flass E. 4 5 J Book THE Birthday of Abraham Lincoln 4B»" SPEECHES JOSEPH G. DARLINGTON, ESQ., HAMPTON L. CARSON, ESQ., AND MARCUS A. BROWNSON, D. D., RESPONSE TO TOASTS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, February 13, 1899. THE BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN .1 ' THE Birthday of Abraham Lincoln SPEECHES JOSEPH G. DARLINGTON, ESQ., HAMPTON L CARSON, ESQ., AND MARCUS A. BROWNSON, D. D., RESPONSE TO TOASTS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, February' 13, 1899. IN EXCHANGK It OtK si THE BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. i The annual banquet of the Union League of Phila- delphia in commemoration of the birth of Abraham Lincoln was held in the beautifully decorated assembly room of the club-house on the evening of Monday, February 13, 1899. The inclement weather and the exceptional violence of the prevailing storm prevented a full attendance of the members of the League and compelled the absence of two distinguished guests from a distance, who had been invited to respond to toasts— viz., Hon. Albert J. Beveridge, United States Senator from Indiana, and Mr. Booker T. Washington, A.M., Principal of the Tuskegee Normal School, of Alabama, both of whom were delayed en route. The President of the Union League, Mr. Joseph G. Darlington, presided. President Darlington prefaced the formal call for responses to toasts with some pertinent remarks. He said : "Gentlemen, as we sit in this comfortable room, surrounded by flowers indicative of spring, it is diffi- 3 4 cult for us to appreciate the violence of the storm that is raging without, and which is covering almost the entire country. The storm is the explanation of the absence of so many of our guests this evening. It is also the explanation of why two of the gentlemen whom we had anticipated listening to with so much pleasure are not with us. Mr. Washington is some- where between New York and Philadelphia ; Senator Beveridge, from whom we have had several telegrams during the day, is at Coatesville. The Senator is evidently as much distressed at not being with us as we are disappointed by his absence. I have re- ceived two telegrams from him since we have been at dinner — both from Coatesville. The last indicates that he is of a sanguine temperament. His first telegram reads: "Our train was due at Philadelphia at five o'clock this morning. Now at Coatesville. Probably will arrive by nine o'clock this evening." His second telegram reads : " Still at Coatesville. No information as to progress. Rail- road people can inform you when we will arrive." Unfortunately, our friends at the Broad Street station say they can not give us any information on the sub- ject. Therefore we will not have the pleasure this evening of hearing from Senator Beveridge or Mr. Washington. " Gentlemen, ninety years ago there was born of the humblest parentage, amid poverty and wretchedness, 5 a child who was destined to become one of the greatest and most remarkable characters in history. We have assembled to-night for the purpose of pay- ing a tribute of respect to his memory, and gratefully to acknowledge the greatness of his life, the purity of his life, such was the man — Abraham Lincoln. The casual reader will fail to discover any indication of greatness, but the careful reader of history will have no difficulty in detecting in his boyhood and early manhood the elements of a noble character which rapidly developed to completeness. If I should be asked to name what I consider were the greatest characteristics of Mr. Lincoln, I should unhesitatingly answer absolute, innate honesty ; — honesty in thought, honesty of purpose, honesty in deed ; entire simplicity ; a true man, true to himself, true to all men ; a man of the people ; a plain man, and so the plain people understood him, believed in him, and trusted him. And, gentlemen, let us not lose sight of the fact, that it is the plain people who rule the universe, for they are honest, and they recognize an honest man when they come in contact with him. Neither can deceive the other. The brains and the labor of the plain people of our land constitute the glory of the nation. In my judgment no higher encomium can be paid to the memory of Mr. Lincoln than to say that he was a plain man, and was believed in and trusted by the plain people. Together, under the guidance of the Almighty, they preserved the honor of the nation, and restored peace throughout its borders. " It is well that, in our busy and hurried lives, we should pause to recall the characters and deeds of the great men of our country who now rest from their labors ; and it is peculiarly fitting that The Union League should assemble out of respect to the memory of this great man ; for, gentlemen, The Union League was organized in the early part of Mr. Lincoln's ad- ministration, when the affairs of the country were in the most discouraging and disheartening condition, when it was a very grave question whether the Union would, or could be preserved. To uphold the Presi- dent, to aid the Government, was the object of the founders of The Union League. "Among all the glorious characters in our country's history Abraham Lincoln stands forth as a sunburst, casting its brilliancy over mankind throughout the world. We thank God for sending such a man to earth. The effect and influence of his life will endure throughout the ages, and as the years roll by the world will understand the man better, and be more and more convinced and impressed with his greatness." The President then introduced, in complimentary terms, the first speaker of the evening, Hampton L. Carson, Esq., upon whom he called to respond to the toast, "The Real Greatness of Lincoln." The Real Greatness of Lincoln. Hampton L. Carson, Esq., responded. After a cor- dial greeting-, he said : " Mr. President and Members of the Union League : I consider it a distinguished honor and a rare privi- lege to be called upon, on this occasion, to respond to such a toast. Much of what I might have said has been most exquisitely and fittingly said by you, Mr. President, in the few but happy and expressive words which you have used in describing the char- acter of Abraham Lincoln. I can do little but add to what you have said. " For some fifteen years or more I have been a dili- gent collector of the engraved portraits of all the great men who have taken part in the making and development of America since the time of Columbus. I think it is safe to say that there are 30,000 pieces in that collection ; pictures of statesmen, Presidents, ex- plorers, bankers, lawyers, merchants, manufacturers — all those who have assisted in building up the mighty buttresses of our institutions, and who led in every needed reform or in the extension of a useful move- ment. Of Mr. Lincoln I have at least one hundred different pictures ; and it is not too much to say that the most dignified, the most thoughtful, the most rugo-ed, a s well as the saddest face in the vast army of leaders is his. A gaunt, tall form ; a firm-set head, with beet- 8 ling brows, and 'eyes from which the soul of an immor- tal sorrow looks ' ; a spirit baptized in that rain of blood which drenched the sod and the forests of the Southern States until his heart grew sick with orief : a spirit which embodied the woe of Lear and the tragedy of Hamlet, and which would have broken be- neath the weight had it not been enlivened by en- joyment of the humor of the ' Merry Wives of Wind- sor' and the merriment of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' I never look at those pictures without recall- ing two scenes of April, 1865. I was but a boy of thirteen, but if I live to be ninety and nine, unless my faculties decay, I can never lose the memory of them. The old city of Philadelphia, by night, was indeed dark and dismal ; here and there was a straggling gas-lamp, everywhere badly paved streets, made more gloomy by the tightly closed front shutters, through which not a single hospitable gleam shot out from any parlor on the sidewalk — a drearier or more depressing scene I can not recall. And yet one night I remember when every house from the Schuylkill to the Delaware, and from League Island to Germantown, was ablaze with light ; flags were afloat upon the joyous breeze ; the ground resounded beneath the tread of multitudes who shouted in triumph; troops of happy boys, of which I was one, ran up and down the streets, sing- ing, ' Rally 'round the flag, boys,' ' Marching through Georgia,' or 'We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree ' ; the solid earth quivered with a joy- ous palpitation which indicated, by a strange, sub- terranean murmur, that the feelings of the nation, so long pent up, had found a voice in exultation over the surrender of Lee, and the conviction that at last there was full assurance that this Union was, and should remain for all time, 'an indissoluble Union of indestructible States.' In a few days that scene had changed. I recollect the State House wreathed in black; every block of buildings was draped in sable; every house stood with shutters bowed ; every man, with pallid face, whispered to his neighbors ; women spoke in convulsive sobs ; children ceased their play, hushed and awe-stricken; every officer on the street had crape upon his arm, or wore the rosette of mourning; our daily newspapers were bordered with broad, black bands ; there was a suffo- cating grief in the air, which, as a child, I felt but could not explain. Was it because the President of the United States was dead? Was it because our victory had been shorn of its fulfilment by the loss of our leader ? No ; it was because the greatest soul of the nineteenth century had passed from earth to immortality. "What was the secret of this man's greatness? Ah ! what is the secret of the strength of iron, of the tenacity of steel, of the fiber of the oak ? You must answer, It is a secret of the eternal hills; it is a IO riddle of the elements, a mystery connected with those dim, far-distant times when raw material was shaped in the womb of the mountains. The secret of Abraham Lincoln's greatness must be sought for in the evolution of family isolation, in the struggle with primeval forces, in a life spent in the loneli- ness of untrodden forests ; in a state of society when men had no strong nation at their backs to sustain them in their rights, when they had to hew out for themselves a solution of every problem in their grapple with a harsh condition of life, and in con- flict with a savage foe which still hung upon the borders of the wilderness. " Lincoln could trace his forefathers back for six generations to respectable ancestry — Charles Lincoln, I think it was, who came from Norwich to Hingham, Mass., his descendants coming into Berks County, Pa., removing into Virginia ; and then the grand- father, who was a co-pioneer with Daniel Boone, push- ing into old Kentucky — but the sad fact must be told : his father was a luckless rover, a miserable squatter, moving about from State to State in a vain search for the acquisition of property. He went from Kentucky to Indiana, and from Indiana to Illinois. His mother, — what matters it that she knew not whence she came? — is it not immortality for her womanhood to have been the mother of Abraham Lincoln ? "A boyhood spent, as your president has told you, II amid squalid, poverty-stricken, coarse, low, ignorant surroundings ; in a half-faced cabin scarcely as snug as the winter cavern of a bear ; and yet the seed of that immortal spirit, planted in such a soil, nurtured by such surroundings, was developed by adversity into a noble growth. No other President of the United States ever sprang from so lowly an origin, — nay, from such a pit. It is a familiar story in America for men to rise from poverty to the White House ; it is a familiar story to trace the barefooted boy through the various positions of clerk, storekeeper, member of the Legislature, member of Congress, to high position in the Cabinet or in the White House ; but the fact that he became President is not the crowning feature of his career. It is true he had but one year's school- ing in all his life ; it is true that as a backwoodsman he split rails for Nancy Miller, at the rate of four hundred for every yard of jean cloth stained, in walnut-juice, for a pair of trousers, as his price ; it is true that as a flat-boatman he floated down the broad waters of the Illinois to the Ohio, and from the Ohio to the Mississippi ; and that there, on some Southern wharf, he beheld a scene of the slave-market which first drove the iron into his soul. He recorded no vow like that of Hannibal at the altar, but between clenched teeth he muttered, ' If it ever comes within my power to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard.' {Applause.) "A surveyor; a postmaster, with his office in his 12 hat ; a member of the Legislature without great dis- tinction, but active in securing the removal of the capital of the State from Vandalia to Springfield ; a member of Congress without attracting particular attention ; finally working out for himself the problems that revolved before his mind ; thinking, as the man who knew him best once said, more than any other man in America ever thought, and reading less, because books were few and opportunities for thought were many, — thinking, as he rode upon his horse across the broad prairie, where the quail whistled to its mate and the red deer sprang from the ripened grass beside his path, — thinking of those mysterious problems as to the meaning of this Government, as to its powers and as to whether slavery could constitutionally be ex- cluded from the territories, — he finally worked out the answer, and in the discussions which led to their settlement achieved distinction by dint of his own inherent force of character, his conscientiousness, his courage, his intelligence, and his commanding position on the hustings. He rose so steadily and so loftily that he was at last in a position, when the Douglas debate gave him an opportunity to enter upon a death-grapple with the hateful wrong, in an argument which attracted attention in all parts of the country, and drew the eyes of all men to the Illinois campaign for senator, in which he routed the 'Little Giant,' and as a Rupert of Debate became immortal. *3 "Had his career stopped there, we would still say, ' There is nothing so extraordinary in this' ; but he had not yet reached the full measure of his stature. In the great conflict that followed he appeared at the Cooper Institute, and delivered a speech which made his reputation national, and then for the first time there flashed throughout the great, loyal, struggling region of the North a conviction that the bold declaration which had caused his defeat as a senator of the United States had made him a possible candidate for the Presidency : ' A house divided against itself can not stand ; this country can not remain half-slave and half- free ; I do not expect to see the Union dissolved, but I do expect to see it become wholly one or the other.' Time proved that he was right. " The gentlemen who were instrumental in forming this League remember well what the feeling was when it was announced that Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and not William H. Seward, of New York, had been nominated by the Chicago Convention for the Presi- dency of the United States. Did any student of our history, familiar with the names and deeds of our former statesmen, make mention of him as a probable great leader? Was there any prophet among the statesmen of his day who foresaw either what he would accomplish or what he might be called upon to accom- plish? This ' mast- fed lawyer,' as he was called; this 'Illinois ape '; this 'half-horse, half-alligator'; this H man ' reared on the muck of the prairies '; this man 'who tells a story when other men are grave'; this man 'who has had no experience in the affairs of life'; this man 'utterly destitute of knowledge and of foreign diplomacy'; this man 'who was elevated for the time being to a conspicuous position because of his debate with Senator Douglas ' — was this the man to be intrusted with the Presidency of the United States? Do we of to-day doubt Abraham Lincoln's ability, question his sagacity, or deny his mastery? Why, not one month had he been President of the United States before his cabinet knew that he was master. His Secretary of State, William H. Seward, the foremost statesman of his day, his most conspicu- ous rival, the man whose eloquence had charmed the Senate, whose knowledge of our foreign relations was world-wide, and whose fame was equally so; Chase, his Secretary of the Treasury, the most conspicuous of the Western antislavery men ; his Secretary of War, the most powerful man in Pennsylvania ; his Post- master-general, Mr. Blair, the leader in the border States ; his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, commanding the support of New England — these men, coming together, assured themselves that if this raw, untrained giant of the West did not know how to run the Government, they could do it for him and keep his head and feet in line ! Within a month Mr. Seward informed the President that the 15 Government had no policy, either domestic or foreign ; and he had taken the liberty to sketch out a paper which he would submit for the President's considera- tion, and for the execution of which he himself would stand pledged. It proposed to drop out of sight entirely the slavery issue ; it proposed to call France, Spain, and England to a strict account, and, if they gave no satisfactory explanation of their actions, to wage a foreign war in the hope of reuniting the dissevered sections of the country in resolute resist- ance to foreigners. Mr. Lincoln, who had no knowl- edge by experience of foreign policy, quietly pocketed that paper and, in terms polite but firm, allowed Mr. Seward to know that the President of the United States, who had sworn to uphold the Constitution and maintain the laws, and whose oath to do it had been taken on the east front of the capitol, would face the responsibilities of the position for himself. (Applause.) " He was the intellectual master of a cabinet of giants. Read the tributes of the men who did not like him. Read the unwilling admissions wrung from the lips of those who did not at first respect him. Read the tributes from the reluctant pens of critics who subsequently confessed themselves as pigmies in his presence. No doubt can there be as to whose was the ruling mind or whose the master-spirit through those long, dark, dreary years. His intellectual power was, it seems to me, the first and most conspicuous i6 feature of his greatness. It was a power such as that exercised by John Marshall in jurisprudence, or Isaac Newton in philosophy, when stating a case or present- ing a proposition, the statement being in itself not only a vindication of the position assumed, but a logi- cal demonstration of its truth, unalterable, impreg- nable, and needing no argument for its support. ' If this thing- is not wrong, there can be nothings which is wrong; if slavery is right, then nothing is right.' In these few words he gave expression to a simple, clear, and direct view of the immorality of slavery. He had also an analytical power in which no man was his equal, combined with a calmness and courage which were divine. His patience, his firmness, his tenacity of purpose, the manner in which, after having formu- lated a proposition in his mind, he would cling to it, constituted the grandest element of strength in the totality of that strange, mysterious combination of in- congruous qualities which made up the sublime char- acter which stands accredited to his name. "He combined modesty with patience. 'lam the humblest man,' he said, ' ever called on to fill this office, and yet I have a duty to perform greater than that of any man, not excepting even George Wash- ington.' Behold his endurance ! We have seen the captain on the bridge of some great ship calmly issue his orders amid the howling of the storm ; we have applauded the presence of mind of the general who, in i7 the storm of battle, coolly surveyed the field, marshalled his troops, or threw his squadrons upon hill-top or into valley to break the weakest line of the enemy ; we have admired the heroism of the engineer who, firing- his locomotive, rushed through blazing forests for a distance of miles, to save the lives of his passen- gers ; we have applauded the skill and celerity of the great commander who traversed ten thousand miles, through tropic seas, and brought his battleship around the Horn in time to share in a critical engagement ; but never was there such agony of endurance or self- possession imposed upon any man in high position as that which was required of the President of the United States from 1861 to 1865. A storm, however violent, in a few hours is over ; a battle in a few days is won ; a run of a few miles takes the engineer beyond the burning forest ; the sea-voyage of ten thousand miles is ended in two months ; but here was a man who, day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, bore with herculean shoulders the whole dreadful weight of responsibility, and faced the momentous issues of fate ; a man with a divided party at his back ; with Ben Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, and Henry Winter Davis issuing their flaming manifestoes against him in denunciation because he was not destructive enough or not aggressive enough. The earth opened, as he stood on the very edge of a flaming pit, but his head never reeled nor did his heart quail ; the sulphur- i8 ous fumes of that devil's caldron rolled into the air, enveloping this republic in a conflagration such as, thank God, it will never see again ; but far above the vapors of hell the people saw, growing grander and more majestic as it loomed and rose higher and still higher, a firm, calm, sublime, self-regnant soul which, for them as well as for the black chattels of the South, lived but for the salvation of the Union and the emanci- pation of the slave ! (Applatise.) Beneath pressure from Congress ; with radical editors like Mr. Greeley and Henry Ward Beecher writing bitter editorials which, like mowing-machines, cut at every revolution ; with clamor from office-holders or shrieks of rage from disappointed applicants ; not knowing where he would find absolute support, whether from the radical or con- servative wing of his party, Mr. Lincoln clearly per- ceived, as no other man of his time did perceive, that if he but waited, the plain people (of whom he was the best and most expressive type) would some day come to his support. He knew that the war was one which could not be fought to success by noisy debaters in Congress, nor by the sons of a few rich men leaving their occupations and marching into the field, but that victory must depend upon the voluntary services of boys who, while dedicating themselves to the salvation of the Union, had not yet learned to associate Emanci- pation with Constitutional Preservation. He knew that he must sublimely wait. He waited, and the time 19 came. The second call for arms was made when the people were ready to receive it. And then, not from the slums of cities, not from the ooze of social swamps, not from the ranks of the dissolute and the idle, not from hirelings bought by bounty, not from hordes of adventurers, but from mill and factory, from barn and hamlet, from church and school-house, from cross-roads' store and gilded club, from drawing-room and work- shop, from mountain-top and valley, from lumber dis- trict and iron mine, from granite quarry and marl pit, poured ten thousand confluent streams of gallant 'boys in blue,' their caps up-tossed to salute the flao- their souls uplifted by devotion to the Union, their eyes glistening with heroic resolution, their quick hearts beating to the music of the charge, while the winds, heavy-laden with the sighs of mothers, the tears of wives, the sobs of sisters, the blessings of fathers, bore down to the listening ears of that great, steadfast, silent, suffering man in the White House, the thunder of their battle-shout, 'We are coming, Father Abra- ham, three hundred thousand more ! ' {Cheers) " Ah, yes, he was the Father of his people ! There's no cant in that. He was the same man whose sympa- thetic heart could not affirm the death- sentence of a court-martial ; the man who revised and modified the action taken under the rules of war by every military body against deserters, spies, boys sleeping on their posts, or lads delayed on furlough ; the man to whom 20 the loss of a human life was as a personal loss ; the man who oftener set aside judgments of death than did any other human being who ever held a similar position or who was invested with similar power. How many hearts of wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters were gladdened by his merciful interposition ! The officers of the army did not like it. They sent him telegram after telegram, saying, ' Do not interfere with our find- ings ; you are destroying the discipline of the army ' ; but his response was, ' This is an army of volunteers for the salvation of the Union, and I can not apply to them the rules of the regular service when there are extenuating circumstances.' {Applause?) And so, gradually, a realization of the greatness, the mercy, and the goodness of the man extended all over the country. It was from no spirit of superstition, but simply from a child-like recognition of a patent truth that the colored preacher exclaimed, ' Massa Lincoln, he know ebery- ting, he eberywhere ; he walk de earf like de Lord ! ' Such a tribute from what many might call a be- nighted mind was the revelation of a universal senti- ment. " Some saw in Lincoln simply an idle story-teller, because when other men were grave, he sought to be jocose. I have read many of his alleged stories, and I know that an excellent reason for his habit was given by men who knew him well. The deep-seated melan- choly in his eyes indicated that the heavily burdened 21 spirit would have broken if it had not had some relief; and when I said that his spirit embodied the woe of Lear and the tragedy of Hamlet, and would have snapped had it not had the humor of ' The Merry- Wives of Windsor ' and the merriment of ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' I uttered a truth well known to those who knew him best. His humor preserved the sanity and the integrity of his mind ; or, if Lincoln himself could have expressed it, he was ' always pulling and tugging at the butt-end of a log, or else sitting on the end, whittling for recreation and for rest.' Like Talleyrand, so many stories are credited to him that had he spent the whole of his presidential term and double that length of time in telling stories, the period would not have sufficed for the actual narration of all of them. But he made a plain statement of a case with a story. He evaded responsibility, at a time when responsibility ought not to be assumed, by the same means. When a visitor asked for informa- tion which he had no right to expect would be given, instead of having his feelings hurt by an abrupt reply, he would be told a story. When the merchants of New York, alarmed by the exploits of the Merrimac, sent their delegation to Washington, their spokesman told the President, 'We represent a hundred millions of our own money, we are loyal citizens, we have paid our taxes, and we want you, Mr. President, to send a gunboat into the harbor of New York in order to 22 protect us from the Merrimac,' Mr. Lincoln replied, ' Gentleman, I am the President of the United States, I am the commander of the army and the navy, I can send ships in any direction I please, but at the present time every ship is engaged in some useful service ; I don't actually know where they are; but if I had one-half of your money and were only half as much " skeered " as you appear to be, I would buy or build a gunboat for myself and present it to the Government.' {Applause?) "When that gentle little Quaker lady who had received a revelation from on high that the President ought to emancipate the slave went into the White House and told her story, and told of Deborah and how she interfered in the matter of Sampson, the President queried thus : ' You believe that I have been chosen by the Lord to carry on this Government ? ' ' Yes, Mr. President.' ' Well, if you believe that, why should n't the Lord have revealed my duty to me instead of to you?' {Merriment?) When the clergy- men of Chicago, drawing themselves up en masse, insisted that he should, in response to a revelation from on high, of which they were the God-sent mes- sengers, immediately emancipate the slave, the Presi- dent said, ' Gentlemen, I recognize your mission and your high calling, but, believing that I myself am a servant of the Lord, I am a little at a loss to understand why He should have chosen such a round-about route 2 3 as the wicked city of Chicago in order to communicate with me.' (Co?itinued merriment.) When a sudden raid was made and a brigadier general and 200 mules were captured by the rebels, Mr. Lincoln remarked, 'Well, about that brigadier, I probably could supply his place in five minutes, but as to those mules, they cost us $200 apiece.' When trouble was made over the retirement of one of the members of his Cabinet, and a great difficulty ensued, and finally pressure was exerted to secure the removal of all the remain- ing members of the Cabinet, he said, ' Gentlemen, your request reminds me of that man out in San- gamon County, 111., who was much troubled with skunks, and he went out with a gun and killed one of them at the wood-pile. When his wife accosted him with "I thought you were going to shoot that whole lot of skunks," his answer was, "Yes, Jane, I went out there, saw five skunks and shot one of them, but the one that I killed made such a 'tarnal smell that I thought I would let the others live." ' {General merriment?) When much pressed by an office-seeker, who insisted on having recognition, and who, upon being refused, began to abuse the Presi- dent, Mr. Lincoln, with true dignity, said, ' Sir, I can submit to censure, but I will never tolerate insult,' and, taking hold of the man with his long, strong hand, promptly ejected him from the room. " These incidents give you but one phase of the 24 character of the man, and by some they are regarded as showing his characteristics. But place beside them his utterances in State papers. You will search the literature of Presidential proclamations in vain for anything finer in the English tongue, nay, in human speech, than the language of the First Inaugural, or the Gettysburg address, or the Second Inaugural. Indeed, they read like inspired passages from Isaiah or Job. What an exquisite appeal, what a pathetic argument was that which was addressed to our erring Southern brothers: 'We are not enemies, we must be friends. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and every patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone in this broad land of ours will swell again the chorus of the Union when touched, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.' ' Fervently do we hope, fondly do we pray that this cruel scourge of war may pass away ; but if that is not to be, if God wills that it should last until all the wealth piled up by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall have been spent, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by another drop drawn by the sword, still shall it be said, as was said three thousand years ago, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' (Applmise.) "Believing that the people would sanction his action, and convinced at last that the integrity of the 25 Union was only to be saved by the gift of freedom to the slave, he made a solemn vow that if the arms of McClellan were crowned with victory at the battle of Antietam, he would bless that achievement by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation ; and then, in the rapture of that joyous hour, dipping his pen in the sunlight, he signed his name to that immortal document, which enrolled him among the benefac- tors of mankind. This was his great, his crowning act — one which for all time will stand alone, like the Constitution of the United States, without a prototype and without a fellow. "The character of Lincoln? Ah, if that can be analyzed, it was his charity, his heartiness, his kindli- ness, his human sympathy, which endeared him to the multitude. But it was his relentless logical power, his clear perception, his grasp of details, his ten- acity of purpose, his sense of justice, his loftiness of view, his moral courage, — that magnificent equipoise of conscience, of heart, and of brain, — which lifted him up far above the heads of all other men, and which enabled him to place his country upon a plane so high and safe that the dastards of despotism no longer dared to question the might, the majesty, and the sublimity of freedom. " No voice but that of the archangel can now reach his ear, but his fame and his memory will be preserved and increase from age to age. When unseen fingers 26 strike back the bolts which lock out futurity, when this country shall have grown to two hundred millions of people, when one-third of the population of the earth shall speak the English tongue, when the dusky millions of distant islands shall learn to lisp the golden words of liberty, and free institutions are scattering blessings in every clime, then will the name of Lincoln as liberator be on every lip, and nothing but the spaciousness of centuries can fitly frame the grandeur of his fame. (Long-continued applause.) The President. — " Gentlemen, I know of no higher evidence of a gracious disposition than is exhibited by a gentleman who, coming to a dinner with no intention of speaking, is willing, upon a moment's notice, to lend his voice to entertain the company surrounding him. We have with us to- night a gentleman who is blessed with just that gra- cious character, who has very kindly consented to respond to the call now made upon him. I take great pleasure in introducing to you the Rev. Dr. Brownson." Response by Rev. Marcus A. Brownson, D.D. Dr. Brownson, when the applause which greeted him had subsided, said : "Mr. President and members of the Union League, assembled here to-7iight to commemorate the birth of 27 Abraham Lincoln: I have first to say to you, upon this call, that I have received so many kindly court- esies and such gracious treatment from the Union League, upon many former occasions, that I should feel myself to be an ingrate if I were unwilling now to rise for a few moments and mingle my voice in the praises which are ascending from this board unto our God for the birth and life and immortal fame of President Lincoln. I have, like every young Amer- ican, inherited a reverence for that great name. I have not in my possession treasures such as those of which Mr. Carson has so eloquently spoken this evening, but I do have a memento which I value highly. It is nothing else than a lock of hair which once grew upon the forehead of Abraham Lincoln. It was given to me by a lawyer in the West, to whom it had been given by Governor Bagley, of Michigan. I prize the little token as a treasure the value of which I can not estimate. I take it out fre- quently, and always upon this anniversary day, and I never look upon it without remembering the glory of that man of destiny, who stood for the preserva- tion of the Union in the time which has been so graphically pictured to us to-night by the distin- guished orator of the evening. " I will not ascend the platform on which Mr. Car- son has stood, for I could not hope to rise to the height of his eloquence in the few words which I 28 shall say, but with him and with you all I share the opinion that among all the great men whom our country has brought forth upon the stage of action Lincoln is preeminent. Mr. Stanton, whose picture yonder looks toward this portrait of Lincoln that is encircled with the red, white, and blue of our national emblem, when he stood by the bedside of the de- parted Lincoln, in Peterson's house, opposite Ford's Theater, at Washington (a picture of which appears on the menu card), exclaimed, as the President's pulse ceased to beat and his heart became still, ' Now he belongs to the ages.' It is said that, when that magnificent and stately funeral pageant had pro- ceeded from Washington to Baltimore, from Balti- more to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to New York, and then northward and westward, those who accompanied the mortal remains of Abraham Lincoln and who watched the great concourses 01 people who assembled at various places to glance upon that face so solemn, so sad, and yet so sweet, as it was cold in death, began to realize the prophecy of Mr. Stanton as soon to be fulfilled. And was it not so that the press of England, which had defamed his character, which had misrepresented his motives, which had misconstrued his deliverances and the poli- cies he had announced, sent over the water the most gracious and kindly apologies for the sentences which they had printed, and joined with the people of this 20 great land in acknowledging his worth and his immor- tality. Although in the House of Lords and also in the House of Commons speeches which were care- fully delivered set forth a conservative opinion con- cerning Mr. Lincoln, the sentiment of the English people found its true expression when Queen Victoria wrote to the widow of Mr. Lincoln, as "a widow to a widow." There came to Washington from a patri- otic society of sunny France, inclosed in a little box, an assurance of French sympathy. Accompanying that token of affection was this message : ' The heart of France is in that box.' In the Netherlands the character of Mr. Lincoln was likened to that of William the Silent, whom Mr. Motley describes, when speaking of the assassination, as one who had gone through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his heart, and " when he died, the little children wept in the streets." Like tributes were paid to Mr. Lincoln all over the civilized world, in all forms of literary expression, in addresses, in halls of legislation, and in the pulpits throughout Christendom. Even in the South Sea Islands, as we have heard to-night, the old negro declared his love and reverence for Mr. Lincoln when he said, ' He walked like Jesus.' " Mr. Lincoln's character has been so accurately analyzed, his life has been so beautifully portrayed, and the majesty of his achievements have been so 3° glowingly set forth that it is not necessary to attempt a repetition ; but we do all give thanks unto God, to-night, that He raised up a child of the people at that critical hour, who also regarded himself as a child of destiny and who served his land in the fear of God and with the great day of eternal account ever before his eyes. His very kindliness of heart found early expression when, as a pioneer in the Western land, he was known to descend from his horse, as he passed through a forest, to lift a fledg- ling that had fallen from the nest overhead, that the mother bird might not lose her young beneath the feet of his steed. As we have heard to-nieht, he never could close his eyes in reposeful slumber if he knew that a soldier boy was to be shot down for a failure in duty, or when he thought of the mighty sorrow of an enslaved people. "I think that one of the most beautiful and pathetic pictures in literature is that which appears in the voluminous work on the life of Mr. Lincoln by Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, when they tell of his solicitude at the outbreak of the war, as he paced the great floor of the East Room of the White House, awaiting the coming of the belated troops from New England. When they came not he fell upon his knees at the window, looking out in the direction from which the troops were expected and, not knowing that he was observed, he cried in agony 3i of soul, 'Oh, God, why do they not come?' This was one incident that tells of the self-sacrifice which caused him to be willing to bear upon his great heart the destinies of a nation for the ultimate eood of millions. " I suppose no speech concerning Mr. Lincoln would be at all complete without an allusion to a story or two of the many which have been credited to him. These stories, as Mr. Carson has sue- gested, show the occasions for recreation which were but outlets to the seriousness of his nature and aptly met the conditions by which he was surrounded. Perhaps you have heard this one : A certain man appeared before Mr. Lincoln as an appli- cant for a political appointment and presented a large number of letters which the President only cursorily glanced over, but, being pleased with the man's appearance and his evident honesty, assured him at once, 'I will give you the appointment.' The delighted seeker after office was about to depart joy- fully and in great haste when Mr. Lincoln called after him, ' One moment — here are the letters of recom- mendation which you have presented.' 'I care noth- ing for them,' said his beneficiary. 'Ah,' the Presi- dent rejoined, ' but if you come to Washington, you will need all these and more to get into St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church.' {Merriment}) "You remember to have heard a thousand such 32 stories. I recall having- heard once, at a gathering at a summer hotel, a lecture, or rather an evening talk, upon Mr. Lincoln's character, by Mr. Leonard C. Svvett, who practised law with him in the early history of Illinois. Mr. Swett was a man of huge size, be- ing taller and stouter than Mr. Lincoln. He and Judge Davis, a man of large frame also, were wont to travel together over the judicial circuit for the trial of cases. Judge Davis upon a certain occasion was called home by the serious illness of his wife, and Mr. Swett, with other lawyers, being far away from home and not desiring to return and then come back to finish the business of the court, held a conference, and concluded to elect one of their number to serve as judge temporarily, in the absence of Judge Davis. Mr. Lincoln was elevated to the position. A case came before the court, which may be briefly stated in this way : A farm-boy, after the harvest-time, had gone into the village and had ordered from a merchant tailor what, in those days, was considered a very hand- some suit of clothes, at a cost of twenty-eight dollars. The father of the boy refused to pay the bill, and a suit was instituted in order to effect a compulsory payment. The case having been argued before him as judge, Mr. Lincoln, in his charge to the jury, said that a suit of clothes costing as much as twenty-eight dollars was an unnecessary and unjustifiable expendi- ture on the part of any young American. He added : 33 'Inasmuch as I myself have never up to this time enjoyed the luxury of a suit of clothes costing that sum of money, I am compelled to charge the jury in accordance with my own views.' This statement was made by Mr. Lincoln only a short time before his nomination for the presidency. "The humble origin of the man ; his plain and simple style of life ; his identification with the common people whom he loved and to whose hearts and consciences, as he so often said, he always kept near, awaken at this late day increasing admiration for his character and his inherent greatness. Mr. Swett also recalled, as I remember his charming talk, the fact that Mr. Lincoln was exceedingly generous in his treatment of his brother-lawyers. Upon a certain occasion he said to Mr. Swett, ' Swett, did you ever notice that a door swings upon two, or at the most three, hinges? You may string fifty pairs of hinges upon the door, but they would be unnecessary, for only the two or three will swing it. And so it is in most of the cases at law. There are only one or two essential points in a case. Now, let 's be generous — we '11 give the other fellows all the other points and we will press for the two or three.' And the pressure for the two or three usually won the case. "We have heard Mr. Lincoln spoken of as a man of letters, as an orator of the highest rank ; and so he was. Otherwise Emerson and Lowell would not LofC 34 commend his homely utterances and compare them, for point and pith, to the fables of y^sop, nor would the literary men of our country and of the world declare that those trite phrases had taken rank with sentences in the immortal allegory of Bunyan for style and with the triumphs of literature which have most mightily impressed the human mind and moved the human heart. " He regarded himself as a child of destiny. It seems to me that that was the controlling char- acteristic of his great mind and his great life. At the close of the war military chieftains united in declaring that Mr. Lincoln had been the greatest strategist of the conflict. And if he was generous to the men in the field, to those in command, and to the men in the ranks, if he trusted those whom he sent forth to the field of battle, it only added to his greatness in that he had confidence in other men, and believed that they, like himself, appreciated the responsibility imposed upon them. " The northernmost grave on the face of the earth, in the Arctic region, is marked by a plain copper plate affixed to a standard at the head, the inscrip- tion upon which is in these words : " Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." The raging storm of to-night suggests the reference. I believe from many incidental evidences that the great soul of Lincoln often offered that prayer in secret to the 35 Saviour of the world and that, when he left the earth, he attained through grace to the immortal purity of the celestial land where no sorrow enters and where God wipes away all tears from the eye ; and that he looks down upon a land guided by his superior states- manship, delivered from perils by his far-sighted policy and wise utterances — upon a people whose future greatness he did not and could not foresee and com- prehend, but who will ever regard him as among the immortals of our American history, perhaps as the American preeminent, whose returning birth anni- versary each year develops an intenser love and a loftier admiration for his memory." The President. — " Gentlemen, expressing our ad- miration and appreciation of Mr. Carson's most bril- liant oration, and our acknowledgment to Dr. Brown- son for his gracious courtesy in making us so excellent an address, the Chair announces that the evening s o program has reached an end."