From this time during many years almost all the men who saw beyond the surface in Lincoln have indicated,in one way or another,their vision of a constant quality.The observers of the surface did not see it.That is to say,Lincoln did not at once cast off any of his previous characteristics.It is doubtful if he ever did.His experience was tenaciously cumulative.Everything he once acquired,he retained,both in the outer life and the inner;and therefore,to those who did not have the clue to him,he appeared increasingly contradictory,one thing on the surface,another within.
Clary's Grove and the evolutions from Clary's Grove,continued to think of him as their leader.On the other hand,men who had parted with the mere humanism of Clary's Grove,who were a bit analytical,who thought themselves still more analytical,seeing somewhat beneath the surface,reached conclusions similar to those of a shrewd Congressman who long afterward said that Lincoln was not a leader of men but a manager of men.[1]This astute distinction was not true of the Lincoln the Congressman confronted;nevertheless,it betrays much both of the observer and of the man he tried to observe.In the Congressman's day,what he thought he saw was in reality the shadow of a Lincoln that had passed away,passed so slowly,so imperceptibly that few people knew it had passed.During many years following 1835,the distinction in the main applied.So thought the men who,like Lincoln's latest law partner,William H.Herndon,were not derivatives of Clary's Grove.The Lincoln of these days was the only one Herndon knew.How deeply he understood Lincoln is justly a matter of debate;but this,at least,he understood--that Clary's Grove,in attributing to Lincoln its own idea of leadership,was definitely wrong.He saw in Lincoln,in all the larger matters,a tendency to wait on events,to take the lead indicated by events,to do what shallow people would have called mere drifting.To explain this,he labeled him a fatalist.[2]The label was only approximate,as most labels are.
But Herndon's effort to find one is significant.In these years,Lincoln took the initiative--when he took it at all--in a way that most people did not recognize.His spirit was ever aloof.It was only the every-day,the external Lincoln that came into practical contact with his fellows.
This is especially true of the growing politician.He served four consecutive terms in the Legislature without doing anything that had the stamp of true leadership.He was not like either of the two types of politicians that generally made up the legislatures of those days--the men who dealt in ideas as political counters,and the men who were grafters without in their naive way knowing that they were grafters.As a member of the Legislature,Lincoln did not deal in ideas.He was instinctively incapable of graft A curiously routine politician,one who had none of the earmarks familiar in such a person.Aloof,and yet,more than ever companionable,the power he had in the Legislature--for he had acquired a measure of power--was wholly personal.Though called a Whig,it was not as a party man but as a personal friend that he was able to carry through his legislative triumphs.His most signal achievement was wholly a matter of personal politics.There was a general demand for the removal of the capital from its early seat at Vandalia,and rivalry among other towns was keen.
Sangamon County was bent on winning the prize for its own Springfield.Lincoln was put in charge of the Springfield strategy.How he played his cards may be judged from the recollections of another member who seems to have anticipated that noble political maxim,"What's the Constitution between friends?""Lincoln,"he says,"made Webb and me vote for the removal,though we belonged to the southern end of the state.
We defended our vote before our constituents by saying that necessity would ultimately force the seat of government to a central position;but in reality,we gave the vote to Lincoln because we liked him,because we wanted to oblige our friend,and because we recognized him as our leader."[3]
And yet on the great issues of the day he could not lead them.
In 1837,the movement of the militant abolitionists,still but a few years old,was beginning to set the Union by the ears.
The illegitimate child of Calvinism and the rights of man,it damned with one anathema every holder of slaves and also every opponent of slavery except its own uncompromising adherents.
Its animosity was trained particularly on every suggestion that designed to uproot slavery without creating an economic crisis,that would follow England's example,and terminate the "peculiar institution"by purchase.The religious side of abolition came out in its fury against such ideas.
Slave-holders were Canaanites.The new cult were God's own people who were appointed to feel anew the joy of Israel hewing Agag asunder.Fanatics,terrible,heroic,unashamed,they made two sorts of enemies--not only the partisans of slavery,but all those sane reformers who,while hating slavery,hated also the blood-lust that would make the hewing of Agag a respectable device of political science.Among the partisans of slavery were the majority of the Illinois Legislature.Early in 1837,they passed resolutions condemning abolitionism.Whereupon it was revealed--not that anybody at the time cared to know the fact,or took it to heart--that among the other sort of the enemies of abolition was our good young friend,everybody's good friend,Abe Lincoln.He drew up a protest against the Legislature's action;but for all his personal influence in other affairs,he could persuade only one member to sign with him.Not his to command at will those who "recognized him as their leader"in the orthodox political game--so discreet,in that it left principles for some one else to be troubled about!
