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 SMITHSOXLVX DRPOSIT. 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 FEBRUARY 12. 1911 'SA*-iOo. 
 
X 
 
 
 THIS APPRECIATION OF 
 LINCOLN, WHICH IS RE- 
 PRINTED BY PERMIS- 
 SION OF "THE DETROIT 
 NEWS," WAS CONTRIB- 
 UTED TO THAT PAPER, 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1909, BY 
 W. J. CAMERON, OF 
 BRIGHTON, MICHIGAN. 
 
 titte« 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln is the chief saint in the nation's calendar. 
 Often as his natal day comes round the national mind 
 is slowed to reverent mood. Our memory of him walks 
 apart in paths of subdued reflection, for we behold 
 him as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
 Here is no bold and valiant figure, with sword and 
 buckler and stirring trumpet call, marching across 
 his time to the acclaim of hosts; here, rather, is one 
 from whom men hid their faces, whose countenance 
 was woe-struck, who walked wearily his appointed #• 
 way through the bitterest wine press of redemptive^^Vy^ 
 blood ever trod by man, save One. y^\k 
 
 Lincoln's whole life lingered in a minor key whick"^ ^ 
 through four years rose to a wail, and at the end sank 
 into a miserere. If certain great works of literature 
 are said to have scriptural quality, his life did show 
 a scriptural movement. Like Moses he was nurtured 
 with shepherds and husbandmen, and trained in those 
 simple virtues which bear the strain of weightiest 
 events. Righteousness was burned into his heart as 
 the color of the sun into his skin. He came out of the 
 west like a prophet, those choosing him knowing not 
 what great thing they did — 'it seemed too rash, on a 
 purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust in 
 such anxious times." His freedom from the common, 
 pleasant faults of men was not surpassed by any devotee; 
 he was sound to the core of his great heart. Like the 
 spokesman of the moral law he stood before the people 
 in times that allowed no state secrets, in a tumult that 
 demanded daily account of what he did and what he 
 thought, yet he stumbled not at all. He left one 
 speech that will live with Isaiah's rapt prophecy, and at 
 the end he laid down his life as a final sealing testimony 
 of his faith. Surely he is our saint, and we do well 
 to reverence him. ^^^ -t: . j — 
 
 Abraham Lincoln lives not by what he did^'fet^^NWhat-"^ • 
 he was. Z^-^^' ,, > \ 
 
 APR 1*7 1911 ) 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 "Here was a type of the true elder race, 
 And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face." 
 
 Intellectual giants do not wring tears from after 
 generations. Military genius does not send us to the 
 closet of tender meditation. Yet these are the influences 
 of Lincoln's life, and they can have no source other than 
 majestic moral strength and simple human tenderness. 
 It is not by accident, neither by man's design, that we 
 commonly think of Lincoln as inhabiting an exalted 
 place — like Moses on the mount — where visions came 
 to him and he made his vows familiarly to the Almighty 
 as his best Advisor; it could not be otherwise with one 
 for whom the higher laws were more clearly written 
 than the statutes on the books. 
 
 Military genius we acclaim; intellectual superiority 
 we boast; but character we reverence, and it were an 
 unmeant profanity to hail Lincoln with screaming 
 eagles. It was not military genius that accomplished 
 Lincoln's work — consummate tacticians and brave 
 warriors were admittedly with the other party. 
 Intellectual power did not make up his strength — 
 the argument was with the other side. But it was 
 the moral straightness, clear, spiritual seeing, absolute 
 trust in the uncompromised and unentangled Right 
 that made the outcome what it was. Behind the 
 battle plan was Abraham Lincoln's conscience, behind 
 the far flung line of blue was Abraham Lincoln's 
 conviction, and this is the true basis of his fame. 
 
 Simplicity and righteousness are the keys to Lincoln's 
 life. One is not certain that the last could have existed 
 without the first yet it was the last that made the first 
 possible. Abraham Lincoln's surpassing clearness 
 of vision in our most trying emergency was due to 
 the simplicity in which he approached a problem. 
 Philosophers had found so many considerations 
 on both sides that they were mere weather vanes. 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Theologians lent their texts to the most opposite views. 
 Politicians found themselves helpless in the mire of 
 expediency. Forth came Abraham Lincoln asking: 
 "Is slavery right? Is secession right?" Philosophy 
 had its involved answer, theology its prosy homily, 
 politics its evasions. Abraham Lincoln answered his 
 simple question in the only way it could be answered, 
 and for him the battle was over. He had only to go 
 forth in his serene conviction, conquering and to conquer. 
 He dared to be simple. He dared to ignore the 
 entangling mazes of thought afraid of its own 
 conclusions. He found the line between right and 
 wrong, and took his stand to await the turning of the 
 nation on his principle as on an axis. We little men 
 dare not be simple. We cover our consciences with 
 layer on layer of compromise and concealment. We 
 ask, "What will this involve?" The speed with which 
 the answer comes to the question, "Is it right?" 
 unhorses us. We crave something more deliberate, 
 with easy gradations, something that enables us to 
 postpone taking our stand until the multitude is ready 
 to stand with us. The complexity mth which we 
 have covered the questions of our individual and national 
 life is our mantle of cowardice. Dare be simple and 
 complexity vanishes — thus was Abraham Lincoln given 
 his clear sight. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln determined what was right 
 the battle was over for him — with us it is only begun. 
 Between seeing the good and doing it is the battleground 
 for most of us. But the perception and the act were 
 inseparably linked in Lincoln's character. He dared 
 venture on the Right. He dared trust all that he 
 was and all he hoped to be on it. That was his faith, 
 that his religion, that the ground for his intimate 
 thought of God. He seemed to SEE the operation 
 of the moral law; he seemed to KNOW that it revenged 
 itself on whomsoever violated it. His faith was an 
 inner sight. To him the Right was neither philosophical, 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 theological nor political — it was vital. God help him, he 
 could do no other. 
 
 Through four years, every year an eternity and every 
 day a bloody age, Lincoln held this faith. Defeat 
 after defeat overwhelmed his armies and he held this 
 faith. With traitors about him and foes beyond, he 
 held this faith. Great Britian was all but leagued 
 against him, but he held this faith; and one day our 
 children's eyes will behold the letter he wrote in simple 
 directness and righteous faith to Queen Victoria, 
 wherein he placed the compulsion of the moral law on 
 a mighty empire. St. John speaks of the "faith which 
 overcometh the world," and it was given the peoples 
 to behold it in Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Faith in the simple right — that is what we reverence 
 to-day in our nation's saint. Abraham Lincoln is not 
 dead. Even now he calls the nation to the simplicity 
 of moral candor in approaching its problems. Still 
 he commands it to faith in the right, "as God shall 
 give us to see the right," in prosecuting its mission. 
 To see the right and to do it — one despairs of ever 
 making plain the moral majesty of this simple 
 program in these days when vast complexity is woven 
 of compromise, expediency and evasion. Yet just 
 here is the greatness of Abraham Lincoln, and through 
 him the moral salvation of his generation. No greatness 
 will ever again come to this people, except along this 
 simple path of straightness. To paraphrase his words: 
 It is for us, the living, rather to be rededicated to his 
 unfinished work, for only thus shall the nation have 
 large liberations, eternal emancipations. 
 
 The literature of his centenary year, is sufficient 
 proof that the pall of Lincoln's end has not yet lifted 
 from the people's heart. He is still "The Martyred 
 President," though two have fallen since. We seem 
 still to need the words of Emerson spoken at the Concord 
 funeral services: 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 "Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; 
 to have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen — 
 perhaps even he — the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to 
 have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough 
 to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow 
 man — the practical abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, 
 Missouri and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen 
 Savannah, Charleston and Richmond surrendered, and seen the 
 main army of the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered 
 the public opinion of Canada, England and France. Only 
 Washington can compare with him in fortune." 
 
 Our Lincoln wasted not an hour of his arduous day, 
 and when the task was finished heaven saw its 
 completeness and gave him early rest. Thank God 
 you live in a land that claimed him living and reverences 
 him dead. 
 
LB S 12