Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/71

Rh Before the war America hardly possessed any grand examples of public character saving that of Washington, which was somewhat remote and somewhat aristocratic. The public men of the democracy lacked the potent teaching of such examples, and this was one cause of the want of dignity in American statesmen. A democratic leader scarcely knew what his ideal was. Now, new examples have been added of the true democratic type. The nation has been greater in this struggle than the individual men: but judged by the average standard of other nations and times, America in the civil war can scarcely be said to have been barren of great men. Two or three might be named who are still living. One has finished his course. In his perfect simplicity of character, as well as in his perfect devotion to the public good, Mr. Lincoln presented the ideal of a true servant of the people. The almost absolute ruler of a mighty nation, the chief of the greatest armaments in the world, he never allowed himself, in language or demeanour, to be exalted above his fellows, or to claim for himself the respect which was due to his place alone. No state surrounded his person. We have too good reason to know that this tyrant kept no guard. His example and the type of character which he has set before public men, as much as the victory which his patient wisdom, his constancy, and integrity mainly achieved, will protect for ever the cause for which he toiled and died; so that, in his own words, government for the people and by the people shall never perish from the earth.

It would be wickedness, the greatest wickedness, to make a eulogy of war. War, besides the misery that it inflicts, stirs up from their depths all the evil passions of