UC-NRLF 
 
 307 
 

 GIFT OF 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ADDRESS Ex-Gov. Alexander Ramsey 5 
 
 ADDRESS Major-General Wesley Merritt, U. S. A 9 
 
 ADDRESS Gov. Knute Nelson 1 1 
 
 ADDRESS Archbishop John Ireland, St. Paul 13 
 
 LINCOLN THE GREAT COMMONER Bishop Charles H. Fow 
 ler 16 
 
 LINCOLN, THE STATESMAN. AND PATRIOT President Cyrus 
 
 Northrop, University of Minnesota 23 
 
 LINCOLN, THE MAN Bishop Mahlon N. Gilbert, St. Paul. . . 28 
 
 ADDRESS Rev. Edward P. Ingersoll, St. Paul 30 
 
 ADDRESS Henry Watterson, Louisville, Ky 35 
 
 ADDRESS Rev. John Paul Egbert, St. Paul 38 
 
 ADDRESS Bishop Mahlon N. Gilbert 43 
 
 ADDRESS President Cyrus Northrop 45 
 
 ADDRESS General John C. Black, U. S. Vols 49 
 
 ADDRESS Archbishop John Ireland, St. Paul 64 
 
 ADDRESS Brigadier-General Edward S. Bragg, U. S. Vols. . 67 
 
 ADDRESS General Robert N. Adams, U. S. Vols 77 
 
 ADDRESS Rev. Pleasant Hunter, Minneapolis 79 
 
 ADDRESS Robert G. Evans, U. S. District Attorney, Minne 
 apolis 84 
 
 ADDRESS Rev. L. H. Hallock, Minneapolis 92 
 
 ADDRESS Sen. Gilbert A. Pierce 95 
 
 ADDRESS General John B. Sanborn, U. S. Vols 100 
 
 ADDRESS Daniel Fish, Attorney-at-Iaw, Minneapolis 105 
 
 ADDRESS Sen. Hiram F. Stevens.. 112 
 
PAGE. 
 
 TYPICAL AMERICANS By Capt. Henry A. Castle, St. Paul. . . 122 
 
 ADDRESS Gov, Samuel R. Van Sant 134 
 
 ADDRESS Rev. J. S. Montgomery, Minneapolis 135 
 
 ADDRESS William G. White, Attorney-at-Law 138 
 
 ADDRESS M. D. Grover, Attorney-at-Law, St. Paul 140 
 
 ADDRESS Capt. Edwin E. Woodman, U. S. Vols 150 
 
 ADDRESS President Cyrus Northrop 154 
 
 ADDRESS Bishop Samuel C. Edsall, Minnesota 161 
 
 THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLAG Henry D. Esterbrook, Attor 
 ney-at-Law, New York City 162 
 
 LINCOLN, THE LEADER Richard W atson Gilder, New 
 
 York City 169 
 
 ADDRESS Bishop Samuel Fallows 186 
 
 ADDRESS Rev. Henry C. Swearingen, St. Paul. 193 
 
 ADDRESS Gov. Adolph O. Eberhart 202 
 
 THE HEART OF LINCOLN Lieut. Ell Torrance, Past Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, G. A. R 203 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE MINNESOTA COMMANDERY 
 
 . r M o "<" a c v 
 
 OF THE LOYAL LEGION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 1903-1910 
 
 Published for the Cammandery under direction of 
 C. G. Schulz, Superintendent of 
 Public Instruction 
 
- 
 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 The personal element in history always appeals to children. 
 How Abraham Lincoln looked and what he did are of more 
 interest to them than the origin, development, and destruction 
 of slavery. Only as the institution of slavery has a direct 
 bearing upon the personal life of the great emancipator or 
 of some other character, does it awaken their interest and 
 hold their attention. 
 
 The adult mind studies policies, and the growth and develop 
 ment of ideas, and in their realization observes the personal 
 achievements of the men and women whose lives have been 
 affected by the working out of the world s great problems. 
 For a time the abstract idea may be paramount in the adult 
 mind, but the human element by which it has been moulded, 
 or which it has moulded, must of necessity excite the interest 
 and rivet the attention. 
 
 The republic is established, but the personality of George 
 Washington is inseparably connected with the achievement. 
 The constitution is interpreted, but the life work of its master 
 interpreter, Chief Justice Marshall, is indissolubly merged in 
 its broad application. The union is upheld, but the most pow 
 erful eloquence in its behalf is centered in the great patriot, 
 Daniel \Yebster. The republic is saved, the constitution vin 
 dicated, the union make indissoluble, but the achievement is 
 forever linked with the personality of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 In the hope that this collection of addresses may associate 
 in the minds of our youth the great achievement with the 
 mighty man, this book is sent forth. As the contents breathe 
 the love of the man, they instill an admiration for what he 
 accomplished, and establish patriotism on the only founda 
 tion on which it can thrive knowledge of our government and 
 its history, with an appreciation for what they stand. 
 
 C. G. SCHULZ, 
 Superintendent of Public Instruction. 
 
 St. Paul, Minnesota, June 17, 1910. 
 
 421113 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY ALEXANDER RAMSEY, EX-GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 Upon persistent request, I have jotted down some reminis 
 cences of the administration of him who will undoubtedly, by 
 future generations, be considered the savior, as Washington 
 is designated the founder, of the Republic. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Toward the close of my last term as a member of the United 
 States House of Representatives from one of the districts of 
 Pennsylvania, I boarded at the house of a widow who lived 
 on what was then known as the Duff Green Row, on East 
 First street, south of B street, facing the east front of the 
 Capitol, now pulled down to make way for the magnificent 
 library building ordered by Congress. Duff Green, after whom 
 the row was named, had been a fiery editor and ardent admirer 
 of President Jackson, and the fierceness of his sentences had 
 involved him in more than one duel. One day at my board 
 ing house a stranger appeared, and I was told that he was 
 Abraham Lincoln, the only Whig member of Illinois, who had 
 been elected to the next, which was the Thirteenth, Congress. 
 
 He seemed to be on a visit of observation before taking 
 his seat, but he made no distinct impression upon me, and I 
 think during his term as a member of Congress no occasion 
 arose to call forth any display of that force of character of 
 which he afterwards proved himself so amply possessed. 
 
 His ability was brought out in his debates with Stephen A. 
 Douglas. By his clear logic, quick repartee, and good humor, 
 his fellow citizens were convinced that he was more of a 
 man than they had hitherto supposed him to be. 
 
 During the second week of April, 1861, I was in Washing 
 ton on some business as the governor of Minnesota; and Abra 
 ham Lincoln, who had been ,steadily rising in the estimation of 
 the country since first I saw him, some fourteen years before, had 
 the month before been inaugurated as President of the United 
 States of America. 
 
6 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 On Saturday, the 13th of April, news was received that the 
 insurgents at Charleston had opened fire on Fort Sumter. That 
 night the lobbies of the hotels were full of excited men, anxious 
 to obtain additional news. After breakfast, Sunday morning, 
 I went to the war department, and, when ushered into Secre 
 tary Cameron s room, found him standing, with hat on, and 
 a bundle of papers in his hand. We had been fellow towns 
 men and friends for many years and he quickly said, "I have 
 no time to stop; I am on my way to see the President. What 
 do you want?" W r hen I told that I came to offer one thou 
 sand men in behalf of Minnesota to meet the emergency that 
 had arisen, he continued, "Hurry ! write it in official form, and 
 I will take it over to the executive mansion." 
 
 Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, I am informed, mention that the 
 President was much encouraged by the proffer of a regiment 
 so soon from a state so new, and then so remote from the 
 capital. Returning to St. Paul about ten days after, I found 
 there had been the fullest response to my pledge. The greatest 
 enthusiasm prevailed, not only in the cities, but throughout the 
 state; and on the 2d day of May I telegraphed the secretary of 
 war that a regiment was organized and awaiting orders. 
 
 From May, 1861, until my election as United States senator 
 in 1863, I was wholly occupied in raising regiments, not only 
 for the preservation of the Union, but for the protection of 
 the frontiers of Minnesota from the inroads of the Sioux In 
 dians, who had suddenly risen and scalped hundreds of men, 
 women, and children in sparsely settled districts. The depart 
 ure of so many able-bodied men to subdue the rebellion had 
 quickened the desire to raise the war-whoop upon the part 
 of these Indians. 
 
 When I again returned to Washington to reside, every 
 thing was changed. The deep green foliage, with birds flitting 
 among the branches, which had surrounded the city in sum 
 mer a fringe of beauty had disappeared and the hills on 
 every side frowned with fortifications bristling with cannon. 
 The boarding house in which I had met so many pleasant people 
 had become a military prison, known as "Carroll prison"; and 
 not far distant, the building which had been erected as a tem 
 porary capitol was also designated the "Old Capitol prison"; 
 and here many captured officers of the insurgent armies, and 
 treasonable women, during the war were accommodated, and 
 charged neither for board nor lodging. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. / 
 
 President Lincoln, by his simplicity of manner, compre 
 hensive views, absence of partisanship, and great common sense, 
 commanded admiration and confidence. On the 5th of -July, 
 1864, with Senator Chandler and wife, Senator Wade and 
 wife, Senator Sprague of Rhode Island, and Senator Wilkin 
 son of Minnesota, I left Washington, and about six o clock 
 the next afternoon the steamboat on which we had embarked 
 had reached City Point, the headquarters of Gen. Grant, up 
 on whom we called. 
 
 The next day, the 7th, under the escort of Chas. A. Dana, 
 the assistant secretary of war, we proceeded by railroad to the 
 headquarters of William F. (known in the army as "Baldy") 
 Smith, within about a mile of Petersburg, and here, among 
 others, met Gen. Thomas H. Neill. 
 
 The houses and steeples of the churches in Petersburg w r ere 
 in sight, and, with Gen. Martindale, we moved to the front, 
 entered the trenches and passed behind the breastworks, the 
 balls from the enemy s pickets at the time striking near by. 
 
 On the 8th, Gen. B. F. Butler and staff of about a dozen 
 officers called upon us and took us along the lines about five 
 miles, and, upon our return, entertained us. Upon the 9th of 
 July we took leave of Gen. Grant. Placid and silent as Grant 
 \vas, the most penetrating of the committee on the conduct 
 of the war could never have suspected that Gen. Lewis Wal 
 lace had evacuated Frederick, and that Baltimore and Wash 
 ington were threatened by the enemy. 
 
 On the journey back to Washington the steamboat on 
 which we were was at different times passed by other boats 
 crowded with soldiers. We could not understand the move 
 ment. On Sunday, the 10th day of July, the navy yard at 
 Washington was reached and the mystery was solved. We 
 were told that the rebels under Gens. Early and Breckenridge 
 were moving toward the city, and that the steamboats we had 
 seen hurrying up the river carried portions of the sixth corps 
 sent to meet the enemy. 
 
 On Tuesday, with others, I drove out to Fort Stevens on 
 the north side of the city. Gen. Early had established his 
 headquarters at Silver Spring, the residence of Francis P. 
 Blair the father of Montgomery Blair, the postmaster gen 
 eral, whose house, a little further from the city, was burned. 
 
 The President was at Fort Stevens this afternoon, also 
 Mr. Welles, secretary of the navy, and other prominent men. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Some of the Sixth corps made a sally, and for a time there 
 was brisk firing; but the rebels were repulsed, leaving a num 
 ber of killed and wounded. 
 
 President Lincoln entered Richmond on the 4th day of 
 April, 1865, and returned to the executive mansion on the 9th. 
 
 On the 10th of April, accompanied by Senators Norton 
 and Wilkinson, I visited Richmond, and found the best portion 
 of the city a heap of smouldering ruins; went at night to the 
 theater, which was lighted with tallow candles, and witnessed 
 the play Macbeth. It was not until the morning of the 14th 
 that I returned to Washington. During the evening of that 
 day the late Benjamin Thompson of St. Paul, came to my 
 parlor at the International hotel and told me that President 
 Lincoln had been shot at Ford s Theater by J. Wilkes Booth, 
 and that Secretary Seward, in his sick chamber, had been 
 dangerously assaulted by another conspirator. It was difficult 
 to believe, but in a few minutes my brother Justus arrived and 
 confirmed the statement, having been at the theater and wit 
 nessed the tragedy. 
 
 The President, as you all know, expired about half-past seven 
 on the morning of Saturday, the 15th day of April, in a house 
 to which he had been removed from the theater just opposite. 
 
 After breakfast of that day, Senator Foote of Vermont, 
 conversed with me and suggested that immediate steps should 
 be taken for Vice-President Johnson to enter upon the duties 
 of president. 
 
 With him, Senator Yates of Illinois, and Senator Stewart 
 of Nevada, I drove to the Kirkwood House, where Mr. John 
 son had rooms. He was absent at the time, but soon returned, 
 and the object of our visit was made known. Chief Justice 
 Chase, in the presence of about ten persons, then administered 
 to him the oath of office. Not the slightest jar occurred in 
 the administration of affairs. Before noon sorrowing people 
 throughout the country learned that though the president was 
 dead the government still lived. And the nations of the world 
 for the first time realized the greatness and stability of the 
 Republic of the United States of America. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY MAJOR-GENERAL WESLEY MERRITT, U. S. A. 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 Not all of you have heard, perhaps, that the first Com- 
 mandery of the Loyal Legion was established in Philadelphia 
 upon an impulse which grew out of the death of Abraham 
 Lincoln. In the midst of the grief of a mighty nation, mourn 
 ing the loss of the greatest American of the age, a few officers 
 who had served their country in the War of the Rebellion met 
 together and resolved that they would organize a society to 
 cherish the companionship and memories of the war and do 
 honor for all time to the brave who had fallen, mightiest among 
 whom was the martyr commander-in-chief of the army and navy. 
 From this sprang the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, now 
 with a commandery in nearly every state of the Union. 
 
 Whatever the feelings of the originators of our order and 
 who can doubt that they were full of the bitterness of death 
 in their hearts? we can say today that we meet "with malice 
 toward none and with charity for all." Under these condi 
 tions it is peculiarly fitting that we should set aside the meet 
 ing each year in his natal month to commemorate the birth 
 of him who 
 
 "Was a type of the true elder race, 
 One of the Plutrach s men, who talked with us face 
 to face." 
 
 In reviewing the program of the meeting this evening, 
 it occurs to me that one important characteristic of the many- 
 sided man we commemorate has been omitted that is Lin 
 coln as commander-in-chief of the army and navy. Those 
 who are qualified to judge have assigned no secondary place 
 to him as a master of the art of war. His great, broad, com 
 mon sense came to his assistance in the decisions of questions 
 of policy as well as of strategy. When he resisted the counsel 
 of his constitutional advisers, who wanted an unsuccessful gen 
 eral replaced during the active operations of a campaign, he 
 urged, in a single sentence, a more powerful argument against 
 
10 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 it than could have been offered in hours of talk "It is bad 
 to swap horses while crossing a stream." 
 
 Again, when one of his generals proposed to divide his 
 army and send part of it to combat the Confederates on the 
 farther side of the Rappahannock, the wise commander con 
 veyed volumes of the art of war by saying: "If you divide 
 your army, you will be like a bull jumped half across a fence, 
 who can neither gore to the front nor kick in the other direc 
 tion." 
 
 So also, he wrote to Hooker, who was talking much about 
 lines of communication, objectives, and lines of supply: "Let 
 your objective be the enemy s army, and your line of com 
 munication the shortest road over which you can march to 
 fight him. Win a battle, and I will take care of the rest." 
 
 Instances like these might be mentioned almost without 
 limit, but I will not multiply words on the subject. The 
 speakers tonight will do their share to properly cherish the 
 memory of him of whom an American poet has said : 
 "His was no lonely mountain peak of mind. 
 Thrusting to thin air o er cloudy bars, 
 
 A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 
 
 Broad prairie rather, level lined, 
 
 Fruitful and friendly for his human kind, 
 
 Yet also known to Heaven, and friend with all its stars." 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 11 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY KNUTE NELSON, GOVERNOR OP MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 The institution of slavery had debased the white people 
 of the South, and had given them a white peasant class not 
 known among the people of the North. This peasantry, though 
 primitive, rude, and unlettered, was, nevertheless, in many es 
 sentials far superior to its counterpart in the Old World. It 
 was courageous to a high degree, intensely democratic in 
 spirit, and charged with a suppressed intellectuality that, in 
 isolated cases and on great occasions, asserted itself. From 
 the very loins of this class, and as a crystallization of all the 
 virile vigor that was in it, came/ Abraham Lincoln born the 
 American peasant, died the American king. 
 
 His parentage, home, and surroundings were of the hum 
 blest kind ; scarce were there ever humbler. His moral and 
 intellectual environment was of the most primitive order, as 
 primitive as the undeveloped country in which he dwelt. But 
 the embryo of true life and vigorous growth was in him, and 
 so, under the sunshine and dews of Heaven, he grew in the 
 midst of the barrenness in which he was placed, as the stout 
 and lofty pine grows in the stony cleft of the craggy and hoary 
 mountain, slowly, surely, irresistibly and heavenward. 
 
 His development from childhood to manhood, from a back 
 woodsman to a statesman, was a saga, simple in its unity, som 
 ber and sad in its texture, but inspiring and heroic in its out 
 lines and results. From Nolin Creek to the banks of the 
 Sangamon, narrow, cheerless and rough was the path. A 
 mother s love was given and found in a stepmother, the only 
 sunshine on the long and dreary journey. And that love, with 
 which a man loves but once in his life, was buried in the grave 
 of Ann Rutledge. From that moment love claimed and was 
 given less, and duty more, and from that moment he seemed 
 dedicated to and in training for the task and the mission that 
 were to be his. Feeble minds assuage grief in the frivolous 
 vanities of the world; but strong minds, fortified with pure 
 hearts and Godlike consciences, seek relief in the real and sub- 
 
12 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 stantial battle of life, where the turmoil is the hottest and the 
 strife rages the fiercest. Lincoln was the true embodiment of 
 this class; and there was no intellectual battleground so cap 
 tivating, grand, and inviting as that of politics in the Illinois 
 of his day. Gifted and equipped by nature, steeled in the rude 
 school of the frontiersman, and tempered by the shadows and 
 sorrows that had come upon him, he entered the arena a 
 trained gladiator, ready to do battle with giants and there 
 were real and aggressive giants in those days. But for the 
 lack of a living issue, the strife was for a time a mere skirmish 
 on the outposts, the remote prelude to the great drama of 
 the century. 
 
 From the shadows and dark clouds whence came our hero, 
 came also, in battle array, the great anti-Christ, slavery, which 
 was to be subdued and conquered. Slavery, in her zeal, pro 
 jected her advance guard into Kansas; and there was fought 
 a veritable Inkerman a battle of stubborn and isolated skirm 
 ishes; and soon along the entire line, from Kansas to the Ohio 
 and thence to the Potomac, there was a mustering of clans 
 and an outburst of firing that betokened a momentous and 
 prolonged struggle. In these preliminary conflicts there were 
 many leaders, and Lincoln, though one of them, was not re 
 garded by all as the foremost. But, on the eve of the great 
 battle, none disputed his chieftainship of the mighty hosts of 
 the North. " He was the heart and the soul of all our people, 
 with faith in them, in himself, in the cause, and in God. 
 
 Serious and sad were those days to all of us, but most of 
 all to him, and it made him more serious and sad than ever. 
 But from that great duty entailed upon him by man and God, 
 he shrank not one iota no, not even in those dark days, when 
 bolder men than he doubted and quailed. He was braver and 
 more valiant than the best of us, because his faith was loftier 
 and more boundless, and he ennobled the strife and hallowed 
 the cause of the Union by severing the last shackles of the 
 bondsmen. 
 
 He looms up through the vista of the years as the great 
 spirit of that mighty whirlwind. God gave him to work out 
 a great problem in the moral world. His task, his life, and 
 his mission were Godlike; his death was that of a martyr. 
 He sanctified the Union to us and to our posterity for all 
 time to come. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 13 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY JOHN IRELAND, ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP, ST. PAUL, MINN. 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 Abraham Lincoln to me appears the model product, the 
 honor of our country. He was born a child of the people, a 
 child of modern democracy, and, as opportunities offered, he 
 loomed up not only before his own country, but before the nations 
 of the world, one of the grandest men of the nineteenth century. 
 
 It has been said, in reproach to democracy, that popular 
 governments are not capable of producing great men, that 
 they are generally levelers, bringing out but mediocrity. As 
 we see in Lincoln and in hundreds and thousands of cases, 
 wherever there is the need, in America, the great man appears 
 to fill it. During my late visit to Europe I met a Russian gen 
 eral, famed in his country, who told me that he had studied 
 often and attentively the records of our civil war, and it was 
 always to him an unexplained mystery how, suddenly, so many 
 great heroes appeared, such as the trained military nations of 
 Europe did not furnish and could not furnish. And so it was, 
 especially, with Lincoln. 
 
 I read on the last page of this little paper Lincoln s defini 
 tion of a democracy a modern popular government, a govern 
 ment "of the people, by the people, and for the people;" and 
 he hopes that that government "shall not perish from the 
 earth." He who spoke these words deserves, beyond all other 
 titles, that of the great philosopher. In no better words, in 
 no more terse language, could popular government be de 
 fined, could our American government be defined "a govern 
 ment of the people, by the people, and for the people." Not 
 for any one class or for any one family, but for the whole 
 people, and by the whole people. 
 
 I was asked, while in Paris, to speak of America and to 
 say some things that would have relation to the present con 
 dition of Europe, particularly to say what we understood by 
 popular governments, by democracies; and I told them that 
 I could not define a democracy or a popular government in 
 better language than in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "a 
 
14 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 government of the people, by the people, and for the people." 
 I do not say that these words of Lincoln were then heard 
 for the first time in Paris, but this much it is my good fortune 
 to be able to say, that, in some manner, I was instrumental in 
 emphasizing- them ; and, since then, this definition of Lincoln s, 
 I find, is going through all the papers and all the reviews of 
 all the different countries of Europe. Constantly the comment 
 is made : Never was a better definition given of a popular 
 government; these words we must inscribe in all our great 
 proclamations in Europe, for this is the government of the fu 
 ture, the government which the whole world should envy." 
 
 We have a fearful responsibility resting upon us. We have 
 to guard the country, the institutions for which our fathers, 
 our brothers, ourselves, indeed, fought and exposed our lives, 
 a quarter of a century ago. We have to guard them today, 
 in peace, as we guarded them then, in war. We have to guard 
 them not only for our own nation, but for the world at large. 
 Today, as never betore, trie eyes of nations are upon us. We 
 are looked upon as a providential nation, a nation that is giv 
 ing to the world the form of the most advanced government 
 the government "of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people." And the question is asked, in trembling, by the friends 
 of humanity, "Is such a government a mere ideal, or can it be 
 a matter of practical reality?" So far, we say, "Look to the 
 United States ; here is the great popular government." And 
 the question then is asked, by friends, hoping that all will be 
 well, and by foes, hoping that it may be a failure, "Ah, but will 
 it last? Ah, but will it be able to conquer all the obstacles, to 
 do away with all the dangers?" Let us, as Americans, answer, 
 in tones that shall be heard across seas and oceans, "Yea, we 
 pledge ourselves that our free institutions shall last." 
 
 But we need to do something more than to speak we need 
 to lead lives like the hero whom we honor tonight. We, who 
 understand well the value of our country, need to give to the 
 whole population, high and low, the example of deep patriot 
 ism, of disinterested patriotism, of pure-minded patriotism. 
 We owe it to all, to go abroad in our daily duties, in the ex 
 ercise of our rights, to show to all our fellow citizens, that 
 only love of country must control us in all our civil and in all 
 our political movements. When we come before the public 
 as American citizens, let no temptations control us, let never 
 a vote be cast, let never a word be spoken in the name of 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 15 
 
 country, unless inspired by the purest and holiest patriotism 
 and the purest and holiest love of country. Let the intelligent 
 citizen give in every way this example, and proclaim aloud, 
 morning, noon and night, the principles of patriotism, so that 
 others will imitate us, and this great nation, with all its magni 
 ficent institutions, will go down to posterity a blessing to the 
 people of America and a blessing to the people of all nations 
 on earth. 
 
16 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 LINCOLN THE GREAT COMMONER. 
 
 BY CHARLES H. FOWLER, METHODIST EPISCOPAL BISHOP. 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 Herodotus once went to the games in Greece. He was 
 seen and recognized. Soon the people caught him up in their 
 arms and carried him about the great arena and said, "This 
 is the man that has written our history; let us honor him who 
 honors us." Not the man who has written our history would 
 we honor tonight, but the man who has made much of it. 
 Indeed, it is difficult to tell how much such a name as Abraham 
 Lincoln is worth to a people. We cannot exactly put it up 
 on change or in the bank as security, and yet the land is 
 hardly rich enough to do without it. Carthage had seven hun 
 dred thousand citizens, and she had a wide commerce; she 
 worked the tin mines of Britain and the silver mines of Spain, 
 and sent her vessels to the Baltic and her caravans to the 
 Niger; and yet she has sent to us but one name to illumine her 
 history Hannibal. Take out of American history the name of 
 Abraham Lincoln, and we would be, for this last half cen 
 tury, comparatively poor ; a few other names with his, and the 
 rest will shake through the sieve of the next twenty cen 
 turies. But his will abide, and we cannot measure its value 
 in dollars and cents. 
 
 He was a man of the people and represents and embodies 
 the ideal republic as no other man ever has in our history. 
 Born in poverty, as we have heard, and in the poorest poverty, 
 living in a hut that had three sides and no door or window 
 for it did not need them, the other side being wide as the 
 universe; without furniture, without floor built by a father 
 who did not even root into the soil, but drifted without motive 
 for moving. Yet it was a clean poverty. It was not the poverty 
 of the crowded cities, for it stood erect on the tender bosom 
 of gentle nature; not the poverty that stands with its hat un 
 der its arm, but a poverty that recognizes in itself a right to 
 live anywhere. 
 
 He found comfort in his stepmother one who loved him 
 tenderly and spoke of him to the end as "the best boy that 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 17 
 
 ever lived;" and he loved her with that rapturous affection of 
 his almost boundless nature. I remember in boyhood to have 
 seen a picture of Washington taking his farewell of his mother, 
 before going to take command of the armies, and it touched 
 and moved me always. But I have seen another picture in 
 my thought, of a greater than Washington, Abraham Lincoln, 
 turning aside after his election to go and take his farewell of 
 his stepmother; and, as she clung about his neck, touched with 
 the spirit of prophecy and weeping for the loss that was com 
 ing to her, saying, "They will kill you ; you will die for our 
 country; f shall never see you again," I see a fit picture to 
 be the companion of that older one. The older came out of 
 the border of the monarchical government and out of what 
 we are pleased to call the upper classes of society; the later 
 came out of what we call the lower classes; but God some 
 times calls our up His down; and it may be that in this poverty 
 we see the embodiment of the common people that stand on 
 the earth and make up the body of this great people, and 
 replenish, again and again, the ranks that we are pleased to 
 call society. 
 
 It is difficult to analyze the character of Mr. Lincoln, on 
 account of its symmetry. It is like taking hold of a globe; 
 it is largest on whichever side we approach it difficult to 
 measure, a little beyond our comprehension, for a man is com 
 prehended only by his peers. But it had a magnificent founda 
 tion. Its underlying principle was its moral element. It mani 
 fested itself in absolute integrity. His word was final with 
 every man who knew him. The principal characteristic of 
 his mind was reason. He reached his conclusions not by im 
 pulse or instinct, but by argument. This made him slow in 
 great questions, and yet it made him so firm that he was equal 
 to every emergency and was the wonder of mankind. His 
 conscience, crowned by the symmetry of his faculties, made 
 his hard common sense the steady ally of the right. His con 
 science, his reason, and his common sense were the three fixed 
 points through which the perfect circle of his character was 
 drawn. Without any one of these, he would have failed, and 
 we might have been buried amid the ruins of the republic. 
 Without the first he would have been a villain; without the 
 second, he would have been a fool or a bigot; without the 
 third, he would have been a fanatic or a dreamer; with them 
 all, he was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
18 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Men speak of his goodness as if it were his weakness; but 
 they do not measure the man, for his goodness was exercised 
 under the great law of duty that bound him always. His 
 goodness was overflowing and abundant. In childhood, the 
 simplest cruelty to man or beast made him boil over with 
 wrath. It was in that first historic journey, on a flat-boat to 
 New Orleans, in 1831, that he saw for the first time, the 
 bondman in chains and on the auction block, and from that 
 time onward he was the unhesitating enemy of slavery. In 
 1836, a member of the Illinois state legislature, when the state 
 went wild with the other states, joining in the act of Con 
 gress that refused to hear petitions on the subject of slavery, 
 Mr. Lincoln, finding only one man to agree with him, entered 
 upon the journal of that state his protest against the resolu 
 tions of the state. In 1846, the President of the United States 
 issued a proclamation saying that the Mexicans had invaded 
 the soil of the republic and had murdered our citizens. Mr. 
 Lincoln, then a member of Congress, introduced the then 
 famous "Spot Resolution," in which he requested the President 
 to name the particular spot where this outrage had happened. 
 He had had the courage always to stand by his anti-slavery 
 convictions, which made it possible for him finally to remove 
 that domestic institution that sought to throttle and ruin the 
 country. 
 
 His goodness can hardly be measured. He seemed to touch 
 everything on the right side. If I could paint but two pictures 
 of Mr. Lincoln, one would be, of course, his issuing of the 
 proclamation of emancipation that has made him the great 
 emancipator; the other would be a typical scene in which he 
 distributes a little of the mercy that flowed so abundantly 
 through his veins : A poor woman, tall and thinly clad, came 
 to him saying, "Mr. President, I had three sons and a husband 
 in the army, but my husband has just been killed; I want my 
 oldest son." And he wrote. the order giving him a release 
 from the service. She went to the front just in time to see 
 the oldest boy die of his wounds in the hospital. With the 
 statement from the surgeon on the back of the order, she re 
 turned to the President and handed him the paper. He said, 
 "I know what you want, you need not ask it. I will give you 
 your next oldest son." And then, as he wrote the order, he 
 said, "You have one and I have one ; that is about fair." But 
 the poor old woman of the common people stood by the side of 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 19 
 
 the President s chair and smoothed down his hair as he wrote, 
 and, her tears running upon his head, she said, "God bless you, 
 Mr. Lincoln, may you live a thousand years to be the President 
 of this great republic." 
 
 A little incident, that I have not seen in print, told me by 
 James R. Speed, Mr. Lincoln s life-long friend, sets forth this 
 quality of the great President by which he was in common 
 heart-beat with us all. Lincoln said: "Speed, why don t you 
 stop and see me ? I want to see somebody that doesn t want 
 anything." Speed says, "You are worn to death and you must 
 rest." "No, stop tonight, after the levee, and let us have 
 a visit." So, on that Thursday night, when the people had 
 gone away, they sat down together, two or three minutes ; 
 then Speed got up and said, "Mr. Lincoln, I must go, I haven t 
 the heart to keep you out of your bed, you must rest." Put 
 ting out his long, strong hand, and taking Speed by the 
 shoulder, Lincoln said to him again, "Mr. Speed, stay with 
 me, for I never sleep Thursday nights." Mr. Speed said, 
 "What do you mean? what do you say?" He said "I never 
 sleep Thursday nights. Tomorrow is execution day, and all 
 around the lines the boys will be shot, unless I sign their 
 pardon. But I find, and the generals tell me, that to pardon 
 these costs more lives, and so I cannot pardon; but I can t 
 sleep when I think that tomorrow they will be shot." 
 
 Never was a greater or a truer heart put in charge of the 
 people than Lincoln. Goodness and greatness, in him, went 
 together. Firm as he was good. Why I remember hearing 
 pious men pray that God would give him backbone when he 
 had the almightiest spinal column that ever stood erect on 
 this American continent ! You remember that, at one time, 
 many of the personal enemies of Gen. Grant, and a great many 
 of the people, wanted his head, but Mr. Lincoln said, "No, I 
 rather like the man, and I think we ll keep him, nevertheless." 
 We learned, a while afterward, that to have taken that head 
 would have cost us more than the republic could pay. Back 
 bone? W T hy, he sent three questions to the Committee on 
 the War concerning the arming of the negroes, to be asked 
 of the officers that might come before them ; and, of ninety- 
 two officers that were catechised, eighty-seven were solid against 
 the arming, and two major-generals and three brigadiers were in 
 favor of it. When the committee handed in their report to Lincoln, he 
 looked it over, turned around and issued the order for the arming. 
 
20 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 We have learned of his courage and his backbone and his strength 
 of character. 
 
 He was indeed of us, the Great Commoner; grew up among 
 us, w r as so trained and educated that he belonged to us; his 
 plans, his sympathies, his feelings, his dreams, his ambitions, 
 w r ere ours. If he had come of very aristocratic family, he 
 would not have been our President. The schools might have 
 polished him, but they would have removed him from us. 
 But, trained in the wilderness, dwelling in a cabin, struggling 
 on the frontier, he grew into our manhood, and his calloused 
 palms never slipped from the poor man s hand. He was as 
 accessible in the White House as he had been in the cabin; 
 and the wants of the poor colored man were as much to him 
 as the claims of the opulent white man. He was indeed our 
 brother and the representative of our institutions. 
 
 With a living faith in God, that characterizes this great 
 people, he lifted them on his faith. Look at him on the steps 
 of the car just leaving Springfield going to Washington, stop 
 ping and saying to the friends of his youth and of all his 
 years, "I go to a greater task than that assigned to Wash 
 ington, and unless the God that helped him helps me, I shall 
 fail. But if that Omniscient Mind and Almighty Arm that 
 sustained and guided him shall sustain and guide me, I shall 
 not fail, I shall succeed." And the country believed him. 
 When he issued his proclamation of emancipation, he said to 
 Secretary Seward, when Seward was arguing against his sign 
 ing, "But, Secretary Seward, I must, I told the Lord I would." 
 Sew r ard said, in a quick and somewhat startled way, "What 
 is that you say, Mr. President?" He said, "I say that I told 
 the Lord if he would drive the rebels out of Pennsylvania, 
 I would emancipate the slaves, and I ll do it." 
 
 Magnificent character! Measured |by what he did, he 
 stands above every other man of six thousand years. He came 
 to the government by a minority vote, without an army, with 
 out a navy, without munitions ; into the capital full of enemies, 
 surrounded by rebels, friends far away in the North; he com 
 pacted his friends, conciliated his rivals, overmastered the 
 Copperheads, put his hand on Wall street, and conquered the 
 rebels. He stamped on the earth, and two millions of armed 
 men sprang up for his defense; he spoke to the sea, and the 
 mightiest navy the world ever saw crowned its waves; he 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 21 
 
 breathed into the air, and money and munitions rained upon 
 the people. Measured by what he did, he is without a peer. 
 
 I would not take one laurel from the statues of the noble 
 dead; I would rather place in their midst another statue that 
 will adorn their glorified company. We are indeed too near 
 Mr. Lincoln to award him the glory he deserves. We remem 
 ber too well his long, lank form, his awkward movements, to 
 realize that this man, standing among us like a father, towers 
 above us like a monarch. I turn to the past: I see behind 
 me a noble company. There is Napoleon, the man of destiny. 
 Armies move at his bidding as if .they were the muscles of 
 his body. Kings rise and fall at his nod; not a soldier on the 
 earth lifts his foot without his permission. But he lived for 
 himself. His entire life was a failure. He did not accomplish 
 one of his great purposes. I see Wellington, great as a military 
 chieftain, competent to command armies against a foreign and 
 hereditary foe. I see Marlborough ; but on every stone of his 
 monument, and in every page of his history, I see the frauds 
 by which he enriched himself from the plunder of his gasp 
 ing country. There is Cromwell, England s noblest son ; but 
 his arena was small, his work limited, the result ephemeral. 
 The revolution from the hereditary kingdom of the Stuarts 
 to the hereditary dictatorship of the Cromwells was not so 
 great as the change from executing the Fugitive Slave Law 
 in Boston to the constitutional emancipation of slaves in Mary 
 land. Yet, upon his death, the government reverted to the 
 Stuarts. But upon the death of Mr. Lincoln, Freedom rears 
 a monument, and for the new conquests marches boldly into 
 the future. I do see a Caesar yonder, but his power is the 
 purchase of crime and falls about his grave like withered 
 weeds. And away down yonder in the dark vortex of history, 
 looking out upon the centuries, is old Pericles. But the thirty 
 thousand citizens of Athens are lost in some inland town of 
 America w T ith her thirty millions of citizens. There are many 
 noble heroes who illumine the darkness behind us with some 
 single virtue, but among them all I see no Lincoln. He is 
 radiant with all the great virtues, and his memory shall shed 
 a glory upon -this age that shall fill the eyes of men as they 
 look into history. Other men have excelled him in some one 
 point; but taken at all points, all and in all, he stands head and 
 shoulders above every other man of six thousand years. An 
 administrator, he saved the nation in the perils of an unparal- 
 
22 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 leled civil war. A statesman, he justifies his measures by 
 their success. A philanthropist, he gave liberty to one race 
 and salvation to another. A moralist, he stooped from the 
 summit of human power to the foot of the cross, and became 
 a Christian. A mediator, he exercised mercy under the most 
 absolute obedience to law. A leader, he was no partisan. A 
 commander, he was untainted with blood. A ruler in desperate 
 times, he was unsullied with crime. A man, he has left no 
 word of passion, no thought of malice, no trick of craft, no 
 act of jealousy, no purpose of selfish ambition. Thus per 
 fected, without a model and without a peer, he was dropped 
 into these troubled years to adorn and embellish all that is 
 good and all that is great in our humanity, and to present 
 to all coming time the incarnation of the divine idea of free 
 government. Let us cherish his memory, emulate his virtues, 
 and stretch ourselves up toward his greatness and hope that, 
 by and by, in the city yonder, we may see his stalwart soul. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 23 
 
 LINCOLN, THE STATESMAN AND PATRIOT. 
 
 BY CYRUS NORTHROP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 I have no prepared address to make, and therefore I can 
 fit in perhaps better than if I had one, after what has been 
 said, for the English language has been put to its utmost power, 
 during the last few days, to give expression to the American 
 sentiment and appreciation of Abraham Lincoln. The highest 
 praise that in this age has been bestowed upon any man has 
 been rendered him in the presence of a people who neither 
 felt nor expressed dissent. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln is the one man in this nineteenth cen 
 tury who is certain to live in all the coming ages. Ulysses 
 S. Grant will be remembered as the great commander who 
 led the forces of the Union through that great contest to ulti 
 mate victory, but he will be remembered more on account 
 of the great events with which he was associated, and the great 
 combinations in which he was the moving spirit, than by reason 
 of any personal qualities of his own out of which were pro 
 duced the elements of victory. Abraham Lincoln, despite the 
 great things that he did, will be remembered hardly less for 
 what he was than for what he did. He is a perfectly unique 
 figure in the midst of this century and of all the centuries 
 nothing like him since the creation of the world. As Ingersoll 
 said the other night, "He had no ancestors, no fellows, and 
 no successors." And it is literally true. Born in a log cabin, 
 in poverty, he did not derive, so far as I can see, any inheri 
 tance of wealth, of blood, or even of brains, from his an 
 cestors. His mother, it is true, seems to have been superior 
 to any other of his ancestors. Lincoln himself said, when 
 President, and in the zenith of his power, "All that I am and 
 all that I hope to be, I owe to my sainted mother." But what 
 his "sainted mother" was thinking of when she married the in 
 efficient and shiftless father, I have never been able to deter 
 mine. How much of brain power Lincoln derived from his 
 mother, it is impossible to say. She taught him to read and 
 write. She did more for him than the twelve months of school- 
 
24 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ing which was all that he had during his life. She died when 
 he was only nine years old. Think of it ! A boy nine years 
 of age, left without any comforting, guiding, inspiring influence 
 in the world. What an intellectual and moral nature his must 
 have been that, amid the great events in which he was after 
 wards called to act, he was able to rise to the majesty of the 
 highest manhood and of the noblest statesmanship that this 
 broad country has ever seen ! 
 
 You ask me to speak of him as a statesman. Poor boy; 
 hired hand on a flat-boat ; surveyor ; clerk in a country store ; 
 lawyer; in the legislature in 1837 for the first time just as 
 in the Empire State another figure, educated in college, cul 
 tured, polished, brilliant, was made its governor. Humble, 
 honest Abraham Lincoln, sitting in the house of representa 
 tives in Illinois Illinois black with Egyptian darkness, Illinois 
 practically a southern state, Illinois whose legislature in 1837 
 is endorsing human bondage and negro slavery humble 
 Abraham Lincoln sitting there, without a record, without any 
 thing back of him, and God only knows what before him. 
 And in Albany, the capital of the Empire State, in the govern 
 or s chair sits William H. Seward, the polished leader, the 
 orator, the disciple of Thurlow Weed, the man skilled in man 
 agement, in politics, in administration, in government; the 
 man who, as governor of the State of New York, did more 
 in the line of statesmanship, solved more questions, led to 
 more reforms than Abraham Lincoln accomplished in his whole 
 life. There are the two men. And, in 1858, William H. Sew 
 ard is talking, at Rochester, of an "irrepressible conflict," and 
 Abraham Lincoln, at Springfield, Illinois, is talking about "the 
 house divided against itself that cannot stand." Here are the 
 two men; the eastern type of the polished civilization, and the 
 western man born of the people, self-made, without polish, 
 and with nothing but his own unaided efforts and culture. 
 And in the year 1858, this tall, lank, sad-looking man, is brought 
 forward as a candidate for United States senator, before the 
 people of Illinois, and enters into that contest with the young 
 giant, Stephen A. Douglas Douglas, a figure to inspire, vigor 
 ous, ambitious, successful, the leader of the great party, a man 
 who had never known defeat; and Lincoln, the uncouth, raw, 
 tall, lank, sad-faced young man who had never known success; 
 the one representing the fleeting and passing changes of polit 
 ical policy, and the other representing the eternal truths of 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 25 
 
 God. They fought it out upon that issue, and the policy of 
 the present triumphed and Douglas was senator. 1858 passes 
 by, 1859, and then comes 1860. The tall, plain, common- 
 sense, clear-headed orator of Illinois goes east. He goes into 
 Cooper Institute and he makes that speech, the most logical, 
 the most argumentative, the most convincing speech that was 
 ever made on American soil a speech which demonstrated the 
 policy of the fathers of the republic, of the men who framed 
 the constitution, as to their opinion of slavery; and he closed 
 that speech with a sentence which is the key to his character, 
 the key to his success, the key to his glory, "Let us have faith 
 that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end do 
 our duty as we understand it." That speech, gentlemen, made 
 Abraham Lincoln President of the United States. 
 
 Now, why was it, when the Republican convention met and 
 the contest was between Abraham Lincoln and William H. 
 Seward between the plain man of the west and the cultured 
 man of the east; between the man who had shown no practical 
 statesmanship and the man who had shown all the arts of 
 statesmanship that the Machiavelli of eastern politics could im 
 part to him that Abraham Lincoln was chosen as the candi 
 date f the party for President, and not William H. Seward? 
 Why was it that the house-divided-against-itself speech was 
 deemed less dangerous than the irrespressible-conflict speech 
 of Mr. Seward? Have you ever thought of the reason? It 
 is not far to seek. There was the difference in the two men 
 of just this nature : Mr. Seward, though he was a leader, an 
 advanced leader, in the great army of freedom, though he had 
 resisted the encroachments of slavery, though he had repre 
 sented the free-soil wing of the Whig party in the State of 
 New York, was always endeavoring to regulate the processes 
 of affairs and the operations of principles by thoughts of the 
 success of the party. Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, begin 
 ning back twenty years before men had advanced far enough 
 in his own state to believe slavery to be wrong, had taken, 
 from the first, the position that principle was everything, 
 and that upon right principle must rest the foundation for 
 the building up of a party. The party, feeling that Mr. Lincoln 
 was planted on eternal principles, the party, feeling that Mr. 
 Seward might be drifted from side to side by the eddies and 
 whirling tides of policy, chose ; and the nation chose, and they 
 chose right they chose Abraham Lincoln. God bless him ! They 
 
26 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 chose Abraham Lincoln, and he was elected. He went into the 
 presidential chair, and the great victory was won. 
 
 And oh, what a man he was ! I went to him, once, and sat 
 with him in the White House. I went down there as the 
 messenger of Gov. Buckingham of Connecticut, to plead with 
 him for a change of policy in a certain particular affecting our 
 ability to carry on the war. He received me, just as I supposed 
 he received every one else, with a courtesy that could not be 
 surpassed. He threw his leg over the arm of his chair and 
 he sat there and talked with me as familiarly as if I had been 
 Gov. Buckingham himself instead of his messenger. And I 
 saw then, and I have never forgotten, w r hy it was that Abraham 
 Lincoln in that long struggle in the years that followed, kept 
 the great body of the Northern people so in touch with him 
 self, when statesmen of no mean reputation and generals of 
 great popular favor, and editors of papers that had voiced the 
 sentiment of his party, deserted him. It \vas because he never 
 forgot that he came of the people, that he was of them, that 
 by them he had been raised to power, and that for them the 
 services of his life were to be rendered. The great heart of 
 the man, the tender heart of the man, was exhibited in all his 
 career. 
 
 What an orator he w 7 as! What an orator! Not an Everett, 
 studied and polished like an actor; nor a Webster, with his 
 mighty and majestic rhetoric and his soaring imagination; not 
 a Phillips, with his gracefully repressed intensity and his boil 
 ing passion delivered in ice-bound sentences ; but Lincoln, 
 Lincoln, the orator of conscientious thought, touched and glori 
 fied by a universal charity. 
 
 Oh, the man, the greatness of the man ! How he grew as 
 the years went on! As was said of one even greater than he, 
 he "increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God 
 and man." When he went up to Gettysburg, there in the midst 
 of the war, with his great burden resting upon him and his 
 heart dropping drops of blood, of sympathy for his suffering 
 country, what a speech \vas that he made ten sentences that 
 will live longer than any eloquence that has been spoken on 
 earth in nineteen centuries. And where did he get that style 
 so plain, so clear, so simple? You may read Demosthenes 
 with his mighty argument; you may read Cicero with his 
 sweeping denunciation, in clear, polished sentences ; you may 
 read Erskine, with his admirable statement and great common 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 27 
 
 sense and practical application of law; you may read Brough 
 am, with his thundering periods of denunciation read whom 
 you will, but Lincoln never got his style from the great orators 
 of the world, he got it from the English version of the Bible, 
 studied it from reading those simple words that the loving 
 John has recorded in regard to Jesus Christ. And the spirit 
 of all that he spoke, during those last years of the war where 
 did it come from ? Ah, it is the spirit of the broadest human 
 ity, best exemplified in the Son of Man. O, great-hearted man! 
 noble-hearted man ! homely-faced, sad-faced, pathetic-faced 
 man ! The nation wept when he died, and there was no friend 
 of liberty and no patriot loving his country who did not feel 
 that the world was more lonesome when Abraham Lincoln 
 w r ent away. 
 
28 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 LINCOLN, THE MAN. 
 
 BY MAHLON N. GILBERT, PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 14, 1893.) 
 
 The character of Abraham Lincoln is like a gold mine 
 which is inexhaustible, from which you may draw forth treas 
 ures and still the vein opens up more widely, and richer treas 
 ures are still in store. 
 
 I would present to you tonight only one characteristic, 
 which, perhaps, has been suggested, but not dwelt upon. It 
 is the characteristic which, it seems to me, found voice in 
 every soldier who marched to the beat of the drum during those 
 years of war ; it is the characteristic which crowned the won 
 derful abilities of this great commoner, this great patriot, this 
 great statesman; it is the characteristic which found its em- 
 
 o 
 
 bodiment and its expression in that tenderest word which the 
 American soldier and the American citizen could utter, "Father 
 Abraham." In that simple word Father there is embraced 
 everything else ; there is power, there is authority, there is 
 leadership, there is statesmanship, there is the great pulse 
 of the common people beating in all its wonderful develop 
 ment, there is all that makes up the statesman and the man. 
 The father the father not only of the nation, but the father 
 of a family w^hich is the ideal, after all, of all these states 
 of this land which we love. 
 
 I have always thought that the people embodied and em 
 phasized the old Latin maxim, Vox populi, vox Dei, when they 
 gave him that appellation which, although in its form almost 
 harsh, as it comes down upon refined ears, nevertheless ex 
 pressed the true idea, "Honest old Abe." In it was the utter 
 ance of the love which the people bore for him, a love which 
 consecrated itself in ardent acts of devotion and sacrifice; a 
 love which found vent on many a battlefield, a love which led 
 men gladly from the homes which they loved and from the 
 prattling children at their side, to go forth and face death in 
 all its horrid forms; a love which, after all, might always be 
 translated into a phase of the love that we ought to bear for 
 God, the Father of us all. It is the fatherhood of Abraham 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 29 
 
 Lincoln that we ought not to forget a fatherhood which seems 
 to embrace in it all that was expressed in "The father of his 
 Country"; a fatherhood which was willing to lay itself out in 
 utter self-sacrifice; a fatherhood which lived in the midst of 
 those years of war; a fatherhood which went on beating out 
 its own earnest energies in every thought gathered and ex 
 pressed; a fatherhood which at last found its culmination in 
 the final act of love by sacrificing himself for the children 
 whom he loved. That, my friends, is the fatherhood of Abra 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 And we are his children. Let us, in the same spirit in which 
 he spoke on the heights of Gettysburg, where rebellion found 
 its highest limit and where it found its death also; in the spirit 
 of that love which comes from that fatherhood, reconsecrate 
 ourselves to the cause of the Union for which Father Abraham 
 died. Let us simply go on in the w r ay that he marked out, 
 and then, though the coming years may never reach the 
 climax which shall involve such a character as that of Lincoln, 
 nevertheless there shall be men coming up, in every emer 
 gency, who shall reflect, in their own persons and in their own 
 deeds, something of the wondrous character of the man whom 
 we revere. 
 
 Then out into the future let us press, with something of 
 that same great faith which was his, with something of that 
 great hopefulness, of that great, wondrous optimism which was 
 a distinguishing mark of his character, out into that future of 
 ever-developing glory, out into that future which we believe 
 shall be realized in this country, and which shall be emulated 
 by the nations of the earth ; until not only America shall 
 revere Lincoln as the father, but the people of the world, the 
 men whom he has freed, the men to whom he has given the 
 true insight into liberty, black and white, bond and free, shall 
 follow along and realize that he indeed was the father of a 
 principle which, in God s own good time, shall prevail through 
 out the whole wide world. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY EDWARD P. INGERSOLL, D. D., PASTOR PARK CONGREGATIONAL 
 
 CHURCH, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 12, 1894.) 
 
 It is not a day we celebrate but a life, and a life so grand, 
 so magnified with the passing years that we already see it 
 belongs to immortal fame. As the centuries have advanced 
 since the dark ages, we have been lifted upon the shoulders of 
 thirty generations, and the horizon of our intelligence has 
 widened and brightened. But higher than by intelligence have 
 W 7 e been lifted by those moral forces which hide self and give 
 honor not to prowess, but to the pure benefactors of man 
 kind. Such a benefactor is ours ! Grand and Imperishable ! 
 Honored and loved name, Abraham Lincoln! Abraham Lin 
 coln, a star of the first magnitude in the constellation of his 
 toric worthies ! 
 
 It has come to me that I can best signalize this occasion 
 by naming and illustrating three or four characteristics of our 
 great war president. The first I name is simplicity of char 
 acter, blended with sincerity. A man may be simple because 
 he has no brains, a man may be proud because he is without 
 brains, and a man may be proud because he has brains ; but, 
 a man of brains and of power, with modesty and simplicity, 
 bears the signet of noblest manhood. 
 
 It is not often that such virtues and graces are developed 
 amid the tumult and carnage of war. Noble exceptions we 
 have had. David lost nothing of character while he was chas 
 ing the Philistines over the Judean hills ; Marcus Aurelius lost 
 nothing of character while he was fighting the barbarian on 
 the frozen Danube ; Gustavus Adolphus lost nothing of char 
 acter when, with that inspiration that seemed to come from 
 beyond the stars, he hastened to the very center of Europe tnat 
 he might strike a blow for the balance of imperial power; 
 though carnage turned his foe, Gen. Tilly of Austria, into a 
 fiend. Napoleon became sullen and selfish under the power of 
 war; Marlborough, greedy and grasping; and, in our first and 
 second and third wars, there were many men of haughty and 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 31 
 
 imperious character. But there was never so little of these 
 malign characteristics as during the war for our Union. Why? 
 Because it was signally for homes and Christian civilization. 
 It made heroes and not popinjays. 
 
 The foremost men who fought, trusted by the soldiers and 
 by the people, for the most part lost the personal in the public 
 weal, and the stars of our flag, "Old Glory," not the stars on 
 their shoulders, were the symbol of inspiration. Looking back 
 through the vista of years, after the lapse of a generation, to 
 those "days that tried men s souls," who is there that is not 
 willing, nay, is not eager to accord to Abraham Lincoln, be 
 cause of the sincerity which lifted itself into nobility, because 
 of the simplicity which was abiding through all the time of his 
 lofty position, a pedestal which shall stand side by side with 
 that of the Father of his Country, no higher, no lower? 
 
 God does not raise a tempest to waft a feather ; he does not 
 lash the ocean to drown a fly. When he is to make a man 
 strong to lead the people, he prepares him by great trials. 
 The oak is knit by the blast, "the dross consumed and the gold 
 refined" by the furnace. Such was Abraham Lincoln, the grand 
 representative of a nation s patriotism and integrity. 
 
 He was no cameo, he was no effigy cut upon a cherry-stone; 
 he was no colossus cut out of granite, stretching his long legs 
 and pluming his gaunt form over his armies and his fellow 
 citizens ; but he was a brother to the stricken mother, he was 
 a father to the boys in blue. All honor to that nobility which 
 came out of simplicity and sincerity and modesty. * * * "Of 
 the people, and for the people ;" girded of God for the work and 
 "apprehending that for which also he was apprehended," in 
 the might of his faith and patriotism he took hold of the very 
 foundations of the temple of rebellion and shook it into ruin. 
 God be praised for the loyal strength of such a man ! 
 
 The next characteristic I name is magnanimity. It is com 
 paratively easy to be magnanimous when we have had a good 
 dinner and when the tide of business prosperity and ideal social 
 life and firm health are ours. But to be great-hearted in the 
 midst of such trials as he met in poverty; in baffled ambitions, 
 which were laudable; to be sw r eet and wholesome and gener 
 ous all the while and everywhere, was a test of manhood, and 
 he nobly met it and endured it. As illustrating this magnan 
 imity, here is an incident, given me by a gentlemen who was 
 a student in Air. Lincoln s law office in Springfield at the time 
 
32 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 of his nomination. This gentleman was an occasional and al 
 ways a welcome guest at the White House. Just before the 
 convention of 1864 he was there, and, learning that Chief Jus 
 tice Chase, who had been nominated to his high office by Mr. 
 Lincoln, was likely to be a candidate before the convention, he 
 said to the president: "Mr. Lincoln, I think I have a piece of 
 news for you. There is a new candidate for the presidency." 
 "Ah, ha! who is it?" said the president. "Mr. President, it 
 tries me a great deal, and I hardly like to tell you; I am afraid 
 that it won t strike you well." "Tell it right out, sir; tell it 
 right out, sir." "Well, sir, Chief Justice Chase is to be a can 
 didate for the presidency." "Ah," says Mr. Lincoln, without 
 any hesitation, "Colonel, that reminds me of something that 
 happened down in Illinois." "What is that?" says the colonel. 
 "Why, there was an old man down there who had a nice little 
 patch of corn; he had a boy thirteen years old, and he had an 
 old horse. One day he went out with his old horse hitched to 
 the plow to cultivate the corn; and as they were working on, a 
 gadfly got after the horse, and the boy said, Hold on, dad, and 
 let me get off and kill that fly. No, no, boy, let the fly alone, 
 it makes the horse lively! Ride on! ride on! There was not 
 the least shock to his magnanimity; he went on as smoothly 
 and cheerfully and brightly as ever. It was magnanimity with 
 a "right smart" sprinkle of acuteness ! 
 
 There was a third point in his character, which has grown 
 upon me ; it is this : he comprehended the issue. There came 
 hurrying to him (and they were patriots) those who said, 
 "Now is the time, sir, for the downfall of slavery. Make your 
 proclamation." He answered them, "Be quiet, wait." Calmly 
 he stood, but watchful. He was misunderstood, abused, villi- 
 fied, even by those who had helped to elect him; patriotic fools 
 on one side, and scheming vipers on the other side, pretending 
 to love the Union, but seeking the aggrandizement of self 
 rather than the prosperity and perpetuity of their country: 
 With all his might he prosecuted the war for Union. "The 
 Union ought to be preserved, the Union may be preserved, 
 the Union shall be preserved." 
 
 He delayed his proclamation because he was grasping the 
 great thought that brotherhood and the love and blessings of 
 home belong to all tribes and nations; that wholesome laws 
 and civilized institutions are for all mankind; and he desired 
 so to time the issue of his proclamation that it should reach 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 33 
 
 beyond the emancipation of the slave. He stood upon the deck 
 of the old Ship of State when she went rolling on in the midst 
 ~>f the clouds as well as the sea (for they touched each other), 
 and the stoutest sailors that had been accustomed to storms, 
 were abandoning the lookout because they could not catch 
 their breath in the face of the gales; but he stood, the captain, 
 firmly, resolutely and trustingly, steering between the Scylla 
 and Charybdis, right on into the very teeth of the wind, that 
 he might accomplish that which was grandest in the sight 
 of God and for the blessing of humanity. And the flag with 
 its "ample folds floating over the sea and over the land," in 
 every wind under the whole heavens, has become the symbol 
 of grander things than it ever symbolized before, because he 
 saw humanity and, in seeing humanity, he brought liberty to 
 the slave. 
 
 Down on the Rappahannock there was a day of truce- 
 some of you may have been there and just as the sun was 
 setting and the darkness was beginning to gather, on this side 
 of the river, a band belonging to some devision or regiment, 
 struck up "Rally Round the Flag, Boys;" presently from the 
 other side was wafted back, "Way Down South in Dixie," and 
 then all the bands on this side and on that side of the river 
 caught up, each, the challenging strain; and then on our side 
 "The Star Spangled Banner;" and then on their side the "Bon 
 ny Blue Flag;" and then on our side, "Hail Columbia, Happy 
 Land;" and then on their side, "My Maryland" and so for 
 ward and backward went the challenge. But, hark, the battle 
 of martial strains has ceased. Presently the dead silence is 
 broken, for our boys, in soft and plaintive notes, in tender 
 harmony, have started "Home, Sweet Home." Listen! they 
 the playing it over yonder, and all along on either bank it is 
 "Home, Home, Sweet Home," and all hearts are melted into 
 one. As that grand inspiration of "Home, Sweet Home," 
 came to the leader of one of our bands, so the inspiration that 
 was higher came to him who was seeking the home of human 
 ity in that grand liberty that should touch and quicken and 
 lead all mankind into nobler life. 
 
 One characteristic more. Abraham Lincoln was reverent. 
 Looking upward he sought God for guidance. Be it said to 
 the honor of his reverent soul, he never made a fling at religion. 
 It is said of one of our great men by the poet, 
 
34 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 "He climbed the ladder of fame so high, 
 From its topmost round he touched the sky." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln did not try by fame to get the favor of 
 heaven; he took the Gospel gate and "the path of the just." 
 An incident illustrates the staunchness and the nobility of his 
 religious character: Just before the proclamation of emancipa 
 tion, in discussing the situation, the President said to his sec 
 retary of state : "Mr. Seward, I promised God I d do it." 
 "What is that, Mr. President? what did you say?" "Mr. Se 
 ward, I have promised God that I would do it and I shall do it." 
 
 There was a day, when the grand army came back in tri 
 umph to Washington, grim with the stain and dust of battles, 
 and some of the people that looked upon them said, "Ah, here 
 we have the veterans of the war, the heroes and the victors of 
 all the great battles." But stricken ones knew it was not so. 
 Tramp, tramp, tramp, the heroes came, but unseen to mortal 
 eye, yet distinct to every patriot s memory and heart, were 
 W T inthrop, and Lyons, and Kearney, and Ellsworth, and Mc- 
 Pherson, and an uncounted army, heroes of unwritten history, 
 save as their deeds, without their names, had proclaimed their 
 patriotism. They have left to you and to me the legacy of the 
 great work which they did for liberty and Union. 
 
 And what is our duty? It is to pass on the light! Light 
 means life, and life means liberty, and liberty means the palm- 
 branches of universal triumph. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 35 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY HENRY WATTERSON, EDITOR COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, KY. 
 (Read February 12, 1894.) 
 
 No one of you can know, as I do know, what it is to be a 
 man without a country. I have lived through an epoch of sore 
 travail. I was born in the national capital and grew to man 
 hood there. I was brought into close personal intimacy with 
 the men who made this Union possible. I saw the struggle 
 to save the Union and the struggle to destroy it. I saw the 
 good men of the North and South join hands, bravely and 
 nobly, to maintain the compromises upon which the Union 
 rested. I saw those compromises, one by one, sink beneath 
 the waves of passion artfully stimulated for party purposes. 
 I knew the secret springs of private ambition which were play 
 ing upon the credulity of the people. I stood by the side of 
 Abraham Lincoln when he delivered his first inaugural address, 
 and, as I looked out over the vast assemblage of excited Amer 
 icans, goaded to fury by the passions of the time, I knew that 
 it meant war, and the heart within me (boy s though it was) 
 was ready to burst, because I loved my country, its glorious 
 traditions, and its incalculable uses to liberty and humanity. 
 There was no sunshine in the heavens, there was no verdure 
 on the hills; all seemed lost. The demon of strife had taken 
 possession of the popular heart, the dove had taken its flight 
 from the earth, leaving the raven in her nest. But all was not 
 lost ; God was with us, though we did not know it, and He 
 builded wiser than we knew. For are we not here, tonight, 
 our blessed Union restored, the government intact having 
 survived all the assaults that would have shattered single dy 
 nasties and monarchies its credit rehabilitated, its faith re 
 vived, its flag flying at last as Webster would have had it fly, 
 over land and sea, bearing those words dear to every Amer 
 ican heart, "Union and liberty, now and forever, one and in 
 separable." 
 
 As one of many thousand Southern men who loved the Union, 
 and who, when the debate was ended and the fight was on, went 
 with their own side in the arbitrament of arms, I cannot better 
 
36 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 illustrate the situation than by telling you a little incident that 
 occurred toward the close of the war, which has always seemed 
 to me, in a half-humorus, half-melancholy way, to be very sug 
 gestive. Mr. Meredith P. Gentry of Tennessee was one of the 
 great orators of the old Whig party. He was living upon 
 his farm in Bedford county when a division of the Union army 
 came that way, commanded by Gen. Rousseau of Kentucky. Gen. 
 Rousseau was a great friend and admirer of Mr. Gentry, and mean 
 ing to have him come to dinner, he sent for him, but, as a jest, put 
 his invitation in the form of an order of arrest, to be delivered by 
 an imposing provost-guard. The old statesman was brought into 
 camp, fully persuaded that he was a captive, and, when he came into 
 the presence of Gen. Rousseau, still believing himself a prisoner, he 
 drew himself to his full height, and said, in that sonorous voice that 
 has so often electrified the halls of congress and the hustings, "Gen. 
 Rousseau, you know that I love the Union; the dearest aspirations 
 of my heart were poured out as libations upon the altars of the 
 Union ; my young manhood was devoted to its service, I grew gray 
 in its cause; but, finally the old stern-wheel steamboat Secession 
 came along, and I saw first one neighbor and then another get 
 aboard, and, when all were aboard except me, and I was left alone 
 upon the shore and they were about to draw in the gangplank, I 
 cried out, Hold on, boys, I ll go with you if you go to 
 Hades. 
 
 I was taken to task, not long ago, for speaking of Abraham 
 Lincoln as a man inspired of God. I do not see how any 
 body can think otherwise who believes in the doctrines of in 
 spiration at all. If he was not inspired of God, then was no man 
 who ever lived on earth. From Caesar to Gladstone and Bismarck, 
 the Avorld has had its statesmen and its soldiers, men who have risen 
 to eminence and power, step by step, by a sort of geometric pro 
 gression, as it were, each advancement following upon the other in 
 regular order, according to well-known and well-understood prin 
 ciples of cause and effect. They were not what we call men of 
 destiny, they were men of talent whose lives had a beginning, a 
 middle and an end, rounding off a history full, it may be, of inter 
 esting and exciting events, but stil comprehensive and comprehensi 
 ble. The inspired men are fewer; when they came or where 
 they got their powers, by what rule they lived and moved 
 and had their being, we know not. There is no explication 
 to their lives, they rose in shadow and they went in mist. We 
 followed them and saw them, but we knew them not. They 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 37 
 
 came, God s word upon their lips; they did their office, God s 
 mantle about them ; and they passed from the scene as mysteri 
 ously as they had come upon it, leaving behind them a memory 
 half mortal and half myth. There they were, distinctly the 
 creations of some special providence which folded them round 
 about defying the machinations of the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil, until their duty was done, and then as mysteriously 
 passing them off the stage. Luther, Shakespeare, Burns, even 
 Bonaparte the archangel of war, havoc and ruin, not to go 
 back into the dark ages for examples of the hand of God 
 stretched out to raise up to protect and then to cast down 
 again. Tried by this standard, where shall we find an ex 
 ample? Such is the life and death of Abraham Lincoln, a 
 story which might stand as the prelude of the most imperial 
 theme of modern times. 
 
 Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel, with no gleam 
 of light or fair surrounding, singularly uncouth among the 
 uncouth about him, it was reserved for this strange being, 
 late in life, without name or fame or preparation, to be snatched 
 by unseen hands and entrusted with the reins of power at a 
 supreme moment and given the destinies of the nation. All 
 the great men of his party statesmen trained and accom 
 plished, men like Sumner and Seward and Chase, sent to 
 the rear; whilst this fantastic being was brought to the front 
 and given supreme command at this critical moment. It mat 
 ters not whether we believed in what he said or did, or not ; 
 it matters not whether we were for him or against him ; that 
 during four years embracing such a responsibility as the 
 world had never witnessed before, he filled the vast measure 
 allotted him in the actions of mankind and in the eyes of the 
 world, is to say that he was inspired of God for nowhere else 
 could he have got the enormous equipment necessary for his 
 mission. 
 
 Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where did Mozart 
 get his music? Who smote the lyre of the Scottish plowman, 
 and saved the life of the German priest? God alone. And as 
 surely as these were inspired of God, raised up by God, so was 
 Abraham Lincoln ; and a thousand years from this, no story, 
 no epic poem will be filled with greater wonder or be read 
 with deeper feeling than that which tells the strange tragedy 
 of his life and death. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY JOHN PAUL EGBERT, D. D., PASTOR HOUSE OF HOPE, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 12, 1894.) 
 
 We are all better men and better citizens for the life of 
 Abraham Lincoln. Whenever a nation ceases to praise its 
 virtuous men, it ceases itself to be virtuous or patriotic, and 
 I know of no better work that the Loyal Legion can do than 
 to keep the minds of the people attentive to those things that 
 we have tested and found to be great things. The Loyal 
 Legion has done wisely in choosing this day to commemorate 
 Abraham Lincoln as one of our great men, standing side by 
 side with our other greatest men. Withgut the study of these 
 two, I do not see how any American can be either wise or 
 truly patriotic ; and I have no fear of the loss of loyalty or of 
 patriotism while Loyal Legions and Sons of the Revolution 
 keep these themes before the public mind. 
 
 We are told, and we all believe it, more and more, that 
 Abraham Lincoln is the typical American. Thank God if 
 this be true, for the type is a grand one. His life was typical 
 of honesty, sincerity, simplicity and that perfect truthfulness 
 of nature w T hich must win the victory or die. In Abraham 
 Lincoln it was to win the victory and die. He told us that he 
 w T as elected president not to preserve slavery nor to destroy 
 it, but to preserve the Union. But his deep truthfulness of 
 character made him unable to destroy the greater and save 
 the less, to destroy the good and save the evil, when he was 
 brought face to face with the moment in which he had to 
 write the death warrant of the one or the other. Looking 
 out of his own sincerity of character, with that inheritance of 
 freedom through all his life behind him, with all that absolute 
 saneness of mind, saneness of moral character, clearness of 
 conscience, tenderness of heart and soundness of brain, as 
 he put his signature to that emancipation proclamation, he 
 must have felt a joy that could not die, and a thankfulness 
 sure to abide with him forever as he thought of the new song 
 of thanksgiving he was putting in the hearts of millions of 
 others. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 39 
 
 We compare him in these days with only one other in his 
 tory; one other so great that he never can be left behind by 
 any one; whose genius, whose patience, whose calmness of 
 intellect, whose absolute sense of right, whose patient deter 
 mination, made it possible for us to have a government not 
 only to win our independence but to secure our constitution 
 and start us on that marvelous journey of life in which we are 
 making such strides today. George Washington will always 
 stand as the Father of his country; but Abraham Lincoln as 
 the Child of his country. Washington did greatly more than 
 any other of the host of men about him to make America 
 what it became. He is easily the first man of his time. Amer 
 ica made Abraham Lincoln, and he was easily the first man 
 of his time. The story of Lincoln s life is the story of our 
 national civilization, and his character is the summary of the 
 highest and noblest attributes of our American life incarnated 
 in a person. And so, as the attributes of Washington did 
 so much to create our land as it is, this land gave us Abraham 
 Lincoln as its highest product. 
 
 His mother was not a Kentucky woman, his mother was 
 not Kentucky his mother was these United States of Amer 
 ica; and we glory in him because he resembles so much in 
 himself the greatest beauties, the deepest health, the noblest 
 character of his mother. His character was born of the best 
 blood of American life. 
 
 Who was his father? Mr. Watterson has told you God! 
 I mean it, and I say it reverently. If God did not call him 
 forth for his great work, where is there illustration of God s 
 presence in our history? The very qualities which put Lin 
 coln at the head of our nation, and led him on to success of 
 life and of w r ork, are the qualities that God loves to exalt and 
 the successes of them are praises of his name. Is there any 
 other civilization, in all the history of our human progress, 
 that could have enabled a man so thoroughly to contradict 
 all his inheritance, to defy all his environment and to claim 
 all that ever-readiness of power in the development of his re 
 sources to fit every emergency while going from the lowest 
 in degradation to the highest in glory and honor, to stand 
 at length by the side of our greatest man, ay, to -take him by 
 the hand and claim him as an equal. Abraham Lincoln did 
 it not some man who was the son of a genius, not some man 
 
40 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 who had every possible advantage in his early life but Abra 
 ham Lincoln, out of what he .was, being what he was. 
 
 The praise of Lincoln, the profound reverence for his char 
 acter and the honest affection for his person, becoming more 
 and more apparent in all parts of our land, is a promise of 
 greatest meaning and value. The best thing in you and me 
 is that we can love that which is better than ourselves. Lov 
 ing is always the method of approach in moral life. That 
 which we love supremely, where it is better than ourselves, 
 always leads us upward, and when it has the moral approba 
 tion, with the heart s love, it leads to imitation. Why do we 
 honor Abraham Lincoln? Because he was true, because he 
 was faithful, because he deserved all the honor that we could 
 give him. We know that we cannot exalt him, but we are bet 
 tering ourselves by the simple approach toward him of our 
 affections and our admiration. The nation s praise of Lin 
 coln is America s recognition of what an American ought to 
 be, because of what the typical American has been. 
 
 I believe that the American people have seized upon just 
 those things in the character of Abraham Lincoln which give 
 us the promise of still nobler greatness. Look at some of the 
 sayings, expressions of his own life, he put into circulation 
 among men ; how much of good they have already accom 
 plished. Take that one sentence, "with malice toward none 
 and charity for all." It has calmed thousands of hearts, it 
 has brought the sentiment to thousands of minds in the heat 
 of discussion ; and, in those days following the war, how much 
 it did to guide men toward justice and brotherly affection. 
 Is it not the echo of that spirit represented in him, enlarged 
 and enriched in him, that made it possible for us to hear, as 
 we have heard here this evening, the message coming to us 
 from what we used to think was the other side, but which we 
 now gladly think is this side throughout the whole country? 
 Take that other saying of his, which is repeated in all our 
 patriotic speeches, "a government of the people, by the people 
 and for the people." It was his prayer that these should never 
 end. Do we see the force of it? The highest government is 
 self-government. That is the highest use of all the resources 
 and powers of life, by the purest motive and the highest 
 method for the noblest object. The highest government is 
 the government of God s own self, the perfect self-government. 
 The highest government for men, who are made in the image 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 of God, is the same government which governs that sublime 
 nature in whose image we are created. What is the highest 
 government for one man, then, is the highest and best for 
 all men. It it is the best government for each man, it is the 
 best government for a community of men; if for a com 
 munity, then for a nation; and that national government which 
 gives to a man not only the best opportunity, but the highest 
 enablement to be his best and do his best, by the highest 
 motive, for the noblest object, is the greatest and best and 
 most abiding national government possible among men. I 
 take it that Abraham Lincoln stands before us all as an il 
 lustration of just that government. What other government 
 on the face of the earth would have enabled that man, out of 
 his uncouthness and roughness and poor inheritance, to use 
 his powers, by pure motives, for noble aims, by right methods, 
 until he rose by them above us all, head and shoulders above 
 the greatest among us? Our nation is great not because it is 
 rich, but because it enables every man to do his best and to 
 be his best. And do you wonder, then, that such a man, who 
 had passed through it all, who had worked it all out of his own 
 nature who had seen it wrought out of God in his own mak 
 ing when he would honor the men who laid down their lives 
 on that great battlefield in achieving this very opportunity 
 for all men who would come under our flag, should utter this 
 prayer, "that still there might be preserved to the end on 
 this earth a government of the people, by the people, and for 
 the people?" 
 
 To lift our government, then, we must lift ourselves; and 
 the government that does not place the responsibility for self- 
 government upon every citizen is simply laying the train which 
 will some day destroy it. But that government which, by its 
 righteous decisions in court, by its righteous teachings in 
 schools, by its righteous teachings in church, by its righteous 
 living in private life, by its righteous execution of all laws, 
 by the righteous living, man by man, of all its people, gives 
 every man the opportunity and the help, without hindrance 
 of the body politic, to be his best and do his best, in this noblest 
 fashion, is simply building life for itself upon foundations laid 
 under the guidance of Almighty God, because it is best devel 
 oping his children for that kingdom which is everlasting. 
 
 Did any man ever see this more clearly than did Abraham 
 Lincoln, the last year or two of his life, say from 1863? I do 
 
42 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 not believe that he was made great before he became great; 
 I do not believe that he was fit for the presidency until he be 
 came president; I do not believe that he was fit to end his 
 career until it was ended. He was one of those strange, rare 
 men, who came in, as he once said of himself, "made by 
 events"; shaped and guided by Providence through all the in 
 tricacies and dangers of life, gathering unto himself- the best, 
 the deepest and the most abiding of that through which he 
 moved; and, carrying it on, leaving behind him the ephemeral 
 and the temporary; standing at last, when his work is done, 
 representing to us the permanent and abiding things in the 
 civilization which produced him. 
 
 When we present such a man as this for the admiration of 
 our people, we are giving them a blessing. When we teach 
 our children, when we put into our schools, from one end of 
 this land to the other, the fundamental teachings of patriotism, 
 we present the fundamental teachings of character, which will 
 abide not only for the highest and most enduring national life, 
 but will develop that life which fits for citizenship in the king 
 dom that is everlasting. 
 
 And so I think that every meeting of loyal, patriotic men, 
 to venerate and perpetuate the memories of our noblest and 
 best, who fought for truth and right, is but continuing what 
 our fathers began in the Revolution and what men battled for 
 thirty years or more ago ; they are but continuing and hand 
 ing down to others that which they must have, without which 
 they can be neither virtuous nor loyal, neither citizens of 
 their country nor citizens of the kingdom of God. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL. ADDRESSES. 43 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY MAHLON N. GILBERT, PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 12, 1895.) 
 
 I cannot help thinking that such a day as this is a day 
 if we catch the spirit of it aright which gives us new courage. 
 If there ever was a dark day it was the day before the war; 
 it was the day when the incubus of that awful curse of per 
 sonal thraldom rested upon the people, and men went on 
 saying, "What of the night?" There never was a greater time 
 of depression, it seems to me, than those few months preced 
 ing the war; and then up out of the midst of that Egyptian 
 darkness, like the Moses of old, out of the common people, 
 out of the very principles lying enshrined always in the heart 
 of a free government arose this great man and gave the 
 name, and focalized and incarnated in himself a great feeling 
 of hope ; for men from that day went on, knowing that this 
 country would be safe, knowing it because of the self-reliant 
 hopefulness of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 We catch that spirit today. We sometimes despair of this 
 country I have had my moments of despair, when it seemed 
 as though the principles of liberty were being ploughed un 
 der; but though they were being ploughed under, they were 
 like a fallow soil out of which the seed again should spring. 
 And looking at it from the standpoint of such a day as this, 
 it is impossible for us to retain feelings of despondency; we 
 believe that the land shall be saved by the power of men not 
 so great as he but born with the same spirit. It is this power 
 born of the inherent principles of American life that makes 
 this time after all, all-hopeful. And when the time comes, I 
 care not how fraud may rule, I care not how far political cor- 
 cuption may have carried us down, I care not how the genius 
 of destruction and anarchism may seem to hold high carnival; 
 nevertheless, when the time comes, the great heart of the 
 American people, through its leaders, who are made for the 
 occasion, speaks, "Hope on, this country is safe!" 
 
 This is always the great thought which comes to me on 
 such a day as this, the thought that, no matter what may be 
 
44 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 the conditions of despondency surrounding us, nevertheless, 
 there is, deep down in the American heart what? Patriotism 
 love for the country. And when you touch the feeling of 
 love, whether it be for woman or for children; whether it be 
 for God or for country, you strike a principle which moves 
 the universe, you strike a principle which binds men together; 
 and in unity there is strength, and such strength, as it marches 
 on down the ages, like some great giant, armed cap-a-pie, always 
 brings victory. 
 
 While I could dwell on such a thought as this, I will not; 
 yet, as I look forward into the future, from the high standpoint 
 of such a day, I catch glimpses of the ideality of this republic 
 realized more and more ; I catch glimpses of the spirit which 
 breathed into you men as you marched forth, not knowing 
 whither you went and not knowing how great you were ; and 
 I see it gathering in force as the years go on ; I see it over 
 coming fraud ; I see it assimilating within itself all the vast 
 hosts of the world as they pour upon our shores; I see it mak 
 ing possible all the possibilities of the constitution and of the 
 Union. And so looking on, the world seems brighter, because 
 of our country and its principles. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 45 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY CYRUS NORTHROP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 12, 1895.) 
 
 I have been remarking tonight that most people can die 
 without the world s being very much afflicted; it is a kind 
 of vulgarizing practice, a bestial condition of things, when 
 humanity can see all of humanity but itself go down into the 
 grave without a tear. And I, for my part, thank God that, 
 along the mountain tops of history, there are still to be seen 
 men standing so high that the rest of the human race must 
 see them and look at them, whether they w r ill or not, and mark 
 their disappearance when they go beyond the horizon into 
 the unseen world. And now I thank God that there has come 
 to our country such a man as Abraham Lincoln, and that he 
 stands in history just where he does. 
 
 I want you to note one fact : There were, formerly, in the 
 United States senate, men of very great prominence. Just 
 run over in your mind, what kind of men they were. There 
 was John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky; John Bell, of Tennessee; 
 Geo. M. Berrien, of Georgia; William P. Mangum and Geo. 
 E. Badger, of North Carolina; Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland; 
 and John M. and Thomas Clayton, of Delaware all these 
 from the southern states, to say nothing of the men from the 
 north. Great men and men of power. How many of them 
 live in the memory of the present generation? Nine-tenths 
 of them are covered by the waters of oblivion, as completely 
 almost as if they had never lived. The student of history 
 gathers up their names ; men who lived when they were in 
 the senate remember their speeches, but they are going to be 
 forgotten and buried in the oblivion of time. 
 
 No such fate awaits the name of Abraham Lincoln. Why? 
 W r as he the greatest man intellectually that this country has 
 produced? Not at all. Daniel Webster had a mightier in 
 tellect than Abraham Lincoln, if you look at it as a matter of 
 pure reason. Was he the godliest man that this country has 
 ever produced? No. Was he the only man that was patriotic? 
 No, no, no. There was not a true soldier who marched under 
 
46 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 the flag to face death who had not as much patriotism in him 
 as had Abraham Lincoln. Was he unselfish utterly unselfish 
 like a Christ? No, he wished to be United States senator from 
 Illinois and he tried hard for it; and when he could not get it, 
 he wanted to be president and he got it a noble and an 
 honorable ambition bravely carried out. This man, I tell you, 
 was eminently human, he was no god ; no divine creature, but 
 he was so human that he will live as long as the human heart 
 shall live, because he was so true to it; and when you sum up 
 Abraham Lincoln, what is it that makes him live? What is 
 it that makes the heart warm to him? When I left that ban 
 quet hall in St. Paul t\vo years ago and was met by a prominent 
 Democrat and he said something to me about it, I said, "I 
 loved Lincoln." Said he, "Didn t we all love him?" Why 
 is it that we all loved him without regard to party? Well, I 
 will tell you : It is the secret of winning love anywhere, it 
 is the secret of love in high places or in low places; it is the 
 secret of a successful life; it is the key-note to a vital human 
 ity; it is a star of Bethlehem pointing to the progress of human 
 ity. Abraham Lincoln lives and will live because, with a 
 great intellect, with a patriotic heart, with devotion to country, 
 with wisdom, with all those qualities which mark a statesman 
 and prepare a man for leadership, he had also a great, loving 
 heart which, touched by all the affinities which bind heart to heart, 
 made him tender to everyone and anxious for the peace and joy 
 and happiness of every one. This is Lincoln, the man "who did 
 not sleep Thursday nights because Friday morning was the time 
 for execution," and he wanted to be ready, if it was necessary, to 
 save a man; and whether it was or not, he could not sleep with 
 death impending over men over whose life he had control. That 
 is Lincoln listening to the words of little Blossom pleading for her 
 brother who was to die because, after one night of exhaustion in 
 \vatching, he undertook the duty of another suffering boy, and slept 
 on his guard and w r as condemned to die. That is the Lincoln. 
 Lincoln telling stories to the reporter while waiting for the 
 news to come from a battlefield ; Lincoln retiring to his room, 
 praying that God will give victory to the armies of the Union 
 and confident thereafter that victory will come. 
 
 You cannot take this man in and bind him to any church. 
 No church can claim him. The agnostics cannot claim him ; 
 no mere sect can claim Abraham Lincoln; and I am glad it 
 is so. I am glad he was not a Congregationalist, as I happen 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 47 
 
 to be; I am glad he was not a Presbyterian; I am glad he was 
 not anything that any particular denomination can take and 
 claim, but I am glad also that he was not the man mentioned 
 in the Bible who said in his heart, "There is no God." No 
 body ever did say in his heart, There is no God," except per 
 sons of that class mentioned in the Bible, and Abraham Lin 
 coln did not belong to that class. 
 
 Reverent, reverent, reverent! Oh, he knew what was 
 meant by the God of battles; he knew what was meant when 
 armies were going into conflict, clashing against each other, 
 and death was in the air, and the nation s life hung upon the 
 result of the conflict; he knew that there was a God; and the 
 man that in that time of trial came to stand in a closer and 
 more reverent relation to the Builder of the Universe is a man 
 over whom it is not necessary for us to fight any theological 
 battles. He knew God and he worshiped Him, and when he 
 went from earth, God called him home. 
 
 I have never in the least despaired of the republic. I do 
 not share in the view of those who are continually pointing 
 out the possibilities of this nation s going to pieces, of this 
 Union s being subverted by revolution, one element striking 
 against another until we have confusion worse confounded 
 and anarchy comes in like night and closes the scene. I take 
 no interest in any of these prognostications. Here is a na 
 tion, it is founded on justice, it is founded on the principle 
 of equal rights; every man in theory and before the law has 
 the same rights. You cannot make anything in the way of 
 government that is more fair and equal and just to all than 
 this. This nation was founded, in every part of it, by men 
 who believed in the rule of divine Providence and the power 
 of the world to come, and those influences are still with us. 
 You may laugh, you may sneer, you may go out on the street 
 and talk in a pessimistic and agnostic way; you may make a 
 spectacle of yourself as an unworthy son of a noble" father, 
 but I tell you when the hour of trial comes, when the bell 
 rings and the call is made for all that is honorable and manly 
 in America to stand up and be counted on the side of law 
 and order and justice and right, there will be such a response 
 every time as will establish your hearts and make you feel 
 that the glory of the days of Lincoln has not departed. 
 
 And now, in conclusion : If you talk pessimism you are an 
 apostle of pessimism, whether you believe in or desire pessim- 
 
48 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ism or not. If you go around insisting that things are getting 
 worse all the time, you are creating a public sentiment that 
 helps things to grow worse all the time. You can take your 
 friends into your cellar and keep them there, if you wish, and 
 they will, after awhile if they ever come up come up look 
 ing very much like the potato vines that have gradually come 
 out from the potatoes you have carefully placed there for 
 your comfort and convenience. But do not take them there; 
 take them into your living rooms, take them into the rooms 
 where the sun shines in where everything is bright and joy 
 ous and cheerful ; let them feel with you that God is there 
 and that the atmosphere is good and that things are bright 
 and promising, and you will create a sentiment of this kind 
 which in itself will be helpful and healing and to a certain 
 extent will remove the evils which now threaten us. 
 
 Am I not right? Do you not know it? Every man that 
 joins in this cry of "Everything is going to the dogs," is doing 
 an injury to the country, and to society and to peace. I tell 
 you things are not going to the dogs. I am not going to the 
 dogs myself, if I can help it. I do not mean you shall go to 
 the dogs if I can help it. Everything is going to grow better 
 if we will only let it grow better and be helpful to it. All we 
 want is faith and hope and charity; all we want is brotherly 
 feeling, a kindly regard for the interests of humanity, a willing 
 ness to live and let live, to be helpful, to do what we can to 
 lift one another up. Gracious heavens ! we want the spirit that 
 was in Jesus Christ and the spirit that was in Abe Lincoln, and 
 then this country will do well enough, in spite of all the legislation 
 that an unusually idiotic congress could possibly produce. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 49 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY GENERAL JOHN C. BLACK, U. S. VOLS. 
 (Read February 12, 1897.) 
 
 Within this century curious archaeologists uncovered the 
 ruins of Asia Minor and brought to sight monuments and in 
 scriptions of vast nations who once dwelt there and filled all 
 the earth with the pageants of power and pomp. 
 
 On the walls thus rescued were found the inscriptions and 
 records by which the vanished sought to tell their highest 
 claims to human remembrance and regard; chapter after chap 
 ter of woe and ruin; captives in chains; awful lists of the dead; 
 on the cumulation of all which rose the ghastly ghosts that 
 pleaded with us for remembrance. Thank God that they per 
 ished before the whole earth was desolated! That their bloody 
 days died ere we were born, and that the cycling ages have 
 brought us to the higher planes whereon he who pleads for 
 recollection must show himself in peace or war a lover of his 
 kind. We have changed with the times. 
 
 The pens of our historians and of our poets have been 
 very busy since April of 1865; all over the land thousands 
 of orators have in ceaseless emulation told the story; from the 
 capitol to the borders of the seas Phidian genius has reared 
 monuments, and affection told in bronze and granite the claims 
 of Lincoln for remembrance. Not on one lip; not in one line; 
 not on one tablet, rests that fame of needless slaughter; but 
 always from the accessory pictures of conflict and the sound 
 ing tales of brothers battles, the ascriptions and the love are 
 to one great figure which even in the midst of struggles, tow 
 ered aloft with sad glance and tear-dimmed eyes; mourning 
 the stricken of the hosts,- consoling the woeful homes touched 
 by war, striking the chains from human limbs, preserving ever 
 with the tenacity of devoted love, the union of the states; the 
 figure, not of a conqueror or partisan or chief, but of Father 
 Abraham. 
 
 I wish I could recall to you, tell to you, all that those two 
 words meant in the camps and to the fighting men; the army 
 knew that while Father Abraham was in Washington all the 
 
50 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 energies of the American nation were at their backs; that 
 while Father Abraham was commander-in-chief, the volunteer 
 had a friend and the regular a merciful chief; each officer 
 knew that he was expected to do his best and to implicitly 
 trust for recognition and support to Father Abraham. And 
 so they came by millions. And while one of that vast host 
 of the Union on land and sea survives, there will be found a man 
 who cherishes, loves, and honors the name, the work, and the 
 glory of Father Abraham. 
 
 But those days are memories. We are in a new presence ; 
 among people who were not born when we were soldiers; let 
 us teach them the story of our chief that it may be heard for 
 ever. 
 
 The old South was a very pleasant land! Sunny, forest- 
 covered, stored with fish and game; fertile and producing 
 abounclingly to labor; men and women loved it and yielded 
 to its lifelong spell. How potent was that spell those only know 
 who have felt its thrall; it colored the ideals of life; it shaped 
 the habits of men and accented the speech of all its dwellers; 
 it knew its own weakness and became fiercely antagonistic to 
 all who did not declare its weakness strength, and worship 
 at its intolerable shrine ; there was but one alternative to a 
 free man dwelling in the whole region which slavery occupied, 
 allegiance or exile! Slavery was exclusive; it wanted to be let 
 alone, it did not favor emigration nor travel nor local move 
 ment ; hence the great trails of emigration usually moved out 
 side it and thus had to cross from east to west the borders of 
 Illinois which, based on the Northern line of liberty, projected 
 like a mighty promontory far towards the center of the antici 
 pated empire of slavery. From this it resulted, very early, 
 that many restless and "misfitted" peoples, those who loved 
 the cause of freedom and who had begun to feel the glacier-like 
 pressure of slavery, moved from their native seats, and fleeing 
 from the invisible presence of bondage, begun their exodus 
 across this lovely land; they were attracted by its popular 
 government and, perchance, were deterred from further jour 
 neying by the mystic terrors that sentineled the middle west; 
 that patroled the trails and vast solitudes stretching from the 
 Father of Waters to the far Rockies and thus, many of them 
 stopped in Illinois. 
 
 They found that an ancient civilization had preceded them ; 
 the trails of the Canadian on his way from Quebec and Mon- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 51 
 
 treal to the Arcadian recesses of Louisiana had run north and 
 south there for nearly a century; the voyagers had lingered at 
 Kaskaskia and Cahokia and around the abandoned monuments 
 of the mound builders. Slavery with them a patriarchal in- 
 institution they attempted long before Illinois was a separate 
 territory to set up beside their domestic altars ; in the new 
 arena in the solitude of a region more remote from the center 
 of affairs than is Alaska now, they renewed the old fight for 
 the possession of the world; in the contest freedom and slav 
 ery grappled for control and slavery lost. So the travelers of 
 later days found written over the gate of every trail and high 
 way that led into the state "Dedicated to Freedom!" 
 
 And so it was that early in this century Thomas and Nancy 
 abandoning their humble Southern home and seeking the 
 Northwest, came to Illinois. The earth was colder, more stub 
 born, less inviting where they rested, than whence they came, 
 but it was free. 
 
 The world had much in store for that young household. 
 A few years before (it is eighty-eight years now) the mother, 
 in a rude cabin, in the midst of a clearing of a few acres, made 
 by the toil of her absent husband, had brought forth in agony 
 of maternity, in the solitude of the Kentucky forests and in 
 the only presence of her God, the man child whom all the ages 
 are to rise and reverence. 
 
 Slavery with its plaited scourge drove forth this little 
 family, and by and by the infant whose cradle had been rocked 
 in the near sound of chains arose and wrested away the scourge 
 and redeemed his birthplace forever. 
 
 No origin was ever more honorable or humbler, not even 
 that of the camel driver of Arabia, or, let me speak it reverent 
 ly, the stable-mangered Babe of Bethlehem. Yet, when I look 
 over the array of the sons of men whose influence endures 
 forever, it occurs to me that those who have greatly benefited 
 mankind have always been those who have sprung from the 
 depths of the w r orld, and grown upward through all pressure 
 with tremendous native power, until, when in their full stature, 
 they are part and parcel of all that is beneath them ; to do 
 the world s work a man must know the world, from those depths 
 which we rarely see to the surface brilliant with foliage and flowers. 
 
 The family began the struggle for existence, absolutely without 
 advantage; the child continued it until he was a man, his bare feet 
 
52 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 on the bottom rock ; without money ; without education ; without an 
 alleviating circumstance, he grappled the hand of the sympathetic 
 democrary about him, of which he was part, and begun his slow 
 upward way. His first struggles and triumphs were all physical ; he 
 was a good boatman and a fair traveler ; he was a good axeman and 
 a faithful clerk; he met all comers in the village ring and was 
 the matchless wrestler and all-conquering athlete; by his sinewy 
 strength, exercised not in vindictiveness, but in rustic rivalry, 
 he won the first place among his simple peers, maintaining 
 it in many peaceful and one warlike campaign. 
 
 I will not try to trace the development of the inner young 
 man; let it suffice that on his humble head and into his humble 
 heart were poured by turns the passions of love, despair, ambi 
 tion ; the wish for approbation ; the worthy desire to rise in the 
 world; at last the longing to exercise the full measure of 
 leadership among men. And to this end he entered the law ; 
 that broad but steep and dangerous highway over which so 
 many have passed on to ruin or to fame. It was during his 
 practice of this chosen profession that I then a boy first 
 saw and knew him, and I ask your indulgence while I briefly 
 sketch his surroundings. 
 
 The annual session of the circuit courts drew to the court 
 houses of the respective counties the brightest lawyers of the 
 entire circuits ; they rode with the court on its rounds ; they 
 were in constant forensic struggle with each other; and 
 studied the common law, that perennial stream from whose 
 richness come constitutions and statutes, and the varied safe 
 guards of property, person and liberty. They journeyed by 
 the old stage or by private conveyance, often on horseback; 
 they were out in the free wind, and breathed the free air, and 
 saw the free sun, and looked upon the opening days of a free 
 and unsubdued land; they were part and parcel of a young 
 free commonwealth ; their three great landmarks were Magna 
 Charta, the Constitution, and the Ordinance of 1787. They de 
 manded that their leaders should be worthy of their environ 
 ment, and they were. 
 
 It was a matter of universal moment that the court should 
 be treated with all honors ; its great lawyers sharing the respect 
 tendered to the judge ; yet how simple and unpretending was 
 every step taken in the public gaze. When the great assize 
 day arrived, the judge came and the lawyers in his company, 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 53 
 
 each known to youthful eyes, and conspicuous among them 
 Mr. Lincoln in simple garb often a linen coat and rusty black 
 garments, with rough boots, and a slouch hat to complete his 
 attire greeting every passerby with hearty speech, mingling 
 familiarity and pleasantry with all the people on the streets 
 or in the hotels or in the court house. I most vividly recall 
 him as a figure in the court room, when, with slow stride, he 
 moved back and forth, outside the bar, but in the view of ail, 
 his tall form stooped, his hand behind his back grasping the 
 opposing elbow, listening, observing, thinking", known of all, 
 regarded of all, and, years before the first thought of great honors 
 turned towards him, called Honest Abe ; powerful then alike before 
 court and jury for his honesty, ability, his knowledge of the people 
 and their law, and taking that place in the common heart, from 
 which he was never to be driven. 
 
 I remember well other great actors on the civil side of 
 that period. Judge Trumbull, cold, passionless, an imperson 
 ated intellect, winning by the mere force of brain; never dear 
 to the people, yet always regarded by them, whose high for 
 tune it became, after Lincoln and Douglas had passed away, 
 to secure to the world, by the framing of the fourteenth amend 
 ment and the civil rights act, all the results of their struggles. 
 Judge Douglas, whose massive head, broad bosom and elec 
 tric eyes presented him to the fascinated gaze of men as a 
 mighty ruler, a Titan in a struggle, a measureless force in 
 action. His name was familiar in all our households and 
 known to thinkers everywhere ; his superb genius, resting upon 
 a solid character and united with a warm heart and personal 
 fidelity to friends, made him beloved to associates as few men 
 ever have been. He laid an unbreakable charm upon those 
 about him. To this day old men who knew him two genera 
 tions ago wall tell with kindled faces the story of his acquain 
 tance with them as the precious reminiscences of their lives. 
 And Douglas loved his country, and believed that only by the 
 triumph of his policy could it be preserved. Yet when that 
 policy was rejected by the people he subordinated his own 
 judgment and linked his high fame to his rival; the part that 
 he performed was only less important than that of Mr. Lin 
 coln himself. For had Douglas halted in his country s peril, 
 who can foretell what would have followed? He did not hesi 
 tate ; in the supreme hour he forgot all but country. He, too, 
 lives forever! 
 
54 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 But not yet did these two men, or either of them, measure 
 the majesty of the careers that destiny was opening to them, 
 or understand that in the near future they were to be the 
 foremost figures of a great era. They were at work, in the 
 same state, each loving his country and his fellow men, each 
 striving for preferment and honor, each a rival of the other. 
 Douglas was easily the first man of the American senate; he 
 was the great conservative leader of the time; he was re 
 nowned at home and abroad ; it recalls the stories of chivalry 
 to hear how in 1856 and in 1858 the country-bred lawyer whom 
 I have pictured to you challenged him to a contest that should 
 be mortal to the supremacy and the ideas of one or the other. 
 
 But the times were out of joint. The irrepressible con 
 flict was forcing its way to the front ; it was in vain that men 
 and women everywhere deplored the situation; that the 
 churches prayed for concord; that the press declared there was 
 no necessary trouble ; that state conventions and legislatures 
 and congress passed votes of confidence and enacted ponderous 
 compromises; resolutions do not arrest the laws of gravita 
 tion, nor stay the loosened passions of men. The conflict had 
 been inherited by those who had to fight for the constitution 
 when adopted, who declared its purpose to be to extend and per 
 petuate the blessings of liberty, yet at the same time bound 
 the national authorities to protect slavery and surrender the 
 slave ! It thus inaugurated the contest at first an amiable 
 discussion, but waxing fiercer and fiercer as opposing civiliza 
 tions under one flag stretched out their joining borders into 
 new lands, until all citizens were irresistibly drawn into hos 
 tile ranks. Everywhere aspirants for the distinction of leader 
 ship arose. In the congress it fell to Seward, but the people 
 not satisfied, withheld the baton, awaiting the coming man, 
 they knew not and they cared not who, but he must be a man 
 as wide in his purpose as their own; as instinct with humanity; 
 as resolute for the prevalence of right, as devoted to the union 
 of the states. He must be a man who could plead at the bar 
 of the Eternal for justice; who could know and feel all that he 
 said ; could cry up from sorrows with a voice that should car 
 ry to the Lord God of Sabaoth the whole infinite cry of the 
 oppressed, and yet be so loving that the oppressors should go un 
 harmed. Who was this man and whence would he come, and what 
 should give him opportunity? And to this the answer of the peo 
 ple came: 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 55 
 
 Lincoln, an everyday man ; not in the front of his com 
 pany, but on its right, preserving the alignment of the people; 
 abreast of them ; touching elbow with them ; moving and halt 
 ing with them; rejoicing and mourning, shouting and crying 
 with them ; all but divinely wise to their needs and wishes and 
 so their highest oracle and the best instrument for the de 
 signs of Providence; so plain; so simple; tall and stooping, 
 with sad face and earnest eyes. An American, a pioneer, a 
 backwoodsman, a most tender and earnest and eloquent man. 
 
 He will pass soon forever from such portraitures. Art 
 which loves the beautiful and worships the great, will chisel 
 his homely face anew, and in the future American pantheon 
 he will be majestic, but not art nor time will change that lov 
 ing heart nor that grand character; they will endure in grow 
 ing grandeur ; to them "all time will be a temple and all sea 
 sons summer." One refulgent sentence will ever crown his 
 head, "With malice towards none, with charity for all." 
 
 Behold then the occasion and note the leader to be, but 
 all unconscious of the waiting majesty and glory. When the 
 campaign of 1858 closed, Mr. Lincoln, although beaten, was 
 easily one of the foremost men in the Union, because he had 
 recognized the irrepressible, because he had proclaimed the 
 truth, because he had brought to the American mind its clear 
 est perception of the shrouded issue soon to convulse the 
 Union. 
 
 I pass over all details; two rushing years and swords were 
 flashing and the cannon s opening roar had called the land to 
 arms. How awful it was in that day to stand on the brink 
 of that red sea and strive to find the way of divine deliverance 
 through its misty waves, and to mark through the future 
 clouds and tempests, safety for the Union and the people and 
 liberty on the farther side ! Who could foretell the issue of 
 war? Who knew where victory would abide? Who foresaw 
 what would happen when already the bayonets were massing 
 from the Potomac to the gulf, and the cries of rebellion were 
 being echoed across the Atlantic by sympathetic tyranny? 
 The peaceful and unarmed Union taken by surprise, blinded 
 and confused by the fierce blows, gasped and trembled and 
 turned to the president. 
 
 Never was human need sorer; never human duty greater 
 than when on March 4, 1861, the president, having communed 
 with the divine ruler, and having listened to the voices of the 
 
56 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 people, spoke the purposes of the hour. In his inaugural he 
 was historian and prophet; citizen and ruler; the beseeching 
 brother, the unyielding commander-in-chief into whose hands 
 the people had placed the constitution and bade him observe 
 it, the Union, and bade him preserve it. Patriot, loving fellow 
 countryman, and president, he faced the tempestuous future, as it 
 rushed, on the present, and declared the uncompromising, sorrow 
 ing, inexorable purpose of the people ; in that high hour he spoke 
 the whole unalterable scheme of war and peace; he surveyed the 
 stomiy sky and through the furious clouds, perceiving the fixed 
 and steadfast star of duty, by that laid the course and charted the 
 journey of the republic. Turning to the world he said : 
 
 "A disruption of the federal Union, heretofore only 
 menaced, is now formidably attempted. I hold that in the 
 contemplation of universal law and of the constitution, 
 the union of these states is perpetual. I, therefore, con 
 sider that in view of the constitution and the laws, the 
 Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall 
 take care, as the constitution itself expressly enjoins upon 
 me, that the laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed 
 in all the states." 
 
 Then came the pleading with the rebellious people : 
 
 "You can have no conflict without being yourselves 
 the aggressors. You can have no oath registered in heav 
 en to destroy the government ; while I shall have the most 
 solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. I am loath 
 to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not 
 be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must 
 not break our bonds of affection." 
 
 And then that appeal to the spirits and glory of the great 
 dead and to the loyal living : 
 
 "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 
 the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely 
 they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 
 
 Not yet, my companions, has the full majesty of that in 
 augural address been measured ; it will be part of the historic 
 lore of the republic to latest time. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES. 57 
 
 And now the citizen became the president; from that hour 
 of inauguration until the end he moved in the sight and the 
 hearing of the world. 
 
 If Mr. Lincoln was a sincere man he had one paramount 
 and all-controlling mission; he felt and knew one great duty; 
 he had in view one end; to that everything was subordinate; 
 all things existed for that; all was done and spoken for that; 
 so his inaugural declared, so subsequent events and speech 
 testified. Believing that he \vas sincere and earnest, the study 
 of his future career becomes an inspiration. We can track 
 the man as we do some star that rises and moves about us 
 in an unclouded night. 
 
 How great and portentous were events in the first years ! 
 Unmerciful disaster crowded on disaster; defeat upon defeat; the 
 loss of Sumter; the first Bull Run; Virginia a slaughter pen; her 
 rivers red with blood ; her hills covered with unyielding fortresses ; 
 the flag of rebellion close and defiant over against the very capitol ; 
 the Mason and Sidell affair involving all but war with Great Brit 
 ain; France and Austria intriguing for a renewal of empire on our 
 Southern border; the awful losses in the Chickahominy swamps; 
 the seven-day battles; and Fredericksburg ; and the campaign 
 about second Bull Run ; a great people, stung to frenzy by un 
 merited defeat, dragged to the verge of despair by losses they 
 could not comprehend and would not forgive ; withdrawing the 
 full measure of their confidence and threatening to transfer 
 their fealty; doubt and disaster and gloom and storm, lightened 
 only by the steady roll of the drums that went down the Mis 
 sissippi and in the West far from the capitol and the nation s 
 life, while about that capitol, aye, up to its very gates, pushed 
 the grey-coated victors, led by their triumphant chiefs! 
 
 And through all these months of agony the president, on 
 whose heart fell every blow, wrestled with fate, watching, urg 
 ing, restraining, cheering! Over him on guard, the long night 
 dragged on and the gloom was deepening. Not yet had it 
 seemed to him that he must give its final color to the war; 
 not yet draw from the arsenal the tremendous reserve power 
 of emancipation ; but his resolve was made when our broken 
 regiments returned for safety in the late summer of 1862 to 
 the banks of the Potomac and he determined that if victory 
 did crown our arms again, he would in its light proclaim liber 
 ty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof. 
 
58 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 He told the world why on the 22d of August : 
 
 "I would save the Union. I would save it in the 
 shortest way under the constitution. If there be those 
 who would not save the Union unless they could at 
 the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. 
 If there be those who would not save the Union un 
 less at the same time they could destroy slavery, I 
 do not agree with them. My paramount object in this 
 struggle is to save the Union and is not to either de 
 stroy or save slavery. If I could save the Union with 
 out freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save 
 the Union by freeing all the slaves I would do it ; and 
 if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others 
 alone. I would also do that." 
 
 On the 18th of September was won the battle of Antietam 
 and four days thereafter came the preliminary proclamation 
 with its hundred days notice and then on the New Year of 
 1863 the grave and majestic act by which liberty was restored 
 to four million people and their children yet unborn. Study 
 it well, oh, children of the oppressed ! Oh, children of the free 
 oh, all ye that love mankind! For greater words were never 
 breathed by man into the trumpet of immortality. 
 
 "Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, president of 
 the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested 
 as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the 
 United States, in time of actual armed rebellion 
 against the authority and government of the United 
 States and as a fit and necessary war measure for 
 suppressing said rebellion, proclaim freedom. 
 
 And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act 
 of justice, I invoke the considerate judgment of man 
 kind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 
 
 No doubt he felt the individual sublimity of his act and yet 
 he performed it only as a part of the struggle to keep and 
 preserve the Union. Public sentiment would not have toler 
 ated its earlier enforcement; the attempts in this line made 
 previously by Hunter and by Fremont had failed of popular 
 support ; now was the appointed hour, waited for by the bonds 
 men through all the ages, now the boon to the slave was the 
 victory to the free; now the clash of falling chains was echo 
 to the musketry s sharp roll; now the armies of the Lord 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 59 
 
 broke their reserve and moved with the nation s blue batallions; 
 now those blue batallions sang with fervid voices the battle 
 hymn of the republic; now the sunshine of justice lit the flag 
 of the free. Up to this hour the burning heart had yielded 
 to the cool brain, but when the time did come, how wondrous 
 must have been the thoughts of this mortal patient, regard 
 ful, wise, who cast the thunderbolt prepared through ages of 
 wrong into the field of war and as its vast explosion cast 
 down the defenses of slavery, what must have been the triumph 
 and the agony mingling in his breast! 
 
 He had labored with his hands for his livelihood; toil was 
 his early need and he knew those who ate bread in the sweat 
 of their brow, for he was labor s child and product; in his 
 individuality was the personification of labor; labor all around 
 the world was watching the outcome of the war which had 
 become his own cause ; it was labor which in Europe so sym 
 pathized with the loyal cause that it held in check all demon 
 strations of aristocratic accord with rebellion. Labor knew 
 that Lincoln was its greatest champion and he knew that the 
 eyes of the poor were on him everywhere. 
 
 And thus he who when a flat-boat man had with horror seen 
 a slave auction in New Orleans, who had seen the efforts to 
 annul the ordinance of 1787, the charter of liberty to the North 
 west ; who had seen foreign strife add to our domain enormous 
 territory subject to. slavery; who had borne a part in all the 
 agitations over its extensions or its restrictions now in the 
 midst of the great war spoke its doom ; saw it perish by the 
 decree of a fugitive from its blight; saw his own act unite the 
 purposes of eternal justice and of the national life and saw 
 this continent reserved for the triumphs of free men. For such 
 surely is the great result ; here by human sacrifice has been 
 made ready a continental field wherein labor and law shall 
 attain in harmonious ways their highest development. 
 
 Accursed let him be who shall stand in the way of these 
 great purposes or who shall by sowing discord, prepare the 
 harvest of sorrow for the toilers of the world; or embroil the 
 children of America in fatricidal strife ; we are one in heart 
 and destiny; one in interest and purpose; diverse in our duties 
 and opportunities, but one in the glory of peace. 
 
 From the proclamation until the end, reached as that end 
 was in spite of great and devoted opposition, presented by 
 gallant foes, striving as they believed for their most dear 
 
60 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 country and their sacred rights ; although the mountains were 
 filled with passes sturdily defended as was Thermopylae, and 
 a score of plains were like that of Marathon, yet despite all 
 misguided valor, devotion and sacrifice, unto the end the Un 
 ion cause moved resistlessly, checked here, retarded there, it 
 moved on, on, on, and at the last vindicated anew the eternal 
 law that good flourishes even out of evil and will in the end 
 prevail. 
 
 I am not here to show how on land and sea, for four years, 
 a gallant foe withstood our progress in more than two thou 
 sand five hundred contests and battles; how never by day or 
 by night did the guns cease their thunder or the vast armies 
 rest. I will not dwell on the mutual American virtues of brav 
 ery and devotion; but through it all the president seemed the 
 animating presence; he restrained rash adventure; he cheered 
 despondent defeat; he urged the laggard; he praised the 
 worthy; he honored the victorious brave; he wept for the be 
 loved dead; he sympathized with the mourning millions, and 
 while so doing his duty as man and citizen, he planned great 
 campaigns, criticised failures, rewarded success, punished 
 cruelty and with merciful hand struck strong blows when need 
 ed; he was commander and at the same time chieftain; his 
 loving sallies of wit routed dull care and brought a smile to 
 the nation s face ; his speech made the ranks stand fast or 
 move to the front ; his sayings were told in every home and 
 by every camp fire ; and in them all not a bitter word, not a 
 word of hatred for the foemen fell from his lips or pen. I 
 know there is present in your memories that classic of classics, 
 the speech at Gettysburg, and I read it to you now : 
 
 "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth on this continent a new nation, con 
 ceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 
 all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a 
 civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation 
 so conceived and so dedicated, can long edure. We 
 are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have 
 come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final rest 
 ing place for those who give their lives that that na 
 tion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
 that we should do this. 
 
 "But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we can 
 not consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 61 
 
 brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have 
 consecrated it far above our poor power to add or 
 detract. The world will little note, nor long remem 
 ber, what we say here; but it can never forget what 
 they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be 
 dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who 
 fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is 
 rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task 
 remaining before us; that from these honored dead 
 we take increased devotion to that cause for which 
 they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we 
 here highly resolve that these dead shall not have 
 died in vain; that this nation under God shall have 
 a new birth of freedom, and that government of the 
 people, by the people and for the people shall not per 
 ish from the earth." 
 
 Did mortal man ever more truly tell the sentiment of a 
 great people, or pay a more majestic tribute to the dead? 
 This was the frontiersman s, the rustic laborer s appeal to im 
 mortal history. This commander was telling the sentiments 
 of the army. This president was voicing the iron purpose of 
 the nation. This orator was speaking all the hope and love 
 and desire of the present to the unborn millions yet to be. 
 
 From the speech at Gettysburg, delivered at the culmina 
 tion of rebellious effort, until April, 1865, there was the un 
 controllable decline and fall of the Confederacy, whose end 
 was reached at Appomattox, when the Union, triumphant over 
 every obstacle, burst resplendent from the clouds of strife, to 
 move, let us hope, forever, undimmed on that highway where 
 glory waits on honor and has due regard for the rights of men. 
 
 Many swift years have gone since the last note of war 
 died away; the vast edifices of peace are builded where the 
 fortresses frowned ; the railroads stretch where the armies 
 marched and their whistles waken the echoes that once an 
 swered the call of the bugle. A peaceful era usurps and ob 
 literates all traces of destruction; even the stubborn hearts 
 of men acknowledge the wisdom that brought the great cause 
 to success and children cry out, "This is history! Close the 
 volume traced by the sword and open that new one, where 
 in the pen of love shall tell the greater glory of our beloved 
 land." So mote it be! For this we fought, and this being 
 
62 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 done, arms and the flags of war rust and drop their silken 
 tatters on the grave of every passion. 
 
 From this high point we, all the American people, may 
 look back without bitterness to the day and the place when 
 the great president fell, his work done, his course complete, 
 the last and greatest victim of strife. 
 
 The end was reached of strife ! Insane malice, choosing 
 the most illustrious victim, plunged the whole land, North 
 and South, in sorrow and deep horror. 
 
 What a horrible dream that I4th of April seemed! Peace 
 had come the battle banners were furled; the lines of hostile 
 camps were broken, and blue and gray, stern survivors of the 
 tempestuous days, were forgetting and forgiving; foemen were 
 tracing anew the familiar lineaments of each other s war 
 worn face to find in them brothers looks. The flag was spread 
 abroad in joyous splendor over the whole American land, un 
 challenged, unchanged, triumphant. The hearts of the great 
 hosts of the Union were yearning for the gay, glad time of 
 rest at home, and in the hour of success, amid their rejoicing 
 and civic pomp, amid the roar of guns celebrating victory, the 
 whole people echoed and re-echoed the last words Abraham 
 Lincoln ever spoke to that whole people : 
 
 "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with 
 firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, 
 let us strive 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, 
 and to do all which may achieve a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
 
 And while these high, tender, immortal words still were 
 being wafted about the globe and to every shore, after them 
 sped the news of the death of their most consummate author, 
 dead in the hour of highest fortune; dead while his heart 
 glowed for the returning children of the Union ; dead with 
 out bitterness ; dead while still his busy thoughts were run 
 ning on from the passing shadows to the sunny future where 
 in he foresaw the whole vast united nation in concord and 
 content; dead by a maniac hand. Then fell the best and wisest 
 friend of the South ; who can say how her fortunes would have 
 been affected had the mantle of his great authority been spread 
 above her stricken form? 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 63 
 
 As his towering frame fell, all the people North and South, 
 all the world, caught and lifted him on high; laid him to rest 
 with the unforgetable few whose names are dear in all lands 
 and all times; clothed him with the panoplying robes of utmost 
 pure renown and kindled at his mighty pyre the torch that 
 liberty arrd civilization ever bear onward in their ceaseless 
 progress. 
 
 "Oh Captain, my Captain, our fearful trip is done, 
 The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought 
 
 is won, 
 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting 
 While follow eyes the steady keel the vessel grim and 
 daring, 
 
 But, oh, heart! heart! heart! 
 Oh, the bleeding drops of red, 
 Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
 Fallen, cold and dead." 
 
 For him then to die was gain; it would have been nothing 
 to have lived on a few brief years of toil and fierce contention, 
 nothing, that pleasant days might have crowned his age ; noth 
 ing, that gentle hours might have garlanded his brow. That 
 for which he lived was established. The Union was saved and 
 every man was free. 
 
 He only preceded the vast hosts that he had summoned 
 to battle from all of freedom s domain; at their head he entered 
 the sunny plains of rest and glory. Fancy has placed him 
 there in their midst. "On the other side of the river amongst 
 the trees." A name that human weakness might have tar 
 nished is safe and bright. 
 
 On this side, we who remain, and those that shall fol 
 low us, when weary with petty striving or beset with doubt, 
 may raise eyes, from temporary glooms and mists, and shall 
 see, on the receding horizon of that great time, uplifted on 
 the splendid mountain tops of our history, in its middle morn 
 ing, the grave, heroic, loving figure of him who was the saver 
 of the Union and emancipator. While all about him, as he 
 stands near to the father of the country, the clamorous ages 
 in their eternal march shall say: 
 
 "This man was Liberty s martyr ! 
 This man was Humanity s Friend!" 
 
64: LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY JOHN IRELAND, ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 12, 1897.) 
 
 It is well for a country to have its heroes. Their memories 
 raise us up higher ideals and spur us on to deeds of valor. 
 Fortunate is the nation whose heroes are Washington and 
 Lincoln. It is impossible for us to even mention their names 
 without being impelled to better things. Abraham Lincoln, 
 today thy name has been spoken from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific and because of the sweet influence that has gone out 
 from thy memory the republic feels stronger and more hope 
 ful. Thy name symbolizes patriotism, generous, sublime, dis 
 interested. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln lived for his country, and no obstacle 
 was allowed to interfere with his great work. He sacrificed 
 everything, even his very life, and it is this high, disinterested, 
 sublime patriotism that we must learn if we would fitly com 
 memorate his memory. There is need today as there was 
 thirty-six years ago of the patriotism of Lincoln. We often 
 ask ourselves, Is this republic of the people for the people, by 
 the people, this personification of democracy is this republic 
 to live? The very fact that we love the republic so deeply 
 causes us, sometimes almost in timidity, to put this question 
 to ourselves. We know the perils that always surround de 
 mocracy, especially when we shall soon come to a popula 
 tion to be numbered by a hundred million. Democracy is sur 
 rounded by many difficulties because, to its peril, it is a gov 
 ernment by the many, and in order that the country may be 
 governed well it is necessary that the many be ready to make 
 sacrifices, to imitate Lincoln, to be sublimely patriotic. As 
 the nation advances through the years the perils increase. 
 Let us not try to disguise the fact as we increase in popula 
 tion, as wealth increases, as we witness the economic revo 
 lutions, results of the great inventions, discoveries of this 
 age. What is it that enables us to rise superior to all these, 
 perils? What will bring us to the point when we can bid all 
 passions be silent, when we can sacrifice our very lives? 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES. 65 
 
 Patriotism ! When we can say our country, first and last. 
 America is safe. 
 
 It is well to recall the deeds of heroes. It is well to look 
 often at the flag and remember that it signifies liberty for the 
 nation, liberty for the world. In seeking the best for our 
 country, opinions will always be divided. There will always 
 be political parties. But all is well if, whenever the country 
 calls we are able to put aside party for country. I say culti 
 vate patriotism, and hence I salute those grand organizations, 
 the Grand Army of the Republic and the Loyal Legion. They 
 are schools of patriotism. It is the nature of men s souls to 
 love dearly the things for which sacrifices have been made. 
 Companions, it is difficult for others to feel the warm love 
 that we feel for the flag, because we have followed it over gory 
 fields and its battles have been purchased with the offering 
 of our heart s blood. 
 
 War is dreadful and no one knows it better than the old 
 soldiers, but one of the results of war is to stimulate patriot 
 ism. I do not say understand me well that we must desire 
 war for the sake of the patriotism it begets. Yet when war 
 has come let us acknowledge that it is a fertile fountain of 
 purest and most generous patriotism. History will proclaim 
 that one of the greatest results of the civil war is that we 
 have since been a united people. 
 
 It has said that arbitration has come. God grant it, for 
 it opens the way to the settlement of all difficulties by simple 
 justice, without justice having to call upon force. Let us 
 hope that the dream may become reality. But terrible as 
 war is, there are other things more terrible loss of the integrity 
 of the nation, of the national honor. If arbitration can elimin 
 ate all these evils, be it so. But rather than that the nation 
 shall suffer in her least particular in its life or in its honor, 
 rather than that men should live unworthy of their country, 
 let war come. 
 
 I salute the attempt at arbitration. It will be a lesson to 
 all nations. It will help Europe put down that terrible mili 
 tarism which keeps millions in camp or fortress. But with 
 all my love of arbitration, I love my country best, and if 
 through this treaty we expose to the slightest peril that policy 
 of the nation by which the United States claims the continent 
 of America for Americans and American principles and Amer 
 ican liberty, if the Monroe doctrine is exposed to the least dan- 
 
66 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ger, let us have no treaty. I am glad the senate has paused 
 and has asked before approving the treaty, "Is the Monroe 
 doctrine safe?" Let arbitration come with due respect for 
 America, but we cannot submit to arbitration things which 
 cannot be left to a few men, even if some of them be Amer 
 icans. There are certain great policies which can be settled 
 only by the nation itself. 
 
 While I hope for arbitration, we must not go so far as not 
 always to be in sufficient readiness for war. Humanity is im 
 perfect on many sides. In the name of the American people 
 and American liberty the army and the navy must be sustained 
 and increased. As we grow into a great nation and assume 
 to a higher position than any nation of the earth there will be 
 perils which no arbitration can settle and which will endanger 
 us if we are not prepared. 
 
 Old flag, to thee I pledge the tribute of my gratitude and 
 love ! May it wave over America s happy homes. Wave in 
 peace, if it be the will of God, but if bloodshed come, old flag, 
 shelter thou us ! 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 67 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BRIGADIER-GENERAL EDWARD S. BRAGG, U. S. VOLS. 
 (Read February 12, 1898.) 
 
 It is most meet and fitting for this order, as a repre 
 sentative of the brain and brawn of the people, on whose 
 shoulder the Union rests, and who went down to the jaws 
 of a very hell to proclaim to the world that the American 
 republic was not a failure, that in peace and in war there would 
 always spring forward in defense of her honor, her integrity 
 and the flag of an undivided nation patriotic sons, from the 
 hovel and the palace, from the city and the hamlet, from her 
 valleys and mountain sides, singing as they did before, when 
 they went to death, to prison and to fetid hospital : 
 
 "We re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand 
 more!" 
 
 It is not only the birthday of Abraham Lincoln that we 
 commemorate, but it is to us the birth of the great commander- 
 in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, whose 
 children we were during the dark days from 61 to 65, bearing 
 arms for the integrity of the Union, and ultimately wiping 
 from the flag of a free people the foul stain of human slavery, 
 protected and conserved by constitutional law. 
 
 There is another propriety in this place of commemora 
 tion peculiarly applicable. We are dwellers in and children 
 of the West. Mr. Lincoln was a child of the West, a boy of 
 the West, a man of the W^est, a type of character too fast 
 fading from view before the pushing advance of a class whose 
 god is in their bank account, and whose polished address and 
 manner of speech is too often acquired at the expense of the 
 sacrifice of the hickory, rough though it might be, which was 
 the "sine qua non" at the base of the character of men like Lin 
 coln, and the early pioneer of his type. They will stand in Amer 
 ican history as representatives of God s manhood, not needing the 
 conventional polish of society, or the agnosticism bred from too 
 much school, to mark them as men worthy of the trust and confi 
 dence of a people deserving to be free. 
 
68 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Hero worship stands out as a prominent attribute in Amer 
 ican character, and next, in close proximity to it, on the chart 
 of delineation of our character, is a marked tendency to Athen 
 ian fickleness bays and laurels for today, cups of poison hem 
 lock for the morrow. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln died when his glory was in apogee when 
 every loyal American and every lover of manhood and free 
 dom, wherever God s sunlight shed its rays, in sorrow and 
 mourning bowed its head in reverence, almost in worship, as 
 the body was given back to its mother earth, and the spirit, 
 freed from care and sorrow, sped away from its earthly tene 
 ment and nestled with the souls of the just made perfect in 
 the bosom of its God. 
 
 Do not shudder at my words! I but use the language of 
 one of the dead martyr s bosom friends and admirers, in the 
 Philadelphia Times, as expressing the idea I have endeavored 
 to give you "Mr. Lincoln was fortunate in the opportunity 
 of his death." He escaped the politicians intrigue and filthy 
 smirch, that made the name of his successor and fellow-worker 
 "a hissing and a byword" upon the tongues of the populace 
 harped on by a partisan press, inflamed to advance the ends 
 of an unscrupulous cabal. 
 
 The story of his life, his education, his character, his virtues, 
 his peculiarities, and his great big tender heart, overflowing 
 with kindness, without stint, making at times all other marked 
 attributes of his character bend gently before its outflow, to 
 evidence his love for all, and a humanity worthy of a god, 
 is an oft told tale. His hopes, purpose and rule of action as 
 chief magistrate, resulting from war as a necessity for pre 
 servation of the Union, are best preserved in his own simple 
 language in his second inaugural address: 
 
 "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
 this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 
 Yet if God wills that it shall continue until all the 
 wealth piled by the bondsman s 250 years of unre- 
 quitted toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood 
 drawn with the lash shall be paid, by -another drawn 
 by the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it 
 must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and 
 righteous altogether. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 69 
 
 And then, giving utterance to sentiments bubbling up from 
 a different fountain of feeling in the heart, he proceeds : 
 
 "With malice towards 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 orphans; 
 to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and 
 lasting peace among ourselves and with all. nations." 
 
 In the volumes of adulation of Mr. Lincoln in the early 
 years following his murder, there seems many times more ful 
 some gush than the plain truthful talk he himself always used 
 and delighted to listen to, and upon no subject did this mani 
 fest itself more than in his attitude towards slavery. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was never a slave-holder. Nor was he an 
 Abolitionist, until the time came when the preservation of the 
 Union depended upon it. The emancipation proclamation that 
 struck the shackles from the bondman, had not for its motive 
 cause the wrongs and the sufferings of the slave ; that good 
 was an incident, nothing more ! It was a necessity, as it 
 seemed to him, to prevent foreign interference and largely in 
 creased the safety of the Union. 
 
 The light, of the times when events happened, is the only 
 light that shows the right rule in which to consider them. At 
 the beginning of the Rebellion there were few of either sex 
 in the United States who believed, to use the language of a 
 great orator and philanthropist of Massachusetts, that the con 
 stitutional recognition of the right of property of man in man 
 "was a league with the devil and a covenant with hell." 
 
 It may surprise some to know that Mr. Lincoln was not 
 an Abolitionist, nor was he a believer in the divine right of 
 slave-holders. He believed with the great majority "That 
 within states w r here it existed it was protected by the broad 
 shield of the constitution, and without violation of organic 
 law, it, though an evil, could not be reached but by the con 
 sent of those whose property would be affected by its aboli 
 tion." 
 
 He states his position and that of his party, in his first 
 inaugural address, in these explicit words: 
 
 "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to in 
 terfere with the institution of slavery in the states 
 
YO LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do 
 so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who 
 nominated me and elected me did so with the full 
 knowledge that I had made this, and made many simi 
 lar declarations and have never recanted them; and 
 more than this, they placed in the platform for my 
 acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the 
 clear and emphatic resolution, which I now read: 
 
 " Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the 
 rights of the states, and especially the right of each 
 state, to order and control its own domestic institu 
 tions according to its own judgment exclusively, is 
 essential to that balance of power on which the per 
 fection and endurance of our political fabric depends; 
 and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed forces 
 of any state or territory, no matter under what pre 
 text, as among the greatest of crimes. 
 
 Having thus announced the faith and purpose of himself 
 and his party, he boldly and clearly declares: 
 
 "If the United States be not a government proper, 
 but an association of states, in the nature of a contract 
 merely, can it as a contract peaceably be unmade by 
 less than all the parties who made it? * * * In 
 legal contemplation the Union is perpetual, confirmed 
 by the history of the Union itself." 
 
 The single purpose of this bold brave man was to save the 
 Union he loved, and for which he gave his life. In his letter 
 of August 22, 1862, to his friend Horace Greeley, who at one 
 time spoke of the rebel states in the kindness of his heart, 
 following the dictates of an impracticable philanthropy, as 
 "erring sisters," and added, "depart in peace," he says: 
 
 "My paramount object is to save the Union, and 
 not either to save or destroy slavery. * * * What 
 I do about slavery and the colored race I do because 
 I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I for 
 bear I forbear because I do not believe it would help 
 to save the Union." 
 
 When the time came, when this silent, thoughtful, con 
 servative man reached in his own mind the conclusion that the 
 day for the harvest was nigh, that the life of the Union de- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 71 
 
 pended upon the execution of the moral law against human 
 bondage, he shrank not from his duty, as current events marked 
 out that duty on clearly unmistakable lines. He sounded the 
 note of warning on September 22, 1862, to the inhabitants of 
 the states in rebellion, by a proclamation tendering the olive 
 branch in one hand for their acceptance, with the preserva 
 tion of their property, upon their resuming again their posi 
 tion in the Union before the first day of January, 1863, or in 
 default thereof on that day the proclamation of freedom to 
 the slaves would be made. Vainglorious in their pride, devil 
 ish in the purpose of their leaders, supported by the ignorance 
 of the masses, the inevitable result of the slave system, they 
 scoffed and railed at the warning of their friend, many wonder 
 ing in the density of their ignorance whether the Yankee 
 president was even a white man ! The emancipation proclama 
 tion came, and war without gloves followed; blow after blow 
 in quick succession was given. They fought as men of our 
 own blood only can fight; sometimes victory upon one side 
 and then again upon the other, but the sturdy Northmen, 
 children of free men, faltered not! 
 
 "We are coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand more," 
 was the cry and at last victory perched upon the eagles of 
 the Republic and depopulated country, with villages laid waste, 
 blackened chimneys standing to mark where the besom of 
 war had swept, desolate homes, cries of the widows and the 
 fatherless, and thousands of hillocks showing the resting places 
 of their dead, were all that was left to represent the great govern 
 ment with slavery for its chief corner stone, that was to have been. 
 
 "Old Abe ! God bless him," was the ejaculation that went 
 from mouth to mouth of every lover of the Union ! But, lo 
 there came as a thunder clap in a clear sky the news of the 
 assassination of the president, and the heavens were hung with 
 black, and the voice of mourning filled the land ! The murder 
 er was not a Southerner, but was imbued with their ideas 
 and convictions, and fired the fatal shot that sent to his grave 
 the man the people of the North were fast learning to call 
 "the second Washington." not the "father of" but the "savior 
 of" his country, shouting as he did so, in his devilish frenzy, 
 "Sic semper tyrannis !" 
 
 It was the last blow of slavery, but it struck a shining 
 mark. 
 
72 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 The character of Mr. Lincoln without the embellishments 
 of word painting, should be the study of every young Amer 
 ican. He had no advantages, so called, to equip him for his 
 battle of life. His capital was honesty, integrity, truthfulness, 
 and continuity of purpose, to do well what was given him to 
 do, and with a firm trust in God that justice, right and well 
 doing would sooner or later meet their reward. He recognized 
 from earliest boyhood the dignity of honest labor. His op 
 portunities for mental culture were few, but what they were 
 he seized with avidity. 
 
 When asked for incidents of his early life, he replied : "You 
 can find the whole of my early life in a single line of Gray s 
 Elegy ; The short and simple annals of the poor. 
 
 Poverty has its advantages as well as its drawbacks to 
 an education. Success is not always to him who reads most, 
 but more usually awaits him who reads well. As a good ap 
 petite not clogged by over-indulgence in sweets takes with 
 zest and assimilates strong, hearty food, so does a vigorous 
 intellect, not surfeited with variety, absorb and adopt what is 
 given for mental food ; not blunted in its taste, not overfed, 
 it drinks up what it finds to feed upon and makes it its own. 
 
 The Bible, "Pilgrim s Progress" and "Aesop s Fables" were 
 Lincoln s early text books and the impress they made upon 
 his method and lines of thought, are perceptible in his early 
 conversation with Shakespeare added, which he dearly loved to 
 read, and, later, the life of Washington. These made his library 
 for literary culture in his early life. He read not so much, but he 
 read it well. 
 
 His quaint sayings and anecdotes, to teach a moral or to point 
 an argument, are cropping out of his Aesop. He stood not upon 
 words for style of expression ; his thought always seemed to be not 
 to talk over the heads of his hearers, but to use language they 
 could readily understand. 
 
 In his message to congress at the extra session in 1861, 
 he used the expression, in speaking of the methods used , to 
 cover up the real purpose of the secession leaders, "With re 
 bellion thus sugar-coated," and was appealed to to change the 
 phrase, as undignified. He declined, saying that "word sugar- 
 coated expresses my idea, and I am not going to change it." 
 The time will never come in this country when the people won t 
 know exactly what "sugar-coated" means. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 73 
 
 Bancroft, the historian, writing of his fitness for his office 
 and his qualities for leadership at the time the executive man 
 tle fell upon him, said : 
 
 "He was one of the mass of the people, the class 
 that lives and thrives by self-imposed labor, felt that 
 the work that was to be done was a work of their own 
 the assertion of equality against the pride of oli 
 garchy; of free labor against the lordship over slaves; 
 of the great industrial people against all the expiring 
 aristocracies of which any remnant had tided down 
 from the middle ages. 
 
 "He was of a religious turn of mind, without super 
 stition ; and the unbroken faith of the mass was like 
 his own. As he \vent along through his difficult jour 
 ney, sounding his way, he held fast by the hand of the 
 people, and tracked his footsteps with even feet, his 
 pulse s beat, twined with their pulse." 
 
 He was, indeed, a leader of men, a great tribune of the peo 
 ple, to whom they gave their trust with their hearts. There 
 was with him none of the arts and clap-trap of the demagogue 
 to catch the ear, or the false lights held out to lure the un 
 wary to ruin, which so mark our present decade. His words 
 and teachings were of honest, sterling worth, and not highly 
 polished brass, whose only value is the glitter of its worthless- 
 ness. 
 
 He was a man of peace and hated war, and yet there fell 
 upon him the responsibility of the greatest, cruelest war known 
 in modern history. How his great heart bled ! What prayers, 
 with sobs, went up to his Great Master from his private ora 
 tory, "that the cup might pass from his lips," are known but 
 to the Master, "Who doeth all things well." He was commis 
 sioned, as it were, to break the fourth seal of the apocalypse, 
 and "behold a pale horse; and his name who sat upon him was 
 Death, and Hell followed him." This man, so gentle, so peace- 
 loving, bowed his head and accepted the trust, and with a 
 stern, immobile face, concealing the inward struggle, anxiety 
 and suffering, was given also a faculty of speech to thwart the 
 too inquisitive mindreader and thicken the cover under which 
 real purpose and convictions were hid. 
 
 I do not believe in his inspiration. I do not believe in his 
 canonization. He was a man with all the attributes that enter 
 
74: LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 into manhood. He had all the tastes, ambition, longings and 
 passions of other men, but he had them under complete con 
 trol, so that they might be used for the benefit of common 
 humanity and not alone for self-gratification. He curtained 
 his thoughts and intentions; not for the purposes of deception, 
 but simply to guard against the plucking of unripe fruit. 
 
 Emerson says of him : 
 
 "His broad good humor, running easily into jocular 
 talk, in which he delighted, was a rich gift to this wise 
 man. It enabled him to keep his secret; to meet 
 every kind of man, and every rank of society; to take 
 off the edge of the severest decision; to mask his own 
 purpose and sound his companion, and to catch with 
 true instinct the temper of every company he ad 
 dressed. * * * This faculty to a man of severe la 
 bors in anxieties and exhausting crises is a natural 
 restorative, good as sleep, and is the protection of the 
 over-driven brain against rancor and insanity." 
 
 He was not over-careful of his dignity, because he felt that 
 his dignity would care for itself. He waived ceremony, and 
 cut every knot of red tape and rule of precedent, when neces 
 sary to do a good deed by the most expeditious route. It 
 is said of him that once upon a great and sudden emer 
 gency, in the night time, without any robe of state save a 
 cotton nightgown of scanty proportions drawn about his un 
 gainly form, he met his counselors and discussed matters 
 of state. He could be and was, when necessary, as stately, 
 cold and dignified, with eyes dilated and flashing, as if the blue 
 blood of generations of title-bearing aristocracy coursed in his 
 veins. But of a truth, "it was not into ancestors graves that 
 Abraham Lincoln dug for the clothes that were to clothe him 
 in the garb of manhood; he studied the laws of his Creator to 
 find the material," and he received the patent of his nobility 
 from God. 
 
 The lesson of this life of Abraham Lincoln to the young 
 American is not to grow despondent and faint-hearted in your 
 struggle to reach eminence in life, because fortune does not 
 smile and society frowns upon you. Had Abraham Lincoln 
 been despoiled of honor and power and been introduced as the 
 honest, homely man he was, into that society of Anglophobists 
 "that seeks the tracerv of a ducal coronet on its escutcheon 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 75 
 
 and obtains its principal sustenance from the phosphorescent 
 light emanating from the bones of long buried ancestors," he, 
 as well as you, would have been thrust out as an unwelcome 
 
 guest. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was racy and humorous in conversation, with 
 the habit of upsetting a pendantry or a sophism by an epigram 
 or an anecdote. When he was once pressed by influential 
 friends to avert the storm of rebellion by concession, and it 
 was explained how easily it could be accomplished by recon 
 ciliation of the dissevered wings of the Democratic party, he 
 replied : 
 
 "I once knew a good, sound churchman, a member 
 of a committee to build a bridge over a dangerous and 
 rapid river. Many architects had failed. At last this 
 committeeman said to his associates, I have a friend 
 who has built several bridges and can build this ! 
 Bring him in, said they. Can you build this bridge, 
 sir? 1 was the question. Yes, I can build a bridge to 
 the infernal regions, if necessary. The pious commit 
 tee were horrified at his reply. But -his friend in de 
 fense of him said: He is so honest a man and so 
 good an architect that if he states soberly and posi 
 tively that he can build a bridge to Hades, I believe it 
 but I have my doubts about the abutment on the in 
 fernal side! " 
 
 So Mr. Lincoln added: 
 
 "When politicians say they can harmonize the 
 northern and southern wings of the Democracy, why, 
 I believe them, but I have my doubts about the abut 
 ment on the Southern side!" 
 
 That this great man who told stories and was at times un 
 dignified in the conventional meaning of the word, could in 
 his plain, terse style of speech, overshadow the ornate and stu 
 died sentences of the schools, you can learn if you sit with me 
 at Gettysburg, as on Nov. 19, 1863, when this plain, simple 
 man was shown in contrast with the most polished and fin 
 ished orator that the schools had yet given to the world. Man 
 against art, they stand side by side. The oration of Everett 
 was a gem in beauty, and for the moment its brilliancy threw 
 the plain words of the man of the West into a shadow, but 
 
76 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 not for time: The brilliancy of one was the glitter of the icicle 
 and it melted away and is forgotten, while the other is an 
 American classic, and will live so long as the memory shall 
 remain of the heroes who fought on that field and to whom, 
 living and dead, the monument at Gettysburg was that day 
 dedicated. Mr. Lincoln said : 
 
 ""* * * We cannot dedicate, we cannot conse 
 crate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, 
 living or dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 
 it far above our power to add or detract. The world 
 will little note nor long remember what we say here; 
 but it- can never forget what they did here. It is for 
 us, the living, to be dedicated here to the unfinished 
 
 work that they have thus far so nobly carried on ; 
 
 - * * * that from these honored dead we take in 
 creased devotion to the cause for which they here 
 gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here 
 highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in 
 vain ; that the nation shall, under God, have a new 
 birth of freedom ; and that government of the people, 
 by the people, for the people, shall not perish from 
 the earth." 
 
 It is for us, companions, children of the flag, to keep to the 
 full extent of our power, by word and example, the sentiment 
 of these noble words, a living, ever-existing faith and practice 
 among us and the people, that they be, "the pillar of fire by 
 night" to guide and direct our loved union in times of trouble 
 and danger. 
 
 I conclude my reflections, already too far extended, with 
 the sentiment that every loyal man can approve : 
 "Abraham Lincoln, God bless him !" 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 77 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY GENERAL ROBERT N. ADAMS, U. S. VOLS. 
 (Read February 12, 1898.) 
 
 We are assembled not in obedience to a time-honored cus- 
 tum, but in response to the universal and grateful sentiment 
 of a patriotic, loyal and liberty-loving people, that we may in 
 fitting ceremony honor ourselves and bless posterity by keep 
 ing alive or perpetuating the memory and deeds of him, who 
 under Providence, led the nation in triumph through the 
 bloody sea of a gigantic civil strife. 
 
 When the conflict was on, we measured men by the success 
 that attended them ; and in those stirring times, as General 
 Sherman once said, "men were made and unmade in a day." 
 But now, with calmer scrutiny, as time slowly adjusts the 
 focus, we are able to study and review the public policies of 
 1861-5 ; to give to the great events of the war their proper 
 shades and places in history, and also with precision to ana 
 lyze the characters of the great leaders of that period and 
 unite in the coronation of those whose genius, motives, sacri 
 fices and deeds deserve immortality. And in so doing we in 
 no degree detract from the honors due to many who served 
 and suffered and sacrificed when the great leaders, by the rec 
 ord of their deeds, and by the luster of their acknowledged in 
 herent greatness, are made to stand transfigured before the 
 eyes of the people. 
 
 At rare intervals, however, in the history of the world, 
 there have appeared here and there colossal figures, marked 
 and unique personalities, geniuses of transcendent mold and 
 merit, who have easily stood first even among the great ones 
 in the ages to which they respectively belong. At the head of 
 the list of honor, in the nineteenth century, stands unchallenged 
 the name of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Hence it is, that in the recent years patriotism and grati 
 tude have been diligent in gathering even in minutest detail the 
 incidents of that wonderful life and in making clear and mani 
 fest and familiar the record of the great events in our national 
 history that are linked eternally with the name and fame of that 
 
78 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 great soul. I believe the following incident has never been 
 so far related : A few days after the birth of that child of glo 
 rious destiny, a neighbor of the family called to see the proud 
 mother and her child. In the course of conversation the 
 mother was asked whether or not they had given a name to 
 him. "Oh, yes," she responded, "we named him before he 
 was born." "And what do you call him?" inquired the visitor. 
 "Abraham." "Abraham !" exclaimed the visitor, and then 
 added, "What a name for a baby! Why, it seems to me the 
 name is bigger than the baby!" 
 
 How is it now? There is such a thing as making a name 
 and there is such a thing as growing up into a name, and in 
 this instance how marvelous the ascent ! From deepest pov 
 erty, to the highest honors and emoluments of the nation 
 that, we believe, the greatest. From almost absolute obscurity 
 to world-wide fame; through honest industry in the w T ay of 
 common toil to glorious immortality. Who now questions that 
 the child, the boy, the man, the statesman, the martyred pres 
 ident, the sainted and crowned king has not grown up into 
 the greatness of the name? Abraham! Father of a multitude! 
 Savior of a nation ! Emancipator of an oppressed people ! 
 Child of nature and of God ! The grandest exponent of popul- 
 lar liberty of any mere men whose names glorify the pages of 
 human history. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. I 79 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY PLEASANT HUNTER, D. D., PASTOR WESTMINSTER CHURCH, 
 
 MINNEAPOLIS. 
 (Read February 12, 1898.) 
 
 Lincoln s birthday is an educational institution in which 
 all the generations to come should be schooled. The history 
 made during the four years that he filled the presidential chair 
 is a part of our national wealth. It is very fitting, therefore, 
 on this his anniversary, that we recall the story of his life and 
 work. But, believe me, the feelings awakened here this even 
 ing amount to little if they do not lead to greater consecra 
 tion and devotion to the country for which he lived and died. 
 We honor him not so much by what we say about him, as by 
 what we do with the heritage which he has left us. The patri 
 otism that was in him is the patriotism that should be in all; 
 and such patriotism will find abundant opportunities for serv 
 ice today. One of the most practical ways in which it may 
 serve is in seeking to invest citizenship with greater dignity 
 and responsibility. To be a citizen in our republican form of 
 government means to be a ruler. All power here resides in 
 the people and all questions are settled at the ballot-box. It 
 is true our national policy is determined and our laws made 
 by the chosen few; but to decide who that chosen few shall be 
 is, practically, to decide everything. Men represent measures, 
 and in passing upon the one we pass upon both. To exercise 
 the right of suffrage, therefore, means more than saying who 
 shall do; it also means saying what shall be done. Voting 
 means more than casting a ballot on a certain day in the year; 
 it means taking part in the administration of government 
 throughout the entire year. 
 
 Looked at thus, citizenship is a thing full of dignity and 
 responsibility. To say that we cannot secure the best results 
 until this is recognized by all, is to say what must be self-evi 
 dent. Our nation can reach the highest condition only when 
 it enjoys the best rule, and can enjoy the best rule only when 
 its rulers are in the best condition. To say that many are not 
 in that condition is to say what must be painfully manifest. 
 
80 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 The number who appreciate the dignity and responsibility of 
 citizenship is comparatively small. To the remedying of this 
 evil, all good men should give themselves without delay or 
 reserve; and one of the first things to do is to see to it that 
 the men who occupy what we call the first positions in life shall 
 attach more value to it. 
 
 In his great work The American Commonwealth, Mr. Brice 
 tells us that there are three sets of people in England; those 
 who make opinion, those who receive and hold opinion, and 
 those who have no opinion at all. The first set, he tells us, 
 is extremely small in this country. The statement, as he in 
 tended it to be understood, is true. As he further explains, 
 opinion is not made here, but grows; the conditions of growth, 
 however, are supplied by men, and some make larger con 
 tributions thereto than others. Some men, in virtue of the 
 positions occupied, have a larger influence upon public opinion 
 than others. This is notably true of the successful merchant, 
 the professional man lawyer, teacher, or physician, the man 
 of large property interests, the man of high social standing. 
 There is not a single reform needed today for which men in 
 these positions may not do royal service. Particularly is this 
 true in the matter under consideration. The men who live 
 in the first walks of life may do much to lift citizenship to a 
 higher plane for those who walk in the humbler walks of life. 
 How? By themselves taking a greater interest in the affairs 
 of state and showing that they are moved thereto by the high 
 est considerations. The strongest argument in favor of tak 
 ing a large view of citizenship is the men in the first walks 
 of life who take such a view of it. By exercising all the rights 
 of a citizen, such men show that it means something to be a 
 citizen. 
 
 That there is a lamentable failure at this point today I 
 think is manifest to all. There are many who take practically 
 no interest in the caucus, and some who even slight the gen 
 eral election. The result is not only to give the reins of gov 
 ernment over into dangerous hands, but to give the impression 
 that the whole thing does not amount to much. In business, 
 professional, or social life these men lay hold on everything 
 they regard as important, and their failure to do so in matters 
 pertaining to government begets the feeling that they do not 
 so regard it. The result is not only bad government but low 
 views of citizenship. The only way to right this evil is the 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 81 
 
 practical way. The only way to lead men in the humbler 
 walks of life into a right understanding of what it means to 
 be a citizen is to give them to see in the first walks the right 
 kind of citizens. Believe me, the more the rights of citizen 
 ship are slighted by men who know how to appreciate them, 
 the less value will they have for men who need to be educated 
 into appreciation. Great reforms always work from above 
 down. It is the same here. Reforms must begin at the top. 
 Before we can get men in the humbler walks of life to think 
 of citizenship as a dignified and responsible thing, the men 
 in the higher must themselves so regard it. 
 
 Another thing essential is higher qualifications for citizen 
 ship. A low standard always cheapens. The higher the re 
 quirements of the college for entrance, the higher it rises in 
 public esteem and the better the class of students it secures. 
 The more careful the secret organization is in its election to 
 membership, the more strength it has. The truth contained 
 in these illustrations holds with reg^r.l to citizenship. The 
 only way to raise the character of citizenship is to raise the 
 standard. The only way to have more men at the ballot box 
 is to insist upon more men on registration day. Wholesale 
 naturalization is a curse. Intelligence and righteousness should 
 always be insisted upon. No man should ever be allowed to 
 promise that he will support the Constitution of the United 
 States until he gives satisfactory evidence that he is capable 
 of reading that Constitution. Do I hear someone say that 
 to accept only such as can stand a certain test is to discriminate 
 against and manifest a spirit foreign to that of our free in 
 stitutions? I answer, no. The higher rights of life grow not 
 out of simple being, but out of character. The ignorant man 
 is not allowed the same privilege in the courts as the man who 
 is thoroughly familiar with the law. He has being, but not 
 legal character. The man with the smallpox is not allowed 
 the same liberty as the man thoroughly well. He has being 
 but not physical character. The criminal is not allowed the 
 same rights as the man who is honest and law-abiding. He 
 has being but not moral character. Rights grow not out of 
 simple being but out of character. Any other rule in life would 
 mean chaos. Imagine every man who would go into our 
 courts and practice, regardless of his mental qualifications. 
 It would soon mean the overthrow of law. Imagine all men 
 allowed to go up and down our streets, the men who have a 
 
82 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 contagious disease, as well as the men who are well. It 
 would soon mean the prevalence of disease everywhere. Im 
 agine the criminal allowed the same liberty as the law-abid 
 ing citizen. It would soon mean the loss of respect for law. 
 Any other order in our political life means danger. The only 
 safe citizenship is that founded upon intelligence and righteous 
 ness. Sound it into every land that America is still "the home 
 of the free," but let it be of the intelligent and righteous free. 
 Emphasize it, forever emphasize it, that America gives asylum 
 because of sympathy, but citizenship because of merit. "Amer 
 ica for Americans" should be the cry of the hour. This does 
 not mean that we will confine citizenship to all born upon 
 our shores, but it does mean that all coming to us who are 
 not right when they come shall be politically born again. 
 
 Just another word, that is we should insist that citizen 
 ship carries with it the idea of obligation to the state. There 
 is no word made so much of by the American people as "Liber 
 ty." I am not sure that we make too much of it, but I doubt 
 if we make as much as we should of the word "duty." The 
 great majority of men think of citizenship only in relation to 
 self. It gives them a voice in the administration of govern 
 ment, and secures to them the protection of the state. It is 
 all right to think of these two things, but along with these 
 should go recognition of the obligation under which it puts 
 one to the state. The closing words of that immortal doc 
 ument, the Declaration of Independence, are these: "And 
 for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on 
 the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to 
 each other our lives, our fortunes, and our own sacred honor."" 
 That wording of that document secured to every signer the 
 support of every other man. At the same time it committed 
 him to the support of every other. The same is true of citizen 
 ship. And there is no truth that we need to recognize and 
 teach to our children more than this : That citizenship is a 
 partnership; that the man who becomes a citizen owes some 
 thing to the country which protects him as truly as to the 
 grocer who provides him with the necessaries of life ; that 
 every citizen is under the same obligation to look well to the 
 highest interests of the state that the state is to look well to 
 his highest interests. 
 
 It seems to me that on this sacred evening, one thing above 
 all others should stand out clearly before us, and that is the 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 83 
 
 need of meeting well our responsibility as citizens. Lincoln 
 did well his duty in 1861 to 1865. If we meet the issues of 
 the present day in the spirit and with the fidelity with which 
 he met the issues of his day, the future of this country is as 
 sured. 
 
 It is said of Charlemagne, that one day he stood looking 
 off upon the waters of the Mediterranean and saw in the dis 
 tance a fleet approaching. "Whose vessels sail yonder?" said 
 he to his courtier. "African merchantmen, no doubt," he re 
 plied. The old king hung his head, was observed weeping, 
 and someone said, "Why those tears?" He overheard it and 
 said: "No, those are not merchantmen. Those vessels carry 
 the fierce Northmen. I do not fear them myself, but I am 
 weeping to think what they may do to my country in years to 
 come." 
 
 We look out upon the political sea today and while in 
 some respects there is calmness, there is a fleet hovering in sight 
 and there are dangers in it. That fleet may not bring trouble 
 during the days of those farther along in life, but unless judi 
 ciously dealt with there is trouble coming. And what is 
 needed is that good men, irrespective of party, shall bury the 
 issues that are dead, forget the differences of the past, and 
 unite and meet the issues of the day. Righteousness, and 
 righteousness alone, can save us. Righteousness, and right- 
 eusness alone, can make us a free, prosperous and happy 
 people. Let the flag and the cross keep close together and all 
 will be well. 
 
84 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY ROBERT G. EVANS, UNITED STATES DISTRICT ATTORNEY, MINNE 
 APOLIS. 
 (Read February 14, 1899.) 
 
 It is not an easy thing for me to speak about Abraham 
 Lincoln. In common with all of you, I have that feeling 
 which his name always brings to the heart of every Amer 
 ican citizen. I was born at the mouth of a little river in south 
 ern Indiana, where, in the early twenties, Abraham Lincoln, 
 the boy, earned a livelihood by ferrying across the river, and 
 it was my fortune to be raised in that county in which he 
 spent the early years of his life when coming from Kentucky, 
 and where he laid in silence and solitude the best friend he had 
 ever had the best friend he ever had in all his life among 
 the oak trees of my native state. 
 
 I have known men and women who knew Abraham Lin 
 coln as a boy in Indiana, and from them, with that boyish en 
 thusiasm and reverence and love which his name and his 
 deeds ever engender, I have heard stories of his childhood 
 struggles that you have read, and they have given to me a ten 
 der sentiment which always comes welling up in my throat 
 when I speak the name of Abraham Lincoln. Someone has 
 said that there is more of sentiment about the name of 
 Lincoln, and about his memory, than that of any other his 
 torical character. I think it is true. We who look at him 
 across the short span of a short life hardly realize that he is 
 of the past. We look at the bare hills in Kentucky which re 
 ceived the first imprint of his childish feet; we follow him 
 through the struggles of childhood and youth into young man 
 hood and early manhood, until he became a national character, 
 and we see a man of the plain people, imbued with all their 
 impulses and with all their integrity and their hardships; when 
 he has come into the highest gift of any people anywhere, he 
 does not forget the lowly depths from which he rose, nor his 
 companions and associations in youth, and that memory does 
 more to strengthen him in the days of trial than everything 
 else that he could bring to himself. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 85 
 
 It is difficult to separate one s self from others in speak 
 ing of Lincoln, and yet I have thought that it might not be 
 uninteresting to you to have me, in a casual way, review what 
 all will concede to be the greatest act of the greatest Amer 
 ican his handling of the Slavery Question. Lincoln was not 
 a man of prejudice. He was a man of reason. He had learned 
 to give and take. He had learned it on the green sward in Il 
 linois where he pitted his strength against his fellows. He 
 had learned to be charitable, and yet he was a man of honest 
 purpose, if there ever lived such a man. A man of deep im 
 pressions a man whose heart received impressions which 
 remained upon it as long as he lived, and a man to whom 
 the appeals of the downtrodden and oppressed went with un 
 erring accuracy the very center of his being. When he first 
 came upon the scene of public action he was impressed with 
 the great central thought of his life and administration, and 
 that which will hand him down to .history more than any 
 other one thing the condition of this country in regard to the 
 great question of slavery. 
 
 In 1858 Lincoln was comparatively unknown. In 1856 he 
 received some votes, in the Republican convention held in that 
 year, for the office of vice president of the United States. They 
 were given to him by men who knew him personally, and by 
 those who could be influenced by such personal acquaint 
 ances. But in 58, pitted against Stephen A. Douglas, the 
 little giant of Illinois, and of the northern Democracy of that 
 day, he first came into public notice. The great question 
 agitating the mind of the people of that day was the slavery 
 question. They became candidates of their respective parties 
 for the office of United States senator. They went before the 
 people nominated in the state conventions of their several par 
 ties for that office, and there followed the greatest contest of 
 debate ever waged upon the stump in this country of ours. 
 Many men here remember how much interest was attracted 
 to the territory over which these two great intellectual giants 
 waged a warfare, the results of which were not seen until 63, 
 when, by the Emancipation Proclamation, the shackles were stricken 
 from the arms of four million slaves. 
 
 Douglas was the idol of his party, and he well might have 
 been a man of genius and intellectual force, who attracted the 
 admiration and won the affection of all those with whom he 
 came in contact. He had but recently passed through stirring 
 
86 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 scenes in the United States senate. The Missouri Compromise 
 Bill had been repealed, and following upon it, in order to meet 
 the demands of the North, Stephen A. Douglas had introduced 
 and passed in Congress the Kansas and Nebraska bill, which 
 was the popular Sovereignty bill, as known in that day, giv 
 ing to the people of each state and of each territory the right 
 to say whether that state or territory should be free or slave. 
 It was followed almost immediately by the Dred Scott de 
 cision, handed down by Chief Justice Taney, in which the 
 Supreme Court of the United States held that under the con 
 stitution of this country the territories were subject to slavery, 
 and could not be taken from under its ban by the voice of 
 the people. Thus there came a contest between Lincoln on 
 one side, who believed in the non-extension of slavery in its 
 restriction, and in its ultimate extinction; and Douglas, on the 
 other side, who believed in leaving the institution as it was, 
 restricting it within reasonable limits, and leaving the ranks 
 of his party in the South, as well as in the North. 
 
 Lincoln announced, in the first speech that he made, his 
 ultimate purpose, his ultimate belief his ultimate platform, if 
 you may say upon this question, in that great speech best 
 known in history as the "divided-house speech." Said he: 
 
 "A house divided against itself can not stand. I do 
 not believe that this Union can endure permanently half 
 slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis 
 solved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect 
 it will cease to be divided. It will be all one thing, or all 
 the other. Either the opponents of slavery will prevent 
 the further spread of it and force the public mind to be 
 lieve in its ultimate extinction, or its advocates will press 
 it onward until it becomes and receives the sanction of 
 the law alike in all the states, old as well as new. North 
 as well as South." 
 
 He saw the inevitable conflict and from that day Abraham Lin 
 coln was morally attached to the extinction, by lawful means, of 
 slavery in the United States. 
 
 I think he little thought then of becoming president of this 
 great country, but that was his belief upon that question. Two 
 years afterwards, in the providence of God because it was in 
 His providence he was called to head this nation in the hour 
 of her distress. He represented a people divided in the North 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 87 
 
 as well as in the South. In the parties as aligned in that day 
 there were men who believed in the institution of slavery who 
 lived north of the Mason and Dixon line, and who insisted 
 on the perpetuation of its so-called right. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office in Wash 
 ington, more than a month had elapsed since the secession of 
 seven of the southern states, and the election of a president 
 of that Confederacy. No other man was ever called into a posi 
 tion of so much responsibility as that which he held, under 
 such circumstances as met him. He realized that out of the 
 conflict then impending there would come a change in the in 
 stitutions of this country which would either destroy the Un 
 ion and perpetuate slavery, or destroy slavery and perpetuate 
 the Union. He sa\v, as he believed, that the conscience of the 
 people of this country, as well as the conscience of mankind, 
 and the providence of God would lead the stars and stripes to 
 victory in the end. And that hope buoyed him up in the af 
 fairs which he met. And yet, as I say, no man had a task 
 more severe set before him than that which met our martyred 
 president. There were radicals in the Republican party which 
 elected him president of the United States who wished him 
 to at once issue an Emancipation Proclamation, striking by its 
 edict the shackles from the slave. There were others who in 
 sisted that if slavery was the question of battle they were 
 not interested in its results; and all over the United States 
 there was a division of opinion w 7 hich made it impossible for 
 him, as president of the United States, to take any decided 
 position upon the great question of ultimate extinction of 
 slavery, without running the risk of alienating from the Union 
 some of her strongest defenders. He was not radical enough 
 for many who supported him for the presidency. He was too 
 radical, or might be too radical for many thousands who must 
 be depended upon to carry the Union cause to victory. 
 
 That condition met him. You remember that at the be 
 ginning of the war those who opposed it and opposed Mr. 
 Lincoln, called it an Abolition War, and you will remember 
 that Abraham Lincoln declared that it was not an Abolition 
 War, it was a war for the preservation of the Union; and he 
 waited with the greatest care, resisting all urgings from every 
 source against any affirmative action, until the flag of the Un 
 ion was fired against in the harbor at Fort Sumter and the Un 
 ion itself attacked, and then Abraham Lincoln called for 
 
88 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 seventy-five thousand troops to defend not to put down slav 
 ery but to defend the Union. Yet all the time in his great 
 mind this great moral question was being considered. Men 
 were urging this and that position upon him. He saw the sit 
 uation, and he saw the difficulties that surrounded him. If 
 he had listened to the radical advisors that were at his elbow, 
 no man can today tell what would have been the result. 
 
 Seward, his secretary of state, who was the most popular 
 man in the United States at that time, came to the convention its 
 most popular candidate; but the convention was held in check. 
 He was called to the Cabinet, bringing him under the shadow 
 of Lincoln and within his control, rather than leaving him in 
 New r York, or Chase in Ohio, or Cameron in Pennsylvania, to 
 differ with the administration. When the administration was a 
 little more than a month old, Horace Greeley wrote Mr. Lin 
 coln in effect that it had been a failure, and that the radical 
 means which men believed in had not been adopted; and yet 
 it was not until May, 1862, that Lincoln dared to take any 
 steps upon that question, and then he advised the co-opera 
 tion plan of emancipation to Congress, and it was adopted 
 by a resolution of both houses. At the same time he declared, 
 so as to allay excitement, and prevent those who were opposed 
 to a Union for the purpose of destroying slavery, that it was 
 not the intention of the United States to make war upon that 
 institution. 
 
 A little later, in that same year, General David Hunter 
 issued a proclamation, by which he declared the slaves within 
 his jurisdiction, as a military action, free. Mr. Lincoln is 
 sued a statement in which he denied any knowledge of any 
 authority for such a proclamation on the part of Gen. Hunter, 
 and in which he held it to himself, the right and stated in 
 square and fair language the right to determine this ques 
 tion of emancipation whenever it became a military necessity. 
 
 He called the attention of the South to the resolution of 
 March 6th, and, in language the most plaintive, appealed to 
 them to heed the words sent out from the Congress of the 
 United States and the offer of the people of the North, and 
 co-operate with them in removing this great cause of dis 
 turbance. No man has ever read a more pleading appeal to 
 a people than that which the president made to the people 
 of the South at that time. He besought them to give it a 
 fair consideration, ranging far above partisan politics. He 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 89 
 
 told them that it was for a common purpose, urged in a com 
 mon cause. He "blamed no one, yet he did not want them to 
 feel that the North was holding up its hands in holy horror 
 against their institution. He told them that the opportunity 
 was presented to them to do more good than had ever been 
 presented at any other time in the history of the world by any 
 other one act, and he besought them to heed the appeal of 
 the North; and finally he wound up by saying, as I recollect 
 it, "May not the vast future have cause to regret your action 
 in this matter." 
 
 I doubt not that he had in mind then the countless graves, 
 the widowed homes, the orphan children, which were the re 
 sult of a prolongation of that contest. This, I think, was in 
 May, 1862. In September of that year he saw that the time 
 had come when some definite step must be taken, and he saw 
 it for this reason : We had been having losses in battle ; foreign 
 nations were looking to the Southern Confederacy with the 
 purpose of recognizing it as an independent nation, and Abra 
 ham Lincoln felt that he knew and that he did feel there can 
 be no doubt that the moral conscience of the people of civil 
 ized foreign lands would not allow them to recognize, as an 
 independent nation, a nation which was basing its opposition 
 to the government solely on the institution of slavery. Recog 
 nizing that fact, he issued his proclamation of the 22d of 
 September, 1862, in which and by which he stated that in all 
 states and parts of states in which rebellion existed on the 
 first day of January, 1863, those men who had been held in 
 slavery should forever thereafter be free. At the same time 
 he declared that the war thereafter, as theretofore, should be 
 conducted for the purpose of restoring the constitutional re 
 lations theretofore existing between the United States and the 
 seceded states, and that it was his purpose to call the atten 
 tion of Congress to a plan of emancipation which should carry 
 with it pecuniary aid to those who lost their slaves. 
 
 See the wisdom of it. Upon one side he was dealing with 
 a heated people, who would listen to no appeals, and who 
 spurned them whenever they \vere given. The resolution of 
 March 6th was met with jibes in the South. The resolution 
 of September 22d was met in the same way, and, though it 
 showed, as his first inaugural showed, the fairness of his in 
 tention and his great heart toward that people, it also showed 
 to all the world, and particularly the people of the North, that 
 
90 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 what the South was fighting for was the institution of slav 
 ery and the destruction of the Union; and it removed those 
 prejudices which had before, in a great measure, existed, and 
 made clear the way, and caused to march to the south-land 
 a hundred thousand men who would have gone for no other 
 reason, as history tells us. 
 
 Shortly afterwards congress met, and he sent to it his 
 second annual message, in December, 1862, in which he pro 
 posed a plan for gradual emancipation of the slaves, which 
 carried the whole question over a period of thirty-seven years, 
 and pledged the bonds of the United States to the holders of 
 that property, as payment for their losses. Mr. Lincoln, I 
 do not believe, in his own mind believed at that time that 
 suggestion would be received, and yet he made it in the utmost 
 candor and in the utmost fairness; he believed in it with his 
 whole heart; he therefore tried such measures upon the South. 
 But, following the suggestions which he proposed, was one ol 
 the greatest arguments, one of the strongest arguments ad 
 dressed to the people of this country against the divisibility 
 of the Union that the mind of man ever penned. He showed 
 how impossible it was for any one section of this country to 
 be divided and cut off from another. He showed that the ques 
 tion of slavery was simply a question between generations, and 
 that this question of contiguitive soil and climate would over 
 ride every other, and, that whatever might be the result of the 
 war, in the end this would be a united nation that it must be 
 so. 
 
 The South received this proposition in the same manner. 
 The North received it as another offer of this great man of 
 history to show the fairness in which he stood in relation to 
 that question, and Abraham Lincoln, by the message of 
 December 1st, 1862, removed the last straw of opposition, you 
 might say, in the North, against the conduct of the war upon 
 whatever lines he deemed, in his wisdom, it should be con 
 ducted. 
 
 Then followed victory and defeat; and on the first day 
 of January, 1863, he issued his message of emancipation, in 
 voking upon it the considerate judgment of mankind, as a 
 military necessity, and the blessings of Almighty God. 
 
 When we look back in retrospection upon the vicissitudes 
 of that time, and the various opposition that assailed him, 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 91 
 
 the advice that he had on every hand, the kinds of people 
 with which he had to deal, the sentiment which he had to 
 build up here, and the opposition which he had to allay there 
 all arising out of a tenderness of this question of the freedom 
 of the slaves he met with a united sentiment in the North; 
 and we can now see, if we never could see before, the wisdom 
 of what at that time was seemingly a vacillating policy; and 
 we now admit, if we never would admit before, that in his 
 handling of the Slavery Question with Congress, and before 
 the country, Abraham Lincoln showed his greatest genius, and 
 his greatest power. 
 
92 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY L. H. HALLOCK, D. D., PASTOR PLYMOUTH CONGREGATIONAL 
 
 CHURCH, MINNEAPOLIS. 
 
 (Read February 14, 1899.) 
 
 I have held in my hand a manuscript that never saw the 
 light of publicity that was presented by Abraham Lincoln s 
 own hand to a boon companion, who last March took his 
 flight to join his comrade a manuscript written in that 
 familiar, legible, clear hand of our president, being in itself 
 a lecture. My friend was offered a thousand dollars for the 
 manuscript, and he said, "No, I am not so poor as to take a 
 thousand dollars for that." 
 
 And its first sentence was this : "All the world s a mine, 
 and every man a miner." I should not assume myself, on this 
 occasion, to seek to find any vein of rich wealth in the char 
 acter or career of Abraham Lincoln that has not been fully 
 explored and thoroughly worked, and for that reason, since 
 the finest minds have analyzed and constructed his character, 
 and the finest pens have written his eulogy, I shall not speak 
 in eulogy of this man, who, of all Americans, America best 
 loves. There are no words left unused with which to grace 
 a character so honest and transparent, so born of God and 
 filled with his wisdom, that I might use to add one star of glory 
 to his crown. 
 
 But I recognize this fact that what Abraham Lincoln 
 was, he was because he was of the people, with the people, 
 and for the people. It would not then be amiss if I should 
 say just one word or two concerning the American people and 
 their present and coming history, for I should not go wide of 
 the mark, since the personality of this man has interwoven it 
 self into the very texture of the American people, and what 
 ever we do hereafter will be redolent with the name of Abra 
 ham Lincoln. I remember that in history we are told that there 
 was a time when to be an American was to be provincial and 
 narrow, for the American then lived on that narrow ledge 
 of poor land that lay upon the arm of the blue Atlantic, bound 
 ed on the east by its billows, and on the west by a wilderness. 
 But by and by expansion struck her, and she moved on to 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 93 
 
 take the Connecticut Valley, and then the Ohio Valley, and 
 then the Mississippi Valley. Then she crossed the Rockies 
 and conquered the Columbia, and left her flag on the great 
 territory of Oregon. And then she went down and caught 
 to her arms the Golden State, with golden dust and golden 
 flowers, and a golden future ; and then of course she got by 
 the way Louisiana and Florida, and, at length, not provin 
 cial was the adjective, but continental. But continental will 
 not do today. The United States has laid her great palm 
 face down oh these central territories, and at last she holds 
 under her thumb spread the gem of the Antilles, and her little 
 finger reaches up to Alaska, and her next finger reaches for 
 Honolulu, and she stretches her long central finger and finds 
 the Philippines. And where the flag stands, there the flag 
 stays. 
 
 I will irjtroduce you to a trinity of power, and guarantee 
 that not one of the trinity is not dear to every loyal heart. 
 You know that is the great man who, in the midst of fogs 
 and uncertainties is able to discern the pointing finger of 
 the great arbitrator and see that which common minds do not 
 see ; and the father in this trinity is George Washington, who, with 
 his splendid aristocracy and fortunes, all consecrated to patriotism, 
 was willing to come out from his luxury and be himself in sacri 
 fice the father of his country; he saw in those trying emergencies 
 something of its future, and he led its arms to victory. 
 
 The next man, the central man, must, of course, be the 
 one whom today we celebrate. A man who came with a great 
 weight of responsibility on his soul to the White House. A 
 man who, more than all other men perhaps, became a worthy 
 sacrifice for his country; who lived his four years in the White 
 House with a magnificent service, who won the hearts of the 
 people all, who lived in perpetual harmony and close contact 
 with the people, and yet so near to the God he honored that 
 he could see what few men saw. Yes, he, when he lay down 
 his life for the American people was the second person in 
 our goodly trinity. And he did one thing made and kept the 
 country a unit, and, being a unit it still had, when it was right, 
 the power of a new expansion. 
 
 The third person of this glorious trinity is the still present 
 and abiding with us, the worthy successor of George Wash 
 ington and of Abraham Lincoln, of course I mean William 
 
94 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 McKinley. And he is demonstrating the greatness of his stew 
 ardship, in that he, more than most of his subjects, was able 
 quickly to discover that the providence of God was pointing 
 us far out toward the Orient. That, having relieved Cuba, 
 and having put our stamp of eternal non-entity upon the 
 seventeenth century Spanish Inquisition and having undertak 
 en to lift that cruel heel from the neck of our neighbor, he was 
 able to discern that, on that first day of May, when the here 
 of Manila sank the Spanish fleet in the harbor, God meant what 
 we had never dreamed that He would open a highway to the 
 Orient, and help us to lift the yoke of oppression from ten mil 
 lion savages, and teach them that where the flag floats, there 
 liberty lives, and that we will show them how to govern them 
 selves according to the principles of divine humanity. 
 
 Ah, yes, we are living in a great day. We have stepping 
 stones now clear across the Pacific. The Pacific is today the 
 broad highway of commerce, and the American ships are ar 
 gosies of wealth. We are going some day, having completed 
 the transit of the globe, we are going to meet what? A new 
 civilization, a new embodiment of self-government. We are 
 going to meet the old and benighted settlements of the pop 
 ulous Orient and show them that we have come there to lift 
 them out of their degradation, and teach them all what this 
 blessed Old Glory signifies. That is our mission. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. Q5 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY GILBERT A. PIERCE, U. S. SENATOR FROM NORTH DAKOTA. 
 (Read February 14, 1899.) 
 
 There is a perennial freshness about Lincoln s life that 
 always interests me. It is like the old, old story of love which, 
 the poets say, is never ended, but never wearisome. I think 
 that perhaps this is largely due to the intense humanity of 
 the man, the simplicity of his character; somehow, going right 
 down into our hearts, he crept into our affections. He had 
 that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Why, I 
 have read most of the lives of Lincoln, and I think I have read 
 just as heartily the last one that was written as the first. The 
 Sunday papers publish many columns of incidents of his char 
 acter; none of them very new, perhaps, and yet I read them 
 with great avidity, and it seemed to me that it was something 
 like having the singing, at appropriate times, of old Home 
 Sweet Home, or Auld Lang Syne. 
 
 And by simplicity I do not mean triviality. That was very 
 foreign to Lincoln s character. I was reading an article by 
 Mrs. Lew Wallace the other day which illustrates this. Mrs. 
 Wallace said that she saw her little grandchild come into the 
 room, and directly become very much absorbed in a book. She 
 said, "What are you doing, my child?" and the child said, 
 Grandmother, I am diagraming," and she said, "what is dia 
 graming, my child?" and the child said: "It is the correct 
 placing of the elements. Fourscore and seven are joined by 
 and, a subordinate connective, copulative conjunction. It 
 modifies years, the attribute of the preposition." And Mrs. 
 W r allace said, "My dear, what a wonderful thing that is. Did 
 you learn that at school?" The child said, "Yes"; and Mrs. 
 Wallace said, "In that work basket on that table, my child, 
 is the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. I know it 
 by heart, but I tell you, if his head had been filled with such 
 stuff as that the speech never would have been written." He 
 called a noun a noun, and was done with it; it was his nat 
 uralness, the simplicity of the man, that so charmed us. He 
 
96 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 did not pose, he did nothing for dramatic effect. He was a 
 manly man. 
 
 How old that speech at Gettysburg, my friends, and yet 
 how new r ; how its truths live on, and will live on forever. I 
 often wonder at the wisdom of Lincoln as exhibited there, 
 and a little later at nearly the close of the war. You remem 
 ber that at about that time we were all worrying about how 
 we were going to pay this vast national debt that had been 
 piled up in suppressing the rebellion; but Lincoln did not seem 
 to be very much troubled about it. We were wondering how 
 the rebel states were to be reconstructed, and what we would 
 do with them when they w r ere ; but Lincoln looked beyond, and 
 while he saw the problem was full of perplexity and trouble, 
 he gave it no great thought. He saw that it was temporal and 
 ephemeral. Standing with uncovered head on that field of 
 Gettysburg, in the midst of those new made graves, he called 
 upon his countrymen to highly resolve that the dead there 
 should not have died in vain; that the nation, under God, 
 should have a new birth of freedom, to the end that the nation 
 "of the people, for the people, and by the people," should not 
 perish from the earth. Think, my fellow citizens, what that 
 means. It epitomizes the Declaration of Independence. It 
 summarizes in a few lines an ideal government for mankind, 
 a government toward which the enlightened nations of the 
 earth should be pressing forward more particularly this gov 
 ernment on which so much of human happiness depends. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln showed conclusively that he wanted a strong 
 government in many respects ; a government not only able to 
 protect the people, but able to protect itself. We often hear 
 it objected, that a strong government is dangerous to liberty. 
 But, my fellow citizens, a strong government is all right if 
 the people are behind it. With intelligence they can make or 
 unmake it. I want a strong government, and you want a 
 strong government ; we want a government strong enough 
 to reach its iron hand and take by the collar the rascal who 
 betrays a public trust. You want a government, and I want 
 a government, strong enough to hold up to condign punish 
 ment that wretch, be he of the municipality, state, or nation, 
 who betrays his trust, and preys upon the treasury he has been 
 set to guard. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 97 
 
 There is a cry we hear once in a while of the Old Flag 
 and an appropriation, which I. venture to say is a reproach to 
 us. It ought to be mustered out of our vocabulary. It is said, 
 and some of you know whether it is true or not it is said 
 that certain bills in Congress have no difficulty and notably 
 it is the River and Harbor Bill have no difficulty in passing 
 Congress if there is enough business to be divided if there 
 is a "piece of the pork," as they say, for enough members. It 
 is a reproach to us. And I am tempted to say, and you will 
 say, that it would be a piece of Spartan courage on the part 
 of Minneapolis, a piece of wonderful unselfishness, if you would 
 say to the government of the United States, "It is not absolute 
 ly necessary at this time that the channel of the Mississippi 
 River be deepened between St. Paul and Minneapolis, not 
 withstanding the fact that we realize that by getting that ap 
 propriation, and deepening that channel, we are fixing the 
 head of navigation where God in his wisdom intended it should 
 be." Neither would I oppose what two legislators of this 
 western state are endeavoring to procure an appropriation 
 of four hundred thousand dollars to improve the navigation 
 of the roaring Red River of the North. I know how neces 
 sary it is that the gigantic commerce of that stream should 
 be encouraged and developed. I am not sure but when I was 
 in Congress I introduced a bill for that purpose myself, and 
 I have no doubt after I did so I received the approval of every 
 person the approval of every newspaper editor on the line 
 
 Now, I am not very much in favor, my friends, I am not 
 very much of an enthusiast about these Philippines. Person 
 ally I would not give the lives of the boys who have been 
 sacrificed there in the last two weeks for the whole archipelago. 
 To tell you the truth, I think Spain came pretty neai getting 
 even with us when she sold us that trouble for twenty million. 
 
 But I want a government notwithstanding and I have 
 found we have got it strong enough to whip the daylights 
 out of an ungrateful horde after we have been sent eight thou 
 sand miles to liberate them from Spanish oppression. It is 
 too late to go backward now ; it would be criminal, as well as 
 cowardly. We have got those islands by what seems to have 
 been almost necessary or, circumstances over which we have 
 had no control. We could not return them to Spain without 
 receiving the protest of every thoughtful man and woman. 
 
98 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 We can not conscientiously turn them over, if they are too 
 wicked, to any other government any other Christian nation. 
 That would be like the story told of the lady who was reciting 
 how she had been saved from her sins, and that when she found 
 her diamonds were dragging her down to perdition, she turned 
 around and gave them to her sister. 
 
 I am sorry this great task is for us. Some times it looks 
 like an appalling task to me. I hate to think of fifty thousand 
 men, or a hundred thousand men, being sent there to march up 
 and down in that tropical climate, keeping a turbulent people 
 in subjection. It is contrary to our education, to our tastes, 
 foreign to the spirit of our institutions. Most of the brethren 
 that I have heard have been in favor of going forward, as 
 they say, with a Bible in one hand and a gun, or a sword, in 
 the other. Well, this is a favorable time to extend the gospel, 
 and I see that Senator Davis says that we are undoubtedly the 
 consecrated evangelists of humanity. But I am inclined to 
 think that we can not safely preach to an enemy until we have 
 whipped him, and so I would not take many books just now, 
 but I would take guns in both hands. And this need not hinder 
 us from praying for those people s conversion. 
 
 Like the old preacher, you know, who, when he went into 
 a house to pray with a sick sister, and when this sister and 
 the children were set upon and brutally treated by the brutal 
 husband and father, that stalwart old Methodist took that 
 reprobate by the throat and choked him as a terrier would a 
 rat, he said, "Oh, Lord (punctuating his words with his fists), 
 Oh Lord, make this wretched sinner realize his condition, and 
 if it be Thy will that I am to be the instrument of his regenera 
 tion, nerve my arm, Oh Lord, and make him think that hell 
 has broken loose on him !" 
 
 Events have loaded us with new responsibilities. But, our 
 vision is widening, the republic is ever growing in character 
 and in influence, and in authority, as well as in responsibility; 
 and you must remember that responsibility, as well as the 
 starry meteor, takes its way to the westward. As Doctor 
 Strong has told us, the star of destiny first rested on Persia, 
 from Persia it was transferred to Greece, from Greece to Italy, 
 from Italy to Britain, from Britain to America, and here we 
 waken up in this nineteenth century to find it shining like a 
 meteor. And here it is to remain, for when you leave the 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 99 
 
 shores of the Pacific there is no further west; beyond that is 
 the East beyond that is the Orient. We have a great destiny 
 to fulfill, but I am one who believes that we can fulfill that 
 destiny without departing materially from the principles of the 
 saviors of this republic, and I pray that the doctrines and 
 principles for which they fought, are not to be abandoned; 
 that the flag that you carried, the flag that you love, the flag 
 we all love, is to remain the emblem of liberty and not be 
 come the symbol of oppression or greed; that wherever it 
 goes, its silken folds and its resplendent stars shall be the har 
 binger of better government, freer men, happier days, a sign 
 of promise, not only to the people of other lands, but to the 
 people of our land as well. 
 
 For what use, my friends, is a republic if it cannot, in some 
 measure, lift the burdens of the people? Of what use is a 
 government of the people if it is not going to benefit the people. 
 It was the dream of Lincoln that God, in His own good time, 
 should lift the burden of all men. Therefore, wherever we go, 
 and whatever we do let this be our ultimate aim, our loftiest 
 aspiration. 
 
 With this thought then, I say, let the old flag float on. 
 Where it goes let prosperity be its handmaiden; where it floats 
 in the sky let the shackles fall. If we are true to the high 
 principles which guide us, the enlarged horizon of our nation s 
 sky will ever serve to make our work broader and more ben 
 eficent, and then let us pray that this providence which has 
 brought together the sections of our own land, and banished 
 hatred and discord, will unite finally two hemispheres in an 
 alliance for human brotherhood, and for liberty and law 
 throughout the world. 
 
100 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY GENERAL JOHN B. SANBORN, U. S. VOLS. 
 (Read February 12, 1900.) 
 
 Every thought suggested by the birthday of Abraham Lin 
 coln is elevating and inspiring. We cannot think even of his 
 mother, coming across the Alleghanies, a mere child in the 
 early days of the century, living in the frontier log cabin of 
 Hardin County, Kentucky, and in the wilds of Indiana, and 
 then giving to the world such a power as Abraham Lincoln 
 a power that in its future was destined to crush the necks of 
 the mighty, to sweep away the serried strength of arms, and 
 to give liberty to an enthralled and enslaved race, a race that 
 had been enslaved for thousands of years without standing 
 in awe before any child that you may meet in the streets for 
 the reason of the influences and the powers that may be 
 wrapped up in her existence. 
 
 Of his father nothing was known more than of any farmer 
 in our agricultural districts, and still his name will, from the 
 services of his son, be linked with those of the greatest orators 
 and statesmen and warriors of all times with the names of 
 Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Charlemagne and 
 Washington, and the great men of the earth so that manhood 
 is elevated and womanhood extolled by the very suggestion 
 of their lives. 
 
 Now, we cannot think of his infancy in the log cabin, of 
 his childhood in that remote frontier in those early days, of 
 the early life of the young man, showing his public spirit at 
 the earliest age by taking command against one of the strong 
 est and most hostile Indian tribes before he was twenty-one 
 years of age, of his learning the profession of the law and 
 advancing to the high even the highest position at the Il 
 linois bar; of his then becoming the great orator on the ques 
 tion of the impossibility of preserving this Union half slave 
 and half free, and securing the strength and support of all 
 the best people of the country, without reaching the highest 
 appreciation of the man, even before he entered upon his great 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 101 
 
 career as a statesman and as president of the United States. 
 
 One of the most marked features of his whole life was his 
 independence of thought and action. He was an anti-slav 
 ery man, but at the same time the most ardent supporter of 
 the Constitution of the United States. He came forward in 
 an age which the younger people here present cannot remem 
 ber, when the most intelligent and wisest and most patriotic 
 people in the eastern states resolved many times that the only 
 exodus of the American slave from his house of bondage was 
 over the ruins of the American Union; resolved again at some 
 of the largest conventions at Boston that the Constitution of 
 the United States was a league with death, and a covenant 
 with hell. 
 
 He saw no hope for the emancipation of the slaves, except 
 in the preservation of the constitution. In this respect he dif 
 fered from many of the most learned and the wisest of the 
 public men of his day, and this was the great secret of his 
 success. His eye was steadfastly fixed on that one proposi 
 tion to maintain the constitution. He entered upon the war 
 with no purpose of changing the constitution in the least de 
 gree. He brought forward the proposition of compensated 
 emancipation of the slaves; he brought forward the proposi 
 tion, at last, that if the Union could not be preserved by the 
 masters giving up the slaves, then, if it was necessary to pre 
 serve the constitution, he would free the slaves. In this re 
 spect he differed from the leading public men of his day, and 
 he was compelled to resist the strongest combinations of the 
 most powerful men in public life in the nation, and stand by 
 himself on all these occasions. 
 
 He had no supporter in sustaining Grant in command of 
 the army of the Tennessee after the 20th of July, 1863, in 
 the senate, or in the house, or among the public men of the 
 country. He took upon himself the whole responsibility, the 
 result of which proved to be a success; but even the great 
 supporters of General Grant had, before that time, all formal 
 ly withdrawn from his support. 
 
 So much in regard to the character of the war not to 
 abolish slavery, not to establish slavery, but to preserve the 
 Constitution of the United States as it had been framed by 
 Washington and as it had come down to his generation, and 
 
102 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 amending it, when amended, according to its own terms and 
 provisions. 
 
 I was requested to speak tonight upon the origin and pur 
 pose of the Loyal Legion. Its origin is in the life and serv 
 ices of Mr. Lincoln, in the war that he was compelled to 
 wage to enforce the laws and to carry into effect his oath that 
 he had taken on the steps of the capitol at the time of his 
 inauguration to support, protect and defend the Constitution 
 of the United States. 
 
 It is strange at this remote day that every one of the 
 members of the first class of this Commandery was a sub 
 ordinate officer in the public service of Mr. Lincoln, that we re 
 ceived orders, sometimes direct in his own handwriting, and 
 that orders thus communicated, or received through his sub 
 ordinates, emanating from his mind and emanating from his 
 powers as president of the United States, were executed to 
 his satisfaction; but such is the fact, and we are all here living 
 thirty-five years after he has passed away. Now, one of the 
 great objects of this order was to preserve the principles, the 
 theories and the policies of that remarkable man; to preserve 
 under all conditions, and to make that the primary objects of 
 our life, so far as government is concerned, to preserve the 
 constitution as it is until it is amended in the manner and 
 form prescribed by itself. Without that, there is no security 
 to this people or to this civilization; and what the result would 
 be of its breaking up, no human mind can foresee or tell. 
 
 Our creed is as broad as the universe; it can be accepted 
 by both Jew and Gentile, by every race and by every language, 
 provided they have been fortunate enough to have been in 
 the military service of the United States and in the exercise 
 of sovereign powers, as an officer, during the war of the rebel 
 lion. That creed is an unfaltering, an unyielding, and an 
 absolute belief and faith in God; and a man who has not that 
 faith and that belief cannot be a member. We are all familiar 
 with the old expression that "the undevout astronomer is 
 mad" ; but an unbelieving man in God can be little above an 
 animal. 
 
 W T e may disbelieve all the religious creeds, but when it 
 comes to the question as to whether there is an omnipotent, 
 an omniscient and overruling and absolute power governing 
 men and nations, there is no room for doubt. There is no room 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 103 
 
 for any hesitation. We can all doubt our own immortality, but 
 we cannot doubt the existence and power of God. Hence I say 
 our creed is as broad as the universe. 
 
 Now, the objects to be accomplished. I have already hint 
 ed at these objects. The first and most important is to pre 
 serve, as I said, the principle upon which the war was con 
 ducted, the principle that the constitution must, under all 
 circumstances, be maintained; to preserve the memories of 
 the war and the traditions of the war; to preserve the respect 
 we have for each other and the attachments formed in the 
 military service we rendered to the United States, to our gen 
 eration, and to the whole human race by obeying the orders 
 of our illustrious chief, whose birth is this day commemorated. 
 
 There is a frivolous, laughable, ridiculous feature con 
 nected with our meetings, but what harm can a little mirth 
 do in such staid, old, reliable men as we are? Who can object 
 to our laughing a little still at the old story of the Irish matron 
 who brought her son to the colonel of the regiment, as it 
 was about to embark south, telling him that she wanted to 
 introduce her son Patrick to him, wanted him to know him. 
 She said that she had told the boy that, if the regiment ever 
 got into a battle, to "keep near the colonel" and he would 
 "never be hurted." Or at the story of the picket in front of 
 one of the great armies of the East. He was ordered by his 
 colonel the field officer of the day to fire in the event that 
 there was any unusual noise in the night, and he would come 
 immediately. The mules that had made their supper on the 
 wagon box itself, instead of anything it contained, suffering 
 from hunger and lack of water, had broken loose and torn 
 their way through a stumpy field, and braying, caused the 
 picket to fire. When the colonel came up and asked him what 
 the matter was, "Why," said he, "I think the whole confederacy 
 is advancing." 
 
 Now, there is no harm in all this thing, and it is not the 
 great aim and purpose of the Loyal Legion, it is simply a part 
 of the mirth and the life which, if we enjoy, we think nobody 
 should find any fault with. But we have a higher ambition, 
 a greater aim still, and that is to relieve and assist, as far as 
 possible, any of these companions and any members of their 
 families that, in the latter portion of life, come to the point 
 where assistance is needed. Our experience as a Commandery 
 
104 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 in this respect has been very wonderful. We have not been 
 called upon to furnish any particular aid, I believe, to any in 
 dividual. We had arranged once or twice to do so, but other 
 relief was found, and I do not think that our treasury to this 
 day, although we have been in existence fifteen years, has 
 ever been called upon for a single dollar for that purpose; but 
 we always hold ourselves ready to make the offer in case of 
 need, which certainly is commendable and laudable in every 
 respect. 
 
 There this cultivation of patriotism that we believe in 
 on all occasions, not a sentimental patriotism, not a patriot 
 ism that exists simply in the mind, but an active, practical, 
 sacrificing patriotism that will come to the front and take sides 
 with the government in every important emergency and take 
 an active, energetic, decided part. We may differ on all non- 
 essentials pertaining to government, but when it comes to 
 that which is essential to its preservation, then we must stand, 
 as we always have stood, shoulder to shoulder, and act as one 
 man. This does not include the necessity of believing that 
 there is but one single way to vote on matters not essential 
 to the preservation of the government, but I desire to im 
 press upon this audience the immense advantages derived 
 from associations in society of great numbers of our people 
 monize their ideas. For a community to be stable the great 
 who discuss public questions, and thereby assimilate and har- 
 mass of its members must think alike on questions pertain 
 ing to their institutions. The membership of churches, num 
 bering millions, works to this end. In the Loyal Legion, 
 composed now of more than eight thousand members, this 
 condition is worked out to a larger extent than in any other 
 organization not having a larger membership. Men must think 
 and think alike on a great many things, and on most funda 
 mentals, and they never can be brought to think alike until 
 they discuss these questions with each other and their minds 
 assimilate upon what is the true and what is the false in prin 
 ciple, and in theory. That is one of the great objects result 
 ing from such an organization. We meet and we correct his 
 tory to a great extent, in writing up what we saw and what 
 we did in the war, and what we know of certain events and 
 centain transactions, upon which a correct history can be 
 made. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 105 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY DANIEL FISH, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, MINNEAPOLIS. 
 
 (Read February 12, 1900.) 
 
 There are at least two special dangers which beset anyone who 
 tries to speak briefly of Abraham Lincoln. One is that the time may 
 be unprofitably consumed in mere eulogy, that kind of undiscrimin- 
 ating laudation of which there has been more than enough; the 
 other, that in avoiding that error, one s hurried words may seem 
 to detract from the dignity of a great theme. 
 
 Two considerations, however, tend to reassure me. One is con 
 tained in a wise hint once dropped by Mr. Lincoln himself. On 
 facing an unkown audience in a strange city he said : "I have 
 found that when one is embarrassed, usually the best way to get 
 through with it is to quit talking or thinking about it, and go at 
 something else." The other comforting reflection is, that I have 
 some right, small though it be, to join with all who, anywhere, seek 
 to honor the hero of this feast. I know that vainglory is con 
 demned, that "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty 
 spirit before a fall" yet, God help me, I am proud, that as a tow- 
 headed boy I was permitted to carry a Union musket, man s size, 
 and with aching shoulders and wobbling knees, to go along, when 
 the flag was carried into all the places where Father Abraham de 
 sired it to go. 
 
 Every suggestion of the hour is of that faraway time when the 
 life of the nation was at stake. We are thinking of him who was 
 constantly in the minds of all who planned, or prayed, or fought 
 for the great peace which was won at last, and which still abides. 
 Such thoughts are especially appropriate to this birthday evening, 
 but every meeting of the Loyal Legion, I fancy, must be a Lincoln 
 memorial. You could not, as your custom is, recall old memories 
 of the battle years without feeling the benignant and approving 
 presence of your old commander in chief. Your "Glimpses of the 
 Nation s Struggle" would be glimpses indeed, if they were not illum 
 ined by thoughts of the master-spirit of that struggle ; the man who 
 was both commander and companion, the man who was able to di 
 rect the forces of patriotism at home as well as the armies afield ; 
 
106 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 the kindly, patient, wide-visioned chieftain who, as truly as any 
 comrade in the blue, pledged and paid his life that the nation might 
 live. You are the contemporaries and coadjutors of that man, the 
 greatest that the nation founded by Washington has produced ; the 
 greatest in personal influence and official power, the greatest in 
 sacrifice and service, immeasurably the greatest in public harm 
 averted and in national benefits achieved. 
 
 Of course it is not needful that I should declare these things un 
 to you, but you would send some word, I take it, to the future; to 
 those who in times to come will desire to know this unique leader 
 as he was, and who, mayhap, will form some judgment about you, 
 out of the knowledge which they may gain of him. And so, since 
 the value of the message is relative to the worth of the sender, you 
 will not marvel that I hesitate to speak in your name. 
 
 First of all, Lincoln was a man, and not, as he is sometimes 
 thoughtlessly represented, a brother of the Gods. His fame, like 
 that of all popular heroes, has suffered from ill-judged praise. The 
 writers of biography, and especially the orators who declaim eulo 
 gies, seem to lose all sense of proportion. A mass of rhetorical rub 
 bish must be cleared away before the subject can be seen as he lived 
 and walked among men. It is related that when Thackeray was 
 preparing to write his great novel, "The Virginians," he sought out 
 an American historian and inquired for facts about the life and 
 character of Washington. The answer was begun in the conven 
 tional phrase commonly resorted to in describing the father of his 
 country. "No, no," interrupted Thackeray, "that s not what I 
 want. Was he a fussy old gentleman in a wig? Did he take snuff 
 and spill it down his coat-front?" That was the kind of informa 
 tion that he, the historian of life, desired of the hero of that day. 
 
 There are nearly a thousand books and pamphlets about Lin 
 coln, not a dozen of which are worth buying. There is but one, in 
 truth, that sheds a clear light upon the personality of the man the 
 one written by Herndon, his long-time partner and familiar friend. 
 I unhesitatingly commend this book, for in no other have I found 
 distinctly revealed that touch of nature which proves his kinship 
 with the world. This is a misfortune. Men are bound together 
 very largely by a knowledge of their common weaknesses. It is 
 the great motive of chanty; and so when a great life is pictured as 
 faultless, a main cord of human sympathy with that life is severed 
 and its uplifting force impaired. Lincoln was intensely human, but 
 nearly everything about him lent itself to distortion. His obscure 
 birth, his lack of schooling, his plain face and ungainly figure, the 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 107 
 
 narrow circumstances in which his character was formed, the sim 
 ple life that he led until lifted to the people s throne, the strange 
 mixture of humor, benevolence, and indomitable will, and finally 
 the tragic death all have contributed to mystify and mislead. 
 Moreover, his was in truth the most singular nature that was ever 
 unfolded to common gaze. 
 
 Emerson early observed, that if .Lincoln had lived before the 
 era of printing, he would speedily have become mythological, 
 like Aesop or Hlpai. He has become such, despite the multiplicity 
 of books. Probably the dominant impression of him today, for 
 instance, is that he was an immoderate joker. So much has been 
 written of his story-telling propensity, of the pleasure that he 
 found in repeating mere drolleries, of his aptness in enforcing 
 every truth with a pat anecdote, and of his constant resort to that 
 method of his intercourse with men, that one would expect to find 
 in his recorded words a profusion of side-splitting tales. To cor 
 rect that impression, re-read some of his popular addresses from 
 the stump. There, in the days of his freedom from official care, 
 and in the full maturity of his powers, he came into closest con 
 tact with his own people, whose political action he intensely de 
 sired to control. In those familiar, unrestrained speeches, surely 
 the best proofs of his style are preserved. They are almost bare 
 of anecdote. Wit there is, in plenty, but no stories; humor, of the 
 most illuminating quality, but all bent to a serious purpose. Once, 
 in chaffing Douglas, the "little giant, for losing his temper and 
 speaking harshly of him (Lincoln), the "big giant," he reminded 
 the crowd that his waspish friend had begun the campaign with 
 honeyed phrases, which, coming from so great a man, were very 
 taking. "I was like the Hoosier," he said, "who reckoned he liked 
 ginger-bread better than any other man and got less of it." That 
 is about the nearest approach to a "story" in the entire record of 
 that famous contest for the favor of his own people. 
 
 In a similar way, exaggerated notions are abroad in respect to 
 his talents. Because he was unquestionably great in some direc 
 tions, abilities are attributed to him of which he gave no sign. Be 
 cause he could state a political or a legal problem with incompar 
 able precision and explain it to the simplest understanding, he has 
 been esteemed a master of literary expression. Because he was 
 attracted by certain pathetic or lugubrious verses, shallow critics 
 have pronounced him a poet. Because the things that his work re 
 quired him to know^ were thoroughly mastered, men have marvel 
 ed as though all knowledge were his. The truth is that he was not 
 
108 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 well taught in childhood, and was never a student of books. "He 
 read less, and thought more Herndon says, "than any man of his 
 time." He possessed very little of w^hat is called culture. The im 
 aginative faculty in him was well-nigh dormant. It must have been 
 so, for if an eduation such as his could develop a boy broadly, we 
 ought to abolish our modern schools and turn all the children into 
 the woods. Still, although his writings contain no allusions to the 
 classics, are barren of beauties drawn from nature or the arts, and 
 afford no proof that he kne\v the history of any country, but his 
 own, despite all that, he was the wisest man of the nineteenth cen 
 tury, and he ruled this nation by a right of kingship that was truly 
 Divine. 
 
 There are those who assert that Lincoln possessed military 
 genius of the highest order. The bogus president of a counterfeit 
 confederacy, you remember, held similar opinions about himself,, 
 but the real president was very modest in matters of war. In sport 
 ive moods he used to tell how, in the Blackhawk campaign, he 
 once led his company across a field, and how, having forgotten 
 the words of command by which it could be marched through a 
 gate "endways," he gave the order to break ranks for two minutes 
 and then to form again on the other side of the fence. But that 
 was not such bad generalship. We had colonels, and even briga 
 diers, who, in such an emergency as that, would have halted the 
 whole column and convened a council of war. He once congratu 
 lated Seward that, although they knew but little of soldiership, 
 they did know that "the rear rank comes just back of the front 
 one." Not much, to be sure, but even that little might have 
 saved them from a mistake like that of the general who habitually 
 kept his headquarters "in the saddle," where, as a witty confederate 
 observed, his "hind quarters ought to have rested." 
 
 The president s letters to generals in the field show clearly 
 enough that his profound sagacity was not wholly at fault in mat 
 ters of war, and it is plain that mental powers such as his, if 
 trained to the profession of arms, could not have failed to give him 
 a mastery of its principles; but whether the deliberate, sure-footed 
 processes of his mind were suited to the exigencies of active com 
 mand may well be doubted. He might have become a Thomas, 
 but could hardly have been a Sherman or a Sheridan, while in the 
 quality of extreme caution he was almost the opposite of Grant. 
 Still, there is the very flavor of Grant s most characteristic trait in 
 that dispatch to Hooker, in which he says : "If the head of Lee s 
 army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 109 
 
 Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim 
 somewhere. Could you not break him?" 
 
 But the highest generalship of the war was displayed, and its 
 most decisive battles were fought not in the South, but in the 
 North. It was a stupendous moral struggle through which the 
 nation freed itself from the taint of death, and in that higher com 
 bat Lincoln was in immediate and direct command. The greatest 
 battle of the Civil war was fought in the summer of 1858. The 
 Lincoln and Douglas contest for the Illinois senatorship was the 
 intellectual Gettysburg which marked the high tide of pro-slavery 
 aggression. Its story has all the dramatic interest of a conflict of 
 arms. There was the premonitory stirrings of the belligerent spirit, 
 the sullen gathering of the clouds of wrath, the clarion call to arms, 
 the massing of opposing strength, the patient moulding of incon 
 gruous materials into a disciplined army, the cautious maneuvering 
 for position, the rattling skirmish fire, the roar of battle and the 
 rushing charge; and finally the conquest of ground from which all 
 the cohorts of hell could never dislodge us. And from that emi 
 nence, to which Lincoln led the heart and conscience of the North 
 in the fifties, went forth the power which, under his consummate 
 management, crushed the nation s foes and redeemed it from its 
 shame. 
 
 No fact of war history is so fixed in my memory as the fact of 
 Lincoln s peculiar, almost superhuman influence upon public opin 
 ion throughout the war period. It was like the supreme confidence 
 in which Sherman s command followed him on the march to the 
 sea, and from Savannah to the end. When that northward plunge 
 was made, the men knew that a winter campaign through the Caro 
 lina swamps was pronounced by military authorities to be impos 
 sible; but if Sherman had said it was necessary to wade the At 
 lantic, that army would have rolled up its trousers and started for 
 the beach. Such was the sublime faith of the great North in Lin 
 coln s judgment. As Sherman s men trusted him because he had 
 earned their trust, so Lincoln s word was law because his wisdom 
 had been tested and proven. We knew that his purpose was our 
 purpose, that the nation should not be destroyed. We knew that 
 each throb of his great heart was a new declaration that all men 
 are created equal, and every breath a fresh protest against the en 
 thronement of human bondage on American soil. And so the 
 people waited only for his word, and heard it only to obev. 
 
 It is a common belief that Lincoln was especiallv "raised up" 
 by a wise and benevolent Providence for the work that he did. I 
 
110 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 have sought to test that opinion, so far as history enables us to test 
 it, and of this pertinent fact I am profoundly convinced : No other 
 conspicuous man of that time could have done it. Not one of them 
 ever manifested a tithe of his peculiar fitness of that original, al 
 most eccentric, genius through which he was enabled to hold the 
 nation to its awful four years task. Each of them sooner or later, 
 displayed some disqualifying trait, some defect of judgment, con 
 science or will, which inevitably would have wrecked the nation s 
 cause. 
 
 Do you recall that from 1861, even to 1864, there was hardly 
 a statesman or a soldier in all Europe who believed it possible to 
 suppress the rebellion by force of arms? That fact explains, and, 
 in a measure, excuses the conduct of England, of which we so bit 
 terly complained. There w^as no precedent in all history for any 
 such stupendous military achievement. It was not a military achieve 
 ment it was vastly more. It was the profound conviction, im 
 posed upon South as well as North by the matchless logic and in 
 vincible faith of Abraham Lincoln, that secession must fail, and 
 ought to fail, because it w^as wrong. 
 
 Our confederate friends try to delude themselves into the belief 
 that their cause yielded only to overwhelming physical power. Well, 
 the South knew all about our superiority in numbers and in wealth 
 before she resorted to war; the census had just been taken and its 
 tale was an open book, but the pretence is futile. Never before 
 were eight millions of our race, inhabiting a land so completely de 
 fensible as the South, and so passionately united in a war for polit 
 ical independence, overwhelmed, subjugated, in four years, or in 
 forty, by twice or thrice their number. Why did the loss of a few 
 thousand men at Appomatox precipitate that sudden and unanimous 
 surrender from Virginia to Texas? Why that utter collapse of a 
 proud and warlike nation in a night? The answer is, the capitula 
 tion of Lee was but the pretext for which the South had been wait 
 ing.- Her faith was dead. Her armies had crumbled away because 
 the judgment of the people, of which the armies are but the out 
 ward symbol, had yielded to overwhelming truth. And the same 
 embodied conscience and faith, the same far-seeing wisdom and 
 unyielding will the same Abraham Lincoln of immortal fame 
 inspired the high resolve that triumphed and dissolved the passion 
 ate courage which failed. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. HI 
 
 "Let us have faith that right makes might. If slavery 
 is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Why should there not 
 be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the peo 
 ple? Is there any better, greater or equal hope in the 
 world? The Union must be preserved; hence all indis 
 pensable means must be employed. With charity for all, 
 with malice towards none, with firmness in the right as 
 God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
 work we are in." 
 
 "Common his mind (it seemed so then), 
 His thoughts, the thoughts of other men ; 
 Plain were his words, and poor 
 But how they will endure !" 
 
 No hero, this, of Roman mould: 
 Nor like our stately sires of old : 
 Perhaps he was not great 
 But he preserved the state !" 
 
112 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY HIRAM F. STEVENS, STATE SENATOR, MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 12, 1900.) 
 
 It is but fitting that in the state which was the first to 
 establish this holiday, in the capital city where the name of 
 the first volunteer in the great army of freedom was placed 
 upon the roll, in the presence of the last survivor of the war 
 governors, by whose loyal aid and energy that army was re 
 cruited and maintained, who was the first to tender troops 
 in defense of the Union, and who, crowned with years and with 
 honors, still goes in and out among us, his eye not dim nor 
 his natural vigor abated, the Minnesota Commandery of the 
 Loyal Legion should celebrate the day which gave to the 
 republic, to freedom and to the world the priceless life and 
 memory of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The traveler across a continental range sees height after 
 height rising around him in confusing grandeur; but as he 
 passes on down the foothills, one after another loses its con 
 tour and is obscured until, finally, when far out upon the plain, 
 he turns at twilight for a last look, one peak alone stands out 
 above the shadowy range, its summit piercing the clouds and 
 radiant in the sunlight which has left the rest behind. 
 
 Thus it is in human history. As the years go by, one after 
 another of those who have been conspicuous among their 
 contemporaries, passes, not into oblivion, but into the back 
 ground of history, while that character is indeed colossal that 
 towers above the horizon of its age. 
 
 It may well be said that that land is fortunate which in 
 each century adds the name of one benefactor to the roll of 
 the world s immortals; a name destined to be renowned, not 
 alone in the land that gave it birth, nor in a single sphere of 
 action, but in all lands beneath the sun, and in the universal 
 judgment of mankind. Such has been the fortune of America. 
 Near the close of the eighteenth century she laid to rest the 
 mighty Washington, and now his fame is boundless as the 
 race. The nineteenth century has not been less prolific than 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 113 
 
 its predecessors in its contribution to the list of celebrated 
 men; but although only a generation has passed away since 
 the curtain fell in tragedy upon Lincoln s life, and we are yet 
 too near the scenes in which he lived to justly estimate its 
 lasting influence, we come upon this closing anniversary of the 
 century, to dedicate his memory to the ages, assured that his 
 tory will yield him primacy among the illustrious leaders of 
 his time. During this period so much has been written and 
 said about his life and character that little remains to be told. 
 No tongue or pen can add to the luster of his fame, but to 
 his precepts and example, like those of Washington, so abund 
 ant in inspiration and guidance, we may well resort in all the 
 vicissitudes and in every crisis of our national life. 
 
 It was long supposed that Lincoln s ancestry was as in 
 ferior as his birth was humble. Nothing is further from the 
 truth. He was the descendant in the sixth degree of Samuel 
 Lincoln, of Norfolk, England, a member of the Plymouth 
 colony, among whose descendants were three governors, an 
 attorney general, a secretary of state, and a judge of the 
 United States Supreme Court. All his ancestors, except his 
 father, w r ere persons of character, ability and prominence; all 
 but one of them were pioneers, and all of them bore scriptural 
 names. For fifty years before his birth they had lived in three 
 different slave states. Thus he inherited from an ancestry 
 of nearly two hundred years of adventure, patriotism and 
 sagacity, combined with deep religious sentiment, not only nat 
 ural ability of a high order, but those qualities of mind and 
 heart that enabled him to appreciate the conflicting interests 
 and prejudices which had their respective sources at James 
 town and at Plymouth Rock, and fitted him better than any 
 other man of his time to be the final arbiter of their destiny. 
 His parents, it is true, were without education and of limited 
 means. Ninety-one years ago today, in the rude cabin of these 
 lowly Kentucky pioneers, began the life of him whose memory 
 we meet to honor. His childhood was one of poverty, but it 
 was not the poverty of dependence. His youth was one of 
 hardship that disciplines, but does not degrade. The fire of 
 ambition burned in his bosom from his earliest years, and he 
 made all things books, men and events wisely subservient 
 to its ends. If he had little of the training of schools, the 
 world was his university. The books he had w r ere the world s 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 masterpieces. He learned the stories of the Bible at his 
 mother s knee, and to its lofty precepts he resorted in his 
 latest days. He had Shakespeare, Burns, Blackstone and 
 Aesop s Fables, and these he studied with unceasing zeal. 
 Drinking deep at these exhaustless fountains of knowledge and 
 inspiration, he did not miss the rivulets into which men had 
 drawn out their overflow. Having the keys of the treasure- 
 house of literature he needed not the small coin of its shops. 
 
 If he lacked in social culture it was superseded by the rude 
 amenities of frontier intercourse, which sharpened his faculties 
 if it did not refine his manners. Born among the "plain people/* 
 as he loved to call them, he understood their traits and feel 
 ings. His sympathies w r ere ever with them, and his services 
 always at their command; and, so as he rose in position and in 
 fluence, he kept their confidence and esteem. Accustomed from 
 his childhood to self-reliance, he became an unerring judge 
 of character. Without ostentatious profession, he was ever 
 reverent of sacred things. "Show me," said he, "a church 
 where the only requirement is to love God and to love man, 
 and I will walk a hundred miles to join it." 
 
 To say that he was raised up to meet a great crisis is to 
 state but half the truth. More than all other men combined 
 he induced and developed to its tragic but beneficent end the 
 crisis w r hich had impended since the adoption of the consti 
 tution. 
 
 During a trip to New Orleans in his early manhood he 
 witnessed the brutality of the slave market, and from that 
 hour became the inveterate foe of slavery. But such was his 
 reverence for the constitution that never, even in the throes of 
 civil war, did he favor its forcible abolition until justified as 
 a military necessity. His highest hope was for its restrction 
 to the orginal slave states and to gradual extinction there 
 through peaceful measures. He demonstrated the fallacy of 
 secession by declaring that if one or more states had the right 
 to secede, the logical result was that all but one of the states 
 might join in seceding, and thus, in effect, expel a sovereign 
 state from the union against its will a proposition which its 
 rashest advocate had never had the temerity to advance. 
 
 Loving the Union above all else, he felt, as much as any 
 statesman has ever done, the binding obligation of the con 
 stitution. Although slavery was abhorent to every fiber of 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 115 
 
 his being, he felt bound to recognize the protection which the 
 constitution afforded, until it became a choice between the 
 Union and the constitution. When that moment came, and not 
 till then, was he ready to destroy slavery, in spite of the con 
 stitution, that the Union, which was the object of the con 
 stitution, might survive. With dispassionate but resistless 
 logic, he pierced the sophistry of a hundred years and sounded 
 the knell of its approaching doom. But such was the virulence 
 of feeling that, while he became an object of violent hatred 
 to the slave interest, this most puissant of champions \vas 
 scorned and reviled by the abolitionists because, in his con 
 servatism, he respected the constitution. 
 
 After his nomination Wendell Phillips referred to him as 
 this huckster in politics who does not know whether he has 
 any opinions." Lincoln was indeed a politician of the most 
 pronounced type, but he belonged to a class of which the 
 country today needs more, and not less. There are politicians 
 and politicians. Some are like the mercenary troops in earlier 
 days at the service of the highest bidder. But there is a 
 large and honorable class who, actuated by deepest principles, 
 loyally, fearlessly and proudly follow the flag of their faith in 
 victory or defeat, whether assigned to duty in the ranks or 
 leading gloriously on the ramparts. Of this class the most 
 prominent example of the century was Abraham Lincoln. 
 First defeated for the legislature of Illinois at the age of 
 twenty-three, he tried again with better results, and was for 
 eight years a member of that body twice being an unsuccess 
 ful candidate for speaker. Four years later he was elected to 
 congress. Then he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 
 commissionership of the general land office. He was twice 
 defeated for the United States senate. 
 
 His debate with Douglas proved him to be a consummate 
 master of his art, as well as one of the keenest logicians of 
 his day. The Dred Scott decision, upon which the Southern 
 Democrats based their assumptions, and from which they 
 brooked no dissent, had declared slavery to be inherently right, 
 under the constitution, and therefore entitled to protection in 
 all the territories and the states to be formed out of them. 
 Douglas had already pronounced in favor of "popular sover- 
 eignity," or the right of each new state to allow or prohibit 
 slavery. Between these two irreconcilable positions, Lincoln 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 drove Douglas to a choice. If he declared for slavery he would 
 lose the senatorial election and alienate the support of the 
 Northern Democracy for the presidency. If he adhered to 
 popular sovereignly he was in danger of losing the South. 
 Escape was impossible. He chose the latter alternative and 
 defeated Lincoln for the senate, but two years later the South 
 refused to support him for the presidency, and put another 
 ticket in the field. The party strength was thus divided, and 
 Lincoln was elected by a minority of the popular vote. 
 
 But, with all his adroitness, he was no demagogue. He did 
 not hesitate to accept the position of attorney for the Illinois 
 Central Railroad company while he was a candidate for the 
 senate. When addressing an assemblage of workingmen he 
 said: "Labor is prior to capital, but property is the fruit of 
 labor. Let no man, therefore, who is houseless, pull down 
 the house of another, but let him labor diligently to build one 
 for himself, thus assuring that his own shall be safe from vio 
 lence when built." 
 
 In the administration of his high office he proved himself 
 a statesman of the first order. From the day when he demon 
 strated his skill as a diplomat in the revision of Steward s 
 famous dispatch to our minister at the court of St. James, to 
 the last important act of his life, relating to reconstruction, 
 subsequent events have not only justified his policies, but have 
 shown that any material variance during the war would have 
 been fraught with disaster. 
 
 As an orator he has contributed to the world s literature 
 some of its choicest gems. The closing lines of his first inaug 
 ural, with which he concluded a firm but pathetic protest 
 against secession, were as touching as they were prophetic. 
 
 "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 better angels 
 of our nature." 
 
 Two years and a half later, standing upon Gettysburg s 
 immortal heights, he uttered this classic tribute, which will be 
 forever linked to the story of that historic ground : 
 
 "Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth on this continent a new nation, con 
 ceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 117 
 
 all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a 
 great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any 
 nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
 We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We 
 have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a 
 final resting place for those who here gave their lives 
 that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting 
 and proper that we should do this. But in a larger 
 sense, we cannot dedicate we cannot consecrate 
 we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living 
 and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far 
 above our poor power to add or detract. The world 
 will little note, nor long remember what we say here, 
 but it can never forget what they did here. It is for 
 us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfin 
 ished work which they who fought here have thus far 
 so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here ded 
 icated to the great task remaining before us that 
 from these honored dead we take increased devotion 
 to that cause for which they gave the last full meas 
 ure of devotion that we here highly resolve that 
 those dead shall not have died in vain that this na 
 tion, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
 and that government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 The following from his second inaugural, was his last pub 
 lic expression of a great character. Its lofty and benignant 
 strain transcends mere human diction and breathes the spirit 
 of the sublimest utterances of Holy Writ: 
 
 "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
 this mighty scourge of war may pass speedily away. Yet, 
 if God wills that it continu until all the wealth piled by 
 the bondsman s two hundred and fifty years of unre 
 quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
 blood drawn with the lash shall be repaid 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 firm 
 ness 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 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 the nation s wounds, to care for him who shall have 
 borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, 
 to do ail which may achieve and cherish a just and 
 lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 
 Entrusted with supreme command of a military establish 
 ment, compared with which the armaments of ancient and 
 modern times shrink into insignificance, and covering a field 
 of operaiions of vast extent, he proved himself master of the 
 situation, and was in fact, as well as name, the commander- 
 m-chief. Sagacious in selecting and loyal in supporting his 
 great commanders, he made possible the illustrious achieve 
 ments and fadeless renown of Grant and Sherman and Thomas 
 and Sheridan and their compatriots whose place in history is 
 secure. And how he loved the common soldiers. No man 
 ever wielded such power with such tenderness and magnan 
 imity. The Illinois circuit rider who dismounted in the storm 
 to restore the young birds to the nest from which they had 
 been blown, became the soft-hearted president w r ho went from 
 cot to cot through the hospitals, and who subverted military 
 discipline by the frequency of his reprieves. The records of 
 the executive departments teem with his correspondence in 
 behalf of the condemned and with messages of sympathy to 
 the bereaved. The funeral literature of all time contains no 
 tribute more tender and expressive than this, which he sent 
 to a bereaved mother, just after his second election: 
 
 "Dear Madam : I have been shown, in the files of 
 the war department, a statement of the Adjutant Gen 
 eral of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five 
 sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. 
 I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of 
 mine which should attempt to beguile you from a 
 loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from ten 
 dering to you the consolation that may be found in 
 the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray 
 that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish 
 of your bereavement, and leave you only the cher 
 ished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn 
 pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacri 
 fice upon the altar of freedom." 
 
 The quaint and humorous drollery which characterized him 
 throughout life, and which, at the outset of his national career. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 119 
 
 often provoked the sarcasm of offended dignity, was but the 
 alloy that strengthened his fine nature for the discharge of 
 duties and responsibilities else too heavy to be borne, and 
 though his humor sometimes bordered on coarseness or in 
 delicacy, this was but the dross in a character whose substance 
 was otherwise of purest gold. 
 
 While traitors were secretly plotting or openly attempting 
 the destruction of the Union, while the shafts of calumny from 
 foes, and carping criticism from those who should have been 
 friends, were falling thick around him, under the weight of 
 burdens and vexations seemingly too grievous to be borne, he 
 cherished no malice in his heart, his lips gave utterance to no 
 abuse. Believing in the justice of God, and basing his con 
 duct upon principles that antedated the decalogue and will sur 
 vive the wreck of human laws and constitutions, he wrought in 
 faith and patience to the end, and so he came to be the em 
 bodiment of the regenerated brain, heart and conscience of the 
 nation. 
 
 And yet you shall search the pages of history in vain for 
 a parallel to the national career of seven swift, eventful 
 years which transformed the unknown Illinois politician into 
 the foremost figure of his century. If we would learn the 
 secret of that social alchemy by which the son of the Ken 
 tucky pioneer, reared in the narrow circle of frontier priva 
 tion, became the ruler whose sagacious leadership in the crisis 
 of the republic withstood the criticism of statesmen and sav 
 ants, and won the lasting homage of mankind, may we not find 
 its solution in that immortal sentence of his, which was ex 
 pressed in every act of that earnest, patient, sagacious life : 
 "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith 
 let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." 
 
 The century opened with peans of acclaim to Napoleon, 
 "the man of destiny," beneath whose tread the continent of 
 Europe quaked for twenty years. The century is drawing to 
 its close, and, in the sculptured pomp of his stately tomb upon 
 the Seine, beneath the purple dome of the Hotel des Invalides, 
 amid the marble emblems of his victories and surrounded by 
 his battle flags, the great emperor sleeps in the icy calm of 
 death. The empire which he founded has vanished like the 
 figment of a dream. But the republic of Washington and Lin 
 coln endures. The bond of Union, though strained by civil war r 
 
120 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 was yet strong enough to withstand the test, and from ocean 
 to ocean, and from Jake to gulf, the arms that once were raised 
 to strike are now outstretched to shield. The race whose tri 
 umphal and civilizing march has known no halt from Plymouth 
 Rock to the Philippines, as in the past, so in the present, and 
 in all the days to come, true to the precepts of the founders 
 and saviors of the republic, within the limits of its constitution, 
 will accept the duties and responsibilities imposed by Provi 
 dence, and without fear or faltering, march on to the fulfill 
 ment of its high and continuing destiny. 
 
 He who seeks the embodiment of the genius of the Union 
 finds it in the apotheosis of the Great Emancipator. There, 
 under the arching skies he stands, erect, serene, resplendent; 
 beneath his feet the broken shackles of a race redeemed; upon 
 his brow the diadem of liberty with law, while around and be 
 hind him rise up, as an eternal guard of honor, the great army 
 of the republic. 
 
 In the belief that from the martyr s bier as from the battle 
 field of right, it is but one step to paradise, may we not, on 
 days like this, draw back the veil that separates from our mor 
 tal gaze the phantom squadrons as they pass again in grand 
 review before their "martyr president." 
 
 "In solid platoons of steel, 
 
 Under heaven s triumphant arch, 
 The long lines break and wheel, 
 
 And the order is "Forward, March !" 
 The colors ripple o erhead, 
 
 The drums roll up to the sky, 
 And with martial time and tread 
 
 The regiments all pass by 
 The ranks of the faithful dead 
 
 Meeting their president s eye. 
 March on, your last brave mile ! 
 
 Salute him, star and lace! 
 Form round him, rank and file, 
 
 And look on the kind, rough face. 
 But the quaint and homely smile 
 
 Has a glory and a grace 
 It has never known erstwhile, 
 
 Never in time or space. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 121 
 
 Close round him, hearts of pride ! 
 Press near him, side by side ! 
 
 For he stands there not alone. 
 For the holy right ye died, 
 And Christ, the crucified, 
 
 AYaits to welcome his own." 
 
122 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 TYPICAL AMERICANS. 
 
 BY CAPT. HENRY A. CASTLE, EX-POSTMASTER, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 12, 1901.) 
 
 To develop a high average in man is the noblest work of civiliza 
 tion. 
 
 The advancement of a race is only real when it reaches all social 
 strata, pervading the classes and the masses, steadily elevating, 
 energizing, fructifying the entire population. 
 
 The capacity of a people to evolve constantly improving types of 
 humanity is the final test of greatness. That nation will win su 
 premacy which has the most highly developed average man and 
 makes of him an aspiring citizen. The average man has not, 
 until recently, been a factor in the world; nowhere today is he 
 so important a factor as in our own proud and happy land. 
 He has ceased to make an abtuse angle of himself before rank 
 and privilege; he has begun to inhale fresh ozone of the brand 
 that stiffens spines; he has learned that the constitution always 
 follows the flag sooner or later and he believes in both. 
 
 Clasped in the embrace of golden centuries that gave model and 
 masterpiece of art, poetry, philosophy, laws, and eloquence, lie the 
 shining annals of queenly Athens and exultant Rome. But viewed 
 from our long focal distance how provincial, how isolated, how 
 evanescent. The "higher classes" were luxurious, but the common 
 people had fewer comforts than the beasts that perish- Freedom 
 and civilization starved because they thrust no rootlets into the popu 
 lar intellect. Even the tidings of those glories and achievements 
 scarcely reached beyond the walls of cities which girt the Mediter 
 ranean like a constellation. 
 
 That progress only is genuine which reaches and illumines man 
 kind in general the average man. Civilizations of the past rich as 
 they were in specific features, were local ; their blessings touched 
 only the smallest circles. Two hundred years elapsed before the 
 common people of Europe knew that America had been discovered. 
 Knowledge lay in a state of arrested incubation. Ages rolled on, 
 while simple inventions slowly broke their way through crusts of 
 ignorance to the hand and home of the toiler. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 123 
 
 All this is changed. While kings have shriveled and potentates 
 have shrunken, mankind has expanded. Some things are wrong 
 and rotten still, for civilization, like beauty, is often only paint-deep. 
 But the average man in physical and intellectual vigor, in culture and 
 character has throughout Christendom been wondrously exalted. 
 
 Our people enjoy their full allotment of this exaltation. Else 
 where development and aspiration are militant, here they are tri 
 umphant permeated and dominated by a spirit of aggressive, pro 
 gressive, belligerent, defiant Americanism. This spirit has extended 
 our sphere of influence until it reaches from Ursa Major to the plane 
 of the ecliptic; it has made aurora borealis a familiar domestic pro- 
 uct and narrowed the Pacific ocean into an American lake. The 
 average American is the highest type the world now holds or ever 
 has seen. So long as we maintain this pre-eminence we can trust 
 ourselves to lead in the march of history. 
 
 A sublime faith in our country and our countrymen has directed 
 the policies of the last three memorable years. It guided and in 
 spired our voiceless comrade, companion, friend, the ideal American 
 statesman, the pride of our commonwealth, a pillar of the nation, of 
 whose wondrous deeds we can now only speak from the depths of a 
 bleeding affection. His every heart-beat throbbed with this cour 
 ageous confidence. It led his unfaltering steps up the imperial 
 heights of destiny as the shepherds of old were led by the radiance 
 of Bethlehem s beckoning star. 
 
 A crowning beneficence of our position, the unerring prophecy 
 of a hopeful future, is the significant fact that from the ranks of 
 our average man, from the mass of our intelligent citizenship, every 
 crisis calls forth leaders equal to the heaviest demand built up i.y 
 the moulding hand of free institutions, stalwart and heroic, formed 
 for the supreme emergency. We have discarded the pauper-made 
 pedigrees of Europe. From the homes of the people, from condi 
 tions even less favorable than the lot of the average men of their 
 time, have sprung the consummate figures of our nation s annals, 
 our two transcendent typical Americans. 
 
 The luminous career of one spanned all the decades of the 
 eighteenth century the other s splendid deeds have made the nine 
 teenth century memorable, and the day we celebrate sacred to 
 patriotism forever. Each was an august embodiment of the Repuh 
 lie; into every thread of its fabric their lives are woven, on every 
 flutter of its flag their genius shines. 
 
 Our colonial and revolutionary eras, with the formative years 
 
124 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the federal government glisten with illustrious names all more 
 than worthy the deathless fame so grandly won. But it is not on 
 the story of Adams or Hamilton or Jefferson or Pickering or Madi 
 son or Jay or Putnam we will dwell to-night. Nor even on that 
 of immortal Washington, of whom our speech can be clothed only 
 in garments of profoundest reverence unsullied be his renown on 
 the tongues of men and angels until time shall be no more ! 
 
 Above any or all of these in splendor of intellect, versatility of 
 attainment and achievement, effective public service, was the s f ates- 
 man, diplomat, inventor, philosopher, patriot, printer, the original 
 Yankee, the first typical American, Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 Washington, soldier and hero, the wealthiest citizen of the col 
 onies, aristocratic, and justly proud, a Virginian of the third gen 
 eration, was a modified Englishman; Franklin, cradled in penury, 
 the son of an immigrant, was in every throb and fiber and tissue an 
 unadulterated American. 
 
 ********* 
 
 Benjamin Franklin was the splendid typical American of the 
 eighteenth century. Had this nation produced none worthy to 
 stand beside him, he alone would have superbly vindicated the type 
 and its potentialities. But the nineteenth century came, bringing 
 new vicissitudes, environments, requirements. The nineteenth cen 
 tury brought its own crisis and it likewise brought a man for the 
 crisis Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 He was the second distinctive, colossal, typical American. 
 Genius is common-sense intesified; a typical American is an 
 average man exapnded and crystallized. As to some features of 
 character and career Franklin and Lincoln were strikingly similar, 
 yet the differences were marked and decisive. Each was an apothe 
 osis of the average man. Each was a born child of the people, 
 raised by self culture to a stature unsurpassed among mortals. 
 Each was a man of the people without a trace of demagoguery. 
 Each was framed for his high calling by the imperious mandate of 
 nature and surroundings ; both were in every trait and tendency and 
 texture unquestionably American. Their endowments were essen 
 tially practical and real, but with finest backgrounds of the ideal 
 and full equipment for exalted trust. That they were recognized 
 and trusted and exalted is a crowning vindication of Republicanism. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was born in the state of Kentucky in 1809. 
 less than twenty years after Franklin died. He was of obscure 
 ancestry, and was cradled amid the rudest rusticities of life on a 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 125 
 
 raw frontier. The sum total of his attendance at school was less 
 than twelve months. Much of his childhood was spent in a cabin 
 of logs, with no floor or door or window, without stove or fur 
 niture or utensil more elaborate than a kettle, a skillet, and a bench. 
 
 Lincoln as a youth, untrained in polite society ; clad in coarsest, 
 most meagre garments, tow trousers fifteen inches too short, coon- 
 skin cap, bare feet, face browned from exposure and hands calloused 
 with toil, was an unpromising boulder out of which to carve the 
 conventional hero. But strength of body and mind dwelt in him, 
 which among his compeers brought a primacy grateful, perhaps, as 
 his later honors. He was first in all athletic games ; he was leader 
 in race and wrestle; more than all he owned half a dozen books, 
 read them with avidity, absorbed them completely and built his men 
 tal structure around them. Reading ^Esop s fables by the light from 
 a fire-place was his recreation, his theater, opera and lecture rolled 
 into one. He grew to be a backwoods prodigy in knowledge as in 
 feats of strength and agility. 
 
 Lincoln as a Farmer, a Boatman and a Clerk brought his early 
 manhood into relation with varied elements of useful activity. His 
 faculties were quickened, his horizon was widened, his experiences 
 were multiplied, and practical information was garnered for later 
 years. At New Orleans he saw the cruelties of human slavery and 
 where the atmosphere was filled, with the suffocating fumes of its 
 apologists, he registered a holy vow to smite it always and smite 
 it hard. 
 
 Lincoln as a Soldier served one short eventless campaign in the 
 Blackhawk war of 1831, stimulating his appreciation of discipline 
 and strengthening, as captain of a company of fellow townsmen, 
 his attributes of leadership. 
 
 Lincoln the Legislator helped to frame the codes he was destined 
 so ably to expound, and contributed to the earliest development 
 of resources which have since made his adopted State, imnerial 
 Illinois, the third commonwealth of the Union. He did not serve 
 at a period when the railroad magnate feels obliged to own and 
 operate two or more State Legislatures as a feature of his system, 
 but in that day of relatively small things he made a creditable rec 
 ord. 
 
 Lincoln the Lawyer was noted for his adherence to highest 
 conceptions of the dignity of his chosen profession. He held it 
 to be the duty of the bar to aid the court in administering justice. 
 Lucid argument, even grace of diction and oratory were his instru- 
 
126 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ments in presenting the law and facts of each case for the better in 
 formation of judge and jury. His logical power, merciless as the 
 erosion of a glacier, was never consciously used to mislead the one ; 
 his gifts of impassioned eloquence were not employed to befog or 
 deceive the other. He never sought to beguile men into the treat 
 ment of an incurable disease with an infallible remedy. He rose 
 to merited eminence in regular practice before courts presided over 
 by the ablest jurists. He established a reputation for capacity, prob 
 ity, and learning, upon which rests no stain of unfaithfulness to 
 clients or treachery to truth. 
 
 Lincoln the Patriot nursed in the growth of anti-slavery agita 
 tion; aroused by its appeals; tossed in its storms and fired by the 
 lightnings of its rage, became an active champion of the nation s 
 awakening conscience voiced in a swelling clamor* for free press, 
 free speech, free soil, free men. A new evangel came to stir men s 
 souls ; he was its early apostle ; he finally became its prophet, seer and 
 sage, its martyr and its canonized hero. As has been truly said, he 
 combined the faith of Abraham, the leadership of Moses, the cour 
 age of Leonidas, the mental vigor of Paul, the integrity of Crom 
 well and the patriotism of Washington. That patriotism was more 
 than a sentiment it was an animating, overmastering spiritual 
 possession. From him and his co-laborers it flowed out into the 
 souls of their countrymen until the mighty North was leavened 
 with their spirit and inspired by their zeal. 
 
 Lincoln the Leader, was evolved by natural selection- From 
 inconspicuous beginnings he steadily grew to be the acclaimed 
 tribune of the people. By the force of his ability and character he 
 embodied all the conditions around him, until he become an in 
 carnation of their loftiest aims. Rugged and massive he was, 
 surely not fair and smooth to look upon, yet with an imposing 
 personality as the future will idealize him. Rugged, massive and 
 imposing he was, but not inert. There were internal fires to fuse 
 this ruggedness; there was an expansive soul that elevated this 
 massiveness and made it majestic. His leadership was not of the 
 larynx and lungs variety, ever ready to clothe itself in asbestos and 
 umpire the conflagration of a planet ; it was neither rant nor malev 
 olence nor incendiarism. It was conservatism personified, steadi 
 ness energized, determination sublimated. 
 
 Lincoln the Orator displayed intellectual gifts of the highest 
 range. His collected addresses and State papers form a classic 
 which has no superior in our prolific language. They are the clear 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 127 
 
 flowing utterance of an affluent mind, wanned by the sanctifying 
 impulse of profound conviction. The inimitable words at Gettys 
 burg have given to that hallowed ground increased sanctity as a 
 shrine of pilgrimage for Earth s rejoicing children. 
 
 Lincoln the President, the central figure of Time s most awful 
 tragedy, stepped forth with modest manliness, solemnly assumed 
 his burden and bore it royally, yet meekly until he died. Confronted 
 with perils and problems unprecedented, he stood on the shifting 
 quicksands of a disintegrating government, a rustic politician out of 
 the West with no clientage even among his party associates. He was 
 compassed about with perplexities innumerable. His cabinet was 
 strange and discordant, its members distrustful of him and of each 
 other; the treasury was empty and the public credit paralyzed. 
 Foreign nations were openly hostile; domestic traitors infested 
 every executive department, polluted the courts and distracted Con 
 gress. He rose to the tremendous responsibility. He was tactful 
 and discreet; always growing; always moving with a self-sufficing 
 self-reliance that is modesty enthroned. He met every emergency 
 as it came and controlled it. He guided diplomacy, finance, and 
 internal policies. Friends abandoned him; political conspirators 
 plotted his overthrow, but he was firm, patient, consistent, neither 
 speaking thoughtlessly nor acting with rashness. In every branch 
 of statesmanship he was easily master of his colleagues and the 
 occasion. He piloted the ark of man s last hope through all menac 
 ing breakers until it anchored safely in the haven of deliverance. 
 
 Lincoln the Commander, unversed in military lore, speedily dis 
 closed instincts of generalship and genius for command. War en 
 vironed him with swift, remorseless fury; his communications were 
 cut off and his capital beleagured; forts and shipyards had been 
 treacherously surrendered ; arms had been stolen and vessels scat 
 tered ; trusted officers of the army and navy forswore their alle 
 giance and deserted to the foe. From the mines and forests navies 
 were created : from the farms and schools and workshops, enormous 
 armies were drawn. Leaders were evolved, campaigns \vere planned 
 battles were fought and unsurpassed victories won. The soldiers of 
 the Union, under his unrelaxing guidance, captured forts and 
 armies, seaports and citadels and capitals, senates and cabinets and 
 presidents ; they conquered States, crushed rebellion and built 
 around the rescued nation an impregnable rampart of freedom. 
 
 Lincoln the Emancipator, appeals most vividly to the imagina 
 tions of men. Slavery s doom had been rung on the celestial chimes. 
 
128 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 It was due to perish because the nineteenth century had come ; be 
 cause the free school, the newspaper and the open Bible had come; 
 because the flying engine and the speaking wire had come; because 
 Wilberforce and Garrison and Harriet Stowe had come; because 
 Seward and Stanton and Sumner had come ; because Grant and 
 Sherman and Sheridan had come; because two million boys in 
 blue had come above all, because the great and terrible day of 
 wrath had come. These myriad influences spoke with Lincoln s 
 voice and struck with his resolute arm. He seemed slow as he led 
 public opinion by marching abreast, but he struck hard. In August, 
 1862, a zealous war-governor telegraphed: "Hurl the thunder 
 bolt of Emancipation and Illinois will again leap like a flaming giant 
 into the fight." The characteristic reply was flashed back: "Rich 
 ard, possess thou thy soul in patience stand by and see the salvation 
 of the Lord." One month later the thunderbolt was hurled. Loyal 
 Illinois had meanwhile sent seventy new regiments to the front; a 
 great battle had been gained : the time was ripe and Lincoln was 
 ready. 
 
 Lincoln the Devout was the self-confessed instrument of an ir 
 resistible, overruling power. His religion was neither that of noisy 
 pretence, ever audible to the naked ear, nor of pure formalism, 
 mere pomp and circumstance, signifying nothing. It was a sober, 
 indwelling faith, a silent, introspective veneration. In his coun 
 tenance the gloom of nature, the hardship of early struggles, the 
 agony of unuttered sorrows and remorseless pressure of official 
 care, had chiselled their pathetic furrows. But through them 
 gleamed the light of a dimless sincerity. He was supremely honest. 
 Honesty is the best policy when the amount involved is small but 
 it is the best principle always and everywhere. Lincoln was honest 
 from principle. He was the "honest old Abe" of admiring con 
 temporaries; his was the inarticulate religion of a reverent, contrite 
 soul. 
 
 Lincoln the Martyr, walked in the path which duty had marked 
 for his weary, aching steps, until, from under the assassin s hand, 
 his labor done, his honors gained, Gocl called and crowned him. 
 He had a recompense in bringing to his country more perfect liberty 
 and brighter human hopes. Then his blood mingled with that of 
 scores of thousands of nameless youthful victims to form the price 
 less libation in which the finger of the Almighty baptized mankind 
 to a new birth of freedom immaculate and imperishable. 
 
 O Lincoln of Today, illustrious, immortal ! How superbly 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 129 
 
 he looms, as with long arms folded in statuesque dignity, he calmly 
 fronts the scrutiny of the ages. He is the world s unquenchable 
 prophet of hope, lifted already to such eminence that the aggregated 
 effulgence of all the kings and emperors of earth for a thousand 
 years pales in the luster of his rising fame. 
 
 And Lincoln of the Better Days to Come! He will stand as 
 the embodiment of his time, his transfigured character, like a shin 
 ing sphere of crystal, embosoming the heart and kernel of the cause 
 he typified. And with him the disciples of that sacred cause, the 
 heroic living and the sainted dead, admonish us to assume their 
 task and complete their triumphs. Lincoln will sweep and swing 
 through the chronicles of futurity, and into his grandeur will at last 
 be merged all the service and sacrifice that contributed to make his 
 era conspicuous. He wrought mightily, he toiled terribly, but he 
 was grandly and loyally upheld. Long and lustrous is the battle roll 
 of those who smote and stood and held the hope of unborn mil 
 lions amid the tempests of a thousand flaming fields. From highest 
 to lowest they were soldiers of the flag one in purpose and one 
 in honor. The legacy of their deeds is the priceless possession of 
 America s successive generations. Let it suffice that all the blood 
 and tears and prayers of the bitter contest are fused in Heaven s 
 alembic into one imperishable splendor, and fixed in the zenith of 
 the Republic s deathless diadem. 
 
 If there be any who question the sacredness of Lincoln s cause or 
 the completeness of its triumph, the survivors of that struggle may 
 exultantly leave the decision to time, to God, and to history. Our 
 comrades did not die in vain. All that is best that the twentieth 
 century inherits is the purchase of their blood ; the Grand Army 
 of the Republic and the Loyal Legion are custodians of their stain 
 less memory. An enlightened patriotism in the South will one 
 day grind to tongueless dust the memorials which mistaken zeal is 
 now raising to forgiven error, while the humblest veteran of the 
 Union is hailed as a priest in the temple of freedom, a prince in 
 the kingdom of glory. Shoulder to shoulder, in a later war, our 
 sons marched with the sons of Confederates under the flag \ve 
 mercifully saved for them, and fought for the land we made wonh 
 defending. Side by side their descendants and ours will stand, as 
 they work out the mysteries of the unknowable future, until the 
 purpling borders of their enlarged horizon will be brightened by 
 the smile of Justice as she comes to reign over all the earth, with a 
 bridal circlet on her brow and her feet in the dew of the millennial 
 morning. 
 
130 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Wider visions of demand and opportunity are opening before 
 UF which will bring new vicissitudes and emergencies. From their 
 broadening fields of action the predestined leader will be called. 
 The average American of the twentieth century will be the consum 
 mate flower of Christian civilization. His control of new and 
 complicated physical forces, yielding a vast increment of facilities 
 for production and distribution, suggest necessary augmentations 
 of his outlook and aggrandizement of his enterprise. 
 
 True conservatism is deeply rooted in the eternal verities. But 
 there is a false conservatism, sorely addicted to the dry-rot habit, 
 which believes headache is caused by a fermentation of new ideas 
 in the brain. This conservatism, ultra-refined and over-comfort 
 able, goes into retreat, rout, and preposterous panic when it is pro 
 posed to blaze a pathway into unexplored domains, or even to 
 walk bravely in the footsteps of the mighty dead. The twentieth 
 century American will discard the pessimism that legislates for an 
 open season of misery twelve months in the year, demands a ple 
 biscite of Malays and splits hairs over the consent of the governed. 
 He will ignore the preachers and breeders of disaster who rejoice 
 with retroactive glee in multiplications of woe brambles in the 
 highway, drouth in the field, murrain in the flock, glanders in the 
 stable, rabies in the kennel, famine in the kitchen, pestilence in the 
 chamber, blasphemy in the soul, and hatred in the heart. 
 
 There is abundant ground for faith in a permanent and sover 
 eign force running through all the processes of our national growth 
 that will meet the exigencies of coming years. The optimism of 
 Franklin, the sad, stern hopefulness of Lincoln enfolded this faith 
 as a perpetual benediction. That force will go on, age after age, 
 "building statelier mansions, far beyond our past vision and present 
 thought. It will fashion for the average American type men and 
 women nobler than the world has ever seen, moulding and blending 
 from all sections a cultivated homogenous race; rich, inventive, 
 productive, materialistic beyond the dream of prophet or hope of 
 sage, yet endowed with conscience, morals and spiritual attributes 
 which are the only pledge against decay. 
 
 Into what a vast amphitheater for the exercise of all his powers 
 has the twentieth century been placed by recent world-embracing 
 events how miraculously the sphere has been broadened wherein 
 it is permissible, nay mandatory that man shall die for man ! There 
 are in current tendencies, at home and abroad, ample incentives 
 for the enlargement of every human activity. Since Lincoln died 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 there have been in all civilized nations manifest irresistible move 
 ments toward a concentration of governmental power in the in 
 terest of personal liberty. Governments are stronger but the people 
 are more free. Today there are visible movements for a concen 
 tration of the resources of capital for the advancement of individual 
 prosperity. Pessimism saw no good in the one tendency and sees 
 only evil in the other, but the destiny-thwarter, though voiced 
 like the letting go of air-brakes, has small success against the in 
 evitable. Oppressions and distress accompany such processes, but 
 if benefit does not finally result, all teachings of history are false 
 and maxims of philosophy delusive. 
 
 We can hazard no detailed predictions the kaleidoscope of des 
 tiny shifts with strange and aw r ful suddenness. We can not fore 
 cast policies even for the day after tomorrow. We can rely on 
 the ingrained, salutary conservatism of our progressive people to 
 prevent too rapid advancement, for all the tendencies of our prog 
 ress are beneficent, and God over all reigneth forever. We will 
 advance with safety toward the goal of prosperity and happiness 
 for three hundred millions of twentieth century Americans. 
 
 Who will be the typical American of the twentieth century? 
 We can not tell. We only know that he will not spring from the 
 emasculated and invertebrate classes, cultured beyond the limita 
 tion of their intellect and ashamed of the country where they con 
 descended to be born. And this we steadfastly believe that the 
 examples of Franklin and Lincoln are not lost, nor has the power 
 of reproducing their like from the ranks of its plain average citi 
 zenship, perished in the land they established and regenerated. 
 War, we may hope, is nearly obsolete it has become largely a 
 matter of mechanical skill and finance, modified by woman s new 
 prerogative to register shrill, effective expostulations against ex 
 posure and suffering. But there are perils and problems to be en 
 countered still. 
 
 /Let us banish distrust and eliminate pessimism here in the 
 golden heart of the continent must be the nurturing home of Hope; 
 amid the amplitude and prodigality of this fresh national life there 
 is no room for hideous dolor and highly oxygenated phases of 
 despair. The gifted charlatan whose view is bounded by the roofs 
 of his little college town on the country s Eastern waterfront is 
 too much in evidence in that region. He is profoundly convinced 
 that laws can be framed and constitutions interpreted only by a 
 small circle of Latin experts with impaired digestion. He is shelled 
 
132 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 in a dwarfing, withering isolation. He is still content to pose as a 
 European lay figure, and has only the faintest conception of the real 
 spirit, functions and resources of the Republic. He will profit by 
 a patient search for the star of empire. Here in ths breezy an 1 
 buoyant new Northwest; on her teeming and boundless prairies; 
 by the banks of her amazing rivers; in the midst of her million- 
 acred harvests here can the fullest inspiration of our national mag 
 nificence be caught and assimilated. This favored region of which 
 Franklin never heard and which Lincoln but dimly discerned, is the 
 nursery of high impulse, tireles activity, and unconquerable trust. 
 
 Here is the New England of tomorrow, the Yankee land of 
 the twentieth century. New York may cultivate snobs and inter 
 breed social degenerates to the limit; Boston provincialism may 
 gnaw a file and mumble well-modulated sneers through broken 
 teeth Minneapolis will be the modern Athens; the ultimate Amer 
 ican metropolis will rise and reign resplendent on the shores of 
 Puget sound. Six states of the upper Mississippi valley, lying 
 between the great lakes and the foothills, have all prerequisites of 
 exuberant soil, healthful climate, vigorous physical and intellectual 
 races, to build up the model commonwealths of this free empire 
 and develop the dominating population of the continent. He con 
 quers in peace and war who fights with the north wind at his 
 back. Favorable climatic conditions will here mould a mixture 
 of the globe s premier races into an all-conquering combination of 
 strength, intelligence, and energy. 
 
 The New England of the past is stamped on all the elements of 
 our progress. Its six craggy, sterile, noble states have sent their 
 sons and daughters, their laws, their piety, their tracts, prints, 
 codfish and college yells into the remotest corners of the Union and 
 left them there as abiding, welcome institutions. The New Eng 
 land of the future, with broader gauge and larger resource, will con 
 tinue in unstinted flow the necessary output of masterful, aggres 
 sive, average Americans. 
 
 Franklin, born in Massachusetts, was the original, character 
 istic, legitimate Yankee ; Lincoln, born near the Ohio river, was 
 reviled and lampooned as the Yankee president. The term carries 
 no stigma now, and the sons of the new Northwest will wear 
 their patent of nobility. 
 
 We may confidently leave American of the twentieth century in 
 the hands of her average citizens. When a crisis comes, from 
 their ranks will step out the typical American, with an equipment 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 133 
 
 we can but darkly imagine, to face responsibilities we can not pos 
 sibly foresee. Beyond that we seek not to penetrate the veil. Per 
 haps the enrolling ages will shrivel our annals to a dot on history s 
 page ; fresher splendors may throw our epoch into blank, unbroken 
 shadow; Saxon speech may linger only on the tongues of learned 
 and listless aliens even then the names of Franklin and Lincoln 
 will survive, to make luminous the centuries which gave them birch 
 and preserve the traditions of popular freedom in the majesty of 
 their consecrated character. 
 
 We read in the legends of Scotland that when Robert Bruce 
 passed away, his heart was preserved in a golden urn, which was 
 carried as a standard in the van of her marching hosts. When 
 the focus of a battle was reached the standard was advanced and 
 the charging clansmen lifted their thrilling war cry : "Lead on, 
 great heart of Bruce we come, we come!" 
 
 In the gladder, grander days that lie before us, whether the 
 conflict be in war or peace, the conquering battalions of ultimate 
 America will in like manner invoke inspiration of their thronging 
 pantheon of heroes : "Lead on, exalted spirit of Washington and 
 Greene and Putnam; lead on, sacred memory of Grant and Sher 
 man and Stanton and Logan ; lead on, priceless example of Lawton 
 and Dewey and Davis and McKinley Lead on, great brain of 
 Franklin Lead on, great soul of Lincoln We come! We come! 
 We come! 
 
134 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY SAMUEL R. VAN SANT, GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 12, 1901.) 
 
 I am proud to be a Minnesotan. In our state Lincoln s birih- 
 clay is a holiday forever. In every city, village and hamlet his 
 memory is honored and his praises are sung. I hardly know 
 whether to admire most his marvelous success under adverse cir 
 cumstances, or the value of his services to his country and human 
 ity. Let the youth of the state and nation take courage from his 
 example. No boy or girl so poor as he; yet by close application 
 to his studies and an ever present desire to advance in knowledge, 
 he overcame all obstacles and in the end reached the topmost round 
 in the ladder of fame and became the benefactor of his own, and 
 freed from bondage another, race. 
 
 Lincoln, in the estimation of the old soldier, stands without a 
 peer in all history. No one has accomplished more, no one is more 
 loved by those who fought with Grant in the Wilderness, marched 
 with Sherman to the sea or rode through the Valley of the Shenan- 
 doah with Sheridan. 
 
 Lincoln not only saved the nation, not only freed the slave, 
 but whenever the time comes (and may God speed the day!) when 
 the universal brotherhood of man is established, it will be because 
 Lincoln lived. Our country has ever been rich in great men. Dur 
 ing the Revolutionary struggle Washington was the chosen leader, 
 and has well been termed the father of his country. In the dark 
 days of the Rebellion Lincoln came, and surely he was the savior 
 of the nation as, who can deny, the nation s most able defender was 
 our old commander, U. S. Grant. These Washington, Lincoln, 
 Grant, make a trio of the grandest men that ever lived, and might 
 well be termed "Liberty s Trinity." To my mind Liberty s greatest 
 rnartvr was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 135 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY J. S. MONTGOMERY, D. D., PASTOR FOWLER METHODIST CHURCH, 
 
 MINNEAPOLIS. 
 (Read February 12, 1901.) 
 
 Our country, our harbors, might be filled with ships loaded tor 
 foreign ports, and every city teeming and streaming with commer 
 cial industry, and yet without the exaltation of our good men, our 
 country would be poor indeed. God s greatest gift to our country 
 is the gift of good men, and the next greatest gift to our country 
 is the gift of a great, good man. Peter the Great was the height 
 of Russian civilization; Plato was the height of the Grecian mind 
 and heart. Brave Garibaldi was the height of Italian civilization, 
 Napoleon was the height of French ; Shakespeare, the myriad-mind 
 ed dramatist, and Gladstone, were the height of English ; but when 
 we come to the civilization of the new world, Abraham Lincoln 
 stands at its summit. 
 
 For some reason, I know not why or how, this great character, 
 presents unto me an infinitely holy puzzle, even like that puzzle of 
 the Man of Galilee. But next, I believe, to the One who is God s 
 only son there is not a greater of human flesh than our hero, eman 
 cipator and liberator. A school of hard knocks what poverty, 
 what squalor, what want! Yet, somehow, the infinite mind seems 
 to smile upon this boy when it placed a ladder in the mire of pov 
 erty somehow, the infinite hand seems to lead that American boy 
 to the top of the ladder to fame and of usefulness. 
 
 I recall the memorable moment, that sad, sad hour when Lin 
 coln, on Pidgeon Creek, Indiana, lost the truest friend of mortal 
 man, his mother. Sad hour when that boy, six feet four, clad in 
 homespun jeans came down the little forest trail, out through the 
 opening, and there hewed down a maple tree and cut therefrom 
 four rude boards and put them together. Sad hour when, the next 
 afternoon, the father and the two sons bore the mother to a lonely 
 spot at the foot of a densely wooded hillside. What an hour! 
 What pathos; that handful of mourners; no choir; the world shut 
 out from that scene. Yet God s angels came down upon the in 
 visible spiral stairway, above that holy ladder God s face opened, 
 and a soft, sweet requiem came from heaven and the forest bough. 
 
136 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Can it be from a beginning so poor, so worthy of pity, there 
 will come forth a power so extensive ? Ah, that is one of the God- 
 inspired and heaven-born possibilities to men. 
 
 Often has the ocean taught me a lesson as I looked upon its 
 face. It has taught me the mystery of the measuring line of man s 
 soul. How it flashes and rushes and tumbles and rolls; how it 
 kisses the shore line of every clime ; how it runs up into our largest 
 rivers and far off to our littlest rills; how it piles up icebergs in 
 the Arctic seas, and how it kisses the tropics beneath the Southern 
 sun; how it thrills in its depth, and what a thunder is there when 
 it is stirred. Ah, the measuring line of man s soul! When I 
 think of the great Lincoln he does not belong to this race, to this 
 clime; the privileges and the prophesies to which he gave new 
 impetus were not born upon this continent, but yonder upon far 
 away Galilee s shore and without the walls of old Jerusalem, they 
 were recorded on Calvary s brow and made crimson by the Re 
 deemer s blood. 
 
 Who was it that stayed the steps of Martin Luther; who was 
 it that stirred the angels hiding in the breast of Robert Burns; 
 who struck Milton s lyre? God alone, and I believe that Abraham 
 Lincoln s soul was tuned to the melody of Almighty God. 
 
 Lincoln was as true and genuine and simple as nature itself. He 
 despised only one thing, and that was doing wrong and, under 
 Almighty God, he was to become the leader and giant liberator 
 of his race, and the creator of a new civilization. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln loved his country. He believed in the inde 
 pendence of the states, but he also believed in the interdependence 
 of all the states, and when in that unholy hour brute treason 
 sprang at the throat of fair Columbia, Lincoln was ready, and as 
 he put his ear to the ground he heard the sweet refrain, "We are 
 coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong. " 
 
 In closing, I think of that decade of 1850 to 1860, and see 
 the causes of that struggle. Yonder in Boston, the cradle of lib 
 erty, were federal troops for taking to the Southland the runaway 
 slaves ; there was the Drecl Scott decision, Uncle Tom s Cabin, and 
 the insurrection of John Brown. What a storm was gathering, 
 but on that memorable March day when its fury broke above our 
 nation, great Lincoln was ready, and the country was ready. 
 
 What man did we need in that awful hour? We must not have 
 a stripling, not an untrained man, not a radical man, but we must 
 have a man who will lift his hand in benediction upon all sections 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 137 
 
 of our country; a man whose conscience is the outlet of his rea 
 son; a man who would stand square on the constitution of the 
 United States and find there all that is adequate for our needs. 
 That man was found in Abraham Lincoln. Patriotism stimulated 
 him. 
 
138 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY WILLIAM G. WHITE, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, ST. PAUL. 
 
 (Read February 12, 1901.) 
 
 The one distinguishing feature of Lincoln s life which I 
 think is the controlling one marks him not so much as a typical 
 man as one who was fitted for a special and partcular work, 
 and who is, in that sense, different from the many men who 
 have given America its proud position among the nations of 
 the world. Let me suggest that Abraham Lincoln was an in 
 spired man. He lived and moved under the immediate guid 
 ance and direction of the Almighty. I think his wonderful 
 career and his singular character can be explained and ac 
 counted for in no other way. Men grow. The great men of 
 the world, its heroes, its statesmen and its martyrs are very 
 largely the result of circumstances which environ them. But 
 now and then in some great crisis of the world s history the 
 great Commander-in-Chief of the universe lays his hand upon 
 some man, and he breathes into him just enough of the divine 
 to lift him a little above his fellows, and he uses him to accom 
 plish the purposes and fulfill the divine mission. Such a man 
 as that was Abraham Lincoln. I have never doubted that he 
 was as truly inspired to do his marvelous work for his country 
 as was any prophet, priest or king to whom history or revela 
 tion makes any reference. . Just as Abraham of old was led 
 from the land of his fathers to a new and a better land that 
 should be for him and his children forever, so was our Abra 
 ham led from that rude, humble home on the frontier to the 
 Nation s home at Washington, that this land which we love 
 might be for us and for our children forever, and that this gov 
 ernment of the people, for the people and by the people might 
 never perish from the earth. I think that the reading of his 
 tory will carry with it the conviction that the great General of 
 all has always his hands upon the affairs of this world and holds 
 the guiding star of its progress, and its hope and its joy forever. 
 
 The glittering aphorism so often attributed to Napoleon, 
 which is really much older than he, that God always fights on 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 139 
 
 the side of the strongest battalion, is as false in fact as it is in 
 principle. I believe He fought on the side of the Greeks at 
 Marathon, and saved civilization from being swallowed up ; I 
 believe it was His word that raised the storm that swept the 
 Spanish Armada to destruction and ruin, and saved the world 
 from being dominated by Spanish superstition and ignorance; 
 I believe that he was with those men from Minnesota who 
 stood so nobly with Thomas at Chickamauga while the waves 
 of battle raged round and about them, but never over them, 
 and whose bravery can never be too highly sung, and with 
 those other Minnesota men on that awful day at Gettysburg 
 who held back the full tide of the Rebellion, and whose devo 
 tion will be a priceless legacy to their children and to their 
 children s children forever. It may be that for any good cause 
 there comes a Fort Sumter in the beginning, perhaps there 
 may even come a Fredricksburg or Chancellorsville ; but Ap- 
 pomattox and Victory are written in the end for every right 
 eous cause as surely as there is a God in heaven. 
 
 It was no accident that Abraham Lincoln was raised under 
 those humble surroundings. It was a part of the plan of God. 
 He was intended to do a special work. He was fitted and 
 trained and prepared for it. He was guided and directed in the 
 day of it, and in the full tide he was taken home that there 
 might be neither spot nor stain upon the fullness of its per 
 fection. Men would have chosen a Seward, a Chase, perhaps a 
 Sumner, or a Stanton, but the One whose ways are not our 
 ways thought otherwise. So this is to me a distinct character 
 istic of Lincoln s life and character, and I believe that his work 
 was not only not done, but that it never could have been done 
 without the immediate direction, intervention and control of 
 the Almighty. 
 
140 T.INCOT-N MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY M. D. GROVER, ATTORN EY-AT-L AW, ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 12, 1902.) 
 
 In 1809, on the 12th day of February, over 70,000 babies 
 were born in the world. I have heard of but two of them : 
 One was Abraham Lincoln, and the other was Charles Dar 
 win. The rest of all those thousands lived and died in their 
 own way, leaving no memory behind save the memory inspired 
 by loving friends and acquaintances; and we would not know 
 that they ever lived if we did not now and then go to some old 
 country graveyard and see a name on a stone, discolored by 
 the sunshine and the rain of the seasons, and perhaps under 
 the name a quaint epitaph to draw a tear or excite a smile. 
 Now I remember one such epitaph that brings to mind that 
 Dr. Hayward once lived, and it was this : "Here lie the re 
 mains of Dr. Hayward who lived seventy years and never 
 voted, and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." And this one 
 by Edward Jones: "She lived with her husband fifty years, 
 and died in the hopes of a better life." And another: "She 
 was a virtuous woman, and she sang in the choir, but she died 
 with cholera morbus from eating green fruit in the blessed 
 hope of a glorious immortality." And there is one in Connec 
 ticut of Solomon Pease: 
 
 "Under this sod, neath these trees, 
 Lieth the body of Solomon Pease. 
 He is not in this grave, it is only his pod; 
 He shelled out his soul, and it went up to God." 
 
 And so but for the epitaphs you and I would not know, and 
 the world would hardly know, one of the 70,000 born on that 
 day. 
 
 AVe know Lincoln because in the performance of his duty 
 he did more than any other living man to preserve this repub 
 lic. I am not here to deliver a eulogy on Lincoln; his life and 
 character have been pictured in words more beautiful than I 
 can utter, but to talk with you for a little while as to what 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES. Ill 
 
 the war meant, and what has been the result to you and to me, 
 and to the country, and what he did with the help of the gen 
 erals and the soldiers and the loyal people of the country. 
 
 Lincoln was a very patient man. First, when the rebel rep 
 resentatives went to the courts of France and England, and, 
 without communication with our government and waiting for 
 its representatives the belligerency of the South was recog 
 nized, Seward, secretary of state, resented it, and wrote a let 
 ter to send to Russell, the British minister, which, had he sent 
 it, would have made w r ar, because it would have led to the rec 
 ognition by England of the Southern Confederacy. I invite 
 your attention sometime when you look at history to find that 
 letter, and see what Lincoln struck out, and what he put in, 
 and how he moulded it to meet the situation, and how, instead 
 of war, it made peace for the time, and stopped the recognition 
 which was so imminent. 
 
 When the old Merrimac hulk was saved, and the Rebels 
 put a powerful steam engine into it, and sheeted "it with iron 
 rails, and made it the strongest ship afloat, Mr. Bushnell, of 
 Bridgeport, Connecticut, appreciated the danger to the coun 
 try and to our commerce; so when that one boat entered the 
 Potomac and McClellan dared not move his transports, Mr. 
 Bushnell drafted a vessel to meet it. He was asked to submit 
 his p 1 an to John Ericcson, the great inventor, and Ericcson 
 said it was not good, but that he had on the shelf a plan of a 
 little monitor, the fighting ship of the earth, if it could only be 
 built and put afloat. Bushnell took it and showed it to Gideon 
 Welles, Secretary of the Navy. He turned it down. Through 
 the influence of Winslow, who believed in Ericcson, he was in 
 troduced to Lincoln with the plan. A tired and weary man got 
 up from bed at night to meet them, and the next day he made 
 an appointment with the Naval Board, where Welles was, and 
 when his bright mind comprehended it he said, "Gentlemen, 
 there is something in it," as the Chicago girl said when she 
 put her foot in her shoe. 
 
 His act and his influence led to the adoption of the plan and 
 encouraged it although I ought to say that the Naval Board 
 would not contract to purchase the ship until it was guaran 
 teed to float and to fight ; and it was built with money ad 
 vanced by Bushnell and Winslow and John A. Griswold, and 
 when it was launched it floated, and it sailed around the water 
 to Fortress Monroe and met the Merrimac on the 9th of March, 
 
142 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 beat it in the battle, and revolutionized the navies of the world. 
 That act and influence of Lincoln alone, in building that boat, 
 saved the recognition of the Confederacy by England and 
 France, and in the end was one controlling thing that saved 
 the Union. 
 
 Later on, after the battle of Chancellorsville, when Lee 
 and his army moved north, Hooker wanted to go to Richmond 
 and strike Fredericksburg again crossing at Fredericksburg. 
 Lincoln vetoed it. He said, "Lee is coming north and the army 
 will follow him. To divide your army and put part of it 
 across the river is like placing an ox on the top rail of a fence; 
 he can neither go one way nor kick the other." 
 
 Lincoln had a great heart. I remember the story which a 
 gentleman told me years ago like this: The only son of wealthy 
 parents in New York a wayward boy, enlisted. He grew 
 tired of his enlistment, violated the rules, sought to escape and 
 was arrested. He thought he would bribe the guard by giving 
 them morphine, but the party employed made a mistake and 
 they got strychnine and killed the guard, and the boy was sen 
 tenced to be shot. The man who told me the story was a mem 
 ber of Congress from New York, and the father and mother 
 appealed to him to save the son from death. He knew Stanton 
 and he called on him. Stanton turned him out of his office and 
 said, "You come here to appeal to me solely because of our 
 friendly relations, and to induce me to disregard my duties, for 
 the rules and the laws must be enforced." He went back to 
 New York and reported that he could not succeed, that there 
 was no hope. But, being urged by the loving father and moth 
 er to renewed efforts, and the suggestion being made that the 
 young man was insane, and armed with the affidavit of Dr. 
 Willard and Dr. Gray he went back to Washington. On the 
 night before the execution, which was appointed for the mor 
 row, with Senator Harris and some of his friends he went to 
 the White House, and Lincoln, worn and tired got out of bed 
 and, with uncombed hair, and in bare feet and slippers, came 
 down to meet them. He read the affidavits, and he knew Dr. 
 Willard and he knew Dr. Gray, and he called his secretary and 
 sent a telegram reprieving the boy for the present until an ex 
 amination could be made. And now, when he signed that 
 order he put out his hand and stopped the march of death ; and 
 he told Senator Harris and his friends, "Don t let Stanton know 
 what I have done, for I need him, and after all, gentlemen, 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 143 
 
 I have but little influence in this administration." And later 
 on, when Grant came to take command of the army, and 
 Stanton wanted to know -his plan, Grant said, "I will give my 
 plans when the commander-in-chief requests it." Still Stanton 
 said, "General, what is your plan?" and Grant says, "It is to 
 get to the rebels; march until I find rebels, and fight and 
 whip them." Stanton said that would not do, they ought to 
 know definitely that Washington must *be protected. Lin 
 coln, with his great hard common-sense said, "Stanton, you 
 and I have been trying to run this t^ing for several years and 
 we have made a failure of the army of the Potomac, we have 
 got Mr. Grant here, and we will let Grant run it." And they 
 did. Again in the critical and crucial tests the rare good sense 
 and sagacity of Lincoln saved us from ruin and accomplished 
 that, with the aid of the armies in the field, which gives us 
 what we have today. 
 
 Now all world s wars have had their decisive battle. Get 
 tysburg was the decisive battle of the Civil War because it 
 it saved the Union and saved free institutions. Why I re 
 member, as I have read of the battle and the history of the 
 battle many times I remember the occurrence of events, 
 slight in themselves, which saved the battle and won the 
 victory. When we think for a moment that the actual salva 
 tion of this country and the winning of the war depended on 
 that battle that, through secret contracts with Napoleon of 
 France, five ships were being built for the rebels in the ports 
 of Bordeaux and Marseilles, and that Napoleon was in close 
 negotiations with them, and that the Cabinet of England was 
 looking to the recognition of the Confederacy when we re 
 member the reaction that followed the proclamation of 
 freedom which went into effect on the first day of January, 
 the humiliation of the defeat of the army of the Potomac, 
 we have brought to our minds the crucial test of that hour. 
 Hooker was removed on the 2t8h of June. Meade succeeded 
 him, knowing- nothing of the location of the army. And what 
 saved that battle? Without going into detail it was Gen 
 eral Pleasanton sending Buford s cavalry in front of his in 
 fantry, going two miles in front of Gettysburg where the 
 roads from Chambersburg and York come together, and, with 
 his cavalry and their guns, resisting the approach towards 
 Gettysburg for over two hours until the first corps arrived 
 
144: LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 to defend it and then only four thousand of the first corps. 
 Then the placing of Sickles line too far out from the line 
 of the ridge at Gettysburg, the break between his line and 
 Hancock s left; the fact that we didn t possess Round Top. 
 Why, there is no doubt in the mind of men who have stu 
 died it, that the charge of the old First Minnesota Regi 
 ment, under the direction of Hancock, staying the rebels for 
 fifteen or twenty minutes until he could reform his line, saved 
 the battle of Gettysburg. Hancock charged into the line which 
 enfiladed it for a mile. General Warren went on to Round 
 Top to establish a signal station, saw the rebels approaching 
 it, rushed down the hill, found the division of Syke s corps, 
 the old fifth army corps in reach, and took a brigade and led 
 it on to Round Top and saved it, and saved the battle of Get 
 tysburg. Lee walked before his tent and said, "O God, for 
 one hour of Stonewall Jackson." Read the accounts of the 
 war and of the battle. There is no Union officer connected 
 with it who does not admit, that had Longstreet made the 
 attack at any time prior to two o clock of that day, the left 
 wing of our army would have been crushed, and we would 
 have lost the battle of Gettysburg. 
 
 I remember the Fourth of July of that year. I had a 
 chance to go to Rutland, the county seat, about twenty-five 
 miles from my home, to attend the Fourth of July celebra 
 tion. I started out the day before and went as far as West 
 Wallingford and I stayed there all night with a friend, Mr. 
 Nicholson and his family, then we went to Rutland. It was 
 a rainy, dark, dreary morning; we knew that the boys were 
 fighting at Gettysburg and the wires were down. We gath 
 ered solemnly in the great town hall and ate the little din 
 ner which the ladies of the town provided; Senator Foote 
 was there to make an address, and General Cameron was 
 there to make an address, and Sullivan s band; but there was 
 silence as dead as a funeral. I remember about two o clock 
 that afternoon when Col. Joyce came in and mounted the table 
 and announced that Pickett had been beaten in his assault, 
 and that we had won the battle of Gettysburg. Men threw 
 up their hats, they took off their coats and vests, they hugged 
 and kissed each other and cried for joy; and I remember, 
 too, that when we went away with the news of that battle, 
 we knew that Grant was before Vicksburg, and it was agreed 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES. 14-5 
 
 that if Grant won Vicksburg, one hundred guns should be fired 
 to tell the news down the valley of Otter Creek. We drove 
 home that night happy over the victory at Gettysburg; and 
 there were Mr. Nicholson and his wife ("Mother Nick" we 
 called her, for she was a mother), blessed woman; and there 
 was her daughter Aggie and Aggie s little boy David, whose father 
 was in Stannard s brigade at Gettysburg. We sat on the front 
 steps and visited quietly and solemnly and fell to wondering 
 whether the baby was an orphan and whether Aggie was a 
 widow 7 . About eleven o clock that night we heard the first 
 gun boom, and \ve sat there until we counted a hundred 
 guns and knew that Vicksburg had surrendered. They had 
 a little organ and I could play a tune on it, and we all went 
 into the parlor and I played "Victory," and Mother Nick and 
 Aggie and Nicholson sang it, and kissed the baby, and we 
 went to bed, waiting for the morrow, and for news to know 
 whether Aggie was a widow or not. But she was not a 
 widow. 
 
 I remember also how the boys used to go to war. Now 
 there was one boy in the town named Charlie Edgerton, a 
 bright, handsome brave boy, an only son, and he enlisted. And 
 Mary Reed loved him, and he loved Mary; and when he went 
 to take the train after he had been mustered in, he went away 
 with the handshake of his friends and his mates; he went away 
 in the midst of tears; he went away with a father s blessing 
 and a mother s benediction, and the kiss of love the last he 
 ever received from Mary on his lips. And then there was 
 Joe Gilbert. Now, to show you the difference between the 
 scenes of those days Joe went home for a day or two be 
 fore it was time for him to go, and he had a good suit of 
 clothes, the best he ever had. And when the orderly came 
 around and told him he must report to his company, for they 
 were going to the front, he put on his hat and lit his pipe. 
 His mother said, "Joe, won t you pick me up a basket of chips 
 before you go," but the old man said, "Don t you do it, Joe, 
 let her pick up her own chips, I ve always done it." Charlie 
 did not come back, Joe did come back. Charlie died from 
 pneumonia. The s^ood neighbors, from patriotism, and be 
 cause he deserves it, on Decoration Day put flowers on Joe s 
 grave. Nobody knows where Charlie s grave is; it is on a 
 hill somewhere around Cedar Mountain, and I imagine that 
 
146 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 the flowers of spring grow on it, or near his grave, for nature 
 and God take care of it. 
 
 After we won the battle of Gettysburg there was an end 
 of any danger from foreign recognition of the Confederacy. 
 Appomattox was in sight. The road to it was by the way 
 of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, a 
 road of blood, and with Sherman to the sea; but it came. 
 And now here was the issue, a struggle with us between 
 North and South not a mere struggle between contending 
 factions for political rule, like France and Germany not a bit; 
 a struggle to destroy a fundamental principle of our govern 
 ment equality before the law; a struggle to uphold an aristo 
 cracy asserting to itself power which cannot exist in free in 
 stitutions and is contrary to sound morals; asserting to itself 
 a power that denied men the right to follow God s sunshine 
 around the earth ; asserting a power that closed the Missis 
 sippi; asserting a power that would have dominated the 
 country, for Abraham Lincoln never said a thing more wise 
 than when he quoted, "A house divided against itself can 
 not stand." 
 
 It is said that Providence elected Lincoln. Politics nom 
 inated and elected him, with the help of Horace Greeley. Lin 
 coln was a man of acute political sense and sagacity. In the 
 debate with Douglas in 1858, when the great pivotal question 
 was "Freedom or Slavery" the South claiming that slaves 
 were property, and that the owner had the right to take them 
 anywhere in the Union ; the Republican party claiming that 
 it was the duty of Congress to keep it out of the territories; 
 and Douglas that it was for the people of a territory to de 
 cide Lincoln formulated this question to submit to Douglas. 
 Lincoln s friends said "Don t do it, he will answer you adroitly 
 and he will defeat you." Lincoln said, "He may, but if he 
 does, the interests of our country are at stake, and it will de 
 feat him for the presidency." So he put the question: "May 
 the people of a territory by lawful means, against the wish of 
 any other citizen, before the adoption of a state constitution, 
 exclude slavery from a territory?" Mr. Douglas said, "Wheth 
 er slaves shall exist in a territory or not is for the territory 
 to determine for itself: it is a creature of law and cannot 
 exist except in places where the law upholds it." That went 
 through the country. That was called the Freeport Heresy. 
 When Lincoln started to make the speech at Freeport Douglas 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 147 
 
 had made a magnificent address. Lincoln felt the force of 
 it. He took off his coat when it came his turn to speak and he 
 put it in the hands of Judd who was beside him, and said, 
 "judd, you hold this for a few minutes while I proceed to 
 stone Douglas." 
 
 That 1 reeport speech, that Freeport heresy divided the 
 Democratic party. The South would not have it, the con 
 vention split; Breckenridge was nominated by one faction and 
 he carried eleven states, Douglas by the other, and he car 
 ried one state, Missouri. Bell and Everett, a couple of old 
 Whigs, nominated by a body of men who thought you could 
 compromise between loyalty and treason and between right 
 and wrong, had three states. Lincoln had 1,800,000 votes; 
 Douglas had 1,300,000, and that 1,300,000 that went for Doug 
 las shouldered muskets to fight by the side of the Republicans 
 for the Union; but if the South had not been divided, if 
 Abraham Lincoln had not put that question as he did, and 
 Douglas had not answered it as he did, Abraham Lincoln 
 never would have been president of the United States. These 
 things are interesting to know and to think about in these 
 gatherings. 
 
 Now what did it do, what was the result? Why, when 
 Lee surrendered at Appomattox the flag of our country was 
 hidden from the sunshine a part of every twenty-four hours. 
 Now when the sun s rays leave it in the harbor of Portland 
 they greet it in the harbor of Manila Bay. When the war 
 broke out there were three parties in the South, the slave 
 owner, the slave, and the poor white man whose condition 
 was worse than the slave s. They could not work because 
 they could get nothing to do; if they were to raise a bit of 
 cotton it was found full of cottonseed, for they had no cot 
 ton-gins, and that was presumptive proof of larceny. Well, 
 it is not so today. Time has worked slowly, but the great 
 work has gone on, and if you will go down through the 
 South today you will see how, under the rule of a free gov 
 ernment and the operation of the constitution and the laws 
 the little streams are being chained to wheels of manufact 
 uring skill and industry, how furnace fires are kindling; all 
 along on the railroad stations are little cotton-gins where the 
 poor man takes his cotton, has the seed taken out of it, has 
 it baled and gets his money for it. How much better the 
 girls are dressed; how much happier the homes are; how the 
 
148 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 schools are growing up ! Go down there and you will get some 
 conception of what the war meant, of what Lincoln did, and 
 of what Gettysburg saved. 
 
 But it is not alone in the South that our country and its mar 
 velous growth suggest to us consideration and the memory 
 of those days. Why, tonight, American-made locomotives are 
 whistling by the pyramids of Egypt. Today American loco 
 motives are run on the railways of India and carrying people 
 rushing by the sacred waters of the Ganges. Three years 
 ago there were but three American locomotives in the whole 
 British Islands; today there are locomotives of American make 
 on every good road. Everywhere throughout Europe he who 
 wants to buy the best tools looks to see if there is the stamp, 
 "Made in America." Why, they even make British plum pud 
 dings in Delaware. Bread is made in Palestine from flour 
 made in Minneapolis, and the gardens of Palestine are today 
 watered with waters pumped from the Jordan by American 
 pumps. Our sewing machines are everywhere, and our type 
 writers are used in every language. We are not only the 
 supreme cotton producers in the world, but are getting to be 
 the great cotton manufacturers of the world. In 1870, five 
 years after the close of the war, we only made one-seventh of 
 the textile fabrics of Great Britain, one-fifth of France, one- 
 half of Germany. Today we make as much as Great Britain 
 alone, and as much as France and Germany together one- 
 third the manufactured products of the world. Away off in 
 the land of the remote people of Corea, within the last month, 
 there was a celebration upon the building of an electric tram 
 way by a contractor from San Francisco with materials made 
 in America, to be operated by American motoneers. Down on 
 a little river in Connecticut there are great ships being built, 
 the largest of the earth, which, before you meet again, will 
 sail around the cape and be upon the Pacific, and carrying 
 American products to the Orient, and bringing Oriental prod 
 ucts back. What the war meant was saving the Union; what 
 saving the Union meant was establishing free institutions 
 where all men could stand equal before the law, and where 
 men of grenins and of power and of great commercial sense 
 and activity could do what has been done in building rail 
 ways and public institutions and the great industrial activities 
 of the age. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 140 
 
 And now that the war is over and slavery is gone, and the 
 Union is saved, we can look back and see how helpful even 
 the humblest private soldier was, but the grandest figure of 
 that time, the one prominent figure, the one who is recognized 
 and will be for all time as the indispensable figure, was the 
 one man of the 70,000 born in 1809 on the twelfth day of 
 Februarv, whom we call Abraham Lincoln. 
 
150 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY CAPT. EDWIN E. WOODMAN, U. S. VOLS. 
 (Read February 12, 1902.) 
 
 Great characters appeal to us variously, because we our 
 selves differ. I think we may agree that some of them ap 
 peal to us chiefly through the intellect, like Newton, and 
 Bacon; others through the imagination, like King Arthur, and 
 Richard of the Lion Heart; and yet others through the feel 
 ings, as Lady Jane Gray and Marie Antoinette; and a few, 
 combining in degree these several elements of spiritual power 
 over us, compel our love as well as our admiration. For me 
 Lincoln stands in this last choice company. 
 
 If we consider his abilities and life work, he was a man 
 of extraordinary powers, unselfishly devoted to the noblest 
 ends. Without scholastic education, self-taught in youth out 
 of half a dozen books the Bible, Shakespeare, Aesop, Bun- 
 yan, a grammar, an arithmetic with these he put a cutting 
 edge and an incisive point on an intellect of the finest natural 
 quality and temper a mind which he himself compared to 
 steel, in that it was very hard to scratch anything on it, and 
 almost impossible to rub that thing out again. I think the 
 word that most fitly comprehends his abilities is the word 
 "genuis," used in its original sense as signifying the divine 
 element in his individuality; for if we take into account this 
 lack of early training, we are at a loss, except upon the theory 
 of very unusual natural endowments, to explain how he could 
 exert so great skill in so many aptitudes which singly are suf 
 ficient to raise less gifted men to distinction. Yet we do not 
 speak of his versatility, for he exercised his powers so strong 
 ly in every direction that the word would be trivial if applied 
 to him. To speak of Lincoln as statesman, is to suggest one 
 of the great men that were in him. 
 
 His refined taste, which led to the production of oratory 
 and literature of permanent value, was not formed on these 
 few great models that he knew, but rather was innate, a nat 
 ural gift and grace of mind, more strikingly manifested in his 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 151 
 
 first political composition, written at the age of twenty-three, 
 than in the Gettysburg address, even though the latter has 
 deservedly been put into bronze and marble, and lives in many 
 hearts; because few men of twenty-three can match the purity 
 and precision of that first effort, even if they have the wisdom 
 to say anything important on public questions. Indeed, he 
 is a striking exemplar of the truth that the first need of the 
 speaker or the writer is something to say, that substance must 
 precede form and will fitly clothe itself. For he never spoke 
 without meaning or significance, and his mind was so filled 
 with serious objects and benevolent purposes, thoroughly 
 considered, that his thoughts flowed in words limpid as the 
 waters of a crystal spring. We have had few orators who 
 could put their feelings into words and make them felt again 
 by others, as Lincoln could, and this is the highest achieve 
 ment in oratory. 
 
 He had, too, in very large measure, the sense of humor 
 which is so distinctively an American trait and mark of sanity. 
 A witticism is an instantaneous judgment; comprehension of 
 an incongruity is a somewhat slower, but still a rapid con 
 clusion of reasoning. Lincoln was strong in both, and happy, 
 as we know, in parrying the thrust of a specious opponent, or 
 turning aside the unreasonable request of a visiting delegation 
 by an anecdote of something that occurred among the farm 
 ers of Illinois. The latest authenticated instance of this that 
 has come to me, tells of a deputation of gentlemen who called 
 with a request that a proclamation of emancipation should be 
 immediately issued. He explained to them that the time was 
 not ripe to make it effective, that if he were to do it then it 
 must necessarily have largely the character of the celebrated 
 Bull against the Comet. Then continuing he said, "Now, by 
 way of illustration, how many legs will a sheep have if you 
 call the tail a leg?" and of course they all said five. "No,", he 
 said, "you are mistaken, calling the tail a leg will not make 
 it so." Then the deputation withdrew in good humor, dis 
 comfited it is true, but still convinced that to write on a 
 sheet of paper "All slaves are henceforth forever free," and 
 calling that emancipation, would not of itself free a single 
 slave. I like to think of his story telling, that it was his teach 
 ing by parables, for which he had the most illustrious author 
 ity. 
 
 We love him for the gentle spirit with which he met such 
 
152 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 trials; for the kindness of heart which he displayed in his 
 domestic and social relations, and in all those public functions 
 in which he came in touch with the people, of which there are 
 a thousand incidents; for "knowing what a gentleman is like 
 inside," as he once expressed it, and for having such a soul 
 himself; for the simplicity of his manners, so that while he 
 sat on a level with kings, his life was still visibly rooted in 
 the loam of the prairie, like our own. These human graces 
 show the natural man to be of the same clay with friends and 
 neighbors whom we love for the same qualities, and thus they 
 bring him within the embrace of our affections. These humble 
 traits endear him. They are like that tender touch in the de 
 scription of the Master, that so brings home to our hearts his 
 humanity and brotherhood, where it is said that "in all things 
 he was tempted like as we are." 
 
 But there is another side, the noblest aspect of this great 
 man, in which shines his distinguishing trait of righteousness. 
 It is this which gives him rank among the heroes of the ages. 
 It was he who first saw and proclaimed and denounced the 
 conspiracy to make slavery national. Throughout his career 
 in national politics he subjected every adversary and every 
 measure to the test of righteousness. For the finest example 
 of this kind of heroism we must indeed turn to religious his 
 tory. In the old literature of the Hebrews the prophets are 
 represented as speaking by authority of Jehovah. Isaiah said 
 to Israel : "You hew down a cedar, and out of part of it you 
 make a fire and warm yourselves, with another part you roast 
 your meat, and out of the rest you make a God, a graven 
 image, and fall down and worship it. They that make a 
 graven image are all of them vanity, saveth the Lord." And 
 the Lord did say it, speaking through the most available in 
 strument, the most Godlike man of the time and place. So 
 Lincoln, like exaltation in effect cried aloud again and again, 
 "No man has the moral right to be indifferent as to whether 
 slavery is voted up or voted down; slavery is wrong"; and he 
 too might have added, "Thus sayeth the Lord," for he was 
 the Lord s annointed to lead us from our sin. Again he dis 
 played the same prophetic power and spirit in the stirring use 
 he made of his paraphrase of the text, "A house divided against 
 itself cannot stand," namely: "I believe this government can 
 not endure permanently half slave and half free." No one 
 else ever stated the radical nature of the controversy so terse- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 153 
 
 ly and so clearly. By frequent reiteration of it, and exposi 
 tion of the historical grounds of it, he convinced the people 
 of the entire country, the South as well as the North, that 
 this end of compromises and expediences had come; that 
 future efforts to deal with slavery as, at the same time, both 
 right and wrong in the same country, were futiie. I believe 
 that this utterance precipitated the war, though that was 
 furthest from his intention; that it was truly a prophetic utter 
 ance, in the biblical sense ; that it emanated from "a Power 
 not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." 
 
 And perhaps the most striking trait in the character of Lin 
 coln was his profound sense of dependence on this Power. 
 His speeches and state papers abound in passages which show 
 that his unwavering belief in the successful outcome of the 
 war struggle was based on his faith that God, and not man, 
 was guiding it. He held his office reverently, as servant of 
 the Most High ; as agent to do the will of God, as he might 
 be able to apprehend it; to do the right as God gave him to 
 see the right. From the first he conceived that the issue of 
 the struggle depended on the Divine interposition and favor; 
 he never doubted that a just God would bring it to a rightful 
 end. 
 
 His whole attitude towards the momentous crisis was 
 Hebraic and prophetic. In a short speech at Trenton, when 
 on his way to Washington to take office, after telling of the 
 deep impression made on his youthful mind by an account 
 of the battle of Trenton, and how he was thus early con 
 vinced that those old heroes fought for something of great 
 value, he said : "I shall be most happy, indeed, if I shall be a 
 humble instrument in the hand of the Almighty, and of this 
 His almost chosen people, for perpetuating .,the object of 
 the Revolutionary struggle." And because he died in the hour 
 that the Union was saved, we feel that his aspiration involved 
 that crucifixion, that pathetic sacrifice. 
 
 And so from these thoughts, and other like thoughts, the 
 conviction has come to me, that never, since the Carpenter s 
 Son taught charity and the simply sweet religion of love along 
 the waters of Galilee, has any man been so signalized; so 
 clearly set apart, commissioned, empowered and inspired to 
 carry forward the beneficent designs of the Almighty, as was 
 true of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
154 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY CYRUS NORTHROP, PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 12, 1903.) 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt was born amid comparative affluence, and 
 he had the grandest opportunities for gaining the highest educa 
 tion, and fitting himself for the discharge of the most responsible 
 duties in public life and it is to his enduring credit that he so im 
 proved these great opportunties as to make himself the warrior, 
 the scholar, the writer and the statesman that he is. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln was born in a Kentucky cabin, of the 
 poorest kind of Virginia ancestors. He had no opportunities for 
 an education a poor white motherless at the age of nine, with 
 nobody on earth to care for him or help him, except a totally illit 
 erate father. And he, from such a beginning, rose to be the choice 
 of the American people for president in the very crisis of the 
 nation s life. 
 
 Why linger over the events of his life? You know how his 
 days were passed from the time that he stood by his mother s grave 
 until he emerged into a certain degree of publicity. You know 
 the occupations that he was engaged in none of them of any 
 special importance or dignity; rail-splitting, storekeeping, boating, 
 surveying anything that would give him support. The only in 
 spiration to his life in all these years was the whispering of that 
 ever to be revereH stepmother, calling upon him to study and to 
 read as he could, and the words that she whispered into the for 
 lorn boy s heart brought fruit, and the uncultivated boy rose gradu 
 ally in intellect. After a while he is elected a member of the Illinois 
 legislature, though that does not convey any idea of the ability of 
 the man at that time. A little later he is elected a member of con 
 gress. He served one term, from 47 to 49, and, as the record 
 shows, he gained no distinction. Why should he? There was 
 nothing for Abraham Lincoln to gain distinction about in 47 and 
 49. But he voted as his conscience dictated ; he voted for the 
 Wilmont Proviso excluding slavery from the. territories. He 
 voted for receiving anti-slavery petitions into an American con 
 gress with the entire South sitting there and protesting against it. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 155 
 
 He voted for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of 
 Columbia, and he stood resolute and hrm against the Mexican War. 
 In all these things he was in advance of his constituents; and as 
 a matter of course he was not re-elected. He retired from con 
 gress; he lost his interest in politics, if he ever had any special in 
 terest, and for a considerable time devoted himself exclusively to 
 the practice of law, having, after a somewhat dilatory study of 
 that branch of learning been admitted to the bar when he was 
 twenty-nine years of age, and in a few years he gained the posi 
 tion of leading member of the bar of Springfield, the capital of Illi 
 nois. 
 
 It was the time of compromises; when the men that repre 
 sented the country in the city of Washington in congress were try 
 ing to patch up agreements by which it might be possible for the 
 country to live safely, one-half slave and one-half free. Clay was 
 using all his marvelous eloquence and his wonderful powers of per 
 suasion in favor of his Omnibus bill by which the slavery ques 
 tion might be settled forever. John C. Calhoun, that man with 
 an iron grasp of logic, was using all his logic in favor of the idea 
 of a confederacy of which the states were almost independent parts, 
 instead of a nation to which the states were subordinate, and Daniel 
 Webster, that majestic intellect of New England, was making 
 Seventh-of-March speeches, thus losing the support of the North 
 and not gaining the support of the South, while he fondly hoped 
 still in his old age that he should become president of the United 
 States. Whigs and Democrats throughout the country were vying 
 with each other to see which could be most abjectly subservient to 
 the slave power. When the Omnibus bill was passed, it really 
 seemed as if the slavery question were settled forever as if, by 
 comrnqn consent, no occasion for disagreement would be permitted 
 to arise. 
 
 But how r things change in this world in a short time ! How 
 the actors that stand so conspicuously before an admiring world 
 disappear! Calhoun, Clay, Webster the three great giants of 
 the senate, one after another, in the order named, died between 
 the spring of 1850 and the autumn of 1852, and all the measures 
 that they had provided for the maintenance of peace in the country 
 endured but two years, when again the heavens were red and 
 the earth on fire with a most tremendous explosion of slavery, 
 the slavery of Vesuvius. Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, urged 
 thereto by Archibald Dixon, of Kentucky, introduced into con 
 gress that memorable and detestable bill the Kansas and Nebraska 
 
156 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 bill which, having been passed by congress, and having been ap 
 proved by President Pierce, removed every barrier in the terri 
 tories between freedom and slavery, and made it possible for a 
 slave-holder to go with his slaves wherever he pleased and hold 
 them, and at the same time made it possible for immigrants organ 
 ized for the purpose from any state, to go into a new territory and 
 fix forever the character of that territory when it should become a 
 state. There was, following that measure, such an uprising in the 
 North as the half century before had never known an uprising 
 that was hardly surpassed by that which took place seven years 
 later when Fort Sumter was fired upon. Politics had been mean 
 ing nothing but a decision as to which party should dispose of the 
 spoils. Here was lifted up before the American people and made 
 a part of their future life a question which touched the moral and 
 religious sentiment of the North as nothing had ever touched it; 
 and men who had cared nothing for politics while the only chance 
 of success lay in subserviency to the South, men who had not been 
 willing to co-operate with the abolitionists because they were re 
 gardless alike of the constitution and laws in their violence of 
 speech, men who now saw the danger that threatened the country 
 came forth from their retirement and from the occupations that had 
 busied their lives and joined hands one with another in a deter 
 mination that the evil that sooted the great name of this republic 
 had gone far enough, and, God helping them, it should go no 
 further; and among the brave spirits whom the great crisis called 
 forth and once more placed in publicity as a political leader, was 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 He had cared nothing about politics while politics meant noth 
 ing but a dispostion of the spoils. He had never forgotten that 
 early visit to New Orleans and the sight there witnessed of men, 
 women, and children sold and separated, and without regard to af 
 fections, interests of relationship, just as if they were cattle, and with 
 as little regard for them as if they had been cattle. The scene that 
 he had there witnessed, and which had stirred in his heart a deter 
 mination to put down that institution if ever the opportunity came, 
 was what made the new Abraham Lincoln that came to the front 
 in Illinois as a leader in the senatorial fight with Douglas a very dif 
 ferent man fr^m the Lincoln who went to congress in 47. 
 
 If there we^e no sorrow in the world there would be no need of 
 sympathy; if there were no poisons we should not need any anti 
 dotes; if there were no wrongs and oppressions, heroic self-sacri- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 157 
 
 lice would never be called for, and if there had been no slavery 
 issue, Abraham Lincoln would have remained in his office in Illi 
 nois to the end. It was the great crisis calling for a great man, and 
 the great man came, and he met the crisis as it deserved and com 
 pletely fulfilled his duty in that respect. 
 
 There was a marked difference between Air. Lincoln and Mr. 
 Douglas in the essentials of their characters. Douglas did not care 
 whether slavery was voted up or voted down. Lincoln did care. 
 He wanted slavery voted down. He stood for right, for justice, for 
 humanity. He was as skillful in debate as the "Little Giant;" he 
 was stronger than he in pure logic, he was greater in moral eleva 
 tion. His speeches were a revelation to the country. He forced 
 Douglas into a position which undoubtedly gained for Douglas the 
 senatorship, but later on lost him the presidency; and when the 
 contest for the senatorship was over, Abraham Lincoln went East, 
 where he had never been before, and where he was known only 
 by the records of his debates with Douglas. He went to New York 
 .and made in Cooper Institute a speech on the position of the fath 
 ers in relation to slavery that is as complete a demonstration as 
 any theorem or problem in calculus. He went to New Haven and 
 spoke there, and in other cities in Connecticut, and it was there that 
 1 first saw Abraham Lincoln and heard him. I had heard Tom Cor- 
 win only a little time before, and had been disappointed ; he lacked 
 earnestness moral earnestness. I had heard Wendell Phillips 
 time and again, and had been delighted, but, though a prince of 
 eloquence, he lacked entirely a practical plan for doing anything. I 
 had heard Beecher in all his enthusiasm and power of the spiritual 
 and half militant; and here w r as this man from the West, without 
 any of the advantages that these men had all had, without any of 
 the advantages that these men had all had, without any of the per 
 sonal graces that belonged to some of them; tall, lank, homely, 
 and yet this man had the power, in the plainest, most forceful and 
 most simple language to make you understand just what he under 
 stood, to make you feel exactly as he felt, to enlighten your under 
 standing so that you accepted every position of his ; to take captive 
 your very soul and hold it to the end, and that, too, without a single 
 artifice or understanding of anything known to the rhetoricians. 
 Plain, clear, forceful ; the great cause for which he spoke qualified 
 him as he glorified it. He made a political contest grand by im 
 parting to it a moral quality. It was no longer a struggle for 
 votes, it was a battle for righteousness. In no other kind of a 
 
158 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 contest could Abraham Lincoln have come to the front, and in no 
 other could he have won the fadeless crown of glory which he now 
 wears and will wear through all the coming centuries. 
 
 Elected president, he never forgot that he was a Southern man 
 by birth, and his heart ached all through the great struggle for the 
 sufferings of the Southern people. Yet he never faltered in press 
 ing forward in the contest, and never for a moment lost sight of 
 the great end to be secured; first union, then union and universal 
 freedom. He had no malice in his heart. His first inaugural ad 
 dress would have won to him any people not already in the grasp 
 of the frenzy of revolution. It came too late; the die was cast. 
 The long series of agitating questions which had distracted the 
 country for seventy years were now to be settled on the battle 
 field, the only place where they could be finally settled. Into the 
 great struggle the South entered with a cheery spirit, and with un~ 
 doubting expectation of victory; into the same struggle the North 
 entered with a blind determination to win, and with a slightly aug 
 mented expectation of the magnitude of the struggle. The par 
 ticipants on both sides of the contest have proved that a heroic 
 victory under such circumstances was hard to attain, and defeat 
 could not be disgraceful. The leaders in the contest on both sides 
 came into view like stars in the heavens, and many of them faded 
 out of sight; but the real planets, with their glory shining, remained 
 in the sky to the end and are there still ; Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, 
 Thomas, Lee, Jackson and Johnston, these at least are still shin 
 ing ; and now as the peaceful influence of time is felt they are plant 
 ing together their rays of glory on the country which they all 
 loved, and for which they would all have gladly fought against a 
 foreign foe. And during it all, the long four years of death and 
 sorrow 7 , Lincoln waited for the hour of victory only that he might 
 be merciful. Bitterly opposed by his enemies, sometimes betrayed 
 by his friends, often annoyed by the impatience of the over-zealous, 
 he experienced a large measure of ingratitude in return for gener 
 osity, while he was bearing on his own great heart the sorrows of 
 his country, of friends and of foes alike. He came out of the 
 crucible of affliction purified like fine gold ; and when at the dedi 
 cation of the cemetery at Gettysburg, after a great oration by Ed 
 ward Everett, the prince of orators, Lincoln spoke for five minutes, 
 he in that short time effaced from men s memory all the rounded 
 periods of Everett s scholarly eloquence as, with the plainness of 
 one of the common people, with the pathos of a great heart suf- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 159 
 
 faring almost to breaking, and with the inspiration of a Hebrew 
 seer, he spoke those memorable sentences of consecration and hope 
 that will live in the world s highest eloquence so long as the English 
 language shall be spoken. 
 
 The years went on, the rebellon broke down at last was crush 
 ed, in fact; Lee and Johnston surrendered, the Union was safe, free 
 dom had been assured, joy filled the hearts of the victors, the cup of 
 blessing was filled to overflowing was just ready for the nation s 
 lips when, on the evening of Good Friday, the day on which our 
 Savior was crucified, the bullet of an assassin sped on its fatal way, 
 and before the sun of another day was well on its course in the 
 heavens the spirit of Abraham Lincoln had gone back to the God 
 who gave it, and there was left to a sorrow-stricken people only 
 his lifeless body over which to mourn: and the nation literally 
 "lifted up its voice and wept." 
 
 In the home of a distinguished citizen of Minneapolis there 
 hangs a large picture, the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Many of 
 you doubtless have seen it. It is an admirable likeness. I wish I 
 could describe it to you as an artist might, but I cannot. The face, 
 though serious, has none of the wan and sad look that came to it 
 in later days ; it is pleasant and genial. But the one thing to which 
 face and figure alike bear witness is strength not intellectual nor 
 physical strength mainly, but moral strength, backed by both of 
 these. There is nothing to indicate that the subject is not a gentle 
 man, but nobody would ever think of labeling it "The Portrait of 
 a Gentleman," but anybody might label it "The Portrait of a Man." 
 Great strength of character is here joined with intellectual power 
 and sweetness of spirit; and such was Abraham Lincoln strong, 
 rugged, forceful, true, yet gentle, tender, and of almost infinite 
 charity. 
 
 Winston Churchill, in his notable book, "The Crisis," has de 
 scribed a scene in the White House in the closing days of the Civil 
 War which gives us a clear view of Mr. Lincoln as he was when 
 the great drama of the country and of his life was drawing to a 
 close. A confederate young lady, of great beauty and brilliancy, 
 but of pronounced Southern feeling, has been pleading for the life 
 of her cousin, a Confederate officer, who had been captured under 
 circumstances which almost convicted him of being a spy. At the 
 president s suggestion that it was a pity that the officer should have 
 taken off his uniform and entered Sherman s lines as a civilian 
 a? a spy the young lady exclaimed "Then he will be shot! You 
 
160 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 are not content with what you have gained you are not content 
 with depriving us of our rights and of our fortunes, while forcing 
 us back to an allegiance we despise; you are not content with put 
 ting innocent men in prisons, but now I suppose you will shoot us 
 all, and all this mercy that I have heard about means nothing, 
 nothing!" 
 
 "Miss Carvel," said the president, "I am afraid, from what I 
 have heard just now, that it means nothing." Oh! the sadness of 
 that voice, the ineffable sadness ; the sadness and the woe of a great 
 nation and the sorrow in those eyes, the sorrow of a heavy cross 
 borne meekly, how heavy none will ever know ; the pain and the 
 crown of thorns worn for a world that did not understand ; and 
 when at last the president grants the pardon, as he had from the 
 first intended to do, he said slowly and the words remind me 
 of his Gettysburg speech "I am sparing his life because the time 
 for which we have been waiting and longing for four years is now 
 at hand, a time to be merciful. Let us thank God for it." No won 
 der the daughter of the South was affected. She crossed the room, 
 her head lifted, her heart lifted, to where this man of sorrows stood 
 smiling down on her. "Mr. Lincoln," she faltered, "I did not 
 know you when I came here. O how I wish that every man, woman 
 and child in the South might come here and see you as I have seen 
 you today. I think, I think, that some of their bitterness might be 
 taken away" Perhaps it might have been if they could have seen 
 him as he was. God only knows. But it was not to be. Like 
 Moses, the liberator of the Hebrews, who was permitted to see the 
 promised land, but not to enter it, Abraham Lincoln, the liberator 
 of the enslaved negroes, was permitted to catch a glimpse of the 
 country redeemed but was not permitted to share in either the 
 triumphs or the struggles of the new nation. It is as if, like our 
 blessed Savior, the redemption which he wrought could be com 
 pleted only by his death. 
 
 God grant that neither sacrifice may have been made in vain. 
 God grant that this nation may firmly tread the path of honor and 
 justice for which the work and sufferings of the martyred dead 
 have so grandly prepared the way, and that the coming men, the 
 young men of America, may "highly resolve" that Lincoln shall 
 not have died in vain, but that the nation shall under God yet have 
 a new birth of honor, and "that the government of the people, by 
 the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 161 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY SAMUEL C. EDSALL, EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 (Read February 12, 1903.) 
 
 When a great man dies, high in official station, it is natural and 
 usual that the community in which he lives should attach an exag 
 gerated importance to his life and service, and claim for him a 
 larger place in history than subsequent historians, writing calmly 
 and coolly, will award and especially will this be true if the great 
 one has fallen by the hand of an assassin and about him there shines 
 the halo of a martyrdom. It is therefore doubly remarkable that 
 Abraham Lincoln has proved such a signal exception to this rule; 
 for, instead of growing less as he sinks into the perspective of his 
 tory, it seems as if he would loom larger and larger upon our hor 
 izon as the years go by; and when history comes to be written 
 carefully, and the men and the events of his period are brought out 
 into their true relation, the well-nigh infinite patience of Lincoln 
 the long-suffering and sorely-tried Lincoln and his marvelous 
 insight into what was practicable and portentous at any moment, 
 and his far-sighted wisdom in working gradually in the accomplish 
 ment of his great purposes are revealed before us in a measure 
 which is almost superhuman superhuman at least in this sense, 
 that they are beyond previous human experience. 
 
 But though we may hear an eloquent eulogy of Lincoln, hear 
 it spoken or read it on the printed page, the noblest eulogy of Abra 
 ham Lincoln was that which was rendered not in speech or writ 
 ten word, but in the act, in the deed, in the life of his martyred suc 
 cessor, William McKinley. For, when placed by Providence in 
 circumstances similar and only less trying, he rendered from his 
 heart that loving, loyal imitation of the great man who had gone 
 before which has made us of this day realize, as perhaps we never 
 could have realized otherwise, the immortal character of Lincoln s 
 greatness, and the permanent nature of the legacy in lessons of 
 statesmanship which he left for the guidance of his country, and 
 for the enlightenment of history. 
 
162 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLAG. 
 
 BY HENRY D. ESTERBROOK, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, NEW YORK CITY. 
 
 (Read February 13, 1906.) 
 
 February is an American holy month, for in it were born Wash 
 ington and Lincoln two names so blended in popular affection that 
 to mention one is to recall the other. Washington, the patrician, 
 whose mind and heart, like the cups of a chemist s balance, seemed 
 to weigh each other, to whom religion was a rule of action, a divine 
 command; Lincoln, the plebian, whose mind and heart had been 
 fused in the crucible of love, with whom religion was a passionate 
 intuition. I have chosen to speak of Lincoln to relate the man 
 ner of his death, and the vengeance of the flag. 
 
 Was it, my friends, an inspiration or caprice when, on the very 
 threshold of that most sober, somber, sullen story of colonial life, 
 "The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne suddenly stoops, and plucking 
 a rose which grew beside the prison door, presents it to his reader? 
 It was a graceful act, a propitiatory act, and withal an act of deep 
 significance. Somehow the perfume of the flower pervades the en 
 tire story, so when at last you close the book, with the mist still in 
 your eyes, and fain would murmur, "A sad, cruel, useless sacrifice," 
 lo ! the fragrance of the rose, like an exhalation from an unseen 
 altar, breathes through your spirit and you sigh instead, "Perhaps, 
 after all twas best; yea, perhaps twas necessary." 
 
 With something of the motive I have attributed to Hawthorne 
 I wish to relate an incident which befell me in the city of Chicago, 
 as a prelude to my recital of the darkest page in American history. 
 Ii was in Lincoln Park. The statue of liberty s great martyr had 
 recently been unveiled, and I had come to study it. To my mind, 
 unskilled in the niceties of criticism, the work seemed perfect. The 
 dear, homely, lovely face with its wilderness of wrinkles, those 
 hieroglyphics of character; the tall , angular, awkward figure to 
 which the garments clung hopeless of adaptation cccc homo! Re- 
 hold our kingly rail-splitter, himself a sort of human rail cleft from 
 a genealogical tree as yet uncatalogued, sound to the core, with the 
 bark still on, and all the splinters left as God had left them. It was 
 Abraham Lincoln as I had dreamed of him in bovhood, as I had 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 103 
 
 read of him in history; simple, majestic, actual, as if his immortal 
 spirit had clothed itself in a vestment of immortal bronze. There, 
 in the restful quiet of a park already dedicated to his memory a 
 nodal point among the mighty vibrations of a great city amidst 
 the green twilight of arching trees and whispering leaves, towered 
 the beloved form of liberty s Messiah. 
 
 As I lowered my eyes to trace the words embossed upon the 
 pedestal (the words of that short speech destined to live so long 
 at once the epilogue and the epitaph of Gettysburg) I became 
 aware of an old gentleman who stood gazing up into the dark be 
 nignant face that bent above us. He was a quaint old man; lusty, 
 thickset, smooth-shaven, wearing a wide-brimmed felt hat and a 
 homespun costume, neat enough but far from fashionable. His 
 bright, ruddy face glowed from out its snow-drift of white hair 
 like a live coal among its ashes. There was certainly nothing in 
 his physignomy to suggest melancholy, and yet, as he gazed, the 
 tears streamed clown his cheeks unheeded. 
 
 The spectacle touched my sympathies and roused my curiosity. 
 With perhaps unpardonable rudeness I attempted to discover the 
 secret of his perturbation. I ventured to ask if, in his opinion, the 
 statue before us was a good likeness of Mr. Lincoln. He replied 
 simply: "I presume it is; I never met him." 
 
 "And yet," I persisted, "the contemplation of the statue seems 
 to singularly affect you?" 
 
 The old gentleman turned to me impressively and said : "Young 
 man, I am a Kentuckian, born and reared and hoping to die in the 
 old Blue Grass Commonwealth. If Kentucky had left the Union 
 I should have followed and fought for her. All through those 
 frightful years and for long years afterward I looked upon Presi 
 dent Lincoln as a tyrant and despot; and when the news came of 
 his taking off I flung up my hat and echoed the yell of the assassin 
 Sic semper tyrannis! Not until recent years have I come to 
 realize that Abraham Lincoln was the best, the truest friend that 
 the South or humanity has ever had. And now I can never think 
 of him, never hear the menton of his name, that my heart does not 
 well within me and overflow my eyes." 
 
 I had already seized his hand and was wringing it in both of 
 mine. "Sir," I cried, "if what you feel is the true disposition of 
 Kentucky, I swear to you I voice the sentiment of Nebraska when 
 I say that, in the name of Lincoln, we are once more and forever 
 friends. God bless voti brother!" 
 
164 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 And then and there, in presence of that sacred effigy, Kentucky 
 and Nebraska clasped hands across the bloody chasm, while the 
 great bronze statue smiled down its benediction. 
 
 How often have I appealed to this incident when, in reading 
 the particulars of Lincoln s assassination, I have felt my teeth 
 clench and my sinews harden with rising anger. I commend it 
 to you now that I am about to recall the circumstances of that fatu 
 ous and apparently senseless crime. I say that the crime was ap 
 parently senseless; although, could we fathom the divine motive 
 in human history, I doubt not that, involved with this catastrophe, 
 there was more than human wisdom; for have I not already called 
 Lincoln Liberty s Messiah? 
 
 It was on the night of April i/j-tti, 1865, tnat tne snot was fired, 
 and its reverberation will last forever. On the mornng following, 
 ai. precisely 7 122 of the clock, Abraham Lincoln yielded up the 
 ghost. The fatal moment is notched on the scythe of time. Even 
 the watchmakers, those wardens of the hours, have embalmed that 
 moment in the sign of their calling. In every city of the Union, 
 North and South, East and West, you have seen those great dumb, 
 wooden horologes pointing backward to the dread event. 
 
 Look at them whenever you will, it is always 7 :22 ! Could 
 Coleridge describe a thing more idle than those painted hands upon 
 a painted dial ? Idle? No, not unless a cathedral spire, a marble 
 shaft, or the cross itself is idle; for those idle hands hold out a 
 memory which only pardon asked and pardon given can ever, ever 
 sweeten. 
 
 The murder of Lincoln was the most appalling tragedy ever wit 
 nessed in a theater. History, as if desparing of another Shakes 
 peare, dramatized itself. We are told that his death interrupted 
 a comedy; but what death has not? Among all the chimeras and 
 phantasms of this life, death a thing seemingly the most unreal 
 is the one inexorable reality. And yet, let it come when or how 
 it will, there is always in the event a mocking incongruity. But 
 this this immolation of Abraham Lincoln was the very mas 
 querade of death, grotesque, spectacular, I would almost say fan 
 tastic. The glare of footlights, the fripperies of a playhouse, the 
 tinsel and pasteboard of the age, the gullery of the greenroom, 
 the mummery of the actors it was into this realm of Fiction that 
 the awful Fact obtruded. It was the coup de theatre of death ! 
 And must we call this fate? Alas, I can almost hear the frantic cry 
 of Victor Hugo : "Fate sinister burst of laughter !" 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 165 
 
 On this mortal night the president had sought to be amused. 
 He wished to laugh, to be made to laugh ; and for this he has been 
 criticized. Why should he wish to laugh when every click of the 
 telegraph was the death tick of a soldier? Why should he not? 
 
 There is no laughter in the natural world 
 
 Of beast or fish or bird, though no sad doubt 
 Of their futurity to them unfurled 
 
 Has dared to check the mirth-compelling shout. 
 The lion roars his solemn thunder out 
 
 To sleeping w 7 oods; the eagle screams her cry; 
 Even the lark must strain a serious throat 
 
 To hurl his blest defiance at the sky. 
 Fear, anger, jealousy have found a voice. 
 
 Love s pain or rapture the brute bosoms swell. 
 Nature has symbols for her nobler joys, 
 Her nobler sorrows. Who had dared to foretell 
 That only man, by some sad mockery, 
 Should learn to laugh who learns that he must die. 
 
 President Lincoln was not only aware that he must die, but he 
 had every reason to believe that his death would be at the hands 
 of an assassin. He had been warned repeatedly that such would be 
 his fate; indeed, an attempt had already been made upon his life; 
 and that he kne\v of it was shown by papers found in his desk, 
 revealing the plot, and by himself labeled "Assassination." Dis 
 cussing the subject with his friend, Father Chiniquy, he had said: 
 
 "I see no other way than to be always prepared to die. I know 
 my danger; but man must not care how or where he dies, provided 
 he dies at the post of honor and of duty." 
 
 And still he laughed, and his laughter was the music of his 
 heart, the sweet expression of his sweet humanity. Such a man 
 can afford to laugh ; for, "Thanks be to God, Who giveth us the 
 victory," human laughter is a challenge to death, the clarion of im 
 mortality. Moreover, the president had earned a respite from the 
 anxieties which for four years, like four eternities, had brdoMecl 
 over him. 
 
 The volcano of war has ceased to vomit forth its lava of human 
 blood. The vertigo of death is past. The thunder of battle in 
 one baffled roar is muttering over the distant field of Appomattox. 
 There has been too much of tragdy, and now this laughter-loving 
 man would gain surcease from the long tension on his heart 
 strings by forgetting fact in fiction, the real in the apparent. 
 
166 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 The box which the presidential party was to occupy had been 
 appropriately draped with the Union flag, so arranged as to frame 
 the portrait of George Washington, whoso serene and august 
 face smiled from out its folds, as from an aureola of glory. When 
 the president and his guests entered, the whole audience rose to 
 greet him. It was a. shout of jubilee, of gratitude, of reverence, 
 of love, of adoration; and God was not jealous of it. 
 
 Midway of the performance, and shortly after 10 o clock, a 
 >oung man came down the outer aisle, and presented his card to 
 the president s messenger. Before the messenger could fairly 
 glance at the card, the young man had pushed past him and entered 
 the narrow passage immediately behind the box in which the presi 
 dent was seated. The door to this passage was not locked, fof the 
 lock had only that day been removed to prevent such a contingency. 
 The young man, however, fastened the door behind him with a 
 wooden brace, which he had previously prepared for the purpose. 
 He next went to the door opening into the box, and peered at the 
 occupants through a small aperture, also previously made for the 
 purpose. 
 
 Surely the noble Lincoln must have felt some vague conscious 
 ness of this propinquity. If the very atmosphere of the incarnate 
 devil did not herald his approach, that basilisk eye, framed by a 
 gimlet hole, must have sent a shudder through the victim s heart. 
 We may never know. In a moment the door was opened, the mur 
 derer entered. Then ah ! then 
 
 There was a sharp detonation, a moment s dread paralysis, a 
 wild commotion, a clutch at the fleeing assassin, a fierce impreca 
 tion, and the savage slash of the knife as he freed himself from the 
 detaining grasp, his leap to the stage, his mock heroics, his rehearsed 
 magniloquence, his Chauvinistic bravado, and the startled, bewild 
 ered cry, "The president is murdered!" 
 
 Holy God ! How couldst Thou suffer it ? He so loving and so 
 lovable, so gentle, patient, brave and true ! So slow to anger, so 
 eager to forgive ! Throughout our national eclipse his great heart 
 was stayed on Thee, his sole purpose to fulfill Thy will ! 
 
 Only a little while before, he had said to the people of the South : 
 
 "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds 
 of affection." 
 
 Was this the language of a tyrant, the fiat of a conqueror? His 
 tory has no parallel to this sublime, unasked-for condonation, save 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 167 
 
 when on Calvary that divine whisper faltered through the dark 
 ness : "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." 
 
 Instantly with the pistol shot, the president had fallen forward. 
 The dear head drooped, never to rise again; the loving heart flut 
 tered into rest, and Abraham Lincoln, offered by the All Wise as 
 a mediator and an exemplar to his distracted countrymen, was with 
 the "undying dead." 
 
 But what of the assassin? 
 
 Maniacally bold as now seems this murder, the chances of cap 
 ture had been weighed by the murderer and reduced to a minimum. 
 His route to the South had been chosen and carefully studied. His 
 confederates were numerous and discreet. His finances were ample, 
 his equipment complete. 
 
 As for the leap from the proscenium box, that was a matter so 
 insignificant as scarcely to have entered into the calculation, for 
 the assassin was a trained athlete, exulting in his prowess. In 
 his histrionic career he had often sprung upon that very stage from 
 twice the height, simply to startle the audience into applause. 
 
 And yet, we are told that, except for the accident of his foot 
 catching in the flag, a strip from which was thus torn out and 
 fluttered from his heels as he dragged his wounded limb across 
 the stage, his escape would have been inevitable. 
 
 But why call it an accident? Does not Plato tell us that even 
 granite rocks have souls that shape their appearance and give them 
 individuality? Shall a heathen philosopher grant such an attri 
 bute to sticks and stones and a patriot deny all sensibility to his 
 country s flag? 
 
 It was no accident, but a miracle of gratitude the vengeance 
 of the flag! Washington was there. Washington, the father who 
 begat and brought it forth, seemed for the moment to live again 
 in its embrace. Lincoln, the savior who had redeemed it from the 
 sin of slavery, was even then dying that it might live, the last puls 
 ings of his heart quivering in all its breathing folds. It was no 
 accident! In the absence of human intervention, the flag itself 
 became an actor. It reached forth and grappled with the assassin. 
 It clave to him like the bloody garment of old mythology. It 
 shrieked, and was rent in twain, but clung clung clung, writh 
 ing about and binding him like a pvthon in its coils. The flag was 
 the captor, the flag was its country s Nemesis ! 
 
 All hail the flag, our proud and happv flag ; radiant in its beantv, 
 sparkling with its stars, conscious of itself, its God and its Amer- 
 
168 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ica ! Look up, poor human race, look up to it in reverence and 
 with a prayer of gratitude ! Behold it unfurled above the nations 
 of the earth, the splendor of it s sheen as lambent as the sunlight 
 that plays upon it; its undulations as billowy and voluminous as 
 the clouds of heaven; its gorgeous colors painted upon the air as 
 impalpable as the rainbow, hope s phantom flag! What wonder 
 that it seems like a gift from the spirit world, as though Father 
 Abraham had reached it forth from beyond the stars and said: 
 "Take it, my children; take and keep it in remembrance of me. 
 Study its history, learn its lesson, know its value; study it, learn 
 it, know it, and love it always." 
 
 And shall we not? The blood of thousands has been spilled in 
 its defense no, not spilled, for within its crimson arteries that 
 heroic blood still flows, giving strength and vitality to our nation s 
 emblem, making it not an emblem merely, but a living creature. 
 Its bars of white, "as chaste as unsunned snow," have never yet 
 been sullied witli the stain of shame. 
 
 The golden stars that irradiate the night are not more lustrous 
 than those sister stars that constellate its azure firmament. Our 
 noble flag! So long as it shall flout the sky, laugh in the sun, nor 
 droop an alien in the sight of God, so long shall free men, free 
 homes, free schools, free churches, yea, freedom itself, find refuge 
 in the shadow of its strength. God bless our flag! His own har 
 binger of universal peace, the standard of humanity, the oriflamme 
 of liberty ! God bless our flag ! 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 169 
 
 LINCOLN, THE LEADER. 
 
 BY RICHARD WATSON GILDER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR THE " CENTURY. 
 (Read February 12, 1907.) 
 
 The thought may pass through some minds that it is pre 
 sumptuous for a man from the East to consent to come to 
 the West to speak to you concerning a Western man, the 
 greatest of Western men. But I come, surely in no sectional 
 spirit, to utter a word of homage to the memory of one who 
 had not the slightest taint of sectionalism in his mental habit; 
 who was national in his characteristics, his sympathies, his 
 outlook and his aspiration. 
 
 I heard a few years ago of a senator of the United States 
 who made his proud boast that he had never set foot in the 
 city of New York- Distances and differences were greater 
 between cities and sections, in Lincoln s time. But Lincoln 
 had no feeling of aversion to any place or community in Amer 
 ica. You know how quickly he set foot in Richmond, as soon 
 as he was able to do so. He did not hesitate to set foot 
 in New York, and when there he was apparently not so much 
 impressed by the idea that he was a long way from home, as 
 by the idea that he was among his fellow-citizens of the Repub 
 lic, having common problems and a common destiny. I find 
 in the record of that Cooper Union address no reference to 
 the fact that he was in any country but his own. 
 
 It was not many years after the Civil War that I first came 
 to New York. There I met with youth s curiosity and ad 
 miration for genius ; among other literary lights of the day, 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had struck out that dynamic 
 lyric on Osawotomie Brown, prophetic of the war, who had 
 addressed to the president the demand for a captain. "Abra 
 ham Lincoln, give us a man !" a demand which it took Lincoln 
 so long and through so many disappointments to satisfy; and 
 who had written the ringing sonnet on the assassination, in 
 which Lincoln is described as "the whitest soul a nation knew" ; 
 Bayard Taylor, who had been of special service to Lincoln 
 at the important court of St. Petersburg; Richard Grant White, 
 
170 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 who had interpreted the Union cause in his "New Gospel of 
 Peace," and had gathered the war songs into a unique volume; 
 Richard Henry Stoddard, who had written a noble ode on the 
 death of Lincoln; Dr. J. G. Holland, who had written a life 
 of Lincoln, the first of any consequence to be put forth after 
 his death; Noah Brooks, who had been close to Lincoln in 
 Washington ; Bret Harte, author among other famous pieces 
 of certain memorable rhymes of the war; George William Cur 
 tis, who had taken part in both the conventions that nominated 
 Lincoln, and officially notified him of his second nomination; 
 and a rare and picturesque revisitor of his beloved Manhat 
 tan Walt Whitman, who had written, "Captain, My Captain," 
 and the passionate chant on the death of the president, "When 
 Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed." A majestic figure of 
 the time was the poet Bryant, who had presided on the occa 
 sion of Lincoln s Cooper Union speech, when each had been 
 greatly impressed by the other, Lincoln saying that "It was 
 worth the journey to the East merely to meet such a man," 
 and Bryant becoming one of Lincoln s chief supporters for the 
 presidential nomination. 
 
 A certain young journalist and author in the literary group 
 greatly attracted me. I remember writing to him in those days 
 a boyish, enthusiastic letter enrolling him in the company of 
 "good fellows"; the good-hearted, the art-loving, the genial. 
 There was a special fascination about him, which, as in all 
 cases of charm, it is hard to analyze. He had a quiet, intense 
 sense of humor; a wit that was genial and could be stinging,, 
 and a curious poise and reticence. He was as self-confident 
 as he was courteous and modest. 
 
 To him I said one day, "Colonel, as you continue your 
 study of and your writing about Lincoln, does he seem to you 
 larger or less?" 
 
 To this and I remember the seriousness of his manner- 
 John Hay answered : "As I go on with the work, to me Lin 
 coln grows greater and greater." 
 
 Since then, as the historical students and the people of his 
 country and of the world have studied and better known his 
 commanding personality, Abraham Lincoln has grown greater 
 and greater in the estimation of mankind. Very greatly, in 
 deed, has the writing of John Hay himself, and of the elder 
 devoted co-biographer, John G. Nicolay, helped in this better 
 understanding. Lincoln s praises are multiplied in all lands by 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 171 
 
 statesmen, historians, orators, poets. Added to the usual ad 
 miring regard in which he is held, one constantly comes upon 
 a peculiar interest in, an actual affection for him on the part 
 of persons in the various walks of life some of these con 
 temporaries of his, and some children born during, or since, 
 the war. The other night one of the ablest and most influential 
 men of the Southern states, told me that to him Lincoln was 
 one of the three most interesting personalities in all history 
 one of the others being no less than "the Man of Galilee." 
 
 It is natural that a writer should be especially attracted 
 to Lincoln by a study of his recorded utterances, in other 
 words, by an interest in his literary style. Too young to ap 
 preciate what may be called the artistic quality of his speeches 
 and writings at the time of their delivery, it was after the 
 war that I woke up to a full appreciation of Lincoln s power 
 of expression, a power which was one of the main elements of 
 his strength as a leader. 
 
 It is not strange that unusual powers of expression should 
 be found to belong to those who have risen to leadership 
 among men. This expressiveness may be of various kinds. 
 Lincoln and Gladstone, having been contemporaries, born in 
 the same year and each rising to the highest leadership in the 
 two great English-speaking nations, it is natural that they 
 should be compared as to their use of language, spoken and 
 written. Gladstone s elaborate and persuasive eloquence, his 
 manifold learning and well-stored memory, the copiousness of 
 his diction and the dignity, as well as the fire and energy of 
 his forensic appeals, these were among the wonders of a good 
 part of the last century. But I asked, lately, on separate oc 
 casions, of two of Gladstone s most eminent parliamentary 
 supporters and admirers, without contradiction and, indeed, 
 with full agreement on the part of both whether it was not 
 one of the miracles of genius that, notwithstanding Gladstone 
 had enjoyed all that culture could accomplish, by means of 
 university training and familiarity with the art and literature 
 of the ancient and modern world and long training and leader 
 ship in public life, he had not left a single masterpiece of Eng 
 lish, hardly one great phrase that clings to the memory of men, 
 while Lincoln, without any educational advantages whatever, 
 growing up in the backwoods, with scarcely a dozen books of 
 value at his command and ignorant of the literature and art 
 of modern Europe, as of ancient times, had acquired a style 
 
172 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 of higher distinction than that of Gladstone, and had be 
 queathed more than one masterpiece to the literature of the 
 English tongue. 
 
 Lincoln s style in speech and writing is the same sort of 
 miracle that gave us the consummate works of Shakespeare, 
 the uncolleged actor; of Burns, the plowman, and of Keats, 
 the unlearned apothecary s apprentice, son of a livery stable 
 man. It is not easy to analyze a miracle, but in discussing the 
 leadership of Lincoln it is interesting to find certain qualities 
 in his literary style that are traits of his character, and thus 
 elements of his leadership. 
 
 Notwithstanding that the country has been ransacked for 
 every record of his public speech, and every scrap of paper he 
 ever put pen to, there has been found nothing discreditable, 
 and little that can be criticised in the way of expression. With 
 out the aid of any teacher, he early learned to be moderate 
 and reasonable in statement, so that on the part even of the 
 obscure young politician there is nothing of that kind of pub 
 lic speech which is described in a passage he loved to quote, 
 where it is said of the orator that "he mounted the rostrum,, 
 threw back his head, shined his eyes, and left the consequences 
 to God." 
 
 Lincoln s relish for a phrase like this recalls his extra 
 ordinary sense of humor. Probably no great historical figure 
 in the realm of action ever had Lincoln s intense humorous- 
 ness, combined with so keen and racy a wit- Lincoln s laugh 
 was something amazing; his face, in repose well balanced and 
 commanding, with the grimace of laughter is said to have be 
 come a surprising thing. Many anecdotes relate the boister- 
 ousness of his appreciation of a humorous situation or story. 
 Hay tells of his cheery laugh that filled the Blue room with 
 infectious good nature. "Homeric laughter," Hay says it 
 sometimes was; adding this genial touch, that it was "dull 
 pleasure" to Lincoln "to laugh alone." Some visitors at the 
 White House were filled with wonder at the quick transition 
 from unbridled mirth to pathetic seriousness; what wonder 
 that "the boisterous laughter became less frequent year by 
 year, the eye grew veiled by constant meditation on moment 
 ous subjects ; the air of reserve and detachment from his sur 
 roundings increased," and as Hay says, and his pictures and 
 the two life masks show, he rapidly grew old. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 173 
 
 Lincoln s sense of humor, which flavored now and then 
 his speeches and writings, and constantly his conversation, 
 went along with a homely wit which frequently brought to his 
 argument quaint and convincing illustration. His sense of 
 humor was, indeed, a real assistance in his leadership, having 
 many uses; it relieved the strain of his strenuous labors; it 
 helped to attach the masses to his personality; and it assisted 
 him out of many difficulties. We did not know till lately that 
 he himself so keenly appreciated the part that story-telling 
 played in his career. Col. Burt reports a strange interview 
 w T ith Lincoln at the Soldiers Home at a time of keen anxiety, 
 and when a person present had rudely demanded one of his 
 "good stories." 
 
 "I believe," said Lincoln, turning away from the challenger, 
 "I have the popular reputation of being a story-teller, but I 
 do not deserve the name in its general sense, for it is not the- 
 story itself, but its purpose, or effect, that interests me. I 
 often avoid a long and useless discussion by others or a labor 
 ious explanation on my own part by a short story that illus 
 trates my point of view. So, too, the sharpness of a refusal 
 or the edge of a rebuke may be blunted by an appropriate 
 story, so as to save wounded feelings and yet serve the pur 
 pose. No, I am not simply a story-teller, but story-telling as 
 an emollient saves me much friction and distress." 
 
 The most striking characteristic of Lincoln s style may be 
 found in the record from the beginning. Candor was a trait 
 of the man, and not less of his verbal manner. His natural 
 honesty of character, his desire to make his meaning clear 
 literally to demonstrate what he believed to be the truth with 
 mathematical precision this gave his style both attractiveness 
 and force. The simplicity of his nature, his lack of self-con 
 sciousness and vanity, tended to simplicity and directness of 
 diction. An eminent lawyer has said that without the massive 
 reasoning of Webster, or the resplendent rhetoric of Burke, 
 Lincoln exceeded them both in his faculty of statement. His 
 style was affected, too, by the personal traits of consideration 
 for those of a contrary mind, of toleration, and of large, human 
 sympathy. 
 
 But Lincoln s style might have had all these qualities, and 
 yet not have carried as it did. Beyond these traits come the 
 miracle the cadence of his prose, and its traits of pathos and 
 imagination. Lincoln s prose at its height and when his spirit 
 
174 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 was stirred by aspiration and resolve affects the soul like no 
 ble music. Indeed, as I have elsewhere said, there may be 
 found in all his great utterances a strain which is like the 
 leading motive, the Leit motif in musical drama, a strain of 
 mingled pathos, heroism and resolution. It is that strain in 
 the two inaugurals, in the Gettysburg address and in his letter 
 of consolation to a bereaved mother which moves the hearts 
 of succeeding generations. 
 
 Lincoln s power of expression was evidently one of the 
 most effective elements of his leadership. The sympathy and 
 toleration which made his writings and speeches so persuasive 
 helped his leadership not only in convincing his listeners and 
 in endearing him, the leader, to individuals and the masses, 
 but helped him as a statesman to take large and humane views 
 and to adopt measures in keeping with such views. To that 
 sympathy and that toleration a reunited country is under con 
 stant obligation, not merely for the result of a successfully con 
 ducted war successful in the true interests of both antagonists 
 but for the continuing possibility of good feeling between 
 the sections. To think that in the preparatory political strug 
 gle and during the four years of the dreadful conflict Abraham 
 Lincoln, though his spirit was strained almost beyond human 
 endurance by the harassments of his position; though misun 
 derstood and foully calumniated by public antagonists and 
 thwarted and plotted against by his own apparent supporters, 
 uttered not one word of violence or rancor, not a phrase which 
 after the cessation of hostilities might return to embitter the 
 defeated combatants or be resented by their descendants. 
 
 This extraordinary forbearance of the president has often 
 been spoken of as an amiable trait of the man, but do we fully 
 realize the value to the nation of that trait and the worth of its 
 example in public leadership? After so tremendous a conflict 
 the world abroad wonders at the quickness of the return to 
 sympathetic relations to closer relations than ever between 
 the sections so lately at war. But we of the country know that 
 the obstacles to true Union after the war were not so much 
 the events of the war, though some of them naturally enough 
 left a trail of bitter resentment, but events succeeding the con 
 flict of years in those years of experimental reconstruction, 
 when things were done in the name of the dominant powers 
 which the South has found it hard to forget and the North ar- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 175 
 
 dently wishes could be blotted from all remembrance. In other 
 words, we are today a truly united country, not only because 
 Lincoln conducted the war to a successful issue, but because of 
 Lincoln s wise and tolerant and sympathetic leadership during 
 that war. 
 
 A striking illustration of his sympathy for the people of 
 the Confederate states was his attempt, earnest and ineffectual, 
 in the last days of hostilities, two months before his death, 
 to convert his own cabinet to his generous and long cherished 
 scheme of compensated emancipation. That he failed pathet 
 ically to carry through this plan upon which his heart was set 
 illustrates also the fact that uninterrupted success is not neces 
 sary to the fame of the great figures of history. Lincoln s 
 failure to win support for this humane policy deeply grieved 
 him, but the misadventure is not held against him in the esti 
 mate of his greatness. The fact that he made the attempt, 
 on the contrary, counts in his favor, and today endears him to 
 multitudes of his countrymen and is one of the bonds that hold 
 the country together. 
 
 But Lincoln s sympathy and tolerance, his forgiveness, his 
 distaste for personal contention, his lack of resentment, his 
 great heart were shown not only in his attitude toward those 
 whom for their own good, as he believed he unrelentingly 
 opposed with all the forces at his command, but also toward 
 his political opponents in the North and toward those among 
 his ostensible supporters whose zeal led them into positions 
 of open or concealed antagonism. The opposition to him in 
 his own party was much more intense than is generally known 
 to the present generation. As an illustration of such opposi 
 tion, I may refer to an unpublished letter I lately read, written 
 in the stress of war-time, by one of the most distinguished of 
 Republicans, who declared Lincoln to be a greater danger to 
 the Union cause than Jefferson Davis himself. 
 
 As to his masterly management of the personalities whose 
 followers he placated and whose peculiarities and diverse abil 
 ities he skillfully utilized for the common cause, this part of his 
 leadership is illustrated by a hundred stories, either true in 
 fact or typically true. Here came into play his sense of humor, 
 his insight into motive and character in a word, his tact 
 along with that tolerance and that sympathy of which I have 
 spoken as affecting his habit of oral and written expression. 
 
176 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 That he could manage to hold so long together four such 
 individualities as his own, Seward s, Stanton s and Chase s 
 proves a genius of leadership truly exceptional. It is now 
 known, as it was not till Nicolay and Hay revealed the fact, 
 how Seward was taught to respect and loyally acquiesce in 
 the leadership of one whom he, not unnaturally, at first, ex 
 pected to lead. Lincoln s leadership of the irascible and faith 
 ful Stanton was a simpler matter; here the president s inex 
 haustible patience and his abounding sense of humor were 
 both required to save the situation though looking back on 
 the relations of these strong and utterly divergent person 
 alities, one feels that the sense of humor was perhaps the 
 saving grace. As for Chase, and his convinced and enthusiastic 
 following, it was inevitable that some such rallying ground 
 should exist in a time of stress, for those who, as in the case 
 of Chase himself, were temperamentally unsympathetic with 
 the personality and methods of Lincoln. Here, perhaps, was 
 Lincoln s greatest personal anxiety, but his leadership did not 
 fail him; as the story of the second nomination and election 
 abundantly testifies. 
 
 Let it not be omitted in the enumeration of the elements 
 of Lincoln s leadership that he did not disdain to learn from 
 experience. In his first inaugural, while stating the policy of 
 the administration with regard to acts of violence against the 
 authority of the United States, he definitely announced that 
 the course indicated would be followed "unless current events 
 and experience" should "show a modification or change to be 
 proper," and that in every case and exigency his best discre 
 tion would be exercised "according to circumstances actually 
 existing." Lincoln, like other great leaders and administrat 
 ors, would rather be right than be consistent. His was a con 
 sistency of principle rather than of program. His aim was 
 justice, and if he could not reach it by one path he would push 
 on by another. 
 
 Special features of his leadership were two acquired skills 
 and two acquired knowledges the skill and knowledge of 
 the long-practiced lawyer, which helped him immeasurably in 
 his executive decisions, as Trevor Hill has so clearly pointed 
 out; and his quickly and almost instinctively acquired skill 
 in and knowledge of military strategy. His letters to generals 
 in the field are those of a master of strategy, using the irony 
 of Socrates and the symbolism of Aesop. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 177 
 
 An intensely important feature of Lincoln s leadership 
 would be omitted if nothing were said of the effect upon his 
 thought and conduct of his belief in and conscious communion 
 with an almighty, mysterious and beneficent Power, concern 
 ing itself not less with human affairs than with the march 
 of seasons and the sweep of constellations. The deity was to 
 him an ever-present, ever-pregnant influence. There was noth 
 ing of theology or dogmatism in his religious opinion, but he 
 lived in the spirit. The strange silence of the Almighty sover 
 eign perplexed him ; and he sought with passionate eagerness 
 to read the decrees of Providence in the unfoldings of events, 
 sometimes taking definite action in accordance with his in 
 terpretation of divine indications. And always the belief in 
 God was to him a challenge to singleness of purpose; to the 
 All Pure he lifted clean hands and a pure heart. 
 
 The reference to Lincoln s religious nature leads to the 
 declaration that Lincoln the leader possessed sterner and 
 higher traits than those to which we first called attention. He 
 had the lofty qualities of spiritual insight, of moral conviction, 
 of solemn resolution, of undying courage, of complete devotion 
 and faith and of hope unfailing. He saw deeply, he felt in 
 tensely, he spoke, at times, with the voice of a poet-prophet. 
 
 Fate or is it some World Spirit of Comedy? plays strange 
 pranks with human affairs now and then; and nothing more 
 singular ever happened either in history or romance than the 
 giving of imperial powers, the destiny of a race, the leadership 
 of a nation, the keys of life and death to a sad-eyed, laughter- 
 loving, story-telling, shrewd, unlettered, great-hearted fron 
 tiersman and lawyer. A leader always he was, from the time 
 he commanded a grotesque company of motleys in an Indian 
 frontier campaign. And there at Washington was he leader 
 of public opinion in a world-wide field; wielder was he also 
 of fleets and armies, having in his strong and sympathetic 
 hands the lives of hundreds of thousands. 
 
 That inordinately tall countryman, with a shawl thrown 
 over his gaunt figure, crossing, alone, the little park between 
 the White House and the war department if appealed to by 
 some distressed private soldier or citizen could order justice 
 done by a written sentence as surely as could any Asiatic auto 
 crat by issued edict. While often yielding to the dictates of 
 his pitying heart in individual cases, and showing constantly 
 almost abnormal patience, any one who mistook his charity 
 
178 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 for weakness was liable to sudden enlightment. The signifi 
 cant fact was only lately published that Colonel Hay once saw 
 the long-suffering Lincoln take an office seeker by the coat 
 collar, carry him bodily to the door, and fling him in a heap 
 outside. 
 
 And here is the wonder this merciful man, daily saving 
 the lives of deserters so as not to increase in the land the mel 
 ancholy list of widows and orphans; this tender-souled, agon 
 izing, consecrated leader, looking out upon armies encamped 
 and a suffering people, is stern as fate in demanding that 
 battle shall be made and war, with all its horrors, resolutely 
 continued, till right is accomplished and eternal justice done. 
 Here is the true leader gentle and affectionate as any woman, 
 as averse to violence yet able to meet the unwelcome duty 
 of the sword-bearer with unflinching spirit. 
 
 The great test of Lincoln s leadership came in his dealing 
 with the fundamental question of slavery, as related to the 
 compact of the states, the perpetuity of the Union, the very 
 existence of the nation. The important part of his political 
 career before the war had to do with this complex question. 
 This double problem made the war, and was dominant through 
 out its course. The, as he called it, "perplexing compound 
 Union and slavery," had become indeed a "question not of 
 two sides merely, but of at least four sides," even among those 
 who were for the Union, saying nothing of those who were 
 against it. "There were," he said, "those who were for the 
 Union with, but not without slavery those for it without, but 
 not with ; those for it with or without, who preferred it t 
 with, and those for it with or without, who preferred it with 
 out." Here was the maze through which he had to find his 
 way; these were the conditions from which he was to work 
 out salvation for the nation, with the profound conviction that 
 whether slavery were or not immediately extinguished, its 
 death warrant was already signed. Lincoln s view of slavery 
 was, from the first, not unlike Washington s and that of other 
 founders of the republic. His attitude was unyielding as to 
 principle. He looked upon the institution as intrinsically evil, 
 inimical to the interests of free labor; anomalous, and impossi 
 ble of perpetuity, in a politically free community; something 
 to be thwarted, diminished and ultimately made to cease by 
 just, constitutional and reasonable means. He satisfied the 
 extremists on neither side of the great debate; for while he 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 179 
 
 would never compromise as to principle he did not refuse to 
 compromise as to time and method. 
 
 Lincoln the Leader, in dealing with the chief perplexity 
 of the situation this complex question of slavery and the 
 Union was helped by his own intensely human makeup. The 
 average traits of mankind were in him strongly developed. 
 He was in close touch with his kind; he sympathized with men 
 on the plane of humanity, and regarded them in the spirit of 
 philosophy. He was called a great joker but Lincoln s "see 
 ing" of "the joke" meant a good deal more than with ordinary 
 minds ; it meant, often enough, that he saw through the solemn 
 pretender who was pained at his frivolity. And the jokes that 
 he told often had the wisdom of ancient parables. 
 
 Lincoln s democracy was a matter more of instinct than 
 of reason. He comprehended human motives, prejudices, lit 
 tleness and nobilities. It was he who once described honest 
 statesmanship as the employment of individual meannesses 
 for the public good. Acquainted with humanity he knew how 
 to bear with its infirmities, and he moved toward his inflexible 
 purpose, over what to others would have been heart-breaking 
 obstacles, with a long-suffering patience that had in it some 
 thing of the divine. 
 
 As memoir after memoir of the war time has come to light 
 his countrymen year by year have been better able to obtain 
 a knowledge of the workings of Lincoln s mind, and of the 
 marvelous skill and wisdom of his leadership during his presi 
 dency. That which his chief biographers long ago declared of 
 him we now more certainly know to be the truth, namely that, 
 "with the fire of a reformer and a martyr in his heart, he yet 
 proceeded by the ways of cautious and practical statecraft." 
 
 Descended upon him from the North, delegations of aboli 
 tionists to tell him that unless he at once freed the slaves his 
 administration would be shorn of moral support, and the war 
 would end in failure and disgrace. Hastened to the White 
 House from the border states their governors and congression 
 al representatives to warn him that if he touched slavery they 
 could not keep their constituencies on the side of the Union 
 and the border states, he knew, held the balance of power. 
 Hurried back from Spain, Carl Schurz the gallant figure, a 
 contribution of the best of the old world to the service of 
 the new in its hour of need hurried Carl Schurz from his post 
 at the Spanish court to inform the president that according 
 
180 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 to his belief there would be great danger of the recognition 
 of the Confederacy unless there were prompt military success,, 
 or some proof that the war would destroy slavery; while other 
 warnings from over the sea were to the effect that if the presi 
 dent should stir up the slaves against their masters, the sym 
 pathy of European friends of the North would be justly for 
 feited. 
 
 Through all this divergency of counsel Lincoln watched, 
 waited, prayed and incessantly worked toward the end his 
 own intellect, his own heart approved. It was, as we have 
 said, a highly important element of Lincoln s leadership that 
 he had had the training of a lawyer by a practice of many 
 years and many kinds. His knowledge of men had thus been 
 vastly increased; while his grasp of legal principles was of in 
 finite help when his talents and experience were enlisted in 
 a mighty cause. It was no petty construction of legal obliga 
 tion that mad him strenuous as to the literal fulfillment of 
 his oath to execute faithfully the office of president, and pre 
 serve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. 
 He found no constitutional authority to emancipate the slaves 
 except as a military necessity, and he steadfastly refused to 
 free the slaves till he could with an honest mind declare that 
 the necessity had arisen; knowing then, also, the time had at 
 last arrived w r hen public opinion would sustain his action. 
 
 In his famous letter to Greeley in 1862, he stated his posi 
 tion explained his policy with absolute lucidity. "If I could 
 save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and 
 if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; 
 and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
 I would also do that." Similar statements were made to others 
 in formal and informal utterances. Often he explained to im 
 patient critics and counselors that the conditions of public 
 opinion would not justify the course they demanded. 
 
 But the deep lesson of his leadership lies in the fact that 
 while year after year he carefully studied public opinion > 
 that supreme element in all matters of government and all the 
 affairs of men he studied it not to yield to it as his master, 
 but in order to so act in respect to it as to accomplish his own 
 well considered purpose ; to act upon it ; to bring it power 
 fully to the help of his cherished plans; in a word to lead it and 
 to lead it right. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 181 
 
 And what is true leadership of the people? Is it to be 
 carried away by a popular wave; to avoid opposing it, not in 
 order to circumvent it and to save one s strength for its later 
 direction but solely and selfishly to avoid being submerged 
 by it? Is it to change when it changes, in order to retain 
 place and the semblance of power? Is he truly a leader who 
 listens to "the sacred voice of the people," in .order to learn 
 which way to leap? Not thus Lincoln. His was not the 
 leadership that in order to be popular, "changes its mind." 
 but a leadership that changes the minds of others. He kept 
 "near the people" he kept his "ear to the ground" not from 
 selfish policy, but through his sympathy with the interest in 
 human beings; in order to learn the moods of many minds 
 and gradually to lead thought and action in the direction of his 
 own profound convictions. Lincoln respected public opinion, 
 but he was not its trembling slave. He understood human 
 prejudices, limitations, the effects of heredity and environ 
 ment, but he never considered a wrong public opinion final. 
 Not unknown to mankind is the statesmanship that resists 
 public opinion when it disapproves of it, resists, till the waves 
 beat threateningly, and then turns with the tide. This is the 
 statesmanship of Pontius Pilate. That tragic figure stands 
 before the eyes of all mankind washing ineffectually his guilty 
 hands, while he releases Barabbas and sends Christ to Calvary. 
 
 No book praising Lincoln has lately been issued which has 
 brought to me a higher idea of his method with public opinion, 
 as well as his wisdom and his self-sacrificing devotion, than 
 one by a man whose life has been a romance of devotion to 
 ideals, a Southern-born abolitionist, who does not hesitate to 
 dispraise the president. He is opposed to war, and held and 
 still holds that "no drop of blood would have been shed if 
 the president, at the beginning, had proclaimed freedom for 
 every slave." Yet even he would have protected the centers 
 to which the slaves would flee, as if that itself would not have 
 been an open invitation to war. In 1862, the Rev. Moncure 
 Conway, for it is of him I speak, went to the White House 
 with the Rev. W. H. Channing to urge, personally, upon the 
 president the emancipation of slaves. There was something 
 pathetic in the sweet reasonableness of the president in ex 
 plaining to these good and insistent men as he had so often 
 to do to men of like scruples and beliefs not only his own 
 
182 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 great desire for emancipation, preferably with compensation, 
 but the fact that perhaps they did not so well as he know the 
 temper of the entire public. He showed them that those who 
 were working in the anti-slavery movement would naturally 
 come in contact with men of like mind, and might easily over 
 estimate the number of those who held similar views. He 
 gave it as his observation that the great masses of the people, 
 at that time, cared comparatively little about the negro. And 
 at the end of the interview he said can you not hear him 
 say it? "We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country 
 and more. You can go home and try to bring the people to 
 your views, and you may say anything you like about me if 
 that will help. Don t spare me!" 
 
 Do w r e seize all the bearings of his strange situation; that 
 he who is known now as the great emancipator set before him 
 self as the one indispensable aim, not the immediate freedom 
 of the slave, but the immediate salvation of the Union the 
 integrity of the nation though when the time came for 
 emancipation to assist Union, how joyfully and confidently he 
 put forth emancipation, with what courage in the face of what 
 heavy risks ! In many thoughtful minds the fact that his 
 policy \vas the Union first and abolition next is his highest title 
 to world-wide fame. Theirs the belief that his saving of the 
 nation is the gigantic feat that lifts him to the companionship 
 of the most important characters of universal history. "This 
 Union," says John Coleman Adams, "is the consummation of 
 all the struggles of all men toward a state of universal peace. 
 It is the life and aspiration of the world organized into a na 
 tion." The threat to undo the Union was a "peril to man 
 kind." That Lincoln instinctively felt this and strained every 
 nerve to the supreme task of preserving the nation and this 
 with success gives him rank among the greatest. That he 
 did this and destroyed slavery also proves his genius and 
 doubly crowns his stupendous accomplishment. 
 
 He did all this, so far as we may attribute to any single 
 person the guidance of affairs so tremendous, though in this 
 case the personal preponderance is exceptionally evident; he 
 did all this, and he assumed no virtue for having done it; nox 
 a thought of vanity or undue exultation ever crossed his candid 
 mind. To a lesser nature the temptation would have been 
 great as. at the last, success followed success, remembering 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 183 
 
 the reproaches he had so long silently borne, and, most try 
 ing of all, the suspicion and spiritual scorn, the look from 
 above downward, of those who, working for the same ends, 
 regarded him as less sensitive morally and less faithful than 
 they to that cause to which he had dedicated every energy ot 
 his soul. 
 
 It is pleasant to know that this kindly, much burdened 
 and harassed ruler had, at least for a few days before his 
 taking off, the satisfactions of full success. He knew more 
 than any other the awful dangers, yet, as Godkin said while 
 Lincoln still was living, he was perhaps the only man in the 
 North who had "never wavered or doubted or abated one jot 
 of heart or hope." He had "been always calm, confident, deter 
 mined, the very type and embodiment of the national will, the 
 true and fit representative of the people in its noblest moods," 
 the ideal "leader of a democracy." "Through the ages to 
 come," said lately one who knew him and who confesses that 
 it has taken years of reflection and retrospective considera 
 tion to become convinced that in the matter of the proclama 
 tion as a war measure Lincoln was right and he was wrong, 
 "through the ages to come the history of the Union and free 
 dom under the Union will hold up to the admiration of man 
 kind as the greatest saving influence in our greatest danger, 
 the character, the firmness, the homely sayings, the freedom 
 from passion, the singular common sense, the almost divine 
 charity of Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 In these times of new conditions, new advantages and new 
 dangers in every community of our country and in the national 
 field the cry today is for leaders. Nor are we without them ; 
 some long known and well beloved; some just emerging into 
 prominence and being tried by the first tests of responsibility. 
 Some are leaders in the best sense; and to some we may be 
 inclined to apply the name not of leaders, but of misleaders. 
 It would be absurd to be looking now here, now there for 
 "another Lincoln"; for a reincarnation of that rich and most 
 individual and peculiar character. We shall not see again that 
 extraordinary combination of sympathetic qualities with the 
 sterner virtues; such rare gifts and abilities; such sense of 
 humor, such mixture of buoyancy of spirit with moods of 
 gloom ; such tendency to contemplation and such power of ac 
 tion all united in one personality. It would be unfortunate, 
 moreover, to judge present day executives and leaders by en- 
 
184 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 deavormg to compare their opinions and acts in detail with 
 those which were characteristic of entirely different men and 
 conditions. We are living in a very different world from that 
 of the middle of the last century. For one thing, the relation 
 of public men to the merit system in public office is not that 
 of the days of the Civil War; and many questions are now 
 pressing which were only faintly imagined forty or fifty years 
 ago. 
 
 But nothing has outworn the fundamental principles of 
 Lincoln s leadership. We have the right to demand in our 
 leaders equal sincerity, disinterestedness, and devotion. We 
 have a right to point to his moderation as a perpetual stand 
 ard, to his conscientious consideration of all interests and 
 views; to his wise and patient tolerance and open-mindedness; 
 to his freedom from rancor and avoidance of personal conten 
 tion ; to his moral courage; to his sense of justice; to his es 
 sential democracy. W r e may well ask of our leaders that they 
 should imitate his manly attitude toward public opinion; that 
 they should disdain to poison its sources by violent and un 
 proved assertions and by the forced uses of our modern en 
 ginery of publicity; we may well insist that they should not 
 meanly follow, nor falsely inform and selfishly mold the senti 
 ment of voters; but direct aright and to no ignoble ends the 
 opinions and the suffrages of the people. We have a right 
 to resent leadership based either upon conscienceless advocacy 
 of supposedly popular programs, or still more shameless 
 upon the wholesale use of money. It is our inescapable duty 
 to warn against the spurious leadership that deals in indis 
 criminate denunciation, awakens a feeling of class and of class 
 hatred, forgets the bonds of a common citizenship, spreads 
 distrust and despisal of the nation, and sows the very seeds 
 of anarchy and assassination. We have a right to scout the 
 demagogues who take the name of Lincoln upon their lips, 
 and in their lives, and their parody of leadership set at nought 
 every principle of his nature. 
 
 Our needs, our conditions, are different, but the principles 
 of justice and of human liberty are the same, now and forever. 
 In the recurring and necessary readjustment of laws and meth 
 ods in the related realms of industry, of economics and of 
 government, let us have the respect for rights, the acknowl 
 edgment of mutual duties ; the striving for justice ; the under 
 standing of humanity, and the love of fellowmen which makes 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 185 
 
 Lincoln s leadership, like the leadership of Washington, the 
 standard of a patriotism broader than the confines of common 
 wealths, and fit for emulation and guidance throughout the 
 centuries to come. 
 
 Let me close with the memory of a night of the spring ot 
 the year 1865, in the time of the blooming of lilacs, as says 
 the w r onderful poem. I was waiting in Philadelphia for Lin 
 coln s funeral train to start, as I was to accompany it to New 
 ark. I had and have little desire to look upon faces from 
 which the light of life is departed; but suddenly it came upon 
 me that I had never seen Lincoln and must not let go by this 
 last chance to behold at least the deserted temple of a lofty 
 soul. Then I found it was too late; the police had drawn their 
 line across the path in front of Independence Hall. But my 
 earnest desire prevailed and I was the last to pass in by the 
 window and behold, in a strange dazzle of lights and flowers, 
 the still features of that face we all now know so well. Then 
 I went my way into the night and walked alone, northward 
 to the distant station. Soon I heard behind me the wailing 
 music of the funeral dirge. The procession approached; the 
 funeral train moved out beneath the stars. Never can I for 
 get the groups of weeping men and women at the little towns 
 through which we slowly passed ; and the stricken faces of 
 thousands who, in the cities, stood like mourners at the funeral 
 of a beloved father. Thus through grieving states was borne 
 the body of the beloved chieftain while the luminous spirit 
 and example of Lincoln the leader of the people went forth into 
 all the earth along the pathway of eternal fame. 
 
186 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY SAMUEL FALLOWS, BISHOP REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 (Read February 12, 1908.) 
 
 Hero worship is grounded in human nature. We want 
 excellence embodied, ideas incarnated. Principles are grand, 
 but principled personalities are infinitely grander. 
 
 We may think in the abstract, but we love in the con 
 crete. We may throw a halo of self-created splendor about our 
 hero, and idealize, and well nigh divinize, the departed great 
 one, but it is simply the homage involuntarily paid to the in 
 herent dignity of our own being. It is the bringing out of the 
 best that is within us. It is only letting fly the angel that 
 waits with folded wings to be set free in the innermost sanct 
 uary of every human soul. 
 
 History, it has been declared, is but the biography of great 
 men, and an institution the lengthened shadow of a single 
 man; for "every true man is a cause, a country and an age." 
 About one such man, whose name is on our lips tonight, gather 
 some of the most magnificent chapters in the annals of time. 
 
 Born in poverty and raised in obscurity, Lincoln proved, 
 by his triumphant ascent, that circumstances are not the mas 
 ters, but the servants of man. They are not the creators, but 
 the mere conditions of the all conquering mind. 
 
 Lincoln was emphatically the child of the people and the 
 man of the people. Sprung from their loins, he was never 
 separated from them by distance of official position. The 
 simplicity and heartiness of his earlier life of the woods, the 
 prairies, and the river were never spoiled by the stiffness and 
 formality of an imported court etiquette. No man among us 
 ever captured so completely the popular imagination, and won 
 so enthusiastically and enduringly the popular heart. Mil 
 lions in reverence will always bow at his feet. 
 
 "Character, the diamond that scratches every other stone," 
 was of the purest quality in him. Napoleon schooled his looks, 
 and discharged his face of expression that no man might read 
 his thoughts. But our Lincoln needed no such veil over his 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 187 
 
 rugged features to hide that honest soul, which he could so 
 fearlessly throw open to the gaze of angels or of men. 
 
 Grant was the world s leader in war without an oath ; and 
 Lincoln, the world s leader of all leaders without deceit. 
 His honesty was so pure, so transparent, that friend and foe 
 were compelled by the might of its irresistible majesty to bend 
 before it. 
 
 "Shame was ashamed to sit upon his brow, 
 For twas a throne where honor fair was crowned 
 Sole monarch of the universal world." 
 
 With "Aristides the Just" will go down through all the 
 ages, "Honest Old Abe." 
 
 Hope, the prophet in every heart, was king and priest be 
 sides in his. It ruled his life and consecrated his deeds. Other 
 men turned their backs in despair on the republic s future; he, 
 through the densest darkness, saw with steadfast gaze the 
 splendor of the coming day. 
 
 To some of his contemporaries he was as "a root out of 
 dry ground," and there was "no beauty that they should de 
 sire him." But if the soul of a seraph dwelt in the form of 
 a satyr in glorious old Socrates, in the ungainly figure of Lin 
 coln dwelt the resplendent beauty of virtue unexcelled in liv 
 ing man before. 
 
 Many could not comprehend the blending of mirthfulness 
 with the most serious thoughtfulness the twin elements of 
 his innermost being, which in alternate succession, were seen 
 in the play and repose of his face. They forgot that "a sense 
 of the ludicrous is always essential to prevent us from becom 
 ing ridiculous." Lincoln used this sense with rarest skill, and 
 with the deepest reason. 
 
 The carping critics around him heard with ill concealed 
 impatience, on important occasions, what was to them an ill- 
 timed story. They were simply blind to the profoundest 
 philosophy of human nature. They were ignorant of the sur 
 passing greatness of the man who was thus enabled to carry 
 the superhuman load heaped upon him, which else would have 
 crushed out his very existence. 
 
 Lincoln had supreme self-reliance, "that iron string to 
 which all hearts vibrate," and yet was not self-willed. Men 
 used to talk of "masters" in his cabinet, but all the masters 
 there combined could not move that one master from his 
 
188 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 purpose, when he felt duty was at stake. It was of these 
 minor things that he used playfully to say; "I have no in 
 fluence with this administration." In non-essential things he 
 was as pliable as a reed; in essential things, as immovable 
 as the everlasting hills. Other men were trying to hurry the 
 march of progress, and demanding that the supreme action 
 of his life should be taken. He said, "I wait on Providence 
 and will not force events." He waited until the hour of high 
 noon in American history had struck, and then, with the sweep 
 of his pen, sent a whole race to freedom and to fortune. 
 
 He rose to the height of every occasion, and yet in doing 
 so it was easy to see "that half his strength he put not forth." 
 He knew, while using every plea for peace which human per 
 suasiveness could prompt, that the rebellion could not be put 
 down with rose and lavender water. He knew it would not 
 answer to use the rap of a kid-covered knuckle or the button 
 hole touch of a superannuated remonstrance, as some desired, 
 but the fist of authority rimmed with iron. And so we 
 sang: "We dare not look behind us but steadfastly before. 
 We are coming ; we are coming ; our Union to restore. We are 
 coming, Father Abraham one hundred thousand three hun 
 dred thousand six hundred thousand more." And we would 
 have gone on singing if need be. "Still there s more to fol 
 low." 
 
 Politics with Lincoln was righteousness guided by com 
 mon sense ; and a politician lacking either can never become 
 a statesman. Lincoln, as a consummate statesman, had at last 
 to call out two hundred thousand blacks in blue, to make pos 
 sible "the Union of the states forever." His daring action 
 caused an entire revision of American arithmetic in which 
 one was to count one, whether the merchant millionaire in 
 his city counting room, or the liberty loving son of Erin, com 
 ing from his native soil to raise corn for his pigs in some of 
 the impassable streets and alleys of Chicago; whether the 
 Southern planter on his broad, paternal acres or the dusky 
 laborer who whitened his fields with the snow of the cotton 
 harvest. 
 
 Lincoln, who always glorified manhood and recognized 
 fitness for place, could not forget his obligation to the colored 
 people, whom we cannot consider as aliens among us. Our 
 soldier president, General Grant, did not forget it: William 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 189 
 
 McKinley, our great peacemaker, of blessed memory, did not 
 forget it; our strenuous young president, Theodore Roose 
 velt will not forget it; and President Taft (or Cannon, or Fair 
 banks, or La Follette) must not forget it. 
 
 Without compassing the realm of literature, Lincoln yet 
 went confessedly to the head of all masters of English ex 
 pression and threw all classic diction into the shade. In him 
 the quality of mercy was not strained. It was the passion of 
 his being to forgive and reinstate. His gentleness lay at the 
 heart of his greatness, as it does at the heart of every great 
 man. It was this conception of gentleness which made quaint 
 George Herbert says of the greatest of all of women born: 
 "Christ was the first true gentleman that ever breathed." In 
 on of the ablest English journals it was written of Lincoln s 
 last message : 
 
 "It is the most remarkable thing of the sort ever 
 pronounced by any president of the United States. 
 Its Alpha and its Omega is Almighty God, the God of 
 Justice and the Father of Mercies, who is working 
 out the purposes of His love. It is invested with a 
 dignity and a pathos which lift it high above every 
 thing of the kind in the Old World or in the New. With 
 malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in 
 the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 
 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 orphans, to do all which 
 may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
 among ourselves and with all nations. 
 
 My comrades, companions and friends, in what more fitting 
 language can we consecrate ourselves to the momentous and undy 
 ing work of the Republic. These words of Lincoln should be writ 
 ten in letters of gold and placed in the White House for every 
 administration to read and recognize. 
 
 "Freedom s battle once begun 
 Is bequeathed from sire to son." 
 
 Some men said "Liberty with or without the Union," but 
 Abraham Lincoln said, "The Union with or without slavery." He 
 was right and they were wrong. For he knew, after that first 
 
190 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 shot on Sumter, that with the Union, slavery had nothing to hope, 
 ar,d without it, it had nothing to fear. That grip of his on the 
 Union was trie grip of gravitation the grip of death. Nay, it was 
 the grip of life, never to be unloosed by the hand of either slavery 
 or secession. 
 
 In these days of conflict between capital and labor and between 
 the upholders and contemners of law, the language of Lincoln is 
 most timely : 
 
 "Nowhere in the world is presented a government of 
 so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poor 
 est among us are held out the highest privileges and posi 
 tions. The present moment finds me at the White House, 
 yet there is as good a chance for your children as there 
 was for my father s. Again I admonish you not to be 
 turned from your stern purpose of defending our beloved 
 country and its free institutions by any arguments urged 
 by ambitious and designing men. 
 
 "To save these institutions for our children, to keep 
 these paths of privilege and preferment open to all, there 
 must be no despotisms here, not even for beneficent ends. 
 Workingmen want no other weapons than liberty and 
 light. By peaceful and orderly measures they will the 
 more speedily and surely gain the ends they seek; by any 
 other measures they will undermine and shatter the civil 
 structure which is the shelter and the defense of all that 
 they hold dear." 
 
 Much has been said about Mr. Lincoln s relation to re 
 ligion. But one thing is sure; he was neither an atheist nor 
 an agnostic. He was as profound a believer in the power of 
 prayer as the most orthodox Christian. His request for the 
 prayers of his neigh bors and friends as he left Springfield to 
 assume the presidency proves it. His visit to General Sickles 
 when this hero was wounded confirms it. 
 
 The general tells in his own graphic way the story of his 
 interview with the president : 
 
 "It was on the 5th day of July, 1863, that I was 
 brought to Washington on a stretcher from the field 
 of Gettysburg. Hearing of my arrival, President Lin 
 coln came to my room and sat down by my bedside. 
 He asked me about the great battle, and when I told 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 191 
 
 him of. the terrible slaughter the tears streamed from 
 his eyes. I asked him if he had doubted the result. 
 He said, No. Then he continued: 
 
 " This may seem strange to you, but p. few days 
 ago, when the opposing armies were converging, I 
 felt as never before my utter helplessness in the great 
 crisis that was to come upon the country. I went into 
 my own room and locked the door. Then I knelt 
 down and prayed as I never did before. I told God 
 that He had called me to this position; that I had 
 done all that I could do, and that the result was now 
 in His hands ; that I felt my own weakness and lack 
 of power, and that I knew that if the country was to 
 be saved, it was because He so willed it. When I 
 went down from my room, I felt that there could be 
 no doubt of the issue. The burden seemed to have 
 rolled off my shoulders, my intense anxiety was re 
 lieved, and in its place came a real sense of trustful 
 ness, and that was why I did not doubt the result of 
 Gettysburg. 
 
 " And, what is more, Sickles, he continued, I be 
 lieve that we may hear at any moment of a great suc 
 cess by Grant, who has been pegging away at Vicks- 
 burg for so many months. By tomorrow you will 
 hear that he has won a victory as important to us in 
 the West as Gettysburg is in the East. Then, turn 
 ing to me, he said: Sickles, I am in a prophetic 
 mood today, and I know that you will get well. The 
 doctors do not give me that hope, Mr. President/ I 
 said ; but he answered cheerfully, I know you will get 
 well, Sickles. 
 
 The supreme mission of the Man of Galilee was reflected 
 in the subordinate mission of Abraham Lincoln. For he could 
 reverently say of the Father of the human soul, "He hath sent 
 me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to 
 the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are 
 bound." 
 
 The most exquisite tribute to his noble attributes was the 
 wreath at his funeral, sent from Boston by the sister of a sol 
 dier boy he had pardoned when condemned to death for sleep 
 ing at his post. It was justly placed directly above that heart so 
 
192 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 cruelly stilled in death, which beat only with love to mankind. 
 
 The very hem of Lincoln s garment is now a priceless relic. 
 The out-of-style hat he w^ore is regarded more highly than the 
 begemmed circlet which decks a monarch s brow. A splin 
 ter from the rail he split is worthy of the choicest adorning of 
 richest gold. If Milton could aver, "Scipio was the height of 
 Rome," we can aver "Lincoln was the height of America." 
 
 And yet, my comrades and companions, it was divinely or 
 dained that, without the splendid galaxy of military and naval 
 heroes that gathered about him, his unique position could not 
 have been attained, nor his immortal work performed. His pen 
 wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, but the swords of a 
 Grant, a Sherman, a Sheridan, a Logan, a Thomas, and othef 
 great leaders, with the mighty host of the boys in blue, re 
 wrote it, their cannon thundered it, their musketry echoed it, 
 their bayonets punctuated it, and Appomattox put the final, ir 
 revocable Amen of God and Man upon it. But as great as 
 some of these men were, matchless as each of them was in his 
 sphere, they were but the superb setting of that priceless jewel 
 in America s keeping, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 He still lives "For him all doors are flung wide, 
 Him still all tongues greet, and honors crown, 
 All eyes follow with desire." 
 
 Through God s good providence, he made the old prophecy 
 of Ancient Israel true of our own American Israel, "Thou shalt 
 also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal 
 diadem in the hand of thy God." 
 
 Kentucky gave Lincoln birth, and cradled him in her arms ; 
 Indiana led him up to early manhood; Illinois then threw open 
 to him every avenue to honor. We, Illinoisans may then be 
 pardoned for saying: 
 
 "Not without thy wondrous story, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois, 
 
 Could be writ the Nation s glory, 
 Illinois, Illinois." 
 
 Rut we know that without the wondrous story of every 
 loyal state of our undivided and indivisible Union, we could 
 not truthfully apostrophize tonight our peerless, beloved coun 
 try, and say : 
 
 "Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
 The queen of the world and the child of the skies." 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 193 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY HENRY CHAPMAN SWEARINGEN, D. D v PASTOR HOUSE OF HOPE, 
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 (Read February 8, 1910.) 
 
 I am especially sensible of the privilege and the honor of speak 
 ing to you on this occasion, when you come together to celebrate the 
 birth of one whose name will be spoken first with veneration and 
 awe by all future generations of Americans. I would not speak in 
 vidiously, but it does seem to me that, tried by every standard of 
 greatness, judged by his personal characteristics, by the clearness 
 and correctness of his judgment, by the moral qualities of his 
 mighty heart no other man who has occupied public position in all 
 history is worthy to be compared with Abraham Lincoln. To stand 
 next to Lincoln is sufficient glory for any man, so brilliant is the 
 lustre of his fame. There are other men whose motives have been 
 as pure; whose patriotism was as devoted; other men who set be 
 fore them high ideals, and strove earnestly and persistently to at 
 tain to them. But it is my sober conviction not the utterance of 
 this moment inspired by the occasion and I think it will be writ 
 ten down as the calm verdict of history, that Abraham Lincoln is 
 the typical American citizen, and that he, as no other character 
 and that it saying much will personalize the qualities that the 
 American people delight to honor. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln answers to three tests of greatness, at least 
 possibly to many others. The most severe test, probably, that we 
 can apply to any character that has claim to a place in history is. 
 whether or not its lustre fades with the passing of time. Real 
 greatness lives. With probably a national disposition towards 
 fulsomeness it is quite common with us, while the memory of a 
 man s life and deeds is still fresh, to speak of him as one whose 
 fame is undying, and whose name will be remembered for gen 
 erations. But history fulfills very few such predictions. There 
 are few men who really grow upon the generations as they come 
 and go. Such men are in a class alone and foremost among 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 those who have borne the American name and had a part in Am 
 erican affairs, is Abraham Lincoln . 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a surprise to his generation. He is more 
 of a surprise to the present generation. It is only recently that we 
 have begun to appreciate the quality of his genius. We have 
 passed a sufficient distance from him to study him in true per 
 spective. Now we are able to relate his life and career to the events 
 preceding his entrance upon the stage of action, and also to measure 
 his services by their results. The generation that lives to-night 
 and is taking its part in the affairs of this day thinks more of 
 Abraham Lincoln than the generation to which he belonged ; and 
 our children who are yet in their infancy, when another half cen 
 tury shall have rolled around will be gathering as we gather to 
 night, to pay honor to the memory of the mightiest of all Americans. 
 That is a sure test of greatness. 
 
 He responds to another test of greatness. He created ideals. 
 There are some men who have figured in our national affairs, who 
 are justly entitled to rank as great men, because of the quality 
 of their genius. Some of them were soldiers leading the armies 
 upon the field of battle, and among them could be mentioned tonight 
 names that stand with the foremost in the history of military en 
 deavor. Some were statesmen who assisted in guiding the affairs 
 of the Nation in the day of our country s trial. Some were jurists 
 who pointed out for us the basic principles upon which the nation 
 was founded and by which true national life may be conserved. 
 But the final test of greatness that which will awaken someThing 
 more than admiration for genius, that which will win the hearts 
 of men and enshrine a character in their loving regard, so that 
 their love goes out to him as to a friend after he has long passed 
 away is to create for men the ideals of their own living. Wash 
 ington did it. He has set a mark for high minded, dignified, un 
 swerving patriotism. Although we do not feel so near to him 
 as to Lincoln, although a man of entirely different temperament 
 yet Washington lives tonight in the memory of a grateful country, 
 because he has created an ideal for American citizenship. And so 
 has Abraham Lincoln. He has taught men as no other has taught, 
 how American citizens should live. He has given us a conception 
 of civic duty. He has shown us civic ideals. He has warmed our 
 hearts with the tenderness of his own. He has blessed our lives 
 with the richness of his moral qualities as with the glory of his 
 intellectual attainments. The children in our schools are properly 
 pointed to Abraham Lincoln as the ideal American citizen. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 195 
 
 He fulfills a third test of greatness, and that is : he knew how 
 to gather about him men who were worth while. Many men who 
 have been placed in positions somewhat similar to those in which 
 Lincoln found himself when he assumed the duties of the presidency, 
 have failed because they were either not able to discern commanding 
 qualities in the men they needed, or did not possess the diplomacy, 
 the skill and the warm qualities of heart which enabled them to labor 
 successfully with such men. Abraham Lincoln s cabinet will be 
 famous as long as American history is known great names they 
 have and worthy. Not often has it been true if ever, that a president 
 has had about him a triumvirate like Seward and Chase and 
 Stanton. Not many presidents could have worked successfully 
 with men of such commanding abilities, such strong wills and de 
 termined convictions. William M. Everts, in his Memorial Ora 
 tion upon Chief Justice Chase, said, speaking of Lincoln and Seward 
 and Chase, that had either of the others been president, the country 
 would have lost the services of the other two. Only Lincoln 
 could hold together that company of mighty men, and control them 
 without commanding them, turning their thoughts and their abil 
 ities into channels that led to the salvation of the Nation. 
 
 We have said that Abraham Lincoln was a surprise. If you take 
 his life and study him as an orator, if you study him as a lawyer, if 
 you study him as the commander-in-chief of the army and navy 
 of the United States, if you study him as a statesman who was 
 obliged to mark out great policies when he had no precedents to 
 follow, you are always meeting with surprises. And yet it is not 
 so remarkable; Lincoln believed that he had been raised up by a 
 mighty providence and weighted with responsibility for the salva 
 tion of the Nation. And men of that type have always been sur 
 prises. 
 
 When you study his ancestry, honorable but not distinguished ; 
 when you think of his life in the Western woods, of the pioneer 
 conditions under which he was reared ; when you think of him be 
 hind the counter in a country grocery store, where one of the chief 
 commodities of trade was corn whiskey; when you think of him 
 on the Hat boat and remember all the environments of that man s 
 youth, the scanty schooling he had, the marvel of it is that, when 
 lie came to take up the burden of this mighty duty, he was one of 
 the chastest and most gifted of orators in our annals, one of the 
 mightiest, if not the mightiest statesmen and lawyers, that the 
 Nation has yet produced. A surprise I say! 
 
196 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 As we read his speeches, so full of noble sentiments, expressed 
 in language that is so brief and epigrammatic as to be almost 
 proverbial ; when we think of the manner in which he grapples with 
 the great constitutional questions which came to the fore at that 
 time we wonder how any such good thing could have come out 
 of Nazareth. It is indeed a tribute to the surpassing genius of this 
 man, that he came up from such a lowly origin, and to-night oc 
 cupies a position of unrivaled glory in the history of the Nation. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was particularly distinguished, both by his 
 insight and by his foresight. He knew more than other men. It 
 was a sort of intuition with him. He had the gift of correct analy 
 sis and of clear, definite expression in a remarkable degree. Time 
 and again he was brought face to face with situations and was called 
 upon to solve problems that were perplexing the greatest minds 
 of his day. He always knew how to call for advice from those 
 who were competent to give it; but after having read the opinions 
 submitted to him on such occasions, one wonders what the man s 
 final decision will be; and yet, when that decision is studied, you 
 wonder still more that all his advisors had not seen the matter as 
 he saw it. 
 
 In his famous debates with Douglas, his great rival in Illinois, 
 Lincoln s triumph was due to his insight and his foresight. Lincoln 
 saw the point, and he knew how to state it. When he was called to 
 the presidency, Lincoln, of all men of that day, understood 
 the situation that confronted him. He said to his neighbors as 
 he \vas leaving Springfield and he repeated the sentiment on a 
 number of occasions during that trip to Washington and at his 
 first inauguration also that there had fallen to his lot a task 
 mightier than that which fell to the lot of George Washington. He 
 knew the issues of the future; knew all that was involved in that 
 mighty struggle. Those of you who are familiar with the history 
 will not forget the divided councils of that generation. Committees 
 of both houses of congress were appointed and almost as many 
 compromises suggested as there were members of these commit 
 tees, scarcely any two of them agreeing. Have you ever tried to 
 consider, gentlemen, what would have been the result for the coun 
 try, had not there been placed at the helm a man whose judgment 
 was sound, and whose foresight was penetrating? On all sides men 
 were urging upon Lincoln s attention subordinate issues. Lincoln 
 saw the main issue, and he refused to turn his eye from it. He could 
 not be driven from it by the threats of his enemies nor persuaded 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 197 
 
 by blandishments of others. He set before him the preservation 
 of the Federal Union, and no other question was allowed to rise to 
 equal dignity in the thought of that mighty leader. When the 
 question of slavery came forward Lincoln was calm, unmoved, 
 steady bearing himself in the midst of the storm with perfect 
 poise, determined that no other issues should displace that before 
 him the preservation of the Union. 
 
 I think Lincoln s training as a lawyer had something to do with 
 this gift that he displayed in such high degree. Of course, it was 
 a gift, but one that had been carefully developed. Lincoln s career 
 as a lawyer was of a character which compelled him to be an inde 
 pendent thinker. The young lawyers of that day if 1 am correctly 
 informed followed an entirely different practice from that which 
 now prevails. They were obliged to do so. These men relied on 
 tlieir own resources; they were required to study the principles of 
 the law and in that study developed their analytical powers. Those 
 men were not following precedents. They were the men who made 
 precedents; and that kind of training served Lincoln well when he 
 faced his heavy responsibilities. He was obliged to settle great 
 constitutional questions, such as had never been presented to another 
 president such questions as the right of the executive to suspend 
 writ of Habeas Corpus, the right of the national government to 
 coerce a state, and that raised at the time the state of West Vir 
 ginia was admitted into the Union. This man was blazing a new 
 trail. As great questions as ever confronted the legal minds of 
 this Nation were presented to Abraham Lincoln without precedents 
 which he might follow ; and had he not been a lawyer of original 
 genius, of initiative, of independence, of clear insight and logical 
 mind, he never would have been able to define the policies which 
 he adopted and followed. Take for instance, the case of the ad 
 mission of West Virginia. One member of his cabinet had resigned, 
 of the six remaining, he asked opinions as to two questions : Is the 
 admission of West Virginia under the circumstances constitutional? 
 If constitutional, is it advisable? His cabinet divided equally. 
 Chase, Seward and Stanton advised him that the admission of West 
 Virginia was constitutional and would be expedient, while Bates, 
 Blair, and Wells advised against it. Perhaps, being a layman, I 
 should not speak of these things in detail. I have read several times 
 the opinions of these three great ministers of Lincoln as to the 
 constitutionality of this policy. Technical arguments they are, but 
 you feel yourself in another world when perusing the opinion of 
 
198 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. If the members of the legal profession and 
 jurists who are here will pardon my saying it Abraham Lincoln 
 could write opinions that a layman can understand his decisions 
 were clear ; he went down to bed rock ; he presented his propositions 
 in such manner that the average mind is compelled to give assent. 
 Probably a layman is not entitled to pass an opinion upon Lincoln 
 as a lawyer, but I venture to believe judging from the opinions 
 which he wrote in his state papers I venture to believe that if 
 Abraham Lincoln had been elevated to the Supreme Bench of the 
 United States, he would have left a record second not even to that 
 of the great Marshall. 
 
 When Lincoln is considered as a military genius, again one 
 must speak with caution, because we are addressing those who are 
 far better able than ourselves to criticise his military policy. He 
 was w^ise enough never to attempt to give advice concerning what 
 1 may call, unprofessionally, the technique of military affairs. He 
 left that to military men. But probably when history has been 
 written and the final verdict transcribed, future generations will 
 agree that in questions of grand strategy, Abraham Lincoln was 
 one of the foremost, if not the foremost, genius that guided in the 
 affairs of that great war. Very often, as frequent study has shown, 
 Lincoln s advice was far better than that of men to whose judgment 
 he deferred. 
 
 It seems to us that one reason Abraham Lincoln had such 
 correct judgment, and was able to state himself in such simple and 
 clear language was, that all that he said was the expression of 
 himself. Lincoln was simple in his thinking, in his manner, in his 
 tastes; he was honest to the core, intellectually and morally. He 
 could not be untrue, and that moral quality, communicated to his 
 intellectual process, enabled him to think without bias and pre 
 judice. He had a heart and mind which fitted him to realize 
 the magnitude of the task which had been set before him. He 
 sought public office like other normal high-minded men, in an 
 honorable way, but I think it can be said of him that no personal 
 distinction or advantage was ever permitted to influence his judg 
 ment when the question was before him of the wise and safe policy 
 to be pursued in order to save this Federal Union. 
 
 Those were great days, and how grateful we ought to be that 
 a great man was called to the helm at that particular time. Lincoln 
 had behind him a political party that for the first time had come into 
 National power ; he had behind him a body of men, politically con- 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 199 
 
 sidered, composed of various, and sometimes discordant, elements. 
 He was called upon to assume the reins of power just at the time 
 several states were declaring their independence of the Federal 
 government. To win and to hold the confidence of his party; to 
 develop public opinion in the right direction and make it a mighty 
 agency for crushing rebellion, were giant tasks that few men could 
 have borne. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was probably the best politician who ever 
 filled the presidential chair, using that term in the very best sense. 
 No other president had a keener sense of the importance of public 
 opinion. No other president has been more skillful in directing 
 public opinion. No other president has been more patient in waiting 
 for public opinion to mature. No other has been more accurate 
 in his judgment as to the proper moment when he should speak, 
 assured that the sentiment, the loyal sentiment of the Nation, was 
 behind him for defense and encouragement. 
 
 The name of Abraham Lincoln will long be remembered on ac 
 count of these qualities, but I think his greatest virtue, and that 
 which will chiefly entitle him to a \vorthy place in the regard of pos 
 terity, is his moral grandeur. He was a good man. Have you ever 
 thought how little there is in the career of Abraham Lincoln for 
 which posterity need apologize? Do you realize \vhat it means to 
 point the rising generation to the career of a man who not only rose 
 to the heights of genius, but who, in his moral character and in the 
 nobility of his patriotic purpose, is worthy to be a model for our 
 children ? He never would do what he thought was wrong. Never ! 
 And he always strove to find what w^as right. The greatest word 
 with Lincoln was the word "right." 
 
 On one occasion, as you will remember, a committee repre 
 senting various religious bodies in the City of Chicago called upon 
 Lincoln. They were zealous, well meaning, somewhat radical per 
 sons. They spoke, of course without the responsibilities that Lin 
 coln felt. They requested him to take advance ground on the ques 
 tion of the abolition of slavery, though such a course might involve 
 the main question with which he was dealing. They said to him it 
 was the will of God that he should do. And do you remember his 
 reply, in which he expressed surprise that the will of God should 
 have been revealed to them and withheld from him, who had the 
 responsibility for the decision? And said he, "No one has struggled 
 more earnestly to know what the will of God is than I." And 
 closing that memorable reply, he uttered a sentence which alone 
 
200 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 would have made Abraham Lincoln immortal : "If I know the will 
 of God, I will do it." No man can say a greater thing than that. 
 
 I promised myself I would not weary you to-night with extracts 
 from Lincoln s speeches or writings. There is one sentiment, how 
 ever, which Lincoln has left upon record, which was not transcribed 
 lor the scrutiny of men s eyes, which, as his private secretary says, 
 expresses better than anything else the clearness and the candor 
 of Lincoln s thinking, and his profound religious sentiments. "The 
 will of God prevails," he wrote. "In great contests each party claims 
 to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one 
 must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing 
 at the same time. In the present Civil War it is quite possible that 
 God s purpose is something different from the purpose of either 
 party." There is the prophet ! "And yet, the human instrumentalities 
 are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready 
 to say that this is probably true, that God wills this contest and 
 wills, that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power he could 
 have either saved or destroyed the Union without a content ; yet, 
 the contest began ; and having begun, He could give the final victory 
 to either side any day; yet, the contest proceeds." He is as great 
 as a theologian as he was as a lawyer. I will commend that medita 
 tion to any theologian, assured that the verdict will be that the 
 correctness and soundness of Lincoln s thinking, aided by his calm, 
 unostentatious, religious faith, led him to a conclusion which the 
 sound Christian judgment of the world will affirm. That had 
 something to do with his clear insight always honest, and always, 
 setting before himself the right. Oh, is it any wonder we Idve this 
 man ! 
 
 Early he showed these qualities. Living down in Indiana in 
 a little cabin with but three sides, and the other open to the winter 
 storms, his mother died and they laid her away without a word, 
 without Christian rites. Three or four months after that a wander 
 ing clergyman came that way, and this young lad took him out in 
 the face of the winter blasts to the place where his mother lay and 
 had him perform over her the rites of Christian burial. It does 
 seem to me that if God s Angels ever come down to the habitations 
 of man they must have folded their wings at that spot where the 
 little orphan boy knelt in the snow on his mother s grave. That is 
 the man we love ! That is the man who holds to-night the affection 
 of a nation ! That is the man, the lustre of whose fame will become 
 more brilliant as the clays go by. And so long as our nation is 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 201 
 
 permitted to live and in a loyal and grateful sense pay honor to 
 those who had part in founding it and in perpetuating it, the name 
 cf Abraham Lincoln will be held in reverential regard; and mothers 
 will take their sons, and will read to them the story of his early 
 struggles, and of his mighty triumphs, and feel happy if they can 
 hope that their children will emulate his example. 
 
202 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY ADOLPH O. EBERHART, GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA. 
 (Read February 8, 1910.) 
 
 I am sure there is no one this evening who expects me to say 
 anything that would add to the splendid eulogy that has been 
 uttered. 
 
 It seemed to me, as I listened to those beautiful songs of the 
 flag, that I could imagine those beautiful tones rising higher and 
 higher until they touched the Heavens, singing praises of Him, and 
 that they were bringing before His eternal altars the offerings of an 
 independent people, such as the members of this Loyal Legion, 
 whose love offerings do not consist in tributes of praise and song, but 
 in a noble character, in right living, and in deeds of unselfish love. 
 Let us not forget that you and I are citizens of this great country, 
 the only country in the world that gives a worthy boy a chance 
 the country of Abraham Lincoln and let us look forward to this 
 Twentieth Century, whose sunrise has already long filled our vision, 
 hoping it may be an era of more perfect peace, happiness, and joy, 
 when all the world shall know our country by the blood and struggles 
 of the men of 61 and 65. 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 203 
 
 THE HEART OF LINCOLN. 
 
 BY LIEUT. ELL TORRANCE, PAST COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, G. A. R. 
 
 (February 12, 1902.) 
 
 On the 1 5th of April, 1865, and within a few hours after the 
 death of President Lincoln, a little company of ex-army officers 
 assembled in the city of Philadelphia and organized the Military 
 Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. On the follow 
 ing day, by special resolution, the martyred president was enrolled 
 as a member of the Order and from that day to this the name of 
 Abraham Lincoln leads all the rest. Six members of the Loyal 
 Legion have held the highest office in the gift of the republic Lin 
 coln, Grant, Garfield, Hayes, Harrison and McKinley and the 
 history making period of these men is all embraced within the 
 memory of every living soldier of the Civil War. Three of this 
 immortal group suffered a martyr s death and consecrated with 
 their life s blood the temple of liberty. * * * The sons of 
 men are like the sands of the sea shore in numbers but history 
 perpetuates the memory of few. 
 
 The world does not remember long; it soon forgets not only 
 what men say, but what they do. Nevertheless the wondrous story 
 ui him whose memory we commemorate this evening will be told 
 by eloquent lips and with ever increasing power as long as the 
 republic endures. Some men dwindle as you approach them; 
 others who appear great fade into insignificance as you study their 
 characters, while others pass into oblivion with the lapse of time; 
 but not so with Abraham Lincoln the. passing years only disclose 
 a more beautiful spirit, a more exalted character and give deeper 
 significance to every act of his life. 
 
 How humble his birth: No angels announced his advent or 
 if they did, the ears of men were too dull to hear; but now how 
 plainly all can discern that he was a teacher sent of God and divine 
 ly led from the day of his birth to the hour of his martyrdom. 
 The school in which he was disciplined was one few would care to 
 enter, and yet, from the most obscure origin, he reached the highest 
 eminence, and, once for all demonstrated the efficacy and bene 
 ficence of our free institutions. His vouth was crowned with 
 
204 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 privations and hardships, and until he reached man s estate, his feet 
 trod a narrow and cheerless path. 
 
 Scarcely three score and ten years ago, if you had drifted down 
 the Sangamon River, you would have found him in the forests along 
 its banks. The sound of an axe would have been your guide and 
 would have led you into the presence of one of the youthful pioneers 
 of the dreary frontier settlements of Illinois. There in the solitude 
 of the forest you would have seen a tall, raw-boned and awkward 
 youth, friendless and poorly clad; a young backwoodsman, strong 
 in body and manly of heart, undisturbed by any suggestion that 
 the world owed him a living; ready, able and willing to pay in 
 the honest coin of hard labor a full equivalent for all he received. 
 When the evening shadows marked the close of day, and the for 
 est again relapsed into primeval silence, great heaps of new made 
 rails could be seen like weird sentinels on the river s bank, and 
 for every three hundred of those well-made rails Abe Lincoln 
 was entitled to receive one yard of home-spun, toward decently 
 covering his giant frame. 
 
 But on this occasion I wish especially to speak of the heart 
 of Lincoln. He was a many-sided man and many elements were 
 mixed in him to make him great, but the one that most endeared 
 him to his countrymen and to the world was his kindly heart, his 
 broad charity and his unfailing sympathy for his fellow men. He 
 cherished no resentments, and his nature seemed destitute of the 
 element of harshness. He was made patient, if not perfect, through 
 suffering. It has been said "that he was a burden bearer from his 
 birth and that the burdens were girt upon his spirit even more than 
 his body, but while they gnarled the body and bent it earthward 
 the spirit grew in strength and beauty and was at no time so 
 strong and beautiful as in the hour an assassin blew it out." 
 
 When first inaugurated president, sectional hate had well nigh 
 burned love out of the hearts of men, but Abraham Lincoln was 
 able to rise far above the passions, hatreds, and prejudices of the 
 hour and to say to his dissatisfied countrymen, "We are not enemies, 
 but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
 strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." And four 
 years later, after the land had been drenched with blood and every 
 household was in mouring, he was still able to say : "With malice 
 towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as 
 God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we 
 are in, to bind up the Nation s wounds, to care for him who shall 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 205 
 
 have borne the battle and for his widow and for his orphan; to 
 do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
 among ourselves and all nations." In sacred literature only have 
 such utterances a parallel. 
 
 But Lincoln s heart was no less courageous than it was gentle, 
 and while he cherished no resentments, he was quickly moved to 
 righteous protest in the presence of injustice. At the age of 22 
 he visited New Orleans and, for the first time, saw parents and 
 Children placed on the auction block and sold as chattels. The 
 wrong appealed to him with tremendous force and with uplifted 
 arm and trembling voice he said, "If I ever get a chance to hit 
 that thing, I will hit it hard." This was his first introduction to 
 slavery and, doubtless, the day and the hour when he consecrated 
 himself to the cause of universal freedom. But what seemed more 
 improbable than that he would ever be able to hit "that thing" a 
 blow? Was it not wrought into the very framework of society 
 and entrenched in both church and state ; was not slavery anchored 
 to the constitution and legalized by the highest judicial authority? 
 What could such a youth hope to accomplish? Who knew him or 
 cared for him? Was he not poor, and friendless, and uneducated, 
 and destitute of influence or power, either social or political ? Could 
 he by the remotest chance ever become able to smite such an in 
 stitution? Nevertheless, in the mysterious providence of God the 
 same hand that was uplifted in solemn protest in the New Orleans 
 slave mart, wrote the immortal emancipation proclamation which 
 forever swept out of existence the slave and the slave master and 
 the slave mart. 
 
 In 1858 the same courageous heart, like "one crying in the 
 wilderness," boldly declared that "unless slavery was wrong, noth 
 ing was wrong; that every man was entitled to the fruits of his 
 own labor and that no man could justly live in idle luxury by the 
 sweat of another s brow." Lincoln foresaw with clearest vision 
 that the conflict between freedom and slavery was irrepressible, 
 and that one or the other must prevail. He believed that the gov 
 ernment could not permanently endure half slave and half free, 
 but his courage never abated, nor did he ever for a moment lose 
 faith in the final triumph of the right. In this faith he triumphed 
 and today "millions of men and women and children whom he 
 lifted out of the deepest darkness, think it no harm to worship 
 him." 
 
206 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 He had a fatherly heart, and the song " We Are Coming, Father 
 Abraham/" was not only patriotic, but a filial response to his call: 
 The soldiers loved him. In a special sense they belonged to him 
 and he to them. Their faith in their commanders was sometimes 
 shaken, but never in Abraham Lincoln. He was the one man in 
 whom they could always trust, the one man to whom they could 
 always with confidence appeal when every other hope had fled. 
 Who that has once heard can ever forget the story of William 
 Scott, a private in the Third Regiment Vermont Infantry? 
 
 Scott was in his teens and, w r ith his regiment, reached Wash 
 ington soon after the first battle of Bull Run. He was a farmer s 
 boy, accustomed to regular, sound, and healthy sleep, and before 
 becoming inured to camp life he volunteered to take the place of 
 a sick comrade who had been detailed for picket duty. The next 
 day he was detailed for like service and undertook its perform 
 ance, but found it impossible to keep awake two nights in succes 
 sion, and was found asleep at his post. For this offense he was 
 tried by a court martial and sentenced to be shot. His regiment 
 was stationed near Chain Bridge that spans the Potomac River, 
 connecting Washington with Virginia. Many spies had succeeded 
 in passing the Union lines, and orders had been issued enjoining 
 the strictest vigilance on the part of officers and men. The young 
 soldier could make no defense. He admitted that he had done 
 wrong, but said he could not have tried harder to keep awake, and 
 that if he were placed in the same situation again, he could no 
 more help falling asleep than he could fly. He had anticipated a 
 hard fight to keep awake and at one time thought of asking one 
 of the boys to take his place, but feared they might think he was 
 afraid, so he decided to "chance it." Twice he fell asleep and 
 awoke while walking his beat, and then he could not remember 
 anything more all he knew was that he was sound asleep when 
 the guard came. Something must be clone, and done at once, to 
 save the boy, and the only hope was the president. His captain, 
 who had promised the mother to take care of her son, went with a 
 few of his men directly to the White House and laid the case be 
 fore the president. Little encouragement was given and the men 
 went away heavy-hearted, but the president immediately visited the 
 place where the young soldier was confined awaiting execution, 
 and personally investigated the facts in the case. He then saw the 
 young soldier and asked him about his home, the neighbors, the 
 farm and where he went to school. Finally, he inquired about his 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 207 
 
 mother, and when the lad with trembling hand took her picture 
 from his breast and showed it to him, he said: "You ought to 
 be thankful that you have such a patriotic mother," and then, after 
 a moment s silence, he said : "My boy, look me in the face. You 
 are not going to be shot tomorrow. I believe you tell the truth 
 when you say that you could not keep awake. I shall trust you 
 and send you back to your regiment, but I have a big bill against 
 y OU one that no person in the world can pay except yourself, 
 and if from this day you do your duty as a soldier, the debt will be 
 paid." 
 
 A few months afterwards young Scott fell, mortally wounded, 
 at the Battle of Lees Mill, and his last words were : "Tell Presi 
 dent Lincoln that I have never forgocten his kindness to me; that 
 I have tried to be a good soldier and now, when dying, I again 
 thank him for giving me a chance to fall like a soldier in battle, 
 and not like a coward by the hands of my comrades." When the 
 message was communicated to the president, a shade o sorrow 
 overspread his face as he exclaimed: "Poor boy! poor boy! and 
 is he dead? and did he send me this message? I am sorry that he 
 is dead for he was a brave boy. I am glad I interfered. It is as 
 great a comfort to me as it was to him." 
 
 Not long after this he met his life-long friend James Speed 
 and said, "Why don t you come and see me? I want to see some 
 body that doesn t want anything. Stop tonight after the recep 
 tion is over, and let us have a visit." So on that Thursday night 
 when the people had gone away the two men sat down together 
 for a few minutes, then Speed arose and said : "Mr. Lincoln, 
 you are worn out and must rest. I haven t the heart to keep you 
 out of your bed, you must rest." Lincoln stretched out his long 
 arm and, placing his hand upon Speed s shoulder, said : "You 
 must stay with me for I never sleep Thursday nights. Tomor 
 row you know 7 is execution day, and some of the boys will be shot 
 unless I sign their pardon; but the generals tell me that to par 
 don them will cost more lives, so I cannot pardon, but I cannot 
 sleep when I know that tomorrow they will be shot." 
 
 No wonder the poor woman whose son had been reprieved by 
 the president, when she came away from his office, the tears still 
 running down her cheeks, exclaimed to her waiting friends : "Oh ! 
 how they have slandered Mr. Lincoln. They told me he was an 
 ugly man, but I never saw a more beautiful face in all my life-" 
 
208 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 What a priceless inheritance to this nation that he belonged 
 to the common people that he dwelt among them, that his sym 
 pathies were with them; that the schools did not educate and pol 
 ish him until he was separated from them; that he was as acces 
 sible in the White House as in the log cabin. 
 
 He had a devout heart. As he left his old home for Washing 
 ton, he said to his neighbors, "I go to a greater task than that 
 assigned to Washington, and unless the God that helped him helps 
 me, I shall fail, but guided and sustained by him, I shall not fail 
 I shall succeed." 
 
 When about to issue the Emancipation Proclamation he said 
 in reply to his great secretary, who doubted that the time had fully 
 come for such an important step, "I must sign it; I told the Lord 
 I would." Seward, somewhat startled, said, "What is that you 
 say, Mr. President?" And he replied, "I made a promise that if 
 the Lord would give us victory and the rebel army were driven back 
 into Virginia, I would emancipate the slaves, and I will do it." 
 Thirty-one years before he had lifted up his hand towards heaven, 
 and promised the Eternal God that if he ever got a chance to hit 
 that institution, he would hit it hard ; and now, with a living faith 
 in that God, he fulfilled his solemn promise. 
 
 Last of all I will speak of his patriotic heart. To him his great 
 office meant service, not power, and his highest ambition was to 
 serve his country. Promotion from peasant to president did not 
 separate him from the people. He never forgot that the people 
 raised him to power, and that for them the service of his life was 
 to be rendered. His one supreme passion was the Union the 
 Union with or without slavery, but always the Union. The lives 
 of almost half a million men were required to save the Union, and 
 at last, to make the Union forever sure, he sealed it with his own 
 blood. 
 
 He \vas a patriot of the highest and noblest type. He knew 
 no North, no South, no East, no \Vest. The rivers and mountains 
 did not divide his country, but bound all parts of it together. He 
 believed in the perpetuity of the republic. His great heart never 
 expressed a more sublime faith in that perpetuity or uttered a 
 grander prophecy than when, standing under the impenetrable 
 clouds of impending war, he assured his countrymen that the time 
 would come "when the mystic cords of memory, stretching from 
 every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth 
 stone all over this broad land, would yet swell the chorus of the 
 
LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 209 
 
 Union when touched again, as surely they would be, by the better 
 angels of our natures. ; These immortal words were spoken when 
 he was being bitterly assailed, and when the passions of men were 
 like the angry sea and their hearts were filled with prejudice and 
 hate. He always spoke in the spirit of the broadest humanity, "with 
 malice toward none and charity for ^all," for he could see what 
 many of us could not then see, that the chasm that separated his 
 countrymen could only be bridged and the nation s wounds be 
 healed by the triumph of a common brotherhood. 
 
 There were giants in those days, and Abraham Lincoln was 
 surrounded by a host of great men Seward, Sumner, Chase, and 
 Stanton, Grant, Thomas, Sherman and Farragut, and a countless 
 host of boys in blue;" yet he towered above them all, and was 
 the incarnation of the virtues of all. In simplicity of faith and 
 strength of character, in honesty of purpose and self-surrender to 
 duty, he was and still remains the highest product of American 
 civilization- 
 It has been truly said that "he now belongs to the ages," but, 
 best and truest of all, he belongs to us. His rugged features have 
 become transfigured and his face is the most radiant that looks 
 out upon us from the glorious past. 
 
 "How seldom, in the lapse of centuries, 
 Lives there a man so great, 
 That when he dies, 
 His record is beyond all eulogies." 
 
 Ho\v deep, sincere and constant should be our gratitude for the 
 gift to this Republic of one, the contemplation of whose virtues 
 strengthens every moral fiber of the soul and confirms our faith in 
 the final world-wide triumph of the right. 
 
 "Nature, they say, doth dote, 
 And cannot make a man 
 Save on some worn out plan, 
 Repeating as by rote : 
 
 For him her old world moulds aside she threw, 
 And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 Of the Unexhausted West, 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 
 
210 LINCOLN MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Great Captains, with their guns and drums 
 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
 
 But at last silence comes; 
 
 These are all gone, and standing like a tower, 
 
 Our children shall behold his fame, 
 
 The kindly, earnest, brave, far-seeing man, 
 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American." 
 
51000 
 
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