ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 133 



think. Come, let us reason together about this matter, has 

 been the tone of all his addresses to the people ; and accord 

 ingly we have never had a chief magistrate who so won to 

 himself the love and at the same time the judgment of his 

 countrymen. To us, that simple confidence of his in the 

 right-mindedness of his fellow-men is very touching, and its 

 success is as strong an argument as we have ever seen in 

 favour of the theory that men can govern themselves. He 

 never appeals to any vulgar sentiment, he never alludes to 

 the humbleness of his origin ; it probably never occurred to 

 him, indeed, that there was anything higher to start from 

 than manhood ; and he put himself on a level with those he 

 addressed, not by going down to them, but only by taking it 

 for granted that they had brains, and would come up to a 

 common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in 

 The Nation, Mr. Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, 

 that in the foulest dens of the Five Points he found the por 

 trait of Lincoln. The wretched population that makes its 

 hive there threw all its votes and more against him, and yet 

 paid this instinctive tribute to the sweet humanity of his 

 nature. Their ignorance sold its vote and took its money, 

 but all that was left of manhood in them recognised its saint 

 and martyr. 



Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, This is my 

 opinion, or my theory, but, This is the conclusion to which, 

 in my judgment, the time has come, and to which, accord 

 ingly, the sooner we come the better for us. His policy has 

 been the policy of public opinion based on adequate discus 

 sion and on a timely recognition of the influence of passing 

 events in shaping the features of events to come. 



One secret of Mr. Lincoln s remarkable success in capti 

 vating the popular mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness 

 of self which enables him, though under the necessity of con 

 stantly using the capital /, to do it without any suggestion of 

 egoism. There is no single vowel which men s mouths can 

 pronounce with such difference of effect. That which one 

 shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his dis 

 course, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give 

 an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another 

 shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of 

 all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man s 

 sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his 

 vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a gooseflesh of opposi- 



