fe_£. 45 . 
 
 Brink 
 
 ^JT— __ 
 
 r^RlvSDNTirD liY 
 
Celebration of 
 Abraham Lincoln's Birthday 
 
 anc 
 
 Second Anniversary of Institution 
 
 of 
 
 General James Shields Council No. 967 
 Knights of Columbus 
 
 Congress Hall, West Congress and Honore Streets, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Tuesday, February 12, 1907, at 8 P. M. 
 
 Address 
 
 of the 
 
 ' Hon^ Peter S. Grosscup 
 
 Judge of U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
 on 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln 
 
p- 
 
 
 i i iKoin 
 
 PROGRAMME 
 
 ADDRESS OF WELCOME .' - Dr. Eugene G. Clancy 
 t Grand Knight, GeneraJ.James Shields Council 
 
 ADDRESS OF CHAIRMAN - - Anthony Czarnecki 
 Lecturer, General James Shields Council 
 
 VOCAL SOLO ! l~^^^^' ^°"f.7,^'"''''' 
 ( b — Absence — Wilkins 
 
 Miss Eleonore Elliott, Soprano 
 
 Piano Accompaniment, John A. Hedgecoxe 
 
 READING— Edwin Markham's "Lincoln the Man of the People" 
 
 Miss Josephine McGarry 
 
 ADDRESS — "Abraham Lincoln" - Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 
 Judge of U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
 
 ^. ft. OaJajcca- 
 
7Uli6 
 
 Mk. CllAlKMAX, La 
 
 l.Al>lES 
 
 vjrars si 
 
 AND Gentle m v. x 
 
 It is only two vj?&rs short of a century now, since Lincoln was 
 born. It is almost forty-two years since he died. In that time he 
 lived the most conspicuous and the most useful life, barring, per- 
 haps, the Father of his Country, of any secular American. 
 
 If I tried, I could only elaborate upon the beautiful sketch 
 of him given this evening in Markham's poem, "The Man of the 
 People" ; the man who born out of the red earth ; who mixed 
 with that earth the laughter as well as the pathos of humanity : 
 and who lived under a commission from the Almighty, that this 
 country miglit at its critical ])eriod meet fully and justly its re- 
 sponsibilities. 
 
 He was born in Kentuck}- — in the little hill country in Ken- 
 tucky — and he lived there until he had almost grown into young 
 manhood. It was a wise providence that he was born among a 
 slave-holding people. Then, as now, men were so constituted 
 that they could not see the justice of the other man's point of 
 view. The north particularly — the New England north — could 
 not understand how there could be any humanity in the slave- 
 liolder, or how the slave himself could be anything else than a 
 brutalized, unfortunate human being. 
 
 On the other hand, the slave-holder of the south looked upon 
 the northern New Englander and northern abolitionist as an in- 
 termeddler. He could not understand how there could be such 
 fanaticism, such narrowness, such a failure to comj^rehend other 
 people's point of view, as was exhibited by (jarrison and Love- 
 joy, and other men who represented the abolition cause. 
 
 God ap])ointed Lincoln to be born among the slaves, and with 
 the slave-holders, in one of the border states between the north 
 and the south, that when the supreme moment of his life, and the 
 supreme moment of the national life came, he might have the 
 comprehension, ncit simply from the point of view of the hills of 
 New England, but from the point of view of the hills of Kcntuckv 
 and Tennessee, and the rice fields and the cotton plantations of 
 South Carolina and Georgia as well. 
 
 Lincoln came as a young man to Indiana, and there met that 
 throbbing young pioneer life of Americanism that had just 
 crossed the Alleghenies. and was plodding over the Mississippi 
 Valley : and from Indiana he came into our own plains here of 
 Illinois : leading until he was fifty years of age, or nearly fifty 
 years of age, an inconspicuous life — almost an obscure life. 
 Known by his lawyer friends as a keen, shrewd practitioner at the 
 bar ; appreciated by his ])arty as a local leader of great shrewd- 
 
4%, ''\, ' Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 
 
 ness' ana^nsi'ght ; but unknown to the country — not having re- 
 vealed, until the great campaign between him and Douglas, the 
 pathos in character and mastery of minds that afterwards made 
 him the great American. 
 
 At fifty-one he was elected President of the United States, 
 and at fifty-six was dead. 
 
 I wish, before I refer to the consequences of this great life 
 on the moral, intellectual, and material welfare of this country — 
 I wish, if I can, to portray some of the qualities of the man — the 
 qualities with which he came equipped — the tools, the garments 
 that he was given, that his leadership might not simply be su- 
 preme, but that it might be successful as well ; and not simply 
 successful in the sense of having achieved a brute success, but 
 successful in the sense of having established his cause upon the 
 high altitudes of universal justice; so that Lincoln to-night stands 
 one of the great figures of the universe. 
 
 Not very long ago I found myself in California, camping 
 among the hills of the south Nevada Range. All about me were 
 the hills. After awhile I broke up camp and made towards the 
 coast. The little hills, that looked great while I was at the foot 
 of them, began to flatten out and sink ; and behind them a range 
 of mountains appeared; and I realized that in some way, the 
 greater elevations had been obscured by the less — those that were 
 closer to me. I moved on towards the coast. In a little while, 
 even this range of mountains began to flatten out, and behind 
 them, at a distance I could not measure, rose the splendid peaks, 
 white capped, and glistening against the eastern sky. One, two, 
 three, four, five ; and the further I went the smaller the hills, and 
 the smaller the mountains, but the higher the peaks. 
 
 Lincoln along with Washington, and with a few others of the 
 world's history, are those splendid peaks of history, glistening 
 in the morning sunlight with the purity of his life, and looking 
 down upon the wdiole world, himself one of the most conspicuous 
 figures of the world. (Applause.) 
 
 Let us see, then, w-hat were the qualities, what were some of 
 the personal equalities, that made him this great figure. 
 
 In American politics, one of the great qualities is the capacity 
 of transposing one's own ideas into the idea of the people. Some- 
 times we call that oratory, or public speaking. It may be oratory. 
 It may not be oratory. Whatever it is, it is the possession of 
 something inside, and the capacity to get it outside— into the other 
 man's inside. We have orators who paint the skies in beautiful 
 color. W^e have orators whose speeches sound like the roll of the 
 organ. But when the colors disappear from the sky, and the roll 
 of the organ has died out, nothing is left in the breast of the 
 hearer except the sense of having been for the time being enter- 
 tained. Lincoln was not such an orator. He had few s^races 
 
Address of Hon. Peter S. Crosseup 5 
 
 of body. His voice was high pitched ; not at all sonorous. But 
 he had the faculty of saying- something that stuck in the heart. 
 He had in his own heart the ideal, and he had the artist's capacity 
 of transferring that ideal into other hearts. 
 
 I remember once of being in France, going to Barbizon, 
 traveling along the highway, having forgotten almost where I 
 was, by reason of the fact 1 had been in the carriage for a long 
 while. All at once something appealed to me as belonging to me. 
 I had never been there before ; but that hay-stack, that stable, 
 that barn, that row of poplars — all these things someway or other 
 were mine, and as familiar as childhood — like one of those in- 
 tellectual mirages you sometimes experience when you see a thing 
 for the first time, realizing you have seen it before, either in some 
 other instance, or as a flash of the mind in advance. Turning to 
 the driver I said, '"Where are we? "At that stone," said he, "jNIillet 
 painted the 'Gleaners.' " There in the man's breast was the ideal 
 of the Gleaners, and here he put it on canvas ; so that by merely 
 reading the canvas the reality had become a reality to me who 
 had never seen it before, — a familiar childhood reality, as familiar 
 as the scenes about my childhood home. Lincoln had that faculty 
 in oratory. He had no time to entertain. He had no time to 
 please. He never told a story except for an eiTect. He was too 
 serious, too earnest a man for that- — but he had something that 
 he wanted to impress upon the public heart, and he had the 
 faculty of doing it. 
 
 Returning once from a meeting at Galesburg. that had been 
 addressed by Baker of Springfield, and by Mr. Lincoln, two farm- 
 ers fell into a conversation. Baker, you remember, was one of 
 the great orators, afterwards in the Senate — appearing there on 
 one occasion in the full uniform of a Major General, and deliver- 
 ing one of the most captivating of speeches at the opening of the 
 war ; then going straight out to battle where he laid down his life. 
 These two men spoke, and the two farmers got to talking about it. 
 Said one of the farmers to the other, "Was not that a splendid 
 speech of Baker's? He held me just as long as he wished to hold 
 me ; I could have stayed there until morning and listened to him." 
 "Yes," said the other farmer, "it was a splendid speech ; but 
 wasn't Old Abe a convincin' cuss ?" 
 
 Lincoln had the faculty of speech that carries thought and 
 speedy conviction ; and that it is that has made all his great State 
 papers, and all his great speeches immortal. Take the speech at 
 Gettysburg, written on an envelope on the way between Washing- 
 ton and Gettysburg. At that time the great orator of the country 
 was Edward Everett of Massachusetts. He was the orator of 
 this occasion, dedicating this National Cemetery. Lincoln was 
 there simply to grace the occasion as President of the United 
 States. Everett delivered what was unquestionably a great ora- 
 
6 Address of Hon. I'cfcr S. Grosscup 
 
 tion, running through an hour or an hour and a half of the 
 people's time, and then Lincoln rose and read from his envelope 
 the speech that has become the famous Gettysburg speech. Ever- 
 ett's oration is lost. Nobody has ever read it. Lincoln's great 
 speech, compressed within less than one-eighth of a column of a 
 newspaper, is repeated every year at the decoration of the soldiers' 
 graves ; is recited from every ]:)latform in every school house ; and 
 r saw it at the University at Oxford, in the Library there, 
 framed ; and when I said to the man who was conducting me 
 tlu-ough, "Why have you framed this speech of Lincoln's, and 
 Inmg it on the walls?" his answer was: "To illustrate what can 
 be done in the English tongue." 
 
 Here was a man who grew ui), out of the red soil ; who had 
 never had nine months' education in his life ; who studied law 
 on the wood-pile ; vvhose whole life was one of sacrifice ; not only 
 the first president, not only the first statesman, not only the first 
 figure in his country's history ; but rapidly, as the years go by, 
 becoming the first orator of America ; the one to whom not only 
 the American people but the nations of the world turn, as an ex- 
 ample of what can be done in the tongue that his people speaks. 
 Such was Lincoln, the Orator. 
 
 Lincoln, the Statesman — the politician statesman — not a 
 statesman who spent all his energies in saying things, and doing 
 nothing ; in calling upon people to do things and then not organiz- 
 ing them in any way that would efifectually bring about their 
 doing; but a ])olitician statesman. I remember, when I was a boy, 
 of watching a little old mill in my country town, at the side of my 
 country town. The stream came down in the spring, turbulent 
 and deep — a fully developed stream of water; and all summer 
 long, a stream large enough for the boys to use for bathing and 
 swimming, but apparently good for nothing else. But diverted 
 from this stream, among the trees, and down between two hills, 
 ran a little canal or race course ; and the water it carried was 
 not much larger than the breadth of my body. But that water 
 went over the wheel ; and in going over the wheel, it turned a 
 mill ; and only after having turned the mill did it rejoin the 
 stream below. Lincoln believed in the public opinion that goes 
 over the wheel. He believed that public opinion, when rightly 
 set upon its track, will overcome all obstacles. He believed that 
 in the end, public opinion was bound to be right, and it is. But 
 he believed in the public opinion, that diverted out of ordinary 
 channels runs over the wdieels of politics — the public opinion 
 that goes to primaries, the public opinion that expresses itself 
 in elections, the public opinion that allies itself with organization, 
 the public opinion that does something to put public opinion into 
 effect. They called him Lincoln, the politician ; and he remained 
 to the end of his days, Lincoln, the politician. But, in being Lin- 
 
Address of Hon. Fctcv S. Grosscup 9 
 
 coin, the politician, he was Lincoln, the Statesman; for no man 
 can lead the great arm} of citizenship unless he stays with the 
 army; unless he knows the rank and file out of which it is con- 
 structed : and when that army starts to cross the stream the 
 leader must not be alread} on the other side of the stream; but 
 on the same side, one step in advance, one step forward, wait- 
 ing- there patiently, if necessary ; but waiting there until the 
 column has come up. And thus it happened that Lincoln was 
 often denounced for being too slow ; that people grew impatient 
 with him for not taking .steps more rapidly in a direction that 
 that far-seeing man knew eventually he would have to pursue. 
 But he sat silently, no matter what they had to say, waiting for 
 the people to come up ; waiting for public sentiment to come up ; 
 getting public sentiment behind him before he took the next 
 step forward. That was Lincoln, the Statesman ; Lincoln, the 
 Politician. 
 
 Then there was Lincoln the Man. It is hard to get an ade- 
 (|uate conception of Lincoln, the Man. There are so many sides 
 to the picture ; so many colors have been thrown in by those who 
 knew him, and those who have described him, that what you 
 might call a particular dominating quality is hard to catch. And 
 yet, I believe that if you were to take it all apart, in search of 
 that which dominates all else — that which gave to his character 
 as a man more prominence and more efifectiveness than anything 
 else — it would be found to be, iirst of all. his love of justice — 
 his love of your having just the right in the world that he had: 
 his love of the little man having just as much right as the great 
 man, and the great man as much right as the little man; supple- 
 mented by his belief that behind this justice was the great moral 
 truth called God — the great personal IJeing in whose hands the 
 universe swings. It was this love of justice — of justice emanat- 
 ing from God — that dominated him clear through his splendid 
 career. 
 
 I rememl)er a friend of mine, Mr. Leonard Swett. telling me 
 this very interesting incident. Mr. Swett was a practitioner here 
 in Illinois whom Mr. Lincoln trusted as a friend. (Jne day Mr. 
 Swett received a telegram saying, "Come to Washington imme- 
 diately," signed by Mr. Lincoln. He took the first train, which 
 at that time required that he should be two nights and a day on 
 the road, arriving in Washington on the second morning. So 
 urgent seemed the telegram that before going to a hotel to 
 change his clothing or get breakfast, he went up to the White 
 House, where he found Mr. Lincoln just finishing his toilet. He 
 met him in the Cabinet room looking out over the Potomac ; 
 down over the green sward ; down the glancing waters to the 
 river ; down the river to where Mount Vernon looms up ; and 
 the\- stood at the window for a moment, while Mr. Lincoln asked 
 
8 
 
 Jddrcss of Hon. Peter S. Grosscnp 
 
 about his Illinois friends, and about some other affairs that he 
 was naturally interested in as a citizen of Illinois. Then Lin- 
 coln turned and sat down at a cabinet, and pulled out a drawer, 
 from which he took a letter (Mr. Swett meantime taking a chair 
 by his side), saying, "Here's a letter I want to read to you." It 
 turned out to be a letter from William Lloyd Garrison of Boston. 
 It was right in the midst of that awful Civil War. Lincoln had 
 just called for 600,000 troops, and there were evidences all over 
 
 the north that the quotas would not be filled by volunteers that 
 
 there^ would have to be drafting. Everywhere the spirit of dis- 
 satisfaction and discontent and discouragement had grown up. 
 Mr. Garrison, in his letter, referred to that fact, and said in sub- 
 stance : You will never be able to fill this call ; the people are as 
 wise as you, and the people know that whatever else you may 
 say, or whatever else you politicians may think, the real cause for 
 this war is slavery, and the real outcome must be the freedom of 
 the slaves ; and until you in some way enroll yourself on the side 
 of freedom, either by issuing an emancii)ation proclamation, or 
 promising you will issue some such proclamation, the north is 
 going to stand back discouraged and disheartened. Having read 
 that letter, Lincoln laid it aside. "Now," he said. "Here is 
 another." It turned out to be from Garrett Davis of Kentucky, 
 who at that time was in the Senate from Kentucky, a border 
 state union democrat; and the purport of that letter was this: 
 You came to Washington saying that your purpose, and the pur- 
 pose of the party behind you, was to restore the union. You 
 
 have said all along that you liad no complaints against slavery 
 
 that you proposed to let that institution alone in the states where 
 that institution had become established. If you do that all is well. 
 But if you do one thing, or .say one word, by which the people 
 of the border states, Kentucky and Maryland, and Missouri, and 
 Tennessee, that are now contributing as many soldiers to the 
 union forces as to the confederate forces, lose confidence that 
 what you have said was meant — if you say one word that leads 
 them to think that you were not sincere in the beginning — that 
 the purpose of this war, after all, is abolition— they will fall 
 away from you ; and then, with the whole south on one side and 
 a divided north on the other, the restoration of the union will 
 become an impossible accomplishment. 
 
 Having read that, he laid it aside, and took out another. It 
 was from the President of the Swiss Federation of Cantons, a 
 well-known man in public life in Europe at that time. This let- 
 ter called Mr. Lincoln's attention to a report spread over Europe, 
 that there was something to be done in the way of abolition of 
 slavery ; that a proclamation was to be made up on that line, or 
 something of that sort; and continued. "I want to call your' at- 
 tention to a feature of this, that perhaps vou Americans have 
 
Address of Hon. Fcfer S. Grosscup 9 
 
 not fully appreciated, and that is this : That while public England 
 and public France and public Germany are on the side of the 
 north, ofificial England and ofificial France, and official Germany 
 are on the side of the south. Your only friend over here in 
 official life is Russia. And England and France are simply 
 waiting for a pretext upon which to make a move for interven- 
 tion in behalf of the south." Such intervention, for instance, as we 
 accomplished later in the war between Cuba and Spain. "Now," 
 said this writer, "it has been the edict of international law from 
 the Greeks and Romans that the turning of the slave against his 
 master was barbarous and unlawful. We fear that an Emanci- 
 pation, whether interpreted correctly or not by public England 
 and public France, will be used by official England and France 
 as a hint that the slave will take arms against his master, and 
 will thus furnish the pretext upon which intervention will come." 
 Then leaning back in his chair Lincoln went over the whole 
 situation, pro and con, stating it better from Garrison's point 
 of view than Garrison had stated it himself ; stating it from Davis' 
 point of view better than Davis had stated it himself ; stating it 
 better from the Swiss President's point of view better than 
 the Swiss statesman had stated it himself — understanding it all 
 to the end ; and having come to no further conclusion that Mr. 
 Swett could make out, laid back the papers, and inquired when 
 Swett was to return to Illinois ; and at that point the interview 
 broke up. 
 
 Why that interview? Because Mr. Lincoln had the habit 
 that all just men have of testing his judgment before acting 
 upon it. At that moment the Emancipation Proclamation was 
 v.ritten and in one of the cabinet draw^ers. \\'ithin a few days 
 it appeared. But before this intended step was actually taken— 
 before this step that meant disaster or success ; possibly, disaster 
 where one looked for success, and success where one looked for 
 disaster — before the final seal was put upon that document Lin- 
 coln wished to discuss it with another mind ; not to get the judg- 
 ment of the other mind, but to clear up his own judgment; to 
 satisfy himself, by putting once and for all his judgment into 
 words before this friend of his youth and this friend of his man- 
 hood. It w^as because he was a just man that he could do noth- 
 ing when justice was not fully tested. lie could have sent out 
 that Proclamation without this final scrutiny ; but he had, as a 
 great many men before him have had, and as a great many men 
 after him have had, that conscientiousness of judgment, that 
 sense of responsibility to a higher Being for the responsibilities 
 his fellow citizens had conferred on him, that made it impossible 
 for him to act until he had exhausted every resource. And thi$ 
 was the man, with these qualities, who "came forward at this 
 critical period as the representative of the American nation. 
 
lo Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 
 
 Now, in ordinary historical review, we look upon slavery as 
 the thing that caused the war ; and we look upon the emancipa- 
 tion of the slave as the chief event of the w^ar. But I do not 
 believe that that will be the final judgment of history. 
 
 The slavery question, indeed, was a mere incident, a little 
 thing on the great current, conspicuous it is true — so conspicuous 
 that no one at the time saw anything else — but the great under- 
 lying- thing at that time, the great thing as events afterwards dis- 
 closed to us, was the grow'ing, the maturing, the bursting nation- 
 ality of this people that the world calls the Americans. 
 
 I remember when I was a boy, back in the Civil War, a little 
 fellow with my brother playing in a hollow back of our house. 
 I would sometimes hear a low rumbling along the horizon, and 
 the inquiry would come to me : Is it thunder, or is it a railroad 
 train away off at a distant town? And if thunder, there would 
 be excited the most lively apprehensions. We regarded the light- 
 ning, at that time, not as a friend of man, but as his enemy ; not 
 as something mankind would make use of, but something man- 
 kind must escape from, and dodge, and run away from. But 
 since that time the lightning has become the friend of man. Its 
 lights you utilize ; it moves your street cars ; it is beginning to 
 move your railroad trains. Through it you call up your friend 
 a thousand miles away, and his heart and yours beat as one. 
 Under the sea it carries messages of life. It has bound us so 
 closely together that Chicago and New York at the present time 
 are as closely interwoven as New York and Brooklyn were in the 
 fifties ; and San Francisco is as close to Chicago as Jersey City 
 was to New York in the fifties. This whole teeming activity. 
 American industry, American invention, American transporta- 
 tion — everything that makes up American activity — was com- 
 ing before the war to a crisis — a crisis that required that it 
 should be met ; required that there should be built up among the 
 people, that there should grow into the life of the people, a strong 
 national sentiment. 
 
 Then, too, the government required the spirit of nationality. 
 The government as a government required it. We were coming 
 to a time — we didn't see it then, but we see it now — when the 
 central government had to have power that it never had before. 
 The country's railroads then were little roads running from one 
 town to another. Now, they are great trunk continental lines, 
 that instead of remaining in the control of the State, had to come 
 into the grasp of the wliole people. Government was coiupelled 
 to expand. There had to be a growing nationality here as else- 
 where. 
 
 Then there was the necessity of a growing nationality in 
 life, liberty and property. I do not mean the liberty of the slave, 
 which is a mere incident, but the libertv of the man. without 
 
Address of Hon. Fctcr S. Grosscup ii 
 
 which Hfe is worth nothin^^; without wliich propertv is worth 
 nothing — the hbert}- of the individual man. 
 
 A few years ago I was up in the Lake Superior country. 
 One night, after my fellows had all gone to their tents, I took 
 the boat, and cutting loose from the party, drifted out into the 
 Great Lake, drifting further and further until even the lights 
 disappeared, and I was out there all alone. 
 
 I looked up, and abcn-e me were the splendid constellations, 
 fleets of ships sailing into ports I knew not where ; but sailing 
 under a guidance that has been so accurate, that in all history 
 no clash has ever been reported. I looked below me, the water 
 was placid as a mirror, so that the constellations were reflected 
 in the water below. When I looked up, I was looking into the 
 depths of a fathomless universe, tilled with the moving ships of 
 God's fleets, and when I looked down I was looking again into 
 the fathomless depths of the same universe. And for the moment 
 I trembled not. 1, a little fisherman, was in the center of the 
 great sphere; and for a moment I felt, as every one would feel, 
 the inconsequence c(jmi)ared with all this of a single life, of an 
 individual life, of the life of a man clothed in this kind of clay. 
 But then I remembered that it was a man like myself, who had 
 marked out the orbits of these fleets, who had charted their ways, 
 and who for a thousand years to come can tell where they will be 
 when that thousand years has passed ; and I remembered, too. 
 that it was my own eyes, these lens ])ut into my own face, acting 
 as glasses for something behind them, that caught into vision 
 these fleets thousands of millions of miles away; and then I re- 
 flected, that in my own heart was the photographic process that 
 mirrored them — mirrored their sublimity, their greatness on the 
 human soul ; and then I said : After all, the little lone fisherman 
 in the center of this universe, is not out of place. It belongs to 
 him ; the universe belongs to man ; God made it for man ; made 
 it for the individual man. And it is on a conception like that 
 that we get some conception of what indrvidual liberty means, 
 and what the right of individual conscience is, without which all 
 other things are worthless ; because, in the end, except for the 
 existence of human souls, this whole universe could be crushed 
 into dust, thrown away, and nothing would have been lost. (Ap- 
 plause.) Individual liberty; the right of individual life; in- 
 dividual labor, and individual property — these are the things for 
 which all the battles of civilization have been fought. The in- 
 dividual against his fellows; the single man against everybody 
 else; the right of the individual man to his life — it is that that 
 constitutes the trophy, the crowning success of civilization. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest lasting thing that the civil war did was 
 to nationalize Life, Liberty and Property. Before the fourteenth 
 amendment to the federal constitution, life, liberty, and property 
 
12 Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 
 
 were within the power of the eight and thirty states. By that 
 amendment they were put within the protecting shield of the 
 nation. Henceforth the right to hfe. the right to Hberty, and the 
 right to property, were national interests. When we look across 
 the Atlantic to what is transpiring in France to-day, in relation 
 to the church properties created by the Catholics of France, the 
 value of this, our great national guaranty against absolutism 
 and spoliation, stands out one of the mighty bulwarks of Ameri- 
 can institutions. 
 
 What is happening in France? The Catholics of France 
 through centuries built the churches of France, splendid, noble, 
 beautiful edifices. I never go there that I am not more impressed 
 with what man has built in his reverence of God than for any- 
 thing that he has put up in honor of men — the beautiful Made- 
 laine, a bride's face looking out through the bridal veil — the splen- 
 did Notre Dame. Will I ever forget an afternoon that I hap- 
 pened into Notre Dame when the funeral of an Archbishop or 
 Cardinal or one of the high officials of the Catholic Church was 
 in its midst ; when the great organ at one end of the Cathedral 
 and the great organ at the other were throwing back and forward 
 the strains of their lamentations, broken in now and then with 
 the chimes from the dome ; a symphony so sublime that I felt 
 that great as the dead's life had been in the world it must be 
 immensely greater in the atmosphere in which it was caught up 
 and was being translated heavenwards. (Applause.) 
 
 For centuries the Catholics of France had been building their 
 churches and their other institutions. Like the little Lutheran 
 church building in which I was confirmed — like the Protestant 
 cliurcli buildings to which the majority of Americans are attached 
 —these edifices became, humanly speaking, the property of their 
 human creators. By every law of nature and of right they should 
 have remained the property of their creators. But in the frenzy 
 of the revolution of 1789 they w^ere seized by the mob; and 
 because the mob at that time was the government of France, what 
 had been built by religion was confiscated to the state. No his- 
 torian of standing, no jurist of standing has ever attempted, on 
 any principle of honor or morals, to defend this act. It was an 
 act of sheer brute force — the taking by sheer force, and without 
 compensation, of things created from their creators, and turning 
 them over to the state. No socialist of the most radical type has 
 ever outstripped in speech what the mob of the revolution accom- 
 plished in deed. 
 
 For twelve years the situation thus stood — the forcible reten- 
 tion by the state of that which did not belong to the state. Then 
 Napoleon, alive to the fact that a religion in France w^as needed 
 as well as French armies, and that the weakness of his govern- 
 ment in the eye of the world was the spoliation on which it was 
 
Address of Hon. Pcfcr S. Grosscup 13 
 
 founded, set about to undo the wrong. The Concordat of 1801 
 was the result. The Concordat was a compromise. It did not 
 restore to the CathoHcs of France the property that belonged to 
 them ; rightful as such restoration would have been, it probably 
 was beyond the power of Napoleon to accomplish. But what was 
 accepted as an equivalent was agreed upon— the assumption by 
 the state of a part of the burdens of the church. And as a con- 
 tract to that end the Concordat has stood now for over a hundred 
 years. 
 
 It is from this settlement — this contract between the authori- 
 ties of the state and the authorities of the church that has stood 
 for a century — that the state now withdraws ; withdraws, too, 
 without a pretense of restoring to the other party the right of 
 property that the contract that is abrogated was intended to re- 
 place. A witlidrawal under such circumstances is nothing less 
 than repudiation. True, as some of the apologists for the act of 
 separation say, the Concordat by its terms was not perpetual ; but 
 assuming that that fact gives to the state the right of withdrawal, 
 it does not excuse the duty, when the supposed right of with- 
 drawal is exercised, of at least restoring that for which the con- 
 tract was intended as the eciuivalent. Could the state the next 
 day after the contract was signed, or a year thereafter, or ten 
 years thereafter, still keeping its grasp on the property taken, 
 have withdrawn without guilt of repudiation? \Vhy then in ten 
 times ten years ? For it is not the lapse of time, however long, 
 that gives the right to withdraw. The sole basis of that right, 
 whenever exercised, would be the restoration to the party of 
 what had been originally taken — what we call in law the restora- 
 tion of the statu quo. 
 
 True. too. as the apologists say, the state has had now the 
 legal title to these properties for a century. But by what code 
 of morals or justice does the possession of title for a period, how- 
 ever long, accompanied by a burden settled upon it as a part of 
 the consideration upon which the title was surrendered, entitle 
 the party to throw ofif at will the burden while holding fast to the 
 title? Besides, there is no principle, either in morals or in public 
 law, that makes that right which originally was wrong. X^o plea 
 of that character can stand for an instant in the court of public 
 conscience. 
 
 But again it is said that the repeal of the Concordat is only 
 putting into effect in France the principle of separation between 
 church and state that prevails in America. But what is there in 
 the American principle that deprives the church of the right to 
 hold the property that the church has from time to time, or that 
 justifies the taking by the public of that property without full com- 
 pensation for the thing taken ? Indeed, the American principle 
 contemplates that the churches shall hold their own property, to 
 
14 Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosseup 
 
 l)e used according- to their own interpretations of their rehgious 
 duties ; and it prohibits the state, by the solemnity of constitu- 
 tional guaranties, from taking any property, either church or 
 secular, except upon full compensation first made. 
 
 As a final apology it is said, that the act of separation still 
 preserves to the people who reside in the vicinity of the individual 
 churches taken, the continued enjoyment of such churches as 
 houses of worship — that all that these several communities have 
 to do is to apply to the state for permission to use the church 
 buildings, whereupon permission will be granted, as a matter of 
 course, without charge. lUit do the people who ofifer this argu- 
 ment realize that under the P>ench law, as it now stands, three, 
 five, a score of associations may be formed in the specific com- 
 munity surrounding the church edifice asked for — Catholic. He- 
 brew, Methodist, Mohammedan — whereupon each will be entitled 
 to the use of the edifice, transforming it thus from a place conse- 
 crated to some concrete faith, into a sort of town hall, where every 
 character of faith will be housed. What would the Methodists, 
 or the Lutlierans, or the Jews, each perfectly tolerant of the Cath- 
 olic church as an organ of religion, think of it if our government 
 were to compel them to stretch that toleration to the extent of 
 dividing with that church the rights in the church edifices erected 
 with their own hands and dedicated to their own faith ? Resides, 
 what assurances have the Catholics of France that a public that 
 will seize, without right, wdiat belongs to another, and withdrawing 
 without right from the arrangement under which that seizure for 
 a century was condoned, will observe any later or less substantial 
 promises that it will make? What assurance have the Catholics 
 of France that step by step, as it is now going on. this process of 
 elimination will not result in the end in the total elimination of 
 the Catholic faith from the properties that their ancestors have 
 created ? 
 
 Indeed every attempt at justifying these acts of the French 
 government dissolves the moment it is ])ut under the lens of any 
 honest application of the axioms of law or morals — dissolves in- 
 stantly one applies to it that highest test of fair judgment, "Have 
 you done unto others what you would have them do unto you?"' 
 And it is then that the defender of the French government falls 
 back upon the assertion, that after all, the Concordat was not a 
 settlement, but was merely an arrangement for governmental vol- 
 untary contributions to the church — contributions that the state 
 may continue or discontinue at will. But argument like that is 
 bad as its predecessors, for it tries to make us believe that an 
 untruth is the truth. The seizure of the churches at the begin- 
 ning of the revolution, and the Concordat at the end. are not sep- 
 arate items in French history, unrelated to each other. On the 
 other hand, thev are two events closelv related, standing to each 
 
Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosseup 15 
 
 other in the relation of cause and effect ; for without the unlawful 
 seizures the Concordat would never have been brovight into exist- 
 ence, and without the Concordat the church would eventually 
 have found some other way to retrieve the wrong done. Napol- 
 eon was not making" a contribution. He was righting the wrong. 
 He needed the church to help govern France, and the Concordat 
 was his token that the church was not to be despoiled. He 
 needed to show the world that he was not for overturning the 
 well established institutions of mankind ; justice to the church that 
 had been robbed was the best evidence of his good faith. In every 
 honest view of history it was a settlement that these parties 
 entered upon in 1801, not a surrender — a settlement that had the 
 intended oft'er of forestalling the church from appealing on that 
 day, or at some later day, to the conscience of P>ance for the 
 justice that the conscience of France was bound some day to do. 
 
 It is not as a Catholic, therefore, or a Protestant speaking 
 to Catholics, that I chose to raise my voice, for whatever my voice 
 is worth, against this invasion of the rights of the church ; nor as 
 a Protestant merely interested in seeing that the great sister 
 church is not despoiled. I speak as a Protestant, and in the inter- 
 est of Protestants ; because if such things could be done outside 
 of France, the great Protestant church to which I belong, secure 
 now in the enjoyment of the property it has created, as the human 
 instrument through which it is working out its faith, would be no 
 longer secure. I speak, too, as an American, who though irrev- 
 ocably opposed to a church controlled state, is as irrev- 
 ocably opposed to a state controlled religion. I speak as a man 
 to whom breach of faith is none the less odious because it may 
 emerge from high altitudes. And I speak as a believer, who sees 
 in what is transpiring in France an organized movement against 
 belief in Ciod after any faith. 
 
 I speak, too, as a liberty loving American, who stands in favor 
 of individual liberty. When the situation in France is clearly 
 understood by the American people, there will be no apologies for 
 that act of vandalism that can stand. Republican America will 
 be against it ; Protestant America will be against it ; liberty loving 
 America will be against it ; all the forces that have made us great 
 will be against it ; everything that has made this nation what it is 
 will be against it. Lincoln and Washington, looking down from 
 the upper skies, would raise their voices against it. 
 
 It was in behalf of life, liberty and property, as well as of the 
 liberty of the slave, and the liberty of the commonwealth that 
 Lincoln fought his great fight ; and when I think of him tonight, 
 as rested on God for his support, there comes into my heart the 
 hopefulness and the benediction that is the salvation of mankind. 
 
 I am a believer. But like all human beings, there have come 
 to me davs of doubt — davs when the lights were not as brijrht as 
 
i6 Address of Hon. Peter S. Grossaip 
 
 on other days ; when the candles were burning down. I have 
 looked sometimes to^fclie eastward, out of which my lite came 
 up along with the sun, and though I knew beyond the fog that 
 marked the beginning of my life, thirty, forty or fifty years ago, 
 all the past lay it was not a past that seemed to be my past. My 
 individual past ran back only to the fog. And when I looked 
 toward the west where my life will eventually set. there again, 
 ten, fifteen or twenty years from now, another fog arose. I 
 knew, of course, that beyond that fog was all the future — a 
 mighty future — but was not the fog the end of my personal exist- 
 ence? Alas, my life! It began in a fog; it ends in a fog. lUit 
 then, lifting my eyes over the fog in the east, away in the further- 
 most corners of the universe, I see the constellations ; and lifting 
 my eyes over this fog in the west, away in the uttermost corners 
 of the universe, I see again other constellations ; and between 
 them the millions of constellations, held together by a divine law, 
 that makes them move as though they were ships on the seas ; and 
 I know that my life does not begin with the fog and that it does 
 not end with the fog; that my life begins with the furthest constel- 
 lation, and ends not until the end of time is reached ; that I am a 
 part of this great universe; and that whether I live a little part 
 or a great part, a higher part or a deeper part, what I am doing 
 has been commissioned to mc from the throne of the universe. 
 And under such a faith I. live without fear that in some way all 
 things will come out right. They will come out right in France. 
 The revolution against the throne of Louis XVI. succeeded ; rev- 
 olutions against other human thrones have succeeded. But there 
 never will come a time when a revolution against the throne of 
 God can have success. (Applause, loud and long continued.) 
 
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