SUGGESTIONS FROM THE LIFE OF T ABRAHAM LINCOLN.* BY PROF. FRANCIS WAYLAND SHEPARDSON, PH. D., WO contradictory tendencies find frequent expression in American life. The one is a disposition to hero-worship of public leaders; the other an inclination to ridicule and belittle them. The first is due partly to long prevalent methods of instruction, and partly to the peculiar conditions of existence here. The second results partly from these same conditions and partly from the asperities of party politics, which have encouraged both caricature and caustic criticism. The past has been constantly exalted. We have been accustomed to look backward through a haze, which has so distorted our vision that the leaders of days gone by have appeared as giants looming up through the mists of years. This continual glorification has been the bane of all instruction. Environment has lent its powerful aid to the same end. This pre-eminently is the land of opportunity. The saying, "Every American boy expects to be President,” has sufficient warrant in the fact that several very unpromising American boys have been elevated to that distinguished position. If conditions are favorable, a moment may make an American one of the Immortals. Just so long as the starry banner waves in the sky, the name of Lawrence will be revered, because of those heroic words he uttered as he was carried from the deck to his death below, "Don't give *Originally contributed, Feb. 1899, to Self-Culture Magazine, G. Mercer Adam, Editor, and published by The Werner Co., Akron, 0. up the ship!" A happy word at the right instant, an opportunity for duty seized, an act of heroism, a tragic death, these have made American names immortal. But there is another side. All is not glorification, for one failure to use opportunity, one false move, one sign of weakness at a critical time, has doomed a whilom hero to the prison house of neglect and forgetfulness. A striking instance is that of Citizen Genêt, who basked in the smiles of an enthusiastic populace now a century ago. For a year his name was heard everywhere; then he was forgotten. Only the special student of American history knows, or cares to know, that for forty years after his ill-advised triumphal advance from Charleston to Philadelphia, he lived in the United States as a common private citizen. Equally suggestive are the facts about Aaron Burr, who had thirty years of obscurity after his trial for treason, before death came to take him from a land which had once shown him honor. These cases illustrate the second American tendency -to disparage and belittle. A sentiment which applauds quickly will blame with equal readiness and intensity. What party passion does not accomplish, personal bitterness will secure, and the result is that every public man has his life so carefully scrutinized with microscopic exactness, that every detail, no matter how personal or private, is brought to the light to satisfy the imperious demands of a scientific age. The wonder increases, that anything remains to be praised, that every idol is not thrown down. It speaks well for our leaders that so many of them have come out of this searching examination with honor and increased dignity. In an address at Vassar College a few years ago, a well 300442 known Harvard professor mentioned a Christmas card which he had lately seen in a store window in Cambridge. It had upon it the pictures of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Hawthorne, and Holmes. He found in the very pictures a sufficient argument for the existence of an American literature, and then he expressed his opinion that these men and their writings might safely be left to posterity. "For," he continued, "posterity will judge; that is certain. It will judge, too, with unthinking impartiality—without acrimony, without tenderness. What mankind wants or needs it will preserve and remember; what mankind finds useless it will cast aside and forget. That is what makes the past heroic to all eyes not unduly sharpened by the engines of science. It is the sin and the tumult and the passion of human life that die. Enthroned in art the beauty of the old days lives, and it will live forever.' And although science nowadays teaches us the suggestive truth that the old days which we have reverenced were, after all, when the sun still shone on them, days of turbulence and wickedness, disheartening as any that surges about us now, that same science, one often thinks, is prone to forget the deep law of human nature, which makes each generation, in the end, remember instinctively, of those that are gone before, only or chiefly those traits and deeds which shall add to the wisdom and power of humanity." No other public man in American history affords such opportunities for study as are presented in the life of Abraham Lincoln. His lowly origin, his meteoric career, his tragic death-these yield ample materials for artist and poet and writer. From every hidden nook and corner of the western world eager hands are drawing forth the details of his life, and with every added bit of information the mystery of his existence becomes the more complex and inexplicable. Henry Watterson uses words full of meaning, when he says: "A thousand years hence, no story, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled with greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper feeling, than that which tells of his [Lincoln's] life and death." The constant tendency toward glorification already mentioned, and in this special case the added inclination to deification, renders the task difficult, indeed, for him who attempts in a brief chapter to tell what the life of Abraham Lincoln means to the American of to-day. The names of great Americans are associated with great ideas or movements. The majority link the name of Alexander Hamilton with federal finances, overlooking his great influence in the building up of the central government and his determined stand for that central authority as against the individual state. So, likewise, the name of Calhoun will go down to the coming ages as the synonym for Nullification, much to the prejudice of the historic influence of that distinguished statesman. In every case that might be mentioned, the central idea obscures the many other features of a life full of illustration of phases of American develop ment. In the case of Abraham Lincoln the crowning thought always will be the emancipation of the slave, and yet it is worth while considering whether, as the years go by and the wonderful life is studied again and again, other features than this most dramatic one may not be chosen in real explana tion of the power of this leader over the minds and hearts of American citizens. Certainly Mr. Lowell had something else in mind than praise for the Emancipator, when he phrased his "Commemoration Ode" and called Abraham Lincoln "the first American." When the thought of emancipation first came into the mind of Mr. Lincoln it is difficult to determine. The iconoclastic scientific student casts discredit upon many of the tales which have been told about his boyhood. Especially desirable would it be that one story might be retained. According to that, one day, in the spring of 1831, two youths might have been seen wandering about the streets of that quaint southern city of New Orleans. In age and stature they were men, but in knowledge of the world they were mere children. They had come down the river from their home in Illinois, bringing a flat-boat loaded with pork and beef. They wondered much as they saw the sights of the busy southern city, the centre of all the trade of the West and South, and gained a glimpse of a life so different from that of the simple quiet of their prairie home. Among other places visited was the slave-mart, and there for the first time they were brought face to face with the evils of human slavery, as they saw men and women, boys and girls, sold like cattle, and heard the sad cry of the mother as the child was taken away, or the mournful lamentation of the father as he realized that he was to be separated from his loved ones. The coarse remarks of the rude overseers grated harshly upon their ears, and as they turned away from the accursed spot and hurried out into the pure sunlight, one of them, with quivering lip and clenched |