JOHN HAY (1838-1905) The early life of John Hay was like that of Eggleston. He too was born in a refined home in early Indiana, and he too was sent when thirteen to live with a relative in a region full of crude western types,- Pike County, Illinois; but here the parallel stops. At sixteen he was sent to Brown University in Rhode Island where he came into contact with a little literary circle and became deeply interested in poetry and the finer things of art. After his graduation and his return to the West as a law student in his uncle's office, he looked upon himself as a poet in exile and for a time he went on writing lyrics of the Heine, Longfellow type. But the headlong West was about him: dreams and Keats-like lyrics had no place in the stirring office where Lincoln came as a visitor and where political campaigns were planned. At length he gave himself wholly to the law, and after the election of Lincoln was enabled, through his uncle's influence, to secure the position of secretary to the President. Later, after the war, he was given diplomatic work at Paris, at Vienna, and at Madrid, returning in 1870 with a delightful series of Spanish sketches, Castilian Days, which was published in the Atlantic. His later biography is concerned largely with his career as a diplomatist and a statesman.- a career brilliant and far-reaching in its influence. In the field of letters Hay produced little and that little always during the intervals of a busy career, but all that he wrote was singularly influential. In 1870, for instance, he wrote with careless abandon a half dozen ballads of homely western frontier life, collected later as Pike County Ballads, and all unconsciously set in motion that school of political local colorists, and dialect versifiers of whom James Whitcomb Riley is perhaps the typical figure. His anonymous novel, The Bread Winners, 1883, was widely commented on, but his most notable work, his supreme literary achievement, was his life of Lincoln written in conjunction with John G. Nicolay, a work that covers with completeness one whole vital period in American history. His was one of those rare germinal minds that appear now and then to break into new regions and to scatter seed from which others are to reap the harvest. There was running and cursing, but Jim yelled out, Over all the infernal roar, 'I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last galoot's ashore.' Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. He were n't no saint-but at jedgment That would n't shook hands with him. In the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies the imperialists and the republicans vied with each other in utterances of grief and of praise; the Emperor and Empress 40 5 sent their personal condolences to Mrs. Lincoln. In England there was perhaps a trifle of self-consciousness at the bottom of the official expressions of sympathy. The Foreign Office searched the 1 records for precedence, finding nothing which suited the occasion since the assassination of Henry IV. The sterling English character could not, so gracefully as the courtiers of Napoleon III., bend to 15 praise one who had been treated almost as an enemy for so long. When Sir George Grey opened his dignified and pathetic speech in the House of Commons, by saying that a majority of the people of 20 England sympathized with the North, he was greeted with loud protestations and denials on the part of those who favored the Confederacy. But his references to Lincoln's virtues were cordially received, 50 55 New York Tribune, Jan. 5, 1871. 25 and when he said that the Queen had writ LINCOLN'S FAME1 The death of Lincoln awoke all over 30 the world a quick and deep emotion of grief and admiration. If he had died in the days of doubt and gloom which preceded his reëlection, he would have been sincerely mourned and praised by the 35 friends of the Union, but its enemies would have curtly dismissed him as one of the necessary and misguided victims of sectional hate. They would have used his death to justify their malevolent forebod- 40 ings, to point the moral of new lectures on the instability of democracies. But as he had fallen in the moment of a stupendous victory, the halo of a radiant success enveloped his memory and dazzled the eyes 45 even of his most hostile critics. That portion of the press of England and the Continent which had persistently vilified him now joined in the universal chorus of elegiac praise. Cabinets and 50 courts which had been cold or unfriendly sent their messages of condolence. The French government, spurred on by their Liberal opponents, took prompt measures to express their admiration for his char- 55 acter and their horror at his taking-off. 1 Copyright by the Century Company, 1887. ten to Mrs. Lincoln with her own hand, 'as a widow to a widow,' the house broke out in loud cheering. Mr. Disraeli spoke on behalf of the Conservatives with his usual dexterity and with a touch of factitious feeling. There is [he said] in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, something so homely and innocent, that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind. In the House of Lords the matter was treated with characteristic reticence. The speech of Lord Russell was full of that rugged truthfulness, that unbending integrity of spirit, which appeared at the time to disguise his real friendliness to America, and which was only the natural expression of a mind extraordinarily upright, and English to the verge of caricature. Lord Derby followed him in a speech of curious elegance, the object of which was rather to launch a polished shaft against his opponents than to show honor to the dead President; and the address proposed by the Government was voted. While these reserved and careful public proceedings were going on, the heart of England was expressing its sympathy with the kindred beyond the sea by its thousand ofgans of utterance in the press, the resolutions of municipal bodies, the pulpit, and the platform. In Germany the same manifestations were seen of official expressions of sympathy from royalty and its ministers, and of heartfelt affection and grief from the people and their representatives. Otto von Bismarck, then at the beginning of the events which have made his career so illustrious, gave utterance to the courteous regrets of the King of Prussia; the eloquent deputy, William Loewe, from his place in the House, made a brief and touching speech. ple of the entire civilized world that the most genuine and spontaneous manifestations of sorrow and appreciation were produced, and to this fact we attribute 5 the sudden and solid foundation of Lincoln's fame. It requires years, perhaps centuries, to build the structure of a reputation which rests upon the opinion of those distinguished for learning or intelli10 gence; the progress of opinion from the few to the many is slow and painful. But in the case of Lincoln the many imposed their opinions all at once; he was canonized as he lay on his bier, by the irresistible decree of countless millions. The greater part of the aristocracy of England thought little of him, but the burst of grief from the English people silenced in an instant every discordant 15 25 to speak slightingly of him in London as it was in New York. Especially among the Dissenters was honor and reverence shown to his name. The humbler people instinctively felt that their order had lost its wisest champion. The man [he said] who accomplished such great deeds from the simple desire conscien- 20 voice. It would have been as imprudent tiously to perform his duty, the man who never wished to be more or less than the most faithful servant of his people, will find his own glorious place in the pages of history. In the deepest reverence I bow my head before this modest greatness; and I think it is especially agreeable to the spirit of our own nation, with its deep inner life and admiration of self-sacrificing devotion and effort after the ideal, to pay the tribute of veneration to such greatness, exalted as it is by simplicity and modesty. Two hundred and fifty members of the Chamber signed an address to the American minister in Berlin, full of the cordial sympathy and admiration felt, not only for the dead President, but for the national cause, by the people of Germany. 30 35 Not only among those of Saxon blood was this outburst of emotion seen. In France a national manifestation took place which the government disliked, but did not think it wise to suppress. The students of Paris marched in a body to the American Legation to express their sympathy. A two-cent subscription was started to strike a massive gold medal; the money was soon raised, but the Committee was forced to have the work done in Switzerland. A committee of French Liberals brought the medal to the American minister, to be sent to Mrs. Lincoln. Tell her,' said Eugène Pelletan, 'the heart of France is in that little box.' The inscription had a double sense; while honoring the dead Republican, it struck at the Empire. Lincoln - the Honest Man; abolished slavery, reëstablished the Union; saved the Republic, without veiling the statue of Liberty.' Everywhere on the Continent the same swift apotheosis of the people's hero was seen. An Austrian deputy said to the writer, Among my people his memory has already assumed superhuman proportions: he has become a myth, a type of ideal democracy.' Almost before the earth closed over him he began to be the subject of fable. The Freemasons of Europe generally regard him as one of them his portrait in Masonic garb is often displayed; but he was not one of that brotherhood. The Spiritualists claim him as their most illustrious adept, but he was not a spiritualist; and there is hardly a sect in the Western world, from the Calvinist to the atheist, but affects to believe he was of their opinion. being. Among the humble working people of the South whom he had made free this veneration and affection easily passed into the supernatural. At a religious 5 meeting among the negroes of the Sea Islands a young man expressed the wish that he might see Lincoln. A grayheaded negro rebuked the rash aspiration: No man see Linkum. Linkum walk as A collection of the expressions of sympathy and condolence which came to 10 Jesus walk-no man see Linkum.' But Washington from foreign governments, associations, and public bodies of all sorts was made by the State Department, and afterwards published by order of Congress. It forms a large quarto of a thou- 15 sand pages, and embraces the utterances of grief and regret from every country under the sun, in almost every language spoken by man. But admired and venerated as he was 20 in Europe, he was the best understood and appreciated at home. It is not to be denied that in his case, as in that of all heroic personages who occupy a great place in history, a certain element of le- 25 gend mingles with his righteous fame. He was a man, in fact, especially liable to legend. We have been told by farmers in central Illinois that the brown thrush did not sing for a year after he died. 30 He was gentle and merciful, and therefore he seems in a certain class of annals to have passed all his time in soothing misfortune and pardoning crime. He had more than his share of the shrewd 35 native humor, and therefore the loose jest books of two centuries have been ransacked for anecdotes to be attributed to him. He was a great and powerful lover of mankind, especially of those not fa- 40 vored by fortune. One night he had a dream, which he repeated the next morning to the writer of these lines, which quaintly illustrates his unpretending and kindly democracy. He was in some great 45 assembly; the people made a lane to let him pass. He is a common-looking fellow,' some one said. Lincoln in his dream turned to his critic and replied, in his Quaker phrase, Friend, the Lord pre- 50 fers common-looking people: that is why he made so many of them.' He that abases himself shall be exalted. Because Lincoln kept himself in such constant sympathy with the common people, whom 55 he respected too highly to flatter or mislead, he was rewarded by a reverence and a love hardly ever given to a human leaving aside these fables, which are a natural enough expression of a popular awe and love, it seems to us no calmer nor more just estimate of Lincoln's relation to his time has ever been made - nor perhaps ever will be-than that uttered by one of the wisest and most American of thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a few days after the assassination. We cannot forbear quoting a few words of this remarkable discourse, which shows how Lincoln seemed to the greatest of his contemporaries. A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him. Lord Bacon says, 'Manifest virtues procure reputation; occult ones fortune.'- His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense of mankind and of the public conscience. . . . He grew according to the need; his mind mastered the problem of the day; and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was a man so fitted to the event. . . . It cannot be said that there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. . . . Then what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war! Here was no place for holiday magistrate, nor fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years-four years of battle-days- his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the center of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time; the true representative of this continent-father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue. The quick instinct by which the world recognized him. even at the moment of 5 his death, as one of its greatest men, was In this country, where millions still live who were his contemporaries, and thousands who knew him personally, where the envies and jealousies which dog the 35 footsteps of success still linger in the hearts of a few, where journals still exist that loaded his name for four years with daily calumny, and writers of memoirs vainly try to make themselves important by belittling him, his fame has become as universal as the air, as deeply rooted as the hills. The faint discords are not heard in the wide chorus that hails him second to none and equaled by 45 Washington alone. The eulogies of him form a special literature. Preachers, poets, soldiers, and statesmen employ the same phrases of unconditional love and reverence. Men speaking with the au- 50 thority of fame use unqualified superlatives. Lowell, in an immortal ode, calls him New birth of our new soil, the first American.' General Sherman says, 'Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to pos- 55 sess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.' General Grant, after having met the rul ers of almost every civilized country on earth, said Lincoln impressed him as the greatest intellectual force with which he had ever come in contact. He is spoken of, with scarcely less of enthusiasm, by the more generous and liberal spirits among those who revolted against his election and were vanquished by his power. General Longstreet calls him the greatest man of rebellion times, the one matchless among forty millions for the peculiar difficulties of the period.' An eminent Southern orator, referring to our mixed Northern and Southern ancestry, says: From the union of those colonists, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic Abraham Lincoln. It is not difficult to perceive the basis of this sudden and world-wide fame, nor rash to predict its indefinite duration. There are two classes of men whose names are more enduring than any monument the great writers, and the men of great achievement; the founders of states, the conquerors. Lincoln has the singular fortune to belong to both these categories; upon these broad and stable foundations his renown is securely built. Nothing would have more amazed him while he lived than to hear himself called a man of letters; but this age has produced few greater writers. We are only recording here the judgment of his peers. Emerson ranks him with Esop and Pilpay in his lighter moods, and says: The weight and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their application to the moment, are destined to a wide fame. What pregnant definitions, what unerring common sense, what foresight, and on great occasions what lofty, and more than national, what human tone! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded occasion. His style extorted the high praise of French Academicians; Montalembert commended it as a model for the imitation of |