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Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847-1865

<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2> <h3>THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH.</h3> Among the many historic scenes in which President Lincoln was an actor there is not one, perhaps, where a single incident gave rise to speculations so groundless and guesses so wide of the truth as his justly celebrated Gettysburg speech.[H] Since his death there has been an enormous expenditure, not to say a very great waste, of literary talent on that extraordinary[170] address, as there has been on almost everything else he did, or was supposed to have done, from his boyhood until the moment of his assassination. That reporters, critics, chroniclers, eulogists, flatterers, and biographers have not only failed to give a true account of that famous speech, but that they have subjected Mr. Lincoln's memory to hurtful misrepresentation, it is the purpose of this chapter to show. It was my good fortune to have known Mr. Lincoln long and well,—so long and so intimately that as the shadows lengthen and the years recede I am more and more impressed by the rugged grandeur and nobility of his character, his strength of intellect, and his singular purity of heart. Surely I am the last man on earth to say or do aught in derogation of his matchless worth, or to tarnish the fair fame of him who was, during eighteen of the most eventful years of my life, a constant, considerate, and never-failing friend. The world has long since conceded that Abraham Lincoln was great in all the elements that go to make up human greatness. He had a stamp of originality entirely his own. With his unique individuality and his commanding intellect—at once strong, sagacious, and profoundly acute and critical—were associated a mental integrity and a moral purpose as firm as granite, a thorough knowledge of himself, and a modesty that scorned not only self-laudation but eulogy by others for fame or achievements not his own. An act accomplished by him, either in his character of a citizen or as a public[171] servant, he regarded more as a duty discharged than as an achievement of which to be proud. He was charitable to a fault; and yet no man ever discriminated more narrowly in forming a judgment concerning the character, the acts, and the motives of other men, or had a keener appreciation of merit or demerit in others. With his characteristic honesty and simplicity we may well suppose, that, were he alive to-day, he would feel under little obligation to the swarm of fulsome eulogists who have made up a large part of the current chronicles of his life and public conduct by ascribing to him ornamental virtues which he never possessed, and motives, purposes, and achievements which he would promptly disown if he could now speak for himself. Discriminating observers and students of history have not failed to note the fact that the ceremony of Mr. Lincoln's apotheosis was not only planned but executed by men who were unfriendly to him while he lived, and that the deification took place with showy magnificence some time after the great man's lips were sealed in death. Men who had exhausted the resources of their skill and ingenuity in venomous detraction of the living Lincoln, especially during the last years of his life, were the first, when the assassin's bullet had closed the career of the great-hearted statesman, to undertake the self-imposed task of guarding his memory,—not as a human being endowed with a mighty intellect and extraordinary virtues, but as a god. In fact, the tragic death of Mr. Lincoln brought a more fearful panic to his former[172] traducers than to his friends. The latter's legacy was deep sorrow and mourning; the former were left to the humiliating necessity of a change of base to place themselves en rapport with the millions who mourned the loss of their greatest patriot and statesman. If there was one form of flattery more offensive to the noble and manly pride of Mr. Lincoln than all others, it was that in which credit was given him for a meritorious deed done by some other man, or which ascribed to him some sentimental or saintly virtue that he knew he did not possess. In the same spirit he rejected all commendations or flattering compliments touching anything which he had written or spoken, when, in his own judgment, there was nothing especially remarkable in the speech or the composition referred to. Although superior, I readily concede, to any other man I have ever known, Mr. Lincoln was yet thoroughly human; and with his exact knowledge of his own character,—its weakness and its strength,—he once said to me, speaking of what historians and biographers might say of him, "Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." He had a clear perception of the value of that history which is truthful; and he believed that hosannas sung to the memory of the greatest of men, as if they were demi-gods, are hurtful to their fame. A day or two before the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Mr. Lincoln told me that he would be expected to make a speech on the occasion;[173] that he was extremely busy, and had no time for preparation; and that he greatly feared he would not be able to acquit himself with credit, much less to fill the measure of public expectation. From his hat (the usual receptacle for his private notes and memoranda) he drew a sheet of foolscap, one side of which was closely written with what he informed me was a memorandum of his intended address. This he read to me, first remarking that it was not at all satisfactory to him. It proved to be in substance, if not in exact words, what was afterwards printed as his famous Gettysburg speech. After its delivery on the day of commemoration, he expressed deep regret that he had not prepared it with greater care. He said to me on the stand, immediately after concluding the speech: "Lamon, that speech won't scour! It is a flat failure, and the people are disappointed." (The word "scour" he often used in expressing his positive conviction that a thing lacked merit, or would not stand the test of close criticism or the wear of time.) He seemed deeply concerned about what the people might think of his address; more deeply, in fact, than I had ever seen him on any public occasion. His frank and regretful condemnation of his effort, and more especially his manner of expressing that regret, struck me as somewhat remarkable; and my own impression was deepened by the fact that the orator of the day, Mr. Everett, and Secretary Seward both coincided with Mr. Lincoln in his unfavorable view of its merits. [174]The occasion was solemn, impressive, and grandly historic. The people, it is true, stood apparently spell-bound; and the vast throng was hushed and awed into profound silence while Mr. Lincoln delivered his brief speech. But it seemed to him that this silence and attention to his words arose more from the solemnity of the ceremonies and the awful scenes which gave rise to them, than from anything he had said. He believed that the speech was a failure. He thought so at the time, and he never referred to it afterwards, in conversation with me, without some expression of unqualified regret that he had not made the speech better in every way. On the platform from which Mr. Lincoln delivered his address, and only a moment after it was concluded, Mr. Seward turned to Mr. Everett and asked him what he thought of the President's speech. Mr. Everett replied, "It is not what I expected from him. I am disappointed." Then in his turn Mr. Everett asked, "What do you think of it, Mr. Seward?" The response was, "He has made a failure, and I am sorry for it. His speech is not equal to him." Mr. Seward then turned to me and asked, "Mr. Marshal, what do you think of it?" I answered, "I am sorry to say that it does not impress me as one of his great speeches." In the face of these facts it has been repeatedly published that this speech was received by the audience with loud demonstrations of approval; that "amid the tears, sobs, and cheers it produced in the excited throng,[175] the orator of the day, Mr. Everett, turned to Mr. Lincoln, grasped his hand and exclaimed, 'I congratulate you on your success!' adding in a transport of heated enthusiasm, 'Ah, Mr. President, how gladly would I give my hundred pages to be the author of your twenty lines!'" Nothing of the kind occurred. It is a slander on Mr. Everett, an injustice to Mr. Lincoln, and a falsification of history. Mr. Everett could not have used the words attributed to him, in the face of his own condemnation of the speech uttered a moment before, without subjecting himself to the charge of being a toady and a hypocrite; and he was neither the one nor the other. As a matter of fact, the silence during the delivery of the speech, and the lack of hearty demonstrations of approval immediately after its close, were taken by Mr. Lincoln as certain proof that it was not well received. In that opinion we all shared. If any person then present saw, or thought he saw, the marvellous beauties of that wonderful speech, as intelligent men in all lands now see and acknowledge them, his superabundant caution closed his lips and stayed his pen. Mr. Lincoln said to me after our return to Washington, "I tell you, Hill, that speech fell on the audience like a wet blanket. I am distressed about it. I ought to have prepared it with more care." Such continued to be his opinion of that most wonderful of all his platform addresses up to the time of his death. I state it as a fact, and without fear of contradiction, that this famous Gettysburg speech was not regarded by[176] the audience to whom it was addressed, or by the press and people of the United States, as a production of extraordinary merit, nor was it commented on as such until after the death of its author. Those who look thoughtfully into the history of the matter must own that Mr. Lincoln was, on that occasion, "wiser than he knew." He was wiser than his audience, wiser than the great scholars and orators who were associated with him in the events of that solemn day. He had unconsciously risen to a height above the level of even the "cultured thought" of that period.[6] The marvellous perfection, the intrinsic excellence of the Gettysburg speech as a masterpiece of English composition, seem to have escaped the scrutiny of even the most scholarly critics of that day, on this side of the Atlantic. That discovery was made, it must be regretfully owned, by distinguished writers on the other side. The London "Spectator," the "Saturday Review," the "Edinburgh Review," and some other European journals were the first to discover, or at least to proclaim, the classical merits of the Gettysburg speech. It was then that we began to realize that it was indeed a masterpiece; and it dawned upon many minds that we had entertained an angel unawares, who had left us unappreciated. In no country and in no age of the world has the death of any man caused an outpouring of sorrow so universal. Every nation of the earth felt and expressed its sense of the loss to progressive civilization and popular government. In his life and death, thoughtful men[177] in all lands found an inspiring theme. England's greatest thinker, John Stuart Mill, pronounced Abraham Lincoln to be "the greatest citizen, who has afforded a noble example of the qualities befitting the first magistrate of a free people." The London "Times" declared that the news of his death would be received throughout Europe "with sorrow as sincere and profound as it awoke in the United States," and that "Englishmen had learned to respect a man who showed the best characteristics of their race." The London "Spectator" spoke of him as "certainly the best, if not the ablest man ruling over any country in the civilized world." For using in his Gettysburg speech the celebrated phrase, "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people," Mr. Lincoln has been subjected to the most brutal criticism as well as to the most groundless flattery. Some have been base enough to insinuate against that great and sincere man that he was guilty of the crime of wilful plagiarism; others have ascribed to him the honor of originating the phrase entire. There is injustice to him in either view of the case. I personally know that Mr. Lincoln made no pretence of originality in the matter; nor was he, on the other hand, conscious of having appropriated the thought, or even the exact words, of any other man. If he is subject to the charge of plagiarism, so is the great Webster, who used substantially the same phrase in his celebrated reply to Hayne. Both men may have acquired the peculiar form of expression (the thought itself being as[178] old as the republican idea of government) by the process known as unconscious appropriation. Certain it is that neither Lincoln nor Webster originated the phrase. Let us see how the case stands. In an address before the New England Antislavery Convention in Boston, May 29, 1850, Theodore Parker defined Democracy as "a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people, of course," which language is identical with that employed by Mr. Lincoln in his Gettysburg speech. Substantially the same phrase was used by Judge Joel Parker in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1853. A distinguished diplomat has acquainted me with the singular fact that almost the identical phrase employed by Mr. Lincoln was used in another language by a person whose existence even was not probably known to Mr. Webster, the Parkers, or to Mr. Lincoln. On the thirty-first page of a work entitled "Geschichte der Schweizerischen Regeneration von 1830 bis 1848, von P. Feddersen," appears an account of a public meeting held at Olten, Switzerland, in May, 1830. On that occasion a speaker named Schinz used the following language, as translated by my friend just referred to: "All the governments of Switzerland [referring to the cantons] must acknowledge that they are simply from all the people, by all the people, and for all the people." These extracts are enough to show that no American statesman or writer can lay claim to the origin or authorship of the phrase in question. No friend of Mr. Lincoln[179] will pretend that it is the coinage of his fertile brain; nor will any fair-minded man censure him for using it as he did in his Gettysburg speech. As a phrase of singular compactness and force, it was employed by him, legitimately and properly, as a fitting conclusion to an address which the judgment of both hemispheres has declared will live as a model of classic oratory while free government shall continue to be known and revered among men. <div class="center"> <table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Quotes"> <tr><td align="left">"The world will little note,</td><td>|</td><td align="left"> "The speech will live when</td></tr> <tr><td align="left">nor long remember, what we</td><td>|</td><td align="left"> the memory of the battle will</td></tr> <tr><td align="left">say here; but it can never</td><td>|</td><td align="left"> be lost or only remembered</td></tr> <tr><td align="left">forget what they did here."</td><td>|</td><td align="left"> because of the speech."</td></tr> <tr><td align="right">Lincoln.</td><td> </td><td align="right">Sumner.</td></tr> </table></div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [180] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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