_April 16, '65_.--I find in my notes of the time, this passage on the
death of Abraham Lincoln: He leaves for America's history and biography,
so far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence--he leaves, in my
opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral
personality. Not but that he had faults, and show'd them in the
Presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience, and (a new
virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really known here, but
the foundation and tie of all, as the future will grandly develop,)
UNIONISM, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd the hard-pan of his
character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragic splendor of his
death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, an
aureole that will remain and will grow brighter through time, while
history lives, and love of country lasts. By many has this Union been
help'd; but if one name, one man, must be pick'd out, he, most of all,
is the conservator of it, to the future. He was assassinated--but the
Union is not assassinated--_ça ira_! One falls and another falls. The
soldier drops, sinks like a wave--but the ranks of the ocean
eternally press on. Death does its work, obliterates a hundred, a
thousand--President, general, captain, private,--but the Nation is
immortal.