They aver
(and it is no doubt true) that he has hardly the average of our day's
literary and scholastic culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd genius
or conventional eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves how
an average western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides of
circumstances, perhaps caprices, into a position of incredible
military or civic responsibilities, (history has presented none more
trying, no born monarch's, no mark more shining for attack or envy,)
may steer his way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying the
country and himself with credit year after year--command over a
million armed men--fight more than fifty pitch'd battles--rule
for eight years a land larger than all the kingdoms of Europe
combined--and then, retiring, quietly (with a cigar in his mouth) make
the promenade of the whole world, through its courts and coteries, and
kings and czars and mikados, and splendidest glitters and etiquettes,
as phlegmatically as he ever walk'd the portico of a Missouri hotel
after dinner. I say all this is what people like--and I am sure I like
it. Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How those old Greeks, indeed,
would have seized on him! A mere plain man--no art, no poetry--only
practical sense, ability to do, or try his best to do, what
devolv'd upon him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer of
Illinois--general for the republic, in its terrific struggle with
itself, in the war of attempted secession--President following, (a
task of peace, more difficult than the war itself)--nothing heroic,
as the authorities put it--and yet the greatest hero.
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