Men of letters heaped praise on Lincoln’s message. George William Curtis, editor of Harper’s Weekly, privately called it “the most truly American message ever delivered. Think upon what a millennial year we have fallen when the President of the United States declares officially that this government is founded upon the rights of man! Wonderfully acute, simple, sagacious, and of antique honesty! I can forgive the jokes and the big hands, and the inability to make bows. Some of us who doubted were wrong.” In his magazine, Curtis was more formal but no less laudatory: “While many Presidents of many parties would have endeavored to save the Government by force of arms, not all Presidents would so clearly comprehend or so simply state what the Government was that they were saving. This Government was founded upon the rights of man; and for the first time in long years the President recognizes that fact. Presidents’ messages for many years have been labored defenses of an oligarchical and aristocratic administration of the Government. At length there is a people’s President, in no mean sense; and the Government of the United States is restored to its original principles. It is not a matter of party, but of patriotic congratulation.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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