Chapter XIII Reception of the news of Lincoln's Death-Lincoln's views of Providence and Religion-Of Government and Labour-The Paradox of his Personality. IT is always more prudent to delay one's praise of a great man till after he is dead: for so long as his life lasts, there is a danger lest that incalculable element of greatness which is in him should too obviously transcend the categories of our approval, and so commit us to an admiration we had not intended. But once the last digit of his acts is set down and the line of death has been drawn across the foot of the account, it does not seem so difficult to compute its total, nor so hazardous to strike the balance. Even to the end, Abraham Lincoln puzzled his contemporaries. There were indeed many who always loved, admired or revered him, and many who consistently distrusted and disliked the man and his policy. But there were also very many who were perplexed; whose attitude toward the President was alternately one of praise and blame, of confidence and suspicion. Because of the singularity of his character, and the stress of the times, it was but natural that the feeling of anxiety should often have outweighed all else in men's thoughts. But on two occasions America came near to the consciousness of his greatness; the first was in the election of 1864, the second was upon his death. It is when a great power, but especially when a unique co-ordinating power, ceases to be exercised that its force is realised, and men begin to estimate its character. This was notably true in the case of Abraham Lincoln. Once his name was removed from its familiar station in men's minds, once his grasp had slackened on the helm of the ship of state, his value was made poignantly clear by his loss. From that time on, we have been seeking to estimate more precisely the nature of the power he wielded. The first feeling experienced on hearing the news of his death by all who had even dimly recognised Lincoln's personality was that expressed by Sir George Grey in the House of Commons, when he felicitously declared, "we feel as if some great calamity had befallen ourselves." Whitman's chant, "When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd," commemorates this profound and almost universal sentiment of bereavement. But alongside of this absorbing sorrow, there sprang up the praise of the deceased. He had been tried, and he had not been found wanting. "It cannot be said there was any exaggeration of his worth," Emerson declared: "if ever a man was fairly tested, he was.” "Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow-men-the practical abolition of slavery ?" And Frederick Harrison said, and has recently re-affirmed, that Lincoln was "the most beautiful and heroic character who, in recent times has ever led a nation, the only blameless type of the Statesman since the days of Washington." The mention of that illustrious name recalls a dictum of Lincoln's worth recording here, for the light it throws upon the man himself; it belongs to his years on the eighth circuit. "Let us believe as in the days of our youth," he said, "that Washington was spotless; it makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect that human perfection is possible." He knew himself far too intimately ever to suppose that he or any biographer of his, could claim so much for him, but "he was a man without vices sound to the core; cheerful, persistent, all right for labour, and liked nothing so well." It was not claimed by Emerson, even in the words quoted; but, using perfection in its finer sense, he would have declared that Lincoln was more complete, more full-grown than other men. He set indeed a nobler standard of human stature before the world; and it was not for nothing that he began his manhood in the land of the Illinois1 in a society which one of his biographers has aptly described as consisting of "full grown men." In moral stature he led them all. "He was a common man," wrote Joshua Speed, "expanded into giant proportions." It would be easy to quote many other notable tributes to, and estimates of the man; I cannot here omit reference to two in passing, that of Lowell in his Ode, as true to Lincoln as it is happily familiar to all lovers of noble literature, and the verses of generous, if belated recantation in Punch. But more appropriate to my present purpose are the words spoken, thirteen years later by Alexander Stephens, once Vice-President 1 "Illinois"=the full-grown men. Of He of the Southern Confederacy, on the reception by Congress of F. B. Carpenter's painting of the Signing of the Proclamation. He said, "I knew Mr Lincoln well... we were together during the 30th Congress. I was as intimate with him as with any other man of that Congress, except perhaps one [Mr Toombs]. Mr Lincoln's general character I need not speak. was warm-hearted; he was generous; he was magnanimous; he was most truly, as he afterward said on a memorable occasion, with malice toward none, with charity for all! In bodily form he was above the average and so in intellect: the two were in symmetry. Not highly cultivated, he had a native genius far above the average of his fellows. Every fountain of his heart was ever overflowing with the milk of human kindness. So much for him personally. From my attachment to him, so much the deeper was the pang in my own breast as well as of millions, at the manner of his 'taking off.' That was the climax of our troubles, and the spring from which came afterward unnumbered woes." Later in the same address, speaking of the result of the Proclamation, he said finely referring to the part Lincoln had taken in emancipating the slaves, "Life is all a mist and in the dark our fortunes meet us. This was evidently the case with Mr Lincoln." There is another testimony to the President which has its own special value, that of the negroes, who persisted in identifying him with America on the one hand, and with Providence on the other. They would call him "Uncle Sam," or "Massa Sam"; and again, "de great Messiah," and declare "Massa Linkum, he be eberywhere. He knows eberyting. He walk de earf like de Lord." Expressions of childlike devotion and reverence such as these, made sometimes in all simplicity to the man himself, never touched his pride, but always his humility. He would say, "You must not give me the praise-it belongs to God;" or, after a silence, pacing his room, "It is a momentous thing to be the instrument, under Providence, of the liberation of a race." Without dwelling further upon the innumerable testimonies to Lincoln's work and worth, let us consider several passages in which he attempted to express his sense of agency and guidance; for they illustrate, better than could any other words, a side of his personality which needs now to be thrown into greater relief. The following statement of Lincoln's views is given in the Recollections of Mr Lucius E. Chittenden : "That the Almighty does make use of human agencies, and directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the plainest statements in the Bible. I have had so many evidences of His direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from above. I frequently see my way clear to a decision when I am conscious that I have no sufficient facts upon which to found it. But I cannot recall one instance in which I have followed my own judgment, founded upon such a decision, when the results were unsatisfactory. . . I am satisfied that, when the Almighty wants me to do, or not to do a particular thing, he finds a way of letting me know it." Continuing, he said-as reported by Mr Chittenden -that his certainty of God did not rest merely on the |