Francis Bicknell Carpenter

“ Before they could pass out, he made his way to where they stood, and, taking each of them by the hand, with a delicacy and cordiality which brought tears to many eyes, he assured them of his interest and welcome. Governors, senators, diplomats, passed with simply a nod; but that pale young face he might never see again. To him, and to others like him, did the nation owe its life; and Abraham Lincoln was not the man to forget this, even in the crowded and brilliant assembly of the distinguished of the land. ”

“ It is said that Newton saw an apple fall to the ground from a tree, and beheld the law of the universe in that fall; Shakspeare saw human nature in the laugh of a man; Professor Owen saw the animal in its claw; and Spencer saw the evolution of the universe in the growth of a seed. Nature was suggestive to all these men. Mr. Lincoln no less saw philosophy in a story, and a schoolmaster in a joke. No man, no men, saw nature, fact, thing, or man from his stand-point. ”

“ Lincoln is justly entitled to in all the walks of life. These limit, bound, and define him as statesman, orator, as an executive of the nation, as a man of humanity, a good man, and a gentleman. These limit, bound, and define him every way, in all the ways and walks of life. He is under his law and his nature, and he never can get out of it. ”

“ Lincoln’s mind was slow, angular, and ponderous, rather than quick and finely discriminating, and in time his great powers of reason on cause and effect, on creation and relation, on substance and on truth, would form a proposition, an opinion wisely and well,—that no human being can deny. When his mind could not grasp premises from which to argue he was weaker than a child, because he had none of the child’s intuitions,—the soul’s quick, bright flash over scattered and unarranged facts. ”

“ Lincoln very well knew that the great leading law of human nature was motive. He reasoned all ideas of a disinterested action from my mind. I used to hold that an action could be pure, disinterested, and holy, free from all selfishness, but he divested me of that delusion. His idea was that all human actions were caused by motives, and that at the bottom of those motives was self. ”

“ Lincoln first lived and breathed upon the world from his head and conscience. I have attempted to show you that he lived and breathed upon the world through the tender side of his heart, subject at all times and places to the logic of his reason, and to his exalted sense of right and equity, namely, his conscience. He always held his conscience subject to his head; he held his heart always subject to his head and conscience. ”

“ Lincoln cared nothing for simple facts, manners, modes, ways, and such like things. Be it remembered that he did care for truth, right, for principle, for all that pertains to the good. In relation to simple facts, unrelated to substance, forms, rules, methods, ways, manners, he cared nothing; and if he could be aroused, he would do anything for any body at any time, as well foe as friend. As a politician he would courteously grant all facts and forms—all non-essential things—to his opponent. ”

“ Lincoln, in the closing months of his career, reached the full measure of his greatness. Man may not read the future: but it is my firm conviction, that, had he lived through his second term, he would have continued to grow, as he had grown, in the estimation and confidence of his countrymen; rising to a grander moral height with every emergency, careful always to weigh every argument opposed to his convictions, but, once mounted upon those convictions, grounded in righteousness, as immovable as one of the giant ranges of our own Rocky Mountains! ”

“ When the strange revocation came of the most rational and reasonable proclamation of Fremont,—‘The slaves of Rebels shall be set free,’—I remembered that hearty ‘Amen,’ and stifled my rising apprehensions. I remembered it in those dark days when McClellan, Nero-like, was fiddling on James River, and Pope was being routed before Washington, and the report came that a prominent Cabinet Minister had boasted that he had succeeded in preventing the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation; I said: ‘Abraham Lincoln will prove true yet.’ And he has! God bless him! he has. ”

“ Conscience, the second great quality and forte of Mr. Lincoln’s character, is that faculty which loves the just: its office is justice; right and equity are its correlatives. It decides upon all acts of all people at all times. Mr. Lincoln had a deep, broad, living conscience. His great reason told him what was true, good, and bad, right, wrong, just or unjust, and his conscience echoed back its decision ”

“ Lincoln looked at him a moment, and then, stepping forward, he threw his arm around the clergyman’s neck, and, laying his head upon his breast, sobbed aloud. “Alive? alive?” he repeated. “My dear sir,” said Dr. Vinton, greatly moved, as he twined his own arm around the weeping father, “believe this, for it is God’s most precious truth. Seek not your son among the dead; he is not there; he lives to-day in Paradise! Think of the full import of the words I have quoted. The Sadducees, when they questioned Jesus, had no other conception than that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead and buried. ”

“ I shall never cease to regret that an additional private secretary could not have been appointed, whose exclusive duty it should have been to look after and keep a record of all cases appealing to executive clemency. It would have afforded full employment for one man, at least; and such a volume would now be beyond all price.
Just before leaving for Washington, I met a brother artist, who, upon learning of my proposed purpose, laid before me the details of an interesting case, concerning his only son, begging me to bring the circumstances to the President’s knowledge. ”

“ Human slavery has been the material type or expression of spiritual bondage. On the lowest or physical plane, it has symbolized the captivity and degradation of our higher nature; with the breaking in of new light, and the inspiration of a deeper life, it is inevitably doomed. ”

“ That man, to attain the full development of the faculties implanted in him, must be in spiritual and physical freedom, is a principle which lies at the foundation of all government; and the enfranchisement of a race to-day thus becomes the assertion and promise of a true and coming Emancipation for all men.
III.
When Abraham Lincoln, called from the humblest rank in life to preside over the nation during the most momentous period of its history, uttered his Proclamation of Freedom,—shattering forever the chains which bound four millions of human beings in slavery ”

“ How like the last words of the Divine one himself, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” will the closing sentences of his last inaugural address resound in solemn cadence through the coming centuries. Truly and well says the London “Spectator” of that address: “We cannot read it without a renewed conviction that it is the noblest political document known to history, and should have for the nation and the statesmen he left behind him something of a sacred and almost prophetic character. Surely, none was ever written under a stronger sense of the reality of God’s government. ”

“ Lincoln arose, and gravely addressing the company, said: ‘Gentlemen, we must pledge our mutual healths in the most healthy beverage which God has given to man—it is the only beverage I have ever used or allowed in my family, and I cannot conscientiously depart from it on the present occasion—it is pure Adam’s ale from the spring;’ and, taking a tumbler, he touched it to his lips, and pledged them his highest respects in a cup of cold water. ”

“ Lincoln received him in the parlor, and an opportunity was soon embraced by the clergyman to chide him for showing so rebellious a disposition to the decrees of Providence. He told him plainly that the indulgence of such feelings, though natural, was sinful. It was unworthy one who believed in the Christian religion. He had duties to the living, greater than those of any other man, as the chosen father, and leader of the people, and he was unfitting himself for his responsibilities by thus giving way to his grief. To mourn the departed as lost belonged to heathenism—not to Christianity. ”

“ Hence he tore up to the deep foundations all arrangements of facts, and coined and arranged new plans to govern himself. He was compelled, from his peculiar mental organization, to do this. His labor was great, continuous, patient, and all-enduring.
“The truth about this whole matter is that Mr. Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America. No man can put his finger on any great book written in the last or present century that he read. When young he read the Bible, and when of age he read Shakspeare. ”

“ There is a lesson in such simple incidents,—abounding as they did in the life of the late President,—which should not be lost upon the young men of this country. The Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,—with almost unlimited power in his hands,—the meekness and simplicity with which Mr. Lincoln bore the honors of that high position, is a spectacle for all time. ”

“ All opponents dreaded him in his originality of idea, condensation, definition, and force of expression, and woe be to the man who hugged to his bosom a secret error if Mr. Lincoln got on the chase of it. I say, woe to him! Time could hide the error in no nook or corner of space in which he would not detect and expose it.
* * * * *
“Though Mr. Lincoln had accurate perceptions, though nature was extremely suggestive to him, though he was a profound thinker as well as analyzer, still his judgments and opinions formed upon minor matters were often childish. ”

“ Lincoln a man of great humanity?’ asks a friend at my elbow, a little angrily; to which I reply, ‘Has not that question been answered already?’ Let us suppose that it has not. We must understand each other. What do you mean by humanity? Do you mean that he had much of human nature in him? If so, I will grant that he was a man of humanity. Do you mean, if the above definition is unsatisfactory, that Mr. Lincoln was tender and kind? ”

“ Lincoln, it occurred to me, in my simplicity, that if I could bring them together, an interview might result in clearing up what was, perhaps, a mutual misunderstanding of relative positions,—though I had never known Mr. Lincoln to mention the name of the editor of the “Tribune,” otherwise than with profound respect. Leaving my visitor in front of the picture, I went to the President’s office to inform him of the presence of Mr. G. in the house, thinking that he might deem it best, under the circumstances, to receive him below stairs. ”

“ It cannot be truthfully said of any mortal man that he was always just. Mr. Lincoln was not always just; but his great general life was. It follows that if Mr. Lincoln had great reason and great conscience, he was an honest man. His great and general life was honest, and he was justly and rightfully entitled to the appellation, ‘Honest Abe.’ Honesty was his great polar star. ”

“ But if you mean to say that he so loved a man that he would sacrifice truth and right for him, for love’s sake, then he was not a man of humanity. Do you mean to say that he so loved man, for love’s sake, that his heart led him out of himself, and compelled him to go in search of the objects of his love, for their sake? ”

“ Lincoln’s will, by men of equal and much capacity. One opinion is, that he had no will; and the other is, that he was all will—omnipotently so. These two opinions are loudly and honestly affirmed. Mr. Lincoln’s mind loved the true, the right, and good, all the great truths and principles in the mind of man. He loved the true, first; the right, second; and the good, the least. His mind struggled for truths and his soul for substances. Neither in his head nor in his soul did he care for forms, methods, ways,—the non-substantial facts or things. ”

“ When the reports, in an authentic form, first reached Washington of the sufferings of the Union prisoners, I know he was greatly excited and overcome by them. He was told that justice demanded a stern retaliation. He said to his friend Mr. Odell, with the deepest emotion: “I can never, never starve men like that!” “Whatever others may say or do, I never can, and I never will, be accessory to such treatment of human beings!” And although he spoke with the deepest feeling at the Baltimore Fair of the Fort Pillow massacre, and pledged retaliation, yet that pledge was never carried into execution. ”

“ Lincoln through his perceptions, his suggestiveness, his judgments, and his four great predominant qualities, namely,—his powers of reason, his great understanding, his conscience, and his heart. I assert that Mr. Lincoln lived in the head. He loved the truth; he loved the eternal right and the good,—never yielding the fundamental conceptions of these to any man for any end. ”

“ To one disposed to look for coincidences in daily life, and regard its events as no mere succession of accidents, there must often come those which wear a deep significance. In seeking a point of unity or action for the picture, I was impressed with the conviction that important modifications followed the reading of the Proclamation at the suggestion of the Secretary of State, and I determined upon such an incident as the moment of time to be represented. ”