But in the deep entanglements of history this baleful institution had to be condoned, even in this land made sacred to the free. Inbred within the Nation in theNation's very birth, that it be sheltered within the Nation's life became a national responsibility. From this firm bond Lincoln himself could not escape. In the Constitution that Lincoln swore to uphold, when first he took the presidency, slavery was sheltered, if not entrenched. As chief magistrate of the whole Republic, however obnoxious slavery might be, he had the obnoxious thing to protect. This he freely admitted, and explicitly declared in his first inaugural.
Here was the beginning of his final, moral debate. How should he morally justify himself in defending what he morally abhorred? That this dual attitude should be assumed he seemed fully to concede. This shows most clearly, and in its sharpest moral contradiction, when, in his first inaugural, he volunteered to permit an amendment to the Constitution, enacting, as the supreme law of the land, that slavery should remain thereafter undisturbed forever. How he brought his mind to take that stand has never been made clear. He said in that connection that such an amendment was in effect already Constitutional law. But previous to that date he had always pledged and urged forbearance with slavery, on the understanding that such forbearance was only for a time; that, as foreseen and designed by the men who framed the Constitution, slave holding was always to be so handled, as to be always on the way to disappear. It is not easy to see how a man, to whom the practice of holding slaves was so morally repellent, could participate in making it perpetual. One could wish that just this problem had been frankly handled under Lincoln's pen. It must have been plainly before his thought. And the words of few men would be more worthy of careful record and review than deliberate words from Lincoln upon this world-perplexing query:—how adjust one's thoughts andacts to a moral evil, that inveterately endures, and is never atoned? But in fact that amendment was never carried through. One of the fruits of slavery was its rash unwisdom at just this juncture.
Still, though the amendment lapsed, slavery held on. And slaveholders tightened their resolution to retain their rights in slaves, or rend the Union. This precipitated war. This may seem to have doubled Lincoln's problem, slavery and national dissolution. Standing at the apex of national responsibility, he had to bear the hottest brunt of the physical anguish, the mental perplexity, and the moral sorrows of a war waged by a slave-holding South in militant secession. But in reality, in his thought, the two were one. All turned on slavery. This was the burning blemish in the Constitution. This was the intent of the war. This was the burden on his heart. Here was a load too grievous for any man to bear. It bore preponderantly on him. And yet, as regards any personal and conscious desire or deed, he was through and in it all conscious within himself of innocence. His trial and sorrow were without cause. How now, in his soberest thought, was all this moral confusion explained? Hating slavery with all his heart, innocent all his life of any inclination to rob another man of liberty, but pledged and sworn to shelter slavery under the arm of his supreme and free authority, how could he prove himself consistent morally?
Here emerge the profoundest thoughts of Lincoln on the ways of God. And herein appears his contribution to a theodicy—a vindication of God's moral honor, where his moral government seems slack. How can thoughtful men conceive and hold that God is just, when such injustice and disaster are allowed at all, much less for centuries;in any corner of the earth, much less where heaven's favor seems to dwell?
Upon this subduing theme this last inaugural gives us Lincoln's most explicit words. Of God's personal being, and of his personal care, this address shows Lincoln to be perfectly assured. This was his standing attitude and confidence. Throughout his years in the presidency this trust had seemed unwavering. Indeed, by repeated, almost unconscious attestations, it was his stablest trust. Some of his utterances are tender and touching testimonials to his belief that God rules in his own personal career. But mainly his confessions of belief in the Providence of God are connected with national concerns. He did joyfully, almost jubilantly believe that this Republic was under God's special watch and care. His own hope for our national future well-being and honor rested mainly, we must judge, upon the tokens he thought he could trace in our thrilling and inspiring history of the divine controlling care. At bottom it was this faith that underlay all his patriotism. That the fundamental affirmations of our Constitution were rescripts and digests from the will and word of God was the lively ground and unfailing confirmation of his pure devotion to his Nation's honor and weal. More than aught in all the world beside, it was this religious faith that steadied and girded his will through all those strenuous days.
It is just here that this study of a theodicy sets in. Above all his former thoughts about himself, about his land, about the clash of right and wrong; above all thoughts of other men, and other times; even above his own and his opponents' former prayers and faith, he lifts new thoughts in new reverence and new docility towards God.
Still naught but slavery in his theme—its undeniableiniquity; its strange, prolonged permission; his own, and all other men's responsibility; its unavoidable entail in penalty; and the divine, enduring terms of new liberty and peace. Here are themes and fixed realities that seem eternally to disagree. Can they ever all be morally harmonized? Could even God enlighten that dark past? Could his own historic acts be morally unified? Nothing he had ever done with slavery, not even its utter elimination in his act of freedom, had ever been done, he explicitly affirmed, on moral grounds. Yet slavery, and by his own hand, was indeed undone. But even so the spirit of the South was still invincible, and war was holding on. What indeed could be the thoughts and plans of God?
To begin with, he confesses both North and South and all the land gone wrong. This is the first component in his theodicy. Neither North nor South, not even in the act of prayer, had walked with God, nor found the truth, nor gained its wish. All thoughts of men, in the righteous rule of God, were being overturned. This confession verges near to worship, acclaiming, as it does, the Almighty's designs; and venturing as it does, to trace and reproduce the Almighty's thoughts.
Here is seen how genuine is the moral earnestness in Lincoln's earnest thoughtfulness. As though by a very instinct, his form of words betrays his reverence. He refrains from dogmatism. He refrains even from affirmation. He knows he is venturing upon a daring flight. He is assuming to conjoin together into a moral unison that bitter sample of the age-long cruelty of man against his brother, and the transcendent sovereignty, the eternal justice, and the age-long silence of God. His formula is a modest supposition. But within its modesty is an eye that searches far.
He takes resort in one of the most trenchant declarations of Christ, that momentous saying in his colloquy about the majesty and modesty of a little child:—"Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
In this colloquy Jesus seems to be moved by a tender impulse of affectionate jealousy for the model beauty and grace of children. But that tenderness is roused into one of the most terrific outbursts that ever passed his lips. Little children are Christlike, Godlike, models of the citizenship in the heavenly Kingdom. God is their jealous guardian and defender. But Godlike, and of heavenly dignity though they be, they are shy and frail. And men, as they grow gross and impudent, abuse and offend their defenselessness. So things have to be. But woe to such offenders. They were better tied to that mammoth stone that the mule turns in the mill, and submerged in the abyss of the deep of the great sea.
Here are four noteworthy elements:—a blended heavenly modesty and majesty and innocence; an insufferable insolence; a trebly-terrible penalty; and a strange and ominous necessity.
Over these four factors Lincoln's mind must have pondered long. Else how explain their place in this inaugural? They form the foundation of its central paragraph, and constitute its paramount argument; forming alike a sobering admonition, and a humble ground of hope to all the Nation, while at the same time holding aloft before the Nation's thought the outline and substance of a stately vindication of the ways of God. Evidently here is shapely fashioning in lucid speech of Lincoln's ripest, surest thought. As one faces all its range, it seems like the open sky, clear but fathomless. But its wisdomis doubly sealed, and it bears a double claim to our respect. It shows the way of Lincoln's mind, and the way of the mind of Christ. Not quickly will any other thinker, however disciplined, traverse all its course. But travel where he will in the mighty orbit of this inquiry, the modern thinker, whatever his attainment, may find in this inaugural shining indications that Lincoln's thought has gone before.
In this modest, far-searching supposition, transferred to American history from the lips of Christ, Lincoln firmly grasps two solid facts, elemental and universal in human life:—the beautiful modesty of the meek; and the ugly arrogance in the strong. Strength and weakness needs must be. These invite to rudeness and retreat. Then the powerful overbear. The gentle are overborne. Offenses multiply. The arrogant prevail. So must it be. But when the meek go down beneath the wicked rudeness of the strong, then the Most High God, within whose firm dominion both strong and weak share equally in all the privileges and rights of liberty and law, sets over the offended one his shield, and against the proud offender his sword, until pity and equity are enthroned upon the earth again. Thus must it be. The meek must suffer. Offenders must arise. But meekness is a heavenly, Godlike quality. And as with God, so with his gentle little ones, patient gentleness will be duly vindicated; rude arrogance will meet exact and fit rebuke; and it will stand clear that strength and weakness may dwell together in equity and liberty and peace.
This was the age-long moral process which Lincoln's eye discerned, and the final issue which his expectation hailed. Then and therein his eye discerned that all voices would be constrained to proclaim that in all the moral world pity and equity were prevalent; that theleast had Godlike majesty; that humility gave to all the great their courtliness; and that there was within all men a fadeless worth, far outranking all other wealth.
But it is essential to note, not alone that Lincoln offers this in the modest form of supposition; but that, as it leaves his lips, it assumes the formula of a confession. Even the meek receive rebuke. The gentlest have wandered also away from God. The problem has surpassed us all. All have somewhat to learn from God. That arrogance may meet its due, meekness must be yet more meek. It must needs be that offenses come. Greater than all our wrong, and all our patience, is the patient truth of God. This must be fully learned. It is under wrong that wrong is made right. It is by meekness under arrogance that arrogance is put to shame. It is by gentleness under rudeness that rudeness is subdued. Offenses must needs be. Only in sacrificial submission to its woe is the problem of evil ever resolved. Only thus is the iniquity of the sin measured back upon the evil doer in a symmetrical and equivalent rebuke.
But this is never to exculpate the offender or condone the offense. Blood with the sword, drop for drop, must be meted out to the slaveholder, as he meted out to the slave blood with the lash. All the wealth that the bonds-man's lord has snatched from the toiling slave must be yielded up. Over human scorn and greed and injustice and cruelty hang unfailingly judgments that are true and righteous altogether. Neither may they who are offended rail, nor they who offend exult, over the divine delay. Nor when God's judgments fall may they who are rebuked complain, nor they who are redeemed turn exultation into arrogance. God's ways, and his alone are even, and altogether true.
In thoughts like these Lincoln's final explanation of theways of God took form. In patient, repentant, adoring acquiescence his heart found rest. His sorrows were profound, the sorrows of a patriot, kinsman to all the sorrowful in the land. But he learned, however deep the stroke, to forbear complaint. He received the sorrows of the war into his own breast as heaven's righteous woe upon a haughty land, and as heaven's discipline, teaching offenders the woe of their offense. So his ways became coincident with the greater ways of God.
But in this moral explication of the war, and of all that the war involves, two vastly different types of character persist. Lincoln's solution of the enigma was in diametrical contrast with the views of the leading spirits of the South. Not like him did they rate slavery, nor conceive the war, nor understand the ways of God. How, now, could Lincoln's view assimilate this obduracy in the South? This question was clearly within the scope of Lincoln's thought, and its answer is embraced in what has already been explained. Given an even penalty for any sin, drop for drop with the avenging sword for blood with the lash, and it is morally indifferent whether men rail, or whether they acquiesce. The wrong is made right. The meek are redeemed. God's delay is vindicated. Rudeness is reversed. The law is fully revealed. Man's liberty is honored equally. Cruelty and unfairness are rebuked. The gains of greed are scattered. Humblest men are crowned with eternal dignity. To such, whether from the North or from the South, as with melting sorrow and repentance welcomed to their bosoms this bitter vindication of those primal rights, the sorrows of the war opened into perennial peace. To such as repelled that proffered vindication, there was in the sorrows of the war no alleviation. But for both, nevertheless, and for both identically, the sorrows of the war completed the moralvindication of a pure and Christlike equity and friendliness. Thus all the ways of God, with the repentant and the rebellious alike, are just and righteous altogether. This it is the highest wisdom of men to acquiescently confess. To this even those who rebelliously complain and rail must finally utterly submit.
And now one final matter remains—the idea and definition of happiness. When men discuss the problem of evil in the universe, and in its awful presence try to substantiate their confidence in the just and friendly care of a transcendent Deity, one subtle touchstone governs all they say:—What is their conception of human weal, and of human woe? What in actual fact is deepest misery; and what is true felicity? What do they assume man's highest good to be?
Just here is wide and multiform diversity. For illustration, let thought recur to the contrast with which the topic of this chapter was introduced. The idea of happiness that Goethe plants in Dr. Faust, and the idea of happiness that ruled in Lincoln, are as separate as the poles. And again, to keep within the setting of this inaugural, the happiness towards which Lincoln strove, and in which his thought found satisfaction, contrasted mightily with the happiness that informed the aspirations of the leaders of the South. In their ideal, disdain of all inferiors, delight in easy luxury, unequal acknowledgment of rights, and a cruel stifling of the very rudiments of love, were mixed and working mightily. Desiring and enjoying that Elysium, their estimate of evil, their definition of the highest good, and their programme for a final consummation under God could have no fellowship with any final plan of thought approved by Lincoln.
What was Lincoln's highest happiness? This merits pondering anywhere; but compellingly, where one triesto trace his views upon this problem of theodicy; and yet still more when one conceives in this inquiry how in Lincoln's life his ethics, his civics, and his religion became coincident.
As this mighty problem resolves itself in Lincoln's mind, it comprehends, along with his own welfare and worth and true contentment, the equal dignity and happiness of every other man, and a harmonious consonance with the being and decree of God. He sees that scorn of any other man involves in time the scorner's shame. He sees that robbery, however veiled, entails a debt whose perfect reimbursement the slowest centuries will in their time exact. He sees that any form of malice or unfriendliness, housed and fed in any heart, will forfeit all the joy of gratitude, and fill that heart at last with vindictive hate and bitterest loneliness. He sees that fleshly joys, however lush and full, are marked and destined for a swift and sure decay and weariness and vanity. And so, to realize the perfect welfare, he commends to himself, and urges persuasively on all other men, the sovereign good of an even justice, upheld within himself, and so measured out to other men by the perfect standard of God's self-respecting loyalty; of universal charity, eager everywhere to minister universal benefit and peace; of supreme enthusiasm for enduring life; and of a genuine humility, that shares all hope with all the lowly, and trusts and honors God. In this fourfold, composite unison of conscious, deathless life Lincoln sees the fairest goal, the choicest boon, the highest good of man. In the presence of such a standard, and before the outlook of such a hope Lincoln fashions his theodicy.
Here then is the sum of Lincoln's thought upon this bewildering theme:—
The evil that makes this earthly lot so dark and hardis man's wrong to man; the awful sorrows of the meek; the offenses wrought upon the helpless by the arrogant.
Before this mystery all other mysteries, however deep and terrible, such as hurricanes and famine, plagues and death, may not be named.
This most sovereign evil is most clearly understood by those who are oppressed. Their eyes pierce all its deeps. The rude are, by their rudeness, blind.
The names of all who suffer and are still are registered on high for full solace and redemption.
The register of the rudeness of the strong is also full, and destined for full requital.
This redemption and requital shall be wrought by God.
In this redemption the ruthless may relent and share with all the meek the full measure of all their sorrows, and so become partakers of all their joy.
If ruthlessness persist, full requitals shall still descend, and in the presence of God's even righteousness every mouth shall be stopped.
And so shall all evil be fully rectified.
Of all the words of Lincoln, evincing what he thought of God, none outweigh the witness of this last inaugural. His reply to Thurlow Weed regarding this address, referred to in another place, concerned precisely just this point—the movements and the postulates of his religious faith. As his ripened mind prepared and pondered and reviewed this speech, there accrued within his consciousness a solemn confidence that it was destined to become his most enduring monument; and that as coming generations became aware of its outstanding eminence, their eyes and hearts would fasten on those words about theage-long, just, and overturning purposes of God. There was a confession, so Lincoln felt assured, embracing and conjoining North and South and East and West in an equal lowliness and shame; and declaring and extolling God's divine supremacy over all the erring waywardness and awful sufferings of men.
In this outpouring of his burdened heart before his God, and in the presence of his fellowmen, there is evidence respecting Lincoln's piety that courts reflection.
In the first place it indicates where Lincoln's sense of moral rectitude found out its final bearings. Those purposes of God, as Lincoln watched their operation, were working out the moral issues in the awful wrong of age-long, unrequited toil in perfect equity. Strong men had been wronging weaklings and inferiors. Helpless men had been suffering untold sorrows. Indignant men had been crying out in hot and hasty protest for full and speedy vengeance. Thoughtful men had been tortured over weary, futile wonderings as to how the baffling problem could be solved. Convulsions and confusion, which no arm or thought of man could start or stay, were shaking and bewildering all the land.
But through and over all, as Lincoln came reverently to believe, a sovereign God held righteous government; and out of all the baffling turmoil he was, by simple righteousness, bringing perfect unison and peace. The dark mystery of unrequited wrong was being illuminated by the righteous majesty of complete requital. But in its full perfection, it was a righteousness such as no mind of man devised. It was the righteousness of God. Here Lincoln's moral sense was purified. He was being taught of God. And this he clearly, humbly recognized. And he took full pains in this address to give God all the praise. And so his reverence towards Deity, and his affirmationtouching righteousness became identical. His sense of equity stood clothed in piety.
In the second place, deep within the heart of these divine instructions were such unveilings of God's high majesty, in his steadfast reign above the passing centuries, as awoke on Lincoln's lips such lowly adoration as attuned these words of Godly statesmanship unto a psalm of praise. Here Lincoln's lowliness attains consummate beauty. It is indeed an utterance of profound abasement. It sinks beneath a strong rebuke. It acknowledges sad wanderings. It accepts correction, and meekly takes God's guiding hand. It also sees God's excellence, his high thoughts and ways, his irresistible dominion, his moral spotlessness. And before that revelation he humbly walks among his fellow-citizens, the lowliest of them all, confessing that the reproach involved in what he said fell heaviest upon himself; and therein, as a priest, leading the Nation in an act of worshipping submissiveness before the Lord. Herein his comely, moral modesty becomes an act and attitude of simple reverence towards God. And thus his humility, just like his sense of righteousness, becomes apparelled all about with Godly piety.
In the third place, this new discernment of the ways of God unfolds profound discoveries of the divine evaluation of the diverse, contending interests in our commingled life. It makes clear which values fade, and which shine on eternally. The problem upon which Lincoln had transfixed his eye was that two and one-half centuries of hard and sad embondagement. By that gross sin men's deathless souls were bought and sold for transient gain. Past all denial, therein was moral wrong; else moral wrong had no existence. Its presence, every time he faced it, tortured Lincoln, and made him miserable. And it affronted heaven, overturning God's creative fiatof equality in all mankind. It set and ranked brief creature comforts and desires above the worth of heaven's image in a brother man. Every day it challenged heaven's curse. But heaven's judgment was delayed. Long centuries seemed to show that heaven was indifferent whether human souls or carnal pleasures held superior rank.
But now, within the awful tumult of the war there boomed an undertone, conveying unto all who had quick ears to hear, how God adjudged that wrong. Upon dark battle clouds shone heavenly light, making newly plain God's estimate of slaveholder and of slave; of joys and gains that perish with their use, or await recall; and of souls that never die. Those awful tidings told how ill-gotten, carnal wealth is mortgaged under woe, and to the uttermost farthing must be released; how offending men affront the Lord; and how all offenses must be avenged. They made full clear how he who grasps at earthly gain by wrecking human dignity commits a primal sin—a sin that time, though it run into centuries, cannot obscure, or mitigate, or exempt from strict review. They reveal infallibly that God's pure eye is on God's image in every son of man; that supreme, far-seeing ends are lodged in all the good but unenduring gifts wherewith God's wise and kindly bounties crown man's toil; that a perfect moral government holds dominion everywhere and forevermore; and that beneath this rule, in God's own time, it shall come supremely clear that feasts and luxury and fine attire, that wealth and lust and pampered flesh have lesser worth and pass away, while souls of men may thrive, and gain, and win new worth eternally.
As Lincoln's eye reviewed these centuries of reveling wealth, and impoverished hearts; and beheld, in the issues of the resultant war, that wealth laid waste, and those pure hearts fed and filled with hope and liberty; his wisdomto compare all earth-born, mortal things with things unperishing and heavenly passed through new birth, new growth to new completeness in depth and clarity and confidence. And all this gain to Lincoln, while wholly ethical, dealing as it did with the wrong and right in human slavery and liberty, owed all its increase to truer understanding of the Lord. Here again his ethics was purified by faith. His faith was deeply ethical. As with his lowliness, and his rectitude, so with his moral valuation of the human soul. It was vestured all about with Godly piety.
In the fourth place, within the awful wreckage of the war, with which this last inaugural is so absorbed, there were mighty attestations that God was pitiful. That war could be defined as God's vengeance on man's cruelty. Precisely this was what Lincoln grew to see. To all who toiled in slavery the war had brought deliverance. Thereby the stinging lash was snatched from human hands; the human heel was thrust from human necks; the shameless havoc of the homes of lowly men was stayed; countless sufferings were assuaged; and true blessedness was restored to souls hard-wonted to unrelenting grief.
And this achievement was alone the Lord's. Of all down-trodden men high heaven became the champion. In all its awful judgments he who ruled that conflict remembered mercy. High above all the bloody carnage of those swords there swayed the scepter of the All-pitiful. In the very doom upon the strong God wrought redemption for the poor. And so, as that dreadful wreckage brought to nothing all the pride in the extorted gain of centuries, it published most impressively that he who reigned above all centuries was All-compassionate.
To this great thought of God, Lincoln keyed this last inaugural. The majesty of God's sovereign law of purityand righteousness was robed in kindliness. Into this high truth ascended Lincoln's patriot hope. Let men henceforth forswear all cruelty, and follow God in showing all who suffer their costliest sympathy. This was a mighty longing in his great heart, as he prepared this speech. Before God's vindication of the meek, let the merciless grow merciful. Yea, let all the land, for all the land had taken part in human cruelty, confess its wrong, accept God's scourge without complaint, thus opening every heart to God's free, healing grace, and binding all the land in leagues of friendliness. Let men, like God, be pitiful. Like God, let men be merciful. In mutual sympathy let all make clear how men of every sort may yet resemble God, the All-compassionate. This was the trend and strength of Lincoln's gentleness, as it stood and wrought in full maturity beneath God's discipline, within this last inaugural. It was nothing but an echo and reflection of the gentleness of God. And so, in his benignity, as in his rectitude and lowliness and purity, he stood in this address attired in Godly piety.
So Lincoln's ethics can be described, in his ripened harvest-tide of life. So it stands in this inaugural. It is alike a living code for daily life, and a religious faith. It is born and taught of God. It is Godliness without disguise, upon the open field of civic statesmanship. It is a prophet's voice, in a civilian's speech. It is the seasoned wisdom of a man familiar equally with the field of politics, and the place of prayer. It shows how God may walk with men, how civic interests deal with things divine. It proves that a civilian in a foremost seat may without apology profess himself a man of God, and gain thereby in solid dignity. It shows how heaven and earth may harmonize.
But this manly recognition in Lincoln's mind of theinner unison of ethics and religion was in no respect ephemeral, no careless utterance of a single speech, no flitting sentiment of a day. It was the fruitage of an ample season's growth. It was royally deliberate, the issue of prolonged reflection, the goal of mental equipoise and rest to which his searching, balanced thought had long conduced. It was in keeping with an habitual inclination in his life.
This proclivity of his inwrought moral honesty to find its norm and origin, its warrant and secure foundation in his and his Nation's God must have taken shape controllingly within those silent days that intervened between his first election in 1860, and the date of his inaugural oath in 1861. Else, in those brief addresses on his way to Washington, that marvelous efflorescence upon his honest lips of an ideal heavenward expectancy is unaccountable. In those dispersed and fugitive responses, from Springfield to Independence Hall and Harrisburg, there breathed such patriotic sentiments of aspiration and anxiety as owed their ardor, their excellence, and their very loyalty to his eager trust and hope, that all his deeds as president should execute the will of God. Throughout his presidential term this wish to make his full official eminence a facile instrument of God, attains in his clear purpose and intelligence a solid massiveness, all too unfamiliar in the craft of politics.
The witness to this, in a letter to A. G. Hodges of April, 1864, is most explicit and unimpeachable. This letter is a transcript of a verbal conversation, is written by request, and is designed distinctly to make the testimony of his mortal lips everywhere accessible and permanent. Its major portion aims to give his former spoken words a simple repetition. Then he says:—"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation." Andupon this he appends a paragraph, as of something he could not restrain, the while he was conscious perfectly that what he was about to write was certain to be published and preserved among all men. In this letter, so doubly, so explicitly deliberate, he is defending his decree for unshackling the slave, by the plea, that only so could the Union be preserved. In the appended paragraph, he disclaims all compliment to his own sagacity, and accredits all direction and deliverance of the Nation's life, in that dark mortal crisis, to the hidden, reverend government of a kind and righteous God.
If any man desires to probe and understand the thoughtfulness of Lincoln's piety, let him place this doubly-pondered document and the last inaugural side by side, remembering discerningly the date of each, detecting how each conveys Lincoln's well-digested judgment of unparalleled events, and not forgetting that Lincoln foresaw how both those documents would be reviewed in generations to come. Here are signs assuredly that Lincoln's lowliness and reverence, his prayerfulness and trust, his steadfastness and gratitude towards God had been balanced and illumined beneath the livelong cogitations of an even, piercing eye. Pursuing and comparing every way the tangled, complex facts of history; the endless strifes of men; the broken lights in minds most sage; and the awful evidence, as the centuries evolve, that greed and scorn and hate and falsity lead to woe; his patient mind grows poised and clear in faith that a good and righteous God is sovereign eternally. The truth he grasped transcended centuries. His grasping faith transcends change.
But Lincoln's piety was not alone deep-rooted and deliberate, the ripened growth of mixed and manifold experience. It was heroic. It was the mainspring and the inspiration of a splendid bravery. This is finelyshown in the early autumn of 1864. On September 4 of that year he wrote a letter to Mrs. Gurney, a Quakeress. This letter bears a most curious and intimate resemblance to the central substance of the last inaugural. It witnesses to his earnest research after the hidden ways of God.
Within this search he sees some settled certainties. He sees that he and all men are prone to fail, when they strive to perceive what God intends. Into such an error touching the period of the war all had fallen. God's rule had overborne men's hopes. God's wisdom and men's error therein would yet be acknowledged by all. Men, though prone to err, if they but earnestly work and humbly trust in deference to God, will therein still conduce to God's great ends. So with the war. It was a commotion transcending any power of men to make or stay. But in God's design it contained some noble boon. And then he closes, as he began, with a tender intimation of his reverent trust in prayer. The whole is comprehended within this single central sentence, a sentence which involves and comprehends as well the total measure of the last inaugural:—"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance."
Here is a confession notable in itself. It would be notable in any man, and at any time. But when one marks its date, its notability is enhanced impressively. For Lincoln was traversing just there some of the darkest hours of his overshadowed life. It was the period following his second nomination for the presidency in May of 1864, and before the crisis of election in November of the same year. Central in that season of wearisome and ominous uncertainty fell the failure of the battle in the Wilderness under Grant; the miscarriage of his plans forRichmond; and the awful carnage by Petersburg. Here fell also the date of Early's raid, with its terrible disclosure of the helplessness in Washington. Thereupon ensued, in unexampled earnestness, a recrudescence of the great and widespread weariness with the war; and of an open clamor for some immediate conference and compromise for peace. Foremost leaders and defenders of the Union cause throughout the North sank down despairingly, convinced that at the coming national vote Lincoln was certain to meet defeat. At the same time the army sorely needed new recruits; but another draft seemed desperate. Then Lincoln's closest counselors approached his ears with heavy words of hopelessness about the outlook in the Northern States confessedly most pivotal.
In the midst of those experiences, on August 23, 1864, Lincoln penned and folded away with singular care from all other eyes, these following words:—
"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the president-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward."
Those words were written eleven days before he penned the sentiments cited above from the letter to the Quakeress. Between those two dates the Democratic Convention of Chicago had convened and nominated General McClellan.
Amid such scenes, in the presence of such events, and among such prognostications, Lincoln chiseled out those phrases about the perfect, hidden, but all-prevailing purposes of God. Here is Godly piety in the sternest stress of politics. Here faith is militant, and unsubdued.Its face is like a burnished shield. Its patience no campaign outwears. In its constancy suggestions of surrender can find no place. It was forged upon a well-worn anvil, under mighty strokes, and at a fervent heat. Fires only proved its purity. It was fighting battles quite as sore as any fought with steel. It was the deathless, truceless courage of a moral hero. It was pure and perfect fortitude. Its struggle, its testing, and its victory had not been wrought on earthly battle-fields. Its strife had been with God. More than with the South, Lincoln's controversy had been with the Most High. He wrestled with the heavenly angel through the night, like the ancient patriarch. Like the ancient saint, he bore the marks of grievous conflict. And like him of old, he gained his boon. He achieved to see that God and perfect righteousness were in eternal covenant.
Such was Lincoln's piety. His view of God gave God an absolute pre-eminence. In Lincoln's day, as in the day when Satan tempted Christ, vast areas of human life seemed to give all faith in God's control the lie; and men in multitudes abjured such futile confidence. But Lincoln kept his faith in God, and truth, and love, and immortality. And in that faith he judged his trust, and hope, and prayer to be preserved on high inviolate. There above, he firmly held, were lodged eternally the perfect pattern and assurance of full rectitude and charity. And in that understanding he held on earth unyieldingly to the perfect image of that heavenly norm, in a pure and acquiescent loyalty and love. Thus discerningly, submissively, triumphantly did Lincoln's heart aspire to unify an honest earthly walk with a living faith in God.
One word remains. As Lincoln makes confession of his faith in this inaugural, extolling God supremely, and therein announcing to his fellowmen the groundwork ofhis morality, it comes to view that the qualities held fast in Lincoln's heart, and the attributes of God have marvelous affinity. The equity he adores in God he cherishes within himself, and recommends to all. God's estimate of the incomparable value of a human soul, when set beside the variable treasures men exchange, Lincoln's judgment reverently approves, and as reverently adopts, establishing thereby a standard quality in his conscious life. God's tender pity for the poor, hidden deep in his divine rebuke of slavery, and hidden deeper still within his mercy for all who help to bear its awful sacrifice, melts and molds the heart of Lincoln to the same compassion. And to the very outlines of God's majesty, as his sovereign purposes are all unrolled and all fulfilled throughout the earth, Lincoln's soul conforms ideally, in its humble vision and expression of devout, discerning praise.
Here is something passing wonderful. Between a fragile, mortal man and the eternal God, when each is limned in terms of ethics, appears a deep and high agreement. There is enthroned in each a common righteousness. In each, the laws of mercy are the same. In each are constituted principles inwrought with immortality. And within the eternal interplay of reverence and majesty between mankind and God, there is a fellowship in dignity that proves the holy Maker and his moral creature to be immediately akin. And so the mind and will of Lincoln, in this their moral plenitude, may interpret and recommend, may apprehend and execute the eternal purposes of God. This high commission Lincoln humbly, firmly undertook. And in his commanding life there is a mighty hint, not easy to silence or erase, that Godliness and ethics, which have been set so often far apart, were eternally designed for unison.
In the study of Lincoln's ethics it is not enough to describe it as an ideal scheme of thought, however notable its range and poise and insight may be seen to be. As Lincoln's character stands forth in national eminence among our national heroes, he figures as a man of deeds, a man of powerful influence over the actions of other men, a man of masterly exploits. However truly it may be affirmed that multitudes of adjutants reinforced his undertakings at every turn and on every side, it still holds also true, and that a truth almost without a parallel, that his sheer personal force was the single, undeniable, over-mastering energy that shaped this Nation's evolution through an outstanding epoch in its career. It was primarily out of those prolific and exhaustless energies, stored and mobilized within himself, that he rose, as though by nature, to be national chief executive. It was straight along the line of his far-seeing vision and advice that Congress and the Nation were guided to accept and undertake that terrible enterprise of war. In that great struggle he came to be in firm reality, far more than any other man, the competent, effective commander-in-chief. He was chief councilor in a cabinet whose supreme function dealt singly with matters wholly executive. It was by the almost marvelous unison of wisdom and decision resident in him that Congress and the Nation were day by day induced to hold with an almost preternatural inflexibility to the single, sovereign issue of the strife. When, after four years of unexampled bitterness, multitudes were wearying of all patience in further hostilities, it was his personal momentum and weight, more than any other influence, that held the prevailing majority of the national electorate to predetermine by their free ballots that, atwhatever cost of further war, the principles of liberty, equality, and national integrity should be placed above all possible challenge or assault forever.
And in the period before the war and before his elevation to the presidency this same executive efficiency, this singular capacity to mold the views and stir the motives of other men, was likewise in continual demonstration. Discerning how supreme a factor in our American affairs was the power of public sentiment, and observing how that power was being utilized to undermine the national tranquillity, he challenged and overthrew single handed the leading master of the day in the field of political management and debate. Trusting in the same confidence, and pursuing the same device, he appealed to the civic consciences of men in the open field of free debate, by the single instrument of reasoned speech, until, by his persuading arguments, he consolidated into effective harmony and led to national victory a party of independent voters, with watchword, platform, and experience all untried. In all the process by which that new-formed party gained access to national pre-eminence it was Lincoln's governing influence that went ahead and gave the movement steadiness. And through it all he vitally inspired a Nation, now undivided and indivisible, with a prevailing, corporate desire, that all succeeding days and all beholding Nations are now deeming, for any stable civic life, the true enduring ideal.
And all of this was compassed and set afoot within scarcely more than one decade. In October of 1854 at Peoria, he consciously took up his strenuous enterprise. In April of 1865, he laid it down and ceased to strive. Single handed he undertook the task. Through all its progress the weight of that one hand was undeniably preponderant. And when that hand relaxed, the task thatits release left trembling was one that stirred a mighty Nation's full solicitude.
Here is something marvelous. These affirmations, as thus far made, seem certainly overdrawn, and totally incredible. An agency and an efficiency of national dimensions, introducing and completing an epoch in our national history; but an agent and an outfit almost defying inventory, his personality seeming in every phase so simple and without prestige, and all his ways and means seeming so unpromising and plain; the while through all his course he was confronting a resistance and a hostility whose impulse was rooted in centuries of firm and proud dominion, and whose onset made a Nation tremble. How can such stupendous affirmations be clothed with credibility? Was it indeed the hand of Lincoln that turned the Nation from its mistaken path? Was it Lincoln's will that reinaugurated our predestined course? Was it Lincoln's overcoming confidence that established in the land again a good assurance that its integrity was indestructible?
If questions such as these were addressed to Lincoln himself for his reply, we may be sure his answer, like all his ways, would contain a beautiful mingling of modesty and confidence. Heeding well the mortal crisis, and hearing the Nation's call for help, he would not refuse, when bidden and appointed, to take his stand alone at the very apex of the strain, knowing well that the burdens to be borne would be greater than tasked the strength of even Washington; and affirming as he advanced warily to his post, that in his appointment many abler men had been passed by. But then he would re-affirm and urge again all the arguments of his great addresses and messages and debates, beginning with that initial trumpet peal in Peoria in 1854, and not concluding until, after all had been rehearsed and reavouched, he recited again with propheticearnestness this last inaugural. And throughout all his devout re-affirmation of all the spoken and written appeals to which his patriotic mind gave studied form and utterance in that intense decade, a discerning ear could distinguish in every paragraph profound and penetrating attestations, such as these:—This is a mighty Nation. Its future is far more vast. Its present perplexities are intricate. It has been misled. It needs most sane direction. I am stationed at her head. Difficulties environ me. My burdens outweigh Washington's. But this land was conceived in liberty. It was dedicated to be free. Here all are peers. God's hand has been on our history. Our destiny enfolds the highest human weal. God is with us still. Human hearts are with us. Here is overcoming power. Despite my frailty and poor descent, I will never leave my place. I see how other men prevail with multitudes by personal appeal. This shall be my confidence. Though I have no name, though there is perhaps no reason why I should ever have a name, I can plead. I can plead with men. It is a Godlike art. Grave as is my problem, this is its grand solution. I will study to persuade. I will take refuge in the mighty power of argument. I will confer, and conciliate, and convince. I will employ my reason to the full. I will address, and assail, and enlist the reason of other men. I will put all my trust in speech, in ordered, reasoned speech. I will arrange all my convictions and hopes and plans in arguments. I will approach men's wills with momentous propositions. I will open a path to human hearts through open ears by my living voice. I will make righteousness vibrate vocally. To men's very faces will I rebuke their wrong. Argument, pure argument shall be my only weapon, my only agency, my only way. By naked argument, honest and unadorned, I will undertake to turnthis Nation back to rectitude. I will rest all my confidence in truth, truth unalloyed, abjuring every counterfeit and all hypocrisy. It is truth's primal and mightiest function to persuade. Through persuasion alone can freemen be induced by freemen to yield a free obedience. The heavenly art of persuading speech shall be for me the first and the last resort. By this most comely instrument shall my most eager and ambitious wish gain access to all this peopled land, and win vindication through all coming time.
Something such as this, as one must judge from Lincoln's practice, was Lincoln's science and evaluation of the art of logical appeal. By every token Lincoln was a master of assemblies. Upon a public platform he was in his native element. There he won his place and name. Whatever any one may say about Lincoln's reputation or Lincoln's power, that power and that reputation were mined and minted in the very act and exercise of reasoning appeal. As iron sharpeneth iron, so he, in the immediate presence of audiences of freeborn men, assembled from his very neighborhood, shaped and edged and tempered his total influence. It was when upon the hustings, and while engaged in pleading speech, that he commanded the Nation's eye and gained the Nation's ear. And once advanced to national pre-eminence, it was still by logical persuasion that the Nation's deference was retained.
What now was the inner nature of Lincoln's arguments? What was the fiber, what the texture in the composition of his thought that made its arguments so convincing? What was the structure, and what the carrying power in his appeals that made their logic so prevailing, so compelling, so enduring?
To find an answer to this inquiry let men review yet once again this last inaugural. Here is a product of Lincoln'smind whose single motive is persuasion, whose momentum does not diminish, and which seems destined to be adjudged by history a master's masterpiece. What does this short speech contain that gave it in 1865, and gives it yet, an influence almost magical?
There can be but one possible reply. The factor in that address that makes its influence so imperial is the moral majesty of the argument in its major paragraph. That paragraph enshrines an argument. Though fashioned in the mode and aspect of a reverent supposition, the steady pace and import of its ordered thought is such as every ordered mind admits to be compelling. But in substance and in structure that argument is purely ethical. All turns upon that cited, undoubted fact of age-long, unrequited toil. Upon that stern actuality hinges all the arrangement of the thought. Its phrases move with rhythmic fluency; but they bind together inseparably a Nation's duty, sin, and doom; not omitting to enfold, with a marvel of moral insight, an almost hidden intimation of a healing cure.
Here are weighty thoughts, thoughts that press and urge, thoughts that carry and communicate the gravity of centuries. They contain an interpretation. They clarify and illuminate. And they all co-ordinate. They combine and operate together to enforce agreement. They demonstrate that tyranny breeds a baleful progeny of guilt and woe; that robbery binds the robber under debt to the full measure of his rapine; that such guilt can never be forgotten; that such a woe is pitiless; that the centuries, though slow and mute, are attentive and impartial witnesses; and that God's even judgments are over all, and are altogether just. This is all the content and all the purport of this paragraph, and of all this speech: an exposition of American slavery and of its resultantcivil war, in moral terms, before the moral bar of every hearer's conscience, and beneath the thought of God's eternal righteousness; all turning upon the self-evident verity that unpaid toil is wrong. In this prolific affirmation is the fertile germ of all that Lincoln ever thought or undertook in that supreme decade. Here are enfolded all his axioms and postulates and propositions. By interlocking its multiform, infolded, self-evident certitudes he framed all his arguments. Its overflowing, resistless demonstrations in active human affairs formed all his corollaries. Toil unrequited is a moral wrong. It cries to heaven, and shall be avenged. In this avenging, if we but see our day, there is an open door to join with heaven, and transmute its vengeance into recompense and reconciliation.
This was Lincoln's logic. It was purely ethical. This was the master-key to his transcendent statesmanship. Here was the secret of his political efficiency. Thus, and in no other way, he swayed the Nation. Himself a Godlike man, and discerning in every other man the same Godlikeness; trusting his own soul's honesty, and appealing to honest manhood in all other men; he took his stand beside all the oppressed, and against all extortion; and voiced and urged and trusted the sovereign moral plea for perfect charity, and perfect equity for all.
But Lincoln's logic was interlaced with history. All through his debates and addresses are woven the facts and sequences of our national career. And to these connected events he clung in all his arguments, as a man clings to the honor of his home. There was in those events an argument. To tamper with that history, discrediting its sure occurrences, or distorting their right connection, was in his conception a downright immorality.
But mere historical exactitude was not the motive ofLincoln's appeal to past events. The momentum of our past was for Lincoln's use entirely moral. Here upon this continent, as he conceived our great experiment, was being tried, in the presence and on behalf of all mankind, a government in which the governed were the governors. Here men are inquiring and being taught what true manhood can create, uphold, and consummate upon a continental scale, in mutual equality. Here men are schooled for independence. Here men may dare to fashion their own law. Here men are nurtured towards full fraternity. Here men are forced to heed the civic necessity of being fair. Here a boundless impending future has to be kept steadily in view. Here the God of Nations is teaching a Nation that he should be revered. Here, in brief and in sum, men are being disciplined to know and cherish the rudiments of civic character.
Thus Lincoln interpreted the meaning of our national history. In his rating, its total purport was ethical. Any logical exposition of our national career, if its statements are historically exact, will carry moral consequences. If the logical sequence of any statement of our historical course is morally perverse, then that statement of our history is historically untrue. Thus Lincoln's jealous zest for truthful history, for truthful argument, and for true morality became coincident.
But Lincoln's logic was his own. His zeal for history was a freeman's zest. His arguments were not the cold reflection of a borrowed light. They were the fervid affirmations of his own convictions, compacted into reasoned unison, out of the indivisible constituents of his very manhood's honor. When in his appeal his soul most glowed, when the ordered sequence and pressure of his thought waxed irresistible, he was simply opening to his auditors the balanced burden of his honest heart. Thengenuine manhood became articulate. Then pure honor found a voice. Then eloquence became naught but plain sincerity. Then arguments became transparent, and affirmations convinced like axioms. Then demonstrations moved. Assertions did persuade. Then the very being of the orator took possession of the auditor in an intelligent fraternity. True, indeed, a solid South, and multitudes besides, derided his postulates, contemned his arguments, and scorned derisively his tenderest appeals. But better than they themselves he understood their hearts; and holding fast forever his deeper faith and confidence, he maintained his reasoning and his plea, knowing surely that in some future day their chastened hearts would vindicate his words.
But in all of this exposition of Lincoln's logical force and skill there has been no mention of a syllogism. Did Lincoln then neglect that famous formula of argumentative address? To this natural inquiry it must be replied that Lincoln understood right well the fine utility of this strict norm of formal thought. Indeed, he had taken special pains to perfect his skill in just that form of argument. To the logical click in a well-formed syllogism his inner ear was well attuned. Repeatedly he summoned in its aid. An excellent illustration may be seen in his rejoinder to Douglas at Galesburg in September of 1858. But Lincoln's confidence was not in syllogistic forms, however trim. His trust was in his moral axioms. Unaided, naked truth; truth whose total urgency is self-contained, whose perfect verity is self-displayed, and whose proudest triumphs are self-achieved; pure truth, shaped forth in speech of absolute simplicity; truth that works directly in the human mind, like sunshine in the eye, was Lincoln's handiest and most common instrument in an argument. Thus he sought to so use reason as to awaken conscienceand arouse the will. And thus his arguments prevailed.
This was Lincoln's logic. It was the orderly exposition of his honest manhood, pleading with the honest intelligence of every other man for his free assent. Himself a freeman whom God made free, and greeting in every other man an equal dignity; with loyalty to himself and with charity for all; with Godly deference and unfailing hope; he urged and argued from his own true manhood, and from no other grounds, with a logic that no true freeman can ever refute: that in this heaven favored land, and for the welfare of all the world, these ethical foundations of all true civic welfare be kept unmoved forever. In such a moral character, and in such a moral argument is this expanding Nation's only pride and sure defense. At any modern Round Table of civic knights Lincoln is true King Arthur, and his persuading speech the true Excalibur.
When Plato took his pen to write his dialogues; when Michael Angelo took his chisel to fashion his Moses; when Raphael took his brush to paint his Madonna; they were designing to make their several ideals of personality pre-eminently beautiful and distinct. And each artist in his way won a signal, a supreme success. Moses, Socrates, the Madonna, are shining revelations of human personality. Success herein is the height of highest art.
But what is personality? It seems an eternal secret, despite all human search and art. Yet its secret is everywhere felt instinctively to be of all quests the most supreme. By every avenue men are trying to reach and reveal its hiding place. Our goal is nothing less than the human soul. And upon this inquest the eyes and instruments ofour inspection are being sharpened with a determination and zeal hitherto unparalleled.
Suppose this quest be turned to Lincoln. Surely here is a human person. He stands enough apart in his preeminence to be pre-eminently distinguishable and distinct; while yet his face beams near enough to be as familiar and accessible as our most accessible and familiar friend. For surely, despite all his proneness towards a musing solitude, Lincoln, of all Americans, displays through all his published statements, and in all his public life, an instructive and unstudied openness and unreserve. Just here his marvelous power and influence lie. He practiced no concealment. He held communion with all his fellowmen. Herein consists his honesty.
Now may not an honest scholarship, honestly conceiving that of all investigations our pursuit for the ways and dwelling place of personality is easily supreme, as honestly believe that in the open, waiting heart of Lincoln that supreme inquiry may find its supreme reward? Surely here is promise of a labor that will pay. In Lincoln's personality is a vein, a mine whose worth and sure utility no mineral wealth can parallel.
What in very truth, what in solid fact, what in absolute reality is Lincoln's personality? For undeniably in facing and regarding him, we confront and apprehend a human life, compact and self-controlled, the native home and throne of all the conscious and self-directed energies that are ever resident within and representative of any man. If human personality ever took evident and conscious shape and form, then Lincoln is an open and easily approachable illustration of its embodiment. Upon no object may a student of psychology more easily or more wisely fix his eye than upon the soul of Lincoln, when itthrills in resolute, intense endeavor, as in this last inaugural.
For one thing, that Lincoln should be the specimen of psychology commanding any student's choice is suggested by Lincoln's notability. Here is an exhibit in no way ordinary. He has secured the attention of us all. And the attention of us all is athrill with mighty interest. However it has come about, in some way, as a human personality, he illustrates a type, he presents a sample so powerful and positive as to stand before all eyes almost alone, while also so attractive as to be by everyone beloved. This fact may fairly beget assurance from the start that in any heedful search for the very substance of human personality, an interior and intimate fellowship with Lincoln may show us closely and clearly where it dwells, and what it is. For from the start it stands plain that Lincoln's hold upon our hearts is in its controlling co-efficients purely personal. That hold clings fast and spreads afar, indifferent to space, or time, or even death. His influence over us, so gladly welcomed and so clearly felt, is no wise physical or temporal. It cannot be handled or weighed. It is personal. Herein is high encouragement. And that in this sense of our response to his enduring sway should be enfolded on our part, a kindred, pure, enduring delight attests convincingly that within Lincoln's personality and our own there is something mutual. Within the thing we search and us who seek there is profound affinity. In this our encouragement may heighten, and that with solid soberness, unto hope.
And then the scene of this his last inaugural is all aglow with promise. For here if anywhere Lincoln's personality may be seen engaged in the ripeness of his finished discipline, and the fullness of his manhood's strength. The scene itself swells full of meaning; and Lincoln's part andcontribution fix and fill the center of its significance. Surely if anything within that scene is plain to see and localize, it is Lincoln's own identity. The living Lincoln is surely there, wholly unreserved and unconcealed. There Lincoln's personality is in fullest play, an evident and mighty revelation, plainly felt and seen.
But it is only in the action that the actor comes to view; only in his words does the thinker stand revealed. Here and thus, and nowhere else or otherwise, is Lincoln's personality unveiled. And yet herein, within the compass of this speech, Lincoln unlades a burden of such grave concern, and unrolls a problem of such profound complexity as could nowhere come to birth and utterance but in a mighty human heart. In the vastness of that problem and anxiety can be gauged the vastness of the measure of that heart. Here open into immediate view at once an object and a method of research, fitted at once to challenge and appall the bravest student's heart. But once its summons is distinguished, it is irresistible.
One thing that meets the student, as he seeks the speaker in this speech, is its witness to his titanic and pathetic toil. The words he utters are the message of a laborer far forespent, voiced with mingled weariness and hope, well towards the sunset of a weary day. The sun had been fiercely hot. The field had been full of thorns. And through the arid hours he had tasted little food, or rest, or joy. No husbandman ever chose his seed or tilled his ground at greater cost of patient care. None ever had to bend his frame to ruder weather, or battle against more malicious and persistent pests. And all the agony of that toil had been wrought through within the anguish of his mind. In exactest and exacting thought he had engrossed and consumed the full measure of his full strength. On all he had to bear and do he ponderedmightily. No mortal ever pondered more intently on all that mortals ever have to meet. In this inaugural scene the soul of Lincoln is straining at its full strength. No portion of his personal life is idling. If a student's hand is truly deft, he can feel, as he fingers the throbbing life of this address, the pulse beats of a full heart.
And within the grasp and compass of that heart are revolving vast and strenuous themes. The soul of Lincoln is dealing with a Nation's destiny. His speech is borne upon his single voice; but with that single voice he pleads for millions; and its vibrations carry through a continent, as a national oracle. Expounder and defender of the Nation's vital honor, beleaguered all about with war, distressed by all oppression, eager with a sacrificial passion that all men everywhere may have liberty and an equal share in equity, searching for a just and stable basis for the world's tranquillity, as he stands and strives throughout that speech the structure of his soul grows luminous. As he studied Providence and scanned the grounds of government; as he peered far into the deeps of freedom, the majesty of duty, and the sanctions of inviolable law; as he pondered the nature of eternal right, and the deadly mischief of moral wrong; as he watched the ways of hate and pride and falsity and sensual delights, he was not alone compacting the substance and order of this immortal address; but in the shapely body of his argument he has embodied and uncovered his honest, guileless heart. In the very scars and seams upon his sorrow-shadowed face, as he overcomes his task and fills out his duty in this address, discerning eyes can see through the furnace of how deep refinement his humble and majestic soul has been forever beautified. Transforming themes possessed his mind. By the ministry and inner influence of these themes he grew to be transformed;and in the process and issue of that change the outline and texture of his inner being becomes traceable.
And of this inner revelation the most notable mark is its simplicity. As in this speech his inner life is introduced, its texture is not perplexing and intricate. It is perfectly apprehensible. The total speech can be quickly scanned. Its sentiments barely get your full attention before they are at an end. Its entire compass can be comprehended in a single glance. Its whole sum can be reviewed in a single breath. And still its themes and propositions are imperial. Within its fine simplicity its stateliness stands uneclipsed. Hence its marvelous power to command. Upon all who look and listen, its action and appeal are like the dawning of a day. Its major propositions are assented to unconsciously. It works like light. It is genial, winsome, clear. And it is irresistible. It moves. It rules. It is an argument, the ordered appeal of a candid, earnest mind to the reasoned thought of honest men. Gentle and modest throughout, it contains and conveys compelling energy. It has the sturdiness of a hardy oak. And yet its first appearing was like a new unfolding of our flag. It is a kingly word, alike in lasting beauty and enduring strength. In this there is surely some sure reflection of that hidden man within, Lincoln's real, undying self.
And this still further may be said. Amid these sovereign interests and affirmations their agent is thus employed of his own free choice. He is no automaton. The Lincoln whom we seek, the Lincoln whom this address is helping us to see can never be defined by physical terms. Through the realm of physics things move as they are moved. Lincoln in this address moves and guides and governs himself. And he is here self-judged. This inaugural teems with moral verdicts, verdicts thatdefine eternal issues irrevocably. No higher function than this can be imagined in any sphere of being, or in any form. These verdicts Lincoln fastens upon himself. And before the same complete authority he summons the whole Nation to bow. Deep within those verdicts there throbs omnipotently a sense of moral duty, moral right, man's highest good and goal. This ideal of what should be stands evident in this inaugural in Lincoln's own humble conformity with God, in his own unimpeachable integrity, in his unreserved benevolence, and in his pure esteem for souls. In each one of these constituents of human duty Lincoln sees unchallengeable authority. For the honor of each one he deems himself responsible. Their mingled rays create the light in which he writes this speech, by which this speech is read, and under whose clear radiance he records his oath. Surely here are more than hints for any one, who seeks to see just where this speech originates, and most precisely how its author may be defined.
Within this last preceding paragraph one feels again the presence and the movement of all that all the chapters of this volume have contained. Herein we seem to face a sort of final synthesis of all our study. If this be true, or only true approximately, then its face and contents should be scrutinized until they are cleared of every shadow or alloy. For this research is surely approaching its goal, and some of its boundaries may surely be defined.
One line that shows indelibly is his intelligence; an intelligence comprehending total centuries, and assembling within its scope extreme diversities; an intelligence that has a piercing eye, acute to distinguish and divide; an intelligence that has power to estimate, compare, and summarize; an intelligence intolerant of error, and eagerafter truth; an intelligence that can frame an argument designed to clarify, convince, and win all other minds; an intelligence that assumes to deal with God, receiving and reflecting within its own interior and proper vision a revelation of the divine intent. Here is an energy, at once receptive and original, fitted marvelously for a reflection that can embrace and authorize eternal truth.
This intelligence is within control. It is not a vagrant or unguided force. It is under conduct, all its action to observe, inspect, and estimate being ordered reasonably. And all this influence operating to understand and counsel, all this wisdom, while gathering light and substance from everywhere, is informed within, and wonderfully self-contained. As Lincoln reasons in this inaugural, as he resolves and purifies his argument, its power to convince is most intimate and deep within himself. As he guides and shapes his thoughts for the thought of other men, the convictions within the speaker, and their power to persuade, so inwrought in the speech, become identical. In his own consent choice and judgment are combined. Here is freedom indeed, a freedom to discern as truly as to choose, to distinguish as truly as to decide, to estimate as truly as to select, the freedom of the intelligence, an intelligence that is truly free.
This freedom fashions character. It is a moral architect. It is original, able to create. The author of this speech is self-produced. The personality that comes to view among those words is self-determined and self-made. Its plan was sketched by his own hand. His position and his posture, his sentiments and his sympathies, his bent and inclination, his moral postulates and axioms, his moral stamp and trend and tone, his stability and moral sturdiness are all his own invention, originally, essentially, inseparably his own. Lincoln's character isLincoln's handicraft. Its title vests in him. It never was, nor could it ever become the property of another man. This all men recognize. But this universal recognition is pregnant with significance to any seeker amid the phenomena of Lincoln's life for the substance of his personality. Somewhere within those statements just now made, somewhere within Lincoln's conscious authorship and invention of his moral worth is precious intimation of the whereabouts and constitution of his personality.
This blend in Lincoln of freedom and intelligence, of liberty and sanity is notable for its evenness. Lincoln's liberty is not chimerical or riotous. It is regulated, orderly, real. Within himself and over his full destiny, an unimpeachable sovereign though he is, he is not prone towards wilfulness, but towards composure and sobriety. He moves as one fast-held beneath the law that for all his movements he will be accountable. He always wears the mien of one who carries high responsibilities. Far from being arbitrary, he behaves as facing within himself a court of arbitration, truly self-invested, and just as truly sovereign. Of all his words and deeds and attitudes he is himself self-constituted, reverend judge. Whether seeking to resolve a doubt, or waiting to receive a verdict, his appeal is finally to himself. This is his mood and posture in this inaugural. He is giving an opinion. This scene is a literal crisis in a review in which a Nation's history and delinquency have met incisive, balanced examination, to the end that his own view of duty as president might come clear to his own judicial eye, and all gain the approbation of all mankind. In his loftiest originality, where his conscious power and right to elect the path he takes is most self-evident, the way he takes is also owned to be an unimpeachable obligation. Hereis another signal hint for the seeker after the living and abiding source of Lincoln's words and deeds. Somewhere within this sense of duty, so sane and free and serious, lives the very Lincoln whom we seek.