Title: Lincoln, the American
Author: Lowden, Frank O.
Language: English
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                         Lincoln, The American

                                  by

                            FRANK O. LOWDEN

                         Governor of Illinois


                             Boston, Mass.

                           February 12, 1919


           [Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.]


                       [Illustration: colophon]
                           SPRINGFIELD, ILL.
              ILLINOIS STATE JOURNAL CO., STATE PRINTERS
                                 1919

                               15793--1M


     Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois delivered the following
        address before the Middlesex Club at the Hotel Somerset
             in Boston, Mass., Wednesday evening February
                               12, 1919:

Principles rather than policies appealed to Abraham Lincoln. All great
questions seemed to him to involve some moral quality. It was his habit,
therefore, to resolve them into their simple fundamentals. It thus
happens that many of his words are as apt and forceful to-day as when
they were first spoken by him. Your Club has recognized this fact and
has made “Lincoln, the American,” the theme of the evening. In harmony
with this thought, I shall try to put before you some of the things for
which Lincoln stood, which directly apply, as it seems to me, to the
grave problems with which we and all the world with us are now
confronted.

A hundred and ten years ago to-day, two men were born. Both have been
dust for many years. Yet each played a large part in the Great World War
that we hope has reached its close. These men were Charles Darwin and
Abraham Lincoln. Darwin devoted his life to the study of material
things. In that world in which he lived he found heredity and
environment to be the controlling facts. Out of his study came the
doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The savants of Germany made
that doctrine the corner-stone of a new philosophy which they called
Kultur.

According to Kultur, the world belonged to the strong and to the strong
alone. Might was right, and the world was in the relentless grip of
physical force. Justice, gentleness, righteousness were words invented
by the weak to protect themselves against the strong. To pity a foe was
weakness; to spare him was a crime. Kultur was a denial of the moral
law; was a blind faith in the power of the laws of life which Darwin had
declared.

On the same day, in a cabin in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln was born. If
heredity and environment had been all there was in human life, we never
should have heard his name. While Darwin delved in rocks to find
vanished forms of life, Lincoln studied men. He learned to know men. By
them his sympathies were quickened; the moral depths of his being were
stirred; the right and wrong of human conduct engaged his deepest
thought. Just as the laws of physical being unfolded under the eye of
the great scientist, so the laws of the moral universe disclosed
themselves to the great man. It was said that Darwin could take a single
bone of some extinct and unknown animal and reconstruct that animal
perfectly. Lincoln at the same time could take a single wrong to society
and reconstruct society, to the everlasting benefit of all. Lincoln
never read The Origin of Species, but he knew that, under the moral law,
an injury by a superior race to an inferior reacted upon itself. He
said--“This is a world of compensation and he who would be no slave must
consent to have no slave. And those who deny freedom to others deserve
it not for themselves and under a just God cannot long retain it.”
Unconsciously, Lincoln became the interpreter of the moral laws of
society, just as Darwin became the interpreter of the physical laws of
life. Therefore, to Lincoln all men had the inalienable right to “life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Lincoln was as much at home
amidst the play of moral and spiritual forces as was Darwin in the realm
of mere matter. It was this moral grandeur to which Lincoln attained
that made him the wisest of all men. For, after all, wisdom is largely a
product of character. Men may be intellectually brilliant, indeed
brilliant beyond compare, and yet be utterly lacking in wisdom. Where
other men had views, Lincoln had convictions. Convictions come from the
heart and not from the brain. And so if there comes a question of human
liberty, of human rights, one may turn to Lincoln for an answer without
inquiring as to the particular year in which he wrote. There is a
perfect harmony running through all his utterances.

It is not strange that as Kultur was partially founded upon the doctrine
of Darwin, so the Allies found their chief inspiration in the life of
Abraham Lincoln. For this great contest was a war between the material
forces of the world, upon the one hand, and the spiritual forces on the
other. Where the Central Empires found comfort in The Origin of Species,
the statesmen of England and France, and of Italy and the United States
read the Gettysburg speech and the Second Inaugural, and so they renewed
their faith and refreshed their courage.

Darwin and Lincoln! Darwin announcing the survival of the strong!
Lincoln declaring that when being mounted up to man, love also came into
the universe to shield the weak! Lincoln insisting that when the laws of
the physical universe and of the moral universe clash, those of the
moral universe will prevail! Thank God, our soldiers, on a score of
immortal battlefields in the last two years, have proven that Lincoln
was right. The victory which we celebrate is the victory of spiritual
forces over the things of earth.

Lincoln truly served mankind because he loved mankind. Genuine service
must always spring from the promptings of the heart, and is never a
product of the will alone. It was your own poet Lowell who said:

    “How beautiful to see
     Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
     Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead.”

And so he couldn’t help giving his tenderest thought to the working man.
He cared for him because he cared for all men. All are familiar with his
significant saying that the Lord loves plain people because He made so
many of them.

With reference to the age-old question of labor and capital, he
declared--“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only
the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first
existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the highest
consideration.” This is but another way of saying that society should
chiefly concern itself with the lot in life of the average man. And this
is but saying, in another form, that Lincoln was a lover of humanity.
The Declaration of Independence, to which, again and again, he turned in
his thinking, included not only the right to life and liberty, but the
right to the pursuit of happiness as well. And it is interesting to note
that though Lincoln emphasized the right to liberty--for slavery was the
dominant issue at the time--he never referred to the Declaration, so far
as I can find, without coupling with the right to liberty, the right to
the pursuit of happiness. Life means much; liberty means much; but both
fail unless life can be lived and liberty enjoyed under conditions of
well-being. Any form of government is but a means to an end, and that
end is the happiness of the individual. I am sure that in our almost a
century and a half of existence, since that great day of Independence,
more men have lived happy lives in our country and under our form of
government than in any other in all the history of the world.

But the happiness and well-being of the average man and woman must be
steadily advanced if our institutions are to endure. The economists may
explain, the statesmen may excuse our failure to accomplish this, but
the fact remains that our civilization will fail if the well-being of
the men and women and children of America shall not continuously
improve.

This cannot be, however, in my opinion, if we destroy private initiative
in industry. For every invention, for every improved process made under
the stimulus of private initiative, though the inventor may profit,
society profits immeasurably more. A steadily reducing amount of human
labor is all the time required to produce the necessities of life. If we
shall abandon the ancient landmarks and substitute for private
initiative and private industry a socialistic state, the progress of
mankind will be arrested and retrogression will set in. Again Lincoln
speaks to us: it is a message for to-day--“The legitimate object of
government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to
have done but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves in
their separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can
individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to
interfere.” He also warns us--“let not him who is houseless pull down
the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for
himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from
violence when built.”

Lincoln was above all a great American. Indeed, it was that same poet of
yours, whom I have already quoted, who said of him--“new birth of our
new soil, the first American.”

All his life he hated slavery, but he loved his country more. He
accepted battle not to free the slave but to save the Union. With sad
heart, but with steadfast courage, he faced the greatest war the world
had ever seen to keep the flag of his country--and not of the
world--flying in the sky.

There are those who believe they can see somewhere high in the sky a
shadowy banner, upon which is written the word “internationalism.” To
some this far-away flag seems white and to others red. They believe,
that this flag is to supersede the flag of all the nations of the earth.
That time may come, but it will come only when men shall cease to love
their own, when they shall care for others’ families equally with their
own. In the meantime we can serve humanity best by serving our own
country first.

Lincoln said: “I do not mean to say that this general government is
charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the
world; but I do think that it is charged with preventing and redressing
all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.” These words might indicate that
Lincoln was not interested in humanity beyond our own borders. This is
not so. All through his writings runs the thought that our cause was the
cause of humanity. In his speech at Gettysburg, he did not say--“Let us
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this
Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not
perish” _from the United States_, but “from the earth.” His vision
circled all the globe. His great heart was beating in sympathy with
mankind everywhere. But he knew that the surest way to help the world
was to cherish our priceless heritage at home. He knew that if we could
preserve intact the liberties and institutions which we called our own,
that was the greatest service we could render to mankind.

How well he wrought I doubt if even he himself could fully understand.
The condition of mankind the world over has been constantly improving,
due to our influence and our example. The American Republic has been an
inspiration to the lovers of liberty everywhere. It is the last and best
hope of the world and he who would imperil its future by excess of love
for other peoples and other lands is recreant not only to his country,
but to mankind everywhere. The Republic, during its almost a century and
a half of existence, has had a mighty influence throughout the world.
Its power has come from its success as a self-governing nation. Our
influence has run around the globe because we have contented ourselves
with being an exemplar to, rather than a ruler of mankind.

Lincoln did preserve the Union and free the slaves. That Nation which he
saved had grown so powerful in a little more than fifty years that it
was able, in the supreme crisis of civilization, to turn the tide of the
great world conflict. And as he prayed, so now we may have faith to
believe that “government of the people, by the people, for the people
shall not perish _from the earth_.”



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