To the end of his life, Lincoln was the very incarnation of democratic simplicity. He was never at home in a drawing-room; he never could dispose gracefully his hands and feet--appendages whose size was proportionate to his huge stature. After his nomination for the Presidency, he used to answer his own bell at his little house in Springfield, Illinois.
The people’s man of 1860, ABRAHAM LINCOLN! The pulse of patriotism quickens at the pronunciation of the name. The people’s plain Abe Lincoln; one of them, a commoner, of them, with them, like them. To foreign nations, he may have appeared as “President Abraham Lincoln, Chief Magistrate of the United States.” He may have been “Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy,” in the minds of his subordinates in those two important branches of his administration from ’61 to ’65. History may record him as the “wise, able, and philanthropical.” But his memory will last enshrined in a temple more lasting than bronze or stone--the hearts of the people.
To them he was Abe Lincoln--one of them, feeling their sensations, a common bond between him and them. He was a democrat by birth, by experience, by sentiment, reason, and patriotism. He was a President of the masses, and how well and loyally did they love him! His homely ways and phrases, his unadorned and vigorous speeches, were the ways of the people, speeches of the people; loved by the people for the very enemies he had made, for his enemies were the enemies of the people. Every caricature of Lincoln was a caricature of the people; every attack upon his personality was an attack upon the personality of the “mudsills” of the people, and his call to arms was their call to arms, and they sprang forward, responsive to his appeal, recognizing in it their appeal, as no sham aristocrat or autocrat can ever hope to have a nation do.
His memory will not remain green in the minds of the masses by his martyrdom; but dear will the picture be, from generation to generation, of the boy studying by the light of a flickering fire, and splitting rails for daily bread; fighting his way onward and upward without wealth, or powerful friends, until at last, in the supreme hour of the people’s need, he comes to bear their standard in the battle which they waged against “caste.” He did not come to the contest as a hired soldier, but as a volunteer, feeling all that was felt by the common soldier. It was _his_ battle, for he had felt the sting of class distinction, as did every private soldier of his army.