Abraham 1809-1865 Lincoln

During the years that had followed his election as president the qualities that had enabled him to attain success were all in process either of transformation or of reorganization. The former is the dominant note until midsummer 1862; the latter in the re maining years. But there is no definite division in time. In some respects the period of uncertainty contradicts itself. Timid and indecisive in action as, in the main, he was in that period, he was never more clear and self-sufficient in thought. Two sides of his nature were in conflict. While as man of action he waited upon the opinions of others, as man of thought he consulted no one and formulated his position out of his own meditations. This is strikingly apparent in the contrast as State papers of the First Inaugural and the First Annual Message. In March 1861 Lincoln still believed that the divisions of the sections was a mere quarrel over the extension of slavery. He had not then taken the measure of the secession movement and did not understand that inde pendence, not simply the preservation of slavery, was what the South had in view. He was still blinded by the provincial bias of Springfield, by his own lack of contact with Washington. In the next eight months he made the great discovery of his life— that there was no one cause of secession, that the South had be come a nation within the Union, that both the Southerners who loved slavery and the Southerners who hated slavery were tired of living with the North and wanted a legal separation. In these months while he fumbled weakly with the reins of power his mind called up all its reserves and set to work to form a philosophical-historical defense of the cause of the Union. The result was his most remarkable State paper, the First Message. Its origins lie undoubtedly in a long train of thoughts that had been moving through his mind, more or less subconsciously, dur ing 2o years. All that while he had been growing in the belief that the basic issue of the time was not the freedom of the slaves but the preservation of the ideal of democracy. Jefferson came very near being his patron saint. Two propositions were in solu tion in his mind when he was elected president : that slavery must be checked because it was an aristocratic institution inimical to the interests of the "plain people"; that the Union was sacred because it made possible a great experiment in government "of the people, for the people and by the people." Neither of those ideas played an important part at the Inaugural ; they are the bed rock of the Message. Incidentally, the Message contained an historical argument which was based on inadequate knowledge and has not stood the test of scientific criticism. The immeasur able importance of the Message is as the statement of a creed. "This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and sub stance of government whose leading object is to elevate the con dition of men ; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all ; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." Evolution As a Writer.—Even more striking than the pre cipitation of political thinking is the sudden leap forward of his power as a writer. Previous to 186o he had displayed a wonderful gift of lucidity; his style differed from the prevailing styles of the time in his love of temperance, in a general repudiation of rhetoric, in candour, in serenity. He had also the gift of noble rhythm. But in those early days his language lacked beauty in any rich sense ; it was not shot through with imagination ; it had nothing of what was vaguely termed "the poetical." This quality appeared suddenly in the First Inaugural. Thereafter his writing steadily grew in richness without letting go its soundness of method, without becoming decorated, without lapsing into rhetoric. Here is another mystery of his later development. How he had gathered into himself a subterranean sense of beauty in words, whether it had grown out of long reading of the Bible, Shake speare and Burns—the favourite books of his maturity—whether it linked back with his mother's world, with its forests and empty spaces, its loneliness and its lampless nights of stars, who can say? Something perhaps may be allowed to the influence of the brilliant Seward whose hand is known to be present in the First Inaugural, and who was certainly his close friend as well as secretary of State during the later years. But such literary sense

as Seward possessed is slight compared with that which appears in Lincoln's Fast Day Proclamations, in his description of the map of the United States in the Second Inaugural Message, in the oration at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863, in the Second Inaugural, in some fragments and letters such as the famous letter to Mrs. Bixby upon the death of her sons in battle, or the letter to Gen.

Hooker on Jan. 26, 1863, informing him of his appointment as commanding general and quietly discussing in the most objective vein his recent talk that "both the army and the Government needed a dictator. . . ." The speech at Gettysburg condensing into one page of eloquent prose the purport of the First Message is probably his most famous utterance.

There is a new sense of balance in him and of self confidence. He has grasped the full nature of his task as military executive of a democracy and has thought out his own conception of the division and articulation of powers among the president, the legislature and the generals. He puts this conception firmly into effect despite furious clamour from Congress. In the latter stage of his government he follows his own judgment alone in making or unmaking generals, but once they are in command he permits no civilian interference with their plans. His own meddling in army matters in 1861 has no parallel after 1862. The terrible Com mittee on the Conduct of the War, which had the temper and aimed to get the power of the great Committee of the French Revolution, was slowly but steadily forced into insignificance. The aim of the committee and its associates was to conduct the war on a purely partisan basis while Lincoln was determined to conduct it on a national basis transcending party. Broadly speak ing, he was successful. It was as the "Union" not merely as the "Republican" candidate that he was re-elected in 1864. In all his later thinking two ideas which have been frequently overlooked were harped upon. He steadily insisted that the United States formed a strictly federal community, that the States were as es sential to its welfare as was the central Government and that he was fighting neither to enable the North to dominate the South nor to centralize the Union through the overthrow of the States. His party enemies were for Northern domination and for central ization. The second idea, too often overlooked or explained away, is his steady insistence on the executive as the proper centre of gravity in exceptional conditions and his virtual assumption of the role of dictator. No small part of the significance of this final stage is the struggle between himself and Congress for pos session of the extraordinary powers which inevitably are generated in time of war. Nowhere was he denounced more bitterly than in the House of Representatives by fanatical Republicans. His views upon both these crucial matters were summed up in the Emancipation Proclamation which is even more important as a statement of administrative policy than as a step in the history of Abolition. Quite frankly, he defended the theory that the "war powers" of the president formed a virtual dictatorship in two open letters justifying the punishment by military process of persons charged with sedition. He was able to maintain this bold attitude involving a questionable interpretation of the Consti tution because of the dominance he acquired in the hearts and imaginations of the mass of the people. Defending the most high-handed case of military arrest (see VALLANDIGHAM, CLEM ENT L.) he said of this great power which he claimed for the president, "if he uses the power justly, the . . . people will prob ably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves under the Constitution." His success in his second election when the mere politicians of his party very generally intrigued against him was a justification of himself as the tribune of the people. His hold upon them was accomplished partly by his utterances, partly through the com munication to others of the vivid and compelling impression he made on individuals close to him, partly through the open recep tions which he held every few days which any one was permitted to attend. He called them his "baths of public opinion." Through them he found out the heart of the nation and communicated him self to the nation.