Читать книгу Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; - Beardslee Clark Smith - Страница 8

This second inaugural contains a fine example of free and reasoned reliability. It is in fact, in its total stature, a stately exhibit of deliberate steadfastness. Let this short document be read, meanwhile remembering that other inaugural document, and not forgetting all the unspeakable strain and struggles of those four intervening years. The man who spoke in 1861, and the man who speaks now again in 1865, stands forth in the heart of those bewildering confusions of our political life, a living embodiment of civic constancy. In his person national firmness stands enshrined. In those ripe convictions, in those cool and poised determinations, in those ardent, prophetic desires – steadfast, consistent, and sure – are traceable the rock-like foundations of our confederate Republic. In those inaugurals stands a monument not liable soon to crumble away. But within that monument insuring its durability, rests as within and upon a steadfast throne, Lincoln's everlasting fidelity.

To win clear vision of this fine trait, let one read again this second inaugural, and locate truly the center of gravity of its second paragraph. There Lincoln is tracing in broad, plain strokes the origin and on-coming of the war. In the center of his steady thought the interest centrally at stake was the Union. On the one hand he recalls his own address at his first inauguration, "devoted," as he says, "altogether to saving the Union without war." On the other hand, he recalls "insurgent agents" seeking to destroy it without war. War was deprecated and dreaded by both parties. But one would make war rather than let the Nation survive. And the other would accept war rather than let the Nation perish. "And the war came." As a register of Lincoln's capacity for free, intelligent stability, no passing glance can in any sense exhaust or apprehend the depth and sweep and energy of those last four words. When loyalty to the Union was the issue and interest at stake, Lincoln would "accept war." "And the war came."

When Lincoln voiced those four words, his eye was looking back through four dreadful, bloody years – years, whether in prospect or in reminiscence, fit to make any human heart recoil. But as he surveys those scenes of hate and carnage and desolation, retracing and reckoning again the sum of their awful sorrow and cost, and rehearses again his resolution to "accept the war," it is without a shadow or a hint of wavering or remorse. In fact he is recalling that fateful day of four years before with an eye to review and vindicate that fateful resolve. At the end of those eventful and sorrow-laden years, he is as steady as at their start. Not by the breadth of a hair have his footing and purpose, his judgment and endeavor been made to swerve. Then as now, now as then, his loyalty is absolute. And in that sturdy loyalty of that lone man a seeing eye discerns nothing less than the unbending majesty of a Nation's self-respect. It is the Nation's sacred honor that he has in sacred charge. In him the integrity of the Nation at large finds a champion and a living voice. In his firm-set decision the Nation's destiny takes shape. In those short pregnant words the proud consistency of our total national career, and his superb reliability, become, instantly and for all time, freely, nobly, and completely identified. This is not to say that in the teeming history of those eventful years Lincoln's mind and will and sentiments had stood in stolid immobility. He freely concedes that the years have brought him lessons he had never foreseen. And his central attitude in this second scene is a reverent inquiry into the ways of Him whose purposes transcend all human wisdom, and require full centuries to complete. But strong and clear within his reverent and lowly acceptance of divine rebukes, stands unbent and unchanged his steadfast, invincible pledge to reveal, on his own and on his Nation's behalf, the sovereign grandeur of civic reliability.

In his first message to Congress this integral trait of his personal and official life finds majestic and most definite explication. It is the passage explaining to Congress, in precise and minute recital, just how the war began. It deals with those ominous events in Charleston harbor, centering about heroic Major Anderson, a federal officer, and within Fort Sumter, a federal fort. That assault upon a national garrison by Confederate guns was no haphazard event. At just that moment, and in just that spot the national crisis became acute. Upon that spot, and upon those events Lincoln's eye was fixed with a physician's anxiety. There he knew he could feel the pulse of the resentment and resolution of the South. Day and night he held his finger upon its feverish beat. And as the fever rose, he marked with exactest attentiveness its registration of one condition of the Southern heart: – Was that heart so hot with civic hate that, when every lesser issue was set aside, and the only issue under review was the right of the Republic to stand by its officers and its flag, then those Southern leaders would fire upon those officials in a federal fort, and pull down that flag upon federal soil? If in a federal fort the major in command, and his uniformed men, while making no aggression nor voicing any threat, but acting only as peaceful exponents of the Nation's authority, and being in exigent need of food, were to be visited by a national transport bearing nought but bread, upon such a ship, upon such a mission, would seceding soldiers open fire? If they would, and if that onslaught passed without rebuke, then that Nation's federal integrity was dissolved. Such was the unmixed issue, and so sharply edged was its final and decisive definition under Lincoln's hand. And on his part there was here no accident. With foresight, and by careful design Lincoln "took pains" to make the problem plain. With impressive and ideal carefulness he guided the action of his own heart to its final resolution, and predetermined the final verdict of the world.

In the last supreme alternative, when government agents stand in need of food, and citizens who repudiate all loyalty fire upon government transports freighted only with bread, what shall a government do? This was the naked question that Lincoln faced, when he decided to accept and prosecute the war. Upon this one plain question, and upon his one convinced determination he massed and compacted his first Congressional address. Right well he understood its point, its gravity, and its range. And surpassing well was he fitted to be the man to frame and demonstrate the true reply. In all the land no finer, firmer exemplar of elemental constancy could ever have been found to guide and cheer the Nation's course in this extremest test of elemental self-respect. Let those words be written and read again. It was a test of national self-respect, elemental and supreme. It was a question that concerned, as Lincoln saw and said, "the whole family of man." "Government of the people, by the same people" – can or cannot such a government "maintain its own integrity against its own domestic foes?" Can it "maintain its own integrity?" Can it master "its own domestic foes?" Can men who assume their self-control be trusted to maintain their self-respect? Here is a problem that is in verity elemental and supreme. What, in very deed and in solid fact, what is civic reliability? Where, among all the governments by men, where can steadfastness, civic steadfastness be found? Nowhere, Lincoln had the eyes to see; nowhere, but in the civic constancy of men at once governing and governed. Only thus and only there, only so and only here, in this heaven-favored land, did Lincoln see, can any government of men by men find fundamental base and final form that shall be consistent, stable, and real. This is government indeed. Here is elemental, civic verity. A community held in common self-control upon the basis of common self-respect – such a union alone has constancy. This is the sublime and radical civic truth that Lincoln forged out upon his steadfast heart, as he bent with mighty ponderings over those scenes in Charleston harbor, and reviewed and expounded their pregnant implications in his initial message to Congress in 1861.

In many ways this constancy of Lincoln rewards attentive thought. For one thing, it was radiant with intelligence. Indeed in him the two became identified. As thus conceived, it shows as pure and clear consistency. His fully tried reliability was the well-poised balance of a mind long-schooled in the art of steadiest deliberation. When Lincoln held immutably fast, it was due to his invincible faith that the conviction to which he clung involved abiding truth. This quality tempered all his firmness. Just here one finds the genesis and motive of all his skilled invention of reasoned, pleading speech. Lincoln's prevailing power of urgent argument roots in the deep persistency of his convinced belief. It was because of an impassioned confidence, an assurance that was vibrant with a note of triumph, that his grasp of any ruling purpose was so unwaveringly firm. This was his mood and attitude in all the major contentions of his life. To the central tenets that those contentions involved he held with all the firmness of the rooted hills. Touching those primary principles in his character and politics his mind and faith seem to have attained an absolute confirmation. And from those settled positions he could never be moved. Constancy in him was nothing more nor less than the energetic affirmation of intellectual rectitude.

His steadfastness, thus, was a mental poise. It can be defined as ripened judgment, a conclusion of thought, safeguarded on every side by a discernment not easily confused, by a penetration not easy to escape. This involved a wonderful flexibility. While steadfast unto the grade of immutability, where honor was involved, no student of his ways could call him obstinate. While firm and strong enough to hold the Nation to her predestined course upon an even keel, he held her helm with a gentle, pliant grasp. Being in every mental trait inherently honest and deliberate, he could at once be resolute and free.

This blend within his being of thoughtfulness and determination, of openness and immutability, this candid, conscientious, mental poise, this Godlike apprehension of the larger equilibrium, qualified him peculiarly to interpret the major movements of his time, to trace in the deep, prevailing sentiments of the human soul the chart of our national destiny.

Here is in Lincoln something wonderful. Among the millions of his fellowmen he counts but one. But in the range and grasp of his thought, in the eager passion of his heart, in the controlling power of his commanding will, he comprehends them all. Stable and heedful at once, he could challenge unanswerably every man's esteem. His symbol is the firm, benignant oak, the sheltering, abiding hills. Thus he stood to help and hold, to serve and rule among his fellowmen. Thus he wrought coherence into our great career. Thus he linked together those mighty political events with a logic which succeeding times have proved powerless to refute, but strong and glad to confirm. He had marvelous capacity to divine. With him to reason was to illuminate. Things bewilderingly obscure, within his thought and speech grew plain. He was our prime interpreter. He explained the Nation to itself. But in every such elucidation the Nation was made to co-operate. His instinctive, habitual attitude toward other men was that of a conferee. He was sensitively open to complaints and appeals. Delegations and private supplicants always found him courteous. This courtesy was never formal. To a degree altogether noteworthy the words of other men found entrance into the counselings of his mind. He was not merely accessible. He was impressible, sensitive, quick to appreciate and honor the sentiments of another man. With the earnest plea of balanced, honest argument, hailing from whatever source, he was facile to correspond. His judgments and decisions were amenable to estimates wholly novel to him. Indeed, to an almost astonishing degree his major movements were commensurate with the progress and pace of the national events that environed his life. In some of his mightiest accomplishments he seemed to do little more than register the conclusions of the national mind.

All this is to say that Lincoln's constancy was poise, not obstinacy; a well-reflected equilibrium, not a stiff rigidity. All his steadiness was studied. Never can it be said of Lincoln that his verdicts were snap judgments. On the contrary, with him deliberation and delay were so habitual and so excessively indulged, while pondering some massive, political perplexity, that the patience of some of our greatest statesmen repeatedly broke down, and he was charged repeatedly with criminal, and all but wanton indifference, inertia, and neglect. But never was sorer libel. Through it all he was only too intent. Through it all his eye refused to sleep, while his steady and steadying mind pursued the vexing task, until its permanent solution stood clear. And then, with his eye steadily single to the guiding hand of God, to the Nation's immortal weal, and to his own unsurrendered integrity, he would publish and fulfill his studied and sturdy resolve. Upon the basis of these internal mental conquests did all his firmness rest. Hence his life-long evenness and freedom from fluctuation.