_deliver'd in New York, April 14, 1879--in Philadelphia, '80--in Boston,
'81_
How often since that dark and dripping Saturday--that chilly April day,
now fifteen years bygone--my heart has entertain'd the dream, the
wish, to give of Abraham Lincoln's death, its own special thought and
memorial. Yet now the sought-for opportunity offers, I find my notes
incompetent, (why, for truly profound themes, is statement so idle? why
does the right phrase never offer?) and the fit tribute I dream'd of,
waits unprepared as ever. My talk here indeed is less because of itself
or anything in it, and nearly altogether because I feel a desire, apart
from any talk, to specify the day, the martyrdom. It is for this, my
friends, I have call'd you together. Oft as the rolling years bring
back this hour, let it again, however briefly, be dwelt upon. For my
own part, I hope and desire, till my own dying day, whenever the 14th
or 15th of April comes, to annually gather a few friends, and hold its
tragic reminiscence. No narrow or sectional reminiscence. It belongs
to these States in their entirety--not the North only, but the
South--perhaps belongs most tenderly and devoutly to the South, of
all; for there, really, this man's birth-stock. There and thence
his antecedent stamp. Why should I not say that thence his manliest
traits--his universality--his canny, easy ways and words upon the
surface--his inflexible determination and courage at heart? Have you
never realized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted on the West,
is essentially, in personnel and character, a Southern contribution?
And though by no means proposing to resume the secession war to-night,
I would briefly remind you of the public conditions preceding that
contest. For twenty years, and especially during the four or five before
the war actually began, the aspect of affairs in the United States,
though without the flash of military excitement, presents more than
the survey of a battle, or any extended campaign, or series, even of
Nature's convulsions. The hot passions of the South--the strange
mixture at the North of inertia, incredulity, and conscious power--the
incendiarism of the abolitionists--the rascality and grip of the
politicians, unparallel'd in any land, any age. To these I must not omit
adding the honesty of the essential bulk of the people everywhere--yet
with all the seething fury and contradiction of their natures more
arous'd than the Atlantic's waves in wildest equinox. In politics, what
can be more ominous, (though generally unappreciated then)--what more
significant than the Presidentiads of Fillmore and Buchanan? proving
conclusively that the weakness and wickedness of elected rulers are
just as likely to afflict us here, as in the countries of the Old World,
under their monarchies, emperors, and aristocracies. In that Old World
were everywhere heard underground rumblings, that died out, only to
again surely return. While in America the volcano, though civic yet,
continued to grow more and more convulsive--more and more stormy and
threatening.
In the height of all this excitement and chaos, hovering on the edge at
first, and then merged in its very midst, and destined to play a leading
part, appears a strange and awkward figure. I shall not easily forget
the first time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln. It must have been about the
18th or 19th of February, 1861. It was rather a pleasant afternoon, in
New York city, as he arrived there from the West, to remain a few hours,
and then pass on to Washington, to prepare for his inauguration. I saw
him in Broadway, near the site of the present Post-office. He came down,
I think from Canal street, to stop at the Astor House. The broad spaces,
sidewalks, and street in the neighborhood, and for some distance, were
crowded with solid masses of people, many thousands. The omnibuses and
other vehicles had all been turn'd off, leaving an unusual hush in that
busy part of the city. Presently two or three shabby hack barouches made
their way with some difficulty through the crowd, and drew up at the
Astor House entrance. A tall figure stepp'd out of the centre of these
barouches, paus'd leisurely on the sidewalk, look'd up at the granite
walls and looming architecture of the grand old hotel--then, after a
relieving stretch of arms and legs, turn'd round for over a minute to
slowly and good-humoredly scan the appearance of the vast and silent
crowds. There were no speeches--no compliments--no welcome--as far as
I could hear, not a word said. Still much anxiety was conceal'd in that
quiet. Cautious persons had fear'd some mark'd insult or indignity to
the President-elect--for he possess'd no personal popularity at all in
New York city, and very little political. But it was evidently tacitly
agreed that if the few political supporters of Mr. Lincoln present
would entirely abstain from any demonstration on their side, the immense
majority, who were anything but supporters, would abstain on their side
also. The result was a sulky, unbroken silence, such as certainly never
before characterized so great a New York crowd.
Almost in the same neighborhood I distinctly remember'd seeing Lafayette
on his visit to America in 1825. I had also personally seen and heard,
various years afterward, how Andrew Jackson, Clay, Webster, Hungarian
Kossuth, Filibuster Walker, the Prince of Wales on his visit, and
other celebres, native and foreign, had been welcom'd there--all that
indescribable human roar and magnetism, unlike any other sound in the
universe--the glad exulting thunder-shouts of countless unloos'd throats
of men! But on this occasion, not a voice--not a sound. From the top of
an omnibus, (driven up one side, close by, and block'd by the curbstone
and the crowds,) I had, I say, a capital view of it all, and
especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look and gait--his perfect composure and
coolness--his unusual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black,
stovepipe hat push'd back on the head, dark-brown complexion, seam'd
and wrinkled yet canny-looking face, black, bushy head of hair,
disproportionately long neck, and his hands held behind as he stood
observing the people. He look'd with curiosity upon that immense sea of
faces, and the sea of faces return'd the look with similar curiosity. In
both there was a dash of comedy, almost farce, such as Shakspere puts in
his blackest tragedies. The crowd that hemm'd around consisted I should
think of thirty to forty thousand men, not a single one his personal
friend--while I have no doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments of
the time,) many an assassin's knife and pistol lurk'd in hip or
breast-pocket there, ready, soon as break and riot came.
But no break or riot came. The tall figure gave another relieving
stretch or two of arms and legs; then with moderate pace, and
accompanied by a few unknown-looking persons, ascended the portico-steps
of the Astor House, disappear'd through its broad entrance--and the
dumb-show ended.
I saw Abraham Lincoln often the four years following that date. He
changed rapidly and much during his Presidency--but this scene, and him
in it, are indelibly stamp'd upon my recollection. As I sat on the top
of my omnibus, and had a good view of him, the thought, dim and inchoate
then, has since come out clear enough, that four sorts of genius, four
mighty and primal hands, will be needed to the complete limning of this
man's future portrait--the eyes and brains and finger-touch of Plutarch
and Eschylus and Michel Angelo, assisted by Rabelais.
And now--(Mr. Lincoln passing on from this scene to Washington, where
he was inaugurated, amid armed cavalry, and sharpshooters at every
point--the first instance of the kind in our history--and I hope it will
be the last)--now the rapid succession of well-known events, (too
well known--I believe, these days, we almost hate to hear them
mention'd)--the national flag fired on at Sumter--the uprising of the
North, in paroxysms of astonishment and rage--the chaos of divided
councils--the call for troops--the first Bull Run--the stunning
cast-down, shock, and dismay of the North--and so in full flood the
secession war. Four years of lurid, bleeding, murky, murderous war.
Who paint those years, with all their scenes?--the hard-fought
engagements--the defeats, plans, failures--the gloomy hours, days,
when our Nationality seem'd hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death--the
Mephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attachés--the dreaded
Scylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendously
dangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the free
States, (far more numerous than is supposed)--the long marches
in summer--the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, as on the rush to
Gettysburg in '63--the night battles in the woods, as under Hooker
at Chancellorsville--the camps in winter--the military prisons--the
hospitals--(alas! alas! the hospitals.)
The secession war? Nay, let me call it the Union war. Though
whatever call'd, it is even yet too near us--too vast and too closely
overshadowing--its branches unform'd yet, (but certain,) shooting too
far into the future--and the most indicative and mightiest of them yet
ungrown. A great literature will yet arise out of the era of those
four years, those scenes--era compressing centuries of native passion,
first-class pictures, tempests of life and death--an inexhaustible mine
for the histories, drama, romance, and even philosophy, of peoples to
come--indeed the verteber of poetry and art, (of personal character
too,) for all future America--far more grand, in my opinion, to the
hands capable of it, than Homer's siege of Troy, or the French wars to
Shakspere.
But I must leave these speculations, and come to the theme I have
assign'd and limited myself to. Of the actual murder of President
Lincoln, though so much has been written, probably the facts are yet
very indefinite in most persons' minds. I read from my memoranda,
written at the time, and revised frequently and finally since.
The day, April 14, 1865, seems to have been a pleasant one throughout
the whole land--the moral atmosphere pleasant too--the long storm, so
dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended
at last by the sun-rise of such an absolute National victory, and utter
break-down of Secessionism--we almost doubted our own senses! Lee had
capitulated beneath the apple-tree of Appomattox. The other armies, the
flanges of the revolt, swiftly follow'd. And could it really be, then?
Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and failure and disorder,
was there really come the confirm'd, unerring sign of plan, like a
shaft of pure light--of rightful rule--of God? So the day, as I say, was
propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. (I remember where
I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many
lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge
to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always
reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these
blossoms. It never fails.)
But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular
afternoon paper of Washington, the little "Evening Star," had spatter'd
all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a
sensational manner, in a hundred different places, _The President and
his Lady will be at the Theatre this evening_.... (Lincoln was fond
of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember
thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor
in the stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries,
should sit there and be so completely interested and absorb'd in those
human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures,
foreign spirit, and flatulent text.)
On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay
costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young
folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many
people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--(and
over all, and saturating all, that vast, vague wonder, _Victory_,
the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the
thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all music and perfumes.)
The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witness'd the play
from the large stage-boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one,
and profusely drap'd with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the
piece--one of those singularly written compositions which have at least
the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental
action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes
not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic, or
spiritual nature--a piece, ("Our American Cousin,") in which, among
other characters, so call'd, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never
seen, or the least like it ever seen, in North America, is introduced
in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such
phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama--had progress'd
through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy,
or non-such, or whatever it is to be call'd, and to offset it, or finish
it out, as if in Nature's and the great Muse's mockery of those poor
mimes, came interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be
described at all, (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems
to this hour to have left a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)--and yet
partially to be described as I now proceed to give it. There is a scene
in the play representing a modern parlor in which two unprecedented
English ladies are inform'd by the impossible Yankee that he is not
a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching
purposes; after which, the comments being finish'd, the dramatic trio
make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. At this period came the
murder of Abraham Lincoln.
Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching into
the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, &c.,
of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actual
murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest
occurrence--the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation,
for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, with
the change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol-shot, which
not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time--and yet a
moment's hush--somehow, surely, a vague startled thrill--and then,
through the ornamented, draperied, starr'd and striped space-way of the
President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands
and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, (a
distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet,) falls out of position,
catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery, (the American flag,)
falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had
happen'd, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)--and so
the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain black broadcloth,
bare-headed, with full, glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad
animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange
calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife--walks along not much
back from the footlights--turns fully toward the audience his face
of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with
desperation, perhaps insanity--launches out in a firm and steady voice
the words _Sic semper tyrannis_--and then walks with neither slow
nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and
disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene--making the mimic ones
preposterous--had it not all been rehears'd, in blank, by Booth,
beforehand?)
A moment's hush--a scream--the cry of _murder_--Mrs. Lincoln leaning out
of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing
to the retreating figure, _He has kill'd the President._ And still a
moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then the deluge!--then that
mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of
a horse's hoofs clattering with speed)--the people burst through chairs
and railings, and break them up--there is inextricable confusion
and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons fall, and are trampl'd
on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills
to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible
carnival--the audience rush generally upon it, at least the strong men
do--the actors and actresses are all there in their play-costumes and
painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge--the screams
and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to
pass up water from the stage to the President's box--others try to
clamber up--&c., &c.
In the midst of all this, the soldiers of the President's guard,
with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--(some two hundred
altogether)--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially
the upper ones, inflam'd with fury, literally charging the audience with
fix'd bayonets, muskets and pistols, snouting _Clear out! clear out!
you sons of_----.... Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it rather,
inside the play-house that night.
Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people,
fill'd with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, come near
committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case
was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got
started against one man, either for words he utter'd, or perhaps without
any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to actually hang him on
a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen,
who placed him in their midst, and fought their way slowly and amid
great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the
whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro--the night,
the yells, the pale faces, many frighten'd people trying in vain to
extricate themselves--the attack'd man, not yet freed from the jaws
of death, looking like a corpse--the silent, resolute, half-dozen
policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady
through all those eddying swarms--made a fitting side-scene to the grand
tragedy of the murder. They gain'd the station house with the protected
man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged him in
the morning.
And in the midst of that pandemonium, infuriated soldiers, the audience
and the crowd, the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its
paint-pots, spangles, and gas-lights--the life blood from those veins,
the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, and death's ooze
already begins its little bubbles on the lips.
Thus the visible incidents and surroundings of Abraham Lincoln's murder,
as they really occur'd. Thus ended the attempted secession of these
States; thus the four years' war. But the main things come subtly
and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward--neither military,
political, nor (great as those are,) historical. I say, certain
secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of this death, are,
in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murder itself. Not that
Mr. Lincoln strings the principal points and personages of the
period, like beads, upon the single string of his career. Not that his
idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance and disappearance, stamps this
Republic with a stamp more mark'd and enduring than any yet given by
any one man--(more even than Washington's;)--but, join'd with these,
the immeasurable value and meaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me,
in senses finally dearest to a nation, (and here all our own)--the
imaginative and artistic senses--the literary and dramatic ones. Not in
any common or low meaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the
race, and to every age. A long and varied series of contradictory
events arrives at last at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial
denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the
secession period comes to a head, and is gather'd in one brief flash of
lightning-illumination--one simple, fierce deed. Its sharp culmination,
and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angry problems,
illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where
the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other,
suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long
drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than
fiction. Fit radiation--fit close! How the imagination--how the student
loves these things! America, too, is to have them. For not in all
great deaths, nor far or near--not Caesar in the Roman senate-house,
or Napoleon passing away in the wild night-storm at St. Helena--not
Paleologus, falling, desperately fighting, piled over dozens deep with
Grecian corpses--not calm old Socrates, drinking the hemlock--outvies
that terminus of the secession war, in one man's life, here in our
midst, in our own time--that seal of the emancipation of three million
slaves--that parturition and delivery of our at last really free
Republic, born again, henceforth to commence its career of genuine
homogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself.
Nor will ever future American Patriots and Unionists, indifferently over
the whole land, or North or South, find a better moral to their lesson.
The final use of the greatest men of a Nation is, after all, not with
reference to their deeds in themselves, or their direct bearing on their
times or lands. The final use of a heroic-eminent life--especially of a
heroic-eminent death--is its indirect filtering into the nation and the
race, and to give, often at many removes, but unerringly, age after age,
color and fibre to the personalism of the youth and maturity of that
age, and of mankind. Then there is a cement to the whole people,
subtler, more underlying, than any thing in written constitution, or
courts or armies--namely, the cement of a death identified thoroughly
with that people, at its head, and for its sake. Strange, (is it not?)
that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so
condense--perhaps only really, lastingly condense--a Nationality.
I repeat it--the grand deaths of the race--the dramatic deaths of every
nationality--are its most important inheritance-value--in some respects
beyond its literature and art--(as the hero is beyond his finest
portrait, and the battle itself beyond its choicest song or epic.) Is
not here indeed the point underlying all tragedy? the famous pieces of
the Grecian masters--and all masters? Why, if the old Greeks had had
this man, what trilogies of plays--what epics--would have been made
out of him! How the rhapsodes would have recited him! How quickly that
quaint tall form would have enter'd into the region where men vitalize
gods, and gods divinify men! But Lincoln, his times, his death--great
as any, any age--belong altogether to our own, and our autochthonic.
(Sometimes indeed I think our American days, our own stage--the actors
we know and have shaken hands, or talk'd with--more fateful than
anything in Eschylus--more heroic than the fighters around Troy--afford
kings of men for our Democracy prouder than Agamemnon--models of
character cute and hardy as Ulysses--deaths more pitiful than Priam's.)
When, centuries hence, (as it must, in my opinion, be centuries hence
before the life of these States, or of Democracy, can be really written
and illustrated,) the leading historians and dramatists seek for some
personage, some special event, incisive enough to mark with deepest
cut, and mnemonize, this turbulent Nineteenth century of ours, (not only
these States, but all over the political and social world)--something,
perhaps, to close that gorgeous procession of European feudalism, with
all its pomp and caste-prejudices, (of whose long train we in America
are yet so inextricably the heirs)--something to identify with terrible
identification, by far the greatest revolutionary step in the history of
the United States, (perhaps the greatest of the world, our century)--the
absolute extirpation and erasure of slavery from the States--those
historians will seek in vain for any point to serve more thoroughly
their purpose, than Abraham Lincoln's death.
Dear to the Muse--thrice dear to Nationality--to the whole human
race--precious to this Union--precious to Democracy--unspeakably and
forever precious--their first great Martyr Chief.