7. THE HIGH GROUND ADDRESS
Before leaving the Presidency, Mr. Lincoln very kindly arranged for me to secure a position with the State Department. I therefore left his employ in the summer of 1869, shortly after he and Mrs. Lincoln returned to Springfield. I knew then that no matter what the future might hold for me, it could never be as exciting or fulfilling as those years I had spent in his service.I kept in touch with the Lincoln family, mainly through Robert Lincoln whom I had come to know well during the White House years. Then in the spring of 1873 I received a personal letter from the former President himself.
Mr. Lincoln had received an invitation from the British statesman John Bright to visit England and give an address at St. James’s Hall in London on November 19, 1873, the tenth anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. He asked if I would accompany him and Mrs. Lincoln to assist with arrangements. Although Mr. Lincoln’s trip was to be “unofficial,” the State Department was anxious to be of assistance. Of course I was more than willing to be of whatever help I could, and I was also excited by the prospect of meeting Mr. Bright.
John Bright was a distinguished member of the British Parliament—a champion of democracy and a first-rank orator in his own right. He had strongly supported the Union and Mr. Lincoln throughout the Civil War and had been influential in dissuading the British government of Lord Palmerston from declaring in favor of the Confederacy, as it had been inclined to do.
I had frequently passed on copies of Bright’s supportive speeches to Mr. Lincoln; in fact, the very day before his meeting with the three mysterious cavalrymen I had given him a copy of one such speech which he immediately filed in his coat pocket for future reading.
The Lincolns’ trip to London in the fall of 1873 involved the usual round of courtesy visits with government officials arranged by our embassy. It also included a lunch at Windsor Castle with Queen Victoria, which was certainly a highlight for Mrs. Lincoln.
For Mr. Lincoln, however, the highlight was his personal visit with John Bright and their joint appearance together on the same platform at St. James’s Hall on the night of November 19, 1873.
We arrived early, but the hall, the main floor of which held more than two thousand people, was already filling with people, many of them common folk who made up the majority of Bright’s considerable political constituency. An assistant of Mr. Bright’s helped identify some of the more prominent members of the audience who occupied the second-floor boxes above the platform.
One of these was the London Times correspondent who was there to cover Mr. Lincoln’s speech. On seeing him, I could not help but remember the two-sentence dismissal of Mr. Lincoln’s original Gettysburg Address by that newspaper. It declared that “the (Gettysburg) ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln. Anything more dull and commonplace (than his address) would not be easy to produce.”
But it was the party in an adjacent box that was causing a stir among the audience below and which brought a smile of appreciation to the face of our host. It included none other than Prime Minister William Gladstone.
Gladstone had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Palmerston throughout the War between the States. He had a reputation for being a man of strong moral conscience. In fact, a later commentator was to say that “if Gladstone could not discover good on one side of an important political issue, and evil on the other, he failed to discover importance and was not interested.”
But to the great disappointment of Bright and the British opponents of slavery, Gladstone had spoken in favor of aligning the British government with the Southern Confederacy—a position which he later regretted and apologized for, but which had seriously strained the otherwise cordial relationship between himself and Bright.
“I urged him to come to hear you tonight,” Bright whispered to Mr. Lincoln, “but I didn’t think he would. He’s had to swallow his pride to do so and his presence is a great tribute to yourself.”
By now it was time to begin the evening’s proceedings. Mr. Bright went to the podium, hushed the crowd, and welcomed everyone present. He acknowledged with gratitude the presence of the Prime Minister and especially welcomed the guest of honor, Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. Bright then briefly explained that he had been greatly moved personally by Mr. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. That address, he reminded the audience, had ended with an appeal relevant to the champions and beneficiaries of democracy everywhere—to resolve that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, would not perish from the earth.
“On this the tenth anniversary of the issuance of that appeal,” continued Mr. Bright, “I have asked its author to come and advise what is required of us today to ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people will live and prosper rather than perish. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, a great friend of freedom and democracy, the former President of the United States of America, Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”
Mr. Lincoln approached the podium, affixed his steel rimmed spectacles to his face, and looked out over the vast throng waiting to hear what this curious but legendary figure from distant America had to say.
He started modestly as was his custom, declaring his awareness that some of the greatest political speakers of the age—Mr. Gladstone (whose presence he gratefully acknowledged), Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Bright himself—had addressed many audiences from this very podium. It would be difficult if not impossible for him to match their erudition or eloquence but he would do his best and trust that the audience would not be overly disappointed.
Turning then to the topic at hand, he proposed to share the reasons for his personal belief that democratic government—of the people, by the people, and for the people—would live and flourish in the days ahead rather than decline or perish.
He would do so, he said, by simply re-telling “the democracy story”—a story in which British statesmen and the British people had played and would continue to play a vitally important role. It was and is, he said, “a story so inspiring, compelling, and relevant to the well-being of ordinary people—so conducive to providing guidance to leaders and hope for all mankind—that it is the telling and re-telling of it which is the key to the continuance and expansion of democracy from generation to generation.”
Mr. Lincoln then launched into “the story.” As he understood it, twenty-four centuries ago the city states of Greece sent out settlers to their frontier regions to grow food. There, the rugged independence of those settlers, the natural equality of the frontier, and the lack of formal governance structures somehow combined to ignite the first democratic flame which was then carried back to the city states such as Athens. There Pericles declared, “We are a democracy because the administration of our affairs is in the hands of the many and not of the few.”
Personalizing the story, Mr. Lincoln recollected how he himself had grown up in frontier communities in Kentucky and Illinois which exhibited some of the same characteristics as those ancient Greek communities and which provided him, despite his modest circumstances, the opportunity to seek and win election to public office at a relatively early age.
“But there is a dark side to the story,” Mr. Lincoln continued. “Democracy has her enemies—the enemies of freedom and equality, the perpetrators of bondage, oppression, tyranny, and war.
“In ancient Greece it was these enemies who drove the bearer of the democratic flame from her homeland to wander Europe friendless and alone. She sought refuge but found it not in the Roman Republic, nor in the church which favored theocracy, nor in the palaces of kings and princes who preferred aristocracy to democracy.
“Eventually, however, Democracy did find an enduring home, but where?” asked Mr. Lincoln. “In the hearts of the common people—in France as the populace rose up against their oppressors, here in England where the institutions of Magna Carta, the Common Law, and the evolution of an elected and accountable Parliament provided her with safety and sustenance, and in America where institutions and democratic processes based on those historic foundations allowed her to continue to expand and thrive.”
At this point, Mr. Lincoln the storyteller became more Mr. Lincoln the lawyer, presenting and analyzing evidence before a jury. He left the podium and began to pace back and forth across the stage, much as he was reported to have done in those famous debates with Senator Stephen Douglas which first brought him to national attention in the United States. There was now a passion in his voice and gestures, and I could sense a growing awareness on the part of the audience that he was speaking to them from his heart as well as his head.
“In the 18th century in your country, and the 19th century in mine, a ‘charge’ could be and was laid against democracy. If democracy truly represented freedom and equality, how could she possibly continue to harbor the institutions of slavery and the slave trade in her bosom?
“And as much as I am reluctant to admit it, this was a question which you here in Britain were able to address and resolve more wisely and successfully than we in America.”
Mr. Lincoln acknowledged that Britain herself had been spared the evil of slavery on her native soil. But this was not the case in the British colonies, including those in America. As the audience well knew, the institution of slavery became so widespread and so intimately linked with the economies of the two countries that even those who found slavery morally reprehensible could not imagine how it could possibly be abolished.
“But thank God,” Mr. Lincoln declared vehemently, “at long last, the institution of slavery, and the slave trade which fed it, have been abolished, but by two very different paths in our two countries.
“In your country, it was the institutions and processes of democracy herself—brilliantly and persistently deployed under the leadership of Mr. Wilberforce and others— which were instrumental in abolishing this terrible injustice through the enactment of laws demanded by the people.
“In my country, although for thirty years we tried by every conceivable political device and compromise to achieve the same result by peaceable means, in the end we were forced to resort to war—civil war, with all its pain and tragedy—to free the slave population of America while preserving the unity of our country. In the process, many democratic rights and freedoms had to be suspended and it is only by God’s grace that democracy in America itself did not become a casualty of that terrible war.
“I considered war,” he continued earnestly, “to be a terrible evil, but a lesser evil than the oppressive denial of freedom and equality to the Negro population of America and the attempt to destroy the American Union over that issue.
“But I fervently wish in my heart that we could have avoided recourse to war—which so bitterly divided our country and very much strained our relations with yours—by abolishing slavery through laws democratically enacted and respected rather than by force of arms.
“I have come tonight therefore to pay tribute to your achievements in this regard—to pay tribute to the fact that British democracy was able to recognize and expunge the evil of slavery without resort to war—to pay tribute to the democratic flame which burns so brightly in your hearts and institutions to this very day—to pay tribute to, and to point other nations towards, the instruments of democracy rather than the instruments of war as constituting the highest ground of human governance and providing the best means of eradicating whatever future social and political evils may afflict the earth.”
Mr. Lincoln ended his address with these words, frequently quoted since:
“When we identify ourselves as followers, carriers, and re-kindlers of the democratic flame; when we feel her warmth and govern ourselves by her light; when we employ her freedoms and institutions to advance the common good and to constrain and eradicate evils—when we govern ourselves in this fashion, we become actors in one of the greatest dramas ever enacted on the stage of civilization. And as long as we continue to invest our lives, our tears, our wealth, and if necessary our blood, in nurturing and defending this high ground of human governance, surely it can confidently be prophesied that government of the people, by the people, and for the people will not perish from the earth.”
As Mr. Lincoln ceased speaking, a momentary hush fell over the audience. I felt a flash of panic—had he misjudged his audience? Was his reliance on “story telling” to communicate his convictions—an approach which was so successful with American audiences—somehow inappropriate and ineffective here?
But then it began, from the back of the hall and progressing toward the front like a rush of wind. Hundreds of people rising to their feet, stamping their feet, and clapping their hands until the entire audience was visibly demonstrating their approval of what commentators later labeled Mr. Lincoln’s “High Ground Address.”
A beaming John Bright leaped on to the stage and lifted Mr. Lincoln’s hand high above his head. Both glanced up, as did I, to the box where Mr. Gladstone was seated.
8. EPILOGUE
Scarcely half a year later, in May of 1874, I received word through Robert Lincoln that his mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, had passed away after a brief illness.
During the last two years of the great War, I had greatly feared for Mrs. Lincoln’s mental health. The fact that the last years of her life were spent in peace and tranquility at the side of her beloved husband whom she so feared losing, was indeed a great mercy.
Official duties at the State Department kept me from attending her funeral in Springfield. But it was little more than a year later that the nation received the melancholy news that Abraham Lincoln himself had passed away at the age of sixty-six years.
Mr. Lincoln was also to be buried in the family plot in Springfield. But the state funeral was to be held in Washington, D.C., on June 30th 1875.
The day of the funeral dawned bright and cloudless, as if to say that this was a day to celebrate not mourn the great life which had so profoundly affected us all.
Robert Lincoln had very kindly invited John Nicolay and me to ride in the family carriage just behind the horse-drawn caisson which would bear the casket on its final journey.
As we took our place in the carriage, Robert pointed to the riderless horse which was led by a cavalry officer immediately behind the caisson. The horse was fully bridled and saddled, with boots reversed in the stirrups—the traditional symbol of the fallen warrior especially revered by the cavalry.
There was something vaguely familiar about that horse. Although its muzzle was flecked with grey, its coat was coal black, and it arched its neck and lifted its feet smartly—just as it had done so long ago when Mr. Lincoln had ridden it down the White House lane. Yes, it was High Ground—now more than twenty years old, but ready to go the last mile with his old master.
The procession moved slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue to the slow beat of muffled drums. The crowds were immense but hushed, liberally sprinkled with blue as veterans of the great War had donned their uniforms one more time in fitting tribute to their Commander in Chief.
The procession turned off Pennsylvania Avenue toward the station where the special train waited to bear Abraham Lincoln to his final resting place in Springfield. And then I heard it—above the sound of the drums and the murmuring of the crowd—the sound of a piercing, high-pitched whistle.
High Ground heard it too. His ears pricked forward and he strained against his halter shank in an attempt to turn his head toward its source. My eyes stared in the same direction, and there they were, standing together at the edge of the crowd—three cavalry troopers all in blue.
The middle one, the source of the whistle, was a giant in stature with a bushy beard and dark black curly hair protruding from under his cavalry Stetson. They were waving vigorously, and the giant, grinning broadly, gave me a slow sweeping salute.
I rubbed my eyes and for a split second glanced back at High Ground. When I looked again towards the crowd, the three troopers had vanished.
