The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1864-03-26

at TINS critical period a Republican Senator was
elected from Illinois, when a Republican Senator
in the trembling national scales of the conflict
was worth a thousand times ms weight In gold.
Little did the Convention that nominated Abra-
ham Lincoln for President 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 towns
men and receiving their pledges TO remember
him, forsee how awfully he was TO need those
prayers, the prayers of all this nation and the
prayers of all the working. suffering common
people throughout the world. Gods hand was
upon him with a visible protection, saving first
from the danger of assassination at Baltimore
and bringing him safely to our national capI-
tai. Then the world have seen and wondered
at the greatest sign and marvel of our day, 10
wit, a plain working man of the people, with no
more culture, instruction or education than any
such working man may obtain for himself, called
on to conduct the passage of a great people
through a crisis involving the destinies of the
whole world. The eyes of princes, mobiles, aris-
t1crats, of dukes, earls, scholars, statesmen, war
riOrs, all turned on the plain backwoodsman,
with his simple sense. his imperturbable sim
plicity, his determined self-reliance. his impracti-
cable and i~ncorruptible honesty, as he sat amid
the war of conflicting elements with unpretend-
ing steadiness striving to guide the national ship
through a channel at whose perils the worlds
oldest statesmen stood aghast. The. brilliant
courts of Europe levelled their opera glasses at
the phenomenon. Fair ladies saw that he had
horny hands and disdained white gloves. Dap
per diplomatists were shocked at his system of
etiquette, but old statesmen, who new the ter
rors of that passage. were wiser than court ladies
and dandy diplomatists, and watched him with 4
fearful curiosity, simply asking, Z" HiH that awk-
ward old backwoodsman really get that ship
through? If he does, it Will be time for us to
look about u.s."
SoOth to say, our own politicians were some
what shocked with his State papers at first. Why
not let as make them a little more conventional
and file them TO Il classical pattern? NO" was
his reply, | shall write them myself. The pen
pie tOiH understand them" But this or that
form of expression is not elegant, not classical
90 The people anil understand IT, has been his in
variable reply. And whatever may be said of
his State papers as compared with the classic
standards, 1t has been a TACT that they have al
ways been wonderfully well understood by the
people, and that since the time of Washington,
the State papers of no President have more con-
this is, that they have been informal and undi-
plomatic. They have more resembled a fathers
talks to his children than q State paper. And
they have had that relish and smack of the soil,
that appeal to the simple human heart and head
which is greater power in writing than the most
say, with the apostle, =" But though | be rude in
speech yet not IN knowledge, but We have been
thoroughly made manifest among you in all
things" His rejection of what is called fine
writing WAS as deliberate ~ 81. IaQl :, anu IOr
the same reason-because he felt that he was
speaking on a subject which must be made clear
to the lowest intellect, though it should fail to
captivate the highest. But we say of Lincoln's
writing, that for all true, manly purposes of
writing, there are passages in his State papers that
could not be better put-they are absolutely per-
feet. They are brief, condensed intense, and
with a power of insight and expression which
make them worthy to be inserted IN letters of
gold. Such are some passages OF the celebrated
Springfield letter, especially that mastery one
where he compares the conduct Of the patriotic
and loyal blacks with that of the treacherous and
dsloyal whites. No one can read this letter
without feeling the influence of a mind both
strong and generous.
Lincoln is Il strong man, but his strength is of
a peculiar kind; 1t is not aggressive so much as
passive, and among passive things it is like the
strength not SO much of 4 stone buttress, as of a
wire cable. 1t is strength swaying to every infu-
ence, yielding on this side and on that to popular
needs, yet tenaciou,ly and inAexibly 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
nd tempests which beset her way.
Surrounded by all sorts of conflicting claims,
by traitors, by half-hearted, timid men. by bor-
der States men and free State men, by radical abo-
litiOnists and conservatives, he has listened To all,
weighed the words Of all, waited, observed, yield
ed now here and now there, but in the main
kept one inhexible, honest purpose, and drawn
the national ship through.
In times of our trouble Abraham Lincoln has
had his turn of being the best abused man of our
nation. Like Moses leading his Israel through
the wilderness, 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 intentions, and looking to
God for help. All the nation have felt i'm the in
oreasing solemnity OF his Proclamations and pa
pers, how deep an education was being wrought
in his mind by his simple faith in God, the Ruler
of nations, and this humble willingness to learn
the awful lesson of His providence.
We do not mean to give the impression that
Lincoln is a religious man in the sense in which
that term is popularity applied. We believe he
has never made any such profession, but we see
evidence that in passing through this dreadful ma
tiOnal crisis he has been forced by the very an
guish of the struggle 10 look upward, where any
rational creature must look for support. No man
in this agony has suffered more aud deeper. albeit
with a dry, weary, patient pain, that seemed to
some like insensibility. Nv hichever way it ends,''
he said TO the writer, 81 have the impression that
1 shan't last long after it's over" After the
dreadful repulse of fredericksburg he is reported
to have said, .. If there is a man out OF hell that
suffers more than l do, / pity him." In those
dark days his heavy eyes and worn and weary air
told how our reverses wore upon him, and yet
there was a never failing fund of patience at bot
tom. that sometimes rose to the surface in some
droll, quaint saying, or story, that forced a laugh
even from himself.
There have been times with many, of impetu-
Gus impatience, when our national ship seemed TO
lie water-logged and we have called aloud for n
deliverer of another fashion,-a brilliant Gener-
al, a dashing, fearless statesman, a man who
could dare and do, who would stake all on d die,
and win or lose by a brilliant coup de man. 1t
may comfort our minds that since lie who ruleth
in tho artuias of nations sat no Such man 4 a this