Emerson delivered his address, Abraham Lincoln, at the funeral services held in Concord on April 19, 1865. Lincoln was assassinated on April 15th (I couldn’t have planned the reading of this essay better). However, lest anyone reading this get excited and believe that Emerson delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Lincoln, I must note that services were held across the country in honor of the late president. Concord held a service sans Lincoln, and what better citizen of the town to give an address than Mr. Emerson? While his eulogies of his personal friends have got to be some of the best ever, especially of Thoreau, Emerson goes lofty with Lincoln.

Emerson begins by acknowledging the occasion and stating that he “doubt[s] if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as this has caused.” And then the accolades begin. Lincoln was “a man of the people,” and thoroughly American. Being thoroughly American is always a point of pride for Emerson who felt that too often Americans turned to Europe for culture and solutions to problems. It was part of the still-young United States’ inferiority complex and identity problem which Emerson felt keenly.

Lincoln is praised for being a good worker, something Emerson considers rare because

everybody has some disabling quality. In a host of young men that start together and promise so many brilliant leaders for the next age, each fails on trial ; one by bad health, one by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly temper, – each has some disqualifying fault that throws him out of the career. But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persistent, all right for labor, and liked nothing so well.

According to Emerson, Lincoln also had “unerring common sense,” a quality Americans were and, one could argue, still proud of. Though one could also argue there is currently a dearth of common sense in the land, but I also wonder if what we consider common sense has changed over time. Now that could be an interesting project, the social history of common sense. Anyone want to take up the research? I’ve already been nominated to write a book about Melvil Dewey so if anyone wants the common sense idea you can have it, just include me as one of your inspirations in the book’s acknowledgments

Eloquence also scores high marks with Emerson, he has written a whole essay on the topic and mentions it in many others as an important quality. Lincoln hit the ball out of the park when it came to eloquence, ” on great occasion, what lofty, and more than national, what humane tone ! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded occasion.” Emerson got that right. The Gettysburg Address is still held up as one of the best speeches ever.

But that’s not all. Emerson goes on to raise Lincoln up to be among representative men:

He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by step he walked before them ; slow with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent ; an entirely public man ; father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue.

Lincoln, humble and modest, rose to the demands of the times. He was fitted to what needed to be done as few so rarely are. He was a man of worth, fairly tested.

Emerson generally has fantastic conclusions. Ones in which you might hear music coming in quietly at first and then building to a crescendo after his final words, adding to the emotion of the moment. But his conclusion here is a bit disappointing. I find something Emerson says in the middle of the address much more appropriate to an ending:

He was the most active and hopeful of men; and his work had not perished: but acclamations of praise for the task he had accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep down.

We know more about Lincoln now than Emerson did then. We know he had foibles just like anyone else. But to me, a person who can hope and inspire hope in others and then back up that hope with real and meaningful action, that is a person who deserves to be remembered among the great.

Next Week’s Emerson: Dedication of the Soldier’s Monument in Concord