Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Democracy of Abraham Lincoln: Address by Henry Cabot Lodge Before the Students of Boston University School of Law on March 14, 1913
For all these reasons, it seems to me, in these days of agitation and disquiet, when the fundamental principles upon which our Government rests and has always rested are assailed, that nothing could be more profitable and more enlightening than to know just what Lincoln's Opinions were as to democracy and the true principles of free government. I am well aware that objection may be made to Lincoln, as an authority for our guidance, of the same character as the one brought against the framers of the Constitution, which is that he died nearly half a century ago and that, therefore, however excellent he was in his own day and generation, he is now out of date as a guide in public questions because all conditions have so completely changed. It is quite true that Lincoln, like Washington, never saw a telephone, an automobile or a ?ying machine and that economic conditions as well as those of business and finance have been radically altered since his day. But this is really an inept objection because the subject upon which we seek to know his thoughts concerns the relation of human nature to certain forms and principles of government among men, most of which were as familiar to the speculations of Plato and Aristole as they are to us; some of which are older than recorded history while the very youngest have been known, discussed and experimented with for centuries. So I think we may dismiss the suggestion that Lincoln is antiquated and realize that upon the principles of free government and the capabilities of human beings in that direction he is an authority as ancient as the Greek philosophers and I as modern as the last young orator who has just discovered that this very comparative world is not abstractly and ideally perfect.
What, then, were the thoughts and opinions of Abraham Lincoln as to the principles upon which free and ordered popular government should rest? He alone can tell us. No one is vested with authority to proclaim to us what Lincoln thought or believed upon any subject: There is no high priest at that altar to utter oracles which no one else can question and which he alone can interpret. Lincoln's convictions and opinions are to be found in only one place, in his own speeches and writings which, like his fame, belong to his countrymen and to mankind. Fortunately we need not grope about to discover his meaning. Few men who have ever lived and played a commanding part in the world have had the power of expressing their thoughts with greater clearness or in a style more pellucid and direct than Lincoln. Of him it may truly be said that his state ments are demonstrations. You will search far before you will find a man who could state a proposition more irresistibly, leaving no avenue of escape, or who could use a more relentless logic than the President of the Civil War. We feel as we read his life that he had in him the nature 'of a poet, the imagination which pertains to the poetic nature and which was manifested not only in what he said and did but in his intuitive sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men. Combined with these attributes of the poetic genius, which, is as rare as it is impalpable, were qualities seldom found in than connection. He was an able lawyer and had the intellectual methods of the trained legal mind. He was also the practical man of a?airs and the great statesman, looking at facts with undazzled eyes and moulding men and even ts to suit his pur pose. There is no occasion for guesswork, assertion or speculation in regard to him when he turned away from the visions of the imagi nation to confront and deal with the hard problems of life and government, never to any man harder than they were to him.
