As one man's life, the life of Mr. Lincoln after his election is simply

the picture over again, on a gigantic scale, in stronger colors, in

bolder relief, of the same courage, devotion, strength, industry,

energy, sense, decision, kindness, caution, instinctive feeling of

what was right and what was practicable, and deliberate execution of

it, that had marked his career before, as the political leader in a

great state controversy, and as a laborious lawyer at the bar. As he

mounted upon a higher plane of action, his views became enlarged and

elevated. Especially is it noticeable how as President, he was very

much more open and specific in avowing an immediate dependence upon

help higher than man's, in doing the work before him. Mr. Lincoln was

naturally inclined to religious feelings. His habit of considering all

the affairs of life from the religious point of view, at the tribunal

of the laws of God, is clearly traceable in his private history and

even in his political campaigns. He was not obtrusive nor unreasonable

however in avowals of this feeling. It would have been out of place

to request the prayers of his fellow citizens during the debates

with Douglas, almost as much as to ask the prayers of the jury while

arguing a case. But while placed at the head of his nation, during the

vastest peril of its existence--while occupying the most prominent,

the most powerful, the most responsible, the most difficult, and the

most dangerous position upon the whole round world--while at the very

front of the very vanguard of humanity in the great battle which was

deciding whether good or evil should overcome--in such a position, no

avowals of the need of Divine aid, no repetition of the consciousness

of that need, no requests for the sympathy and the help of all good

men's prayers, could be too frequent or too free. This profound sense

of human weakness and of God's strength, and a distinct sentiment of

mournful foreboding, give the whole coloring to the brief address in

which he bade good bye to his neighbors at Springfield, at setting out

for Washington in 1861.

This habit of religious feeling, and the avowal of it, remained a very

marked one during all Mr. Lincoln's Presidency. Subordinate to this,

the acts of his official life, his written and spoken utterances, and

his personal conduct, were mainly marked by solicitous and extreme

sense of duty, unfailing resolution, unerring tact and wisdom, and

a kindness and patience entirely unparalleled in the history of

governments. These traits were often hidden by his quaint modes of

expression, by the wonderful flow of humorous anecdotes which he

so constantly used in arguing, in answering, in evading, or for

entertainment; and by his confirmed habit of arguing all questions

against himself, against his own views, before coming to a conclusion.

These externals often concealed him, often occasioned him to be

misunderstood, distrusted, and opposed. It was only as time passed on,

and his public acts gradually formed themselves into his history, that

it was possible for those broad and massive characteristics to be seen

in a just perspective. Now however, they are visible throughout all

his life, whether traced in anecdote, in speech, in state papers, in

cabinet debates, in intercourse with the representatives of bodies of

the people, or in executive orders and acts.

Of all these traits, Mr. Lincoln's kindness was unquestionably the

rarest, the most wonderful. It may be doubted whether any human being

ever lived whose whole nature was so perfectly sweet with the readiness

to do kind actions; so perfectly free from even the capacity of

revenge. He could not even leave a pig in distress. He once on circuit,

drove past a pig, stuck fast in a mud hole. Having on a suit of new

clothes, he felt unable to afford them for the pig, but after going two

miles, he could not stand it, turned and drove back, made a platform

of rails, helped out the pig, spoiled his new clothes, and then went

contentedly about his business. He used to help his poor clients

with money--a ridiculous thing in a lawyer. He was quite as helpless

about traitors and deserters and criminals, as about pigs; even when

pardoning or non-retaliation was actually doing harm. The beseechings

and tears of women, the sight of a little child, even a skilful picture

of the sorrow of a scoundrel's friends, was almost certain to gain

whatever favor they sought. It really sometimes seemed as if he was

tenderer of individual lives than of multitudes of them, so nearly

impossible was it for him to pronounce sentence of death or to forbear

the gift of life. His doorkeeper had standing orders never to delay

from one day to another any message asking for the saving of life. He

undoubtedly did harm by giving life to deserters, and thus weakening

army discipline. He heard a child cry in his anteroom one day, and

calling his usher, had the woman that carried the child shown in. She

had been waiting three days, by some mischance. Her husband was to be

shot. She stated her case; the pardon was at once granted; she came

out of the office praying and weeping; and the old usher, touching her

shawl, told her who had really saved her husband's life. "Madam," said

he, "the baby did it."

One of his generals once urgently remonstrated with him for rendering

desertion safe, though it was seriously weakening the army. "Mr.

General," said Mr. Lincoln, "there are already too many weeping widows

in the United States. For God's sake don't ask me to add to the number,

for I won't do it." Even to put a stop to the unutterable horrors which

were slowly murdering our brave men in the rebel prisons, he could not

retaliate. He said, "I can never, never starve men like that. Whatever

others may say or do, I never can, and I never will, be accessory to

such treatment of human beings." Once, after the massacre at Fort

Pillow, he pledged himself in a public speech that there should be a

retaliation. But that pledge he could not keep, and he did not.

His perfectly sweet kindness of feeling was as inexhaustible towards

the rebels as such, as towards dumb beasts, or the poor and unfortunate

of his own loyal people, and it was shown as clearly in his state

papers and speeches as in any private act or word. That sentiment, and

one other--the unconditional determination to adhere to the doctrines

of the Declaration of Independence and to do his sworn official

duty--colored the series of speeches which he made on his way to

Washington. At Philadelphia, where he was especially impressed with

associations about the old Independence Hall, he said, speaking of that

edifice, and standing within the old Hall itself:

"All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I

have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in

and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling,

politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the

Declaration of Independence."

Then he referred to the doctrine of freedom in that instrument; and he

said:

"But if this country can not be saved without giving up that principle,

I was about to say I would rather be assassinated in this spot than

surrender it. * * * I have said nothing but what I am willing to live

by, and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by."

These references to assassination and death, were no casual flourishes

of oratory. They were deliberate defiances of the fate which had

already been denounced against the speaker, in public and in private,

which continued to be threatened during all the rest of his life,

and which finally actually befel him, but the fear of which never

made him turn pale nor waver in his duty. He began as soon as he was

nominated, to receive anonymous letters from the South threatening him

with death. They became so frequent that he kept a separate file of

them. They continued to come, up to the year of his death. The first

one or two, he said, made him "a little uncomfortable;" but afterwards

he only filed them. The train on which he left home for the East, was

to have been thrown off the track. A hand grenade was hidden in one

of the cars. An association was known to exist at Baltimore for the

express purpose of killing him. When therefore he spoke as he did at

Philadelphia, it was doubtless with a feeling that some one concerned

in these plans was probably hearing him, and understanding him. It was,

no doubt, at the same time a sort of vow, taken upon himself under the

feelings aroused by the birth-place of the Declaration which he had

so often and so well defended. Whether a challenge, a vow, or a mere

statement of principle, he kept his word. He lived by it, and he died

by it.

The same mixture of firmness and kindness appears in the First

Inaugural, and in this document there is also another most

characteristic element;--circumspect adherence to the Constitution as

he understood it, and most remarkable care and skill in the language

used to interpret law, or to announce his own conclusions or purposes.

Lover of freedom as he was, and believer in the rights of man, he

had already been invariably careful not to demand from the masses of

men whom he sought to influence, more than they could be expected

to give. Now, he went even further. He expressly and clearly avowed

his intention to execute all that he had sworn, even the laws most

distasteful to any freeman. In speaking of the crisis of the moment,

and after setting forth his doctrine of national sovereignty and an

unbroken Union, he promised to maintain it as far as he could, and

added:

"Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall

perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the

American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some

authoritative manner direct the contrary."

Then, as if to avert ill feeling if possible:

"I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the

declared purpose of the Union, that it will constitutionally defend and

maintain itself."

Then, with careful adherence to the mildest terms possible--could

anything be a more peaceful assertion of national right than the simple

"hold, occupy and possess"?--he says what the nation will do:

"In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall

be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power

confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property

and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and

imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will

be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."

The remainder of the Inaugural is just such a kindly, homely, earnest,

sincere, straight-forward appeal to the South, as he might have made

in a country court-house in Illinois, "taking off his coat, leaning

upon the rail of the jury box, and singling out a leading juryman and

addressing him in a conversational tone." Having stated the case,

and once more barely repeated that it was "his duty to administer

the present government as it came to his hands, and to transmit it

unimpaired by him to his successor," he then quietly but powerfully

appeals to his own two life-long trusts, God Almighty, and the free

people of America. He asks:

"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice

of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our

present differences, is either party without faith of being in the

right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and

justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that

truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the judgment of the

great tribunal of the American people."

And the final paragraphs are sad and heavy with his unutterable

longings and yearnings for peace; so that the words, plain and simple

as they are, are full of deep and melancholy music:

"You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You

have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I

shall have the most solemn one, to 'preserve, protect and defend' it.

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be

enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our

bonds of affection. The mystic cord of memory, stretching from every

battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone

all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when

again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our

nature."

As the war went on, the same unwavering decision, the same caution and

kindness marked the whole action of the Executive. Especially were

these traits exhibited in his dealings with the main question at issue,

that of slavery.

On this point he bore a pressure such as it is safe to say no mortal

son of earth ever bore before or since. The interests of the great

laboring, suffering classes that go to make up human nature, were all

at this period of history condensed into one narrow channel, like that

below Niagara where the waters of all the great lakes are heaped up in

ridges, and seem, in Scripture language, to "utter their voices and

lift up their hands on high." Like the course of those heavy waters

the great cause weltered into a place where its course resembled that

sullen whirlpool below the falls where the awful waters go round

and round in blindly, dizzy masses, and seem with dumb tossings and

dark agonies to seek in vain for a clear, open channel. In this dread

vortex, from time to time are seen whirling helplessly the bodies of

drowned men, fragments of wrecked boats splintered and shattered, and

trees torn to ghastly skeletons, which from time to time dart up from

the whirling abyss with a sort of mad, impatient despair.

So we can all remember when the war had struggled on a year or

two--when a hundred thousand men, the life and light and joy of as many

families, who entered it warm with hope and high in aspiration, were

all lying cold and low, and yet without the least apparent progress

towards a result--when the resistance only seemed to have become wider,

deeper, more concentrated, better organized, by all that awful waste

of the best treasures of the nation; then was the starless night--the

horror of the valley of the shadow of death. Above, darkness filled

with whisperings, and jibes, and sneers of traitor fiends; on one side

a pit, on the other a quagmire, and in the gloom all faces gathered

blackness, and even friends and partisans looked strangely on each

other. Confidence began to be shaken. Each separate party blamed the

other as they wandered in the darkness. It was one of the strange

coincidences which show the eternal freshness of Scripture language in

relation to human events, that the church lesson from the Old Testament

which was read in the churches the Sunday after the attack on Sumter,

was the prediction of exactly such a conflict:

"Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near;

let them come up:

Beat your plough-shares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into

spears: let the weak say, I _am_ strong.

Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves

together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O

Lord.

Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: the press is full, the

fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the

Lord is near in the valley of decision.

_The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw

their shining._ The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his

voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but

the Lord _will be_ the hope of his people, and the strength of the

children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God."

The repeated defeats, disasters, and distresses that had come upon the

Union cause stirred the conscience of all the religious portion of the

community. They remembered the parallels in the Old Testament where

the armies of Israel were turned back before the heathen, because they

cherished within themselves some accursed thing--they began to ask

whether the Achan who had stolen the wedge of gold and Babylonish vest

in our midst was not in truth the cause why God would not go forth

with our armies! and the pressure upon Lincoln to end the strife by

declaring emancipation, became every day more stringent; at the same

time the pressure of every opposing party became equally intense, and

Lincoln by his peculiar nature and habits, must listen to all, and

take time to ponder and weigh all. In consequence there was a time when

he pleased nobody. Each party was incensed at the degree of attention

he gave to the other. He might say, in the language of the old prophet,

at this time, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of

strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither

lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; _yet_ every one of

them doth curse me." He was, like the great Master whom he humbly

followed, despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted

with grief; we hid, as it were, our faces from him, he was despised,

and we esteemed him not. Like the poor, dumb, suffering, down-trodden

classes for whom he stood, he had no prestige of personal advantages,

or of that culture which comes from generations of wealth and ease.

His method of thought and expression had not the stamp of any old

aristocratic tradition. He was a sign upon the earth--the sign and the

leader of a new order of events in which the power and the prestige

should be in the hands of the plain, simple common people, and not in

those of privileged orders. But the time had not yet come, and now was

their hour of humiliation, and while in England the poor operatives

of Manchester bravely and manfully bore starvation caused by want of

cotton, rather than ask their government to break the blockade and

get it for them; while the poor silk weavers of Lyons, and the poorer

classes all over Europe trembled, and hoped, and sympathised with the

struggling cause and its unfashionable leader--all the great, gay,

successful, fashionable world went the other way. Punch had his jolly

caricatures of Lincoln's long, thin face, and anxious perplexities,

and the caricatures of Paris were none the less merry. Even in America

there was a time when some of his most powerful friends doubted his

fitness for his position, and criticisms filled the columns of every

newspaper. In Washington, every fop and every fool felt at liberty to

make a jest at the expense of his want of dignity, and his personal

awkwardness. He was freely called an ape, a satyr, a stupid blockhead,

for even the ass can kick safely and joyfully at a lion in a net. Even

his cabinet and best friends said nothing for him, and kept an ominous

and gloomy silence.

Lincoln knew all this, and turned it over in the calm recesses of his

mind, with a quiet endurance, gilded at times by a gleam of the grim,

solemn humor peculiar to himself. "I cannot _make_ generals," he said

once, "I would if I could." At another, to an important man who had

been pressing some of his own particular wisdom upon him, "Perhaps

you'd like to try to run the machine yourself." Somebody gave him a

series of powerful criticisms which a distinguished writer had just

poured forth on him. "I read them all through," he said quaintly, "and

then I said to myself, Well, Abraham Lincoln, are you a man, or are you

a dog?"

No man in the great agony suffered more or deeper, but it was with

a dry, weary, patient pain, that many mistook for insensibility.

"Whichever way it ends," he said to the writer, on one occasion, "I

have the impression that I shan't last long after it's over."

After the dreadful repulse at Fredericksburg, he is reported to have

said, "If there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do,

I pity him." In those dark days, his heavy eyes and worn and weary

air told how our reverses wore upon him, and yet there was a never

failing fund of patience at bottom that sometimes rose to the surface

in bubbles of quaint sayings or a story that forced a laugh even from

himself. The humor of Lincoln was the oil that lubricated the otherwise

dry and wiry machinery of his mind. The power of looking at men and

things with reference to their humorous side, enabled him to bear

without irritation many things in the political joltings and jarrings

of his lot, which would have driven a more nervous man frantic. It

is certainly a great advantage to be so made that one can laugh at

times when crying will do no good, and Lincoln not only had his own

laugh in the darkest days, but the wherewithal to bring a laugh from

a weary neighbor. His jests and stories helped off many a sorry hour,

and freshened the heart of his hearer for another pull in the galling

harness.

He saw through other men who thought all the while they were

instructing or enlightening him, with a sort of dry, amused patience.

He allowed the most tedious talker to prose to him, the most shallow

and inflated to advise him, reserving only to himself the right to a

quiet chuckle far down in the depths of his private consciousness. Thus

all sorts of men and all sorts of deputations saw him, had their talks,

bestowed on him all their tediousness, and gave him the benefit of

their opinions; not a creature was denied access, not a soul so lowly

but might have their chance to bore the soul of this more lowly servant

of the people. His own little, private, quiet, harmless laugh was his

small comfort under all these inflictions. Sometimes the absolute

confidence with which all contending sides urged their opinions and

measures upon him, seemed to strike him with a solemn sense of the

ludicrous. Thus when Dr. Cheever, at the head of a committee of

clergymen, had been making a vigorous, authoritative appeal to him

in Old Testament language, to end all difficulties by emancipation,

Lincoln seemed to meditate gravely, and at last answered slowly, "Well,

gentlemen, it is not very often that one is favored with a _delegation

direct from the Almighty_!"

Washington, at this time, was one great hospital of wounded soldiers;

the churches, the public buildings all filled with the maimed, the sick

and suffering, and Lincoln's only diversion from the perplexity of

state was the oversight of these miseries. "Where do you dine?" said

one to him in our hearing. "Well, I don't dine, I just browse round

a little, now and then." There was something irresistibly quaint and

pathetic in the odd, rustic tone in which this was spoken.

Even the Emancipation Proclamation--that one flag stone in the wide

morass of despondency on which the wearied man at last set firm

foothold, did not at first seem to be a first step into the land of

promise.

It was uttered too soon to please some parties, too late to please

others. In England it was received in the face of much military ill

success, with the scoffing epigram that the President had proclaimed

liberty in the states where he had no power, and retained slavery in

those where he had. It is true there was to this the sensible and just

reply that he only gained the right to emancipate by this war power,

and that of course this did not exist in states that were not at war;

but when was ever a smart saying stopped in its course by the slow

considerations and explanations of truth?

The battle of Gettysburg was the first argument that began to convince

mankind that Mr. Lincoln was right. It has been well said, that in this

world nothing succeeds but _success_. Bonaparte professed his belief

that Providence always went with the strongest battalions, and therein

he expressed about the average opinion of this world. Vicksburg and

Gettysburg changed the whole face of the nation--they were the first

stations outside of the valley of the shadow of death.

The nation took new courage--even the weary clamorers for peace at any

price, began to shout on the right side, and to hope that peace might

come through northern victory, and so it _did_ come, they did not care

how.

Whereas a few months before, Lincoln was universally depreciated,

doubted, scoffed and scorned, now he found himself re-elected to the

Presidential chair, by an overwhelming majority. It was in fact almost

an election by acclamation. When the votes were being counted in New

York late at night, and this victory became apparent, the vast surging

assembly at the motion of one individual, uncovered their heads and

sang a solemn Doxology--an affecting incident which goes far to show

what sort of feelings lay at the bottom of this vast movement, and how

profoundly the people felt that this re-election of Lincoln was a vital

step in their onward progress.

At this hour the nation put the broad seal of its approbation on all

his past course. At this moment she pledged herself to follow him and

him alone to the end.

Perhaps never was man re-elected who used fewer of popular arts--made

fewer direct efforts. He was indeed desirous to retain the place, for

though he estimated himself quite humbly, still he was of opinion that

on the whole his was as safe a hand as any, and he had watched the

navigation so far as to come to love the hard helm, at which he had

stood so painfully. In his usual quaint way he expressed his idea by a

backwoods image. Alluding to the frequent fordings of turbulent streams

that are the lot of the western traveller, he said, "It is'nt best to

swap horses in the middle of a creek."

There was something almost preternatural in the calmness with which

Lincoln accepted the news of his re-election. The first impulse seemed

to be to disclaim all triumph over the opposing party, and to soberly

gird up his loins to go on with his work to the end.

His last inaugural has been called by one of the London newspapers "the

noblest political document known to history."

It was characterized by a solemn religious tone, so peculiarly free

from earthly passion, that it seems to us now, who look back on it in

the light of what has followed, as if his soul had already parted from

earthly things, and felt the powers of the world to come. It was not

the formal state-paper of the chief of a party in an hour of victory,

so much as the solemn soliloquy of a great soul reviewing its course

under a vast responsibility, and appealing from all earthly judgments

to the tribunal of Infinite Justice. It was a solemn clearing of his

soul for the great sacrament of death:

"_Fellow Countrymen_--At this second appearing to take the oath of the

Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address

than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of

a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the

expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been

constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest

which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the

nation, little that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends is as

well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably

satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no

prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts

were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded

it; all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being

delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union

without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it

without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by

negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make

war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war

rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed

generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.

These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew

that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen,

perpetuate and extend this interest, was the object for which the

insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government

claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial

enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which

it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the

conflict might cease with, or even before the conflict itself should

cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental

and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, and each invoke

his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare

to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat

of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been

answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world

because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come: but woe

to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that

American slavery is one of these offences, which in the providence of

God must needs come, but which having continued through his appointed

time, He now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South

this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came,

shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes

which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we

hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon

pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth

piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil

shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall

be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand

years ago; so, still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are

true and righteous altogether.'

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the

right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish

the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him

who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphans, to do

all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among

ourselves and with all nations."

The words of Lincoln seemed to grow more clear and more remarkable as

they approached the end. Perhaps in no language, ancient or modern, are

any number of words found more touching and eloquent than his speech

of November 19, 1863, at the Gettysburg celebration. He wrote it in a

few moments, while on the way to the celebration, on being told that he

would be expected to make some remarks, and after Mr. Everett's oration

he rose and read it. It was as follows:

"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this

continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the

proposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in

a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so

conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great

battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that

field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that

the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we

should do this.

But in a larger sense, _we_ cannot dedicate, _we_ cannot consecrate,

_we_ cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who

struggled here, _have_ consecrated it far above our poor power to add

or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we _say_

here, but it can never forget what they _did_ here. It is for us, the

living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they

who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for

us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that

from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for

which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly

resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation,

under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government _of_

the people, _by_ the people, and _for_ the people, shall not perish

from the earth."

The audience had admired Mr. Everett's long address. At Mr. Lincoln's

few words, they cheered and sobbed and wept. When Mr. Lincoln had

ended, he turned and congratulated Mr. Everett on having succeeded so

well. Mr. Everett replied, with a truthful and real compliment, "Ah,

Mr. Lincoln, how gladly I would exchange all my hundred pages, to have

been the author of your twenty lines!"

Probably no ruler ever made a more profoundly and peculiarly

_Christian_ impression on the mind of the world than Lincoln. In

his religious faith two leading ideas were prominent from first to

last--man's helplessness, both as to strength and wisdom, and God's

helpfulness in both. When he left Springfield to assume the Presidency,

he said to his townsmen:

"A duty devolves on me which is perhaps greater than that which has

devolved on any other man since the days of Washington. He never would

have succeeded but for the aid of divine Providence, on which he at

all times relied, and I feel that I cannot succeed without the same

Divine aid which sustained him. On the same Almighty Being I place my

reliance for support, and I hope that you, my friends, will pray that I

may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but

with which success is certain."

Abraham Lincoln's whole course showed that he possessed that faith

without which, St. Paul says, it is impossible to please God, for

"he that cometh to God _must believe that He_ IS, and that He is a

_rewarder of those who diligently seek him_."

And now our Christian pilgrim having passed through the valley of the

shadow of death, and slain and vanquished giants and dragons, at last

had a little taste, a few days sojourn, in the land of Beulah.

Cheer after cheer rose up and shook the land as by one great stroke

after another the awful convulsions of the conflict terminated in full,

perfect, final victory.

Never did mortal man on this earth have a triumph more dramatic and

astounding than Lincoln's victorious entry into Richmond. Years before,

when a humble lawyer in Illinois, a man without prestige of person or

manners or education, he had espoused what the world called the losing

side, and been content to take the up-hill, laborious road. He had seen

his rival, adorned with every external advantage of person, manners,

eloquence and oratory, sweeping all prizes away from him, and far

distancing him in the race of political ambition.

In those days, while confessing that he had felt the promptings of

ambition, and the disappointment of ill success, there was one manly

and noble sentiment that ought to be printed in letters of gold, as the

motto of every rising young man. Speaking of the distinction at which

Douglas was aiming, he said:

"SO REACHED AS THAT THE OPPRESSED OF MY SPECIES MIGHT HAVE EQUAL REASON

TO REJOICE WITH ME, I SHOULD VALUE IT MORE THAN THE PROUDEST CROWN THAT

COULD DECK THE BROW OF A MONARCH."

At this moment of his life he could look back and see far behind

him the grave of the once brilliant Douglas, who died worn out and

worn down with disappointed ambition, while he, twice elected to

the Presidency, was now standing the observed of all the world, in

a triumph that has no like in history. And it was a triumph made

memorable and peculiar by the ecstacies and hallelujahs of those very

oppressed with whose care years before he had weighted and burdened

his progress. It was one of those earthly scenes which grandly

foreshadow that great final triumph predicted in prophecy, when the

Lord God shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke

of his people shall he utterly take away. A cotemporary witness has

described Lincoln, calm and simple, leading his little boy by the hand,

while the liberated blacks hailed him with hymns and prayers, mingling

his name at each moment with ascriptions of praise and glory to Jesus

the Great Liberator, whose day at last had come. Who can say of what

ages of mournful praying and beseeching, what uplifting of poor, dumb

hands that hour was the outcome? Years before, a clergyman of Virginia

visiting the black insurrectionist, Nat Turner, in his cell before

execution, gives the following wonderful picture of him: "In rags, in

chains, covered with blood and bruises, he yet is inspired by such a

force of enthusiasm, as he lifts his chained hands to heaven, as really

filled my soul with awe. It is impossible to make him feel that he

is guilty. He evidently believes that he was called of God to do the

work he did. When I pointed out to him that it could not be, because

he was taken, condemned, and about to be executed, he answered with

enthusiasm, 'Was not Jesus Christ crucified? My cause _will_ succeed

yet!'"

Years passed, and the prophetic visions of Nat Turner were fulfilled

on the soil of Virginia. It did indeed rain blood; the very leaves of

the trees dripped blood; but the work was _done_, the yoke was broken,

and the oppressed went free. An old negress who stood and saw the

confederate prisoners being carried for safe keeping into the former

slave pens, said grimly, "Well, de Lord am slow, but He am _sure_!"

As the final scenes of his life drew on, it seemed as if a heavenly

influence overshadowed the great martyr, and wrought in him exactly

the spirit that a man would wish to be found in when he is called to

the eternal world. His last expressions and recorded political actions

looked towards peace and forgiveness. On the day before his death

he joyfully ordered the discontinuance of the draft. His very last

official act was to give orders that two of the chief leaders of the

rebellion, then expected in disguise at a sea port, on their flight to

Europe, should not be arrested, but permitted to embark; so that he was

thinking only of saving the lives of rebels, when they were thinking of

taking his. If he had tried of set purpose to clear his soul for God's

presence, and to put the rebels and their assassin champion in the

wrong before that final tribunal, he could not have done better.

Mr. Lincoln seems to have had during his course a marked presentiment

of the fate which had from the first been threatening him, and which

the increasing pile of letters marked "Assassination," gave him

constant reason to remember. In more than one instance he had in

his public speeches professed a solemn willingness to die for his

principles. The great tax which his labors and responsibilities made

on his vitality, was perhaps one reason for his frequently saying that

he felt that he should not live to go through with it. He observed

to Mr. Lovejoy, during that gentleman's last illness, in February,

1864, "This war is eating my life out; I have a strong impression

that I shall not live to see the end." In July following, he said to

a correspondent of the Boston Journal, "I feel a presentiment that I

shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done."

Concerning the last painful history, there have been a thousand

conflicting stories. From the mass of evidence the following

brief account has been prepared, which sufficiently outlines the

circumstances:

Who were the persons concerned in the assassination of President

Lincoln, has never been judicially proved. Perhaps it never will be.

The indictment against the conspirators named the following parties.

David E. Herold, George A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, Michael O'Laughlin,

Edward Spangler, Samuel Arnold, Mary E. Surratt, Samuel A. Mudd, John

H. Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, George N. Sanders,

Beverly Tucker, Jacob Thompson, William C. Cleary, Clement C. Clay,

George Harper, and George Young; and it added, "and others unknown."

The assassin was John Wilkes Booth. And whether or no Jefferson Davis

and his fellows in the rebel government were actually aiding and

abetting in this particular crime, it has not been unjust nor unnatural

to suspect them of it. For Mr. Davis certainly accredited Thompson,

Sanders, Clay, and Tucker, as his official agents in Canada. These men

in their turn, and acting in harmony with their instructions and the

purposes of their government, gave a commission to that John A. Kennedy

who was detected in attempting to kindle an extensive fire in the city

of New York, and consulted with him about his proposed plans. This was

the substance of Kennedy's own confession, and he and his accomplices

did kindle fires in four of the New York hotels. It is completely

proved, again, that Davis paid sundry sums, in all $35,000 in gold, to

incendiaries hired by his government to burn hospitals and steamboats

at the West, and that Thompson paid money to a person engaged in Dr.

Blackburn's attempt to spread yellow fever in our cities.

But more: when one Alston wrote to Davis, offering his services to try

to "rid my country of some of her deadliest enemies, by striking at the

very heart's blood of those who seek to enchain her in slavery"--adding

the very significant remark, "I consider nothing dishonorable having

such a tendency," Mr. Davis caused this proposition not to be refused,

nor passed over in silence, nor indignantly exposed; but to be

"respectfully referred, by direction of the President, to the honorable

Secretary of War." Still more: it has been proved that in 1863, John

Wilkes Booth declared that "Abraham Lincoln must be killed." The rebel

agents in Canada, six months before the assassination, specifically

made the same declaration. In the summer of 1864, Thompson said that

he could at any time have the "tyrant Lincoln," or any of his advisers

that he chose, "put out of the way," and that Thompson's agents would

not consider doing this a crime, if done for the rebel cause; and Clay,

when he heard of this, corroborated the sentiment, saying, "That is

so; we are all devoted to our cause, and ready to go any length--to do

anything under the sun." Many other such utterances by rebel leaders

are proved and have become uncontradicted matter of history. Besides;

when Mr. Davis, at Charlotte, North Carolina, while fleeing from

Richmond, received the telegram announcing the fate of Mr. Lincoln,

he calmly read it aloud to the people present, and without a word of

disapproval, uttered a cold comment: "If it were to be done, it were

better it were well done." And when Breckinridge said he regretted

it, (not because it was wicked or dishonorable, but because it was

unfortunate for the South just then,) Mr Davis replied in the same

tone of cold indifference or of concealed satisfaction, and using the

same words: "Well, General, I don't know; if it were to be done at

all, it were better that it were well done; and if the same had been

done to Andy Johnson, the Beast (i. e. Gen. Butler), and to Secretary

Stanton, the job would then be complete." Those are not the words of

an honorable man, nor of a disapprover. But they are exactly natural

to an accessory before the fact, who does not confess his part in it,

and prefers to dissemble his joy. It is not at all unreasonable to

suspect that the men who are proved to have done thus and spoken thus,

before and after the deed, and who have openly hired and approved the

perpetration of such other deeds, were concerned in the planning and

execution of this deed too.

Booth was an actor, and the son of a well known actor; and the son had

inherited, apparently, much of the reckless and occasionally furious

temper of his father. He was also a very violent and bitter rebel.

During the fall of 1864, he had been in Canada, consulting with the

rebel agents there, and mixed up with a number of other subordinate

agents in the business of assassinating President Lincoln; and he was

the most prominent candidate, so to speak, for the place of actual

murderer. On November 11th, 1864, he was in New York, where, while

riding with a companion in a street car, he dropped a letter which came

into the possession of the government; it was a vigorous appeal to

him to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. It said: "Abe must die, and now. You

can choose your weapons, the cup, the knife, the bullet;" and again:

"Strike for your home, strike for your country; bide your time, but

strike sure." During the winter, Booth was engaging the assistance

required for his scheme; and he had already fixed upon the scene of the

murder; for, not later than January, he was urging one Chester to enter

into the plan, and assuring him that all his part of it would be to

stand at the back door of Ford's Theatre and open it. This was a safe

calculation, for the President's enjoyment of dramatic performances was

great, and enhanced by the difficulty of finding agreeable relaxations,

and also by the awful pressure of his official duties and of the war,

which intensified the need of relaxation.

The scheme as finally arranged, provided for the assassination of

Mr. Lincoln, by Booth; of Mr. Johnson, by Atzerodt; of Mr. Seward,

by Payne, (alias Powell); and of Gen. Grant, by O'Laughlin. For the

President, an elaborate death trap was constructed in Ford's Theatre.

The catches of the locks to all three doors of the President's box (one

outer and two inner ones), were loosened by loosening their screws, and

left so that a slight push would enable the assassin to enter even

though the doors should be locked. A small hole was made through one

of the two inner ones, to enable him to see before entering exactly

how his victim sat, so that the final moves within the box could be

laid out before entering it; and a wooden brace was prepared to set

against the outer door (which opened inward) with one end, and with the

other to fit a mortice cut in the wall behind, so that after entering,

the assassin could fasten the door behind him sufficiently to prevent

any interruption until his work was done. Arrangements were made for

securing horses for the murderers to flee with. The stage carpenter or

assistant, Spangler, was employed to be on hand and open and shut the

back door of the theatre when wanted. Some scenes and miscellaneous

matter that frequently impeded more or less the passage from the front

of the stage to this back door, were piled up or otherwise put out of

the way. A supply of weapons for the conspirators was provided. And a

route for flight from Washington within the rebel lines was determined

on. This route led southward from the city, over Anacostia Bridge, ten

miles to Mrs. Surratt's house at Surrattsville, then some fifteen miles

more to Dr. Mudd's house, then about twenty miles to a point where

arrangements were made for crossing the Potomac and proceeding towards

Richmond.

All being ready, Booth, about 9 P. M., on the 14th of April, 1865, went

to the theatre. He first went to the back door, entered it and saw that

all was prepared; left Spangler in charge, and left his horse to be

held by another subordinate of the theatre. Then he went round to the

front of the building, where three of the conspirators were waiting.

It was now about half past nine. One act of the play, "Our American

Cousin,"--was nearly through. "I think he will come out now," remarked

Booth. It is very usual for the spectators to leave the theatre between

the acts, often to return; and if Mr. Lincoln had happened to feel too

busy to remain longer and had left then, probably Booth would have

attacked him there, trusting to be able to escape into the theatre in

the bustle and so through his guarded door. But the President did not

come. Booth went into a saloon close by and drank some whisky. The

spectators had returned for the next act. Booth entered the vestibule

of the theatre, and from it the passage that leads from the street to

the stage and also to the outer door of the President's box. As he did

so, one of his companions followed him into the vestibule, looked up

to the clock and called out the hour. It was approaching ten. Three

successive times, at intervals of several minutes, the companion thus

called out the hour. The third time he called, in a louder tone, "Ten

minutes past ten o'clock!" At this Booth disappeared in the theatre,

and the three others walked rapidly away. Booth went straight to the

outer door of the President's box, paused and showed a visiting card

to the President's messenger, who was in waiting; placed his hand

and his knee against the door, and pushing it open, entered. He then

quietly fastened the door with the brace that stood ready; looked

through the hole in the inner door, and saw the President. Silently

opening the door, he entered. Mr. Lincoln sat at the left hand front

corner of the box, his wife at his right hand, a Miss Harris at the

right hand front corner, and a Major Rathbone behind her. Mr. Lincoln

was leaning forward and looking down into the orchestra. Booth stepped

quickly up, and fired a pistol bullet into the President's head, behind

and on the left side. The murdered man raised his head once; it fell

back upon his chair, and his eyes closed. Major Rathbone, a cool, bold

and prompt soldier, who had been absorbed in the play, now hearing

the pistol-shot, turned, saw Booth through the smoke, and instantly

sprang upon him. Booth, a nervous and strong man, expert in all

athletic exercises, and a skillful fencer, wrenched himself free with

a desperate effort, as he well needed to do. He had already dropped

his pistol and drawn a heavy bowie knife, with which he made a furious

thrust at his captor's heart. Rathbone parried it, but was wounded

deeply in the arm and his hold loosed. Booth sprang for the front of

the box; Rathbone followed, but only caught his clothes as he sprang

over. Rathbone shouted "Stop that man!" and then turned to assist the

President.

Booth leaped over the front of the box, down upon the stage, shouting

as he went, "Revenge for the South!" His spur caught in the national

flag as he descended; the entanglement caused him to fall almost flat

on the stage as he came down; and either the wrench of tearing loose

from the flag, or the fall, snapped one of the bones of his leg between

knee and ankle. This fracture, though not preventing him at once from

moving about, so far disabled him as probably to have been the occasion

of his being overtaken and captured; so that it is scarcely extravagant

to imagine the flag as having, in a sense, avenged the guilt of the

crime perpetrated upon its chief official defender, by waylaying and

entrapping the criminal in his turn, as he had done his victim. Booth

instantly sprang up, turned towards the audience, and raising his

bloody knife in a stage attitude, with a theatrical manner, vociferated

the motto of the State of Virginia, "_Sic semper tyrannis!_"--a motto

already turned into a discreditable satire by its contrast with the

characteristic traffic of the great slavebreeding state, and even

more effectually disgraced by the use now made of it, to justify

assassination. It will be strange if some less dishonored words are not

one day chosen for the device of Free Virginia.

Booth, thus vaporing for a moment, then rushed headlong across the

stage, and darted by the side passage to the rear door. One man sprang

from an orchestra seat upon the stage and shouted to stop him. One of

the employes of the theatre, standing in the passage, was too much

startled to stand aside, and the desperate fugitive struck him on the

leg, cut at him twice, knocked him one side and darted on. The door

was ready. He sprang out, and it shut behind him. Seizing the horse

which was held in waiting for him, Booth, as if in a frenzy like that

of the Malays when "running _amok_," struck the poor fellow who held

it, with the butt of his knife, knocking him down; and then kicking

him, sprang to the saddle, and after a few moments lost in consequence

of some nervousness or fright of the animal, rode swiftly off. This

was on the evening of Friday, the 14th; it was on Wednesday, the 26th,

that Booth, after having been delayed by having his leg set, and

crippled by it afterwards, was discovered in Garrett's barn, south of

the Rappahannock, not far from twenty miles from the Potomac, and was

surrounded, shot and taken.

The murdered President was quickly carried from the theatre to a house

across the street and placed upon a bed. Surgical aid was at once

obtained, but an examination at once showed that there was no hope of

life. Mr. Lincoln's eyes had not opened, nor had consciousness returned

at all, and they never did. The ball was a heavy one, from what is

called a Derringer pistol, a short single-barreled weapon with a large

bore. It had passed clear through the brain, and lodged against the

bone of the orbit of the left eye, breaking that bone. It is almost

certain that Mr. Lincoln suffered no pain after being shot, as the

injury was of a nature to destroy conscious life. His exceedingly

strong constitution and tenacity of life maintained respiration and

circulation for a remarkably long time, but he died the next morning at

about half past seven.

Of the particulars of that great national mourning which bowed the

whole land, it is not needful to speak. Like many parts of that great

history of which it formed a portion, there were often points in it of

a peculiar and symbolic power, which rose to the sublime. Such was the

motto--"Be still, and know that I am God"--which spoke from the walls

of the New York depot when amid the hush of weeping thousands, the

solemn death car entered. The contrast between the peaceful expression

on the face of the weary man, and the surging waves of mourning and

lamentation around him was touching and awful.

Not the least touching among these expressions of national mourning was

the dismay and anguish of that poor oppressed race for whose rights he

died.

A southern correspondent of the New York Tribune, the week following

the assassination, wrote: "I never saw such sad faces, or heard such

heavy heart-beatings, as here in Charleston the day the news came. The

colored people were like children bereaved of a parent. I saw one old

woman going up the streets, wringing her hands, and saying aloud as she

walked, looking straight before her, so absorbed in her grief that she

noticed no one;

'O Lord! Oh Lord! O Lord! Massa Sam's dead! Massa Sam's dead!'

'Who's dead, Aunty?' 'Massa Sam's dead!' she said, not looking at me,

and renewing her lamentations.

'Who's Massa Sam?' said I.

'Uncle Sam,' she said, 'O Lord! O Lord!'

Not quite sure that she meant the President, I spoke again:

'Who's Massa Sam, Aunty?'

'Mr. Lincum!' she said, and resumed wringing her hands, mourning in

utter hopelessness of sorrow."

The poor negroes on the distant plantations had formed a conception

of Lincoln, much akin to that of a Divine Being. Their masters

fled on the approach of our soldiers, and this gave the slaves the

conception of a great Invisible Power which they called Massa Lincum.

An old negro exhorter once, rising in an assembly of them, was heard

solemnly instructing his fellows in the nature of this great unknown:

"Bredren," he said solemnly, "Massa Lincum, he be eberywhere. He knows

ebery ting;" and looking up solemnly, "He walk de earf like de Lord."

To them the stroke was almost as if we could possibly conceive death as

happening to the God we worship; a mingled shock of grief, surprise and

terror.

No death of a public man ever entered so deep into the life of

individual families, so as to seem like a personal domestic sorrow. The

assumption of mourning badges and garments, the hanging out of mourning

tokens, was immediate in thousands of families, each obeying the same

spontaneous impulse without stopping to consult the other. It seemed

almost as if the funeral bells tolled of themselves and without hands.

Wherever the news travelled, so immediately and without waiting for

public consultation, were these tributes of mourning given.

One fact alone, proves the depth and strength of these feelings more

than volumes of description. It is, the vast extent of the publications

in which the history of Mr. Lincoln's life and times, his individual

biography and real or written utterances, or his personal appearance,

were in one way or another commemorated. A gentleman who has begun a

collection of such materials had some time ago gathered two hundred

different books on Mr. Lincoln, a hundred and twenty-five portraits,

besides badges, mourning cards, autographs and manuscripts, as he

reports, "almost without number." And in the list of publications about

the rebellion compiled by Mr. Bartlett, are enumerated three hundred

and eighty books, sermons, eulogies or addresses upon his life or

death.

There is an astonishing contrast between the perfect sweetness and

kindness of Mr. Lincoln's sentiments and utterances, whether private

or public, individual or official, in reference to the rebels and

the rebellion, and theirs about him. Doubtless no loyal citizen of

the United States was so uniformly kind in feeling and decorous and

even courteous in expression, about the rebels; and doubtless no such

citizen was so odiously bespattered with the most hateful and vulgar

and ferocious insult and abuse, both public and private. To give the

quotations to prove the point would be simply disgusting. They were

sprinkled through the newspapers and the public documents of the

rebellion from beginning to end of it. A compend and a proof at once of

the whole of them was that private bundle of letters threatening death,

marked in Mr. Lincoln's own handwriting "Assassination," and kept in

his private cabinet. And the assassination itself and the circumstances

connected with it, constituted another proof and specimen, still more

overwhelming. Never since the times of the Christian martyrs has

history recorded a contrast more humiliating to humanity, between

his kind words and kind intentions on the one hand, and infamous

abusiveness and deliberate bloodthirsty ferocity in those who thus slew

the best and kindest friend they had in the world.

Scarcely less striking was the contrast between the habitual tone

of the foreign utterances about President Lincoln before his death

and that of those after it; a change, moreover, whose promptness

and evident manly good faith may in some measure atone for the

unreasonable and even indecent character of many things said and

printed in Europe. It is unnecessary to reproduce the offences: it

is a more grateful task to quote a few specimens of the feelings and

expressions with which the news of his death and of the manner of it

was received abroad.

It may be premised, that some few persons of foreign birth and good

position, had already discerned the truth of the character of Mr.

Lincoln. A correspondent of the N. Y. Times wrote that paper from

Washington, on one occasion, the following narrative:

"One day, as President Lincoln drove past a Washington hotel, sitting

alone in his carriage, three gentlemen stood talking in front of

the hotel. One of them, a foreigner of high cultivation and great

distinction, with a gesture quite involuntary, raised his hat and

remained uncovered until Mr. Lincoln had passed by. One of his

companions, surprised at so much ceremony, observed, "You forget that

you are in republican America and not in Russia." "Not at all, sir--not

at all," was the reply, given with a certain indignation; "that is the

only living ruler whom I sincerely reverence. I could not avoid showing

the feeling, if I would. He is a patriot, a statesman, a great-hearted

honest man. You Americans reverence nothing in the present." And

after a few more sentences to the like effect, he ended by saying:

"Not only your posterity, but the posterity of all the peoples which

love honesty and revere patriotism, will declare that the part which

President Lincoln was called to perform, required the exercise of as

noble qualities as the 'Father of his Country' ever possessed. It is

any thing but a credit to you that you do not better appreciate the man

whom God has sent in these perilous times to rule the people of this

republic."

The rebuke was received in silence. But such cases were very few. The

general tone of foreign opinion about him was thoroughly unjust. Not so

the obituary testimonials from across the sea.

On the first of May, 1865, Sir George Grey, in the English House of

Commons, moved an address to the Crown, to express the feelings of the

House upon the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. In this address he said

that he was convinced that Mr. Lincoln "in the hour of victory, and in

the triumph of victory, would have shown that wise forbearance, and

that generous consideration, which would have added tenfold lustre to

the fame that he had already acquired, amidst the varying fortunes of

the war."

In seconding the same address, at the same time and place, Mr. Benjamin

Disraeli said: "But in the character of the victim, and in the very

accessories of his almost latest moments, there is something so homely

and so innocent that it takes the subject, as it were, out of the pomp

of history, and out of the ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the

heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind."

In the House of Lords, Lord John Russell, in moving a similar address,

observed: "President Lincoln was a man who, although he had not been

distinguished before his election, had from that time displayed a

character of so much integrity, sincerity and straightforwardness,

and at the same time of so much kindness, that if any one could have

been able to alleviate the pain and animosity which have prevailed

during the civil war, I believe President Lincoln was the man to have

done so." And again, in speaking of the question of amending the

constitution so as to prohibit slavery, he said: "We must all feel that

there again the death of President Lincoln deprives the United States

of the man who was the leader on this subject."

Mr. John Stuart Mill, the distinguished philosopher, in a letter to

an American friend, used far stronger expressions than these guarded

phrases of high officials. He termed Mr. Lincoln "the great citizen

who had afforded so noble an example of the qualities befitting

the first magistrate of a free people, and who, in the most trying

circumstances, had gradually won not only the admiration, but almost

the personal affection of all who love freedom or appreciate simplicity

or uprightness."

Professor Goldwin Smith, writing to the London Daily News, began by

saying, "It is difficult to measure the calamity which the United

States and the world have sustained by the murder of President Lincoln.

The assassin has done his best to strike down mercy and moderation, of

both of which this good and noble life was the main stay."

Senhor Rebello da Silva, a member of the Portuguese Chamber of Peers,

in moving a resolution on the death of Mr. Lincoln, thus outlined his

character: "He is truly great who rises to the loftiest heights from

profound obscurity, relying solely on his own merits as did Napoleon,

Washington, Lincoln. For these arose to power and greatness, not

through any favor or grace, by a chance cradle, or genealogy, but

through the prestige of their own deeds, through the nobility which

begins and ends with themselves--the sole offspring of their own

works. * * * Lincoln was of this privileged class; he belonged to this

aristocracy. In infancy, his energetic soul was nourished by poverty.

In youth, he learned through toil the love of liberty, and respect

for the rights of man. Even to the age of twenty-two, educated in

adversity, his hands made callous by honorable labor, he rested from

the fatigues of the field, spelling out, in the pages of the Bible,

in the lessons of the gospel, in the fugitive leaves of the daily

journal--which the aurora opens, and the night disperses--the first

rudiments of instruction, which his solitary meditations ripened.

The chrysalis felt one day the ray of the sun, which called it to

life, broke its involucrum, and it launched forth fearlessly from

the darkness of its humble cloister into the luminous spaces of its

destiny. The farmer, day-laborer, shepherd, like Cincinnatus, left the

plough-share in the half-broken furrow, and, legislator of his own

State, and afterwards of the Great Republic, saw himself proclaimed

in the tribunal the popular chief of several millions of people, the

maintainer of the holy principle inaugurated by Wilberforce."

There are some vague and some only partially correct statements in this

diffuse passage; but it shows plainly enough how enthusiastically the

Portuguese nobleman had admired the antique simplicity and strength of

Mr. Lincoln's character.

Dr. Merle d'Aubigne, the historian of the Reformation, writing to Mr.

Fogg, U. S. Minister to Switzerland, said: "While not venturing to

compare him to the great sacrifice of Golgotha, which gave liberty to

the captives, is it not just, in this hour, to recall the word of an

apostle (1 John, iii: 16): 'Hereby perceive we the love of God, because

he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for

the brethren'? Who can say that the President did not lay down his life

by the firmness of his devotion to a great duty? The name of Lincoln

will remain one of the greatest that history has to inscribe on its

annals. * * * Among the legacies which Lincoln leaves to us, we shall

all regard as the most precious, his spirit of equity, of moderation,

and of peace, according to which he will still preside, if I may so

speak, over the restoration of your great nation."

The "Democratic Association" of Florence, addressed "to the Free People

of the United States," a letter, in which they term Mr. Lincoln "the

honest, the magnanimous citizen, the most worthy chief magistrate of

your glorious Federation."

The eminent French liberal, M. Edouard Laboulaye, in a speech showing

a remarkably just understanding and extremely broad views with respect

to the affairs and the men of the United States, said: "Mr. Lincoln was

one of those heroes who are ignorant of themselves; his thoughts will

reign after him. The name of Washington has already been pronounced,

and I think with reason. Doubtless Mr. Lincoln resembled Franklin more

than Washington. By his origin, his arch good nature, his ironical

good sense, and his love of anecdotes and jesting, he was of the same

blood as the printer of Philadelphia. But it is nevertheless true

that in less than a century, America has passed through two crises in

which its liberty might have been lost, if it had not had honest men

at its head; and that each time it has had the happiness to meet the

man best fitted to serve it. If Washington founded the Union, Lincoln

has saved it. History will draw together and unite those two names.

A single word explains Mr. Lincoln's whole life: it was Duty. Never

did he put himself forward; never did he think of himself; never did

he seek one of those ingenious combinations which puts the head of a

state in bold relief, and enhances his importance at the expense of the

country; his only ambition, his only thought was faithfully to fulfil

the mission which his fellow-citizens had entrusted to him. * * * His

inaugural address, March 4, 1865, shows us what progress had been made

in his soul. This piece of familiar eloquence is a master-piece; it

is the testament of a patriot. I do not believe that any eulogy of

the President would equal this page on which he has depicted himself

in all his greatness and all his simplicity. * * * History is too

often only a school of immorality. It shows us the victory of force

or stratagem much more than the success of justice, moderation, and

probity. It is too often only the apotheosis of triumphant selfishness.

There are noble and great exceptions; happy those who can increase the

number, and thus bequeath a noble and beneficent example to posterity!

Mr. Lincoln is among these. He would willingly have repeated, after

Franklin, that 'falsehood and artifice are the practice of fools who

have not wit enough to be honest.' All his private life, and all his

political life, were inspired and directed by this profound faith in

the omnipotence of virtue. It is through this, again, that he deserves

to be compared with Washington; it is through this that he will remain

in history with the most glorious name that can be merited by the head

of a free people--a name given him by his cotemporaries, and which will

be preserved to him by posterity--that of Honest Abraham Lincoln."

A letter from the well known French historian, Henri Martin, to

the Paris Siècle, contained the following passages: "Lincoln will

remain the austere and sacred personification of a great epoch, the

most faithful expression of democracy. This simple and upright man,

prudent and strong, elevated step by step from the artizan's bench to

the command of a great nation, and always without parade and without

effort, at the height of his position; executing without precipitation,

without flourish, and with invincible good sense, the most colossal

acts; giving to the world this decisive example of the civil power

in a republic; directing a gigantic war, without free institutions

being for an instant compromised or threatened by military usurpation;

dying, finally, at the moment when, after conquering, he was intent on

pacification, * * * this man will stand out, in the traditions of his

country and the world, as an incarnation of the people, and of modern

democracy itself. The great work of emancipation had to be sealed,

therefore, with the blood of the just, even as it was inaugurated with

the blood of the just. The tragic history of the abolition of slavery,

which opened with the gibbet of John Brown, will close with the

assassination of Lincoln.

And now let him rest by the side of Washington, as the second founder

of the great Republic. European democracy is present in spirit at his

funeral, as it voted in its heart for his re-election, and applauded

the victory in the midst of which he passed away. It will wish with one

accord to associate itself with the monument that America will raise to

him upon the capitol of prostrate slavery."

The London Globe, in commenting on Mr. Lincoln's assassination, said

that he "had come nobly through a great ordeal. He had extorted the

admiration even of his opponents, at least on this side of the water.

They had come to admire, reluctantly, his firmness, honesty, fairness

and sagacity. He tried to do, and had done, what he considered his

duty, with magnanimity."

The London Express said, "He had tried to show the world how great, how

moderate, and how true he could be, in the moment of his great triumph."

The Liverpool Post said, "If ever there was a man who in trying times

avoided offenses, it was Mr. Lincoln. If there ever was a leader in a

civil contest who shunned acrimony and eschewed passion, it was he. In

a time of much cant and affectation he was simple, unaffected, true,

transparent. In a season of many mistakes he was never known to be

wrong. * * * By a happy tact, not often so felicitously blended with

pure evidence of soul, Abraham Lincoln knew when to speak, and never

spoke too early or too late. * * * The memory of his statesmanship,

translucent in the highest degree, and above the average, and openly

faithful, more than almost any of this age has witnessed, to fact and

right, will live in the hearts and minds of the whole Anglo-Saxon

race, as one of the noblest examples of that race's highest qualities.

Add to all this that Abraham Lincoln was the humblest and pleasantest

of men, that he had raised himself from nothing, and that to the last

no grain of conceit or ostentation was found in him, and there stands

before the world a man whose like we shall not soon look upon again."

In the remarks of M. Rouher, the French Minister, in the Legislative

Assembly, on submitting to that Assembly the official despatch of

the French Foreign Minister to the Chargé at Washington, M. Rouher

remarked, of Mr. Lincoln's personal character, that he had exhibited

"that calm firmness and indomitable energy which belong to strong

minds, and are the necessary conditions of the accomplishment of great

duties. In the hour of victory he exhibited generosity, moderation and

conciliation."

And in the despatch, which was signed by M. Drouyn de L'Huys, were the

following expressions: "Abraham Lincoln exhibited, in the exercise of

the power placed in his hands, the most substantial qualities. In him,

firmness of character was allied to elevation of principle. * * * In

reviewing these last testimonies to his exalted wisdom, as well as the

examples of good sense, of courage, and of patriotism, which he has

given, history will not hesitate to place him in the rank of citizens

who have the most honored their country."

In the Prussian Lower House, Herr Loewes, in speaking of the news of

the assassination, said that Mr. Lincoln "performed his duties without

pomp or ceremony, and relied on that dignity of his inner self alone,

which is far above rank, orders and titles. He was a faithful servant,

not less of his own commonwealth than of civilization, freedom and

humanity."

By far the most beautiful of all these foreign tributes, was the very

generous memorial of the London Punch. That paper had joined all

the fashionable world in making merry at Lincoln's expense while he

struggled, weary and miry, through the "valley of humiliation,"--but

it is not every one who does a wrong who is capable of so full and

generous a reparation. We give it entire, because, apart from its noble

spirit, it is one of the most truthful summaries of Lincoln's character:

_You_ lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier!

_You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,

Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair,

His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,

His lack of all we prize as debonair,

Of power or will to shine, of art to please!

_You_, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,

Judging each step, as though the way were plain;

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,

Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain!

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet

The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew,

Between the mourners at his head and feet,

Say, scurril-jester, is there room for _you_?

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer--

To lame my pencil, and confute my pen--

To make me own this hind of princes peer,

This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue,

Noting how to occasion's height he rose;

How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true;

How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows;

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be;

How in good fortune and in ill the same;

Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work--such work as few

Ever had laid on head, and heart, and hand--

As one who knows where there's a task to do;

Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command,

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,

That God makes instruments to work his will,

If but that will we can arrive to know,

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied

His warfare with rude nature's thwarting mights;--

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,

The iron bark that turn's the lumberer's axe,

The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil,

The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear--

Such were the needs that helped his youth to train:

Rough culture--but such trees large fruit may bear,

If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do,

And lived to do it: four long suffering years'

Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,

And took both with the same unwavering mood;

Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him,

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest--

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,

Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips,

Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,

When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse

To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.

The old world and the new, from sea to sea,

Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!

Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high!

Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

Lincoln must be looked upon in the final review of his character, as

one of those men elect of God, whom he calls and chooses to effect

great purposes of his own, and fashions and educates with especial

reference to that purpose. As is usual in such cases, the man whom God

chooses for a work is not at all the man whom the world beforehand

would choose, and often for a time the world has difficulty in

receiving him. There was great questioning about him in the diplomatic

circles of Europe, when the war began, and there was great searching

of heart concerning him at home. There have been times when there were

impatient murmurs that another sort of man was wanted in his chair--a

man with more dash, more brilliancy, more Napoleonic efficiency. Yet

in the contest such a man might have been our ruin. A brilliant

military genius might have wrecked the republic on the rock of military

despotism, where so many good ships have gone down; whereas, slow,

cautious, honest old Abe only took our rights of habeas corpus, and

other civil privileges, as he did the specie of old, to make the legal

tender, and brought it all back safe and sound.

Lincoln was a strong man, but his strength was of a peculiar kind; it

was not aggressive so much as passive, and among passive things it was

like the strength not so much of a stone buttress as of a wire cable.

It was strength swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and

on that to popular needs, yet tenaciously and inflexibly bound to carry

its great end. Probably by no other kind of strength could our national

ship have been drawn safely through so dreadful a channel. Surrounded

by all sorts of conflicting claims, by traitors, by half-hearted, timid

men, by border State men and free State men, by radical abolitionists

and conservatives, he listened to all, heard all, weighed all, and in

his own time acted by his own honest convictions in the fear of God,

and thus simply and purely he did the greatest work that has been done

in modern times.

[Illustration: U S Grant]