The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, vol 1 | Page 4

its people can be strong enough to maintain
its existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion
brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election,
occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the
strain.... The strife of the election is but human nature practically
applied to the facts in the case. What has occurred in this case must
ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any
future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have
as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us
therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from
and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the election is
over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a common fort to
save our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall
strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been
here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I
am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election and duly
grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my
countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good, it adds
nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or
pained by the result."
This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is in a
peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great statesman who
made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in its lofty standard of
morality. Lincoln's life, Lincoln's deeds and words, are not only of
consuming interest to the historian, but should be intimately known to
every man engaged in the hard practical work of American political life.
It is difficult to overstate how much it means to a nation to have as the
two foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln. It
is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to feel that
the highest ambition any American can possibly have will be gratified
just in proportion as he raises himself toward the standards set by these
two men.
It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to advance

the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse for doing poorly
in the present; but it is an excellent thing to study the history of the
great deeds of the past, and of the great men who did them, with an
earnest desire to profit thereby so as to render better service in the
present. In their essentials, the men of the present day are much like the
men of the past, and the live issues of the present can be faced to better
advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the leaders of
the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of Lincoln's
life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and
inefficiency--the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers
alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if
shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning
moralist of unbalanced mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but
has no power himself to do good and but little power to do ill--all these
were as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic themselves. His
life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom, because
otherwise adherence to right will be mere sound and fury without
substance; and that they must also act high-mindedly, or else what
seems to be wisdom will in the end turn out to be the most destructive
kind of folly.
Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to leadership in
his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty to a
lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life, he also accepted human
nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve
results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a
man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption,
from mere self- seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man
of more sane and healthy mind--a man less under the influence of that
fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in
reality profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work- a-day
world refuse to do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the
impossible.
In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian draws
an interesting distinction