The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1885-10-15

AMERICA IS noted for hero Worship
Until quite recently any imputation that
Washington had any mortal attributes
was deemed an offense worthy of the
stake. He was looked uoon as the en-
bodiment of every virtue, the greatest
soldier of the worlds history, although
he was the hero only of provincial war,
having all the powers of government
conferred in himself. But he has been
worshiped ami if he can look down from
heaven bow great must be his surprise
that while on earth he did not appreciate
the prodigiousness of his stature.
Halsted said what he thought of Lin
coin and Grant. and though he un9ues-
tionably erred in judgment, he did not
go to the extreme which panegyrists have
since gone in the opposite direction
Lincoln was man of the people,-home-
ly, honest, kindhearted and possessed of
a rugged intellect. That man of his
training and experience could be the
IldStSI LII a wal VI 5uCA OluuCuolOho
as that of the rebellion, is to assume that
a child can act intuitively as would man
of experience with trained intellect
And still the proposition, however self
evident, will cause canting patriots to
hold up their hands in pious horror that
the canons of patriotic belief should be
thus unthinkingly assailed. History must
be sacrificed that sentiment remain I'M
disturbed. Abe Lincoln, whom the peo-
pie love because power could not make
him ruler; the kind hearted man always
willing to withdraw his mind from the
great movements he did not understand,
to the consideration of some little matter
which touched his sympathetic heart,
must be painted in history as the tower
ing figure who welded the thunderbolts
of war and struck the shackles from mil
lions of bondsmen. And still if the pres
ent infirm and lovesick old Queen of
England were at the head of affairs at
that time, the result would be the same,
barring those individual acts of mercy
which have endeared Lincoln to the peo-
pie, but which were at the time weak
ness.
Every movement must have its hero;
it must be incarnated in an individual.
The Reign of Terror produced Robes
pierre, Danton and Marat, but they are
looked upon as its occasion not an Incl
dent of it. The blood thirstiness and
fierce energy which marked the time had
to be typified in the character of certain
prominent individuals. The mind is in
capable of considering passion or power
in the abstract or as the qualities of a
nation or people acting in concert, and
SO one man or set of men must bear
the odium or wear the laurels. This was
the case with Lincoln and largely with
Grant.
People cannot understand why the
laws of nature produce a world clad
with verdure and teeming with animal
life, and the idea of personal God is
invoked. Nor can the idea which the
more philosophic frame of God,-om-
nipresent, impersonal, intangible, in
scrutable, find Judgment in the average
mind. He must have an organism, form
and locality to meet the demands of the
average intellect which is not satisfied
with an abstraction.
The Queen of England is Fl cure head
but o necessity to people whose ira
ditions are that power has come from the
sovereign and who cannot comprehend
government unless typitied in the person
of an individual. 1t is so with us in the
matter of party. Men are made the
representatives of our political IDEAS
In popular movements when the
enthusiasm is greet, the idea is lost sight
of and the man towers. Stanton was the
Man of the rebellion, but he stood be-
hind the man on whom the people looked.
Pitiless in his energy, absorbed by one
purpose, he forgot humanity when to be
humane, was weak. Pity interfered with
his grand movements and he wisely
thrust it aside. He was the Man of Iron
who struck with the mailed hand and
who knew that the swing of the mighty
arm Of war could not fail to work wrong
to many.