And, as both North and South came to see, when he had been taken away, in his hopes and plans he represented the nation. He was and is the great national figure of the century. The recognition of this fact has been growing year by year since the tragic ending of his great life. It is less than half a century since his career was ended; yet to-day he stands forth as one of the great historical figures of the world. Time makes many changes, but none have been more striking than the growth of appreciation of Lincoln on the part of the South. His mighty passion was for the Union and its preservation as the fathers had given it to us, and in this love for the Union he included the South as well as the North. Differing radically from the South in his view of the slavery question, and of the other vital political questions of that day, he recognized that he, and the people whose convictions he represented, if placed in similar circumstances, would in all probability have championed the views held by his opponents. He had, therefore, only the kindliest feeling for the South and for the problems it had to face. President Roosevelt has recently said that one of the most wonderful of the characteristics of Lincoln was "the extraordinary way in which he could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong, and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from whom he differed." To-day, as never before, this is recognized by the South, and we find its press and people saying that he cared for the South not less than for the North; we find the Southern people at one with the rest of the nation in paying tribute to his memory; all joining as one people in his eulogy. Nothing shows so much as this fact how completely sectional feeling has been obliterated since his time. "Not less than the North has the South reason to canonize him," recently said Colonel Watterson in his Louisville Courier-Journal, "for he was the one friend we had at court -aside from Grant and Sherman-when friends were most in need." We are told, too, in the South, that his death was a calamity to it "the direst misfortune that ever darkened the calendar of her woes"-and it seems now to be generally recognized that much of the bitterness and humiliation of the reconstruction period would have been avoided, had he lived to guide the nation through those stormy days. This attitude of the South, as expressed by the Southern press, is typically illustrated by a recent editorial in The Post of Houston, Texas: "All men stand ready to concede that in a great crisis he was loyal to his convictions of duty, that he bore his great responsibilities with infinite patience, and that in all things he was free from sectional hatred and personal malice. "The people of the South have always felt that his untimely and tragic end was one of the severest catastrophes of the war period. They believed after the capitulation at Appomattox, that Mr. Lincoln would, in his second administration, bend all his energies toward reconciliation and binding up the wounds of war. All his utterances respecting the South were broadly patriotic, sympathetic, and expressive of a desire to restore peace, prosperity, and self-government. He sounded no note of exultation or vindictiveness over a prostrate country. He seemed to comprehend the woe and hardship which rested so heavily on every portion of our devastated domain, and he evinced a determination to resist the efforts of those who were anxious to put the people under the heel of the conqueror. It was no fault of his that the South, crushed and bleeding, was subjected to the brutalities and vandalism of reconstruction. We know now that when he fell, the barrier that protected us from that reign of terror was swept away; we know that if he had lived we should have been spared the multiplied sorrows which were visited upon us. . . . In the Republic's oneness, the Americans of all sections shared in the heritage he bequeathed to the nation, and Americans of all sections honor and revere his memory." The South does not forget that Lincoln was a Southerner by birth, transplanted to the soil of the West. She takes pride in him as the son of the South. There is not throughout the South that deep affection for Lincoln which is everywhere evidenced in the North; but there is a very real appreciation and a profound respect. Here and there discordant notes and utterances are sounded in the Southern press, but their very rarity marks them as anachronisms of a bygone day, which have long since ceased to represent the true sentiments of this great section of our common country. Not only, then, has Lincoln come to be a truly national figure and to represent, in his hopes and ideals for America and American institutions, the North and South, the East and West, alike, but wherever thoughtful men or hopeful men turn to American institutions as the hope of democracy, he stands forth as the heroic figure on the horizon of time. Abraham Lincoln holds this place to-day in the minds and hearts of all his countrymen and men of similar aspirations everywhere, not alone because of his public utterances, his keen insight into the problems of a democratic State, his emancipation of millions of slaves, his even-handed justice to friend and foe alike, or any one or all of the things that go to make up his public career, but also because of his personality and life history. In his own day there were those who sneered because his training and manner were not conventional. These very facts, and the opposition which they caused, endeared him to the people as a whole, for they represented their joys and sorrows, their aspirations and hopes, their ideals and beliefs, their struggles for self-expression in all the varied activities of life. It is sometimes commented upon as remarkable that a man like Lincoln should have risen from conditions such as marked his youth and early career. Americans then, and Americans now, have been among those who raise the question. It may be excusable for men brought up in other civilizations, to wonder at the possibility, but for an American to do so is to doubt his own institutions, and to question the power of democracy. It is out of such conditions, modified from decade. to decade in accordance with the development of the country, away from the deadening level of the schools and the crushing conventionality of a settled society in our great cities, that we are most apt to draw our truly great men. Lincoln had a fine mind and a splendid physique, both developed to great perfection. He was a natural student, trained largely by his contact with men, but not neglecting every opportunity to master the books that he had at hand. |