ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS

(His opinion of President Lincoln)

[The original letter dated Washington, March 19, 1863, is owned in New York and is of exceptional interest, as written to two intimate friends and revealing Whitman at his very best. He says it is the longest he has ever written, and that he is “writing at night, while taking care of the child of a friend who had gone to see Matilda Heron inMedea.”]

* * * After describing his life in Washington, among the soldiers, he refers thus to President Lincoln:

“Congress does not seize hard upon me ... much gab, great fear of public opinion; plenty of low business talent, but no masterful man in Congress (probably best so)—I think well of the President. He has a face like a Hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep cut criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion. My notion is, too, that underneath his outside smutched manner, and stories from third-class country bar rooms (it is his humor), Mr. Lincoln keeps a fountain of first class practical telling wisdom. I do not dwell on the supposed failures of his government; he has shown I sometimes think an almost supernatural tact in keeping the ship afloat at all, with head steady, not only not going down and now certain not to, but with proud and resolute spirit, and flag flying in sight of the world, menacing and high as ever. I say never yet Captain, never ruler, had such a perplexing dangerous task as his the past two years. I more and more rely upon his idiomatic western genius, careless of court dress or of court decorums....”

(His hospital experiences are very interesting.)

“... These Hospitals, so different from all others—these thousands, and ten and twenties of thousands of American young men, badly wounded ... operated on, pallid with diarrhoea, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, etc., open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights ... showing our humanity ... tried by terrible fearful tests, probeddeepest, the living souls, the body’s tragedies, bursting the petty bonds of art. To these, what are your dreams and poems, even the oldest and the tearfullest? Not old Greek mighty ones, where man contends with fate (and always yields)—not Virgil showing Dante on and on among the agonized and damned, approach what here I see and take a part in. For here I see, not at intervals but quite always, how certain man, our American man—how he holds himself cool and unquestioned master above all pains and bloody mutilations.... This, then, what frightened us all so long! Why it is put to flight with ignominy—a mere stuffed scarecrow of the fields. O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?...”

⁂ It is easy to see the great personal interest of such a letter as this. It marks a period in Lincoln’s life, the importance of which can hardly be over-estimated. In Morse’sLife of Lincoln, it is said that upon the offer of the position, “controlled by the sensible advice of his wife, he fortunately declined.”

Springfield,Illinois,Sept. 27, 1849.

“Hon. J. M. ClaytonSecretary of State.Dear Sir

“Hon. J. M. ClaytonSecretary of State.

“Hon. J. M. Clayton

Secretary of State.

Dear Sir

Your letter of the 17th inst. saying you had received no answer to yours informing me of my appointment as Secretary of Oregon is received and surprises me very much—I received that letter accompanied by the commissions in due course of mail, and answered it two days after, declining the office and warmly recommending Simeon Francis for it. I have also written you several letters since, alluding to the same matter all of which ought to have reached you before the date of your last letter.

Your Obt. Servt.“A. Lincoln.”

Your Obt. Servt.

“A. Lincoln.”

Back to Index Next