Abraham Lincoln | Page 2

whose apt manner of "putting things" made him more than a
match for practiced diplomatists and wily marplots. These were men of
might about his council-board, scholars and statesmen, but none arose
to his altitude, much less was either his master.
That very facetiousness sometimes critcised, kept him from becoming
morbid, and gave healthfulness to his opinions, free alike from fever
and paralysis. That his was incorruptible integrity, no man dare
question. He was not merely above reproach, but eminently above
suspicion. Purity is receptive. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God," is as profound in philosophy as comprehensive in
theology. Purity in the realm of moral decision and motive, is a skylight
to the soul, through which truth comes direct. Abraham Lincoln was so
pure in motive and purpose, looked so intensely after the right that he
might pursue it, that he saw clearly where many walked in mist.
Without developing the characteristics of the ideal statesman
analytically, let us see how they were manifest in his administration.
It began amid the rockings of rebellion. A servile predecessor,
deplorably weak, if not criminal, had permitted treason to be freely
mouthed in the national capitol, treasonable action to be taken by State
authorities, and armed treason to resist and defy federal authority, and
environ with bristling works the forts and flag of the Union. At such a
juncture, Mr. Lincoln, then barely escaping assassination, was
inaugurated. As was right, he made all proper efforts for conciliation,
tendered the olive-branch, proposed such changes as existing laws, and
even of the Constitution, as should secure Southern rights from the
adverse legislation of a sectional majority. All was refused, and traitors
said, "We will not live with you. Though you sign a blank sheet and
leave us to fill it with our own conditions, we will not abide with you."

Refusing peace, war was commenced, not by the President, but by
secessionists. War has been waged on a scale of astounding vastness
for four years, and Mr. Lincoln falls as the day of victory dawns.
His claim to the character of a great statesman is to be estimated in
view of the fiery ordeal which tried him, and not by the gauge of
peaceful days. In addition to the most powerful armed rebellion ever
organized, he was confronted by a skillful, able, persistent, well
compacted partisan opposition. He was to harmonize sectional feelings
as antagonistic as Massachusetts and Kentucky, and to rally to one flag
generals as widely apart in sentiment and policy as Phelps and Fitz
John Porter. That under such difficulties he sometimes erred in
judgment and occasionally failed in execution, is not strange, for he
was a man, but that he erred so seldom, and that he so admirably
retrieved his mistakes, shows that he was more by far than an ordinary
man; more by far than an average statesman. Standing where we do
today, we feel that he was divinely appointed for the crisis; that he was
chosen to be the Moses of our pilgrimage, albeit, he was to die at
Pisgah and be buried against Beth-Peor, while a Joshua should be
commissioned to lead us into the land of promise.
In studying the administration of these four eventful years, it seems to
me there were four grand landmarks of principle governing him, ever
visible to the eye of the President, by which he steadily made his way.
I. THE UNION IS INCAPABLE OF DIVISION.
In his first Inaugural, he said: "I hold that in contemplation of universal
law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual." In
his reply to Fernando Wood, then Mayor of New York, he said, "There
is nothing that could ever bring me willingly to consent to the
destruction of the Union." By this rule he walked. The Union was one
for all time, and there was no authority for its division lodged anywhere.
He would use no force, would exercise no authority not needed for this
purpose. But what force was needed, whether moral or physical, should
be employed. Hence the call for troops. Hence the marching armies of
the Republic, and the thunder of cannon at the gates of Vicksburg,
Charleston and Richmond. Hence the suspension of the habeas corpus,

the seizure and occasional imprisonment of treason-shriekers and
sympathizers, for which he has been denounced as a tyrant by journals,
which, slandering him while living, have the effrontery to put on the
semblance of grief and throw lying emblems of mourning to the wind!
For the exercise of that authority, he went for trial to the American
people, and they triumphantly sustained him.
II. The second grand regulating idea of his administration may be best
stated in his own words: "GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY
THE PEOPLE,