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His Authority – The Problem of Government

The study in the preceding chapter of Lincoln's even-paced serenity, culminating in the symbol of a throne, conducts directly to an examination of his influence and mastery over other men. During those troubled days in Washington, despite all the malice, defiance, and active abuse which he daily bore, his power to persuade, conciliate, and govern other men was, in all the land, without a parallel. In fact, as well as in name, he was throughout those presidential days the Nation's chief magistrate. And since his death that dominion has increased, until it stands today above comparison. Here is an opportunity, not easily matched, to explore a theme whose importance in the field of ethics no other topic can surpass – the seat and nature of moral authority. And here in this second inaugural is a transparent illustration of the firm security in which that authority rests, and of the method by which it prevails.

As in his own inner reverence for law, so in his sway of other men, his posture towards the national Constitution demands attention first.

"The supreme law of the land" – thus the Constitution of the United States, in its sixth article, defines itself. In its fifth article, the same fundamental document provides that "Amendments," properly made, "shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution." This primary authority for the rule of the land is further affirmed to have been ordained and established by "the people of the United States." Here are three noteworthy features of this "law of the land: " – it is supreme; it is amendable; it arises from the people.

This written standard of our national life, its amendability, and its primal origin in the people's will, were matters much in Lincoln's eye. Each separate one of these three features of our national civic life had reverent respect in Lincoln's mind, in all his conception and exercise of authority over other men. It was this "supreme law" that he swore in both inaugurations to "preserve, protect, and defend." An amendment to the Constitution, that was pending at the time of his first inaugural oath, he took unusual pains in that address to mention and approve. And it was to "the people," on both occasions of his inauguration as president, and at all other times of public and responsible address, that he paid supreme respect, in his most finished and earnest eloquence and appeal. Here was a threefold ultimate standard to which Lincoln always made final appeal – the original Constitution; its amenability to due revision; and the people's free and deliberate decree. This triangular base-line was for Lincoln's politics and jurisprudence and statesmanship the supreme and finished standard of last appeal. He deferred to it submissively, habitually, and with reverence.

All this can be truly said. And yet all this does not say all the truth. Respectful as Lincoln was for all that he found thus fundamentally prescribed, and heedful as he was to indulge in no executive liberty inconsonant with those express decrees, he found his fortune as chief executive forcing him to move where all explicit regulations failed to specify the path. The Constitution does not include all details. It does not vouchsafe specific counsel for specific needs. Its guidance is as to principles. "No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain, express provisions for all possible questions." This he declared in his first inaugural. Then he mentions three such unprescribed details: – the method of returning fugitive slaves; the power of Congress to prohibit; and the duty of Congress to protect slavery in the Territories. Touching those three civic interests, civic duties and civic standards were undirected and undefined. But even while he spoke, those three unsettled problems in the Nation's life were kindling the national pulse to an uncontrollable heat. Nothing less than civil war was certainly impending, over controversies touching which the sovereign standards of the civic life did not expressly speak.

Upon these momentous, undecided questions Lincoln, in his high authority as president, had to bring his judgment, his action, and his influence into settled shape. Deep in the heart of these unsettled regions he set his camp, and toiled away his life. This heroic and patriotic act may be called a detail of constitutional interpretation. But it was for Lincoln a labor of Hercules. It opened a gigantic controversy. The land was convulsed with contending explications. Views, held essential to the vital honor of separate sections of the land, were in essential hostility. As the dissension deepened, two questions rose, outstanding above the rest: – the Constitutional integrity of the several States (might States secede?); and the Constitutional rights of slavery (should slavery spread?). Both these problems were mortally acute in 1861. Both were still in hand in 1865. Under the Constitution could the Union be legitimately dissolved? Under the Constitution should slavery be permanently approved? To both these questions Southern leaders answered, Yes. To both these questions Lincoln answered, No.

Of these two questions and asseverations, it is plain to see that the second is the more profound. So this second inaugural affirms: "Somehow" slavery was the cause of the secession and the war. This "all knew." Upon this pivot, all the chances and contentions of the great debate were compelled to turn. Here lay all the meaning of the war. All those awful battles were trembling, struggling arguments; thrilling, impassioned affirmations striving to finally and forever decide whether human slavery was justified to spread.

Here was a supreme divergence of conviction, and a supreme debate. In all the realm of social morals, no divergence and no debate could be more radical. Into this supreme contention Lincoln was compelled to enter. To some conclusion that should be supreme he was, by his official station and responsibility, compelled to lead. To find his way through such a controversy, and to guide the land through all that strife to some sovereign reconciliation, involved this common citizen in the presidential chair in an assumption and exercise of authority nothing less than sovereign.

Face to face with this impending and decisive agony, Lincoln took his stand in his first inaugural, not flinching even from war, if war must come. A mighty wrestler in the awful throes of mortal civic strife, he held his determined stand in the act of his second inaugural oath, after war had raged for four full years. The great debate is unsettled still. Still Lincoln has to bear the awful burden of responsible advice. He is still the Nation's chief magistrate. An authority pregnant to predetermine continental issues for unnumbered years to come, however dread its weight, and however frail and faint his mortal strength, he may not demit. Within the darkness and amid the din, he must think and speak, he must judge and act, he must rise and lead, while a Nation and a future both too vast for human eye to scan and estimate, stand waiting on his word and deed.

It was a time for omens. But never did Lincoln's ways show fuller sanity. In such a day, and for such a responsibility this, his second inaugural address, is Lincoln's perfect vindication. Here the true civilian's true democracy stands vested with an authority both sovereign and beautiful. Here political expertness becomes consummate. Here the very throne of civil authority is unveiled. Here leadership and fellowship combine. Here a master, though none more modest in all the land, demonstrates his mastery in the mighty field of national politics. Here it may be fully seen how in a true democracy a true dominion operates.

Here emerges, in the ripened, rugged, mellowed, moral character of Lincoln, and in the finished, immortal formulation of his uttermost contention and appeal, a marvelous illumination of an inquiry, that is always alike the last and the first, the first and the last in ethical research – the inquiry about ethical authority. Where did Lincoln finally rest his final appeal? He is assuming to venture a preponderant claim. He is speaking as a Nation's president. And in a conflict of radical views that for four dread years has been a conflict of relentless arms, he argues still, and without a quaver, for the thorough prosecution of the war. Divergence of judgment on moral grounds could never be brought to a sharper edge. Contention over issues in the moral realm could never be harder pressed. On what authority could Lincoln push a moral argument unto blood? Is there moral warrant for such a deed? If ever there be, then where is its base, and whence its awful sanctity?

To shape reply to this is but to shape more sharply still the naked substance of the debate – the crying issue of the war. The core of that insistent strife concerned the essential nature of man. Was slavery legitimate? Might a white man enslave a black? Could a strong man enslave the weak? Dare some men forswear toil? May any men who toil be pillaged of the food their hands have earned? Are some men entitled to a luxury and ease they never earned, while to other men the luxury and ease they have fairly won may be denied? Are some men so inferior that they can have no right to life, and liberty, and happiness, however much they strive and long for such a simple, common boon? Are other men so super-excellent that life, and liberty, and happiness are theirs by right, though never earned or even struggled for at all?

This was the central issue of that war; and this the central theme of this inaugural. Are common people to be forever kept beneath, and traded on, and eyed with scorn; while favored men are to be forever set on high, and filled with wealth, and fed with flattery? This was the quivering question that was brought on Lincoln's lips to its sharpest edge. Well he knew its momentousness and its antiquity.

In its very formulation, as Lincoln gave it shape, there loomed the formulation of its reply, perhaps still to be bitterly defied, perhaps to be still long deferred; but inevitable at last, and sure finally to find agreement everywhere. This final answer Lincoln's vision saw. In that clear vision he discerned the certain meaning of the battles of the war. In the great debate they were the solemn, measured arguments. Amid those awful arguments this inaugural took its place, the oracle of a moral prophet, explaining how the war arose, by whose high hand the war was being led, and in what high issue the war must attain its end. As the arguments of this address advance, one grows to feel that Lincoln's thought is forging a reply, in which emerges a moral law whose authority no man may ever dare rebuke.

But as that authority comes to view in Lincoln's speech, its form is shorn of every shred of arrogance. Never was mortal man more modest than in the tone and substance of this address. This modesty is indeed throughout devoid of wavering. His tones ring with confidence and decisiveness. But in that confidence, though girt for war, there are folded signs of deference and gentleness and solemn awe, as though confessing error and confronting rebuke. Even of slavery, that most palpable and abhorrent evil, as he forever avers; and of slaveholders, who wring their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, and then dare to pray for heaven's favor on their arms, he says in this address: – "let us not judge that we be not judged;" as though the germ of that dark error might then be swelling in his and all men's hearts. And as to the war itself, for which he bade the Nation stand with sword full-drawn, the central passage in this speech more than intimates, what in an earlier part he fully concedes, that he and all the people had availed but poorly to understand the Almighty's plans. In all of this Lincoln seems to say that he found himself, in common with all the land, but imperfectly in harmony with God, as to his judgment concerning the sin inwrought in holding slaves, and as to the primacy of the Union among the interests pending in the war. He seems in this address, so far from affirming his right to judge and govern arbitrarily, instead confessing that love of ease, greed for gain, the mood of scorn, and proneness to be cruel – those inhuman roots that rear up slavery – were apt to find hidden nutriment in his and all men's hearts, yielding everywhere the baleful harvest of inhumanity; confessing further that this deep-rooted tendency in human hearts to undo God's primal decree of freedom and equality was far more needful to eradicate than any proneness to secede within any confederacy of States; and confessing in consequence and finally that it was for all Americans to accept the war as God's rebuke of their common propensity to be unkind, and as God's correction of their false rating of their national concerns. This then seems to be Lincoln's posture in this address – no lofty arrogance of authority to decree and execute the right; but a humble confession of error and guilt; an acquiescent submission to God's correction and reproof. This modest hue must tincture this address through all its web.

And yet the dominant note of this inaugural is clear decisiveness, an unwavering firmness in his own opinion, a classic illustration of persuasion and appeal, as though from the vantage ground of convictions perfectly assured. Where now, in full view of all that has been said, is the basis of Lincoln's argument and authority to be placed? In an argument where conviction seems to be transmuted into penitence, and where confession seems transfigured into confidence, how can the logic be resolved; and where at last can the authority repose?

The full reply to this inquiry can be found only when we find where Lincoln's conviction and confession coalesce. Touching this, one thing is clear. Both bear upon the same concern. Deep within them both slavery is the common theme. Assured that slavery is wrong, he confesses that its roots run everywhere. Honest to the core, he bows beneath the scourge of war, convinced that it is heaven's penalty upon all the land. Throughout he is pleading and suffering consistently that all men may be free. This is the sum of the address. In this it all coheres. Thus he divines and understands the ways of God. And so he stands, as poised in this address, in ideal fellowship, at once with men who have held slaves, with slaves in their distress, with the Creator in his primal decree, and with the Providential meaning of the war.

To all this problem, vexing so many generations, the clear and witting touch of Lincoln's sacrificial penitence is the master key. In this all contradictions, all hostilities, all sufferings, all transgressions, and all pure longings are harmonized. In assurance and repentance he has found how truth and grace, blending together in humble heed for God and for undying souls, hold complete dominion in the moral realm. These pure principles, congenial alike to God and men, he welcomes to himself, and commends to all his fellowmen in sacrificial partnership.

Here is Lincoln's prevailing faith. This is the secret of his strength. Herein vests his commanding and enduring power. This is Lincoln's self – his very manhood. This is the man in this address whom the world beheld, and still beholds – the man he was, the man he aimed and strove to be, the man he recommended all the Nation to combine to reproduce, the man in whom the fear of God, the love of men, the zeal for life, and true reliability, mingle evenly, at whatever cost. This is the man, and this the mighty influence over other men, enthroned imperishably in this address.

Here is the throne, the scepter, and the key to Lincoln's vast authority. It is patterned and informed from the cardinal constituents of a balanced moral character. It is inwrought within a life that heeds harmoniously, and with heroic earnestness, his own integrity, his God, his fellowman, and things immortal. Holding souls above goods, holding his fellow as himself, holding himself in true respect, and holding God above all, he stands and pleads, with a cogency that is unanswerable, for verities as self-evident to any man as any man's self-consciousness. All his claims in the heart of this address are self-apparent. They are original convictions. They prove and approve themselves. They make no call for substantiation. They confront every man within himself, the light in his eye, the life in his heart, the spring in his hope. They confront every man again within his neighbor. They confront both men again, when together they look up to God. And far within all forms that change, they confront all men forevermore in things that immortally abide.

This is the truth to which Lincoln pledged his troth, and in which he besought all other men to plight their faith, in this address. The vivid, ever-living dignity in man, discoverable by every man within himself, to be greeted by every one in his brother-man, at once the image and the handiwork of God – this defined all his faith, fired all his zeal, woke all his eloquence, shaped all his argument, winged all his hope. That such a being should be a slave, that such a being should have a slave, was in his central conviction, of all wrong deeds, the least defensible. It was the primal moral falsity, cruelty, insult, and debasement. That such a sin should be atoned, at whatever cost, was the primal task of purity, reverence, tenderness, and truth. Holding such convictions, handling such concerns, for him to make the statement was to give it demonstration. Against such convictions, and in scorn of such concerns, no man could seriously contend without assailing and, in the end, undoing himself. This was the citadel and the weaponry of Lincoln's authority.

And Lincoln found within these views the pledge of permanence. He saw them bulwarked and corroborated by all the lessons and revelations of history. All devices of human society, contending against these rudimentary verities, had been proved pernicious and self-defeating a thousand times. Only such behavior of man with man as harmonized with the creative design, and sprang from endowments that were common to all, could ever hope to last. Here is the sovereign lesson from all the centuries past, and a sovereign challenge for all the centuries to come. As Lincoln viewed it, he was handling a matter beyond debate, when he talked of two centuries and a half of unrequited toil. If that was not wrong, then nothing was wrong. There is the whole of Lincoln's argument, and the whole of his authority. It stood true two hundred and fifty years ago. It will hold fast two hundred and fifty years hence. To deny this is to dethrone all law, turn every freeman's highest boast to shame, and finally banish moral order from human government and from human thought. That this could never be suffered or confessed was the substance of Lincoln's argument, and the sum of his authority. This and this alone was the sovereign lesson that the sacrificial sorrows of the war were searing so legibly, that all the world could read, upon the sinful Nation's breast. And in saying this, Lincoln's voice was pleading as the voice of God.

His Versatility – The Problem of Mercy

The study of Lincoln's authority, as it wields dominion in the last inaugural, has brought to prominence his humble readiness to share repentantly with all the Nation, in the bitter sorrows of the war, the divine rebuke for sin. That sin was the wrong of holding slaves. But in all the land, if any man was innocent of that iniquity, it was Lincoln. And yet the honest Lincoln was never more sincere, more nobly true and honest with himself, than in this deep-wrought co-partnership with guilt. Surely here is call for thought.

Lincoln's character was fertile. The principles that governed his development were living and prolific. In his ethics, as in his bodily tissues, he was alive. As the days and years went on, he grew. Like vines and trees, he added to his stature constantly. New twigs and tendrils were continually putting out, searching towards the sunshine and the springs, and embracing all the field. And in all this increase he was supremely pliable. While always firm and strong, he had a wonderful capacity to bend.

The primary, towering impulse working in Lincoln's life was ethical. Amid the continual medley and confusion of things, he was continually reaching and searching to find and plainly designate the right and the wrong. This stands evident everywhere. Nowhere does this stand plainer than in the period, when, at his second inaugural, he faced a second presidential term. Still straining in the toil and turmoil, in the intense and blinding passion of the war, he halts upon the threshold of a second quadrennium of supreme responsibility, to see if he can surely trace God's indication of what is right. The eternally right was what he sought. He was after no mere expediency, no ephemeral shift for ephemeral needs. The judgments of the Almighty Ruler of Nations, true and righteous altogether and evermore, were what he prayed to find and know. Then, if ever, Lincoln's earnestness was moral.

And for this search at just this time his eye was peculiarly sobered and grave. Portentous problems were emerging, as the finish of the war drew near. And these problems were new. What should the Nation, when it laid aside its arms, decide to do with the seceded States, and with those millions of untutored slaves? For that no precedent was at hand, no direction in the laws. The conclusion must be original. And it must be supreme. And its issues must hold wide sway for generations of imperial, expanding growth. There loomed an impending peril, and a test of statesmanship, demanding the wisdom, and integrity, and deep foresight of a moral prince – a peril and a moral test but poorly met by the men whom his untimely death thrust into Lincoln's place. For bringing to perfection his ripening judgment upon that task, and so for displaying another historic demonstration of Lincoln's moral adaptability, the few short requisite years were mysteriously to be denied.

But upon other problems and in other days, there was ample revelation of Lincoln's agile moral strength. His entire career in national prominence provides outstanding demonstration of the continual full mobility and plastic freedom of his moral powers. The civil war, which he was conducting with such determination to its predestined end, as he stood the central figure in this second inaugural scene, was but the central vortex of a moral agitation in which all our national principles and precedents were challenged and defied; and in which statesmen of supremely facile, virile, moral sense were in exigent demand. Problems were propounded constantly upon which our Constitution shed no certain light, and the Constitution itself was in a way to be overturned.

Throughout this period of national discord and moral instability, Lincoln was a leading, creative mind. The circuit of that career was brief indeed, scarcely more than one decade. But in those dark, swift years shine and cluster many illustrations of the rich and ready fertility of his ethical postulates in the political realm. Man of the people though he was, and acutely sensitive of his responsibility to the people for every responsible act, he was in every judgment and resolve every inch a king, openminded, original, free. Again, and again, and again, he was the man for the hour.

One demonstration of this is shown in his surprising readiness. With whatever situation, he behaved as though familiar. Undisciplined in diplomacy, he proved himself almost instantly a finished diplomat. Totally untutored in all the acts and practices of war, but compelled by his office to take sovereign command of the Nation's arms, and that so suddenly that even the arms themselves could not be found, he became one of the foremost critics and counselors of perilous and intricate military campaigns. Unaccustomed to authority, but advanced at a leap to the Nation's head, beleaguered by deadly animosities among cliques and sections and States, encompassed by shameless cabinet intrigues, he developed, as in one day, into manager, adviser, administrator of political affairs, the most astute in all the land.

A most impressive example of this adjustability is seen in his manifold capacity for moral patience. It reveals how he could keep his full integrity, while binding up his life and fortune inseparably with men whose moral standards swayed far from his. Lincoln's first inaugural gave luminous definition of his designs and hopes. The principles there propounded were the ripe and firm convictions of a thoughtful, honest life. They had been pronounced repeatedly before. To their defense and consummation his heart and honor were pledged irrevocably. Those propositions were the irreducible rudiments of his faith, the permanent constituents of his hope. Surrender those convictions and desires he never did, he never could. Within the ample compass and easy play of those glowing sentiments there was no room for secession, nor for war, nor for any bitterness, but only for loyalty, fellowship, peace. But as he turned from that inauguration and its declaration of his policy toward the execution of his trust, he had to face and handle secession, war, and malicious defamation. He had to see the Nation's holiest dignity desecrated, all his brotherly offices disdained, the souls of men still held as rightful objects of common trade, and the plainest decrees of God defied. This as shown in the spirit and uprising of the impatient, imperious South.

And within the North, in the very armies assembled for the Union's defence, he had to find the very leaders and plotters of his campaigns absorbed and overcome by petty jealousies, too despicable and unpatriotic to be believed, and yet so real and vicious as to defeat their battles before they were fought. And back among the Union multitudes around his base, were men of might and standing, and men in multitudes, who maligned his motives, and entangled his plans, until antagonism the most malignant and resolved to all his views and undertakings seemed to environ him on every side.

To such conditions it was Lincoln's bitter obligation to conform. Many men were ready with many fond prescriptions for the case; but they all were marked by weak futility. They either brought the Nation no complete relief, or else surrendered the Nation's very life. Within the strain and pull from every side Lincoln felt the obligation of his oath.

The mood and method he employed (and let not the phrase be misunderstood) was moral relaxation. This did not mean that he altered aught of his pronounced belief, or varied by a single hair from his announced design. He remembered his inaugural oath. He retained his faith and hope, and held to his prime resolve unchanged. But he gave the opposition time. He suffered malignants to malign, seceders to rebel, detractors to impugn; and bore their taunts and blows and wounds patiently, still abiding by his word. His very war was simply for defense. The honor of the Union he would not yield up. His brotherly friendliness he would not forego. His rating of freemen he would not discount. The mandates of God he would not disobey. But while on every hand these might be assailed and abjured, he repressed all violence and vehemence of heart, and endured, and indulged, and was still.

Herein, however, his convictions and hopes wore a modified guise. Their rigor softened; their lustre mellowed; their angles broadened; their rudeness ripened; and his aspect passed through change; the while his honor brightened and became more clear. This adjustment of such a nature to such a fate is a massive illustration of moral versatility. It is like keeping the steed to the course, while yet laying the rein upon his neck.

Through experience such as this it must have been that Lincoln traversed his profoundest sorrow. Just here his critics and traducers had their firmest hold. To the world at large his tactics did seem slack, his method dilatory, his mood indifferent. Men wearied past endurance at his delay, and charged repeatedly that he had betrayed his trust. Such accusations must have been to his pure loyalty like gall. And yet he must perforce be mute. It was not he, it was the awful situation in which his noble life was manacled, that was so incorrigible. With God and man he pleaded day and night that bloodshed might be stayed, and peace possess the land. But an enemy was in the land, determined not to leave his guns until the Union was dissolved, and slavery vindicated as right. Rather than forsake the Union, and own that men were as the brutes, he would die a thousand times. And with a patience that no malice and no misfortune could wear away, he held his post and kept his word, through torments too severe for unheroic men to bear, producing thus upon his silent, sorrowful face a humble replica of the divine long-suffering of the meek and lowly Christ. And so he taught the world how in patience the righteousness that abhors all wrong may turn its face toward sin with humble meekness, through years that seem like centuries, and cause thereby that pure and Godlike truth and love shall only be more glorious.

But even with this the description of this case stands incomplete. To understand it rightly further statements are required. After all his patience, the South was obdurate. Even while in this last inaugural Lincoln was pleading for universal charity, and seeking to banish malice everywhere, the leaders of the armies in the South were rallying their unrecruited ranks in a very desperation of hatred for his principles, and of scorn for his forbearance. While he was interpreting the desolations and sorrows of the war as God's all-powerful punishment of slavery, our common national sin, they resented with impassioned vehemence such an explanation, disclaimed all guilt, and denied that slavery was wrong.