ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 147, 24 June 1939, Page 7

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

MUCH-DISCUSSED MAN

OFFENSIVE BIOGRAPHIES

THE REAL PRESIDENT

More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other statesman of any country, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." Ten years ago Mr. A. Briggs, a Chicago bookseller, who specialised in Lincolniana, compiled a list of 3500 books and pamphlets dealing with Lincoln. This list excluded hundreds v of campaign leaflets and magazine articles, which were not published subsequently in book form, and also all biographies published outside the United States. Biographies of Lincoln have been-pub-lished in England, and in more than a dozen foreign languages, including French, German/Spanish, Russian, Greek, Danish, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and Yiddish. Previous,to Lincoln's election as President of the United States in 1861, the only refer-, ence to him was to be found in, the "Dictionary of Congress." It was not until after his assassination in 1865 that the first impetus was given to Lincolniana. So much memorial material was published at that timesermons, eulogies,' tributes by legislative bodies, clubs, and associations of all kinds—that it has been impossible to collect them all.. The reconstruction period, in the United States after the Civil War marked the lowest ebb in Lincoln literature, less than fifty books appearing between 1869 and 1879, but the period between 1906 and 1928 witnessed the publication of more than 2000 —more than half the total number of books and pamphlets. Every form of literary expression has-been employed in the glorification of Lincoln, including odes, epics, dramas, essays, novels, masques, and-moving pictures. POSTHUMOUS FAME. Lincoln's fame is mainly posthumous. During his lifetime he was belittled and defamed by his political opponents, and even' his political friends and supporters found' it necessary to apologise for him. He was tall and ungainly ir. figure, and his manners were often uncouth. As President, he was accustomed to receive important visitors with his feet in slippers that were much the worse for wear. "He discussed great affairs of State with one of his slippered feet flung on to a corner of his desk," writes a recent biographer. A favourite attitude even when debating vital matters with the great ones of the nation is described by his secretaries as "sitting on "his shoulders"—he would slide far down into his chair and stick- up both slippers so high above his head that they could rest with ease upon the mantelpiece. No wonder that his enemies made unlimited.. fun of him. Still j more serious was the effect of his manner on many men who agreed, with him otherwise. Such a high-minded leader as Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, never got over his feeling that Lincoln was a rowdy. How could a rowdy be the saviour of his country?

The accepted ideal of a statesman among cultured Americans of the period was a gentleman of good appearance and good manners. , Lincoln was not a gentleman in breeding or manners, and his'appearance was such that his opponents called him the Illinois Gorilla. Moreover, he had a habit—acquired in boyhood, and continued throughout his career—of telling smoking-room stories. As a raconteur of broad stories he won fame of a kind among Congressmen when he first went to Washington in 1847 | senator for Illinois. "During the Christmas holidays Mr. Lincoln found his way into the small room used as the i post office of the House, where a few genial, raconteurs used to meet almost every morning after the mail had been distributed into the members' boxes, to exchange such new stories as any oi them might have acquired since they had last met," wrote a contemporary of Lincoln. CHAMPION OF CAPITAL. "After modestly standing at the door for several daysj Mr. Lincoln was reminded of a story, and by the New Year he was recognised as the champion storyteller of the Capital. His favourite seat was at the left of the open fireplace, tilted back.in his chair, with his long legs reaching over to the chimney jamb."

Several of the early biographies written by men who had been closely associated with Lincoln offend public taste by somewhat candid references to Lincoln's fondness for retailing broad stories. Of Ward Hill Lamon's biography, published in 1872, Dr. William E. Barton, one of the best-known of modern specialists in Lincolniana, writes: —"This valuable but unwiselywritten book, containing many things offensive to good taste, occasioned much controversy for its stark realism and what seemed, to many of Lincoln's friends, misrepresentations. Some of the intimate friends of Lincoln were said to have bought up a considerable part of the edition and destroyed the book, but copies are in the principal libraries and the best private collections." Concerning the biography, inj three volumes, written by Lincoln's law partner, William H. Herndon, in collaboration with J. W. Weik, Dr. Barton states: —"The greater part of the edition disappeared. Libraries that contain it keep it under lock and key, and the prices bid for it at occasional book auctions contrast strikingly with those for which it went begging immediately after it was issued." Four years after its publication Herndon, with the assistance of Horace White, reissued the biography in two volumes, after eliminating those passages which had given the greatest offence. LINCOLN'S MEMORY. Immediately after Lincoln's assassination a large section of the American people began to idolise his memory. "Innumerable tongues told tales of his shrewdness and compassion," writes Lord Charnwood, one of Lincoln's English biographers. "His melancholy and his humour became blended in a vivid but indescribable portrait for popular imagination. Soon the ■ scholarly world discovered the charm and perfection of his restrained oratory. Later study revealed a profundity in his thought, as, for instance, in' the human wisdom of his unique feeling towards the negro, his inferior and his equal. Historical inquiry tends to show him a statesman where once he seemed a patient, honest blunderer. In any case, his combination of simplicity with a touch of indefinable genius, of forceful ambition with all but absoloute unselfishness, of a delightful cunning with transparent honesty, of unsubduable humour with a prevailing tragic melancholy, ,of proved and iron fortitude with an everdeepening tenderness, has made him the best-loved public man in the history of the English-speaking peoples."

Lincoln was a self-educated man, but some of his speeches and letters are masterly examples of English prose. "His tastes, fed on Blackstone, Shakespeare, and the Bible, led him more and more exactingly to say just what he meant, {o eschew the wiles of decoration, to be utterly non-rhetorical," writes a modern biographer, Nathaniel

Wright Stephenson. "He acquired a style that was a rich blend of simplicity, directness, candour, joined with a clearness beyond praise, with a delightful cadence, having always a splendidly ordered march of ideas." THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. The most famous of Lincoln's speeches is that .delivered iat Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when portion of the battlefield where the Confederate army under General Lee had been defeated by the Federal army under General Meade, on July 13, 1863, was dedicated as a soldiers' cemetery. In this battle 5664 were killed and 27,206 were wounded. The dedication of the cemetery took place four months after the battle, while the civil war was still in progress. Lincoln's address to the people assembled at' the dedication ceremony consisted of 270 words, and took less than three minutes to deliver. It was preceded by a speech by Edward Everett, which lasted nearly two hours, and wearied the audience. When Everett, a scholar and a statesman, who had a reputation in America for carefully-prepared speeches, sat down the. audience ; expected Lincoln, as President, to make a lengthy speech. But almost before they had settled themselves comfortably to listen after relaxing when Everett ceased, Lincoln had finished his speech; The effect on the audience was that of disappointment, and Lincoln subsequently referred to his speech as "a flat failure." "I tell you," he said to a.friend after his return to Washington, "that speech fell on the audience, like a wet blanket. I am distressed about it. I ought to have prepared it with more care."

The speech received no favourable comment when it was published in the newspapers. In fact, it was not until after Lincoln's death, which took place eighteen months later, that people began to regard the speech as one of the gems of English language. EXTRAVAGANT PRAISE. In America the most, extravagant praise has been,bestowed on it fpr,two generations. At a time, when the rhetorical style of oratory practised by statesmen of the Victorian period is sneered at it retains its place in the admiration of the English-speaking world. The late Lord Curzpn, in a lecture; delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1913/ described it'as, a masterpiece of modern English.

The following is the text of this famous speech:—"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war,, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field1 as a final resting place for (those who here gave their lives that [that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper-that we! should do < this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so, nobly advanced. It is; rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before vs —that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they j gave the last full measure of, devotion —that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain —that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of. the people, by. the people, for the people, shall not perish | from the earth." .*■••! Almost equally memorable as an example of beautiful and simple prose is the final paragraph of Lincoln's inaugural address on entering on his second term as President:—"With malice towards 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."