aass_ 
 Book! 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
THE BURDEN BEARER 
 
The Burden bearer 
 
 AN EPIC OF LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
This edition of "The Burden Bearer" is limited to 
 Three Hundred copies, of which this is 
 
 No. 
 
 ^.^fX^ita^c^zi-lj^^: 
 
 ^4-5-^ 
 
 LIBRAKY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 NOV 16 1908 
 
 . Copyri^ni Entry _ 
 CLASS OL Mc. No. 
 
 .W 
 
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 jji^.j', ;> .nM 
 
 Copyright, 1908, by 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 
 Published November, igo8 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
 
BOOK FIRST 
 
THE BURDEN BEARER 
 
 BOOK FIRST 
 
 Of sturdy English stock the Linkhorns came, 
 
 People of Norfolk, seeking in the new 
 
 For what the old denied, — a human right 
 
 To labor and to worship in God's world 
 
 Untrammeled save by conscience and the fear 
 Of one sole Maker. 
 
 So John Linkhorn came 
 
 To plant his crops in Pennsylvania soil 
 
 And gather fruit beneath Virginia sun; 
 
 And after him came Abraham in turn. 
 
 Migrating to Kentucky's distant fields; 
 
 And after Abraham, Thomas, — he whose ways 
 
 Were never thrifty, though his heart was set 
 
To cozen fortune whose averted face 
 Shone never on him. Slow of gait was he, 
 Stoop-shouldered, pausing ever for a jest, 
 Hard-handed, capable of labor, nor 
 Striving to shun it when it came his way. 
 Though scarce alert to seek it out. 
 
 His friends, — 
 And he had many, — called him Shiftless Tom, — 
 Tom Lincoln, who could make a joint at need 
 And do such carpentry as few could match, 
 Yet all unlettered. Patient at his bench 
 Within the shop of Joseph Hanks he wrought, 
 And saw the months glide into years and all 
 The years to bootless issues. Yet a web 
 Was being spun about his life to lead 
 To undreamed destinies. For Tom saw oft 
 His gentle cousin, daughter of the man 
 Who paid him his scant wage. And Nancy's eyes, 
 Resting at first complacent on the gaunt 
 And stooping form at Joseph Hanks's bench, 
 Little by little took a softer light 
 And conjured up strange images whereof 
 
 13 
 
They two became a portion. And at last 
 He spoke, all awkwardly and ill at ease, 
 Fashioning his untaught phrase to tell his love,- 
 Unlettered, rough, yet eloquent. And she 
 Quite understood and loved him that he failed,- 
 Quite took into her heart his futile trial 
 To make his plea a poesy; and so 
 She gave her promise to become his wife. 
 
 Time's wheel turns slowly, but at last the day 
 Set for the marriage came, and Jesse Head, 
 Exhorter, preacher, and the friend of both, 
 With ceremony due made these two one 
 In eyes of God and man. 
 
 And Nancy faced 
 The stern reality of coming trials 
 With faith which knew no faltering. 
 
 Sweet was she 
 In all the winning ways of womanhood, 
 Too timid haply for the turbulent stress 
 Of stern and rugged days. Within her veins 
 The blood of those who once serenely dwelt 
 
 13 
 
In English Malmsbury flowed inviolate, 
 And something of the mystic Stonehenge hung 
 About her presence. Soft and vagrant winds 
 Whispered their earliest carols to the child 
 Who knew no struggle till a ruthless world 
 Startled her sense and dashed her striving life 
 Against the hardships of the pioneer. 
 
 Through tears that told the pain of parting shone 
 The light of girlish eyes, and from her gaze 
 Faded Virginia hills, as in her mind 
 A vision of the far Kentucky rose. 
 And soon the perils of the journey came, 
 The Wilderness Road with all its hidden fears. 
 The bruit of savage Indians and at night 
 The iterant cry of wolf and wildcat, raised 
 As though to stem the Western flowing stream 
 Of active life, grown milder at the hearth 
 Of human kindliness. Thus did she come 
 To live and learn and to each daily task 
 To bring her willing effort. Thus her face 
 Took on the look of patience, and her eyes 
 
 14 
 
Turned serious, even as our fancy paints 
 
 The eyes of Mary when the angel came 
 
 To make annunciation. For mayhap 
 
 A prescience whispered to the guileless one: 
 
 "The day shall come when thou shalt bear a man 
 
 To carry high the torch of liberty." 
 
 How evermore inscrutable is fate! 
 
 How evermore implacable the scales 
 
 That weigh life's happenings! A timid bride 
 
 Came Nancy to the cabin of the man 
 
 Whom she had wedded, unafraid yet frail, — 
 
 Alas! too frail, to cope with those hard days 
 
 Which now became her lot. 
 
 For Tom had made 
 A hut of rough-hewn logs, with earth for floor, 
 Windowless, bare, and open to the blast. 
 And here he brought the wife whose daily toil. 
 Faithfully given, of recompense had naught 
 Save scanty food and clothing, and the leave 
 For brief respite in weary slumber. Here 
 Was born the little Sarah, all too soon 
 To droop and seek again the kindly earth, 
 
 IS 
 
Leaving the fragrant memory of her smile. 
 Then, in the discontent which often breeds 
 A hope of future betterment, these two, — 
 The shiftless pioneer and his fading wife, — 
 Moved onward to a little settlement; 
 Men named it Buffalo, on Nolan Creek, 
 Meandering through the blue Kentucky fields. 
 Close by the cabin bubbled one clear spring, 
 In cool seclusion, from beneath a rock 
 That kept it ever shadowed; so they named 
 The new place Rock Spring Farm. 
 
 And ere a year 
 Had seen the little family settled there, 
 A mystery seemed to brood upon the house; 
 And on a day God called a soul to life, 
 And Abraham Lincoln lived. 
 
 II 
 
 Haply the dawns 
 That press their wan cheeks on the uncumbered hills, 
 Nor fret upon the angled works of men, 
 
 i6 
 
Bring yet a finer essence to new day 
 And bathe the spirit in a rarer joy 
 Than those who dwell in towns have dreamed upon. 
 So loving Nature's compensations keep 
 Her scales at balance, and for us who seek 
 To see in retrospect those rugged days 
 In the gaunt wilderness, there is strange joy 
 To think upon the vigor and the life 
 Which from the first imbued that infant form, 
 And through the tender veins of him whose fate 
 Enwrapt America, poured vital strength 
 To build at last the stature of a man. 
 Patient the mother was, as true the wife. 
 The first rude learning which to Thomas came 
 He gained from Nancy's hands. So, too, the child, 
 Turning from infancy at the mother's knee. 
 Was taught to read from the scant printed page. 
 And gathered lore of holy men of old, 
 Ever more thoughtful with the growing years. 
 Of schooling nothing worthy of the name. 
 Of preaching little, save when some lean man 
 Came hungry on his circuit through the wilds, 
 
 17 
 
Pronouncing with thin hps the Hving word 
 And in grim mien and manner setting forth 
 The stern necessity of struggle here 
 Or misery hereafter. 'Twas as though 
 Fate hung a hopeless veil before the child, 
 Who evermore sought shelter in himself, 
 And as he learned to work, learned also well 
 To hoard the hours for study. Then there came 
 The move to Knob Creek, and again the change 
 To friendlier soil in far and fallow fields 
 Wrung by hard toil from Indiana's huge 
 And overshadowing forests. Gentryville 
 Became the new abode, forlorn and bare. 
 A cabin rough-hewn, into whose rude logs 
 Had bit the hatchet of that seven-year boy. 
 Laboring each day beside his father, reared 
 Its inhospitable unlovely shape, — 
 Haply a shelter but no whit a home; 
 And here each evening closed a day of toil. 
 Ah, who that dwells in curtained ease can know 
 The stress of those stern pioneers whose hands 
 Wrought out the miracle of a Nation's growth? 
 
Who, fashioned in the large luxurious mold 
 Of this our day's prosperity, may dream 
 How Nature's face a century ago 
 Wore frowns where now she smiles? 
 
 Hard, hard the times, 
 And grim the struggle for existence waged 
 In those far settlements, those outer posts 
 Where Thomas Lincoln and his fading wife 
 Wrung a bare living from the grudging soil. 
 Meagre their fare and their utensils few, 
 Their raiment scarce above the garments made 
 By silent squaws in the red Indians' tents; 
 And if perchance the mother's patient hands 
 Wrought homespun clothing, 'twas for Sunday wear, 
 Above the daily uses of the farm. 
 So Abraham, the child of such hard days, 
 Grew into youthful stature, garnering strength. 
 At night he sought the fitful glare of logs 
 Burning upon the hearth to con the lore 
 Of Thomas Lincoln's Bible, or to find 
 In Bunyan's allegory food for dreams. 
 The Life of Washington, sl precious part 
 
 19 
 
Of the slim stock of books, was evermore 
 
 An inspiration and an upward call 
 
 To a soul bent on duty. Nor the least 
 
 Of these prized helps to gropings of the mind 
 
 Was that loved book of human tinctured rimes, 
 
 The poems of Robert Burns. So evermore 
 
 The earnest boy, after the hours of toil, 
 
 Fed his young mind and built his seeking soul; 
 
 And so the years sped till there came a night 
 
 When Nancy Lincoln reached the end of care, 
 
 And, folding her thin hands across her breast. 
 
 Whispered a blessing in her husband's ear, 
 
 Looked with a mother's lovelight in her eyes 
 
 On little Sarah and on Abraham, 
 
 And, with a sigh, passed out into the light. 
 
 Ill 
 
 How doubly solemn is death's whisper heard 
 Through the green aisles, the lonesome sacristies. 
 Of the primeval forest! Rude and plain 
 The burial of Nancy, with no word, 
 
No sentence spoken, and no voice upraised 
 
 In solace or in song. And Abraham grieved 
 
 And brooded long on such a sore neglect. 
 
 Till, hearing that one David Elkin rode 
 
 To nearby settlements, — a man of God, 
 
 Itinerant preacher and exhorter he, — 
 
 He wrote beseeching that some service meet 
 
 Be rendered at his mother's humble grave; 
 
 And David traveled o'er the weary miles 
 
 On horseback to the cabin, and from far 
 
 About the country silent neighbors came, 
 
 And gathered at the grave, now grown with grass, 
 
 Beneath a stately sycamore; and there 
 
 A sermon preached, a hymn sung and a prayer 
 
 Hallowed the ground where Nancy Lincoln slept. 
 
 Less prompt the foot of toil to meet each day 
 The daily strife, when at the heart there tugs 
 The sorrow of a parting. Yet the task 
 Waits not upon the pleasure of the man, 
 And so the father and the son toiled on. 
 And little Sarah childishly essayed 
 
 21 
 
A woman's labors. Abraham, between 
 
 The hours of heavy work upon the farm, 
 
 Sought how to add to their too scanty means, 
 
 Doing such service as he might, perchance 
 
 SpHtting the rails for a far neighbor's fence 
 
 Or ferrying some traveler o'er the stream. 
 
 Content with what he got, the while he gave 
 
 A conscientious measure for his wage. 
 
 The quiet evenings were in study spent; 
 
 The boy, intent on education, strove 
 
 To garner fruitage from that arid soil, 
 
 And prospered so that soon the neighbors said 
 
 He had become the oracle of law. 
 
 At Jones's store the Solons of the place 
 
 Discussed the politics of State and town 
 
 And wrestled with the problems which their lives 
 
 Made very real and earnest. When the court 
 
 At Boonville held its session, Abraham came, 
 
 Listening with admiration to the pleas, — 
 
 Returning to his cabin then to dream. 
 
 Through the long silence of the sombre nights. 
 
 Of legal tilts and tourneys and the joy 
 
Of swaying men by brilliancy of mind 
 
 And all the force of logic. But at home 
 
 There was scant comfort. Son and father felt 
 
 The need of all the thousand ministries 
 
 Of woman's hand. Neglected were the chores 
 
 Of the poor household, rusted and ill-kept 
 
 The homely vessels of the kitchen shelf, 
 
 Unmended the mean clothing. 'Twas perchance 
 
 Rather necessity than sentiment 
 
 Which spurred the elder Lincoln to make choice 
 
 Of Sarah Johnson as a second mate; 
 
 Yet was the choice most happy, for she proved 
 
 As noble as affectionate, as wise 
 
 As she was tender. And her stepson grew 
 
 All soon to love her from a heart as true 
 
 And crystalline as Nature. 
 
 When again 
 The struggling family in fair Illinois 
 Sought an amended fortune, she who brought 
 Her little store of household goods to fill 
 The ever pressing needments, carried too 
 
 ■23, 
 
The sunshine of her soul to that far home 
 
 To soften every hardship. Abraham now 
 
 Feehng the hour had struck that he should seek 
 
 To make his own place in a wider world, 
 
 Engaged with Denton Offutt to bring down 
 
 A flatboat to New Orleans, loaded deep 
 
 With such provision as should find a sale 
 
 In that great mart. 'Twas there his quick eyes found 
 
 The many avenues to giant trade; 
 
 'Twas there his nature turned in sudden shock 
 
 To see the flesh and blood of men bid off 
 
 Like chattels at an auction. With what mad 
 
 Grief and wild indignation did he cry: 
 
 "By God! if ever in the days to come 
 
 I have the chance to strike so vile a trade, 
 
 I shall strike hard !" 
 
 Ah, wondrous prophecy! 
 Sublime forecast of a sublime event. 
 To give our wisdom pause! 
 
 The country store 
 At primitive New Salem scarce could give 
 The inspiration for a destiny 
 
 24 
 
So great as Lincoln dreamed. Yet mid the stress 
 
 Of that rude Hfe he found the dreamer's hour 
 
 To fashion visions in his spacious mind. 
 
 Then came the Black Hawk war with quick alarm 
 
 To summon men to action, and he went 
 
 Undaunted by the meagreness of means, 
 
 A poor equipment of a frontier town. 
 
 With what strange interest does our thought revert 
 
 To that rough camp on the Rock River's banks, — 
 
 A camp which unto us of later days 
 
 Seems history's microcosm; for its lines 
 
 Enclosed, in comradeship of soldiers' lives, 
 
 Zachary Taylor, Robert Anderson, 
 
 Immortal Lincoln and — a name less blest — 
 
 Jefferson Davis; mounted rangers all, 
 
 And all as brave as hardy. When again 
 
 A respite came from Indian alarms, 
 
 The many-sided man put by his arms 
 
 And, as postmaster of his little town, 
 
 Gave honest labor for a meagre wage. 
 
 25 
 
IV 
 
 Anne Rutledge! What a perfume seems to haunt 
 The syllables of that mellifluous name! 
 Imagination dwells upon her face, 
 And fancy wreathes her form in symmetry. 
 Slowly both face and form became a part 
 Of each day's dreaming of the earnest youth, 
 And Abraham Lincoln knew the deepest love 
 That ever in his heart made melody. 
 At night he glimpsed her eyes among the stars, 
 And in the twilights he repeated soft 
 The verses of a song which seemed to hold 
 The essence of her being. But too soon 
 Fate passed a subtle hand across her brows, 
 And she was fallen on sleep ere yet the joy 
 Of love had reached its ripening. 
 
 Lincoln knew 
 Alone his bitterness, nor made loud moan; 
 But those about him saw a shadow creep 
 In darker emphasis to mark new lines 
 And write its message on that virile face; 
 
 26 
 
And ever after in the deep-set eyes 
 
 Dwelt the strange pathos of an untold pain, — 
 
 The mist of unshed tears. 
 
 To the small home 
 Had come the stealthy tread of Death to claim 
 The cherished form of Sarah, and once more 
 Father and son looked on a new-made grave 
 Beneath the whispering trees. 
 
 And Abraham wrought 
 With still redoubled vigor at his tasks. 
 Haply with hope to dull the edge of grief 
 Upon the unchanging round of daily toil. 
 Surveyor was he, boatman, rail-splitter. 
 Builder of rough-hewn cabins. In the woods 
 A wielder of the axe, and in the fields 
 A tiller of the soil. Yet all the while 
 He delved amid the precedents of law, 
 Studied the commentaries, — the debates ; 
 Not seldom brought the logic of his wit 
 To bear upon the issues of some feud 
 Among his neighbors of that countryside, 
 Till people came to him for argument, 
 
 27 
 
And afterwards for justice, and the folk, 
 
 Finding him ever jealous of the right, 
 
 And all unbending to mere policy, 
 
 Bowed to his will, and called him "Honest Abe," 
 
 Nor questioned his decisions. 
 
 So the man 
 Became the politician in a sense 
 Worthy of all approval, and appealed 
 To fellow citizens for proof of faith 
 In his staunch loyalty; and at the polls 
 They showed their faith, and sent him to the halls 
 Of legislation at Vandalia. 
 So, in the early manhood of a life 
 Rooted in rugged nature, and upbuilt 
 Amid the strenuous ways and days of toil, 
 Came Abraham Lincoln to the open door 
 Of statesmanship. And we who, looking back 
 Down the perspective of the vanished years, 
 May mark the epochs of a great career, 
 Are conscious of an exultation born 
 Of knowledge that within that open door 
 Stood the sublimest fruitage of the time, 
 To adorn the annals of America. 
 
 28 
 
V 
 
 Honor that oft doth seem too coy to list 
 The lofty wooing of a noble mind! 
 Fame whose blown hair and sun-illumined eyes 
 Not always bring their glory to the dreams 
 Of worthiest seekers; ye are hovering near, 
 To touch with eloquence a lagging pen 
 And fling new radiance o'er the historic page. 
 A new career hath opened to the man 
 Whose mind accepted destiny the while 
 His hand wrought out his own. 
 
 His steady eyes 
 Had fixt their questioning purpose on the words 
 Of prophecy and promise, — had indrawn 
 The spiritual essence of the sacred text. 
 And winnowed meanings, symbolisms, truth, 
 From the large utterance of inspired lips. 
 Within the ample storehouse of his mind 
 Were garnered phrases of an import rich 
 In comfort to the soul, and through his heart 
 The melody of love, vibrating, kept 
 
 29 
 
Its unabated sway. From Avon's source 
 
 Of wit and wisdom flowed the exhaustless stream 
 
 Of wide humanity, touched by the hand 
 
 Of art inimitable, and upon its breast 
 
 Floated rich argosies, which the seeking mind 
 
 Of Lincoln seized and fed upon, and throve. 
 
 So grafting beauty on the stock of strength. 
 
 That perfect manhood should at last bloom forth, 
 
 Life's ultimate fruit and flower. His studious ways 
 
 Held him aloof from many a social scene, 
 
 Yet left him time for civic duties, deemed 
 
 The prime commands, laid on an honest soul. 
 
 From Blackstone, Kent, the elementary law 
 
 Was slowly made his portion. Physics soon 
 
 Became his study. Manly, gentle, true, 
 
 He grew to be the master of such speech 
 
 As made him Nature's orator. His style. 
 
 Concise and clear, simple, and more than all 
 
 Marked with the Anglo-Saxon nervous force 
 
 Which makes a sentence vital and a phrase 
 
 Undying. 
 
 30 
 
Now there came a further call 
 To serve his State in legislative halls, 
 First at Vandalia, then in later days 
 At Springfield, whither the gaunt giant rode 
 On a poor borrowed horse, and owning naught 
 But saddle-bags, three law books and such clothes 
 As poverty might claim. 
 
 His good friend Speed 
 Was waiting, and to him the traveler came 
 Asking the cost of lodging, and, when told, 
 Turning in sad and melancholy plight. 
 Saying: "I have not wherewithal to pay, 
 But if you'll let me share your room, I'll make 
 My credit good by Christmas." So the two 
 Lived in the humble quarters, and the town. 
 From that time forward till the crowning year 
 Which summoned Lincoln to his high estate, 
 Became a patriot's home. 
 
 Now did the law 
 Absorb his every thought; the Federal courts 
 Drew to themselves the talent of the State, 
 Which, sparsely settled with a hardy race, 
 
 31 
 
Yet furnished matter for continual feud 
 
 At bench and bar. The court-house, oft of logs 
 
 Though sometimes framed and boarded, bore small 
 
 trace 
 Of the robed majesty whence precedents 
 And legal cues were drawn. The judge was placed 
 Upon a platform of unsightly boards. 
 Raised to lend dignity where oft, alas ! 
 No dignity abode; and at his side 
 The clerks, on comfortless imstable stools; 
 And on the benches, further down the room, 
 The patient jury. It were hard to tell 
 Why, in the rude and restless days which then 
 Filled out the passing year, the people found 
 So great attraction in the court-house, yet 
 It seemed the Mecca for all seeking minds 
 To journey to, and, having found, to keep. 
 Fitted to diverse needs, it held the place 
 Of lecture and of theatre, or the scenes 
 Of nightly revelry which Eastern taste 
 Turned to for respite from a world of work. 
 Riding the circuit had its hardships then, 
 
 32 
 
Yet knew its compensations. Oft, perchance, 
 Adventure seasoned travel, and the men 
 Who rode together, making Hght the way 
 With joke and sally, fording swollen streams, 
 And sleeping in mean quarters, met in fierce 
 And wordy opposition at the court, 
 Intent to snatch, each for his client, all 
 That might be got by pleading, or the wit 
 To make a jury laugh. 
 
 Such men were they 
 Who, humble then, were giants when there came 
 The stress and strain of war. The names stand large 
 On history's page. Logan, the partner, friend 
 And counsellor of Lincoln. Douglas, he 
 Whose burning eloquence was yet to thrill 
 A Nation and touch wide the fount of tears, — 
 He whose supreme invective was to meet 
 The solid sense and humor of that man 
 Who conquered through simplicity. Bissell, 
 Stuart and Baker, Trumbull, Browning, all 
 Intent to carve out fortune, though the world 
 Stood with averted face. Now the campaign 
 
 33 
 
Which carried the first Harrison to fame, — 
 
 "Log cabin" hero first, then President, — 
 
 Broke into wordy fury, and the Whigs 
 
 Knew no more vaHant champion than he 
 
 Who spoke but by conviction, and so held 
 
 Respect of enemy as love of friend. 
 
 But not alone did politics enthrall 
 
 Or civic duty bind him. For there came 
 
 From Lexington to Springfield Mary Todd, 
 
 Young, witty, ever ardent and withal 
 
 Disposed to arrogance in claiming suit 
 
 Of many brilliant suitors, and to her 
 
 Lincoln made court; and soon the vixen Chance 
 
 Threw in the way of both the hot-blood youth 
 
 Of James Shields, who found grievance in a jest, — 
 
 A paper satire born of Mary's pen, — 
 
 And made demand for satisfaction. So 
 
 Lincoln, whose chivalry was of the sort 
 
 Which acts nor mouths its presence, stepped before 
 
 Her anonymity, and bore the blame. 
 
 Accepting challenge, and, while loath to fight, 
 
 Refusing naught which honor might demand. 
 
 34 
 
Then Shields was satisfied, and Mary felt 
 
 Her first light liking ripening into love 
 
 For one whose gaunt form held a knightly soul. 
 
 Then, as October glories turned to brown, 
 
 These two were plighted, nor postponed for long 
 
 The benediction that should make them one. 
 
 So, in the record of a great career. 
 
 Another leaf was turned, — a new bright page 
 
 Opened to meet the seeker's scrutiny, 
 
 And teach the lesson of a life. 
 
 VI 
 
 What time 
 The silver-tongued Demosthenes held Greece 
 Struck into admiration and dumb awe, 
 'Twas whispered that the gods had leaned to earth 
 To pour their miracle of words upon 
 The favored lips of men. And as the thrill 
 Of cadenced eloquence enthralled the souls 
 Of listening multitudes a deeper faith 
 Became the human dower. 
 
 35 
 
So to our land, — 
 Dove-eyed America whose vizor rests 
 Above her brow serene, — came now a voice 
 To sway men to its will. Lincoln, inspired 
 By loftiness of theme or righteous cause, 
 Oft rose to heights sublime. Awkward at first, 
 Ungainly in his mien, nor having care 
 For outward accessories, when his soul 
 Rose in the majesty of spiritual power 
 To lift the banner of eternal right. 
 He seemed the avatar of Justice, crowned 
 With her undying bays. His attitude 
 Unconsciously took on a classic mold; 
 The lines of that lean figure fell apace 
 Into the forms of beauty. From his eyes, — 
 Those sentient pools wherein strange shadows lay, — 
 Flashed forth the lightnings of a noble wrath, 
 And flamed the indignation of a god. 
 Invective from his agile tongue poured out 
 A withering sarcasm, doubly barbed mayhap 
 By the scarce uttered jest. The anecdote, — 
 As coarse perchance as Nature's under side, 
 
 36 
 
Yet like to Nature strong, unerring, true, — 
 Served as the vestibule to temples wrought 
 To ultimate perfection. To the jest 
 So flavored with the salt of Attic wit 
 That none could miss its purpose, oftentimes 
 Succeeded, in one vital moment, words 
 Fraught with the pathos of a woe concealed, — 
 Touched with the minor music of men's tears. 
 That tall shape, stooping as at first it rose, 
 That homely visage, as at first it turned 
 Full-featured on a half believing throng, 
 Became transfigured until they who gazed 
 Visioned a nimbus seeming to surround 
 The dark dishevelled hair. 
 
 Such was the man 
 Who now brought to his country's Congress all 
 A patriot's fervor. He had followed close 
 Upon the heels of Stephen Douglas, he 
 Who seemed designed of destiny to be 
 Rival of Lincoln with such rivalry 
 As brought undying fame to Illinois, 
 Which both claimed as a mother. 
 
 2>7 
 
In the House, 
 As fellow members, Winthrop, Collamer, 
 John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, he 
 Whom coming years brought to a doubtful fame, 
 And Alexander Stephens, whose worse fate 
 Foredoomed him to rebellion, sat and oft 
 Met Lincoln in debate. Here, too, were Toombs, 
 And fiery Rhett, and Cobb, who served his State 
 Forgetful of his country. 
 
 Douglas met, 
 As rivals in the Senate, Benton, Dix, 
 Keen Simon Cameron and Lewis Cass, 
 Grave Daniel Webster, master orator. 
 And Hale, and Crittenden, and John Calhoun, 
 And (name replete with memoried regret) 
 Jefferson Davis. 
 
 Through long strenuous years 
 Douglas, the leader of Democracy, 
 Had faced on many a field of hot debate 
 Lincoln, admitted chieftain of the Whigs; 
 And now the Nation's legislative halls 
 Echoed the rounded phrases of these two, — 
 
 38 
 
One with a cultured eloquence o'erlaid 
 With classic lore and fine historic sense; 
 The other finding in deep human truth 
 And apt similitude the stronger force 
 To move the hearts of men. 
 
 Dark seemed the days 
 When war was forced upon a weaker State 
 At bidding of an oligarchy, proud 
 And arrogant withal. For slavery 
 Had cast its baleful shadow o'er the land, 
 And Mexico must at a nod be crushed 
 That the fell monster might be further gorged, 
 And serfdom mar the 'scutcheon of the free. 
 Lincoln the patriot yielded nothing up 
 Of principle. When once, at Ottawa, 
 Douglas had charged him with disloyalty. 
 He answered, with rare dignity and truth: 
 "I was an old Whig, and when in the House 
 My vote was sought in favor of the war, 
 I did refuse to affirm its righteousness; 
 But when my country was in arms, I gave 
 My vote for grants of men and money, ay, 
 
 39 
 
For prosecution of the bitter strife 
 Even against a sister State. 'Twere well 
 To note the clear distinction which subsists 
 Between the wish to keep our country right, 
 And base betrayal of her in the wrong." 
 The war with Mexico brought issues up 
 Too soon to lead to conflict. That small cloud, 
 No larger than a man's hand, was to grow 
 Into a darkling tempest. Even now, 
 With Taylor president and party strife 
 Stilled only at the voice of sordid gain, 
 There came to ears not dulled by platitude 
 The low portentous rumblings. 
 
 To the man 
 Who more than others had placed power within 
 The hands of Taylor, now the offer came 
 Of Oregon's executive control; 
 But, with a wisdom haply not explained, 
 The offer was refused. 'Twas fated so. 
 And when, in after years, one said: "How good 
 Was the kind fortune that so guided you!" 
 Lincoln, with meditative mien, replied: 
 
 40 
 
"Yes, you are right. Through all my varied life 
 I still have been a fatalist. What is 
 Must be, and Hamlet speaks the deeper truth: 
 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough-hew them how we will!' 'Tis ever so." 
 Then to the deeps of his far-searching eyes 
 There came the dreamy look which they knew well 
 Who best knew Lincoln, and a silence fell 
 That seemed a prophecy. 
 
 At Washington 
 The stress of politics grew keener ever, 
 And for domestic joys left scanty hours; 
 Two boys had blest the marriage, and were now 
 The brightest lights of home; for Robert kept 
 Much of his father's likeness, and there dwelt 
 Upon the brow of Edward some fair trace 
 Of that which drew all eyes to Mary Todd, 
 When from Kentucky's fields to Illinois 
 She brought her coronet of womanhood. 
 
 41 
 
BOOK SECOND 
 
BOOK SECOND 
 
 America, thou whose euphonious name 
 Is balsam to the ears of those whose love 
 Is basic and undying; 
 Thou whose broad fame 
 
 Is founded in eternal justice, thou 
 Upon whose brow the bays of peace are lying 
 With laurel intertwined, — to thee above 
 All other mistresses is due my vow 
 Of loyalty and love. What then must be 
 
 The sadness of the thought that thy young life 
 Was marred by discord? That an envious cloud, 
 Born of the lust of gain, should darken thee 
 And bring at last the fratricidal strife, — 
 
 The scarlet scourge of war? Thy pennons proud 
 Were doomed to droop, even in the freshening 
 breeze 
 
 45 
 
Of thy fair morning tide, and ever through 
 Thy matin-song of Hberty there went 
 
 The mournful minor tones of bondage. When 
 The settlers of Virginia, who knew 
 
 The curse of slavery, besought the King 
 To stop the infamy of trade in men. 
 He did refuse and back a message sent 
 Of stern rebuke. The fathers of the Nation — 
 
 The men who later in their hands did seize 
 Freedom's sweet fruit, — 
 
 Regarded bondage as a vanishing 
 And temporary evil. At the first 
 
 And general congress of the Colonies 
 Fair Philadelphia's legislative halls 
 Heard Jefferson proclaim 
 
 His bill of rights, holding a thing accurst 
 The law which calls 
 A man a chattel. Wide the proclamation 
 
 Spread through the land, and all men heard the bruit 
 Of abolition that should free the name 
 Of fair America from infamy. 
 Later the old Sun Tavern's storied walls 
 
 46 
 
Saw the formation of the first 
 Society of AboHtion, when 
 The men of light and leading in the Nation 
 Banded together in a common cause 
 
 To make half-bound America all free, 
 And tear from out the fundamental laws 
 That earliest, worst 
 
 And fatallest provision. Franklin then 
 Became protagonist of freedom's cause, 
 
 And Robert Morris, Patrick Henry, Rush, 
 Immortal Washington and Hamilton, 
 
 John Jay and Stiles of Yale, — 
 The men whose names had won 
 The veneration of their kind. 
 
 The righteous path which Pennsylvania trod 
 Was followed by New York and Maryland, 
 Then by Connecticut, Virginia; 
 
 Nor stayed New Jersey long without the pale, 
 All recognizing where the way of God 
 Departed from the King's way. 
 From the hand 
 
 Of the great-hearted, clear-eyed Jefferson, 
 
 47 
 
There came the ordinance prohibiting 
 All slavery throughout the unbounded West; 
 'Twas not adopted; had it been, no State 
 Curst with an institution so unblest 
 
 Could have been added to the sisterhood. 
 The patriot's impulse, as he stands to-day 
 With retrospective gaze, is first to sigh: 
 
 "Alas! that they who held the scales of fate 
 
 Should so have erred." The sober second 
 thought 
 Brings forth the deeper wisdom, and we cry: 
 "Necessity of law is ever fraught 
 With issues which evade us. If we could 
 We would not now undo that past defeat, 
 
 Since through such darkness only could fate bring 
 Our souls to nobler knowledge and make meet 
 Our hearts for sacrifice." The canker sore 
 Fixt in our country's vitals could no more 
 Be soothed with balsams into quietude, 
 But only by the rude 
 And pitiless hand of unrelenting war 
 Be reft away forever. Yet the strife 
 
 48 
 
Was in the misty distance, and the love 
 Of liberty was spreading. That vast field 
 From which were carved five future sovereign 
 States, 
 Was made secure to freedom. Far above 
 All mere expediency was set the star 
 
 Towards which the soul forever gravitates, 
 The beacon of all hope, loadstone of life. 
 
 To whose strong power we yield 
 As to a deity's bright avatar. 
 
 From schools that graced New England's granite 
 hills, 
 From Pennsylvania's Quaker righteousness, 
 
 From old Virginia's English rectitude. 
 Flowed forth the stream of liberty which made 
 The revolution real; the potent ills 
 Which followed pauselessly in slavery's train. 
 
 Debasing freemen as a contact lewd 
 Debases virtue, — these could never be 
 
 The vestibule of national content. 
 The truth was recognized, yet soon arose 
 The spectre of pecuniary gain; 
 
 49 
 
The cotton gin an added impulse lent 
 To the production of the staple; this 
 
 Demanded negro labor; from the slave 
 Wealth could be wrung, 
 And power from wealth, as flows 
 
 A river from its source; no theories grave 
 Of abstract right born of the ethic sense, — 
 
 No virtues sung 
 By poets whose high artistic recompense 
 
 Was their sufficient guerdon, could outweigh 
 The call of selfishness; and so there grew 
 An aristocracy of base intent 
 Built on a baser crime. Nor was the North 
 Less guilty than the South. Though keen at 
 first 
 To strike away the shackles, all too few 
 
 Of those who championed freedom ventured forth 
 Upon the sea of politics, to stay 
 The flood which swept the South. 
 
 Men of the North were everywhere immersed 
 In things commercial, enterprises vast. 
 Building of railways, opening of mines, 
 
 so 
 
Great irrigation schemes to conquer drouth 
 
 And lines of telegraph to conquer space. 
 There was no time to fight for principle 
 
 While yet ungarnered wealth 
 Lay ready to the hand, and so there fell 
 A shadow of indifference which cast 
 Its pall upon the money-getting North; 
 Cotton was king in Northern factories 
 
 As in the Southern fields; a Nation's health 
 Might suffer so that mill and mine gave forth 
 Their golden harvestings to enterprise. 
 
 Then did the face 
 Of Justice darken with a frown, and lines 
 Of sorrow lie upon her regal brow. 
 
 A base alliance made between the greed 
 Of Northern money-kings and Southern lords 
 Of a sham aristocracy, arose 
 To hold the Nation in its grip of steel 
 
 And make the government a tool to feed 
 Rapacity and pride. 
 
 The Southern people, bred to politics. 
 Grew arrogant and proud, as those who feel 
 
 SI 
 
Superior power to organize and lead. 
 Thus out of circumstance did fate endow 
 The South with sure control. The weaker side 
 Became the stronger. History affords 
 
 No apter lesson. So the slave power grew 
 To be the dominant factor, till there came 
 The hand of destiny to clear anew 
 
 The Country's forehead of its brand of shame. 
 
 II 
 
 Ironical the fate that in a land 
 
 Sacred to freedom slavery should hold 
 High court within the capital; yet this 
 Insult was ours to bear. 
 From the free soil of Philadelphia 
 
 The Nation's seat, removed to Washington, 
 Became the citadel of bondage. Bold 
 And ever bolder did the serpent hiss 
 As shrank the Nation, fearing to make stand 
 Before its closing coils. From Georgia 
 By cession came the land 
 
 52 
 
Out of which two great States 
 Should afterwards evolve. From friendly France 
 Louisiana, purchased, brought her weight 
 Of forty thousand slaves. 
 
 From Spain a territory doomed by fate 
 To human chains was bought, and Florida 
 Added her quota further to enhance 
 The power of Southern greed. 
 Then at the Nation's gates 
 Missouri knocked, insisting on the need 
 Of that base institution which depraves 
 
 The souls of those who wear 
 Its galling fetters. With far-searching eyes 
 Clay saw the opportunity to check 
 
 The monster's progress Northward, and so drew 
 The terms of the Missouri Compromise, 
 Giving the state to bondage, but forever 
 
 Prohibiting extension to the North. 
 Vainly did Douglas prophesy that never 
 Should the vext question like a ghost arise 
 
 To plague the country. Yet more arrogant 
 Grew the sham aristocracy, whose power 
 
 S3 
 
Was based in that iniquity of law 
 
 Which gave the master right to cast a vote 
 Proportioned to the number of his slaves. 
 Law never knew 
 
 So strange a logic as the people saw 
 Writ in the Constitution. Southern cant 
 
 Was matched by Northern failure well to note 
 That slaves were either men or property; 
 
 If men, the franchise was their own by right; 
 If property, no owner had the dower 
 Of ballots based on wealth. 
 The people closed their eyes and shunned the light 
 Lest, when they came to see. 
 
 The cancer which consumed the Nation's health 
 Should grow into a conflict ending all. 
 Yet are the scales of God forever true; 
 
 No human judgments may His ends foretell; 
 But they whose vision was the keenest knew 
 The conflict now was irrepressible. 
 The grasping spirit overreached itself, 
 
 Making unrighteous war on Mexico; 
 And California, seized for love of pelf, 
 
 54 
 
Became the seed of liberty. For lo! 
 
 A mighty call 
 
 Went up against slave labor in that land 
 
 Of golden promise, and though Wilmot failed 
 
 In his "Proviso," Freedom took her stand 
 
 For human liberty, and tyrants quailed 
 
 Before the imminent storm. 
 
 Now from ten States were delegations sent 
 
 To Philadelphia. Thither Garrison, 
 
 Phillips and Adams, Clay and Channing went, 
 
 And Whittier, he whose placid muse had won 
 
 The affection warm 
 
 Of all his countrymen. A pact was made 
 
 To free the country's 'scutcheon of its stain. 
 
 And to exterminate the abhorrent trade 
 
 In human flesh, which rendered worse than vain 
 
 Our boasted liberty. 
 
 Now party lines were drawn for deadlier strife. 
 
 Men saw the coming storm with quickened 
 
 breath, 
 
 While in the balance the Republic's life. 
 
 Shadowed beneath the brooding brows of death. 
 
 Hung tremblingly. 
 
 55 
 
Ill 
 
 From out the turmoil and the deep unrest 
 
 A figure now emerges, and a mind 
 That Hke an Eastern storied palimpsest 
 Is brilliant in perception overlaid 
 With matchless eloquence, — a force refined 
 In the white fires of passion, unafraid, 
 Yet ever finding in diplomacy 
 The safest exit from the politic snares 
 
 That oft beset ambition. Such as he 
 Spring into leadership and unawares 
 Become their own dark Nemesis. 
 
 The Senate's leaders, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, 
 Had fallen into silence, and the walls 
 Which once had echoed their euphonious calls 
 To duty in the fields where honor is, 
 
 Heard nevermore the music, all too soon 
 Hushed in the quietude which often falls 
 Before the tempest bursts. 
 
 To them succeeded, in the early prime 
 Of manhood, Stephen Arnold Douglas, he 
 
 s6 
 
Who seemed the very flower of his time, — 
 The idol of the young Democracy. 
 And as the soldier thirsts 
 
 For glory, so did Douglas thirst for fame, 
 Finding in his misguided view, the way 
 In truculent complaisance with that same 
 Insatiate monster whose dark shadow lay 
 Already o'er the country like a pall. 
 
 So when came Kansas and Nebraska, seeking 
 
 Their territorial rights, 
 Douglas cast faith aside, and, boldly speaking 
 In favor of a crime, sought to wipe all 
 
 The laws that shielded liberty away. 
 'Twas then that the Missouri Compromise, — 
 A solemn obligation made between 
 
 The friends of freedom and of slavery, — 
 Was ended by repeal; 
 'Twas then the light 
 
 Went out in Liberty's high citadel. 
 And sad America's beseeching eyes 
 Gave up their dole of tears! 
 On such a day 
 
 57 
 
Rose Seward in the Senate, valiantly 
 Proclaiming to the sense-enthralled throng: 
 "The struggle which we now so keenly feel 
 
 Is that which ever, through the aging years, 
 Exists uncrushed between the right and wrong. 
 You may as soon compel the heaving sea 
 To stay his waves, or bid the fecund earth 
 
 Quench her internal fires. 
 As bid the human mind forget its birth, — 
 
 The human heart cease craving liberty." 
 Houston of Texas, too, refused to give 
 
 His vote to break a solemn act of faith. 
 And, pointing to the gilded eagle, cried: 
 "Yon symbol proud above your head remains 
 
 Shrouded in black, as it were now the wraith 
 Of murdered justice. Our departed sires, 
 Whose memories in our hearts forever live, 
 Must from the higher realms deplore the chains 
 We rivet on the free. 
 So faith is broken, honor crucified." 
 
 All, all in vain! The barriers were cast down 
 That held the curse of slavery from domain 
 
 58 
 
Over the North and West. 
 Each Southern town 
 Put on its gala dress. In Washington 
 The officers of government wore smiles; 
 Guns thundering from the capitol's green hill 
 Proclaimed in salvos over listening miles 
 The triumph of the slave power, — victory won 
 At cost of rectitude; the powers of ill 
 Wearing the victor's crown. 
 Blue Lodges, formed throughout the exultant South, 
 Sought to take quick possession, and extend 
 To the new territory slavery's sway; 
 While through the thoughtful North, from mouth 
 to mouth, 
 Was passed the word of warning, to defend 
 Free soil from this pollution. Day by day 
 The lines were closelier drawn. New England 
 formed 
 Emigrant Aid Societies, and soon 
 
 Came hardy settlers, taking up the land 
 
 For farming. While the foes of freedom 
 stormed, 
 
 59 
 
Its friends grew more determined that the boon 
 Should not be lost; and so the fires were fanned 
 To ever threatening flame. A man arose, — 
 A man of conscience, yet with judgment bent 
 By personal wrongs, — to lead the freemen on, 
 John Brown of Ossawatomie; and those 
 Who felt his purpose right assistance lent 
 To aid its consummation. Robinson, 
 Pomeroy and Lane, and many an earnest soul. 
 Helped to build villages, make settlements. 
 Erect schoolhouses ; while, with equal zeal, 
 The fiery slaveholders sought control 
 
 Of the wide land from which the law's defence 
 Had been withdrawn through cowardly repeal. 
 Such was the bitter struggle now at hand 
 For Kansas. On the side of slavery 
 Was all official influence; 
 
 The government of the United States 
 Was in the grasp of foemen to its weal. 
 
 From end to end of Liberty's own land 
 The friends of Liberty were made to feel 
 The bitter sense 
 
 60 
 
Of base betrayal, and as honor hates 
 The stigma of surrender to a He, 
 
 So in the conscience of the serious North 
 Sank ever deeper the compelHng thought 
 That Liberty and Slavery henceforth 
 Could not dwell side by side, — could not be brought 
 Into the harmony for which those sigh 
 Who love their native land. 
 
 IV 
 
 Now came the breaking down of party lines; 
 Old issues disappeared, and on the new 
 And vital questions men divided stood; 
 Political allegiance, which confines 
 The individual action when the view 
 
 Is unobscured by stressful circumstance. 
 Was cast aside. The overbearing mood 
 Of the slave-holding South was bearing fruit; 
 The Democratic party which so long 
 Had been the citadel of bondage, now 
 
 Was rent in twain. Men of conviction strong 
 6i 
 
Against the right of property in slaves, 
 Broke from the ranks, and, as though following suit, 
 The old Whigs split, some seeking to endow 
 With privilege of franchise only those 
 Born of the native soil, while others held 
 To broader views, though still insistently 
 
 Demanding freedom for the man who craves 
 As for the man who claims it. So there came 
 A new alignment. Human liberty 
 Became the slogan of a mighty host 
 Who needed but a leader and a name, 
 
 And at the appointed moment there arose 
 In Illinois the leader and the name, — 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, the Republican, 
 Chosen of destiny to mold and weld 
 The elements diverse 
 Into the party that should come to be 
 
 The standard bearer in a new crusade, — 
 The force cohesive when the Nation's shame 
 Should culminate, and human passion fan 
 Hate's embers into war. 
 The time of compromise was past; the curse 
 
 62 
 
Which strangled a free people could no longer 
 
 Be shut from sight, or be by falsehood made 
 A seeming blessing. Lincoln, hitherto 
 But little known beyond his State, came forth 
 As freedom's champion. From near and far 
 A sudden cry went thrilling through the land 
 That here was one whose sturdy faith was stronger 
 Than all the craven fears which made the North 
 Bend to the Southern lords; 
 No history affords 
 
 A lesson more astounding. Douglas came, 
 With futile argument to gloss his shame 
 In forcing the repeal 
 Of the Missouri Compromise. He brought 
 The apt allusion, the well-rounded phrase, 
 The eloquence and the persuasion bland 
 
 Which, in the Senate, oft had carried through 
 Measures the most unpromising. 
 
 In rapt attention Lincoln listened, then 
 Replied in utterance so deeply fraught 
 
 With feeling and in logic so complete. 
 That every auditor was made to feel 
 63 
 
The inherent virtue of his cause. 
 The State-house, crowded to its outer doors, 
 Was still as death; 
 
 A burst of wild applause 
 Succeeded to the tension, while each breath 
 Was held awaiting 
 
 The final periods of a speech replete 
 With beauty which outran perfunctory praise, 
 And sense which forced conviction. Once 
 again, 
 When Douglas, at Peoria, sought to prove 
 
 The worse the better, Lincoln, like the flood 
 Which a pent torrent, liberated, pours 
 Upon the unstable reeds. 
 
 Tore from its roots the flimsy argument. 
 Till Douglas, crushed, essayed at last to move 
 His adversary to compassion. Thus 
 Did Lincoln leap to National renown. 
 Wise in the knowledge of his country's needs, 
 
 Great in devotion to her cause, he stood 
 A leader at the parting of the ways 
 
 Where friendship and life's holiest ties were rent, 
 
 64 
 
And, 'neath the shadow of an incubus, 
 
 A smiHng land drooped in the direful frown 
 Of those who plucked away her honored bays. 
 
 V 
 
 Fraud, slavery's best handmaid, now became 
 The means to rivet Kansas in her chains; 
 And at Lecompton, acting in the name 
 
 Of a free people, brought about a sham 
 And meagre constitution, fastening 
 The blight of slavery upon the State. 
 
 Then, in the righteous anger which disdains 
 All compromise, the hardy settlers held 
 Convention at Topeka, drafting there 
 
 An instrument of freedom, wrought to weld 
 Fair Kansas in the Union, North and West, 
 Of commonwealths forever dedicate 
 To liberty and law. 
 The people saw. 
 And seeing, welcomed the oncoming strife; 
 Impending battle hurtled in the air; 
 
 6s 
 
The crawling monster stood at last confest; 
 And when the legislature was dispersed 
 By force of arms, 
 At order of a recreant President, 
 All timorous alarms 
 
 Gave place to a determination, first 
 To conquer liberty, more dear than life, 
 Nor ever rest content 
 
 Till Kansas should be free. 
 Yet was the goal far distant. That great court 
 Which hitherto the world had deemed the 
 august 
 Tribunal of a sovereign people, fell 
 
 To be the instrument of party need, — 
 To bend to circumstance, and so abort 
 
 A Nation's welfare, that a section's creed 
 Should be writ in the fundamental law. 
 
 The calm historian, standing where the dust 
 And din of battle reach him not, can tell 
 
 With faltering tongue the story of a case 
 Become historic through the inherent flaw 
 Within its reasoning: 
 
 66 
 
Dred Scott, the negro slave, the merest thing 
 Of sale and barter, now became 
 The pivot about which the questions turned 
 That should at last be wrought to settlement 
 On bloody fields of war. Type of his race, 
 He symbolized the shame 
 Of a great Nation's highest court, and earned 
 For Taney and his fellows that low place 
 Which, in the judgment of posterity, 
 Is silently assigned to those content 
 
 To sell their birthright for rewards all base 
 And sordid utterly. 
 Nor satisfied to rend with ruthless hand 
 
 The instrument which made the land half free, 
 This cruel decision, taking its false stand 
 Upon the right of local sovereignty. 
 In one breath said that each community 
 Should make its own decision to exclude 
 
 Or to admit the slave, and in the next 
 Proclaimed the right of him who held a slave 
 
 To take him, as his very property, 
 Into a State whose Constitution gave 
 
 67 
 
That slave the right of human liberty. 
 Then, further to becloud the question vext, 
 These sordid Solons, seeking to obtrude 
 
 Their unsought wisdom, — turning quite aside 
 
 From what the case involved, boldly declared 
 The law unconstitutional which fixt 
 
 A boundary to the realm of slavery. 
 So were self interest and false logic mixt 
 That people guaranteed untrammeled choice, 
 Found themselves fettered and without a voice 
 In the most vital issue. They were free 
 So long, and so long only, as they chose 
 
 To keep themselves ensnared 
 Within the meshes of the net which those 
 Who hated liberty had opened wide 
 To hold a land enslaved. 
 So was the issue of States' Rights, — that twin 
 Abortion born with slavery, — the spawn 
 
 Of greed and treason, — thrust unduly forth. 
 To force confusion while the people craved 
 Peace and the opportunity to win 
 
 From bounteous Nature her unstinted store 
 
 68 
 
Of wealth diverse and splendid. Like the dawn 
 
 Touching to life the sleeping fields, the North 
 Had seen the hope of a free country grow 
 Into a glorious promise. Now the light 
 
 Seemed dying out forever. Nevermore 
 Should laughing rivers, all unfettered, flow 
 Into the boundless sea. In hope's despite 
 
 The chains were being forged with stronger links, 
 And from the rostrums of a sneering world 
 Scorn mixt with pity o'er the sea was hurled 
 At a Republic based upon a lie, — 
 At Liberty with wrists in iron gyves, — 
 At a great Nation builded on the claim 
 
 That all men were born free and equal, yet 
 Outraging every holiest natural tie, 
 And placing in unsparing hands the lives 
 Of fellow creatures, — ay, the right to maim 
 And whip to silence, — ay, the right to set 
 Firm lip to lip, and, like the storied Sphinx, 
 To answer nothing to a people's plea 
 And to a Nation's questioning! 
 
 Alas! the deeper shame that, at the fount 
 
 69 
 
Of government, should dwell the coward soul 
 
 That bends to arrogance. The Nation's force 
 Was ever wielded at the Southern nod, 
 And ever quick to bring 
 
 Confusion to the champions of free 
 Unfettered toil. The Congress did not count 
 The final cost of peace that gave control 
 
 To men whose theory had become their God, — 
 Whose conscience, seared and deadened to 
 remorse, 
 Now made the worse the better, — made sincere 
 
 Their faith in that base institution, born 
 In love of power and the human greed, 
 
 Which seeks the fruitage of another's toil. 
 Alas! that in the chair of Washington 
 Was seated now a weakling, in whom fear 
 Kept pace with indecision, — the mere foil 
 And tool of stronger men, — target of scorn 
 Of every patriot groaning to be freed 
 
 From the intolerable bondage of a class 
 
 Whose hands had seized the prize our fathers 
 won, — 
 
 70 
 
Whose pride, alas! 
 Outran discretion, and whose final deed 
 
 Let loose the dogs of fratricidal war. 
 
 VI 
 
 With what nice jointure, what unmatched design. 
 
 Are wrought the works of Providence, to fill 
 Each one its destined purpose! To combine 
 All friends of human freedom, that the will 
 To banish slavery might find the way, — 
 
 This was the goal now set before the eyes 
 Of earnest thinking men. The force that lay 
 In Sumner's eloquence, in Seward's wise 
 And witty epigram, and in the keen 
 
 Philosophy of Phillips, Trumbull, Chase, 
 Gave strength to those who, faltering between 
 The love of peace and duty's call to face 
 A conflict irrepressible, now turned 
 
 For counsel to their leaders. Through the South 
 Determination hardened into hate; 
 
 Concessions, offered timidly, were spurned; 
 
 71 
 
The administration, speaking by the mouth 
 Of a weak President, had learned too late 
 The lesson of a government's high call 
 
 To enforce authority. Even Douglas saw 
 The pride which ever goes before a fall 
 Rearing its head too brazenly. The law 
 
 Was being wrenched, and Congress bent the 
 knee 
 To dictatorial masters, who upheld 
 
 The standard of a Southern chivalry 
 Above the flag of freedom. 'Twas the hour 
 For presentation of the issues. Now 
 
 The people craved the truth, and Lincoln saw 
 Letters of fire writ large along the sky, — 
 Letters which spelled 
 
 A word to thrill each patriot heart, and dower 
 Each soul with courage. So when Douglas came 
 To hold Chicago in the magic net 
 Of his most specious logic, Lincoln met 
 And answered him minutely, showing how 
 
 The arguments were faulty, — where the flaw. 
 And where the reasoning oft reached a lame 
 
 72 
 
And impotent conclusion. Then a cry- 
 Went up for more discussion. Bloomington 
 Heard Douglas roll his splendid periods, 
 
 And Springfield listened rapt to words that won 
 The ringing plaudits of a thousand tongues. 
 And Lincoln, sitting silent 'mid the throng. 
 Was conscious of a spiritual voice which blent. 
 Divinely human, like an undertone 
 
 Beneath the soaring sound. No man among 
 The listeners could guess the passion pent 
 Within his bosom, like a tide that floods, 
 
 But cannot burst, its boundaries. Quite alone 
 He sat and pondered. Then, when evening came, 
 Within the capitol, upon the same 
 
 Platform which Douglas in the morning used, 
 
 He spoke, and on the listening multitude 
 There fell conviction and belief that fused 
 All feelings into one. For Lincoln's words 
 
 Were charged with faith which bears religion's 
 stamp, 
 And each position in his argument 
 
 Was reinforced, and in its fulness stood 
 
Unanswerable. Truth, which ever girds 
 The man who, in a time of stress, is sent 
 
 By a kind Providence to bear the lamp 
 Of knowledge to a people all confused, 
 Wrapped in its folds this leader among men, 
 
 Who came to rescue Liberty abused, 
 And, with the eloquence of voice and pen. 
 To rend his country's chains. 
 
 Now followed joint discussion of the themes 
 Of vital moment; first at Ottawa, 
 Later at Freeport, Jonesborough ; again 
 At Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton. Then 
 An intellectual battle, which remains 
 
 Unique in history's record, or the dreams 
 Of high ambition, was fought valiantly. 
 And from the fray 
 
 Victor and vanquished bore a fame away 
 All unforgotten of posterity. 
 
 How vivid is the picture fancy draws 
 
 Of this arena and the combat fought 
 Of these contestants, pleading each a cause 
 
 Dear to his heart, — each with a message fraught 
 
 74 
 
With untold consequence, and both impelled 
 
 By knowledge that America stood still, 
 With forward bended head and breath withheld 
 The while the struggle wavered. Stern of will 
 And fixed of purpose, Douglas seemed to be 
 The embodiment of large ambitions. Brows 
 Broad and o'erarching like a canopy 
 Above his eloquent eyes, — a wealth of hair, 
 
 Dark in its purple deeps, — a mobile mouth, 
 Molded a lost cause fitly to espouse, 
 
 And on the battlements of blank Despair 
 
 To plant Hope's banner. From the amber 
 South 
 He drew the honeyed eloquence that held 
 
 His audience spellbound. From the sunburnt West 
 A wafture of the prairies' breath compelled 
 The senses to obedience. His deep chest 
 
 Swelled with emotion, as his words bore forth 
 The message of his brain. His short, stout 
 frame 
 Vibrated, and, as ever to the North 
 
 The inerrant needle turns, so ever came 
 
 75 
 
The argument of Douglas, at the last, 
 
 To prove a theory which his mind held fast, 
 
 And justify a name 
 Dear to his friends: "The Little Giant." 
 
 Strange 
 The contrast which his adversary bore; 
 
 Tall, lean, loose-jointed; with a gaze whose 
 range 
 Seemed wide as life's horizon, those deep eyes 
 Gleamed with the lambent light, — the cryptic lore, — 
 Of long forgotten days. No sophistries 
 
 Were woven through the texture of his speech. 
 But over every argument was flung 
 The unsullied garment of simplicity 
 Which still reveals the truth. 
 The gift to reach 
 
 The common conscience on his eloquent tongue 
 Lay ever ready, while felicity 
 In illustration drove his lessons home. 
 
 Such were the giants wrestling for a prize 
 Beyond the computation of a mind 
 
 76 
 
Yoked to material aims. The compromise 
 
 Which one suggested, and in terms defined, 
 Was by the other deemed the weak device 
 To soothe the cancerous growth which soon must come 
 Even to the country's vitals. In such mood 
 Did Lincoln, moved to seeming prophecy, 
 Quiver upon the platform where he stood. 
 And with the passion of conviction cry: 
 "Sometimes I see the end of slavery; 
 I feel the time is coming when the sun 
 
 Shall shine no more, nor from the darkened sky 
 Shall any rain fall, on a single one 
 Of all God's creatures going forth each day 
 
 To unrequited toil." 
 How deep the inspiration who shall say? 
 
 Son of our native soil! 
 Was his alone the vision, — his the way 
 To reach the appointed goal? 
 We may not know but in all gratitude 
 Be thankful that, within that temple rude. 
 Dwelt Lincoln's crystal soul. 
 
 "77 
 
BOOK THIRD 
 
BOOK THIRD 
 
 How oft upon a breathless summer noon 
 
 Falls the faint whisper of a coming storm, 
 
 And, as the sun turns to the waiting West 
 
 Where white cloud banks thrust up their shoulders high 
 
 Into the glow of gold, a strange, long hush 
 
 Follows the bustle of the breezes, still 
 
 And ominous as fate, as though God held 
 
 His breath a little, ere he uttered forth 
 
 A word of high command. 
 
 'Twas even so 
 That everywhere, from those stone-bounded farms 
 Still echoing to the guns of Bunker Hill, 
 Even to the warm bayous, the thirsty sands 
 Where Mississippi ends a long career, 
 A silent menace in the oppressive air 
 Seemed dolorously to hush the lips of men. 
 
 8i 
 
Then, as the cleavage of opinion grew 
 
 Ever defined more sharply, there was heard 
 
 Another word in whispers iterant. 
 
 More widely spoke than Slavery, such a word 
 
 As brought strange joy to tyrant ears, and filled 
 
 The souls of freedom's lovers with dismay, 
 
 A word of fear, — Secession. 
 
 Was it then 
 In vain the fathers had made sacrifice 
 To weld the colonies, that into one 
 The many should be merged? That patriot blood, 
 Poured out at Concord and at Lexington, 
 To purchase liberty, had made more dear 
 Our sacred Western soil? 
 
 Alas! the call 
 Of judgment, as of conscience, falls unheard 
 Upon the ears of passion. Through the South 
 The lightning of disunion rent its way; 
 The cry went up of rule or ruin; they 
 Who long had gripped the Nation like a vise, 
 Would take no counsel of adversity. 
 But, dreaming of an empire builded high 
 
 82 
 
upon the fruitage of unrighteous toil, — 
 Puffed with false notions of a finer skill 
 In politics and statecraft, these hot sons 
 Of a long-suffering mother sought to strike 
 That patient mother down. With what deep sense 
 Of anguish did the loyal North take heed 
 Of hastening events! More sharply drew 
 The lines of party. Now the eyes of men 
 Turned, seeking leaders; and as slowly grows 
 Out of the mist a vision, so there loomed 
 The figure of a man upon the plains, — 
 Tall, gaunt, untutored of the schools, yet touched 
 With such a grace of Nature, such large mind. 
 As might befit a later Moses, sent 
 To lead a later people to their goal. 
 Across the borders of wide Illinois 
 Floated a name adown the Western breeze. 
 Across Ohio, Pennsylvania, came, 
 In uncouth syllables, like an uttered faith 
 Half understood, reverberating calls, 
 Repeating as though mystic meaning lay 
 Amid its folds, the name of Lincoln. Soon 
 
 83 
 
A whisper grew to volume of a cry; 
 The teeming East, till now but half aroused, — 
 Grown gross and all intent in garnering 
 The golden harvest of its thrift, — held out 
 Appealing hands towards that vast prairie land 
 Whose sunburnt face wore youth's bright smile. 
 
 There came 
 The call for a deliverance, — for a man, — 
 For one strong soul around whose constancy 
 Might group opposing forces. To that call 
 Answer was given; Abraham Lincoln came. 
 And stood before the people of New York, 
 Who went in curiosity to see 
 This Western prodigy, this man of jokes, 
 Stump speaker against Douglas; he best known 
 For much coarse humor, and a pretty wit 
 At repartee and sally. It was there 
 That Bryant sat presiding. Greeley, too, 
 Half hearted at the first, yet growing grave. 
 As, one by one, the records of the past 
 Were from the storehouse of that pregnant brain 
 Brought forth to light the present. 
 
They who went 
 To scoff, remained to pray. This Western boor, 
 Rising to dignity, and swept along 
 By the heroic urgence of his theme. 
 Soon held his audience spellbound. 
 
 He based all 
 On that great charter of our liberties 
 Which, holding all men free and equal, stood 
 Our bulwark for the future. It were vain 
 To speak of compromise while treason sank 
 Its poisoned fangs and hissed its hideous name, — 
 Vain to placate a people who had sought 
 Excuse to rend the Nation, and pluck out 
 From our bright flag its stars. 
 
 "Let us have faith," 
 He cried outstretching a prophetic hand, 
 "Let us have faith that right makes might, and so 
 Dare to do all our duty to the end, 
 As we shall understand it." 
 
 Struck to awe. 
 The people of that cultured audience heard 
 The solemn words of scholarly and rare 
 
 85 
 
Wisdom pronounced by lips whose utterance 
 
 Seemed guided by compelling power and touched 
 
 With a celestial fire. A mighty change 
 
 Was wrought within the hour. A single speech 
 
 Swept Lincoln into leadership throughout 
 
 The limits of a country now at last 
 
 Awakened to its peril. Wide his fame 
 
 Was carried through the North, the East, the West, 
 
 And from a thousand thousand throats burst forth 
 
 A cry of exultation that the hour 
 
 Which brought the crisis also brought the man. 
 
 The Party which in Illinois had raised 
 
 The unblemished standard of free statehood, soon 
 
 Spread mightily throughout the land, and he 
 
 Became the chosen leader of its vast 
 
 And ever growing ranks. 
 
 And all the while 
 Secession sentiment took deeper hold 
 Throughout the turbulent South. On Breckinridge 
 Fell the poor mantle of an erring cause, 
 While Douglas, claiming faithfully to hold 
 The scales of moderation as between 
 
 86 
 
The advocates of sectional designs, 
 
 Raised high the banner of his name, and fought 
 
 A vaHant battle for ambition's goal. 
 
 Lincoln, supremely conscious of the weight 
 
 Of grave responsibility which soon 
 
 Must bear upon the Country's President, 
 
 Shrank from a nomination to that high 
 
 And care-encumbered office; but the call. 
 
 Now grown imperious, could no more be spurned. 
 
 And so, with this fair crown of his desire 
 
 Haply within his reach, he took the cross 
 
 Which patriots proffered, and became the brave 
 
 Unflinching standard-bearer of a Cause. 
 
 II 
 
 Now .destiny, that leans to no man's lure, 
 Leads onward to the crucial test of strength. 
 While a vast Nation, pausing in its task 
 And daily occupation, shows the world 
 A spectacle more grand than pageantry 
 And all the pomps of war. From morn till eve 
 
 87 
 
The fateful ballots fall; from morn till eve 
 A mighty people waits with quickened breath 
 The issue of a peaceful struggle fraught 
 With war's grim possibilities. At last 
 The end is reached. The country solemnly 
 On Abraham Lincoln lays the accolade 
 Of its supreme command. And he, bowed down 
 With weighty sense of that great burden, lifts 
 Eyes sanctified by tears towards Heaven, whose smile 
 Seems shadowed by the clouds of Earth's despair. 
 Yet now a gleam of hope o'er Northern skies 
 Breaks to the glory of a sunburst. Through 
 The nerves of patriot freemen thrills the fine 
 Vibration of a coming action, filled 
 With promise of deliverance, and at last 
 Assertion of a manhood long betrayed. 
 The breaking of the bonds of shameful fear. 
 Nor at the North alone is the result 
 With satisfaction hailed. The Southern men 
 Who once made slavery their sole excuse 
 For a long-lost allegiance, now come forth 
 In colors honester, and wide proclaim 
 
 88 
 
Their final goal disunion. They rejoice 
 That the election of a free-soil man, — 
 Choice of an "abolition President," — 
 Should furnish specious reason for the step 
 Long dreamed of and desired. 
 
 And so begins 
 The stress and struggle of a contest meant 
 To pluck at last a righteous victory, 
 In hate's despite, and so to bind thy brows, 
 O Land of our affection, with new bays. 
 
 Ah, proud fond mother, rended of thy sons; 
 Ah, bleeding mother, whose mute wounds betray 
 More eloquently than all spoken words 
 Thine offspring's black ingratitude! What tongue 
 Shall fashion thought to utterance, or bear 
 To hearkening ages knowledge of the wrongs 
 Which mark thy base betrayal? 
 In the halls 
 Reared for thy uses, stalks Conspiracy, 
 And damned Treason slinks along those aisles 
 Once trodden of patriot feet. Thine arches now 
 
 89 
 
Resound with blatant threats, where once was heard 
 The echoed eloquence of Henry Clay, 
 Or Webster's organ tones. Buchanan sits, 
 Palsied and puerile, in the seat made great 
 By Washington and Jefferson, and all 
 The sources of thy power are sapped away 
 By traitors under cover of the dark. 
 Within the Cabinet are men intent 
 To compass thy undoing, — to disarm, 
 And so make impotent thy battlements, 
 And rive thee of thy strength. The ship of State 
 Must be dismantled ere its flag be struck 
 At bidding of the foe. A Memminger 
 Boasts openly that, with a pliant tool 
 Within the White House, all is easy now 
 To crush the Federal government, and make 
 All Lincoln's efforts futile. From the vaults 
 Of a depleted treasury are drawn. 
 And used improvidently, funds whose care 
 Devolved on Howell Cobb. From each free State 
 And from the Northern arsenals are sent 
 Arms and munitions to the rebel South, 
 
 90 
 
That so the nerves of war may be at hand 
 
 To strike the power that made them. Floyd, alert 
 
 To serve Secession, bears a brazen brow 
 
 Beneath his crown of shame, and scatters wide 
 
 The soldiers of the country to far posts 
 
 And distant reservations; while the ships, 
 
 Making at best a feeble navy, go. 
 
 At order of a Toucy, well beyond 
 
 The reach of sudden call. 
 
 And all the while 
 Each traitor, boasting of his "honor," draws, 
 With promptitude punctilious, his pay; 
 Each arch conspirator goes up and down 
 Demanding mileage, salary and all 
 The perquisites which a too generous land 
 Gives to a ruthless horde. 
 
 Ah, strange indeed 
 The spectacle of government in hands 
 Intent to overthrow it! Davis, Cobb, 
 Toombs and their co-conspirators, each day 
 In conclave plot high treason, and each day 
 Draw sustenance from that fond mother's breast 
 
 91 
 
Against whose heart their poniards, ready drawn, 
 
 Long to strike home. A nice diplomacy 
 
 Marks every step of the recusant States. 
 
 One after other, legislatures pass 
 
 Secession ordinances. One by one 
 
 The Southern Representatives withdraw. 
 
 Leaving the trail of treason in their wake. 
 
 Thus while events are crowding fast, and faith 
 
 Half falters even in Northern hearts, the stern 
 
 Imperious call to duty thrills the soul 
 
 Of that unmatchable American, 
 
 Who, standing on the dark brink of a chasm. 
 
 Pales not, but bends his shoulders to the task 
 
 Which graves its deepening lines across his brow. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Anderson of old Kentucky, — 
 Born and bred in old Kentucky, — 
 Prated little of his "honor," 
 Cared as little for his life. 
 He was of the stuff of heroes, 
 92 
 
(Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 With a soldier's intuition 
 That surrender of position 
 At beginning of the strife 
 Scarce could be considered plucky, 
 
 Though expectant Southern Neros 
 Dreamed of fiddling, while sedition 
 Through a wounded land was rife; — 
 Deemed this man exceeding lucky, 
 (Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 
 That he had a rare occasion 
 To be loyal to the South; 
 Loyal to a section merely, 
 
 Though betraying by evasion 
 What all true men love most dearly, — 
 God and country! Treason's mouth 
 To the man of old Kentucky, 
 (Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 
 Whispered words beneath its breath. 
 Then the War Department sent him 
 Where, in Moultrie, rebels pent him, 
 While around the soldier plucky, 
 
 93 
 
(Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 
 Cannon threatened death. 
 
 Floyd, who prated much of "honor," 
 Thought it no disgrace to strip 
 
 Arsenals of war munitions, 
 Armories of arms, — to slip 
 Through the War Department's portal 
 Stores to Southern States, to be 
 
 Ready for the new conditions 
 Of the war which slavery 
 Had at last made certain, mortal. 
 Too, perchance, for one or both 
 
 Of the stern contestants, waiting 
 For the signal, haply loath 
 
 First to strike, and ever hating 
 Thought of bloodshed in the land. 
 And Floyd, thinking he was certain 
 Of a willing quick compliance 
 By the man of old Kentucky, 
 (Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 
 Sent him, in the firm reliance 
 
 94 
 
That when time should lift the curtain 
 
 On the drama of the war, 
 
 He would yield the fort's possession 
 To the forces of Secession, — 
 
 Yield, nor strive to stand 
 
 Firm against the South's defiance 
 
 And the cannon's roar. 
 
 Three score men and five in Moultrie, — 
 In outworn, decrepit Moultrie, — 
 Spent the Christmas making merry 
 Though the time was full of dole. 
 Came an order on the morrow 
 From the man of old Kentucky, 
 (Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 Silently supplies to ferry, — 
 
 Silently, as though in sorrow. 
 Men and arms in boats to carry 
 Ofif to Sumter, when the sun 
 Should be setting. Every soul 
 Then embarking from Fort Moultrie, — 
 Outworn and decrepit Moultrie, — 
 
 95 
 
Passed the guard-boats in the harbor, 
 Passed the gates, nor sought to tarry 
 Till the destined goal was won. 
 
 Then when Charleston, on the morrow. 
 Woke to find the fort deserted, — 
 Realized the plan concerted, — 
 There was anger far and near; 
 And as over Sumter floated 
 
 Free the flag of starry beauty. 
 Five and sixty men devoted 
 Raised a long and lusty cheer 
 For the man of old Kentucky, 
 (Anderson of old Kentucky,) 
 
 He who knew a soldier's duty, 
 Never knowing fear. 
 
 IV 
 
 How sad the closing in of night, the slow 
 Departure of the faint glow of the sun 
 Which once had lit Hope's day! 
 
 96 
 
From patriot hearts, 
 Both North and South, behef that some fair way 
 Would yet be found for peace, died sorrowfully. 
 And in the place of soothing and of scorn, — 
 From the great North concession, — from the South 
 Insistence upon mastership, — there grew 
 Determination, on the one hand, now 
 To save the Union, though salvation meant 
 War's ravages and ruin; on the other, 
 To fight for statehood and perpetual right 
 To slavery and secession. Boastfully 
 The cry went forth: 'They will not dare attempt 
 Coercion of the South," while through the North 
 Rang out bold words, wherein the wish, perhaps, 
 Was father to the thought: "They will not dare 
 To fire upon the flag." And we, who stand 
 To-day upon the parapet of time, 
 Through history's perspective see that both 
 Boast and belief were idle. For behind 
 Each stern assertion lay the stalwart will 
 Of manhood that was all American, 
 Though for the moment severed. It were well 
 
 97 
 
To ask where, in this mental crisis, stood 
 
 The man about whose personaHty 
 
 All history seemed to turn. The primal call 
 
 For ultimate justice, equity exact, 
 
 Was Lincoln's high incentive. To his soul 
 
 The thought of human bondage was replete 
 
 With all that is abhorrent. To his mind 
 
 A free Republic built on Slavery 
 
 Was a political monstrosity 
 
 Self-doomed to sure destruction. Yet he saw 
 
 With Southern eyes a Southern problem. Here 
 
 The Institution had fixed firm its roots 
 
 In a too pliant soil. No abstract plea 
 
 Could justify a stealage, or make right 
 
 The confiscation of the property 
 
 Of citizens protected by the law. 
 
 He deprecated with his utmost force 
 
 The thought of setting free the slaves without 
 
 Just compensation to the owners, ay, 
 
 Payment in fullest measure. Let the loss 
 
 Thus incidental to a righteous act 
 
 Be borne by all the Nation, not alone 
 
By those whom circumstance had caught within 
 The meshes of its net. To buy the slaves, 
 To free them, to give back the precious gift 
 Of individual liberty vouchsafed 
 To every being by the Almighty, — this 
 Was Lincoln's lofty dream. He recognized 
 The difference in the races; that the black, 
 Inferior in development, could not, 
 And should not, ever occupy the plane, 
 Of the Caucasian. He renounced with ire 
 Social equality of white and black, — 
 Renounced it as abhorrent to the sense. 
 And fatal to the good, of both. His plea 
 Was but for liberty, the human right 
 To universal manhood, and the dower 
 Of nature to her children. From the hour 
 When first he saw a slave upon the block 
 Being bartered as a chattel, his great soul 
 Turned sick with loathing, and his whole career 
 Was molded by the love of freedom. Now, 
 When the impending crisis loomed above 
 The bent heads of a mighty people, dark 
 
 99 
 
And ominous as fate, the vision changed, 
 
 And the immediate necessity 
 
 Pressed on him, till upon his heart was writ, 
 
 As Calais upon Mary's, one sole phrase — 
 
 To save the Union. Question of the slave 
 
 Must for the time be put aside, to wait 
 
 The working out of evolution's law. 
 
 'Twas Lincoln's task to save, at any cost, 
 
 The fabric builded by our fathers' hands, — 
 
 Cemented in the blood of patriot sires. 
 
 Such was his aspiration, and, with faith 
 
 Firm fixt in God's omnipotence, he bent 
 
 His shoulders to the wheel, while 'round him grouped 
 
 The loyal manhood of America. 
 
 And feeling, still divided, seemed to grow 
 
 Daily more constant in his constancy. 
 
 Now, in convention at Montgomery, 
 A form of government was made to clothe 
 Rebellion in the garments of the law; 
 And Davis, whose ability was seared 
 By such vindictiveness as rarely mars 
 
An intellect like his, was chosen chief 
 
 Of a great people greatly borne away 
 
 Upon the tide of passion. Solidly 
 
 The people were Secessionists. Not so 
 
 In Texas, where the love of country held 
 
 Its sway in many hearts. 'Twas needful there 
 
 To cozen fraud and turn to treachery, 
 
 Buying the doubtful voters, and at last 
 
 Forging the ballots which forced Texas out 
 
 And tore her from her moorings. One more shame. 
 
 One more humiliation, to bow down 
 
 The head of scorned America! Her forts, 
 
 Her arsenals and ammunition, all 
 
 Were at the bidding of a mob self styled 
 
 A Sovereign State, surrendered tamely, while 
 
 The lone star flag rose in the air above 
 
 The banner of the Nation; and the troops, 
 
 Lacking a leader with a soldier's heart, 
 
 Marched heartless and unsoldierly away. 
 
 lOI 
 
V 
 
 Plots dark and counterplots. No man might know 
 
 Where the assassins lurked intent to strike 
 
 The standard-bearer down. The boast was heard 
 
 That he whose great commission bore the seal 
 
 Of an untrammeled people should not live 
 
 To execute their will. And as the time 
 
 Drew near for Lincoln to assume the robes 
 
 Of his high office, deep anxiety 
 
 Oppressed all loyal hearts. 
 
 Almost by stealth 
 The coming President was hurried through 
 The towns and cities which should most have vied 
 To do him honor. And when, on the eve 
 Of his inauguration, Lincoln stood 
 Among Americans within the gates 
 Of the American Capital, he felt 
 A sense intuitive of threatening clouds 
 Which lowered like a pall. Then came the day 
 That ushered in an epoch big with fate. 
 About the East front of the capitol 
 
The functionaries of a government 
 Upon the brink of ruin gathered where 
 Successive Presidents had solemnly 
 Taken the oath of office. In the throng 
 Stood Seward, he whose statesmanship o'ertopped 
 The crafty efforts of his adversaries; 
 And Chase, with such a presence as proclaimed 
 The noble mind intent on noble aims. 
 Firm and erect, the venerable Scott 
 Watched with a soldier's eye the pageantry, 
 The while, above his white and shaggy brows. 
 The anxious lines seemed deepening one by one. 
 For guileful treason had nigh reft his hands 
 Of every shard of military strength, 
 And now, when from the Nation's capitol 
 A prayer was offered to the Nation's God, — 
 When the mild sceptre of democracy 
 Passed from a weakling's coward hand to meet 
 The firm grasp of a man, — there were but few 
 Trained soldiers to be mustered for a need, 
 A handful gathered by the vigilant Scott, — 
 Militia, regulars, — a scanty band 
 
 103 
 
To do a mighty duty. On the stand 
 Was Taney, whose soiled ermine ill became 
 The administrator of a solemn oath. 
 The scholar Sumner and the student Wade 
 Were near Buchanan, with his courtly mien 
 And all uncourtly spirit; while in front 
 Stood the persuasive Douglas, tactfully 
 Reaching his hand to hold the hat of one 
 Erstwhile his adversary, and in doing so 
 Imparting to a menial act the grace 
 And dignity of knighthood. From the crowd 
 Gleamed eyes whose light of hate was ill concealed 
 By an assumed indifference. No man knew 
 Whose soul was loyal or whose heart was hot 
 With treason's smouldering fire. The air was charged 
 With coming tempest; and that strange unrest, 
 Half manifest in inarticulate sound, — 
 The voiceless bruit and menace of a crowd, — 
 Hung as the sultry breath of summer hangs 
 Before the lightnings of a rended sky. 
 Facing the winds of gusty March, were men 
 Long trained at foreign courts, the diplomats 
 
 104 
 
Whose sophistry was soon to meet the sense 
 Of one whose soul was riveted to truth, 
 Nor knew evasion. Here were patriots, too, 
 Waiting the word of him who came to lead 
 A people out of bondage; and here, too, 
 Were rebels panting to unloose the leash 
 Which held the dogs of war. 
 
 And, towering high 
 In that rude majesty which ever wraps 
 The prophet like a mantle, Lincoln stood, 
 And with uplifted hand and humble heart 
 Made oath before the throne of God, and took 
 Upon his valiant soul a people's woes. 
 Where in the storied pages of the past 
 Is writ the record of a mightier scene? 
 And where among the uttered words of men 
 Is found the pathos of a plea so deep 
 As fell from those lips, trembling with the touch 
 Of patriot zeal and yearning? 
 
 "Ah!" he cried 
 "My fellow countrymen, men of this soil. 
 Take heed lest passion lure you to despair. 
 
 105 
 
This country with its institutions, all 
 
 The blessings that our Heavenly Father showers, 
 
 Is yours, the heritage of you who live 
 
 Amid its hills and vales. Oh, let there be 
 
 No bloodshed to make horrible the green 
 
 Of its inviolate fields. With all the strength 
 
 Within my being, I beseech you pause. 
 
 Ere on the altar of our common land 
 
 You lay destroying fingers. North and South, 
 
 We all are one; we cannot separate. 
 
 Take time to think; there can be nothing lost 
 
 By that delay which but insures the right. 
 
 It has been said that peace and property 
 
 Throughout the South are menaced by the turn 
 
 That brings a new Executive; 'tis false! 
 
 I say, as often I have said before, 
 
 There is no purpose, — no intent, direct 
 
 Or indirect, — to interfere with that 
 
 Peculiar Institution of the South, 
 
 Within the States where now it does exist. 
 
 I have no lawful right to interfere. 
 
 Nor, if I had the right, have I the will. 
 
 io6 
 
Out of my heart I ask for your belief, 
 
 You who are still dissatisfied. With you 
 
 Must rest the issue of momentous war; 
 
 The government will not assail you, nay, 
 
 Will strain all patience to the utmost test 
 
 Ere plunging into conflict. Pray you mark. 
 
 You have no oath recorded in high heaven 
 
 To break up and destroy the government, 
 
 But I have registered before my God 
 
 An oath to still maintain it. We are friends; 
 
 We cannot, must not, be estranged. The ties 
 
 Which bind us are unbroken. Mystic chords 
 
 Of memory, stretching forth from patriot graves 
 
 And far-off battlefields to living hearts 
 
 And hearthstones over all this teeming land. 
 
 Will yet the chorus of the Union swell, 
 
 When touched again, as surely they will be. 
 
 By better angels of our nature." 
 
 So 
 Lincoln the martyr closed, his frame convulsed, 
 His high, ungainly shoulders bended down. 
 Like Atlas bearing an ungrateful world. 
 
 107 
 
Above his forehead leonine massed hair 
 
 Hung as the aureole of a god in pain; 
 
 And from the fountains of those earnest eyes 
 
 Welled up the guerdon of unbidden tears. 
 
 Then, for the answer to his high appeal, 
 
 A ribald sneer ran through the listening throng; 
 
 A thousand throats sent forth a jeer, that told 
 
 The hate of treason grown most insolent. 
 
 And Lincoln's mouth turned sadder for a smile 
 
 More pitiful than weeping, and he held 
 
 Outward his toil-worn hands. And from the crowd 
 
 Came back the answer, — ribaldry and jeers. 
 
 io8 
 
BOOK FOURTH 
 
\ 
 
BOOK FOURTH 
 
 "Within an hour we open fire." The words 
 Were Beauregard's last message to the man 
 Shut Hke a sohtary sentry left 
 To hold a gate forlorn. The answer came, 
 Prompt, firm, decisive; fearlessly as though 
 The grizzled soldier, whose scant garrison 
 Made a defense but mockery, held power 
 To countervail attack: "We will not yield." 
 And even while the sun with later ray 
 Kissed the upswelling folds of that dear flag 
 Whose stars wrote liberty against the sky. 
 The hour sped by, and over Charleston's bay 
 There roared the summons to a million sons 
 To strike for God and country, roared the doom 
 Of blatant treason arrogant and blind; 
 And as the echo of the first gun died, 
 
Hope fled with mobled head, and Fate cried out 
 The sentence of a desolated South, 
 And all the woes of ruin. 
 
 "They have dared 
 To fire upon the flag!" So through the North 
 Leaped the wild words that made a people one, — 
 Rang out the clarion call to loyal hearts 
 To put aside all controversies, fears; 
 To spurn the dalliance with a honeyed peace, 
 And set stern faces to oncoming war. 
 And even as the sturdy Anderson 
 Endured the pounding of the rebel shells, — 
 Even as, one by one, his magazines 
 Rent with expiring crashes the soiled sky, 
 Through every hamlet of an outraged land 
 Thrilled the determination, now at last, 
 To strangle treason, and with pitiless hand 
 To crush the hissing serpent which had grown 
 To vile maturity. 
 
 Now with strong thews 
 The newly wakened giant bends to lift 
 The burden on his shoulders. Nerves of steel 
 
Quiver along a Nation's rounded limbs, 
 And thrill with agony so near delight 
 That pain is lost in ecstasy. 
 
 "The flag! 
 The flag is fallen at Sumter! Now by God! 
 These men, who were our brothers, are our foes. 
 These faithless children of our mother's womb, — 
 These beings who preached honor while they stole, 
 And whined of loyalty even as their hands 
 Were steeped in treachery, and through the dark 
 Groped to strike dastard blows, — these are henceforth 
 The common enemy." 
 
 From Maine, whose front 
 Faces the silent sunrise, to the sands 
 That welcome evening in the Golden Gate, 
 Such words and such avowal sweep abroad 
 To render action vital. And amid 
 The seething and commotion, one great soul 
 Remains serene, though bent with sadness down; 
 Continues self contained, though bowed before 
 The coming desolation and the woe. 
 Lincoln, whose anguished heart felt every pang 
 
 113 
 
Inflicted on his bleeding country, fears 
 Nor falters not at all. His call goes forth 
 For men, for means, for loyal hearts to serve. 
 And from the hills and valleys of the land 
 Comes such response as only they may know 
 Who, in the crisis of a Nation's life, 
 Have marked a Nation's power. Ere the call 
 Has echoed backward from New England hills, 
 The streets of Boston throb beneath the tread 
 Of Butler and his regiments. New York 
 Springs to her arms. From Pennsylvania, quick 
 To save the capital, the first troops pour 
 Into defenceless Washington. And where 
 Ohio spreads her sunlit fields, upspring 
 Insistent thousands, begging for the right 
 To serve their country. An upswelling cheer 
 Greets the first bugle call. For every man 
 That Lincoln calls for, ten demand the chance 
 To serve beneath the colors so disgraced 
 And flouted at Fort Sumter. 
 
 Up and down. 
 Through cool-aisled forests and lone country roads, 
 
 114 
 
O'er meadows greening in the April sun, 
 
 Amid the roar of bustHng city streets 
 
 And clack of mill and factory, floats the lilt 
 
 And loyal melody of such a song 
 
 As patriot hearts conceive and bring to life: 
 
 "We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 Six hundred thousand strong." 
 
 What though Kentucky fall to insolence. 
 And Tennessee refuse her helping hand? 
 What though Missouri seek to turn her back 
 On that which her best citizens revere? 
 'Twere easier to bear these shafts than see 
 The sad decadence of Virginia, 
 Mother of old time chivalry. And thou 
 Fair Maryland, how hope and fear by turns 
 Usurp our thoughts of thee! 
 
 Were it well done 
 When, through the sullen streets of Baltimore, 
 The men of Massachusetts marched to reach 
 The country's capital, that thy false sons 
 
 115 
 
Should play assassin, and all cowardly 
 
 Seek to shoot down the patriot soldiers sent 
 
 To do a patriot's duty? Ah, no, no! 
 
 Yet thou art saved at last, my Maryland, 
 
 And still remain'st an unextinguished star. 
 
 The South, whose hand hath cut the golden thread 
 
 Which bound our hearts in love, no more holds place 
 
 Within Hope's citadel. Alas! the line, 
 
 Once but imaginary, now hath grown 
 
 To be a yawning chasm. The Nation's ships 
 
 Blockade the Southern ports; the Nation's troops 
 
 Pour to the Southern border. From the staffs. 
 
 Even at the gates of Washington, there flies 
 
 The flaunting symbol of black treason, bold 
 
 To rear a head defiant. 'Twas reserved 
 
 For one brave man's strong hand to tear it down, 
 
 And so, at Alexandria, to yield up 
 
 A brave man's life. 
 
 'Twas thus that Ellsworth came 
 To win the splendor of a patriot's grave. 
 And garner fame immortal, garnering death. 
 
 ii6 
 
II 
 
 Galloping, galloping over the Southland, 
 
 Horses as eager as riders for battle, 
 
 Guns jarring heavy on lumbering caissons, 
 
 Chains tugging hard at the rings of the traces; 
 
 Up and down, up and down through all the Southland, 
 
 Men pouring into the filling battalions. 
 
 Companies forming and coming together, 
 
 Tallied off quickly, compacted to regiments; 
 
 Thousands on thousands of men from the cotton fields, 
 
 Led into line by the broad-hatted planters, — 
 
 Planters long-haired and unkempt, but with glittering 
 
 Eyes, that shed forth the red glow of the smouldering 
 
 Fires in their bosoms! 
 
 From old Virginia 
 Comes the loud call to erect a new nation, — 
 Comes proclamation that Richmond is chosen 
 Capital city of slavery's stronghold, — 
 City whose halls shall henceforward be dedicate 
 Unto the uses of such a confederacy. 
 Made up of sovereign States, as men of Southern blood 
 Long have dreamed fondly of. 
 
 117 
 
And ere the first demand 
 Made on the elder lands, crosses the ocean, 
 Friends of America, — friends in prosperity, — 
 Turning to foes at the strife's earliest echo, 
 Make preparation for prompt recognition; 
 Hasten to stultify former professions 
 Of faith in the human endowment of liberty. 
 Hatred of slavery, blot on America's 
 Blazoned escutcheon; hasten, almost ere asked. 
 Willingly aid to grant, granting belligerent 
 Rights to a section rebellious and passion-mad. 
 France, the first friend of the struggling colonies; 
 England, twice foe yet professed well-wisher, 
 Both alike reach to rebellion the weapons 
 To aid in the Nation's destruction. 
 
 All Europe stands, 
 Looking askance at the tortured Republic; 
 Secretly hoping that, falling asunder. 
 All that made mighty the rule of a people 
 Worshiping freedom, should perish forever! 
 Thus is the theory of bondage exalted 
 Most by the lips that had feigned to deplore it; 
 
 ii8 
 
And o'er the face of Atlantic's wide waters 
 Float, in the tones of scarce-veiled exultation, 
 Words which are bitter as aloes: "Democracy 
 Is but a poor rope of sand!" 
 
 And so galloping. 
 Horses as eager as riders for battle, 
 Rushes to conflict a valiant people, 
 Spurred by encouragement, cheered on by aliens, 
 Blind to the fact that the envy of Tyranny 
 Ever seeks Liberty's fall. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Johnston, Beauregard and Longstreet, 
 Heading columns clad in gray; 
 
 Jackson, Kirby Smith and Early, 
 Ewell, Elzey, Jones and Bee; 
 Pushing onward their battalions 
 In bewildering array, 
 
 While the scouts of Holmes and Evans, 
 Creeping back from tree to tree. 
 Tell how Federal troops are coming 
 With the coming of the day. 
 
 119 
 
Concentrating on the turnpike 
 
 Leading off to Centreville, 
 Forming and again deploying 
 Where the Stone Bridge, grim and gray, 
 Sees the left flank of the Southrons 
 
 Waiting in the dawn, as still 
 As the forms of sculptured sentries, 
 For the coming of the fray. 
 
 Through the air of early morning 
 Comes the long and sullen roar 
 Of a single rifled field-piece; 
 And the Federal skirmish line, 
 Pressing forward, gives scant warning 
 Of the battery soon to pour 
 
 On the ranks of Cocke and Bonham 
 
 Rain of iron and steel. A fine 
 Cloud of dust along the turnpike 
 
 O'er the bridge at Sudley Ford, 
 Tells the route the loyal column 
 Moves upon to cross Bull Run, — 
 Tells the story of the coming 
 
 120 
 
Of the guns whose muzzles poured 
 Challenge of Rhode Island's Second, 
 
 While in fury, gun for gun, 
 Splintering sound breaks through the woodland. 
 Burnside's brave untried brigade 
 
 Sweeps to front, then grows unsteady, 
 
 Falling back on the reserves; 
 Sykes's regulars, already 
 
 Bracing each thin rank that swerves 
 
 Through the bushes of Bull Run. 
 
 Heintzleman's division, sweeping 
 
 Onward, bears the starry flag, 
 Where the dogged Evans struggles 
 To maintain his faltering line; 
 While across the ford come creeping 
 Sherman's men, till on the hill 
 Two brigades, in line of battle, 
 
 Move, as by a single will, 
 Past the Henry house, and keeping 
 To the stream's high bank, entwine 
 In a stern embrace and deadly 
 
The disordered troops of Bee, 
 Who o'er fence and furrow leaping, 
 In wild panic break and flee. 
 
 Onward come the blue battalions; 
 Backward fall the men in gray; 
 
 From the guns of Ricketts, Griffin, 
 Roars a voice which seems to say: 
 "All the Nation watch is keeping 
 On the issue of to-day." 
 Now as rearward seethes and surges 
 All the mass of fear-struck men, 
 
 Beauregard with Southern colors 
 Strives to rally shattered lines; 
 And Bee, turning as he urges 
 Courage on his soldiers, cries: 
 "Look at the brigade of Jackson; 
 Like a stone wall there it stands!" 
 Prophecy is oft a mystery, 
 
 And a chance word thus defines 
 One whose name through future history 
 Like a lifted beacon shines. 
 
Once again the loyal legions 
 Press the column as it flies; 
 Once again a rain of iron 
 Hurtles from the batteries. 
 
 The brigades of Franklin, Willcox, 
 Charge across the broad plateau; 
 Stern the face of brave McDowell, 
 Watching fortune come and go. 
 Palmer's cavalry, in splendid 
 Rank on rank, now turn and wheel, 
 
 While the blue and gray seem blended 
 In the flash and crash of steel. 
 
 In the hot and hazy waning 
 Of the Summer afternoon, 
 
 Comes the desperate final struggle. 
 Fry calls Burnside to his aid; 
 Howard every nerve is straining. 
 
 While the long Confederate line, 
 Reinforced from Johnston's army. 
 Presses on the Federal guns. 
 Now the rallied ranks are gaining; 
 
 123 
 
Now a wave of panic runs, 
 
 As the battery of Ricketts 
 Falls to silence, and too soon 
 
 Griffin, reft of every gunner, 
 
 Must perforce remain supine. 
 
 And ere sinks the sun to slumber, 
 
 Gray-clad soldiers hold the field, 
 Where the dead the hillocks cumber, 
 
 And war's horror stands revealed. 
 
 IV 
 
 Disaster and the crushing of fond hopes, — 
 The turning sick at heart, — the ghost of fear 
 Reaching its tenuous fingers, and despair. 
 Not yet triumphant, but with velvet tread 
 Nearing men's consciousness, — such forces filled 
 The loyal atmosphere with many a dark 
 And half-defined foreboding. 
 
 From Bull Run 
 There seemed to come the wail of Liberty, 
 Struck down, all undefended of her sons. 
 
 124 
 
The Union troops had fought with dogged strength, 
 Yet, in the issue joined as if to test 
 The skill and valor of the North and South, 
 Arrayed alas! in hostile ranks, the day 
 Was won by Southern dash, and such a zeal 
 As bore the symbol of a riven land 
 Up to the mouth of loyal guns, and spent 
 Most noble blood in most ignoble cause. 
 The blue-clad columns, dazed, were falling back 
 On Washington. The wires were thrilling news 
 To every hamlet of a waiting land 
 That boded direful happenings, and fell 
 Upon the Nation's hearing like a dirge. 
 Was it indeed the truth that Southern men 
 Possessed the fighting blood? That Northerners, 
 Coarsened of commerce, could no more uphold 
 The unsullied banner of a knightly name? 
 A mighty people, humbled, answered No! 
 Like waters rushing o'er a smiling plain 
 When some faint flaw has broadened to a breach 
 And left them unconfined, so leaped to war 
 Unnumbered thousands, eager to retrieve, — 
 
 125 
 
Determined to avenge. No longer now 
 Were regiments refused. The flood swept on. 
 Fort Hatteras surrendered and full soon 
 The flag of Union fluttered from its staff. 
 McClellan, whose auspicious star burned bright, 
 Took from the willing hands of that untamed 
 But age-encumbered lion, Winfield Scott, 
 Command of troops about the Capital. 
 September came, and with it came the tread 
 Of stealthy treason luring Maryland; 
 But ere the dark design could ripen, fell 
 The mailed hand, preventing by arrest 
 Assemblage of the legislators, so 
 Saving a State from threatened suicide. 
 Then came Ball's Bluff, a fight for field and fame; 
 And gallant Baker, pierced by volleys, gave 
 His true heart's blood to dye with richer hue 
 The glorious stripes upon his country's flag. 
 Port Royal yielded to the loyal will, 
 And, with new energy, redoubled faith, 
 The giant of the North shook free his locks, 
 Girding anew his limbs for victory. 
 
 126 
 
Yet Europe, ominous upon her thrones, 
 Was evermore unfriendly. 'Twas in vain 
 The Great Repubhc looked for moral aid 
 From those who once professed a holy zeal 
 To set the bondmen free. Commercial needs 
 Outweighed the ethic call. The sordid mills 
 Of Birmingham and Manchester set up 
 The wail of mammon for the daily gorge 
 Of raw material to feed the looms 
 That made of Cotton king. And fired anew 
 By hope enkindled through a foreign hint 
 Of intervention, the Confederate States 
 Strove to ingratiate, to plead, to fawn. 
 That flattery, the handmaiden of Trade, 
 Might make revolt triumphant. 
 
 So abroad 
 The South despatched her emissaries, men 
 Skilled in the use of diplomatic phrase, — 
 Eager to grant the utmost favor asked, — 
 Endowed with power to bind in solemn pact 
 And smooth all dubious issues. On the Trent 
 Sailed from Havana Mason and Slidell, 
 
 127 
 
Bent on accomplishment of such a work 
 At two proud courts, St. James and gay St. Cloud. 
 And close upon the Trent's heels steamed in haste 
 The San Jacinto, under the command 
 Of Wilkes the patriot Commodore. Unused 
 To idle parleys when quick action meant 
 The triumph of the right, he stopped the Trent, 
 Took prisoner the Southerners, and steamed 
 Back to his country, where the men, interned 
 Within Fort Warren's walls, might silently 
 Reflect on life's mutations. Then there rose 
 A cheer through all the North. The people felt 
 Deep irritation at the quick desire 
 Of England and of France to recognize 
 The rebels as belligerents, and now, 
 When England made imperious demand 
 That men seized on her ship should be released, 
 The irritation grew to passion deep, 
 And bitterest resentment. Wilkes's deed 
 Won the applause of all. The Congress passed 
 A vote of thanks; the Navy's head extolled. 
 And all the people praised him. Through the land 
 
 128 
 
The cry went up of "No concession!" Wide 
 Outspread the wave of popular demand 
 For war before surrender. 
 
 But one soul 
 Remained serene; one well poised intellect 
 Rose above passion as a mighty rock 
 Rises above the sea. 'Twas Lincoln's hand 
 Which stayed the fatal step; 'twas Lincoln's keen 
 Unerring sense of right that lifted up 
 The banner of consistency, and so 
 Saved a distracted country from a leap 
 Into disaster fraught with dire result. 
 The South within its heart of heart rejoiced 
 At such a turn of fate as should bring aid 
 And firm alliance with a nation strong 
 And on the sea predominant. To this 
 The frenzied North was blind. But Lincoln saw, 
 And in the homely phrase of common sense 
 Said: "One war at a time. Did we not fight 
 Great Britain once for doing this same thing 
 Which our own Wilkes has done? These prisoners 
 Must be surrendered." And his voice was heard 
 By ears distraught with passion. 
 
 129 
 
Thus again 
 The wisdom of the patriot held on high 
 The scroll whose legend was his country's weal. 
 
 V 
 
 How often hath the historic muse set down 
 Words of profoundest import, which perchance 
 The living hearers lightly dwelt upon, 
 Lacking the knowledge born of later years! 
 Lincoln the patriot, hating as he might 
 The wrong of human chains, yet clearly saw 
 And balanced all the equities. For him 
 The prior duty was the primal call 
 To save his country from disruption. Naught 
 That could be said of moral issues, wrapt 
 In the eternal question: "Bond or Free?" 
 Could move that massive intellect or swerve 
 That ever guiding hand. 
 
 "Our object now 
 Is the firm maintenance of the Union. All 
 Questions of slavery must bide their time, — 
 Be settled in the light that Heaven shall shed 
 When our first duty's done." So rang his words, 
 
 130 
 
And so his facile pen, confirming, wrote: 
 "I seek to save the Union, — that alone, — 
 Neither to keep nor to destroy the slave. 
 If I could save the Union now without 
 The freeing of one slave, that would I do; 
 If I could save the Union by the act 
 Of freeing every slave, that would I do; 
 If I could save the Union only by 
 Freeing some slaves and leaving others bound, 
 I would do that, and deem the action right. 
 I shall do only that which helps the cause 
 Whose life is part of mine." 
 
 So from the fount 
 Of a great spirit flowed the limpid stream 
 Of patriotism, unalloyed with self. 
 Statesman, not yet emancipator, he 
 Nurtured within his heart of heart the twin 
 Flowers of right and liberty. By such 
 Deep wisdom, rising ever o'er the stress 
 Of party passion and the moment's heat, 
 States that yet wavered in the balance found 
 At last their place within the Nation's home. 
 
 131 
 
So was Kentucky held, and Maryland; 
 
 And so Missouri, in despite of all 
 
 The schemes of the destroyers, — held in place 
 
 Within the Union arch. And from these three 
 
 Came forty thousand soldiers, clad in blue, 
 
 To fight beneath the stars. 
 
 And still to give 
 A touch of the heroic, Stanton came, — 
 He of the iron will and stalwart breed, — 
 Acrid, irascible, haply too quick 
 To pluck the nettle of offence amid 
 The flowers of good will, yet ever true 
 In steadfastness of purpose to the aims 
 Which were his high ideal. Ofttimes his mood 
 Tried sorely the great President, who yet 
 Knew well the pure gold 'neath the glittering steel 
 Of the War Secretary, — knew and bore. 
 In that long patience which a parent gives 
 To a too petulant child, — bore silently. 
 Or with a suasion gentle as the breeze 
 Which bends a thorn bush on a day in June. 
 And Stanton, holding stoutly to his own, 
 
 132 
 
Grew first to listen, softening his wish 
 
 To meet that other will, and finally 
 
 Learned to accept the wisdom which, through all 
 
 The darkness of the time, shone beacon-bright 
 
 From Lincoln's towering mind. 
 
 Now from afar, 
 Like to the faint notes of a bugle, borne 
 Across the listening air, there floats a note 
 Of Freedom's coming song. The law was made 
 Prohibiting forever in the then 
 Existing Territories, slavery. 
 And so the second step to tear the roots 
 Of bondage from the soil of liberty 
 Was taken, while the lurid welkin rang 
 With all the strident dissonance of war. 
 
 VI 
 
 Down the road to Shiloh church. 
 On a morn of early Spring, 
 
 'Neath the trees where robins perch 
 Sudden bullets sing. 
 133 
 
up the road from Shiloh church, 
 Sherman's men, unfaltering, 
 
 Through the mud and marshes lurch,- 
 Into action swing. 
 
 Unsuspecting in his camp, 
 
 Prentiss, with his tired brigade, 
 Lies at rest beneath the damp 
 
 Canvas colonnade. 
 Comes the myriad-footed tramp, — 
 
 Comes the gleam of rebel blade,- 
 While the tethered horses stamp. 
 
 Startled and afraid. 
 
 Tumbling out, the sleepy men 
 
 Into line of battle form; 
 Onward press the foe, and then 
 
 Breaks the fiery storm. 
 Crushed before that flood of men, 
 
 In their motley uniform. 
 Federals, numbering one to ten, 
 
 Bow beneath the storm. 
 134 
 
Soon, the foe on both his flanks,— 
 
 Guns to left and guns to right, — 
 Prentiss sees his shattered ranks 
 
 Breaking into flight. 
 All are captured, and the banks 
 
 Of Lick Creek are covered quite 
 With the decimated ranks 
 
 Telling of the fight. 
 
 Pittsburg Landing, where the lines 
 
 Of the Federal troops begin. 
 Wakes to life as daylight shines 
 
 Through the battle's din. 
 Grant, with steady voice, assigns, 
 
 As the regiments rush in, 
 Troops to stay retreating lines. 
 
 Hoping yet to win. 
 
 Near the log house on the bluff, 
 Looking o'er the Tennessee, — 
 
 Twenty pieces scarce enough, — 
 Frowns artillery. 
 
 I3S 
 
Hurlbut, he of patriot stuff, 
 
 With compacted infantry, 
 Stands to meet the summons gruff 
 
 Of the enemy. 
 
 Next McClernand, Sherman, come, 
 
 Their divisions steadying, 
 While, with measured beat of drum, 
 
 Wallace strives to bring 
 Order to his cumbersome 
 
 Mass of stragglers, rallying 
 Round the colors, stricken dumb 
 
 While the bullets sing. 
 
 Thus as sinks the saddened sun 
 
 Far across the Tennessee, 
 Half the bloody work is done, 
 
 Half is yet to be. 
 Grant growls: 'T've only just begun; 
 
 Though driven back, not whipped are we ; 
 The fight to-morrow shall be won ; 
 
 We'll have a victory!" 
 136 
 
Sunday closes. With the dark 
 
 Lew Wallace with five thousand men, 
 Comes and glows the dying spark 
 
 Of a hope again. 
 Monday dawns ; and ere the lark 
 
 Trills his welcome, marsh and fen 
 See the opposing lines that mark 
 
 Stern resolves as when 
 
 In the bright and buried past 
 
 Greeks in burnished corselets, high 
 Held aloft their shields, and cast 
 
 Headlong, valiantly. 
 Life and honor to the last 
 
 On the field where, silently. 
 Waging battle, furious, fast. 
 
 Warriors fight and die. 
 
 Now the splendid corps of Buell 
 Of the army forms the left, 
 
 And with Johnston's right a duel 
 Fights till nearly cleft; 
 137 
 
And, disheartened by the cruel 
 Death of Johnston, the bereft 
 
 Southern legions fall as fuel 
 Burned in warp and weft. 
 
 On the right the battle rages 
 
 Through the long and bloody day; 
 Crittenden the foe engages, 
 
 Naught his hand can stay. 
 Brave McCook, through all the stages 
 
 Of the turbulent affray 
 Writes his name on history's pages, 
 
 Glorious for aye! 
 
 So was Shiloh lost and won, 
 On those early April days. 
 
 Where the river's waters run 
 Neath the Western haze. 
 
 138 
 
VII 
 
 spring blooms to Summer and the Summer wanes, 
 And as the hectic glow of coming death 
 Touches to strange new beauty whispering leaves, 
 Nature seems hearkening to a message filled 
 With mystic spiritual meanings. 
 
 So it was 
 That they who watched the heavy hand of Time 
 Pass a rude palm across the patient face 
 Of him who bore his country's burden, saw 
 The presage of a season wherein peace 
 Should come at last to dwell eternally. 
 The lines that marked those hollow cheeks were graved 
 In deeper emphasis, and o'er the brow 
 The shadow of a sadness grew divine 
 In growing deeplier human. The high stoop 
 Of weary shoulders bent a little more; 
 And such a light illumed those deep gray eyes 
 As spoke of thoughts no man might know. 
 
 Perhaps 
 The memoried figure of Anne Rutledge passed, 
 
 139 
 
In visioned loveliness, across his dreams, 
 And scenes of old romance, like quaint conceits, 
 May oft have mingled with the strenuous, stern 
 And unrelenting problems of the war. 
 So, in the darkest summer of his life. 
 Did Lincoln hand in hand with Nature go. 
 The while the carnage ceased not. 
 
 Then there came 
 September, big with fate and stained more red 
 Than autumn's gorgeous touch might emulate; 
 For o'er the page of history fell a name, — 
 Antietam, — and the hearts of men stood still. 
 Turn thy face, Mercy! Let thy pitying eyes 
 No more behold the sodden fields of blood. 
 Take cognizance no more of riven limbs. 
 And wounds which from dumb mouths seem yet to cry 
 Against the hell of conflict! 
 
 From beyond 
 Potomac's marshy banks Lee's legions came, 
 While Hooker crossed Antietam, out of range. 
 Then turning, swept into the field and formed 
 His lines for battle, Ricketts on the left. 
 
 140 
 
Meade with his Pennsylvanians strongly held 
 
 The centre, while the guns of Doubleday 
 
 Opened upon a rebel battery 
 
 Which sought to enfilade the loyal line. 
 
 Then darkness swept, like a swart mantle, down, 
 
 And all the thousands of opposing men 
 
 Slept on their arms till dawn. 
 
 At daylight came 
 The rush to action. Just beyond a wood, 
 Across a plowed field that in Hooker's front 
 Lay brown beneath the early Autumn sun, 
 A battery pushed its devastating way 
 To a sere cornfield, which, before the day 
 Should sink to slumber, was foredoomed to be 
 Soaked with America's best blood. Here Meade 
 Was side by side with Ricketts, facing there 
 The thin brigade of Lawton and the men 
 Of Jackson's own division. Hooker's corps 
 Hurled itself headlong on the rebel host 
 Till Hood's division, coming up, brought hope 
 To those who faltered. 
 
 141 
 
Then the fresh brigades 
 Of Gordon, Crawford, both of Mansfield's corps, 
 Came to support the wavering Union Hne, 
 And mid the crash of guns and rending scream 
 Of shells which hurtled death along the air, 
 The carnage held its sway, and brave men lay 
 In awful heaps amid the serried corn. 
 So wore the mad day to its bloody close. 
 The while through streets of Sharpsburg rumbling went 
 The carts and wagons improvised to do 
 The ambulance's duty, laden each 
 With its soul-sickening burden of dead flesh. 
 Such was Antietam, — such the hideous tale 
 Which, written in the page of history, makes 
 And mars a scene of that wide drama whose 
 Unfolding is the story of a world. 
 
 142 
 
BOOK FIFTH 
 
BOOK FIFTH 
 
 I 
 
 How deeply rooted in the human breast, 
 How firmly seated in the human soul, 
 Is that large aspiration, unrepressed 
 By any law, defying the control 
 Of all tradition, love of freedom, whole 
 Untrammeled and unchecked, which through the race 
 
 Courses like life blood, levying its toll 
 Of discontent divine, and o'er the face 
 Of men the symbols of its presence quick to trace. 
 
 Sweet Liberty, what realms of joy are thine! 
 What music marks the fall of riven chains! 
 What light celestial o'er thy brow doth shine, 
 Thou goddess of our country's hills and plains! 
 Woe ever to the tyrant who disdains 
 The lofty word thy lips articulate, 
 
 And woe yet deeper to a land where reigns 
 Enthroned slavery, the fitting mate 
 Of sin-conceived Rebellion and unreasoning Hate. 
 
 145 
 
Long in the brooding bosom of the slave 
 The seed of Hberty had dormant lain; 
 Long in a land of promise yearning gave 
 An added sharpness to the dole of pain. 
 Across the flag the sanguinary stain 
 Of legal bondage bowed a Nation's head; 
 
 Till those who loved America were fain 
 To harbor hope, commingled oft with dread, 
 That soon the curse should be forever banished. 
 
 Yet ever with an ordered motion flow 
 
 The under currents of life's restless sea; 
 The mind that made the law alone doth know 
 How long fulfilment of the law's decree 
 Shall wait on circumstance. But destiny 
 Is thwarted never, and there comes at last 
 
 The end that crowns the work, that law may be 
 Supreme to-day as in the storied past, — 
 Fixt as the hours when Fate her silent die hath cast. 
 
 146 
 
Through mists of all the years since Lincoln saw 
 
 His fellow beings bartered at the block, 
 Had gleamed the light of God's eternal law, 
 Impregnable and moveless as a rock 
 That rears its head, nor ever recks the shock 
 Of weltering waves, whose crested summits tower 
 In hissing foam which serves to make a mock 
 Of its own nothingness. Now came the hour 
 To strike, for he who had the will had now the power. 
 
 Not hastily, but after labored thought. 
 
 The great American saw clear the way, 
 Stern logic of events at last had brought 
 The line of duty to the light of day. 
 No longer need that earnest spirit pray 
 For guidance, since a word of high command 
 
 Bade him go boldly on, nor longer stay 
 The deed awaiting his obedient hand. 
 That dowered with liberty a long defrauded land. 
 
 147 
 
Thus in conjunction came the hour and man 
 
 To strike from milHons fetters which should be 
 The future symbols of a tyrant's plan 
 To thwart the uplift of humanity. 
 Thus came the sword of righteousness to free 
 Each base slave from a baser owner's will, 
 
 Cleaving tradition that the world might see 
 How outraged Liberty is potent still 
 Her mission and her purpose ever to fulfill. 
 
 So Abraham Lincoln wrote his glorious name 
 
 Beneath the proclamation which endowed 
 The slaves with freedom and himself with fame 
 More lasting than a Caesar's, and more proud. 
 Above the fleeting plaudits of the crowd 
 The story of this deed, through all the years. 
 
 Shall echo in reverberations loud 
 And fill the measured music of the spheres. 
 Touching with joy the memory of human tears. 
 
 148 
 
II 
 
 At Falmouth, where the Rappahannock runs 
 Serenely smiling to the winter sky, 
 The gallant Sumner massed his men and sought 
 To cross to Fredericksburg, now occupied 
 By Barksdale's Mississippi riflemen, 
 Who, from behind the shelter of the walls 
 Of buildings and of gardens, filled the air 
 With the staccato of his sharpshooters. 
 The while Lee's engineers upon the heights 
 Reared hasty breastworks, seeking to repel 
 The loyal gunboats steaming up the stream 
 Near to Port Royal. Further up, the bluffs 
 Leaned nearer where the river narrowed. Thence 
 The guns of Burnside pounded on the town, — 
 The stubborn town that hugged its treason close, — 
 Till Fredericksburg was rid of Barksdale's gray 
 And dust-begrimed sharpshooters, and the streets 
 Echoed the tread of loyal feet once more. 
 Upon the left was Franklin, pushing on 
 To lay pontoons, o'er which the army passed, 
 Filling the long hours of the sombre night 
 With the low muffled sound of myriad feet, 
 
 149 
 
Hasting to form in line of battle where 
 The looming shapes of Lee's Confederate ranks, 
 Full eighty thousand strong, in silence stood 
 Awaiting the assault. There on the right 
 The corps of Stonewall Jackson, firm, compact, 
 Was fashioned for defense, while on the left 
 Was Longstreet, heading long, thin lines of gray, 
 As moveless as the shrubbery whose leaves 
 Seemed listening for the call to bloody deeds. 
 Now through the mist a sudden burst of sun 
 Glinted upon the Union troops, whom Couch 
 Led from the battered buildings of the town 
 To capture Marye's Hill. 
 
 No braver men 
 Did ever smile on death than these who rushed 
 Even to the base of that rude wall of stone. 
 Behind whose shelter rebel batteries, masked, 
 Belched forth the red hell of their cannonades. 
 Alas! the heroic men of Hancock's corps 
 Went down like grass before the reaper's blade; 
 Alas! for those brave Irish hearts that beat 
 Within the breasts of Meagher's bold brigade, 
 Dashing itself again, and yet again, 
 
 150 
 
Against the heights impregnable, until 
 
 The thousands that had charged lay on the field 
 
 With hearts that beat no more. 
 
 Then Hancock's corps 
 Charged up the flashing heights, and French's men 
 Rushed madly on the death which Barksdale dealt 
 Unsparing from the safety of his wall. 
 Howard's division, in support, and part 
 Of the strong corps of Wilcox, held the rear, 
 To keep communication with the town. 
 And even as the day drew near its close 
 The slaughter of brave men went madly on, 
 And only night brought silence. 
 
 Such the price 
 Which freemen pay for liberty! Such, too. 
 The hideous toll of war when treason lifts 
 A blood-stained hand to take a Nation's life 
 In sateless rage. And such was Fredericksburg. 
 
 ni 
 
 Through the dark winter Victory held her scales 
 At even balance, and, as dawned the Spring, 
 
Each side was fain to flatter hope, nor yield 
 To the deep craving for surcease of all 
 The agonies of war. At Washington 
 The Congress of the Nation, grown to know 
 The depth of that great soul whose utter faith 
 Made doubt impossible, in stern resolve 
 Bended new energies, and cast aside 
 All minor dififerences in the work 
 Which yet remained to do. But still there lurked, 
 Like poison adders hissing in the grass. 
 Through all the straining North, the "Copperheads," 
 Intent to strike their coward blows where'er 
 Shelter from harm made treason tenable. 
 How wide the contrast with their brethren quick 
 To meet the issue and face death like men 
 Upon the Southern fields! Lee, moved to draw 
 His sword by a misguided sense, yet true 
 In every action of his manly life; 
 Johnston and Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, brave 
 Unflinching soldiers fighting for a cause 
 Made less ignoble by their valor, — these 
 Stand forth as men, demanding from our minds 
 The lofty judgment of a high ideal. 
 
 152 
 
But they who, at the North, by word and deed, 
 
 Sought ever to embarrass and destroy 
 
 The government whose sustenance they sucked, — 
 
 These serpents risking naught, but from the dark 
 
 Spitting their venom in the hope to kill, — 
 
 Deserve from human judgment only scorn, — 
 
 The averted face of every honest man! 
 
 Nor was there unanimity to seal 
 
 And make efficient efforts of the North 
 
 To enforce the Union's supremacy. 
 
 Among the generals jealousy too oft 
 
 Uttered insidious whispers. 
 
 More intent 
 To win the unearned plaudits of the crowd 
 By claiming credit for another's act, 
 Than to cooperate to bring about 
 Results of greatest import, some of those 
 Whose post of power should have instilled the thought 
 Of high endeavor showed the petty wish 
 For self aggrandizement. 
 
 And Lincoln's heart 
 Was heavy at the thought of victory lost 
 Because of aid withheld. Nor did the time 
 
 153 
 
Bring cheer to the great, loyal people held 
 In a prolonged suspense. The Spring grew fair, 
 And pipings of the birds made Nature glad, 
 Despite the dirge of murder in the air; 
 May-day was mild, when westward on the road 
 From Chancellorsville the regulars of Sykes 
 Marched cautiously, soon coming on a force 
 Of rebel troops, who, in extended line. 
 Strove to outflank them. Seeking to connect 
 With Slocum's corps and failing, Sykes fell back, 
 And when night came the men in blue and gray 
 Alike were conscious that the dawning day 
 Must bring the groaning harvest of red death 
 To many a valiant soldier. 
 
 With the light 
 Came Sickles' corps from Fredericksburg, and soon 
 Birney's division, pounding with its guns, 
 Scattered confusion through Confederate ranks; 
 Then charging, in its onslaught carried down 
 All opposition, capturing at last 
 A half a thousand prisoners. The day 
 Wore on with varying fortune. Afternoon 
 
 154 
 
Found Birney formed in hollow square, his guns 
 
 Placed in the centre. Barlow's tried brigade 
 
 Supporting well his right; but Whipple's Third, 
 
 Relied on to support the left, came not; 
 
 And while the Union leaders waited, keen 
 
 To push success to victory, there rushed 
 
 A horde of panic-stricken fugitives 
 
 From the Eleventh Corps, in Birney's rear; 
 
 And these bore tidings of disaster wrought 
 
 Upon the First division, — Deven's men, — 
 
 Caught unaware, and in an avalanche 
 
 Of Stonewall Jackson's army swept away 
 
 In awful wreck and havoc. Suddenly 
 
 From out the thick woods poured the men in gray, 
 
 Charging from three sides, sweeping to their doom 
 
 Down the old road from Chancellorsville, in rout, 
 
 Schurz's division, — rolling from their path 
 
 Von Steinwehr's men, and spreading through the ranks 
 
 Of all the Federal troops the panic bred 
 
 By threat of a disaster unexplained. 
 
 Sickles, with cavalry of Pleasanton 
 
 Preparing for a charge, was quickly brought 
 
 155 
 
To sense of his own danger, when he learned 
 That Howard's corps was crushed, and in his rear 
 The rebels were triumphant. There was one, 
 One only thing to do; and Pleasanton, 
 Turning to Major Keenan of the staunch 
 Eighth Pennsylvania, gave his command: 
 "A charge is needed. Take your regiment 
 Into those woods, and hold the enemy 
 At any cost till I can get my guns 
 Into position." 
 
 Keenan said: "I will." 
 And, with his scant five hundred men, he charged 
 Into the thirty thousand troops in gray. 
 Checking them for a moment, till he fell, 
 Dying a glorious death with duty done. 
 Meanwhile the artillery of Pleasanton 
 Made ready in the road to greet with shot 
 The oncoming enemy, who from the woods 
 Displayed the loyal flag, in hope to cheat 
 The Union troops, upon whose frowning guns 
 They waited but to charge. The subterfuge 
 Availed but little, and at last they came 
 
 1S6 
 
On, on, as burst to flame the gaping mouths 
 Of cannon belching death, and piHng high 
 The roadway with the dead. And in that hell 
 Fell Stonewall Jackson, wounded mortally, 
 The bravest soldier in a cause forlorn. 
 
 IV 
 
 Few could see as Lincoln saw 
 Clear the working of the law 
 That America must be 
 Welded close in unity. 
 Not two peoples, one alone 
 Could insure to Freedom's throne 
 Permanence and power to draw 
 Men to action. Such the law. 
 In the East was Richmond, still 
 Subject to a rebel will; 
 In the West stood Vicksburg, frowning 
 O'er the Mississippi, crowning 
 With its black defiant guns 
 Bluffs at whose green bases runs 
 157 
 
That onsweeping, mighty strccim 
 On whose breast the flatboats gleam, 
 Bearing fruits of industry 
 Southward to the shining sea. 
 Now throughout the waiting land 
 Comes a summons and command, 
 Comes a patriot message sent 
 By a patriot President: 
 "We must have, as have we shall, 
 Richmond, treason's capital; 
 But so long as in the West 
 Rebel strength is unrepressed, — 
 While an alien power holds sway 
 O'er our inland waterway, — 
 We can never be as one, 
 Moving on in unison." 
 Wise the words, and happily 
 Time was ripe for wisdom; he 
 Who from out the West had brought 
 To his task the single thought 
 To uphold his country's cause 
 And enforce her righteous laws, — 
 is8 
 
Grant, the silent, came to press 
 Sternly onward to success. 
 His the keen and careful plan 
 When the boats of Porter ran, 
 Past the flashing batteries. 
 Lighting up the sombre skies, 
 Past the forts of Vicksburg, on 
 To the mounds of Warrenton. 
 Then the transports, silently 
 As a tide which seeks the sea. 
 Under cover of the night, 
 Floated, ere the morning light. 
 Safe below the city, where 
 Grant awaited them. With care 
 Every move was made. Each day, 
 Through the sunny month of May, 
 Saw the lines more closely drawn,— 
 Saw the coming of the dawn 
 Which should usher in the day 
 Of the rescued Union's sway. 
 One by one the strongholds fell. 
 Though the rebels fought full well. 
 
 1 59 
 
Soon, above the state-house dome 
 In the town of Jackson, — home 
 Of a recreant State, the flag 
 Of the Nation floated. Brag 
 As they might of dare and dash, 
 Southern soldiers, mid the crash 
 And the ceaseless roar of guns, 
 Where the Yazoo swiftly runs. 
 Fled across the farms wherethrough 
 Grant's converging lines of blue 
 Pressed, and ever closelier drew. 
 Round the goal of long desire, — 
 Vicksburg, city rimmed with fire. 
 Shut in the beleaguered place, 
 Pemberton, brought face to face 
 With starvation, grim and gaunt. 
 Long withstood the siege of Grant; 
 Holding out, from day to day, 
 While the gunboats kept their play 
 Ceaselessly of shot and shell 
 On the crumbling citadel. 
 Less and less the rations grew, 
 1 60 
 
While the Southern standard flew 
 
 Through the lengthening days of June, 
 
 Hoping for relief, yet soon 
 
 Forced to ask for terms. So fell 
 
 Treason's Western citadel. 
 
 Carrying downward in its fall 
 
 Rebellion's dearest hopes, while all 
 
 The loyal North sent up a cry 
 
 Of triumph and of victory; 
 
 And lips devout found time to pray 
 
 Upon the Nation's natal day. 
 
 V 
 
 At Frederick lay the armies of the blue; 
 At Hagerstown the gray. The intrepid Lee, 
 As one who quenched at last a burning thirst 
 To quaff from Northern beakers, gave command 
 To enter Pennsylvania's wide domain. 
 And now, at Chambersburg, his solid ranks 
 Stood, waiting till his strong hand should unleash 
 Their eager spirits for the coming fray 
 
 i6i 
 
Which all felt hovering, like an imminent storm, 
 Athwart the silent sky. 
 
 Then came the word 
 To concentrate at Gettysburg. To Meade, 
 Gallant and wise yet ever cautious, fell 
 Supreme command of the great army, now 
 Destined at last to conquer and retrieve 
 Long wasted days of sickening delay 
 And unexplained inaction. North and South, 
 A sense intuitive, pervasive, strong. 
 Filled every breast with knowledge that the hour 
 Had struck for the decisive final test. 
 Upon whose issue hung the mighty fate. 
 Of a divided people. And as rose 
 The reddened sun upon July's first day. 
 The corps of Reynolds, marching through the town. 
 Came unexpectedly upon the foe. 
 Before whose heavy force he fell back, till 
 The enemy, grown rash, advanced too far 
 And quickly learned his error. But alas! 
 The gallant leader, pressing to the front, — 
 The patriot Reynolds, — garnered to himself 
 The meed of noble death. 
 
 162 
 
Then Howard reached 
 The field of action and assumed command, 
 Leaving his corps in charge of Schurz. 
 
 High up 
 On Cemetery Hill, the men in blue 
 Looked out upon the ranks of Ewell, — they 
 Whom Stonewall Jackson had so often led 
 To victory for the wrong. Once and again 
 Repulsed, the gray line faltered and drew back; 
 But at the last the rebels held the town; 
 And as the sun declined across the hills, 
 Each army sought in concentration, strength 
 To meet the morrow's issue. 
 
 To the right 
 Of Cemetery Hill, the Federals lay. 
 In wide extension towards Rock Creek, beyond 
 Whose whispering waters reared Wolf Hill. 
 
 The left 
 Bent Westward, even to Round Top, on whose slope 
 More blue battalions made a crescent, marked 
 In sombre outlines. With the dark there came 
 The Third and Twelfth corps, and ere night had 
 reached 
 
 163 
 
Its turning, Meade arrived upon the field, 
 Quickly in order of battle placing all 
 The troops at his command. Upon the right 
 Was Slocum with the Twelfth. 
 
 The Third and Fifth, 
 With Sickles in their forefront, held the left; 
 While at the centre Hancock, like a rock. 
 Stood at the head of all that war had left 
 Of the brave First and Second. Howard, too, 
 With the Eleventh, kept a line compact. 
 Ready to shift at need to either wing. 
 Along the crest of Cemetery Hill 
 A hundred Union guns, in grim array, 
 Looked down upon the field. 
 
 The morning broke. 
 Yet those two silent hosts no movement made. 
 But, like opposing lions, couchant, glared 
 Each in the other's eyes. The morning sped 
 To noontide, and the field was silent still; 
 The noon, in shimmering heat, gave place to all 
 The languor of a Summer afternoon; 
 Yet no gun spoke. And Meade, who knew full well 
 
 164 
 
The strength of his position, waited still 
 The coming of the foe. 
 
 "They must attack; 
 Be ready when they come." So said the keen 
 And ever cautious Meade. Then, as the day 
 Wore on to longer shadows, suddenly 
 A virulent mile of fire leaped into life 
 Along the rebel line. The maddening roar 
 Of field artillery, the answering scream 
 Of hurtling shells, rended the Summer air; 
 And from the skirts of Cemetery Hill 
 A rain of iron death implacably 
 Poured on the ranks of gray. 
 
 Then came the yell, — 
 The Southern yell which fired the Southern blood, — 
 And, sweeping in mad charge, the regiments. 
 Brigades, divisions, dashed against the storm 
 Of grape and canister, which never ceased 
 Their awful hail of hell. 
 
 Up to the guns 
 The withering gray lines pushed themselves, and like 
 Sun-stricken snow, melted to nothingness. 
 
 i6s 
 
The Federal gunners by the hundreds fell 
 Beside their pieces, but yet others came 
 To serve the guns and die. 
 
 Again, again, 
 The rebel hosts were shattered and hurled back; 
 The men in blue across their piled-up dead 
 Loaded and fired and fell. Yet onward came 
 The Southern thousands, while, stern man to man, 
 American fought with American, 
 Acrid, unyielding, strong! 
 
 Across the fields 
 Pressed Longstreet, Pickett, Hood, McLaws and Heth, 
 Dashing their legions against Hancock's ranks, 
 Upreared like rocks that balked a seething sea. 
 And Hancock, wounded, through his anguish laughed, 
 As to the muzzles of our batteries 
 The graybacks fought their way, and still were struck 
 Down to the sodden earth by loyal arms. 
 Now Sickles from the front was borne away 
 Desperately wounded, and as victory seemed 
 Hung in the balance, Sedgwick's gallant corps. 
 Weary with marching but undaunted still, 
 
 i66 
 
Swept like an avalanche upon the field, 
 Crushing the foe back on his crumbling lines. 
 Now upon Slocum on the right there came 
 A sudden dash by Early; but again 
 The Northern veterans, like giants, hurled 
 Rebellion back and triumphed. 
 
 So the day, — 
 The bloody second day of Gettysburg, — 
 Drew to its awful close; and on the field 
 Unnumbered thousands lay in hideous heaps, — 
 The dead and dying, — in a mute appeal 
 To human dread and pity. 
 
 With the dawn 
 Again the guns of Longstreet roared abroad 
 Their challenge of defiance, and again 
 The blue lines swung to action. Slocum rushed 
 With splendid vigor upon Early; Sykes 
 Pushed his division up, and Humphreys' corps 
 Swooped upon Stonewall Jackson's men, who soon 
 Were driven backward. But ere yet the day 
 Had ripened to its fulness, all at once 
 Lee hurled the whole strength of his army straight 
 
 167 
 
On Cemetery Hill. His hundred guns 
 Poured their concentric fire upon the massed 
 And wearied blue battalions. Through the air 
 The riven rocks and uptorn earth were hurled; 
 The trees went down before that blast, and men 
 And horses fell about their guns. Then came 
 The answering artillery, till far 
 Across the green miles of the ruined farms 
 The echoes shrieked of war. 
 
 Now Pickett charged 
 In mad abandon on our infantry 
 Along the road which led to Emmettsburg; 
 And Gibbon with his Second Corps stood fast. 
 Waiting the impact. "Hold your fire," he cried. 
 "They're not yet near enough." And even as 
 He spoke, the rebel steel flashed in the sun 
 Close to our rifle-pits. "Now fire." A blaze 
 Of death flamed down the line, — the long, curved 
 
 line, — 
 Of that brave Second Corps; and Pickett's men 
 Reeled, shattered, back to waiting death, and broke 
 In wild confusion. Those who in retreat 
 
 i68 
 
Saw but the end of all, threw down their arms, 
 Surrendering by the thousands. Then there came 
 A panic spreading through the Southern host; 
 Whole regiments surrendered. On the field, 
 Amid the dead and dying, lay the arms 
 Discarded by defeated men, who chose 
 Surrender as a welcome refuge. 
 
 Thus 
 Was fought and won the bloodiest battle known 
 In all the records of this Western world; 
 And as the remnants of Lee's army crossed 
 Once more the wide Potomac, in his soul 
 He must have heard the knell of Southern hopes, 
 Even as the elated hearts of loyalists 
 Acclaimed fruition in acclaiming Meade. 
 
 VI 
 
 In bleak November, standing on that field 
 Heroic in the annals of the world, 
 A patriot spoke the words of prophecy, 
 A prophet worshiped at his country's shrine. 
 
 169 
 
And as across the dim dismantled farms 
 Chill Autumn sighed, the unremembering winds 
 Bore on their wings the message of a seer 
 To the remembering years: 
 
 "Our fathers here, 
 Four score and seven years ago, brought forth 
 A Nation new, conceived in liberty. 
 And dedicated to the truth that all 
 Men are created equal. Now we wage 
 A mighty civil war, to test the strength 
 Of such a Nation. On this battlefield 
 We meet to dedicate a resting place 
 For those who here gave up their lives that we 
 Might, as a living people, still endure. 
 Our act is fit; but in a larger sense 
 We cannot consecrate or hallow ground 
 Already hallowed by the imperial dead, — 
 They who in struggling here have set their deeds 
 So far above our praising. 'Tis for us 
 To dedicate to the unfinished work 
 Ourselves, in dear devotion to the dead, — 
 Heroic souls who in a holy cause 
 
 170 
 
Gave the last measure of a patriot's love. 
 Let us find here our duty. Let us here 
 Highly resolve that they who on this field 
 Breathed out their lives, shall not have died in vain,- 
 That our loved Nation, under God, shall have 
 New birth of freedom, and that government 
 Of, by, and for the people, shall not cease 
 Or perish from the earth." 
 
 And Lincoln's voice. 
 In tones which told of tears, became the wraith 
 Of music falling off along the breeze, — 
 A melody to fill the souls of men. 
 Wrapt in the mantle of the silences. 
 
 171 
 
BOOK SIXTH 
 
BOOK SIXTH 
 
 Vicksburg and Gettysburg! How thrill the names 
 Within the porches of the ears long strained 
 To catch the first notes of victorious peace! 
 Till now hope long deferred had sickened hearts 
 Filled with the love of home and native land; 
 Till now a fratricidal contest brought 
 Results but indecisive. But at last 
 Men knew the tide had turned; for Grant and Meade, 
 Hurling rebellion back to feed its spleen 
 Upon the ofifal of its own chagrin, 
 Set bounds forever to the onward sweep 
 Of Lee, whose boast had been that Southern steel 
 Should sweep the spoil of Pennsylvania farms, — 
 A boast well amplified by threats which fell 
 From the thin lips of Davis, grown apace 
 In insolence and malice. "Soon," he cried, 
 
 175 
 
"We'll carry war where sword and torch may glut 
 Their appetite within the densely packed 
 Great cities of the North." 
 
 But Fate, that holds 
 A scale whose dipping no man may foresee, 
 Ruled otherwise. With Vicksburg captured, all 
 The taint of treason that had soiled the air 
 Where the great Mississippi seeks the sea. 
 Was blown away, and rebel territory 
 Severed in twain forever. In the West 
 Rebellion's power was broken. In the ranks 
 Of a free Nation's army now there served 
 A hundred thousand freedmen, whose dark skins 
 No longer bore the brand of slavery. 
 And in whose hearts dwelt gratitude, and all 
 The new lit fires of liberty. Then came 
 "The Rock of Chickamauga," — Thomas, — brave 
 To save an army, and snatch victory's flower 
 From shadows of defeat. Grant, silent, stern, 
 Assumed command at Louisville, and brought 
 The tempered power of an iron will 
 To render action vital. Up the heights 
 
 176 
 
Of Lookout Mountain Sherman's forces charged, 
 And from the end of Missionary Ridge 
 Hurled down destruction on a fleeing foe. 
 Hooker, impetuous, drove the Southern host 
 Far up the western slope, and through the woods 
 Sent scurrying, panic struck, the broken ranks 
 Of rebel regiments. The next day saw 
 The army of the Cumberland assail 
 The field works grouped on Missionary Ridge, 
 And at the bayonet point sweep out the men 
 Who, under Bragg, had fought in gallant style 
 To save a waning cause. To Tunnel Hill 
 The dauntless Thomas now pursued and fought 
 Again the harassed Bragg, while Burnside met 
 And, with the help of Sherman, backward turned 
 The men of Longstreet, who in swift retreat 
 Seeking Virginia, left Tennessee 
 In full possession of the Union arms. 
 Thus came relief to those enduring souls 
 Whose loyalty no persecution balked, 
 When in the mountains of their Western homes 
 They dwelt without protection from the land 
 Whose flag they dearly loved. 
 
 177 
 
And Lincoln saw 
 As in a glass of fate the glimmering dawn 
 Spread, like a hint of coming joy, across 
 The silent slumbering hills. A prescience filled 
 The chambers of his brain, and through his dreams 
 Wove pictures, haply born mysteriously 
 In that large spiritual nature, — ^knit perchance 
 Into the fabric of to-day's events, 
 Even as the imagination of a seer 
 Colors all prophecy to make it real. 
 "I have a dream that comes and comes again, 
 Asleep or waking, — in the night, the day, — 
 I know not whence it comes, or what should bode 
 Its strange persistence and the vividness 
 Of its appearing. It is of a ship. 
 With canvas set and bellying in the wind, — 
 A ship fast sailing to an unknown port, — 
 Freighted with hope; with helm held hard and bow 
 Leaping across the foam." 
 
 So spoke the man 
 Whose rugged hand guided the ship of State, — 
 Whose human heart bled with a people's woes 
 And bore a Nation's burden. 
 
 178 
 
II 
 
 Onward swept 
 The tide of victory. Yet no great deed 
 Reaches fruition unalloyed of toil 
 And sweat of bended brows. 
 
 The call went forth 
 For men to carry forward to the end 
 The country's vital struggle, and so crush 
 Into the ashes of its baleful fires 
 Rebellion's hateful form. The draft became 
 The unavoidable recourse of war, 
 And States and people bowed, save in New York 
 Whose unavailing riots did but blot 
 The 'scutcheon of a city, proud and rich 
 Yet swarming with the men of foreign birth 
 And fire-bred fugitives from a rebel South, 
 Who had not learned the patriot's creed. To these 
 Were joined that horde of coward souls whose name, 
 The "Copperheads," sounded in honest ears 
 Like some fell serpent's hiss, — beings too mean 
 To venture worthless lives in any cause, 
 
 179 
 
Yet prone to blatant mouthings safe at home, 
 And, like assassins crawling in the dark. 
 Seeking to stab a mother in the back, 
 The while they shared her bounty. 
 
 But the wheels 
 Of destiny could not be blocked by hate. 
 Nor Freedom's cause be thwarted of its goal; 
 And as Time turned the page, another year 
 Saw a united North more firmly set, — 
 More solidly determined than before, — 
 To save the Union and forever blot 
 Treason and slavery from the records marred 
 By blood-stained fingers. 
 
 Now the time was ripe 
 To incorporate in the fundamental law 
 The prohibition of the right to hold 
 Black men in bondage, throughout all the length 
 Of a land dedicate to liberty. 
 So was Emancipation made complete. 
 And so was Lincoln justified. 
 
 Meanwhile 
 Grant, called to the Potomac, came to take 
 
 1 80 
 
Into his vigorous hands the threads left loose 
 By Meade, who faltered on the heels of fate, 
 And, after victory gloriously won. 
 Failed strangely to crush Lee, who crossed again 
 The broad Potomac to his former lines. 
 Upon the soil of old Virginia stood 
 The ranks of long opposing armies, each 
 Seasoned to war's mutations. Grant and Lee 
 At last were face to face; the hero one 
 Of Vicksburg and the storied Western fields; 
 The hope the other of a militant South, 
 Weakened but still unconquered. 
 
 As the Spring 
 Ripened to Summer, came the clash of steel, — 
 The rending of the air with deadly fire. 
 The Rapidan was crossed, and followed fast 
 The bloody battles of the Wilderness. 
 At Opequan the gallant Sheridan 
 Drove Early from the field, and following 
 Even to the Blue Ridge passes, ravaged all 
 The fruitful valley, leaving desolate 
 The one time smiling fields. But Early crossed 
 
 i8i 
 
Again the mountains, and the Federal troops, 
 Retreating in confusion, made a stand 
 At Middletown, from whence the voice of guns 
 Reached Sheridan at Winchester. 
 
 Like Hght 
 He rode in furious haste, and to the field 
 Brought such magnetic presence as inspired 
 Each man with double courage, and insured 
 The quick repulse of Early, who was fain 
 To flee with broken ranks. 
 
 So came the end 
 Of war in Shenandoah Valley; so 
 Rose to the stature of a hero he 
 Whose sobriquet became a shibboleth: 
 "Cavalry Sheridan." 
 
 Now Sherman drew 
 His lines about Atlanta. Towards the sea 
 He bent his soldierly, adventurous eyes. 
 "We cannot stay," so wrote the hero of historic deeds, 
 "Upon the mere defensive. I prefer 
 To make a wreck of roads and country here, 
 From Chattanooga to Atlanta, then 
 
 182 
 
Send back my wounded, and through Georgia move 
 With an effective army to the sea. 
 War, which is hell, cannot be delicate; 
 I must move, smashing all things, to the sea." 
 And Grant, more cautious, yet demurred, but soon 
 Gave Sherman all his will, and Sherman cast 
 His fortunes in the balance, cutting all 
 Communications in his rear, and so 
 Marched onward to the sea. 
 
 Then Farragut, 
 While thus the Union arms on land bore high 
 A laureled victory, seized upon Mobile, 
 His vessels sweeping down, unmindful how 
 Torpedoes barred the way. Thus history grew 
 Into romance, and on Time's tablets wrote 
 The record of imperishable deeds. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Amid the roar of war is heard the voice 
 Of civic duty, calling through the land 
 The approaching termination of the rule 
 
 183 
 
Of him on whom the people set their hopes, — 
 Of him whose heart the people knew was true, — 
 Whose staunch integrity and loyal faith 
 No one could call in question. East and West 
 The stern demand was made that none but he 
 Should be entrusted with the Nation's fate, — 
 That none but he should consummate the work 
 Begun by him and by his wisdom brought 
 In sight of fair fruition. Some there were. 
 Inspired by ignorance, envy, or the zeal 
 Which ever advocates a change, who strove 
 To nominate some stranger to lead on 
 The hosts of Union to the wished-for end. 
 Such men as Greeley, honest in intent, 
 But easily beguiled, and overfond 
 Of lending ear to his own vain conceits. 
 Puffed with a reputation grown beyond 
 The sum of his deserts. Such men as Chase, 
 Disloyal to his chief, while doubtless true 
 To what he deemed the right. Such as Fremont, 
 Hot-headed in a righteous cause, but prone 
 To strangle prudence with publicity. 
 
 184 
 
These men and many more made argument 
 
 Against renomination of the man 
 
 To whose sagacity and splendid zeal 
 
 The Nation owed its life. But all in vain 
 
 The opposition strove to drown the call 
 
 Of a free people for the trusted chief 
 
 Who dwelt within the hearts of all who held 
 
 Country above ambition. 
 
 Thus the choice 
 Fell once again on Lincoln. Once again 
 He stood upon the Eastern portico, 
 Where, in the mists of a departed hour, 
 He plead for peace, and, holding forth gaunt hands, 
 Implored his wayward countrymen to pause. 
 They heeded not, but, answering with jeers, 
 Plunged into battle, proud and arrogant, 
 Full of the overconfidence which breeds 
 The seeds of its undoing. 
 
 Through the stress, 
 The awful murderous stress, of those four years, 
 America had agonized, and care 
 Had writ deep lines on Lincoln's homely face. 
 
 i8s 
 
The maddened South had driven deep its crime 
 Into its own torn entrails, and to-day 
 Stood, Hke a desolated temple, reft 
 Of all that once was beauty. 
 
 From the throng 
 Now burst a mighty cheer; from throats grown dry 
 With fever came the faint pathetic note 
 Of those whom weeks in crowded hospitals 
 Had left but wrecks of men. 
 
 On crutches came 
 Hundreds of soldiers, maimed, to serve the cause 
 And fight the fight of freedom; and anon 
 An eager light stole piteously athwart 
 The faded eyes of men who soon must die 
 Of dread disease of camp and swampy field, 
 Who yet would die the happier to have seen 
 The saviour of his country. 
 
 Lifting up 
 His face, whereon emotion lambent played, 
 Lincoln made sign for silence, and his lips 
 Uttered the message that was half a prayer. 
 He showed the purposes which rashly led 
 
 i86 
 
The insurgents into action; how at first 
 
 The government sought but to set due bounds 
 
 To slavery's extension, — ^not at all 
 
 To banish it; how, by their own mad act. 
 
 The people of the South had forced the end 
 
 Of slavery forever. 
 
 "Ah!" he cried, 
 "The Almighty's purposes are all His own. 
 Woe to the world because offences come. 
 Offences needs must come, but woe to him 
 By whom the wrong is wrought. Shall we suppose 
 That slavery, which haply needs must come. 
 Hath brought the woe of war to North and South? 
 Fondly we hope, as fervently we pray, 
 That this grim scourge of war may pass away; 
 Yet if God wills that it continue till 
 The wealth piled up by all the centuries 
 Of unrequited labor shall be sunk, — 
 Till every drop of blood drawn by the lash 
 Shall be repaid by one drawn by the sword, — 
 So still it must be said, as 'twas of yore, 
 The judgments of the Lord are ever true 
 And righteous altogether." 
 
 187 
 
Then in tears, 
 Vibrant with all the passion of a seer: 
 "With malice," spoke the prophet, "towards none; 
 With charity for all; with firmness in 
 The right, as God gives us to see the right. 
 Let us complete the work that we are in." 
 When he had ended, the upswelling cheer 
 That rose, fell off to silence, checked by awe 
 Too deep for human bearing; and adown 
 The gusty colonnades and broad arcades 
 Of the vast capitol, an echo rang 
 Heard yet to-day: "With charity for all." 
 
 IV 
 
 Yea, and the time made bitter call for all 
 The strength of human wills, to keep the faith 
 With scorned humanity's most stern commands. 
 From Libby Prison came the rending cry 
 Of Union soldiers, scourged to tasks, and galled 
 With chains more bitter than the clutch of death. 
 The outraged face of Mercy turned away 
 From all the horrors of Fort Pillow; while 
 
 i88 
 
At Andersonville carnival went on 
 
 To please the bloody fancies of a fiend. 
 
 Then in the Senate rose the sturdy Wade, 
 
 Demanding that retaliation be 
 
 Forthwith resorted to. But Sumner's voice 
 
 Was firm for righteousness. And Lincoln spoke, 
 
 Out of his human heart, those words of gold: 
 
 "I cannot starve and murder men, though all 
 
 The malice of our foes should goad us on. 
 
 Two wrongs have never made a right, and we 
 
 Must follow conscience even to the end." 
 
 Now, as the glimmerings of coming peace 
 Greatened to dawn, the mind of Lincoln dwelt 
 On reconstruction of the edifice 
 So rudely shocked by war. The Union stood, 
 Yet from a smoking, desolated South 
 Came glimpses but of ruin. Every State 
 Still in rebellion must be organized 
 Under a new and loyal government. 
 Obedience first, then restoration to 
 The rights of citizenship, and once again 
 
 189 
 
Admission to the councils of the land. 
 
 The mighty task which now a mighty mind 
 
 Essayed to carry to completion, was 
 
 The rearing of the torn Republic's fane, 
 
 The restoration of a temple fair 
 
 In all its pristine beauty. 
 
 Yet once more 
 There came the call to battle. Lee was camped 
 Beside the Appomattox, while there drew 
 An ever closing circle of blue ranks, 
 Upon whose banners victory sat to cheer 
 Each loyal soul to action. Grant was there, 
 Silent and confident, his veterans 
 Eager to make an ending of the foe. 
 Sherman, whose lines of eighty thousand men 
 Sought but to form the junction which should force 
 All opposition down, watched eagerly 
 The coming of the end; while Sheridan, 
 Earnest, alert and rapid, marched to seize 
 Lee's only avenue of exit. Thus 
 A fustian Confederacy was brought 
 To its last gasp of life. Lee, ever brave, 
 
 190 
 
Held out, but warned his chief that Petersburg 
 And Richmond too must fall. 
 
 Then Davis fled, 
 A pitiable object, symbol fit 
 Of treason decked in fear's habiliments; 
 And at the dawning of another day 
 The Union cavalry possession took 
 Of Richmond, and upon the state-house raised 
 Once more the old flag, — the unsullied stars 
 And waving stripes of freedom. 
 
 But for Grant 
 A greater goal lured onward. Then and there 
 He vowed to "end the matter." Pushing on 
 Up one side of the Appomattox, Ord, 
 Leading the valiant army of the James; 
 Grant on the other, and with Sheridan 
 Scouring the ground in front, no hope was left 
 For the intrepid Lee. Through weary years 
 He had endured the grinding strains of war, 
 And in a cause unrighteous ever held 
 The path of righteous action. Now he saw 
 The inevitable end, and, stung to tears, 
 
 191 
 
Bore manly sorrows with a dignity 
 
 Befitting manhood in its best estate. 
 
 Yielding to Grant his sword, he bore away 
 
 The fragrance of a character unstained, 
 
 The while his conqueror, large-hearted, broad, 
 
 Gave generous terms, exacting naught that held 
 
 The savor of dishonor. 
 
 So the sun 
 Which shone on Appomattox, lit the fires 
 Of patriot exultation, for all knew 
 Rebellion died upon that April day, 
 And once again the Union was supreme. 
 Meanwhile, the patient Lincoln, lifting eyes 
 Of thankfulness to that Almighty power 
 Whose presence was his bulwark, came to tread 
 The dreary streets of Richmond, looking long 
 Upon the walls of Libby and the marks 
 Of desolation and the finger-prints 
 Of bloody-handed war. 
 
 The negroes flocked 
 To see him, hear him speak, haply to touch 
 His garments who, like a Messiah, came, 
 
 192 
 
Bringing deliverance and the gift of life; 
 Kissing the hand whose act had set them free, 
 Blessing the saviour whose redemption brought 
 The life of liberty to souls long crushed 
 Beneath the weight of serfdom. 
 
 Through the North, — 
 The iron-willed, indomitable North, — 
 Ran the electric joy, the deep content 
 That comes of great accomplishment. 
 
 The land 
 Once more was liberty's, once more was free 
 And dedicate to justice. From the South 
 The sound of crumbling armies, like a dirge, 
 Came fitful on the balmy winds of Spring; 
 And echoes of dire desolation died 
 Amid the anthem chords of victory. 
 
 V 
 
 Ring out, ye bells! 
 From factory, tower and steeple. 
 Ye bells that call to daily toil 
 
 193 
 
The thews and sinews of a mighty people; 
 Ye bells whose long, reverberant echo swells 
 Through lattices where moss and ivy coil 
 Cool fingers mid the stones; 
 Ye bells that utter the muezzin call 
 Translated to the language of the Christ; 
 
 Ring out in ecstasy to one and all 
 Peace, whose soft touch forever hath sufficed 
 To silence sorrow's moans. 
 
 Oh! Mother-Land, how agonized have been 
 The torture and the travail of thy days! 
 What hideous sights thine outraged eyes have seen! 
 What blood hath smeared the verdure of thy bays! 
 And 'mid thy laurel the commingled rue 
 Hath spread the gloom of a funereal shade, 
 Till thou, whose lips were fashioned to command, 
 Hast, of thy mother-love, been forced to sue, 
 Lest thine infuriate children, undismayed. 
 Should drench a sorrowing land 
 
 With one another's blood. How from thy view 
 Have patriots passed to judgment! How 
 
 194 
 
Have they held high their colors and gone down 
 In glorious pageantry of mailed death! 
 Alas! that for the crime of slavery thou 
 Shouldst be condemned to wear a martyr's crown, 
 Listening with bated breath 
 To the long roll-call of thy martial dead! 
 Yet is the end accomplished. Even now, 
 'Mid the low requiem of thy muffled drums, 
 
 A deep exultant cry. 
 Born on the rounded lips of Victory, comes, — 
 Life's music woven through a threnody, 
 Like an immortal joy! 
 War is a spectre fled; 
 Rebellion, as a dragon in the throes 
 
 Of a last agony, through all the South 
 Lashes the dust of desolation's woes. 
 And from its fetid mouth 
 Spits forth the poison fated to destroy 
 Itself in its own infamy. 
 At Appomattox the strong hand of Grant 
 Crushed out the life of treason. Gallant Lee 
 Surrendered with his legions the last plea 
 195 
 
For human bondage and the right of States 
 To sovereignty supreme. Now at the gates 
 Of a free Nation's capital we plant, 
 Unsullied still, the free flag of the people. 
 
 So ring out, ye bells! 
 From factory, tower and steeple 
 
 The victory whose echo proudly swells; 
 
 And, as the dissonant war-cries slowly cease. 
 Far over suncapped hills and greening dells 
 Fling forth your word of peace. 
 
 Yet toll, ye bells! 
 Down all the arches of the lonesome sky 
 
 Pour forth the message of a murdered joy! 
 And even as the victor's song foretells 
 
 Peace that nor hate nor malice may destroy. 
 Weave through the cadence, as it upward swells, 
 The echo of a long heart-broken sigh 
 
 Wrung from an anguished people. 
 Toll, ye bells, from factory, tower and steeple. 
 In tones made eloquent of garnered woe, 
 
 196 
 
Divinely fashioned by the hand of Grief, 
 Utter the sadness which they only know 
 
 Whose every flower is plucked from sorrow's sheaf; 
 For he is dead who loved his country so, — 
 
 Our leader and our chief! 
 
 With new light dawning in his saddened eyes, 
 
 With new joy in his ever steadfast soul, 
 Lincoln the patriot saw at last the prize 
 Gleam with the glory of a patriot's goal. 
 And even in that moment crafty death 
 
 Stole on him in a murderous madman's guise, 
 And he who saved a Nation, in a breath 
 Was one with God's immensities. 
 Ah, Fate inscrutable! Was there no life 
 
 Other than his to yield itself to thee? 
 Was there no other heart to still its strife 
 And end its being at thy stern decree? 
 
 Dear God! That he who bore a people's woes, — 
 A man of sorrows bending 'neath his cross, — 
 Should, at the moment of his blest release 
 
 From the deep anguish which a patriot knows 
 
 197 
 
In presence of his bleeding country's loss, 
 Meet death's dark midnight at the dawn of peace, — 
 Endure the thorns amid the bitter dross. 
 Yet miss at last the rapture of the rose. 
 
 Then toll, sad bells! 
 In falling minor tones o'er sun-kissed fields. 
 In dying strains far over dreamy hills, 
 Through all the pulsing life of cities, bent 
 Upon the rich rewards which effort yields, 
 
 O'er trodden street and meadow flower besprent, 
 Sound the despair which, like a requiem, stills 
 The song of exultation, and dispels 
 The flush that victory lent. 
 
 Toll, solemn bells! 
 Through dim evanished years 
 
 We seem to catch the echo of your tones. 
 
 And standing where no note of discord mars 
 The melody of life, to hear the moans, — 
 The piteous drip of tears, — 
 
 Preluding Victory's psean, which foretells 
 Immortal music sung among the stars.