The
government
will
not assail you.
not assail you.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 - Lev to Mai
This vital sympathy gave his nature a beautiful gentleness, and suf-
fused his thought with a tenderness born of deep compassion and
love. He carried the sorrows of his country as truly as he bore its
burdens; and when he came to speak on the second immortal day at
Gettysburg, he condensed into a few sentences the innermost meaning
of the struggle and the victory in the life of the nation. It was this
deep heart of pity and love in him which carried him far beyond the
reaches of statesmanship or oratory, and gave his words that finality
of expression which marks the noblest art.
That there was a deep vein of poetry in Mr. Lincoln's nature is
clear to one who reads the story of his early life; and this innate
idealism, set in surroundings so harsh and rude, had something to do
with his melancholy. The sadness which was mixed with his whole
life was, however, largely due to his temperament; in which the final
tragedy seemed always to be predicted. In that temperament too
is hidden the secret of the rare quality of nature and mind which
suffused his public speech and turned so much of it into literature.
There was humor in it, there was deep human sympathy, there was
clear mastery of words for the use to which he put them; but there
was something deeper and more pervasive, there was the quality
of his temperament; and temperament is a large part of genius. The
inner forces of his nature played through his thought; and when
great occasions touched him to the quick, his whole nature shaped
his speech and gave it clear intelligence, deep feeling, and that
beauty which is distilled out of the depths of the sorrows and hopes
of the world. He was as unlike Burke and Webster, those masters of
the eloquence of statesmanship, as Burns was unlike Milton and
Tennyson. Like Burns, he held the key of the life of his people;
and through him, as through Burns, that life found a voice, vibrating,
pathetic, and persuasive.
Daniellen W. Merkin
## p. 9065 (#61) ############################################
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
9065
[The following passages are all quoted from Abraham Lincoln's Speeches. '
Compiled by L. E. Chittenden. Published and copyrighted 1895, by
Dodd, Mead & Co. , New York. ]
THE PERPETUATION OF OUR POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
From Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, Jan-
uary 1837
WⓇ
E FIND ourselves under the government of a system of
political institutions conducing more essentially to the
ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the
history of former times tells us. We, when remounting the stage
of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these funda-
mental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or the estab-
lishment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed to us by a once
hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race
of ancestors.
All honor to our Revolutionary ancestors, to whom we are
indebted for these institutions. They will not be forgotten. In
history we hope they will be read of and recounted, so long as
the Bible shall be read. But even granting that they will, their
influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they
cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were
by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that strug-
gle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of
its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the
form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living cory
was to be found in every family,—a history bearing the indu-
bitable testimonies to its own authenticity in the limbs mangled,
in the scars of wounds received in the midst of the very scenes
related; a history too that could be read and understood alike
by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.
But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever.
They were a fortress of strength; but what the invading foemen
could never do, the silent artillery of time has done,—the level-
ing of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant
oaks; but the resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left
only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn
of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more
gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few
more ruder storms, and then to sink and be no more.
·
## p. 9066 (#62) ############################################
9066
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
·
FROM HIS SPEECH AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE
IN NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 27TH, 1860
IT
T IS surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the
Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken to-
gether, do certainly include those who may be fairly called “our
fathers who framed the government under which we live. " And
so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever,
in his whole life, declared that in his understanding any proper
division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Con-
stitution, forbade the Federal government to control as to slavery
in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy any one
to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior
to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost say,
prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century),
declare that in his understanding any proper division of local
from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade
the Federal government to control as to slavery in the Federal
Territories. To those who now so declare, I give not only "our
fathers who framed the government under which we live," but
with them all other living men within the century in which it
was framed, among whom to search; and they shall not be able
to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.
<<
But enough! Let all who believe that our fathers who
framed the government under which we live" understood this
question just as well and even better than we do now, speak as
they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Repub-
licans ask, all Republicans desire, in relation to slavery. As
those fathers marked it, so let it again be marked: as an evil not
to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because
of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that tol-
eration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those
fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained.
For this Republicans contend; and with this, so far as I know or
believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen,- as I suppose they will not,—
I would address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable
and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities
of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people.
## p. 9067 (#63) ############################################
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
9067
Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to
denounce us as reptiles, or at the best as no better than outlaws.
You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing
like it to "Black Republicans. " In all your contentions with
one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation
of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to.
Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable
prerequisite license, so to speak-among you, to be admitted
or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you or not be prevailed
upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us,
or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and speci-
fications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or
justify.
You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue;
and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof,
and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your
section -gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially
true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we
should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your
section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot
escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it?
If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to
be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very
year.
-
The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of
your making and not of ours. And if there be fault in that
fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show
that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice.
If we
do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is
ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started,-
to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle.
If our
principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the bene-
fit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle and we
with it are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as
such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle,
put in practice, would wrong your section, and so meet us as if
it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do
you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the
principle which "our fathers who framed the government under
which we live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse
it again and again upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly
## p. 9068 (#64) ############################################
9068
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's con-
sideration.
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning
against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell
Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that
warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and
signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in
the Northwestern Territory: . . and about one year after
he penned it [that warning] he wrote Lafayette that he con-
sidered that prohibition a wise measure; expressing in the same
connection his hope that we should at some time have a confed-
eracy of free States.
·
Again, you say we have made the slavery question more
prominent than it formerly was. We deny it.
It was
not we but you who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We
resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the
greater prominence of the question. Would you have that ques-
tion reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old
policy. . . . . If you would have the peace of the old times,
readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.
You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves.
We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry? John
Brown? John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to
implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise.
If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know
it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcus-
able for not designating the man and proving the fact.
do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it.
If you
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insur-
rection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt
among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact,
it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw
plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philoso-
phy, corresponds with the many attempts
at the assas-
sination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast
ventures
the attempt,
which ends in little else than his own
execution.
But you will not abide the election of a Republican president!
In that supposed event, you say you will destroy the Union; and
then you say the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon
us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear and
•
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## p. 9069 (#65) ############################################
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
9069
mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill
you, and then you will be a murderer! "
If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions
against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and .
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nation-
ality—its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist
upon its extension-its enlargement. All they ask we could
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could
as readily grant if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it
right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which
depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do,
they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition as being
right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them?
Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own? In
view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do
this?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it
alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity aris-
ing from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our
votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Terri-
tories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense
of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and
effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical con-
trivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored,
-contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between
the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who
should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy
of "don't care," on a question about which all true men do care;
such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to
disunionists,-reversing the Divine rule, and calling not the
sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to
Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and
undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusa-
tions against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction
to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have
faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end
dare to do our duty as we understand it.
## p. 9070 (#66) ############################################
9070
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
FROM THE FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4TH, 1861
A
PPREHENSION seems to exist among the people of the Southern
States, that by the accession of a Republican Administra-
tion their property and their peace and personal security
are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable
cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence
to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their
inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of
him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those
speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or
indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the
States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so. "
I only press
upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which
the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of
no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incom-
ing Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which con-
sistently with the Constitution and the laws can be given, will
cheerfully be given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for
whatever cause; as cheerfully to one section as to another. . .
I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations,
and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or the laws by
any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to
specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do
suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and
private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which
stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find
impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.
It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a
President under our national Constitution. During that period
fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succes-
sion, administered the executive branch of the government. They
have conducted it through many perils, and generally with
great success. Yet with all this scope of precedent, I now enter
upon the same great task for the brief constitutional term of
four years, under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of
the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably
attempted.
I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Con-
stitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is
## p. 9071 (#67) ############################################
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
9071
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national
governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper
ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national
government, and the Union will endure forever,-it being impos-
sible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the
instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but
an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it
as a contract be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties
who made it? One party to a contract may violate it-break it,
so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
It follows then from these views, that no State, upon its own
mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves
and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and [that] acts of
violence within any State or States, against the authority of the
United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary according to
circumstances.
I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the
laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability
I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins
upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all
the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on
my part; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my
rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite
means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I
trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the
declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend
and maintain itself.
In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence; and
there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national au-
thority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy,
and possess the property and places belonging to the government,
and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may
be but necessary for these objects there will be no invasion, no
using of force against or among the people anywhere.
That there are persons in one section or another who seek
to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext
to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I
## p. 9072 (#68) ############################################
9072
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
To those, however, who really
need address no word to them.
love the Union, may I not speak?
Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction
of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its
hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?
Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility
that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence?
Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the
real ones you fly from-will you risk the commission of so fear-
ful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional
rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right plainly
written in the Constitution has been denied? I think not. Hap-
pily the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach
to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single
instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution
has ever been denied.
I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitu-
tional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor
do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon
the parties to the suit, as to the object of that suit, while they
are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all
parallel cases by all other departments of the government. . . .
At the same time,
if the policy of the government upon
vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably
fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,
the people
will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent
practically resigned their government into the hands of that emi-
nent tribunal.
•
.
Nor is there in this view any assault upon the Court or the
judges.
One section of our country believes slavery
is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is
wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substan-
tial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution, and
the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each
as well enforced, perhaps, as any law ever can be in a commu-
nity where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports
the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the
dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each.
This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be worse,
in both cases, after the separation of the sections than before.
## p. 9073 (#69) ############################################
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
9073
The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be
ultimately revived without restriction in one section; while fugi-
tive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surren-
dered at all by the other.
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove
our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable
wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and
go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but
the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot
but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hos-
tile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make
that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after
separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than
friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced
between aliens than laws among friends? Suppose you go to
war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both
sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old
questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the peo-
ple; and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for
the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this
also, if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to
do with it. His duty is to administer the present government as
it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to
his successor.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate
justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the
world? In our present differences, is either party without faith
of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations with
his eternal truth and justice be on your side of the North or on
yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail,
by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this
whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If
there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step
which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frus-
trated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by
it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Con-
stitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your
XVI-568
## p. 9074 (#70) ############################################
9074
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
own framing under it; while the new Administration will have
no immediate power, if it would, to change either.
If it were
admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the
dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action.
Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him.
who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent
to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
The government will
not assail you. You can have no conflict without being your-
selves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven
to destroy the government; while I shall have the most solemn
one to "preserve, protect, and defend it. "
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it
must not break our bonds of affection.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-
field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels
of our nature.
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
Remarks at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg,
November 19th, 1863
F°
OURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedi-
cated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can
long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final
resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should
do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot conse-
crate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our
power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they
## p. 9075 (#71) ############################################
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
9075
did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far
so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of
the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4TH, 1865
FEL
ELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:-At this second appearing to take the
oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an
extended address than there was at the first. Then a state-
ment, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting
and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which
public declarations have been constantly called forth on every
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the atten-
tion and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new
could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all
else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself;
and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all.
With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is
ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war.
All
dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving
the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seek-
ing to destroy it without war,- seeking to dissolve the Union,
and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war;
but one of them would make war rather than let the nation sur-
vive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
And the war came.
―
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves; not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the south-
ern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful
interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of
## p. 9076 (#72) ############################################
9076
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
the war.
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was
the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even
by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than
to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the
duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that
the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the
conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph
and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the
same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his
aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should
dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be
not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered - that
of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world
because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come;
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. " If we shall
suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in
the providence of God must needs come, but which having con-
tinued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and
that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the
woe due to those by whom the offense came,-shall we dis-
cern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the
believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we
hope- fervently do we pray-that this mighty scourge of war
may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until
all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of
blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must
be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto-
gether. "
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness
in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on
to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his
widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
―
## p. 9076 (#73) ############################################
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*st aces
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LINNÆUS
(1707-1778)
BY JOHN MUIR
HE immortal Linnæus - Carl von Linné - was born in Sweden,
a cold rocky country now famous forever. He was born in
the bloom-time of the year, May 13th, 1707; and contem-
plating this great event, one may easily fancy every living thing
dancing and singing and clapping hands for joy.
Whether descended from sea-kings and pirates as is most likely,
or from fighting Normans or Goths, matters not; for he was a lover
sent of God to revive and cheer and bless all mankind. And this
he did in spite of crushing poverty, and all the black brood of disap-
pointments and discouragements that ever beset the onway of genius.
His parents were as poor and pious as the parents of great men
usually are. He was a naturalist from his birth, and reveled in the
bloom of the fields and gardens about his native village of Rashult
as naturally as a bee. By his steady, slow-going neighbors he was
looked on as one possessed. They did not know what to make of
him; neither did his own father and mother. His father, a minister,
naturally wished his son to follow in his footsteps, and with com-
mendable self-denial saved money to send young Carl to school with
this end in view. But the studies leading to the ministry did not
interest the lad, and like other divine boys he was called a dunce.
Accordingly, when his father visited the school and anxiously inquired
how Carl was getting on, he was bluntly told that the boy was dull,
had no brains, and could never be made into a minister or scholar
of any kind. Under these dark circumstances, the best advice the
schoolmaster was able to offer the discouraged father was to take
away his boy and make a tailor or a shoemaker of him. Yet this
was the boy who was to do the most of all for many generations to
open men's eyes to see the beauty of God's gardens and the creatures
that enliven them.
The real education of Linnæus began as soon as he could see.
When only four years old he constantly questioned his father about
the weeds and flowers around the house. His formal education began
at the age of seven, when he was sent to a private school for three
years; at the end of which time he entered another private school at
Wexiö. In 1719, we are told, he was committed to the care of one
Gabriel Hok, a teacher of repute, but who was as unsuccessful as his
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LINNÆUS
predecessors had been in his efforts to overcome the lad's distaste for
scholastic studies and his seemingly irrational liking for plants. In
1724 he entered the gymnasium, caring for nothing but botany and
biology in general,-which in truth is almost everything. Here he
managed to get together some of the books of the few Swedish
authors who had written of plants, and over these he laboriously
pored.
It was when he was in the gymnasium, at the age of seventeen,
that his father was advised to make a tailor or shoemaker of his
dullard. The old clergyman, grieved and disappointed at the out-
come of twelve years' schooling, met Dr. Rothman, a practitioner of
the town, to whom he mentioned his sad case. The doctor, a better
judge of human nature than the minister, declared he could end the
troubles of both father and son: he offered to board Carl the year
that remained of the gymnasium course, and assured his father that
though backward in theology, the boy would yet make a name in
medicine and natural history. So Carl escaped cobbling, was kindly
cared for by the good doctor, given instruction in physiology, and
directed to Tournefort's system of botany, the best then in existence.
At the age of twenty he went to the University of Lund; and
while studying there had the good fortune to lodge at the house of
Dr. Stobæus, who had a museum of minerals, shells, dried plants, and
birds, which made the heart of young Linnæus throb with joy. The
learned doctor also had a library to which Carl at length gained
access, and from which he got books on natural history, which he
read stealthily by night against the rules of the orderly household.
And thus genius made its own starry way, uncontrollable as the tides
of the sea.
In the summer of 1728 Linnæus again met his benefactor Rothman,
who urged him to leave Lund and go to Upsala, where educational
advantages were better. Accordingly, with about forty dollars in his
pocket, all he was to expect from his father, he set out for the
university he was soon to make famous. Of course his little stock
of money quickly melted away; and being a stranger, he could earn
nothing by teaching. Nearly a year he passed in dire poverty,
glad when he could get one hard meal a day. His worn-out shoes
he patched with pasteboard. His eyes were full of plants, but his
stomach was achingly empty most of the time. Only by chance
meals from fellow-students, and others almost as poor as himself, did
he manage to keep body and soul together. A course of starvation,
it would seem, is a tremendous necessity in the training of Heaven's
favorites.
During the hunger period, in the autumn of 1729, Linnæus was
one day intently studying a plant in the academical garden, when a
venerable minister happened to notice him, and asked what he was
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LINNEUS
9079
doing,
etc.
whether he knew anything about plants, whence he came,
This clergyman was Olaf Celsius, professor of theology, who
was then writing his 'Hierobotanicon. ' He was quick to see, as well
any naturalist might, that the starved and ragged student was no
ordinary fellow. He therefore invited him to his house and fed him.
How could he help it? And later, when he saw Linnæus's collection
of plants and heard him talk about them, he gladly gave him a home.
In the University at this time little attention was given to natural
history; and it is said that Linnæus did not hear a single lecture
on botany all the time he attended the classes. In 1729 he began to
write his wonderful books: first a small one on the sexes of plants,
which he showed to his friend Celsius, who in turn showed it to
Professor Rudbeck, who knew something of botany. In the following
year Rudbeck, who was growing old, appointed Linnæus his assistant;
and the latter was now openly started on his flowery way, lecturing,
traveling, and reveling in the wilderness of plants like a bee in a
clover-field.
―
He now wrote his celebrated epoch-making 'Systema Naturæ. '
At Amsterdam in Holland he dwelt a year with the famous Professor
Boerhaave, and there published his 'Fundamenta Botanica. ' A rich
banker by the name of Cliffort wiled him to his magnificent garden
at Hartecamp, where he worked and lived like a prince; and there he
published his 'Flora Lapponica,' containing the new genus Linnæa.
In 1736 he visited England, and was warmly welcomed by the
plants and plant-lovers there. On his return to the Netherlands he
completed his 'Genera Plantarum,' which may be regarded as the
beginning of the natural systematic botany. This great work was
followed in this hot, fertile, high-pressure period by his 'Classes
Plantarum. ' His industry and fertility were truly wonderful. Books
came from his brain as from an inexhaustible fountain; and neither
pleasure nor pain, praise nor blame, nor the weariness and exhaus-
tion that stop common mortals, could abate one jot his overmastering
enthusiasm, or divert him in the least from his glorious course.
In 1738 Linnæus established himself as a physician in Stockholm,
and was married there the following year. In 1740 Rudbeck died,
and Linnæus gained his place as professor of natural history at the
University of Upsala, where he had so long and so bravely studied.
and starved. Thenceforth his life was all congenial work, flowers
and sunshine, praise and fame. In 1750, after many other less nota-
ble works, he published 'Philosophia Botanica,' and three years later
'Species Plantarum. > He shone now like a sun; honors of all kinds
poured in on him, kings wanted him at their courts, every university
wanted him; but he remained true to his own country and his own
work. Students from near and far gathered about him. The five
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LINNEUS
hundred at Upsala increased to fifteen hundred, attracted and in-
spired by his bright-burning love. He lived till 1778.
In person he is described as of medium height, with large limbs
and wonderful eyes. If one may judge from the portrait statue
erected to his memory in Upsala, his features were beautiful and
serene beyond those of most men, and surely beyond those of most
statues.
Of course plants were studied long before Linnæus, but mostly as
food or medicine; and the collections of living plants were called
"physic gardens. " Solomon "spake of trees, from the cedar of Leb-
anon to the hyssop on the wall. " The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and
Greeks studied botany in some form or other; for the showy multi-
tudes of plant-people could not fail to attract the attention of scholars
in every age. About three hundred years before Christ, Theophrastus
wrote a 'History of Plants,' in which he described about five hundred
species supposed to be useful in medicine. The elder Pliny described
about a thousand. But it was not until the sixteenth century that
anything noteworthy was done in botany as a science. In 1583
Andreas Cæsalpinus, professor of botany at Padua, published a work
called 'De Plantis,' in which he distributed some one thousand five
hundred and twenty plants in fifteen classes, according to the differ-
ences of their fruits and flowers, and their being herbaceous or
woody.
Then came John Ray, an Englishman, who died two years before
Linnæus was born; and who published in 1682 Methodus Plantarum,'
in which he separated flowering from flowerless plants, and divided
the former into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons, a marked advance
in natural classification. Tournefort, a contemporary of Ray, was
professor of botany in Paris in 1683; and published a systematic
arrangement in 1694-1700, in which he described about eight thousand
species of plants, divided into twenty-two classes.
Then came Linnæus, whose published works are said to number
over one hundred and eighty, while many remain in manuscript.
Much has been written by naturalists on the Linnæan system; and
while recognizing its usefulness as a convenient index to nature's
floral book, they seem puzzled to account for the revolution he effected
in natural history, and his unparalleled influence. Even his most
enthusiastic admirers seem at a loss to know the secret of his unri-
valed power. The so-called Sexual system of Linnæus, they anxiously
point out, was needful in bringing order out of chaos, and making a
foundation for the "natural system" now universally adopted, and in
preparing the way for the work of De Jussieu and De Candolle. Strong,
they say, in body and mind, with marvelous industry and insight,
Linnæus worked with the strength of ten. He improved the existing
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LINNEUS
9081
distinctions of genera and species, introduced a better nomenclature
on the binomial method, and invented the system founded on the
stamens and pistils. In half praise, half apology, they claim that
"his verbal accuracy and the terseness of his technical language»
reduced the crude accumulations of his predecessors into available
form, arranged their endless synonyms, cast out the confusing varie-
ties of gardeners' terms, like a Moses led botanical science out of
Egyptian darkness; and in fine, that he found biology a chaos and
left it a cosmos.
But it is not in methods of classification, technical skill, tireless
energy in making books and gathering plants, that we are to look
for the secret of the marvelous influence he exerted, and which made
him the king of naturalists. No. Dry words and dry facts, however
clear-cut and polished, will not fire hearts. A botanist may be a
giant in intellect, gather plants from the four quarters of the globe
and pile them in labeled heaps as high as haystacks, without kindling
a single spark of the love that fired the followers of Linnæus. In
drying plants, botanists too often dry themselves. But Linnæus loved
every living thing as his friend and brother, and his eyes never
closed on the divine beauty and harmony and oneness they dis-
played. All the dry word-work he did, however technical and severe,
was done to bring the plants and animals as living children of
Nature forward into light to be loved. In the midst of his immense
classifying labors, he seemed always to be saying in a low glowing
undertone, «< Come, darlings: I love you, and want everybody to love
you! Come, stand in rows and let me see you and count you and
call you by name. " And they came-from his own Scandinavia,
from the tundras of Lapland, from icy Siberia, from sunny India and
Africa, from both the Americas, and from the isles of the seas. They
came to his love, led by devoted disciples. For as a sun, he warmed
others and inspired them; and thus warmed and inspired, they radi-
ated like light over all the world and did the master's bidding. The
beasts of the field came also to this solar man to be seen and
warmed and loved; and the birds from every grove, and insects and
creeping things, and fishes from the seas and streams, and crystals
from the mountain caves,- all for love. And so his radiant influence
works on, cheering and enlightening the world, and will go on while
flowers bloom and birds sing.
A hundred years after Linnæus died, our own Asa Gray, Sir Joseph
Hooker, and I were botanizing together on Mount Shasta, the north-
ernmost of the great mountains of California; and when night came
we camped in a flowery opening in a grand forest of silver firs. After
supper I built a big fire, and the flowers and the trees, wondrously
illumined, seemed to come forward and look on and listen as we
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LINNÆUS
talked. Gray told many a story of his life and work on the Atlantic
Alleghanies and in Harvard University; and Hooker told of his trav-
els in the Himalayas, and of his work with Tyndall and Huxley and
grand old Darwin. And of course we talked of trees, argued the
relationship of varying species, etc. ; and I remember that Sir Joseph,
who in his long active life had traveled through all the great forests
of the world, admitted, in reply to a question of mine, that in grand-
eur, variety, and beauty, no forest on the globe rivaled the great
coniferous forests of my much-loved Sierra. But it was not what
was said in praise of our majestic sequoias and cedars, firs and pines,
that was most memorable that night. No: it was what was said of
the lowly fragrant namesake of Linnæus,-Linnæa borealis. After
a pause in the flow of our botanic conversation that great night, the
like of which was never to be enjoyed by us again (for we soon sep-
arated and Gray died), as if speaking suddenly out of another coun-
try Gray said, "Muir, why have you not found Linnæa in California?
It must be here or hereabouts on the northern boundary of the
Sierra. I have heard of it, and have specimens from Washington
and Oregon all through these northern woods, and you should have
found it here. " In reply, I said I had not forgotten Linnæa. "That
fragrant little plant, making carpets beneath the cool woods of Can-
ada and around the great lakes, has been a favorite of mine ever
since I began to wander. I have found many of its relations and
neighbors, high up in the mountain woods and around the glacier
meadows; but Linnæa itself I have not yet found. " "Well, neverthe-
less," said Gray, "the blessed fellow must be living hereabouts no
great distance off. " Then we let the camp fire die down to a heap
of ruby coals, wrapped our blankets about us, and with Linnæa in
our minds, fell asleep. Next morning Gray continued his work on
the Shasta flanks, while Hooker and I made an excursion to the west-
ward over one of the upper valleys of the Sacramento. About noon
we came to one of the icy-cold branches of the river, paved with
cobblestones; and after we forded it we noticed a green carpet on
the bank, made of something we did not at first recognize, for it was
not in bloom. Hooker, bestowing a keen botanic look on it, said
"What is that? " then stooped and plucked a specimen and said,
"Isn't that Linnæa? It's awfully like it. " Then finding some of the
withered flowers, he exclaimed, "It is Linnæa. " This was the first
time the blessed plant was recognized within the bounds of Califor-
nia; and it would seem that Gray had felt its presence the night
before, on the mountain ten miles away.
It is a little slender, creeping, trailing evergreen, with oval crenate
leaves, tiny thread-like peduncles standing straight up and dividing
into two pedicels at the top, on each of which is hung a delicate,
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9083
fragrant white and purple flower. It was at the age of twenty-five
that Linnæus made the most notable of his many long, lonely botan-
ical excursions. He set out from Upsala and wandered afoot or on
horseback northward through endless pine and birch woods, tundras,
and meadows, and along the shores of countless lakes into Lapland,
beyond the Arctic Circle; now wading in spongy bogs, now crossing
broad glacier pavements and moraines and smooth ice-burnished
bosses of rock, fringed with heathworts and birch: a wonderful jour-
ney of forty-six hundred miles, full of exciting experiences and charm-
ing plants. He brought back hundreds of specimens new to science,
among which was a little fragrant evergreen that he liked the best
of all. Soon after his return he handed a specimen of it to his friend
Gronovius, pointed out its characters, and requested him to describe
it and name it for him; saying that somehow he felt that this lit-
tle plant was related to him and like him. So it was called Linnæa
borealis, and keeps his memory green and flowery and fragrant all
round the cool woods of the world.
Only last summer, when I was in the wildest part of the Rocky
Mountains, where glaciers still linger and waterfalls like ribbons hang
down the unscalable cliffs, I found Linnæa spreading and blooming
in glorious exuberance far and wide over mossy ground, beneath
spruce and pine, - the wildest and the gentlest, the most beautiful
and most loveful of all the inhabitants of the wilderness.
Wherever Linnæa dwells, you will find enchanting woods and
the dearest of the small plant-people, chiogenes, Clintonia, orchids,
heathworts, and hosts of bright mosses wearing golden crowns. No
breath of malaria comes near Linnæa. The air and the scenery are
always good enough for gods or men, and a divine charm pervades it
that no mortal can escape. In Linnæan woods I always feel willing
to encamp forever and forego even heaven. Never was man's mem-
ory more blessedly embalmed than is the memory of immortal Lin-
næus in this little flower. All around the cool ends of the world,
while wild beauty endures, the devout pilgrim will see-
"-beneath dim aisles in odorous beds,
The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,
And bless the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. "
John Mins
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LINNEUS
LAPLAND OBSERVATIONS
From the Lachesis Lapponica '
JUN
UNE 11. -Being Sunday, and a day of continued rain, I re-
mained at Umœa.
June 12. I took my departure very early in the morn-
ing. The weather was so hazy I could not see the distance of
half a gunshot before me. I wandered along in a perpetual
mist, which made the grass as wet as if it had rained. The sun
appeared quite dim, wading as it were through the clouds. By
nine o'clock the mists began to disperse, and the sun shone forth.
The spruce fir (Pinus Abies), hitherto of a uniform dark green,
now began to put forth its lighter-colored buds, a welcome sign
of advancing summer.
---
Chamoedaphne of Buxbaum (Andromeda polifolia) was at this
time in its highest beauty, decorating the marshy grounds in a
most agreeable manner.
