If any one hath doubt or fear
That this is Freedom's chosen clime--
That God hath sown and planted here
The richest harvest field of Time--
Let him take heart, throw off his fears,
As he looks back a hundred years.
Cities and fields and wealth untold,
With equal rights before the law;
And, better than all lands and gold--
Such as the old world never saw--
Freedom and peace, the right to be,
And honor to those who made us free.
Our greatness did not happen so,
We owe it not to chance or fate;
In furnace heat, by blow on blow,
Were forged the things that make us great;
And men still live who bore that heat,
And felt those deadly hammers beat.
Not in the pampered courts of kings,
Not in the homes that rich men keep,
God calls His Davids with their slings,
Or wakes His Samuels from their sleep;
But from the homes of toil and need
Calls those who serve as well as lead.
Such was the hero of our race;
Skilled in the school of common things,
He felt the sweat on Labor's face,
He knew the pinch of want, the sting
The bondman felt, and all the wrong
The weak had suffered from the strong.
God passed the waiting centuries by,
And kept him for our time of need--
To lead us with his courage high--
To make our country free indeed;
Then, that he be by none surpassed,
God crowned him martyr at the last.
Let speech and pen and song proclaim
Our grateful praise this natal morn;
Time hath preserved no nobler name,
And generations yet unborn
Shall swell the pride of those who can
Claim Lincoln as their countryman.
[Illustration: FORD'S THEATRE]
The building is a plain brick structure, three stories high,
seventy-one feet front and one hundred feet deep. It was originally
constructed and occupied as a Baptist Church, but at the beginning of
the war was converted into a theatre, though never used for that
purpose after the assassination of Lincoln. The government purchased
it for one hundred thousand dollars, and it is now used as a branch of
the Record and Pension Division of the War Department. President
Lincoln was shot by J. Wilkes Booth at 10.20 o'clock P.M. on the
evening of April 14, 1865, while seated in his private box in the
theatre.