Abraham Lincoln

The half century that has elapsed since Lincoln's death has dispelled the mists that encompassed him on earth. Men now not only recognise the right which he championed, but behold in him the standard of righteousness, of liberty, of conciliation, and truth. In him, as it were personified, stands the Union, all that is best and noblest and enduring in its principles in which he devoutly believed and served mightily to save. When to-day, the world celebrates the century of his existence, he has become the ideal of both North and South, of a common country, composed not only of the factions that once confronted each other in war's dreadful array, but of the myriad thousands that have since found in the American nation the hope of the future and the refuge from age-entrenched wrong and absolutism. To them, Lincoln, his life, his history, his character, his entire personality, with all its wondrous charm and grace, its sobriety, patience, self-abnegation, and sweetness, has come to be the very prototype of a rising humanity.

Carl Schurz, himself a man of large nature and wide and sympathetic comprehension, says of Lincoln:

In the most conspicuous position of the period, Lincoln drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society; but even then he filled the souls of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur. It was distinctly the weird mixture in him of qualities and forces, of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that which he had become with that which he had not ceased to be, that made him so fascinating a character among his fellow-men, that gave him his singular power over minds and hearts, that fitted him to be the greatest leader in the greatest crisis of our national life.

He possessed the courage to stand alone – that courage which is the first requisite of leadership in a great cause. The charm of Lincoln's oratory flooded all the rare depth and genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feelings were the strongest element in his nature. He was one of the greatest Americans and the best of men.

The poet Whittier writes:

The weary form that rested not
Save in a martyr's grave;
The care-worn face that none forgot,
Turned to the kneeling slave.

We rest in peace where his sad eyes
Saw peril, strife, and pain;
His was the awful sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.

Says Bryant:

That task is done, the bound are free,
We bear thee to an honoured grave,
Whose noblest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Hath blessed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those
Who perished in the cause of right.

Says Lowell:

Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

Ordinary men die when their physical life is brought to a close, if perhaps not at once, yet in a brief space, with the passing of the little circle of those to whom they were dear.

The man of distinction lives for a time after death. His achievements and his character are held in appreciative remembrance by the community and the generation he has served. The waves of his influence ripple out in a somewhat wider circle before being lost in the ocean of time. We call that man great to whom it is given so to impress himself upon his fellow-men by deed, by creation, by service to the community, by character, by the inspiration from on high that has been breathed through his soul, that he is not permitted to die. Such a man secures immortality in this world. The knowledge and the influence of his life are extended throughout mankind and his memory gathers increasing fame from generation to generation.

It is thus that men are to-day honouring the memory of Abraham Lincoln. To-day, one hundred years after his birth, and nearly half a century since the dramatic close of his life's work, Lincoln stands enshrined in the thought and in the hearts of his countrymen. He is our "Father Abraham," belonging to us, his fellow-citizens, for ideals, for inspiration, and for affectionate regard; but he belongs now also to all mankind, for he has been canonised among the noblest of the world's heroes.

APPENDIX

THE ADDRESS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York,

February 27, 1860.

With Introduction by Charles C. Nott; Historical and Analytical Notes by Charles C. Nott and Cephas Brainerd, and with the Correspondence between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nott as Representative of the Committee of the Young Men's Republican Union.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The address delivered by Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in February, 1860 in response to the invitation of certain representative New Yorkers, was, as well in its character as in its results, the most important of all of his utterances.

The conscientious study of the historical and constitutional record, and the arguments and conclusions based upon the analysis of this record, were accepted by the Republican leaders as constituting the principles and the policy to be maintained during the Presidential campaign of 1860, a campaign in which was involved not merely the election of a President, but the continued existence of the republic.

Under the wise counsels represented by the words of Lincoln, the election was fought out substantially on two contentions:

First, that the compact entered into by the Fathers and by their immediate successors should be loyally carried out, and that slavery should not be interfered with in the original slave States, or in the additional territory that had been conceded to it under the Missouri Compromise; and, secondly, that not a single further square mile of soil, that was still free, should be left available, or should be made available, for the incursion of slavery.

It was the conviction of Lincoln and of his associates, as it had been the conviction of the Fathers, that under such a restriction slavery must certainly in the near future come to an end. It was because these convictions, both in the debates with Douglas and in the Cooper Institute speech, were presented by Lincoln more forcibly and more conclusively than had been done by any other political leader, that Lincoln secured the nomination and the presidency. The February address was assuredly a deciding factor in the great issue of the time, and it certainly belongs, therefore, with the historic documents of the republic.

G.H.P.

NEW YORK, September 1, 1909.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINCOLN, NOTT, AND BRAINERD

(From Robert Lincoln)

MANCHESTER, VERMONT,

July 27, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

Your letter of July 23rd reaches me here, and I beg to express my thanks for your kind remembrances of me in London… I am much interested in learning that you were present at the time my father made his speech at Cooper Institute. I, of course, remember the occasion very well, although I was not present. I was at that time in the middle of my year at Phillips Exeter Academy, preparing for the Harvard entrance examination of the summer of 1860… After the Cooper Institute address, my father came to Exeter to see how I was getting along, and this visit resulted in his making a number of speeches in New England on his way and on his return, and at Exeter he wrote to my mother a letter which was mainly concerned with me, but which did make reference to these speeches… He said that he had had some embarrassment with these New England speeches, because in coming East he had anticipated making no speech excepting the one at the Cooper Institute, and he had not prepared himself for anything else… In the later speeches, he was addressing reading audiences who had, as he thought probable, seen the report of his Cooper Institute speech, and he was obliged, therefore, from day to day (he made about a dozen speeches in New England in all) to bear that fact in mind.

Sincerely yours,

ROBERT LINCOLN.

(From Judge Nott)

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.,

July 26, 1909.

DEAR PUTNAM:

I consider it very desirable that the report of Mr. Lincoln's speech, embodying the final revision, should be preserved in book form… The text in the pamphlet now in your hands is authentic and conclusive. Mr. Lincoln read the proof both of the address and of the notes. I am glad that you are to include in your reprint the letters from Mr. Lincoln, as these letters authenticate this copy of the address as the copy which was corrected by him with his own hand…

The preface to the address, written in September, 1860, has interest because it shows what we thought of the address at that time… Your worthy father was, if I remember rightly, one of the vice-presidents of the meeting…