The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln - 12

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln - 12

He was not a man who
held it good public economy to pull down on the mere chance
of rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln's faith in God was
qualified by a very well-founded distrust of the wisdom of
man. perhaps it was his want of self-confidence that more
than anything else won him the unlimited confidence of the
people, for they felt that there would be no need of retreat
from any position he had deliberately taken. The cautious,
but steady, advance of his policy during the war was like
that of a Roman army. He left behind him a firm road on
which public confidence could follow; he took America with
him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his
advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his
genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by
its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor
so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate
common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of
nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with
something of its own pathos, there was no trace of
sentimentalism in his speech or action. He seems to have had
one rule of conduct, always that of practical and successful
politics, to let himself be guided by events, when they were
sure to bring him out where he wished to go, though by what
seemed to unpractical minds, which let go the possible to
grasp at the desirable, a longer road. Undoubtedly the
highest function of statesmanship is by degrees to
accommodate the conduct of communities to ethical laws, and
to subordinate the conflicting self-interests of the day to
higher and more permanent concerns. But it is on the
understanding, and not on the sentiment, of a nation that all
safe legislation must be based. Voltaire's saying, that "a
consideration of petty circumstances is the tomb of great
things," may be true of individual men, but it certainly is
not true of governments. It is by a multitude of such
considerations, each in itself trifling, but all together
weighty, that the framers of policy can alone divine what is
practicable and therefore wise.