The Estimate Republican Leaders Held of the Living Lincoln
Tn his history of the United States, Vol. IV., page 520, Rhodes makes the sweeping assertion that—
"Lincoln's contemporaries failed to perceive his greatness."
Other Republican writers make the same statement. Yet none attempted to explain why those who best knew Mr. Lincoln failed to esteem or respect him. Chase, while in his Cabinet, had every opportunity to know Lincoln well. Tarbell says:
"Mr. Chase was never able to realize Mr. Lincoln's greatness."
McClure says:
"Chase was the most irritating fly in the Lincoln ointment."
In their voluminous life of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay have this:
"Even to complete strangers Chase could not write without speaking slightingly of President Lincoln. He kept up this habit till the end of Lincoln's life. Chase's attitude toward the President varied between the limits of active brutality and benevolent contempt."
Yet Nicolay and Hay, and all other Republican writers, rate Mr. Chase very high as a man of honesty, talent, and patriotism. The reader must bear in mind that every Republican writer since the year 1860 uses the word "patriotism" in a perverted sense, not as meaning love of country, but meaning approbation of the war made on the South. To a Republican, opposition to that war was treason, support of it was patriotism. The worst scoundrel that ever lived, if he eulogized that war, was patriotic. Had St. Peter himself returned to earth and even hinted that war was cruel and unnecessary, he would have been called a traitor and confined in a dungeon cell. Of a bill to create offices in 1864, Chase wrote in his diary:
"If this bill becomes a law, Lincoln will most certainly put men in office from political considerations."
On this, page 448, Rhodes comments thus:
"A President who selected unfit generals for the reason that they represented phases of public opinion, would hardly hesitate to name postmasters and collectors who could be relied upon as a personal following."
This is as near as Rhodes dare come in adverse criticism of the apotheosized man. Rhodes further says:
"In conversation, in private correspondence, in the confidence of his diary, Chase dealt censure unrestrained on Lincoln's conduct of the war."
Morse says:
"Many distinguished men of his own party distrusted Mr. Lincoln's character."
On an official visit to Washington, February 23, 1863, Richard H. Dana wrote Thomas Lathrop as follows:
"I see no hope but in the army; the lack of respect for the President in all parties is unconcealed. The most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers. If a convention were held tomorrow he would not get the vote of a single State. He does not act or talk or feel like the ruler of an empire. He seems to be fonder of details than of principles, fonder of personal questions than of weightier matters of empire. He likes rather to talk and tell stories with all sorts of people who come to him for all sorts of purposes, than to give his mind to the many duties of his great post. This is the feeling of his Cabinet. He has a kind of shrewd common sense, slip-shod, low-leveled honesty that made him a good Western lawyer, but he is an unutterable calamity to us where he is.
Only the army can save us."
This was the way Mr. Dana and many other Republican? saw Mr. Lincoln before the apotheosis ceremony. After thai ceremony the Honorable S. E. Crittenden expressed deej regret that—
"The men whose acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln was intimate enough to form any just estimate of his character did not more fully appreciate his statesmanship and other great qualities. They did not recognize him as the greatest statesman and writer of the times."
Is it not a little singular that neither Crittenden or any other Republican writer has made any attempt to explain the phenomenon, that despite Mr. Lincoln's greatness and goodness not one, so far as I can discover, of his contemporaries perceived those qualities while he lived? The New York Independent, a strong Republican journal, in its issue of August 9th, 1862, thus commented on Lincoln's state papers:
"Compare the state papers, messages, proclamations, orders, documents, which preceded or accompanied the War of Independence, with those of President Lincoln's papers. These are cold, lifeless, dead. There has not been a line in any government paper that might not have been issued by the Czar of Russia or by Louis Napoleon of France."
The state papers of the War of Independence were inspired by the highest, the most generous emotion of the human heartlove of freedom. The state papers of President Lincoln were inspired by the meanest, the most selfish—tne paction for eonqaest. Is it strange that in tone and spirit, Lincoln's state papers should resemble those of the Czar of Russia? Both men stood on a despot's platform.
"Our state papers," continues the New York Independent, "during this eventful period (the war of conquest on the South) are void of genius and enthusiasm for the great doctrine on which this government was founded. Faith in human rights is dead in Washington."
Never spoke journal a more lamentable truth. Faith in human rights was not only dead in Washington, but the Government in Washington was using all the machinery in its power to trample down that faith deep in bloody mire on a hundred battlefields. The Washington Government had gone back a hundred years to the old monarchic doctrines of George III., and was doing its utmost to quell and kill the patriotic spirit of '76, which had rescued the Colonies from kingly rule- Dunning, President of Columbia University, in one of his essays on the Civil War (the war of conquest on the South), says, page 39:
"President Lincoln's proclamation of September 24th, 1862, was a perfect plat for a military despotism. The very demonstrative resistance of the people to the government only made military arrests more frequent. Lincoln asserted the existence of military law throughout the United States."
The President of Columbia University might have gone a little farther back and found that the plat Lincoln made for a military despotism was when he called for 75,000 armed men to invade and conquer the States of the South. The Rev. Robert Collier, a distinguished dvine of Chicago, was on a visit to Washington City.
"The Rev. Mr. Collier," says Lamon, "sharing the prevailing sentiment in regard to the incapacity and inefficiency of Lincoln's government, chanced to pass through the White House grounds. Casting a glance at the Executive Mansion, he saw three pairs of feet resting on the ledge of an open window on the second floor. Calmly surveying the grotesque spectacle, Mr. Collier asked a man at work about the grounds 'What that meant?' pointing to the six feet in the window. 'You old fool!' retorted the man, 'that's the Cabinet a settin' and them big feet is old Abe's.'"
Some time after, in a lecture at Boston, Mr. Collier described the scene and commented on the imbecility of the Lincoln government:
"Projecting their feet out of a window and jabbering away is about all they're good for in Washington," said the great preacher.
The reader will observe the first line of this quotation: "Mr. Collier, sharing the prevailing sentiment in regard to Mr. Lincoln's incapacity."
This sentiment prevailed up to the hour of Lincoln's death. As soon as the apotheosis ceremony was performed, the Rev. Collier made haste to assume toward Lincoln an attitude of reverence and admiration.
"I abused poor Lincoln like the fool the man called me," said Mr. Collier.
Charles Francis Adams wrote of the living Lincoln:
"When Lincoln first entered upon his functions as President, he filled with dismay all those brought in contact with him."
The dismay did not abate as the years went by; on the contrary, the opposition to Lincoln, the distrust, the disgust, increased from day to day to the hour of his death. In 1873 ex- Minister Adams made an address to the Legislature of New York on the occasion of Seward's death. On page 48 Adams said:
"When Lincoln entered upon his duties as President he displayed moral, intellectual and executive incompetency." So far as I can discover, not during Lincoln's life did any noted Republican state that he displayed anything else. June 20th Richard H. Dana, in the New York World, wrote thus:
"I have had several interviews with Lincoln, Seward, Blair, Stanton, Wells and Chase. They all say dreadful things of each other, all except Seward. They are all at sixes and sevens. I cannot describe Lincoln. He was sobered in^his talk; told no extreme stories. Yon feel for him a kind of pity, feeling that he has some qualities of great value, yet fearing his weak points may make him wreck something." Return to Southern History
