LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY
 
 ^V 3r» ^* lameU 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF W. P. LETCHWORTH 
 
 Illustrated. 
 
 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN. 
 
 BOOKS, CULTURE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 A PRIMER OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 
 
 A MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS. Being a Col- 
 lection of Codes, Precepts, and Rules of Life, from thf 
 Wise of all Ages. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR SEC- 
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 A HISTORY OF ENGLAND FOR THE USE OF 
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 yses, Research Questions, and Bibliographical Notes 
 With i8 Maps and 150 Illustrations. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and New Yokk
 
 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN
 
 A STUDY OF 
 GKEATNESS IN MEN 
 
 BY 
 
 J. N. LARNED 
 
 Avihor of «♦ Books, Culture, and Character,^'' " Seventy Centuries 
 
 0/ the Life of Mankind,'' etc. ; compiler of " Hittory 
 
 for Ready Reference " 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY J. N. LARNXD 
 ALL RIGHTS RESKRVXD 
 
 Published March igii
 
 L3ZS 
 
 TO MY FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES OF 
 
 THE THURSDAY CLUB, OP BUFFALO, N. Y., 
 
 ON WHOSE INVITATION AND UNDER WHOSE 
 
 AUSPICES THE LECTURES NOW SOMEWHAT 
 
 EXPANDED IN PRINT WERE PREPARED AND 
 
 GIVEN, IN 1906, FIRST AS A PUBLIC COURSE 
 
 AND THEN REPEATED IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS 
 
 P: OF THE CITY, THIS VOLUME, CONTAINING 
 
 ^ THEM, IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 DEDICATED. 
 In 
 in 
 
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 910050
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. What Goes into the Making of a Great 
 
 Man? 1 
 
 II. Napoleon: a Prodigy, without Greatness . 35 
 
 III. Cromwell : Imperfect in Greatness . . . 109 
 
 IV. Washington: Impressive in Greatness . . 169 
 V Lincoln : Simplest in Greatness 221
 
 WHAT GOES INTO THE MAKING 
 OF A GEEAT MAN?
 
 A STUDY OF GREATNESS 
 IN MEN 
 
 WHAT GOES INTO THE MAKING OF A 
 GREAT MAN? 
 
 There is no other writer who charms and 
 irritates, stimulates and disappoints me so 
 often and so equally as Carlyle, in 
 what he has written personally of "Hero- 
 men. Nobody has ever glorified the °" '* 
 human spirit by loftier conceptions of God- 
 likeness in it than his. He held with Saint 
 Chrysostom, that " the true Shekinah, or visi- 
 ble revelation of God, is Man." He felt, as 
 Novalis expressed his feeling, that " there is 
 but one Temple in the Universe, and that is 
 the body of man." " We," he exclaimed, " are 
 the miracle of miracles — the great inscrutable 
 mystery of God." An overpowering, awe- 
 stricken recognition of sacredness in the Being 
 of Man is manifest in all his contemplation of 
 it, whenever he can abstract the thought ; and 
 it was this very sublimity of his conception of
 
 4 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 Man, as God would have him to be, and as God 
 empowered him to be, that kindled the cease- 
 less wrath and scorn which flamed out of Car- 
 Ijle against all defacements and debasements 
 of the sanctified ideal in his mind. There is 
 something overpowering in the fierceness of 
 his contempt for the falsities, the meannesses, 
 the quackeries, the fripperies, the veneerings, 
 the mammon-worshipings, the servilities and 
 cowardices that honeycomb so much of human 
 character and make so much of human life a 
 sham. In all literature I find no other such 
 tonic for honesty, for sincerity, for simple 
 downrightness and uprightness of doing, 
 thinking, feeling, and being. There is a won- 
 derful eloquence in the very epithets and ex- 
 pletives into which he packs his anger and his 
 scorn. 
 
 In all this Carlyle is great, — unapproach- 
 able, — the mighty prophet of a religion of 
 sincerity which needs, almost more than any 
 other, to be preached in the world. In this he 
 gives me nothing but wholesome stimulation 
 and delight. The things that discontent me 
 in his writings are these two : first, a loose- 
 ness of definition in his mind for the very 
 qualities in human character that are at the
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 5 
 
 bottom of his ideals ; which leads, secondarily, 
 to much serious inconsistency in his estimates 
 of individual men. In other words, I cannot 
 reconcile his normal conception of man with 
 many of the historic characters that he chooses 
 for the exemplification of it, because he seems 
 to entertain a most undefined notion of some 
 qualities that are fundamental in his concep- 
 tion, and to ascribe those qualities upon 
 grounds which I am not able to understand. 
 
 In his lectures on "Hero -Worship," — 
 which signified, in his use of the expression, 
 a transcendent admiration and deference due 
 to great men from their fellows, — Carlyle 
 says, again and again, that " sincerity, a deep, 
 great, genuine sincerity, is the first charac- 
 teristic of all men in any way heroic " ; that 
 "hero" is to be "taken to mean genuine"; 
 that "^it is incredible " a great man " should 
 have been other than true." " All the great 
 men I ever heard of," he declares, " have this 
 [sincerity] as the primary material of them." 
 Now that, if we understand it correctly, is a 
 very great truth ; a truth of transcendent im- 
 portance and vitality; and Carlyle did im- 
 measurable service to the world in proclaim- 
 ing it, from the beginning to the end of his
 
 6 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 life, with iteration and reiteration, and with 
 all the power of the great eloquence at his 
 command. But the ideas attached to those al- 
 most synonymous words sincerity and genu- 
 ineness are not ideas that stand well alone in 
 our minds. They are connected necessarily 
 with ideas of something behind them, to which 
 they refer. If we think of a man as being sin- 
 cere, we are thinking of something in his mo- 
 tives of action which we recognize as being in 
 reality what it appears or is professed to be 5 
 and our valuation of his sincerity, in forming 
 our general judgment and estimate of the 
 man, must depend on our valuation of that 
 which we find him to be sincere in. He may 
 be very sincere in some kind of selfishness, or 
 of egotism, or of ambition, as well as in some 
 prejudice or ill-judgment, that blinds him to 
 its quality, and this may have the effect of 
 making him more questionable in character 
 than if he had no sincerity or genuineness at 
 all. In Carlyle's thinking there seems to be 
 no adequate reckoning of this fact. It is im- 
 aginative, picturesque thinking, — not logical, 
 but graphic, — reasoning by simile and illus- 
 tration, — and the eloquent sweep of it often 
 carries a reader, as it has carried the writer,
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 7 
 
 iike organ music, to an impressive climax of 
 emotion, but to no substantial conclusion of 
 thought. 
 
 There is a striking example of this in the 
 hero-lecture on Mahomet, where he calls upon 
 Nature to show us her marking of what is 
 genuine, what is true, from what is false. 
 ** You take wheat," he says, " to cast into the 
 earth's bosom : your wheat may be mixed with 
 chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and 
 all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast 
 it into the kind, just earth ; she grows th( 
 wheat, — the whole rubbish she silently ab« 
 sorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rub- 
 bish. The yellow wheat is growing there ; the 
 good earth is silent about all the rest, — has 
 silently turned all the rest to some benefit, 
 too, and makes no complaint about it. So 
 everywhere in Nature ! She is true and not a 
 lie ; and yet so great, and just, and motherly 
 in her truth. She requires of a thing only 
 that it he genuine of heart ; she will protect 
 it if so ; will not, if not so." How impressive 
 a deep meaning there seems to be in this 
 charming picture of the just dealing of the 
 kindly earth with a careless sower's mixture 
 of rubbish and wheat. But when we scrutinize
 
 8 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 it, where is the meaning that Carlyle must 
 have intended to convey ? What Nature-mark 
 of genuineness has the earth put upon the 
 wheat ? The wheat is but genuine in its kind, 
 and no more so than the rubbish, in its kind, 
 is genuine, and the earth has dealt with each 
 according to its kind. If tares are in the mix- 
 ture she will protect them and give them 
 growth, as she does the wheat, and there will 
 be the same truth or sincerity in the one 
 growth as in the other; but we shall value 
 them respectively according to their fruit. 
 
 It is just here that Carlyle's teachings, up- 
 lifting and inspiring as the doctrine and the 
 Carlyle's Spirit of them are, seem to drift 
 sMker" often to couf usious that weaken the 
 Admirations, great influence they ought to have. 
 The bottom differences of character and mo- 
 tive which actuate and modulate all that is 
 veritable or sincere in the disposition of men 
 are not discriminated as they need to be. In 
 the graphic method of his thought there 
 is a looseness of texture which gives too free 
 a play to partialities and prejudices in him- 
 self, and they mislead his judgment many 
 times. It was in his nature to admire a domi- 
 nating, masterful temper in men, and to ad-
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 9 
 
 mire it so excessively that he could not do 
 justice to other forms of human force. He 
 found it easier to see evidences of a sincere 
 and great spirit in that autocratic and dog- 
 matic disposition to command, than to see 
 them in any less egoistic display. He could 
 not speak of Hampden or Washington with- 
 out disparagement ; but he fairly compelled 
 himself, though with undisguised repugnance, 
 to discover enough glimpses of what he could 
 take to be sincerity in Napoleon for warrant- 
 ing the award of a pedestal in his gallery of 
 heroes to that most masterful bully of modern 
 times. He describes Cromwell as a "great 
 savage Baresark," and declares in the same 
 breath : " I plead guilty to valuing such a man 
 beyond all other sorts of men." It is fair to 
 infer that the baresark fighting temper in 
 the great Puritan captain is what drew his 
 admiration first and most ; and this leaning of 
 his likings toward a rough, dictatorial energy 
 of spirit and action appears everywhere in his 
 discussion of men. So far he joins himself to 
 the very mobs of mankind, — to those mobs 
 whose senselessness was the perennial object 
 of his scorn. They adore the baresarkers, the 
 hard fighters, the conquerors, the dictators,
 
 10 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 ** beyond all other sorts of men." It is the 
 primitive hero-worship in mankind, natural 
 now only to the barbaric taints that linger in 
 our civilization, and that vulgarize such part 
 of all society as deserves to be called " the 
 mob." It is a partiality that resists reason, 
 culture, Christianity ; for the rank roots of it 
 are in the paganism and the ignorance of the 
 darkest ages of the world. That Carlyle should 
 give way to it, and lend his powerful eloquence 
 to the encouragement of it, is a lamentable 
 thing. It gravely vitiates the influence of the 
 grand doctrine of greatness in human charac- 
 ter which he preached as it was never preached 
 by another man. 
 
 I bring his teachings into discussion here, 
 at the outset of my offering of some thoughts 
 on the subject of great men, because he is, on 
 this subject, the unapproachable master, — the 
 inspired preacher, — the prophet. I come to it 
 as his disciple, though not an unquestioning 
 disciple. I wish to build some discourse on 
 what is fundamental in his doctrines, in order 
 to appeal against the aberrations of temper 
 which sometimes, in his application of those 
 doctrines, led his judgment astray. 
 
 It was Carlyle's contention that the world
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 11 
 
 is losing, or has lost, its due appreciation of 
 great men ; has ceased to yield them due trib- 
 ute of veneration, due submission to their 
 rightful lead and guidance, and does even, as 
 he declared, " deny the desirableness of great 
 men." I hold the accusation to be untrue. The 
 finest trait I can see in human nature — so 
 fine that it often surprises me — is that shown 
 in the generous spirit with which men, almost 
 universally, admire and honor and defer to the 
 fortunate few who are raised to a shining emi- 
 nence among their fellows by surpassing endow- 
 ments of mind. As a rule, there is no grudging 
 of a manly homage from the lower to the higher 
 ranks in that gradation of minds and souls 
 which Nature has arranged. Nor is there any 
 fawning or self-seeking in it, since the poet, 
 the artist, the savant, receive it as freely as 
 the powerful masters of state. To me it seems 
 to be just a glad and grateful welcome of teach- 
 ing and leading, with a generous pride in 
 the knowledge that human faculties and forces 
 can be raised to so noble a pitch. 
 
 I see no lack, in measure or kind, of such 
 homage as it is good for humanity to render 
 to its great men. What I do see is a need of 
 standards for gauging altitudes in character
 
 12 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 and forces in genius, so far, at the least, as 
 to distinguish what is only surprising or im- 
 possible posing from what is really great. 
 H^a"^*°' The difference here is vast, going 
 Quality. to the very bottom of the good we 
 can get from the gift of great men. That good 
 is in the reverence of spirit, the loving admi- 
 ration and the trust wherewith we can open 
 heart and mind in ourselves to the influence, 
 the example, the leading, of characters that 
 are august in their superiority to our own. We 
 miss it if our impressions from what is merely 
 extraordinary in faculty and achievement are 
 confused with our feeling for what is great. 
 Qualities and powers that have little or nothing 
 of a transcendent superiority in their nature 
 may be of such marvelous effectiveness, in the 
 work or the strifes of the world, that men are 
 lifted by them to what seem to be the topmost 
 heights of historical immortality. Often, too, 
 it happens that great and mean attributes, the 
 admirable and the contemptible, are so mixed 
 in the constitution of a man of power that we 
 cannot do homage to him in the higher view 
 without a blinding of ourselves to the lower 
 which does us grave moral harm. 
 
 In some instances, that neutralization of
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 13 
 
 exalting powers in a man by countervailing 
 meannesses has been appreciated with singu- 
 lar justice by the public opinion of the world. 
 For example, John Churchill, Duke of Marl- 
 borough, was unquestionably the ablest soldier 
 (Cromwell excepted, perhaps) that England 
 or Great Britain has ever produced, and his 
 victories, checking the aggressive career of 
 France under Louis XIV, were the most bril- 
 liant ever won by British arms ; but the utter 
 baseness of the man was more than even mil- 
 itary glory could gild, and he remains a more 
 inconspicuous figure in history than any other 
 warrior of his very high quality that I can call 
 to mind. 
 
 For another example I may point to the sec- 
 ond of the Caesars, Octavius, called Augustus, 
 whose rank in history would assuredly be much 
 higher than it is if there had not been traits 
 in his character which are specially offensive 
 to the better part of mankind. He was the 
 architect of the Roman Empire, for the build- 
 ing of which Julius Csesar had but cleared the 
 ground. His work was a masterpiece of shrewd- 
 ness, prudence, patience, and political skill. 
 In its proof of extraordinary abilities it may 
 not be entirely comparable with the more ver-
 
 14 A STUDY OP GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 satile performances of Julius Caesar, as poli- 
 tician and soldier ; but, if faults of character in 
 the two men could be judged with equal char- 
 ity by the world, I doubt if Julius Caesar and 
 Augustus Caesar would stand far apart in fame 
 and esteem. Julius was a man of many vices, 
 few scruples, few virtues of a positive kind ; 
 but the manner of his sinning was so open, 
 so frank, and he carried himself through it so 
 gallantly, that it has seemed, in common views, 
 to be half rectified by the manliness of his air. 
 He was equally capable of a high magnanim- 
 ity or a merciless cruelty, according to their 
 bearing on the objects he pursued. In a word, 
 his nature was impressively large in scale, 
 morally and immorally, as well as intellectually 
 and energetically; too large for meanness, 
 trickishness, or anything that can be despised. 
 Augustus, on the other hand, was a man of 
 furtive ways, stealthy movements, hidden aims ; 
 a cold-brained schemer, of marvelous sagacity 
 and ingenuity, but trickish and considerably 
 despicable in the very ingeniousness with which 
 he picked and pocketed, out of the wreckage of 
 the old republic, those broken bits of consti- 
 tutional authority that went into his remark- 
 able patchwork of imperial power. He has
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 15 
 
 suffered, accordingly, in historical estimation, 
 much more than he would have suffered from 
 detestable crimes committed boldly, in an open 
 way. So impossible does it seem to be to as- 
 sociate impressions of greatness and of mean- 
 ness with the same man. Wickedness and 
 greatness appear to be far more compatible 
 ideas. 
 
 When I spoke just now of standards for 
 gauging character and genius I used a word 
 that means more in strictness than 
 
 Ratlmal 
 
 was in my thought. We are dealing Prinoipiei oi 
 here with quantities and qualities 
 which no metric system will apply to, and 
 gauges and standards, in the precise sense, are 
 out of the question. But I am persuaded that 
 it is possible to formulate some definite prin- 
 ciples of judgment that will test the superior- 
 ity in men of fame reasonably, affording a 
 tenable ground for some satisfying classifica- 
 tion and comparison among the " heroes " of 
 mankind. Especially, I think it practicable and 
 most important to draw some lines of principle 
 for the distinction which ought to be preserved 
 between men who are no more than extraor- 
 dinary and men who are essentially great. The 
 simplest psychology we can employ — the sim«
 
 16 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 plest analysis we can make of the factors of 
 character and power in man — will lead us to 
 the fundamental distinctions we need. Those 
 factors lie wholly in three groups, namely : — 
 
 The Ethical, or Moral ; 
 
 The Kational, or purely Intellectual ; 
 
 The Dynamic, or Energetic. 
 
 The first of these groups takes in all that 
 gives a moral quality to character and con- 
 duct in men ; the second includes reason and 
 imagination, with whatever acts in the mind 
 toward the operation of both ; in the third we 
 place such forces of feeling and volition as 
 energize human action, by ardors and enthusi- 
 asms, by passions and desires, by resolution 
 and will. 
 
 Now, the factors in the moral and intel- 
 lectual groups belong distinctively to the hu- 
 man constitution, while those of the energizing 
 group do not ; and this most significant and 
 important difference is seldom taken into ac- 
 count, as it needs to be. In his moral being 
 Man shares absolutely nothing with the beasts ; 
 in the intellectual he shares a very little ; but 
 in the neural heats and tempers which ener- 
 gize his active life he shares much with the 
 lower animal world. When he thinks, when
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 17 
 
 he forms plans of action, when he obeys or 
 consciously disobeys any ethical rule of life, 
 he is simply and only human ; but when feel- 
 ing comes into play, and forces are moved in 
 him which make him bold or timid, resolute 
 or hesitating, hot or cold in temperament, 
 tense or lax in effort, according to their in- 
 teraction and their strength, then he is the 
 man-animal, exploiting his double nature, and 
 actuated largely from the carnal side. Ob- 
 viously, therefore, the elements of power and 
 of character that come from this source, of 
 mixed animality and mind, are lower in essen- 
 tial nobility than those which originate purely 
 in the intellect and the moral sense. Indeed, 
 we may say that they have no character and 
 no worth of their own, but derive their whole 
 importance in human nature from the moral 
 dispositions and intellectual faculties that they 
 serve. If not aimed by his reason, inspired by 
 his imagination, motived by his conscience, 
 wherein do the enersries of a strons: man dif- 
 f er from the energies in a beast of prey ? 
 
 Plainly, then, the essential factors in char- 
 acter, which cannot be rated low in a right 
 conception of greatness among men, are the 
 moral and the intellectual, and the factors of
 
 18 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN ^ 
 
 energy have importance only as servants of 
 these, appointed to give them activity and 
 
 strength. The conception of a per- 
 pertaoted lected man demands not opij the 
 
 inclusion of them all, but .demands 
 that the ethical motives shall be dominant in 
 his life. This is not theory ; it is a fact to 
 which the judgment and experience of the lead- 
 ing races of mankind have been testifying for 
 nineteen centuries, at the least. For us, who 
 dwell in Christendom, there is one ideal of 
 perfection in human character, realized in 
 Jesus the Nazarene, which most of us accept. 
 Whether we look upon Jesus as a purely hu- 
 man figure, or see God incarnate in His per- 
 son, we are generally of one mind in acknow- 
 ledging that the conceivable man without 
 blemish is represented uniquely in His life. 
 If we accept Him as the type of a perfected 
 humanity, we can entertain no ideal of human 
 greatness which mutilates that type. This does 
 not imply an excessive rating of moral attri- 
 butes, for those attributes in Jesus were only 
 proportioned to others as I am arguing that 
 they ought to be in every man of acknow- 
 ledged greatness. By habit of thought we as- 
 sociate Him so exclusively with emotions of
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 19 
 
 religion and ideas of moral purity that we are 
 apt to lose sight of His perfections in every 
 other attribute of mind. Jesus exhibits to us, 
 not merely the celestial spirit and the tran- 
 scendent purity which have seemed to be di- 
 vine, but he shows us every endowment of 
 humanity at its best. If his parables and dis- 
 courses had come to us with no mark of as- 
 cribed divinity on their authorship, I am sure 
 we should have given them the highest of all 
 places in the precious literature of the world. 
 What other poet has joined imagination to 
 reason in forms so perfect, with effects so 
 simple, so powerful, so beautiful, to ends so 
 exalted, as Jesus, in the parables by which He 
 taught ? From what other philosophy of life 
 has mankind received so much light, so much 
 leading, so much help, as from these parables, 
 and from the sayings of the Master, and from 
 His answers to the questioning of followers 
 and foes ? What other words that letters have 
 preserved for us are so pregnant and so com- 
 pact with meaning, yet so simple in the utter- 
 ance, so straight to their purpose, so entirely 
 without waste ? It is only a slight record that 
 we have, of a few passages in the brief life of 
 the great teacher, — notes of what fell on a
 
 20 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 few occasions from His lips, — repeated in four 
 forms, with little variations, and possibly all 
 from one source. If we throw these four gos- 
 pel reports into one, canceling the repetitions, 
 we may have all that we know of the talk of 
 Jesus in a little printed pamphlet, so small that 
 an eloquent preacher of the present day would 
 almost fill its pages with his Sunday discourse. 
 What a wonderful bit of literature it is ! Not 
 as revelation, but as literature, there is nothing 
 else so small in the mountain-heaps of our 
 books that holds nearly so much ; nothing 
 else so unerring in thought, so pure in feel- 
 ing, so rich in imagination, so perfect in the 
 beauty of simple speech. Intellectually, then, 
 as well as morally, our ideal of a perfected 
 humanity is fulfilled in Jesus. Nor was He 
 less complete on that side of his human na- 
 ture which gave its dauntless energy to the 
 great mission he performed. Calmly, patiently, 
 with no faltering, no fear, no passion, he went 
 straight on to the end of what he had to do, 
 examphng the perfection of energy, the per- 
 fection of courage, the perfection of will. 
 
 I say, then, that our ideal man, who cannot 
 be otherwise than our ideally Great Man, is 
 surpassingly endowed in all ways, but ruled
 
 THE MAKDsG OF A GREAT MAN 21 
 
 from the sovereign seat of moral motives in the 
 whole exercise of his powers; and the just 
 measure of actual greatness in all men of ex- 
 alted fame is by the nearness of their approach 
 to that ideal. 
 
 Unhappily, this Christian standard of human 
 superiority is rejected by what seems to be a 
 vast majority of mankind; and it is the sin of 
 Carlyle that he has stimulated its preference 
 for the rude animalities of force and weight, 
 in character, over the finer energies and grav- 
 ities of spirit and mind that make less commo- 
 tion in history, but are more profoundly felt. 
 If the world at large should be asked for a 
 ballot to name the greatest man of all time, 
 I am afraid that the Corsican warrior who 
 scourged Europe in the last century would 
 head the poll. Hereafter I purpose to examine 
 that astonishing character and career, which 
 have so fascinated and deluded mankind, and 
 to question whether we can count Napoleon 
 Bonaparte among the great of mankind with- 
 out offering an indignity to the human race. 
 
 If it is true, as I claim, that extraordinary 
 endowments cannot impart greatness to men 
 when the quality of greatness is not in the endow- 
 ments themselves, it is equally true that great
 
 22 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 deeds do not signify greatness in the doers of 
 them, unless they are the product of great 
 Men not qualities or powers. Very often they 
 Sy*SSi**^* are not so. Uncontrollable circum- 
 Deeds. stances do sometimes give small re- 
 
 sults to great endeavors, and sometimes bring 
 stupendous effects out of things done with 
 little genius and moderate energy of will. A 
 deed thus exalted by its consequences does 
 not necessarily entitle the doer to that homage 
 we owe and delight in paying to the master- 
 spirits of the race. We need not begrudge 
 to him his fortunate fame — the glory of his 
 association with the great event — if we do 
 not allow it to confuse our notion of great 
 men. It is right that he should be memor- 
 able and honored for what he did ; but much 
 more it is right that we should keep a dis- 
 tinction in our esteem between the man of a 
 great deed and the intrinsically great man. 
 It pleases us often to construct lists of " the 
 greatest men of all time," — the hundred great- 
 est or the fifty greatest, — and we like to de- 
 bate over them and dispute about them ; but 
 I never see such a list without noting this con- 
 fused valuation of men by the value of events 
 which they brought about.
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 23 
 
 For example : There is now no doubt that 
 the obscure Norwegian known as Eric the 
 Eed sailed westward from Iceland, in the 
 tenth century, and found Greenland, and that 
 Leif, his son, sailed still farther into the west- 
 ern ocean and found America. But the exploit 
 of Leif Ericsson ended there. Nothing came 
 of it ; it had no consequences. Europe knew 
 no more of America than it had known before. 
 Five centuries later another bold voyager 
 sailed westward from the Old World and 
 found America, — audio! all human history 
 was changed. One of the transforming events 
 in the life of mankind had occurred, and every 
 happening to humanity since has taken some 
 difference from it, of intention or effect. Sep- 
 arate the two achievements, of Columbus and 
 of Leif, from all thought of consequences 
 which neither Columbus nor Leif had in view, 
 and by how much do they differ in measure 
 or kind ? Yet the one has taken on the ap- 
 pearance of an extraordinarily great achieve- 
 ment by an extraordinarily great man, and the 
 other stands in no such light. 
 
 Let me cite another more striking example : 
 Alexander of Macedonia, styled Alexander the 
 Great, never fails to be named in a list of " the
 
 24 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 greatest men." He ran a career of conquest 
 which opened, in the history of the world, a 
 train of influences more profound and farther 
 reaching than any other that ever came from 
 such a cause. Western Asia and Egypt were 
 mastered, as a consequence, by the Greek 
 spirit and Greek mind, and became the seat 
 from which they acted on the subsequent 
 world-empire of Rome as they could never 
 have acted from their native land. They pre- 
 pared the soil in which the seeds of Christian- 
 ity were planted first; we can almost say that 
 they established the conditions which made 
 it possible for the mission of Jesus to have 
 success. In the light which these great, ever- 
 lasting results from his conquests reflect back 
 upon him, Alexander appears, very naturally 
 and rightly, as a famous, shining figure in 
 history; but not necessarily as a great man. 
 In what he did there is nothing to show 
 greatly surpassing qualities or powers. He 
 was the brilliantly energetic son of a father 
 much abler than himself. With an army which 
 his father, Philip, had created, employing a 
 tactical system which his father had perfected, 
 wielding the Hellenic energies which his fa^ 
 ther had mastered, he carried out an under-
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 25 
 
 taking which his father had prepared for, and 
 overthrew a decayed empire, which seems to 
 have been ready to fall at any vigorous touch. 
 Seventy years before Alexander, a body of 
 Greek mercenaries, enlisted by a rebellious 
 Persian prince, the younger Cyrus, had been 
 led from Asia Minor to Babylonia, and then, 
 on the death of their employer, had made the 
 immortal "retreat of the Ten Thousand," un- 
 der Xenophon, from the lower Euphrates to 
 the Euxine, with moderate loss. The experience 
 of Xenophon had proved the hollowness of 
 the show of empire which the monarch at 
 Susa kept up, and almost guaranteed success 
 to Alexander's attack. We need not deny 
 that the young king of Macedonia moved his 
 forces with admirable energy and fought his 
 battles with an admirable skill; but we may 
 reasonably doubt that the highest order of 
 military genius was required for the routing 
 of such armies as the Persians brought into 
 the field, against Greek veterans, serried in 
 the Greek phalanx. 
 
 In character it is certain that Alexander 
 showed little dignity or strength. He yielded 
 to caprices of temper and inclinations of ap- 
 petite with no self-command. He was over-
 
 26 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 come like a child or a barbarian with the 
 intoxication of his success, and lost the level 
 sanity which was the distinction of a culti- 
 vated Greek. Of political ability there is little 
 sign in his brief career. All that followed the 
 actual breaking of Persian sovereignty in the 
 so-called Empire of Alexander was the work 
 of his generals, who carved it in pieces and 
 divided it among themselves. The Macedo- 
 nian conqueror, in fact, was a man of brilhant 
 gifts, who played a striking part in history, 
 becoming the prime agent in producing a 
 movement of events which proved to be of 
 stupendous importance to the future of the 
 world. Let us honor him in that view of his 
 relation to history, without awarding him a 
 seat in the august company of "the greatest 
 men of all time." 
 
 In the history of mechanical invention there 
 are not a few instances of fame so exalted 
 that it seems to imply greatness in the win- 
 ners of it, but does not yield that mean- 
 ing when scrutinized closely. Inventions that 
 we recognize as surpassingly great take their 
 impressive proportions from the magnitude 
 and importance of the consequences that came 
 from them, rather than from any transcend-
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 27 
 
 ency of genius in the inventors. The most 
 striking example I can cite is afforded by the 
 invention of printing with movable type. No- 
 thing done among men since they came into 
 the world has been the cause of more prodi- 
 gious effects ; and so, if we try to measure him 
 by the almost immeasurable import of his 
 work, the father of the modern printing art, 
 whether he be Gutenberg, or Laurens Coster, 
 or another, must rank with the very greatest 
 of men. That, however, is a plainly unreason- 
 able valuation of the man ; because the inven- 
 tion, in itself, as a mechanical exploit, could 
 not call for the exercise of surpassingly high 
 powers of the human mind. 
 
 Gutenberg, Columbus, Alexander of Mace- 
 don, and more whom I could name, form a 
 class to be described, I think, as men of for- 
 tunate fame, — made greatly famous, that is, by 
 greatly important achievements, but who are 
 not of the peerage of the personally great, 
 whose eminence they seem to share. 
 
 There is another class in history, somewhat 
 kindred to this, of men fortunately born, who 
 receive personal credit, more or less, for 
 grandeurs that are no more, in reality, than 
 an inherited robe. The many-crowned emperor
 
 28 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 Charles the Fifth is one who comes readily to 
 mind. He was born to a lofty position, and 
 could not be less than the most conspicuous 
 personage of an extraordinary time, at the cli- 
 max of the passage of the world from its me- 
 diaeval to its modern plane. The accident of 
 birth not only gave him many crowns, and won 
 for him the prestige of the great title of the 
 Caesars, but it put the wealth of the Nether- 
 lands and the rich first plunder of Mexico 
 and Peru into his hands. He had the opportu- 
 nity and the means for being one of the great 
 master-makers of history, — and what did he 
 do with them, except to resist with futility 
 the new movements of human progress which 
 he could not stop ? Excepting a work of ruin 
 in Spain and Italy and of death and misery in 
 the Netherlands, which he left to be finished 
 by his hateful son, what were the fruits of his 
 life ? I do not know of any that can glorify 
 the man. 
 
 Where, then, shall we look for the final mark 
 and measure of a really great superiority in 
 one man over the mass of his fellow men? 
 We cannot hope to discover it by any abstract, 
 indefinite valuing of minds ; for we have no 
 knowledge of the human mind that will war*
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 29 
 
 rant us in attempting a comparative rating of 
 the differing faculties and forces that make 
 it up, any farther than along the The True 
 lines of division that I have indi- Measure of a 
 
 ureat 
 
 cated, between moral, intellectual, superiority, 
 and energetic powers. So far as we know, 
 the varied functions of mind are equal in 
 all that they signify, per se, of intellectual 
 rank among men. In poetry and in imitative 
 art, in science and in philosophy, in statesman- 
 ship and in war, men may be exercising gifts of 
 intellect that would rank them in indistinguish- 
 able equality if we had a gauge and standard 
 of brain-power to apply, — which we have not. 
 But, instinctively, we know that such a stand- 
 ard would not be the true one, if we had it 
 at command; for, instinctively, we incline 
 always, I think, in our thoughtful estimates 
 of remarkable men, to consider first and most 
 the worth and dignity of the objects on which 
 they expend their powers. This seems to be 
 the instinctive inclination of our better judg- 
 ment, though we do not obey it consistently, 
 as we ought to do. We leave our minds too 
 open to the fascination of astonishing exploits, 
 whether they are worthy or unworthy of the 
 intellect and energy employed ; but I doubt if
 
 30 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 we can ever think seriously of the matter with- 
 out concluding that there must be a great mo- 
 tive in what a man does, — a great object in 
 the use of great powers, — a great character 
 enfolding and embodying the great intellect or 
 the great energy we contemplate, — to make 
 a really great man. 
 
 More and more, in my reading of history, I 
 am drawn to the contemplation of character 
 and motive, as the factors to be weighed and 
 determined in all right estimates of those who 
 have acted important parts on the historic 
 stage. More and more I am led to compare 
 men of fame and measure them, one by an- 
 other, on that basis of the ethical quality in 
 themselves and the ethical purpose in what 
 they do. Otherwise, I should be forced to 
 yield my homage of admiration and defer- 
 ence to many men who have defiled their 
 abilities in evil exploits or detestable careers. 
 I should have to reckon Cortes among my he- 
 roes, and glorify his conquest of Mexico ; for 
 it is hard to find in history a more consum- 
 mate performance of its kind. The perfection 
 of judgment, of energy, of resoluteness, of re- 
 sourcefulness, is exhibited in every emergency 
 of the audacious undertaking. In the practi-
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 31 
 
 cal view, it is as flawless an achievement, per- 
 haps, as Caesar's conquest of Gaul. But with 
 rapine for its motive, the vainglory of con- 
 quest for its object, what is its claim to any- 
 thing but detestation and contempt ? 
 
 Then, again, I should feel compelled to seat 
 the inexplicable, cold-blooded Sulla quite high 
 in the temple of my hero-worship; because 
 nothing in the story of Rome is more wonder- 
 ful to me than the manner of his taking, using, 
 and dropping dictatorial power ; but when no 
 discernible purpose, except to defeat and de- 
 stroy his opponents, is discoverable in what 
 he did, I am absolved from the admiration I 
 might otherwise yield. 
 
 Briefly summed, the things needful to the 
 making of a great man, in the view I have 
 suggested, are these three : — 
 
 (1) Great endowments, so much beyond the 
 gifts of faculty or power to common men that 
 they surprise our wonder and admiration, what- 
 ever their nature may be. 
 
 (2) Great opportunity for the adequate ex- 
 ercise and demonstration of such endowments, 
 without which they remain undeveloped, as 
 well as unknown. I cannot doubt that the 
 possibilities of greatness have existed in many
 
 32 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 men who lived in circumstances which gave 
 no call and afforded no opening for the best 
 and most they could do. For some kinds of 
 noble gift this may not be true. A " mute in- 
 glorious Milton " may not be possible, since no 
 circumstances need silence the song of a poet 
 who is truly inspired. But a Washington, 
 whose country had no need of the great ser- 
 vice he could give it, may easily have lived a 
 life of modest usefulness in some provincial 
 circle and died, not only with no discovery of 
 his potential greatness, but with no develop- 
 ment of the potency itself. The call to action 
 which he did not receive would be needed to 
 make him great. 
 
 (3) Great motives and purposes in the use 
 of whatever the great endowments may be, so 
 that they be not wasted on worthless employ- 
 ments, or defiled by an evil use. 
 
 These, in my view, are the distinguishing 
 conditions of all greatness in men, whatever 
 the field may be in which their eminence is 
 won. The few examples of life and character 
 that I have chosen for special study in this 
 view are wholly from one theatre of renown ; 
 and I have chosen them so, not because I would 
 give a leading importance to that stage which
 
 THE MAKING OF A GREAT MAN 33 
 
 exhibits the clamorous dramas of politics and 
 war, but because its scenes and passions are 
 especially confusing to our judgment of the 
 actors thereon. The critical attitude is more 
 needful in this than in any other theatre where 
 great parts are played. In other high employ- 
 ments of genius, the awards of honor that 
 come at last from the imperial court of public 
 opinion go naturally, almost always, to repu- 
 tations which fulfill the conditions I have 
 named. The acknowledged great poets are 
 the poets who have exercised a surpassing 
 idealism of mind upon subjects that are fully 
 worthy of their powers, and to ends that make 
 the most of their gifts. The conception of 
 greatness in a poet whose themes are mean 
 or trivial, and whose verse is empty of lofty 
 thought, is a conception that our minds re- 
 fuse and will not form. It is so in all realms 
 of Art. The vaunted " art for art's sake," — 
 art for the technique of it, — art for the mere 
 cunning of eye and hand, — was never and 
 will never be great art. The painters of pig- 
 sties for scenery and dames of fashion for 
 human portraiture are craftsmen, whose imita- 
 tive cunning is never thought to be measur- 
 able against the penetrating, idealizing, dis-
 
 34 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 covering art which finds madonnas among 
 women and glimpses of Eden or Olympus in 
 the landscapes of the world. It is only on 
 those eminences of public fame which over- 
 top the battlefields of politics and war that 
 the noble and the ignoble climbers seem so 
 often to be confused indistinguishably and ad- 
 mired alike. Such confusion is illustrated most 
 strikingly in the bewildered homage of admi- 
 ration which Napoleon Bonaparte, the most 
 extraordinary of all military and poHtical ad- 
 venturers, has received and is receiving from 
 the world at large.
 
 n 
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY, WITH- 
 OUT GREATNESS
 
 n 
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY, WITHOUT 
 GREATNESS 
 
 If the value of great men to their fellows 
 ended with the ending of their work, there 
 might be nothing but a question of justice to 
 their memories in our estimates of those who 
 are dead. But death does not finish their ser- 
 vice or time extinguish their worth to man- 
 kind. Even though nothing may remain of 
 what such a man did, — no visible fragment 
 of product from his labors that has not been 
 consumed or outworn in the changes of the 
 world, — there is, or there ought to be, an im- 
 perishable survival of living influences from 
 the man himself. If he is not in some way 
 an inspiration to us — in some way a potent 
 exemplar of wisdom, or noble purpose and 
 power ; if he does not set before us a stand- 
 ard of character that we contemplate with 
 reverence, with aspiration, with an exaltation 
 of our faith in human kind ; if we cannot take 
 lessons from his life that will righteously en- 
 ergize our own, — then, surely, there is either
 
 38 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 some pitiful mistake in the supposition of his 
 greatness, or else we do not know him for 
 what he was. Such mistakes are made easily 
 and often, and because they arise from con- 
 fusions that obscure our perception and appre- 
 hension of the really great in human character, 
 I am contending for the recognition of a few 
 principles of judgment that may guide us to 
 truer estimates of notable men. 
 
 Those principles of judgment have been 
 suggested in the preceding chapter. There 
 will now be an attempt to apply them, in a 
 concrete way, to a few important characters 
 and careers. Napoleon Bonaparte has been 
 chosen for the first subject of examination, 
 because the standing of no other exalted per- 
 sonage in history seems quite so questionable 
 as his. There was never another more con- 
 spicuously a prodigy of his kind ; never an- 
 other whose power to master and mould events 
 in his day was more amazing ; never another 
 less entitled to be called a great man, if there 
 is truth in the conception of greatness which 
 I have set forth. 
 
 Let us realize, to begin with, the historical 
 impressiveness of this man, by a rapid review 
 of his wonderful career : —
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 39 
 
 In race he was Italian, not French. The 
 rfubjugation of his native island, Corsica, to 
 France, had just been accomplished 
 when Napoleon was born, in 1769. tie Young 
 That timely escape of the young 
 Corsican from Genoese to French citizenship 
 carried him to a French mihtary school for his 
 education, placed him in the French army, 
 and threw open before him, by the instant 
 outbreak of the French revolution, such gates 
 of opportunity as were never unlocked before 
 for a genius and an ambition like his. At 
 twenty-four, in the year 1793, he was making 
 his mark as a soldier and drawing attention 
 to himself by his handling of artillery at the 
 siege which drove the British from Toulon 
 and ended royalist resistance in southern 
 France. In two years more he had gained a 
 reputation which made him the champion 
 chosen by the government of the Directory 
 to crush an alarming Parisian revolt. By that 
 service to the men in power he earned com- 
 mand of the army in Italy, and entered the 
 field of his first astonishing campaign, which 
 humbled Austria, tore large provinces from 
 her empire, broke the hostile coalition of Eu- 
 ropean powers, and left England alone in re-
 
 40 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 sistance to the aggressions of revolutionary 
 France. 
 
 It was then that the overbearing audacity 
 of the man began to be displayed. Making 
 the most of his own prestige and the weakness 
 of the corrupt Directory, he assumed practical 
 independence of action, exercising a free hand 
 in dealing with his conquests, and roughly re- 
 constructing the northern and central states 
 of the peninsula to suit schemes of his own. 
 He put on the airs of a potentate, hardly veil- 
 ing his arrogant dictation of measures to the 
 Directory in France. Count Miot de Melito, 
 of the French diplomatic service in Italy, went 
 to confer with the victorious general at the 
 headquarters of the army near Milan, in the 
 summer of 1797, and his memoirs * describe 
 the haughty and imposing state with which 
 the young soldier had so promptly surrounded 
 himself. " I was received by Bonaparte," he 
 says, " at the magnificent residence of Monte- 
 bello, in the midst of a brilKant court, rather 
 than the headquarters of an army. Strict 
 etiquette already reigned around him ; his 
 aides-de-camp and his officers were no longer 
 
 * Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito, tr. by Mrs. C. Hoef 
 and J. Lillie. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1881.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 41 
 
 received at his table, and he had become fas- 
 tidious in the choice of the guests whom he 
 admitted to it. . . . He dined, so to speak, in 
 public; the inhabitants of the country were 
 admitted to the room in which he was eating, 
 and allowed to gaze at him with a keen curi- 
 osity. He was in nowise embarrassed or con- 
 fused by these excessive honors, but received 
 them as though he had been accustomed to 
 them all his life. . . . All bowed before the 
 glory of his victories and the haughtiness of 
 his demeanor. He was no longer the general 
 of a triumphant republic, but a conqueror on 
 his own account, imposing his laws on the 
 vanquished." 
 
 Bonaparte conversed freely with the count 
 during the latter's visit, giving very open ex- 
 pression to his contempt, not only for the men 
 of the Directory, but for the French republic, 
 and for the French people at large. "Do you 
 imagine," said he, " that I triumph in Italy 
 in order to aggrandize the pack of lawyers 
 who form the Directory, and men like Carnot 
 and Barras? What an idea! A republic of 
 thirty million men ! And with our manners, 
 our vices ! How is it possible ? That is a fancy 
 of which the French are full at present, but
 
 42 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 it will pass away like all the others. What 
 fchey want is glory and gratified vanity ; but 
 as for liberty, they do not understand what it 
 means. Look at the army ! The victories we 
 have just won have restored the French soldier 
 to his true character. To him I am everything. 
 Let the Directory try to take the command 
 from me, and they will see who is master. The 
 nation must have a chief, and a chief rendered 
 illustrious by glory, not by theories of govern- 
 ment, by phrases, by theoretic speeches, which 
 Frenchmen do not understand. Give them 
 baubles — that suffices them ; they will be 
 amused and will let themselves be led, so long 
 as the end toward which they are going is 
 skillfully hidden from them." 
 
 Proceeding to discuss the then pending 
 negotiations for peace with Austria, he said : 
 '' Peace is not to my interest. You see what I 
 am, and what I can now do in Italy. If peace is 
 made, if I am no longer at the head of the 
 army, which is attached to me, I must renounce 
 the power, the high position I have made for 
 myself, in order to pay court to a pack of 
 lawyers at the Luxembourg. I do not want to 
 leave Italy unless it be to play a part in France 
 similar to my part here, and the time has not yet
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 43 
 
 come; the pear is not ripe. ... I am quite 
 ready to weaken the republican party ; some 
 day I shall do it for my own advantage, not 
 that of the former dynasty. In the mean time 
 I must act with the republican party. And 
 then if peace be necessary in order to satisfy 
 our Paris boobies, and if it has to be made, it 
 is my task to make it." 
 
 So early (in his twenty - eighth year) was 
 the young Corsican despising his fellow men 
 in general and Frenchmen in particular, and 
 so distinctly were his plans of ambition and 
 his arrogant methods in pursuing them already 
 determined in his mind. Four months later 
 he made peace with Austria, by the treaty 
 of Campo Formio, substantially dictating the 
 terms. He judged the Parisian pear to be not 
 yet ripe for him, and he w^ould watch it a little 
 longer before reaching to pluck it ; but his in- 
 fluence was already the most commanding in 
 France, and he could plan his next military 
 employment. He chose to lead an expedition 
 for the conquest and occupation of Egypt, 
 lookino; forward to movements from that con- 
 venient foothold against the English in India, 
 and with other ideas of a more private ambr 
 tion, as we shall see. Egypt was subjugated;
 
 44 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 but Lord Nelson stripped all possible fruits 
 from that success by his victory in the Battle 
 of the Nile, which destroyed the French fleet, 
 gave England full control of the Mediterra- 
 nean, and cut Napoleon and his army off from 
 France. Nevertheless the indomitable Corsican 
 was able, by false bulletins and reports, to ob- 
 scure his failure so far that, when, in the au- 
 tumn of 1799, he made his own escape from 
 the trap in which his army was left, he could 
 reappear in France with a prestige not greatly 
 impaired. 
 
 Meantime a new coalition against the re- 
 public had been formed in Europe, and the 
 French armies had suffered serious defeats in 
 Italy and on the Rhine. It had come to be in- 
 evitable that the rotten and incapable govern- 
 ment of the Directory would be overthrown by 
 some movement which some strong hand could 
 concentrate and control, and the opportune ar- 
 rival of Bonaparte brought the needed hand. 
 Within a month his supporters had organized 
 and executed the coup d'etat which placed 
 him at the head of the government, with the 
 title of First Consul, under a constitution 
 which put little of practical restraint on his 
 arbitrary exercise of power. His two colleagues
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 45 
 
 in the consulate, and the bodies behind him 
 which seemed to have legislative functions and 
 a representative character, were mere features 
 of stage scenery, arranged to give a republi- 
 can appearance to what was, in reality, a re- 
 stored monarchy with restored absolutism in 
 France. 
 
 For a time there were good results. The ex- 
 ecutive ability of the First Consul was very 
 great, and the free hand with which he worked 
 enabled him to produce quick and astonishing 
 changes, from chaotic to systematic and or- 
 derly conditions, and from depression to activ- 
 ity in industry and trade. At the same time 
 he was giving fresh triumphs to the French 
 arms and intoxicating the nation anew with 
 military pride. Once more he was master of 
 Italy, and refashioned its states to his lik- 
 ing ; again he smote Austria to the earth and 
 broke the coalition of European powers; and 
 now he began to deal with Germany as with 
 Italy, dictating political reconstructions and re- 
 arrangements of its numerous states. France, 
 satisfied with the strong government which 
 had rescued it from the anarchy of revolution, 
 and glorying in the genius and power of its 
 chief, was submissive to him willingly in these
 
 46 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 early years of his rule. It gave him the First 
 Consulate for life in 1802, and allowed him 
 to adorn himself with imperial and royal 
 crowns and titles in 1804 and 1805, objecting 
 very little, so far as can be seen. 
 
 It appears to be plain that a very slight 
 curb of reasonable moderation put then upon 
 Els at- his ambition would have made Napo- 
 Autocracy l^on's imperial throne secure to the 
 In Europe. ^^^ ^f ^g d^ys. Europe would have 
 
 acquiesced in his empire if he had been will- 
 ing to keep it within even the widest boun- 
 daries of historical France. But nothing less 
 than the dominion of the world could have 
 satisfied his demoniacal lust of power; and 
 that lust was stimulated by an inappeasable 
 hatred of England that took possession of 
 his mind. Her sea-power defied him. It had 
 ruined his projects in Egypt. It upheld her 
 against him when all other resistance was 
 beaten down. It protected the commerce which 
 poured wealth into her coffers, and it would 
 enable her, again and again, to form alliances 
 against him by subsidies and loans. He could 
 not match it. He could not break through 
 it with his invincible armies, to reach her island 
 shores. He had talked and planned and seemed
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 47 
 
 to prepare for a great expedition across the 
 Channel; but he cannot have believed that 
 he would dare the risk. This powerlessness to 
 strike straightly at the enemy which stood 
 most resolutely in his path was hardly less 
 than maddening to so arrogant a temper as 
 his. It impassioned his natural craving for 
 power, concentrating it on one supreme prac- 
 tical object, — to ruin England by control- 
 ling the larger sources of her wealth. He per- 
 suaded himself that all Europe could be forced 
 into such submission to his purpose and such 
 obedience to his orders that its markets might 
 be closed to British goods, and that British 
 industries might thereby be starved. In his 
 obstinate pursuit of this design he lost clear- 
 ness of judgment, and plunged blindly into 
 some, at least, of the undertakings which 
 wrecked his career. 
 
 Nevertheless, for seven years after taking 
 his crowns and erecting his thrones in France 
 and Italy he could believe in the superhuman- 
 ity and invincibility of himself. Through that 
 period nothing failed in what he undertook, 
 excepting when he ventured to combine the 
 navies of France and Spain against Nel- 
 son's fleet, and lost them at Trafalgar. He
 
 48 A STUDY OP GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 made and unmade kingdoms at pleasure, in 
 Italy, Holland, Germany, and Spain; seized 
 the papal states and annexed them to France ; 
 dragged the Pope from Rome and held him 
 in ignominious imprisonment for five years; 
 surrounded himself in his family with kings 
 and queens; distributed principalities and 
 duchies among his chief officers and ministers 
 with a lavish hand; and shattered every com- 
 bination that opposed itself to the widespread 
 despotism he was building up. Austria, for 
 a third and a fourth time, fought him and was 
 crushed, at Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805, at 
 Wagram in 1809. Prussia, first cheated and 
 humiliated as an unwilling ally, was then 
 struck to the very dust, in absolute subjuga- 
 tion, by double overthrow, at Jena and Auer- 
 stadt, on the same day. Russia, intervening, 
 was broken in courage by a great defeat at 
 Friedland, and her Tzar, partly cowed and 
 partly bribed, became a helper in the Na- 
 poleonic "boycotting" of British goods. 
 
 So far in the career of Napoleon his expe- 
 rience had been with the baser much more 
 than with the better part of mankind. In 
 France the weak and the cowardly had bent 
 before him, the servile had fawned upon him,
 
 NAPOLEON : A PRODIGY 49 
 
 the unscrupulous in ambition and in merce- 
 nary greed had swarmed about him, clutching 
 at his skirts, to be lifted by him as he climbed 
 the heights of opportunity and power. It is 
 true that no small number of the truest and 
 best in France assisted his rise, supported his 
 government, even into its despotic stage, and 
 served it with honest patriotism, because it 
 restored to their country the conditions of 
 authority and order which they deemed its 
 greatest need ; but it is no less true that the 
 kind of government which Napoleon wished 
 to exercise had to take its chief instruments 
 and most numerous servitors from men of 
 the baser order of brain, like Talleyrand and 
 Fouche. At home, that was the kind of soci- 
 ety, in his closer surroundings, with which 
 he had most to do. Outside of France, his 
 dealings, to the greatest extent, had been with 
 as despicable a lot of sordid rulers and brain- 
 less bureaucrats as ever afflicted the European 
 states. In Germany, especially, he found 
 kings and princes as ready to be his puppets, 
 as eager to be bribed with new titles or new 
 territory, as empty of any patriotism, as igno- 
 rant of honorable motives, as the meanest of his 
 servants at home. If he had not been natu-
 
 50 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 rally contemptuous of mankind he must have 
 learned to be so, from the manifestations that 
 were plainest in his sight. 
 
 But now Europe was turning toward him 
 another front of character which he had not 
 The Revolt kuowu, and which he would never 
 oj Europe, comprehend. At last he had stirred 
 those slow masses of people which give na- 
 tions their ponderable substance, and which 
 nothing can resist when they move. The flun- 
 kies and hirelings and puppets with whom he 
 had had most of his foreign dealings hitherto 
 were being pushed aside, and he now faced men 
 and motives of a very different stamp. 
 
 On the surface of things, in the spring of 
 1811, the all-conquering Corsican appeared 
 to be approaching the substantial autocracy 
 in Europe to which he aspired. The humbled 
 house of Austria had given him one of its 
 daughters in marriage, to succeed his divorced 
 wife, Josephine, and when, on the 20th of 
 March, 1811, a son and heir was born to him, 
 he exclaimed: "Now begins the finest epoch 
 of my reign." There was never a self-delusion 
 more infatuate and blind. The knell of doom 
 to his false fabric of military power, and to all 
 of his selfish projects, was beginning in that
 
 NAPOLEON : A PRODIGY 61 
 
 very hour to ring loud, and he heard it not. 
 Forces of outraged national feeling which 
 nothing in his nature could understand were 
 undermining him in Spain and Germany, and 
 the crust of despotism that covered them was 
 at the breaking point, but he knew it not. 
 
 On that day of March, 1811, when betook 
 his newborn son into his arms and exulted in 
 the ffift of a successor to his crowns, 
 
 o ^ , . The Crnm- 
 
 his forces in the Spanish peninsula bUngoiMs 
 were recoiling from Wellington's 
 impregnable lines at Torres Vedras, begin- 
 ning retreats that would seldom halt till 
 Wellington followed them into France ; Ger- 
 many, beaten, trampled upon, insulted by 
 him, but steeled to heroism and disciplined to 
 wisdom by the anguish of her subjugation, 
 was undergoing a rapid unseen evolution of 
 her real racial strength ; and Russia, sickened 
 of her profitless partnership with Napoleon in 
 his abortive "continental system," was encour- 
 aging secret plans for a fresh rising of the na- 
 tions ao^ainst the insolent warrior who abused 
 or threatened them all. He scorned the abun- 
 dant warnings that came to him from his 
 agents everywhere, who realized, as he did 
 not, the serious menace of these underburning
 
 52 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 fires. He thought that he had attained invin- 
 cibility, and nothing could shake that belief. 
 As he looked at the situation, Russia was the 
 one remaining power on the continent that 
 he needed to break, as he had broken Austria 
 and Prussia, and he entertained no doubt of 
 his ability to lay the Muscovite empire at his 
 feet. And so he exhausted France by his stu- 
 pendous preparations for that invasion of Rus- 
 sia, in 1812, which ended in the most horrible 
 of all the military catastrophes that are told of 
 in the history of the world. 
 
 Then, in the next year, came the mighty 
 uprising of Germany, supported by Russia, 
 Austria and Great Britain, and he had to 
 face it with armies filled .out by boys under 
 twenty years of age, to the extent of 150,000 
 in the conscription of that year. So fright- 
 fully had the grown manhood of France 
 been destroyed in his wars! He had so con- 
 sumed the vast hosts of his trained veterans 
 that, even though his resistless will and en- 
 ergy could drag well nigh half a million of 
 armed men to the field once more, he could 
 not make them into such forces as he had 
 wielded in the past. He had some successes at 
 the outset of the struggle with his oncoming
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 63 
 
 fate, winning the last of his shining victories 
 at Dresden ; and then all went disastrously to 
 the end. 
 
 After the decisive great " battle of the na- 
 tions/* fought round Leipsic, in October, Na- 
 poleon cast reproaches upon Marshal Auge- 
 reau, saying that he was not the Augereau of 
 Castiglione, thus referring to a battle of 1796, 
 in Italy, where the marshal had most distin- 
 guished himself, and from which he had 
 received a ducal title. "Ah," retorted the vet- 
 eran, " give me back the old soldiers of Italy 
 and I will show you that I am." That reply 
 was descriptive in part, but not wholly, of 
 the day of retribution to which Napoleon 
 had come. He had spent the lives of the gen- 
 eration of men who won his victories for him ; 
 but, likewise, he had spent the best of his 
 own powers. All military critics of his cam- 
 paigns have seen signs, from this time, of 
 a weakened grip in his handling of the 
 awful forces of war. It was mighty, still; 
 amazing in the last tremendous efforts of his 
 resistance to the approaching fate, when the 
 allies had driven him back to France, and 
 from the frontier toward Paris, and the circle 
 of their armies closed round him; but his
 
 54 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 electric perceptions, his inlighted vision of the 
 field, his instincts o£ infallible quick judg- 
 ment, were not as of old. 
 
 And more fatal to him than that fading of 
 his genius was the monstrous inflation and 
 arrogation of his will. He had fed it, exercised 
 it, cultivated it, till it overlorded all the fac- 
 ulties of his mind. It would not let him see 
 the facts of his adversity as they were ; and 
 so, of all people concerned, he was the last 
 to comprehend the situation to which he had 
 come. Even after Leipsic he was offered the 
 keeping of his throne in France, with the 
 natural boundaries of the Alps, the Pyrenees, 
 and the Rhine for his kingdom, if he would 
 let the rest of Europe alone ; and even while 
 he defended Paris, in the battles of the last 
 weeks of his reign, he might have kept the 
 sovereignty of France as it was in 1791, before 
 the wars of the Revolution broke out ; but he 
 would not give up his kingdom of Italy, nor 
 agree to restore Holland to freedom. The 
 demoniac despotism of his self-will drove him 
 on to the inevitable end of his bloody career, 
 dragging thousands of the very schoolboys of 
 France to untimely death as heartlessly as he 
 had dragged thi3ir fathers before.
 
 NAPOLEON : A PRODIGY 55 
 
 What an unparalleled career it is ! What a 
 prodigy of awful and appalling powers it dis- 
 closes in the man ! But what kind of powers ? 
 From what factors in the human make up ? 
 How much from the higher and how much 
 from the lower ? How much from soul and 
 mind, and how much from the animal nature 
 that goes with them in man ? How much of 
 the kind of force that makes the lion the king 
 of beasts, and how much of the attributes that 
 put man above the beasts ? These are not idle 
 questions in the case of so exceptional a man. 
 
 Of the surpassing quality of Napoleon's in- 
 tellect, in some modes of power, there is no 
 question, of course. All that goes to TheQuauty 
 the making of a mighty war-lord was J^c^^^'^" 
 concentrated in him to a degree and Po^e»- 
 a perfection that, possibly, has never been 
 equaled in another man. But that intellectual 
 equipment for the commanding of belligerent 
 multitudes and the conduct of war is surely not 
 the highest and greatest with which a human 
 being can be endowed. Napoleon himself has 
 described the kind of mental power that he 
 found in his own experience to be called mostly 
 into play. In one of the conversations at St. 
 Helena reported by Las Cases he said: '^The
 
 56 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 fate of a battle is the result of a moment, — of a 
 thoiio'ht ; the hostile forces advance with various 
 combinations ; they attack each other and fight 
 for a certain time ; the critical moment arrives, 
 — a mental flash decides, and the least re- 
 serve [of troops] accomplishes the object." At 
 another time he said to the same listener : 
 "Success in war depends so much on quick- 
 sightedness, and on seizing the right moment, 
 that the battle of Austerlitz, which was so com- 
 pletely won, would have been lost if I had at- 
 tacked six hours sooner." * 
 
 This electric quality of mind — the power 
 to see, to put together and to apprehend as 
 by a flash the factors of circumstance in any 
 problem of the moment, in war or in politics 
 — is what seems to have been really extraor- 
 dinary in the endowments of Napoleon on their 
 intellectual side. With it, on the under side 
 of his nature, was an almost superhuman de- 
 velopment of energy and will, and the casual 
 combination produced all that was exceptional 
 and extraordinary in the powers of the man. 
 They were the powers of a great conqueror 
 and a great despot, — not the powers of a great 
 
 * LifSf Exile and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon* 
 I, pt. 2, pp. 6 and 143. London : H. Colburn. 1835.
 
 NAPOLEON : A PRODIGY 57 
 
 statesman or of a great man. In what he did 
 there is no sign of any wide sweep of vision, 
 — any far-reaching forecast of circumstances 
 and projection of thought, — any singular sa- 
 gacity, even in the projects of his selfish am- 
 bition. Tested by the results of his ambitious 
 undertakings, they were unwisely conceived 
 and ill -harmonized with each other, repre- 
 senting no well pondered aim or design. Sep- 
 arately, they astound us by the energy and 
 the matchless ability with which he carried 
 them out; but survey them together, and what 
 is there to marvel at or to admire ? What but 
 the ashes of a stupendous failure have they 
 left in the history of the world ? We are con- 
 templating a career of successes, in a wonder- 
 ful series, but not a career of success, as the 
 grand product of a life. 
 
 Nevertheless, after all his intellectual limi- 
 tations have been reckoned up. Napoleon is 
 still a prodigy of genius, and would claim a 
 place among the great of history if his moral 
 nature had not been so hideously dwarfed and 
 deformed. It is there that he shrinks to a lit- 
 tleness and meanness which no splendor of ma- 
 levolent genius can redeem ; and there, in that 
 aspect, we must study the man.
 
 68 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 In this study it is assumed that, where sur- 
 passing gifts of any nature are bestowed on a 
 „^ ^ man, the mark and test and measure 
 
 THe Man ' 
 
 tested toy of ffreatness in him must lie in the 
 
 hlsAspira- . . • i i • i t 
 
 tions in motives and purposes with which and 
 for which they are employed in the 
 work of his life. We can apply this mark and 
 test to Napoleon, not by any guessing of mo- 
 tives in what he did, but mostly by disclosures 
 from himself. There is no mistaking, for 
 example, the significance of his own ideals of 
 greatness and a great career, which he disclosed 
 many times, in conversations that have been 
 reported by people who lived in intimate asso- 
 ciation with him. They were pagan, oriental, 
 barbaric ideals, wholly alien to the spirit of 
 civilization in our modern world. On the day 
 of his coronation as emperor he said to De- 
 cres, his minister of the navy: "My record 
 has been brilliant, I acknowledge, and I have 
 had an excellent career. But how different 
 from ancient times ! Take Alexander, for in- 
 stance. After having conquered Asia he an- 
 nounced himself to the people to be a son of 
 Jupiter, and, with the exception of . . . Aris- 
 totle and a few Athenian pedants, he was be- 
 lieved by the entire Orient. ... If I were to
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 59 
 
 announce myself to-day to be the son of the 
 Everlasting Father, — if I were to declare that 
 I was going to return thanks to Him by vir- 
 tue of that fact, — there isn't a fish- wife who 
 would not jeer at me as I passed. The people 
 are far too much enlightened; there is no- 
 thing great left to be done." * Nothiiig great 
 left to he done, with the power of the imperial 
 sceptre which he took into his hands that day, 
 because he could not practice, in a too-enlight- 
 ened age, the imposture of self -deification, as 
 Alexander had done ! 
 
 The same thought had been in Napoleon's 
 mind seven years before, when he said to 
 Bourrienne, his secretary : " Europe is nothing 
 but a mole-hill; it is only in the Orient that 
 there have been great empires and mighty 
 revolutions, — there where 600,000,000 peo- 
 ple live." 2 It was the thought that took him 
 to Egypt, and it filled his mind there with 
 dreams. In talk with Madame de Remusat, one 
 of the ladies of his court while First Consul, 
 he said, in 1803: "In Egypt I found myself 
 free from the wearisome restraints of civiliza- 
 
 ^ Napoleon the First. By August Fournier, p. 410. New 
 York : Henry Holt & Co. 
 * Fournier, p. 122.
 
 60 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 tion. I dreamed all sorts of things, and I saw 
 how all that I dreamed might be realized. I 
 created a religion; I pictured myself on the 
 road to Asia, mounted on an elephant, with a 
 turban on my head and in my hand a new 
 Koran, which I should compose according to 
 my own ideas." ^ He never dismissed such 
 dreams ; his mind approved them to the end. 
 During his captivity at St. Helena, in one of 
 the conversations reported by General Gour- 
 gaud, he said: "Arabia awaits a man. Had 
 I taken Acre I should have gone to India. I 
 should have assumed the turban at Aleppo, 
 and have headed an army of 200,000 men." 
 In another of the same talks, speaking of 
 Alexander's visit to the temple of Ammon, 
 when the god was reported to have recognized 
 him as a son, he praised it as an act of policy, 
 and remarked: "So I, had I remained in 
 Egypt, should probably have founded an em- 
 pire like Alexander, by going on a pilgrimage 
 to Mecca." « 
 
 Once Gourgaud mentioned to him that the 
 
 * Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, 1802-1808, tr. by Mrs. 
 C. Hoey and J. Lillie, vol. i, p. 149. New York: D. Apple- 
 ton & Co. 1880. 
 
 * Napoleon : The Last Phase. By the Earl of Rosebery, pp. 
 219, 220. New York: Harper & Bros.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 61 
 
 sovereign in China is worshiped as a god; 
 whereupon he replied gravely that " that is as 
 it should be." * A morbid craving for that 
 oriental worship must have been always in 
 his mind. 
 
 One may read widely in the correspondence 
 of Napoleon, and in the many memoirs of him 
 left by those who lived in the closest inti- 
 macy with him, and find nothing to indicate a 
 conception in his mind of higher objects in 
 life or nobler aspirations than were embodied 
 in these oriental and barbaric dreams. The 
 thought of good service to his country, — of 
 being in any way a benefactor to any part of 
 mankind, — of earning a grateful fame, and 
 leaving a fragrant memory for affectionate 
 preservation in the world, can never have en- 
 tered his mind without moving it to contempt. 
 He had the morbid craving of a Nero for the 
 kind of admiration that is mixed pungently 
 with awe and fear ; but if it lacked that flavor 
 it was insipid to his taste. 
 
 In his own esteem he held himself so far 
 above other men that he despised them all, and 
 cared for nothing that they could give him 
 except their obedience, their service, and the 
 
 1 Rosebery, p. 168.
 
 62 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 flattery of their dread. He said to General 
 Gourgaud,at St. Helena: '' I only care for peo- 
 The Enor- pie who are useful tcune^andso len gas 
 ^ems^^' the y are usef uL !^ ^ In 1809, when ne- 
 Bgotism. gotiating peace with Austria, he said 
 to the Austrian ambassador, Count Bubna: 
 *^A sovereign should not concern himself as 
 to the opinion of his subjects." ^ At Leipsic, 
 in 1813, when his course was nearly run, he 
 said to Metternich: "A man like me cares 
 little for the lives of a million men." ^ It is not 
 to be doubted that he prided himself on being 
 that kind of heartless man ; just as he prided 
 himself on being a man without moral restraint. 
 He would say, Madame de Remusat tells us : 
 ^' I am not an ordinary man, and laws of mor- 
 als and of custom were never made for me." ^ 
 It was part of his hear tlessn ess that he could 
 be as cool in his feeling toward enemies as to- 
 ward friends. Shortly after he became emperor 
 he boasted to Madame de Remusat : " I am not 
 capable of acting from revenge ; I only sweep 
 obstacles from my path." ^ Las Cases, his 
 most intimate companion at St. Helena, bears 
 testimony to the truth of this boast. "I have 
 
 » Rosebery, p. 51. ^ Fournier, p. 481. ' Foamier, p. 642. 
 * Rdmusat, vol. i, p. 91. * Kdmusat, vol. i, p. 249^
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 63 
 
 never known him/' he says, "to evince the 
 least feeling of animosity against those indi- 
 viduals who have been most to blame in their 
 conduct towards him. He gives no great credit 
 to those who distinguished themselves by good 
 conduct ; they had only done their duty. He 
 is not very indignant against those who acted 
 basely. ... It is evident that he would be ca- 
 pable of becoming the ally of his most cruel 
 enemy, and of living with the man who had 
 done him the greatest wrong." i Chancellor 
 Pasquier, in his memoirs, is a witness to the 
 same effect. "The First Consul," he says, 
 "never experienced any hatred or any affec- 
 tion not dictated to him by his self-interest." * 
 It is doubtful if another ever lived who 
 did look at all men so entirely with reference 
 to the use to be made of them or the hostility 
 to be met in them, and with such passionless 
 indifference otherwise. He looked for nothing 
 else in the people with whom he dealt. He ex- 
 pected to secure devotion to himself by mak- 
 ing it advantageous to his devotees, and fidel- 
 ity appears to have had no other meaning in 
 his mind. He trusted so entirely to self-inter- 
 
 » Las Cases, vol. i, pp. 335, 337. 
 
 2 Memoirs of Chancellor Pasquier, tr. by C. E. Roche, vol. 
 i, p. 160. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1893.
 
 64 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 est for the binding of men to his fortunes that 
 he dared continually to outrage the feelings 
 of his most important ministers by insult and 
 abuse. Says Talleyrand, who had experience of 
 his insults, and who hated him accordingly: 
 "Napoleon delighted in annoying, humiliat- 
 ing, tormenting those whom he had elevated." ' 
 His own cynical coolness would make him in- 
 capable of understanding the feeling that such 
 treatment evoked, and he was equally incapa- 
 ble of a restraining generosity of soul. 
 
 Naturally, it has become a question whether 
 he had a real friendship in his life. Lord 
 A Man Rosebcry, in his "Last Phase" of 
 Priendt. Napolcon, concludes positively that 
 "he had no friends" at the end of his career.^ 
 "Great masses," says the Earl of Rosebery, 
 "who knew him only in his public capacity, 
 chiefly as a general, adored him to the last. 
 The private soldiers who marched from France 
 to Waterloo were inspired with an enthusiasm 
 for him which at least equaled that of the sol- 
 diers of Marengo and Austerlitz. But that 
 enthusiasm diminished in proportion to re- 
 
 * Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand, ed. by the Due 
 4e Broglie, vol. ii, p. 13. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
 » Rosebery, pp. 273-27&
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 65 
 
 moteness from the rank and file. Officers felt 
 it less in an ascending scale, and when the 
 summit was reached it was no longer percepti- 
 ble. It had long ceased to be felt by those who 
 knew the emperor most intimately. Friend- 
 ship ... he had deliberately discarded, as 
 too close a relation for other mortals to bear 
 to himself. Many, too, of his early friends 
 had died on the field of battle, friends such as 
 Lannes, Desaix, and Duroc. But some had 
 survived, and left him without ceremony, or 
 even decency. Berthier, his lifelong comrade, 
 the messmate of his campaigns, his confidant, 
 deserted him without a word, and did not 
 blush to become captain of Louis XVIII's 
 body-guard. His marshals, the companions 
 of his victories, all left him at Fontainebleau, 
 some with contumely. Ney insulted him in 
 1814, Davoust in 1815. Marmont, the petted 
 child of his favor, conspicuously betrayed him. 
 Caulaincourt found a limit to his devotion at 
 last. Even his body attendants, Constant and 
 Eustan, the valet who always attended him 
 and the Mameluke who slept against his door, 
 abandoned him. It was difficult to collect a 
 handful of officers to accompany him to Elba, 
 much more difficult to find a few for St. He-
 
 66 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 lena. The hopeless followers of ungrateful 
 masters, the chief mourners of misfortune who 
 haunted the barren ante - chambers of the 
 Bourbons and the Stuarts, had no counterpart 
 in the exile of Napoleon. . . . We must re- 
 gretfully attribute this alienation, discredit- 
 able as it is to the deserters, more discredit- 
 ably to Napoleon himself." 
 
 In saying that Napoleon had no friends 
 Lord Rosebery has admitted a possible excep- 
 tion in Duroc, whom the emperor called his 
 conscience, and from whom he was said to 
 have no secrets. But, on Duroc's side, the 
 friendship is denied by Bourrienne, who was 
 a playfellow and schoolmate of Napoleon in 
 boyhood and his private secretary in later life, 
 and in whose memoirs we find this significant 
 remark : " At St. Helena Bonaparte often de- 
 clared that he was much attached to Duroc. 
 I believe this to be true ; but I know that the 
 attachment was not returned." * 
 
 Bourrienne himself was one of many who 
 entered Napoleon's service with an enthusi- 
 astic admiration of the hero as he shone in 
 the public eye, and were disillusioned by close 
 
 * Private Memoirs of Napoleon^ vol. i, p. 29. London t 
 H. Colburn. 1830.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 67 
 
 personal acquaintance with the real man. 
 Baron Charles Doris, who wrote " Secret Mem- 
 oirs of Napoleon Bonaparte," which were pub- 
 lished anonymously in 1815,i as being by 
 ^^ one who never quitted him for fifteen years/' 
 made no concealment of the animosity of feel- 
 ing with which he wrote, but said: "If any 
 one has reason to blush at having considered 
 this man with adulation, I was guilty for the 
 space of two years. During that time I viewed 
 him only at a distance, I judged only by his 
 victories, by the reports of his courtiers ; for 
 courtiers, and very dangerous ones, he had in 
 abundance. Circumstances on a sudden placed 
 me about his person, — the charm disappeared. 
 This was the work of only a fortnight." Else- 
 where, the same writer remarks; "He [Na- 
 poleon] was never surrounded but by cour- 
 tiers; never had he a true friend, not even in 
 his own family. Imperious by system, no one 
 could presume to be in the right in his pres- 
 ence if he would have it otherwise. . . . The 
 people were to him what flocks are to the pro- 
 prietors, he valued them for their bodies and 
 their fleeces." - 
 
 ^ London : H. Colbum. 
 
 » Doris, Secret Memoirs , pp. 63, 45.
 
 68 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 The ideals of Napoleon's ambition have 
 been characterized as barbaric. So far as he 
 A Bar- went in the reaKzation of those ideals 
 
 bario 
 
 conaueror. he adhered to them exactly, and the 
 spirit of the European despotism he established 
 was not European and civilized, but orien- 
 tal and barbaric throughout. In Italy, Hol- 
 land, Germany, Spain, when he had vanquished 
 them by his arms, he ground their unfor- 
 tunate people under his feet, and terrorized 
 them by such methods as a Tartar conqueror 
 would have used. Give attention to a few 
 of the orders that went to his satraps and 
 generals, directly from himself, and in his own 
 words! This, for example, to Holland, in 
 1811: "Have the wife of Gallet, the pilot 
 who is in the English service, arrested, and 
 have that sailor written to, that, unless he 
 comes back to France, or proceeds to some 
 neutral country, so that we may be sure he is 
 not serving the English, she and her children 
 will he put in prison, into a dark cell, on 
 bread and water. Extend this measure to the 
 wives and children of all pilots in the English 
 service." ^ If you think that order barbaric, 
 
 ^ Nero Letters of Napoleon, omitted from the edition pub- 
 lished under the auspices of Napoleon III ; tr. by Lady Mary 
 Loyd, p. 219.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 69 
 
 consider this, which went to Holland the same 
 year: "My intention is that the 500 sailors 
 who took part in the affair at Aurich [where 
 some rioting had occurred] shall be arrested 
 and brought to France, to serve at Toulon, 
 Brest and Lorient; that several shall be 
 brought before a military court and shot; 
 that the most guilty of those who have fled 
 shall be sentenced to death by default, their 
 fathers, mother s, wives, hr others and sisters 
 imjyrisoned, their houses burned and their 
 goods sequestrated."! Could Timour or Attila 
 have illustrated the temper of a barbaric con- 
 queror and despot more perfectly? 
 
 The orders sent personally by Napoleon to 
 his generals in Germany, in 1807 and 1808, 
 are full of such instructions as these : " Have 
 [Hersfield] thoroughly sacked to punish the 
 insult offered to the sixty men of my troops." 
 " Indicate the men each town is to give up on 
 pain of being burnt. . . . Visible traces must 
 be left to frighten the evil intentioned in Ger- 
 many. It was thus, by burning the big village 
 of Bignasco that I kept Italy quiet in the year 
 IV." " Require the names of the four chief 
 persons [at Crossen] who have corresponded 
 
 > New Letters^ p. 233.
 
 70 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 with the partisans [of Prussia] , and you will 
 do the same thing at Giintersberg and Mes- 
 critz. . . . You will have these twelve persons 
 shot." * In March, 1813, at the outset of the 
 German rising, he wrote to his step-son, Eu- 
 gene, then commanding the French forces in 
 Prussia : "At the least insult from a town or 
 Prussian village burn it down, even if it were 
 Berlin." On the 7th of May in the same 
 year he wrote : " Send General Vandamme 
 into Mecklenburg. . . . He will at once arrest 
 all subjects of the town of Hamburg who 
 have taken service under the title of ' Senators 
 of Hamburg.' He will bring them before a 
 court martial ; he will have the five worst cul- 
 prits shot, and he will send the rest under 
 strong! escort to France. . . . He will have the 
 officers of the Hanseatic Legion shot. . . . 
 He will draw up a proscription list of 500 of 
 the richest and most ill-behaved persons be- 
 longing to the thirty-second military divison ; 
 he will have them arrested and their property 
 sequestrated. . . . He will mulct the towns 
 of Hamburg and Lubeck in the sum of 
 50,000,000."^ 
 
 » New Letters, pp. 36, 37, 38. 
 ' New Letters.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 71 
 
 Even such barbarities of subjugation as 
 these had been surpassed in 1806, when the 
 Nuremberg bookseller. Palm, for publishing 
 a purely patriotic pamphlet, entitled " Ger- 
 many in her Deep Humiliation," was seized 
 by Napoleon's order, dragged to an Austrian 
 town, then held by invading French troops, 
 tried by a military court, and shot. Less trag^ 
 ical, but more in outrage of the sentiment 
 and spirit of civilization, was the insolent 
 proscription and expulsion from Prussia of 
 Baron von Stein, the ablest statesman of his 
 day. Stein's wise measures of domestic reform, 
 ending serfdom, clearing away as much as 
 possible of the rubbish of feudalism, creating 
 municipal institutions, abolishing commercial 
 monopolies, and broadly laying the founda- 
 tions of the new Prussia that has risen to lead- 
 ership in Germany since, were feared and 
 resented by the master of the French garri- 
 sons then quartered in Prussian towns. A 
 decree launched from Madrid in December, 
 1808, commanded that " the man named 
 Stein" should be dealt with as an enemy of 
 France, his property confiscated and his per- 
 son seized wherever found. "Inform the 
 Prussian court," was Napoleon's further order
 
 72 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 (December 16, 1808), " that my minister will 
 not go to Berlin unless Stein is sent out of 
 that capital and out of Prussia. You will go 
 further; you will demand by letter to the 
 Prussian minister that this person shall be 
 given up as a traitor. . . . Let it be under 
 stood that if my troops lay hands on Stein 
 he will be put to death." ^ Pi;ussia could not 
 protect her statesman, and Stein fled, first to 
 the Austrian court, and finally to Russia, where 
 he entered the service of the Tsar. In due 
 time he returned, to become the master-spirit 
 of the rising which drove Napoleon from 
 Germany and ended his career. The Prussia 
 which arose then from the dust of its humili- 
 ation, schooled and fitted for the making of 
 the German Empire of to-day, was the mon- 
 umental work of a few political architects, 
 among whom Stein was the chief. "The man 
 named Stein" has a monument that endures. 
 What has the man named Napoleon left, of 
 durable outcome from his life, to compare with 
 that of Stein? 
 
 The tragic case of the Bourbon Due d*En- 
 ghien, kidnapped from neutral territory in 
 1804 and brought into France to be shot, 
 
 » New Letters, p. 111.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 73 
 
 in retaliation for a royalist plot against the 
 life of the First Consul, has been staled by 
 much controversy, and is recalled in this con- 
 nection for the purpose, only, of citing Napo- 
 leon's own statement of his motives in that 
 startling deed. He disclosed them in talk with 
 his brothers, and his words were repeated by 
 Joseph Bonaparte to Count Miot de Melito. 
 We receive them from the memoirs of that 
 gentleman, who had intimate relations with 
 Joseph for many years. "I cannot disguise 
 from myself," said Napoleon, "that I shall 
 only be secure on my throne when not a sin- 
 gle Bourbon is in existence; and there is now 
 one less of them. He [the Due d'Enghien] 
 was the last of the great Conde's blood; the 
 last heir of the grandest and fairest name 
 of that house. He was young, bright, coura- 
 geous, and consequently my most dangerous 
 enemy. It was a sacrifice absolutely neces- 
 sary for KYiy safety and my greatness. And 
 not only would I do what I have done over 
 again, if necessary, but, to-morrow, if I had 
 the chance, I would do the same by the last 
 two scions of the family." ^ Here, frankly dis- 
 closed, is the purely personal motive which 
 ^ Miot de Melito, p. 354.
 
 74 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 seldom fails to come to light in the doings of 
 Napoleon, whenever we are able to catch a pri- 
 vate expression of his feeling or his thought. 
 It was not for the peace of France that the 
 Bourbon prince was dragged lawlessly from a 
 neutral country to be shot; but that violence 
 to civilization was done because "my safety 
 and my greatness " required the young prince's 
 death. 
 
 So, too, when he compelled his brother 
 Jerome to repudiate his marriage with Miss 
 Patterson, of Baltimore, he put the demand 
 upon the ground that Jerome must "wash 
 away the dishonor with which he has stained 
 my name. . . . His duty to me is sacred." * 
 
 The educational system of France was re- 
 organized Napoleonically, with a single eye 
 to the stamping of that idea, of a primary and 
 sacred obligation of duty to the emperor, on 
 the minds of the young. The direction of all 
 teaching was centred in an " Imperial Univer- 
 sity," the first text-book provided for which 
 was a catechism that formulated the political 
 teaching in these words : " We owe to our 
 emperor. Napoleon I, love, respect, obedi- 
 ence, fidelity, military service, tributes de- 
 » New Letters, April 22, 1805.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 75 
 
 creed for the defense of the empire and of his 
 throne. . . . We are under obligation to per- 
 form all these duties toward him, because 
 God has crowned him with manifold gifts in 
 war as in peace, establishing him as our sov- 
 ereign, the instrument of His power, and giv- 
 ing him His own likeness upon earth." ^ 
 
 Public interests and public rights were 
 thrust so entirely into the background of all 
 Napoleon's political views, — all his policy was 
 self-centred and self -motived so entirely, — 
 that finally he was outspoken in declaring 
 the fact, even to the public ear. In 1810 he 
 had thoughts of adopting the elder son of his 
 brother Louis, to make him the heir of his 
 throne, and he published officially in the 
 Moniteur the following admonition that he 
 had addressed to the child : " You are never 
 to forget, in whatever position you may be 
 placed by my policy and the interests of my 
 empire, that your first duty is to me, your 
 next to France. Every other kind of duties, 
 even those toward the people whom I might 
 intrust to your care, come afterward." ^ 
 
 In the memoirs of Lucien Bonaparte, that 
 
 * Fournier, p. 409. 
 
 ' Pasquier, vol. i, p. 426.
 
 76 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 ablest and most independent of Napoleon's 
 brothers protests against the supposition that 
 the latter's wars were forced upon him; that 
 he ever " made war contrary to his own choice 
 at any time in his career." His ambitions, says 
 Lucien, " made war a personal necessity to 
 him " ; ^ and that is the ugly fact which the 
 admirers of this great modern slaughterer 
 have tried most to disguise. 
 
 The barbaric spirit in Napoleon was mani- 
 fested not only in the nature of his ambitions, 
 ^^ but in the demoniac savagery of his 
 
 Savagery will. Resistance simply maddened it 
 oi Mb wm. _ . _,, . ^ '^ . , ., , 
 
 to lerocity. inis appears m a horrible 
 
 incident related by Constant, his devoted va- 
 let, in those curious memoirs which contradict 
 the adage, that no man can be a hero to his 
 valet. Constant accompanied his master to 
 the camp at Boulogne, when armies and naval 
 forces were assembled there, ostensibly in pre- 
 paration for the invasion of England. One 
 morning the emperor gave orders for a naval 
 review on the open sea, and then departed 
 upon a horseback ride which kept him absent 
 for some hours. Meantime Admiral Bruix, the 
 naval commander, saw the approach of a dan- 
 
 i Fouruier, p. 251.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 77 
 
 gerous storm, and stopped preparations for 
 the review. When Napoleon returned and 
 found that such a liberty had been taken with 
 his commands he was enraged, and a scene 
 occurred which Constant relates as follows: 
 *^ ^Monsieur admiral,' said the emperor, ^why 
 have you not executed my orders?' 'Sire,' 
 replied the admiral, with respectful firmness, 
 *a horrible tempest is rising; your majesty 
 can see it as well as I. Will you expose use- 
 lessly the lives of so many brave men ? * 
 'Sir,' returned the emperor, more and more 
 irritated, ' I have given orders ; again I ask, 
 why have you not carried them out? The 
 consequences concern me only. Obey me.' 
 ' Sire, I will not obey,' said the admiral. ^ You 
 are insolent,' cried the emperor, and he ad- 
 vanced, making a threatening gesture with 
 the riding whip in his hand. Admiral Bruix 
 recoiled a step and put his hand on the hilt 
 of his sword. ' Sire,' said he, very pale, take 
 care.' All present were frozen with fright. 
 The emperor stood motionless for a moment, 
 his hand raised, his eyes fixed on the ad- 
 miral, who kept his defensive attitude. At 
 length the emperor threw his whip to the 
 ground, and M. Bruix, dropping his sword,
 
 78 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 waited in silence, with uncovered head, the 
 result of the dreadful scene. Turning then to 
 Vice-Admiral Magon, the emperor said to him, 
 *You will execute instantly the movement 
 I have ordered. As for you,' he continued, 
 looking at Admiral Bruix, ' you will quit Bou- 
 logne within twenty-four hours and retire 
 into Holland. Go ! * " ^ Thereupon, to satisfy 
 the crazed egotism of a heartless tyrant, 
 the unfortunate fleet was sent out of harbor 
 in the teeth of a tempest which made quick 
 wreck of more than twenty gunboats and 
 strewed the neighboring coast with the corpses 
 of more than two hundred drowned men. 
 When the inevitable disaster came. Napoleon 
 was very active and conspicuous in efforts 
 to rescue its victims, and the admiring valet 
 who tells this tale seems to think that the im- 
 perial crime was more than atoned. 
 
 If the Napoleonic despotism had been no 
 more than hard and even heartless there might 
 be specious arguments in defense of it ; but 
 nothing that could palliate its barbarities can 
 cloak the meannesses in his government, the 
 pettiness of spirit in it, and the frauds and 
 
 * Memoires de Constant, premier valet de chambre de VEm- 
 pereurt $ur la vie privee de Napoleon, vol. i, ch. xiii. Paris : 
 1830.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 79 
 
 the lies. Its meanness was illustrated in his 
 petty-minded persecution of the ablest woman 
 of her generation, Madame de Stael. He said 
 " she inspired thought in people who had never 
 taken it into their heads to think before, or 
 who had forgotten how/' and he drove her 
 from France. For years he pursued her, 
 through malignant and insulting directions 
 which he gave personally to his police. " Do 
 not allow that jade to come near Paris," was 
 the sort of order that he flung at intervals to 
 the head of the police. 
 
 There was no department of his govern- 
 ment which Napoleon kept more carefully un- 
 der his own searching eye and his his corps 
 own directing hand than that of the «* spies, 
 police. His correspondence is full of personal 
 orders, informations, rebukes to its ministerial 
 chiefs, showing how much he planned and su- 
 pervised the meanest details of its work, es- 
 pecially in espionage and in the suppression 
 of free speech. He was far too distrustful, 
 however, to depend on the fidelity and effi- 
 ciency of the regular poHce, but organized cir- 
 cles within circles of his own private corps of 
 spies, each watchful of the other and all, to- 
 gether, infesting court, government, and so-
 
 80 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 ciety at large with thousands of treacherous 
 eyes. In the "Secret Memoirs" that I have 
 quoted heretofore it is said that these spies 
 ^' pervaded every part of the administration, 
 both civil and military; they obtained a foot- 
 ing about all the great personages of the state ; 
 they penetrated into their families, into their 
 private societies. This band, which he jokingly 
 called his telegraphic company,' was inde- 
 pendent of the general police, whose agents, 
 charged with watching strictly over the peo- 
 ple, were themselves no less rigidly watched. 
 The number of these dangerous stipendiaries 
 amounted in the month of March, 1803, to 
 three thousand six hundred and ninety-two. 
 . . . Gentry of place and title, writers and 
 merry-andrews, workmen- and state annuitants 
 ... and all that youth, beauty, the graces and 
 agreeable talents could produce, of the most 
 seductive kind in each sex, was to be met with 
 in this society." ^ 
 
 Upon the press Napoleon was his own spy. 
 Not an unsanctioned or undictated word could 
 be printed without calling forth a sharp per- 
 sonal reprimand to the head of police from the 
 imperial pen. His correspondence is full of 
 
 1 Doris, Secret Memoirs, pp. 94, 243, and 249.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 81 
 
 such notes as this, of April, 1808, calling 
 attention to some newspaper publication of 
 extracts from sermons of the day: "I had 
 forbidden the newspapers to refer to priests, 
 sermons, or religion. . . . Will the police be 
 good enough to do my will ? " At another time, 
 in the midst of hasty preparations for the 
 war of 1809 with Austria, he has leisure to 
 notice that a French archbishop has mani- 
 fested some prayerful interest in the illness 
 of the ex-Queen of Spain, and he writes there- 
 upon : " Let me know why the clergy ask the 
 people's prayers for any person without leave 
 from the government." 
 
 As for political discussion in the news- 
 papers, he established his system of imperial 
 management in 1806, when he wrote to Tal- 
 leyrand : " It is my intention to have the po- 
 litical articles for the Moniteur written by 
 officials in the Foreign Office, and, after I have 
 observed for a month how these are done, I 
 shall forbid the other newspapers to discuss 
 politics otherwise than in imitation of the ar- 
 ticles in the Moniteur T 
 
 Worse than the meanness of Napoleon's des- 
 potism was its falsity. He scorned the civil- 
 ized estimates of honor, honesty, and truth,
 
 82 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 declared his belief in lying and knavery, 
 as fine arts in the conduct of life, more espe- 
 cially in government, and was boast- 
 Meanness ful of his proficiency in both. No 
 Shameless One could know him better than Ma- 
 Faisity. (Jamc dc Remusat, who was the neigh- 
 bor and friend of Josephine before her mar- 
 riage to Napoleon, and who became her most 
 trusted '' lady-in-waiting " from the beginning 
 of the Consulate until Josephine's divorce. 
 For ten years she lived as closely to the man, 
 saw as much of him behind the scenes of 
 his great theatre, and talked with him as 
 intimately, as any person could. She entered 
 his household with a worshipful admiration of 
 his seeming greatness, and she gave up her 
 admiration very slowly; but it vanished utterly 
 in the end. Her final verdict was this : " No 
 man, it must be allowed, was ever less lofty 
 of soul. There was no generosity, no true 
 greatness in him. I have never known him 
 to admire, I have never known him to com- 
 prehend, a fine action. He always regarded 
 every indication of good feeling with suspicion; 
 he did not value sincerity, and he did not 
 hesitate to say that he recognized the supe- 
 riority of a man by the greater or less dexter-
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 83 
 
 ity with which he practiced the art of lying. 
 On the occasion of his saying this he added, 
 with great complacency^ that when he was a 
 xjhild one of his uncles had predicted that he 
 should govern the world, because he was an 
 habitual liar." ^ 
 
 Chancellor Pasquier, who had large oppor- 
 tunities for knowing him well, pronounced a 
 similar judgment, in the candid and dispas- 
 sionate memoirs that he left : ^^ His [Napo- 
 leon's] heart," wrote the chancellor, " was bare 
 of that which could enlighten it as to the advan- 
 tage to be derived from generous impulses." ^ 
 Such testimony prepares us to trust the ac- 
 count which Talleyrand gave to Madame de 
 Remusat of a talk with Napoleon in 1813, 
 when the cynical frankness of the latter in 
 disclosing the completeness of his own moral 
 debasement might otherwise exceed belief. 
 "In reality," he is reported to have said, 
 "there is nothing noble or base in the world. 
 I have in my character all that can contrib- 
 ute to secure my power, and to deceive those 
 who think they know me. Frankly, I am base, 
 essentially base. I give you my word that 
 
 ^ Rdmusat, vol. i, p. 6. 
 2 Pasquier, vol. i, p. 160.
 
 84 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 I should feel no repugnance to commit what 
 would be called by the world a dishonorable 
 action." ^ 
 
 That he carried such theories of dishonor 
 and dishonesty into practice systematically is 
 beyond dispute. Even in their day it was dis- 
 coverable that his war bulletins and reports 
 were painted thick with lies : lies to magnify 
 his victories, to minify his failures, to steal 
 even little scraps of glory from his subor- 
 dinates, or to smirch them with the blame of 
 his own mistakes; but the full extent of the 
 meanness and the shameless audacity with 
 which that system of lying was carried on did 
 not come to light till later times. " The whole 
 truth,'' says Bourrienne, his private secretary, 
 "never appeared in Bonaparte's dispatches, 
 when it was in any way unfavorable to him- 
 self. . . . He not unfrequently altered the 
 dispatches of others." ^ 
 
 A flagrant example of the many attempts 
 he made to falsify history for his own glorifi- 
 cation appears in his dealing with the facts of 
 the battle of Marengo. It was the most impor- 
 tant to him of his greater victories, because it 
 
 * Kdmusat, vol. i, p. 8. 
 
 ' Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 260.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 85 
 
 established his prestige and affirmed his power 
 at the beginning of his consular reign ; and 
 yet, of all his battles, it appears *to have been 
 the least creditable to himself. Personally he 
 had lost it, and it was won back for him by a 
 division-general, Desaix. For almost, if not 
 quite, the only time in his career, he had been 
 deceived as to the position of the enemy, and 
 had divided his army, on the day before the 
 battle, sending Desaix with his division to 
 make a movement which proved to be gravely 
 mistaken in plan. The Austrians surprised him 
 by an attack in overpowering numbers, and his 
 troops had given way, when the tide was turned 
 suddenly by the reappearance of Desaix. That 
 admirable officer had heard the sound of battle; 
 had caught its meaning instantly; had recog- 
 nized that his own movement was a mistake, and 
 had turned back. By rapid marching he arrived 
 at the critical moment of Napoleon's defeat, 
 and died leading a charge which recovered the 
 lost field. In Napoleon's report of the battle 
 no hint of these circumstances is allowed to ap- 
 pear; and, to make sure of their suppression 
 in official documents, at least, he caused all of 
 the reports of his subordinates to be destroyed. 
 From his dispatch, as we find it in the sixth
 
 86 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 volume of the "Correspondance de Napoleon 
 I, publiee par ordre de I'Einpereur Napoleon 
 III" (pp. 360-362), I quote the story as he 
 told it of the victory that was snatched from 
 defeat. "The battle," he wrote, "appeared lost. 
 We allowed the enemy to advance wdthin gun- 
 shot of the village of San Giuliano, where De- 
 saix's division was in line, with eight pieces of 
 light artillery in front and two battalions in 
 close column on the wings. All the fugitives 
 were rallied behind it. Already the enemy com- 
 mitted faults which presaged disaster to them ; 
 their wings were too extended. The presence 
 of the First Consul reanimated his troops. 
 * Children,' he said to them, ^ remember that it 
 is my habit to sleep on the battlefield.' To 
 cries of Vive la Repuhlique! Vive le Premier 
 Consul! Desaix charged the centre of the op- 
 posing line. In an instant the enemy was over- 
 thrown." That is the whole mention of Desaix's 
 agency in the battle. Nothing in it of credit 
 to him for being there, at the village of San 
 Giuliano, at the opportune time for rallying 
 a routed army and shattering the victorious 
 foe. Nothing to show that he had not been 
 there from the first of the fight, and by the 
 wise arrangements of his chief. Nothing to
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 87 
 
 spare one honest shred from the glory of the 
 self-glorifying First Consul, whose animating 
 presence is set forth as the all-suf&cient ex- 
 planation of what occurred. 
 
 One of the gravest of Napoleon's failures was 
 in the siege of Acre ; but he covered it from 
 public knowledge at the time by a daring fal- 
 sification of facts. He announced that he had 
 destroyed the town and its fortifications, and 
 had taken a great number of prisoners, but 
 had refrained from entering the place because 
 plague was raging within it. The truth was, 
 that the town, supported by the British fleet 
 of Sir Sidney Smith, had withstood his utmost 
 efforts, and that he retreated from it, and from 
 Syria, with nothing to show for his ambitious 
 undertaking in the field of his Asiatic dreams. 
 There was nothing to shame him in the fail- 
 ure, but there is infamy in the boastful lying 
 with which he tried to cover it up. 
 
 The diplomacy of Napoleon was systematic i 
 in faithlessness and deceit. He gave to every 
 c:overnment and people that had deal- his Paitt- 
 mgs with him some experience or macy. 
 knavish tricks. Our own country went through 
 the experience in a peculiarly mortifying way. 
 In 1809 it had been suffering for three years
 
 88 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 from the attempts of France and England, in 
 their warfare, to destroy neutral trade. It had 
 tried to retaliate by President Jefferson's exper- 
 iment of an " embargo," with no effect on the 
 conduct of the belligerents ; and then Congress 
 passed a conditional act of non-intercourse, 
 or non-importation, which President Madison 
 should enforce against each of the offending 
 powers till its orders and edicts against neutral 
 trade were withdrawn. Thereupon Napoleon 
 gave notice to the American minister at Paris 
 that his decrees were " revoked," and President 
 Madison, trusting the announcement, pro- 
 claimed it, suspending the operation of the act 
 so far as concerned importations from France, 
 but interdicting entries from British ports. He 
 soon found that he had been duped. American 
 ships that ventured within reach of the knavish 
 despot were seized, as before, and no satisfac- 
 tion or explanation could be obtained. There 
 was never a sign that the decrees had been re- 
 voked. Napoleon had thought the opportunity 
 good for embroiling the United States with 
 Great Britain, and did not hesitate to employ d 
 falsehood to that end.^ 
 
 > H. Adams, H%st<yry of the United States, 1801-1817, vol 
 V, cbs. vii-xiy, xvi, xviii.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 89 
 
 For many years Napoleon played upon the 
 inextinguishable hope of the Poles that their 
 broken nation might be restored, deluding 
 them with expectations of his help, in order 
 to use them against Russia ; while always, when 
 it suited him to turn a pacific face toward the 
 Russian or Austrian court, he was giving secret 
 assurances there that Poland had nothing to 
 hope for from him. 
 
 In like manner he tricked the king of 
 Prussia into a disgraceful alliance with him- 
 self, by a tempting pledge of the electorate of 
 Hanover, from which the English had been 
 expelled. A little later, when he came to dis- 
 cuss terms of peace with Great Britain, he 
 offered the restoration of Hanover as freely 
 as if the Prussian treaty bore no such pledge. 
 
 Treaties meant no more to him than tricks 
 of the moment for winning some advantage in 
 his stupendous games. He had no thought of 
 being bound by them longer than they served 
 his ends. In 1805, when he forced the Dutch 
 into an alliance with himself against England, 
 he engaged by treaty to secure the restoration 
 to them of any colonies they might lose in the 
 war. Two years later, when preparing to com- 
 pel them to accept his brother Louis as their
 
 90 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 king, he wrote to Talleyrand : " The arguments 
 to be brought to bear with the Dutch are, that 
 otherwise I will not see that a single one of 
 the colonies lost to England is restored to them 
 when peace is made." 
 
 After Louis had been seated on the throne 
 of Holland, Napoleon extorted from him a 
 treaty which ceded important parts of Dutch 
 territory to France, and placed the whole Dutch 
 coast under French military surveillance. In 
 return for this, the treaty provided for a re- 
 moval of existing restrictions on Dutch trade 
 with France. When the faithless extortioner 
 of the treaty had secured what it gave to him, 
 he turned a deaf ear to the demands of his 
 brother for fulfillment of its terms on his own 
 side. The French restrictions on Dutch trade 
 were not removed ; and this was one of the 
 causes of the disgusted action of Louis Bona- 
 parte, who sickened of the puppet part he had 
 to play and abandoned his fiction of kingship, 
 taking refuge in Austria from his brother's 
 wrath. 
 
 But Spain, among the victims of Napoleonic 
 faithlessness and falsity, suffered most. The 
 series of treacheries and frauds that were prac- 
 ticed, in the infamous process of the theft of
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 91 
 
 her crown, began with an illusory treaty for 
 the partitioning of Portugal, in which Godoy, 
 the base minion who ruled the Spanish court, 
 should share. Under cover of this vile bar- 
 gain, French armies, ostensibly in transit to 
 Portugal through Spain, got the footing on 
 Spanish soil which placed the government of 
 the kingdom in their power. Of all the iniqui- 
 ties in Napoleon's career, the successive trans- 
 actions in this Spanish undertaking are nearly, 
 if not quite, the most glaring in their display 
 of the baseness of the man. Even the unscru- 
 pulous Talleyrand claims to have remonstrated 
 against the rankness of his master's cheating 
 in the rascally game, and to have been jeered 
 at for doing so when the game seemed won. 
 " See," cried Napoleon to him, " what all your 
 predictions as to the difficulties I should en- 
 counter, in regulating the affairs of Spain ac- 
 cording to my views, have amounted to. I have 
 overcome these people; they have all been 
 caught in the nets I spread for them, and I am 
 master of the situation in Spain, as in the rest 
 of Europe." ^ This was the fated delusion of 
 the man, cheating himself more ruinously than 
 others were cheated by him. He had caught 
 
 » Talleyrand, vol. i, p. 288.
 
 92 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 in his nets and overcome — not Spain, but the 
 corrupted Spanish court. When the Spanish 
 people woke to the consciousness of their sit- 
 uation, they broke his fine-spun webs, and 
 started forces in motion that overcame hiniy 
 and cast down the whole false fabric of his 
 power. 
 
 If anything in the history of Napoleon can 
 be fouler than his treatment of Spain we find 
 Toussaint ^^ ^^ ^^s dealings with the revolted 
 rouverture. blacks of San Domingo, and the per- 
 fidious barbarity with which Toussaint TOuver- 
 ture was lured into captivity and done to death. 
 In one of the historical essays of Mr. Henry 
 Adams the revolting story is traced through 
 official documents in the French archives, and 
 told, for the most part, in the words of the 
 agents employed, and in those of the master 
 whose commands they obeyed. The tale opens 
 in 1801, when Napoleon, then First Consul, 
 being momentarily at peace with England, pre- 
 pared to "annihilate," as he expressed his in- 
 tention, " the government of the blacks at San 
 Domingo." He sent for the undertaking a great 
 army and fleet, with his brother-in-law, Gen- 
 eral Leclerc, in command. Leclerc bore a pro- 
 clamation to the blacks, which said to them:
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 93 
 
 *^ The government sends you the Captain-gen- 
 eral Leclerc. He brings with him great forces to 
 protect you' against your enemies, and against 
 the enemies of the republic. If you are told, 
 ' these forces are intended to ravish your lib- 
 erty from you/ reply, ' The republic has given 
 us liberty ; the republic will not suffer it to be 
 taken from us.* " General Leclerc bore also a 
 personal letter from the First Consul to Tous- 
 saint rOuverture, the extraordinary leader who 
 had risen among the African ex-slaves, who 
 had checked the destructive frenzy of their 
 revolt, and who had organized a government 
 which restored the ruined island to an orderly 
 and promising state. The letter was sweetened 
 with friendly assurances in every word. " As- 
 sist the captain-general with your counsels, 
 your influence, and your talents," it said to 
 Toussaint. " What can you desire, — the lib- 
 erty of the blacks? You know that in every 
 country where we have been we have given it 
 to the people who had it not." Then come 
 personal flatteries and promises: "After the 
 services you have rendered, and those you can 
 render in these circumstances, together with 
 the particular sentiments we have for you, you 
 should not be uncertain of your consideration,
 
 94 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 your fortune, and the honors that await you." 
 Such were the words of the master of France 
 to Toussaint and to the blacks at large; but 
 now listen to the secret instructions he gave 
 to Leclerc : " The instant you shall have rid 
 yourself of Toussaint, Christophe, Dessalines, 
 and the principal brigands, and the masses of 
 the blacks shall be disarmed, send back to the 
 Continent all the blacks and mulattoes who 
 have played a part in the civil troubles." 
 
 Neither Toussaint nor his followers yielded 
 to the wiles of Leclerc at once, and the cap- 
 tain-general was employed for some months 
 in a campaign which drove them to the moun- 
 tains and induced their submission at last. In 
 May, 1802, Leclerc reported to his government 
 the terms on which he had accepted the sur- 
 render of Toussaint; they were as follows: 
 " He must surrender to me at the Cape, and I 
 would give him my word of honor that after 
 the conference he should have the liberty to 
 go where he would." Toussaint surrendered 
 accordingly ; and one month later Leclerc wrote 
 to Napoleon: "I have taken a step that will 
 do much good to the colony. I have, as I 
 warned you, arrested General Toussaint, and 
 I send him to France to you, with all his fam-
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 95 
 
 fly. . . . He had written me to complain of 
 my having stationed troops at Dennery, which 
 he had chosen as his residence. I answered 
 that, to remove all ground of complaint, I 
 authorized him to confer with General Brunet 
 on the station of the troops in that canton. 
 He went to General Brunet. There he was 
 arrested and embarked." No doubt this was 
 written by Leclerc and read by Napoleon with 
 pride in the successful perfidy of the act. 
 
 And now the sinister story becomes tragic. 
 Napoleon wrote approvingly to Leclerc : " The 
 arrival of Toussaint has been extremely honor- 
 able to you," and he signed a secret decree 
 ordering Toussaint to be imprisoned in the 
 fortress of Joux, in the Jura Mountains, and 
 to be kept there in solitude and secrecy, with- 
 out power to write or speak to any person 
 save the servant who should attend him. Ev- 
 idently there was hope of finding grounds 
 on which he could be disposed of in some 
 plausibly legal way; for Leclerc was asked 
 to forward proofs against him. Leclerc, how- 
 ever, was compelled to report that, since the 
 amnesty granted to Toussaint, there was no 
 guilt of anything to be proved against him. 
 Whatever, therefore, should be done with the
 
 96 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 captive Dominican patriot and statesman must 
 be done by naked despotism, with no pretense 
 of law. Helped by the winter cold of the Jura 
 Mountains, the Napoleonic despotism was equal 
 to that need. As winter approached, Tous- 
 saint failed in health. His jailer, reporting 
 weekly, wrote on the 30th of October : " He 
 has continual indispositions, caused by inter- 
 nal pains, headaches, and some attacks of fe- 
 ver which are not continuous. He complains 
 always of cold, though making a great fire. . . . 
 No one is allowed to see him but myself." 
 Then the well-instructed jailer adds this, which 
 he must have written with an evil grin on his 
 face : " The constitution of negroes resembling 
 in no respect that of Europeans, I dispense 
 with giving him either physician or surgeon, 
 who would be useless for him." Five months 
 of this most intelligent jailer work sufficed. 
 On the 19th of March a promising report went 
 from Joux to Paris : " The situation of Tous- 
 saint is always the same. He complains con- 
 tinually of pains in the stomach, and has a 
 continual cough ; for some days he has kept 
 his left arm in a sling on account of pains. 
 I perceive that in the last three days his 
 voice is much changed." Three weeks later,
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 97 
 
 on the 9th of April, 1803, the faithful and suc- 
 cessful jailer made his final and most satisfying 
 report : " I had the honor to render you an 
 account of Toussaint's condition by my letter 
 of the 16th germinal [April 6th]. The 17th, 
 at eleven and a half o'clock in the morning, on 
 carrying his food to him, I found him dead, 
 seated on his chair, near the fire." ^ 
 
 This tale needs no comment. 
 
 The evidence now submitted seems more 
 than enough to support my contention that 
 the false, faithless, perfidious barbarism and 
 baseness of spirit which characterize pettiness 
 the despotism of Napoleon are in- °'Spiiit. 
 congruous with any right conception of great- 
 ness in a man. But there was a pettiness of 
 spirit in his nature that seems more incongru- 
 ous still. It was manifested conspicuously in the 
 increasing servility of etiquette that he forced 
 his court, his military officers, and even his 
 family to submit to, as fast as his honors 
 grew. After his Austerlitz campaign, it is 
 said, his brothers were not allowed to sit in 
 his presence, and did not venture to address 
 him without being spoken to. His wife, Jose- 
 
 ^ Historical Essays. By Henry Adams. Essay 4. New 
 York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1891.
 
 98 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 phine, no longer ventured to use the famil- 
 iar "thou" in speaking to him, but addressed 
 him always as " Your Majesty." To sit while 
 others stood appears to have been a mark of 
 superiority that was specially gratifying to his 
 vanity. He exacted it in camp as well as in 
 court. In the curious memoirs of his valet it 
 is related that, when the emperor was with the 
 army assembled at Boulogne, his chair was the 
 only seat in the room where he held long 
 councils with his marshals and generals, and 
 they stood sometimes for hours. Even at St. 
 Helena the petty gratification of such servile 
 forms of deference was required for him, and 
 the unfortunate officers who went with him, 
 to solace his captivity, often stood in his pres- 
 ence till they were ready to drop with fatigue. 
 There was nothing less than paltriness and 
 vulgarity of mind in the eager appetite he 
 showed for every kind of formality that would 
 signify the inferiority of others to himself. 
 Madame de Remusat relates the particulars of 
 a scene which was one of the first to reveal to 
 her the vulgar spirit of the man. With Bona- 
 parte (then First Consul) and Madame Jose- 
 phine, she was a guest one day at dinner with 
 the Consul's elder brother, Joseph. Their mo-
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 99 
 
 ther was of the party, and Joseph, with fiHal 
 propriety, had arranged to give her the place 
 of honor at the table. This arrangement was 
 resented by Napoleon, who claimed precedence 
 and consideration even before his mother, and 
 even in the family circle. When dinner was 
 announced he seized his wife's arm, drew her 
 quickly to the table, in advance of all, and 
 seated her and himself as he desired.^ 
 
 This petty-minded, jealous exaction of every 
 possible show of deference to himself gave 
 the taint of vulgarity as well as barbarity to 
 all his despotism. Thirteen Koman cardinals 
 who failed to accept invitations to the cer- 
 emony of his marriage with Marie Louise of 
 Austria were arrested, exiled, their property 
 sequestrated, and they were forbidden to 
 wear their official dress.^ The Archbishop of 
 Bologna, guilty of the same offense to the des- 
 pot, was compelled to resign. Giving personal 
 orders for this, Napoleon wrote : " Shameful 
 conduct of a man whose infamous debauch- 
 eries I have concealed, by intervening with 
 my authority and interrupting the course of 
 criminal proceedings at Bologna."^ "Infa- 
 
 * R^musat, vol. i, p. 116. ' Pasquier, vol. i, pp. 406, 407. 
 8 New Letters, 1810, April 3.
 
 100 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 mous debaucheries " of the Archbishop could 
 be disregarded by the omnipotent lord of Italy, 
 but not a slight to his august invitations. 
 
 In Napoleon's treatment of the Pope there 
 was not only an insolent defiance to all Cath- 
 Na oieon ^^^^ Europe, and a wanton outrage to 
 and the its feeling, but there was a mean per- 
 sonal malignity as well. He had seized 
 the Papal States and annexed them to France. 
 Thereupon (June, 1809) the Pope, Pius VII, 
 employing his sole weapon of defense, issued 
 a bull of excommunication against all who had 
 taken part in these acts, naming none. In the 
 following month, by the emperor's order, he 
 was arrested like a criminal, and taken from 
 Rome, to be kept in rigorous imprisonment, 
 first at Savona, Italy, and finally at Fontaine- 
 bleau, in France, for five years. His treatment 
 in that period was regulated personally by 
 Napoleon, and the progressive meanness and 
 malice of it are shown by such orders as the fol- 
 lowing, quoted from his published letters:^ — 
 
 November 28, 1810. " Give orders that all 
 letters written by the Pope, or by members of 
 his household, and all those sent to the Pope, 
 or to his household, are to be forwarded to 
 Paris." 
 
 > New Letters, 1810-1811. 
 
 /
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 101 
 
 January 1, 1811. "As the Pope has been 
 misbehaving himself at Savona, I desire you 
 will give orders that the carriages I had placed 
 at his disposal should be sent back to Turin, 
 and that his household expenses should not 
 he allowed to exceed 12,000 to 15,000 /rancs 
 [$2500 to $3000] a year. Make sure that no 
 letters are received at Savona, or sent from 
 there." 
 
 January 2, 1811. " The Pope is stirring 
 up disorder everywhere. . . . He is sending 
 whole sheets of diatribes in all directions. . . . 
 The prefect is the only person who must be 
 allowed to see him." 
 
 January 6, 1811. " As I desire to protect my 
 subjects from the rage and fury of this igno- 
 rant and peevish old man, I hereby order you 
 to notify him that he is forbidden to commu- 
 nicate with any church of mine, or any of my 
 subjects, on pain of the punishment consequent 
 on his disobedience and theirs. . . . Tell him 
 that a man who preaches rebellion, and whose 
 soul is full of hatred and malice, ceases to be 
 the mouthpiece of the Church. . . . He shall 
 see that I am strong enough to do as my pre- 
 decessors did before me, and depose a pope. . . . 
 You will leavehim no paper, nor pens,norinkf 
 nor any means of writing"
 
 102 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 The "predecessors" referred to in this last 
 order were those sovereigns of the early Ger- 
 manic-Roman empire who controlled the pa- 
 pacy for a time. Napoleon had reconciled him- 
 self in a measure to the loss of that oriental and 
 entirely barbaric career of conquest for which 
 his ambition thirsted always, but he did so by 
 turning to the dark ages of Europe for sub- 
 stitute or secondary ideals of grandeur in life. 
 Since fortune forbade his being a second Al- 
 exander, or a second Mahomet, and he could 
 not venture in the modern world to claim di- 
 vinity for himself, he found his highest attain- 
 able satisfaction in fancying that he had re- 
 vived or recreated the empire and the glory 
 of Charlemagne. "You see in me Charle- 
 magne"; "I am Charlemagne, — yes, I am 
 Charlemagne," — were his boastful exclama- 
 tions more than once, on occasions when his 
 arrogant temper exploded- in abusive ha- 
 rangues to people who had crossed his will. 
 It came even with deliberation from his pen, 
 as well as angrily from his tongue. Writing, 
 in 1806, to his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, who 
 represented him at the papal court, before he 
 had broken up that court, his command was : 
 "Say to him [the Pope] that I am Charle-
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 103 
 
 magne, the Sword of the Church, their em- 
 peror, and that I propose to be treated as 
 such."^ It was a vulgar pose; the pose of an 
 imitator who saw nothing in Charlemagne but 
 an embodiment of barbaric domination, and 
 was wholly incapable of appreciating or tak- 
 ing lessons from the real majesty of character 
 in that large-minded chieftain of a rude age. 
 I apply the term vulgar, as I apply the 
 terms mean and barbaric, to Napoleon, be- 
 cause there seem to be no others that will de- 
 scribe certain exhibitions of his nature so cor- 
 rectly. There was a fundamental coarseness in 
 him, morally, mentally, and temperamentally, 
 which expressed itself habitually in vulgarisms, 
 as well as in barbarisms and meannesses of 
 word and deed. He had the talent of an actor, 
 along with other talents, and he had all the 
 pleasing capabilities of a facile mind. By abun- 
 dant testimony we know that he could be an 
 agreeable companion when it suited his humor 
 to be agreeable. He could act the part of a 
 gentleman, as he could act many parts; but 
 when he put on the manner of courtesy and 
 the disposition of amiability, it must have been 
 as an actor dresses himself for the stage, in cos- 
 
 * Foumier, p. 331.
 
 104 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 tumes that are not proper to his natural self. 
 According to many witnesses there was little 
 to indicate the gentleman in his manner and 
 bearing at court, after the full inflation of his 
 arrogant consciousness of power. "He cast 
 off/' says Fournier, " all semblance of courtesy. 
 He would say, for instance, to a lady [at his 
 receptions], after she had stated her name, 
 * Heavens ! I had been told you were pretty ' ; 
 or, to an old man, ^ You have not much longer 
 to live,' and such like urbanities." ^ This agrees 
 with another account of his receptions as em- 
 peror, which states that when he walked about, 
 preceded by chamberlains who announced him, 
 ^^he never remembered a name, and his first 
 question to ladies was, 'And what do you call 
 yourself ? ' " The coarse feeling and vulgar qual- 
 ity of the man was displayed most offensively 
 at the Erfurt meeting of emperors, kings, and 
 princes, in 1808, where he invited Prince Wil- 
 liam of Prussia to a rabbit-hunt on the battle- 
 field of Jena, and had some of his soldiers, in 
 the presence of the Tsar, relate incidents of 
 their exploits during the then recent war with 
 Bussia. 
 
 By these and other things that I find in the 
 
 * Fournier, pp. 411, 412.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 105 
 
 vastly voluminous records of Napoleon and his 
 career I feel myself forbidden to regard him 
 as I wish to regard Great Men. I can- 
 
 . T • • 1 ^^® Empty 
 
 not think of his meaner qualities with- outcome o« 
 out contempt, and I cannot think of "**'' 
 contemptibility and greatness as possibly exist- 
 ing together in the same man. Nor, amazed as 
 I am at the marvel of his life, can I think of it 
 as representing a great career. Its emptiness 
 of great results was declared long ago, with 
 truth and candor, by his private secretary. 
 *^Not having done for the welfare of man- 
 kind what he undertook for his own glory," 
 wrote Bourrienne, "posterity will judge him 
 by what he has achieved. He will have full 
 credit for his victories, but not for his con- 
 quests, which produced no result, and not one 
 of which he preserved. His claim to the title 
 of one of the greatest captains that ever lived 
 will be undisputed ; but he left France less than 
 when she was trusted to him, and less than she 
 had been left by Louis XIV. His brilliant cam- 
 paign in Italy gave Venice to Austria and the 
 Ionian Isles to England. His Egyptian expe- 
 dition gave Malta to the English, destroyed 
 our navy, and cost us 22,000 men. The civil 
 code is the only one of Bonaparte's legislative
 
 106 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 acts which can be sanctioned by philosophy and 
 reason. All his other laws were nnll, and rested 
 only on his existence. Did he, either as consul 
 or emperor, contribute to the happiness of 
 France ? Posterity will answer in the negative." * 
 This I judge to be a verdict that will stand. 
 The one benefaction to France or to the 
 world that it finds for credit, to offset the hor- 
 rible reckoning of death, misery, crime, and 
 wrong in the Corsican's bloody career, is the 
 code of law which bears his name. And how 
 much of that was his work? Even the project 
 of the codification of law was not his own. It 
 had been in the minds of the men of the Rev- 
 olution, but postponed by the commotions of 
 the time, till he had opportunity to take it up, 
 and commit it to a selected body of the ablest 
 jurists of France. Sometimes he presided at 
 their sittings, and is said to have surprised 
 them on occasions by the shrewdness and prac- 
 tical value of the suggestions he made. That 
 kind of contribution to such a work is precisely 
 what a mind like his, of electric quickness and 
 alertness, could make; but nothing that went 
 deep into the principles of law can have come 
 from him. He had no interest in the principles 
 ' Bourrienne, vol. i, pp. 394, 395.
 
 NAPOLEON: A PRODIGY 107 
 
 of things, no knowledge in matters that rest 
 upon principles, no faculty for dealing thought- 
 fully with them. The Code Napoleon, so called, 
 was Napoleon's work no farther than this: 
 that he had the intelligence to recognize a 
 need for it, and the power to have it done.* 
 
 I have said that he had no interest in the 
 principles of things, and no knowledge in mat- 
 ters that rest upon principles. This fact is very 
 marked in his attitude of mind toward eco- 
 nomic questions. He expressed it frankly in one 
 of his letters to Fouche, his minister of police, 
 — a notorious rascal, but a remarkably able 
 man. ^^ I have received," he wrote, ^*a farrago 
 which you have sent me on the subject of the 
 corn trade, and which is perfectly ridiculous. 
 It is mere political economists' chatter. . . . 
 These arguments are pitiful in themselves, but 
 they have one great drawback, — that of en- 
 couraging the commercial community to lec- 
 ture the government, to open discussion and 
 disturb men's minds. The administration has 
 nothing to do with political economy." ^ Thus 
 he scorned persistently all suggestions of eco- 
 nomic principle in the fiscal and commercial 
 
 * Pasquier, vol. i, p. 249. 
 KNew Letters, Julj 28, 1809.
 
 108 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 measures of his government, and pursued a 
 course of headstrong blundering in them, from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 Summing conclusions, it is to be said of 
 Napoleon that a more extraordinary man in 
 some respects has never appeared in the world ; 
 that no man ever scored on the face of the his- 
 tory of his own time a deeper, heavier, more 
 sanguinary mark; that no such deep mark was 
 ever effaced more completely when the pain, 
 the grief, the crimes and oppressions that 
 scored it were cured by the healing of the 
 years. Taken out of the imperial wrappings in 
 which he came to be vestured, and scrutinized 
 in his bare personality, as a man, the astonish- 
 ing Corsican is seen to be so dwarfed in soul, 
 so small and mean in the dispositions of his 
 feeling, so destitute of all nobility of nature, 
 that we cannot call him a Great Man without 
 defiling the idea.
 
 in 
 
 CROMWELL: IMPERFECT IN 
 GREATNESS
 
 in 
 
 CROMWELL: IMPERFECT IN GREATNESS 
 
 For the understanding of Oliver Cromwell, 
 and of the English regicide revolution in which 
 Cromwell bore the chief part, it is necessary 
 to have clear ideas of Puritanism. In its con- 
 sequences, and partly in its causes, the revo- 
 lution was a political one, but its animations 
 were supplied to it most powerfully by that 
 religious movement of the English mind, in the 
 seventeenth century, which underwent many 
 changes and divisions, but which remained 
 Puritanic through them all, according to the 
 original signification of the term. 
 
 The seeds of Puritanism were in the Pro- 
 testant appeal from the Church to the Bible, as 
 the sole depository of God's law, and 
 its root was in the feeling of an imme- ot pnntan- 
 diate, close personal relation and com- 
 munication between each devout soul and its 
 Creator, which came necessarily from that Bib- 
 lical faith. To look straightly to the Bible for 
 spiritual light and teaching, instead of taking 
 them secondarily, through a mediiun of inter-
 
 112 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 preting authority in the Church, led not only 
 to a new view of the Church, as the organ of 
 Christian faith and worship, but led also to a 
 new view of worship, and of all devotional 
 attitudes and exercises of the human spirit. 
 Priestly functions in worship, and the ritual, 
 the form and ceremony which go naturally with 
 sacerdotalism, were depreciated inevitably in 
 this, which came to be known in England as 
 the Puritan view. It was developed peculiarly 
 in England, partly by the seriousness of the 
 English character, and partly by circumstances 
 which gave a peculiar shaping to the outcome 
 of the English secession from Rome. That 
 secession had been controlled in the beginning 
 by an absolutely despotic king, who made it 
 an act of separation, simply, with nothing of 
 change in the Church excepting the substitu- 
 tion of himself for the Pope as its head. 
 
 The Church of England then created was 
 organized, like the Roman Church, under a 
 hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, and other 
 official clergy, and it adhered to a ritualized 
 or ceremonial worship, not much changed from 
 the ancient forms. Substantial departures in 
 doctrine were introduced under Edward VI 
 and Elizabeth, when the prayer-book of the
 
 CROMWELL 113 
 
 new Church was composed and Thirty-nine 
 Articles of a positive creed were affirmed and 
 prescribed; but, so far as sacerdotalism and cer- 
 emonious worship were concerned, there was 
 little concession to that simplifying demand 
 which arose naturally, as I have said, from 
 Protestant views. During the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth the demand had considerable Eng- 
 lish growth, and it was then that the name of 
 "Puritans" was acquired by those who made 
 it heard. Their want, as they described it, 
 was more purity of worship in the Church — 
 more of spirit, less of form. Generally, they 
 had no desire to alter the constitution of the 
 Church. 
 
 Though the influence of Calvin was be- 
 ginning to be felt strongly in England, his 
 scheme of presbyterian organization, to dis- 
 place the episcopal, was not taken up to an 
 important extent by the early Puritans, most 
 of whom were faithful to the communion of 
 their national Church and strove only for a re- 
 laxation of its liturgical forms. So far as the 
 Calvinistic constitution of Christian churches 
 was favored, and so far as congregational sep- 
 arateness was sought, those sectarist depar- 
 tures, of Presbyterians and Independents, can
 
 114 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 only be regarded as offshoots or branches of 
 one strenuous movement of religious feeling, 
 which takes a fitting name from the Puritans 
 of the Elizabethan age. 
 
 Puritanism was intensified peculiarly in Eng- 
 land by the persisting effort of the Crown and 
 The Purl- the hierarchy of the Church to put 
 tan Revolt. ^^ j^^^^ ^^^11^ Elizabeth lived the 
 
 Crown was practically omnipotent, and all re- 
 sistance to it was weak; but it lost half of 
 its prestige and strength when a foolish, 
 conceited, bad-mannered, and often ludicrous 
 king came from Scotland to represent it, and 
 made clumsy attempts to wield the sceptre of 
 the Tudors in their autocratic way. Then 
 everything touched oppressively by the royal 
 hand took courage to resist, and oppressed Pu- 
 ritanism was the quickest to be moved by the 
 spirit of revolt. Both political and religious 
 feeling rose slowly to the white heat of revolu- 
 tion, during forty years of provocation from 
 the first two Stuart kings; but the steadiest, 
 surest fermentation of it was always on the 
 spiritual side. Neither suppression of Parlia- 
 ment, nor lawless taxation, nor prostitution 
 of courts hardened the temper of the nation 
 so much as the ritualistic despotism of King
 
 CROMWELL 115 
 
 Charles and Archbishop Laud. The fact that 
 the real animus of revolution was in Puritan- 
 ism became plain when the crisis of civil war 
 was reached. Then those, like Falkland and 
 Hyde, who had opposed the King on political 
 grounds chiefly, went over to his support, and 
 the . party that took arms against him was es- 
 sentially Puritanic throughout. In the battle 
 years of the revolution no man came to any real 
 leadership on the parliamentary side who was 
 not actuated more profoundly by religious 
 than by political feelings and aims. With all 
 else that he embodied of personal genius and 
 power, Cromwell could never have borne the 
 part that he did in that great transaction if 
 he had not been a Puritan of Puritans, — the 
 perfected Puritan type. My wish is to show 
 what went to the making 'of that type. 
 
 The career of Oliver Cromwell, like that of 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, w^as opened to him by a 
 great upheaval which overturned an ancient 
 monarchy and slew its king. Like Napoleon, 
 he took the fallen sceptre into his own hands, 
 acquiring it, like Napoleon, by the prestige of 
 the soldier and the mandate of the sword. So 
 far, in the bare outlines of circumstance, the 
 parallel of their careers is exact ; but in every
 
 116 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 particular that gives a historic quality to the 
 men and a meaning to their lives they ran 
 divergent courses from first to last. The sur- 
 passing strength of both was in a surpass- 
 ingly energized and centred will, which car- 
 ried the lesser energies and weaker wills of 
 other men into strains of action that ran obe- 
 diently with theirs. Of character in common 
 between them there was nothing else. 
 
 But, before touching questions of quality 
 or character in Cromwell, it will be best, as in 
 the discussion of Napoleon, to recall the stage- 
 setting and the chief incidents of the nota- 
 ble drama in which his remarkable part was 
 performed. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell owed his family name, and 
 a little of the blood in his veins, to the an- 
 oromweu ccstry of Thomas Cromwell, the ill- 
 country famed minister of Henry VIII. A 
 Gentleman, sister of that wreckcr and robber of 
 monasteries married one Wilhams, a Welsh- 
 man, who dropped his own name to take his 
 wife's, transmitting it thereby to his great- 
 grandson, Oliver, and with it a strain of Celtic 
 blood which had influence, no doubt, in mat 
 ing Oliver Cromwell what he was. The lattei 
 sprang from a younger branch of the family
 
 CROMWELL 117 
 
 thus new-named, which had a modest but 
 substantial place among the gentry of Hun- 
 tingdonshire. He was born at Huntingdon, 
 not far from Cambridge, on the 25th of 
 April, 1599. He spent his boyhood and had 
 his schooling in that town, till his entrance to 
 Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge, which 
 occurred on the day of Shakespeare's death, — - 
 the 23d of April, 1616 ; a fact which led Car- 
 lyle to say impressively, in his introduction to 
 Cromwell's letters: ^'The first world -great 
 thing that remains of English History, the 
 Literature of Shakespeare, was ending; the 
 second world-great thing that remains of Eng- 
 lish History, the armed appeal of Puritan- 
 ism to the invisible God of Heaven, . . . was, 
 so to speak, beginning." Cromwell's college 
 matriculation, however, can hardly be thought 
 of as marking any point of beginning in his 
 career. He was a student at Cambridge for 
 only a year, when his father's death brought 
 him away, and there is no evidence that he 
 returned. It is not likely that he had any 
 taste for the student life, or would get muclf 
 from it. Tradition has it that he went to Lon 
 don and read law for a time, but the state- 
 ment is not proved. The next certain fact of
 
 118 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 his life is his marriage, which occurred in his 
 twenty - second year. Thereafter, for eleven 
 years, he farmed the small estate which his 
 father had left; then sold it and rented a 
 grazing farm at St. Ives, not far away. In 
 1636 he fell heir to some property from an 
 uncle, which carried with it the farming of 
 the cathedral tithes of Ely, and this led to his 
 removal to Ely, where he or his family resided 
 till his engagement in great affairs of the 
 nation took him and them into very different 
 scenes. 
 
 History has little knowledge of this plain 
 gentleman farmer of the Fen Country during 
 the first two thirds of his fifty-nine years of 
 life. In all that period he was a man as little 
 in the public eye as any of the kingdom, with- 
 in his modest class. Two or three brief let- 
 ters from his pen that have survived, and a 
 few very slight records or mentions of him in 
 contemporary writing, afford all the glimpses 
 of himself or his doings that the most search- 
 ing biographer has been able to catch. That 
 he won leadership among his neighbors quite 
 early is shown by the fact that they elected 
 him to parliament from Huntingdon in 1628, 
 he being then twenty-nine years of age.
 
 CROMWELL 119 
 
 It was the parliament which fairly opened 
 the long conflict with Charles I ; which passed 
 the famous Petition of Right, and af- inparua- 
 ter the dramatic dissolution of which "•**• 
 England had no parliament for eleven years. 
 We can be sure that Cromwell, as a member, 
 was with his cousin, John Hampden, and with 
 Eliot and Pym, and all the grand patriots of 
 that day, in his voting ; but his place in the 
 great council of the Commons was among the 
 silent and obscure. According to its jour- 
 nal he spoke but once, a few words only, to 
 call attention to a preaching of " flat popery," 
 as he styled it, at St. Paul's Cross. And so he 
 comes upon the stage of public life as a Puri- 
 tan, from the first. How much and in what 
 ways he helped, during the next eleven years, 
 to fan the kindling anger of the people in his 
 own district, while the king extorted *^ ship- 
 money," and Laud practiced his stupid tyranny 
 in the churches, and the flogging and ear- 
 cropping of good men were made familiar 
 spectacles in London, and some thousands of 
 disheartened Puritans went to exile on Massa- 
 chusetts Bay, we are not told ; but no temper 
 is likely to have been more fermentable than 
 his in those days, or more energetic in the dif-
 
 120 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 fusion of its heat. That he was naturally hot in 
 temper, and that it broke from him too readily 
 in early life, is beyond dispute. Once, in 1630, 
 he was taken to London under arrest, for un- 
 seemly wrathful ness in speech to the mayor 
 and aldermen of Huntingdon, concerning an 
 unpopular new charter they had procured. 
 Ten years later, when he sat in parliament 
 again, Mr. Hyde, afterward Earl of Clarendon, 
 acting as chairman of a committee which gave 
 a hearing to disputants from Cromwell's dis- 
 trict over an inclosure of common lands, had 
 an experience of that gentleman's passionate 
 rudeness of speech which he remembered to 
 describe with some bitterness in the history 
 that he wrote. But this hot blood in the man 
 was brought under resolute discipline at last, 
 by a will which mastered everything within 
 him and without. 
 
 In many ways he was a roughly fashioned 
 man; not coarse, by any means, — for much of 
 fine, sweet quality in him is plainly to be seen ; 
 but the surface-growth of character and man- 
 ner was rude, — made so, no doubt, by the 
 very simplicity and straightforward action of 
 the tremendous store of force in the man. He 
 was as careless of his personal appearance as
 
 CROMWELL 121 
 
 he was careless of polite ways. A fastidious 
 listener, who heard him speak in parliament a 
 little before the beginning of his greater ca- 
 reer, described him as being " very ordinarily 
 appareled/' with "linen not very clean/' his 
 " countenance swollen and reddish, his voice 
 sharp and untunable," "his eloquence full of 
 fervor," and observed that he "was much 
 hearkened to," which seems to have caused 
 this critical auditor some surprise. Thus homely 
 and inelegant he stands pictured to us, just as 
 Fame is summoning him to her temple, for 
 the laurel crown of heroic immortality and for 
 its stately robe. 
 
 The long interruption of constitutional gov- 
 ernment was ended by an outbreak of revolt, 
 not in England itself, but in Scotland, the 
 original Stuart realm. There, Calvinism and 
 the Presbyterian form of church government, 
 introduced at the Reformation by John Knox, 
 had become the very roots of the national faith, 
 and when Charles and Laud attempted to put 
 their clergy under bishops and to force a 
 prayer-book on their churches the Scots, by 
 thousands, signed a solemn national covenant 
 to defend their kirk and took arms to make 
 the covenant good. This Scottish revolt com-
 
 122 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 pelled the king to summon an English parlia* 
 ment, in the spring of 1640, and ask its help ; 
 but it showed a temper when it met that 
 alarmed him, and he dissolved it in three 
 weeks. For a few months longer he strove with 
 the Scots, trying to fight them with an army 
 which he could not pay, and was driven in 
 the end to face another English parliament 
 with another appeal. 
 
 This, the famous Long Parliament, which 
 ruled England for the next dozen years, came 
 together in November, 1640, and made haste, 
 with irresistible determination, to strip the 
 king of powers he had usurped and preroga- 
 tives he had abused : declaring its own indis- 
 solubility by any royal command ; annulling 
 the illegal doings of late years ; abolishing or 
 restricting the jurisdiction of tribunals which 
 had served the ends of despotism; sending 
 evil counselors of the king to the Tower, and 
 Strafford, the most feared among them, to the 
 headsman's block. Cromwell sat in this parlia- 
 ment, as he had done in the "Short Parlia- 
 ment " that preceded it, and unquestionably he 
 was active, but he had no prominence in its 
 work. In the great chapter of history that 
 was now being written, Pym, Hampden, Vane,
 
 CROMWELL 123 
 
 St. John, Falkland, Hyde, Hollis, were still 
 the conspicuous names. But CromwelFs day 
 of fame drew near. 
 
 For a time, Charles seemed to give way in 
 everything to the parliamentary attack, sign- 
 ing the bills which disarmed and humiliated 
 him, and withholding from Strafford the royal 
 protection he had promised ; but his scheming 
 mind was busy with plots and projects, which 
 led him finally, in January, 1642, to invade the 
 precincts of parliament with an armed retinue, 
 and attempt the seizure of five members who 
 had displeased him most. Warnings had 
 reached the threatened members and they had 
 escaped. London rose in arms to protect them, 
 and both parties to the conflict between king 
 and parliament began preparations for war. 
 
 At the present day it can be seen, as it 
 could not be seen at the time, that the ulti- 
 mate triumph of parliament in the 
 
 ^ , . , , . Cromwell 
 
 ensuing war was determined and m- ana "the 
 sured, practically, by Cromwell, and "" 
 by him almost solely, from the first hour that 
 preparations for an armed struggle began. 
 That result, for a long period of the war, de- 
 pended on local action in different parts of 
 the kingdom, far more than on the ineffective
 
 124 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 military administration which parliament was 
 able to organize ; and it was CromwelFs section 
 of England, led and stimulated, unquestion- 
 ably, by him, which inspirited the whole cause 
 from the first, giving examples of vigor and 
 lessons of efficiency in everything done. The 
 troop of horse which Cromwell raised and 
 captained at the outset imparted its quality to 
 the regiment which came under his command 
 in the early weeks of 1643 ; and in due time 
 that "Ironside" regiment became the model 
 on which the whole parliamentary army was 
 re-formed and transformed into an absolutely 
 invincible force. Nature had prepared this 
 farmer of the Fens, in mind, temper, and 
 power of will, to be a great soldier, and re- 
 ligion had specialized his preparation for the 
 particular war that was now to be fought. He 
 was quick to see what measureless fighting 
 energy could be embodied in a Puritan army, 
 if its faith were as firm and its zeal as ardent 
 in the ranks as in the command. He began at 
 once, as he related afterwards in a speech, 
 to enlist "such men as had the fear of God 
 before them, and made some conscience of 
 what they did," and, as he could add with 
 perfect truth, "they were never beaten, and
 
 CROMWELL 125 
 
 wherever they were engaged against the enemy 
 they beat continually." This was the winning 
 principle of the war. By Cromwell's example 
 and his urgency the army of parliament came 
 at last to be composed almost wholly of men 
 who " had the fear of God before them, and 
 made some conscience of what they did " ; and 
 its progress in victory was at the rate of its 
 advance toward that character, and of Crom- 
 well's advance in military rank and command. 
 
 But Cromwell did not put all trust in the 
 spirit of his men. He had the master soldier's 
 instinct for discipline and for training in the 
 use of arms. He took instruction for himself 
 and for his troops from old soldiers of the 
 Thirty Years' War. He is said to have caught 
 the ideas of Gustavus Adolphus, who is cred- 
 ited in military history with having given a 
 new value to the horse in war by new forma- 
 tions and a new handling of mounted troops. 
 Cromwell seems to have bettered the instruc 
 tions of the Swede, and to have made his cav- 
 alry a more formidable force in battle than 
 had ever been realized before. 
 
 I shall not trace the course of events in the 
 war, except to outline the work of Cromwell 
 and the successive steps of his rise to the sum-
 
 126 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 mit of military command and political power. 
 During the first year of the war he was but 
 The First ^ cavalry colonel, notably active and 
 Civil War. eucrgctic in the counties which had 
 formed a self-organized military district, styled 
 the Eastern Association, extending from Essey, 
 at the south to Lincoln at the north. His vig' 
 orous operations in this field drew such atten- 
 tion to himself and his small command that a 
 contemporary memoir dates "the beginning 
 of his great fortunes" from the later months 
 of that first year. Early in 1644 he was made 
 lieutenant-general of the forces of the East- 
 ern Association, under the Earl of Manches- 
 ter, and, in the summer following, at Marston 
 Moor, where he commanded a division of cav- 
 alry, he won the honors of the first great battle 
 and victory of the war. 
 
 The forces that fought the king at Mar- 
 ston Moor were partly from Scotland, English 
 and Scotch having now made common cause 
 against the oppressor of both. The northern 
 nation was far more united in its rebellion 
 than that of the south, and its assistance to 
 the English Puritans in their struggle had be- 
 come a vital need. To secure it, the latter 
 were forced to submit to a requirement on
 
 CROMWELL 127 
 
 the part of the Scots, that the "doctrine, 
 worship, discipline and government" of "the 
 Church of Scotland " — that is, the creed and 
 organization of Presbyterianism — should he 
 established in England and Ireland, and a 
 "Solemn League and Covenant" to that effect 
 was subscribed on both sides. This agree- 
 ment was acceptable to one large part of the 
 English Puritans, whose minds were friendly 
 to the plan of a reconstructed national church, 
 framed on Calvin's lines, but bitterly objec- 
 tionable to another large part, whose thought 
 and feeling were against the dictation by law 
 of any uniformity in creed and church. The 
 latter party, of Independents, was increasing, 
 and an increasing variety of sects was rising 
 in it, with no bond of unity except the de- 
 mand that all should have equal freedom to 
 form their churches and conduct their worship 
 as they wished. This opened a cleft in the 
 great Puritan party which had fatal results. 
 In parliament the Presbyterians predominated ; 
 in the army. Independency was rooted deeply 
 already, and was having a rapid growth. Crom- 
 well seems to have been slow in committing 
 himself fully to either side, and I believe that 
 he strove earnestly to avert the impending
 
 128 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 antagonism between parliament and army on 
 the question of religious uniformity and an 
 established church. With all his religious in- 
 tensity he had a broadly tolerant disposition 
 of mind, so far as concerned Puritan differ- 
 ences of opinion ; but his Christian toleration 
 went little beyond the Puritan line. In the 
 end, to save religious liberty for Puritanism, 
 he gave his powerful leadership to the Inde- 
 pendents, and made them masters of the army 
 and the state. 
 
 Meantime Cromwell, still serving in parlia- 
 ment as well as in the field, brought about a 
 remodeling of the army, to unify it, to give it 
 more earnest and energetic chief commanders, 
 and to fill it generally, as he had filled his own 
 regiments, with men who "had the fear of 
 God before them." To accomplish the change 
 of high ofiicers, parliament adopted a "self- 
 denying ordinance," so called, which incapa- 
 citated its own members for military command. 
 This retired the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Man- 
 chester, and some other generals who were sus- 
 pected of a lack of earnestness in the war, but 
 likewise it removed Cromwell, himself. His 
 withdrawal from the army, however, was very 
 brief. Sir Thomas Fairfax, appointed to be
 
 CROMWELL 129 
 
 commander in chief of the New Model Army 
 (April 1, 1645), demanded Cromwell for his 
 lieutenant-general, and the latter, with permis- 
 sion from parliament, returned to the field in 
 time to be the hero and the winner of the deci- 
 sive battle of Naseby (June 14, 1645), which 
 destroyed the hopes of the king. What is 
 known as the First Civil War was ended in the 
 following May, by the voluntary surrender of 
 the king to the army of the Scots. 
 
 Before this occurred, the covenant of par- 
 liament with the Scots had been fulfilled in a 
 measure, but not to the satisfaction supremacy 
 of the Presbyterians, either English ®' *^® ^"^y- 
 or Scotch. The Presbyterian system of church 
 government was established in England ex- 
 perimentally, for three years, in March, 1646 ; 
 but it took no root, and, though the authority 
 of the church assemblies was much limited, its 
 working, as a church establishment, just suf- 
 ficed to stiffen the intolerant aims of its sup- 
 porters and to harden the opposition of other 
 sects. 
 
 For nine months the king was in the cus- 
 tody of the Scots ; then, having received par- 
 tial payment for their service in England, they 
 gave him up to parliament and returned to
 
 130 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 their own land. Both Scotch and En owlish 
 leaders had labored vainly in this period to ar- 
 rive at some agreement with the stubborn yet 
 slippery intriguer, that would secure them, 
 religiously and politically, against his former 
 practices of absolutism, if they restored his 
 throne. The English were still patient in the 
 same useless parleying with their captive king 
 for nearly two years more. He thought that 
 the widening rupture between Independents 
 and Presbyterians — between army and par- 
 liament — would make him master of the sit- 
 uation, and he played a game of double 
 dealing with both. Elections to fill vacancies 
 in parliament (with royalists disfranchised) 
 had reinforced the Presbyterians, and they 
 overestimated their strength. They dealt fatu- 
 ously with the army, offering trifles of pay on 
 a long score of arrears, while planning the dis- 
 bandment of some regiments, the sending of 
 others to Ireland, and treating army petitions 
 with angry contempt. The army, on its side, 
 became defiant of the authority of parliament, 
 and acts of mutiny and violence were begun. 
 The regiments ordered to Ireland refused to 
 go. A troop of horse, sent by nobody knows 
 whom, took the king from his parliamentary
 
 CROMWELL * 131 
 
 custodians, in June, 1647, and the soldiery, 
 thenceforward, controlled his fate. A little 
 later a peremptory demand went to parliament 
 from the army, that eleven of the Presbyterian 
 leaders of the Commons should be ejected 
 from their seats, and the eleven felt con- 
 strained to withdraw. This excited an insur- 
 rection in London, where Presbyterianism 
 prevailed ; parliament was invaded by a mob, 
 and the speakers of both houses, with many 
 members, left the city, taking refuge with the 
 army, which had drawn near to the town. 
 Then the army, led by Fairfax, brought them 
 back, entering the capital in imposing proces- 
 sion, and establishing itself there as the mas- 
 ter power in the state. And now, as such, it 
 assumed the character of a self-organized po- 
 litical body, by the formation within it of a 
 representative council, composed of certain 
 general officers in conjunction with four depu- 
 ties from each regiment, two chosen from its 
 officers and two from the ranks. 
 
 This organization of antagonisms in the great 
 Puritan party gave good reason to the king 
 for thinking that large opportunities were 
 being opened to himself. With sense and hon- 
 esty he might have made much of them ; by
 
 132 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 follies and falsities he threw them away. Crom- 
 well headed a party in the army which still 
 believed that the best settlement of things in 
 the distracted country might be found in some 
 agreement with Charles, and he persisted in 
 negotiations to that end, though the army in 
 general stood in bitter opposition to his course. 
 He found at last, as every one found who dealt 
 with Charles, that no conclusive agreement 
 and binding contract was attainable, by any 
 possibility, with that faithless and shifty- 
 minded schemer. While the parleyings were 
 in progress the king escaped from Hampton 
 Court, his place of custody, hoping, appar- 
 ently, to make his way to France ; but his 
 flight ended at Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle 
 of Wight, where he became a prisoner again. 
 There was now a rapid thickening of con- 
 fusions in the whole state of affairs, with the 
 The Second Tcsult, at last, of a rcopcning of civil 
 TlToDMm^ war- The king had enlisted the Scots 
 the King, in iiig behalf, by consenting to estab- 
 lish Presbyterian ism in England for three 
 years if he was restored to his throne, and a 
 Scottish army crossed the border in July, 
 1648, to cooperate with royalist risings in 
 England and Wales. Fairfax crushed the roy-
 
 CROMWELL 133 
 
 alists in the southeast, while Cromwell made 
 short work of their rebellion in Wales. The 
 latter then hastened northward to meet the 
 invading Scots, whose army, more than double 
 his own, he destroyed in three days of battle 
 and pursuit (August 17-19, 1648), beginning 
 near Preston, from which the fight takes its 
 name. This was the first battle in which 
 Cromwell held supreme command, and critics 
 rank it high among the masterpieces of mili- 
 tary skill. It left little to be done for the fin- 
 ishing of the Second Civil War. 
 
 The royalist rising had failed, but it had 
 brought to the surface and disclosed a very 
 formidable growth of public feeling against 
 the dominating military party, Ly^d favorable 
 to some arrangement for the restoration of the 
 king. The English Presbyterians, while un- 
 friendly, as a rule, to the Scottish interfer- 
 ence, had become inclined to make common 
 cause with Charles ; and their representatives 
 in parliament were encouraged to act again 
 with a bold hand. They passed persecuting 
 ordinances, which struck at many opinions 
 entertained in the various Independent or 
 Congregational sects, and they reopened ne- 
 gotiations with the king. By the time that the
 
 134 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 men of the army had returned to quarters 
 from the Second Civil War, they found a po- 
 litical coalition of Presbyterians and royalists 
 against them, with the destruction of their 
 leaders and the suppression of their religious 
 independency most surely decreed. They sent 
 up a great remonstrance, and parliament re- 
 fused it even respectful consideration. 
 
 Then came a sharp cutting of knotted tan- 
 gles in the situation, by the soldier's sword 
 and the headsman's axe. On the first day of 
 December the king was taken suddenly by a 
 body of officers from Carisbrooke Castle and 
 lodged more securely in Hampshire. On the 
 second day the army was marched again into 
 London. On the sixth and seventh a regiment 
 commanded by Colonel Pride surrounded 
 Westminster Hall and arrested or excluded 
 about a hundred of those members of parlia- 
 ment who had figured most in its recent work. 
 By this " Pride's Purge," as it was styled, the 
 Long Parliament, which began a noble career 
 in 1640, was cut down to the fraction known 
 ignobly in history as "The Rump." 
 
 One of the first proceedings of The Rump 
 was responsive to a demand from the army 
 that justice should be done to the king, as the
 
 CROMWELL 135 
 
 guilty author of the civil war. On charges of 
 treason he was brought to trial before a High 
 Court, created by the appointment of one hun- 
 dred and thirty-five commissioners, of whom 
 no more than sixty-nine were ever present at 
 the sittings of the court. The trial was opened 
 in Westminster Hall on the 20th of January, 
 1649, and closed on the 27th, when a sentence 
 of death was pronounced. The sentence was 
 executed three days later, on a scaffold erected 
 at the front of the palace of Whitehall. 
 
 From the first of the preceding May, when 
 Cromwell went off to the field of his campaigns 
 in the Second Civil War, down to the evening 
 of the day on which parliament was " purged" 
 of Presbyterianism by Colonel Pride, little is 
 known of Cromwell's agency or influence in 
 what was done on the political side of events. 
 Some things in his letters of that period go to 
 show that he shared a rising disposition in the 
 army to assert and exercise authority in itself 
 against parliament ; but whether he did or did 
 not give any kind of direction to what was done 
 in the southern parts of the island while he 
 was in the north, is quite unknown. Pride's 
 work of "purging" was in progress when he 
 reentered London, after the absence of seven
 
 136 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 months. In one of the memoirs of the time 
 he is reported to have said that " he had not 
 been acquainted with this design, yet, since it 
 was done, he was glad of it, and would en- 
 deavor to maintain it." That he approved and 
 maintained it is certain; but in this matter, 
 and in many other doings of his party that 
 have been laid to his personal account, it 
 seems probable that he merely accepted and 
 made the best of what he had no personal 
 agency in bringing about. He was singularly 
 disposed, I think, to accept the movement of 
 events, and go with it in his own action, in- 
 stead of exercising the mastery that is com- 
 monly supposed; and this accepting disposi- 
 tion, which I wish to consider later on, supplies 
 to my mind the true key to his character and 
 career. 
 
 Taking his seat in the Rump Parliament, 
 Cromwell bore a part in its proceedings against 
 the king; but apparently it was not a leading 
 part. In his one reported utterance, when the or- 
 dinance creating the High Court was discussed, 
 he said: "Since the providence of God and 
 necessity hath cast this upon us, I shall pray 
 God to bless our counsels, though I be not 
 provided on the sudden to give you counsel."
 
 CROMWELL 137 
 
 This can only mean that he took counsel, ra- 
 ther than gave it, on the grave question before 
 the house. But when it had been decided that 
 the king should be tried for his crimes against 
 the nation, and Cromwell was called to sit 
 among the judges, then the courage in him 
 that never flinched and the spirit that knew 
 no swerving took their inevitable leadership, 
 in determining the doom of the man who had 
 made himself a problem which nothing but 
 his death could solve. 
 
 The wreck of constitutional government in 
 England had now left nothing but a small, sifted 
 remnant of the House of Commons, 
 
 Oromwell's 
 
 elected more than eight years before, campaign 
 to act with assumed authority in the 
 national name. "Yet this little band of men 
 assumed to be, not merely a true house of 
 commons — one branch of a true parliament 
 — but a full and complete government for 
 ^the Commonwealth of England,' as the state 
 was now described. It abolished the house of 
 lords as ^useless and dangerous,' and Hhe of- 
 fice of a king' as ^unnecessary, burdensome 
 and dangerous'; and so it boldly took all the 
 functions of government into its own hands." 
 For executive action a council of state, which
 
 138 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 differed little from a parliamentary committee, 
 was appointed, and Cromwell, of course, was 
 n its membership. For active support this new 
 rovernment had not even the full streno^th of 
 the Independents to depend upon, nor even 
 the army as a whole. The Levellers (followers 
 of the radical agitator, John Lilburne) were a 
 trouble to it from first to last. But, for a time 
 at least, the Commonwealth had a passive sup- 
 port in the country at large which made it 
 strong. It is the opinion of Professor Gardi- 
 ner, the most candid and careful of the histo- 
 rians of the period, that " for every hundred 
 convinced royalists or republicans there were 
 at least a thousand who were ready to accept 
 whatever government was actually in exist- 
 ence, rather than risk disturbance of the peace 
 by a fresh civil war." ^ 
 
 If England was tolerant of the self-consti- 
 tuted government which had transformed the 
 ancient kingdom into a nominal Common- 
 wealth, Scotland and Ireland were not dis- 
 posed to leave her in passive submission to it. 
 Both countries were offering conditions to the 
 late king's elder son, Charles, on which they 
 would support his claims to the English throne. 
 ^ History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate^ vol. i, p. 281.
 
 CROMWELL 139 
 
 These threatenings gave Cromwell his final 
 military tasks. Between midsummer in 1649 
 and the spring of 1650 he crushed the Irish 
 combination of Catholic and Protestant roy- 
 alists in a horribly merciless campaign. The 
 savage massacres which he personally ordered 
 at Drogheda and permitted at Wexford have 
 left a stain on his memory too black to be 
 effaced by his own defense of them, — that 
 they would tend to prevent the future effu- 
 sion of blood, by their terrorizing effect. The 
 campaign in Scotland, following closely upon 
 that in Ireland, was the crowning of Crom- 
 well's military career. At the beginning he 
 seemed to be outmanoeuvred by the Scottish 
 general, David Leslie, and was forced into a 
 dangerous position at Dunbar; but he caught 
 a moment of opportunity for so deadly a stroke 
 at the beleaguering enemy that they were ut- 
 terly routed and half destroyed (September 3, 
 1650). This, however, did not end the war. 
 The Scotch, after exacting from Charles 11 
 a solemn oath to uphold the Presbyterian 
 Church in their own country and to force it 
 on England and Ireland, had crowned him 
 king at Scone, and he had established his 
 court and government at Perth, under Leslie's
 
 140 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 protection, which Cromwell was not able to 
 overcome till the summer of 1651. Then Les- 
 lie and the young king, dislodged from Perth 
 and Stirling, took what seemed to be the only 
 course left them, and led their army boldly 
 into England, with the hope of being joined 
 by hosts of royalists as they advanced. Crom- 
 well had foreseen the movement and prepared 
 for it. As the Scots marched down the west- 
 ern side of the island he followed by the east- 
 ern i-oute, gathering forces on the way. When 
 they reached Worcester he was in their path, 
 and there, on the 3d of September exactly 
 one year after Dunbar, he finished his military 
 work. He had no more battles to fight. 
 
 When Cromwell returned from the field of 
 
 war to the seat of government, his rank, no 
 
 less than his personal prestio^e, made 
 
 Cromwell , . • n i i i r. i 
 
 the Head of uim practically the head ot the state. 
 In the previous year, after the Irish 
 campaign, he had been appointed Captain- 
 General and Commander-in-Chief of all the 
 forces of the Commonwealth, and as such he 
 overtopped every other existing functionary of 
 government in official rank. This cast upon 
 him, almost necessarily, and without presump- 
 tuousness on his own part, the responsible in-
 
 CROMWELL 141 
 
 itiative of action in all that was subsequently 
 done. The fact is one to be borne in mind. 
 It is true that his chieftainship was commis- 
 sioned more validly by the qualities of force 
 and courage which made him a born leader of 
 men ; but there is nothing to show that he ever 
 acted on that authority alone. Undoubtedly 
 his influence over parliament and in the coun- 
 cil of state, during the last year and a half of 
 the Commonwealth, was very great, but not 
 to a controlling degree. He opposed, for ex- 
 ample, the opening of war with the Dutch, re- 
 garded it always with impatience, and ended 
 it as soon as he had power. It is most prob- 
 able, but not certain, that he strove to broaden 
 the bases on which a measure of religious 
 freedom was established, and could not suc- 
 ceed. 
 
 On one question he did take the peremptory 
 and decisive lead ; and that concerned the dis- 
 solution of the Rump and the election of a 
 ^^new representative" to take its place. For 
 months that worn-out remnant of the Long 
 Parliament had dalHed exasperatingly with de- 
 mands from the army and the public, that it 
 provide for some kind of a new election, and 
 dissolve itself. Nobody in the dominant party
 
 142 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 thought of venturing a free election ; but the 
 hope was entertained that judicious restric- 
 tions of the suffrage might bring forth a par- 
 liament that would be true to the Common- 
 wealth, while commanding a fair measure of 
 respect. This did not accord with the views of 
 the gentlemen of the Rump, who proposed an 
 election for no more than the filling of vacant 
 seats. Cromwell tried to reconcile the dis- 
 agreement by a meeting of leaders on the two 
 sides of the question at his rooms. They parted 
 with the understanding that they would meet 
 again, and that nothing should be done mean- 
 time with the pending elections bill. Next 
 morning, however, Cromwell learned that a 
 quorum of parliament had assembled very early 
 and was pushing the bill through. Thereupon 
 he hastened in wrath to the house, with a 
 guard of soldiers following, and after a speech 
 of violent denunciation, called his musketeers 
 in and ordered the chamber to be cleared. As 
 the members passed out he cried to them : " It 
 is you that have forced me to this, for I have 
 sought the Lord night and day that He would 
 rather slay me than put me on the doing of 
 this work." 
 
 The expulsion of the Rump was followed
 
 CROMWELL 143 
 
 by the dissolution of the council of state, and 
 no governing authority remained but that — 
 purely military — of "the Captain- holis- 
 General and Commander-in-Chief of R^^p^^. 
 the Forces of the Commonwealth." ^"^^^ 
 He protested, with evident sincerity, that it 
 was repugnant to him, and he attempted to re- 
 constitute a civil government for the nation in 
 a strange way. Instead of instituting a new 
 parliament by even a limited election, he sum- 
 moned a select body of one hundred and forty 
 " persons fearing God," chosen partly by him- 
 self and a council of officers, but nominated in 
 large part by the Congregational churches of 
 the country. These were to take upon them- 
 selves " the great charge and trust " of pro- 
 viding for " the peace, safety and good govern- 
 ment" of the Commonwealth. Their assembly 
 was an experiment on the theory of the so- 
 called Fifth Monarchy Men of the time, who 
 claimed that the day had come for the setting 
 up of the Kingdom of Jesus and the reign of 
 the saints — the fifth and last of the great 
 monarchies of the world. Cromwell had re- 
 jected their doctrine, and yet he yielded to 
 them in this critical experiment, — which 
 failed. The assembly of God-fearing men
 
 144 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 proved utterly without knowledge for the work 
 which it did not hesitate to undertake, and its 
 speaker did the nation a good service when he 
 ended its session abruptly, in an arbitrary way 
 (December 10, 1653). 
 
 Thus absolute power returned to Cromwell 
 again. And now he accepted from his council 
 B„,-- — of officers a written constitution which 
 
 Rules as 
 
 LordProtec- lia(j \)qqjx under discussion for some 
 
 torolthe i mi • i mi x 
 
 Common- mouths. This, kuown as " The In- 
 strument of Government," placed 
 " the chief magistracy and the administration " 
 in a person to be styled "Lord Protector of 
 the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and 
 Ireland," and it provided for the summoning 
 of a parliament (of one house) in which the 
 three countries should be represented. The 
 powers of the Lord Protector were limited not 
 only by those of parliament, but by the func- 
 tions of a council, which he was not free in 
 choosing, but whose advice in most matters he 
 was required to take. " Oliver Cromwell, Cap- 
 tain-General," was named in the Instrument as 
 Lord Protector "for his life"; his successors 
 to be chosen by the council. 
 
 A parliament elected, as prescribed in the 
 Instrument, by persons who had not "aided,
 
 CROMWELL 145 
 
 advised, assisted or abetted in any war against 
 the parliament since the first day of January, 
 1641," came together on the 3d of Septem- 
 ber, 1654, and gave trouble to the new gov- 
 ernment before the end of a week. There 
 appeared to be a republican majority, which 
 began at once to question the very Instrument 
 under which it was convened, proposing to 
 discuss "whether the house should approve 
 of government by a single person and parlia- 
 ment." Cromwell put a sharp check on this 
 movement, by requiring the members to sign 
 a pledge " not to alter the government as 
 settled in a single person and a parliament." 
 Those who would not sign were dismissed. 
 Those who did sign kept an attitude of hos- 
 tility to the Protector, and he dissolved the 
 parliament as soon as the Instrument gave 
 him authority to do so (January 22, 1655). 
 
 Then followed a period of really absolute 
 military rule, exercised, not by the Protector 
 alone, but by the Protector and his council, 
 which seems to have shared authority with 
 him to the full extent prescribed in the Instru- 
 ment of Government. Otherwise, that consti- 
 tutional document had little force. In this 
 period of twenty months the government had
 
 146 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 to deal with many conspiracies, insurrections, 
 and hostile combinations, not only of Cava- 
 liers, but of Levellers, Fifth Monarchy Men, 
 and other factions into which the old Puritan 
 party of the civil war was now broken up. 
 Furthermore, it had undertaken an energetic 
 use, in foreign waters, of the strong naval 
 force which Vane, in the late Commonwealth 
 government, had organized, and which Blake 
 and Monk had made famous and formidable 
 in the war with the Dutch. It had acted vigor- 
 ously against the Barbary pirates ; interfered 
 with effect to stop the massacre of Walden- 
 sian Protestants in Piedmont; opened war 
 with Spain to secure freedom for English- 
 men from the Inquisition, and an entrance for 
 English shipping into the West Indian trade ; 
 and it had raised England to a new standing 
 among the European powers. For the stren- 
 uous work which these circumstances re- 
 quired it used military methods and military 
 force. It resorted to what Cromwell de- 
 scribed later as " a little poor invention," 
 dividing England and Wales into a dozen mil- 
 itary districts, each under a major-general, 
 whose duty was not only to preserve order by 
 summary means, but to exact one tenth of the
 
 CROMWELL 147 
 
 unnual income of all disaffected persons, as an 
 arbitrary tax. 
 
 This military government proved effective 
 enough in preserving public order, but its 
 hatef ulness to the nation became so plain that 
 a new parliament was summoned in the sum- 
 mer of 1656. The major-generals of the gov- 
 ernment used all possible influence to prevent 
 the election to it of troublesome men, and 
 yet nearly a hundred of the members elect 
 were excluded from the house when it met, on 
 various grounds. Among the early doings of 
 the new parliament was the rejection of a bill 
 to legalize and continue the authority of the 
 major-generals. This seemed to be an act of 
 independence ; but the army found reason to 
 suspect that it was prompted by Cromwell 
 himself. His state of mind, his purposes, his 
 agency in occurrences then and after, are all 
 obscure and much in dispute. It seems not 
 improbable that he tried, privately, to break 
 the government in some degree from its close 
 connection with the army, and to obtain for 
 it a constitutional basis not derived, as the 
 Instrument of Government had been, from the 
 army circle. Therefore, some instigation from 
 him may have started and stimulated a discus-
 
 148 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 sion in parliament which began in the mid- 
 winter of 1657 and went on for four months, 
 resulting in the formulation and acceptance of 
 what was known as " The Humble Petition 
 and Advice." 
 
 Originally this instrument contemplated a 
 change of title in the chief magistrate, from 
 Lord Protector to King. Those who argued 
 for the royal title were undoubtedly right in 
 saying that it bore prerogatives that were in- 
 terwoven with the whole body of English law, 
 and that it commanded a deference from the 
 mass of the people which no other title would 
 receive. It was an argument that must have 
 weighed in Cromwell's mind, and may easily 
 have inclined him to the proffered crown, 
 more than personal ambition could have done. 
 The same proposal of kingship, on the same 
 grounds of reasoning, had been made by the 
 framers of the Instrument of Government, 
 and then he had put it aside. Now, it seems 
 certain that he was prepared to accept, and 
 would have done so if the republican opposi- 
 tion in the army had not assumed a startling 
 tone. As it was, he declared finally and posi- 
 tively : " I cannot undertake this government 
 with the title of king," and was re-installed
 
 CROMWELL 149 
 
 with great ceremony as Lord Protector under 
 the new law (June 26, 1657). His functions 
 and powers, however, were intended to be 
 substantially those of a constitutional king. 
 He was given the right to name his successor, 
 and the further right to name the life-members 
 of a body now created by the new constitution, 
 to be a substitute for the defunct House of 
 Lords. 
 
 It was this " other house," for which no fit- 
 ting official name could be found, that brought 
 the new scheme of government to speedy 
 wreck. It seemed a travesty of the House of 
 Lords. Its powers were ill-defined and wide- 
 opened to dispute. In selecting its members 
 the Protector had drawn away from the com- 
 mons his strongest supporters, while admit- 
 ting to that body those unfriendly members 
 whom he had shut out before. The result was 
 a powerful majority of the House of Com- 
 mons in deadly opposition to the government, 
 denying to the " other house " any share in 
 legislation, and implacably determined to em- 
 barrass the Protector by every means in their 
 power. For a single fortnight, in January and 
 the beginning of February, 1658, the two 
 houses of the reconstructed parliament sat
 
 150 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 and gave pitiable proof of a hopeless situa« 
 tion ; then the Protector appeared before them 
 and pronounced their dissolution. 
 
 If anything could daunt the soul of Crom- 
 well, he must have shrunk with dread from the 
 His Last prospect that confronted him then, 
 Days. when every attempt at government 
 by less than sheer dictatorship had failed. 
 Happily for him, the troubles it stored would 
 soon be for others to bear. He had but seven 
 more months of life. They were months of 
 sore public trial, of private affliction, then of 
 sickness and death, which came to him on the 
 3d of September, the anniversary of Dunbar 
 and Worcester, the two great victories which 
 had closed his military career. 
 
 And, now, with what feeling shall we think 
 
 of this man, whose death gave an ignoble 
 
 triumph to ignoble enemies ; whose 
 
 The Two . 
 
 Views oi grave they violated, whose memory 
 romwe . ^j^^^ blackened in history? Shall we 
 think of him as they did, that he was the 
 meanest of hypocrites, the falsest of cunning 
 adventurers, the most self-seeking of despots? 
 or shall we think with Carlyle, who valued 
 him '^ above all other sorts of men"? I doubt 
 if any of us can go even nearly to either one
 
 CROMWELL 151 
 
 or the other extremity of these opposing views. 
 But here, if anywhere in history, is a case that 
 calls for the use of such definite principles of 
 judgment as I have proposed to apply in the 
 estimating of exceptional men. Let me bring 
 them to bear, as briefly as I can. 
 
 Firstly, then, we have to take account of 
 the kind and quality of the endowments that 
 grave Cromwell the power to do what „ 
 
 ^ . ^ . . Estimate of 
 
 he did, and then to find, if possible, HisEndow- 
 — not by guess, but by clear dis- 
 closure, the motives that actuated and the 
 purposes that gave direction to his course. As 
 to the fundamental sources of power in him, 
 they are as unmistakable as in Napoleon, or 
 in any other of the greater soldiers and com- 
 manders of men. Inexhaustible springs of an 
 abnormal personal force, partly of the spirit 
 and partly of the flesh ; an unflinching courage 
 and fortitude of the same twofold strength ; 
 an alert, watchful, practical mind, quick to 
 realize situations of circumstance, prompt to 
 discern opportunity, and ready in fitting means 
 to ends : — bring these gifts of power to an 
 adequate service, in an adequate field, and the 
 inevitable product is a greatly victorious sol- 
 dier, or a greatly dominant political chief, or
 
 152 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 both. So far there is close likeness between 
 ,Cromwell and Napoleon ; so far they are men 
 of the same extraordinary breed ; so far, too, 
 Cromwell takes the lower rank. But that rank- 
 ing is reversed when we come to consider the 
 difference of motive in the two men. 
 
 In Napoleon we found unmistakable reve- 
 lations of motive concentrated, from the be- 
 His Motives ginning to the end of his career, in 
 of Action.- ambitions that were selfish, vulsrar, 
 
 sincerity ol . ? & ? 
 
 wsReii- and barbaric. In Cromwell, the rev- 
 elation is just as clear to my mind or 
 motives that sprang purely and almost entirely 
 from the absoluteness and the fervor of his re- 
 ligious beliefs. It was in the service of the Lord 
 that he fought, and in the service of the Lord 
 that he took on himself the heavy burdens 
 of the state. That conviction is borne in on me 
 when I read his letters and speeches, significant 
 in little and eloquent in nothing but the al- 
 ways insisting desire to trace signs of divine 
 leading or assistance in what he and his soldiers 
 and his party have done. They have the ring 
 of sincerity; they are not cant, as the careless 
 judgment of former times pronounced them. 
 The whole mind and heart of the man was in 
 the belief they express. It was a belief not
 
 CROMWELL 163 
 
 easy for tlie present generation to understand. 
 Generally, in the religious thought of our 
 time, there is a conception of the divine govern- 
 ment of the world which differs very greatly 
 from that which Cromwell and his fellow Pu- 
 ritans entertained. In their thought it was not 
 so much a government determined from the 
 beginning by a divine wisdom exercised in 
 fixed forces and laws, as it was a government 
 conducted from hour to hour, and from event 
 to event, by an always watchful divine eye and 
 an always acting divine hand. In Cromwell's 
 profoundest belief God's relation to the Puri- 
 tans of the English conflict was identical with 
 His relation to the Children of Israel in olden 
 time. Every Scripture word addressed to Is- 
 rael was equally a message to them. They were 
 His people. They were upholding His cause. 
 Their antagonists were His enemies. When 
 they pleased Him He gave them success, and 
 the glory was His; it was proof of His displea- 
 sure if reverses or discouragements came. The 
 whole course of events was a succession of 
 "providences," to be studied, like a chart of 
 divine signals, for the discovery of passing 
 dispositions in the mind of God. Expressions 
 of this behef break constantly from Cromwell,
 
 154 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 in every account of his battles, in every speech 
 he made to parliament, and in most of his let- 
 ters to his friends. After the battle of Mars- 
 ton Moor he wrote: "It had all the evidences 
 of an absolute victory obtained by the Lord*s 
 blessing upon the Godly party principally. We 
 never charged them but we routed the enemy. 
 . . , God made them as stubble to our swords." 
 In reporting the capture of Bristol to the 
 speaker of parliament he wrote : " They that 
 have been employed in this service know that 
 faith and prayer obtained this city for you." 
 To his mind the battle of Dunbar was an abso- 
 lute and final decision, by the judgment of 
 God, of questions between the English Inde- 
 pendents and the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk. 
 "The Lord hath heard us," he declared to the 
 ministers of the Kirk, who had shut them- 
 selves up, with the garrison, in Edinburgh 
 Castle, and would not accept his invitation to 
 come down to their pulpits and preach, — " the 
 Lord hath heard us, though you would not, 
 upon as solemn an appeal as any experience 
 can parallel." They answered coldly that they 
 had "not so learned Christ as to hang the 
 equity of their cause upon events." This was 
 rank blasphemy to Cromwell, and he cried
 
 CROMWELL 155 
 
 again to the preachers in stern expostulation : 
 ^' Did not you solemnly appeal and pray ? Did 
 not we do so too? And ought not you and we 
 to think, with fear and trembling, of the hand 
 of the Great God in this mighty and strange 
 appearance of His, instead of slightly calling 
 it an ^ event'? Were not both your and our 
 expectations renewed from time to time, whilst 
 we waited upon God, to see which way He 
 would manifest Himself upon our appeals? 
 And shall we, after all these our prayers, fast- 
 ings, tears, expectations and solemn appeals, 
 call these bare ^events' ? The Lord pity you." 
 
 Even in the horrid massacre at Drogheda, 
 which came from a rare outbreak of barbaric 
 battle-rage in himself, he could see a divine 
 purpose, as he wrote, to save in the future 
 " much effusion of blood, through the good- 
 ness of God." As for the slaughter at Wex- 
 ford, he laid the responsibility upon the Lord 
 with no reserve. He himself, he wrote to 
 Speaker Lenthall, had intended " better to the 
 place than so great a ruin" ; but " God would 
 not have it so." 
 
 So, in all the conflict, he was looking con- 
 tinually for signs of the immediate, present 
 hand of God. In all his correspondence he is
 
 156 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 forever stimulating his colleagues and friends 
 to be watchful of the wonderful "provi- 
 dences " of the time^ and to see them as he sees 
 them, and to take their meaning as he does. 
 The providential influence that he recognizes 
 so unquestioningly, consults so assiduously, 
 and strives faithfully to be guided by, is not 
 only traced by him in the turn of battles, but 
 equally in the movements of feeling and opin- 
 ion among those whom he held to be " God's 
 people.' ' This appears very plainly in one of 
 the most remarkable of his letters, written in 
 November, 1648, when the army had reached 
 the state of mind which led to " Pride's Purge " 
 of parliament and to the trial of the king. 
 Cromwell wrote then to his friend Colonel 
 Kobert Hammond, the commandant of Caris- 
 brooke Castle, who was in grave doubt as to 
 the leading of duty, if civil and military au- 
 thority were broken apart. " My dear friend," 
 wrote Cromwell to him, "let us look into 
 providences ; surely they mean somewhat. 
 They hang so together; have been so con- 
 stant, so clear, so unclouded. . . . What think 
 you of Providence disposing so many of God's 
 people this way, — especially in this poor 
 army ? "
 
 CROMWELL 157 
 
 This disposition of mind was not peculiar 
 to Cromwell ; it was common in his party, — 
 especially so in the army of his creation ; but 
 one can hardly doubt that much of the deeper 
 inspiration of it came from him. There is 
 nothing in the history of the time more sig- 
 nificant or more interesting than the account 
 of an extraordinary prayer-meeting held by 
 the army leaders at Windsor, early in the 
 year 1648. This was a little before the out- 
 breaking of what is called the Second Civil 
 War, when a Scottish army crossed the border 
 to assist royalist risings in England and Wales. 
 The captive king Charles had been the centre 
 of parley ings and intrigues through all the 
 year past ; parliament and army had been 
 drifting into antagonism, more and more ; the 
 distractions of the situation increased from 
 day to day. Thereupon a considerable body 
 of leading .officers in the army agreed to meet 
 at Windsor Castle for a season of prayer, and 
 for inquiry into the causes of what they de- 
 scribed to themselves as " that sad dispensa- 
 tion." One of the officers who took part, Ad- 
 jutant Allen by name, wrote the story of that 
 prayer-meeting with great earnestness of faith, 
 and it is found among the Somers Tracts.
 
 158 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 On the second morning of the meeting, as 
 Allen tells us, " many spake from the Word 
 and prayed; and the then Lieutenant-General 
 Cromwell did press very earnestly on all there 
 present to a thorough consideration of our 
 actions as an army, and of our ways particu- 
 larly as private Christians ; to see if any ini- 
 quity could be found in them, and what it 
 was, that if possible we might find it out, and 
 so remove the cause of such sad rebukes as 
 were upon us (by reason of our iniquities as 
 we judged) at that time. And the way more 
 particularly the Lord led us to herein was 
 this : To look back and consider what time it 
 was when, with joint satisfaction, we could 
 last say, to the best of our judgment, the 
 presence of the Lord was amongst us, and 
 rebukes and judgments were not as then upon 
 us. Which time the Lord led us jointly to 
 find out and agree in ; and having done so 
 to proceed, as we then judged it our duty, to 
 search into all our public actions as an army 
 afterwards ; duly weighing (as the Lord helped 
 us) each of them, with their grounds, rules 
 and ends, as near as we could. ... By which 
 means we were, by a gracious hand of the 
 Lord, led to find out the very steps (as we
 
 CROMWELL 159 
 
 were all then jointly convinced) by which we 
 had departed from the Lord and provoked 
 Him to depart from us. Which we found to 
 be those cursed carnal conferences [which] 
 our own conceited wisdom, our fears and want 
 of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to 
 entertain with the king and his party. . . . 
 Presently we were led and helped to a clear 
 agreement amongst ourselves, not any dissent- 
 ing, that it was the duty of our day, with the 
 forces we had, to go out and fight against 
 those potent enemies [namely, Scotch, Irish 
 and English allies of King Charles] which 
 that year, in all places, appeared against us. 
 . . . And we were also enabled then, after 
 serious seeking His face, to come to a very 
 clear and joint resolution," — which was to 
 the effect that, after dealing with the royalist 
 rebellions of that year, it would be their duty 
 "to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood,*' 
 to an account. 
 
 Now, the attitude of mind which this dis- 
 closes is unquestionably one that would greatly 
 intensify a man's convictions when weafaiess 
 formed, by ascribing them practically ^i^udg-^" 
 to sources of divine inspiration ; but ^^^^ 
 it would do so by putting its own reasoning
 
 160 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 faculties very much out of use. A religious 
 believer of Cromweirs Puritan school could 
 uot at the same time be a political thinker, in 
 the deeper sense ; could not interpret events 
 by inherent meanings to be found in them- 
 selves ; could not bring to bear on them 
 those fundamental principles of political judg- 
 ment that are drawn from historical experi- 
 ence. That Cromwell was no political thinker 
 is very plain ; and it seems to be equally plain 
 that his political instincts were exceedingly 
 weak. Neither in reasoning faculties nor in in- 
 tuitions nor in knowledge was he well equipped 
 for dealing with the tremendous political prob- 
 lems which a revolution to the very bottom of 
 things in England had cast upon him. He did 
 not try to deal with them by any handHng of 
 his own ; he simply trusted them to the Lord. 
 Since Moses, at least, there is no other exam- 
 ple in history of a man so strong who gave 
 himself so unreservedly to be a willing instru- 
 ment in God's hands for the carrying out of 
 God's designs. 
 
 The old notion of Cromwell, that he was 
 an eagerly, cunningly, overpoweringly ambi- 
 tious man, who planned and forced the com- 
 binations of circumstance which gave him
 
 CROMWELL 161 
 
 opportunities to climb to a dictatorship, was 
 totally wrong. Everything indicates that he \ 
 had really a small share of the per- 
 
 , . . , 1 1 1 p • He was not 
 
 sonal ambition to be looked for m seitseewng 
 
 1 iini 1 1 p 1 ^ Ambition. 
 
 one who could reel such mastertul 
 forces in himself. I doubt if anybody can 
 read with care and candor his remarkable sec- 
 ond speech to the first elected parliament of 
 his Protectorate, in which he reviewed his 
 own career, without recognizing that it is an 
 honest, truthful outpouring from the heart. ' 
 He was rehearsing the story of past events, 
 in his own relation to them, to show that he 
 had not raised himself, nor sought to raise 
 himself, to the position of authority in which 
 he stood. '* After Worcester Fight," he said, 
 " I came up to London to pay my service and 
 duty to the parliament which then sat, hoping 
 that all minds would have been disposed to 
 answer what seemed to be the mind of God, 
 namely, to give peace and rest to His people. 
 ... I hoped to have had leave to retire to 
 a private life. I begged to be dismissed of my 
 charge; I begged it again and again; and 
 God be judge between me and all men if I lie 
 in this matter." Then he proceeded to relate 
 the dispersion of the Kump and other occur-
 
 162 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 rences, down to the calling of the assembly of 
 "God-fearing men," sometimes styled the 
 "Little Parliament," and of this he said: "As 
 a principal end in calling that assembly was 
 the settlement of the nation, so a chief end to 
 myself was to lay down the power which was 
 in my hands. I say to you again, in the pres- 
 ence of that God who hath blessed and been 
 with me, in all my adversities and successes — 
 that was, as to myself, my greatest end. A 
 desire perhaps, I am afraid, sinful enough, to 
 be quit of the power God had most clearly by 
 His providence put into my hands, before He 
 called me to lay it down." 
 
 Coming then to the framing of the Instru- 
 ment of Government and the institution of 
 the Protectorate, he gave this account of that 
 procedure: "The gentlemen that undertook 
 to frame this government did consult divers 
 days together (men of known integrity and 
 ability), how to frame somewhat that might 
 give us settlement. They did consult; and 
 that I was not privy to their councils they 
 know it. When they had finished their model 
 in some measure, or made a good preparation 
 of it, they became communicative. They told 
 me that except I would undertake the govern-
 
 CROMWELL 163 
 
 inent they thought things would hardly come 
 ko a composure or settlement, but blood and 
 confusion would break in upon us. I refused 
 it again and again; not complimentingly, — 
 as they know^, and as God knows. I confess, 
 after many arguments, they urging on me that 
 I did not hereby receive anything which put 
 me into a higher capacity than before, but 
 that it limited me, — that it bound my hands 
 to act nothing without the consent of a coun- 
 cil, until the parliament, and then limited by 
 the parliament, as the act of government ex- 
 presseth, — I did consent." 
 
 He ends the review by saying : " This is a 
 narrative that discovers to you the series of 
 providences and transactions leading me into 
 the condition wherein I now stand. ... I 
 brought not myself into this condition : surely 
 in my own apprehension I did not! And 
 whether I did not, the things being true which 
 I have told you, I submit to your judgment. 
 And there I shall leave it. Let God do what 
 he pleaseth." 
 
 Now this, to me, is a perfectly true repre- 
 sentation of the facts of CromwelFs rise to 
 positions where power came to him, was thrust 
 upon him, and was accepted by him, simply
 
 164 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 because he was the one man strong enough 
 to exercise it, — strong enough to take the 
 Power came awful burden of a revolution upon 
 l^TotMs liimself . He brought not himself into 
 strengti. i\^q conditions in which he stood. He 
 accepted them as from God, — as burdens of 
 duty, divinely imposed. Essentially, I would 
 call him a modest man, in the true sense of 
 the term. He knew his own strength and 
 shrank from no test of it ; but I cannot dis- 
 cover a trace of egotism in anything that he 
 said or did. I believe that he did actually take 
 the very simple view of himself that he ex- 
 pressed in one of his later speeches, on the 
 question of converting the Protectorate into 
 kingship. "So far as I can," he then said, 
 " I am ready to serve, not as a king, but as 
 a constable. For truly I have, as before God, 
 often thought that I could not tell what my 
 business was, nor what I was in the place I 
 stood in, save comparing myself to a good 
 constable, set to keep the peace of the parish." 
 There could not be a more simply yet subtly 
 true description of Cromwell's function as 
 Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ire- 
 land. He was the "good constable" of the 
 three nations, fearless, faithful, vigilant, ready
 
 CROMWELL 165 
 
 in resource, powerful in action, and he kept the 
 peace of his three great parishes as no other 
 could have done. But not much that msrau- 
 touches statesmanship is expected ^ateSaan- 
 from the constable. He deals with s^'- 
 things as he finds them under his hand; and 
 so Cromwell did. The constable acts mostly 
 upon orders from some higher mind; and 
 Cromwell sought always for orders from the 
 great Judge of all the earth, whose "provi- 
 dences" he watched unceasingly for signs and 
 tokens of t^ie divine will, and to whom he 
 went continually in prayer. 
 
 When death surprised him in the midst of 
 his constableship, it is evident that he had re- 
 ceived no enlightenment, from the source to 
 which he looked for it, as to what should be 
 done with his power. He was to name his suc- 
 cessor, and none had been named. It was sur- 
 mised or assumed that, in his last moments, he 
 had indicated Richard Cromwell, his eldest 
 living son ; but there appears to have been no 
 certainty of the fact. If a fact, then the dying 
 Protector can have exercised no reasonable 
 judgment in the choice. He knew the inca- 
 pacity of this son. He refers to him often in 
 his letters with fond rebuke and reproach for
 
 166 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 the idleness, the love of pleasure, the extrava* 
 gance, which were evident characteristics of 
 the young man. While Henry Cromwell, the 
 younger son, was an able and important actor 
 in public life during his father's rule, — even 
 lord-deputy and lord-lieutenant in Ireland for 
 four years, — Richard Cromwell took no part 
 in the great affairs of the time. Yet the Pro- 
 tector either made no provision for the suc- 
 cession to himself, or else named the frivolous 
 idler, Richard Cromwell, to be a figure-head 
 in the vacant seat, till the nation should thrust 
 him out and bring the Stuarts back to a re- 
 stored throne. In any career but Cromwell's 
 there could be no explanation of so empty a 
 conclusion. In his case we can feel sure that 
 he had waited for divine leadings as to the 
 final disposition to be made of the trust in 
 his hands, and they did not come to him. I 
 do not know that it was in the power of any 
 statesmanship to avert the results that fol- 
 lowed Cromwell's death ; but, if there was, I 
 think it plain that Cromwell was not the man 
 to discover them. 
 
 Was he, then, a great man? I say yes. 
 Great in personal force ; great in the perfect 
 fitting and powerful use of practical means to
 
 CROMWELL 167 
 
 practical ends ; and great above all in the grand- 
 est moral qualities that can exalt a man : in 
 sincerity ; in earnestness ; in faithful- inteuectu- 
 ness ; in uprightness and downright- Jjete^'us 
 ness of spirit; in fearlessness to do ^wa^ess. 
 and fortitude to endure. Intellectually, I 
 do not see him to have been a remarkable 
 man, in any degree; and those powers that 
 we call intellectual are large factors, neces- 
 sarily, in our estimate of men. And so Crom- 
 well realizes my conception of greatness in- 
 completely, and I would not rank him among 
 the greatest of men.
 
 IV 
 
 WASHINGTON: IMPRESSIVE IN 
 
 GREATNESS
 
 IV 
 
 WASHINGTON: IMPRESSIVE IN GREATNESS 
 
 I TAKE it to be the settled judgment of the 
 world that Washington was an eminent sol- 
 dier and an eminent statesman, but not of the 
 superlative order in either class; and, yet, 
 that his place in history is with the supremely 
 great men of all time. This implies values not 
 shown on the surface of his life. What are 
 they ? The purpose of my present study is to 
 bring them to light. 
 
 Great character is a growth, an evolution, 
 a self-completion, and we need not look for 
 more of it in the youth of Washing- g^iy 
 ton than the courage, the resolution, ^®"*' 
 the self-reliance that are necessary bases of all 
 personal strength. Those fundamentals are 
 plain enough in the young Virginian who 
 surveyed the Shenandoah Valley for Lord 
 Fairfax in his seventeenth year; who bore 
 the warning of Virginia five years later to 
 French intruders in the Alleghany wilderness, 
 and then led ao^ainst them the little force which 
 opened the final, decisive contest of Great
 
 172 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 Britain Vith France for supremacy in the New 
 World. They are plainer still, perhaps, in the 
 Washington of Braddock's staff, and of the 
 subsequent campaigns in which he commanded 
 the Virginia troops. Nevertheless, those gal- 
 lant and adventurous services might, in many 
 a spirited young man, have preluded a quite 
 commonplace career; and no greater career 
 seemed opening to Washington in the next 
 seventeen uneventful, happy years of his life. 
 We can find, however, some tokens of the 
 making of the future " Father of his Country " 
 in the simple journals and letters which give 
 us his own record of those years. 
 
 By inheritance from his elder brother, as 
 well as from his father, he possessed a great 
 Thevir- estate, and his marriage had brought 
 S^iw"' *^ ^^^ *^® IsLTge wealth of his wife. 
 1776. Other estates, large and small, were 
 in his keeping, as guardian or trustee. He was 
 full of labors and business cares, and we can 
 see that he was exercising in them that vigi- 
 lance of eye and mind, that study and fore- 
 thought, that faithful patience, that well-doing 
 of all things, that went afterwards into the 
 conduct of the War of American Independ- 
 ence. But the more significant indication of
 
 WASHINGTON 173 
 
 the man at this period of his prime is in the 
 political feeling that he shows, — the care for 
 public interests and rights. Why should this 
 country gentleman of large wealth, busy far- 
 mer of his own broad acres, exercising a lux- 
 urious hospitality, and living in all ways as an 
 English gentleman of like fortune would live, 
 — why should he concern himself much with 
 questions between the colonies and the British 
 parliament and King George ? What harm to 
 him could the Stamp Act do, compared with 
 any serious political disturbance of his pros- 
 perous and happy life? Why should he not 
 have been a contented, indifferent Tory, like 
 so many of his comfortable class? Why? 
 Because it was not in the nature of the man 
 to be indifferent to questions of right and 
 wrong, whether they touched himself little or 
 much. 
 
 Nobody in Virginia had been reared and 
 had lived under more of English influences 
 than he ; yet nobody was quicker than he to 
 resent the English encroachments on colonial 
 rights that began to thicken in the early years 
 oi the third George's reign. Nobody had 
 more enjoyment of the luxuries of living which 
 came in those days to the colonies from Eng-
 
 174 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 land ; yet none were more ready than he to 
 forego them, as a means of making English- 
 men understand the importance of a friendly 
 harmony between their colonies and them- 
 selves. He gave early warning to his English 
 friends of the non-importation agreements that 
 were planned. Writing to a London relative 
 of his wife, in September, 1765, he bade him 
 remember "that our whole substance does 
 already, in a manner, flow into Great Britain, 
 and that whatsoever contributes to lessen our 
 importations must be hurtful to their manu- 
 factures. And," he continues, " the eyes of our 
 people, already beginning to open, will per- 
 ceive that many luxuries which we lavish our 
 substance in Great Britain for can be dis- 
 pensed with, whilst the necessaries of life are 
 (mostly) to be had within ourselves." 
 
 Non-importation did its work for the time 
 being and won the repeal of the Stamp Act ; 
 but the right of parliament to lay taxes on 
 the unrepre3ented subjects of the king in 
 America was asserted and exercised still ; and 
 it is doubtful if the temper of even Sam 
 Adams was hardened much more than that 
 of Washington by the provocative measures of 
 the next three years. He took the lead then,
 
 WASHINGTON 175 
 
 as a member of the Virginia House of Bur- 
 gesses, in measures to organize a more sys- 
 tematic and universal abstention from the use 
 of British goods, and he was already prepared, 
 moreover, for resistance in a sterner way. We 
 find him writing bitterly to George Mason, on 
 the 5th of April, 1769 : " At a time when 
 our lordly masters in Great Britain will be 
 satisfied with nothing less than the depriva- 
 tion of American freedom, it seems highly 
 necessary that something should be done to 
 avert the stroke and maintain the liberty 
 which we have derived from our ancestors. 
 . . . That no man should scruple or hesitate 
 a moment to use arms in defense of so valu- 
 able a blessing, on which all the good and 
 evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. 
 Yet arms, I would beg leave to add, should 
 be the last resource, the dernier ressort Ad- 
 dresses to the throne and remonstrances to 
 parliament we have already, it is said, proved 
 the inefficacy of. How far, then, their atten- 
 tion to our rights and privileges is to be awak- 
 ened or alarmed by starving their trade and 
 manufactures remains to be seen." 
 
 The renewed experiment of "boycotting" 
 British goods, as we should describe it in
 
 176 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 our day, was especially Washington's ; for he 
 drafted the Virginia resolutions, which had so 
 great an effect in all the colonies that British 
 exports in 1769 were cut down to a small 
 fraction of what they had been the year be- 
 fore. Again the patriotic abstinence of the 
 colonists wrung concessions, not to them, but 
 to wailing merchants and manufacturers in 
 British towns. Again there was a repeal of 
 obnoxious acts, and again the sting of wrong 
 in the acts was left to fester in the wound 
 they had made, by an obstinate persistence in 
 the taxing of tea. More than tempests in tea- 
 pots came out of this brew, as we know, 
 breaking at last into the storm of war, which 
 Washington had expected and was ready to 
 face. 
 
 The heavy hand of royal vengeance laid on 
 Boston, for its rude action in the matter of 
 the tea, moved him to that speech in the Vir- 
 ginia House of Burgesses which John Adams 
 described as the most eloquent that was made : 
 "I will raise a thousand men,'* he said, "en- 
 list them at my own expense, and march, my- 
 self at their head, for the relief of Boston." 
 Writing a few days later to his friend Bryan 
 Fairfax, he explained the feeling which urged
 
 WASHINGTON 177 
 
 him to so positive a course : " An innate spirit 
 of freedom first told me," he said, " that the 
 measures which administration hath for some 
 time heen and are now most violently pursu- 
 ing are repugnant to every principle of natu- 
 ral justice ; whilst much abler heads than my 
 own hath fully convinced me that it is not 
 only repugnant to natural right, but subver- 
 sive of the laws and constitution of Great 
 Britain itself." He dreads the struggle that 
 he sees opening. "I could wish," he says, 
 " that the dispute had been left to posterity 
 to determine; but the crisis is arrived when 
 we must assert our rights, or submit to every 
 imposition that can be heaped upon us, till 
 custom and use shall make us as tame and 
 abject slaves as the blacks we rule over." 
 
 It was in this spirit that he went, the next 
 week, to the meeting at Philadelphia of the 
 first Continental Congress, and, though he 
 took little part publicly in its proceedings, the 
 impression that he made may be gathered 
 from a remark that is attributed to Patrick 
 Henry, who was one of his colleagues in the 
 Virginia delegation: "Mr. Henry," says 
 Wirt, his first biographer, " on his return 
 from the Continental Congress, being asked,
 
 178 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 ^Who is the greatest man in the Congress?' 
 replied, 'If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rut- 
 ledge, of South Carolina, is by far the great- 
 est orator; but if you speak of solid informa- 
 tion and sound judgment, Colonel Washington 
 is unquestionably the greatest man on that 
 floor.' " ^ Having that weight in the Congress, 
 we may be sure that his counsels are repre- 
 sented in the quietly resolute but pacific action 
 that it took ; for he would not hasten what he 
 knew must come. But when he went to the 
 second Congress, in the following spring, he 
 wore his uniform as a colonel of the Virginia 
 militia, to signify that he came as a soldier, 
 ready for the task of the sword. Nearly a 
 month before the Lexington and Concord 
 fighting occurred, he had written to his 
 brother, John Augustine: "It is my full in- 
 tention to devote my life and fortune in the 
 cause we are engaged in, if needful." 
 
 When the second Congress came together, 
 it had no longer an open question to deal with, 
 Commander- between war and peace. It accepted 
 theconu- the statc of war in New England, 
 nentaiArmy. jjjg^jg the cause of Massachusetts 
 
 1 Wirt, p. 132. (See, also, note in Zt/e, Correspandence and 
 Speeches of Patrick Henry, vol. i, p. 247.)
 
 WASHINGTON 179 
 
 the cause of all, adopted the forces in arms 
 as a ^^continental army/' and named of- 
 ficers to the command. In later years, when 
 most of the better men of the Congress had 
 been drawn away to other public duties, there 
 was no act of unwisdom that this body could 
 not commit ; it might even have gratified the 
 ambitious vanity of John Hancock and made 
 him commander-in-chief ; but in those early 
 days the counsels of good sense could prevail, 
 and Congress gave obedience to the plain rea- 
 sons, of personal fitness and public policy, 
 which pointed to Washington as the prefer- 
 able man for the place. 
 
 That he was, indeed, the one man for it 
 of all living men, and, we might say, of 
 all conceivable men, was more than could be 
 known in that day, as we know it now. 
 Looking backward, we can see that the fate 
 of the undertaking of rebellious war hung 
 absolutely upon his acceptance of the of- 
 fered command. How modestly, and with what 
 a generous giving of himself to the coun- 
 try he took the great burden of duty, we 
 all remember: "Lest some unlucky event 
 should happen unfavorably to my reputation," 
 he said to the Congress, " I beg it may be re-
 
 180 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 membered by every gentleman in the room, 
 that I this day declare, with the utmost sin- 
 cerity, I do not think myself equal to the 
 command I am honored with. As to pay, I 
 beg leave to assure the Congress that, as no 
 pecuniary consideration could have tempted 
 me to accept this arduous employment, at the 
 expense of my domestic ease and happiness, 
 I do not wish to make any profit on it. I will 
 keep an exact account of my expenses. Those, 
 I doubt not, they will discharge, and that is 
 all I desire." 
 
 What he distrusted in himself was the tech- 
 nical preparation which nothing but a larger 
 military experience could have given, and 
 which all Americans lacked. He stated it a 
 year later, in a letter written to recommend 
 one of the Continental generals for an impor- 
 tant command. " His wants," he said, " are 
 common to us all, — the want of experience 
 to move upon a large scale; for the limited 
 and contracted knowledge which any of us 
 have in military matters stands in very little 
 stead, and is greatly overbalanced by sound 
 judgment, some knowledge of men and books, 
 especially when accompanied by an enterpris- 
 ing genius,"
 
 WASHINGTON 181 
 
 That Washington, in taking the responsible 
 leadership in the colonial revolt, was making 
 the greatest of all sacrifices to the cause of 
 American freedom was seen and understood 
 at the time. John Adams wrote to Elbridge 
 Gerry : " There is something charming to me 
 in the conduct of Washington. A gentleman 
 of one of the first fortunes upon the conti- 
 nent, leaving his delicious retirement, his 
 family and friends, sacrificing his ease and 
 hazarding all in the cause of his country." 
 We must remember that it was not a mere 
 temporary sacrifice of ease and " delicious re- 
 tirement," and the society of family and 
 friends, and the happy activities and hospitali- 
 ties of Mount Vernon, that Washington was 
 making. He was putting his whole future, 
 his whole fortune, and even his life, at stake 
 on the chances of the war. His risk in rebellion 
 was greater than any other, when he made 
 himself its chief ; and not many in the under- 
 taking could offer so much to its risks. In the 
 first months of his task there were disheart- 
 ened moments when he repented of what he 
 had done, not because of its cost or its risk to 
 himself, but because of the seeming hopeless- 
 ness of success ; yet never but once can we
 
 182 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 find the least sign of a disposition to draw 
 back from the work. 
 
 The discouragements that Washington en- 
 countered were not at all of the kind that he 
 must have been prepared to overcome. 
 
 The Trying 
 
 Task at He kuew, of course, that he had an 
 *™ ' ^*" army to create, out of the rawest mate- 
 rial and with the crudest and scantiest of means. 
 He cannot have been disappointed on finding 
 that the forces beleaguering Boston were a 
 motley gathering of untrained men, accoutred 
 in all sorts of fashions, sheltered in all sorts 
 of makeshift ways, enlisted by different local 
 committees, with great uncertainty as to the 
 sources of their food and their pay. But he 
 went to his command with an ardor of patriot- 
 ism in himself which made him expectant of 
 something similar in all who professed an at- 
 tachment to the patriot cause. He looked for 
 that especially in New England, where the 
 cause had seemed to have its firmest support. 
 He had idealized New England patriotism, it 
 would seem ; for General Greene, of Rhode 
 Island, with whom he formed one of the first 
 and warmest of his army friendships, wrote at 
 this time to a friend : " His excellency has 
 been taught to believe the people here a su-
 
 WASHINGTON 183 
 
 perior race." So it sickened him to discover 
 that many of the common people of the region 
 of his first campaign were, actually, if Greene 
 has described them correctly, "exceedingly 
 avaricious," eager to make profit from the 
 army, by taking all possible advantage of its 
 needs. He was troubled, too, and saddened by 
 many jealousies and quarrels among his offi- 
 cers over questions of rank. To one, a general 
 officer of promise who thought of resigning 
 because he had not been commissioned to his 
 satisfaction, Washington wrote a noble letter 
 of expostulation and reproach, and it had its 
 effect : " In the usual contests of empire and 
 ambition," he said, "the conscience of a sol- 
 dier has so little share that he may very prop- 
 erly insist upon his claims of rank, and extend 
 his pretensions even to punctilio; but in such 
 a cause as this, when the object is neither 
 glory nor extent of territory, but a defense of 
 all that is dear and valuable in private and 
 public life, surely every post ought to be 
 deemed honorable in which a man can serve 
 his country." 
 
 Another grievous disappointment that he 
 suffered was on finding how quickly the mass 
 of those who had taken up arms grew tired
 
 184 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 of their undertaking and eager to escape. He 
 had looked for more steadfastness like his 
 own in the engagement of service to a great 
 cause, and counted upon reenlistments from 
 his temporary army, of enough durability to 
 make training and discipline a fairly possible 
 work. He learned his error as soon as the va- 
 rious short terms of his companies and regi- 
 ments began to expire; and he was bowed al- 
 most to despair, even then, in the first months 
 of his long task, by the wearing weight of a 
 trouble that never lightened from the begin- 
 ning to the end of the war. For the first and 
 last time, so far as his correspondence reveals 
 him, his strong spirit gave way to an out- 
 spoken regret that he had taken the burden 
 of the struggle upon himself. Writing confi- 
 dentially to his friend, Joseph Keed, lately 
 his military secretary, on the 28th of Novem- 
 ber, 1775, he unburdened his sore heart in these 
 words: "Such a dearth of public spirit and 
 want of virtue ... I never saw before, and 
 pray God I may never be witness to again. 
 . . . Could I have foreseen what I have and 
 am likely to experience, no consideration upon 
 earth should have induced me to accept this 
 command." But he seems after this to have
 
 WASHINGTON 185 
 
 nerved himself to the endurance of anything 
 and everything that might come in the way of 
 the duty to which he was pledged. Once in 
 the next year, after he had been driven from 
 New York and was striving to hold together 
 enough of forces to keep control of the river 
 above the city, he exclaimed, in a private let- 
 ter to his brother : " It is not in the power of 
 words to describe the task I have. Fifty thou- 
 sand pounds should not induce me again to 
 undergo what I have done." But this expres- 
 sion of a weary self-pity only measures the in- 
 vincibility of the higher motives which braced 
 him with fortitude to undergo his trials to the 
 end. 
 
 Always, it was the moral harassments of 
 his work — the impediments and discourage- 
 ments that arose from a shallowness in the pub- 
 lic spirit on which it depended for support — 
 that were most painfully trying to his great 
 soul. The natural and necessary difficulties of 
 a war conducted with inadequate means he 
 could meet with cheerful readiness and over- 
 come. How great they were in that first cam- 
 paign, which expelled the British from Boston, 
 and how successfully they were dealt with, we 
 can learn from a letter which he wrote to Con-
 
 186 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 gress on the 4th of January, 1776. "It is 
 not," he said, "in the pages of history, per- 
 haps, to furnish a case like ours. To maintain a 
 post within musket-shot of the enemy for six 
 months together without powder, and at the 
 same time to disband one army and recruit 
 another, within that distance of twenty odd 
 British regiments, is more, probably, than ever 
 was attempted." This was what Washington 
 had done. Five weeks later he reported: 
 "There are near two thousand men now in 
 camp without firelocks" ; and yet by the end 
 of another month he had accomplished the 
 expulsion of the British from Boston, by the 
 seizure of Dorchester Heights. They sailed 
 for Halifax, to prepare for fresh endeavors, 
 and Washington made haste to New York, 
 with most of his forces, to secure possession 
 of the Hudson River, which he recognized as 
 the one vital condition of success in the war. 
 The Americans were sure to be driven from the 
 sea, and New England would then be separated 
 hopelessly from the other States if control of 
 the Hudson valley should be lost. This was 
 now the dominant consideration in his mind. 
 The guarding of the Hudson became his prime 
 task, and he took it personally upon himself.
 
 WASHINGTON 187 
 
 I do not mean to touch the story of the 
 campaigns of the next six years, in that field be- 
 tween the Hudson and the Delaware „... „ 
 
 Bitter Ex- 
 
 from which no allurements of oppor- porienceaox 
 
 1776-77 
 
 tunity for glory could draw Washing- 
 ton away. My wish is to open some glimpses 
 of the under-history of those years ; some dis- 
 closure of what they were in the experience of 
 the commander-in-chief, to see what trials of 
 the spirit he had, and how they were endured. 
 That he was driven from Long Island and 
 from the city of New York was inevitable, 
 when Howe came back from Halifax with 
 thirty thousand veteran troops, and Washing- 
 ton's force, including bodies of the rawest 
 militia, was scarcely two thirds as much. After 
 the battle of Long Island he wrote to Con- 
 gress : " The miUtia . . . are dismayed, in- 
 tractable, and impatient to return. Great num- 
 bers of them have gone off, in some instances 
 almost by whole regiments." He goes on 
 to say that their want of discipline has in- 
 fected the remaining soldiery, and he feels 
 obliged to confess, " with the deepest con- 
 cern," his "want of confidence in the gen- 
 erality of the troops." His distrust was justi- 
 fied on the retreat from New York, when two
 
 188 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 of his brigades ran away in panic from about 
 fifty of the enemy, leaving him to escape cap- 
 ture by following their flight. It was a few 
 days after this that he wrote in deep despond- 
 ency to Lund Washington, his relative: " Such 
 is my situation that if I were to wish the bit- 
 terest curse to an enemy on this side of the 
 grave I should put him in my stead. I see the 
 impossibility of serving with reputation, or 
 doing any essential service to the cause by 
 continuing in command; and yet I am told 
 that if I quit the command inevitable ruin 
 will follow, from the distractions that will en- 
 sue. In confidence I tell you that I never 
 was in such an unhappy, divided state since 
 I was born." 
 
 Washington had now come fully into the 
 beginnings of his long and bitter experience 
 of the impossibility of creating, or maintain- 
 ing, or operating an efficient army under the 
 conditions of government which the revolting 
 Americans had formed. Their central assem- 
 bly of representatives, known as the Conti- 
 nental Congress, had made the fatal mistake 
 of not assuming the authority and the powers 
 that were necessary to the performance of 
 the duties it had assumed. It had taken the
 
 WASHINGTON 189 
 
 responsibilities of the war upon itself, had 
 adopted the army, had commissioned its offi- 
 cers, was giving them its orders and was sub- 
 jecting them to its laws. If it had a right to 
 do these things, it had logically and equally 
 the right to control enlistments for the army 
 and to raise the necessary means for its sup- 
 port. Its right to assume any governing au- 
 thority, as an assembly representative of the 
 people of the thirteen revolting colonies, was 
 the indisputable but indefinable right of rev- 
 olution, which belongs always to all peoples, 
 when they find need to exercise it. The Continen- 
 tal Congress shared that right with the revolu- 
 tionary legislatures formed in the several States ; 
 but its own claims to authority were clearly 
 precedent to theirs. It had led the action 
 which transformed them from dependent col- 
 onies into independent States ; and it had put 
 its stamp on their new character, while nation- 
 alizing their union, by its authoritative Decla- 
 ration of Independence. It held a primacy in 
 the revolutionary government, as the plainest 
 of facts, and had all the reasons that make 
 right for taking to itself, as of course, the full 
 authority and power to act for the United 
 States, from the beginning, in matters of com-
 
 190 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 mon concern. That it did not do so was be- 
 cause too many of the leading patriots of the 
 revolution were provincial in their political 
 ideas, fearing to trust authority anywhere 
 beyond their own local reach. Hence the Con- 
 gress of the union, while taking the responsi- 
 bilities of the war upon itself, left most of the 
 power to fulfill them to be claimed and pos- 
 sessed by the several States. 
 
 The conditions which this produced were 
 such that nobody except Washington seems 
 conceivable as a leader of the army to success 
 in the war. Month by month there was less of 
 unity in anything except the trust and the hope 
 which he inspired. Month by month Congress 
 lost even influence to persuade the States to 
 furnish quotas of troops and quotas of money 
 to the military chest. Month by month the drib- 
 lets of men and means from the States came 
 more tardily, more meagrely, and less in worth. 
 Who but Washington could have wrung from 
 them even the little that came? For he was 
 driven continually to make personal appeals 
 to the States directly, because Congress had 
 failed. And, then, how little that he received 
 accorded with his want and his request ! From 
 the beginning of his experience at Cambridge
 
 WASHINGTON 191 
 
 he pleaded for enlistments long enough in 
 term to give him an army that could be disci- 
 plined and trained. He spent hours in writing 
 arguments to show the wastefulness as well as 
 the futility of an attempt to carry on war with 
 a makeshift army of temporary soldiers, serv- 
 ing for a few months, or for a single year, and 
 eked out, in all emergencies, by raw local mili- 
 tia, summoned hastily to camp. His labor was 
 vain. Neither Congress nor the States would 
 offer inducements that could bring more than 
 some small number of men into the Conti- 
 nental ranks " for the war," or for any ade- 
 quate period of time. From beginning to 
 end of the war they kept him at least half de- 
 pendent, at the best of times, on militia and 
 raw recruits. 
 
 After the withdrawal from New York came 
 the loss of the forts on the lower Hudson, and 
 the retreat of Washington, with a dissolving 
 army, through New Jersey to the Delaware 
 and beyond it, still keeping, however, a guard 
 in the highlands of the valley to hold those 
 upper passes of the river. And now ignorant 
 criticism and jealous intrigue began to work 
 together against the unhappy commander-in- 
 chief. For a time there were formidable incli-
 
 192 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 nations in high quarters to put the treacherous 
 adventurer, Charles Lee, in Washington's 
 place; and Lee, to promote the scheme, held 
 back his command from the junction with 
 Washington that he had been ordered to 
 make. Fortunately, while the intrigue was in 
 progress, Lee fell into the hands of the en- 
 emy, and they kept him out of mischief for 
 the next year and a half. Meantime, the few 
 regiments with Washington were coming to 
 the end of their short periods of enlistment 
 and were dropping away. On the 19th of 
 November, 1776, he wrote to his brother: 
 *^In ten days from this date there will not be 
 above two thousand men, if that number, of 
 the fixed, established regiments on this side of 
 Hudson River, to oppose Howe's whole army, 
 and very little more on the other, to secure 
 the eastern colonies and the important passes 
 leading through the highlands to Albany 
 and the country about the lakes. In short, 
 it is impossible for me, in the compass of a 
 letter, to give you any idea of our situation, 
 of my difficulties, and the constant perplex- 
 ities and mortifications I meet with, derived 
 from the unhappy policy of short enlistments 
 and delaying them too long. I am wearied
 
 WASHINGTON 193 
 
 almost to death with the retrograde motion of 
 things." 
 
 Even recourse to the militia had failed him ; 
 for New Jersey seemed to have given itself up 
 to the British since they entered that State. 
 In a letter to Governor Trumbull, of Connecti- 
 cut, on the 12th of December, he wrote : " The 
 inhabitants of this State, either from fear or 
 disaffection, almost to a man, refused to turn 
 out. I could not bring together above a thou- 
 sand men, and even on those very little depend- 
 ence could be put." Nevertheless, within a 
 fortnight from that writing, on Christmas 
 Eve, in a storm of sleet, he made his famous 
 return across the Delaware, with only twenty- 
 four hundred men, surprised the Hessians at 
 Trenton, and began the movements which re- 
 covered, in position, nearly all that he had 
 lost in the previous two months. The achieve- 
 ment was a revelation of Washington's rare 
 ability, and it had splendid effects, for a time. 
 It encouraged France to give important secret 
 aid to the States, in money and stores; and, 
 temporarily, it inspirited the cause at home. 
 Congress gave Washington extraordinary pow- 
 ers for six months, to raise new battalions, 
 to displace and appoint all officers under the
 
 194 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 rank of brigadier-general, etc. ; but the result 
 appears to have been much the same as on a 
 later occasion, when such powers were put 
 into his hands, and when he was constrained 
 to write : " Congress has added to my embar- 
 rassments, . . . inasmuch as it gives me powers 
 without the means of execution." The truth 
 was, that Congress had few real powers to con- 
 fer; it had thrown them away ; and its action 
 was little more than an attempt to escape from 
 its own responsibilities. 
 
 For the time being, however, there was en- 
 couragement in the prospects of the command- 
 er-in-chief, and in February (1777) he wrote 
 to his brother : " If we can once get the new 
 army complete, and the Congress will take care 
 to have it properly supplied, I think we may 
 hereafter bid defiance to Great Britain and 
 her foreign auxiliaries." But the hopefulness 
 that leaned on those " if s " was downfallen 
 very soon. Early in March he is confessing 
 confidentially to Governor Trumbull that a 
 few days more will find him with almost no- 
 thing but militia to depend upon, for what- 
 ever hostilities the spring may set in motion. 
 In April he is writing to the president of Con- 
 gress: "If the men that are raised, few as
 
 WASHINGTON 195 
 
 they are, could be got into the field, it would 
 be a matter of some consolation ; [but] every 
 method that I have been able to devise has 
 proved ineffectual." On the 1st of June he 
 states to Kichard Henry Lee, then in Congress, 
 that recruiting "seems to be at an end." 
 
 But the small new army that Washington 
 did succeed in assembling that summer had 
 more durability of constitution than any that 
 had come under his hands before, and he 
 was able to fashion it somewhat nearly into 
 the character he desired. Some of it had to 
 be spared for the northern field, to meet Bur- 
 goyne's invasion from Canada ; but that inva- 
 sion roused a spirit in New York and in the 
 neighboring New England States which gave 
 splendid usefulness to their militia in the north- 
 ern campaign. General Schuyler had organ- 
 ized the resistance to Burgoyne with ability; 
 Stark, Arnold, and Morgan fought him to a 
 stand and a surrender; but General Gates, 
 whom Congress sent to supersede Schuyler, 
 took the laurels of the great victory, and as- 
 pired now to the chief command. 
 
 Washington, meantime, was contending 
 ably and valiantly, but unsuccessfully, in New 
 Jersey and Pennsylvania, with Howe, who had
 
 196 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 double his force. He had fought losing battles 
 at the Brandy wine and at German town ; the 
 British had entered Philadelphia ; the prestige 
 of the great leader seemed declining again. 
 New intrigues for his displacement, and this 
 time by Gates, were set on foot. The mean 
 story of " the Conway Cabal " is too familiar 
 for repetition ; I mention it only as one of the 
 trials and the provings that revealed the lofty 
 character of Washington to the world. The 
 simple manliness of the way in which he drew 
 the conspiracy out of darkness and secrecy 
 into open day was all that could be needed, 
 then or since, to condemn it to the limbo in 
 history of despised things. 
 
 In quality the army was better than it had 
 ever been before ; but its numbers were insig- 
 nificant, compared with what it had 
 
 The Winter ,11 «. • 
 
 atvauey to do, and the poverty oi its equip- 
 "^*" ment is almost past belief. Washing- 
 ton began pleading in September for blankets 
 and shoes, want of which latter, especially, 
 had hindered the movement of troops; but 
 December found the suffering Army of Inde- 
 pendence not only more shoeless and blanket- 
 less than it had been three months before, but 
 at the verge of being starved. We, all of us,
 
 WASHINGTON 197 
 
 have some notion in our minds of its pitiable 
 condition in that dreadful winter of 1777-78, 
 which it lived through in huts that it built 
 for itself at Valley Forge ; Washington's re- 
 port to Congress of the state of things exist- 
 ing on the 23d of December has been quoted 
 very often and is familiar to most of us ; but 
 this review of the trials which proved the 
 greatness of the man would be very incom- 
 plete if it did not recall some passages from 
 that report: — 
 
 " I am now convinced beyond a doubt," he 
 wrote, "that, unless some great and capital 
 change suddenly takes [place] in that [the 
 commissary] line, this army must inevitably be 
 reduced to one or other of these three things : 
 starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain 
 subsistence in the best manner they can. . . . 
 Yesterday afternoon, receiving information 
 that the enemy in force had left the city 
 [Philadelphia] and were advancing toward 
 Derby with the apparent design to forage, and 
 draw subsistence from that part of the coun- 
 try, I ordered the troops to be in readiness, 
 that I might give every opposition in my 
 power ; when, behold, to my great mortifica- 
 tion, I was not only informed but convinced
 
 198 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 that the men were unable to stir on account 
 of provision, and that a dangerous mutiny, 
 begun the night before, and which with diffi- 
 culty was suppressed by the spirited exertions 
 of some officers, was still much to be appre- 
 hended. This brought forth the only commis- 
 sary in the purchasing line in this camp; and 
 with him this melancholy and alarming truth, 
 that he had not a single hoof of any kind to 
 slaughter, and not more than twenty-five bar- 
 rels of flour. All I could do under these circum- 
 stances was to send out a few light parties to 
 watch and harass the enemy, whilst other par- 
 ties were instantly detached different ways to 
 collect, if possible, as much provision as would 
 satisfy the present pressing wants of the sol- 
 diery. But will this answer? No sir; three or 
 four days of bad weather would prove our 
 destruction." He proceeds to considerations 
 which, he says, "justify my saying that the 
 present commissaries are by no means equal 
 to the execution of the office, or that the dis- 
 affection of the people is past all belief. The 
 misfortune, however, does in my opinion pro- 
 ceed from both causes ; and though I have 
 been tender heretofore of giving any opinion, 
 or lodging complaints, as the change in that
 
 WASHINGTON 199 
 
 department took place contrary to my judg- 
 ment, and the consequences thereof were pre- 
 dicted, yet, finding that the inactivity of the 
 army, whether for want of provisions, clothes, 
 or other essentials, is charged to my account, 
 not only by the common vulgar but by those 
 in power, it is time to speak plain in exculpa- 
 tion of myself. With truth, then, I can declare 
 that no man, in my opinion, ever had his 
 measures more impeded than I have, by every 
 department of the army. Since the month of 
 July we have had no assistance from the quar- 
 termaster-general, and to the want of assist- 
 ance from this department the commissary- 
 general charges great part of his deficiency. 
 . . . Few men [have] more than one shirt, 
 many only the moiety of one, and some none 
 at all. In addition . . . (besides a number of 
 men confined to hospitals for want of shoes, 
 and others in farmers' houses on the same ac- 
 count) we have, by a field-return this day made, 
 no less than 2898 men now in camp unfit for 
 duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise 
 naked. . . . Since the 4th inst. our numbers 
 fit for duty, from the hardships and exposures 
 they have undergone, particularly on account 
 of blankets (numbers having been obliged, and
 
 200 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 still are, to sit up all night by fires, instead 
 of taking: comfortable rest in a natural and 
 common way) have decreased near 2000 men. 
 ... It adds not a little to my other difficul- 
 ties and distress to find that much more is ex- 
 pected of me than is possible to be performed, 
 and that upon the ground of safety and policy 
 I am obliged to conceal the true state of the 
 army from public view, and thereby expose 
 myself to detraction and calumny." 
 
 This was written late in December. At the 
 end of two months more the state of things 
 does not seem to have improved ; for General 
 Greene, writing to General Knox, on the 26th 
 of February, had this story to tell : "Our 
 troops are getting naked, and they were seven 
 days without bread. . . . The seventh day 
 they came before their superior officers and 
 told their sufferings in as respectful terms as if 
 they had been humble petitioners for special 
 favors; they added that it would be impos- 
 sible to continue in camp any longer without 
 support. Happily, relief arrived from the little 
 collections I had made [in a foraging expedi- 
 tion] and some others, and prevented the army 
 from disbanding. We are still in danger of 
 starving; the commissary department is in
 
 WASHINGTON 201 
 
 a most wretched condition, the quartermaster's 
 in worse. Hundreds and hundreds of our 
 horses have actually starved to death." 
 
 The little army which went through this 
 bitter experience and bore it so admirably was 
 made up of the few men whom Washington 
 had been able to secure for a lengthened term 
 of service ; who had entered it with some no- 
 tion of being real soldiers, and who were being 
 effectively disciplined and trained. What could 
 he have done in like circumstances with his 
 forces of the previous year ? And still there 
 were sources of deep disaffection in the army 
 to give anxiety and labor to the commander- 
 in-chief. Its officers were receiving wretched 
 pittances of pay, in paper money that was 
 losing its purchasing power. For those who 
 had families, and no private means, it became 
 more and more impossible to stay in the ser- 
 vice, and resignations came thick and fast. 
 
 Washington's urgency for measures to put 
 this and other military matters on a better 
 footing, especially in the commissary ^^^^^ 
 and quartermaster departments, in- nessinthe 
 duced Congress, in January (1778), 
 to send a committee to his headquarters for 
 conference with him. The conference was
 
 202 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 long; the whole subject of army administra- 
 tion, particularly with reference to food and 
 clothing and the retention of experienced 
 of&cers, was gone over, and the recommenda- 
 tions and suggestions of the commander-in- 
 chief were embodied in an elaborate paper, 
 with which the committee returned. There 
 seemed to be a promise of prompt endeavors, 
 at least, to remedy the worst evils of the mili- 
 tary system. But weeks ran to months and the 
 months to the end of the year, and nothing 
 effectual was done, — except that General 
 Greene, the ablest of Washington's division 
 commanders, was persuaded to quit the field 
 service which he preferred and take the du- 
 ties of quartermaster-general. In doing this 
 he was generously and patriotically sacrificing 
 his ambitions ; for, as he wrote afterward to 
 Washington, " nobody ever heard of a quar- 
 termaster in history, as such"; but '^I en- 
 gaged in the business," he said, "as well out 
 of compassion to your excellency as from a 
 regard to the public. I thought your task too 
 great, to be commander-in-chief and quarter- 
 master at the same time." Greene made the 
 best of the wretched conditions of his work ; 
 but after a year of hard service he tried to re-
 
 WASHINGTON 203 
 
 Sign, disgusted with the supineness of Con- 
 gress and the needless difficulties that were 
 left or put in his way. He was persuaded, 
 however, to stay in the thankless office through 
 half of another year. 
 
 Undoubtedly Greene's work brought con- 
 siderable relief to Washington and the army ; 
 but there is no sign of anything done by Con- 
 gress that materially bettered the conditions 
 that were needlessly bad. In April the anxious 
 commander is still reporting resignations of 
 officers at the general rate of two or three 
 a day, and writing : " I do not to this hour 
 know whether . . . the old or new establish- 
 ment is to take place ; [and] how to dispose 
 of the officers in consequence." At the end of 
 May he is driven to write to Gouverneur Mor- 
 ris, one of the army committee of Congress, 
 and one of its helplessly good members, plead- 
 ing " that something, I do not care what," he 
 says, " may be fixed and the regulations com- 
 pleted. It is a lamentable prospect," he con- 
 tinues, " that we are again to be plunged into 
 a moving state [quitting camp, that is, for the 
 field] (after six months of repose) before the 
 intended regulations are made, and the officers 
 informed who are and who not to be con-
 
 204 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 tinued in service under the new establish- 
 ment." 
 
 A few days more bring the ill-treated army 
 to that "moving state," from Valley Forge, 
 to follow the British in their withdrawal from 
 Philadelphia to New York ; and Washington, 
 striking them at Monmouth Court House, 
 snatches victory from the defeat which Lee, 
 his treacherous second in command, attempted 
 to bring about. "America," said Alexander 
 Hamilton, writing of that achievement to a 
 friend, "owes a great deal to General Wash- 
 ington for this day's work. A general rout, 
 dismay and disgrace would have attended the 
 whole army in any other hands but his. By 
 his own good sense and fortitude he turned 
 the fate of the day. ... By his own presence 
 he brought order out of confusion, animated 
 his troops, and led them to success." It was 
 one of the few opportunities that Washington 
 had for proving brilliantly how great a soldier 
 he was. 
 
 And yet the army with which he could do 
 this is still distracted by its long-neglected 
 discontents. Nine days after the Monmouth 
 battle he is writing that " Congress can form 
 no adequate idea of the discontents prevailing
 
 WASHINGTON 205 
 
 on account of the unsettled state of rank, and 
 the uncertainty in which officers are as to their 
 future situation " ; and a month later he is 
 addressing that useless hody again, with " re- 
 luctance/' "to renew," he says, "my impor- 
 tunities on the subject of the committee of 
 arrangement. The present unsettled state of 
 the army is productive of so much dissatisfac- 
 tion, and of such a variety of disputes, that 
 almost the whole of my time is now employed 
 in finding temporary and inadequate expe- 
 dients to quiet the minds of officers and keep 
 business on a tolerable sort of footing." And 
 so it goes on, through the year and through 
 the winter beyond it, into another campaign- 
 ing season; and nothing but the strenuous, 
 unremitting exertion of his great personal in- 
 fluence keeps enough of officers and men in 
 camp or field to maintain a show of war. 
 
 Hitherto, in all his sore trials from the impo- 
 tence of Congress, he has never swerved from 
 his careful attitude of respect for and deference 
 to the civil authority supposed to be lodged 
 in its hands; but now he finds that attitude 
 very hard to maintain. In a letter to the 
 speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates 
 (December 18, 1778) he ventures to express
 
 206 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 what he thinks is a public belief, " that the 
 States at this time are badly represented, and 
 that the great and important concerns of the 
 nation are horribly conducted, for want either 
 of abilities or application in the members, or 
 through the discord and party views of some 
 individuals." A few days after writing this he 
 is called to Philadelphia, for a conference with 
 Congress, and writes from there (December 
 30, 1778) to the same correspondent : — 
 
 ^' I have seen nothing since I came here (on 
 the 22d inst.) to change my opinion of men 
 or measures, but abundant reason to be con- 
 vinced that our affairs are in a more distressed, 
 ruinous and deplorable condition than they 
 have been in since the commencement of the 
 war. By a faithful laborer, then, in the cause ; 
 — by a man who is daily injuring his private 
 estate without even the smallest earthly ad- 
 vantage not common to all, in case of a favor- 
 able issue to the dispute ; — by one who wishes 
 the prosperity of America most devoutly, and 
 sees, or thinks he sees it, on the brink of ruin, 
 you are beseeched most earnestly, my dear 
 Colonel Harrison, to exert yourself in endea- 
 voring to rescue your country by . . . send- 
 ing your ablest and best men to Congress.
 
 WASHINGTON 207 
 
 ... If I was to be called upon to draw a 
 picture of the times and of men, from what 
 I have seen and heard and in part know, I 
 should in one word say that idleness, dissipa- 
 tion and extravagance seem to have laid fast 
 hold of most of them ; that speculation, pecu- 
 lation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem 
 to have got the better of every other consider- 
 ation and almost of every order of men ; that 
 party disputes and personal quarrels are the 
 great business of the day, whilst the momen- 
 tous concerns of an empire, — a great and 
 accumulated debt, — ruined finances, — de- 
 preciated money and want of credit . . . are 
 but secondary considerations and postponed 
 from day to day and from week to week. 
 ... I again repeat to you that this is not an 
 exaggerated account ; that it is an alarming 
 one I do not deny, and confess to you that I 
 feel more real distress on account of the present 
 appearances of things than I have done at 
 any one time since the commencement of the 
 dispute." 
 
 Lafayette, who had gone to France (now 
 in open alliance with the States) to solicit na- 
 val and military aid, found that the notori- 
 ous factitiousness and incapacity of Congress
 
 w3 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 was ruining the American cause abroad, as 
 well as at home. " For God's sake/' he wrote 
 to Washington (June 12, 1779) "prevent 
 their loudly disputing together ; nothing hurts 
 so much the interest and reputation of Amer- 
 ica as to hear of their intestine quarrels"; and 
 that good French friend addressed a remon- 
 strance on the subject to Congress itself. 
 
 By this time (in 1779) all the old sufferings 
 of the army from the systemless mismanage- 
 ment and neglect of everything, in its com- 
 missariat and otherwise, that depended upon 
 civil aofents and authorities, were beinjr more 
 than doubled by the state of the " continental 
 currency," which had sunk to the verge of 
 worthlessness. " The depreciation of it is got 
 to so alarming a point," wrote Washington 
 to John Jay, in April, " that a wagon-load of 
 money will scarcely purchase a wagon-load of 
 provisions." His officers, more and more un- 
 able to support themselves, are dropping away 
 from him continually. In December there is 
 starvation in his army again. He makes a des- 
 perate appeal personally to the nearest States, 
 telling them that his forces have been " five 
 or six weeks on half allowance," and he writes 
 to Congress that part of the army has been
 
 WASHINGTON 209 
 
 several days without bread. A month later 
 there is no improvement ; for we find him 
 turning to the county magistrates of New Jer- 
 sey, with a call for grain and cattle, which he 
 makes known that he must take by impress- 
 ment if they are not furnished without. Fi- 
 nally, the climax of congressional impotence 
 is reached, in February, 1780, when it throws 
 up its useless hands, abandons even the pre- 
 tense of attempting to supply the wants of the 
 army, resolving that it will make requisitions 
 upon the States and so cast the duty and re- 
 sponsibility on them. As Madison wrote to 
 Jefferson, the position of Congress had thus 
 ^* undergone a total change from what it ori- 
 ginally was." Now, he said, " they can neither 
 enlist, pay nor feed a single soldier, nor exe- 
 cute any other purpose, but as the means are 
 first put into their hands." 
 
 The working of the new plan was soon de- 
 scribed to Congress by Washington, who wrote 
 in April : " The system of State supplies . . . 
 has proved in its operation pernicious beyond 
 description. . . . Some States, from their in- 
 ternal ability and local advantages, furnish 
 their troops pretty amply, not merely with 
 clothing, but with many little comforts and
 
 210 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 conveniencies ; others supply them with some 
 necessaries, but on a more contracted scale; 
 while others have it in their power to do little 
 or nothing at all. The officers and men in the 
 routine of duty mix daily and compare cir- 
 cumstances. . . . Those who fare worse than 
 others of course are dissatisfied. . . . They 
 become disgusted with a service which makes 
 such injurious distinction. . . . The officers 
 resign, and we have scarcely a sufficient num- 
 ber left to take care even of the fragments of 
 corps that remain. The men have not this re- 
 source. They murmur, brood over their dis- 
 contents and have lately shown a disposition 
 to enter into seditious combinations." 
 
 On receipt of this letter Congress appointed 
 a committee of three to confer with Washing- 
 ton, giving the committee extensive powers. 
 This action was hotly opposed, on grounds 
 that were reported by the French minister at 
 Philadelphia to his government as follows : 
 " It was said that this would be putting too 
 much power in a few hands, and especially in 
 those of the commander-in-chief; that his in- 
 fluence was already too great ; that even his 
 virtues afforded motives for alarm; that the 
 enthusiasm of the army, joined to the kind of
 
 WASHINGTON 211 
 
 dictatorship already confided to him, put Con- 
 gress and the United States at his mercy ; that 
 it was not expedient to expose a man of the 
 highest virtues to such temptations." 
 
 But even the apportioning and addressing 
 of requisitions to the States proved too much 
 for the energy of the assembly which embod- 
 ied all existing authority for the government 
 of the United States of America. Most of the 
 men of the small army which had nobly borne 
 the hardships of the past two years were pear 
 the dates of their discharge, and Congress 
 could reach agreement on nothing that it 
 would do toward getting their places filled by 
 the States. In the past November, Washing- 
 ton had reported that the terms of over 8000 
 would expire in the course of the next five 
 months ; and urged prompt requisitions on the 
 States. In December, when nothing had been 
 done, he renewed his urgency, reminding Con- 
 gress that "several of the [State] assem- 
 blies are now sitting, and if the requisi- 
 tions of Congress do not reach them before 
 they rise the delay on assembling them will 
 protract our succors to a period which may 
 leave us absolutely at the discretion of the 
 enemy." "If not a moment should be lost,"
 
 212 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 he pleads, " the recruits will hardly join the 
 army before the month of April. . . . My 
 anxiety on the subject is extreme." Neverthe- 
 less, it was not till the 9th of February (1780) 
 that Congress passed an act making the de- 
 sired requisitions. The British had then trans- 
 ferred their principal forces and important 
 operations to the South, and beginning what 
 proved to be an absolute subjugation of Geor- 
 gia and South Carolina -for many months. 
 Practically there was nothing but the Southern 
 militia and the companies of Marion, Sumter, 
 and other partisan leaders, to resist them 
 throughout the year. "We are now begin- 
 ning," wrote Washington at the end of March 
 to Philip Schuyler, "to experience the fatal 
 consequences of the policy which delayed call- 
 ing upon the States for their quotas of men. 
 . . . What to do for the southern States, 
 without involving consequences equally alarm- 
 ing in this quarter, I know not." 
 
 Why prolong the dismal record? It grows 
 darker and darker to the verge of the end. 
 The army shrinks steadily ; when the French 
 troops of Rochambeau arrive, the American 
 commander-in-chief does not dare to pledge 
 himself to definite plans for a cooperative cam-
 
 WASHINGTON 213 
 
 paign, because he cannot foresee what forces 
 he will have. The new men of the army are 
 starved as their predecessors were, and will 
 not endure it as patiently; hence formidable 
 mutinies, which nothing but the impressive 
 influence of Washington and the firm attitude 
 of the strong officers who are his faithful 
 support prevent spreading to a ruinous re- 
 volt. That is the main tenor of the remaining 
 history, till French help and British blunder- 
 ing gave Washington his opportunity to trap 
 Cornwallis at Yorktown, and substantially end 
 the war. Then came the dangerous issue be- 
 tween a parsimonious, fatuous Congress and 
 an unpaid, long-abused army, which threatened 
 the wrecking of the national cause, even after 
 it had been won. Who but Washington could 
 have mediated with success between the two, 
 and brought about a peaceful dissolution of 
 the forces in arms ? His patriotic service as a 
 soldier was thus perfected to the last point of 
 perfection that one's mind can conceive. 
 
 At this point let us pause and put together 
 the impressions we have taken from these 
 glimpses of the experience of Washington 
 as commander-in-chief of the armies of the 
 American Revolution. For my part, I am left
 
 214 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 with such a sense of massiveness in charac- 
 ter, — of massive and superlative strength in 
 The Uphold- aluiost every moral element of char- 
 GMataessoi ^^ter, — as comes to me from hardly 
 Washington, another personage in history. It is not 
 force in the dynamic sense, as we found it ex- 
 hibited in Cromwell and Napoleon, and as we 
 can find it in most of the great soldiers of the 
 past, but strength, in its static meaning, — an 
 immutable upholding strength, which nothing 
 can break down. It is not in a single quality, 
 or in any group of qualities, but in everything 
 that could be tributary to greatness of spirit 
 and moral solidity in a man. The disinter- 
 estedness of his patriotism ; the unfaltering 
 steadfastness of his devotion to the duty that 
 he undertook; the equal faithfulness of his 
 loyalty as a soldier to the merest shadows of 
 civil authority and law ; his high magnanimity 
 and generosity of soul ; his constancy ; his 
 fortitude; his courage; his self-mastery of 
 powerful passions; his dutiful patience; his 
 self-respecting dignity, — they are all big in 
 the scale, beyond the largest common mea- 
 sure, when we weigh them together and at- 
 tempt some conception of the singular gran- 
 deur of the character that they formed.
 
 WASHINGTON 215 
 
 I do not know another that is quite so im- 
 pressive in its kind. I do not know another 
 that stands in quite the same relation to a 
 great national cause. For nothing can be 
 plainer than the fact that Washington won 
 the independence of the American States, not 
 so much by what he did as by what he was. 
 Thereby he became, in a certain degree and a 
 certain way, a substitute for some of the cen- 
 tralizing and inspiriting influences which the 
 country had no organization of real govern- 
 ment to generate or exert. Its trust was in 
 him. He was the focus and his example was 
 the inspiration of most of the public spirit 
 that was kept alive to the end. Who but he 
 could have retained or obtained any army 
 after the first years, without sweeping aside 
 the incapable Congress which abused its pa- 
 tience and crippled its work? Who else in 
 his place would have paid the long-suffering 
 deference and respect to that effigy of gov- 
 ernment which he rendered, with republican 
 fidelity, for eight years ? 
 
 If Washington had been as weak in po- 
 litical principle as Cromwell, who can doubt 
 that there would have been "purgings" at 
 Philadelphia, and a military dictatorship, and
 
 216 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 very likely a crowned head for the new 
 American nation? The thought of such a 
 treason to the young republic was abhor- 
 rent to the true-hearted Virginian, aristocrat 
 as he may seem to have been. He repelled 
 the suggestion with angry rebuke when it 
 came to him from some of his officers in the 
 last year of the war. "I am much at a loss," 
 he wrote, " to conceive what part of my con- 
 duct could have given encouragement to an 
 address which to me seems big with the great- 
 est mischiefs that can befall my country." 
 Later, in the midst of the political distractions 
 which followed peace, talk of a monarchy 
 reached Washington in his retirement, and he 
 wrote with anxiety to Jay : " I am told that 
 even respectable characters speak of a mo- 
 narchical form of government without horror. 
 From thinking proceeds speaking ; thence to 
 acting is often but a single step. But how ir- 
 revocable and tremendous ! . . .Would to God 
 that wise measures may be taken in time to 
 avert the consequences we have but too much 
 reason to apprehend." Yet, if a throne was 
 erected, who but Washington could be thought 
 of for king ? Of course, he knew it to be so ; 
 but the knowledge bore no slightest tempta- 
 tion to his mind.
 
 WASHINGTON 217 
 
 I am not sure that the greatest service of 
 Washington to his country was not that which 
 he rendered as the first and most his Final 
 trusted of its citizens, when the work service. 
 of the soldier was finished, and the fruits of 
 the independence he had won were in rapid 
 and total decay, because of the want of any 
 frame of substantial nationality, — any gov- 
 ernment to command respect, — to fulfill obli- 
 gations, — to harmonize and promote public 
 interests, — to preserve public order and 
 peace. In that dreadful interval of five years, 
 between the peace with Great Britain and the 
 adoption of the Federal Constitution, when 
 local jealousies, petty reckonings of self-in- 
 terest and a foolish dread of all centralized 
 power in government were combining to wreck 
 the American experiment of a federated re- 
 public, the most powerful of all reasonable in- 
 fluences in the country was that of the known 
 opinions of Washington. In private corre- 
 spondence and in the few public addresses 
 that he found occasion to make, he lost no 
 opportunity to plead for a constitution " that 
 will," as he described his conception of it, 
 " give consistency, stability, and dignity to the 
 Union, and sufficient powers to the great coun-
 
 218 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 cil of the nation for general purposes." It 
 was the subject of most urgency in a circular 
 letter which he addressed to the governors of 
 all the States, in June, 1783, when preparing 
 to disband the army ; it was in his farewell 
 orders to the armies, in the following Novem- 
 ber ; and we find it in every letter that he 
 wrote to men of weight in different parts of 
 the country during the next five years. 
 
 Meantime he was leading the undertaking 
 of Virginia to open trade routes between the 
 tributaries of the Ohio and the Potomac and 
 the James, as a means of binding the western 
 country to the east, out of which sprang larger 
 movements of commercial cooperation, result- 
 ing finally in the call of the immortal con- 
 vention which framed the Federal Constitution 
 of the United States. The fact that Washing- 
 ton would accept a seat in that convention 
 was the decisive fact which secured the ap- 
 pointment of delegates from every State ex- 
 cept Rhode Island; it was Washington's presi- 
 dency of the convention that overcame its 
 disagreements and averted failure in its work ; 
 and it is not possible to believe that the people 
 would have given their consent to the much 
 distrusted experiment of government under
 
 WASHINGTON 219 
 
 the proposed constitution if they had not ex- 
 pected Washington to preside in the trial of 
 it and inaugurate the exercise of its executive 
 powers. It was the trust in him — in his wis- 
 dom, in his fidelity to the whole people, in the 
 purity of his patriotism, and in the single- 
 minded honesty of every motive in his nature 
 — that had potency above all other influences 
 in rescuing the country from that slough of 
 faction and folly into which the old nerveless 
 Confederation had allowed it to sink. Then, 
 by the dignity, the firmness, the discreetness, 
 and the soundness of principle in his adminis- 
 tration, especially in the great measures which 
 Hamilton conceived and Washington sus- 
 tained, he established the new Union on bases 
 of enough solidity to resist the shocks of party 
 warfare which put it quickly to the test. 
 
 Washington's value to the country in these 
 periods of his public life was as measureless 
 as in the period of his military com- incompar- 
 mand, and it was derived from the pa^^erSwa 
 same combination of moral and intel- country." 
 lectual qualities which gave him a unique 
 greatness of upholding strength. When we 
 call him the Father of his Country we are 
 using what is hardly a figure of speech. His
 
 220 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 relations to its birth and its youth were pater- 
 nal in very fact. He truly gave it a national 
 existence ; he was looked to while he lived, as 
 a child looks to its parent, for guardianship, 
 guiding wisdom, protecting care. In all his- 
 tory I find nothing that parallels the preemi- 
 nence of his standing in the life of a great 
 nation, and nothing in greatness of character 
 that is quite like his.
 
 LINCOLN: SIMPLEST IN 
 GEBATNESS
 
 LINCOLN : SIMPLEST IN GREATNESS 
 
 In what may be called the accidents of their 
 lives and the non-essentials of their person- 
 ality, Washington and Lincoln, the two su- 
 premely great men in American history, are 
 strikingly and strangely contrasted. So far 
 as there have been patrician and plebeian dis- 
 tinctions in our society, Washington, born to 
 the comfortable circumstances and considerable 
 refinements of planter life in colonial Virginia, 
 is representative of one class, while Lincoln, 
 child of pioneering poverty in the first settle- 
 ments of the early West, will stand for the 
 other. But there was no heredity of caste in 
 Lincoln's apparent; plebeianism. The old no- 
 tion that he sprang from the social substratum 
 of chronically "poor whites" at the South 
 has been proved to be wholly false. His fam- 
 ily stock was as good in origin and as thriv- 
 ing generally as any; but something of ill- 
 fortune and something of ill-thrift appear to 
 have combined in making his father a poorer 
 man than others of the name and kin.
 
 224 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 Thomas Lincoln, the father, was one of the 
 never prosperous migrants of his time, who 
 The Early pushed his family farther and farther 
 theFufure ^^ the roughest edges of civilization ; 
 ^^' from Kentucky to Indiana and from 
 
 Indiana to Illinois. Hence the son, Abraham, 
 had his breeding in circumstances as rude, as 
 rigorous, as bare, as toilsome, but as whole- 
 some in many respects, as have ever been 
 found in American life. Of teaching in school 
 he could sum up hardly more than a total of 
 six months, when he referred to it in after 
 years. It started him in reading, writing, ci- 
 phering, and that was enough. Absolutely it 
 was enough; for a man more perfectly edu- 
 cated than Abraham Lincoln, in the true mean- 
 ing of education, did not exist in the world, 
 when the time came for his doing of great 
 work. He had perfected his powers, and the 
 simple story of the simple methods of self -cul- 
 ture and self-training by which he was nature- 
 led to that perfect result holds the whole phi- 
 losophy of education. It affords, too, a more 
 distinct revelation of the mind that was to 
 grow in the man from the mind of the boy 
 than I know of in any other case of kindred 
 intellectual gifts.
 
 LINCOLN 225 
 
 The significance of the story is not in what 
 it tells of difficulties and wants. That books 
 of any kind came rarely within reach of Lin- 
 coln as a boy ; that he borrowed far and near 
 whatever he could obtain; that he made long 
 extracts from his borrowed books, and so ac- 
 quired something of a manuscript library; that 
 he wrote on boards when paper was lacking, 
 and re - copied later ; that a freshly shaved 
 wooden shovel and a charred stick were his 
 substitutes for slate and pencil; that spice- 
 wood bushes and a cooper's shavings gave him 
 light for his evening studies, — these are ex- 
 periences of hardship such as many self-taught 
 men have gone through. Lincoln's self-edu- 
 cation was distinguished from that of most 
 others by the remarkable exercising that went 
 with the feeding of his mind, to produce as- 
 similation in the most perfect degree. His in- 
 tellectual nature was fastidious from the first 
 and exacting in its demands. It would accept 
 no indefiniteness in knowledge and no indis- 
 tinctness of ideas. What he knew and what 
 he thought must be absolutely clarified in his 
 mind. If it did not come to him so from an- 
 other mind, in talk or book, he must make it 
 so, in language and thinking of his own. This
 
 226 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 mental characteristic was manifested in the 
 earliest childhood that his memory recalled in 
 after life. He said once, in a conversation: "I 
 remember how, when a mere child, I used to 
 get irritated when anybody talked to me in a 
 way I could not understand. I do not think I 
 ever got angry at anything else in my life; 
 but that always disturbed my temper, and has 
 ever since. ... I can remember going to my 
 little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors 
 talk of an evening with my father, and spend- 
 ing no small part of the night walking up and 
 down, trying to make out what was the exact 
 meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. 
 I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I 
 got on such a hunt for an idea, until I had 
 caught it; and when I thought I had got it I 
 was not satisfied until I had repeated it over 
 and over ; until I had put it in language plain 
 enough, as I thought, for any boy to compre- 
 hend. This was a kind of passion with me, 
 and it has stuck by me ; for I am never easy 
 now, when I am handling a thought, till I 
 have bounded it north and bounded it south, 
 and bounded it east and bounded it west." 
 
 Now, there we see Abraham Lincoln in the 
 making, intellectually. There we see the fash-
 
 LINCOLN 227 
 
 ioning of the mind that dealt with the tre- 
 mendous problems of the Civil War; that pro- 
 duced the great state papers of the great pres- 
 idency ; that won the faith and following of 
 the nation through years of awful trial by its 
 simple, persuasive wisdom. A mind luminous, 
 absorbent, strong by nature, was clarified and 
 strengthened to perfection by the cultivation 
 of right habits of exercise with lifelong labo- 
 rious care. 
 
 There is a moral revelation, too, of Lincoln, 
 in this disclosure of his early processes of 
 thought. It shows the truest kind of honesty 
 that can exist in a man, — the fundamental 
 rectitude of mind. That constitution of mind 
 which must, by its own compulsion, work 
 straightly and accurately and completely to 
 the end of its thinking, always; which can 
 suffer no dallying, or carelessness, or indiffer- 
 ence, in its processes, or endure any dimness 
 of light in its chambers; which is driven by 
 a goad of nature to find the verity in what- 
 ever it seeks, and to be content with nothing 
 else; — it is in that make of mind that all 
 rectitude has its natural and only sure seat. 
 Moral movements of feeling — leadings of con- 
 science — may be potent in others, but never
 
 228 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 with the unfailing certainty of uprightness 
 found here. 
 
 Into a rare and wonderful alliance with this 
 logical rectitude of thought came the humor- 
 ous imagination which warmed and genialized 
 Lincoln's mind. It lent the magic touch which 
 transforms talent into genius. It doubled the 
 sources of illumination to his thinking and 
 speaking, by adding parable and allegory to 
 argument, — suggestive illustration to rational 
 deduction. It was a dramatic imagination, 
 which actualized ideas, in parabolic anecdotes 
 and stories, instead of imaging them in meta- 
 phors, as the poet does. It contributed some 
 large part to a great gift of power for the just 
 persuasion and right leading of men, such as 
 few in all history have possessed. In this, too, 
 as in the other part of that wonderful gift, the 
 great man of history was foreshadowed in the 
 roughly bred boy of the pioneer's cabin. The 
 gift was never hidden in a napkin to rust. 
 Boy and man, Lincoln was always eager to 
 give out to others what he found in his own 
 mind. From childhood he was the central 
 talker, story-teller, speech-maker of his circle, 
 and always its intellectual leader. One com- 
 rade of his boyhood, who is quoted by Miss
 
 LINCOLN 229 
 
 Tarbell in her biography, relates that "when 
 he appeared in company the boys would gather 
 and cluster around him to hear him talk. 
 . . . He argued much from analogy, and ex- 
 plained things hard for us to understand by 
 stories, maxims, tales and figures. He would 
 almost always point his lesson or idea by some 
 story that was plain and near to us, that we 
 might instantly see the force and bearing of 
 what he said." The child, we see, was training 
 all his powers for what the man would have 
 to do. 
 
 In the feeding of such a mind as that of 
 Lincoln, neither the number nor the kind of 
 available books mattered greatly. The meats 
 that came to it were so masticated and di- 
 gested that whatever was real in substance 
 sufficed. When, at eighteen, he found a vol- 
 ume of the Revised Statutes of Indiana, con- 
 taining, furthermore, the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, the Ordinance of 1787, and the 
 Constitution of the United States, it gave him 
 more than a library of standard literature 
 would give to the ordinary studious boy. Its 
 juiceless desiccations of law, history, political 
 philosophy, social economy, were all dissolved 
 in that digestive intellect of his, and went to
 
 230 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 the making and nourishing of idfeas that were 
 fundamental in his future thinking and belief. 
 But the importance of books in Lincoln's 
 education was not so supreme as it is com- 
 monly made. He craved them, and drew from 
 them richly ; but he craved still more the stim- 
 ulus, the suggestion, the information, the ex- 
 pansion that he could get from talk with men. 
 Perhaps he owed more of the perfect evolution 
 and training of his peculiar powers to that 
 wide intimacy of intercourse with his fellows 
 which he sought continually, than he owed to 
 books. Certainly it prepared him, as nothing 
 else could have done, for the great work he was 
 destined to do. He was to touch the minds 
 and hearts of millions, win their faith and 
 their love, guide them, lead them, by their rea- 
 son and by their feeling alike, and he came to 
 that mission prepared for it by a sympathetic 
 acquaintance with men, apart and together, in 
 their personal and their multitudinous char- 
 acter, such as few have ever had. The un- 
 conventional, democratic society of the Young 
 West, in his young manhood and middle life, 
 shuffled all sorts and conditions of people con- 
 stantly into the public gatherings that he liked 
 to join, — on the street — at the country post-
 
 LINCOLN 231 
 
 office and store*-*- in and around the court- 
 house — by the tavern fire in court - circuit 
 times. He centred such knots of talkers and 
 listeners around himself, as Socrates, in the 
 old days of the Athenian free democracy, was 
 wont to do. And how like Socrates he was, in 
 his personal homeliness, in the self-forgotten 
 carelessness of his manner and dress, and in 
 the quality of his mind ! Socrates had little 
 humor for the tingeing of his genius, and Lin- 
 coln had much; but otherwise the ancient 
 Greek and the modern American were men of 
 singular likeness in kind. There was no at- 
 mosphere of philosophy in the Illinois of his 
 day to turn Lincoln's thought to such ethical 
 problems as Socrates delighted to discuss; but 
 he dealt with questions of right and wrong 
 that were practical and urgent in the politics 
 of his time and country, as Socrates dealt 
 with abstract conceptions of virtue; by prob- 
 ing processes, that is, which led to the same 
 result. It is not likely that he ever read a 
 translation of the dialogues of Plato; but he 
 had quite the Socratic method of analytic ar- 
 gument, and exposed the fallacies of Douglas 
 as Socrates, if his dialogue were turned into 
 monologue, would have riddled the sophis-
 
 232 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 tries of Gorglas and Protagoras. They had 
 kindred minds and were kindred spirits; alike 
 in intellectual honesty; alike intolerant of 
 half -thinking ; alike scornful of trickish and 
 evasive minds ; alike in all greatness of soul. 
 
 For Lincoln's genius and character the tru- 
 est field that could have opened was that in 
 eniMoi ^'^^rican politics, as he found it on 
 hisPouticai reachino^ manhood, in the fourth dec- 
 
 Oareer. ® 
 
 ade of the last century, when imperi- 
 ous moral issues, raised by the aggressions of the 
 slaveholding interest, were beginning to drive 
 economic questions out of the public mind. The 
 political field invited him so early, and he was 
 so frankly ambitious to enter it, with such a 
 consciousness of his ability for it, that when he 
 had just reached the age of twenty-three he an- 
 nounced himself a candidate for the general as- 
 sembly of Illinois. Offering himself as a Whig, 
 in a district that was overwhelmingly Demo- 
 cratic, he experienced defeat, but obtained, at 
 the same time, the first of many proofs that were 
 to be given him of his singular attractiveness 
 to the people who knew him best. In the little 
 town of New Salem, where he had lived a 
 single year, he received all but 23 of the votes 
 cast, being 277 out of a total 300. Two years
 
 LINCOLN 233 
 
 later he repeated his candidacy, with success, 
 and for eight years thereafter, from 1834 till 
 1842, he represented his district in the lower 
 branch of the legislature of the State. 
 
 At about the same time he began the study 
 of law. Hitherto his work had been mostly 
 in occupations of manual labor, — in farming, 
 rail-splitting, flat-boating to and from New 
 Orleans, with some clerking in a country store. 
 His first undertaking of what can be called 
 skilled labor was in the office of deputy county 
 surveyor, for which, on the unsought offer of 
 it, he quahfied himself by six weeks of intense 
 study, night and day. This preceded his study 
 of law by a few months, and his practice of sur- 
 veying supported him till he had won admis- 
 sion to the bar and a living income from the 
 law. He dropped it in 1837, when he removed 
 from New Salem to the larger neighboring 
 town of Springfield, which he, by his influ- 
 ence in the legislature, had been instrumental 
 in making the capital of the State. From that 
 time, law and politics were rival interests in 
 his life, with the great public questions of the 
 time always strongest in their appeal. 
 
 His mind was never stirred very deeply by 
 party contentions over national banks, tariffs,
 
 234 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 and internal improvements, on which he sided 
 with Henry Clay ; but a righteous indigna- 
 tion, which represented everything of bitter- 
 ness that his reasonable nature could feel, was 
 wakened quickly when the champions of slav- 
 ery made claims and aggressions beyond its 
 constitutional rights. He hated the institution, 
 as his father and mother had hated it ; but he 
 respected the obligations of the national con- 
 tract of Union too profoundly to lend coun- 
 tenance to any attack on slavery within its 
 legalized domain. He repudiated the doctrines 
 of the abolitionists in so far as they repudi- 
 ated the binding law of the Constitution ; but 
 when the Illinois assembly, in 1837, adopted 
 resolutions disapproving of those doctrines 
 and condemning the formation of abolition 
 societies, he was one of two members who pro- 
 tested against the resolutions, because they did 
 not, at the same time, condemn slavery as an 
 institution, and because they denied the con- 
 stitutional power of Congress to abolish it in 
 the District of Columbia. 
 
 This was his lifelong stand on all questions 
 touching slavery that came up : unyielding 
 resistance to every claim for it beyond the 
 legal rights conceded to it clearly in the Con-
 
 LINCOLN 235 
 
 stitution ; unfailing respect for those. As early 
 as 1845 he defined for himself the future plat- 
 form of the Republican party, in a letter which 
 he wrote to one of the leaders of the " Lib- 
 erty party " that was then taking form. " I 
 hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the 
 Free States," he wrote, "due to the Union of 
 the States, and perhaps to liberty itself (para- 
 dox though it may seem) to let the slavery of 
 the other States alone; while, on the other 
 hand, I hold it to be equally clear that we 
 should never knowingly lend ourselves, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery 
 from dying a natural death, — to find new 
 places for it to live in when it can no longer 
 exist in the old." 
 
 For twelve years after quitting the Illinois 
 legislature, in 1842, Lincoln went deeply into 
 politics but once, when he served his district 
 in Congress for a single term (1847-49). The 
 time was that of the Mexican War, and Lin- 
 coln's skill in exposition was brought to use 
 in illuminating the iniquitous claims and false 
 pretenses that brought the war about. At the 
 same time he gave his vote for supplying the 
 means that were needful to the prosecution 
 of the war. He branded the iniquity of the
 
 236 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 government which had dragged the country 
 into an unrighteous attack on a weaker neigh- 
 bor, but he would not help to cripple the army 
 which obeyed, as it must, that government's 
 command. It was the morally patriotic course, 
 which every conscientious American of our 
 time who studies the circumstances of the 
 Mexican War has to approve. In its day, how- 
 ever, it was an unpopular course in many parts 
 of the country, and Lincoln may not have 
 seen encouragement in his district to accept 
 the Whig nomination for another term. There 
 were, however, other reasons given for his re- 
 tirement from Congress, after a service that 
 was too brief for any lasting reputation to be 
 made in it. 
 
 On quitting Washington, in the spring of 
 1849, Lincoln believed that he was quitting 
 Roused Dy political life, and he devoted himself 
 tie Repeal to his profcssiou for the next five 
 souricom- ycars. Then came, in 1854, the pas- 
 prom se. g^^^ ^£ ^1^^ Kansas-Nebraska Bill, re- 
 pealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, 
 opening to slavery the great region from which 
 that act had barred it, and establishing what 
 Senator Douglas, the author of the bill, called 
 the principle of "popular sovereignty," to wit,
 
 LINCOLN 237 
 
 "that all questions pertaining to slavery in the 
 Territories, and the new States to be formed 
 therefrom, are to be left to the people resid- 
 ing therein." Everything in Lincoln's nature, 
 reason and feeling, moral sense and political 
 judgment alike, sprang to instant revolt against 
 this breach of a compact which, during half 
 the life of the nation, had been established 
 among the bonds of its federal union. He 
 could not keep himself out of the thickest of 
 the political battle which opened then, or be 
 anywhere in it save far forward in the front ; 
 for no other man entered it with such powers 
 as his, so wrought to their utmost pitch. 
 
 It was then that the surpassing quality and 
 measure of the man began to be revealed, even 
 to the closest of his long-admiring friends, and 
 possibly even to himself. It began to be seen 
 that his speeches were something more than 
 beyond the common, — that they were mas- 
 terpieces of argumentative oratory. We have 
 one of them well reported, from the first en- 
 counters that occurred between Lincoln and 
 Douglas, on the new political issue, in 1854. 
 It was delivered at Peoria, in October, in reply 
 to a speech made by Douglas on the previous 
 day. To me it seems the most perfect, the
 
 238 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 most powerful, of Lincoln's speeches ; partly, 
 perhaps, for the reason that his first presenta- 
 tion of many views and his first expression of 
 many thoughts which came, necessarily, again 
 and again, into the discussions of the next 
 years, are found in this address. I am bold 
 enough to go further, and say that a more 
 perfect political argument never came from an 
 English-speaking tongue, if, indeed, from any 
 other. The perfection of it is equally in the 
 logic and the temper, the warmth and the can- 
 dor, the searchingness and the simplicity, the 
 large plan and the exquisite workmanship, the 
 satisfying completeness of the whole and of 
 every part. There are no surprising splendors, 
 — no bursts of eloquence, — no crimson and 
 purple patches in the speech, such as Burke 
 or Webster might have thrilled us with ; but 
 the pure crystal of it wants no coloring, — 
 needs nothing but the glow of the light that 
 fills it full. 
 
 With all of Lincoln's fervid feeling at the 
 time there is not the least acrimony in the 
 sympathetic specch ; nothing of the acidity, for 
 wMdtte°" example, that runs, with little dashes 
 South. Qf courteous sweetening now and then, 
 through Webster's reply to Hayne. Toward
 
 LINCOLN 239 
 
 the South he felt kindly and sympathetic, as 
 he never ceased to feel. 
 
 " I think," he said quietly, " I have no pre- 
 judice against the Southern people. They are 
 just what we would be in their situation. If 
 slavery did not now exist among them they 
 would not introduce it. If it did now exist 
 among us we should not instantly give it up. 
 This I believe of the masses North and South. 
 . . . When Southern people tell us they are 
 no more responsible for the origin of slavery 
 than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When 
 it is said that the institution exists and that it 
 is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfac- 
 tory way, I can understand and appreciate the 
 saying. I surely shall not blame them for not 
 doing what I should not know how to do my- 
 self. If all earthly power were given me, I 
 should not know what to do as to the existing 
 institution. My first impulse would be to free 
 all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to 
 their own native land. But a moment's reflec- 
 tion would convince me that whatever of high 
 hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, 
 in the long run, its sudden execution is im- 
 possible. If they were all landed there in a 
 day, they would all perish in the next ten days;
 
 240 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 and there are not surplus shipping and surplus 
 money enough to carry them there in many 
 times ten days. What then ? Free them all 
 and keep them among us as underlings ? Is 
 it quite certain that this betters their condi- 
 tion ? I think I would not hold one in slavery, 
 at any rate ; yet the point is not clear enough 
 for me to denounce people upon. What next? 
 Free them, and make them politically and 
 socially our equals ? My own feelings will not 
 admit of this, and, if mine would, we well 
 know that those of the great mass of whites 
 will not. Whether this feeling accords with 
 justice and sound judgment is not the sole 
 question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A 
 universal feeling, whether well- or ill-founded, 
 cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, 
 make them equals. It does seem to me that 
 systems of gradual emancipation might be 
 adopted ; but for their tardiness in this I will 
 not undertake to judge our brethren of the 
 South. 
 
 " When they remind us of their constitu- 
 tional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudg- 
 ingly, but fully and fairly ; and I would give 
 them any legislation for the reclaiming of 
 their fugitives which should not, in its strin-
 
 LINCOLN 241 
 
 gency, be more likely to carry a free man into 
 slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to 
 hang an innocent one. 
 
 " But all this, to my judgment, furnishes 
 no more excuse for permitting slavery to go 
 into our own free territory than it would for 
 reviving the African slave trade by law." 
 
 Here, in these few words of frank state- 
 ment, we can see that the judgment and the 
 feeling which guided Lincoln's whole treat- 
 ment of slavery, when he had power to deal 
 with it, was determined, distinctly and fully 
 in his mind, six years before the power came 
 to him, and that the possession of the power 
 made no slightest change. 
 
 By one more citation from this pregnant 
 speech of 1854 I wish to show how long the 
 basic line of his statesmanship as President 
 had been prepared in his mind, before the re- 
 sponsibilities of the crisis of the conflict with 
 slavery were laid upon him. " Nebraska is 
 urged," he said, "as a great Union-saving 
 measure. Well, I, too, go for saving the Union. 
 Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the 
 extension of it rather than see the Union dis- 
 solved, just as I would consent to any great 
 evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to
 
 242 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 Union-saving I must believe, at least, that the 
 means I employ have some adaptation to the 
 end. To my mind Nebraska has no such adap- 
 tation. ' It hath no relish of salvation in it. ' 
 It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one 
 thing which ever endangers the Union. . . . 
 It could not but produce agitation. Slavery 
 is founded in the selfishness of man's nature, 
 — opposition to it in his love of justice. These 
 principles are in eternal antagonism, and when 
 brought into collision, so fiercely as slavery 
 extension brings them, shocks and throes and 
 convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal 
 the Missouri Compromise, repeal all compro- 
 mises, repeal the Declaration of Independence, 
 repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal 
 human nature. It still will be the abundance 
 of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, 
 and out of the abundance of his heart his 
 mouth will speak." 
 
 The working of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 
 
 in the first application of it, to Kansas, was 
 
 what Lincoln had predicted it would 
 
 The Great i ci . n « . . 
 
 Debate with be. Six years of fiery agitation and 
 
 °^ *" conflict ensued, in the course of which 
 
 Douglas was driven to uphold his doctrine of 
 
 popular sovereignty by rebellion in his own
 
 LINCOLN 243 
 
 party. The old political organizations were 
 dissolved. Anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats 
 came together and formed the Republican 
 party. Lincoln, from the first, was the recog- 
 nized leader of the new party in Illinois, and 
 it came near to seating him at once in the 
 Senate of the United States. In 1856, at the 
 national Republican convention, he was pro- 
 posed for Vice-President, on the ticket with 
 Fremont, and received the second highest 
 number of votes. In 1858, when Douglas came 
 to Illinois for reelection to the Senate, Lin- 
 coln was the candidate chosen to oppose him. 
 
 Douglas was now the conspicuous man in 
 America; his fight for the retention of his 
 seat in the Senate was the exciting event of 
 the day, and the joint debates to which Lin- 
 coln challenofed him had the nation for their 
 audience. Reports of the speeches of the an- 
 tagonists were published far and wide at the 
 time, and subsequently in a volume, of which 
 30,000 copies were sold in a few months. 
 
 Douglas won his reelection by aid from cer- 
 tain of the anti-slavery people, who thought 
 it policy to send him back to the Senate for 
 continued battle with the Buchanan adminis- 
 tration ; but Lincoln won the next presidency
 
 244 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 of the United States. He won it designedly 
 for his party, but unconsciously for himself. 
 He had widened his reputation and risen im- 
 mensely in public esteem, while Douglas came 
 out of the encounter with serious wounds. 
 One, especially, w^as fatal to the future career 
 of the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. 
 Lincoln, by shrewd questioning, had forced 
 him into a deadly dilemma, between offense 
 to the North and offense to the South, com- 
 pelling him to maintain that the inhabitants 
 of a territory, in the exercise of their " pop- 
 ular sovereignty," might keep slavery from 
 entering it by police regulations and "un- 
 friendly legislation,'* in the teeth of the Dred 
 Scott decision, which the Supreme Court had 
 rendered a few months before, and that Con- 
 gress had no constitutional power to interpose. 
 This " Freeport doctrine," as it came to be 
 called, pleased voters enough in Illinois to 
 give Douglas his victory there, and Lincoln 
 had foreseen that quite probable result when 
 he planned to draw it out ; but he met the 
 expostulation of friends, who warned him that 
 it meant defeat to himself, by saying : " Gen- 
 tlemen, I am killing larger game ; if Douglas 
 answers, he can never be President ; and the
 
 LINCOLN 245 
 
 battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." 
 It came to pass as he foresaw. The Democratic 
 party was broken into sectional factions by 
 that "Freeport doctrine," which Lincoln's 
 unselfish acuteness had drawn into dispute, 
 and the triumph of the Republican party in 
 1860 was practically assured. 
 
 It is needless to dwell on the circumstances 
 and incidents of the next two years, which 
 were shaped, by God's mercy, to bring: . 
 about the nommation and election of the united 
 this now nationalized great man of 
 the West, to be the President of what seemed 
 to be the dissolving federation of American 
 States. Let us come at once to the day when 
 he took his heroic oath to " preserve, protect 
 and defend " a broken Constitution, and was 
 commissioned to restore authority and charac- 
 ter to a government which treason had be- 
 trayed and feebleness had abased. 
 
 It is not easy to realize the appalling com- 
 plexities of peril and difficulty that he faced 
 that day. Seven slaveholding States had then 
 passed ordinances of secession from the Union, 
 had withdrawn their representatives from 
 Congress, had seized forts, arsenals, and other 
 property of the Federal Government within
 
 246 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 their limits, and had organized a new confed- 
 eracy, based avowedly on slavery as its corner 
 stone. In the other slaveholding States much 
 division of opinion and feeling prevailed. The 
 positive secessionists in those States were in a 
 minority ; but that minority was sure of in- 
 stant reinforcement from a greater body of 
 theoretic secessionists, if the right of secession 
 should be denied to the States claiming it, and 
 if measures of coercion were undertaken. It 
 was sure, too, of further reinforcement from 
 the nominal Unionists of those States, if slav- 
 ery should be touched by the new administra- 
 tion in a hostile way. 
 
 In the free States there were much the 
 same divisions of sentiment, but the propor- 
 tions were reversed. Unquestionably, the posi- 
 tive, unconditional Unionists were a heavy 
 majority from the first ; the positive seces- 
 sionists, who would willingly have taken part 
 in the wTecking of the Union (like Fernando 
 Wood, for example, and other plotters of a 
 movement to make New York a "free city") 
 were an insignificant number ; but, in March, 
 1861, there was a really formidable body of 
 theoretical secessionists in the North, who 
 upheld the late President, Buchanan, in his
 
 LINCOLN 247 
 
 conclusion that the Federal Government had 
 no power to restrain a State which saw fit to 
 secede. 
 
 In the border slave States the conditional 
 and unconditional Unionists, together, had 
 strength enough to give hope that they might, 
 if wisely aided, hold those States from seces- 
 sion, even in the event of a conflict with the 
 rebellious States. As we look back now, that 
 seems to have been the sole substantial ground 
 there was for a hope of success in resisting 
 the destruction of the Union. In other words, 
 there appears now to have been hardly a pos- 
 sibility of success in the war for the Union if 
 the rebellious confederacy had been joined by 
 the border slave States. Quite as plainly, too, 
 there appears to have been no possibility of 
 restraining them from that junction if the 
 least disposition to attack slavery had been 
 shown by the new administration in its first 
 year of power ; and any effect from that cause 
 which weakened Unionism in the border slave 
 States would have strengthened the opposition 
 to the government in the free States and crip- 
 pled its arm. 
 
 Many who could recognize and understand 
 these fundamental facts of the situation in
 
 248 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 moments of thoughtful reflection were quick 
 to forget them in the heat of a passionate 
 desire for the destruction of slavery, as the 
 cause of the war. It seemed to be Lincoln 
 only whose wise, well-trained mind could hold 
 them always in its thought, and never be se- 
 duced to forgetfulness of them. He could set 
 the compass of his Union-saving policy in ac- 
 cord with them, and steer by it unswervingly, 
 through all the cross-currents and against all 
 the wayward winds of partisan passion and 
 conscientious recklessness that shook the helm 
 under his firm, strong hand. Who but Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, among the public men of that 
 time could have done this thing ? Who but 
 he could have stood up against the power- 
 ful men and bodies of men in his party who 
 had more angry eagerness to strike at slavery 
 than faithful determination to save the Union, 
 — resisting them, baffling them, angering 
 them, and yet planting deep down in their 
 hearts, all the time, a profound faith in him- 
 self? Who else could have stood between 
 Seward factions. Chase factions, Greeley fac- 
 tions, Cameron and anti-Cameron, Blair and 
 anti-Blair factions, and been in friendly inde- 
 pendence of them all ?
 
 LINCOLN 249 
 
 And who but Lincoln, at the outset of his 
 administration, could have brought himself 
 and Seward, the most important of Republi- 
 can leaders, into cordial and perfect coopera- 
 tion, after the astounding suggestion which 
 Mr. Seward, as secretary of state, had made 
 to his chief, that he (the secretary) would 
 take on himself the duties and responsibilities 
 of the head of government, if the President 
 should so desire ? To this most offensive inti- 
 mation that the President must feel himself 
 unfit for the great office to which he had been 
 raised, Mr. Lincoln replied with a simple dig- 
 nity and an unruf&ed temper which no spirit 
 but the loftiest could have shown, Mr. Seward, 
 on his part, was high-minded enough to rec- 
 ognize his superior in the man whose measure 
 he had mistaken, and two months later he 
 wrote confidentially to his wife, " the President 
 is the best of us." What had passed between 
 the two men was never disclosed till it came to 
 light upon the publication of the great bio- 
 graphy and history of Lincoln by his private 
 secretaries, Nicolay and Hay. Its disclosure 
 then was just to Lincoln, for it is one of the 
 most important of the revelations of greatness 
 in his soul. That degree of magnanimity, pro-
 
 250 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 duct of a devotion to impersonal ends that 
 can extinguish every egoistic feeling, is one 
 of the rarest virtues found in men, and Lin- 
 coln's capacity for it was never surpassed. It 
 bore him through countless sore dealings with 
 presumptuous, meddlesome, petty statesmen, 
 party magnates, arrogant soldiers, who were 
 slower than Mr. Seward to learn how master- 
 ful a strength and how profound a wisdom 
 were veiled by the unpretending simplicity 
 and homely manners of the country lawyer 
 from Illinois. 
 
 The question of most urgency that waited 
 for his decision when he came to the presi- 
 dency was that of action in the case of Fort 
 Sumter, and it was Lincoln's wise treatment 
 of that problem which drew out of it the im- 
 passioned excitement of loyal feeling which 
 solidified the North. Seward and one other, 
 at least, of his cabinet advisers, supported by 
 General Scott, then the head of the army, 
 would have surrendered the fort, thus encour- 
 aging the rebellion, disheartening loyal people 
 North and South, and discrediting the gov- 
 ernment at home and abroad. Blair, at least, 
 in the Cabinet, and some naval advisers, 
 would have precipitated a conflict with the
 
 LINCOLN 251 
 
 beleaguering batteries of the Confederates at 
 Charleston, by undertaking to reinforce as 
 well as provision the feeble garrison of the 
 fort. Lincoln listened to all counselors, ob- 
 tained all possible information, waited, watch- 
 ing and pondering, till the last possible hour 
 before Major Anderson and his men must 
 have food, and then sent a special messenger 
 to Charleston, with instructions to read the 
 following to the governor of the State : " I am 
 directed by the President of the United States 
 to notify you to expect an attempt will be 
 made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions, 
 only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, 
 no effort to throw in men, arms or ammuni- 
 tion will be made without fui-ther notice, or 
 in case of an attack on the fort." In this fair 
 notification there was no challenge or provo- 
 cation of hostilities; and when the Confeder- 
 ates responded to it by opening fire on the 
 starved garrison of Sumter they left no ques- 
 tion in any reasonable mind as to the placing 
 of responsibility for the beginning of war. The 
 secessionists had placed themselves too plainly 
 in the wrong for their theoretic partisans in 
 the free States to uphold them any longer ; 
 even Buchanan declared against them, while
 
 252 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 the potent voice of Douglas (then ill, and not 
 far from death) was raised to rally his great 
 body of followers to the defense of the na- 
 tional flag. Whatever of hesitant or disloyal 
 feeling there had been in the North was 
 beaten down by a wild tempest of patriotic 
 excitement, and the government, for a time, 
 was supported by a practically solid North, 
 with a tremendous invigoration of loyalty in 
 the border States. 
 
 The white heat of excitement which pro- 
 duced that emotional fusion could not, in 
 human nature, be maintained. In any 
 
 Hislnspir- . , "^ 
 
 inginiiu- Circumstances it would have cooled, 
 and such circumstances as came very 
 soon — in reverses to the national armies, and 
 in the slow testing, the necessarily slow test- 
 ing of inexperienced and untried general 
 officers, to weed out the inefiicient and find 
 the men of capacity and power — were too 
 chilling for any fervor of enthusiasm in a 
 whole people to resist. Complaining criticism 
 was provoked inevitably; and inevitably it 
 bred divisions that weakened and factions that 
 obstructed the government in its terrible task. 
 The wonder is, not that discontent, disheart- 
 enment, division, obstructive faction grew up
 
 LINCOLN 253 
 
 in those dreadful years of civil war, but that 
 more of every possible mischief to the national 
 cause was not produced; that the courage of 
 the loyal people was kept so high as it was, — 
 its resolution so firm, — its unity of purpose 
 and effort so nearly complete ; and it was the 
 influence of Abraham Lincoln, beyond all 
 other influences combined, that kept it so. He 
 brought about, between himself, as chief mag- 
 istrate, and the whole people, a familiar and 
 confidential relation such as had not been 
 known or dreamed of in government before. 
 Sometimes formally, in ofiicial documents and 
 addresses, sometimes informally, in open let- 
 ters to prominent personages or to committees 
 and associations, he opened his mind to the 
 public, on occasions of disturbing controversy 
 or of depressing events, with a frankness, a 
 simplicity, a warmth of feeling, a wisdom of 
 judgment and a clearness and force of reason- 
 ing that were marvelous in the impression 
 they made. The country found itself yielding 
 to the authority of a master mind and the 
 charm of a rare literary genius, long before it 
 knew why. 
 
 Such words of tender feeling as those spoken 
 by the great President at Gettysburg and in
 
 254 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 his second inaugural address, which went to 
 the hearts of the people, are remembered bet- 
 ter than the wise words that he addressed to 
 their understanding; but the immortal elo- 
 quence of the man is no more in one than in 
 the other. Take an example of his persuasive 
 reasoning from the first inaugural address, 
 where thirteen sentences hold the whole argu- 
 ment of common sense against the rupturing 
 of the Union : — 
 
 " One section of our country," he said, 
 "believes slavery is right, while the other 
 believes it is wrong, and ought not to be ex- 
 tended. This is the only substantial dispute. 
 The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, 
 and the law for the suppression of the foreign 
 slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, 
 as any law can ever be in a community where 
 the moral sense of the people imperfectly sup- 
 ports the law itself. The great body of the 
 people abide by the dry legal obligation in 
 both cases, and a few break over in each. 
 This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured ; and 
 it would be worse in both cases after the sep- 
 aration than before. The foreign slave trade, 
 now imperfectly suppressed, would be ulti- 
 mately revived, without restriction, in one
 
 LINCOLN 255 
 
 section, while fugitive slaves, now only par- 
 tially surrendered, would not be surrendered 
 at all by the other. 
 
 " Physically speaking, we cannot separate. 
 We cannot remove our respective sections 
 from each other, nor build an impassable wall 
 between them. Husband and wife may be 
 divorced, and go out of the presence and 
 beyond the reach of each other; but the dif- 
 ferent parts of our country cannot do this. 
 They cannot but remain face to face, and in- 
 tercourse, either amicable or hostile, must con- 
 tinue between them. Is it possible, then, to 
 make that intercourse more advantageous or 
 more satisfactory after separation than before ? 
 Can aliens make treaties easier than friends 
 can make laws? Can treaties be more faith- 
 fully enforced between aliens than laws can 
 among friends? Suppose you go to war, you 
 cannot fight always; and when, after much 
 loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you 
 cease fighting, the identical old questions as 
 to terms of intercourse are again upon you." 
 
 like the power of this appeal to reason 
 against the breaking of the Union was the 
 power of the President's thrilling arraignment, 
 a little later, of the assailants of Fort Sumter
 
 256 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 for the wantonness of their guilt in precip- 
 itating civil war. In his message to Congress, 
 convened in special session on the 4th of July 
 after the opening of hostilities, he recited the 
 circumstances of the event, and said of it : — 
 ^' It is thus seen that the assault upon and 
 reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a 
 matter of self-defense on the part of the as- 
 sailants. They well knew that the garrison in 
 the fort could by no possibility commit ag- 
 gression upon them. They knew — they were 
 expressly notified — that the giving of bread 
 to the few brave and hungry men was all 
 which would on that occasion be attempted, 
 unless themselves, by resisting so much, should 
 provoke more. They knew that this govern- 
 ment desired to keep the garrison in the fort, 
 not to assail them, but merely to maintain 
 visible possession, and thus to preserve the 
 Union from actual and immediate dissolution 
 — trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, 
 discussion and the ballot-box for final adjust- 
 ment ; and they assailed and reduced the fort 
 for precisely the reverse object — to drive out 
 the visible authority of the Federal Union, and 
 thus force it to immediate dissolution. That 
 this was their object the executive well under-
 
 LINCOLN 257 
 
 stood ; and having said to them in the inau- 
 gural address, ^ You can have no conflict with- 
 out being yourselves the aggressors/ he took 
 pains not only to keep this declaration good, 
 but also to keep the case so free from the 
 power of ingenious sophistry that the world 
 should not be able to misunderstand it. By the 
 affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding 
 circumstances, that point was reached. Then 
 and thereby the assailants of the government 
 began the conflict of arms, without a gun in 
 sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save 
 only the few in the fort, sent to that harbor 
 years before for their own protection, and still 
 ready to give that protection in whatever was 
 lawful. In this act, discarding all else, they 
 have forced upon the country the distinct 
 issue, ' immediate dissolution ' or blood." 
 
 In the same message the sophism of the 
 secession doctrine, " that any State of the 
 Union may, consistently with the National 
 Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peace- 
 fully, withdraw from the Union without the 
 consent of the Union or of any other State," 
 is shattered in what seem to be the fewest 
 words that ever carried an argument of such 
 force : —
 
 258 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 " This sophism," said the President, " de- 
 rives much, perhaps the whole of its currency 
 from the assumption that there is some om- 
 nipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a 
 State — to each State of our Federal Union. 
 Our States have neither more nor less power 
 than that reserved to them in the Union hy 
 the Constitution — no one of them ever hav- 
 ing been a State out of the Union. The origi- 
 nal ones passed into the Union even before 
 they cast off their British colonial depend- 
 ence ; and the new ones each came into the 
 Union directly from a condition of depend- 
 ence, excepting Texas. And even Texas, in its 
 temporary independence, was never designated 
 a State. The new ones only took the designa- 
 tion of States on coming into the Union, 
 while that name was first adopted for the old 
 ones in and by the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. Therein the ^ United Colonies ' were de- 
 clared to be ^ free and independent States ' ; but 
 even then the object plainly was not to declare 
 their independence of one another or of the 
 Union, but directly the contrary, as their mu- 
 tual pledge and their mutual action, before, 
 at the time and afterward, abundantly show. 
 The express plighting of faith by each and all
 
 LINCOLN 259 
 
 of the original thirteen in the Articles of 
 Confederation, two years later, that the Union 
 shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Having 
 never been States either in substance or in 
 name outside of the Union, whence this magi- 
 cal omnipotence of ^ State Rights,' asserting 
 a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union 
 itself ? Much is said about the ^ sovereignty ' 
 of the States ; but the word even is not in the 
 National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in 
 any of the State constitutions. What is ^sov- 
 ereignty' in the political sense of the term? 
 Would it be far wrong to define it ^ a politi- 
 cal community without a political superior ' ? 
 Tested by this, no one of our States except 
 Texas ever was a sovereignty. And even 
 Texas gave up the character on coming into 
 the Union ; by which act she acknowledged 
 the Constitution of the United States, and the 
 laws and treaties of the United States made 
 in pursuance of the Constitution, to be for 
 her the supreme law of the land. The States 
 have their status in the Union, and they have 
 no other legal status. If they break from this 
 they can only do so against law and by revo- 
 lution." 
 
 Two months later he had entered the long
 
 260 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 torment of his trouble with a great body of 
 shallow - minded good people, who could not 
 His Labor see the futility, in existing circum- 
 aated'Emaa- stauces, of a stroke at slavery, for any 
 cipation. desired purpose, and the fatality of it 
 to the cause of the Union. General Fremont, 
 their fit representative, had issued, as com- 
 manding officer in the Department of the 
 West, his presumptuous proclamation of 
 emancipation, thinking to force that suicidal 
 war policy on the government and make the 
 President a helpless follower of his lead. 
 Lincoln nullified the insolent edict unhesi- 
 tatingly, but in such a manner as to exhibit 
 the fine generosity of his temper anew. Then 
 he faced the storm of objurgation that broke 
 on him, — silently before the public for a 
 twelvemonth, because the actualities of the 
 situation in the wavering border States could 
 not be discussed publicly without mischievous 
 effects ; but what he could say privately to the 
 shame of his critics may be seen in the confi- 
 dential letter that he wrote to Senator Brown- 
 ing, of his own State, which appears in his 
 published writings. 
 
 Through all that following year he labored 
 to persuade Congress to offer and the Union-
 
 LINCOLN 261 
 
 ists of the border States to accept compensa- 
 tion for the voluntary freeing of their slaves, 
 as a means of ending hope in the rebellious 
 Confederacy of being joined by those States. 
 He began the effort in November, by drafting 
 a proposed bill "for compensated abolishment 
 in Delaware." In the following March he ad- 
 dressed a special message to Congress on the 
 subject, earnestly recommending the adoption 
 of a joint resolution to the following effect: 
 " That the United States ought to cooperate 
 with any State which may adopt gradual abol- 
 ishment of slavery, giving to such State pecu- 
 niary aid, to be used by such State, in its dis- 
 cretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, 
 public and private, produced by such change 
 of system." In support of the proposal he 
 wrote : — 
 
 " The Federal Government would find its 
 hicjhest interest in such a measure, as one of 
 the most efficient means of self-preservation. 
 The leaders of the existing insurrection enter- 
 tain the hope that this government will ulti- 
 mately be forced to acknowledge the independ- 
 ence of some part of the disaffected region, 
 and that all of the slave States north of such 
 part will then say, ' The Union for which we
 
 262 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 have struggled being already gone, we now 
 choose to go with the Southern section.' To 
 deprive them of this hope substantially ends 
 the rebellion; and the initiation of emancipa- 
 tion completely deprives them of it, as to all 
 the States initiating it. The point is not that 
 all the States tolerating slavery would very 
 soon, if at all, initiate emancipation, but that, 
 while the offer is equally made to all, the more 
 Northern shall, by such initiation, make it cer- 
 tain to the more Southern that in no event 
 will the former ever join the latter in their 
 proposed confederacy. I say ^ initiation ' be- 
 cause, in my judgment, gradual and not sud- 
 den emancipation is better for all. In the mere 
 financial or pecuniary view, any member of 
 Congress, with the census tables and treasury 
 reports before him, can readily see for himself 
 how very soon the current expenditures of this 
 war would purchase, at fair valuation, all the 
 slaves in any named State." 
 
 A few days after sending this message to 
 Congress the President invited the Representa- 
 tives from Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Vir- 
 ginia, and Delaware to an interview at the 
 White House, where he went more fully into 
 the reasons for his proposal. He found that
 
 LINCOLN 263 
 
 they had been made to feel distrustful of it 
 by the New York Tribune and other Kepubli- 
 can organs, which understood it to mean that 
 they " must accept gradual emancipation ac- 
 cording to the plan suggested, or get some- 
 thing worse," and they " did not like to be 
 coerced into emancipation/' He strove ear- 
 nestly to dispel this view of his intentions, and 
 received at the end their assurance that, as 
 they expressed themselves, " whatever might 
 be our final action, we all thought him solely 
 moved by a high patriotism and sincere devo- 
 tion to the happiness and glory of his country ; 
 and with that conviction we should consider 
 respectfully the important suggestion he had 
 made." 
 
 Congress, by large majorities in both 
 branches, adopted the proposed resolution, 
 proffering pecuniary aid to any State which 
 should undertake a compensated emancipation 
 of slaves, and the President lost no opportu- 
 nity to press the acceptance of it on the States 
 which could be reached by his appeal. Having 
 occasion, in May, to revoke another presump- 
 tuous declaration of general freedom to slaves, 
 issued by Major-Gen eral David Hunter, com- 
 manding a department embracing the three
 
 264 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 States of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, 
 he did so by a proclamation in which he went 
 beyond its immediate purpose to say this: — 
 
 " I further make known that, whether it be 
 competent for me, as commander-in-chief of 
 the army and navy, to declare the slaves of 
 any State or States free, and whether, at any 
 time, in any case, it shall have become a ne- 
 cessity indispensable to the maintenance of 
 the government to exercise such supposed 
 power, are questions which, under my respon- 
 sibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can- 
 not feel justified in leaving to the decision 
 of commanders in the field. These are totally 
 different questions from those of police regu- 
 lations in armies and camps." 
 
 Then, citing the joint resolution which ho 
 had recommended to Congress in the preced- 
 ing March and which that body had adopted, 
 he added : — 
 
 " The resolution . . . now stands an authen- 
 tic, definite and solemn proposal of the nation 
 to the States and people most immediately 
 interested in the subject-matter. To the people 
 of those States I now earnestly appeal. I do 
 not argue — I beseech you to make arguments 
 for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be
 
 LINCOLN 265 
 
 blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you 
 a calm and enlarged consideration of them, 
 ranging, if it may be, far above personal and 
 partisan politics. This proposal makes com- 
 mon cause for a common object, casting no 
 reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. 
 The change it contemplates would come gently 
 as the dews of heaven, not rending or wreck- 
 ing anything. Will you not embrace it? So 
 much good has not been done, by one effort, 
 in all past time, as in the providence of God 
 it is now your high privilege to do. May the 
 vast future not have to lament that you have 
 neglected it." 
 
 On the 12th of July he sought another con- 
 ference with the border States Representatives 
 in Congress and renewed his appeal to them. 
 
 "Let the States which are in rebellion see 
 definitely and certainly," he said, " that in no 
 event will the States you represent ever join 
 their proposed confederacy, and they cannot 
 much longer maintain the contest. But you 
 cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately 
 have you with them so long as you show a 
 determination to perpetuate the institution 
 within your own States. Beat them at elec- 
 tions, as you have overwhelmingly done, and
 
 266 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 nothing daunted, they still claim you as their 
 own. You and I know what the lever of their 
 power is. Break that lever before their faces, 
 and they can shake you no more forever. . . . 
 If the war continues long, as it must if the ob- 
 ject be not sooner attained, the institution in 
 your States will be extinguished by mere fric- 
 tion and abrasion — by the mere incidents of 
 the war. It will be gone, and you will have 
 nothing valuable in Heu of it. Much of its 
 value is gone already. How much better for 
 you and for your people to take the step which 
 at once shortens the war and secures substantial 
 compensation for that which is sure to be 
 wholly lost in any other event ! . . . 
 
 " I am pressed with a difficulty not yet men- 
 tioned — one which threatens division among 
 those who, united, are none too strong. An 
 instance of it is known to you. General Hun- 
 ter is an honest man. He was, and I hope 
 still is, my friend. I valued him none the less 
 for his agreeing with me in the general wish 
 that all men everywhere could be free. He 
 proclaimed all men free within certain States, 
 and I repudiated the proclamation. He ex- 
 pected more good and less harm from the 
 measure than I could believe would follow.
 
 LINCOLN 267 
 
 Yet, in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, 
 if not offense, to many whose support the 
 country cannot afford to lose. And this is 
 not the end of it. The pressure in this direc- 
 tion is still upon me, and is still increasing. 
 By conceding what I now ask you can relieve 
 me, and, much more, can relieve the country, 
 in this important point. Upon these consider- 
 ations I have again begged your attention to 
 the message of March last." 
 
 What he so pleaded for was not yielded, and 
 the demand on him for a military edict of 
 freedom which his profound sagacity could 
 not yet approve, as being of probable effect 
 for help to the national cause as much as for 
 harm, grew heavier from day to day. Its prin- 
 cipal mouthpiece was the New York Tribune, 
 through which Horace Greeley harangued the 
 President angrily, on the 19th of August, in 
 what he assumed to entitle "The Prayer of 
 Twenty Millions," and in which he went so 
 far as to declare that "on the face of this 
 wide earth there is not one disinterested, de- 
 termined, intelligent champion of the Union 
 cause who does not feel that all attempts to 
 put down the rebellion and at the same time 
 uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and
 
 268 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 futile." This insulting intimation that he was 
 not a " disinterested, determined, intelligent 
 champion of the Union cause/' and that he 
 was attempting to uphold slavery, drew from 
 the patient, steadfast, far-seeing pilot of the 
 ship of state his famous " Letter to Horace 
 Greeley," which said: — 
 
 ^^ As to the policy I ^ seem to be pursuing,' 
 as you say, I have not meant to leave any one 
 in doubt. I would save the Union. I would 
 save it the shortest way under the Constitu- 
 tion. The sooner the national authority can 
 be restored, the nearer the Union will be to 
 ^ the Union as it was.* If there be those who 
 would not save the Union unless they could at 
 the same time save slavery, I do not agree 
 with them. If there be those who would not 
 save the Union unless they could at the same 
 time destroy slavery, I do not agree with 
 them. My paramount object in this struggle 
 is to save the Union, and is not either to 
 save or to destroy slavery. If I could save 
 the Union without freeing any slave, I would 
 do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all 
 the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do 
 it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
 I would also do that. What I do about slav-
 
 LINCOLN 269 
 
 ery and the colored race, I do because I be- 
 lieve it helps to save the Union ; and what I 
 forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it 
 would help to save the Union. I shall do less 
 whenever I shall believe what I am doing 
 hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever 
 I shall believe doing more will help the cause. 
 1 shall try to correct errors when shown to be 
 errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as 
 they shall appear to be true views. I have 
 here stated my purpose according to my view 
 of official duty; and I intend no modification 
 of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men 
 everywhere could be free." 
 
 His profoundly controlling sense of the dis- 
 tinction that must always be guarded in his 
 mind, between the promptings of his personal 
 feeling and the dictates of his official duty, 
 which he strove in this letter to make under- 
 stood, was expressed more distinctly by Mr. 
 Lincoln much later, in April, 1864, when re- 
 marks on the subject which he had made to 
 Governor Bramlette of Kentucky, and others, 
 were put in writing by him at their request. 
 He said then : — 
 
 " I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is 
 not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remem-
 
 270 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 ber when I did not so think and feel ; and 
 yet I have never understood that the presi- 
 dency conferred on me an unrestricted right 
 to act officially upon this judgment and feel- 
 ing. It was in the oath I took that I would, to 
 the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and 
 defend the Constitution of the United States. 
 I could not take the office without taking the 
 oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an 
 oath to get power, and break the oath in using 
 the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary 
 civil administration this oath even forbade me 
 to practically indulge my primary abstract 
 judgment on the moral question of slavery. 
 I had publicly declared this many times, and 
 in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, 
 I have done no official act in mere deference 
 to my abstract judgment and feeling on slav- 
 ery. I did understand, however, that my oath 
 to preserve the Constitution to the best of my 
 ability imposed upon me the duty of preserv- 
 ing, by every indispensable means, that gov- 
 ernment — that nation, of which that Consti- 
 tution was the organic law. Was it possible 
 to lose the nation and yet preserve the Con- 
 stitution? By general law, life and limb must 
 be protected, yet often a limb must be ampu-
 
 LINCOLN 271 
 
 tated to save a life ; but a life is never wisely 
 given to save a limb. I felt that measures other- 
 wise unconstitutional might become lawful by 
 becoming indispensable to the preservation 
 of the Constitution through the preservation of 
 the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this 
 ground, and now avow it. I could not feel 
 that, to the best of my ability, I had even 
 tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save 
 slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit 
 the wreck of government, country and Con- 
 stitution, all together. When, early in the war, 
 General Fremont attempted military emanci- 
 pation, I forbade it, because I did not then 
 think it an indispensable necessity. When, a 
 little later. General Cameron, then secretary 
 of war, suggested the arming of the blacks, 
 I objected, because I did not yet think it an in- 
 dispensable necessity. When, still later. Gen- 
 eral Hunter attempted military emancipation, 
 I again forbade it, because I did not yet think 
 the indispensable necessity had come. When, 
 in March, May, and July, 1862, I made ear- 
 nest and successive appeals to the border States 
 to favor compensated emancipation, I believed 
 the indispensable necessity for mihtary eman- 
 cipation and arming the blacks would come
 
 272 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 unless averted by that measure. They declined 
 the proposition, and I was, in my best judg- 
 ment, driven to the alternative of either surren- 
 dering the Union, and with it the Constitution, 
 or of laying a strong hand upon the colored 
 element. I chose the latter." 
 
 This shows us how absolute in its sacred- 
 ness to him were the obligations of the oath of 
 his office, to preserve, protect and de- 
 tarypro- fend the Constitution of the United 
 oiEmanci- States J how absolutely it forbade 
 pation. 1^-^ ^^ ^^ anything against slavery to 
 any other end than of helpfulness to the per- 
 formance of that paramount duty ; and why, 
 therefore, he pondered and debated so long 
 the probabilities of effect from a proclamation 
 of emancipation, as being favorable or unfa- 
 vorable to the chances of success in the preser- 
 vation of the Constitution by the preservation 
 of the Union. He was balancing the solemn 
 question in that faithfully reasoning mind of 
 his when his letter to Horace Greeley was 
 written ; and he was so near to a determina- 
 tion upon it that his Preliminary Proclamation 
 of Emancipation was issued exactly one month 
 later. Even nine days before the publishing of 
 the proclamation he argued against the mea-
 
 LINCOLN 273 
 
 sure with a committee from the religious 
 denominations of Chicago, who came to plead 
 with him for it : " What good would a pro- 
 clamation of emancipation from me do, espe- 
 cially as we are now situated?" he asked. "I 
 do not want to issue a document that the 
 whole world will see must necessarily be in- 
 operative, like the Pope's bull against the 
 comet. Would my word free the slaves, when 
 I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the 
 rebel States ? Is there a single court, or mag- 
 istrate, or individual that would be influenced 
 by it there ? And what reason is there to think 
 it would have any greater effect upon the 
 slaves than the late law of Congress, which I 
 approved, and which offers protection and 
 freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who 
 come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn 
 that that law has caused a single slave to come 
 over to us. . . . Now, then, tell me, if you 
 please, what possible result of good would fol- 
 low the issuing of such a proclamation as you 
 desire? Understand, I raise no objections 
 against it on legal or constitutional grounds ; 
 for, as commander-in-chief of the army and 
 navy, in time of war I suppose I have a right 
 to take any measure which may best subdue
 
 274 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 the enemy; nor do I urge objections of a 
 moral nature, in view of possible consequences 
 of insurrection and massacre at the South. I 
 view this matter as a practical war measure, 
 to be decided on according to the advantages 
 or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression 
 of the rebellion. . . . Do not misunderstand 
 me because I have mentioned these objections. 
 They indicate the difficulties that have thus 
 far prevented my action in some such way as 
 you desire. I have not decided against a pro- 
 clamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the 
 matter under advisement; and I can assure 
 you that the subject is on my mind, by day and 
 night, more than any other. Whatever shall 
 appear to be God's will, I will do." 
 
 Nobody can doubt that the subject was on 
 his mind by day and by night, with infinitely 
 more pressure than on the minds of any who 
 wished to determine it for him. Probably, in 
 the few days that passed between his words 
 to the Chicago committee and the publishing 
 of the Proclamation of Emancipation (prepared 
 tentatively some weeks before), he had arrived 
 at no clearer certainty of judgment as to its 
 effect, but only reached the conviction that he 
 must risk the attempt with it.
 
 LINCOLN 275 
 
 Results proved that he had reason for his 
 hesitations and doubts. Twenty months later, 
 in his talk to Governor Bramlette and others, 
 the most that he could claim for the proclama- 
 tion as a war measure was, that '^more than 
 a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our 
 foreign relations, none in our home popular 
 sentiment, none in our white military force — 
 no loss by it anyhow or anywhere " ; and that 
 "on the contrary it shows a gain of quite a 
 hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen 
 and laborers" — from the emancipated slaves. 
 If there was no loss of real strength in " our 
 home popular sentiment " produced by the pro- 
 clamation, there was certainly much embitter- 
 ment of feeling and much excitement of ac- 
 tivity in those Northern circles where more or 
 less of the tie of old political alliances with 
 the South and with slavery was still of force. 
 " Copperheadism " reared its malignant head 
 and showed its fangs, as it had not done be- 
 fore, and the party of the War Democrats be- 
 came a more troublesome and embarrassing 
 party of opposition than it had been hitherto. 
 In the border slave States there was plainly a 
 cooling of the loyal temper, though not to the 
 point of any threatening reaction. The adverse
 
 276 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 effects, in fact, were only serious enough to 
 indicate how dangerous they would have been 
 at an earlier stage of the war, before the na- 
 tion had been resolutely settled to its painful 
 task. 
 
 As for the easing or shortening of that task, 
 by the great decree of death to slavery, there 
 is no sign of that effect. None was visible in 
 the two years and a half of war which followed 
 it, and none is discernible to-day. The battle 
 was fought out to its bitter end, of exhaustion 
 to the weaker side. Possibly it had to be car- 
 ried to that decisive ending ; but if a more 
 merciful conclusion was in any way possible 
 it would surely have been reached by the way 
 which Lincoln strove so hard to have taken. 
 Voluntary acceptance of compensated emanci- 
 pation by the border States would have dis- 
 heartened the Confederates as nothing else 
 could, by destroying all hope of the adhesion 
 of those States to their Confederacy. What 
 perfect conditions would thus have been pre- 
 pared for a warning proclamation, like that of 
 September 22, 1862, holding the same proffer 
 of compensated emancipation open for a des- 
 ignated period to the States in rebellion, at 
 the end of which time the whole power of
 
 LINCOLN 211 
 
 government would be directed to the compul- 
 sory liberation of all slaves ! Can we doubt that 
 this — so prepared for, as Lincoln wished to 
 have it — would have raised demands in the 
 Confederacy for acceptance of the proffer, and 
 caused dissensions enough to weaken the re- 
 bellion greatly, if not to break it down ? 
 
 Delayed as it was by Lincoln's wisdom, un- 
 til the irresistible trend of events had brought 
 a safe majority of the upholders of the Union 
 as near to agreement in approval of it as they 
 could be brought, the Proclamation of Eman- 
 cipation was an immortally great and necessary 
 measure; not as being importantly contribu- 
 tory to the defeat of secession, but as giving 
 finality to the defeat. It certified to the country 
 and the world tliat slavery should not survive 
 the rebellion it had caused, and that the Union 
 of States to be contended for thenceforth 
 should be a Union in which all men were 
 free. It lifted the Union side of the Civil War 
 to a moral plane, above the purely legal ground 
 on which it had to be begun, and it was 
 Lincoln's wise management that brought the 
 le2:al and the moral motive into consistent bar- 
 mony, for the energizing of both. 
 
 And now, having satisfied the anti-slavery
 
 278 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 demand, the President must turn to reason 
 with those who were angered by the procla- 
 mation, denouncing it as an abolition 
 soningwith mcasurc, false to the purpose and fatal 
 
 theDisaJ- ' *» i Vrr p i 
 
 looted atthe to the success 01 the War tor the 
 Union. The number taking that atti- 
 tude was seriously large. He had also to deal 
 with the malignant faction at the North whose 
 opposition to the government ran now into 
 seditious and treasonable courses ; and, finally, 
 he had to reason with a formidable body of 
 political opponents who, while taking no part 
 in such disloyal conspiracies, yet denounced 
 every measure of the executive against them 
 by any other than the slow ordinary processes 
 of the civil law. How scorchingly, with a few 
 quiet words, he could expose the unreasonable- 
 ness of such denunciations we may see in a few 
 passages from his letter to Erastus Corning 
 and others, written on the 12th of June, 1863. 
 Resolutions adopted at a public meeting in 
 Albany had been sent to him by the officers of 
 the meeting, and this letter was his reply. In 
 part he wrote : — 
 
 " The resolutions promise to support me in 
 every constitutional and lawful measure to sup- 
 press the rebellion ; and I have not knowingly
 
 LINCOLN 279 
 
 employed, nor shall knowingly employ, any 
 other. But the meeting, by their resolutions, 
 assert and argue that certain military arrests, 
 and proceedings following them, for which I 
 am ultimately responsible, are unconstitu- 
 tional. I think they are not. The resolutions 
 quote from the Constitution the definition of 
 treason, and also the limiting safeguards and 
 guarantees therein provided for the citizen on 
 trials for treason, and on his being held for 
 capital or otherwise infamous crimes, and in 
 criminal prosecutions his right to a speedy 
 and public trial by an impartial jury. They 
 proceed to resolve ^that these safeguards of 
 the rights of the citizen against the preten- 
 sions of arbitrary power were intended more 
 especially for his protection in times of civil 
 commotion/ And, apparently to demonstrate 
 the proposition, the resolutions proceed : ^ They 
 were secured substantially to the English peo- 
 ple after years of protracted civil war, and were 
 adopted into our Constitution at the close of 
 the Revolution.' Would not the demonstration 
 have been better if it could have been truly said 
 that these safeguards had been adopted and 
 applied during the civil wars and during our 
 revolution, instead of after the one and at the
 
 280 A STUDY OF GREATNESS EST MEN 
 
 close of the other? I, too, am devotedly for 
 them after civil war, and before civil war, and 
 at all times ^ except when, in cases of rebellion 
 or invasion, the public safety may require' 
 their suspension. . . . 
 
 " I was slow to adopt the strong measures 
 which by degrees I have been forced to regard 
 as being within the exceptions of the Consti- 
 tution, and as indispensable to the pubHc 
 safety. Nothing is better known to history 
 than that courts of justice are utterly incom- 
 petent to such cases [of treasonable secret 
 aid to a rebellion] . Civil courts are organized 
 chiefly for trials of individuals, or, at most, a 
 few individuals acting in concert — and this 
 in quiet times, and on charges well defined in 
 the law. . . . He who dissuades one man from 
 volunteering, or induces one soldier to desert, 
 weakens the Union cause as much as he who 
 kills a Union soldier in battle. Yet this dis- 
 suasion or inducement may be so conducted 
 as to be no defined crime of which any civil 
 court would take cognizance. Ours is a case 
 of rebellion — so called by the resolutions 
 before me — in fact, a clear, flagrant and 
 gigantic case of rebellion ; and the provision 
 of the Constitution that ' the privilege of the
 
 LINCOLN 281 
 
 writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended 
 unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, 
 the public safety may require it,' is the pro- 
 vision which specially applies to our present 
 case. This provision plainly attests the under- 
 standing of those who made the Constitution, 
 that ordinary courts of justice are inadequate 
 to ' cases of rebellion,' — attests their pur- 
 pose that, in such cases, men may be held in 
 custody whom the courts, acting on ordinary 
 rules, would discharge. . . . 
 
 " Of how little value the constitutional pro- 
 vision I have quoted will be rendered if arrests 
 shall never be made until defined crimes shall 
 have been committed, may be illustrated by a 
 few notable examples : John C. Breckenridge, 
 General Robert E. Lee, General Joseph E. 
 Johnston, General John B. Magruder, General 
 William B. Preston, General Simon B. Buck- 
 ner, and Commodore Franklin Buchanan, now 
 occupying the very highest places in the rebel 
 service, were all within the power of the gov- 
 ernment since the rebellion began, and were 
 nearly as well known to be traitors then as 
 now. Unquestionably if we had seized and 
 held them, the insurgent cause would be much 
 weaker. But no one of them had then com-
 
 282 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 mitted any crime defined in the law. Every 
 one of them, if arrested, would have been dis- 
 charged on habeas corpus were the writ al- 
 lowed to operate. In view of these and similar 
 cases, I think the time not unlikely to come 
 when I shall be blamed for having made too 
 few arrests rather than too many. . . . 
 
 " I understand the meeting whose resolu- 
 tions I am considering to be in favor of sup- 
 pressing the rebellion by military force — by 
 armies. Long experience has shown that ar- 
 mies cannot be maintained unless desertion 
 shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. 
 The case requires, and the law and the Con- 
 stitution sanction, this punishment. Must I 
 shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, 
 while I must not touch a hair of a wily agita- 
 tor who induces him to desert ? This is none 
 the less injurious when effected by getting 
 a father or brother or friend into a public 
 meeting, and there working upon his feel- 
 ings till he is persuaded to write the soldier 
 boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for 
 a wicked administration of a contemptible 
 government, too weak to arrest and punish 
 him if he shall desert. I think that, in such 
 a case, to silence the agitator and save the
 
 LINCOLN 283 
 
 boy is not only constitutional, but withal a 
 great mercy." 
 
 The exercise of martial law which, at this 
 time, had specially excited the political oppo- 
 nents of the government, was that which dealt 
 with Vallandigham, the most virulent and in- 
 fluential representative of Copperheadism in 
 the North. He had been arrested in Ohio, on 
 the 4th of May, for disloyal speeches, had 
 been tried by a miHtary commission, and, after 
 a brief imprisonment, had been sent through 
 the lines into rebeldom, to join his allies there. 
 Whereupon a timely meeting of the Demo- 
 cratic State Convention in Ohio nominated 
 him for Governor of Ohio, and adopted reso- 
 lutions demanding freedom for him to return 
 to his home. These resolutions were presented 
 to the President, by a committee from the con- 
 vention, soon after the publication of his letter 
 to the Albany meeting, and the chairman of 
 the committee, in some remarks, attempted a 
 criticism of what was said in that letter. The 
 President replied in writing, on the 29th of 
 June, and disposed of the essential part of 
 the criticism in these few incisive words : — 
 
 " You ask, in substance, whether I really 
 claim that I may override all the guaranteed
 
 284 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 rights of individuals, on the plea of conserv- 
 ing the public safety — when I may choose 
 to say the public safety requires it. This 
 question, divested of the phraseology calcu- 
 lated to represent me as struggling for an ar- 
 bitrary personal prerogative, is either simply 
 a question who shall decide, or an affirmation 
 that nobody shall decide, what the public 
 safety does require in cases of rebellion or 
 invasion. The Constitution contemplates the 
 question as likely to occur for decision, but 
 it does not expressly declare who is to decide 
 it. By necessary implication, when rebellion or 
 invasion comes, the decision is to be made 
 from time to time; and I think the man 
 whom, for the time, the people have, under 
 the Constitution, made the commander-in- 
 chief of their army and navy, is the man who 
 holds the power and bears the responsibility 
 of making it. If he uses the power justly, the 
 same people will probably justify him ; if he 
 abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt with 
 by all the modes they have reserved to them- 
 selves in the Constitution." 
 
 When he turned to the demands of the 
 Ohio convention, for Mr. Vallandigham's lib- 
 eration, he met it with a reply so perfect, so
 
 LINCOLN 285 
 
 pat, so pointed, and so straight to the point, 
 — so humorous in its very logicality, that it' 
 shook the whole country with a laugh of ad- 
 miration and delight : — 
 
 " The convention you represent," he wrote, 
 " have nominated Mr. Vallandigham for Gov- 
 ernor of Ohio, and both they and you have de- 
 clared the purpose to sustain the National Union 
 by all constitutional means. But of course they 
 and you in common reserve to yourselves to 
 decide what are constitutional means ; and, un- 
 Hke the Albany meeting, you omit to state or 
 intimate that in your opinion an army is a con- 
 stitutional means of saving the Union against 
 a rebellion, or even to intimate that you are con- 
 scious of an existing rebellion being in progress 
 with the avowed object of destroying that very 
 Union. At the same time your nominee for 
 Governor, in whose behalf you appeal, is known 
 to you and to the world to declare against the 
 use of an army to suppress the rebelKon. Your 
 own attitude, therefore, encourages desertion, 
 resistance to the draft, and the like, because 
 it teaches those who incline to desert and to 
 escape the draft to believe it is your purpose 
 to protect them, and to hope that you will 
 become strong enough to do so.
 
 286 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 "After a short personal intercourse with 
 you, gentlemen of the committee, I cannot 
 say I think you desire this effect to follow 
 your attitude; but I assure you that both 
 friends and enemies of the Union look upon 
 it in this light. It is a substantial hope, and 
 by consequence a real strength, to the enemy. 
 If it is a false hope and one which you would 
 willingly dispel, I will make the way exceed- 
 ingly easy. I send you duplicates of this let- 
 ter in order that you, or a majority of you, 
 may, if you choose, indorse your names upon 
 one of them and return it thus indorsed to 
 me, with the understanding that those sign- 
 ing are thereby committed to the following 
 propositions, and to nothing else : — 
 
 " 1. That there is now a rebellion in the 
 United States, the object and tendency of which 
 is to destroy the National Union ; and that, in 
 your opinion, an army and navy are constitu- 
 tional means for suppressing that rebellion ; 
 
 "2. That no one of you will do anything 
 which, in his own judgment, will tend to 
 hinder the increase, or favor the decrease, or 
 lessen the efficiency of the army or navy 
 while engaged in the effort to suppress that 
 rebellion; and
 
 LINCOLN 287 
 
 "3. That each of you will, in his sphere, 
 do all he can to have the officers, soldiers and 
 seamen of the army and navy, while engaged 
 in the effort to suppress the rebellion, paid, 
 fed, clad, and otherwise well provided for and 
 supported. 
 
 " And with the further understanding that 
 upon receiving the letter and names thus in- 
 dorsed, I will cause them to be published, 
 which publication shall be, within itself, a re- 
 vocation of the order in relation to Mr. Val- 
 landigham." 
 
 It is needless to say that the indorsement 
 of these propositions never came to the Presi- 
 dent. At the ensuing election Vallandigham 
 was buried under an avalanche of loyal votes. 
 
 Such incomparable expositions as these of 
 the ruling mind in the government, — of its 
 shrewd, all-seeing sagacity, its lucidity, its rec- 
 titude, its strength, its poise, its perfect tem- 
 per, — these were the nation's tonic in that 
 awfully trying time. Through and against 
 all adversities they established in it the will 
 and the faith which supported it to the end. 
 More than its people knew, the uncompromis- 
 ing determination which never parleyed with 
 rebellion, and accepted nothing less from the
 
 288 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 long conflict than an enduring vindication 
 and affirmation of the Federal Constitution of 
 their republic, was drawn from the depths of 
 their trust in a leader whom they found them- 
 selves learning to look upon as a gift from 
 the providence of God. That trust was too 
 profound, in the minds and the hearts of 
 too weighty a mass of the loyal people, to 
 be shaken by the intriguing factions which 
 strove to put another in Lincoln's place. His 
 reelection in 1864 by a majority of more than 
 half a million in the popular vote was the an- 
 swer of the people to an opposing party which 
 demanded peace by concession and compro- 
 mise, " after four years of failure," as they de- 
 clared in convention at Chicago, " to restore 
 the Union by the experiment of war." 
 
 When, on the next 4:th of March, he 
 stood again at the front of the Capitol, to re- 
 „^ „ ^ new his solemn oath of fidelity to the 
 
 The Second ^ ^ •/ . 
 
 Inaugural Constitution, the awful conflict of 
 four years was drawing near to its end, 
 and an illimited triumph of the cause which he 
 represented had come almost visibly within 
 reach. It was then, on the approach to that 
 triumph, filled with a solemn sense of its cost 
 and of the new tasks of statesmanship it must
 
 LINCOLN * 289 
 
 bring, — it was then that the surpassing no- 
 bility of spirit in the man was most impres- 
 sively shown. Of his wonderful address on 
 that day it was said by Carl Schurz: "No 
 American president had ever spoken words 
 like these to the American people. America 
 never had a president who found such words 
 in his heart." And when, indeed, had the 
 chief of any nation ever found in his heart 
 such words before. These seventeen marvel- 
 ous sentences, into which the meanings of 
 the war and of the issues from it, as he saw 
 them, were told to his fellow countrymen, can 
 never be put too often into print or too often 
 read : — 
 
 "And the war came. One eighth of the 
 whole population were colored slaves, not dis- 
 tributed generally over the Union, but local- 
 ized in the Southern part of it. These slaves 
 constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. 
 All knew that this interest was, somehow, the 
 cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate 
 and extend this interest was the object for 
 which the insurgents would rend the Union, 
 even by war; while the government claimed 
 no right to do more than to restrict the ter- 
 ritorial enlargement of it. Neither party ex-
 
 290 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 pected for the war the magnitude or the du- 
 ration which it has already attained. Neither 
 anticipated that the cause of the conflict might 
 cease with, or even before, the conflict itself 
 should cease. Each looked for an easier tri- 
 umph, and a result less fundamental and as- 
 tounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray- 
 to the same God 5 and each invokes His aid 
 against the other. It may seem strange that 
 any men should dare to ask a just God's assist- 
 ance in wringing their bread from the sweat 
 of other men's faces ; but let us judge not, 
 that we be not judged. The prayers of both 
 could not be answered — that of neither has 
 been answered fully. The Almighty has His 
 own purposes. ^ Woe unto the world because 
 of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses 
 come ; but woe to that man by whom the of- 
 fense Cometh.' If we shall suppose that Amer- 
 ican slavery is one of those offenses which, in 
 the providence of God, must needs come, but 
 which, having continued through His ap- 
 pointed time, He now wills to remove, and 
 that He gives to both North and South this 
 terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom 
 the offense came, shall we discern therein any 
 departure from those divine attributes which
 
 LINCOLN 291 
 
 the believers in a living God always ascribe to 
 Him ? Fondly do we hope, — fervently do we 
 pray, — that this mighty scourge of war may 
 speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it 
 continue until all the wealth piled by the 
 bondman's two hundred and fifty years of un- 
 requited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
 drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
 paid by another drawn with the sword, as was 
 said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
 be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true 
 and righteous altogether.' With malice toward 
 none; with charity for all; with firmness in 
 the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
 us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to 
 bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him 
 who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
 widow and his orphan — to do all which may 
 achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
 among ourselves, and with all nations." 
 
 Since more than a year before these words 
 were spoken the two States of Louisiana and 
 Arkansas had been so fully controlled The wise 
 by the Union forces that the problem I'Z^TrI 
 of a readjustment of their constitu- coMtrucuon. 
 tional relations to the Federal Union had be- 
 come an immediately pressing one, and had
 
 292 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 been worked upon most profoundly and dis- 
 passionately, we may be sure, in the Presi- 
 dent's mind. With his annual message to 
 Congress in December, 1863, he had issued a 
 proclamation of amnesty, which opened doors 
 for the return of both individuals and States 
 to the Union fold. It excepted certain classes 
 of leaders and special offenders from an offer 
 of pardon, " with restoration of all rights of 
 property except as to slaves," extended to all 
 participants in the rebellion who would sub- 
 scribe a given oath. This oath pledged fidelity 
 to the Constitution and the Union, and sup- 
 port to what had been done by legislation and 
 proclamation touching slavery, "so long and 
 so far as not repealed, modified or held void " 
 by Congress or the Supreme Court. The pro- 
 clamation announced that whenever, in any 
 State where rebellion had prevailed, a number 
 of qualified voters, not less than one tenth of 
 the number of votes cast at the presidential 
 election in 1860, should take the prescribed 
 oath and reestablish a republican State gov- 
 ernment in conformity with it, such govern- 
 ment would be recognized as the true govern- 
 ment of the State ; but admission to Congress 
 of representatives and senators from such State
 
 LINCOLN 293 
 
 would be dependent on tlie Congress itself. 
 This, said the President, "is intended to pre- 
 sent ... a mode in and by which the na- 
 tional authority and loyal State governments 
 may be reestablished" in the States desig- 
 nated; but "it must not be understood that 
 no other possible mode would be acceptable." 
 The proclamation and its suggested plan of 
 " reconstruction " for the States in rebellion 
 gave general satisfaction in and out of Con- 
 gress ; a few radicals only, whose patriotism 
 was more passionate than statesmanlike, ob- 
 jecting to its leniency, and claiming for Con- 
 gress the sole power to deal with the seceded 
 States. According to the radical view, the re- 
 bellion of those States had wrought a forfeit- 
 ure of all their constitutional rights as States, 
 reducing them to the status of subjugated 
 provinces, or Territories, from which they 
 ought not to be redeemed on terms so simple 
 and mild as the President proposed. This rad- 
 ical view gained ground in Congress, and pro- 
 duced finally a bill, passed in the last hours 
 of the session (July, 1864), which embodied 
 a very different plan, requiring a majority of 
 the white male citizens of a seceded State to 
 take the prescribed oath before any reconstruc-
 
 294 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 tion of State government could occur, and dic- 
 tating a single mode in which the proceed- 
 ings of reconstruction must be carried out. 
 This would nullify action that had been taken 
 already in Louisiana and Arkansas, and the 
 President declined to sign the bill, which 
 came to him an hour before Congress ad- 
 journed. He laid it before the country, in a 
 published proclamation, which said : " While 
 I am . . . unprepared, by a formal approval 
 of this bill, to be inflexibly committed to any 
 single plan of restoration, and while I am also 
 unprepared to declare that the free State con- 
 stitutions already adopted and installed in 
 Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and 
 held for naught, thereby repelling and discour- 
 aging the loyal citizens who have set up the 
 same as to further effort, . . . nevertheless I 
 am fully satisfied with the system for restora- 
 tion contained in the bill, as one very proper 
 plan for the loyal people of any State choosing 
 to adopt it." By this wise course President 
 Lincoln avoided a mischievous issue between 
 Congress and himself. His own policy and 
 action, looking to the speediest possible heal- 
 ing of the wounds of civil war, were approved 
 by public opinion, and when his radical op-
 
 LINCOLN 295 
 
 ponents, at the next session of Congress, at- 
 tempted new legislation, to undo his measures, 
 they could carry it through neither House. 
 
 The last public utterance of the President, 
 three evenings before his assassination, when 
 he responded to a serenade which celebrated 
 the approaching end of the rebellion, had re- 
 ference to this difference between his own 
 conception of what would be wisdom in the 
 use of recovered authority over the States 
 lately at war with the national government 
 and the more punitive course urged in oppo- 
 sition to it. Speaking of the plan proclaimed 
 in December, 1863, he said : — 
 
 "I received many commendations of the 
 plan, written and verbal, and not a single ob- 
 jection to it from any professed emancipa- 
 tionist came to my knowledge until after the 
 news reached Washington that the people of 
 Louisiana had begun to move in accordance 
 with it. From about July, 1862, I had cor- 
 responded with different persons supposed to 
 be interested [in] seeking a reconstruction of 
 a State government for Louisiana. When the 
 message of 1863, with the plan before men- 
 tioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks 
 wrote me that he was confident that the people,
 
 296 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 with his military cooperation, would recon- 
 struct substantially on that plan. I wrote to 
 him and some of them to try it. They tried it, 
 and the result is known. Such has been my 
 only agency in getting up the Louisiana gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 "As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as 
 before stated. But as bad promises are better 
 broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad 
 promise and break it whenever I shall be con- 
 vinced that keeping it is adverse to the public 
 interest ; but I have not yet been so convinced. 
 I have been shown a letter on the subject, 
 supposed to be an able one, in which the 
 writer expresses regret that my mind has not 
 seemed to be definitely fixed on the question 
 whether the seceded States, so called, are in 
 the Union or out of it. It would perhaps add 
 astonishment to his regret to learn that, since 
 I have found professed Union men endeavor- 
 ing to make that a question, I have purposely 
 forborne any public expression upon it. As 
 appears to me, that question has not been, nor 
 yet is, a practically material one, and that any 
 discussion of it, while it thus remains practi- 
 cally immaterial, could have no effect other 
 than the mischievous one of dividing our
 
 LINCOLN 297 
 
 friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter be- 
 come, that question is bad as the basis of a 
 controversy, and good for nothing at all — a 
 merely pernicious abstraction. 
 
 " We all agree that the seceded States, so 
 called, are out of their proper practical rela- 
 tion -with the Union, and that the sole object 
 of the government, civil and military, in re- 
 gard to those States, is to again get them into 
 that proper practical relation. I believe that 
 it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to 
 do this without deciding or even considering 
 whether these States have ever been out of 
 the Union, than with it. Finding themselves 
 safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial 
 whether they had ever been abroad. Let us 
 all join in doing the acts necessary to restor- 
 ing the proper practical relations between these 
 States and the Union, and each forever inno- 
 cently indulge his own opinion, whether in 
 doing the acts he brought the States from 
 without into the Union, or only gave them 
 proper assistance, they never having been out 
 of it. 
 
 "The amount of constituency, so to speak, 
 on which the new Louisiana government rests, 
 would be more satisfactory to all if it con*
 
 298 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 tained 50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000, in- 
 stead of about 12,000, as it does. It is also 
 unsatisfactory to some that the elective fran- 
 chise is not given to the colored man. I would 
 myself prefer that it were now conferred on 
 the very intelligent, and on those who serve 
 our cause as soldiers. Still the question is not 
 whether the Louisiana government as it stands 
 is quite all that is desirable. The question is, 
 will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to 
 improve it, or to reject and disperse it ? Can 
 Louisiana be brought into proper practical rela- 
 tions to the Union sooner by sustaining or by 
 discarding her new State government? . . . 
 "What has been said of Louisiana will 
 apply generally to other States. And yet so 
 great peculiarities pertain to each State, and 
 such important and sudden changes occur in 
 the same State, and, withal, so new and un- 
 precedented is the whole case, that no exclu- 
 sive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed 
 as to details and collaterals. Such exclusive 
 and inflexible plan would surely become a new 
 entanglement. Important principles may and 
 must be inflexible. In the present situation, as 
 the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make 
 some new announcement to the people of the
 
 LINCOLN 299 
 
 South. I am considering, and shall not fail to 
 act when satisfied that action will be proper." 
 That Abraham Lincoln did not live to make 
 another announcement on this question, in 
 which the more vital consequences of 
 the great Civil War were wrapped up, ity of u* 
 
 • p i' 1 ' n I Death, 
 
 IS one or our national misiortunes. 
 In the light of what has come from the bit- 
 terer spirit and the narrowed views which pre- 
 vailed in the work of reconstruction after his 
 influence was withdrawn we can measure the 
 calamity of his death. 
 
 We are nigh to half a century from the time 
 when that great man of the West acted his 
 great part on a tragic stage, and I 
 think the world agrees that his figure sure of us 
 looms grander and more heroic the 
 farther we recede.' The fact about him which 
 time discloses more and more is this : that his 
 greatness is measured, like that of Washing- 
 ton, not so much by what he was able to do for 
 the cause of Union and freedom, as by what 
 he was able to 6e to it. It was not his part to 
 ride upon the storm which rolled out of the 
 free North to overwhelm treason and slavery ; 
 it was not his part to forge its thunderbolts, 
 nor to hurl them ; it was his sublimer part to
 
 300 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 stand like a firm, strong pillar in the midst of 
 the swaying tempest of that uncertain time, 
 for a tottering nation and a shaken cause to 
 hold themselves fast by. That is what he was 
 to us ; that is what he did for us ; and that 
 is the kind of providence in human affairs 
 which great characters, only, of the grandest 
 mould and make, are given for. How much 
 this people leaned upon him while they fought 
 their weary battle out ; how much they took 
 strength from his strength, patience from his 
 patience, faith from his faith, they never knew 
 till he lay dead at their feet. To us who lived 
 through it, what an appalling day was that, 
 "when, right in the moment of our consummated 
 triumph, Lincoln was slain, and the pillar on 
 •which our very trust in one another had rested 
 more than we understood was overthrown ! 
 For a time it seemed as though the solid earth 
 had sunk away from our feet and chaos had 
 come again. It took us hours to believe that 
 all our victory had not come instantly to 
 naught, and that all the long battle had not 
 been fought in vain. It took us days to recover 
 belief in the reunion and rehabilitation of the 
 republic with Lincoln gone. All that he had 
 been to us began to dawn upon our undey-
 
 LINCOLN 301 
 
 standings then. We began then to know what 
 an incarnation of democracy he had been; 
 what a soul of sincerity and verity he had sup- 
 plied to the cause of popular freedom ; with 
 what possession his great character had folded 
 itself about every feeling that we had which 
 made us patriotic, democratic, republican. 
 
 And, yet, from what simplicity of nature 
 that influential strength of the man had come ! 
 Here, in truth, was the final secret of it. He 
 had kept his nature as it was given him. He 
 was so little a world-made man, — so very 
 much a God-made man. The child had grown 
 into the man, — not the man out of the child. 
 That rare kind of growth must preserve the 
 best fibre and elasticity of being. It must 
 have helped to produce the quaint, homely 
 humor which some people mistook strangely 
 for clownishness and levity. Levity! Who 
 ever looked into the sad eyes of Abraham 
 Lincoln, when his great burden was heavy 
 upon him, and believed there was levity in 
 the soul of the man? His earnestness was of 
 a strain too deep for those who slandered him 
 that way to understand. 
 
 Some have said that it was fortunate for 
 Lincoln's fame that he diecj when he did. No
 
 302 A STUDY OF GREATNESS IN MEN 
 
 doubt a certain consecration of his memory 
 was produced by the cruelty and martyrdom 
 of his death ; but farther than that there seems 
 no ground for the thought. If he had been 
 left with us, to be our counselor and guide 
 in the hard return from war to peace, we 
 should surely have come by a shorter and a 
 better way to better conclusions than we have 
 reached. 
 
 But no matter ; it is idle to speculate on 
 that. The important thing to be thought of 
 is, that we thank God as we ought to do for 
 the gift of this man's greatness while it was 
 ours, and that we do not let ourselves have 
 lived vainly in the light of it. If we mean to 
 be, in fact and truth, the democracy that we 
 pretend to be and are not; if we genuinely 
 wish to stand toward one another, as fellow 
 citizens of a political commonwealth, in the 
 simple relation of man to man, and give to one 
 another and take from one another all that 
 men can give and take in a perfected social 
 state, he has intimated to us how, and signi- 
 fied the kind of repubHcans we must be. If 
 this nation is to be truly great, it must be great 
 as Lincoln was, by verity and simpleness, by 
 honesty and earnestness; its politics a fair
 
 LINCOLN 303 
 
 weighing of true opinions; its diplomacy a 
 straight acting toward just purposes and ne- 
 cessary ends ; its public service a duty and an 
 honor; its citizenship a precious inheritance 
 or a priceless gift. Let us have faith enough 
 and hope enough to believe that the time of 
 these things is coming yet ; and then, not till 
 then, will the monument of Abraham Lincoln, 
 exemplar of democracy and type of the repub- 
 lican mau; be builded complete.