The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -14

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -14

Meanwhile he must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be devoured.
Though Mr. Lincoln's policy in this critical affair has not
been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment
for even the most trifling occasion, and who will not cut
their coat according to their cloth, unless they can borrow
the scissors of Atropos,(1) it has been at least not unworthy
of the long-headed king of Ithaca.(2) Mr. Lincoln had the
choice of Bassanio(3) offered him. Which of the three
caskets held the prize that was to redeem the fortunes of the
country? There was the golden one whose showy speciousness
might have tempted a vain man; the silver of compromise,
which might have decided the choice of a merely acute one;
and the leaden,--dull and homely-looking, as prudence always
is,--yet with something about it sure to attract the eye of
practical wisdom. Mr. Lincoln dallied with his decision
perhaps longer than seemed needful to those on whom its awful
responsibility was not to rest, but when he made it, it was
worthy of his cautious but sure-footed understanding. The
moral of the Sphinx-riddle, and it is a deep one, lies in the
childish simplicity of the solution. Those who fail in
guessing it, fail because they are over-ingenious, and cast
about for an answer that shall suit their own notion of the
gravity of the occasion and of their own dignity, rather than
the occasion itself. In a matter which must be finally
settled by public opinion, and in regard to which the ferment
of prejudice and passion on both sides has not yet subsided
to that equilibrium of compromise from which alone a sound
public opinion can result, it is proper enough for the
private citizen to press his own convictions with all
possible force of argument and persuasion; but the popular
magistrate, whose judgment must become action, and whose
action involves the whole country, is bound to wait till the
sentiment of the people is so far advanced toward his own
point of view, that what he does shall find support in it,
instead of merely confusing it with new elements of division.
It was not unnatural that men earnestly devoted to the
saving of their country, and profoundly convinced that
slavery was its only real enemy, should demand a decided
policy round which all patriots might rally,--and this might
have been the wisest course for an absolute ruler. But in
the then unsettled state of the public mind, with a large
party decrying even resistance to the slaveholders' rebellion
as not only unwise, but even unlawful; with a majority,
perhaps, even of the would-be loyal so long accustomed to
regard the Constitution as a deed of gift conveying to the
South their own judgment as to policy and instinct as to
right, that they were in doubt at first whether their loyalty
were due to the country or to slavery; and with a respectable
body of honest and influential men who still believed in the
possibility of conciliation,--Mr. Lincoln judged wisely,
that, in laying down a policy in deference to one party, he
should be giving to the other the very fulcrum for which
their disloyalty had been waiting. (1) One of the three
Fates. (2) Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of Homer's Odyssey.
(3) See Shakespeare's *Merchant of Venice.*