Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1911-02-12

refined. He had ambitions as had
other men.
He used and cultivated the art of
politics as they did, and it was not
difficult for those who knew him and
who came close to him 10 realize the
greatness of his character and intel
leet and the other exceptional quail
ities that differentiated him from his
| fellows.
Those traits in him which now
place him with Washington, alone
did not make themselves clearly mani
| fest and were not fully developed
until the trials of the four years of
our Civil war. In supreme test he
threw off such dress as his early life
| may have shown and the gold of his
great character and intellect shone
| forth in its purity.
Lincoln had been a farmer. He
had lived in the humblest home on
a farm, had visited New Orleans in a
store and educated himself. had
studied law and practiced it. had been
| in the legislature, had been once in
congress and had lived all the time
the life of the plain people.
He had taken a part in the great
est debate of the last or any other
century on the slavery question. had
| been defeated for the senate. which
was the immediate prize of the con-
test and then without any executive
or administrative experience, what
| ever, was thrust into an office requir-
| ing in the successful discharge of its
duties the highest ability in selecting
subordinates, the keenest political
sense and shrewdness in order to Sc
cure unity of support In the royal
f, 'ates, familiarity with military
strategy and with the organization of
| military resources and patience and
long suffering kindness that has no
superior that l know of save in the
! life of Jesus of Nazareth.
''Lincoln's intellectual honesty and
his great sympathetic, human heart,
We're his two great and highest at
tributes. because from them flowed all
his other qualities. From boyhood he
had trained his reasoning facilities,
had practiced simplicity of style, and
direct statement. His words were
short and Anglo-Saxon in deviation,
and the simplicity of his sentences
harmOnized with the lucidity and
clearness of his thought.
mo one could be severe with an
other than he was with himself in
reasoning a conclusion. He made no
a 0.tt txx.x
unless he had worked II out pro and
con in his own mind, and what he
wrote or spoke had most convincing
quality. He was interpretive and
was severe In his self judgment
"He cherished no resentments. He
was meek and lowly in weighing his
qualifications to meet the problems
set before him by the war and he
was patient beyond belief with the
men whom he Thought to be the
necessary instruments in accomplish
ing the nations good. He had a
simple dignity as president quite equal
to the needs of the office, but ne sank
personal vanity and repressed his
natural indignation at studied insults
of his subordinates when it seemed
wise to do SO in his country's in
terest.
The trials he had with Seward
and Chase and Stanton and Fremont
and Mcclellan, and with the extreme
abolitionists, no one can realize until
he reads the contemporaneous corre-
spondence of Lincoln and notes how
everything that Lincoln said and did
and refrained from saying was actuat-
ed by the purest patriotic motives and
desire TO bring a united country to
peace.
Lincoln had to go down through
the valley of the shadow of popular
denunciatlon and popular distrust
He had to bear the bitterest ridicule,
the most contemptuous criticism, ac-
cusations of the meanest motives. He
had TO sec small demagogues exalted
in the popular mind at the expense
of his own standing and of his own
reputation.
For months and years he had to
strengthen himself with the thought
that he alone understood the prob
lens that he was working out, that
he alone had the necessary clearness
of vision to see far beyond the present
and secure the nations salvation at
the expense of popular misunder
standing and partisan attack.
But fortunately he lived through
these trials and his martyrs death
did not come until after the people
knew of his patience, his sacrifice, his
great qualities of heart and mind, his
patriotism, and his far-sighted states
manship. And the generations that
have followed and will follow him,
even those whose ancestors were in
conflict with him, will give him a
higher and higher place in the history
80 tha xunrld