Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow,
battle and war, and come near to the promised land of peace into which
he might not pass over. Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for
this people? Since the November of 1860, his horizon has been black
with storms.
By day and by night, he trod a way of danger and darkness. On his
shoulders rested a government dearer to him than his own life. At its
integrity millions of men were striking at home. Upon this government
foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of
storms, and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon
thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not
on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble
soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm
of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with
the mercurial, in hours of defeat, to the depths of despondency, he
held on with immovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against
hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution that it
might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through
four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing
the sin of His people as by fire.
At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The
mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness and
the East came rushing toward us with arms full of joy for all our
sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceedingly that had sorrowed
immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy and rest,
such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked upon it as Moses
looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a nation proclaimed
that he had gone from among us. Not thine the sorrow, but ours,
sainted soul. Thou hast, indeed, entered the promised land, while we
are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm
upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou art
sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and
weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice exceedingly,--thou that hast
enough suffered! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee in this
great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. Around thee are the
royal men that have ennobled human life in every age. Kingly art thou,
with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore.
Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from
thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as
high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it.
In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which
thou hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, an everlasting name
in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall
last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity and
goodness.
Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the
joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as
sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had
fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept
business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in
irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were
strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or deeper yet, many
could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness.
That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the
land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our
footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was
staunched and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the
horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to
rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth--these
thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and
desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the
heated air of midsummer days--all these kindled up such a surge of joy
as no words may describe.
In one hour, joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A
sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through
the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the
flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring
blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever
so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings?
It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow--noon and
midnight, without a space between.
The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it
stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an
earthquake, and bewildered to find everything that they were
accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer
solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get strength to
feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending
dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed
them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake,
or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed
down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief;
this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous
household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were
bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their
dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of
nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly.
All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for
nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was
still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to
generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments,
found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels,
but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and
sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and
covered up animosities, in an hour brought a divided people into unity
of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish.
This Nation has dissolved--but in tears only. It stands four-square,
more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither
wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty
with stronger hate and love to-day than ever before. The government is
not weakened; it is made stronger. How naturally and easily were the
ranks closed! Another steps forward, in the hour that one fell, to
take his place and his mantle; and I avow my belief that he will be
found a man true to every instinct of liberty; true to the whole trust
that is reposed in him; vigilant of the Constitution; careful of the
laws; wise for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has
known what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize
liberty from bitter personal experiences.
Where could the head of government of any monarchy be smitten down by
the hand of an assassin, and the funds not quiver or fall one-half of
one per cent? After a long period of national disturbance, after four
years of drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of the
country, in the height and top of our burdens, the heart of this
people is such that now, when the head of government is stricken down,
the public funds do not waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our
mountains.
Republican institutions have been vindicated in this experience as
they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years,
rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems in the providence of God, to
have been clothed now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an
aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected
nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to
all nations of the earth: "Republican liberty, based upon true
Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe."
Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new
influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before
they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be
gathered like those of Washington, and your children and your
children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep
wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as
idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake,
and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I
swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the
country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his
hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred,
and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror.
I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery, with an
unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this
man, his inflexible conscience for the right, and yet his gentleness,
as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the
heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of his
country shake out of place. I swear you to an emulation of his
justice, his moderation, and his mercy.
You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight million to
whom his name was as the name of an angel of God? There will be
wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in
hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout
the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom
God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, learn
that he has fallen, who shall comfort them? O, thou Shepherd of
Israel, that didst comfort Thy people of old, to Thy care we commit
the helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved.
And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when
alive. The Nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and
States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn
progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is
Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live
dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere
where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life
now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly
life can be.
Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his
peace. Your bells and bands and muffled drums sound triumph in his
ear. Wail and weep here; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass
on.
Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man,
and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror.
Not thine any more, but the Nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give
him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his
dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to
that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that
move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem. Ye people,
behold a martyr whose blood as so many articulate words, pleads for
fidelity, for law, for liberty.