Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits Part 9

But far beyond all this. The vast, unwieldly world of solid sense, so baffling, but so sure, now so terrible, and now so kind, now serving, and now crus.h.i.+ng boastful, trembling man, now begetting, and now absorbing endless, countless generations and mult.i.tudes, seems not to const.i.tute a vexing or perplexing theme in Lincoln's most insistent thought. This can never be explained as due to a painless, care-free, earthly lot; nor to a pampering environment; nor to physical stolidity; nor to incapacity for aesthetic joys. The lines that seamed his face, the muscles that leashed his frame, the structure of his hands, the meaning message upon his lips, his shadowed, sobered, brooding eyes attest a different tale. Lincoln was sufficiently aware of the plain and common sorrows incident to our earthly environment.

He knew what havoc cold and heat, hunger and pain, toil and want, plague and death could visit upon our human life. But none of these things seemed to trouble him. So engrossed was he with questions he called "durable," that all physical discomforts and distresses, with their connected pleasures and desires and hopes and fears, were but pa.s.sing, minor incidents.

This undoubted fact in Lincoln's mental habitude is a signal and significant factor, to be held in careful estimation in a final judgment of Lincoln's character. Ethics, pure ethics, themes that dealt with realms where man is truly responsible and truly free, were his supreme concern from first to last. And so it comes to pa.s.s that the problem, which for him is truly fundamental and ultimate, pa.s.ses wholly by at once all that burden of so-called evil, in the fear and hurt and mystery of things inflexible, and clings fast hold of things alone that are responsible and free.

Touching the theme of this chapter, and touching also this last inaugural, the following letter, written March 15, 1865, to Thurlow Weed, already cited and considered once, deserves a bit of heed again:--

Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech and on the recent inaugural address. I expect the latter to wear as well as--perhaps better than--anything I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there is a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.

To deny it however, in this case, is to deny that there is a G.o.d governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.

Truly yours, A. LINCOLN.

This letter shows what Lincoln judged to be the secret of this inaugural's permanent hold on human approbation. It was its humble testimony to the fact that, amidst and above the errors and sins, the struggles and failures of men and Nations, there is a world-governing G.o.d. Here opens a theme that is truly sovereign and ultimate.

The last inaugural reveals that Lincoln was closely pondering two incongruous themes: the bitter career of slavery; and the just rule of G.o.d.

Touching the first--the fact of human slavery--whatever other men might think, in Lincoln's view it was always abhorrent, a primary immorality. He was naturally "anti-slavery." Even in this address, guarded against all malice, and suffused with charity, he could not forbear from saying:--"It may seem strange that any men should dare to seek a just G.o.d's a.s.sistance in wringing their bread from other men's faces." Man's right to live was in his thought primal. That right carried with it the right to enjoy the bread that his own hands had earned. Such a privilege was the central element in human happiness. Such felicity was elemental. Such freedom and such joy were the simplest common boon in our common, earthly lot.

The inst.i.tution of slavery blasted that joy, denied that liberty, robbed that right to life. This annihilated hope. It ranked men with brutes. Such a ravaging of human desires and human rights Lincoln judged, from the side of the slave-holder, a paramount crime; and from the side of the slave, an insufferable curse. The terrible enormity of both crime and curse was measured in Lincoln's estimation by the enormity of the war. Viewed any way, that war was the indication and register of the wrong done, and the wrong borne, by men in the centuries of slavery. Arrogance and insolence, ruthlessness and cruelty, dishonesty and faithlessness, luxury and l.u.s.t, trailed all along its path. That, in a Republic dedicated to liberty, men would go to war and fight to the death with their fellow-citizens in defense and perpetuation of tyranny and bonds, gave evidence to the strange and obdurate perverseness involved and nurtured in the mood and att.i.tude of men that were bent on holding fellow men as slaves. The existence of such an inst.i.tution in any land Lincoln deemed a national calamity; in a free Republic he felt it to be a heaven-braving anomaly and affront. It was a flagrant evil, bound to bring down woe.

But in the deep entanglements of history this baleful inst.i.tution had to be condoned, even in this land made sacred to the free. Inbred within the Nation in the Nation's very birth, that it be sheltered within the Nation's life became a national responsibility. From this firm bond Lincoln himself could not escape. In the Const.i.tution that Lincoln swore to uphold, when first he took the presidency, slavery was sheltered, if not entrenched. As chief magistrate of the whole Republic, however obnoxious slavery might be, he had the obnoxious thing to protect. This he freely admitted, and explicitly declared in his first inaugural.

Here was the beginning of his final, moral debate. How should he morally justify himself in defending what he morally abhorred? That this dual att.i.tude should be a.s.sumed he seemed fully to concede. This shows most clearly, and in its sharpest moral contradiction, when, in his first inaugural, he volunteered to permit an amendment to the Const.i.tution, enacting, as the supreme law of the land, that slavery should remain thereafter undisturbed forever. How he brought his mind to take that stand has never been made clear. He said in that connection that such an amendment was in effect already Const.i.tutional law. But previous to that date he had always pledged and urged forbearance with slavery, on the understanding that such forbearance was only for a time; that, as foreseen and designed by the men who framed the Const.i.tution, slave holding was always to be so handled, as to be always on the way to disappear. It is not easy to see how a man, to whom the practice of holding slaves was so morally repellent, could partic.i.p.ate in making it perpetual. One could wish that just this problem had been frankly handled under Lincoln's pen. It must have been plainly before his thought. And the words of few men would be more worthy of careful record and review than deliberate words from Lincoln upon this world-perplexing query:--how adjust one's thoughts and acts to a moral evil, that inveterately endures, and is never atoned? But in fact that amendment was never carried through. One of the fruits of slavery was its rash unwisdom at just this juncture.

Still, though the amendment lapsed, slavery held on. And slaveholders tightened their resolution to retain their rights in slaves, or rend the Union. This precipitated war. This may seem to have doubled Lincoln's problem, slavery and national dissolution. Standing at the apex of national responsibility, he had to bear the hottest brunt of the physical anguish, the mental perplexity, and the moral sorrows of a war waged by a slave-holding South in militant secession. But in reality, in his thought, the two were one. All turned on slavery. This was the burning blemish in the Const.i.tution. This was the intent of the war. This was the burden on his heart. Here was a load too grievous for any man to bear. It bore preponderantly on him. And yet, as regards any personal and conscious desire or deed, he was through and in it all conscious within himself of innocence. His trial and sorrow were without cause. How now, in his soberest thought, was all this moral confusion explained? Hating slavery with all his heart, innocent all his life of any inclination to rob another man of liberty, but pledged and sworn to shelter slavery under the arm of his supreme and free authority, how could he prove himself consistent morally?

Here emerge the profoundest thoughts of Lincoln on the ways of G.o.d.

And herein appears his contribution to a theodicy--a vindication of G.o.d's moral honor, where his moral government seems slack. How can thoughtful men conceive and hold that G.o.d is just, when such injustice and disaster are allowed at all, much less for centuries; in any corner of the earth, much less where heaven's favor seems to dwell?

Upon this subduing theme this last inaugural gives us Lincoln's most explicit words. Of G.o.d's personal being, and of his personal care, this address shows Lincoln to be perfectly a.s.sured. This was his standing att.i.tude and confidence. Throughout his years in the presidency this trust had seemed unwavering. Indeed, by repeated, almost unconscious attestations, it was his stablest trust. Some of his utterances are tender and touching testimonials to his belief that G.o.d rules in his own personal career. But mainly his confessions of belief in the Providence of G.o.d are connected with national concerns.

He did joyfully, almost jubilantly believe that this Republic was under G.o.d's special watch and care. His own hope for our national future well-being and honor rested mainly, we must judge, upon the tokens he thought he could trace in our thrilling and inspiring history of the divine controlling care. At bottom it was this faith that underlay all his patriotism. That the fundamental affirmations of our Const.i.tution were rescripts and digests from the will and word of G.o.d was the lively ground and unfailing confirmation of his pure devotion to his Nation's honor and weal. More than aught in all the world beside, it was this religious faith that steadied and girded his will through all those strenuous days.

It is just here that this study of a theodicy sets in. Above all his former thoughts about himself, about his land, about the clash of right and wrong; above all thoughts of other men, and other times; even above his own and his opponents' former prayers and faith, he lifts new thoughts in new reverence and new docility towards G.o.d.

Still naught but slavery in his theme--its undeniable iniquity; its strange, prolonged permission; his own, and all other men's responsibility; its unavoidable entail in penalty; and the divine, enduring terms of new liberty and peace. Here are themes and fixed realities that seem eternally to disagree. Can they ever all be morally harmonized? Could even G.o.d enlighten that dark past? Could his own historic acts be morally unified? Nothing he had ever done with slavery, not even its utter elimination in his act of freedom, had ever been done, he explicitly affirmed, on moral grounds. Yet slavery, and by his own hand, was indeed undone. But even so the spirit of the South was still invincible, and war was holding on. What indeed could be the thoughts and plans of G.o.d?

To begin with, he confesses both North and South and all the land gone wrong. This is the first component in his theodicy. Neither North nor South, not even in the act of prayer, had walked with G.o.d, nor found the truth, nor gained its wish. All thoughts of men, in the righteous rule of G.o.d, were being overturned. This confession verges near to wors.h.i.+p, acclaiming, as it does, the Almighty's designs; and venturing as it does, to trace and reproduce the Almighty's thoughts.

Here is seen how genuine is the moral earnestness in Lincoln's earnest thoughtfulness. As though by a very instinct, his form of words betrays his reverence. He refrains from dogmatism. He refrains even from affirmation. He knows he is venturing upon a daring flight. He is a.s.suming to conjoin together into a moral unison that bitter sample of the age-long cruelty of man against his brother, and the transcendent sovereignty, the eternal justice, and the age-long silence of G.o.d. His formula is a modest supposition. But within its modesty is an eye that searches far.

He takes resort in one of the most trenchant declarations of Christ, that momentous saying in his colloquy about the majesty and modesty of a little child:--"Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

In this colloquy Jesus seems to be moved by a tender impulse of affectionate jealousy for the model beauty and grace of children. But that tenderness is roused into one of the most terrific outbursts that ever pa.s.sed his lips. Little children are Christlike, G.o.dlike, models of the citizens.h.i.+p in the heavenly Kingdom. G.o.d is their jealous guardian and defender. But G.o.dlike, and of heavenly dignity though they be, they are shy and frail. And men, as they grow gross and impudent, abuse and offend their defenselessness. So things have to be. But woe to such offenders. They were better tied to that mammoth stone that the mule turns in the mill, and submerged in the abyss of the deep of the great sea.

Here are four noteworthy elements:--a blended heavenly modesty and majesty and innocence; an insufferable insolence; a trebly-terrible penalty; and a strange and ominous necessity.

Over these four factors Lincoln's mind must have pondered long. Else how explain their place in this inaugural? They form the foundation of its central paragraph, and const.i.tute its paramount argument; forming alike a sobering admonition, and a humble ground of hope to all the Nation, while at the same time holding aloft before the Nation's thought the outline and substance of a stately vindication of the ways of G.o.d. Evidently here is shapely fas.h.i.+oning in lucid speech of Lincoln's ripest, surest thought. As one faces all its range, it seems like the open sky, clear but fathomless. But its wisdom is doubly sealed, and it bears a double claim to our respect. It shows the way of Lincoln's mind, and the way of the mind of Christ. Not quickly will any other thinker, however disciplined, traverse all its course. But travel where he will in the mighty orbit of this inquiry, the modern thinker, whatever his attainment, may find in this inaugural s.h.i.+ning indications that Lincoln's thought has gone before.

In this modest, far-searching supposition, transferred to American history from the lips of Christ, Lincoln firmly grasps two solid facts, elemental and universal in human life:--the beautiful modesty of the meek; and the ugly arrogance in the strong. Strength and weakness needs must be. These invite to rudeness and retreat. Then the powerful overbear. The gentle are overborne. Offenses multiply. The arrogant prevail. So must it be. But when the meek go down beneath the wicked rudeness of the strong, then the Most High G.o.d, within whose firm dominion both strong and weak share equally in all the privileges and rights of liberty and law, sets over the offended one his s.h.i.+eld, and against the proud offender his sword, until pity and equity are enthroned upon the earth again. Thus must it be. The meek must suffer.

Offenders must arise. But meekness is a heavenly, G.o.dlike quality. And as with G.o.d, so with his gentle little ones, patient gentleness will be duly vindicated; rude arrogance will meet exact and fit rebuke; and it will stand clear that strength and weakness may dwell together in equity and liberty and peace.

This was the age-long moral process which Lincoln's eye discerned, and the final issue which his expectation hailed. Then and therein his eye discerned that all voices would be constrained to proclaim that in all the moral world pity and equity were prevalent; that the least had G.o.dlike majesty; that humility gave to all the great their courtliness; and that there was within all men a fadeless worth, far outranking all other wealth.

But it is essential to note, not alone that Lincoln offers this in the modest form of supposition; but that, as it leaves his lips, it a.s.sumes the formula of a confession. Even the meek receive rebuke. The gentlest have wandered also away from G.o.d. The problem has surpa.s.sed us all. All have somewhat to learn from G.o.d. That arrogance may meet its due, meekness must be yet more meek. It must needs be that offenses come. Greater than all our wrong, and all our patience, is the patient truth of G.o.d. This must be fully learned. It is under wrong that wrong is made right. It is by meekness under arrogance that arrogance is put to shame. It is by gentleness under rudeness that rudeness is subdued. Offenses must needs be. Only in sacrificial submission to its woe is the problem of evil ever resolved. Only thus is the iniquity of the sin measured back upon the evil doer in a symmetrical and equivalent rebuke.

But this is never to exculpate the offender or condone the offense.

Blood with the sword, drop for drop, must be meted out to the slaveholder, as he meted out to the slave blood with the lash. All the wealth that the bonds-man's lord has s.n.a.t.c.hed from the toiling slave must be yielded up. Over human scorn and greed and injustice and cruelty hang unfailingly judgments that are true and righteous altogether. Neither may they who are offended rail, nor they who offend exult, over the divine delay. Nor when G.o.d's judgments fall may they who are rebuked complain, nor they who are redeemed turn exultation into arrogance. G.o.d's ways, and his alone are even, and altogether true.

In thoughts like these Lincoln's final explanation of the ways of G.o.d took form. In patient, repentant, adoring acquiescence his heart found rest. His sorrows were profound, the sorrows of a patriot, kinsman to all the sorrowful in the land. But he learned, however deep the stroke, to forbear complaint. He received the sorrows of the war into his own breast as heaven's righteous woe upon a haughty land, and as heaven's discipline, teaching offenders the woe of their offense. So his ways became coincident with the greater ways of G.o.d.

But in this moral explication of the war, and of all that the war involves, two vastly different types of character persist. Lincoln's solution of the enigma was in diametrical contrast with the views of the leading spirits of the South. Not like him did they rate slavery, nor conceive the war, nor understand the ways of G.o.d. How, now, could Lincoln's view a.s.similate this obduracy in the South? This question was clearly within the scope of Lincoln's thought, and its answer is embraced in what has already been explained. Given an even penalty for any sin, drop for drop with the avenging sword for blood with the lash, and it is morally indifferent whether men rail, or whether they acquiesce. The wrong is made right. The meek are redeemed. G.o.d's delay is vindicated. Rudeness is reversed. The law is fully revealed. Man's liberty is honored equally. Cruelty and unfairness are rebuked. The gains of greed are scattered. Humblest men are crowned with eternal dignity. To such, whether from the North or from the South, as with melting sorrow and repentance welcomed to their bosoms this bitter vindication of those primal rights, the sorrows of the war opened into perennial peace. To such as repelled that proffered vindication, there was in the sorrows of the war no alleviation. But for both, nevertheless, and for both identically, the sorrows of the war completed the moral vindication of a pure and Christlike equity and friendliness. Thus all the ways of G.o.d, with the repentant and the rebellious alike, are just and righteous altogether. This it is the highest wisdom of men to acquiescently confess. To this even those who rebelliously complain and rail must finally utterly submit.

And now one final matter remains--the idea and definition of happiness. When men discuss the problem of evil in the universe, and in its awful presence try to substantiate their confidence in the just and friendly care of a transcendent Deity, one subtle touchstone governs all they say:--What is their conception of human weal, and of human woe? What in actual fact is deepest misery; and what is true felicity? What do they a.s.sume man's highest good to be?

Just here is wide and multiform diversity. For ill.u.s.tration, let thought recur to the contrast with which the topic of this chapter was introduced. The idea of happiness that Goethe plants in Dr. Faust, and the idea of happiness that ruled in Lincoln, are as separate as the poles. And again, to keep within the setting of this inaugural, the happiness towards which Lincoln strove, and in which his thought found satisfaction, contrasted mightily with the happiness that informed the aspirations of the leaders of the South. In their ideal, disdain of all inferiors, delight in easy luxury, unequal acknowledgment of rights, and a cruel stifling of the very rudiments of love, were mixed and working mightily. Desiring and enjoying that Elysium, their estimate of evil, their definition of the highest good, and their programme for a final consummation under G.o.d could have no fellows.h.i.+p with any final plan of thought approved by Lincoln.

What was Lincoln's highest happiness? This merits pondering anywhere; but compellingly, where one tries to trace his views upon this problem of theodicy; and yet still more when one conceives in this inquiry how in Lincoln's life his ethics, his civics, and his religion became coincident.

As this mighty problem resolves itself in Lincoln's mind, it comprehends, along with his own welfare and worth and true contentment, the equal dignity and happiness of every other man, and a harmonious consonance with the being and decree of G.o.d. He sees that scorn of any other man involves in time the scorner's shame. He sees that robbery, however veiled, entails a debt whose perfect reimburs.e.m.e.nt the slowest centuries will in their time exact. He sees that any form of malice or unfriendliness, housed and fed in any heart, will forfeit all the joy of grat.i.tude, and fill that heart at last with vindictive hate and bitterest loneliness. He sees that fleshly joys, however lush and full, are marked and destined for a swift and sure decay and weariness and vanity. And so, to realize the perfect welfare, he commends to himself, and urges persuasively on all other men, the sovereign good of an even justice, upheld within himself, and so measured out to other men by the perfect standard of G.o.d's self-respecting loyalty; of universal charity, eager everywhere to minister universal benefit and peace; of supreme enthusiasm for enduring life; and of a genuine humility, that shares all hope with all the lowly, and trusts and honors G.o.d. In this fourfold, composite unison of conscious, deathless life Lincoln sees the fairest goal, the choicest boon, the highest good of man. In the presence of such a standard, and before the outlook of such a hope Lincoln fas.h.i.+ons his theodicy.

Here then is the sum of Lincoln's thought upon this bewildering theme:--

The evil that makes this earthly lot so dark and hard is man's wrong to man; the awful sorrows of the meek; the offenses wrought upon the helpless by the arrogant.

Before this mystery all other mysteries, however deep and terrible, such as hurricanes and famine, plagues and death, may not be named.

This most sovereign evil is most clearly understood by those who are oppressed. Their eyes pierce all its deeps. The rude are, by their rudeness, blind.

The names of all who suffer and are still are registered on high for full solace and redemption.

The register of the rudeness of the strong is also full, and destined for full requital.

This redemption and requital shall be wrought by G.o.d.

In this redemption the ruthless may relent and share with all the meek the full measure of all their sorrows, and so become partakers of all their joy.

If ruthlessness persist, full requitals shall still descend, and in the presence of G.o.d's even righteousness every mouth shall be stopped.

And so shall all evil be fully rectified.

HIS PIETY--THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION

Of all the words of Lincoln, evincing what he thought of G.o.d, none outweigh the witness of this last inaugural. His reply to Thurlow Weed regarding this address, referred to in another place, concerned precisely just this point--the movements and the postulates of his religious faith. As his ripened mind prepared and pondered and reviewed this speech, there accrued within his consciousness a solemn confidence that it was destined to become his most enduring monument; and that as coming generations became aware of its outstanding eminence, their eyes and hearts would fasten on those words about the age-long, just, and overturning purposes of G.o.d. There was a confession, so Lincoln felt a.s.sured, embracing and conjoining North and South and East and West in an equal lowliness and shame; and declaring and extolling G.o.d's divine supremacy over all the erring waywardness and awful sufferings of men.

In this outpouring of his burdened heart before his G.o.d, and in the presence of his fellowmen, there is evidence respecting Lincoln's piety that courts reflection.

In the first place it indicates where Lincoln's sense of moral rect.i.tude found out its final bearings. Those purposes of G.o.d, as Lincoln watched their operation, were working out the moral issues in the awful wrong of age-long, unrequited toil in perfect equity. Strong men had been wronging weaklings and inferiors. Helpless men had been suffering untold sorrows. Indignant men had been crying out in hot and hasty protest for full and speedy vengeance. Thoughtful men had been tortured over weary, futile wonderings as to how the baffling problem could be solved. Convulsions and confusion, which no arm or thought of man could start or stay, were shaking and bewildering all the land.

But through and over all, as Lincoln came reverently to believe, a sovereign G.o.d held righteous government; and out of all the baffling turmoil he was, by simple righteousness, bringing perfect unison and peace. The dark mystery of unrequited wrong was being illuminated by the righteous majesty of complete requital. But in its full perfection, it was a righteousness such as no mind of man devised. It was the righteousness of G.o.d. Here Lincoln's moral sense was purified.

He was being taught of G.o.d. And this he clearly, humbly recognized.