I. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY
The nation was in mourning at the unspeakable tragedy. Friend and foe
had just begun to learn how great was the difference between him and
other men. Coming as it did at the close of the war, in the very dawn
of peace, the assassination seemed so needless and cruel, even in the
name of his bitterest foe.
Walt Whitman wrote one of the most stirring appreciations of the time.
"O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
"But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen, cold and dead.
"O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
For you the bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores
a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
"Here, Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
"My Captain does not answer me, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.
"Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck, my Captain lies,
Fallen, cold and dead."
William Cullen Bryant wrote the ode for the funeral services held in
New York City. Two of the stanzas are as follows:
"In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that husheth all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.
"Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Has placed thee with the Sons of Light,
Among the noble hearts of those
Who perished in the cause of Right."
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote for the funeral services at Concord,
Massachusetts, a poem of which the following is the last stanza:
"Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last, silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American."
II. THE TIME WHEN "THOSE WHO CAME TO SCOFF REMAINED TO PRAY"
Lincoln's death was received throughout the South generally as the
death of an enemy. Well do they know now that it could have been said
of them then, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The sorrow throughout the North was as in the midst of Egypt's ancient
woe. It was as if "There was not a house where there was not one
dead."
As was once said of a great martyr of liberty, slain three centuries
before, so it could be said of Lincoln, "He went through life bearing
the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face.
While he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and
when he died the little children cried in the streets."
Periodicals that had ridiculed him from his first appearance in their
view, and that had caused many of their readers to believe him little
better than a clown in the arena of affairs, or than a court fool
before the nations, dropped their defaming caricatures of him, and
gave him nearer justice.
One of the most belittling and besmirching periodicals of England
against Lincoln was the "London Punch." The war-president of the
United States was, largely from this source of authority, the jest of
all Europe.
But the issue following the assassination of Lincoln contained a great
picture. It was symbolical of England laying a wreath of flowers upon
Lincoln's coffin. The picture was drawn by Tenniel and with it was a
most penitent poem by Tom Taylor, who was author of the play, "Our
American Cousin," which Lincoln was attending when assassinated. Five
of the expressive stanzas are as follows:
"So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it; four long suffering years,
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through,
And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers;
"The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both with the same unwavering mood:
Till, as he came to light, from darkling days,
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,
"A felon hand, between the goal and him,
Reached from behind his back, a trigger pressed,--
And those perplexed and patient eyes grew dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!
"Beside this corpse, that bears for winding sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurril jester, is there room for you?
"Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men."
In 1879, at an unveiling in Boston of Freedman's Memorial Statue, a
duplicate of the original in Lincoln Square, Washington, a poem was
read from Whittier, of which the last three stanzas are the most
significant in their characterization. It beautifully expresses the
faith that in righteousness is personal power, even as it also
"exalteth a nation."
"We rest in peace where these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife and pain;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
"O, symbol of God's will on earth
As it is done above!
Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.
"Stand in thy place and testify
To coming ages long,
That truth is stronger than a lie,
And righteousness than wrong."
III. SOME TYPICAL EXAMPLES GIVING VIEWS OF LINCOLN'S LIFE
Vachel Lindsay invokes the spirit of American patriotism when he says,
"Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness,
From lonely prairies and God's tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,
About that breast of earth and prairie-fire--
Fire that freed the slave."
Herr Loewes in the Prussian Parliament said: "Mr. Lincoln performed
his duties without pomp or ceremony, and relied on that dignity of the
inner self alone, which is far above rank, orders and titles. He was a
faithful servant, not less of his own country than of civilization,
freedom and humanity."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing of Lincoln's death, said:
"Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold,
This martyr generation,
Which Thou, through trials manifold,
Art showing Thy salvation!
O let the blood by murder spilt
Wash out Thy stricken children's guilt,
And sanctify our nation!"
Samuel Francis Smith, author of the national hymn, "America," in a
long poetic tribute wrote:
"Grandly he loved and lived;
Not his own age alone
Bears the proud impress of his sovereign mind.
Down the long march of history,
Ages and men shall see
What one great soul can be
What one great soul can do
To make a nation true."
Horace Fiske closed a poem inspired by the Saint Gaudens statue, as
follows:
"In human strength he towers almost divine,
His mighty shoulders bent with breaking care,
His thought-worn face with sympathies grown fine:
And as men gaze, their hearts as oft declare
That this is he whom all their hearts enshrine----
This man that saved a race from slow despair."
Theodore Roosevelt said, in an address on the character of Lincoln,
"One of his most wonderful characteristics was the extraordinary way
in which he could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong, and
yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from
whom he differed."
Woodrow Wilson said, "There was no point at which life touched him
that he did not speak back to it instantly its meaning."
Sir Spencer Walpole says in his history, "Of all men born to the
Anglo-Saxon race in the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln deserves
the highest place in history."
IV. REMEMBRANCE AT THE END OF A HUNDRED YEARS
The centennial anniversary of Lincoln's birth called forth expressions
of appreciation from over all the world. His memory and his meaning
had not grown dim in the interests of humanity. A few typical examples
illustrate the love and reverence inspired by his great work in the
human cause.
James Oppenheim, in his poem in praise of the Lincoln child, says,
"Oh, to pour our love through deeds----
To be as Lincoln was!
That all the land might fill its daily needs
Glorified by a human cause!
Then were America a vast World-Torch
Flaming a faith across the dying earth,
Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch
That a New World was struggling at the Birth!"
James Whitcomb Riley, writing of Lincoln, the boy, says in the last
stanza:
"Or thus we know, nor doubt it not,
The boy he must have been
Whose budding heart bloomed with the thought
All men are kith and kin----
With love-light in his eyes and shade
Of prescient tears: Because
Only of such a boy were made
The loving man he was."
Ambassador Bryce of England, speaking at Lincoln's tomb before a vast
gathering at the centennial anniversary of Lincoln's birth, said, "To
us in England, Lincoln is one of the heroes of the race from whence we
sprung. Great men are the noblest possession of a Nation, and are
potent forces in the moulding of national character. Their influence
lives after them, and, if they be good as well as great, they remain
as beacons lighting the course of all who follow them. They set for
succeeding generations the standards of public life. They stir the
spirit and rouse the energy of the youth who seek to emulate their
virtues in the service of their country."
Vice-President Fairbanks in an address at Harrisburg on that occasion
said, "His life was spent in conflict. In his youth, he struggled with
nature. At the bar of justice he contended for the rights of his
clients. In the wider field of politics, he fought with uncommon power
to overthrow the wrong and enthrone the right. He fought not for the
love of conquest, but for the love of truth. By nature he was a man of
peace. He instinctively loved justice, right, and liberty. His
conscience impelled him to uphold the right whenever it was denied his
fellowman."
S. E. Kiser ended a centennial poem with the following stanza:
"Lo, where the feet of Lincoln passed, the earth
Is sacred. Where he knelt we set a shrine!
Oh, to have pressed his hand! That had sufficed
To make my children wonder at my worth----
Yet, let them glory, since their land and mine
Hath reared the greatest martyr after Christ!"
Virginia Boyle, in her poem for the Philadelphia Brigade Association,
said in two of her stanzas:
"No trumpet blared the word that he was born,
No lightning flashed its symbols on that day:
And only Poverty and Fate pressed on,
To serve as handmaids where he lowly lay.
"And up from Earth and toil, he slowly won,----
Pressed by a bitterness he proudly spurned,
Till by grim courage, born from sun to sun,
He turned defeat, as victory is turned."
Edwin Markham concluded a centennial poem as follows:
"He held his place----
Held the long purpose like a growing tree----
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise,
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky."