e good-nature--as he confessed, he could hardly
say "no";--it was an obstinate good-nature, which found a naughty
pleasure in refusing to be corrected; and if it should happen that the
object of his weak benevolence had given him personal cause of offence,
the good-nature became more incorrigible than ever. Moreover,
Lincoln's strength was a slow strength, shown most in matters in which
elementary principles of right or the concentration of intense thought
guided him. Where minor and more subtle principles of conduct should
have come in, on questions which had not come within the range of his
reflection so far and to which, amidst his heavy duties, he could not
spare much cogitation, he would not always show acute perception, and,
which is far worse, he would often show weakness of will. The present
instance may be ever so trifling, yet it does relate to the indistinct
and dangerous borderland of political corruption. It need arouse no
very serious suspicions. Mr. Herndon, whose pertinacious researches
unearthed that Kansas gentleman's correspondence, and who is keenly
censorious of Lincoln's fault, in the upshot trusts and reveres
Lincoln. And the massive testimony of his keenest critics to his
honesty quite decides the matter. But Lincoln had lived in a simple
Western town, not in one of the already polluted great cities; he was a
poor man himself and took the fact that wealth was used against him as
a part of the inevitable drawbacks of his lot; and it is certain that
he did not clearly take account of the whole business of corruption and
jobbery as a hideous and growing peril to America. It is certain too
that he lacked the delicate perception of propriety in such matters, or
the strict resolution in adhering to it on small occasions, which might
have been possessed by a far less honest man. The severest criticisms
which Lincoln afterwards incurred were directed to the appointments
which he made; we shall see hereafter that he had very solid reasons
for his general conduct in such matters; but it cannot be said with
conviction that he had that horror of appointment on other grounds than
merit which enlightens, though it does not always govern, more educated
statesmen. His administration would have been more successful, and the
legacy he left to American public life more bountiful, if his
traditions, or the length of his day's work, had allowed him to be more
careful in these things. As it is he was not comm