Complete Project Gutenberg Abraham Lincoln Writings eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,923 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Abraham Lincoln Writings.

Complete Project Gutenberg Abraham Lincoln Writings eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,923 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Abraham Lincoln Writings.
people became bound by a genuine sentimental attachment.  It was not a matter of respect, or confidence, or party pride, for this feeling spread far beyond the boundary lines of his party; it was an affair of the heart, independent of mere reasoning.  When the soldiers in the field or their folks at home spoke of “Father Abraham,” there was no cant in it.  They felt that their President was really caring for them as a father would, and that they could go to him, every one of them, as they would go to a father, and talk to him of what troubled them, sure to find a willing ear and tender sympathy.  Thus, their President, and his cause, and his endeavors, and his success gradually became to them almost matters of family concern.  And this popularity carried him triumphantly through the Presidential election of 1864, in spite of an opposition within his own party which at first seemed very formidable.

Many of the radical antislavery men were never quite satisfied with Lincoln’s ways of meeting the problems of the time.  They were very earnest and mostly very able men, who had positive ideas as to “how this rebellion should be put down.”  They would not recognize the necessity of measuring the steps of the government according to the progress of opinion among the plain people.  They criticised Lincoln’s cautious management as irresolute, halting, lacking in definite purpose and in energy; he should not have delayed emancipation so long; he should not have confided important commands to men of doubtful views as to slavery; he should have authorized military commanders to set the slaves free as they went on; he dealt too leniently with unsuccessful generals; he should have put down all factious opposition with a strong hand instead of trying to pacify it; he should have given the people accomplished facts instead of arguing with them, and so on.  It is true, these criticisms were not always entirely unfounded.  Lincoln’s policy had, with the virtues of democratic government, some of its weaknesses, which in the presence of pressing exigencies were apt to deprive governmental action of the necessary vigor; and his kindness of heart, his disposition always to respect the feelings of others, frequently made him recoil from anything like severity, even when severity was urgently called for.  But many of his radical critics have since then revised their judgment sufficiently to admit that Lincoln’s policy was, on the whole, the wisest and safest; that a policy of heroic methods, while it has sometimes accomplished great results, could in a democracy like ours be maintained only by constant success; that it would have quickly broken down under the weight of disaster; that it might have been successful from the start, had the Union, at the beginning of the conflict, had its Grants and Shermans and Sheridans, its Farraguts and Porters, fully matured at the head of its forces; but that, as the great commanders had to be evolved slowly from the developments of the war, constant success could not be counted upon, and it was best to follow a policy which was in friendly contact with the popular force, and therefore more fit to stand trial of misfortune on the battlefield.  But at that period they thought differently, and their dissatisfaction with Lincoln’s doings was greatly increased by the steps he took toward the reconstruction of rebel States then partially in possession of the Union forces.

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