I.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ingersoll, Robert Green and Widger, David
In 1831, Lincoln went down the Mississippi on a flat-boat. He received the extravagant salary of ten dollars a month. When he reached New Orleans, he and some of his companions went about the city.
Among other places, they visited a slave market, where men and women were being sold at auction. A young colored girl was on the block. Lincoln heard the brutal words of the auctioneer—the savage remarks of bidders. The scene filled his soul with indignation and horror.
Turning to his companions, he said, "Boys, if I ever get a chance to hit slavery, by God I'll hit it hard!"
The helpless girl, unconsciously, had planted in a great heart the seeds of the Proclamation.
Thirty-one years afterward the chance came, the oath was kept, and to four millions of slaves, of men, women and children, was restored liberty, the jewel of the soul.
In the history, in the fiction of the world, there is nothing more intensely dramatic than this.
Lincoln held within his brain the grandest truths, and he held them as unconsciously, as easily, as naturally, as a waveless pool holds within its stainless breast a thousand stars.
In these two years we had traveled from the Ordinance of Secession to the Proclamation of Emancipation.
VI.
WE were surrounded by enemies. Many of the so-called great in Europe and England were against us. They hated the Republic, despised our institutions, and sought in many ways to aid the South.
Mr. Gladstone announced that Jefferson Davis had made a nation, and that he did not believe the restoration of the American Union by force attainable.
From the Vatican came words of encouragement for the South.
It was declared that the North was fighting for empire and the South for independence.
The Marquis of Salisbury said: "The people of the South are the natural allies of England. The North keeps an opposition shop in the same department of trade as ourselves."
Not a very elevated sentiment—but English.
Some of their statesmen declared that the subjugation of the South by the North would be a calamity to the world.
Louis Napoleon was another enemy, and he endeavored to establish a monarchy in Mexico, to the end that the great North might be destroyed. But the patience, the uncommon common sense, the statesmanship of Lincoln—in spite of foreign hate and Northern division—triumphed over all. And now we forgive all foes. Victory makes forgiveness easy.
Lincoln was by nature a diplomat. He knew the art of sailing against the wind. He had as much shrewdness as is consistent with honesty. He understood, not only the rights of individuals, but of nations. In all his correspondence with other governments he neither wrote nor sanctioned a line which afterward was used to tie his hands. In the use of perfect English he easily rose above all his advisers and all his fellows.
No one claims that Lincoln did all. He could have done nothing without the generals in the field, and the generals could have done nothing without their armies. The praise is due to all—to the private as much as to the officer; to the lowest who did his duty, as much as to the highest.
My heart goes out to the brave private as much as to the leader of the host.
But Lincoln stood at the centre and with infinite patience, with consummate skill, with the genius of goodness, directed, cheered, consoled and conquered.
VII.
SLAVERY was the cause of the war, and slavery was the perpetual stumbling-block. As the war went on, question after question arose—questions that could not be answered by theories. Should we hand back the slave to his master, when the master was using his slave to destroy the Union? If the South was right, slaves were property, and by the laws of war anything that might be used to the advantage of the enemy might be confiscated by us. Events did not wait for discussion. General Butler denominated the negro as "a contraband." Congress provided that the property of the rebels might be confiscated.
The extreme Democrats of the North regarded the slave as more sacred than life. It was no harm to kill the master—to burn his house, to ravage his fields—but you must not free his slave. If in war a nation has the right to take the property of its citizens—of its friends—certainly it has the right to take the property of those it has the right to kill.
Lincoln was wise enough to know that war is governed by the laws of war, and that during the conflict constitutions are silent. All that he could do he did in the interests of peace. He offered to execute every law—including the most infamous of all—to buy the slaves in the border States—to establish gradual, compensated emancipation; but the South would not hear. Then he confiscated the property of rebels—treated the slaves as contraband of war, used them to put down the Rebellion, armed them and clothed them in the uniform of the Republic—was in favor of making them citizens and allowing them to stand on an equality with their white brethren under the flag of the Nation. During these years Lincoln moved with events, and every step he took has been justified by the considerate judgment of mankind.
VIII.
LINCOLN not only watched the war, but kept his hand on the political pulse. In 1863 a tide set in against the administration. A Republican meeting was to be held in Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln wrote a letter to be read at this convention. It was in his happiest vein. It was a perfect defence of his administration, including the Proclamation of Emancipation. Among other things he said:
"But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or it is not valid. If it is not valid it needs no retraction, but if it is valid it cannot be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life."
To the Northern Democrats who said they would not fight for negroes, Lincoln replied:
"Some of them seem willing to fight for you—but no matter."
Of negro soldiers:
"But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept."
There is one line in this letter that will give it immortality:
"The Father of waters again goes unvexed to the sea."
This line is worthy of Shakespeare.
Another:
"Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet."
He draws a comparison between the white men against us and the black men for us:
"And then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it."
Under the influence of this letter, the love of country, of the Union, and above all, the love of liberty, took possession of the heroic North.