Lincoln Was Loaded for Bear
An eminent man of politics has said that the similes of the learned which liken Abraham Lincoln to King Henry IV. of France and other historical notables are far from the mark and reveal their miscomprehension of the Machiavel redeemed by moral goodness. He thinks that without the hypocrisy being censurable he was more of the type of Pope Sixtus the Fifth. This celebrity, who, like Lincoln, was in the hog business at one time, pretended silliness to be elected pontiff. The die cast, he stood forth in all his native strength, keeping the friends who did not try to sway him, and becoming a rod of steel where he had been rated as lead.1 At the same time as he dispraised himself—mocked and laughed—he let out glimpses of true ambition. When his short-sighted advisers warmly crossed his ground of setting himself with freedom against the pro-slavery party, assuring him that he would thereby lose the senatorship as against Douglas, he confessed:
“I am after larger game. The battle of 1860 (for the chair of Washington) is worth a hundred of this.”
“A BOUNTEOUS PRESIDENT—IF ANYTHING IS LEFT!”
“Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay and starving to death; the like of that would never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand miles apart; he would stand stock-still, midway between them, and eat both at once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some, too, at the same time. By all means, make him President, gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously—if—if—there is anything left after he shall have helped himself.”—(Speech, House of Representatives, July 27, 1848.)
Notes
1 Greeley stamped Lincoln as “the slowest piece of lead that ever crawled.”