ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE MAN OF THE COMMON

PEOPLE.

(Feb. 12, 1909.)

The smoke has lifted. Another generation has come upon the scene since 1865; and babes who were not born when the Stars and Bars went down in tragic eclipse are passing the line of the meridian. For even the youngest child whose cradle was rocked amid the convulsions of the great Civil war period the westering rays have commenced to slant; and upon most of the participants in the great iron conflict the sun of life has already set.

In both sections of the country the traditions of heroism -the achievements of valor-the fidelity to principle which characterized alike the Blue and the Gray are still sacredly cherished-but the bitterness is gone.

At the North there is hourly growing an unfeigned admiration for Robert E. Lee; and no higher tributes have been paid to the genius, to the soldiership and to the character of the great Virginian than have fallen from the lips of Northern men.

President Roosevelt, in his "Life of Benton," has declared that Lee was the greatest soldier of the age. Horace Greely and Alexander K. McClure, two of America's foremost editors, have registered the same high eulogium. Charles Francis Adams, who inherits the blood of the old Puritan family of Massachusetts, has put Lee in the very forefront of the modern war captains; and George R. Wendling, the gifted prince-eloquent of the American platform, has predicted that the time is not far distant when the same rays which fall upon the towering monument of Washington will yet gild the marble brow of Lee in the nation's capital.

Nor is this disposition among men of Northern birth to recognize the true nobility of Lee more strikingly an index of the better understanding which the years have brought than is the change which is slowly but surely taking place in the mental attitude of this entire section toward Abraham Lincoln.

Who has forgotten the great speech of Henry W. Grady, delivered before the New England Society of New York in 1886?

The echoes of this eloquent outburst are still ringing in the ears of the whole American people:

"My friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me say that he has already come. Great plants are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonists-from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood-slow-perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American-the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and grace of this republic-Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature the virtues of both were fused and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost."

To this estimate of Mr. Lincoln, which was delivered more than twenty years ago by the inspired prophet and evangel of the New South, no challenge has been offered-no demurrer has been filed.

One of the very finest of the many biographies of the martyred president has come from the pen of Henry Watterson, the brilliant veteran editor of The Courier-Journal; and today no higher tributes will be paid to Mr. Lincoln on this hundredth anniversary of his birth than those which two eloquent Georgia orators-Judge Emory Speer, in New York city, and Congressman William M. Howard, at Decatur, Ga.—will lay upon the bier of the great emancipator.

Mr. Lincoln was himself of Southern origin. He was born in the wilderness stretches of the old Kentucky pioneer belt. It was in an humble log cabin of the backwoods that he first saw the light. It was in hand-to-hand encounter with the bitterest experiences of poverty that his sinews gathered strength; and, in fighting his way from the lowest. to the highest station, this stalwart rail-splitter has emphasized the possibilities of brain and character under the benign stimulus of free institutions. He has blazed the way to usefulness and honor for the poor but ambitious lads

of all lands; and he has made the little town of Hodgenville, the Mecca of countless caravans.

While Mr. Lincoln was not of plebian blood, the fact that his boyhood was inured to hardships and privations and that his father was not an owner of slave property may, in part, explain his repugnance for the feudal system of slave labor, in which he possessed no vested rights and interests; and, subsequently, changing his place of abode to the northern banks of the Ohio river, his convictions upon this vital issue of American politics were confirmed by his free-soil environment.

But Mr. Lincoln could not lose the essential elements of kinship which bound him to the people of the South; and, in the cooler and calmer light which has dawned at last upon this section, it is easy to recognize the lovable characteristics of this great man of the common people, who in all his life doubtless never harbored an ungenerous sentiment. What Burns and Whittier were to the world of song, this unique man was to the world of politics.

It is useless to deny the Providence which molds the great events of history, and the same divine hand which guided the destinies of the young nation undoubtedly raised up this strange man, who, to the utter amazement of all the political seers, defeated William H. Seward, the logical candidate of the anti-slavery hosts, for the presidential office in 1860.

No less a power could have checked the gray battalions or stayed the victorious sword of Lee.

What might have happened had the assassin's bullet been turned aside on the fatal night in Ford's Theater, it may be useless and idle to speculate, but there are few Southern men who doubt that much of the gall of bitterness which characterized the days of reconstruction would have been removed had the life of Mr. Lincoln been spared. He not only knew and understood the South, but he also possessed the breadth of mind and soul which this stern era required. Moreover, his intense love of the Union, which was always greater than his hatred of slavery, would have

made him eager and anxious to pour healing oil upon the wounds of sectional estrangement.

Perhaps no single utterance of Mr. Lincoln better illustrates his entire freedom from the poisonous venom which belongs to little men than the one contained in the final paragraph of the first inaugural:

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every home and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union when touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The martyrdom of Mr. Lincoln has imparted to his whole life a melancholy tinge; but he was ever a man of kindly humor, of quick and generous sympathies, of genial and sunny comradeship. He was open to approach. He possessed none of the obsequiousness of the time-serving politician. He was above bigotry and bitterness. He voiced the aspirations and spoke the language of the great masses; and this explains why the Gettysburg oration, which was written on a fragment of note paper, has outlived the attic prose of Edward Everett-why the whole American people today vie with each other in paying him affectionate homage and honor.

Atlanta is in the very heart of the South; but on Sunday evening next, at Trinity Methodist church, the Confederate Veterans will unite with the members of the Grand Army of the Republic in paying tribute to Abraham Lincoln. The invitation has been extended and accepted.

Thus the silent agencies which, for two-score years, have been mantling the green graves have likewise been knitting together the old ties.

The work of reconciliation is almost finished. Only an occasional episode tells of the dying throes of the demon of discord.

For the part which the South took in the great civil conflict she has no apologies to offer. She fought for con

stitutional freedom. She appealed to the arbitrament of the sword; but, having lost the issue, she returned to the Union which she helped to establish, and to whose musterroll of immortals she contributed Washington and Jefferson, Monroe and Madison, Marshall and Henry, Jackson and Scott. The Spanish-American war has attested her fidelity to the flag.

So,

"After all,

One country, brethren, we must rise or fall
With the Supreme Republic!"

VALE, IK MARVEL.

(Dec. 17, 1908.)

The older generation of book-lovers will feel an acute sense of loss in the death of Donald G. Mitchell, the genial Ik Marvel of American letters.

Crowned with the hoar frosts of four-score and six years, Dr. Mitchell was one of the last survivors of the pioneer school of authors that included Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper and a host of others who have long since joined the choir invisible. To quote the familiar phrase of Dr. Holmes, he became "the last leaf on the tree;" but, down to the close of his long pilgrimage, he was characterized by few of the infirmities which attach to old

age.

This was largely because of the fact that, in an age of feverish worry and excitement, he exemplified the philosophy of the simple life.

"Edgewood," his beautiful country seat on the outskirts of New Haven, embodied many of the rural charms which the epic singer of Mantua has so exquisitely embodied in the Georgics.

It is something of a commentary upon the forgetfulness of the times that most of the press dispatches announcing the exit of this gentle spirit have been reduced to the simplest paragraph; and perhaps many will read this editorial comment who have missed the news item altogether.