Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/36

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN Cromwell. Each nation, in its need, produced one man whose figure dominates the time, who seems to incarnate for posterity the ideals of the party which triumphed in the struggle, Cromwell and Lincoln. Lincoln was a statesman, Cromwell a great general as well. Lincoln was a man of the people, Cromwell belonged to the upper classes. "I was by birth a gentleman," he said, "living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity." He believed in class distinctions, "in the ranks and order of men" as he put it, and held the maintenance of these distinctions "a good interest of the nation and a great one," and opposed anything that tended "to the reducing all to an equivalent." Lincoln, on the other hand, said in one of his speeches that he should never be a gentleman "in the outside polish," but as to "that which constitutes the inside of a gentleman" he hoped he was one. He termed himself one of the common people. Once, as he told his secretary, he dreamt that he was in a great assembly which made way to let their Presi- 28