Page images
PDF
EPUB

Secretary of War entreating that no attempt should be made on the rebel capital.

Immediately after being exchanged for Fitz-Hugh Lee I went North, and in Washington was taken into the House of Representatives, where I was immediately surrounded by a large body of the members and business was suspended. At that time a strong effort was made in influential quarters to substitute some other candidate than Mr. Lincoln for the ensuing Presidential election. The members of the House crowded about me to know what effect such a measure would have at the South. Great was the joy of those surrounding me when I said: The rebels are now exhausted of money and men and hope; their only chance is that Mr. Lincoln may be set aside, as they would regard that as a repudiation of his policy, and are sure that peace to the Confederacy, with formal dissolution of the Union, would follow. I did not see the President, as he was absent at the moment. PORTLAND, ME.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S KNOWLEDGE
HUMAN NATURE: A CRITICAL STUDY.

BY THE HON. THOMAS L. JAMES,

EX-POSTMASTER GENERAL.

OF

IT has seemed to me that Abraham Lincoln was one of those men of whom the last word can never be said. For those who have lived, doing great things for humanity, and, being dead, have left a glorious heritage to the world, are ever of fresh interest and of splendid inspiration to those who give thought to their achievements and their characters. Mr. Lincoln was one of these. A generation has passed since the country was bereaved by his untimely and bloody death; and yet there is fascination to-day in the story of his career, the study of his character, and the analysis of his qualities; and those anecdotes which are told illustrating the man have the charm of delightful romance, and are read with greater interest than the most brilliant tales of the writers of fiction.

Mr. Lincoln looked forth upon the world, as we of to-day now realize, with almost Shakespeare's eyes; and it was, perhaps, that greater quality of his, that subtle capacity to fathom the human heart, to understand its weakness and its capacities, and so understanding to be guided by them in his own direction of affairs, and in

the discipline which made it possible for him in great emergencies to stand forth as a man of true greatness, which makes the consideration of him to-day as fresh, invigorating and timely as it was when those great affairs of which he was the master were occupying the country's eye.

He was essentially a poet by nature, not with that technical facility for rhythm or command of prosody by which Shakespeare was able to reveal human nature to the world with immortal sentence, and nevertheless by those homely anecdotes — most of which were of his own creation, as wide in range and as true in teaching as the Fables of Æsop — he illustrated the weaknesses and the forces of human nature with, perhaps, almost as universal a reach as did Shakespeare in his plays.

This greater quality of Mr. Lincoln's—greater in an intellectual sense is now beginning to be understood. Years passed before even those nearest him perceived this quality; and it is probable that, as the years roll by, and critical study is given to the purely mental capacity of Mr. Lincoln, it will furnish as profound suggestion, as amazing revelation of his all-comprehending nature, as does the investigation of the works of the great dramatists. Therefore, there need be no fear that, upon the anniversaries of Mr. Lincoln's birth and death, nothing can be said of him which has not been uttered before. There will always be new suggestions, new revelations, new understandings, for of such capacity was the quality of his intellect and soul.

It was with some consciousness of this that Mr. Lincoln's associate upon the Presidential ticket, the late Vice-President Hamlin, journeyed in the dead of winter, bent with years but still of vigorous intellect, to New York City, that he might appear before the Lincoln Club

on the anniversary of Lincoln's birthday, and say something which had been in his heart to say ever since, in his retirement in his distant home in Maine, he had turned to his recollections of Mr. Lincoln, in the peaceful contemplation of his old age. Mr. Hamlin, the last survivor of all those associated with Mr. Lincoln when he took the Presidency, stood before the Lincoln Club, saying that he had made the long journey that he might impress upon them a thought which had come to him, and that was that the nation should set apart the anniversary of Lincoln's birthday, that it might be inspired by a study of his character, and that able men, and plain, unlettered folk might, upon that day, give their testimony in public places of Lincoln and his service to his country.

Scholars, profound students and men of critical capacity will have abundant inspiration long after this and succeeding generations have passed away, for study into the extraordinary intellectual qualifications of this plain man of the prairies. But a greater service will be done. to the American people than any that critical scholarship can furnish if, upon this and recurring anniversaries, the life and career of Mr. Lincoln are so presented that coming generations shall know what he was, what he did, and what the lessons of inspiration for the American people in these achievements are.

Thirty-four years ago last February, and only a few days after the 51st anniversary of his birthday, Mr. Lincoln stood upon the historic platform of Cooper Institute in New York. The cultured men of the metropolis had known him only through that unique repute, which his brief career, before the public eye, in the West, had furnished. Our professional men, our scholars and our clergymen had heard, through vague

reports in the public prints, and through interesting sketches brought by those who had visited the West, of a lawyer of the prairies, an unconventional man, who had had no schooling, whose practice was in the rural circuit, whose companions were men not prominent in public affairs; but who had, nevertheless, met Douglas, the most impetuous, brilliant and overwhelming debater of his day, and overthrown him in a series of public addresses in those towns. They had also heard that this country lawyer, whom his friends called "Honest Abe," with patronizing suggestion, had made a speech in which he had proclaimed, before the idol of the Republicans of the East, Wm. H. Seward, had done so, the issue upon which the "Rebellion was created and crushed. Seward, in his Rochester speech, in the summer of 1859, had declared that there was an "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and freedom in this country, and that one or the other would be victorious; and the Republicans of the East seized that laconic term "Irrepressible conflict," and made it the watch-cry of their organization. But Lincoln, two months before Mr. Seward thus crystallized the doctrine of the Republican Party, had, with finer metaphor and apter illustration, expressed the same idea; for, in his speech at Chicago, in the spring of 1859, he Isaid in his exordium:

I believe this I do not expect

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. Government cannot endure half slave, half free. the Union dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."

The politicians of the West, to whom he read this speech before he delivered it, criticised it, begging to

H

« PreviousContinue »