The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -6

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -6

They
had so long seen the public policy more or less directed by
views of party, and often even of personal advantage, as to
be ready to suspect the motives of a chief magistrate
compelled, for the first time in our history, to feel himself
the head and hand of a great nation, and to act upon the
fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists, that the
first duty of a government is to depend and maintain its own
existence. Accordingly, a powerful weapon seemed to be put
into the hands of the opposition by the necessity under which
the administration found itself of applying this old truth to
new relations. Nor were the opposition his only nor his most
dangerous opponents. The Republicans had carried the country
upon an issue in which ethics were more directly and visibly
mingled with politics than usual. Their leaders were trained
to a method of oratory which relied for its effect rather on
the moral sense than the understanding. Their arguments were
drawn, not so much from experience as from general principles
of right and wrong. When the war came, their system
continued to be applicable and effective, for here again the
reason of the people was to be reached and kindled through
their sentiments. It was one of those periods of excitement,
gathering, contagious, universal, which, while they last,
exalt and clarify the minds of men, giving to the mere words
*country, human rights, democracy,* a meaning and a force
beyond that of sober and logical argument. They were
convictions, maintained and defended by the supreme logic of
passion. That penetrating fire ran in and roused those
primary instincts that make their lair in the dens and
caverns of the mind. What is called the great popular heart
was awakened, that indefinable something which may be,
according to circumstances, the highest reason or the most
brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once cold, can never be
warmed over into anything better than cant,--and phrases,
when once the inspiration that filled them with beneficent
power has ebbed away, retain only that semblance of meaning
which enables them to supplant reason in hasty minds. Among
the lessons taught by the French Revolution there is none
sadder or more striking than this, that you may make
everything else out of the passions of men except a political
system that will work, and that there is nothing so
pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated
into dogma. It is always demoralizing to extend the domain of
sentiment over questions where it has no legitimate
jurisdiction; and perhaps the severest strain upon Mr.
Lincoln was in resisting a tendency of his own supporters
which chimed with his own private desires, while wholly
opposed to his convictions of what would be wise policy.