LINCOLN LEE - GRANT * -AND- OTHER - BIOGRAPHICAL ADDRESSES EMORYSPEER 7^-7 FACING PAGE 22"; LINCOLN, LEE, GRANT N FRONTISPIECE Lincoln, Lee, Grant AND Other Biographical Addresses BY JUDGE EMORY SPEER New York and Washington THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1909 # Copyright, 1909, by The Neale Publishing Company ©rti A TO MY MOTHER Whose eyes, still beautiful and soft, first saw the light when friends of Olgethorpe were in vigorous life; Erskine but three years gone; Hamilton still deplored by many comrades of Yorktown and Valley Forge; Marshall with eight years to live; Lincoln and Lee were lads; and Brown and Grant, little boys — this book is lovingly inscribed. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 1 1 Abraham Lincoln 19 Robert Edward Lee 45 Ulysses S. Grant 85 James Edward Oglethorpe 109 Alexander Hamilton 151 John Marshall 179 Erskine 209 Joseph Emerson Brown 227 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Abraham Lincoln 19 Robert Edward Lee 45 Ulysses S. Grant 45 James Edward Oglethorpe 109 Alexander Hamilton 151 John Marshall 179 Erskine 209 Joseph Emerson Brown 227 INTRODUCTION. BY CHARLES RAY PALMER, D.D. Sir James Stephen wrote some sixty years ago, "A chain of splendid biographies constitutes the history of past centuries." Well-nigh inevitably, as we turn our eyes backward, our search is for the men in whom their time had its fuUest embodiment. Our feeling is that a period is best studied in its leaders, whether we think they made it or were the product of it. Through human sympathies we gather our best understanding of events. Doubt- less this habit may lead us astray, in respect of de- tails, but it fastens attention upon large outlines securely. Biographical studies do not, indeed, attract all minds alike, nor always proportionately to their real merit. With some it is the fashion to belittle their usefulness. It has been said that every biography must be unsatisfying to those who loved the subject of it, and misleading to others. So much of life cannot be recorded; so little of it appears in the spoken word, or the outward act, or even in the written lines. Those without the love do not apprehend the rich significance of a life; those who loved must keep their secret. It is beyond their power to impart it. In this we may recognize much ti^uth, and yet now and then a biography belies it, and finds for itself a way into the hearts of multitudes, enlightening and quick- ening their interest in life and stirring laudable aspirations for which the world becomes the better. If more elaborate biography has special difficul- 11 12 INTRODUCTION ties to overcome, the orator or lecturer whose theme is biographical encounters these difficulties intensified. Accurately to describe a man's historical environment in all its complexity, and set him in his true relationship to it, showing in vivid outlines how his character was shaped and his achievements were determined, is not the task of an hour. The glowing pages of a biographer, perused in the leisure of our library, may bear us into the depths of an illustrious life or a great human movement, when the very brevity of his opportunity may with- hold the orator of an occasion from that success, however earnestly he endeavors to effect it. But such endeavors, manfully and thoughtfully made, are sometimes exceedingly impressive and fruitful of impulses that are abiding. If the men who can make them are few, they are among the most use- ful of a nation's teachers. The papers collected in this volume are mani- festly efforts in this difficult direction. They were more or less occasional, and something is irrecov- erably lost when an occasion has passed. The atti- tude of a reader is different from that of a listener uplifted by a memorable anniversary or upon the sympathies of a great assembly. But, on the other hand, the known personality of a writer, or some- thing in his history, or the particular subject of his discourse, may lend interest to the printed page or give him an audience beyond the occasion, which only the printed page can reach. The power of the spoken or of the written word depends very much upon whose word it is. It is hardly necessary to speak particularly of one so conspicuously before the public as the judge of a United States court, or of so striking a per- INTRODUCTION 13 sonality as Judge Speer. It is nevertheless true that these addresses, even if they must be regarded as a by-product of his life, derive significance from his special relation to his time. Born just before the middle of the nineteenth century, the son of a clergyman in the Empire State of the South, in the last year of the Civil War a Confederate soldier, but sixteen years old at the date of the surrender, he acquired such education as was possible for him in the disastrous years succeeding that struggle, and addressed himself to the problem of his life with most creditable courage and resolution. Graduating from the University of Georgia in 1 869, he was soon admitted to the bar. His prog- ress was such that in January, 1873, he became Solicitor-General of the State, under the first Dem- ocratic Governor subsequent to the war. In the midsummer of 1876 he resigned his office, resum- ing private practice. In 1878 he was elected to Congress as an Independent Democrat. He was re-elected in 1880 as an Independent with Repub- lican affiliations. He was again a candidate in 1882, but failed to receive a certificate of election. On the day after the expiration of his second term, in March, 1883, he was appointed by President Arthur the United States District Attorney in his native State, and within two years afterwards to the position which, with growing reputation, he has since continuously held. Incidentally to this honorable career, he has done valued educational work as the head of the law school in Mercer Uni- versity, and published volumes of interest to the profession and to law students. In a country so vast in area as this is, with local interests so various and important, there is always i 4 INTRODUCTION a likelihood of provincialisms. That sectional feelings might arise and tend to subordinate to themselves the consciousness of nationality was from the early days of the Republic a contingency to be apprehended — a peril it would task states- manship to avert. For a generation previous to 1 860 this peril was seen to be increasingly real and to threaten consequences most serious. Men be- gan to speak of an irrepressible conflict. The calamities in which the culmination of it actually resulted everybody knows. When the war ended the situation seemed almost desperate. Nothing appeared less likely than the reunifying of a peo- ple that had been so frightfully divided. In the Southern States the national authority was de- tested and anything like national feeling was practically extinct. On the other hand, those of us who believed this country was made to be the home of one nation, not two or many; the home of a united and peace-loving people, not a circle of armed camps, knew perfectly well that the sole hope of that eventuality lay in the restoration of the national authority and the re-enkindling of a truly national spirit, hopeless as such a result might seem. What should bring it about? Whence could it be anticipated? Force would never pro- duce it. Negotiation would never ensure it. Leg- islation would never effect it. If ever it was to be, it must be the outcome of the hearts of the South- ern people themselves, spontaneous, magnanimous, self-propagating, in the lapse of years, perhaps of generations. For that it was necessary to wait. Now it is the distinction of Judge Speer that he was one of the earliest of the men of the South clearly to perceive the immense desirableness of INTRODUCTION 15 this political renovation, and set himself intelli- gently and heartily to do a man's utmost toward it. In this patriotic endeavor he has never wearied. To make it successful he has spared no exertion. By precept and example, by word and by deed, pri- vately and publicly, as a citizen and as a judge, he has striven to hasten the happy issue which now one need not be oversanguine confidently to expect. Time, good sense, common experiences and com- mon aspirations, mutual understandings ripening into common purposes, combine to develop a con- sciousness of unity finding many ways to assert it- self. Demonstrations multiply that the once di- vided American people have grasped the full sig- nificance of the motto which the fathers chose, and perceived the splendid potencies contingent upon the realization of the ideal to which it points, and clearly see the felicity, the dignity, the grandeur of the fact that in very truth, for a great future at home and a beneficent mission abroad, they are one nation — "an indissoluble union of indestruct- ible States." Doubtless there are many who remember a poem of twenty-five years ago, by Dr. Holland, entitled "The Mistress of the Manse." They will recall how the doubly-bereaved heroine solved the problem of her tortured heart. She laid side by side the soldier of the Union, who had been her beloved husband, and the soldier of the Confed- eracy, who had been her beloved brother, with a common monument, and this inscription : "They did the duty that they saw ; Both wrought on God's supreme designs ; And, under Love's eternal law, Each life with equal beauty shines." 1 6 INTRODUCTION That sentiment, from which once hearts in either section somewhat recoiled, now finds a response throughout the length and breadth of the land, and beyond a question will finally be universal and abiding. Those whom it animated first will then stand out as the prophets of their generation — the heralds of a bright and glorious day for their coun- try and for mankind. It will be seen that to the patriot whose ad- dresses are collected in this volume that day dawned long ago. The names of Washington and Lincoln, of Grant and Lee, equally arouse his enthusiasm as his imagination reproduces their characters and their services, each in the proper time and place, for the inspiration of his listening countrymen. It is interesting to remember in this connection that he has been heard by attentive and sympathetic audiences in the North and in the South, in the East and in the West, and every- where has won the tribute of ready and hearty ap- plause. Nor is this at all difficult to understand. His addresses have a charm that is their own. The ardor of a Southern nature, the fertility of a full mind, the sympathies of a generous heart are continually manifested in them, whether the par- ticular subject of discourse faced the problems of the colonial period, the long war for Independence or the struggle of less than fifty years ago. All these glimpses of the past have their interest, and thus treated make their own appeal, and it is to what is deeper than partisanship and belongs to no one time. It is not desirable that noble qualities and magnificent energies be forgotten whenever or wherever displayed. It is profitable that by elo- quent lips, by glowing pages, by enduring monu- INTRODUCTION 17 ments they be kept in remembrance. It will profit if in these ways, and in every other practicable way, the hearts of the children are prompted to vie with their fathers in that large public spirit which the future equally with the past will somehow de- mand "in times which try men's souls." To speak particularly of the literary form of these papers in this introduction would be uncalled for. They may safely be left to speak for them- selves. This they certainly will do, and most effectively, whatever may be said of them in ad- vance. But it will be permitted to a friend of the author to commend them to the public, and express the hope that they may find a wide circle of inter- ested readers. May they awaken in many minds a fresh and an abiding appreciation of the rich heritage the American people possesses in the memory of heroic leaders, who in a long succes- sion have gloriously met the emergencies of its history in the centuries that have gone! New Haven, Conn., August 1, 1909.