But not yet had beaten Britain concluded peace--not yet had dried the

blood of Victory's field, ere "follies and disputes" confounded all

things with their Babel tongues and intoxicated liberty gave loose to

license. An unpaid army with unsheathed swords clamored around a

poverty-stricken and helpless Congress. And grown at last impatient even

with their chief, officers high in rank plotted insurrection and

circulated an anonymous address, urging it "to appeal from the justice

to the fears of government, and suspect the man who would advise to

longer forbearance." Anarchy was about to erect the Arch of

Triumph--poor, exhausted, bleeding, weeping America lay in agony upon

her bed of laurels.

Not a moment did Washington hesitate. He convened his officers, and

going before them he read them an address, which, for homethrust

argument, magnanimous temper, and the eloquence of persuasion which

leaves nothing to be added, is not exceeded by the noblest utterances

of Greek or Roman. A nobler than Coriolanus was before them, who needed

no mother's or wife's reproachful tears to turn the threatening steel

from the gates of Rome. Pausing, as he read his speech, he put on his

spectacles and said: "I have grown gray in your service, and now find

myself growing blind." This unaffected touch of nature completed the

master's spell. The late fomenters of insurrection gathered to their

chief with words of veneration--the storm went by--and, says Curtis in

his History of the Constitution, "Had the Commander-in-Chief been other

than Washington, the land would have been deluged with the blood of

civil war."

But not yet was Washington's work accomplished. Peace dawned upon the

weary land, and parting with his soldiers, he pleaded with them for

union. "Happy, thrice happy, shall they be pronounced," he said, "who

have contributed anything in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom

and empire; who have assisted in protecting the rights of human nature,

and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and

religions." But still the foundations of the stupendous fabric trembled,

and no cement held its stones together. It was then, with that

thickening peril, Washington rose to his highest stature. Without civil

station to call forth his utterance, impelled by the intrepid impulse of

a soul that could not see the hope of a nation perish without leaping

into the stream to save it, he addressed the whole People of America in

a circular to the governors of the states: "Convinced of the importance

of the crisis, silence in me," he said, "would be a crime. I will,

therefore, speak the language of freedom and sincerity." He set forth

the need of union in a strain that touched the quick of sensibility; he

held up the citizens of America as sole lords of a vast tract of

continent; he portrayed the fair opportunity for political happiness

with which Heaven had crowned them; he pointed out the blessings that

would attend their collective wisdom; that mutual concessions and

sacrifices must be made; and that supreme power must be lodged somewhere

to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederate Republic,

without which the Union would not be of long duration. And he urged that

happiness would be ours if we seized the occasion and made it our own.

In this, one of the very greatest acts of Washington, was revealed the

heart of the man, the spirit of the hero, the wisdom of the sage--I

might almost say the sacred inspiration of the prophet.

But still the wing of the eagle drooped; the gathering storms baffled

his sunward flight. Even with Washington in the van, the column wavered

and halted--states straggling to the rear that had hitherto been

foremost for permanent union, under an efficacious constitution. And

while three years rolled by amidst the jargon of sectional and local

contentions, "the half-starved government," as Washington depicted it,

"limped along on crutches, tottering at every step." And while

monarchical Europe with saturnine face declared that the American hope

of union was the wild and visionary notion of romance, and predicted

that we would be to the end of time a disunited people, suspicious and

distrustful of each other, divided and subdivided into petty

commonwealths and principalities, lo! the very earth yawned under the

feet of America, and in that very region whence had come forth a

glorious band of orators, statesmen and soldiers to plead the cause and

fight the battles of Independence--lo! the volcanic fires of rebellion

burst forth upon the heads of the faithful, and the militia were

leveling the guns of the Revolution, against the breasts of their

brethren. "What, gracious God! is man?" Washington exclaimed: "It was

but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the

constitutions under which we live, and now we are unsheathing our swords

to overturn them."

But see! there is a ray of hope. Maryland and Virginia had already

entered into a commercial treaty for regulating the navigation of the

rivers and great bay in which they had common interests, and Washington

had been one of the commissioners in its negotiation. And now, at the

suggestion of Maryland, Virginia had called on all the states to meet in

convention at Annapolis, to adopt commercial regulations for the whole

country. Could this foundation be laid, the eyes of the nation-builders

foresaw that the permanent structure would ere long rise upon it. But

when the day of meeting came no state north of New York or south of

Virginia was represented; and in their helplessness those assembled

could only recommend a constitutional convention, to meet in

Philadelphia in May, 1787, to provide for the exigencies of the

situation.

And still thick clouds and darkness rested on the land, and there

lowered upon its hopes a night as black as that upon the freezing

Delaware; but through the gloom the dauntless leader was still marching

on to the consummation of his colossal work, with a hope that never

died; with a courage that never faltered; with a wisdom that never

yielded that "all is vanity."

It was not permitted the Roman to despair of the republic, nor did

he--our chieftain. "It will all come right at last," he said. It did.

And now let the historian, Bancroft, speak: "From this state of despair

the country was lifted by Madison and Virginia." Again he says: "We come

now to a week more glorious for Virginia beyond any in her annals, or in

the history of any republic that had ever before existed."

It was that week in which Madison, "giving effect to his own

long-cherished wishes, and still earlier wishes of Washington,"

addressing, as it were, the whole country, and marshaling all the

states, warned them "that the crisis had arrived at which the people of

America are to decide the solemn question, whether they would, by wise

and magnanimous efforts reap the fruits of independence and of union, or

whether by giving way to unmanly jealousies and prejudices, or to

impartial and transitory interests, they would renounce the blessings

prepared for them by the Revolution," and conjuring them "to concur in

such further concessions and provisions as may be necessary to secure

the objects for which that government was instituted, and make the

United States as happy in peace as they had been glorious in war."

In such manner, my countrymen, Virginia, adopting the words of Madison,

and moved by the constant spirit of Washington, joined in convoking that

Constitutional Convention, in which he headed her delegation, and over

which he presided, and whose deliberations resulted in the formation and

adoption of that instrument which the premier of Great Britain

pronounces "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by

the brain and purpose of man."

In such manner the state which gave birth to the Father of his Country,

following his guiding genius to the Union, as it had followed his sword

through the battles of Independence, placed herself at the head of the

wavering column. In such manner America heard and hearkened to the voice

of her chief; and now closing ranks, and moving with reanimated step,

the thirteen commonwealths wheeled and faced to the front, on the line

of the Union, under the sacred ensign of the Constitution.

Thus at last was the crowning work of Washington accomplished. Out of

the tempests of war, and the tumults of civil commotion, the ages bore

their fruit, and the long yearning of humanity was answered. "Rome to

America" is the eloquent inscription on one stone contributed to yon

colossal shaft--taken from the ancient Temple of Peace that once stood

hard by the palace of the Cæsars. Uprisen from the sea of revolution,

fabricated from the ruins of the battered Bastiles, and dismantled

palaces of unhallowed power, stood forth now the Republic of republics,

the Nation of nations, the Constitution of constitutions, to which all

lands and times and tongues had contributed of their wisdom. And the

priestess of Liberty was in her holy temple.

When Salamis had been fought and Greece again kept free, each of the

victorious generals voted himself to be first in honor; but all agreed

that Themistocles was second. When the most memorable struggle for the

rights of human nature, of which time holds record, was thus happily

concluded in the muniment of their preservation, whoever else was

second, unanimous acclaim declared that Washington was first. Nor in

that struggle alone does he stand foremost. In the name of the people of

the United States, their president, their senators, their

representatives, and their judges, do crown to-day with the grandest

crown that veneration has ever lifted to the brow of glory, him, whom

Virginia gave to America, whom America has given to the world and to the

ages, and whom mankind with universal suffrage has proclaimed the

foremost of the founders of empire in the first degree of greatness;

whom Liberty herself has anointed as the first citizen in the great

Republic of Humanity.

Encompassed by the inviolate seas stands to-day the American Republic

which he founded--a freer Greater Britain--uplifted above the powers and

principalities of the earth, even as his monument is uplifted over roof

and dome and spire of the multitudinous city.

Long live the Republic of Washington! Respected by mankind, beloved of

all its sons, long may it be the asylum of the poor and oppressed of all

lands and religions--long may it be the citadel of that liberty which

writes beneath the eagle's folded wings, "We will sell to no man, we

will deny to no man, Right and Justice."

Long live the United States of America! Filled with the free,

magnanimous spirit, crowned by the wisdom, blessed by the moderation,

hovered over by the guardian angel of Washington's example; may they be

ever worthy in all things to be defended by the blood of the brave who

know the rights of man and shrink not from their assertion--may they be

each a column, and altogether, under the Constitution, a perpetual

Temple of Peace, unshadowed by a Cæsar's palace, at whose altar may

freely commune all who seek the union of Liberty and Brotherhood.

Long live our Country! Oh, long through the undying ages may it stand,

far removed in fact as in space from the Old World's feuds and follies,

alone in its grandeur and its glory, itself the immortal monument of him

whom Providence commissioned to teach man the power of Truth, and to

prove to the nations that their Redeemer liveth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Lecture by Henry Watterson, journalist and orator, editor of the

Louisville, Ky., _Courier Journal_ since 1868. This lecture was

originally delivered before the Lincoln Club of Chicago, February

12, 1895, and subsequently repeated on many platforms as a lecture.

It has been heard in all parts of the country, but nowhere, with

livelier demonstrations of approval than in the cities of the South

"from Richmond and Charleston to New Orleans and Galveston."

The statesmen in knee breeches and powdered wigs who signed the

Declaration of Independence and framed the Constitution--the soldiers in

blue-and-buff, top-boots and epaulets who led the armies of the

Revolution--were what we are wont to describe as gentlemen. They were

English gentlemen. They were not all, nor even generally, scions of the

British aristocracy; but they came, for the most part, of good

Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish stock.

The shoe buckle and the ruffled shirt worked a spell peculiarly their

own. They carried with them an air of polish and authority. Hamilton,

though of obscure birth and small stature, is represented by those who

knew him to have been dignity and grace personified; and old Ben

Franklin, even in woolen hose, and none too courtier-like, was the

delight of the great nobles and fine ladies, in whose company he made

himself as much at home as though he had been born a marquis.

The first half of the Republic's first half century of existence the

public men of America, distinguished for many things, were chiefly and

almost universally distinguished for repose of bearing and sobriety of

behavior. It was not until the institution of African slavery had got

into politics as a vital force that Congress became a bear-garden, and

that our law-makers, laying aside their manners with their small

clothes, fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern fashion and

the slovenly jargon of partisan controversy. The gentlemen who signed

the Declaration and framed the Constitution were succeeded by

gentlemen--much like themselves--but these were succeeded by a race of

party leaders much less decorous and much more self-confident; rugged,

puissant; deeply moved in all that they said and did, and sometimes

turbulent; so that finally, when the volcano burst forth flames that

reached the heavens, great human bowlders appeared amid the glare on

every side; none of them much to speak of according to rules regnant at

St. James and Versailles; but vigorous, able men, full of their mission

and of themselves, and pulling for dear life in opposite directions.

There were Seward and Sumner and Chase, Corwin and Ben Wade, Trumbull

and Fessenden, Hale and Collamer and Grimes, and Wendell Phillips, and

Horace Greeley, our latter-day Franklin. There were Toombs and Hammond,

and Slidell and Wigfall, and the two little giants, Douglas and

Stephens, and Yancey and Mason, and Jefferson Davis. With them soft

words buttered no parsnips, and they cared little how many pitchers

might be broken by rude ones. The issue between them did not require a

diagram to explain it. It was so simple a child might understand. It

read, human slavery against human freedom, slave labor against free

labor, and involved a conflict as inevitable as it was irrepressible.

Greek was meeting Greek at last; and the field of politics became almost

as sulphurous and murky as an actual field of battle. Amid the noise and

confusion, the clashing of intellects like sabers bright, and the

booming of the big oratorical guns of the North and the South, now

definitely arrayed, there came one day into the Northern camp one of the

oddest figures imaginable; the figure of a man who, in spite of an

appearance somewhat at outs with Hogarth's line of beauty, wore a

serious aspect, if not an air of command, and, pausing to utter a single

sentence that might be heard above the din, passed on and for a moment

disappeared.

The sentence was pregnant with meaning. The man bore a commission from

God on high! He said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I

believe this Government cannot endure permanently half free and half

slave. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the

house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided." He was

Abraham Lincoln.

How shall I describe him to you? Shall I do so as he appeared to me,

when I first saw him immediately on his arrival in the national capital,

the chosen president of the United States, his appearance quite as

strange as the story of his life, which was then but half known and half

told, or shall I use the words of another and a more graphic

wordpainter?

In January, 1861, Colonel A. K. McClure, of Pennsylvania, journeyed to

Springfield, Illinois, to meet and confer with the man he had done so

much to elect, but whom he had never personally known. "I went directly

from the depot to Lincoln's house," says Colonel McClure, "and rang the

bell, which was answered by Lincoln, himself, opening the door. I doubt

whether I wholly concealed my disappointment at meeting him. Tall,

gaunt, ungainly, ill-clad, with a homeliness of manner that was unique

in itself, I confess that my heart sank within me as I remembered that

this was the man chosen by a great nation to become its ruler in the

gravest period of its history. I remember his dress as if it were but

yesterday--snuff-colored and slouchy pantaloons; open black vest, held

by a few brass buttons; straight or evening dress coat, with tightly

fitting sleeves to exaggerate his long, bony arms, all supplemented by

an awkwardness that was uncommon among men of intelligence. Such was the

picture I met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. We sat down in his

plainly furnished parlor and were uninterrupted during the nearly four

hours I remained with him, and little by little, as his earnestness,

sincerity, and candor were developed in conversation, I forgot all the

grotesque qualities which so confounded me when I first greeted him.

Before half an hour had passed I learned not only to respect, but,

indeed, to reverence the man."

A graphic portrait, truly, and not unlike. I recall him, two months

later, a little less uncouth, a little better dressed, but in

singularity and in angularity much the same. All the world now takes an

interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the

weird tragedy of his life and death.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861]

And who was this peculiar being, destined in his mother's arms--for

cradle he had none--so profoundly to affect the future of humankind? He

has told us, himself, in words so simple and unaffected, so idiomatic

and direct, that we can neither misread them, nor improve upon them.

Writing, in 1859, to one who had asked him for some biographic

particulars, Abraham Lincoln said:--

"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My

parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished

families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who

died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My

paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham

County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where, a year or

two later, he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by

stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.

"My father (Thomas Lincoln) at the death of his father was but six

years of age. By the early death of his father, and the very narrow

circumstances of his mother, he was, even in childhood, a wandering

laboring boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did

more in the way of writing than bunglingly to write his own

name.... He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County,

Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many

bears and other animals still in the woods.... There were some

schools, so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a

teacher beyond 'readin', writin', and cipherin' to the rule of

three.' If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to

sojourn in the neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard.... Of

course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I

could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three. But that was

all.... The little advance I now have upon this store of education

I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

"I was raised to farm work ... till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one

I came to Illinois--Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, ...

where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came

the Black Hawk war; and I was elected captain of a volunteer

company, a success that gave me more pleasure than any I have had

since. I went into the campaign--was elated--ran for the

legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten--the only time I

ever have been beaten by the people. The next, and three succeeding

biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a

candidate afterward. During the legislative period I had studied

law and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was

elected to the lower house of Congress. Was not a candidate for

reëlection. From 1849 to 1854, inclusive, practiced law more

assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and

generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I

was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri

Compromise aroused me again.

"If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be

said that I am in height six feet four inches, nearly; lean in

flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark

complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or

brands recollected."

There is the whole story, told by himself, and brought down to the point

where he became a figure of national importance.

His political philosophy was expounded in four elaborate speeches; one

delivered at Peoria, Illinois, the 16th of October, 1854; one at

Springfield, Illinois, the 16th of June, 1858; one at Columbus, Ohio,

the 16th of September, 1859, and one the 27th of February, 1860, at

Cooper Institute, in the city of New York. Of course Mr. Lincoln made

many speeches and very good speeches. But these four, progressive in

character, contain the sum total of his creed touching the organic

character of the Government and at the same time his party view of

contemporary issues. They show him to have been an old-line Whig of the

school of Henry Clay, with strong emancipation leanings; a thorough

anti-slavery man, but never an extremist or an abolitionist. To the last

he hewed to the line thus laid down.

Two or three years ago I referred to Abraham Lincoln--in a casual

way--as one "inspired of God." I was taken to task for this and thrown

upon my defense. Knowing less then than I know now of Mr. Lincoln, I

confined myself to the superficial aspects of the case; to the career

of a man who seemed to have lacked the opportunity to prepare himself

for the great estate to which he had come, plucked as it were from

obscurity by a caprice of fortune.

Accepting the doctrine of inspiration as a law of the universe, I still

stand to this belief; but I must qualify it as far as it conveys the

idea that Mr. Lincoln was not as well equipped in actual knowledge of

men and affairs as any of his contemporaries. Mr. Webster once said that

he had been preparing to make his reply to Hayne for thirty years. Mr.

Lincoln had been in unconscious training for the presidency for thirty

years. His maiden address as a candidate for the Legislature, issued at

the ripe old age of twenty-three, closes with these words: "But if the

good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background,

I have been too familiar with disappointment to be very much chagrined."

The man who wrote that sentence, thirty years later wrote this sentence:

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and

patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad

land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as

surely they will be, by the angels of our better nature." Between those

two sentences, joined by a kindred, somber thought, flowed a

life-current--

"Strong, without rage, without o'erflowing, full,"

pausing never for an instant; deepening whilst it ran, but nowise

changing its course or its tones; always the same; calm; patient;

affectionate; like one born to a destiny, and, as in a dream, feeling

its resistless force.

It is needful to a complete understanding of Mr. Lincoln's relation to

the time and to his place in the political history of the country, that

the student peruse closely the four speeches to which I have called

attention; they underlie all that passed in the famous debate with

Douglas; all that their author said and did after he succeeded to the

presidency. They stand to-day as masterpieces of popular oratory. But

for our present purpose the debate with Douglas will suffice--the most

extraordinary intellectual spectacle the annals of our party warfare

afford. Lincoln entered the canvass unknown outside the state of

Illinois. He closed it renowned from one end of the land to the other.

In that great debate it was Titan against Titan; and, perusing it after

the lapse of forty years, the philosophic and impartial critic will

conclude which got the better of it, Lincoln or Douglas, much according

to his sympathy with the one or the other. Douglas, as I have said, had

the disadvantage of riding an ebb tide. But Lincoln encountered a

disadvantage in riding a flood tide, which was flowing too fast for a

man so conservative and so honest as he was. Thus there was not a little

equivocation on both sides foreign to the nature of the two. Both wanted

to be frank. Both thought they were being frank. But each was a little

afraid of his own logic; each was a little afraid of his own following;

and hence there was considerable hair splitting, involving accusations

that did not accuse and denials that did not deny. They were

politicians, these two, as well as statesmen; they were politicians, and

what they did not know about political campaigning was hardly worth

knowing. Reverently, I take off my hat to both of them; and I turn down

the page; I close the book and lay it on its shelf, with the inward

ejaculation, "There were giants in those days."

I am not undertaking to deliver an oral biography of Abraham Lincoln,

and shall pass over the events which quickly led up to his nomination

and election to the presidency in 1860.

I met the newly elected president the afternoon of the day in the early

morning of which he had arrived in Washington. It was a Saturday, I

think. He came to the capitol under Mr. Seward's escort, and, among the

rest, I was presented to him. His appearance did not impress me as

fantastically as it had impressed Colonel McClure. I was more familiar

with the Western type than Colonel McClure, and, whilst Mr. Lincoln was

certainly not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, there was about him

a dignity that commanded respect.

I met him again the forenoon of the 4th of March in his apartment at

Willard's Hotel as he was preparing to start to his inauguration, and

was touched by his unaffected kindness; for I came with a matter

requiring his immediate attention. He was entirely self-possessed; no

trace of nervousness; and very obliging. I accompanied the cortege that

passed from the senate chamber to the east portico of the capitol, and,

as Mr. Lincoln removed his hat to face the vast multitude in front and

below, I extended my hand to receive it, but Judge Douglas, just beside

me, reached over my outstretched arm and took the hat, holding it

throughout the delivery of the inaugural address. I stood near enough to

the speaker's elbow not to obstruct any gestures he might make, though

he made but few; and then it was that I began to comprehend something of

the power of the man.

He delivered that inaugural address as if he had been delivering

inaugural addresses all his life. Firm, resonant, earnest, it announced

the coming of a man; of a leader of men; and in its ringing tones and

elevated style, the gentlemen he had invited to become members of his

political family--each of whom thought himself a bigger man than his

master--might have heard the voice and seen the hand of a man born to

command. Whether they did or not, they very soon ascertained the fact.

From the hour Abraham Lincoln crossed the threshold of the White House

to the hour he went thence to his death, there was not a moment when he

did not dominate the political and military situation and all his

official subordinates.

Always courteous, always tolerant, always making allowance, yet always

explicit, his was the master-spirit, his the guiding hand; committing to

each of the members of his cabinet the details of the work of his own

department; caring nothing for petty sovereignty; but reserving to

himself all that related to great policies, the starting of moral forces

and the moving of organized ideas.

I want to say just here a few words about Mr. Lincoln's relation to the

South and the people of the South.

He was, himself, a Southern man. He and all his tribe were Southerners.

Although he left Kentucky when but a child, he was an old child; he

never was very young; and he grew to manhood in a Kentucky colony; for

what was Illinois in those days but a Kentucky colony, grown since

somewhat out of proportion? He was in no sense what we in the South used

to call "a poor white." Awkward, perhaps; ungainly, perhaps, but

aspiring; the spirit of a hero beneath that rugged exterior; the soul of

a prose poet behind those heavy brows; the courage of a lion back of

those patient, kindly aspects; and, long before he was of legal age, a

leader. His first love was a Rutledge; his wife was a Todd. Let the

romancist tell the story of his romance. I dare not. No sadder idyl can

be found in all the short and simple annals of the poor.

We know that he was a prose poet; for have we not that immortal prose

poem recited at Gettysburg? We know that he was a statesman; for has not

time vindicated his conclusions? But the South does not know, except as

a kind of hearsay, that he was a friend; the one friend who had the

power and the will to save it from itself. He was the one man in public

life who could have come to the head of affairs in 1861 bringing with

him none of the embittered resentments growing out of the anti-slavery

battle. Whilst Seward, Chase, Sumner and the rest had been engaged in

hand-to-hand combat with the Southern leaders at Washington, Lincoln, a

philosopher and a statesman, had been observing the course of events

from afar, and like a philosopher and a statesman. The direst blow that

could have been laid upon the prostrate South was delivered by the

assassin's bullet that struck him down.

But I digress. Throughout the contention that preceded the war, amid the

passions that attended the war itself, not one bitter, proscriptive word

escaped the lips of Abraham Lincoln, whilst there was hardly a day that

he was not projecting his great personality between some Southern man or

woman and danger.

Under the date of February 2, 1848, and from the hall of the House of

Representatives at Washington, whilst he was serving as a member of

Congress, I find this short note to his law partner at Springfield:--

"DEAR WILLIAM: I take up my pen to tell you that Mr. Stephens, of

Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice

like Logan's (that was Stephen T., not John A.), has just concluded

the very best speech of an hour's length I ever heard. My old,

withered, dry eyes (he was then not quite thirty-seven years of

age) are full of tears yet."

From that time forward he never ceased to love Stephens, of Georgia.

After that famous Hampton Roads conference, when the Confederate

commissioners, Stephens, Campbell, and Hunter, had traversed the field

of official routine with Mr. Lincoln, the president, and Mr. Seward, the

secretary of state, Lincoln, the friend, still the old Whig colleague,

though one was now president of the United States and the other

vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, took the "slim, pale-faced,

consumptive man" aside, and, pointing to a sheet of paper he held in his

hand, said: "Stephens, let me write 'Union' at the top of that page, and

you may write below it whatever else you please."

In the preceding conversation Mr. Lincoln had intimated that payment for

the slaves was not outside a possible agreement for reunion and peace.

He based that statement upon a plan he already had in hand, to

appropriate four hundred millions of dollars to this purpose.

There are those who have put themselves to the pains of challenging this

statement of mine. It admits of no possible equivocation. Mr. Lincoln

carried with him to Fortress Monroe two documents that still stand in

his own handwriting; one of them a joint resolution to be passed by the

two houses of Congress appropriating the four hundred millions, the

other a proclamation to be issued by himself, as president, when the

joint resolution had been passed. These formed no part of the discussion

at Hampton Roads, because Mr. Stephens told Mr. Lincoln they were

limited to treating upon the basis of the recognition of the

Confederacy, and to all intents and purposes the conference died before

it was actually born. But Mr. Lincoln was so filled with the idea that

next day, when he had returned to Washington, he submitted the two

documents to the members of his cabinet. Excepting Mr. Seward, they were

all against him. He said: "Why, gentlemen, how long is the war going to

last? It is not going to end this side of a hundred days, is it? It is

costing us four millions a day. There are the four hundred millions, not

counting the loss of life and property in the meantime. But you are all

against me, and I will not press the matter upon you." I have not cited

this fact of history to attack, or even to criticize, the policy of the

Confederate Government, but simply to illustrate the wise magnanimity

and justice of the character of Abraham Lincoln. For my part I rejoice

that the war did not end at Fortress Monroe--or any other

conference--but that it was fought out to its bitter and logical

conclusion at Appomattox.

It was the will of God that there should be, as God's own prophet had

promised, "a new birth of freedom," and this could only be reached by

the obliteration of the very idea of slavery. God struck Lincoln down in

the moment of his triumph, to attain it; He blighted the South to attain

it. But He did attain it. And here we are this night to attest it. God's

will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. But let no Southern man

point finger at me because I canonize Abraham Lincoln, for he was the

one friend we had at court when friends were most in need; he was the

one man in power who wanted to preserve us intact, to save us from the

wolves of passion and plunder that stood at our door; and as that God,

of whom it has been said that "whom He loveth He chasteneth," meant that

the South should be chastened, Lincoln was put out of the way by the

bullet of an assassin, having neither lot nor parcel, North or South,

but a winged emissary of fate, flown from the shadows of the mystic

world, which Æschylus and Shakespeare created and consecrated to

tragedy!

I sometimes wonder shall we ever attain a journalism sufficiently

upright in its treatment of current events to publish fully and fairly

the utterances of our public men, and, except in cases of provable

dishonor, to leave their motives and their personalities alone?

Reading just what Abraham Lincoln did say and did do, it is

inconceivable how such a man could have aroused antagonism so bitter and

abuse so savage, to fall at last by the hand of an assassin.

We boast our superior civilization and our enlightened freedom of

speech; and yet, how few of us--when a strange voice begins to utter

unfamiliar or unpalatable things--how few of us stop and ask ourselves,

may not this man be speaking the truth after all? It is so easy to call

names. It is so easy to impugn motives. It is so easy to misrepresent

opinions we cannot answer. From the least to the greatest what creatures

we are of party spirit, and yet, for the most part, how small its aims,

how imperfect its instruments, how disappointing its conclusions!

One thinks now that the world in which Abraham Lincoln lived might have

dealt more gently by such a man. He was himself so gentle--so upright in

nature and so broad of mind--so sunny and so tolerant in temper--so

simple and so unaffected in bearing--a rude exterior covering an

undaunted spirit, proving by his every act and word that--

"The bravest are the tenderest,

The loving are the daring."

Though he was a party leader, he was a typical and patriotic American,

in whom even his enemies might have found something to respect and

admire. But it could not be so. He committed one grievous offense; he

dared to think and he was not afraid to speak; he was far in advance of

his party and his time; and men are slow to forgive what they do not

readily understand.

Yet, all the while that the waves of passion were dashing over his

sturdy figure, reared above the dead-level, as a lone oak upon a sandy

beach, not one harsh word rankled in his heart to sour the milk of human

kindness that, like a perennial spring from the gnarled roots of some

majestic tree, flowed within him. He would smooth over a rough place in

his official intercourse with a funny story fitting the case in point,

and they called him a trifler. He would round off a logical argument

with a familiar example, hitting the nail squarely on the head and

driving it home, and they called him a buffoon. Big wigs and little wigs

were agreed that he lowered the dignity of debate; as if debates were

intended to mystify, and not to clarify truth. Yet he went on and on,

and never backward, until his time was come, when his genius, fully

developed, rose to the great exigencies intrusted to his hands. Where

did he get his style? Ask Shakespeare and Burns where they got their

style. Where did he get his grasp upon affairs and his knowledge of men?

Ask the Lord God who created miracles in Luther and Bonaparte!

What was the mysterious power of this mysterious man, and whence?

His was the genius of common sense; of common sense in action; of common

sense in thought; of common sense enriched by experience and unhindered

by fear. "He was a common man," says his friend Joshua Speed, "expanded

into giant proportions; well acquainted with the people, he placed his

hand on the beating pulse of the nation, judged of its disease, and was

ready with a remedy." Inspired he was truly, as Shakespeare was

inspired; as Mozart was inspired; as Burns was inspired; each, like him,

sprung directly from the people.

I look into the crystal globe that, slowly turning, tells the story of

his life, and I see a little heart broken boy, weeping by the

outstretched form of a dead mother, then bravely, nobly trudging a

hundred miles to obtain her Christian burial. I see this motherless lad

growing to manhood amid the scenes that seem to lead to nothing but

abasement; no teachers; no books; no chart, except his own untutored

mind; no compass, except his own undisciplined will; no light, save

light from Heaven; yet, like the caravel of Columbus, struggling on and

on through the trough of the sea, always toward the destined land. I see

the full-grown man, stalwart and brave, an athlete in activity of

movement and strength of limb, yet vexed by weird dreams and visions; of

life, of love, of religion, sometimes verging on despair. I see the

mind, grown as robust as the body, throw off these phantoms of the

imagination and give itself wholly to the work-a-day uses of the world;

the rearing of children; the earning of bread; the multiplied duties of

life. I see the party leader, self-confident in conscious rectitude;

original, because it was not his nature to follow; potent, because he

was fearless, pursuing his convictions with earnest zeal, and urging

them upon his fellows with the resources of an oratory which was hardly

more impressive than it was many-sided. I see him, the preferred among

his fellows, ascend the eminence reserved for him, and him alone of all

the statesmen of the time, amid the derision of opponents and the

distrust of supporters, yet unawed and unmoved, because thoroughly

equipped to meet the emergency. The same being, from first to last; the

poor child weeping over a dead mother; the great chief sobbing amid the

cruel horrors of war; flinching not from duty, nor changing his

life-long ways of dealing with the stern realities which pressed upon

him and hurried him onward. And, last scene of all, that ends this

strange, eventful history, I see him lying dead there in the capitol of

the nation, to which he had rendered "the last, full measure of his

devotion," the flag of his country around him, the world in mourning,

and, asking myself how could any man have hated that man, I ask you, how

can any man refuse his homage to his memory? Surely, he was one of God's

elect; not in any sense a creature of circumstance, or accident.

Recurring to the doctrine of inspiration, I say again and again, he was

inspired of God, and I cannot see how any one who believes in that

doctrine can regard him as anything else.

From Cæsar to Bismarck and Gladstone the world has had its statesmen and

its soldiers--men who rose to eminence and power step by step, through a

series of geometric progression as it were, each advancement following

in regular order one after the other, the whole obedient to

well-established and well-understood laws of cause and effect. They were

not what we call "men of destiny." They were "men of the time." They

were men whose careers had a beginning, a middle and an end, rounding

off lives with histories, full it may be of interesting and exciting

event, but comprehensive and comprehensible; simple, clear, complete.

The inspired ones are fewer. Whence their emanation, where and how they

got their power, by what rule they lived, moved and had their being, we

know not. There is no explication to their lives. They rose from shadow

and they went in mist. We see them, feel them, but we know them not.

They came, God's word upon their lips; they did their office, God's

mantle about them; and they vanished, God's holy light between the world

and them, leaving behind a memory, half mortal and half myth. From first

to last they were the creations of some special Providence, baffling the

wit of man to fathom, defeating the machinations of the world, the flesh

and the devil, until their work was done, then passing from the scene as

mysteriously as they had come upon it.

Tried by this standard, where shall we find an example so impressive as

Abraham Lincoln, whose career might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at

once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern

times?

Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; reared in penury, squalor,

with no gleam of light or fair surrounding; without graces, actual or

acquired; without name or fame or official training; it was reserved

for this strange being, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity,

raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the

destiny of a nation.

The great leaders of his party, the most experienced and accomplished

public men of the day, were made to stand aside; were sent to the rear,

whilst this fantastic figure was led by unseen hands to the front and

given the reins of power. It is immaterial whether we were for him, or

against him; wholly immaterial. That, during four years, carrying with

them such a weight of responsibility as the world never witnessed

before, he filled the vast space allotted him in the eyes and actions of

mankind, is to say that he was inspired of God, for nowhere else could

he have acquired the wisdom and the virtue.

Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where did Mozart get his music?

Whose hand smote the lyre of the Scottish plowman, and stayed the life

of the German priest? God, God, and God alone; and as surely as these

were raised up by God, inspired by God, was Abraham Lincoln; and a

thousand years hence, no drama, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled

with greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper feeling than

that which tells the story of his life and death.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Delivered by Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865, on the occasion of his

second inauguration as president of the United States.

FELLOW COUNTRYMEN:--At this second appearing to take the oath of the

presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than

there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a

course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration

of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly

called forth on every point and phase of the great contest, which still

absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little

that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all

else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and

it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With

high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were

anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought

to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this

place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent

agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to

dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties

deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the

nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it

perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed

generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.

These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that

this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,

perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which insurgents

would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right

to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which

it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the

conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should

cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental

and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and

each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men

should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from

the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not

judged. The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has

been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of

offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man

by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery

is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs

come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now

wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this

terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we

discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the

believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we

hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily

pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled

by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be

sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by

another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so

still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous

altogether."

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the

right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the

work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who

shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan--to do all

which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves

and with all nations.

ROBERT E. LEE

The following extracts are taken from the great lecture[4] of E.

Benjamin Andrews on "Robert E. Lee." Dr. Andrews was president of

Brown University 1889-1898, superintendent of the Public Schools of

Chicago 1898-1900, chancellor of the University of Nebraska

1900-1908, and since 1909 has been chancellor emeritus of that

institution. He served as a private, and later as second lieutenant

in the Union army during the Civil War. He was wounded at

Petersburg, losing an eye. Probably no better characterization or

higher tribute has ever been made of Robert E. Lee than that by Dr.

Andrews in this lecture which was as enthusiastically received by

the Union veterans of the North as by the Confederate veterans of

the South; for, as Dr. Andrews says in his tribute to Lee, "None

are prouder of his record than those who fought against him, who

while recognizing the purity of his motive, thought him in error in

going from under the stars and stripes."

Robert Edward Lee had perhaps a more illustrious traceable lineage than

any American not of his family. His ancestor, Lionel Lee, crossed the

English Channel with William the Conqueror. Another scion of the clan

fought beside Richard the Lion-hearted at Acre in the Third Crusade. To

Richard Lee, the great land owner on Northern Neck, the Virginia Colony

was much indebted for royal recognition. His grandson, Henry Lee, was

the grandfather of "Light-horse Harry" Lee of Revolutionary fame, who

was the father of Robert Edward Lee.

Robert E. Lee was born on January 19, 1807, in Westmoreland County, Va.,

the same county that gave to the world George Washington and James

Monroe. Though he was fatherless at eleven, the father's blood in him

inclined him to the profession of arms, and when eighteen,--in 1825,--on

an appointment obtained for him by General Andrew Jackson, he entered

the Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1829, being second

in rank in a class of forty-six. Among his classmates were two men whom

one delights to name with him--Ormsby M. Mitchel, later a general in the

Federal army, and Joseph E. Johnston, the famous Confederate. Lee was at

once made Lieutenant of Engineers, but, till the Mexican War, attained

only a captaincy. This was conferred on him in 1838.

In 1831 Lee had been married to Miss Mary Randolph Custis, the grand

daughter of Mrs. George Washington. By this marriage he became possessor

of the beautiful estate at Arlington, opposite Washington, his home till

the Civil War. The union, blessed by seven children, was in all respects

most happy.

In his prime Lee was spoken of as the handsomest man in the army. He was

about six feet high, perfectly built, healthy, fond of outdoor life,

enthusiastic in his profession, gentle, dignified, studious,

broad-minded, and positively, though unobtrusively, religious. If he had

faults, which those nearest him doubted, they were excess of modesty and

excess of tenderness.

During the Mexican War, Captain Lee directed all the most important

engineering operations of the American army--a work vital to its

wonderful success. Already at the siege of Vera Cruz, General Scott

mentioned him as having "greatly distinguished himself." He was

prominent in all the operations thence to Cerro Gordo, where, in April,

1847, he was brevetted major. Both at Contreras and at Churubusco he was

credited with gallant and meritorious services. At the charge up

Chapultepec, in which Joseph E. Johnston, George B. McClellan, George E.

Pickett, and Thomas J. Jackson participated, Lee bore Scott's orders to

all points until from loss of blood by a wound, and from the loss of two

nights' sleep at the batteries, he actually fainted away in the

discharge of his duty. Such ability and devotion brought him home from

Mexico bearing the brevet rank of colonel. General Scott had learned to

think of him as "the greatest military genius in America."

In 1852 Lee was made superintendent of the West Point Military Academy.

In 1855 he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of Col. Albert Sidney

Johnston's new cavalry regiment, just raised to serve in Texas. March,

1861, saw him colonel of the First United States Cavalry. With the

possible exception of the two Johnstons, he was now the most promising

candidate for General Scott's position whenever that venerable hero

vacated it, as he was sure to do soon.

Lee was a Virginian, and Virginia, about to secede and at length

seceding, in most earnest tones besought her distinguished son to join

her. It seemed to him the call of duty, and that call, as he understood

it, was one which it was not in him to disobey. President Lincoln knew

the value of the man, and sent Frank Blair to him to say that if he

would abide by the Union he should soon command the whole active army.

That would probably have meant his election, in due time, to the

presidency of his country. "For God's sake don't resign, Lee!" General

Scott--himself a Virginian--is said to have pleaded. He replied: "I am

compelled to; I cannot consult my own feelings in the matter."

Accordingly, three days after Virginia passed its ordinance of

secession, Lee sent to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, his resignation

as an officer in the United States army.

Few at the North were able to understand the secession movement, most

denying that a man at once thoughtful and honorable could join in it. So

centralized had the North by 1861 become in all social and economic

particulars, that centrality in government was taken as a matter of

course. Representing this, the nation was deemed paramount to any state.

Governmental sovereignty, like travel and trade, had come to ignore

state lines. The whole idea and feeling of state sovereignty, once as

potent North as South, had vanished and been forgotten.

Far otherwise at the South, where, owing to the great size of states and

to the paucity of railways and telegraphs, interstate association was

not yet a force. Each state, being in square miles ample enough for an

empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent

nation. The state was near and palpable; the central government seemed

a vague and distant thing. Loyalty was conceived as binding one

primarily to one's own state.

It is a misconception to explain this feeling--for in most cases it was

feeling rather than reasoned conviction--by Calhoun's teaching. It

resulted from geography and history, and, these factors working as they

did, would have been what it was had Calhoun never lived. These

considerations explain how Colonel Lee, certainly one of the most

conscientious men who ever lived, felt bound in duty and honor to side

with seceding Virginia, though he doubted the wisdom of her course.

Most striking among the characteristics of General Lee which made him so

successful was his exalted and unmatched excellence as a man, his

unselfishness, sweetness, gentleness, patience, love of justice, and

general elevation of soul. Lee much loved to quote Sir William

Hamilton's words: "On earth nothing great but man: in man nothing great

but mind." He always added, however: "In mind nothing great save

devotion to truth and duty." Though a soldier, and at last very eminent

as a soldier, he retained from the beginning to the end of his career

the entire temper and character of an ideal civilian. He did not sink

the man in the military man. He had all a soldier's virtues, the

"chevalier without fear and without reproach," but he was glorified by a

whole galaxy of excellences which soldiers too often lack. He was pure

of speech and of habit, never intemperate, never obscene, never profane,

never irreverent. In domestic life he was an absolute model. Lofty

command did not make him vain.

[Illustration: ROBERT E. LEE]

That Lee was brave need not be said. He was not as rash as Hood and

Cleburne sometimes were. He knew the value of his life to the great

cause, and, usually at least, did not expose himself needlessly.

Prudence he had, but no fear. His resolution to lead the charge at the

Bloody Angle--rashness at once--shows fearlessness. Tender-hearted as he

was, Lee felt battle frenzy as hardly another great commander ever did.

From him it spread like magnetism to his officers and men, thrilling all

as if the chief himself were close by in the fray, shouting, "Now fight,

my good fellows, fight!" Yet such was Lee's self-command that this ardor

never carried him too far.

But Lee possessed another order of courage infinitely higher and rarer

than this--the sort so often lacking even in generals who have served

with utmost distinction in high subordinate places, when they are called

to the sole and decisive direction of armies: he had that royal mettle,

that preternatural decision of character, ever tempered with caution and

wisdom, which leads a great commander, when true occasion arises,

resolutely to give general battle, or a swing out away from his base

upon a precarious but promising campaign. Here you have moral heroism;

ordinary valor is more impulsive. A weaker man, albeit total stranger to

fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of

hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either

rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme to the other, losing

all.

It was in this supreme kind of boldness that Robert Lee preëminently

excelled. Cautious always, he still took risks and responsibilities

which common generals would not have dared to take, and when he had

assumed these, his mighty will forbade him to sink under the load. The

braying of bitter critics, the obloquy of men who should have supported

him, the shots from behind, dismayed him no more than did Burnside's

cannon at Fredericksburg. On he pressed, stout as a Titan, relentless as

fate. What time bravest hearts failed at victory's delay, this

Dreadnaught rose to his best, and furnished courage for the whole

Confederacy.

In a sense, of course, the cause for which Lee fought was "lost"; yet a

very great part of what he and his _confreres_ sought, the war actually

secured and assured. His cause was not "lost" as Hannibal's was, whose

country, with its institutions, spite of his genius and devotion,

utterly perished from the earth. Yet Hannibal is remembered more widely

than Scipio. Were Lee in the same case with Hannibal, men would magnify

his name as long as history is read. "Of illustrious men," says

Thucydides, "the whole earth is the sepulcher. They are immortalized not

alone by columns and inscriptions in their own lands; memorials to them

rise in foreign countries as well--not of stone, it may be, but

unwritten, in the thoughts of posterity."

Lee's case resembles Cromwell's much more than Hannibal's. The _regime_

against which Cromwell warred returned in spite of him; but it returned

modified, involving all the reforms for which the chieftain had bled. So

the best of what Lee drew sword for is here in our actual America, and,

please God, shall remain here forever.

Decisions of the United States Supreme Court since Secession gave a

sweep and a certainty to the rights of states and limit the central

power in this republic as had never been done before. The wild doctrines

of Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens on these points are not our law. If the

Union is perpetual, equally so is each state. The republic is "an

indestructible Union of indestructible states." If this part of our law

had in 1861 received its present definition and emphasis, and if the

Southern States had then been sure, come what might, of the freedom they

actually now enjoy each to govern itself in its own way, even South

Carolina might never have voted secession. And inasmuch as the war,

better than aught else could have done, forced this phase of the

Constitution out into clear expression, General Lee did not fight in

vain. The essential good he wished has come, while the republic with its

priceless benedictions to us all remains intact. All Americans thus have

part in Robert Lee, not only as a peerless man and soldier, but as the

sturdy miner, sledge-hammering the rock of our liberties till it give

forth its gold. None are prouder of his record than those who fought

against him, who, while recognizing the purity of his motive, thought

him in error in going from under the stars and stripes. It is likely

that more American hearts day by day think lovingly of Lee than of any

other Civil War celebrity save Lincoln alone. And his praise will

increase.

OUR REUNITED COUNTRY

Speech of Clark Howell at the Peace Jubilee Banquet in Chicago,

October 19, 1898, in response to the toast "Our Reunited Country:

North and South."

MR. TOASTMASTER, AND MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN:--In the mountains of my

state, in a county remote from the quickening touch of commerce, and

railroads and telegraphs--so far removed that the sincerity of its

rugged people flows unpolluted from the spring of nature--two

vine-covered mounds, nestling in the solemn silence of a country

churchyard, suggest the text of my response to the sentiment to which I

am to speak to-night. A serious text, Mr. Toastmaster, for an occasion

like this, and yet out of it there is life and peace and hope and

prosperity, for in the solemn sacrifice of the voiceless grave can the

chiefest lesson of the Republic be learned, and the destiny of its real

mission be unfolded. So, bear with me while I lead you to the

rust-stained slab, which for a third of a century--since

Chickamauga--has been kissed by the sun as it peeped over the Blue

Ridge, melting the tears with which the mourning night had bedewed the

inscription:--

"Here lies a Confederate soldier.

He died for his country."

The September day which brought the body of this mountain hero to that

home among the hills which had smiled upon his infancy, been gladdened

by his youth, and strengthened by his manhood, was an ever memorable

one with the sorrowing concourse of friends and neighbors who followed

his shot-riddled body to the grave. And of that number no man gainsaid

the honor of his death, lacked full loyalty to the flag for which he

fought, or doubted the justice of the cause for which he gave his life.

Thirty-five years have passed; another war has called its roll of

martyrs; again the old bell tolls from the crude latticed tower of the

settlement church; another great pouring of sympathetic humanity, and

this time the body of a son, wrapped in the stars and stripes, is

lowered to its everlasting rest beside that of the father who sleeps in

the stars and bars.

There were those there who stood by the grave of the Confederate hero

years before, and the children of those were there, and of those present

no one gainsaid the honor of the death of this hero of El Caney, and

none were there but loved, as patriots alone can love, the glorious flag

that enshrines the people of a common country as it enshrouds the form

that will sleep forever in its blessed folds. And on this tomb will be

written:

"Here lies the son of a Confederate soldier,

He died for his country."

And so it is that between the making of these two graves human hands and

human hearts have reached a solution of the vexed problem that has

baffled human will and human thought for three decades. Sturdy sons of

the South have said to their brothers of the North that the people of

the South had long since accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which

they had appealed. And likewise the oft-repeated message has come back

from the North that peace and good will reigned, and that the wounds of

civil dissention were but as sacred memories. Good fellowship was wafted

on the wings of commerce and development from those who had worn the

blue to those who had worn the gray. Nor were these messages delivered

in vain, for they served to pave the way for the complete and absolute

elimination of the line of sectional differences by the only process by

which such a result was possible. The sentiment of the great majority of

the people of the South was rightly spoken in the message of the

immortal Hill, and in the burning eloquence of Henry Grady--both

Georgians--the record of whose blessed work for the restoration of peace

between the sections becomes a national heritage, and whose names are

stamped in enduring impress upon the affection of the people of the

Republic.

And yet there were still those among us who believed your course was

polite, but insincere, and those among you who assumed that our

professed attitude was sentimental and unreal. Bitterness had departed,

and sectional hate was no more, but there were those who feared, even if

they did not believe, that between the great sections of our greater

government there was not the perfect faith and trust and love that both

professed; that there was want of the faith that made the American

Revolution a successful possibility; that that there was want of the

trust that crystallized our States into the original Union; that there

was lack of the love that bound in unassailable strength the united

sisterhood of States that withstood the shock of Civil War. It is true

this doubt existed to a greater degree abroad than at home. But to-day

the mist of uncertainty has been swept away by the sunlight of events,

and there, where doubt obscured before stands in bold relief, commanding

the admiration of the whole world, the most glorious type of united

strength and sentiment and loyalty known to the history of nations.

Out of the chaos of that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the

vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach

surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable--a

new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its

cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. No one questioned that

commercial and geographic union had been effected. So had Rome reunited

its faltering provinces, maintaining the limit of its imperial

jurisdiction by the power of commercial bonds and the majesty of the

sword, until in its very vastness it collapsed. The heart of its people

did not beat in unison. Nations may be made by the joining of hands, but

the measure of their real strength and vitality, like that of the human

body, is in the heart. Show me the country whose people are not at heart

in sympathy with its institutions, and the fervor of whose patriotism is

not bespoken in its flag, and I will show you a ship of state which is

sailing in shallow waters, toward unseen eddies of uncertainty, if not

to the open rocks of dismemberment.

Whence was the proof to come, to ourselves as well as to the world, that

we were being moved once again by a common impulse, and by the same

heart that inspired and gave strength to the hands that smote the

British in the days of the Revolution, and again at New Orleans; that

made our ships the masters of the seas; that placed our flag on

Chapultepec, and widened our domain from ocean to ocean? How was the

world to know that the burning fires of patriotism, so essential to

national glory and achievement, had not been quenched by the blood

spilled by the heroes of both sides of the most desperate struggle known

in the history of civil wars? How was the doubt that stood, all

unwilling, between outstretched hands and sympathetic hearts, to be, in

fact, dispelled?

If from out the caldron of conflict there arose this doubt, only from

the crucible of war could come the answer. And, thank God, that answer

has been made in the record of the war, the peaceful termination of

which we celebrate to-night. Read it in every page of its history; read

it in the obliteration of party and sectional lines in the congressional

action which called the nation to arms in the defense of prostrate

liberty, and for the extension of the sphere of human freedom; read it

in the conduct of the distinguished Federal soldier who, as the chief

executive of this great republic,[5] honors this occasion by his

presence to-night, and whose appointments in the first commissions

issued after war had been declared made manifest the sincerity of his

often repeated utterances of complete sectional reconciliation and the

elimination of sectional lines in the affairs of government. Differing

with him, as I do, on party issues, utterly at variance with the views

of his party on economic problems, I sanction with all my heart the

obligation that rests on every patriotic citizen to make party second to

country, and in the measure that he has been actuated by this broad and

patriotic policy he will receive the plaudits of the whole people: "Well

done, good and faithful servant."

Portentous indeed have been the developments of the past six months; the

national domain has been extended far into the Caribbean Sea on the

south, and to the west it is so near the mainland of Asia that we can

hear grating of the process which is grinding the ancient celestial

empire into pulp for the machinery of civilization and of progress.

But speaking as a Southerner and an American, I say that this has been

as naught compared to the greatest good this war has accomplished.

Drawing alike from all sections of the Union for her heroes and her

martyrs, depending alike upon North, South, East and West for her

glorious victories, and weeping with sympathy with the widows and the

stricken mothers wherever they may be, America, incarnated spirit of

liberty, stands again to-day the holy emblem of a household in which the

children abide in unity, equality, love and peace. The iron sledge of

war that rent asunder the links of loyalty and love has welded them

together again. Ears that were deaf to loving appeals for the burial of

sectional strife have listened and believed when the muster guns have

spoken. Hearts that were cold to calls for trust and sympathy have

awakened to loving confidence in the baptism of their blood.

Drawing inspiration from the flag of our country, the South has shared

not only the dangers, but the glories of the war. In the death of brave

young Bagley at Cardenas, North Carolina furnished the first blood in

the tragedy. It was Victor Blue of South Carolina, who, like the Swamp

Fox of the Revolution, crossed the fiery path of the enemy at his

pleasure, and brought the first official tidings of the situation as it

existed in Cuba. It was Brumby, a Georgia boy, the flag lieutenant of

Dewey, who first raised the stars and stripes over Manila. It was

Alabama that furnished Hobson who accomplished two things the Spanish

navy never yet has done--sunk an American ship, and made a Spanish

man-of-war securely float.

The South answered the call to arms with its heart, and its heart goes

out with that of the North in rejoicing at the result. The demonstration

lacking to give the touch of life to the picture has been made. The open

sesame that was needed to give insight into the true and loyal hearts

both North and South has been spoken. Divided by war, we are united as

never before by the same agency, and the union is of hearts as well as

hands.

The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must

take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident

of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in

sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy

from Narragansett to its last, long rest at Richmond.

When that great and generous soldier, U. S. Grant, gave back to Lee,

crushed, but ever glorious, the sword he had surrendered at Appomattox,

that magnanimous deed said to the people of the South: "You are our

brothers." But when the present ruler of our grand republic on awakening

to the condition of war that confronted him, with his first commission

placed the leader's sword in the hands of those gallant confederate

commanders, Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, he wrote between the lines in

living letters of everlasting light the words: "There is but one people

of this Union, one flag alone for all."

The South, Mr. Toastmaster, will feel that her sons have been well

given, that her blood has been well spilled, if that sentiment is to be

indeed the true inspiration of our nation's future. God grant it may be

as I believe it will.

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

Speech of Henry Cabot Lodge, delivered at a banquet complimentary

to the Robert E. Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans, of Richmond,

Va., given in Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 17, 1887. The Southerners

were visiting Boston as the special guests of the John A. Andrew

Post 15, Department of Massachusetts, Grand Army of the Republic.

MR. CHAIRMAN:--To such a toast, sir, it would seem perhaps most fitting

that one of those should respond who were a part of the great event

which it recalls. Yet, after all, on an occasion like this, it may not

be amiss to call upon one who belongs to a generation to whom the

Rebellion is little more than history, and who, however insufficiently,

represents the feelings of that and the succeeding generations as to our

great Civil War. I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away

to defend Washington, and my personal knowledge of that time is confined

to a few broken but vivid memories. I saw the troops, month after month,

pour through the streets of Boston, I saw Shaw go forth at the head of

his black regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body but dauntless in

soul, ride by to carry what was left of him once more to the

battlefields of the republic. I saw Andrew, standing bare headed on the

steps of the state house, bid the men God speed. I cannot remember the

words he said, but I can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought

tears to the eyes and fire to the hearts of all who listened. I

understood but dimly the awful meaning of these events. To my boyish

mind one thing alone was clear, that the soldiers as they marched past

were all, in that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Amid many changes

that simple belief of boyhood has never altered. The gratitude which I

felt then I confess to-day more strongly than ever. But other feelings

have in the progress of time altered much. I have learned, and others of

my generation as they came to man's estate have learned, what the war

really meant, and they have also learned to know and to do justice to

the men who fought the war upon the other side.

I do not stand up in this presence to indulge in any mock

sentimentality. You brave men who wore the gray would be the first to

hold me or any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say

that, now it was all over, I thought the North was wrong and the result

of the war a mistake, and that I was prepared to suppress my political

opinions. I believe most profoundly that the war on our side was

eternally right, that our victory was the salvation of the country, and

that the results of the war were of infinite benefit to both North and

South. But however we differed, or still differ, as to the causes for

which we fought then, we accept them as settled, commit them to history,

and fight over them no more. To the men who fought the battles of the

Confederacy we hold out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. To

courage and faith wherever shown we bow in homage with uncovered heads.

We respect and honor the gallantry and valor of the brave men who fought

against us, and who gave their lives and shed their blood in defense of

what they believed to be right. We rejoice that the famous general

whose name is borne upon your banner was one of the greatest soldiers of

modern times, because he, too, was an American. We have no bitter

memories to revive, no reproaches to utter. Reconciliation is not to be

sought, because it exists already. Differ in politics and in a thousand

other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but let us never differ

with each other on sectional or State lines, by race or creed.

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I

have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We

welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at

the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back

and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your great

orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The

distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New

Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." A

distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves at Arlington, said

"Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with

thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great

reconciliation. Side by side, Virginia and Massachusetts led the

colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the

government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox,

Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought

shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue--the

uniform of Washington.

Your presence here brings back their noble memories, it breathes the

spirit of concord, and united with so many other voices in the

irrevocable message of union and good will. Mere sentiment all this,

some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the

world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has reunited us. When the

war closed, it was proposed in the newspapers and elsewhere to give

Governor Andrew, who had sacrificed health and strength and property in

his public duties, some immediately lucrative office, like the

collectorship of the port of Boston. A friend asked him if he would take

such a place. "No," said he; "I have stood as high priest between the

horns of the altar, and I have poured out upon it the best blood of

Massachusetts, and I cannot take money for that." Mere sentiment, truly,

but the sentiment which ennobles and uplifts mankind. It is sentiment

which so hallows a bit of torn, stained bunting, that men go gladly to

their deaths to save it. So I say that the sentiment manifested by your

presence here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who

wore the blue, has a far-reaching and gracious influence, of more value

than many practical things. It tells us that these two grand old

commonwealths, parted in the shock of the Civil War, are once more side

by side as in the days of the Revolution, never to part again. It tells

us that the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts, if war should break

again upon the country, will, as in the olden days, stand once more

shoulder to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear.

It is fraught with tidings of peace on earth and you may read its

meaning in the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and Union, now and

forever, one and inseparable."

A REMINISCENCE OF GETTYSBURG

The following extract is taken from General John B. Gordon's great

lecture, "The Last Days of the Confederacy," delivered with marked

effect throughout the country. This report of the lecture is as

given in Brooklyn, N. Y., February 7, 1901.

But now to Gettysburg. That great battle could not be described in the

space of a lecture. I shall select from the myriad of thrilling

incidents which rush over my memory but two.[6] The first I relate

because it seems due to one of the bravest and knightliest soldiers of

the Union army. As my command came back from the Susquehanna River to

Gettysburg, it was thrown squarely on the right flank of the Union army.

The fact that that portion of the Union army melted was no disparagement

either of its courage or its lofty American manhood, for any troops that

had ever been marshaled, the Old Guard itself, would have been as surely

and swiftly shattered. It was that movement that gave to the Confederate

army the first day's victory at Gettysburg; and as I rode forward over

that field of green clover, made red with the blood of both armies, I

found a major-general among the dead and the dying. But a few moments

before, I had seen the proud form of that magnificent Union officer reel

in the saddle and then fall in the white smoke of the battle; and as I

rode by, intensely looking into his pale face, which was turned to the

broiling rays of that scorching July sun, I discovered that he was not

dead. Dismounting from my horse, I lifted his head with one hand, gave

him water from my canteen, inquired his name and if he was badly hurt.

He was General Francis C. Barlow, of New York. He had been shot from his

horse while grandly leading a charge. The ball had struck him in front,

passed through the body and out near the spinal cord, completely

paralyzing him in every limb; neither he nor I supposed he could live

for one hour. I desired to remove him before death from that terrific

sun. I had him lifted on a litter and borne to the shade in the rear. As

he bade me good-bye, and upon my inquiry what I could do for him, he

asked me to take from his pocket a bunch of letters. Those letters were

from his wife, and as I opened one at his request, and as his eye

caught, as he supposed for the last time, that wife's signature, the

great tears came like a fountain and rolled down his pale face; and he

said to me, "General Gordon, you are a Confederate; I am a Union

soldier; but we are both Americans; if you should live through this

dreadful war and ever see my wife, will you not do me the kindness to

tell my wife for me that you saw me on this field? Tell her for me, that

my last thought on earth was of her; tell her for me that you saw me

fall in this battle, and that her husband fell, not in the rear, but at

the head of his column; tell her for me, general, that I freely give my

life to my country, but that my unutterable grief is that I must now go

without the privilege of seeing her once more, and bidding her a long

and loving farewell." I at once said: "Where is Mrs. Barlow, general?

Where could I find her?" for I was determined that wife should receive

that gallant husband's message. He replied: "She is very close to me;

she is just back of the Union line of battle with the commander-in-chief

at his headquarters." That announcement of Mrs. Barlow's presence with

the Union army struck in this heart of mine another chord of deepest and

tenderest sympathy; for my wife had followed me, sharing with me the

privations of the camp, the fatigues of the march; again and again was

she under fire, and always on the very verge of the battle was that

devoted wife of mine, like an angel of protection and an inspiration to

duty. I replied: "Of course, General Barlow, if I am alive, sir, when

this day's battle, now in progress is ended--if I am not shot dead

before the night comes--you may die satisfied that I will see to it that

Mrs. Barlow has your message before to-morrow's dawn."

And I did. The moment the guns had ceased their roar on the hills, I

sent a flag of truce with a note to Mrs. Barlow. I did not tell her--I

did not have the heart to tell her that her husband was dead, as I

believed him to be; but I did tell her that he was desperately wounded,

a prisoner in my hands; but that she should have safe escort through my

lines to her husband's side. Late that night, as I lay in the open field

upon my saddle, a picket from my front announced a lady on the line. She

was Mrs. Barlow. She had received my note and was struggling, under the

guidance of officers of the Union army, to penetrate my lines and reach

her husband's side. She was guided to his side by my staff during the

night. Early next morning the battle was renewed, and the following

day, and then came the retreat of Lee's immortal army. I thought no more

of that gallant son of the North, General Barlow, except to count him

among the thousands of Americans who had gone down on both sides in the

dreadful battle. Strangely enough, as the war progressed, Barlow

concluded not to die; Providence decreed that he should live. He

recovered and rejoined his command; and just one year after that, Barlow

saw that I was killed in another battle. The explanation is perfectly

simple. A cousin of mine, with the same initials, General J. B. Gordon,

of North Carolina, was killed in a battle near Richmond. Barlow, who, as

I say, had recovered and rejoined his command--although I knew he was

dead, or thought I did--picked up a newspaper and read this item in it:

"General J. B. Gordon of the Confederate army was killed to-day in

battle." Calling his staff around him, Barlow read that item and said to

them, "I am very sorry to see this; you will remember that General J. B.

Gordon was the officer who picked me up on the battlefield at

Gettysburg, and sent my wife through his lines to me at night. I am very

sorry."

Fifteen years passed. Now, I wish the audience to remember that during

all those fifteen years which intervened, Barlow was dead to me, and for

fourteen of them I was dead to Barlow. In the meantime, the partiality

of the people of Georgia had placed me in the United States senate.

Clarkson Potter was a member of Congress from New York. He invited me to

dine with him to meet his friend, General Barlow. Now came my time to

think. "Barlow," I said, "Barlow? That is the same name, but it can't be

my Barlow, for I left him dead at Gettysburg." And I endeavored to

understand what it meant, and thought I had made the discovery. I was

told, as I made the inquiry, that there were two Barlows in the United

States army. That satisfied me at once. I concluded, as a matter of

course, that it was the other fellow I was going to meet; that Clarkson

Potter had invited me to dine with the living Barlow and not with the

dead one. Barlow had a similar reflection about the Gordon he was to

dine with. He supposed that I was the other Gordon. We met at Clarkson

Potter's table. I sat just opposite to Barlow; and in the lull of the

conversation I asked him, "General, are you related to the Barlow who

was killed at Gettysburg?" He replied: "I am the man, sir." "Are you

related," he asked, "to the Gordon who killed me?" "Well," I said, "I am

the man, sir." The scene which followed beggars all description. No

language could describe that scene at Clarkson Potter's table in

Washington, fifteen years after the war was over. Truth is indeed

stranger than fiction. Think of it! What could be stranger? There we

met, both dead, each of us presenting to the other the most absolute

proof of the resurrection of the dead.

But stranger still, perhaps, is the friendship true and lasting begun

under such auspices. What could be further removed from the realms of

probabilities than a confiding friendship between combatants, which is

born on the field of blood, amidst the thunders of battle, and while the

hostile legions rush upon each other with deadly fury and pour into

each other's breasts their volleys of fire and of leaden hail. Such were

the circumstances under which was born the friendship between Barlow and

myself, and which I believe is more sincere because of its remarkable

birth, and which has strengthened and deepened with the passing years.

For the sake of our reunited and glorious Republic may we not hope that

similar ties will bind together all the soldiers of the two

armies--indeed all Americans in perpetual unity until the last bugle

call shall have summoned us to the eternal camping grounds beyond the

stars?

THE NEW SOUTH

Address by Henry W. Grady, journalist [born in Athens, Ga., May 17,

1851; died in Atlanta, Ga., December 23, 1889], delivered at the

eighty-first anniversary celebration of the New England Society in

the city of New York, December 22, 1886.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--"There was a South of slavery and

secession--that South is dead. There is a South of union and

freedom--that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every

hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H.

Hill, at Tammany Hall in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my

text to-night.

Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am

permitted to address you. I make this abrupt acknowledgment advisedly,

for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient and

august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening

sentence, it would be well if, in that sentence, I had met in a rough

sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to speak, with

courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted through your

kindness to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the

significance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which

bears the substance, if it surpasses the semblance, of original New

England hospitality and honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but

in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to my people made

plain.

I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not

troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife

sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the

top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landing afforded,

into the basement; and while picking himself up had the pleasure of

hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher?" "No, I

didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't!"

So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with energy if

not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you

will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to

judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told

some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The

boys finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next

morning he read on the bottom of one page: "When Noah was one hundred

and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was"--then turning

the page--"one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built

of gopher wood, and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally

puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said: "My

friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I

accept it as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and

wonderfully made." If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I

could proceed cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense

of consecration.

Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of

getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich

eloquence of your speakers--the fact that the Cavalier as well as the

Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was "up and

able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I find no

mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving

a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else. Let me remind you

the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on this continent--that

Cavalier John Smith gave New England its very name, and was so pleased

with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever

since--and that while Miles Standish was cutting off men's ears for

courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to kiss

their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight,

and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the Cavalier

colonies, the huts in the wilderness being full as the nests in the

woods.

But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little

books I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has always done

with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his

merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as

such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the

inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both

Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution; and

the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either, took

possession of the Republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to

wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and

establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.

My friend, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to

come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types like

valuable plants are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of

these colonies Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their

purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a

century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who

comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the

majesty and grace of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the son of

Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of

both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost.

He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was

American renewed, and that in his homely form were first gathered the

vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government--charging it with such

tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that

martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life

consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing

the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to

the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are

honored; and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and

to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me. I accent the

term, "The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to

me, sir, is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. I

would not, if I could, dim the glory they won in peace and war, or by

word or deed take aught from the splendor and grace of their

civilization--never equaled and, perhaps, never to be equaled in its

chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, not through protest

against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments and, if

you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address

myself, and to the consideration of which I hasten lest it become the

Old South before I get to it. Age does not endow all things with

strength and virtue, nor are all new things to be despised. The

shoemaker who put over his door "John Smith's shop. Founded in 1760,"

was more than matched by his young rival across the street who hung out

this sign: "Bill Jones. Established 1886. No old stock kept in this

shop."

Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's hand, the picture of your

returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of

war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread,

reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I

tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late

war--an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory--in pathos

and not in splendor, but in glory that equalled yours, and to hearts as

loving as ever welcomed heroes home. Let me picture to you the footsore

Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the

parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and

faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865.

Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want

and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings

the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and

pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia

hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful

journey. What does he find--let me ask you, who went to your homes eager

to find in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four

years' sacrifice--what does he find when, having followed the

battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half

so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and

beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves

free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money

worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away;

his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the

burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very

traditions are gone; without money, credit, employment, material or

training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that

ever met human intelligence--the establishing of a status for the vast

body of his liberated slaves.

What does he do--this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit

down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had

stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin

was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The

soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had

charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red

with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women

reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their

husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a

garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all

this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. "Bill Arp" struck the

keynote when he said: "Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me,

and now I am going to work." Or the soldier returning home after defeat

and roasting some corn on the roadside, who made the remark to his

comrades: "You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going to

Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool

with me any more I will whip 'em again." I want to say to General

Sherman--who is considered an able man in our part, though some people

think he is a kind of careless man about fire--that from the ashes he

left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow

or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our

homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.

But in all this what have we accomplished? What is the sum of our work?

We have found out that in the general summary the free negro counts more

than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop

and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in

the place of theories and put business above politics. We have

challenged your spinners in Massachusetts and your iron-makers in

Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received

from our cotton crop will make us rich, when the supplies that make it

are homeraised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from

twenty-four to six per cent., and are floating four per cent. bonds. We

have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and

have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and

Dixon's line used to be, and hung our latch-string out, to you and

yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every

household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks

are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun

shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did "before the war." We

have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with

work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance

never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as

rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until

we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as he manufactures

relics of the battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive

oil out of his cotton seed, against any down-easter that ever swapped

wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the valleys of Vermont. Above

all, we know that we have achieved in these "piping times of peace" a

fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to

win in the forum by their eloquence or compel on the field by their

swords.

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this

work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting

and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided, perhaps,

but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always.

In the record of her social, industrial, and political institutions we

await with confidence the verdict of the world.

But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or

progressed in honor and equity towards the solution? Let the record

speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring

population than the negroes of the South; none in fuller sympathy with

the employing and landowning class. He shares our school fund, has the

fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people.

Self-interest, as well as honor, demand that he should have this. Our

future, our very existence depend upon our working out this problem in

full and exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the

Emancipation Proclamation, your victory was assured; for he then

committed you to the cause of human liberty, against which the arms of

man cannot prevail; while those of our statesmen who trusted to make

slavery the cornerstone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as

they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the

sword maintain in the sight of advancing civilization. Had Mr. Toombs

said, which he did not say, that he would call the roll of his slaves at

the foot of Bunker Hill, he would have been foolish, for he might have

known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and

that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New England when your

fathers--not to be blamed for parting with what didn't pay--sold their

slaves to our fathers--not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when

they saw it.

The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and

cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our

defenseless women and children, whose husbands and fathers were fighting

against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he

struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at

last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be

struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless

charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors

loyalty and devotion. Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled

him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South, with the

North, protests against injustice to this simple and sincere people. To

liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. The

rest must be left to conscience and common sense. It should be left to

those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected

and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent

sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him in spite of

calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for

us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if

the South holds her reason and integrity.

But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee

surrendered--I don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I understand

he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the

time when he "determined to abandon any further prosecution of the

struggle"--when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South

became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough

to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final

the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found

her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her

in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave

were broken. Under the old _regime_ the negroes were slaves to the

South, the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its

simple police regulation and its feudal habit, was the only type

possible under slavery. Thus we gathered in the hands of a splendid and

chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among

the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is

gathered at the heart, filling with affluent rapture, but leaving the

body chill and colorless.

The Old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious

that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The New South

presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular

movement--a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on

the surface but stronger at the core--a hundred farms for every

plantation, fifty homes for every palace, and diversified industry that

meets the complex needs of this complex age.

The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the

breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her

face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and

prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the

people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the

expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because in

the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her

brave armies were beaten.

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has

nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle

between the states was war and not rebellion, revolution and not

conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should

be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions

if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to

take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its

central hills--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a

name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man

who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New

England--from Plymouth Rock all the way--would I exchange the heritage

he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall

send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name

with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that

memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the

cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged

by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the

omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand, and that

human slavery was swept forever from American soil--the American Union

saved from the wreck of war.

This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every

foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a

battleground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to

you by the blood of your brothers, who died for your victory, and doubly

hallowed to us by the blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted,

in defeat--sacred soil to all of us, rich with memories that make us

purer and stronger and better, silent but stanch witnesses in its red

desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless

glory of American arms--speaking in eloquent witness in its white peace

and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American states and the

imperishable brotherhood of the American people.

Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the

prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has

died in the hearts of the conquered? ("No! No!") Will she transmit this

prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never felt

the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself? ("No! No!")

Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight

from his soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she

make the vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the

couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his

lips with praise and glorifying his path to the grave; will she make

this vision on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a

benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If she does, the South, never

abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal;

but if she does not; if she accepts in frankness and sincerity this

message of goodwill and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster,

delivered in this very Society forty years ago amid tremendous applause,

be verified in its fullest and final sense, when he said: "Standing hand

to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for

sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same

government, united, all united now and united forever. There have been

difficulties, contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my

judgment

"'Those opposed eyes,

Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,

All of one nature, of one substance bred,

Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,

Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,

March all one way.'"

THE DUTY AND VALUE OF PATRIOTISM

John Ireland, Archbishop of Saint Paul, was born at Burnchurch,

County Kilkenny, Ireland, September 11, 1838. As a boy he came to

Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1849, and there obtained his secular

education at the Cathedral School. He studied theology in France,

in the seminaries of Meximieux and Hyeres. During the Civil War he

was chaplain of the Fifth Minnesota Regiment. In 1875 he was

consecrated bishop of Saint Paul. In 1869 he founded the first

total-abstinence society in Minnesota and has lectured much on

temperance in the United States and Great Britain. The following

extracts, used by special permission, are from his lecture

delivered before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, New

York, April 4, 1894.

Patriotism is love of country, and loyalty to its life and weal--love

tender and strong, tender as the love of son for mother, strong as the

pillars of death; loyalty generous and disinterested, shrinking from no

sacrifice, seeking no reward save country's honor and country's triumph.

Patriotism! There is magic in the word. It is bliss to repeat it.

Through ages the human race burnt the incense of admiration and

reverence at the shrines of patriotism. The most beautiful pages of

history are those which recount its deeds. Fireside tales, the

outpourings of the memories of peoples, borrow from it their warmest

glow. Poets are sweetest when they reecho its whisperings; orators are

most potent when they thrill its chords to music.

Pagan nations were wrong when they made gods of their noblest patriots.

But the error was the excess of a great truth, that heaven unites with

earth in approving and blessing patriotism; that patriotism is one of

earth's highest virtues, worthy to have come down from the atmosphere of

the skies.

The exalted patriotism of the exiled Hebrew exhaled itself in a canticle

of religion which Jehovah inspired, and which has been transmitted, as

the inheritance of God's people to the Christian Church:

"Upon the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, when we

remembered Sion.--If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand

be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember

thee, if I do not make Jerusalem the beginning of my joy."

The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme value.

The value of patriotism to a people is above gold and precious stones,

above commerce and industry, above citadels and warships. Patriotism is

the vital spark of national honor; it is the fount of the nation's

prosperity, the shield of the nation's safety. Take patriotism away, the

nation's soul has fled, bloom and beauty have vanished from the nation's

countenance.

The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme

loveliness. Patriotism goes out to what is among earth's possessions the

most precious, the first and best and dearest--country--and its effusion

is the fragrant flowering of the purest and noblest sentiments of the

heart.

Patriotism is innate in all men; the absence of it betokens a perversion

of human nature; but it grows its full growth only where thoughts are

elevated and heart-beatings are generous.

Next to God is country, and next to religion is patriotism. No praise

goes beyond its deserts. It is sublime in its heroic oblation upon the

field of battle. "Oh glorious is he," exclaims in Homer the Trojan

warrior, "who for his country falls!" It is sublime in the oft-repeated

toil of dutiful citizenship. "Of all human doings," writes Cicero, "none

is more honorable and more estimable than to merit well of the

commonwealth."

Countries are of divine appointment. The Most High "divided the nations,

separated the sons of Adam, and appointed the bounds of peoples." The

physical and moral necessities of God's creatures are revelations of his

will and laws. Man is born a social being. A condition of his existence

and of his growth of mature age is the family. Nor does the family

suffice to itself. A larger social organism is needed, into which

families gather, so as to obtain from one another security to life and

property and aid in the development of the faculties and powers with

which nature has endowed the children of men.

The whole human race is too extensive and too diversified in interests

to serve those ends: hence its subdivisions into countries or peoples.

Countries have their providential limits--the waters of a sea, a

mountain range, the lines of similarity of requirements or of methods of

living. The limits widen in space according to the measure of the

destinies which the great Ruler allots to peoples, and the importance of

their parts in the mighty work of the cycles of years, the

ever-advancing tide of humanity's evolution.

The Lord is the God of nations because he is the God of men. No nation

is born into life or vanishes back into nothingness without his bidding.

I believe in the providence of God over countries as I believe in his

wisdom and his love, and my patriotism to my country rises within my

soul invested with the halo of my religion to my God.

More than a century ago a trans-Atlantic poet and philosopher, reading

well the signs, wrote:

"Westward the course of empire takes its way.

The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;

Time's noblest offspring is the last."

Berkeley's prophetic eye had descried America. What shall I say, in a

brief discourse of my country's value and beauty, of her claims to my

love and loyalty? I will pass by in silence her fields and forests, her

rivers and seas, the boundless riches hidden beneath her soil and amid

the rocks of her mountains, her pure and health-giving air, her

transcendent wealth of nature's fairest and most precious gifts. I will

not speak of the noble qualities and robust deeds of her sons, skilled

in commerce and industry, valorous in war, prosperous in peace. In all

these things America is opulent and great: but beyond them and above

them in her singular grandeur, to which her material splendor is only

the fitting circumstance.

America born into the family of nations in these latter times is the

highest billow in humanity's evolution, the crowning effort of ages in

the aggrandizement of man. Unless we take her in this altitude, we do

not comprehend her; we belittle her towering stature and conceal the

singular design of Providence in her creation.

America is the country of human dignity and human liberty.

When the fathers of the republic declared "that all men are created

equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable

rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness," a cardinal principle was enunciated which in its truth was

as old as the race, but in practical realization almost unknown.

Slowly, amid sufferings and revolutions, humanity had been reaching out

toward a reign of the rights of man. Ante-Christian paganism had utterly

denied such rights. It allowed nothing to man as man; he was what

wealth, place, or power made him. Even the wise Aristotle taught that

some men were intended by nature to be slaves and chattels. The sweet

religion of Christ proclaimed aloud the doctrine of the common

fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of men.

Eighteen hundred years, however, went by, and the civilized world had

not yet put its civil and political institutions in accord with its

spiritual faith. The Christian Church was all this time leavening human

society and patiently awaiting the promised fermentation. This came at

last, and it came in America. It came in a first manifestation through

the Declaration of Independence; it came in a second and final

manifestation through President Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation.

In America all men are civilly and politically equal; all have the same

rights; all wield the same arm of defense and of conquest, the suffrage;

and the sole condition of rights and of power is simple manhood.

Liberty is the exemption from all restraint save that of the laws of

justice and order; the exemption from submission to other men, except as

they represent and enforce those laws. The divine gift of liberty to man

is God's recognition of his greatness and his dignity. The sweetness of

man's life and the power of growth lie in liberty. The loss of liberty

is the loss of light and sunshine, the loss of life's best portion.

Humanity, under the spell of heavenly memories, never ceased to dream of

liberty and to aspire to its possession. Now and then, here and there,

its refreshing breezes caressed humanity's brow. But not until the

republic of the West was born, not until the Star-Spangled Banner rose

toward the skies, was liberty caught up in humanity's embrace and

embodied in a great and abiding nation.

In America the government takes from the liberty of the citizen only so

much as is necessary for the weal of the nation, which the citizen by

his own act freely concedes. In America there are no masters, who govern

in their own rights, for their own interests, or at their own will. We

have over us no Louis XIV, saying: "L'etat, c'est moi;" no Hohenzollern,

announcing that in his acts as sovereign he is responsible only to his

conscience and to God.

Ours is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. The

government is our organized will. There is no state above or apart from

the people. Rights begin with and go upward from the people. In other

countries, even those apparently the most free, rights begin with and

come downward from the state; the rights of citizens, the rights of the

people, are concessions which have been painfully wrenched from the

governing powers.

With Americans, whenever the organized government does not prove its

grant, the liberty of the individual citizen is sacred and inviolable.

Elsewhere there are governments called republics; universal suffrage

constitutes the state; but, once constituted, the state is tyrannous and

arbitrary, invades at will private rights, and curtails at will

individual liberty. One republic is liberty's native home--America.

OUR COUNTRY

From the speech of President McKinley, in response to the toast

"Our Country," at the Peace Jubilee banquet in Chicago, October 19,

1898.

MR. TOASTMASTER AND GENTLEMEN:--It affords me gratification to meet the

people of the city of Chicago and to participate with them in this

patriotic celebration. Upon the suspension of hostilities of a foreign

war, the first in our history for over half a century, we have met in a

spirit of peace, profoundly grateful for the glorious advancement

already made, and earnestly wishing in the final termination to realize

an equally glorious fulfillment. With no feeling of exultation, but with

profound thankfulness, we contemplate the events of the past five

months. They have been too serious to admit of boasting or

vain-glorification. They have been so full of responsibilities,

immediate and prospective, as to admonish the soberest judgment and

counsel the most conservative action.

This is not the time to fire the imagination, but rather to discover, in

calm reason, the way to truth, and justice, and right, and when

discovered to follow it with fidelity and courage, without fear,

hesitation, or weakness.

The war has put upon the nation grave responsibilities. Their extent was

not anticipated and could not have been well foreseen. We cannot escape

the obligations of victory. We cannot avoid the serious questions which

have been brought home to us by the achievements of our arms on land and

sea. We are bound in conscience to keep and perform the covenants which

the war has sacredly sealed with mankind. Accepting war for humanity's

sake, we must accept all obligations which the war in duty and honor

imposed upon us. The splendid victories we have achieved would be our

eternal shame and not our everlasting glory if they led to the weakening

of our original lofty purpose or to the desertion of the immortal

principles on which the national government was founded, and in

accordance with whose ennobling spirit it has ever since been faithfully

administered.

The war with Spain was undertaken not that the United States should

increase its territory, but that oppression at our very doors should be

stopped. This noble sentiment must continue to animate us, and we must

give to the world the full demonstration of the sincerity of our

purpose. Duty determines destiny. Destiny which results from duty

performed may bring anxiety and perils, but never failure and dishonor.

Pursuing duty may not always lead by smooth paths. Another course may

look easier and more attractive, but pursuing duty for duty's sake is

always sure and safe and honorable. It is not within the power of man to

foretell the future and to solve unerringly its mighty problems.

Almighty God has His plans and methods for human progress, and not

infrequently they are shrouded for the time being in impenetrable

mystery. Looking backward we can see how the hand of destiny builded for

us and assigned us tasks whose full meaning was not apprehended even by

the wisest statesmen of their times.

Our colonial ancestors did not enter upon their war originally for

independence. Abraham Lincoln did not start out to free the slaves, but

to save the Union. The war with Spain was not of our seeking, and some

of its consequences may not be to our liking. Our vision is often

defective. Short-sightedness is a common malady, but the closer we get

to things or they get to us the clearer our view and the less obscure

our duty. Patriotism must be faithful as well as fervent; statesmanship

must be wise as well as fearless--not the statesmanship which will

command the applause of the hour, but the approving judgment of

posterity.

The progress of a nation can alone prevent degeneration. There must be

new life and purpose, or there will be weakness and decay. There must be

broadening of thought as well as broadening of trade. Territorial

expansion is not alone and always necessary to national advancement.

There must be a constant movement toward a higher and nobler

civilization, a civilization that shall make its conquests without

resort to war and achieve its greatest victories pursuing the arts of

peace.

In our present situation duty--and duty alone--should prescribe the

boundary of our responsibilities and the scope of our undertakings. The

final determination of our purposes awaits the action of the eminent men

who are charged by the executive with the making of the treaty of peace,

and that of the senate of the United States, which, by our constitution,

must ratify and confirm it. We all hope and pray that the confirmation

of peace will be as just and humane as the conduct and consummation of

the war. When the work of the treaty-makers is done the work of the

law-makers will begin. The one will settle the extent of our

responsibilities; the other must provide the legislation to meet them.

The army and navy have nobly and heroically performed their part. May

God give the executive and congress wisdom to perform theirs.

BEHOLD THE AMERICAN

From the speech of Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage at the eighty-first

annual dinner of the New England Society in New York, December 22,

1886.

MR. PRESIDENT, AND ALL YOU GOOD NEW ENGLANDERS:--If we leave to the

evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to

prophesy where are we going to, we still have left for consideration the

fact that we are here; and we are here at an interesting time. Of all

the centuries this is the best century, and of all the decades of the

century this is the best decade, and of all the years of the decade this

is the best year, and of all the months of the year this is the best

month, and of all the nights of the month this is the best night. Many

of these advantages we trace straight back to Forefathers' Day, about

which I am to speak.

Well, what about this Forefathers' Day? In Brooklyn they say the Landing

of the Pilgrims was December the 21st; in New York you say it was

December the 22d. You are both right. Not through the specious and

artful reasoning you have sometimes indulged in, but by a little

historical incident that seems to have escaped your attention. You see,

the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about

noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American

beach looking for a New England dinner, and a band of savages out for a

tomahawk picnic hove in sight, and the Pilgrim Fathers thought it best

for safety and warmth to go on board the Mayflower and pass the night.

And during the night there came up a strong wind blowing off shore that

swept the Mayflower from its moorings clear out to sea, and there was a

prospect that our Forefathers, having escaped oppression in foreign

lands, would yet go down under an oceanic tempest. But the next day they

fortunately got control of their ship and steered her in, and the second

time the Forefathers stepped ashore.

Brooklyn celebrated the first landing; New York the second landing. So I

say Hail! Hail! to both celebrations, for one day, anyhow, could not do

justice to such a subject; and I only wish I could have kissed the

Blarney stone of America, which is Plymouth Rock, so that I might have

done justice to this subject. Ah, gentlemen, that Mayflower was the ark

that floated the deluge of oppression, and Plymouth Rock was the Ararat

on which it landed.