" "Their deepest convictions," he contends,
"make the average unintelligent man the representative democrat, and the
aggressive, successful individual the admired national type." To them
Lincoln is simply "a man of the people" and an example of strong will.
But the man who said this did not know that land of Lincoln--which was the
valley of La Salle, and even before that the valley of the tribe of men--
for I believe its inhabitants knew that he was the embodiment of what they
coveted for themselves; that he was not their ordinary average but their
best selves.
Their individualism has been, I must say again, under practical
compulsions and has had fruits that deceive the eye. It is so insistent
upon national productivity, but none the less is it joined to a high
idealism that worships just the qualities that were so miraculously united
in Abraham Lincoln. To be sure, some remember for their own excuse his
coarse stories; some recall for their own justification his acceptance of
the political standards that he found; but the great body of the people
keep him in reverence and affection as the incarnation of patience,
honesty, fairness, magnanimity, humility; not for his strength of will
primarily, but for his strength of charity and honesty, and in so doing
they reveal the ideal that is in and under their own individual struggle.
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