The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -19

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -19

To us, that simple confidence of his in the right-mindedness of his
fellowmen is very touching, and its success is as strong an
argument as we have ever seen in favor of the theory that men
can govern themselves. He never appeals to any vulgar
sentiment, he never alludes to the humbleness of his origin;
it probably never occurred to him, indeed, that there was
anything higher to start from than manhood; and he put
himself on a level with those he addressed, not by going down
to them, but only by taking it for granted that they had
brains and would come up to a common ground of reason. In an
article lately printed in *The Nation,* Mr. Bayard Taylor
mentions the striking fact, that in the foulest dens of the
Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. The wretched
population that makes its hive there threw all its votes and
more against him, and yet paid this instinctive tribute to
the sweet humanity of his nature. Their ignorance sold its
vote and took its money, but all that was left of manhood in
them recognized its saint and martyr. Mr. Lincoln is not in
the habit of saying, "This is *my* opinion, or *my* theory,"
but "This is the conclusion to which, in my judgment, the
time has come, and to which, accordingly, the sooner we come
the better for us." His policy has been the policy of public
opinion based on adequate discussion and on a timely
recognition of the influence of passing events in shaping the
features of events to come. One secret of Mr. Lincoln's
remarkable success in captivating the popular mind is
undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which enables him,
though under the necessity of constantly using the capital
*I*, to do it without any suggestion of egotism. There is no
single vowel which men's mouths can pronounce with such
difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, as it
were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring
it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent
of individuality to what he says, another shall make an
offensive challenge to the self- satisfaction of all his
hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense
of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity,
like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and
hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Quintilian;(1) but
he has, in the earnest simplicity and unaffected Americanism
of his own character, one art of oratory worth all the rest.
He forgets himself so entirely in his object as to give his
*I* the sympathetic and persuasive effect of *We* with the
great body of his countrymen. Homely, dispassionate, showing
all the rough-edged process of his thought as it goes along,
yet arriving at his conclusions with an honest kind of
every-day logic, he is so eminently our representative man,
that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people were
listening to their own thinking aloud. The dignity of his
thought owes nothing to any ceremonial garb of words, but to
the manly movement that comes of settled purpose and an
energy of reason that knows not what rhetoric means.