That Lincoln understood children and could talk to them is shown in his visit to Five Points Mission, then the most miserable spot in all the poverty-stricken sections of New York City. No one knows why he went there, alone and unannounced. Perhaps, knowing what was the lowest possible poverty in the frontier forests, he wanted to see what it was in the midst of the greatest wealth in America.
The manager of the Mission, seeing a stranger, in the rear of the house, who had been such an earnest listener to their exercises, asked him if he would like to speak a few words to the children.
We can hardly imagine his feelings as he arose to speak to those suffering little ones, so like his own hard childhood and yet subject to such different causes and conditions.
Feeling that he had used up his time, after speaking a few minutes, he stopped but they urged him to go on. Several times he ended his talk, but every time they cried out so persistently for him to go on that he spoke to them long over time.
No one knew who he was, but so impressive had been what he said that one of the teachers caught him at the door, begging to know his name.
He replied simply, "Abraham Lincoln of Illinois."
Adversity only made Lincoln stronger. In the midst of defeat he was at his best. In the midst of great moral success, in the profound trials of his country, his heart was mild and gentle as a child, and his eyes misty with supreme dreams of beauty and peace to lessen the suffering of humanity.
Once when Lincoln was speaking for Fremont, a brazen voice in the audience roared out above his own, "Is it true, Mr. Lincoln, that you came into the state barefoot and driving a yoke of oxen?"
The interruption had come in the midst of his strongest argument and was intended to throw him off of his subject.
His reply came back with a bound that it was true and he believed he could prove it by at least a dozen men in the audience more respectable than the speaker. Then he seemed inspired by the question into a vision of this country as the home of the free and the land of opportunity.
In a great burst of eloquence, that carried the people with him, he showed how oppression had injured the oppressor as much as the oppressed, even as slavery had injured the master as it did the slave.
"We will speak for freedom and against slavery," he said, "as long as the Const.i.tution of our country guarantees free speech, until everywhere on this wide land the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil."
This was before he had spoken in New York, where his speech at the Cooper Inst.i.tute awoke the people of the Eastern States to realize that an intellectual political giant had at last come out of the West.
II. NEARING THE HEIGHTS OF A PUBLIC CAREER
Lincoln"s long struggle to know and to be worth while culminated at last in a political career. The good opinion of a.s.sociates grew into the favorable friendship of his neighbors and that confidence widened to the community, then to the political district and so on.
In this age when thousands of dollars, and, in some instances, many hundred thousands of dollars used for campaign expenses is a common occurrence, it is interesting to read how Lincoln managed such things.
He was elected four times to the Illinois legislature. One time the Whigs made up two hundred dollars to pay his campaign expenses. After the election he returned one hundred and ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents, to be given back to the subscribers, in which he explained, "I did not need the money. I made the canva.s.s on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the house of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider, which some farm hands insisted I should treat them to."
The history of Lincoln"s political battles belongs to those who would comment on his part in public affairs. We are interested here in a moral consideration of what built him up to a life used in the preservation of his nation, the intimate personal interests of his wonderful story, and how he stands as an ideal character of American manhood.
It is therefore sufficient for us to pa.s.s over the great political struggles that proved him to be the "Giant of the West," and begin with him on the way to the White House.
Lincoln was not exactly as the prophet without honor in his own country, for he was beloved wherever he was known, but his neighbors were struck with surprise when he was nominated to be President of the United States.
One fine old gentleman, recently settled in Springfield from England, who had brought his old country ideas of propriety with him, was covered with astonishment.
"What!" he exclaimed, "Abe Lincoln nominated for President of the United States! A man that buys a ten-cent beefsteak for his breakfast, and carries it home himself! How is it possible!"
Lincoln"s vision of himself, expressed during a debate with Douglas, was not much more hopeful. Ponder over these words in which Lincoln with mingled humor, pathos and insight contrasted his own appearance with that of his adversary in the famous debates:
"There is still another disadvantage under which we labor.... It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate. Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party ... have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships and Cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On the contrary, n.o.body has ever expected me to be President.
In my poor lean, lank face n.o.body has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle and upon principle alone."
But the people were in earnest. It was realized by all that the fundamental interests of American progress were in the midst of a great crisis. They needed a reliable man and Lincoln was that man.
Campaign songs are usually very flat reading after the campaign is over, but they were then the carriers of the enthusiasm for a great cause.
The song sung in the state nominating-convention at Springfield, Illinois, had for its first verse and chorus the following lines:
"Hark! Hark! a signal gun is heard, Just beyond the fort; The good old Ship of State, my boys, Is coming into port, With shattered sails and anchors gone, I fear the rogues will strand her; She carries now a sorry crew, And needs a new commander.
Chorus
"Our Lincoln is the man!
Our Lincoln is the man!
With a st.u.r.dy mate From the Pine-Tree State, Our Lincoln is the man!"
III. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MOMENTOUS TIMES
Reference to a few of his speeches, made before his election to the presidency, will give a clear idea of his political Americanism, to which was entrusted the definition and the destiny of the greatest democracy in the world.
The Illinois legislature of 1854, by the union of Whigs and Know-Nothings, indorsed him for senator and sent a committee to notify him. The Know-Nothings were especially strong on the slogan of "America for Americans," and wanted to shut out immigration.
In the reply to the delegation or committee of notification, he said, "Who are the native Americans? Do they not wear the breech-clout and carry a tomahawk! Gentlemen, your principle is wrong. It is not American. For instance, I had an Irishman named Patrick working my garden. One morning I went out to see how Pat was getting along.
""Mr. Lincoln," he said, "what d"ye think of these Know-Nothing fellers?" I explained their ideas and asked him if he had been born in America."
""Faith, to be sure," Pat replied, "I wanted to be, very much, but me mother wouldn"t let me. It"s no fault of mine.""
Lincoln and Pat thus together believed that every baby, born anywhere on earth, is a good American until its mind is moulded into some man-made shape.
Referring to the thirteen original colonies and what they stood for, he said, "These communities by their representatives in old Independence Hall said to the world of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This was their lofty and wise and n.o.ble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures. In their enlightened belief nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the race of men then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They created a beacon to guide their children and their children"s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages."
Among the many familiar quotations from these great speeches that made him known to the nation may be mentioned a few that should never be forgotten.
"Let none falter who believes he is right."
"Let us have faith that right makes might."
"Freedom is the last, best hope of earth."
"Disenthrall ourselves, then we shall save ourselves."
"Come what will, I"ll keep my faith with friend and foe."
"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like."
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
"No man is good enough to govern another without the other"s consent."
"Would you undertake to disprove a proposition in Euclid by calling Euclid a liar!"