For all his hatred of the ideas
which he held to be treason, he never had a vindictive impulse directed
toward the men who accepted those ideas. Destruction for the idea,
infinite clemency for the person--such was his attitude.

It was the idea of disunion, involving as he believed, a misconception
of the American government, and by implication, a misconception of the
true function of all governments everywhere, against which he declared a
war without recourse.

The basis of his argument reaches back to his oration on Clay, to
his assertion that Clay loved his country, partly because it was his
country, even more because it was a free country. This idea ran
through Lincoln's thinking to the end. There was in him a suggestion
of internationalism. At the full height of his power, in his complete
maturity as a political thinker, he said that the most sacred bond in
life should be the brotherhood of the workers of all nations. No words
of his are more significant than his remarks to passing soldiers in
1863, such as, "There is more involved in this contest than is realized
by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether
your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have
enjoyed." And again, "I happen temporarily to occupy this White House. I
am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here
as my father's child has."(2)

This idea, the idea that the "plain people" are the chief concern of
government was the bed rock of all his political thinking. The mature,
historic Lincoln is first of all a leader of the plain people--of the
mass--as truly as was Cleon, or Robespierre, or Andrew Jackson. His
gentleness does not remove him from that stern category. The latent
fanaticism that is in every man, or almost every man, was grounded in
Lincoln, on his faith--so whimsically expressed--that God must have
loved the plain people because he had made so many of them.(3) The basal
appeal of the first message was in the words:

"This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it
is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of
government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men;
to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of
laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair
chance in the race of life."(4) Not a war over slavery, not a war to
preserve a constitutional system, but a w