element of danger. The barrier it had created between himself and the
more formal types, made it hard for the men who finally saved him to
overcome their prejudice and nail his colors to the mast. Andrew's
biographer shows himself a shrewd observer when he insists on the
unexpressed but inexorable scale by which Andrew and his following
measured Lincoln. They had grown up in the faith that you could tell
a statesman by certain external signs, chiefly by a grandiose and
commanding aspect such as made overpowering the presence of Webster.
And this idea was not confined to any one locality. Everywhere, more or
less, the conservative portion in every party held this view. It was the
view of Washington in 1848 when Washington had failed to see the real
Lincoln through his surface peculiarities. It was again the view of
Washington when Lincoln returned to it.

Furthermore, his free way of talking, the broad stories he continued
to tell, were made counts in his indictment. One of the bequests of
Puritanism in America is the ideal, at least, of extreme scrupulousness
in talk. To many sincere men Lincoln's choice of fables was often a
deadly offense. Charles Francis Adams never got over the shock of their
first interview. Lincoln clenched a point with a broad story. Many
professional politicians who had no objection to such talk in itself,
glared and sneered when the President used it--because forsooth, it
might estrange a vote.

Then, too, Lincoln had none of the social finesse that might have
adapted his manner to various classes. He was always incorrigibly the
democrat pure and simple. He would have laughed uproariously over that
undergraduate humor, the joy of a famous American University, supposedly
strong on Democracy: