“I recollect that soon after its delivery, at my house in Louisville,
Robert Dale Owen, who was present with others, took from his pocket a
speech which he had cut from a newspaper, and read it aloud saying it
would be translated into all languages in the world, being the very
finest oration of the kind that had ever been delivered. He said there
were utterances in it which would become familiar to all the people of
the world as household words. I recollect further that Judge S. S.
Nicholas, of Louisville, an accomplished man and a fine writer, upon
first seeing the speech, spoke of it in terms of the highest praise,
saying he did not believe a man of the education and culture of Mr.
Lincoln could have written it. He believed, until corrected by me, that
it had been written by another hand.”
One of the most remarkable tributes that has been paid was that of the
London _Quarterly Review_, which said, substantially, that the oration
surpassed every production of its class known in literature; that only
the oration of Pericles over the victories of the Peloponnesian war
could be compared to it, and that was put into his mouth by the
historian Thucydides.
A greatly admired personal tribute to Lincoln is that of James Russell
Lowell in the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July, 1865. It is especially
noteworthy for its broad significance, its tender pathos, its
discriminating appreciation, and its grand American sentiment, closing
as follows:
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.
I praise him not; it were too late;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait
Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime
Till the wise years decide.
Great Captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These are all 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.
Governor Andrew, in an address to the Legislature of Massachusetts,
following the assassination of Lincoln, after describing him as the man
who had added “martyrdom itself to his other and scarcely less emphatic
claims to human veneration, gratitude and love,” continued thus: “I
desire on this grave occasion to record my sincere testimony to the
unaffected simplicity of his manly purpose, to the constancy with which
he devoted himself to his duty, to the grand fidelity with which he
subordinated himself to his country, to the clearness, robustness, and
sagacity of his understanding, to his sincere love of truth, his
undeviating progress in its faithful pursuit, and to the confidence
which he could not fail to inspire in the singular integrity of his
virtues, and the conspicuously judicial quality of his intellect.”
_Grant at Appomattox_
At the dedication of the Mausoleum erected at Riverside Park, New York,
in memory of General Grant, Colonel Charles Marshall, who had been Chief
of Staff to General Lee, the Confederate commander, was the orator. In
the course of his address he said,—
“When General Grant first opened the correspondence with General Lee
which led to the meeting at Appomattox, General Lee proposed to give a
wide scope to the subject to be treated of between him and General
Grant, and to discuss with the latter the terms of a general
pacification.
“General Grant declined to consider anything except the surrender of
General Lee’s army, assigning as a reason for his refusal his want of
authority to deal with political matters, or any other than those
pertaining to his position as the commander of the army. The day after
the meeting at McLain’s house, at which the terms of surrender were
agreed upon, another interview took place between Grant and Lee, upon
the invitation of General Grant, and when General Lee returned from that
meeting he repeated, in the presence of several of his staff, the
substance of the conversation, in one part of which, you will see, as we
all did, the feeling that controlled the actions of General Grant at
that critical period.
“The conversation turned on the subject of a general peace, as to which
General Grant had already declared the want of power to treat, but, in
speaking of the means by which a general pacification might be effected,
General Grant said to General Lee, with great emphasis and strong
feeling: ‘General Lee, I want this war to end without the shedding of
another drop of American blood’—not Northern blood, not Southern blood,
but ‘American blood’—for in his eyes all the men around him, and those
who might be then confronting each other on other fields over the wide
area of war, were ‘Americans.’
“These words made a great impression upon all who heard them, as they
did upon General Lee, who told us, with no little emotion, that he took
occasion to express to General Grant his appreciation of the noble and
generous sentiments uttered by him, and assured him that he would render
all the assistance in his power to bring about the restoration of peace
and good-will without shedding another drop of ‘American blood.’ This
‘American blood,’ sacred in the eyes of both these great American
soldiers, flows in the veins of all of us, and let it be sacred in our
eyes also, henceforth and forever, ready to be poured without stint as a
libation upon the altar of our common country, never to be shed again in
fratricidal war.
“It is in the light of this noble thought of General Grant that I have
always considered the course pursued by him at the moment of his supreme
triumph at Appomattox, and, seen in that light, nothing could be
grander, nobler, more magnanimous, nor more patriotic than his conduct
on that occasion.
“Look at the state of affairs on the morning of the 9th of April, 1865.
The bleeding and half-starved remnant of that great army which for four
years had baffled all the efforts of the Federal government to reach the
Confederate capital, and had twice borne the flag of the Confederacy
beyond the Potomac, confronted with undaunted resolution, but without
hope save the hope of an honorable death on the battle-field, the
overwhelming forces under General Grant.
“At the head of that remnant of a great army was a great soldier, whose
name was a name of fear, whose name is recorded in a high place on the
roll of great soldiers of history. That remnant of a great army of
Northern Virginia, with its great commander at its head, after the long
siege at Richmond and Petersburg, had been forced to retreat, and on the
9th of April, 1865, was brought to bay at Appomattox, surrounded by the
host of its great enemy.
“There was no reasonable doubt that the destruction of that army would
seal the fate of the Confederacy and put an end to further organized
resistance to the Federal arms, and no doubt that if that remnant were
driven to desperation by the exactness of terms of surrender against
which its honor and its valor would revolt, that resistance would have
been made, and that General Grant and his army might have been left in
the possession of a solitude that they might have called peace, but
which would have been the peace of Poland, the peace of Ireland. Under
such circumstances, had General Grant been governed by the mere selfish
desire of the rewards of military success, had he been content to gather
the fruits that grew nearest the earth on the tree of victory, the
fruits that Napoleon and all selfish conquerors of his time have
gathered, the fruits that our Washington put away from him, what a
triumph lay before him!
“What Roman triumph would have approached the triumph of General Grant
had he led the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, with its great
commander in chains, up Pennsylvania Avenue, thenceforth to be known as
the ‘Way of Triumph!’
“But so simple, so patriotic was the mind of General Grant that the
thought of self seems never to have affected his conduct.
“He was no more tempted at Appomattox to forego the true interests of
his country for his own advantage than Washington was tempted when the
time came for him to lay down his commission at Annapolis. I doubt if
the self-abnegation of Washington at Annapolis was greater than that of
Grant at Appomattox, and it is the glory of America that her
institutions breed men who are equal to the greatest strain that can be
put upon their courage and their patriotism.
“On that eventful morning of April 9, 1865, General Grant was called
upon to decide the most momentous question that any American soldier or
statesman has ever been required to decide. The great question was, How
shall the war end? What shall be the relations between the victors and
vanquished?
“Upon the decision of that question depended the future of American
institutions. If the extreme rights of military success had been
insisted upon, and had the vanquished been required to pass under the
yoke of defeat and bitter humiliation, the war would have ended as a
successful war of conquest—the Southern States would have been conquered
States, and the Southern people would have been a conquered people, in
whose hearts would have been sown all the enmity and ill-will of the
conquered to the conquerors, to be transmitted from sire to son.
“With such an ending of the war there would have been United States
without a united people. The power of the Union would then have reposed
upon the strength of Grant’s battalions and the thunder of Grant’s
artillery. Its bonds would have stood upon the security of its military
power, and not upon the honor and good faith and good-will of its
people. The federal government would have been compelled to adopt a
coercive policy toward the disaffected people of the South, which would
soon have established between the government and those States the
relations between England and Ireland, and some Northern Gladstone would
be demanding for the Southern people the natural right that the English
Gladstone claimed for the Irish against their haughty conquerors.
“Does any man desire to exchange the present relations between the
people of the Northern and Southern States for the relations of
conqueror and conquered? Does any wish to have a union of the States
without a union of the people?
“General Grant was called upon to decide this great question on the
morning of April 9, 1865. The Southern military power was exhausted. He
was in a position to exact the supreme rights of a conqueror, and the
unconditional submission of his adversary, unless that adversary should
elect to risk all on the event of a desperate battle, in which much
‘American blood’ would certainly be shed.
“The question was gravely considered in Confederate councils whether we
should not accept the extreme risk, and cut our way through the hosts of
General Grant, or perish in the attempt. This plan had many advocates,
but General Lee was not one of them, as will be seen by his farewell
order to his army.
“Under these circumstances General Lee and General Grant met to discuss
the terms of surrender of General Lee’s army, and, at the request of
General Lee, General Grant wrote the terms of surrender he proposed to
offer to the Confederate general. They were liberal and honorable, alike
to the victor and the vanquished, and General Lee at once accepted them.
“Any one who reads General Grant’s proposal cannot fail to see how
careful he is to avoid any unnecessary humiliation to his adversary. As
far as it was possible, General Grant took away the sting of defeat from
the Confederate army. He triumphed, but he triumphed without exultation,
and with a noble respect to his enemy.
“There was never a nobler knight than Grant of Appomattox—no knight more
magnanimous or more generous. No statesman ever decided a vital question
more wisely—more in the interest of his country and of all mankind—than
General Grant decided the great question presented to him when he and
General Lee met that morning of April 9, 1865, to consider the terms of
the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The words of his
magnanimous proposal to his enemy were carried by the Confederate
soldiers to the furthest borders of the South. They reached ears and
hearts that had never quailed at the sound of war. They disarmed and
reconciled those who knew not fear, and the noble words of General
Grant’s offer of peace brought peace without humiliation, peace with
honor.”
_Last Words_
Iconoclasts overshadow with their doubts and questionings the alleged
dying words of eminent men, but the following appear to be authentic.
George Washington, “It is well.” John Adams, “Independence forever.”
Benjamin Franklin, in severe suffering, “A dying man can do nothing
easy.” Thomas Jefferson, “I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my
country.” John Quincy Adams, “It is the last of earth; I am content.”
John C. Calhoun, “The South! the South! God knows what will become of
her.” William H. Harrison, “I wish you to understand the true principles
of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” Daniel
Webster, “I still live.” James Buchanan, “O, Lord Almighty, as Thou
wilt.” William McKinley, “It is God’s way. His will be done, not ours.”
Henry Ward Beecher, “Now comes the great mystery.”