ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9495, 18 August 1891, Page 2

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Mr Theodore Stanton, in the Weslmin. ster Review for June, begins the first of a brief series of papers on Abraham Lincoln, in whioh he proposes to study him briefly as a politician, as an orator, as a writer, as a wit, as a military man, as an abolitionist, and as a moralist. The chief interest in the paper depends upon the anecdotes with whioh it la interspersed. Some of them are new, and some of them are old, bub the latter are quite good enough to beat telling many times. The paper, ao a whole, gives a very pleasant account of the greatest of modern Americans, A MELANCHOLY JOKER. Mr Stanton gives the following explanation of the fondness for joking whioh sometimes seems to impair the heroic grandeur of Lincoln’s character “Mr Lincoln was a victim of constitutional melancholy, which assumed a most dangerous form on one or two occasions in his earlier years. His domestic life was far from happy, and it is now known that his wife was threatened with insanity, if she were not actually insane. The terrible responsibilities and continual uncertainties of the Civil War were an awful strain on his mental and bodily powers; An intense love of fun was the safety-valve of this mental state. Iu his youth and early manhood it often showed itself in the roughest sort of horseplay and in illconsidered story-telling, and during his mature years his own wit and humour, or that of others, was always a delightful balm to his much troubled soul.” MAGNANIMITY AND MANAGEMENT. Lincoln was singularly magnanimous in dealing with his political opponents, i Lincoln once said to Mr Pox, AssistantSecretary to the Navy: “ You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never thought it paid. A man has no time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.” Mr Stanton describes him as supremely capable in the management of men. He was an expert student of electoral statistics. Mr Stanton hints that occasionally his astuteness got the better of his simple, straightforward honesty, bat the incident which he gives to show Lincoln's capability of prevarication is very slender indeed. Ha quotes a saying of his' “ That honest statemanship was. the employment of individual meannesses for. the public good.” But there is very little cynicism in that remark, and no one could have ‘ run the gauntlet of office-seekers without learning by painful experience how much truth lay in that remark. “ALWAYS KEEP NEAR THE PEOPLE.” The following story is well known, but so characteristic as to be worth repeating i The foundation of Lincoln’s political success was his popularity, and his popularity, was due to his “ always keepingnear to the people,” as he expressed it. One night he had a dream. He thought that he was in some great assembly. The people made a lane to let him pass. “He is a common-looking fellow,”, some one said. Lincoln, in his dream, turned to his critic, and replied: “Friend, the Lord prefers common-looking people; that is why he made so many of them.” The following extract will convey a good idea of Mr Stanton’s article:— But it is the terse, axiomatic phrases with which Lincoln’s writings, both public and private, abound that give them their original and characteristic stamp. When, in August, 1864, Grant thought for a moment of leaving the army before Petersburg, and hastening with a large detachment to the assistance of Sheridan, then in the Shenandoah Valley, Lincoln telegraphed as follows to the General-in-Chief i “ I have seen your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where yoa are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.— A. Lincoln, President.” SOME OF HIS SAYINGS. ! It is the humorous element in Lincoln's speeches and writings which makes them almost sui generis. What he said or wrote to his Generals was often amusingly pat. When a seemingly unsurmountable obstacle checked the advance of one of the armies, his favourite illustration was: “ Well, If yon can’t plough through the log, perhaps you can plough round it." It was characteristic of General M'Clellan, the author tells us, that he always regarded bad weather os exceedingly injurious to him, but as never injurious to the other side; so Lincoln once said of him:—“ He seems to think, in defiance of Scripture, that heaven sends its rain -only on the just and not on the unjust.” Exasperated at the discrepancy between the aggregate of troops forwarded to the same General, and the number the General reported as being .received, Lincoln exclaimed'■—

“ Sending men to that army is like shovelling fleas across a barn-yard—not half of them get there.” When one of the Northern commanders took the control of a Missouri church out of the hands of its rebel trustees, Lincoln disapproved of the measure in a despatch containing this terse and vigorous phrase, which immediately obtained wide currency : “ The United States Government must not, as by this order, undertake to run the churches.” When Grant was accused of intemperance, the President answered t “If I knew what brand of whisky he drinks, I would send a barrel or so to some other Generals.” Ho once telegraphed to General Hooker : “If the head of Lee’s army is at Marbinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?” To another General he wrote : " I understand the mam body of the enemy is very near you, so near that you could ' board at home,” so to speak, and menace or attack him any day.” Lincoln’s hdmoub. Not less happy were many of Lincoln’s messages to politicians. To one of his' mild-natured critics he wrote s “ Would you drop the war where it is, or would you prosecute it in the future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose water P” : When, on hisfirat arrival in Washington* the new President was besieged by officeseekers, while the war was breaking out, Lincoln said : “ I feel like a man letting lodgings at one end of the house, while the other end is on fire.” In the winter of 1863 there was much anxiety at Washington, lest Burnside should be captured at Knoxville. One day a report came to the White House that there was heavy firing in the direction of the latter city. Lincoln, who had been waiting during long hours lor some news; now expressed his satisfaction, and when asked why he found any comfort this meagre message, answered: “ A neighbour of mine in Menard County, named -Sally Ward, had a large family of children* which she took very little care of. Whenever she heard one of them yelling in soma out-of-the-way place, she would , say, * Thank the Lord! there’s one of my young ones not dead yet.’ ” So long as there was " firing in the direction of Knoxville,” Burnside was not captured. Lincoln, of course, enjoyed the wit of others, though He did sometimes choose extraordinary occasions for indulging in this pleasure. Thus, when the Cabinet was called together to learn for the first time the President’s emancipation policy, L'ncoln began by informing them that Artemus Ward had just sent him his latest book, and proposed reading a chapter (“High-handed Outrage at Utica”), which he thought very funny. He thereupon read the chapter aloud, seemed to enjoy it* and after the Cabinet had recovered its gravity, the President assumed a graver tone, and then told them the important object of the meeting.