Читать книгу Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; - Beardslee Clark Smith - Страница 4

Deeply set within the heart of Lincoln in this last inaugural was his binding sense of right. This obligation was civic. The speech can be described as a statement of what a loyal citizen under confederate law is bound to do, when his civic loyalty is put to a final test. It is an illustration of obedience facing rebellion. It is an exposition of a confederate's duty, when confederates secede. It is a civilian's announcement of the law that is singly and surely sovereign, when the sole alternative in the Nation's life is dissolution or blood. It is a revelation of the law that still prevails among and above a Republic of freemen, when all law is faced by the challenge and defiance of war.

Here is a supreme exhibit of a solid co-efficient in Lincoln's character. It shows in a commanding way how moral duty held dominion in his life. He had no predilection for war. That he must face its menace, or forswear his fealty to his freeman's covenant, was a pathetic fate. And when in that alternative he upheld his oath and endured the war, it is past all denial that he was bowing under an inexorable constraint. He was plainly ordering his speech and conduct in submission to an all-commanding, all-reviewing moral regimen. His will was listening to a moral behest. His judgment was pondering a moral choice. His eye was forecasting a moral award. He was shaping sovereign issues with a sovereign responsibility.

This experience and this expression of Lincoln's life unearths foundations in his character which demand precise examination. What was the nature of the law which held and swayed the soul of Lincoln with such an overmastering control? Whence came its authority? Wherein rested its validity? Is there record of its origin and authorship? Where is it recorded? By whose hand was it transcribed? Precisely what are its so imperative terms?

In attempting an answer, one's first impulse is to say that in this address Lincoln was speaking as citizen and official, as subject and chief executive of an openly organized civil government, with written Constitution and laws; and that what he was saying in this inaugural address contained and involved no more and no less than those regulations expressed; that he simply adopted and echoed what they defined and described; that the sole and only authority he assumed to cite or urge was this well-known published law of the land; and that in those open records one may find in fullness and precision the full definition of the nature and validity, the authority and authorship and origin, the very terms and abiding form of all the moral mandates he here obeyed.

In such a statement there is abounding truth. Lincoln explicitly shows explicit allegiance in all his political life to the dominion of our national law. He revered our Constitution. And that the Constitution should likewise be revered by all was all he gave his life to realize. Grounded as that Constitution was upon our American Bill of Rights, acknowledging as it did that all men were created equal, owning as it openly did the sovereignty of the popular will, and allowing no other lord, he found within its reverent and reverend affirmations the dignity, authority, and power all-sufficient and supremely valid for him as a fellow-citizen among his fellowmen.

But in such a statement something is left unsaid. As one listens through this address to Lincoln's voice, he instantly and continuously feels that he is hearing there no mere echo of quoted words. There is in the vibrant tone a note that is original. His voice is his own. His words are of his own selection. His phrases were fashioned by himself. His paragraphs embody the shape and bear the stamp of his peculiar and painstaking invention and argument. In his utterance are the inflection and accent, the very passion of unforced and independent conviction. He speaks as one who finds within himself, in some true sense, the authority for what he says.

But not merely are his words valid for himself, as he shapes his ordered speech. They are irrepressible. His convictions throb with urgency. The constraint to which he bows is enthroned and exercised within. The law he obeys is just as truly a law he ordains. But on either view it is a mandate which he humbly and grandly obeys. It is an imperative to which he yields his life.

Just here emerges another phase of his amenability to law. It operates as an impulse to plead. It drives him to the rostrum, and makes of him one of the foremost masters of public address our civic life and history have produced. As Lincoln voices this address he is speaking not merely to himself, nor for himself, nor to ease and unburden his mind, nor yet to open and indicate his view. As he spoke those words his eye was fixed upon a mighty multitude of his fellowmen. As he unfolded his thought before their attentive, waiting minds, it was as though a banner were being unfurled to symbolize and signify to a Nation's multitudes the sovereign duty of all true patriots. In that transaction he became undeniably prophet and lawgiver to the Nation. The obligations that supremely bind his life he urges and attests as binding with equal and evident urgency upon the millions upon millions of the members in the same free and solemn political league. When his speech is done, he would have all who hear conjoined indefeasibly with him in loyalty to his law. Every sentence of the address bears evidence of this design. He is aiming to bring the Nation's conscience and will to embody and obey the identical mandates that govern him.

But his appeal is vestured in ideal deference. He deals with law. But he does not command. Throughout his solemn exposition there is no note or hint of dictatorship of any sort. Not a breath in any accent suggests any undertaking to coerce. He simply strives, as a man with his friend, to persuade.

And yet as he sets forth his speech, within the comely apparel of its courteous words gleams the regal form of duty, imperial offspring of inflexible law. Those words were no empty phrasings of indifferent platitudes, disposed and pronounced to dignify a passing pageant in the formal rounds of our civic life. They trembled with anxiety. He spoke of nothing less than the Nation's life and death, the Nation's duty, and the Nation's doom. The honor of the Republic was being sternly tried, to see if it was sound or rotten in its very heart. Lincoln was dealing with things that all men owned to be above all price. He was striving, as for life, to achieve agreement as to duties that should transcend all possible denial. He was trying to fasten upon every American conscience constraints that no American conscience could possibly escape.

Here is a cognizance of law and deference before its claims that is curiously composite, if not complex, or even innerly contraposed. He acknowledges the written Constitution to bind all citizens with supreme authority; and gives his solemn oath to honor, uphold, and execute its plain behests. He as plainly betrays the presence within his individual breast of a moral sovereign to which he bows with just as loyal reverence. And before every man with whom he pleads he orders his behavior, even while he pleads, as before a throne whose moral majesty he has no right or power to nullify. And yet within the terms embodying such a deference he expounds the genesis and justifies the conduct of a long-drawn civil conflict, in which his own official decrees can be carried out only by the aid of the death and desolation entailed by war. And when, despite death-dealing guns and deferential pleas alike, vast multitudes of men, even all the captains and armies of the South, despise his arguments and defy his arms, he continues to urge his convictions and appeals, and to reinforce his words with war.

Can such a complex attitude be shown and seen to rest in moral harmony? Were his conscience, and the Constitution, and his deference before other men, and his summons of the land to arms equally and alike compelling morally, all indeed morally akin? Beneath the unsparing gaze of his conscience-searching eye, under all the awful testing of his loyalty to oath, in all his patient and persistent pleadings for other men's agreement, and through all the torture and distress of war, what explanation and account can be given of any obligation adequate to bind and justify his course? Instinct himself with deference, and averse to any form of tyranny, how could he so rigidly refuse to yield? Prone toward conciliation in every fiber of his life, how did he inwardly, how could he openly vindicate his unbending determination to uphold his faith, and carry through the war?

This forces a final and vital inquiry touching the nature of the law that was so regnant and compelling in Lincoln's personal life; and that he was struggling here in this address with such consuming desire, and by the unabetted efficiency of oral appeal, to implant in other breasts. From Lincoln's balanced words it stands apparent that the problems bound up in this inquiry beleaguered him on every side. His throbbing syllables, and the tactics by which his sentences are arranged, attest impressively that while he was facing problems too profound for human thought to solve, he was also facing laws that he could not escape, and dared not disobey. It was not for his kind heart to sanction and encompass such a war, and stand so solidly against the solid South, while yet behaving with so unfeigned respect for every other man, except beneath compulsion of a law supremely gentle and invincibly severe. He was plainly viewing some behest too plain to be denied, too sacred to be disobeyed, too insistent to be withheld, and yet too reverend and benign to suffer any champion to be rude – a behest around whose throne hung sanctions, true to fact, waiting to adjudge, certain to descend.

In the effort now to trace in the soul of Lincoln the birth and growth and manly stature of this deep sense of law, some things stand plain. In this, his consciousness of sovereign duty and supreme allegiance, Lincoln stands entire. In this address will and thought and sentiments combine. He is not swept against his will. What he decides he eagerly desires. And with his will and wish his best intelligence co-operates. If any man essay to overthrow his argument, he has the total Lincoln to overturn. Determined, impassioned, and convinced, he confronts all men, whether they be adversaries or friends. In his contention and defense his being is completely unified. He is employing upon his master task his total strength. Distressful, dark and difficult as is his environment and time, he suffers and ponders and resolves, with forces undivided, none reserved. With such convictions, such desires, and such determination, the assurance in his onset was in itself triumphant.

Upon what foundations now for such unyielding confidence and appeal did Lincoln take his stand? For Lincoln's own deliberate reply, let all men read again, and then again, and still again, this second inaugural address. Those words are appareled with a beautiful charity. But from deep within their kindliness resounds the clear, firm voice of heaven-ordered, all-prevailing law – a law that comprehends beneath its strong and high dominion the long career of American slavery, defining its sin, awarding its doom, and dealing justly with the contending imprecations and the pleading intercessions that strangely voice the deep confusion of embattling hosts. American slavery, its sin and doom – in his exposition of that dark theme, Lincoln gave his exposition of all-compelling law.

All men were created equal. The right of all men to liberty is likewise a primitive endowment. Upon this one broad base, and upon no other, did Lincoln ever set up any claim to voice for himself, or for his fellowman, a civic obligation. To that creative decree can be traced all the civic appeals that Lincoln ever made. In fixing there the ground of every plea, he had indomitable assurance of faith that he was defining and declaring for every man an irreducible and ineffaceable moral law. All men were created equal. All men were divinely entitled to be free. That fiat of God Americans had tried and dared to invalidate. Its authority it was now the Almighty's purpose, by the obedient hand of Lincoln, to reinaugurate. Its simple terms, that had forever been indelible, were now to be made universally legible, and everywhere visible, by the obedient consent of all his fellowmen.

In all of this the chiefest thing to note is that this same all-commanding moral law is born within. Written precepts and published constitutions are but transcriptions. They are not original. They are only copies. Not at the tip of a moving pen, but in our forefathers' reverent and independent hearts, did our noble Constitution come to birth. And in the time of Lincoln it was in Lincoln's heart that this venerable law was born again. In the heart of Washington, in the heart of Lincoln, in the heart of every man, as fashioned and over-shadowed evermore by God, all moral regimen has its stately origin.

To this grave oracle, deep within Lincoln's Godlike soul, did Lincoln fashion utterance. To this same reverend oracle, deep-lodged within the Godlike soul of every listener, Lincoln made appeal. Here is all the urgency of all his argument. Here is the secret of all his confidence. Herein alone shines all his moral majesty.

Something such was Lincoln's exposition to himself, and to his time, of the majesty and mandatory force of civic law. Its authority rests in God. Its validity rests as well in man. It has been written down most nobly in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Its terms spell freedom and equality for all. In the light of our common human sentiments, kindling within us from heavenly fires, its printed copies may be easily revised. And while its concrete regulations are far too manifold for any general document to possibly contain, its dictates are all as concrete and corresponsive to our human civic life as is the heaven-born and reverent human friendliness with which the life of Lincoln was continually graced.

Deferring then to future pages all specific analysis and appraisal of the pregnant interior wealth of Lincoln's sense of moral obligation, two momentous affirmations touching Lincoln's reverence for law lie already right at hand. The law he reverenced held high and wide dominion. It shaped and swayed and judged at once and alike both his own and his Nation's destiny.

And its terms were plain. It was no timid, dusky lamp, held in trembling hand, throwing uncertain rays, and flickering towards extinction. The law that shines in this inaugural is a glowing, radiant orb, bringing day when first it dawned, and shedding still full light of day over all the earth.