Evansville daily journal. (Evansville, Ind.) 1863-1866, 1864-01-19

he had never studied surveying-but
what of that? He accepted the 'job,"
procured chain and did the work. 20
we not see in this parable of the wider
wilderness which in latter years he has
undertaken to survey and fit for human
habitstion without chart or surveyors
chain? .ei
Little did the Convention that nomi-
mated Mr.Lincoln know what they were
doing. Little did the honest, fatherly,
patriotic man, who stood in his simplicity
on the platform at Springfield, asking
the prayers of his townsmen, and receiv-
ing their pledges TO remember him, fore
see how awfully he was to need those
prayers, the prayers Of all this nation,
and the prayers of all the working, suf-
fering, common people throughout the
visible protection, saving 6rst from the
danger of assassination at Baltimore, and
bringing him safely to our National cap
ital. Then the world has seen and won
dered at the greatest sign and marvel If
our day, to-wit; plain working man OF
the people, with no more culture, instruc-
tlon or education than any such working
man may obtain for himself, called on to
conduct the passage of a great people
through a cricis involving the destinies
of the whole world The eyes of princes,
mobiles, aristocrats, Of dukes earls
scholars, statesmen, warriors, all turned
on the plain backwoodsman, with his
simple sense, his imperturable simplicity,
his determined selfreliance, his imprac-
ticable and incorruptible honesty, as he
sat amid the war of conflicting elements
with unpretending steadiness striving to
guide the national ship through a chan
mel at whose perils the worlds oldest
statesmen stood aghast. The brilliant
courts of Europe leveled their opera
glasses at the phenomenon. Fair ladies
saw that he had horny hands and dis
dained white gloves. Dapper diploma
lists were shocked at his system of eti-
quette, but old statesmen, who knew the
teIrors of that passage, were wiser than
court ladies and dandy diplomatists, who
watched him with fearful curiosity,
simply asking, 8" Will that awkward old
backwoodsman really get that ship
through? If he does, it will be time for
us to look about us"
Lincolnis strong man, but his
strength is of a peculiar kind; it is net
aggressive so much as passive, and
among passive things it is like the
strength not so much Of stone buttress
as of wire cable. 1t is strength sway
ing to every influence, yielding on this
side and on that to popular needs, yet te-
naciously and infexibly bound to carry its
great end; and probably by no other
kind of strength could our national ship
have been drawn safely thus far during
the tossings and tempests which beset her
way.
Surrounded by all sorts of conflicting
claims, by traitors, by halfhearted, timid
men, Border State men and Free State
men, by radical Abolitionists and Con-
seryatives, he has listened to all, weighed
the words of all, waited, observed, yield
ed now here aud now there, but in the
main kept one infexible, honest purpose,
and drawn the national ship through.
In the time of our trouble, Abraham
Lincoln has had his turn of being the
best-abused man of our nation. Like
Moses leading his Iseral through the will
derness, he has seen the day when every
man seemed ready to stone him, and yet,
with simple, wiry, steady perseverance,
he has held on, conscious of honest in
tentions, and looking to God for help.
All the nation have felt, in the increas-
ing solemnity of his proclamations and
papers, how deep an education was being
wrought in his mind by this simple faith
in God, the Ruler of nations, and this
humble willingness to learn the awful
lessons CT His Providence.