LOCKE WHO?

The Roman Republic was at the back of the minds of the framers of the American Constitution; it was their hope that the chief magistrate of these United States would conduct himself with "the high old Roman virtue," becoming an exemplar of pietas, gravitas, constantia, firmitas, comitas, disciplina, industria, clementia, frugalitas, and severitas.

George Washington, a grand gentleman of the old model, suffused with the unbought grace of life, set high the standard for these virtues. Eight decades later, there appeared a public man of an origin very different from Washington's, who nevertheless has come to stand as Washington's equal in republican virtue.

From a disaster greater still, we were saved by the presidential dignity of Lincoln, from whom few had expected any dignity at all. [...]

There have lived few Americans more abundantly graced with the theological virtues, charity most of all. The New Testament shines out from his acts of mercy, and the Old from his direction of the war. We all know the deep piety of his Gettysburg Address; and in some of his letters there looms a stern justice, at once Christian and classical.

Prudent amidst passion, Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery that lies close beneath the skin of man, and he saw that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and custom and convention. The reckless fire-eater and the uncompromising Abolitionist were abhorrent to him; yet he took the middle path between them not out of any misapplication of the doctrine of the Golden mean, but because he held that the unity and security of the United States transcended any fanatic's scheme of uniformity.

Here, he was like Edmund Burke; yet it is improbable that he read much Burke, or any other political philosopher except Blackstone; his wisdom came from close observation of human nature, and from the Bible and Shakespeare. The Radical Republicans detested him as cordially as did the Southern zealots. In his conservative object, the preservation of the Union, he succeeded through the ancient virtue of prudentia.

Lincoln was a conservative statesman on the intellectual model of Cicero.

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