No final words of that great life can be more fitly spoken than the
eulogy pronounced by Henry Ward Beecher:
“And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when
alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and
States are his pall-bearers, and the cannon speaks the hours with solemn
progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh.
“Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is any man that was ever fit to
live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, risen to the unobstructed sphere
where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life is
now grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life
can be.
“Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Ye people, behold the martyr whose
blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for
liberty.”