[Speech of Horace Porter at a dinner given by the Republican Club
in honor of the ninetieth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's
birthday, New York City, February 12, 1889. Mortimer C. Addams, the
newly elected President of the Club, occupied the chair. General
Porter was called upon for a response to the first toast, "Abraham
Lincoln--the fragrant memory of such a life will increase as the
generations succeed each other." General Porter was introduced by
the chairman, as one "whose long acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln,
intimate relationship, both official and personal, with our
illustrious chieftain, General Grant, and distinguished career as a
brave defender of his country in the time of her peril, have
eminently fitted him to tell the story of our great War
President."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I am encumbered with diverse
misgivings in being called upon to rise and cast the first firebrand
into this peaceful assemblage, which has evidently been enjoying itself
so much up to the present time. From the herculean task accomplished by
the Republican party last fall we have come to think of its members as
men of deeds and not of words, except the spellbinders. [Laughter.] I
fear your committee is treating me like one of those toy balloons that
are sent up previous to the main ascension, to test the currents of the
air; but I hope that in this sort of ballooning I may not be interrupted
by the remark that interrupted a Fourth of July orator in the West when
he was tickling the American Eagle under both wings, delivering himself
of no end of platitudes and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of
fancy when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on
throwing out his ballast, in that way, the Lord knows where he will
land." [Laughter.] If I demonstrate to-night that dryness is a quality
not only of the champagne but of the first speech as well, you may
reflect on that remark as Abraham Lincoln did at City Point after he had
been shaken up the night before in his boat in a storm in Chesapeake
Bay. When he complained of the feeling of gastronomic uncertainty which
we suffer on the water, a young staff officer rushed up to him with a
bottle of champagne and said: "This is the cure for that sort of an
ill." Said the President: "No, young man, I have seen too many fellows
seasick ashore from drinking that very article." [Laughter.]
The story of the life of Abraham Lincoln savors more of romance than
reality. It is more like a fable of the ancient days than a story of a
plain American of the nineteenth century. The singular vicissitudes in
the life of our martyred President surround him with an interest which
attaches to few men in history. He sprang from that class which he
always alluded to as the "plain people," and never attempted to disdain
them. He believed that the government was made for the people, not the
people for the government. He felt that true Republicanism is a
torch--the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the brighter it
will burn. He was transcendently fit to be the first successful
standard-bearer of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican
party. [Loud applause.] He might well have said to those who chanced to
sneer at his humble origin what a marshal of France raised from the
ranks said to the haughty nobles of Vienna boasting of their long line
of descent, when they refused to associate with him: "I am an ancestor;
you are only descendants!" [Laughter and cheers.] He was never guilty
of any posing for effect, any attitudinizing in public, any mawkish
sentimentality, any of that puppyism so often bred by power, that
dogmatism which Johnson said was only puppyism grown to maturity.
[Laughter.] He made no claim to knowledge he did not possess. He felt
with Addison that pedantry and learning are like hypocrisy in
religion--the form of knowledge without the power of it. He had nothing
in common with those men of mental malformation who are educated beyond
their intellects. [Laughter.]
The names of Washington and Lincoln are inseparably associated, and yet
as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire life
in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into rails.
Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. [Laughter.] And
Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they
were never too long, and never too broad. [Laughter.] He never forgot a
point. A sentinel pacing near the watchfire while Lincoln was once
telling some stories quietly remarked that "He had a mighty powerful
memory, but an awful poor forgettery." [Laughter.]
The last time I ever heard him converse, he told one of the stories
which best illustrated his peculiar talent for pointing a moral with an
anecdote. Speaking of England's assistance to the South, and how she
would one day find she had aided it but little and only injured herself,
he said: "Yes, that reminds me of a barber in Sangamon County. He was
about going to bed when a stranger came along and said he must have a
shave. He said he had a few days' beard on his face, and he was going to
a ball, and the barber must cut it off. The barber got up reluctantly,
dressed, and put the stranger in a chair with a low back to it, and
every time he bore down he came near dislocating his patient's neck. He
began by lathering his face, including nose, eyes, and ears, strapped
his razor on his boot, and then made a drive scraping down the right
cheek, carrying away the beard and a pimple and two or three warts. The
man in the chair said: 'You appear to make everything level as you go.'
[Laughter.] The barber said: 'Yes, if this handle don't break, I will
get away with what there is there.' The man's cheeks were so hollow that
the barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor and an
ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man's mouth
and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clean through the cheek and
into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man's mouth, and
snapped the blood off it, looked at him, and said: 'There, you
lantern-jawed cuss, you have made me cut my finger.'" [Laughter.] "Now,"
said Lincoln, "England will find she has got the South into a pretty bad
scrape from trying to administer to her. In the end she will find she
has only cut her own finger." [Applause.]
But his heart was not always attuned to mirth; its chords were often set
to strains of sadness. Yet throughout all his trials he never lost the
courage of his convictions. When he was surrounded on all sides by
doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented Catilines,
his faith was strongest. As the Danes destroyed the hearing of their
war-horses in order that they might not be affrighted by the din of
battle, so Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all that might have discouraged
him, and exhibited an unwavering faith in the justice of the cause and
the integrity of the Union. [Cries of "Bravo!" and cheers.]
It is said that for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylæ
every child in the public schools of Greece was required to recite from
memory the names of the three hundred martyrs who fell in the defence of
that Pass. It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education if
every school child in America could contemplate each day the grand
character and utter the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln. [Loud
applause.]
He has passed from our view. We shall not meet him again until he stands
forth to answer to his name at the roll-call when the great of earth are
summoned in the morning of the last great reveille. Till then
[apostrophizing Lincoln's portrait which hung above the President's
head], till then, farewell, gentlest of all spirits, noblest of all
hearts! The child's simplicity was mingled with the majestic grandeur of
your nature. You have handed down unto a grateful people the richest
legacy which man can leave to man--the memory of a good name, the
inheritance of a great example! [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]
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