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The Lincoln Tradition in American Poetry By THE LINCOLN TRADITION IN AMERICAN POETRY BY CELESTINE B. TEGEDER A THESIS» Submitted to the Faculty of The Creighton University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English OMAHA, 1941 Thesis Approved By TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction ...... .............................. ... i Chapter I. WALT WHITMAN When Lilaos Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. ..... 1 0, Captain, ISy Captain!.......................... 3 II. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration. ..... 11 III. EDWIN MARKHAM Lincoln, the Man of the People. ................... 18 IV. EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON The Master........................................ 23 V. NICHOLAS VACIIEL LINDSAY Abraham Lincoln Whiles at Midnight ................. 29 The Litany of the Heroes................ 33 VI. EDGAR LEE MASTERS Autochthon. ..... ................ ...... 34 VII. JOHN GOULD FLETCHER Lincoln.................. ........................ 38 VIII. STEPHEN VINCENT BENET John Brown's Body................................. 43 IX. CONCLUSION.........................................50 Bibliography 56 INTRODUCTION New countries, such as our own United States, usually do not have a developed folk-lore nor an abundance of national legends. It is only after centuries that ancient tales and certain heroic figures become a part of the literature of a race or nation. United States history is rich in the names of outstanding characters and incidents on whioh to build such stories and even myths. We need only to read of the Colonial settlements, the Revolutionary War, the settling of the West, etc., to see that since the very beginnings of our government there have been women and men who have been prominent because of their achievements on behalf of an ideal. Names such as George ’Washington, Roger Williams, William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Dolly Madison, Barbara Frietchie, U, S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln^ and Theodore Roosevelt are familiar to all of us because of the countless stories we have read and heard about them. Some of these tales have been in prose and some in poetry. Of all the persons mentioned there is none who has been / the subject of more fiction, biography, drama, and poetry than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln has played a role that has endeared him to all humanity and has made him a popular subject for inspirational literature. Here is one more honored than any other man while living, more revered when dying, and destined to be loved to the last syllable of recorded time. He has threefold great­ ness - great in life, great in death, great in the ii history of the world. ^ Lincoln has been used times without number as the subject of American poetry. Although each poet has been motivated by something different, and though it is hard to say that it was one certain thing that appeals to all poets, it is well to review the life and character of Linooln to determine, at least in part, why above all others Lincoln has been so honored. And the spell that Abraham Lincoln exercises over all the world is undoubtedly bound up with the mystery of the man. Somewhat more than a thousand different biographers have tried their hand at its solution, but in vain. With reverent curiosity some, and with complacent smartness others, but all have sought to trace to their hidden source the sagacity, the eloquence, the insight, the human­ ity, the wit, the brooding tenderness, in a word, the power - of this unexplainable child of nature. 2 The life of Abraham Lincoln is the most outstanding example we have as proof of the saying that any boy in this country may became President. Lincoln was of the soil, his forebears had * pioneered into the wilderness, ever trekking westward as so many other early settlers. He was born in a rude, log hut in the wilds of Kentucky, had no formal schooling, yet by virtue of hard work attained the highest position the nation has to offer, that of President of the United States. In this office he practised the / same homely virtues of his youth and those of the days when he had been a country lawyer. Far from becoming drunk with power and over- 1. John Philip Newman, MAbraham Lincoln’s Place in History” Book of Linooln, 65 2. Robert E. Knowles, ”The Jtystery of Lincoln.” Independent, 66, (February 11, 1909), 288. iii bearing he pursued his usual course. He was always plain Abraham Lincoln, the man of the people. The symbols of his life, the log cabin, the rail-splitter with ax flung over his shoulder, a tall, guant figure of a homely man wearing a tall, silk hat and worn shawl have marched through the pages of American literature. The vision that counts is that of the rude, untutored boy and youth in the solitariness of that pioneering scene, growing into the man somber and often self- distrustful, not given to any formal religiosity, relying without self-consciousness or emphatic gesture upon certain mystic monitions drawn, as it were, from the heart of mankind itself. ”What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.” There is the quite homely, there the truly precious Lincoln, the same who slept better after signing a pardon - one of the very few Christians in the bloody history of Christendom. ® As President, Lincoln confronted the greatest crisis in the history of the nation, that of the Civil Yiar. He was faced with the problems of holding the nation together and of settling for all time the question of negro slavery. The Civil War was a conflict within a nation, brother against brother, and a very bitter struggle. No one hated war more than Lincoln and he bent every effort to bring about an end to the destruction of property and life. He came on the stage in one of the greatest crises known in modern history - an hour big with fate, and he dis- , cerned fundamental principles so clearly that none were able to becloud his mind, even at a time when the clamor of discorded and warring voices had confused the thought of many and obscured the basic truths even to the vision of most statesmen of the time. To clarity of thought were welded,single-heartedness, and transparent sincerity, 3. Ludwig Lewisohn, Expression in Amerioa, 196 iv love of justice that amounted to passion, reverence for truth, and tenderness of heart, combining to make him a noble personification of the genius of democracy. 4 As the climax to a spectacular career Lincoln died at the hand of an assassin. Shakespeare himself could not have fashioned a greater tragedy. The untimely death of Lincoln made him the man of the hour and the funeral cortege winding its way across the nation was met in town and country by hosts of people, horror- stricken and mourning the death of their beloved leader. Even those who had opposed him in his policies realized that the United States had been deprived of one of its greatest men. Other Americans, too, have had lives patterned much the same as Lincoln's, at least in part. But it is the combination of all these factors, together with the character of Lincoln that has made him a popular subject for American literature. Why? Robert E. Knowles in trying to probe the mystery of Lincoln has this to say: » Uneducated, yet a master of letters, unfamiliar with many books, yet a kind of modern Aesop in homely wisdom; un­ trained in diplomaoy, yet more than a match for Seward and Chase and the most cultured parliamentarians of his day; reared amid the most primitive influences, yet familiar with every aspect of human life and almost every current of the human heart; struggling fiercely from infancy against obscurity and poverty — often too, against ruth­ less men — yet aglow with humanity, a great and compassion­ ate lover of the human race; untutored in the ways of war, yet compelling the wondering confidence of generals in the field; the rail-splitter of the plains, the awkward man who at twenty-three was earning his eight dollars a month on the farm, became the uncrowned king of one of the 4. "The Democratic Spirit and Poets of the People." Arena, 41 (July, 1909), 483. V strongest nations, the savior of his country, the eman­ cipator of the enslaved, the champion of freedom to millions who never saw his facej became in short one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. 5 But primarily Lincoln's appeal rests on the fact that he was the ideal leader of a democratic people. Russell Blankenship in his history of American Literature says that Lincoln's democracy was founded on the double basis of economics and humanitarianism. And his humanitarian objections were based on the words of the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal, Lincoln insisted, and they have the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In his definition of equality he indulged in no logic chopping. He took the typical western attitude that equality did not refer to physical or mental endowment. It referred to equality of opportunity - equality of chance at life, liberty, and happiness. The statements of the Declaration of Independence he cheerfully seconded as a Mstumbling- block to tyrants for all time to come.” ® The life and character of Lincoln give us the reasons why » he has become one of the foremost figures in our history and why he has become immortalized in song and story and has been the subject of more statues and paintings than any other American. Legends and myths built around this man have become legion. It is easy to agree with Blankenship’s opinion thatj 5. Robert E. Knowles, op. cit., 288. 6.
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