THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH "For a moment Lincoln, towering up in his unusual height, stood silent, his hands clasped, his head bowed. Then he lifted his face to the vast con- course of people, and in that high pitched tenor yoice so familiar to those who had heard him speak in the out-of-door political gatherings in Illinois, a voice that carried his words to the outer edges of the great crowd, he gave his now immortal Address." Page 67. LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS BY ORTON H. CARMICHAEL THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1917, by ORTON H. CARMICHAEL DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE WHO LOVE THE GREAT LINCOLN AND WHO BELIEVE THAT AT GETTYSBURG HE VOICED THE MESSAGE OF AMERICA TO THE WORLD. 1910753 ' CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE FOREWORD 9 I. THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY 13 II. THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY 26 III. FROM WHITE HOUSE TO BATTLEFIELD 37 IV. THE NIGHT AT GETTYSBURG 43 V. THE DAY OF DEDICATION 51 VI. A RECEPTION AND A VILLAGE HERO. . . 73 VII. THE SPELL UPON THE MULTITUDE. ... 79 VIII. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ADDRESS. ... 84 IX. A PRODUCT OF TRAINING AND OF GENIUS 97 X. LEST WE FORGET. . ,113 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG FRONTISPIECE " WE CAN NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY DID HERE" 24 MR. DAVID WILLS 26 "THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION".. 28 THE LINCOLN ADDRESS MEMORIAL 34 THE HOME OF DAVID WILLS 42 INTERIOR OF THE LINCOLN ROOM IN THE WILLS HOUSE 48 Miss AGNES MACREARY AND HER FLAG.. . . 62 BALTIMORE STREET ON THE DAY OF DEDICATION 72 THE STATUE OF JOHN BURNS 76 INTERIOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 78 FACSIMILE OF A LETTER OF DAVID WILLS. ... 86 ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 90 LETTER OF MR. CLARENCE L. HAY 92 "THE HAY MANUSCRIPT" 93 AUTOGRAPH COPY OF THE ADDRESS 96 THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN 1863 100 PHOTOGRAPH OF A LINCOLN DOCUMENT 108 "THEY DID NOT DIE IN VAIN",. . 112 FOREWORD FEW literary productions are more fa- miliar to the American people, or more highly prized by them, than is the address which was made by President Lincoln at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Ceme- tery at Gettysburg. Programs on innumer- able occasions are felt hardly to be complete unless they include a reading of this speech, some recognition of it is found in the courses of study of almost every public school in the land, and with a frequency not true of any other American utterance it is inscribed upon the walls of colleges and universities. But notwithstanding the popularity of the address, erroneous ideas widely prevail touching the time and place of its composi- tion, as well as regarding the reception which was accorded its delivery. Some recent pop- ular books, unhistorical in character and perhaps not purposed by their authors to be otherwise considered, have tended to confirm many misleading impressions. This little volume is the result of an at- 9 FOREWORD tempt to state briefly in logical order such well-attested facts, both old and new, as bear upon the writing, the delivery and the revi- sion of this address by Mr. Lincoln, together with an account of some of the incidents and circumstances connected with his visit to Gettysburg at the time the address was made. Without attempting to name all those to whom we are indebted, we desire to express our thanks to Mr. Clarence L. Hay and to Mrs. Helen Hay Whitney for information regarding the manuscripts of the Gettysburg address which were presented by President Lincoln to their father, the Hon. John Hay ; to Mr. Jesse W. Weik of Greencastle, In- diana, for data concerning Lincoln docu- ments; to Mr. Daniel Chester French for a photograph of his well-known work of art, "Lincoln at Gettysburg"; to W. H. Tipton, the veteran photographer of Gettysburg, and to G. Cornwell Taylor, of the same place, for several photographs; to Samuel M. Ral- ston, Governor of Indiana, and to Martin A. Morrison, Member . of Congress from the same State, for their kind offices in securing 10 FOREWORD access to original sources of information ; and to Colonel John P. Nicholson, chairman of the Gettysburg Battlefield Commission, for kindly reviewing the manuscript. Acknowledgment is also made of the kindness of Houghton Mifflin Company, for permission to use some paragraphs from their Life of John Hay, by Thayer; to the Century Company, for permission to quote from Nicolay's article, "Lincoln at Gettys- burg," in the Century Magazine, February, 1894; and to the Review of Reviews Com- pany, for permission to use a copyrighted photograph from their Photographic His- tory of the Civil War. IN AN ESPECIAL WAY WE DESIRE TO AC- KNOWLEDGE OUR VERY GREAT INDEBTEDNESS TO THE REV. FRANKLIN ELLSWORTH TAYLOR, MINISTER IN THE FIRST PRESBY- TERIAN CHURCH OF GETTYSBURG, PENN- SYLVANIA. MR. TAYLOR is AN ARDENT LOVER or LINCOLN AND A STUDENT OF LOCAL HIS- TORY AND TRADITION, AND THE ASSISTANCE WHICH HE WAS ABLE TO RENDER IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS LITTLE VOLUME WAS ALTOGETHER INVALUABLE. 11 CHAPTER I THE BACKGROUND or HISTORY THE most familiar figure of history is the crowned ruler, the pharaoh, the Csesar, the emperor, the king who clothes himself with rich and gorgeous robes, who separates him- self from the multitudes lest they should think that he shared with them some com- mon quality, who hedges himself about with the claims of divinity and assumes for him- self an authority to rule which none may safely presume to question. The miracle of history is found in the meek submission of millions through the centuries to the self -assumed authority of this mortal god who commands them to create by their toil a wealth which they are not to possess, to build palaces in which they are not to dwell, to erect tombs in which they are not to be buried, to fight for causes which they are 13 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS not permitted to understand, and to die on bloody battlefields for a glory of which they are not to be partakers. Parallel, however, with the assumption of the divine right of kings to rule there has been, down the years, the noble protest of rare and lonely spirits. But through long eras of history the voice that was lifted in objection was drowned by the clamorous claims of nobility, and the hand that was raised in protest was crushed by the mailed arm of military power. Even in the great Greek and Roman periods of enlightenment, popular government, in the true sense of the word, did not exist. Historians are generally agreed that pure representative government originated among the Teutonic tribes which dwelt in the forest regions of central Europe. The history of European politics for two thousand years is fundamentally a history of the conflict be- tween this Teutonic idea that government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and the Roman idea of the divine right of kings. In the end the theory of the Caesars largely triumphed upon the Conti- THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY nent even in the land where representative government had its birth. The Teutonic idea was carried by the Ger- mans into England and there the conflict between that idea and the Roman idea, though not less bitter than the conflict upon the Continent, ended differently. Through all those early centuries of their history the English people spoke more openly and con- tended more successfully for popular rights. In 1215 the infuriated barons forced King John to meet them on that green meadow by the Thames, twenty miles west of London, and there compelled him to sign the Magna Charta. The wings of royalty were clipped at Runnymede, for in that great charter was written the principle that there cannot be taxation without representation. This is one of the two great fundamental principles upon which popular government can be built. A half century later the people gained from King Edward the more comprehensive principle, the right of representation on the ground that "what concerns all must be ap- proved by all." Although these two basic principles of 15 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS democracy were written into the English constitution in the thirteenth century, the English people have not been able wholly to free themselves from a past of royal tradi- tions and translate them fully into the law and life of the empire. II The flower of popular government was transplanted to the New World, where in a virgin soil and in an atmosphere free from the traditions of the past, it grew more nat- urally and blossomed more fully. It was not their respect for the crowned heads of the Old World that led the Pilgrim Fathers to cross the sea. The opposite was true. They were hoping to find in the New World a freedom which the Old World did not give, and as the years went by, the con- ditions that made up their new life worked in them and in their children a perfect change. The wide Atlantic which they had crossed in a slow sailing ship made European thrones seem remote, and in that remoteness those thrones lost for them their traditional claims and authority. The great forests, the vast 16 THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY continental areas, the unrestraint of their daily life caused the assumptions of royalty to appear absurd. The American pioneer, too, read in the evening his Bible, and in its cherished pages he found no word of the di- vinity of kings, but much of the divinity of man; he found nothing there of the superi- ority of the few, but much of the worth of the individual, and much of the equality and brotherhood of men. All this, in the course of human events, resulted in the meeting of that group of earn- est men from the seaboard colonies at Phila- delphia, in 1776, who affixed their names to Jefferson's immortal document which de- clared, as a self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and that the American colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent. The splendid visions and the masterful efforts of these men of the Revolutionary period, and of the constitutional period which immediately followed it, are worthily re- flected in the purposes and sacrifices of Washington. Through fiery trial, but with unfailing zeal, led on by visions of a new 17 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS order and a new era, these men set up at last on the shores of the Western world a gov- ernment by the people. Ill From the beginning, however, there was in the American experiment an element that stood in the way of the fullest development of popular government. The Union was made up of individual States and in many instances, because of difference of interests, differences of religion, differences of nation- ality and of tradition, the individuality of the States was thoroughly emphasized. Diver- gent views at length arose as to whether the States, or the people of the States, consti- tuted the proper units of the Union. Some- times it was New England, and sometimes it was South Carolina that emphasized the importance of the State ; for fifty years that debate went on in American political life without a conclusion. The problem at last became inseparably intertwined with the question of African slavery, against which the stars in their courses fought, and the re- sult was the Civil War of the sixties. 18 THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY At this point Abraham Lincoln enters upon the stage, and the part he plays in the great drama is best appreciated when seen with a background, not simply of American political history, but of world-history wherein is told man's long struggle for popular gov- ernment. It has been said that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. It has been said too that the doctrine of State Rights precipitated the conflict. To Lincoln, the supreme question at issue was that of the survival of popular government. It was the question whether a minority representing a local opinion was, or was not, to submit to the voice and the will of the majority. Lincoln was aware that majorities were not always right and that minorities were not always wrong. He believed in consid- ering to the fullest the rights of minorities, and in free speech and free discussion whereby minorities might at any time be converted into majorities. But he held that popular government could exist among men only when the voice of the majority prevailed. 19 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS In May, 1861, Lincoln made a statement to his secretary, John Hay, which the young man fortunately preserved in his diary : "For my own part I consider the central idea pre- vailing in this struggle is the necessity that is upon us of proving that popular govern- ment is not an absurdity. We must settle that question now, whether, in a free govern- ment, the minority have a right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves. Taking the government as we found it, we will see if the majority can preserve it." Lincoln's whole nature rebelled against the idea of human slavery, yet in his famous letter to Horace Greeley he said that he would preserve slavery if by so doing he could save the Union; and with him saving the Union was synonymous with preserving a government of the people. It was a hard fate that put at the head of affairs in the hour of bitterness and strife this tender-hearted man who could not hear the troubled cry of little birds in the rain with- out attempting to relieve their distress. Yet 20 THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY through four red years he spoke the word, as necessity demanded, that robbed ten thou- sand homes of their boys and sent them forth to a hundred battlefields to suffer and to die. His stalwart shoulders bent beneath the cruel load which duty imposed, his face grew thin and haggard, his heart ached, but did not fail him as through the storm he held the ship to its course. When Stanton saw the dying Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, in the house on Tenth Street, his breast and shoulders bared, he called the attention of those about the bed to the President's arms which were the arms of a giant. Those sinews grew when he swung the ax in the woods of Indiana and the beetle in the rail-splitting days in Illinois. By his very physical make-up, as well as by all the associations and all the fundamental interests and sympathies of his life, he was inseparably linked with the life of the com- mon people. And he suffered and strove to preserve in the New World a government of the people not for its own sake, but be- cause he believed that it was under such a government that the common people were LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS able to obtain, in the largest measure, the privileges of life, and to find the widest doors for the freest and fullest self-expression and self -development. IV The great war had gone on through anxious and bloody years and there had been no decisive result. Lee, at length, in the summer of 1863, determined to strike a fatal blow by leading his victorious army into the very heart of the North. He crossed the Potomac and moved northward ; Meade and the Union Army followed. In southern Pennsylvania, eight miles from the Mary- land line, was Gettysburg. This little Ger- man village of thirteen hundred people, with its red brick homes and its whitewashed fences set in a landscape of fertile fields and of wooded hills, had been for decades the scene of rural peace and of quiet prosperity. Out from this village radiated a dozen roads, as spokes from the hub of a wheel, reaching to almost every point of the compass. Lee, who was in southern Pennsylvania, and Meade, who was in northern Maryland, in THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY trying to locate each other, and also in at- tempting to concentrate their scattered forces, moved their divisions along these con- verging roads. On the first of July, unex- pectedly to both, the two armies were thrown together in a titanic struggle at Gettysburg. For three days the battle raged. Unsur- passed heroism marked the fighting on both sides, and death reaped a frightful harvest. In the late afternoon of July 3, on the wooded slope that marks the western margin of the battlefield, where now stands the mon- ument of Virginia, General Lee, despair written in every line of his care-worn but noble face, leaned heavily upon his faithful horse and whispered in broken accents: "It is too bad. Oh, it is too bad." On the open field a mile in front of him, thousands of his gray-clad soldier boys lay dead. Pickett had made his immortal charge, and it had failed. The gray ranks had swept on like ocean waves that with even crests moved proudly forward, but they had struck the unyielding barriers of the Union defense on Cemetery Hill, and had been hurled back broken and LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS spent. The high-water mark of the Rebel- lion had been reached, and the story of the Confederacy from that time forward is the story of an ebbing tide. Pickett, in that dark hour, wrote his sweet- heart back in Virginia: "Our foe believes, as we do, that our cause is lost." Both Lee and Pickett prophetically saw in the gloom of defeat what a Southern poet, in the light which the years have brought, more clearly discerned: In vain the Tennesseean set His breast against the bayonet; In vain Virginia charged and raged, A tigress in her wrath uncaged, Till all the hill was red and wet. Above the bayonets mixed and crossed Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost Receding through the battlecloud, And heard across the tempest loud The death cry of a nation lost. The brave went down ! without disgrace They leaped to ruin's red embrace. They only heard Fame's thunder wake, And saw the dazzling sunburst break In smiles on Glory's bloody face. THE BACKGROUND OF HISTORY They fell, who lifted up a hand And bade the sun in heaven to stand. They smote and fell, who set the bars Against the progress of the stars, And stayed the march of motherland. The war went on. The battles of Cold Harbor, and the Wilderness, and Spottsyl- vania were afterward fought, and Sherman made his march to the sea. But after the failure of Pickett's charge on July 3, at Gettysburg, Appomattox was inevitable. Gettysburg was decisive in the American ' " *F .-,,, ,^?^ Civil War ; it was decisive too in that cen- tury-long world-struggle for popular gov- ernment. CHAPTER II THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY WHEN the Union Army, immediately after the battle, moved southward in pursuit of the retreating forces of Lee, more than twenty thousand wounded soldiers, seven thousand of whom were Confederates, were [Jsf t behind at Gettysburg. To properly pro- vide for this large number of men, most of whom were in need of immediate attention, the medical department of the army was wholly inadequate. Churches, public build- ings, private homes, and barns in the country along Rock Creek and Willoughby's Run were turned into temporary hospitals, and all the resources both of hand and heart of the little village were taxed to the utmost. Shortly after the battle, Governor Curtin, the energetic executive of Pennsylvania, vis- ited the scene to give such relief as the State had to offer. Before returning to Harris- burg he appointed David Wills, a prominent and public-spirited citizen of Gettysburg, to 26 MR. DAVID WILLS Who first suggested the idea of a National Cemetery at Gettysburg THE NATIONAL CEMETERY act as the representative of the State, and authorized him to meet the unusual condi- tions in the most effective way that his judg- ment dictated. Among the many problems calling for an early solution was the burial of the soldiers who were daily dying in the temporary hos- pitals of the town. The problem presented by the deplorable condition of the graves of those who had fallen in the conflict also called for immediate attention. ^- i The battle had been fought in the swelter- ing heat of early July, and sanitary, as well as military, necessity required the burial of the dead at the places where they had fallen. The Confederate Army withdrew on the night of July third; in the pouring rain of the Fourth, parties made up of both soldiers and citizens were sent out to bury those who lay exposed upon the field. The result was that the countryside was dotted with more than five thousand shallow and inadequate graves. UBy McPherson's woods, where the Iron Brigade made good its slogan, "We have come to stay," there were long trenches filled with dead. jThere were rows of graves 27 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS in the Wheatfield, and along the fences by the Peach Orchard, and on the edge of the woods back of the Devil's Den. There were graves on the slopes of Gulp's Hill, and in the low places by Rock Creek, and in the woods about Spangler's Spring and along the hedges and broken stone walls of the cul- tivjited fields of Cemetery Ridge. / In the low ground of the Valley of Death at the foot of the Round Tops, weeks after the battle, hands and shoes protruded from graves too thinly covered.{ Brady, the war photographer, when at Gettysburg late in November, found among the rocks of Devil's Den the body of a sharpshooter, his rusty rifle still beside him, lying undisturbed where he had fallen four months before. Forty years after the battle a skeleton was found in the undergrowth of an unfre- quented part of the field where some wounded soldier had crept for shelter. 'These conditions led Mr. Wills to write Governor Curtin, on July 17, advocating the purchase of a strip of ground to serve as a national cemetery to which the occupants of these scattered and unmarked graves might 28 "THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION" A photograph of the Wheatfield taken by Brady on July 5, 18G3, before the burial parties arrived. The Wheatfield was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between the forces of General Sickles and of General Longstreet on the afternoon of July 2. THE NATIONAL CEMETERY be brought for proper interment, and where a suitable monument might afterward be erected to commemorate their heroism and their secrifices. The governor approved the plan and authorized Mr. Wills to write to the governors of the seventeen States whose sol- diers with those of Pennsylvania had taken part in the battle, asking for their coopera- tion. Fifteen of the governors replied sig- nifying their approval of the plan suggested. After some further correspondence, Mr. Wills purchased an irregular piece of ground containing seventeen acres adjoining the citizens' cemetery. The ground selected one of the highest places of the field from which a sweeping view of the whole battle ground can be had. During the conflict this spot had formed the key to the Union line of defense and the many batteries stationed there had swept with a storm of iron the whole Confederate line. It had been too the target of the opponent's guns ; its sward had been torn by shot and shell and its soil conse- crated by the blood of the slain. The ground selected was carefully plotted by a competent landscape gardener, the 29 ld / he/ JgJ LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS graves being arranged in great half-circles about a center where space was reserved as a site for a fitting monument. Some felt, and among them Mr. Wills, that as those who had died had fought for a common cause and had fallen side by side regardless of the geo- graphical localities from which they had come, so now in this final resting place they should sleep side by side, no distinction as to their native States being made. There were those, however, who felt that the soldiers from each State should be buried together, and this idea in the end prevailed. The ground was divided into twenty-two sec- tions: one for the soldiers of the regular army; three for those whose identity could not be discovered, and the remaining eigh- teen for the dead of the eighteen States whose soldiers had taken part in the battle. Pennsylvania had the largest number of soldiers engaged in this conflict, but New York's section in the cemetery contains the greatest number of graves. Nearly one fourth of all those buried at Gettysburg came from the Empire State. Hundreds of the Pennsylvania soldiers who fell were from the 30 THE NATIONAL CEMETERY vicinity, or from communities not far distant, and immediately after the battle friends claimed them and carried them back to sleep in village or country cemeteries amid the scenes of their youth. A less kindly fate be- fell those whose homes and whose friends were farther away. The work of removing the bodies from the various parts of the battlefield to the ceme- tery began on October 27, and from fifty to sixty removals were made each day. This was carefully done under the direction of Mr. Wills, save in the case of Massachusetts, whose soldiers were moved by representa- tives sent to Gettysburg by the governor of that State. As the plans for the cemetery more fully developed, it was felt desirable that cere- monies of an imposing character should mark the formal setting aside of this ground to its sacred use. Accordingly, arrangements were made for exercises of dedication to take place September 23. The Hon. Edward Everett, former governor of Massachusetts and recog- nized as one of the leading orators of the day, was invited to deliver the address. This was 31 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS intended to be the chief feature of the pro- gram. Mr. Everett, however, in reply to the invitation extended by Mr. Wills, who acted for the Cemetery Commission, wrote that pressing duties would make it impossible for him to be present on the day named, but if a later date would meet with their convenience, he would gladly accede to their request. In view of work he had to do and of the time necessary to make adequate preparation for his address, he named November 19 as the earliest day that he could be present. This was accepted by the Commission as the date for the dedication. Invitations to be present on this occasion were sent to the President and his Cabinet,^, and to many others prominent in public life. Among those invited was General George G. Meade, who commanded the Union Army at the battle of Gettysburg, but duties at the front made it necessary for him to decline. Mr. Clark E. Carr, of Galesburg, Illinois' representative on the Commission which had the program of dedication in charge, says that in the invitation sent to Mr. Lincoln he was not asked to take part in the exercises of 32 THE NATIONAL CEMETERY the day, as it was generally felt that the duties of the President at Washington at that time would make it impossible for him to be present ; and, too, while the members of the Commission were aware that Mr. Lin- coln was a successful speaker on the political platform, it did not occur to them that he was adapted to make an address such as the dedi- catory ceremony demanded. A little later, however, the members of the Commission decided to ask Mr. Lincoln "to make a few dedicatory remarks.'j[ On November 2, six weeks after Mr.Everett had been invited, and only two weeks before the dedication, Mr. Wills, at the request of the Commission, sent the following letter to President Lincoln : "The several States having soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, who were killed at the battle of Gettysburg, or have since died at various hospitals which were established in the vicinity, have procured grounds on a prominent part of the field for a cemetery, and are having the dead removed to them and properly buried. These grounds will be consecrated and set apart to this sacred pur- pose, by appropriate ceremonies, on Thurs- LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS day, the 19th inst. Hon. Edward Everett will deliver the oration. I am authorized by the governors of the different States to invite you to be present and participate in these ceremonies, which will be very imposing and solemnly impressive. It is the desire that after the oration, you, as Chief Executive of the Nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate re- marks. It will be a source of great gratifica- tion to the many widows and orphans that have been made almost friendless by the great battle here, to have you here person- ally ; and it will kindle anew in the breasts of the comrades of these brave dead, who are now in tented field or nobly meeting the foe in the front, a confidence that they who sleep in death on the battlefield are not forgotten by those highest in authority; and they will feel that, should their fate be the same, their remains will not be uncared for. We hope you will be able to be present to perform this last solemn act to the soldier-dead on this battlefield." This letter is interesting, not simply be- cause it is a link in a chain of important his- THE NATIONAL CEMETERY toric events, but because it is more than pos- sible that some of the sentiments expressed by Mr. Wills suggested to Lincoln the line of thought which he followed in his great address. -\ Lincoln visited Antietam shortly after the \ battle. He went to Petersburg several times while the army was there. He was among the first to enter the city of Richmond on its fall in the spring of 1865. It was but natural that he should desire to visit those places which had been the scenes of great events and r which in anxious hours he had visited a thou- I sand times in his thought. Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and Meade's movement northward in pursuit were watched by Lincoln with great anxiety. When at last the two great armies met at Gettysburg, with characteristic insight he felt that the battle would be decisive. It was the President's conviction that if Meade were defeated, the Union cause would be lost. Just how heavy upon him was the agony of suspense during those anxious days is, in a measure, revealed by a conversation of his, the authenticity of which has been vouched 35 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS for by repeated declarations of General Daniel E. Sickles and of General James F. Rusling. General Sickles was seriously wounded at Gettysburg and was taken at once to Wash- ington. On Sunday, July 5, two days after the battle, Lincoln visited him at the hospital where he was being cared for. As a result of a conversation which led up to it, the Presi- dent said to General Sickles, in the presence of General Rusling, "In the pinch of your campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day, and I locked the door, and got down on my knees before Almighty God, and prayed Jojiim mightily for victory at Gettysburg." It is probable that Lincoln was desirous of visiting this Pennsylvania battlefield, over which his thought in those crucial days had so anxiously hovered, and when he received the invitation to take part in the exercises of the dedication of the cemetery there, he at once accepted. Unfortunately, his letter has been lost. 36 CHAPTER III FROM WHITE HOUSE TO BATTLEFIELD MR. STANTON, Secretary of War, notified Mr. Lincoln on November 17 that he had made arrangements for a special train over the Baltimore and Ohio Road to carry the President and his party to Gettysburg. The train was to leave Washington at six o'clock on Thursday, the day of the dedication, reaching Gettysburg at noon, thus giving the party two hours on the battlefield before the exercises were to begin. The President was not wholly satisfied with this schedule and returned to Mr. Stan- ton his note with this written across the face : "I do not like this arrangement. I do not wish to so go that by the slightest accident we fail entirely : and, at best, the whole to be a running of the gauntlet. But any way." Mr. Stanton acted upon this suggestion. The schedule was rearranged, and the train left Washington at noon on Wednesday, in- 37 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS stead of on the morning of Thursday as orig- inally planned. The President was accompanied by three members of the Cabinet : Mr. Seward, Secre- tary of State, Mr. Usher, Secretary of Trea- sury, and Mr. Blair, Postmaster-General; also by Mr. Nicolay, his private secretary, and Mr. Hay, his assistant secretary. Among the guests were two foreign min- isters, several legation secretaries, besides army officers, military guards of honor, mem- bers of the Marine Band and newspaper cor- respondents. Captain H. A. Wise, of the navy, and his wife, who was the daughter of Mr. Edward Everett, were also in the party. The train was composed of four coaches drawn by a gaily decorated locomotive. The last coach was a directors' car, and one third was partitioned off in the rear into a separate compartment with seats arranged about the walls. When the train left Wash- ington, Lincoln with others occupied this compartment. Lieutenant Cochrane, of the Marine Corps, who accompanied the Marine Band, says that Lincoln's face on this occasion was 38 WHITE HOUSE TO BATTLEFIELD drawn and sad, and that he appeared unusu- ally quiet. He spent some time after the train started in reading the morning copy of the New York Herald, which Mr. Cochrane had furnished him. Later, as he looked out of the window over an arm of the Chesapeake Bay, the President commented upon the change which had taken place in the char- acter of the shipping since the time he first saw those waters late in the autumn of 1847, when, as a newly elected Congressman from Illinois, he was making his first visit to the nation's capital. Lincoln had not been in Baltimore since the night of February 23, 1861, when he passed through on his way to his first inau- gural. It will be remembered that at that time he traveled on a train preceding by sev- eral hours that upon which he was expected. This arrangement was made at the sugges- tion of Mr. Seward to circumvent any act of violence, as it had been rumored for several days that a lawless band of Southern sym- pathizers in Baltimore had determined that the President-elect should not pass through that city alive. Baltimore was still a center 39 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS of disloyalty, and as the Presidential train approached the city on its way to Gettys- burg, Seward grew visibly uneasy. Nothing unusual happened, however. Only a few people were at the station when the cars were shifted from the Baltimore and Ohio to the Northern Central Road. The Second United States Artillery Band, one of the oldest and finest bands in the army, several military staffs with their suites, and others joined the party at Baltimore. Among this number was E. W. Andrews, chief of staff to General W. W. Morris, of the regular army, in command of the defenses of Baltimore. In his recollections of this occasion he states that he at once sought out Mr. Lincoln and conveyed to him the regrets of his chief, who on account of a physical disability was unable to attend the Gettysburg exercises. Some- thing in what Mr. Andrews said suggested to Mr. Lincoln a humorous incident touching one of the army officers, which he told to Secretary Blair with much merriment. On board the train was a gentleman who was on his way to Gettysburg to visit the spot on Little Round Top where his boy had fallen 40 WHITE HOUSE TO BATTLEFIELD in the battle. Lincoln expressed to him the fear that a visit to the scene of his son's death would but open anew the wound which his death caused. "Oh, my dear sir," said the President, "if we had reached the end of such sacrifices and had nothing left for us to do but to place garlands on the graves of those who have already fallen we could give thanks even in the midst of our tears. But there are sacrifices yet to be made before this dreadful war is over." John Hay in his re- cently published diary says that Wayne MacVeagh became engaged in conversation with the President on the journey and in- dulged in some rather radical talk regarding affairs in Missouri, but ceased when he real- ized that he had gone too far. Thus Lin- coln mingled with the party and entered into conversation on subjects both light and seri- ous as the time rapidly passed. At Hanover Junction, forty-six miles from Baltimore, where the line to Gettys- burg branches off from the Northern Cen- tral, they were to meet the train from Har- risburg bearing Governor Curtin and most of the governors of the other States who 41 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS were to attend the exercises, and the whole party was to journey together over the re- maining thirty-two miles to their destination. A slight accident, however, delayed the gov- ernor's train and the Presidential party pro- ceeded alone, reaching Gettysburg about dark. When Mr. Wills sent his official letter to Mr. Lincoln inviting him to take a part in the dedicatory exercises, he inclosed on a sep- arate page a personal note in which he stated that as the hotels of the village would be crowded on that occasion, he desired Mr. Lincoln to come to his home and be enter- tained there during his stay, where Governor Curtin and the Hon. Edward Everett would be fellow guests. When the train reached Gettysburg the President was escorted to the home of Mr. Wills, which was a substantial residence lo- cated on the Public Square in the heart of the little village. ^ M fe ' a . V 03 +> -g OS > iuilj C *= OJ * = ^ "g M -a s -"^ p < -^^^-g -. >*<,. the governing of the sibls^to his employers still the hired man of set to do blacksmith- id Viee-Prcr.idcnt, the lors, the Judges, chief able Members of Con- if them, all the State housand by my count- auts, operatives in that lich is owned by Mr. >ectable gentleman who i this continent, thongh He has some per- lillion square miles of mill, for conduct and character, must answer not only to his God, but to the People, the mill owner. Theocracy, the priest power, monarchy, the one-man power, and oligarchy, the few-men power, are three forms of vicarious government over the People, perhaps for them, not by/them. Democracy is Direct Self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people. 4 Our institutions are democratic : theocratic, monarchic, oligarchic vicariousness is all gone. We have no divine vicar who is responsible to God for our polities and religion ; only a hu- man attorney-, asnswcrable to the people for his official work. The axis of rotation has changed: the equator of the old civilization Several years ago, when William H. Herndon, of the law firm of "Lincoln and Herndon," was clearing out the law office preparatory to leaving Springfield, Mr. Jesse W. Weik was in- vited to assist in sorting out papers and letters which had accumulated. On top of one of the bookcases was a dust-covered pasteboard box placed there appar- ently by Mr. Lincoln some time before he left for Washington. In the box were several bundles of papers, one of which was laconically labeled, in Lincoln's handwriting: "If you can't find it elsewhere look in this." In this box were two pamphlets by Theodore Parker which now are in the possession of Mr. Weik. One pamphlet is an address delivered by Mr. Parker, May 26, 1858; on page five is this sentence: "Democraey-The-All-Men-Power: Government over all, by all, and for the sake of all." Around this Lincoln had drawn a line with a lead pencil. The other pamphlet is a sermon by Mr. Parker, given July 4, 1858, at Boston; on page five is this sentence: "Democracy is Direct Self-Government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people." As is shown in the photograph above, Lincoln had marked this sentence on the margin. Further on, on page fourteen, was also this marked sentence: "Direct Government over all the people, by all the people, for all the people." These marked passages are interesting in view of the question as to the origin in Lincoln's mind of the famous sentence with which he closes his Address. TRAINING AND GENIUS "I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General 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 word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot re- frain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Re- public they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." Mr. Jesse W. Weik, joint author with W. H. Herndon of The Herndon and Weik Life of Lincoln, plausibly points out what, in all probability, suggested to Lincoln the sublimest passage in his Second Inaugural. Mr. Lincoln was a constant reader of the Chicago Tribune, and he could hardly have missed seeing a leading editorial of that paper in its issue of August 12, 1862, en- 109 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS titled "The Justice of the Almighty." It was an able but rather an extreme and prosy article dwelling upon the wealth which slav- ery had brought to America, and how, in the justice of God, that wealth must needs be swept away in the war which slavery brought ; and that as the life of the slave had not been held as a sacred thing, so now on battlefield and in hospital the life of his op- pressor was held as cheap and common. As Shakespeare took some homely tale told by stammering lips about a village hearth and by the touch of his genius lifted it into immortal interest and significance, so Lincoln by the touch of poetic insight raised this commonplace newspaper article to the level of the world's great utterances. "Fondly do we hope fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by an- other drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: 110 TRAINING AND GENIUS The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." Ill The Gettysburg address does not stand out as an exception among the utterances of Lincoln. It is the natural and the logical product of his methods of thought and of his genius of spirit. He had received the invitation to be pres- ent at Gettysburg on November 19, and to speak the words of dedication setting aside a portion of the battlefield as a final resting place for those who had there given up their lives. In connection with the invitation Judge Wills had written at some length expressing his earnest wish that the Presi- dent might accept, and stating that his pres- ence would be a consolation to many mourn- ers whose loved ones had fallen in the battle ; and that it would be a source of encourage- ment to the soldiers at the front who were bravely fighting the nation's battles, to know that their companions now sleeping on the battlefield were not forgotten by the nation's highest representatives. Over this sugges- 111 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS tion Lincoln brooded, as occasion in those busy days gave opportunity. The causes back of great movements in history are fully understood, not before, but after they have worked out their results. We can clearly define issues only after the shouting and the tumult ceases and when the captains and the kings depart. But while the air was still sul- phurous with cannon smoke and the ground still trembling with the shock of civil strife, Lincoln saw, as perhaps no other man of the period did, the causal ideas at the heart of the struggle. Clear-cut on the screen of his thought was imaged the fundamental mean- ing of the sacrifice of these men who had died at Gettysburg, and also a clear sense of the obligation which that sacrifice imposed upon the living. These simple but comprehensive ideas were touched and colored by the poetic genius of his spirit, now chastened by the red years during which he had worn the thorn- crown of a people whose sorrows his love had made his own, and the result was the great address, America's only Psalm. 112' CHAPTER X LEST WE FORGET NOTWITHSTANDING Lincoln's modest dis- claimer, the world will long remember what he said at Gettysburg. Truth only is eternal, and the world will cherish what he said there long after it has forgotten what men did there. The address, more and more, is seen to be the expression in the highest form of literary art of the central motive of his great career, and it prophetically imaged the achievement which makes his name and his place in history secure. The purpose and the victory of his life are both revealed in the thought which runs through those immortal sentences and which culminates in those clos- ing words, half a prophecy and half a prayer, "that govemment of the people, _hji_ the people, for the people, shall not perish. from_ the^ earth." It was a noble ideal that dominated Lin- coln's political thinking; and it was a happy LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS ^combination ..of circumstances that enabled him to give utterance in immortal form to it on one.. of. the high places of the battlefield, where it was decisively determined that that ideal should be translated into terms of na- tional law ftpd life. At the nation's capital, in the shadow of the great shaft which commemorates the character and the work of Washington, stands a noble memorial to Lincoln. It is not a museum, where is exhibited the hat or the coat he wore, the pen he used or the books he read, that men in melancholy interest may muse over a strange but perished past. It is not his tomb, where men may gather and in pensive mood lament over the dust of a fallen leader. It is a stately structure as simple and as massive as was his character and as enduring as is his fame. In the spacious interior of this memorial only three objects stand out of the simple grandeur to centralize attention. To the back of the main hall, facing the entrance, is, in heroic size, French's figure of the Martyr. On the unadorned marble wall to the right is inscribed the Second Inaugural, where, in 114 LEST WE FORGET language as dignified and as beautiful as is the language of a Hebrew prophet, Lincoln speaks of justice and of mercy. On the wall to the left, in similar simplicity, is the Gettys- burg Address, whose familiar words speak of that ideal of government where sovereignty rests with the many, and where all the ends of law and power is the largest good for all the people. As far as stone and bronze can translate into thought ideals that are spiritual, this memorial will be the symbol of the living influence of Lincoln, who, though dead, yet speaketh. To Americans, Lincoln's life will ever be a silent power pointing, not backward to "the past's blood-rusted keys," but forward, where on heights of democracy not yet reached the vision of a new freedom and a new brotherhood in American life still beckons. In one version of the Address the closing sentence reads, "that this government of the people, by the people, for the people" ; in its final form, however, this sentence was made to read, "that government of the people, by 115 LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS the people, for the people." It was changed from the particular to the universal, showing that the horizon-line of Lincoln's thought and of his hope swept far beyond the borders of his own loved America. To a world dark- ened by the smoke of battle and red with a carnage which the ambition of kings and the blood-lust of warlords have wrought, Lin- coln's life and ideals point to a more excel- lent way. When the dream of that sad and burdened heart which found utterance amid the bloody places of Gettysburg becomes, in the awak- ened consciousness of a race, a reality, then will dawn the day : When the war-drum will beat no longer, And the battleflags be furled In the Parliament of man, The Federation of the world. 116 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. I