_Senators, Representatives of America:_
That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as any truth of
physical science. On the great moving power which is from the
beginning hangs the world of the senses and the world of thought and
action. Eternal wisdom marshals the great procession of the nations,
working in patient continuity through the ages, never halting and
never abrupt, encompassing all events in its oversight, and ever
effecting its will, though mortals may slumber in apathy or oppose
with madness. Kings are lifted up or thrown down, nations come and go,
republics flourish and wither, dynasties pass away like a tale that
is told; but nothing is by chance, though men, in their ignorance of
causes, may think so. The deeds of time are governed, as well as
judged, by the decrees of eternity. The caprice of fleeting existences
bends to the immovable omnipotence, which plants its foot on all the
centuries and has neither change of purpose nor repose. Sometimes,
like a messenger through the thick darkness of night, it steps along
mysterious ways; but when the hour strikes for a people, or for
mankind, to pass into a new form of being, unseen hands draw the bolts
from the gates of futurity; an all-subsiding influence prepares the
minds of men for the coming revolution; those who plan resistance find
themselves in conflict with the will of Providence rather than with
human devices; and all hearts and all understandings, most of all the
opinions and influences of the unwilling, are wonderfully attracted
and compelled to bear forward the change, which becomes more an
obedience to the law of universal nature than submission to the
arbitrament of man.
In the fulness of time a republic rose up in the wilderness of
America. Thousands of years had passed away before this child of the
ages could be born. From whatever there was of good in the systems of
former centuries she drew her nourishment; the wrecks of the past were
her warnings. With the deepest sentiment of faith fixed in her inmost
nature, she disenthralled religion from bondage to temporal power,
that her worship might be worship only in spirit and in truth. The
wisdom which had passed from India through Greece, with what Greece
had added of her own; the jurisprudence of Rome; the mediæval
municipalities; the Teutonic method of representation; the political
experience of England; the benignant wisdom of the expositors of the
law of nature and of nations in France and Holland, all shed on her
their selectest influence. She washed the gold of political wisdom
from the sands wherever it was found; she cleft it from the rocks; she
gleaned it among ruins. Out of all the discoveries of statesmen and
sages, out of all the experience of past human life, she compiled a
perennial political philosophy, the primordial principles of national
ethics. The wise men of Europe sought the best government in a mixture
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; America went behind these
names to extract from them the vital elements of social forms, and
blend them harmoniously in the free commonwealth, which comes nearest
to the illustration of the natural equality of all men. She intrusted
the guardianship of established rights to law, the movements of reform
to the spirit of the people, and drew her force from the happy
reconciliation of both.
Republics had heretofore been limited to small cantons, or cities and
their dependencies; America, doing that of which the like had not
before been known upon the earth, or believed by kings and statesmen
to be possible, extended her republic across a continent. Under her
auspices the vine of liberty took deep root and filled the land; the
hills were covered with its shadow, its boughs were like the goodly
cedars, and reached unto both oceans. The fame of this only daughter
of freedom went out into all the lands of the earth; from her the
human race drew hope.
Neither hereditary monarchy nor hereditary aristocracy planted itself
on our soil; the only hereditary condition that fastened itself upon
us was servitude. Nature works in sincerity, and is ever true to its
law. The bee hives honey; the viper distils poison; the vine stores
its juices, and so do the poppy and the upas. In like manner every
thought and every action ripens its seed, each according to its kind.
In the individual man, and still more in a nation, a just idea gives
life, and progress, and glory; a false conception portends disaster,
shame, and death. A hundred and twenty years ago a West Jersey Quaker
wrote: "This trade of importing slaves is dark gloominess hanging over
the land; the consequences will be grievous to posterity." At the
North the growth of slavery was arrested by natural causes; in the
region nearest the tropics it throve rankly, and worked itself into
the organism of the rising States. Virginia stood between the two,
with soil, and climate, and resources demanding free labor, yet
capable of the profitable employment of the slave. She was the land of
great statesmen, and they saw the danger of her being whelmed under
the rising flood in time to struggle against the delusions of avarice
and pride. Ninety-four years ago the legislature of Virginia addressed
the British king, saying that the trade in slaves was "of great
inhumanity," was opposed to the "security and happiness" of their
constituents, "would in time have the most destructive influence," and
"endanger their very existence." And the king answered them that,
"upon pain of his highest displeasure, the importation of slaves
should not be in any respect obstructed." "Pharisaical Britain," wrote
Franklin in behalf of Virginia, "to pride thyself in setting free a
single slave that happened to land on thy coasts, while thy laws
continue a traffic whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged
into a slavery that is entailed on their posterity." "A serious view
of this subject," said Patrick Henry in 1773, "gives a gloomy prospect
to future times." In the same year George Mason wrote to the
legislature of Virginia: "The laws of impartial Providence may avenge
our injustice upon our posterity." Conforming his conduct to his
convictions, Jefferson, in Virginia and in the Continental Congress,
with the approval of Edmund Pendleton, branded the slave-trade as
piracy; and he fixed in the Declaration of Independence, as the
corner-stone of America: "All men are created equal, with an
unalienable right to liberty." On the first organization of temporary
governments for the continental domain, Jefferson, but for the default
of New Jersey, would, in 1784, have consecrated every part of that
territory to freedom. In the formation of the national Constitution,
Virginia, opposed by a part of New England, vainly struggled to
abolish the slave trade at once and forever; and when the ordinance
of 1787 was introduced by Nathan Dane without the clause prohibiting
slavery, it was through the favorable disposition of Virginia and the
South that the clause of Jefferson was restored, and the whole
northwestern territory--all the territory that then belonged to the
nation--was reserved for the labor of freemen.
The hope prevailed in Virginia that the abolition of the slave-trade
would bring with it the gradual abolition of slavery; but the
expectation was doomed to disappointment. In supporting incipient
measures for emancipation, Jefferson encountered difficulties greater
than he could overcome, and, after vain wrestlings, the words that
broke from him, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is
just, that His justice cannot sleep forever," were words of despair.
It was the desire of Washington's heart that Virginia should remove
slavery by a public act; and as the prospects of a general
emancipation grew more and more dim, he, in utter hopelessness of the
action of the State, did all that he could by bequeathing freedom to
his own slaves. Good and true men had, from the days of 1776,
suggested the colonizing of the negro in the home of his ancestors;
but the idea of colonization was thought to increase the difficulty of
emancipation, and, in spite of strong support, while it accomplished
much good for Africa, it proved impracticable as a remedy at home.
Madison, who in early life disliked slavery so much that he wished "to
depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves"; Madison, who
held that where slavery exists "the republican theory becomes
fallacious"; Madison, who in the last years of his life would not
consent to the annexation of Texas, lest his countrymen should fill it
with slaves; Madison, who said, "slavery is the greatest evil under
which the nation labors--a portentous evil--an evil, moral, political,
and economical--a sad blot on our free country"--went mournfully into
old age with the cheerless words: "No satisfactory plan has yet been
devised for taking out the stain."
The men of the Revolution passed away; a new generation sprang up,
impatient that an institution to which they clung should be condemned
as inhuman, unwise, and unjust. In the throes of discontent at the
self-reproach of their fathers, and blinded by the lustre of wealth to
be acquired by the culture of a new staple, they devised the theory
that slavery, which they would not abolish, was not evil, but good.
They turned on the friends of colonization, and confidently demanded:
"Why take black men from a civilized and Christian country, where
their labor is a source of immense gain, and a power to control the
markets of the world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry,
and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers, but not
theirs? Slavery is a blessing. Were they not in their ancestral land
naked, scarcely lifted above brutes, ignorant of the course of the
sun, controlled by nature? And in their new abode have they not been
taught to know the difference of the seasons, to plough, and plant,
and reap, to drive oxen, to tame the horse, to exchange their scanty
dialect for the richest of all the languages among men, and the stupid
adoration of follies for the purest religion? And since slavery is
good for the blacks, it is good for their masters, bringing opulence
and the opportunity of educating a race. The slavery of the black is
good in itself; he shall serve the white man forever." And nature,
which better understood the quality of fleeting interest and passion,
laughed as it caught the echo, "man" and "forever!"
A regular development of pretensions followed the new declaration with
logical consistency. Under the old declaration every one of the States
had retained, each for itself, the right of manumitting all slaves by
an ordinary act of legislation; now the power of the people over
servitude through their legislatures was curtailed, and the privileged
class was swift in imposing legal and constitutional obstructions of
the people themselves. The power of emancipation was narrowed or taken
away. The slave might not be disquieted by education. There remained
an unconfessed consciousness that the system of bondage was wrong, and
a restless memory that it was at variance with the true American
tradition; its safety was therefore to be secured by political
organization. The generation that made the Constitution took care for
the predominance of freedom in Congress by the ordinance of Jefferson;
the new school aspired to secure for slavery an equality of votes in
the Senate, and while it hinted at an organic act that should concede
to the collective South a veto power on national legislation, it
assumed that each State separately had the right to revise and nullify
laws of the United States, according to the discretion of its
judgment.
The new theory hung as a bias on the foreign relations of the country;
there could be no recognition of Hayti, nor even of the American
colony of Liberia; and the world was given to understand that the
establishment of free labor in Cuba would be a reason for wresting
that island from Spain. Territories were annexed--Louisiana, Florida,
Texas, half of Mexico; slavery must have its share in them all, and it
accepted for a time a dividing line between the unquestioned domain of
free labor and that in which involuntary labor was to be tolerated. A
few years passed away, and the new school, strong and arrogant,
demanded and received an apology for applying the Jefferson proviso to
Oregon.
The application of that proviso was interrupted for three
administrations, but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that
the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of
parting slavery, and on his deathbed he counseled secession.
Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the
abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of
freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural development.
The death-struggle for California was followed by a short truce; but
the new school of politicians, who said that slavery was not evil, but
good, soon sought to recover the ground they had lost, and, confident
of securing Kansas, they demanded that the established line in the
Territories between freedom and slavery should be blotted out. The
country, believing in the strength and enterprise and expansive energy
of freedom, made answer, though reluctantly: "Be it so; let there be
no strife between brethren; let freedom and slavery compete for the
Territories on equal terms, in a fair field, under an impartial
administration"; and on this theory, if on any, the contest might have
been left to the decision of time.
The South started back in appallment from its victory, for it knew
that a fair competition foreboded its defeat. But where could it now
find an ally to save it from its own mistake? What I have next to say
is spoken with no emotion but regret. Our meeting to-day is, as it
were, at the grave, in the presence of eternity, and the truth must be
uttered in soberness and sincerity. In a great republic, as was
observed more than two thousand years ago, any attempt to overturn the
state owes its strength to aid from some branch of the government. The
Chief Justice of the United States, without any necessity or occasion,
volunteered to come to the rescue of the theory of slavery; and from
his court there lay no appeal but to the bar of humanity and history.
Against the Constitution, against the memory of the nation, against a
previous decision, against a series of enactments, he decided that the
slave is property; that slave property is entitled to no less
protection than any other property; that the Constitution upholds it
in every Territory against any act of a local legislature, and even
against Congress itself; or, as the President for that term tersely
promulgated the saying, "Kansas is as much a slave State as South
Carolina or Georgia; slavery, by virtue of the Constitution, exists in
every Territory." The municipal character of slavery being thus taken
away, and slave property decreed to be "sacred," the authority of the
courts was invoked to introduce it by the comity of law into States
where slavery had been abolished, and in one of the courts of the
United States a judge pronounced the African slave-trade legitimate,
and numerous and powerful advocates demanded its restoration.
Moreover, the Chief Justice, in his elaborate opinion, announced what
had never been heard from any magistrate of Greece or Rome; what was
unknown to civil law, and canon law, and feudal law, and common law,
and constitutional law; unknown to Jay, to Rutledge, Ellsworth and
Marshall--that there are "slave races." The spirit of evil is
intensely logical. Having the authority of this decision, five States
swiftly followed the earlier example of a sixth, and opened the way
for reducing the free negro to bondage; the migrating free negro
became a slave if he but entered within the jurisdiction of a seventh;
and an eighth, from its extent, and soil, and mineral resources,
destined to incalculable greatness, closed its eyes on its coming
prosperity, and enacted, as by Taney's dictum it had the right to do,
that every free black man who would live within its limits must
accept the condition of slavery for himself and his posterity.
Only one step more remained to be taken. Jefferson and the leading
statesmen of his day held fast to the idea that the enslavement of the
African was socially, morally and politically wrong. The new school
was founded exactly upon the opposite idea; and they resolved, first,
to distract the democratic party, for which the Supreme Court had now
furnished the means, and then to establish a new government, with
negro slavery for its corner-stone, as socially, morally, and
politically right.
As the Presidential election drew on, one of the great traditional
parties did not make its appearance; the other reeled as it sought to
preserve its old position, and the candidate who most nearly
represented its best opinion, driven by patriotic zeal, roamed the
country from end to end to speak for union, eager, at least, to
confront its enemies, yet not having hope that it would find its
deliverance through him. The storm rose to a whirlwind; who would
allay its wrath? The most experienced statesmen of the country had
failed; there was no hope from those who were great after the flesh:
could relief come from one whose wisdom was like the wisdom of little
children?
The choice of America fell on a man born west of the Alleghenies, in
the cabin of poor people of Hardin county, Kentucky--ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
His mother could read, but not write; his father would do neither; but
his parents sent him, with an old spelling-book, to school, and he
learned in his childhood to do both.
When eight years old he floated down the Ohio with his father on a
raft, which bore the family and all their possessions to the shore of
Indiana; and, child as he was, he gave help as they toiled through
dense forests to the interior of Spencer County. There, in the land of
free labor, he grew up in a log-cabin, with the solemn solitude for
his teacher in his meditative hours. Of Asiatic literature he knew
only the Bible; of Greek, Latin, and mediæval, no more than the
translation of Æsop's Fables; of English, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. The traditions of George Fox and William Penn passed to him
dimly along the lines of two centuries through his ancestors, who were
Quakers.
Otherwise his education was altogether American. The Declaration of
Independence was his compendium of political wisdom, the Life of
Washington his constant study, and something of Jefferson and Madison
reached him through Henry Clay, whom he honored from boyhood. For the
rest, from day to day, he lived the life of the American people,
walked in its light, reasoned with its reason, thought with its power
of thought, felt the beatings of its mighty heart, and so was in every
way a child of nature, a child of the West, a child of America.
At nineteen, feeling impulses of ambition to get on in the world, he
engaged himself to go down the Mississippi in a flatboat, receiving
ten dollars a month for his wages, and afterwards he made the trip
once more. At twenty-one he drove his father's cattle as the family
migrated to Illinois, and split rails to fence in the new homestead in
the wild. At twenty-three he was a captain of volunteers in the Black
Hawk war. He kept a store. He learned something of surveying, but of
English literature he added to Bunyan nothing but Shakespeare's plays.
At twenty-five he was elected to the legislature of Illinois, where he
served eight years. At twenty-seven he was admitted to the bar. In
1837 he chose his home in Springfield, the beautiful centre of the
richest land in the State. In 1847 he was a member of the national
Congress, where he voted about forty times in favor of the principle
of the Jefferson proviso. In 1849 he sought, eagerly but
unsuccessfully, the place of Commissioner of the Land Office, and he
refused an appointment that would have transferred his residence to
Oregon. In 1854 he gave his influence to elect from Illinois, to the
American Senate, a Democrat, who would certainly do justice to Kansas.
In 1858, as the rival of Douglas, he went before the people of the
mighty Prairie State, saying, "This Union cannot permanently endure
half slave and half free; the Union will not be dissolved, but the
house will cease to be divided"; and now, in 1861, with no experience
whatever as an executive officer, while States were madly flying from
their orbit, and wise men knew not where to find counsel, this
descendant of Quakers, this pupil of Bunyan, this offspring of the
great West, was elected President of America.
He measured the difficulty of the duty that devolved upon him, and was
resolved to fulfil it. As on the eleventh of February, 1861, he left
Springfield, which for a quarter of a century had been his happy home,
to the crowd of his friends and neighbors, whom he was never more to
meet, he spoke a solemn farewell: "I know not how soon I shall see you
again. A duty has devolved upon me, greater than that which has
devolved upon any other man since Washington. He never would have
succeeded, except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at
all times relied. On the same Almighty Being I place my reliance. Pray
that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot
succeed, but with which success is certain." To the men of Indiana he
said: "I am but an accidental, temporary instrument; it is your
business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty." At the
capital of Ohio he said: "Without a name, without a reason why I
should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not
rest even upon the Father of his country." At various places in New
York, especially at Albany, before the legislature, which tendered him
the united support of the great Empire State, he said: "While I hold
myself the humblest of all the individuals who have ever been elevated
to the Presidency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any of
them. I bring a true heart to the work. I must rely upon the people of
the whole country for support, and with their sustaining aid, even I,
humble as I am, cannot fail to carry the ship of state safely through
the storm." To the assembly of New Jersey, at Trenton, he explained:
"I shall take the ground I deem most just to the North, the East, the
West, the South, and the whole country, in good temper, certainly with
no malice to any section. I am devoted to peace, but it may be
necessary to put the foot down firmly." In the old Independence Hall,
of Philadelphia, he said: "I have never had a feeling politically that
did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of
Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this
country, but to the world in all future time. If the country cannot be
saved without giving up that principle, I would rather be assassinated
on the spot than surrender it. I have said nothing but what I am
willing to live and die by."
Travelling, in the dead of night to escape assassination, LINCOLN
arrived at Washington nine days before his inauguration. The outgoing
President, at the opening of the session of Congress, had still kept
as the majority of his advisors men engaged in treason; had declared
that in case of even an "imaginary" apprehension of danger from
notions of freedom among the slaves, "disunion would become
inevitable." LINCOLN and others had questioned the opinion of Taney;
such impugning he ascribed to the "factious temper of the times." The
favorite doctrine of the majority of the Democratic party on the power
of a territorial legislature over slavery he condemned as an attack on
"the sacred rights of property." The State legislature, he insisted,
must repeal what he called "their unconstitutional and obnoxious
enactments," and which, if such, were "null and void" or "it would be
impossible for any human power to save the Union." Nay! if these
unimportant acts were not repealed, "the injured States would be
justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union."
He maintained that no State might secede at its sovereign will and
pleasure; that the Union was meant for perpetuity, and that Congress
might attempt to preserve it, but only by conciliation; that "the
sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force"; that
"the last desperate remedy of a despairing people would be an
explanatory amendment recognizing the decision of the Supreme Court of
the United States." The American Union he called "a confederacy" of
States, and he thought it a duty to make the appeal for the amendment
"before any of these States should separate themselves from the
Union." The views of the Lieutenant-General, containing some patriotic
advice, "conceded the right of secession," pronounced a quadruple
rupture of the Union "a smaller evil than the reuniting of the
fragments by the sword," and "eschewed the idea of invading a seceded
State." After changes in the Cabinet, the President informed Congress
that "matters were still worse"; that "the South suffered serious
grievances," which should be redressed "in peace." The day after this
message the flag of the Union was fired upon from Fort Morris, and
the insult was not revenged or noticed. Senators in Congress
telegraphed to their constituents to seize the national forts, and
they were not arrested. The finances of the country were grievously
embarrassed. Its little army was not within reach; the part of it in
Texas, with all its stores, was made over by its commander to rebels.
One State after another voted in convention to secede. A peace
congress, so called, met at the request of Virginia, to concert the
terms of a capitulation which should secure permission for the
continuance of the Union. Congress, in both branches, sought to devise
conciliatory expedients; the territories of the country were organized
in a manner not to conflict with any pretensions of the South, or any
decision of the Supreme Court; and, nevertheless, the representatives
of the rebellion formed at Montgomery a provisional government, and
pursued their relentless purpose with such success that the
Lieutenant-General feared the city of Washington might find itself
"included in a foreign country," and proposed, among the options for
the consideration of LINCOLN, to bid the wayward States "depart in
peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast
unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and
prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, seemingly the
moment of high but delusive aspirations, the confused wreck of
inchoate magnificence, sadder than any ruin of Egyptian Thebes or
Athens.
The fourth of March came. With instinctive wisdom the new President,
speaking to the people on taking the oath of office, put aside every
question that divided the country, and gained a right to universal
support by planting himself on the single idea of Union. The Union he
declared to be unbroken and perpetual, and he announced his
determination to fulfil "the simple duty of taking care that the laws
be faithfully executed in all the States." Seven days later, the
convention of Confederate States unanimously adopted a constitution of
their own, and the new government was authoritatively announced to be
founded on the idea that the negro race is a slave race; that slavery
is its natural and normal condition. The issue was made up, whether
the great republic was to maintain its providential place in the
history of mankind, or a rebellion founded on negro slavery gain a
recognition of its principle throughout the civilized world. To the
disaffected LINCOLN had said, "You can have no conflict without being
yourselves the aggressors." To fire the passions of the southern
portion of the people, the confederate government chose to become
aggressors, and, on the morning of the twelfth of April, began the
bombardment of Fort Sumter, and compelled its evacuation.
It is the glory of the late President that he had perfect faith in the
perpetuity of the Union. Supported in advance by Douglas, who spoke as
with the voice of a million, he instantly called a meeting of
Congress, and summoned the people to come up and repossess the forts,
places, and property which had been seized from the Union. The men of
the North were trained in schools; industrious and frugal; many of
them delicately bred, their minds teeming with ideas and fertile in
plans of enterprise; given to the culture of the arts; eager in the
pursuit of wealth, yet employing wealth less for ostentation than for
developing the resources of their country; seeking happiness in the
calm of domestic life; and such lovers of peace, that for generations
they had been reputed unwarlike. Now, at the cry of their country in
its distress, they rose up with unappeasable patriotism; not
hirelings--the purest and the best blood in the land. Sons of a pious
ancestry, with a clear perception of duty, unclouded faith and fixed
resolve to succeed, they thronged around the President, to support the
wronged, the beautiful flag of the nation. The halls of theological
seminaries sent forth their young men, whose lips were touched with
eloquence, whose hearts kindled with devotion, to serve in the ranks,
and make their way to command only as they learned the art of war.
Striplings in the colleges, as well the most gentle and the most
studious, those of sweetest temper and loveliest character and
brightest genius, passed from their classes to the camp. The lumbermen
from the forests, the mechanics from their benches, where they had
been trained, by the exercise of political rights, to share the life
and hope of the republic, to feel their responsibility to their
forefathers, their posterity and mankind, went to the front, resolved
that their dignity, as a constituent part of this republic, should
not be impaired. Farmers and sons of farmers left the land but half
ploughed, the grain but half planted, and, taking up the musket,
learned to face without fear the presence of peril and the coming of
death in the shocks of war, while their hearts were still attracted to
their herds and fields, and all the tender affections of home.
Whatever there was of truth and faith and public love in the common
heart, broke out with one expression. The mighty winds blew from every
quarter, to fan the flame of the sacred and unquenchable fire.
For a time the war was thought to be confined to our own domestic
affairs, but it was soon seen that it involved the destinies of
mankind; its principles and causes shook the politics of Europe to the
centre, and from Lisbon to Pekin divided the governments of the world.
There was a kingdom whose people had in an eminent degree attained to
freedom of industry and the security of person and property. Its
middle class rose to greatness. Out of that class sprung the noblest
poets and philosophers, whose words built up the intellect of its
people; skilful navigators, to find out for its merchants the many
paths of the oceans; discoverers in natural science, whose inventions
guided its industry to wealth, till it equalled any nation of the
world in letters, and excelled all in trade and commerce. But its
government was become a government of land, and not of men; every
blade of grass was represented, but only a small minority of the
people. In the transition from the feudal forms the heads of the
social organization freed themselves from the military services which
were the conditions of their tenure, and, throwing the burden on the
industrial classes, kept all the soil to themselves. Vast estates that
had been managed by monasteries as endowments for religion and charity
were impropriated to swell the wealth of courtiers and favorites; and
the commons, where the poor man once had his right of pasture, were
taken away, and, under forms of law, enclosed distributively within
the domains of the adjacent landholders. Although no law forbade any
inhabitant from purchasing land, the costliness of the transfer
constituted a prohibition; so that it was the rule of the country that
the plough should not be in the hands of its owner. The Church was
rested on a contradiction; claiming to be an embodiment of absolute
truth, it was a creature of the statute-book.
The progress of time increased the terrible contrast between wealth
and poverty. In their years of strength the laboring people, cut off
from all share in governing that state, derived a scant support from
the severest toil, and had no hope for old age but in public charity
or death. A grasping ambition had dotted the world with military
posts, kept watch over our borders on the northeast, at the Bermudas,
in the West Indies, appropriated the gates of the Pacific, of the
Southern and of the Indian ocean, hovered on our northwest at
Vancouver, held the whole of the newest continent, and the entrances
to the old Mediterranean and Red Sea, and garrisoned forts all the way
from Madras to China. That aristocracy had gazed with terror on the
growth of a commonwealth where freeholders existed by the million, and
religion was not in bondage to the state, and now they could not
repress their joy at its perils. They had not one word of sympathy for
the kind-hearted poor man's son whom America had chosen for her chief;
they jeered at his large hands, and long feet, and ungainly stature;
and the British secretary of state for foreign affairs made haste to
send word through the places of Europe that the great republic was in
its agony; that the republic was no more; that a headstone was all
that remained due by the law of nations to "the late Union." But it is
written, "Let the dead bury their dead"; they may not bury the living.
Let the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove the worn-out
government of a class, and infuse new life into the British
constitution by confiding rightful power to the people.
But while the vitality of America is indestructible, the British
government hurried to do what never before had been done by Christian
powers; what was in direct conflict with its own exposition of public
law in the time of our struggle for independence. Though the insurgent
States had not a ship in an open harbor, it invested them with all the
rights of a belligerent, even on the ocean; and this, too, when the
rebellion was not only directed against the gentlest and most
beneficent government on earth, without a shadow of justifiable
cause, but when the rebellion was directed against human nature itself
for the perpetual enslavement of a race. And the effect of this
recognition was, that acts in themselves piratical found shelter in
British courts of law. The resources of British capitalists, their
workshops, their armories, their private arsenals, their shipyards,
were in league with the insurgents, and every British harbor in the
wide world became a safe port for British ships, manned by British
sailors, and armed with British guns, to prey on our peaceful
commerce; even on our ships coming from British ports, freighted with
British products, or that had carried gifts of grain to the English
poor. The prime minister, in the House of Commons, sustained by
cheers, scoffed at the thought that their laws could be amended at our
request, so as to preserve real neutrality; and to remonstrances, now
owned to have been just, their secretary of state answered that they
could not change their laws ad infinitum.
The people of America then wished, as they always have wished, as they
still wish, friendly relations with England, and no man in England or
America can desire it more strongly than I. This country has always
yearned for good relations with England. Thrice only in all its
history has that yearning been fairly met: in the days of Hampden and
Cromwell, again in the first ministry of the elder Pitt, and once
again in the ministry of Shelburne. Not that there have not at all
times been just men among the peers of Britain--like Halifax in the
days of James the Second, or a Granville, an Argyll, or a Houghton in
ours; and we cannot be indifferent to a country that produces
statesmen like Cobden and Bright; but the best bower anchor of peace
was the working class of England, who suffered most from our civil
war, but who, while they broke their diminished bread in sorrow,
always encouraged us to persevere.
The act of recognizing the rebel belligerents was concerted with
France--France, so beloved in America, on which she had conferred the
greatest benefits that one people ever conferred on another; France,
which stands foremost on the continent of Europe for the solidity of
her culture, as well as for the bravery and generous impulses of her
sons; France, which for centuries had been moving steadily in her own
way towards intellectual and political freedom. The policy regarding
further colonization of America by European powers, known commonly as
the doctrine of Monroe, had its origin in France, and if it takes any
man's name, should bear the name of Turgot. It was adopted by Louis
the Sixteenth, in the cabinet of which Vergennes was the most
important member. It is emphatically the policy of France, to which,
with transient deviations, the Bourbons, the first Napoleon, the House
of Orleans have adherred.
The late President was perpetually harassed by rumors that the Emperor
Napoleon the Third desired formally to recognize the States in
rebellion as an independent power, and that England held him back by
her reluctance, or France by her traditions of freedom, or he himself
by his own better judgment and clear perception of events. But the
republic of Mexico, on our borders, was, like ourselves, distracted by
a rebellion, and from a similar cause. The monarchy of England had
fastened upon us slavery which did not disappear with independence; in
like manner, the ecclesiastical policy established by the Spanish
council of the Indies, in the days of Charles the Fifth and Philip the
Second, retained its vigor in the Mexican republic.
The fifty years of civil war under which she had languished was due to
the bigoted system which was the legacy of monarchy, just as here the
inheritance of slavery kept alive political strife, and culminated in
civil war. As with us there could be no quiet but through the end of
slavery, so in Mexico there could be no prosperity until the crushing
tyranny of intolerance should cease. The party of slavery in the
United States sent their emissaries to Europe to solicit aid; and so
did the party of the Church in Mexico, as organized by the old Spanish
council of the Indies, but with a different result. Just as the
Republican party had made an end of the rebellion, and was
establishing the best government ever known in that region, and giving
promise to the nation of order, peace, and prosperity, word was
brought us, in the moment of our deepest affliction, that the French
Emperor, moved by a desire to erect in North America a buttress for
imperialism, would transform the republic of Mexico into a
secundo-geniture for the House of Hapsburg. America might complain;
she could not then interpose, and delay seemed justifiable. It was
seen that Mexico could not, with all its wealth of land, compete in
cereal products with our northwest, nor in tropical products with
Cuba, nor could it, under a disputed dynasty, attract capital, or
create public works, or develop mines, or borrow money; so that the
imperial system of Mexico, which was forced at once to recognize the
wisdom of the policy of the republic by adopting it, could prove only
an unremunerating drain on the French treasury for the support of an
Austrian adventurer.
Meantime a new series of momentous questions grows up, and forces
itself on the consideration of the thoughtful. Republicanism has
learned how to introduce into its constitution every element of order,
as well as every element of freedom; but thus far the continuity of
its government has seemed to depend on the continuity of elections. It
is now to be considered how perpetuity is to be secured against
foreign occupation. The successor of Charles the First of England
dated his reign from the death of his father; the Bourbons, coming
back after a long series of revolutions, claimed that the Louis who
became king was the eighteenth of that name. The present Emperor of
the French, disdaining a title from election alone, calls himself
Napoleon the Third. Shall a republic have less power of continuance
when invading armies prevent a peaceful resort to the ballot-box? What
force shall it attach to intervening legislation? What validity to
debts contracted for its overthrow? These momentous questions are, by
the invasion of Mexico, thrown up for solution. A free State once
truly constituted should be as undying as its people: the republic of
Mexico must rise again.
It was the condition of affairs in Mexico that involved the Pope of
Rome in our difficulties so far that he alone among sovereigns
recognized the chief of the Confederate States as a president, and his
supporters as a people; and in letters to two great prelates of the
Catholic Church in the United States gave counsels for peace at a time
when peace meant the victory of secession. Yet events move as they are
ordered. The blessing of the Pope at Rome on the head of Duke
Maximilian could not revive in the nineteenth century the
ecclesiastical policy of the sixteenth, and the result is only a new
proof that there can be no prosperity in the State without religious
freedom.
When it came home to the consciousness of the Americans that the war
which they were waging was a war for the liberty of all the nations of
the world, for freedom itself, they thanked God for giving them
strength to endure the severity of the trial to which He put their
sincerity, and nerved themselves for their duty with an inexorable
will. The President was led along by the greatness of their
self-sacrificing example, and as a child, in a dark night, on a rugged
way, catches hold of the hand of its father for guidance and support,
he clung fast to the hand of the people, and moved calmly through the
gloom. While the statesmanship of Europe was mocking at the hopeless
vanity of their efforts, they put forth such miracles of energy as the
history of the world had never known. The contributions to the popular
loans amounted in four years to twenty-seven and a half hundred
millions of dollars; the revenue of the country from taxation was
increased sevenfold. The navy of the United States, drawing into the
public service the willing militia of the seas, doubled its tonnage in
eight months, and established an actual blockade from Cape Hatteras to
the Rio Grande; in the course of the war it was increased five-fold in
men and in tonnage, while the inventive genius of the country devised
more effective kinds of ordnance, and new forms of naval architecture
in wood and iron. There went into the field, for various terms of
enlistment, about two million men, and in March last the men in the
army exceeded a million: that is to say, nine of every twenty
able-bodied men in the free Territories and States took some part in
the war; and at one time every fifth of their able-bodied men was in
service. In one single month one hundred and sixty-five thousand men
were recruited into service. Once, within four weeks, Ohio organized
and placed in the field forty-two regiments of infantry--nearly
thirty-six thousand men; and Ohio was like other States in the East
and in the West. The well-mounted cavalry numbered eighty-four
thousand; of horses and mules there were bought, from first to last,
two-thirds of a million. In the movements of troops science came in
aid of patriotism, so that, to choose a single instance out of many,
an army twenty-three thousand strong, with its artillery, trains,
baggage, and animals, were moved by rail from the Potomac to the
Tennessee, twelve hundred miles, in seven days. On the long marches,
wonders of military construction bridged the rivers, and wherever an
army halted, ample supplies awaited them at their ever-changing base.
The vile thought that life is the greatest of blessings did not rise
up. In six hundred and twenty-five battles and severe skirmishes blood
flowed like water. It streamed over the grassy plains; it stained the
rocks; the undergrowth of the forests was red with it; and the armies
marched on with majestic courage from one conflict to another, knowing
that they were fighting for God and liberty. The organization of the
medical department met its infinitely multiplied duties with exactness
and despatch. At the news of a battle, the best surgeons of our cities
hastened to the field, to offer the untiring aid of the greatest
experience and skill. The gentlest and most refined of women left
homes of luxury and ease to build hospital tents near the armies, and
serve as nurses to the sick and dying. Beside the large supply of
religious teachers by the public, the congregations spared to their
brothers in the field the ablest ministers. The Christian Commission,
which expended more than six and a quarter millions, sent nearly five
thousand clergymen, chosen out of the best, to keep unsoiled the
religious character of the men, and made gifts of clothes and food and
medicine. The organization of private charity assumed unheard-of
dimensions. The Sanitary Commission, which had seven thousand
societies, distributed, under the direction of an unpaid board,
spontaneous contributions to the amount of fifteen millions in
supplies or money--a million and a half in money from California
alone--and dotted the scene of war, from Paducah to Port Royal, from
Belle Plain, Virginia, to Brownsville, Texas, with homes and lodges.
The country had for its allies the river Mississippi, which would not
be divided, and the range of mountains which carried the stronghold of
the free through Western Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee to the
highlands of Alabama. But it invoked the still higher power of
immortal justice. In ancient Greece, where servitude was the universal
custom, it was held that if a child were to strike its parent, the
slave should defend the parent, and by that act recover his freedom.
After vain resistance, LINCOLN, who had tried to solve the question by
gradual emancipation, by colonization, and by compensation, at last
saw that slavery must be abolished, or the republic must die; and on
the first day of January, 1863, he wrote liberty on the banners of the
armies. When this proclamation, which struck the fetters from three
millions of slaves, reached Europe, Lord Russell, a countryman of
Milton and Wilberforce, eagerly put himself forward to speak of it in
the name of mankind, saying: "It is of a very strange nature"; "a
measure of war of a very questionable kind"; an act "of vengeance on
the slave owner," that does no more than "profess to emancipate slaves
where the United States authorities cannot make emancipation a
reality." Now there was no part of the country embraced in the
proclamation where the United States could not and did not make
emancipation a reality. Those who saw LINCOLN most frequently had
never before heard him speak with bitterness of any human being, but
he did not conceal how keenly he felt that he had been wronged by Lord
Russell. And he wrote, in reply to other cavils: "The emancipation
policy and the use of colored troops were the greatest blows yet dealt
to the rebellion; the job was a great national one, and let none be
slighted who bore an honorable part in it. I hope peace will come
soon, and come to stay; then will there be some black men who can
remember that they have helped mankind to this great consummation."
The proclamation accomplished its end, for, during the war, our armies
came into military possession of every State in rebellion. Then, too,
was called forth the new power that comes from the simultaneous
diffusion of thought and feeling among the nations of mankind. The
mysterious sympathy of the millions throughout the world was given
spontaneously. The best writers of Europe waked the conscience of the
thoughtful, till the intelligent moral sentiment of the Old World was
drawn to the side of the unlettered statesman of the West. Russia,
whose emperor had just accomplished one of the grandest acts in the
course of time, by raising twenty millions of bondmen into
freeholders, and thus assuring the growth and culture of a Russian
people, remained our unwavering friend. From the oldest abode of
civilization, which gave the first example of an imperial government
with equality among the people, Prince Kung, the secretary of state
for foreign affairs, remembered the saying of Confucius, that we
should not do to others what we would not that others should do to us,
and, in the name of his emperor, read a lesson to European
diplomatists by closing the ports of China against the warships and
privateers of "the seditious."
The war continued, with all the peoples of the world, for anxious
spectators. Its cares weighed heavily on LINCOLN, and his face was
ploughed with the furrows of thought and sadness. With malice towards
none, free from the spirit of revenge, victory made him importunate
for peace, and his enemies never doubted his word, or despaired of his
abounding clemency. He longed to utter pardon as the word for all, but
not unless the freedom of the negro should be assured. The grand
battles of Fort Donelson, Chattanooga, Malvern Hill, Antietam,
Gettysburg, the Wilderness of Virginia, Winchester, Nashville, the
capture of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Mobile, Fort Fisher, the march from
Atlanta, and the capture of Savannah and Charleston, all foretold the
issue. Still more, the self-regeneration of Missouri, the heart of the
continent; of Maryland, whose sons never heard the midnight bells
chime so sweetly as when they rang out to earth and heaven that, by
the voice of her own people, she took her place among the free; of
Tennessee, which passed through fire and blood, through sorrows and
the shadow of death, to work out her own deliverance, and by the
faithfulness of her own sons to renew her youth like the eagle--proved
that victory was deserved, and would be worth all that it cost. If
words of mercy, uttered as they were by LINCOLN on the waters of
Virginia, were defiantly repelled, the armies of the country, moving
with one will, went as the arrow to its mark, and, without a feeling
of revenge, struck the death-blow at rebellion.
Where, in the history of nations, had a Chief Magistrate possessed
more sources of consolation and joy than LINCOLN? His countrymen had
shown their love by choosing him to a second term of service. The
raging war that had divided the country had lulled, and private grief
was hushed by the grandeur of the result. The nation had its new birth
of freedom, soon to be secured forever by an amendment of the
Constitution. His persistent gentleness had conquered for him a
kindlier feeling on the part of the South. His scoffers among the
grandees of Europe began to do him honor. The laboring classes
everywhere saw in his advancement their own. All peoples sent him
their benedictions. And at this moment of the height of his fame, to
which his humility and modesty added charms, he fell by the hand of
the assassin, and the only triumph awarded him was the march to the
grave.
This is no time to say that human glory is but dust and ashes; that we
mortals are no more than shadows in pursuit of shadows. How mean a
thing were man if there were not that within him which is higher than
himself; if he could not master the illusions of sense, and discern
the connexions of events by a superior light which comes from God! He
so shares the divine impulses that he has power to subject ambition to
the ennoblement of his kind. Not in vain has LINCOLN lived, for he has
helped to make this republic an example of justice, with no caste but
the caste of humanity. The heroes who led our armies and ships into
battle and fell in the service--Lyon, McPherson, Reynolds, Sedgwick,
Wadsworth, Foote, Ward, with their compeers--did not die in vain; they
and the myriads of nameless martyrs, and he, the chief martyr, gave up
their lives willingly "that government of the people, by the people,
and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The assassination of LINCOLN, who was so free from malice, has, by
some mysterious influence, struck the country with solemn awe, and
hushed, instead of exciting, the passion for revenge. It seems as if
the just had died for the unjust. When I think of the friends I have
lost in this war--and every one who hears me has, like myself, lost
some of those whom he most loved--there is no consolation to be
derived from victims on the scaffold, or from anything but the
established union of the regenerated nation.
In his character LINCOLN was through and through an American. He is
the first native of the region west of the Alleghenies to attain to
the highest station; and how happy it is that the man who was brought
forward as the natural outgrowth and first fruits of that region
should have been of unblemished purity in private life, a good son, a
kind husband, a most affectionate father, and, as a man, so gentle to
all. As to integrity, Douglas, his rival, said of him: "Lincoln is the
honestest man I ever knew."
The habits of his mind were those of meditation and inward thought,
rather than of action. He delighted to express his opinions by an
apothegm, illustrate them by a parable, or drive them home by a story.
He was skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central idea
on which a question turned, and knew how to disengage it and present
it by itself in a few homely, strong old English words that would be
intelligible to all. He excelled in logical statements more than in
executive ability. He reasoned clearly, his reflective judgment was
good, and his purposes were fixed; but, like the Hamlet of his only
poet, his will was tardy in action, and, for this reason, and not from
humility or tenderness of feeling, he sometimes deplored that the duty
which devolved on him had not fallen to the lot of another.
LINCOLN gained a name by discussing questions which, of all others,
most easily lead to fanaticism; but he was never carried away by
enthusiastic zeal, never indulged in extravagant language, never
hurried to support extreme measures, never allowed himself to be
controlled by sudden impulses. During the progress of the election at
which he was chosen President he expressed no opinion that went beyond
the Jefferson proviso of 1784. Like Jefferson and Lafayette, he had
faith in the intuitions of the people, and read those intuitions with
rare sagacity. He knew how to bide time, and was less apt to run ahead
of public thought than to lag behind. He never sought to electrify the
community by taking an advanced position with a banner of opinion, but
rather studied to move forward compactly, exposing no detachment in
front or rear; so that the course of his administration might have
been explained as the calculating policy of a shrewd and watchful
politician, had there not been seen behind it a fixedness of principle
which from the first determined his purpose, and grew more intense
with every year, consuming his life by its energy. Yet his
sensibilities were not acute; he had no vividness of imagination to
picture to his mind the horrors of the battlefield or the sufferings
in hospitals; his conscience was more tender than his feelings.
LINCOLN was one of the most unassuming of men. In time of success, he
gave credit for it to those whom he employed, to the people, and to
the Providence of God. He did not know what ostentation is; when he
became President he was rather saddened than elated, and conduct and
manners showed more than ever his belief that all men are born equal.
He was no respecter of persons, and neither rank, nor reputation, nor
services overawed him. In judging of character he failed in
discrimination, and his appointments were sometimes bad; but he
readily deferred to public opinion, and in appointing the head of the
armies he followed the manifest preference of Congress.
A good President will secure unity to his administration by his own
supervision of the various departments. LINCOLN, who accepted advice
readily, was never governed by any member of his cabinet, and could
not be moved from a purpose deliberately formed; but his supervision
of affairs was unsteady and incomplete, and sometimes, by a sudden
interference transcending the usual forms, he rather confused than
advanced the public business. If he ever failed in the scrupulous
regard due to the relative rights of Congress, it was so evidently
without design that no conflict could ensue, or evil precedent be
established. Truth he would receive from any one, but when impressed
by others, he did not use their opinions till, by reflection, he had
made them thoroughly his own.
It was the nature of LINCOLN to forgive. When hostilities ceased, he,
who had always sent forth the flag with every one of its stars in the
field, was eager to receive back his returning countrymen, and
meditated "some new announcement to the South." The amendment of the
Constitution abolishing slavery had his most earnest and unwearied
support. During the rage of war we get a glimpse into his soul from
his privately suggesting to Louisiana, that "in defining the franchise
some of the colored people might be let in," saying: "They would
probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of
liberty in the family of freedom." In 1857 he avowed himself "not in
favor of" what he improperly called "negro citizenship," for the
Constitution discriminates between citizens and electors. Three days
before his death he declared his preference that "the elective
franchise were now conferred on the very intelligent of the colored
men, and on those of them who served our cause as soldiers"; but he
wished it done by the States themselves, and he never harbored the
thought of exacting it from a new government, as a condition of its
recognition.
The last day of his life beamed with sunshine, as he sent, by the
Speaker of this House, his friendly greetings to the men of the Rocky
mountains and the Pacific slope; as he contemplated the return of
hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fruitful industry; as he welcomed
in advance hundreds of thousands of emigrants from Europe; as his eye
kindled with enthusiasm at the coming wealth of the nation. And so,
with these thoughts for his country, he was removed from the toils and
temptations of this life, and was at peace.
Hardly had the late President been consigned to the grave when the
prime minister of England died, full of years and honors. Palmerston
traced his lineage to the time of the conqueror; LINCOLN went back
only to his grandfather. Palmerston received his education from the
best scholars of Harrow, Edinburg, and Cambridge; LINCOLN'S early
teachers were the silent forests, the prairie, the river, and the
stars. Palmerston was in public life for sixty years; LINCOLN for but
a tenth of that time. Palmerston was a skilful guide of an established
aristocracy; LINCOLN a leader, or rather a companion, of the people.
Palmerston was exclusively an Englishman, and made his boast in the
House of Commons that the interest of England was his Shibboleth;
LINCOLN thought always of mankind, as well as his own country, and
served human nature itself. Palmerston, from his narrowness as an
Englishman, did not endear his country to any one court or to any one
nation, but rather caused general uneasiness and dislike; LINCOLN left
America more beloved than ever by all the peoples of Europe.
Palmerston was self-possessed and adroit in reconciling the
conflicting factions of the aristocracy; LINCOLN, frank and ingenuous,
knew how to poise himself on the ever-moving opinions of the masses.
Palmerston was capable of insolence towards the weak, quick to the
sense of honor, not heedful of right; LINCOLN rejected counsel given
only as a matter of policy, and was not capable of being wilfully
unjust. Palmerston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter, and
knew how to divert grave opposition by playful levity; LINCOLN was a
man of infinite jest on his lips with saddest earnestness at his
heart. Palmerston was a fair representative of the aristocratic
liberality of the day, choosing for his tribunal, not the conscience
of humanity, but the House of Commons; LINCOLN took to heart the
eternal truths of liberty, obeyed them as the commands of Providence,
and accepted the human race as the judge of his fidelity. Palmerston
did nothing that will endure; LINCOLN finished a work which all time
cannot overthrow. Palmerston is a shining example of the ablest of a
cultivated aristocracy; LINCOLN is the genuine fruit of institutions
where the laboring man shares and assists to form the great ideas and
designs of his country. Palmerston was buried in Westminster Abbey by
the order of his Queen, and was attended by the British aristocracy to
his grave, which, after a few years, will hardly be noticed by the
side of the graves of Fox and Chatham; LINCOLN was followed by the
sorrow of his country across the continent to his resting-place in the
heart of the Mississippi valley, to be remembered through all time by
his countrymen, and by all the peoples of the world.
As the sum of all, the hand of LINCOLN raised the flag; the American
people was the hero of the war; and, therefore, the result is a new
era of republicanism. The disturbances in the country grew not out of
anything republican, but out of slavery, which is a part of the system
of hereditary wrong; and the expulsion of this domestic anomaly opens
to the renovated nation a career of unthought of dignity and glory.
Henceforth our country has a moral unity as the land of free labor.
The party for slavery and the party against slavery are no more, and
are merged in the party of Union and freedom. The States which would
have left us are not brought back as subjugated States, for then we
should hold them only so long as that conquest could be maintained;
they come to their rightful place under the constitution as original,
necessary, and inseparable members of the Union.
We build monuments to the dead, but no monuments of victory. We
respect the example of the Romans, who never, even in conquered lands,
raised emblems of triumph. And our generals are not to be classed in
the herd of vulgar warriors, but are of the school of Timoleon, and
William of Nassau, and Washington. They have used the sword only to
give peace to their country and restore her to her place in the great
assembly of the nations.
SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES of America: as I bid you farewell, my
last words shall be words of hope and confidence; for now slavery is
no more, the Union is restored, a people begins to live according to
the laws of reason, and republicanism is intrenched in a continent.