Z^'^^'y-^ ^^V'^.'^-'^o"^ \.''*^\^"^^ %**'.^' 64th Congress \ SENATE ■[ I^octtment 1st Session J I No. 545 LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. ADDRESS DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE ACCEPTANCE OF A DEED OF GIFT TO THE NATION BY THE LINCOLN FARM ASSOCIATION OF THE LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. BY HON. JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI SEPTEMBER 4, 1916 PRESENTED BY MR. FLETCHER SEPTEMBER 7, 1916. — Ordered to be printed WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1916 .31. .UOIZ D. Of D. ;CT 9 I9I6 GIFT OF LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI. Mr. PREsroENT, Ladies and Gentlemen : The presentation and acceptance of this generous gift, which is I really made to the Nation and the people of the United States, whose * servants we all are — the President being Chief only — is fraught not only with memories but with meanings too many and too various for one man's expression. Abraham Lincoln was born in yonder Httle log cabin. He was not the first nor the only one of our great men to be thus humbly bom. He sprang from that poorer class of southern white people whence sprang also Patrick Henry, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and so many others whose names illustrate on the pages of our history the fact that those of humblest origm in a free democracy of equal oppor- tunities can and often do reach the very highest station. Lmcohi was not ''the first American," as has been said of him. There were preceding him, even in the presidential chair, others who were not colonials of any European people, but thoroughly and altogether American — typical Americans, each in his own way. He was more than ''the first American," however. He was one of the greatest Americans. The tide of time, which has buried animosities and prejudices, has left every reflecting and just mind free, and yet compelled, to draw that conclusion. He was great, not in the way that Alexander of Macedon or Napoleon of Corsica was, but in a better way. His was not the greatness of genius, nearly always selfish. His was the greatness of common sense and tenderness. It consisted fmidamentally in intellectual and moral humility and ; in intellectual and moral integrity, which salient characteristics •;^ enabled him to furnish to the world a spectacle scarcely if ever excelled of self-subordination to the interests, the welfare, the unity of the Republic; and, more characteristically perhaps yet, of self- surrender to an enlightened public opinion, the growth of which he shared and studied, the tendency of which he cautiously and wisely guided, and the consummation "of which into deed he at the right moment effected. He never went so fast that the common sense and the common conscience of the common people could not keep measurably apace, nor did he ever go so si^wly that these left him stranded on the shore while they passed beyond him mider other and quicker and abler navigators. In other words, he was like aU the great human instrumentahties of Providence — a part and parcel of the growmg form and texture of the time, unconsciously following and consciously dii'ecting American public sentiment, as this came 4 LINCOLISr BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. naturally or was forced by inevitable circumstances into existence. This enliglitened public opinion, for which he had "a decent respect," constituted then, as always, the only real controlling force and sovereign power in a coimtry whose people are free and self-governing. Horace Greeley once accused him of being an opportunist. So are and must be all real statesmen in free countiies. They weigh oppor- tunity and measure its strength; but they also help to create it and then seize tlie opportunity to effect the desired result. This is sagacity as contradistinguished from "smartness." They are opportunists, but they are more. Lincoln was in this and some other respects singularly hke that other great American, Thomas Jefferson. Both of them were ideal- ists in the closet and statesmen in office. There was no Hmit to the visions wliich either had of what Jefferson called "the indefinite per- fectibility of human nature," nor to their confidence in the progress and enhghtenment of man under rightly constituted popular gov- ernment, founded on an enlightened and educated pubhc opinion. Both were democrats and both beheved in the aristocracy of intelli- gence as the only aristocracy recognizable by freemen. Many dreams which either had have come true. Many more are yet in the womb of fate, certain later to come forth. Yet neither in office ever attempted to force upon the country any result for which a con- siderable and probably prevailmg pubhc opinion was not ready. They attempted to pluck, when in charge of the orchard, no fruit until the fruit was either ripe or ripening, and above all their purpose was not to kill or even harm the tree. Hence both are accused by men of httle minds of "inconsistency." It is to be noted, however, that neither ever really "deserted a principle or a friend," as Jeffer- son's daughter j^roudly said of her father. No two men who have figured conspicuously in molding the des- tinies of the EngUsh-speaking race ever equaled these two in their abiding, patient, and loving reHance upon the rectitude of the pur- poses of the people and in unswerving faith in the wisdom of their ultimate decision. Lincohi never tired of professing himself a dis- ciple of Jefferson. He went so far at one time as to say that the vital spirit — that is, the bhth principle — of American institutions was to be found in the Declaration of Independence and not in the Consti- tution of the United States. On no fundamentally great question did they ever materially differ, not even about slavery, not even about the relations which should exist between the two races m the event of negro emancipation. Between the two the chief difference was one of personal temperament; Lincohi, of the two, hved very much more within hhnself. He was, spiritually speaking, a lonesome man, sadly so, but throwmg about himself a veil of anecdote and humor — sometimes rough himior — which served as a shield to ward off mtrusion. Hidden behind this veil was not only serious but pathetic and nearly always sohtary thought. Hence that indescrib- able mixture of hiunor and pathos which we find in him, as in Shake- speare and Cervantes. Mr. Jefferson, on the contrary, was frequently witty, but had no sense of humor at aU,and seemed to take a sort of delight in letting all the world see every process of his thought, as though through a window glass. LIXCOLlSr BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 5 It is trite now to say that every man in this world is the product of two things — his heredity and his environment. Unhke plants and irrational creatures, however, man is not altogether the product of either or of both. While his environment makes him, he helps to make his environment — can even somewhat change it by conscious purpose. Moreover, while he can not repress, nor reverse, he may influence the tendencies of his heredity even. Lincoln's family we all know about. There was very little stimu- lating in its influence. It furnished rather a platform to rise from than a standard to live up to. ^ Likewise his early environment was, to say the least, discouraging; there was little in it to evoke ambition, or to encourage, "hoping through hope to reach the stars." But he rose from the platform; he reached the stars. Within almost modern big-gun shot distance from where we now stand Jefferson Davis was bom. Both of these men were "border State" men, Kentuckians; both of them came from pioneer ancestry who had fought for American freedom and had braved the dangers and endured the isolation of the wddemess. It is a curious reflection, though there be not time to indulge in it here and now, as to how far each of these men's future — ^his political philosophy, the sectional patriotism of each, his leaning to nationality on the one side or to State rights on the other — might have been altered, mayhap reversed, had Jefferson Davis's family moved him into Indiana and then into Illinois, and had Abraham Lincoln's family moved him first into Louisiana and then into Mississippi. However interesting that inquiry may be, the reverse occurred. Davis became a very extreme southerner; Lincoln never became a very extreme northerner. The men were very much un- like, and yetbothwere alike in possessing the cardinal human virtues — truthfulness, moral and intellectual honesty, courage, loyalty to ideals. There was, too, somewhat of inflexibility about both, though in one case the inflexibility, while knightly, was stern, logical, unyielding, unhumorous, and even proud; while in the other case it was modified by humility and a rich sense of humor, from which flowed that won- derful capacity for "making allowances," that broad knowledge of an opposite's way of looking at things, that sympathetic apprecia- tion of the moods and ways of thinking and the ways of feeling of the untaught and unenriched masses of mankind. With Davis there were no laughter-inciting "sidelights on himseK and others and their relations to one another" to relieve even temporarily the tension of a fixed and absorbing purpose. Lincoln was never without them. By being never without them he made lesser men, like Stanton, for example, " very impatient." Davis became the very type of the best plantation life of the extreme South. As a part and parcel of that life he consecrated himself to his section, whose very civilization and social order he thought to be menaced. Lincoln consecrated himseK to the Nation. Both endured nobly to the very end, each steadfastly "keeping the faith." Lincoln remained all his life a borderer. In his temperament he came very much nearer that of the southerner than that of the New Englander, or the New Yorker, or Pennsylvanian. No theory of any sort would ever have led him into that gross violation of common 6 LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. sense and common iustice which after the war brought about the grotesque though cruel saturnaha of the southern reconstruction governments ; nor could any theory, or any war experience, however bitter, have brought him to a hatred for. the southern white people, even of the slave-holding class. He lived with none ; he died without any. He was a great nationalist, not only in political vision but in this, that he knew and loved the people of both sections. He was per- haps the most thoroughly nationalistic and the least sectionalistic of all our Presidents, not even excepting George Washington, who never forgot that he was " a Virginian and a Gentleman." Hence it is peculiarly appropriate that the legal title to Mr. Lincoln's birthplace should rest in the Nation itself. It may be sadly recorded that while he understood the men of both sections, it is doubtful if any very large percentage of those of either ever understood him until long after he was dead. Jefferson Davis understood him partiially; understood fully his utter lack of malice. Witness the superb reply of the chief of the fallen Confederacy when, his attention having been called to President Johnson's proclamation containing the insinuation that he (Davis) had been complicite to the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, he replied: "There is one man in the United States, at any rate, who knows that to be a falsehood. That is the man who 5vrote it. He knows that I would infinitely rather have Lincohi than to have him in the White House." Davis after- wards said: " Next to the loss of the cause itself, the death of Mr. Lin- coln was the greatest calamity that ever befell the South." Shakespeare, whose writings Mr. Lincoln read and loved so much, helped to mold his thought. The broad and sympathetic charity with which he viewed and sometimes laughed at all men and women — the wise and the foolish, the just and the unjust, the learned and the ignorant, the sinners whom Christ came to save and the righteous who ''needed not a physician" — ^was almost Shakespearean, leaving anger against those who might or might not deserve it to God who knew, repeating sincerely, as he did in one of his inaugural addresses, ''But let us not judge lest we be judged." I think he ab- sorbed from Shakespeare the characteristic breadth in expressing thought which led to this, that so many utterances of his are not con- fined in their applicability to the time or the place where they were made, but expand in appositenoss to many places and many times. Even when arguing a concrete institution like slavery his language was universal rather than particular. His English was terse, forcible, Saxon. His Gettysburg speech is the most eloquent illustration of these qualities — verily multum in parvo. It is by all odds the greatest short speech in the English, or, for aught I know, in any language. To illustrate the breadth of applicability of that wonderful dedication speech, one might paraphrase it, with slight omission and no material addition, so as to make Mr. Lincoln himself, who was a great orator — because he was a man of eloquent thought^dedicate to the Nation that he loved so well the home in which he was born so humbly. Would there, for example, be anything inapposite for the purposes of this occasion m the use of these words : "Seven score years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created LIISrCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 7 equal. Now we are engaged in * * * testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. * * * We have come to dedicate to the Nation the birthplace of him who gave his life that that nation might live." "But in a larger sense we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this gromid." The brave and patient man who was born here, by his life and death, ''has consecrated it far above our poor power to add or to detract." "The world will little note, norlongrememberwhat we say here, but it can never forget * * * what he did." "It is for us, the livmg, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaming before us * * * that from the memory of" this "honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which" he "gave the last measure of devotion; and that we here highly resolve that" he "shall not have Hved nor died m vain; that this Nation under God shall have" daily "a new birth of free- dom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the peo- ple shall not perish from the earth." Suppose that in analyzing the character and results to the two sections of the late War between the States I, the son of a Con- federate soldier, who died in the cause, were to use this language, which is to be found in Mr. Lincoln's second inaugural address, would it not be a fitting comment even for this day and place? "Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fuiT^amental and as- tounding. Both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, and each invoked His aid against the other. * * * The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty had his own purposes." Again, what a fine exhortation to renewed love between the reunited sections of these once dismiited States would not this language be- even now: " With mahce toward none ; with charity for aU; with firmness in the right, as God gives" each "to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in " (and having already "bound up the Nation's wounds") "do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." My f eUow citizens ! We call one another f eUow citizens now from Maine to Florida and even "where Oregon roUs." We are fellow citizens now and this "indissoluble Union of indestructible States" which all of us to-day so intensely love has been reestabhshed only because, as Lincohi said, "God had purposes #f His own," "The stars in their course fought against" the South as they fought of old "against Sisera." Yet again, pursuing my illustration, all reahze the present appli- cability, with slight verbal alterations, of what Mr. Lincoln said in his first inaugural address : "Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our separate sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; hut the different 'parts of our country can not do this. ******* "We are not enemies, but friends. We must- not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every 8 LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. battle field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land," once more "swell the chorus of the Union," as they forever shall ''when * * * touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." " The mystic chords of memory!" What a world of potency there is in a phrase. These "mystic chords of memory" are the richest heritage and possession of any great people. Tlie music which is made upon them is sad; but it is embraving; it "holds the heart up higher." It is music in memoriam of "the generous and patriotic spirits" of a country; of "its buried warlike and its wise." It is always well then, by monument and memorial, to keep all worthy memories fresh in the minds of the people, thus inducing each gen- eration to rethink, refeel, and relive that which was noblest and worthiest in the generations preceding it. Thus we shall have the Nation make of its foregone generations "steppmg stones of its dead self" wherefrom to rise "to higher things." o V60 m '■\^m i ■im