Union, saying nothing of those who were against it.

"There were," he said, "those who were for the Union with, but not without slavery, those for it without, but not with; those for it with or without, but who preferred it with; and those for it with or without, but who preferred it without." Here was the maze through which he must needs find his way; these were the conditions from which he was to work out salvation for the nation, with the profound conviction that whether slavery was or was not immediately extinguished, its death-warrant was already signed. Lincoln's view of slavery was, from the first, not unlike Washington's and that of other founders of the Republic. His attitude was unyielding as to principle. He looked upon the institution as intrinsically evil: inimical to the interests of free labor; anomalous, and impossible of perpetuity, in a politically free community; something to be thwarted, diminished, and ultimately made to cease by just, constitutional, and reasonable means. He satisfied the extremists on neither side of the great debate; for while he would never compromise as to principle, he was too profoundly the statesman to refuse to compromise as to details of time and method.

Kemp Cox

1890

joker; but Lincoln's "seeing" of "the joke" meant a good deal more than with ordinary minds; it meant, frequently enough, that he saw through pretension and falsity. And the jokes that he told often had the wisdom of the ancient parables.

Lincoln's democracy was a matter more of instinct than of reason. He comprehended human motives, human preju

Lincoln the Leader in dealing with the chief perplexity of the situation,-this complex question of slavery and the Union, -was helped by his own intensely human make-up. The average traits of mankind were in him strongly developed. He was in close touch with his kind; he sympathized with men on the plane of humanity, and regarded them in the spirit of philosophy. He was called a great

dices, littlenesses, and nobilities. It was he who once described honest statesmanship as the employment of individual meannesses for the public good. Acquainted with humanity, he knew how to bear with its infirmities, and he moved toward his inflexible purpose, over what to others would have been heartbreaking obstacles, with a long-suffering patience that had in it something of the divine.

A STATESMAN WITH THE HEART OF A PROPHET

As memoir after memoir of the war time has come to light, his countrymen year by year have been better able to obtain a knowledge of the workings of Lincoln's mind, and the marvelous skill and wisdom of his leadership during his Presidency. That which his chief biographers long ago declared of him we now more certainly know to be the truth; namely, that, "with the fire of a reformer and a martyr in his heart, he yet proceeded by the ways of cautious and practical statecraft."

Descended upon him from the North delegations of abolitionists to tell him that unless he at cnce freed the slaves his administration would be shorn of moral support, and the war would end in failure and disgrace. Hastened to the White House from the Border States

their governors and congressional representatives to warn him that, if he touched slavery, they could not keep their constituencies on the side of the Union; and the Border States, he knew, held the balance of power.

Hurried back from

Spain, Carl Schurz,-that gallant figure, a contribution of the best of the Old World to the service of the New in its hour of need,-hurried Carl Schurz from his post at the Spanish court to inform the President that, according to his belief, there would be great danger of the recognition of the Confederacy unless there were prompt military success, or some proof that the war would destroy slavery; while other warnings from over the sea were to the effect that if the President should stir up the slaves against their masters, the sympathy of European friends of the North would be justly forfeited.

Through all this divergence of counsel Lincoln watched, waited, prayed, and incessantly worked toward the end which his own intellect, his own heart approved. It was, as we have said, a highly important element of his leadership that he had had the training of a lawyer, by a practice of many years and many kinds. His knowledge of men had thus been greatly increased; while his grasp of legal principles was of vast help when his talents and experience were enlisted in a mighty cause. It was no petty construction of legal obligation that made him strenuous as to the literal fulfilment of his oath to execute faithfully the office of President, and preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He found no constitutional authority to emancipate the slaves except as a military necessity, and he steadfastly refused to free the slaves till with an honest mind he could declare that the necessity had arisen, knowing, then, also, that the time had at last arrived when public opinion would sustain his action.

In his famous letter to Greeley in 1862, he stated his position and explained his policy with absolute lucidity. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

Like statements were made to others in formal and informal utterances, and he explained to impatient critics and counselors that the condition of public opinion would not justify the course they demanded.

But the deep lesson of his leadership lies in the fact that while year after year he carefully studied public opinion, that supreme element in all matters of government and all the affairs of men,-he studied it not to yield to it as his master, but in order so to act in respect to it as to accomplish his own well-considered purpose; to act upon it; to bring it powerfully to the help of his cherished plans; in a word to lead it, and to lead it right.

And what is true leadership of the people? Is it to be carried away by a popular wave; to avoid opposing it, not in order to circumvent it,-to save one's strength for its later direction, but solely and selfishly to avoid being submerged by it? Is it to change when it changes, in order to retain place and the semblance of power? Is he truly a leader who listens to "the sacred voice of the people," in order to learn which way to leap? Not thus Lincoln. His was not the leadership that, in order to be popular, changes its mind, but a leadership that changes the minds of others. He kept "near the people," he kept his "ear to the ground," -through his sympathy with human beings and his interest in them, in order to learn the moods of many minds, and gradually to lead thought and action in the line of his own profound convictions. Lincoln respected respected public opinion, he declared that "public opinion in this country is everything," but he was not opinion's trembling slave. He understood human prejudices, limitations, the effects of heredity and environment; but he never considered a wrong public opinion final. Not unknown to mankind is the statesmanship that resists public opinion when it disapproves of it-resists till the waves beat threateningly, and then turns with the tide. This is the statesmanship of Pontius Pilate-that hesitant and tragic figure who stands before the eyes of all mankind washing ineffectually his guilty hands, while he releases Barabbas and sends the Christ to Calvary.

LXXVII-53

"DON'T SPARE ME"

No book praising Lincoln has lately been issued which has brought to me a clearer idea of his method with public opinion, as well as his wisdom and his selfsacrificing devotion, than one by a man whose life was a romance of devotion to ideals, a Southern-born abolitionist, -who did not hesitate to dispraise the President. He was opposed to war, and held that "no drop of blood would have been shed if the President," at the beginning, "had proclaimed freedom for every slave." Yet even he would have protected the centers to which the slaves would flee, as if that itself would not have been an open invitation to war! In 1862, he, the Rev. Moncure D. Conway, went to the White House with the Rev. W. H. Channing to urge personally upon the President the emancipation of the slaves. Pathetic was the sweet reasonableness of the President in explaining to these good and insistent men, as he had so often done to men of like scruples and beliefs, not only his own great desire for emancipation, preferably with compensation, but the fact that perhaps they did not know so well as he the temper of the entire public. He showed them that those who were working in the antislavery movement would naturally come in contact with men of like mind, and might easily overestimate the number of those who held similar views. He gave it as his observation that the great masses of the people at that time cared comparatively little about the Negro. And at the end of the interview he said, can we not hear him say it?"We shall need all the antislavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views; and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help. Don't spare me."

Do we seize all the bearings of his strange situation: He who is known now as the Great Emancipator set before him as the one indispensable aim not the immediate freedom of the slave, but the immediate salvation of the Union,-the integrity of the nation,-though when the time came for emancipation to assist Union, how joyfully and confidently he put forth emancipation! With what courage, and in the face of what heavy risks! In

many thoughtful minds the fact that Lincoln's policy was the Union first, and abolition next, remains his highest title to world-wide fame-that his saving of the nation is the gigantic feat that lifts him to the companionship of the most momentous characters of universal history. "This Union," says John Coleman Adams, "is the consummation of all the struggles of all men toward a state of universal peace. It is the life and aspiration of the world. organized into a nation." The threat to undo the Union was a "peril to mankind." That Lincoln instinctively felt this, and strained every nerve to the supreme task of preserving the nation, and this with success, gives him rank among the greatest. That he did this, and destroyed slavery also, proves his genius and doubly crowns his stupendous accomplishment.

He did all this, so far as we may attribute to any single person the guidance of affairs so tremendous, though in this case the personal preponderance is exceptionally evident, he did all this, and he assumed no virtue for having done it; not a thought of vanity or undue exultation. ever crossed his candid mind. To a lesser nature the temptation would have been great as, at the last, success followed success, remembering the reproaches he had so long silently borne, and, most trying of all, the suspicion and spiritual scorn,—the look from above downward, who, working for the same ends, regarded him as less sensitive morally and less faithful to that cause to which he had dedicated every energy of his soul.

of those

It is pleasant to know that this kindly, much-burdened, and harassed ruler had at least for a few days before his takingoff the satisfactions of full success. He who knew more than any other the awful dangers-as Godkin said while Lincoln still was living-was perhaps the only man in the North who had "never wavered, or doubted, or abated one jot of heart or hope." He had "been always calm, confident, determined; the very type and embodiment of the national will, the true and fit representative of the people in its noblest mood"; the ideal "leader of a democracy." Said lately one who knew him, and who confesses that it has taken years of reflection and retrospective consideration to become convinced