; and it is just this
interpretation which I have sought to deny and to expose. In many
respects he was, of course, very much like his neighbors and associates.
He accepted everything wholesome and useful in their life and behavior.
He shared their good-fellowship, their strength of will, their excellent
faith, and above all their innocence; and he could never have served his
country so well, or reached as high a level of personal dignity, in case
he had not been good-natured and strong and innocent. But, as all
commentators have noted, he was not only good-natured, strong and
innocent; he had made himself intellectually candid, concentrated, and
disinterested, and morally humane, magnanimous, and humble. All these
qualities, which were the very flower of his personal life, were not
possessed either by the average or the exceptional American of his day;
and not only were they not possessed, but they were either wholly
ignored or consciously under-valued. Yet these very qualities of high
intelligence, humanity, magnanimity and humility are precisely the
qualities which Americans, in order to become better democrats, should
add to their strength, their homogeneity, and their innocence; while at
the same time they are just the qualities which Americans are prevented
by their individualistic practice and tradition from attaining or
properly valuing. Their deepest convictions make the average
unintelligent man the representative democrat, and the aggressive
successful individual, the admirable national type; and in conformity
with these convictions their uppermost ideas in respect to Lincoln are
that he was a "Man of the People" and an example of strong will. He was
both of these things, but his great distinction is that he was also
something vastly more and better. He cannot be fully understood and
properly valued as a national hero without an implicit criticism of
those traditional convictions. Such a criticism he himself did not and
could not make. In case he had made it, he could never have achieved his
great political task and his great personal triumph. But other times
bring other needs. It is as desirable to-day that the criticism should
be made explicit as it was that Lincoln himself in his day should
preserve the innocence and integrity of a unique unconscious example.

CHAPTER V

I

THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATION AND ITS PROBLEMS

It is important to recognize that the anti-slavery agitation, the
secession