George Haven Putnam

“ The first demand of property is for security.... To publish a book in any real sense—that is, not merely to print it, but to make it well and widely known—requires much effort and large expenditure, and these will not be invested in a property which is liable to be destroyed at any moment. Legal protection would thus put an end to evil practices, make property secure, business more legitimate, and give a new vigor to enterprise. Nor can a policy which is unjust to the author, and works viciously in the trade, be the best for the public. ”

“ It is fortunate for the literature of the world that the Greek poets, dramatists, historians, and philosophers were content to do their work for the approval of their own generation, for the chance of fame with the generations to come, or for the satisfaction of the work itself, as their rewards in the shape of anything more tangible than fame appear to have been either nothing or something very inconsiderable. ”

“ As time goes on, Lincoln's fame looms ever larger and larger. Great statesman, astute politician, clear thinker, classic writer, master of men, kindly, lovable man,—these are his titles. To these must be added—military leader. Had he failed in that quality, the others would have been forgotten. Had peace been made on any terms but those of the surrender of the insurgent forces and the restoration of the Union, Lincoln's career would have been a colossal failure and the Emancipation Proclamation a subject of ridicule. The prime essential was military success. Lincoln gained it. ”

“ The reading public, which, as far as the mass of the people was concerned, came into existence only with the application of the printing-press to the literature of the Reformation, grew up, therefore, with the general belief that nothing more was due to the author than to read his teachings in any form in which they could be obtained, and for these earlier readers any distinction between an authorised and an unauthorised edition was, for more reasons than one, an impossibility. ”

“ In the production of The Sketch Book, Irving was able not only to enhance his fame by a charming contribution to literature, but to render a special service to two countries, England and America. The book came into print at a time when the bitterness of the war which closed in 1814 was still fresh in the minds of both contestants. It was a time when it was the fashion in America to use Great Britain as a bugaboo, as a synonym for all that was to be abominated in political theories and in political action. ”

“ It was the aim of Aldus, as he himself expressed it, to rescue from oblivion the words of the classic writers, the monuments of human intellect. He writes in 1490: “I have resolved to devote my life to the cause of scholarship. I have chosen in place of a life of ease and freedom, an anxious and toilsome career. A man has higher responsibilities than the seeking of his own enjoyment; he should devote himself to honourable labour. Living that is a mere existence can be left to men who are content to be animals. ”

“ From the middle of the sixteenth century and until the time of the great disasters brought on during the revolt of the Netherlands, the “Spanish fury” of 1576, and the great siege of 1585, Antwerp was at the height of its prosperity, and in the extent and varied character of its commercial relations, it was, possibly, the leading city of Europe. While the enterprise and the genius for commerce of the Netherlanders had brought into their hands so large a proportion of the trade of the world, the people were very far from being mere traders. ”

“ If there could come from the States a man recognized as one of nature’s gentlemen, and to be accepted as a companion of the best in the land, a man whose writings of things English won the highest approval of the most authoritative critics, it was evident that there were possibilities in this new English-speaking state. If one American could secure friendships in Great Britain, if one American could make a noteworthy contribution to the literature of the English tongue, the way was thrown open to other American to strengthen and widen the ties and the relations between the tow contries. ”

“ Lincoln threw himself with full earnestness of conviction and ardour into the fight to preserve for freedom the territory belonging to the nation. In common with the majority of the Whig party, he held the opinion that if slavery could be restricted to the States in which it was already in existence, if no further States should be admitted into the Union with the burden of slavery, the institution must, in the course of a generation or two, die out. He was clear in his mind that slavery was an enormous evil for the whites as well as for the blacks, for the individual as for the nation. ”

“ We find an author like Martial needy, eager for money, taking pains to cultivate the favor of the wealthy and the influential in the hopes of securing benefits at their hands. We find him also doing all in his power to push the sale of his books through the booksellers, telling the public where to go and how much they will have to pay, himself writing the publishing announcements of his new books, and in every way evincing the keenest interest in the sales secured for them. ”

“ The scriptoria of the monasteries rendered the service formerly given by the copyists of the book-shops or of the country houses, while their armaria, or book-chests, had to fill the place of the destroyed or scattered libraries of the Roman cities or the Roman villas. The work of the scribes was now directed not by an Augustus, a Mæcenas, or an Atticus, but by a Cassiodorus, a Benedict, or a Gregory, and the incentive to literary labour was no longer the laurel crown of the circus, the favours of a patron, or the honoraria of the publishers, but the glory of God and the service of the Church. ”

“ When we recall the long series of contests carried on by the printers of Venice and of Florence against the ecclesiastical censorship of Rome, and the almost equally hampering obstacles placed upon the printer-publishers of Paris, first by the theologians of the Sorbonne, and, later, by the officials of the Crown, we can appreciate the value of the freedom enjoyed by the Press in Leyden and in Amsterdam, in the history of publishing in which places, there is hardly a single reference to the burdens of interference or censorship. ”

“ We feel its fatal effects. We deplore it with all the pity of humanity. Let all these considerations press with full force on the minds of Congress. Let that urbanity which, I trust, will distinguish America, and the necessity of national defence—let all these things operate on their minds, they will search that paper, and see if they have power of manumission. And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? ”

“ The peculiar relation borne to the earlier intellectual development of Rome by the literature of a foreign people has never been fully paralleled in later history. The use of Greek in Italy as the language of learning and of literature, was, as said, very similar to the general acceptance of Latin by the scholars of mediæval Europe as the only tongue worthy of employment for literary purposes. But I can find no other instance in which the literature of one people ever became so completely and so exclusively the authority for and the inspiration of the first literary life of another. ”

“ Here, on the one hand, were the vast armies of monks, whom both the unsettled state of the times and the religious ideas of the age were driving irresistibly into the cloister; and who, when immured there with only theology to occupy their minds, became, as the great cities of the East knew only too well, preachers of discord and mad fanaticism. Here, on the other hand, were the accumulated stores of two thousand years of literature, sacred and profane, the writings of Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Latin rhetoricians, [24] perishing for want of men with leisure to transcribe them. ”

“ Jacob Wimpfeling, a Humanist, who was also an orthodox Catholic, writing in 1501, says (in a phrase which is curiously akin to the expressions from the Berlin or Leipzig of to-day) : “We Germans practically control the intellectual world. We use our power and our influence for the service of God, for the care of souls, and for the development of the people.... It is for this work that we owe the largest acknowledgment for the service of a man like Koberger, who employs his publishing facilities only for the production of that which is best.” ”

“ It is for us, his fellow-citizens, for the older men who had personal touch with the great struggle in which Lincoln was the nation's leader, for the younger men who have grown up in the generation since the War, and for the children by whom are to be handed down through the new century the great traditions of the Republic, to secure from the life and character of our great leader incentive, illumination, and inspiration to good citizenship, in order that Lincoln and his fellow-martyrs shall not have died in vain. ”

“ To this end both artists and scholars, the depositories of the real Italian greatness at this epoch, laboured; the artists by creating an ideal of beauty with a message and a meaning for all Europe; the scholars by recovering for Europe the burghership of Greek and Roman civilisation. In spite of the invasions and convulsions that ruined Italy between the years 1494 and 1527, the painters and the humanists proceeded with their task as though the fate of Italy concerned them not, as though the destinies of the modern world depended on their activity. ”

“ Silence will not be tolerated—we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. ”

“ It was in Carpi that Aldus developed the scheme of utilising his scholarly knowledge and connections for the printing of Latin and Greek classics. The plan was a bold one for a young scholar without capital. Printing and publishing constituted a practically untried field of business, not merely for Aldus but for Italy. Everything had to be created or developed; knowledge of the art of printing and of all the technicalities of book-manufacturing; fonts of type, Roman and Greek; a force of type-setters and pressmen and a staff of skilled revisers and proof-readers ”

“ All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. [41] Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? ”

“ I can but think that the historians of literature and the students of the social and political conditions on which literary production is so largely dependent, have failed to do full justice to men like Aldus, the Estiennes, Froben, Koberger, and Plantin, who fought so sturdily against the pretensions of pope, bishop, or monarch to stand between the printing-press and the people and to decide what should and what should not be printed. ”

“ No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition, as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. ”

“ As it is necessary for a state to provide military arms, and prepare plentiful stores of provisions for soldiers who are about to fight, so it is evidently worth the labour of the church militant to fortify itself against the attacks of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound books. But because everything that is serviceable to mortals suffers the waste of mortality through lapse of time, it is necessary for volumes corroded by age to be restored by renovated successors, that perpetuity, repugnant to the nature of the individual, may be conceded to the species. ”

“ When to-day, the world celebrates the century of his existence, he has become the ideal of both North and South, of a common country, composed not only of the factions that once confronted each other in war's dreadful array, but of the myriad thousands that have since found in the American nation the hope of the future and the refuge from age-entrenched wrong and absolutism. ”

“ The difference between the production each year of a few hundred copies of religious or classical works by the laborious toil of the monks or the university scribes, works which could at best benefit only the limited circle of readers who were within reach either of the monasteries or of the universities, and a world-wide distribution, as well of the great books of the earlier times which belonged to the world’s literature as of the current thoughts of the contemporary generation, was a difference, not of degree, but of kind. ”

“ We rather think of his sturdy character as having been forged into its final form through the fiery furnace of fierce struggle, as hammered out under the blows of difficulties and disasters, and as pressed beneath the weight of the nation's burdens, until was at last produced the finely tempered nature of the man we know, the Lincoln of history, that exquisite combination of sweetness of nature and strength of character. ”

“ And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling—that sentiment—by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire ”

“ Why was a political trickster like Butler, with no army experience, or a well-meaning politician like Banks with still less capacity for the management of troops, permitted to retain responsibilities in the field, making blunders that involved waste of life and of resources and the loss of campaigns? Why were not the real men like Sherman, Grant, Thomas, McPherson, Sheridan, and others brought more promptly into the important positions? Why was the army of the South permitted during the first two years of the War to have so large an advantage in skilled and enterprising leadership? ”

“ It was Blair who had occasion from time to time to point out, and with perfect truth, that if, through the influence of Chase and of the men back of Chase in Massachusetts and northern Ohio, immediate action should be taken to abolish slavery in the Border States, fifty thousand men who had marched out of those States to the support of the Union might be and probably would be recalled. "By a stroke of the pen," said Blair, "Missouri, eastern Tennessee, western Maryland, loyal Kentucky, now loyally supporting the cause of the nation, will be thrown into the arms of the Confederacy." ”

“ Such a man secures immortality in this world. The knowledge and the influence of his life are extended throughout mankind and his memory gathers increasing fame from generation to generation.
It is thus that men are to-day honouring the memory of Abraham Lincoln. To-day, one hundred years after his birth, and nearly half a century since the dramatic close of his life's work, Lincoln stands enshrined in the thought and in the hearts of his countrymen. He is our "Father Abraham," belonging to us, his fellow-citizens, for ideals, for inspiration, and for affectionate regard ”

“ We call that man great to whom it is given so to impress himself upon his fellow-men by deed, by creation, by service to the community, by character, by the inspiration from on high that has been breathed through his soul, that he is not permitted to die. ”

“ As the debates progressed, it was increasingly evident that Douglas found himself hard pushed. Lincoln would not allow himself to be swerved from the main issue by any tergiversation or personal attacks. He insisted from day to day in bringing Douglas back to this issue: "What do you, Douglas, propose to do about slavery in the territories? Is it your final judgment that there is to be no further reservation of free territory in this country? Do you believe that it is for the advantage of this country to put no restriction to the extension of slavery?" ”

“ Just so sure as the Republican party succeed in electing a sectional man, upon their sectional, anti-slavery platform, breathing destruction and death to the rights of my people, just so sure, in my judgment, the time will have come when the South must and will take an unmistakable and decided action, and then he who dallies is a dastard, and he who doubts is damned! ”

“ It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. ”

“ If we shall suppose that slavery is one of those offences which in the providence of God needs must come, and which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes, which the believers in the Living God always ascribe to Him? ”

“ Where slavery exists, full liberty refuses to enter. It was only through this wise action of the Fathers that it was possible to bring into existence, through colonisation, the great territories and great States of the North-west. It is this settlement, and the later adjustment of 1820, that Douglas and his friends in the South are undertaking to overthrow. Slavery is not, as Judge Douglas contends, a local issue; it is a national responsibility. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise throws open not only a great new territory to the curse of slavery ”

“ And now, if they would listen—as I suppose they will not—I would address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." ”

“ Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? ”