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LINCOLN: 
 THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 By EUGENE W. CHAFIN, LL. B. 
 
 OF THE CHICAGO BAR 
 
 "The field of history is so vast that the student derives 
 his completest instruction from biographies." 
 
 — Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Publiflked by 
 
 LINCOLN TEMPERANCE PRESS 
 
 92 La Salle Street 
 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 1908 
 
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 LiSrtARY or COiVahtSa 
 I wo iliouies hetaiv<M« 
 
 JUN 27 i^Od 
 
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 Copyright 1908. 
 By Eugkni W. Chafin 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Lecture — "Lincoln: The Man of Sorrow" 7 
 
 appendix 
 
 Lincoln's Temperance Speech - - 49 
 
 First Inaugural Address - - - 69 
 
 Second Inaugural Address - - 88 
 
 Emancipation Proclamation - - 92 
 
 The Gettysburg Address - - 96 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 A LECTURE BY EUGENE W. CHAFIN, 
 
 Delivered in "The Temple Lecture Course," in Ebenezer M. E. 
 
 Church, Philadelphia, Pa., February 25, 1907 ^ 
 
 We are pleased to meet such a large and 
 enthusiastic audience tonight. I have not 
 been in Philadelphia since the Centennial 
 was held here in 1876 until today. I am glad 
 to be here again. 
 
 Most people are interested in American 
 history. All ought to be. We are becoming 
 students of history more and more every day. 
 The great problem is how to study it. I be- 
 lieve we should burn all the school histories 
 of today. It has become so large a subject 
 that we cannot teach it in the schools 
 through the ordinary school book. 
 
 The only way we can truly study history is 
 through biography; by reading the lives of 
 great men. All the important events in his- 
 
 ^Reported by Geo. O. Swartz, stenographer, Camden, N. 
 J.; Rev. R. E. Johnson, pastor, presiding; music by the King's 
 Daughters' quartet, of Streator, 111. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 tory surround the lives of great men, and if 
 we would teach the children in the school 
 and in the home early in life to read of the 
 great men of the past, we would not only 
 teach them history, but it would cultivate a 
 liking for it so they would go on in later 
 years studying and becoming familiar with 
 the facts which have made us the great 
 Nation we are. 
 
 The only trouble with this method is that 
 we have so little good biography. It is only 
 within twenty or thirty years that we have 
 been getting what we may call fairly good 
 biography. 
 
 Washington has been dead more than one 
 hundred years, and many biographies have 
 been written, but a good, first-class life of 
 Washington has not yet been published. I 
 have over one hundred and fifty volumes of 
 Washingtoniana in my library, and can see 
 they are getting better each year. We may 
 expect to get a first-class life of Washington 
 before many years. 
 
 If that be true, what shall we say in rela- 
 tion to Abraham Lincoln ? He has been dead 
 over forty years, and there has been no good, 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 true, first-class life of Lincoln yet written, 
 and none of you will live long enough to see 
 such a life published. We cannot get away 
 from our prejudices. We are too close to 
 some of these great characters in history to 
 tell the whole truth about them. 
 
 Lincoln is the most difficult character in 
 all history to understand. Tonight I wish 
 to emphasize the moral of his life, rather than 
 its history. I intend to take up this one 
 phase of his life and see if we can get a little 
 closer to this great man — the greatest char- 
 acter not only in the history of the United 
 States, but in the history of the world in the 
 nineteenth century. The hardest character 
 to comprehend in all history. That is why 
 no good biography of him has been written. 
 No man has yet seemed to comprehend him. 
 
 There is one thing certain if we are going 
 to try to fathom Lincoln we must trace the 
 hand of God in his life, and those who study 
 the life of Abraham Lincoln and see not the 
 hand of God in it, study it to no purpose. 
 
 I am going to speak of that phase of his 
 life and character entitled "Lincoln, the Man 
 of Sorrow,'' and am going to liken him in 
 
10 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 some respects to the ''Man of many Sor- 
 rows" — Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 For what our Lord and Saviour is to Divine 
 history Abraham Lincoln is to American his- 
 tory. One was the Saviour of the World, 
 the other a saviour of a Nation and a race. 
 
 Lincoln was born in a degradation very 
 far below respectable poverty, in the State of 
 Kentucky/ and lived in that poverty the 
 whole of his childhood. When he was in his 
 eighth year the family removed to the State 
 oi Indiana; before he was ten years of age 
 his mother died — the first great crushing 
 grief and sorrow of this boy. When he was 
 about nineteen his only sister died under 
 very distressing circumstances. Up to the 
 time he was twenty-one years of age he had 
 seen little of real Christian civilization. 
 No joy or pleasure of childhood had entered 
 into the life of Abraham Lincoln. He had 
 lived in the back woods, not only in a log 
 cabin but in a log hovel, not very much of 
 clothing, only a year's schooling. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln was an ignorant, worth- 
 
 ^Abraham Lincoln was born Sunday morning, February 
 12, 1809, in Hardin (now LaRue) County, Kentucky, three 
 miles from Hodgensville. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 11 
 
 less, shiftless, illiterate man, and thought it 
 a waste of time for young Abraham to learn 
 to read and write, as he could do neither — 
 his mother could read but probably not 
 write. There never were any cords of love 
 and sympathy between Thomas Lincoln and 
 Abraham and he treated the boy with great 
 cruelty/ When he was grown into manhood, 
 he always wanted to get away from the 
 thought of his childhood. There was no 
 day in this child's life which brought him 
 happiness, and I say to you, my dear friends, 
 no matter what else you do in this world 
 give children happiness. A happy day for 
 a boy or girl means a thousand days, as they 
 live it over and over again as the years go by. 
 Such was not for Abraham Lincoln. He had 
 not a day in his childhood that he wanted to 
 live over again. Undoubtedly that had a 
 great deal to do with his melancholy dispo- 
 sition. He was not the jovial, jolly man that 
 some of you think he was. He was the most 
 melancholy of men. He had the blues most 
 of the time. He was either clear down or 
 clear up. His genius for telling stories was 
 
 ^Thomas Lincoln died in Coles County, Illinois, in 1851. 
 
12 LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 the safety valve that saved his life. It lifted 
 him up, he laughed and made others laugh. 
 His life was either a comedy or a tragedy 
 most of the time. 
 
 When he was twenty-one years of age he 
 removed with the family to the State of Il- 
 linois and leaving the parental home, went 
 to the village of New Salem in that State, a 
 place of about fifteen log houses. 
 
 He lived there about seven years, and soon 
 after he left, the village went out of existence 
 and a new town was started near there call- 
 ed Petersburg. It was in that little log village 
 that Lincoln discovered himself. He went to 
 work as an ordinary laborer, then in a store, 
 and finally bought the store and with his 
 partner ran it a few months and failed, leav- 
 ing a large debt on his hands which it took 
 him years to pay. While he was living there 
 he made the acquaintance of a beautiful and 
 cultured young lady by the name of Ann 
 Rutledge, and they were engaged to be mar- 
 ried. It was his first contact with real Chris- 
 tian civilization. She taught him grammar 
 and to study the Bible and Shakespeare. Two 
 books that all young people should read 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 13 
 
 every day. Lincoln's familiarity with them 
 had largely to do with his literary style 
 which is a combination of both. His first 
 earthly joy seemed at last to be within his 
 grasp, but a few months before the}^ were to 
 be married she died.^ 
 
 While I was in Petersburg near his old 
 home last year on the 12th of February, to 
 deliver this address, I went to the little cem- 
 etery on the hill and the sexton pointed out 
 a neglected grave with a little headstone 
 upon which was simply the name Ann Rut- 
 ledge,^ and as I stood there with uncovered 
 head, I said in that grave was buried the 
 heart of Abraham Lincoln. Her death so 
 worked on his mind that his friends feared 
 he would commit suicide. In a few months 
 he went about his work again, but never re- 
 covered from that great sorrow. 
 
 He was elected to the legislature of Illi- 
 
 ^Miss Rutledge died Aug. 25, 1835, of typhoid fever. 
 
 'Beautiful Oakland Cemetery is about half a mile from the 
 city of Petersburg, 111. The headstone is a rough boulder 
 about two f&et in diameter taken from the roadside, with the 
 name "Ann Rutledge" rudely chiseled upon a level place. 
 The entire cost probably did not exceed one dollar. It is 
 in marked contrast to the beautiful and expensive monuments 
 to the rich surrounding it. Withal there seems to be a fit- 
 ness about it for this Lincolnian simplicity suggests. 
 
 "The short and simple annals of the poor," 
 
14 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 nois, served four terms^ and distinguished 
 himself for nothing. He went out of the leg- 
 islature with practically nothing to his credit 
 as a statesman. 
 
 The four legislatures of which he was a 
 member gave us the most vicious legislation 
 in the history of the State of Illinois. 
 
 While a member of the legislature he re- 
 moved to Springfield, April 15, 1837, which 
 was in his district, and began the practice of 
 law, having been admitted to the bar in 1836, 
 was fairly successful, and it was the only suc- 
 cess he attained anywhere up to the Presi- 
 dency. Soon after removing to Springfield 
 he made the acquaintance of Miss Mary 
 Todd, whom he afterward married. He 
 courted her for several years, and on the 
 first day appointed for their marriage Mr. 
 Lincoln did not appear, and of course there 
 was no wedding." Lincoln's conscience 
 
 'He was elected in the years 1834, 1836, 1838 and 1840. 
 
 ^The day fixed for the marriage was Jan. 1, 1841. Lin- 
 coln expresses his feelings to John T. Stuart, then in Wash- 
 ington, in a letter written at Springfield, January 23, 1841, 
 as follows : 
 
 "For not giving you a general summary of news, you 
 must pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now 
 the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 15 
 
 would not quite allow him to marry her, and 
 he could not face it, and he did not, and ran 
 away from it. About a year and ten months 
 afterwards their friends entered into diplo- 
 matic negotiations and got them to speak- 
 ing together, and one Thursday they agreed 
 to be married and they were married the 
 next day, Friday, Nov. 4, 1842. Now ordi- 
 narily the period of courtship and engage- 
 ment is the happiest period of one's life ex- 
 cept that which is followed by happy mar- 
 riage. 
 
 Not so with Lincoln. They were not hap- 
 py days. His first love was Ann Rutledge 
 and he doubted whether he ought to marry 
 another. The days he courted Miss Todd 
 were among the most unhappy of his life — 
 except after he got her. She was bright, 
 finely educated, could speak French as well 
 
 distributed to the whole human family there would not be 
 one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be 
 better I canno.t tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To re- 
 main as I am is im.possible; I must die or be better it ap- 
 pears to me. The matter you speak of on my account you 
 may attend to as you say, unless you shall hear of my con- 
 dition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall be 
 unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene 
 might help me. If I could be myself I would rather remain 
 at home with Judge Logan. I can write no more." 
 
16 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 as English, aristocratic, haughty, her ambi- 
 tion colossal, and wanted to shine in society, 
 and was one of the ugliest women in Illinois. 
 There is only one State in the Nation where 
 you can arrest a woman for being a ''com- 
 mon scold." That is New Jersey, and it was 
 a good thing she did not live there. This 
 is not a pleasant thing to speak of in a lec- 
 ture, and none of his biographers have said 
 much about her. I would not speak of it to- 
 night only that it is necessary for us to know 
 everything about this man. Everything that 
 occurred in his life. We want to see what 
 made him the great character that he was 
 in our history. In order to do that we must 
 know everything that entered into his life. 
 He was President of the United States which 
 made her Mistress of the White House and 
 therefore I have a right to tell the truth 
 about Mrs. Lincoln. To illustrate how they 
 enjoyed married life, he came home one day 
 very tired. He laid himself on the couch, and 
 she started as we say out West, ''blazing 
 away'* at him. One of the neighbors came 
 in and said to him, "Why don't you jaw back 
 Abe?'' He said, "That did Mary a great 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 17 
 
 deal of good and did me no harm." He was 
 a philosopher. Decided to take her for bet- 
 ter or for worse. 
 
 His married life was not a congenial one 
 from the beginning to the end. No happi- 
 ness could come to Lincoln from any source. 
 
 They 'had four children.^ One died in in- 
 fancy and one died in the White House 
 when the great Civil War was on the heart 
 of this man and he was brought down almost 
 to the point of being crushed by the death 
 of ''Little Willie.'' It was almost more than 
 he could stand. But you must understand 
 that the death of Ann Rutledge brought him 
 nearer to God. From that time on Lincoln 
 was a student of the Bible. The great crush- 
 ing blow of the death of 'Tittle Willie" 
 brought him still nearer to God and I do not 
 
 ^Robert Todd Lincoln, still living and resides in Chicago, 
 born August 1, 1843. 
 
 Edward Baker Lincoln, born March 10, 1846, died in in- 
 fancy. 
 
 William Wallace Lincoln, born Dec. 21, 1850, died in the 
 White House February 20, 1862. 
 
 Thomas (Tad) Lincoln, born April 4, 1853, died in Chica- 
 go July 15, 1871. 
 
 Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln died Sunday evening, July 16, 
 1882, at the residence of her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, 
 in the house where she had been married November 4, 1842, to 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
18 LINCOLN : TflE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 think any man can say from that period 
 Abraham Lincoln was not a devout Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 These crushing blows of great grief in the 
 lives of men sometimes bring out the best 
 there is in them, if they are able to overcome 
 and rise above them as Lincoln was able to 
 do. These sorrows kept him close to the 
 common people. They just seemed to have 
 to come to this man's life to bring out the 
 best there was in him. Thereafter he had a 
 deeper sympathy for the parents who had 
 sons in the army and none appealed to him 
 in vain to save them if it were possible. 
 
 In 1846 Lincoln was elected to Congress. 
 All of his campaigns were conducted with 
 great bitterness against him. This one when 
 he ran for Congress was the least bitter of 
 any of them. He ran against Rev. Peter 
 Cartwright, the great preacher. He had been 
 there only a few months before he made a 
 speech against the Mexican War. This 
 caused his defeat for re-nomination. If you 
 have read many lives of Lincoln you have 
 found that there is not a biographer who tells 
 the truth about this matter. Every one says 
 he declined a re-election. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 19 
 
 Oh, will the time ever come in this coun- 
 try when the biographers will tell the truth. 
 Let us have the truth about these great men. 
 It is marvelous how people like to stick to 
 some old lie. That George Washington 
 cherry tree and hatchet story will illustrate 
 this point. 
 
 I said in my lecture on "Washington as a 
 Statesman/' at one of our Chautauquas last 
 summer, that the story about the cherry tree 
 was a pure fabrication.' There never was 
 a word of truth in it. After the lecture a Sab- 
 bath school teacher came to me and said, 
 "Mr. Chafin I hope you will never tell an- 
 other American audience that that story was 
 not true. It is such a nice story to tell my 
 Sabbath school class. It has such a good 
 moral to it." Just think of that old lie hav- 
 mg a good moral to it. 
 
 'The story was no.t in the first "Life of Washington," writ- 
 ten by "M. L. Weems, formerly pastor of Mount Vernon 
 parish," published a few years before the death of Washing- 
 ton, Dec. 14, 1799. It first appeared in the fifth edition pub- 
 lished in 1806 and was copied bodily from an English gen- 
 tleman's sketch of his son, which appeared in England m 
 1799. Weems says it was communicated to him by "an aged 
 lady," who was a distant rela.tive. I think Weems was the 
 most cheerful liar of his time, or, as Henry Fielding, the 
 author of "Tom Jones," one of the first great novels of the 
 world, said of the opposing lawyer, "With him, truth is a 
 virtue which becomes very much fatigued by exercise." 
 
20 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 Tell the truth about Lincoln. He could 
 not get the re-nomination. He wanted to 
 stay in Congress and if he had not chosen to 
 stay there Mrs. Lincoln wished to continue 
 to be a Congressman's wife and that would 
 have settled it. His speech against the Mex- 
 ican War put him out of Congress and end- 
 ed his political career for the time being. I 
 see the hand of God in it. The Almighty was 
 reserving Lincoln to save this Nation. If he 
 had been re-elected in 1848 he would have 
 been in the Congress that passed the "com- 
 promise measures" of 1850, including the 
 Fugitive Slave law. If he had had a career in 
 Congress at that time and taken a part in the 
 Congressional turmoils preceding the war 
 he would never have been President. If he 
 had voted against the Fugitive Slave law, he 
 would never have been nominated, and if he 
 had voted for it he would not have been 
 elected. 
 
 Does not the truth fit him better than the 
 untruth? The artist who takes a line out of 
 his rugged face, or the author who takes a 
 true line out of his history is an enemy of 
 truth. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 21 
 
 Does it not appear that Almighty God was 
 saving this man for a great work? He then 
 returned to Springfield and settled down to 
 the practice of law, the deadest politician in 
 Illinois. There was great grief in the Lin- 
 coln home. Mrs. Lincoln had to leave Wash- 
 ington society. It undoubtedly furnished 
 an occasion when he would rather have heard 
 her speak French than English. He then 
 determined to withdraw permanently from 
 politics and make a good lawyer of himself. 
 For the first time in his life he settled down 
 to the serious study of books. It was his 
 habit to read men more than hoohs. He em- 
 braced this opportunity as he could not have 
 done if he had stayed in Congress, and be- 
 came a good lawyer. 
 
 The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
 on May 30, 1854, aroused his indignation 
 and brought him again into the political are- 
 na. He saw in it the dangers which precip- 
 itated secession. On October 16 he made 
 one of the five^ great speeches which formu- 
 
 ^The five great speeches were those delivered at 
 
 Springfield, 111., Feb. 22, 1842; 
 
 Peoria, 111., Oct. 16, 1854; 
 
 Springfield, III, June 16, 1858; 
 
 Columbus, O., Sept. 16, 1859, and 
 
 Cooper Institute, N. Y. City, Feb. 27, 1860. 
 
22 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 lated his political creed (in reply to Senator 
 Douglas) on the Kansas-Nebraska law, 
 which repealed the Missouri Compromise. 
 
 He became a candidate for the legislature 
 and was elected in November, 1854. The re- 
 turns showed a majority in the legislature 
 opposed to the re-election of Senator Shields 
 and in favor of the principles Lincoln had 
 advocated during the campaign. He at once 
 became a candidate for the United States 
 Senate and resigned his seat in the legisla- 
 ture. When the balloting took place on Feb. 
 8, 1855, Lincoln had forty-seven votes and 
 Lyman Trumbull five. Four members were 
 controlled by State Senator John M. Palmer 
 and would not vote for Lincoln, and it took 
 fifty-one to elect. On the eleventh ballot 
 Lincoln had his name withdrawn and Judge 
 Trumbull was elected. His defeat was Prov- 
 idential. Had he gone to the Senate and 
 been prominent in all the questions that led 
 up to the secession he would not have been 
 nominated for President. God was saving 
 him for the great work of preserving this Na- 
 tion. He again went back to his law ofiice 
 and Mrs. Lincoln spent the coming years in 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 23 
 
 Springfield instead of Washington society. 
 
 In 1858 Lincoln was again nominated for 
 the Senate and the seven great joint debates^ 
 took place between him and Douglas, but 
 when it was all over, Lincoln was again 
 Providentially defeated. He had to go back 
 to Springfield and practice law. Grief again 
 in the Lincoln home. Oh, if she could only 
 have been a Senator's wife! 
 
 The next year he attempted lyceum lectur- 
 ing on the subject "Discoveries, Inventions 
 and Improvements," which proved a dismal 
 failure. 
 
 A few months ago I visited Lincoln's old 
 home in Springfield, a modest little frame 
 house which perhaps cost $3,000.00, the only 
 real estate that Lincoln ever owned. It is 
 now owned by the State of Illinois, and while 
 there was shown by the attendant the sofa 
 upon which Miss Mary Todd entertained 
 both Douglas and Lincoln while courting her 
 
 ^The debates took place as follows: 
 Ottawa, III, August 21, 1858. 
 Freeport, III., August 27, 1858. 
 Jonesboro, 111., Sept. 15, 1858. 
 Charleston, III, Sept. 18, 1858. 
 Galesburg, III, Oct. 7, 1858. 
 Quincy, III, Oct. 13, 1858. 
 Alton, III. Oct. 15. 1858. 
 
24 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 in her sister's home. That was the first time 
 Stephen A. Douglas got the better of Lincoln 
 — when he didn't get her. 
 
 During the debate Lincoln said if Douglas 
 won the Senatorship he would never be Pres- 
 ident of the United States. He might well 
 have said that if Lincoln is beaten for the 
 Senatorship then he will have a chance for 
 the Presidency. If Lincoln had been elected 
 Senator in 1858 he would never have been 
 President. No man has yet gone from the 
 Senate Chamber to the White House. Sena- 
 tors Seward, Cameron, and Chase tried it in 
 1860, and many other Senators at different 
 periods. 
 
 Lincoln was a man who always arose to 
 the greatness of the occasion. That is the 
 sign of greatness, and there have been but 
 few great men in the world's history and 
 very few in American history. We think of 
 Presidents and Cabinet officers and Govern- 
 ors and Senators and Congressmen as big 
 men. They are big on small occasions, but 
 usually small on great occasions. There are 
 only a few great men on great occasions and 
 Lincoln was one of them. Lincoln had been 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 25 
 
 talked of for the Presidency. He was invited 
 to deliver an address in New York City at 
 Cooper Institute on February 27, 1860/ All 
 
 ^Of this speech Joseph H. Choate said: 
 
 "It is now forty years since I first saw and heard Abraham 
 Lincoln, but the impression he left on my mind is inefface- 
 able. After his great successes in the West he came to 
 New York to make a political address. He appeared in every 
 sense of the word like one of the plain people among whom 
 he loved to be counted. At first sight there was nothing 
 ihnpressive or imposing about him, except that his great 
 stature singled him out from .the crowd; his clothes hung 
 awkwardly on his giant frame ; his face was of a dark pallor, 
 without the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged 
 features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; his deep- 
 set eyes looked sad and anxious ; his countenance in repose 
 gave little evidence of that brain power which had raised 
 him from the lowest to the highest station among his country- 
 men. As he talked to me before the meeting he seemed ill at 
 ease, with that sort of apprehension which a young man might 
 feel before presenting himself to a new and strange audience 
 whose critical disposition be dreaded. 
 
 "It was a great audience, including all the noted men — all 
 .the learned and cultured of his party in New York, editors, 
 clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, critics. They were 
 dll very curious to hear him. His fame as a powerful speak- 
 er had preceded him, and exaggerated rumor of his wit had 
 reached the East. When Mr. Bryant presented him on the 
 high platform of the Cooper Institute a vast sea of eager, 
 upturned faces greeted _him, full of intense curiosity to see 
 what this rude child of the people was like. He was equal to 
 the occasion. When he spoke he was transformed; his eyes 
 kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light 
 up the whole assembly. For an hour and a half he held his 
 audience in the hollow of his hand. His style of speech 
 and manner of delivery were severely simple. What Lowell 
 called "The Great Simplicities" of The Bible" with which he 
 was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no 
 attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or pretense, 
 he spoke straight to the point. If any came expecting the 
 turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier they must 
 have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his 
 
26 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 political New York turned out to hear him. 
 They said let us go and we will have a good 
 chance to laugh, and we shall enjoy it. Wil- 
 liam Cullen Bryant introduced him, and 
 Abraham Lincoln stepped forward and de- 
 livered an address an hour and a half in 
 length. No one smiled. He knew that to 
 go to New York and make a speech that 
 
 utterances. It was marvelous to see how this untutored man, 
 by mere self discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, 
 had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his way to the 
 grandeur and strength of absolute simplicity. 
 
 "He spoke upon the theme which he had mastered so 
 thoroughly. He demonstrated by copious historical proofs 
 and masterly logic that the fathers who created the Constitu- 
 tion_ in order to form a more perfect union, to establish 
 justice, and to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves 
 and their posterity, intended to empower the Federal Govern- 
 ment to exclude slavery from the territories. In the kindliest 
 spirit he protested against the avowed threat of the southern 
 states to destroy the Union if, in order to secure freedom in 
 those vast regions, out of which future states were to be 
 carved, a Republican President were elected. He closed with 
 an appeal to his audience, spoken with all the fire of his 
 aroused and kindling conscience, with a full outpouring of his 
 love of justice and liberty, to maintain their political pur- 
 pose on that lofty and unassailable issue of right and wrong 
 which alone could justify it and not to be intimidated from 
 their high resolve and sacred duty by any threats of destruc- 
 tion to the government or of ruin to themselves. He con- 
 cluded with this telling sentence, which drove the whole argu- 
 ment home to all our hearts: 
 
 " 'Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that 
 faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we under- 
 stand it.' 
 
 "That night the great hall, and the next day the whole 
 city, rang with delighted applause and congratulations, and 
 he who had come as a stranger departed with the laurels of a 
 great triumph." 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 27 
 
 would make everybody laugh would not 
 stamp him as a man big enough for the Pres- 
 idency of the United States. Instead he in- 
 terpreted the conception of the founders of 
 the National Government, on the slavery 
 question, in the light of the constitution, as 
 no other man had in all our history. It was 
 the greatest constitutional argument against 
 the position of the South since Webster's re- 
 ply to Hayne, and was not second to it.' He 
 arose to the greatness of the occasion. That 
 speech ought to have prevented the Civil 
 War. It would have prevented secession, 
 had not the South appealed from reason and 
 logic to the sword. From that day Abraham 
 Lincoln was an available candidate for the 
 Presidency. I wish you would all read that 
 speech, as his character is stamped on every 
 page of it, and especially the last sentence, 
 and every American ought to have it indeli- 
 bly impressed on his memory, and act on it 
 on all civic occasions. He closed that great 
 speech with these words : "Let us have faith, 
 
 ^Daniel Webs.ter, Senator from Massachusetts made his 
 
 famous reply to Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Caro ma 
 
 in the U. S. Senate Jan. 26, 1830, on the question of State 
 Sovereignty. 
 
28 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 that right makes might, and in that faith, let 
 us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we un- 
 derstand it/' Oh, if all Americans would act 
 upon that, we would have better civil gov- 
 ernment that we now have. 
 
 We have now traced the career of Lincoln 
 up to 1860. What is. there about his record 
 that should have made him the proper can- 
 didate for the Presidency? He could not suc- 
 cessfully run a grocery store in a village 
 composed of one hundred inhabitants. He 
 had been a failure in the legislature. He had 
 been a failure in Congress from any worldly 
 standpoint. He had failed twice to be elected 
 United States Senator. He had made a fail- 
 ure of lyceum lecturing. He had been a suc- 
 cessful lawyer as many other men had. Why 
 was it that the Nation turned toward him 
 as the man to be President of the United 
 States in one of the most trying times in the 
 history of our country. When had he ever 
 shown executive ability? He had never been 
 president of a village, mayor of a city or gov- 
 ernor of a state. Why should he have been 
 chosen? My answer to that is, because of 
 his great character. The people believed in 
 
LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 29 
 
 him. They had faith in his honesty. He was 
 called "Honest Old Abe." It was in a period 
 of great moral awakening; and they were 
 looking for a man to represent a great moral 
 question. All people had faith in his integ- 
 rity' and character. That was one thing 
 that stood before the American people above 
 everything else, and I think the day and hour 
 has come when we should teach this gener- 
 ation of people that that was the one great 
 reason why this man with his limited ex- 
 perience and with the surrounding circum- 
 stances of his life was selected to be the Pres- 
 ident of the United States. What gave him 
 this character? I shall attribute the founda- 
 tion of it to the fact that from his youth he 
 chose between right and wrong and was a 
 total abstainer from intoxicating liquor, 
 from tobacco, from profanity and he never 
 gambled; the four great vices that were so 
 common with the people among whom he 
 mingled. And because he chose between 
 right and wrong regardless of his associates, 
 and kept away from these vices, he built a 
 character that made him the man for the 
 Presidency in the minds of the people. There 
 
30 UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 has not been a biographer, not a single one, 
 who has written a page on that part of his 
 Hfe, and Nicolay and Hay, who wrote his Hfe 
 in ten volumes, which should have been the 
 standard life of Lincoln for all time,^ did not 
 find room to refer to these things. Lincoln, 
 on the 22nd day of February, 1842, made one 
 of the greatest temperance speeches that has 
 ever been made in this country.^ He asked 
 people to sign the pledge in the "Washing- 
 tonian Movement" and was a member of the 
 Sons of Temperance. In 1855 he spent five 
 or six weeks advocating the adoption of a 
 prohibition law then submitted to a vote of 
 the people in Illinois. It is said they left 
 these facts out because they thought it 
 would hurt the sale of the book. Oh! the 
 time will soon come when the American peo- 
 ple will not be ashamed to say that Abraham 
 
 *No two men in tl..e United States knew Lincoln better than 
 John Hay and John G. Nicolay, who were his private secre- 
 taries, but it is a singular fact that no man ever writes a good 
 true biography of an intimate friend or companion or_ even 
 contemporary. He is more ap.t to see the small things in his 
 life than the large ones. Coming ages are looking for the 
 big things he did which have had an effect on civilization. He 
 sees in every line how it is likely to affect the family or asso- 
 ciates of his subject and himself in their good opinion. It 
 is easier to tell the whole truth when they are dead. 
 
 'See Appendix. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 31 
 
 Lincoln never used alcohol or tobacco, or 
 profanity, or engaged in gambling. 
 
 I would put in the biographies of this 
 great man and teach this generation that 
 the most valuable asset in any position of 
 life is character. There was no other reason 
 for the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for 
 the Presidency. The convention met, Lincoln 
 was nominated and elected. Ordinarily the 
 four months between election and inaugura- 
 tion is a period of great happiness for a Presi- 
 dent-elect. The whole world is applauding 
 him, politicians and statesmen of all parties 
 praising him; a time of great joy. Not so 
 with Lincoln. Nothing but grief and sor- 
 row. The official vote had hardly been de- 
 clared before the news came that South 
 Carolina had seceded and other States fol- 
 lowed. What did it mean? That Lincoln 
 had to sit there at Springfield for four long 
 months with his hands tied, could neither 
 speak nor act and see the Nation being torn 
 to pieces, leaving to him the task of mend- 
 ing it. 
 
 He went to the Presidency with less politi- 
 cal party support than any man who was 
 
32 LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 ever President. His own party trembled for 
 him. They said this untried man who has 
 never shown any executive abiHty we have 
 elected President of the Uinted States, and 
 he is the man who is to solve the mightiest 
 problems in our history. They doubted him; 
 they said he was probably a weak man ; that 
 in the Presidency he might let the Nation 
 be destroyed. 
 
 When inauguration day came on the 
 Fourth of March, 1861, and Lincoln stepped 
 to the East portico of the Capitol to deliver 
 his inaugural address,^ he then had it in his 
 power to destroy this Nation in a fifteen 
 minutes speech, but he <^i(^W(9^. He arose to 
 the greatness of the occasion. He was a 
 Nationalist. He had learned the principles 
 of Nationalism from 'George Washington 
 and John Marshall; and whtvethei/ left the 
 cords of Nationalism they were gathered up 
 by Lincoln and woven into his inaugural ad- 
 dress, and he never lost sight of them until 
 they became the accepted law of the land at 
 Appomattox. 
 
 After he had delivered it, stating sub- 
 
 *See Appendix. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 33 
 
 stantially that we were a Nation, and his 
 oath of office would make him preserve it to 
 the very last, the country breathed easier. 
 He had said in words what the Nation felt 
 but could not express. All the principal men 
 of the Nation saw that he was the man. He 
 arose to the greatness and dignity of the oc- 
 casion in that inaugural address, the great- 
 est in history, for in it he laid the foundation 
 to save the Nation. 
 
 He had more trouble <with his Cabinet 
 than all other Presidents combined. Instead 
 of being loyal to him, laying aside their 
 political ambitions in this hour of the Na- 
 tion's greatest trials, they began quarreling 
 among themselves and plotting to succeed 
 him as President. Oh! I tell you, my dear 
 friends, that when the true history of this 
 Nation is written, there will be some of them 
 who will appear mighty small and certainly 
 unpatriotic. Secretary of State Seward was 
 sure he knew more than the President. In- 
 side of ninety days he got off his high horse; 
 Lincoln leaned over and took hold of the 
 gentleman's collar, and carefully put him on 
 behind and continued to handle the reins 
 
34 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 himself. Seward accepted the situation and 
 thereafter made a good Secretary of State. 
 He had political sense enough to know that 
 if Lincoln's administration were a success, 
 he must be his own successor, and if it failed 
 no one of his party could be elected. 
 
 Then he had trouble with Chase, Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, who had the Presi- 
 dential microbe working in his head. A very 
 bad case of it and he never got over it, even 
 after he got to be Chief Justice. He spent 
 his days and nights studying how he could 
 beat Lincoln and be President himself. But 
 he was so good a Secretary of the Treasury 
 that Lincoln w^as broad enough and great 
 enough to overlook his Presidential fever 
 and kept him at his post. Nearly all of them 
 were making him trouble instead of helping 
 him; some one said to him, ''Why don't you 
 send all those fellows home?" "What," said 
 Lincoln, "Send Seward back to New York, 
 Chase to Ohio, Cameron to Pennsylvania, 
 and Montgomery Blair to Maryland ! Why 
 I can watch them a great deal easier around 
 this Cabinet table than I could if they were 
 at home." He was not only a statesman, 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 35 
 
 but a philosopher and diplomat. He was a 
 man of great tact, which is the gentle art of 
 doing things the best way. 
 
 Matters got so bad in the war department 
 that he had to get rid of Secretary Cameron. 
 But he did not send him back to Pennsyl- 
 vania. He sent him as Envoy Extraordi- 
 nary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Rus- 
 sia. Then he appointed Edwin M. Stanton, 
 the greatest Secretary of War this Nation 
 ever had. A man of iron, with nerves of 
 steel, and there he firmly held the power of 
 Secretary of War with Lincoln's guiding 
 hand to save the Nation. But he was the 
 trial of Lincoln's life. Oh! the patience re- 
 quired to bear with him. He was the Mars 
 of this world — Lincoln was the Venus of 
 earth. One day he sent an order to Stanton 
 to pardon some one, and Stanton tore it up 
 and threw it in the waste basket. The gen- 
 tleman returned and told Lincoln that Stan- 
 ton said he was a fool. Lincoln replied, "If 
 Stanton said so it must be so.'* A few hours 
 later he repeated the order and it was 
 obeyed. When Lincoln was a boy he used 
 to plow and when he came to a nice apple 
 
36 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 tree, which some day would bear fruit, he 
 plowed around it, and that is the way he did 
 with Stanton, "plowed around him," because 
 he knew he was a great Secretary of War. 
 Oh, the patience he had. The patience to 
 stand him those three long years of war. No 
 one could ever have stood Stanton three 
 years who had not been taught patience by 
 living with Mrs. Lincoln twenty years. So 
 you see there is a compensation for all trials. 
 These things all entered into the life of the 
 man who had this mighty task on his hands 
 of saving this Nation. But it just seems as 
 though nothing ever came to him to make 
 life easy and happy as it does to ordinary 
 mortals. 
 
 Then he had trouble with his generals, 
 especially McClellan and Fremont. They 
 had not their shoulder straps on twenty-four 
 hours before they began making arrange- 
 ments to be President next time. Others 
 followed in order. Give them a little promo- 
 tion and they got "the big head." Lilliputian 
 politicians, about 4 by 4 inches square, and 
 they could never see anything bigger than 
 themselves. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 37 
 
 Be it said to the everlasting credit of the 
 Federal army that Lincoln finally found 
 three generals who did not want to be Presi- 
 dent, who knew how and were willing to 
 fight, and who were never jealous of each 
 other or any one else. Place high on the roll 
 of true patriotism the names of Generals 
 Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. 
 
 And he had trouble with Congress of 
 course. Oh ! if we could only carry on war 
 without a Congress, with its resolutions and 
 speeches. A debating society never won a 
 battle. When the cabinet was all right, the 
 "big head" generals dismissed, Congress not 
 in session, and Mrs; Lincoln asleep, then 
 Horace Greele}^ always said some fool thing 
 in the New York Tribune. The war went on 
 and he arose above these things and carried 
 burdens that others should have borne with 
 the one great thought of saving the Nation. 
 
 We now come to the emancipation proc- 
 lamation. I presume if I were to ask an or- 
 dinary American audience what was the 
 greatest act of Lincoln's life, the reply would 
 be, "Signing the emancipation proclama- 
 tion." ''With one great stroke of his pen he 
 
38 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 struck the shackles from four million slaves,*' 
 I actually read that the other day in one of 
 our great daily papers. Why do people say 
 that? There is not a word of truth in it — it 
 did not free a single slave — either the pre- 
 liminary proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862, or 
 the final one of January 1, 1863. You must 
 remember that the proclamation only pro- 
 vided that the slaves v^ithin the Confederate 
 lines should be free, leaving the ones w^ithin 
 the Federal lines to remain in slavery. All 
 the slaves in Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, 
 Delaw^are, West Virginia, Tennessee, and, 
 parts of Virginia and Louisiana w^ere not 
 included in the proclamation. It tried to 
 free onlv the slaves over w^hich the Nation 
 then had no control, and left in slavery all 
 those over v^hich it had physical control.^ 
 
 What happened? Enlistments fell off, de- 
 sertions increased in the army; officers re- 
 signed their commissions; it divided the 
 North and solidified the South; stocks went 
 down, and when the elections came in the 
 fall of 1862 the administration lost thirty- 
 
 'The Fugitive Slave law was not repealed until June 28, 
 1864. The 13th Amendment which took effect Dec. 18, 1865, 
 freed the slaves. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 39 
 
 eight seats in the House of Representatives 
 and lost heavily in the states of New York, 
 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and In- 
 diana. Lincoln lost his own State, which 
 sent to the Senate a man who fought his ad- 
 ministration; and the legislature contained 
 so many rebels that Governor Yates pro- 
 rogued them and sent them home, — the only 
 like instance in American history. The ef- 
 fect of the proclamation on foreign countries 
 fell far short of the expectations of the ad- 
 ministration. Are we not far enough from 
 the war now to tell the truth about this mat- 
 ter? I think it was the greatest mistake of 
 his administration. It was at least of doubt- 
 ful utility.' 
 
 That was not his greatest act. What then 
 was his greatest act? When the flag was 
 shot down at Fort Sumter he had to decide 
 whether or not the constitution gave him 
 power to "coerce a sovereign State." Nearly 
 all the best constitutional lawyers of the 
 country decided that he had no such power. 
 Lincoln again arose to the greatness of the 
 occasion and decided that this Nation had in- 
 
 ^See Appendix. 
 
40 UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 herent power to save its own life. No greater 
 or better interpretation of the Constitution 
 was ever made by Chief Justice Marshall. 
 The decision was equivalent to an amend- 
 ment to the Constitution. No one disputes 
 its correctness now. It took a Lincoln to see 
 it then. To decide that he had such power 
 meant that we were a "Nation of people," 
 and not a ''Union of States." We would have 
 been destroyed as a Nation in an hour had 
 he decided otherwise. He then issued his 
 call for 75,000 men and they came. When 
 others were called they came, and our Na- 
 tional unity was preserved. 
 
 In my opinion this was the greatest act 
 of his life. 
 
 Signing the emancipation proclamation 
 sinks into insignificance compared to it. 
 
 If we could destroy the larger part of all 
 that has ever been said about Lincoln and 
 start with one good, true life of him, I should 
 have hopes that some time in the near future 
 we might begin to comprehend this most in- 
 comprehensible man. 
 
 He was invited to make a few dedicatory 
 remarks on the occasion of the dedication of 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 41 
 
 a portion of the battlefield of Gettysburg as 
 a National Cemetery November 19, 1863. 
 Edward Everett v^as to deliver the main ad- 
 dress, v^hich took over tw^o hours, and w^as 
 a magnificent effort. There v^ere 100,000 
 people present. 
 
 It w^as a great occasion and Lincoln did 
 not fail to be as great as the occasion. After 
 Mr. Everett's oration, he stepped forv^ard 
 and read from a sheet of paper ten sentences, 
 268 words. The Gettysburg address.' The 
 only bit of American literature ever taught 
 in an English University. The battle of Get- 
 tysburg was the decisive battle of the Civil 
 War, and one of the greatest in all history. 
 Lincoln wanted to ask his people not to let 
 the men who fell there ''die in vain." If he 
 made a long speech they would not read it, 
 so he made it short enough for them to com- 
 mit to memory. Those words so touched 
 the Northern heart and quickened it to ac- 
 tion, for the remaining conflict, that their 
 importance became second only to the bat- 
 tle of Gettysburg itself. Everett's speech 
 did not live an hour. Lincoln's will live for- 
 
 esee Appendix. 
 
42 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 ever. Of this speech Senator Charles Sum- 
 ner said: ''Since Simonides wrote the epi- 
 taph of those who died at Thermopylae, 
 nothing equal has ever been breathed over 
 the fallen dead/' 
 
 Incomprehensible Lincoln! No one ever 
 called him a scholar. He was never noted 
 for being a man of great learning. Up to 
 this time no University had proposed to con- 
 fer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws/ 
 Yet we find him writing such masterpieces 
 of English as the Gettysburg address, the 
 two Inaugural addresses,^ the Cooper Insti- 
 tute speech and many others. His letters are 
 such masterpieces of logic, reason and good 
 English that they are not second to Bacon's 
 Essays. Some of his sentences are like a 
 demonstration in Euclid. Here is one. After 
 t]}e fall of Vicksburg and the North had 
 gained control of the Mississippi river, he 
 summed up the situation in one sentence of 
 ten words thus: 'The Father of Waters 
 
 *In December, 1864, the degree of LL.D. was conferred 
 upon President Lincoln in absentia by the Trustees of the 
 College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. His letter 
 of acceptance was dated Washington, Dec. 27, 1864. He 
 never got to Princeton in person to receive the degree 
 formally. 
 
 'See appendix. 
 
UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 43 
 
 again goes unvexed to the Sea." In all 
 of Shakespeare you can hardly find a more 
 comprehensive sentence. 
 
 I think Lincoln wrote the best English of 
 any man since Shakespeare, and it is as hard 
 for us to conceive that the Lincoln of New 
 Salem was the Lincoln of Gettysburg, as it 
 IS to believe that the Shakespeare of Strat- 
 ford is the Shakespeare of the plays. 
 
 In the presidential campaign of 1864, 
 when Lincoln stood for re-election, there 
 took place the bitterest campaign in our his- 
 tory. He had three formidable foes to com- 
 bat, the secessionist in the field in the South, 
 the Democratic party of the North, and 
 w^orse than both the former were the trait- 
 ors, brainy, ambitious, dishonest, unpatriotic 
 politicians w^ho wanted office and promotion 
 worse than they wanted to save the Nation, 
 who were prominent members of his own 
 party. They not only fought him until he 
 was re-nominated, but demanded his decli- 
 nation thereafter. 
 
 He was so villified and maligned by men 
 who ought to have been his supporters, that 
 for him personally it took all the honor and 
 pleasure out of his re-election. 
 
44 UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 Nothing could come to him as to other 
 men to give him pleasure and happiness. It 
 seems as though that was not to be. During 
 it all no bitter word of resentment was ever 
 spoken by him. 
 
 Lincoln will live in the love and admira- 
 tion of the people of this Nation when his 
 maligners shall have become the unremem- 
 bered mold of mediocrity and malice, — the 
 forgotten dust of defeat. 
 
 Let us mark the contrast between the lives 
 of our two greatest Americans. 
 
 Washington was born of a race of cava- 
 liers, and was the greatest of them all. 
 
 Lincoln was born a plebeian and was the 
 poorest of ten thousand. 
 
 Washington's boyhood days were filled 
 with joy and prosperity, and at nineteen he 
 was one of the Adjutants-General of Vir- 
 ginia, with the rank of Major. 
 
 Lincoln's childhood was filled with sor- 
 row, and at twenty-one, uneducated, un- 
 known, and not cared for, he was driving 
 two yoke of oxen hitched to an emigrant 
 wagon, going from Indiana to Illinois. 
 
 Washington enjoyed more than forty 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 45 
 
 years of domestic felicity, never excelled in 
 the lives of great men. 
 
 Lincoln's married life of tv^enty-two years 
 we will not dwell upon. 
 
 Washington was a success as a planter, 
 financier, legislator, general, statesman and 
 President. All things transpired in such a 
 manner as to give him honor and pleasure 
 out of public service. 
 
 Lincoln's only great success came to him 
 through the Presidency. The attaining and 
 administration of the office gave him little 
 personal happiness. 
 
 Washington, after a career of unprece- 
 dented' success in war and peace retired to 
 his beautiful Mt. Vernon home with' his 
 kindred and friends around him. No great 
 sorrow had ever entered his life. In ripe old 
 age, in that peaceful home, with his beloved 
 Martha by his side he laid down to rest — 
 ''and he was not.*' 
 
 Lincoln, who had always worn "sorrow's 
 crown of sorrow" came to his death while 
 yet bearing the burden, in a public place 
 with the enactment of the greatest tragedy 
 since the crucifixion/ 
 
 ^President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth 
 
46 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 In some respects they were alike. They 
 were both great men. No opportunity was 
 ever too great for them to grasp. 
 
 Each stood for a great moral and political 
 reform. 
 
 No man lives in history and the hearts of 
 the people who does not stand for the fore- 
 most moral reform of his day. 
 
 We Americans have a right to feel a little 
 proud of the fact that this marvelous young 
 Republic produced the greatest man in the 
 World's history of the 18th century in the 
 person of George Washington; and the 
 greatest of the 19th in the person of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 Our limit is not yet. We shall furnish 
 the greatest man of the 20th century. We 
 are looking for him now. He will be the 
 Statesman who is big enough to rise to the 
 greatness of opportunity and lead this Na- 
 tion to the Prohibition of the liquor traffic. 
 His name in history will be written by the 
 side of Washington and Lincoln. 
 
 at Ford's Theater, Washington, D. C, on the evening of April 
 14, 1865, a few minutes past 10 o'clock. He was carried to a 
 house across the street, remaining unconscious until he died 
 at 7:22 o'clock on the morning of the 15th. 
 
 He was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, 111., 
 May 4. 
 
LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 47 
 
 In no respect did the life of Lincoln more 
 resemble that of our Saviour than in his last 
 days. 
 
 Passion Week means human triumphs — 
 death in agony. Palm Sunday is the Sun- 
 day of victory. Good Friday, the day of 
 crucifixion and assassination. 
 
 Earthly success and triumph came to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ but once, and that v^as 
 marked by his triumphal entry into Jerusa- 
 lem late in the afternoon of Sunday, April 
 2, A. D. 30. As the multitude escorted Him 
 into the Holy City, they strewed palms in 
 his pathv^ay, and it has been called Palm 
 Sunday to this day. 
 
 This earthly triumph of '7^^^ Christ, 
 the Man of many Sorrows," took different 
 forms from day to day until April 7, Good 
 Friday, when his enemies again took pos- 
 session of the City, and He died on the 
 Cross. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's life would have been 
 a failure if secession had triumphed and the 
 states been dissevered. 
 
 Success came to him but once also, and 
 was marked by the victory of the Federal 
 Army at Appomattox when General Le'e 
 
48 LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 
 
 surrendered to General Grant, on April 9, 
 A. D. 1865, which was also Palm Sunday. 
 Late in the afternoon the news reached 
 Washington. The war was over. The 
 burden was lifted. The Nation was not dis- 
 severed, and President Lincoln's name and 
 fame were secure forever. This triumph of 
 "Lincoln, the Man of Sorrow" took differ- 
 ent forms from day to day, and made up a 
 large part of the happiness of a life time, 
 until April 14, which was also Good Friday, 
 when, for the first time in history the "Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of a victorious army was 
 pierced by a bullet, such as had caused the 
 death of so many thousands of his brave 
 soldiers on the field of battle. 
 
 He could not have wished to have died at 
 the hands of an assassin in any other man- 
 ner. 
 
 Triumphant success came into their 
 earthly lives but once, and that was on Palm 
 Sunday. Five days thereafter and on Good 
 Friday, Jesus was crucified. 
 
 Five days therafter and on Good Friday, 
 Lincoln was assassinated, and the parallel 
 is complete. 
 
Appendix, 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered before the Springfield Washington Temperance Society, 
 
 on the 22nd of February, 1842, 
 
 By ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Esq., 
 
 And published by direction of the Society. 
 
 Although the Temperance cause has been 
 in progress for near twenty years, it is ap- 
 parent to all, that it is just now being 
 crowned with a degree of success, hitherto 
 unparalleled. 
 
 The list of its friends is daily swelled by 
 the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of 
 thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly 
 transformed from a cold, abstract theory, to 
 a living, breathing, active and powerful 
 chieftain, going forth "conquering and to 
 conquer." The citadels of his great adver- 
 sary are daily being stormed and disman- 
 tled; his temples and his altars, where the 
 rites of his idolatrous worship have long 
 been performed, and where human sacri- 
 fices have long been wont to be made, are 
 daily desecrated and deserted. The trump 
 
50 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 of the conquerer's fame is sounding from 
 hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to 
 land, and calling millions to his standard at 
 a blast. 
 
 For this new and splendid success, we 
 heartily rejoice. That that success is so 
 much greater now, than heretofore, is 
 doubtless owing to rational causes; and if 
 we would have it continue, we shall do well 
 to inquire what those causes are. The war- 
 fare heretofore waged against the demon 
 Intemperance, has, somehow or other, been 
 erroneous. Either the champions engaged, 
 or the tactics they adopted, have not been 
 the most proper. These champions for the 
 most part, have been Preachers, Lawyers, 
 and hired agents. Between these and the 
 mass of mankind, there is a want of ap- 
 proachahility, if the term be admissible, 
 partially at least, fatal to their success. They 
 are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling 
 or interest, with those very persons whom 
 it is their object to convince and persuade. 
 
 And again, it is so easy and so common 
 to ascribe motives to men of these classes 
 other than those they profess to act upon. 
 The preacher, it is said, advocates temper- 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 51 
 
 ance because he is a fanatic, and desires a 
 union of the Church and State; the laivyer, 
 from his pride and vanity of hearing himself 
 speak; and the hired agent for his salary. 
 But when one, who has long been known as 
 a victim of intemperance, bursts the fetters 
 that have bound him, and appears before his 
 neighbors "clothed and in his right mind," 
 a redeemed specimen of long lost humanity, 
 and stands up with tears of joy trembling in 
 eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured, 
 noiv to be endured no more forever; of his 
 once naked and starving children, now clad 
 and fed comfortably; of a wife, long weighed 
 down with woe, weeping, and a broken 
 heart, now restored to health, happiness, 
 and a renewed affection; and how easily it is 
 all done, once it is resolved to be done; how- 
 ever simple his language, there is a logic 
 and an eloquence in it that few with human 
 feelings, can resist. They cannot say that he 
 desires a union of church and state, for he is 
 not a church member; they cannot say he 
 is vain of hearing himself speak, for his 
 whole demeanor shows he would gladly 
 avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he 
 
52 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 Speaks for pay, for he receives none, and 
 asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any 
 way be doubted; or his sympathy for those 
 he would persuade to imitate his example, 
 be denied. 
 
 In my judgment, it is to the battles of this 
 new class of champions that our late success 
 is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had 
 the old-school champions themselves been 
 of the most wise selecting, was their system 
 of tactics, the most judicious? It seems to 
 me, it was not. Too much denunciation 
 against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was 
 indulged in. This, I think, was both impoli- 
 tic and unjust. It was impolitic, because it 
 is not much in the nature of man to be driven 
 to anything; still less to be driven about 
 that which is exclusively his own business; 
 and least of all, where such driving is to be 
 submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary 
 interest, or burning appetite. When the 
 dram-seller and drinker, were incessantly 
 told, not in the accents of entreaty and per- 
 suasion, diflidently addressed by erring man 
 to an erring brother; but in the thundering 
 tones of anathema and denunciation, with 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 53 
 
 which the lordly judge often groups to- 
 gether all the crimes of the felon's life, and 
 thrusts them in his face just ere he passes 
 sentence of death upon him, that they were 
 the authors of all the vice and misery and 
 crime in the land; that they were the manu- 
 facturers and material of all the thieves and 
 robbers and murderers that infest the earth; 
 that their houses were the workshops of the 
 devil; and that their persons should be 
 shunned by all the good and virtuous as 
 moral pestilences. — I say, when they were 
 told all this ,and in this way, it is not won- 
 derful that they were slow, very slow, to 
 acknowledge the truth of such denuncia- 
 tions, and to join the ranks of their denounc- 
 ers, in a hue and cry against themselves. 
 
 To have expected them to do otherwise 
 than they did — to have expected them not 
 to meet denunciation with denunciation, 
 crimination with crimination, and anathema 
 with anathema — was to expect a reversal of 
 human nature, which is God's decree and 
 can never be reversed. When the conduct of 
 men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, 
 kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be 
 
54 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, 
 ''that a drop of honey catches more flies than 
 a gallon of gall." — So with men. If you 
 would win a man to your cause, first con- 
 vince him that you are his sincere friend. 
 Therein is a drop of honey that catches his 
 heart, which, say what he will, is the great 
 high road to his reason, and which, when 
 once gained, you will find but little trouble 
 in convincing his judgment of the justice of 
 your cause, if indeed that cause really be a 
 just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate 
 to his judgment, or to command his action, 
 or to mark him as one to be shunned and de- 
 spised, and he will retreat within himself, 
 close all the avenues to his head and his 
 heart ; and though your cause be naked truth 
 itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, 
 harder than steel, and sharper than steel can 
 be made, and though you throw it with more 
 than Herculean force and precision, you 
 shall be no more able to pierce him than to 
 penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise v/ith a 
 rye straw. 
 
 Such is man, and so mustht be understood 
 by those who lead him, even to his own best 
 interest. 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 55 
 
 On this point, the Washingtonians greatly 
 excel the temperance advocates of former 
 times. Those whom they desire to convince 
 and persuade, are their old friends and com- 
 panions. They know they are not demons, 
 nor even the worst of men. They know that 
 generally they are kind, generous and char- 
 itable, even beyond thq example of their 
 more staid and sober neighbors. They are 
 practical philanthropists; and they glow 
 with a generous and brotherly zeal, that 
 mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Be- 
 nevolence and charity possess their hearts 
 entirely; and out of the abundance of their 
 hearts, their tongues give utterance, "Love 
 through all their actions run, and all their 
 words are mild." In this spirit they speak 
 and act, and in the same, they are heard and 
 regarded. And when such is the temper of 
 the advocate, and such of the audience, no 
 good cause can be unsuccessful. But I have 
 said that denunciations against dram-sellers 
 and dram-drinkers are unjust as well as im- 
 politic. Let us see. 
 
 I have not enquired at what period of 
 time the use of intoxicating liquors com- 
 
56 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 menced, nor is it important to know. It is 
 sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit 
 the world, the practice of drinking them, is 
 just as old as the world itself, — that is, we 
 have seen the one, just as long as we have 
 seen the other. When all such of us as, have 
 now reached the years of maturity, first 
 opened our eyes upon the stage of existence, 
 we found intoxicating liquor, recognized by 
 everybody, used by everybody, and repu- 
 diated by nobody. It commonly entered into 
 the first draught of the infant, and the last 
 draught of the dying man. From the side- 
 board of the parson down to the ragged 
 pocket of the houseless loafer, it was con- 
 stantly found. Physicians prescribed it in 
 this, that, and the other disease. Govern- 
 ment provided it for its soldiers and sailors; 
 and to have a rolling or raising, a husking 
 or hoe-down anywhere without it, was pos- 
 itively unsufferahle. 
 
 So, too, it was everywhere a respectable 
 article of manufacture and of merchandise. 
 The making of it was regarded as an hon- 
 orable livelihood, and he who could make 
 most was the most enterprising and respect- 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 57 
 
 able. Large and small manufactories of it 
 were everywhere erected, in which all the 
 earthly goods of their owners were invested. 
 Wagons drew it from town to town; boats 
 bore it from clime to clime, and the winds 
 wafted it from nation to nation; and mer- 
 chants bought and sold it, by wholesale and 
 by retail, with precisely the same feelings, 
 on the part of the seller, buyer, and by- 
 stander, as are felt at the selling and buying 
 of flour, beef, bacon, or any other of the real 
 necessaries of life. Universal public opin- 
 ion not only tolerated, but recognized and 
 adopted its use. 
 
 It is true that even then it was known and 
 acknowledged that many were greatly in- 
 jured by it; but none seemed to think the 
 injury arose from the use of a had thing, 
 but from the abuse of a veri/ good thing. The 
 victims to it were pitied, and compassionated 
 just as now are the heirs of consumption, and 
 other hereditary diseases. Their failing was 
 treated as a misfortune, and not as a crime, 
 or even as a disgrace. 
 
 If, then, what I have been saying be true, 
 is it wonderful, that some should think and 
 
58 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 act now, as all thought and acted twenty 
 years ago? And is it just to assail, condemn, 
 or despise them for doing so? The universal 
 sense of mankind, on any subject, is an argu- 
 ment, or at least an influence not easily over- 
 come. The success of the argument in favor 
 of the existence of an overruling Providence, 
 mainly depends upon that sense; and men 
 ought not, in justice, to be denounced for 
 yielding to it, in any case, or for giving it up 
 slowly, especially, v^here they are backed by 
 interest, fixed habits, or burning appetites. 
 
 Another error, as it seems to me, into 
 which the old reformers fell was the position 
 that all habitual drunkards were utterly in- 
 corrigible, and therefore, must be turned 
 adrift, and damned without remedy, in order 
 that the grace of temperance might abound, 
 to the temperate then, and to all mankind 
 some hundred years thereafter. There is 
 in this something so repugnant to humanity, 
 so uncharitable, so cold blooded and feeling- 
 less, that it never did, nor ever can enlist 
 the enthusiasm of a popular cause. We could 
 not love the man who taught it — we could 
 not hear him with patience. The heart could 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 59 
 
 not throw open its portals to it. The gen- 
 erous man could not adopt it. It could not 
 mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly 
 selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers 
 overboard, to lighten the boat for our se- 
 curity — that the noble minded shrank from 
 the manifest meanness of the thing. And be- 
 sides this, the benefits of a reformation to be 
 efTected by such a system were too remote 
 in point of time, to warmly engage many in 
 its behalf. Few can be induced to labor ex- 
 clusively for posterity; and none will do it 
 enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing 
 for us; and theorize on it as we may, prac- 
 tically we shall do very little for it, unless we 
 are made to think we are, at the same time, 
 doing something for ourselves. What an 
 ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, 
 to ask or expect a whole community to rise 
 up and labor for the temporal happiness of 
 others after themselves shall be consigned to 
 the dust, a majority of which community 
 take no pains whatever to secure their own 
 eternal welfare, at a no greater distant day? 
 Great distance, in either time or space, has 
 wonderful power to lull and render quiescent 
 
60 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, 
 or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead 
 and gone, are but little regarded, even in our 
 own cases, and much less in the cases of 
 others. 
 
 Still, in addition to this, there is something 
 so ludicrous in promises of good, or threats 
 of evil, a great v^ay off, as to render the 
 whole subject with which they are connected, 
 easily turned into ridicule. "Better lay down 
 that spade you're stealing, Paddy — if you 
 don't you'll pay for it at the day of judg- 
 ment." "Be the powers, if ye'll credit me so 
 long I'll take another jist." 
 
 By the Washingtonians, this system of 
 consigning the habitual drunkard to hope- 
 less ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more 
 enlarged philanthropy. They go for present 
 as well as for future good. They labor for 
 all now living as well as hereafter to live. 
 They teach hope to all — despair to none. As 
 applying to their cause, they deny the doc- 
 trine of unpardonable sin. As in Christianity 
 it is taught, so in this they teach, that 
 
 "While the lamp holds out to burn 
 The vilest sinner may return." 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 61 
 
 And, what is matter of the most profound 
 gratulation, they, by experiment upon ex- 
 periment, and example upon example, prove 
 the maxim to be no less true in the one case 
 than in the other. On every hand we behold 
 those who, but yesterday, were the chief of 
 sinners, now the chief apostles of the cause. 
 Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by 
 sevens, and by legions; and their unfortunate 
 victims, like the poor possessed, who was re- 
 deemed from his long and lonely wanderings 
 in the tombs, are publishing to the ends of 
 the earth, how great things have been done 
 for them. 
 
 To these new champions, and this new 
 system of tactics, our late success is mainly 
 owing; and to them we must chiefly look for 
 the final consummation. The ball is now roll- 
 ing gloriously on, and none are so able as 
 they to increase its speed, and its bulk, — to 
 add to its momentum, and its magnitude. 
 Even though unlearned in letters, for this 
 task, none others are so well educated. To 
 fit them for this work, they have been taught 
 in the true school. They have been in that 
 gulf from which they would teach others the 
 means of escape. Thep have passed that 
 
62 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 prison wall, which others have long declared 
 impassable; and who that has not, shall 
 dare to weigh opinions with them as to the 
 mode of passing. 
 
 But if it be true, as I have insisted, that 
 those who have suffered by intemperance 
 personallyy and have reformed are the most 
 powerful and efficient instruments to push 
 the reformation to ultimate success, it does 
 not follow, that those who have not suffered, 
 have no part left them to perform. Whether 
 or not the world would be vastly benefited 
 by a total and final banishment from it of all 
 intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now 
 to be an open question. Three-fourths of 
 mankind confess the affirmative with their 
 tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknow- 
 ledge it in their hearts. 
 
 Ought any then, to refuse their aid in do- 
 ing what the good of the whole demands? 
 Shall he, who cannot do much, be, for that 
 reason, excused if he do nothing? "But," 
 says one, "what good can I do by signing 
 the pledge? I never drink, even without 
 signing." This question has already been 
 asked and even answered more than millions 
 of times. Let it be answered once more. 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 63 
 
 For the man to suddenly, or in any other 
 way, to break off from the use of drams, who 
 has indulged in them for a long course of 
 years, and until his appetite for them has be- 
 come ten or a hundred fold stronger, and 
 more craving, than any natural appetite can 
 be, requires a most powerful moral effort. In 
 such an undertaking, he needs every moral 
 support and influence, that can possibly be 
 brought to his aid, and thrown around him. 
 And not only so, but every moral prop, 
 should be taken from whatever argument 
 might rise in his mind to lure him to his 
 backsliding. When he casts his eyes around 
 him he should be able to see all that he re- 
 spects, all that he admires, and all that he 
 loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him on- 
 ward; and none beckoning him back, to his 
 former miserable "wallowing in the mire." 
 
 But it is said by some, that men will think 
 and act for themselves; that none will disuse 
 spirits or anything else merely because his 
 neighbors do; and that moral influence is 
 not that powerful engine contended for. Let 
 us examine this. Let me ask the man who 
 could maintain this position most stiffly, 
 what compensation he will accept to go to 
 
64 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 church some Sunday and sit during the ser- 
 mon with his wife's bonnet upon his head? 
 Not a trifle, I'll venture. And why not? 
 There would be nothing irreligious in it; 
 nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable. 
 Then why not? Is it not because there would 
 be something egregiously unfashionable 
 in it ? Then it is the influence of fashion;; and 
 what is the influence of fashion, but the in- 
 fluence that other people's actions have on 
 our own actions — the strong inclination 
 each of us feels to do as we see all our neigh- 
 bors do? Nor is the influence of fashion con- 
 fined to any particular thing or class of 
 things. It is just as strong on one subject 
 as another. Let us make it as unfashionable 
 to withhold our names from the temperance 
 pledge as for husbands to wear their wives 
 bonnets to church, and instances will be just 
 as rare in the one case as the other. 
 
 "But," say some, ''we are no drunkards; 
 and we shall not acknowledge ourselves such 
 by joining a reformed drunkards' society, 
 whatever our influence might be." Surely 
 no Christian will adhere to this objection. 
 If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipo- 
 tence condescended to take on Himself the 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 65 
 
 form of sinful man and, as such, to die an 
 ignominious death for their sakes, surely 
 they will not refuse submission to the in- 
 finitely lesser condescension for the temporal 
 and perhaps eternal salvation of a large, err- 
 ing, and unfortunate class of their own fel- 
 low creatures. Nor is the condescension 
 very great. 
 
 In my judgment, such of us as have never 
 fallen victims have been spared more from 
 the absence of appetite, than from any men- 
 tal or moral superiority over those who have. 
 Indeed, I believe if we take habitual drunk- 
 ards as a class, their heads and their hearts 
 will bear an advantageous comparison with 
 those of any other class. There seems ever 
 to have been a proneness in the brilliant and 
 warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The 
 demon of intemperance ever seems to have 
 delighted in sucking the blood of genius and 
 of generosity. What one of us but can call 
 to mind some dear relative, more promising 
 in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen 
 a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems 
 to have gone forth, like the Egyptian angel 
 of death, commissioned to slay if not the 
 first, the fairest born of every family. Shall 
 
66 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 he now be arrested in his desolating career? 
 In that arrest, all can give aid that will; and 
 who shall be excused that can and will not? 
 Far around as human breath has ever blown, 
 he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, 
 and our friends, prostrate in the chains of 
 moral death. To all the living everywhere, 
 we cry, "Come sound the moral resurrection 
 trump, that these may rise and stand up an 
 exceeding great army" — "Come from the 
 four winds, O breath! and breathe upon 
 these slain, that they may live." 
 
 If the relative grandeur of revolutions 
 shall be estimated by the great amount of 
 human misery they alleviate, and the small 
 amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be 
 the grandest the world shall ever have seen. 
 Of our political revolution of '76 we all are 
 justly proud. It has given us a degree of 
 political freedom, far exceeding that of any 
 other of the nations of the earth. In it the 
 world has found a solution of the long moot- 
 ed problem as to the capability of man to 
 govern himself. In it was the germ which 
 has vegetated, and still is to grow and ex- 
 pand into the universal liberty of mankind. 
 
 But with all these glorious results, past, 
 
TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 67 
 
 present, and to come, it has its evils too. 
 It breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and 
 rode on fire; and long, longafter, the orphans 
 cry and the widows wail continued to break 
 the sad silence that ensued. These were the 
 price, the inevitable price, paid for the bless- 
 ings it bought. 
 
 Turn now, to the temperance revolution, 
 in it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, 
 a viler slavery manumitted^ a greater tyrant 
 deposed. In it more of want supplied, more 
 disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By 
 it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. 
 By it none wounded in feeling, none injured 
 in interest. Even the dram-maker, and dram- 
 seller, will have glided into other occupa- 
 tions so gradually as never to have felt the 
 shock of change, and will stand ready to join 
 all others in the universal song of gladness. 
 
 And what a noble ally this, to the cause 
 of political freedom. With such an aid, its 
 march cannot fail to be on and on, till every 
 son of earth shall drink in rich fruition, the 
 sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect lib- 
 erty. Happy day, when, all appetites con- 
 trolled, all passions subdued, all matter sub- 
 jected, mind all conquering mind shall live 
 
68 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 
 
 and move the monarch of the world. Glor- 
 ious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! 
 Reign of Reason, all hail! 
 
 And when the victory shall be complete — 
 when there shall be neither a slave nor a 
 drunkard on the earth — how proud the title 
 of that Land, which may truly claim to be 
 the birthplace and the cradle of both those 
 revolutions, that shall have ended in that 
 victory. How nobly distinguished that Peo- 
 ple who shall have planted, and nurtured to 
 maturity, both the political and moral free- 
 dom of their species. 
 
 This is the one hundred and tenth anni- 
 versary of the birthday of Washington. We 
 are met to celebrate this day. Washington 
 is the mightiest name of earth — long since 
 mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still 
 mightiest in moral reformation. On that 
 name an eulogy is expected. It cannot be. 
 To add brightness to the sun, or glory to 
 the name of Washington, is alike impossible. 
 Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pro- 
 nounce the name, and in its naked deathless 
 splendor leave it shining on. 
 
 The above is an exact copv as published in the Sangamo 
 Journal, Springfield, 111., March 26, 1842. 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 Fellow-Citizens of the United States: 
 
 In compliance with a custom as old as the 
 Government itself, I appear before you to 
 address you briefly and to take in your pres- 
 ence the oath prescribed by the Constitution 
 of the United States to be taken by the 
 President "before he enters on the execution 
 
 of his office." 
 
 I do not consider it necessary at present 
 for me to discuss those matters of adminis- 
 tration about which there is no special anx- 
 iety or excitement. 
 
 Apprehension seems to exist among the 
 people of the Southern States that by the ac- 
 cession of a Republican Administration their 
 property and their peace and personal se- 
 curity are to be endangered. There has never 
 been any reasonable cause for such apprehen- 
 sion Indeed, the most ample evidence to the 
 contrary has all the while existed and been 
 open to their inspection. It is found in nearly 
 all the published speeches of him who now 
 addresses you. I do but quote from one of 
 those speeches when I declare that— 
 
70 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere 
 with the institution of slavery in the States where it ex- 
 ists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and i 
 have no inclination to do so. 
 
 Those who nominated and elected me did 
 so with the full knowledge that I had made 
 this and many similar declarations and 
 had never recanted them; and more than 
 this, they placed in the platform for my ac- 
 ceptance, and as a law to themselves and to 
 me, the clear and emphatic resolution which 
 I now read: 
 
 Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights 
 of the States, and especially the rights of each State to 
 Order and control its own domestic institutions according 
 to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that bal- 
 ance of power on which the perfection and endurance of 
 our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless 
 invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Ter- 
 ritory, no matter under what pretext, as among the 
 gravest of crimes. 
 
 I now reiterate these sentiments, and in 
 doing so I only press upon the public atten- 
 tion the most conclusive evidence of which 
 the case is susceptible that the property, 
 peace, and security of no section are to be in 
 any wise endangered by the now incoming 
 Administration. I add, too, that all the pro- 
 tection which, consistently with the Consti- 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 71 
 
 tution and the laws, can be given will be 
 cheerfully given to all the States when law- 
 fully demanded, for whatever cause — as 
 cheerfully to one section as to another. 
 
 There is much controversy about the de- 
 livering up of fugitives from service or labor. 
 The clause I now read is as plainly written 
 in the Constitution as any other of its pro- 
 visions: 
 
 No person held to service or labor in one State, under 
 the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in conse- 
 quence of any law or regulation therein be discharged 
 from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on 
 claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be 
 due. 
 
 It is scarcely questioned that this pro- 
 vision was intended by those who made it 
 for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive 
 slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is 
 the law. All members of Congress swear 
 their support to the whole Constitution — to 
 this provision as much as to any other. To 
 the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases 
 
 come within the terms of this clause ''shall 
 
 « 
 
 be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. 
 Now, if they would make the effort in good 
 temper, could they not with equal unanimity 
 
72 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 frame and pass a law by means of which to 
 keep good that unanimous oath? 
 
 There is some difference of opinion 
 whether this clause should be enforced by 
 national or by State authority, but surely 
 that difference is not a very material one. If 
 the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of 
 but little consequence to him or to others by 
 which authority it is done. And should any- 
 one in any case be content that his oath shall 
 go unkept on a merely unsubstantial con- 
 troversy as to how it shall be kept? 
 
 Again: In any law upon this subject 
 ought not all the safeguards of liberty known 
 in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be 
 introduced, so that a free man be not in any 
 case surrendered as a slave? And might it 
 not be well at the same time to provide by 
 law for the enforcement of that clause in the 
 Constitution which guarantees that "the 
 citizens of each State shall be entitled to all 
 privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
 several States"? 
 
 I take the official oath to-day with no men- 
 tal reservations and with no purpose to con- 
 strue the Constitution or laws by any hyper- 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 73 
 
 — — ■ ^ — ■ — _^___^^^ 
 
 critical rules; and while I do not choose now 
 to specify particular acts of Congress as 
 proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it 
 will be much safer for all, both in official and 
 private stations, to conform to and abide by 
 all those acts which stand unrepealed than 
 to violate any of them trusting to find im- 
 punity in having them held to be unconsti- 
 tutional. 
 
 It is seventy-two years since the first in- 
 auguration of a President under our Na- 
 tional Constitution. During that period fif- 
 teen different and greatly distinguished citi- 
 zens have in succession administered the 
 executive branch of the Government. They 
 have conducted it through many perils, and 
 generally with great success. Yet, with all 
 this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the 
 same task for the brief constitutional term of 
 four years under great and peculiar diffi- 
 culty. A disruption of the Federal Union, 
 heretofore only menaced, is now formidably 
 attempted. 
 
 I hold that in contemplation of universal 
 law and of the Constitution the Union of 
 these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is im- 
 
74 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 plied, if not expressed, in the fundamental 
 law of all national governments. It is safe 
 to assert that no government proper ever had 
 a provision in its organic law for its own ter- 
 mination. Continue to execute all the ex- 
 press provisions of our National Constitu- 
 tion, and the Union will endure forever, it 
 being impossible to destroy it except by 
 some action not provided for in the instru- 
 ment itself. 
 
 Again : If the United States be not a gov- 
 ernment proper, but an association of States 
 in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a 
 contract, be peaceably unmade by less than 
 all the parties who made it? One party to a 
 contract may violate it — break it, so to 
 speak — but does it not require all to lawfully 
 rescind it? 
 
 Descending from these general principles, 
 we find the proposition that in legal contem- 
 plation the Union is perpetual confirmed by 
 the history of the Union itself. The Union 
 is much older than the Constitution. It was 
 formed, in fact, by the Articles of Associa- 
 tion in 1774. It was matured and continued 
 by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. 
 
FKST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 75 
 
 It was further matured, and the faith of all 
 the then thirteen States expressly plighted 
 and engaged that it should be perpetual, by 
 the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And 
 finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects 
 for ordaining and establishing the Constitu- 
 tion was "to form a more perfect Union,'' 
 
 But if destruction of the Union by one or 
 by a part only of the States be lawfully pos- 
 sible, the Union is less perfect than before 
 the Constitution, having lost the vital ele- 
 ment of perpetuity. 
 
 It follows from these views that no State 
 upon its own mere motion can lawfully get 
 out of the Union; that resolves and ordi- 
 nances to that effect are legally void, and that 
 acts of violence within any State or States 
 against the authority of the United States 
 are insurrectionary or revolutionary, accord- 
 ing to circumstances. 
 
 I therefore consider that in view of the 
 Constitution and the laws the Union is un- 
 broken, and to the extent of my ability I shall 
 take care, as the Constitution itself expressly 
 enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union 
 be faithfully executed in all the States. Do- 
 
76 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 ing this I deem to be only a simple duty on 
 my part, and I shall perform it so far as prac- 
 ticable unless my rightful masters, the 
 American people, shall withhold the requis- 
 ite means or in some authoritative manner 
 direct the contrary. I trust this will not be 
 regarded as a menace, but only as the de- 
 clared purpose of the Union that it will con- 
 stitutionally defend and maintain itself. 
 
 In doing this there needs to be no blood- 
 shed or violence, and there shall be none un- 
 less it be forced upon the national authority. 
 The power confided to me will be used to 
 hold, occupy, and possess the property and 
 places belonging to the Government and to 
 collect the duties and imposts; but beyond 
 what may be necessary for these objects, 
 there will be no invasion, no using of force 
 against or among the people anywhere. 
 Where hostility to the United States in any 
 interior locality shall be so great and uni- 
 versal as to prevent competent resident citi- 
 zens from holding the Federal offices, there 
 will be no attempt to force obnoxious 
 strangers among the people for that object. 
 While the strict legal right may exist in the 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 77 
 
 Government to enforce the exercise of these 
 offices, the attempt to do so would be so ir- 
 ritating and so nearly impracticable withal 
 that I deem it better to forego for the time 
 the uses of such offices. 
 
 The mails, unless repelled, will continue 
 to be furnished in all parts of the Union. 
 So far as possible the people everywhere 
 shall have that sense of perfect security 
 which is most favorable to calm thought and 
 reflection. The course here indicated will 
 be followed unless current events and ex- 
 perience shall show a modification or change 
 to be proper, and in every case and exigency 
 my best discretion will be exercised, accord- 
 ing to circumstances actually existing and 
 with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution 
 of the national troubles and the restoration 
 of fraternal sympathies and affections. 
 
 That there are persons in one section or 
 another who seek to destroy the Union at 
 all events and are glad of any pretext to do 
 it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there 
 be such, I need address no word to them. 
 To those, however, who really love the 
 Union may I not speak? 
 
78 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 Before entering upon so grave a matter as 
 the destruction of our national fabric, with 
 all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, 
 would it not be wise to ascertain precisely 
 why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate 
 a step while there is any possibility that any 
 portion of the ills you fly from have no real 
 existence? Will you, while the certain ills 
 you fly to are greater than all the real ones 
 you fly from, will you risk the commission of 
 so fearful a mistake? 
 
 All profess to be content in the Union if 
 all constitutional rights can be maintained. 
 Is it true, then, that any right plainly writ- 
 ten in the Constitution has been denied? I 
 think not. Happily, the human mind is so 
 constituted that no party can reach to the 
 audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of 
 a single instance in which a plainly written 
 provision of the Constitution has ever been 
 denied. If by the mere force of numbers a 
 majority should deprive a minority of any 
 clearly written constitutional right, it might 
 in a moral point of view justify revolution; 
 certainly would if such right were a vital 
 one. But such is not our case. All the vital 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 79 
 
 rights of minorities and of individuals are 
 so plainly assured to them by affirmations 
 and negations, guaranties and prohibi- 
 tions, in the Constitution that controversies 
 never arise concerning them. But no or- 
 ganic law can ever be framed with a pro- 
 vision specifically applicable to every ques- 
 tion which may occur in practical adminis- 
 tration. No foresight can anticipate nor 
 any document of reasonable length contain 
 express provisions for all possible questions. 
 Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by 
 national or by State authority ? The Consti- 
 tution does not expressly say. Matj Con- 
 gress prohibit slavery in the Territories? 
 The Constitution does not e^^pressly say. 
 Must Congress protect slavery in the Terri- 
 tories? The Constitution does not expressly 
 
 say. . 
 
 From questions of this class sprmg all our 
 constitutional controversies, and we divide 
 upon them into majorities and minorities. 
 If the minority will not acquiesce, the ma- 
 jority must, or the Government must cease. 
 There is no other alternative, for continuing 
 the Government is acquiescence on one side 
 
80 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 or the other. If a minority in such case will 
 secede rather than acquiesce, they make a 
 precedent which in turn will divide and ruin 
 them, for a minority of their own will se- 
 cede from them whenever a majority refuses 
 to be controlled by such minority. For in- 
 stance, why may not any portion of a new 
 confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily 
 secede again, precisely as portions of the 
 present Union now claim to secede from it? 
 All who cherish disunion sentiments are 
 now being educated to the exact temper of 
 doing this. 
 
 Is there such perfect identity of interests 
 among the States to compose a new union 
 as to produce harmony only and prevent re- 
 newed secession? 
 
 Plainly the central idea of secession is the 
 essence of anarchy. A majority held in re- 
 straint by constitutional checks and limita- 
 tions, and always changing easily with de- 
 liberate changes of popular opinions and 
 sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a 
 free people. Whoever rejects it does of ne- 
 cessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Una- 
 nimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 81 
 
 as a permanent arrangement, is wholly in- 
 admissible; so that, rejecting the majority 
 principle, anarchy or despotism in some form 
 is all that is left. 
 
 I do not forget the position assumed by 
 some that constitutional questions are to be 
 decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I de- 
 ny that such decisions must be binding in 
 any case upon the parties to a suit as to the 
 object of that suit, while they are also en- 
 titled to very high respect and consideration 
 in all parallel cases by all other departments 
 of the Government. And while it is obvious- 
 ly possible that such decision may be erron- 
 eous in any given case, still the evil effect 
 following it, being limited to that particular 
 case, with the chance that it may be over- 
 ruled and never become a precedent for 
 other cases, can better be borne than could 
 the evils of a different practice. At the same 
 time, the candid citizen must confess that if 
 the policy of the Government upon vital 
 questions affecting the whole people is to be 
 irrevocably fixed by decisions of t'he Su- 
 preme Court, the instant they are made in 
 ordinary litigation between parties in per- 
 sonal actions the people will have ceased to 
 
82 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 be their own rulers, having to that extent 
 practically resigned their Government into 
 the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is 
 there in this view any assault upon the court 
 or the judges. It is a duty from which they 
 may not shrink to decide cases properly 
 brought before them, and it is no fault of 
 theirs if others seek to turn their decisions 
 to political purposes. 
 
 One section of our country believes slav- 
 ery is right and ought to be extended, while 
 the other believes it is wrong and ought not 
 to be extended. This is the only substan- 
 tial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of 
 the Constitution and the law for the supres- 
 sion of the foreign slave trade are each as 
 well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever 
 be in a community where the moral sense 
 of the people imperfectly supports the law 
 itself. The great body of the people abide 
 by the dry legal obligation in both cases, 
 and a few break over in each. This, I think, 
 can not be perfectly cured, and it would be 
 worse in both cases after the separation of 
 the sections than before. The foreign slave 
 trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would 
 be ultimately revived without restriction in 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 83 
 
 one section, while fugitive slaves, now only 
 partially surrendered, would not be surren- 
 dered at all by the other. 
 
 Physically speaking, we can not separate. 
 We cannot remove our respective sections 
 from each other nor build an impassable 
 w^all between them. A husband and wife 
 may be divorced and go out of the presence 
 and beyond the reach of each other, but the 
 different parts of our country cannot do this. 
 They cannot but remain face to face, and in- 
 tercourse, either amicable or hostile, must 
 continue between them. Is it possible, then, 
 to make that intercourse more advantageous 
 or more satisfactory after separation than 
 before? Can aliens make treaties easier than 
 friends can make laws? Can treaties be more 
 faithfully enforced between aliens than laws 
 can among friends ? Suppose you go to war, 
 you cannot fight always; and when, after 
 much loss on both sides and no gain on 
 either, you cease fighting, the identical old 
 questions, as to terms of intercourse, are 
 again upon you. 
 
 This country, with its institutions, be- 
 longs to the people who inhabit it. When- 
 ever they shall grow weary of the existing 
 
84 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 Government, they can exercise their consti- 
 tutional right of amending it or their revolu- 
 tionary right to dismember or overthrow it. 
 I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many 
 worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of 
 having the National Constitution amended. 
 While I make no recommendation of 
 amendments, I fully recognize the rightful 
 authority of the people over the whole sub- 
 ject, to be exercised in either of the modes 
 prescribed in the instrument itself; and I 
 should, under existing circumstances, favor 
 rather than oppose a fair opportunity being 
 afforded the people to act upon it. I will 
 venture to add that to me the convention 
 mode seems preferable, in that it allows 
 amendments to originate with the people 
 themselves, instead of only permitting them 
 to take or reject propositions originated by 
 others, not especially chosen for the pur- 
 pose, and which might not be precisely such 
 as they would wish to either accept or refuse. 
 I understand a proposed amendment to the 
 Constitution — which amendment, however, 
 I have not seen — has passed Congress, to the 
 effect that the Federal Government shall 
 never interfere with the domestic institu- 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 85 
 
 tions of the States, including that of persons 
 held to service. To avoid misconstruction 
 of what I have said, I depart from my pur- 
 pose not to speak of particular amendments 
 so far as to say that, holding such a provision 
 to now be implied constitutional law, I have 
 no objection to its being made express and 
 irrevocable. 
 
 The Chief Magistrate derives all his au- 
 thority from the people, and they have con- 
 ferred none upon him to fix terms for the 
 separation of the States. The people them- 
 selves can do this also if they choose, but the 
 Executive as such has nothing to do with 
 it. His duty is to administer the present 
 Government as it came to his hands and to 
 transmit it unimpaired by him to his suc- 
 cessor. 
 
 Why should there not be a patient confi- 
 dence in the ultimate justice of the people? 
 Is there any better or equal hope in the 
 world? In our present differences, is either 
 party without faith of being in the right? 
 If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His 
 eternal truth and justice, be on your side of 
 the North, or on yours of the South that 
 truth and that justice will surely prevail by 
 
86 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 the judgment of this great tribunal of the 
 American people. 
 
 By the frame of the Government under 
 which we live this same people have wisely 
 given their public servants but little power 
 for mischief, and have with equal wisdom 
 provided for the return of that little to their 
 own hands at very short intervals. While 
 the people retain their virtue and vigilance 
 no Administration by any extreme of wick- 
 edness or folly can very seriously injure the 
 Government in the short space of four years. 
 
 My countrymen, one and all, think calmly 
 and well upon this whole subject. Nothing 
 valuable can be lost by taking time. If there 
 be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste 
 to a step which you would never take delib- 
 erately, that object will be frustrated by tak- 
 ing time; but no good object can be frus- 
 trated by it. Such of you as are now dis- 
 satisfied still have the old Constitution un- 
 impaired, and, on the sensitive point, the 
 laws of your own framing under it; while 
 the new Administration will have no im- 
 mediate power, if it would, to change either. 
 If it were admitted that you who are dis- 
 satisfied hold the right side in the dispute, 
 
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 87 
 
 there still is no single good reason for pre- 
 cipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, 
 Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him 
 who has never yet forsaken this favored land 
 are still competent to adjust in the best way 
 all our present difficulty. 
 
 In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
 countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- 
 tous issue of civil war. The Government 
 will not assail you. You can have no con- 
 flict without being yourselves the aggres- 
 sors. You have no oath registered in heaven 
 to destroy the Government, while I shall 
 have the most solemn one to "preserve, pro- 
 tect, and defend it.'' 
 
 I am loath to close. We are not enemies, 
 but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained it must 
 not break our bonds of affection. The mystic 
 chords of memory, stretching from every 
 battlefield and patriot grave to every living 
 heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
 land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, 
 when again touched, as surely they will be, 
 by the better angels of our nature. 
 
 March 4, 1861. 
 
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 Fellow-Countrymen : At this second ap- 
 pearing to take the oath of the Presidential 
 office there is less occasion for an extended 
 address than there was at the first. Then a 
 statement somewhat in detail of a course to 
 be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, 
 at the expiration of four years, during whicn 
 public declarations have been constantly 
 called forth on every point and phase of the 
 great contest which still absorbs the atten- 
 tion and engrosses the energies of the na- 
 tion, little that is new could be presented. 
 The progress of our arms, upon which all 
 else chiefly depends, is as well known to the 
 public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reason- 
 ably satisfactory and encouraging to all. 
 With high hope for the future, no prediction 
 in regard to it is ventured. 
 
 On the occasion corresponding to this 
 four years ago all thoughts were anxiously 
 directed to an impending civil war. All 
 dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the 
 inaugural address was being delivered from 
 
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 89 
 
 this place, devoted altogether to saving the 
 Union without war, insurgent agents were 
 in the city seeking to destroy it without war 
 — seeking to dissolve the Union and divide 
 effects by negotiation. Both parties depre- 
 cated war, but one of them would make war 
 rather than let the nation survive, and the 
 other would accept war rather than let it 
 perish, and the war came. 
 
 One-eighth of the whole population were 
 colored slaves, not distributed generally 
 over the Union, but localized in the southern 
 part of it. These slaves constituted a pe- 
 culiar and powerful interest. All knew that 
 this interest was somehow the cause of the 
 war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and ex- 
 tend this interest was the object for which 
 the insurgents would rend the Union even 
 by war, while the Government claimed no 
 right to do more than to restrict the terri- 
 torial enlargement of it. Neither party ex- 
 pected for the war the magnitude or the du- 
 ration which it has already attained. Neither 
 anticipated that the cause of ithe conflict 
 might cease with or even before the conflict 
 itself should cease. Each looked for an easier 
 
90 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
 astounding. Both read the same Bible and 
 pray to the same God, and each invokes His 
 aid against the other. It may seem strange 
 that any men should dare to ask a just God's 
 assistance in wringing their bread from the 
 sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge 
 not, that we be not judged. The prayers of 
 both could not be answered. That of neither 
 has been answered fully. The Almighty has 
 His own purposes. ''Woe unto the world 
 because of offenses; for it must needs be 
 that offenses come, but woe to that man by 
 whom the offense cometh." If we shall sup- 
 pose that American slavery is one of those 
 offenses which, in the providence of God, 
 must needs come, but which, having con- 
 tinued through His appointed time, He now 
 wills to remove, and that He gives to both 
 North and South this terrible war as the woe 
 due to those by whom the offense came, 
 shall we discern therein any departure from 
 those divine attributes which the believers 
 in a living God always ascribe 'to Him? 
 Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, 
 that this mighty scourge of war may speed- 
 
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 91 
 
 ily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it con- 
 tinue until all the wealth piled by the bonds- 
 man's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
 quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
 of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid 
 by another drawn with the sword, as was 
 said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
 be said "the judgments of the Lord are true 
 and righteous altogether." 
 
 With malice toward none, with charity 
 for all, with firmness in the right as God 
 gives us to see the right let us strive on to 
 finish the work we are in, to bind up the na- 
 tion's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
 borne the battle and for his widow and his 
 orphan, to do all which may achieve and 
 cherish a just and lasting peace among our- 
 selves and with all nations. 
 
 March 4, 1865. 
 
PROCLAMATION. 
 
 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
 A PROCLAMATION. 
 
 Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A. 
 D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the 
 President of the United States, containing, 
 among other things, the following to-wit: 
 
 That on the 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, all persons 
 held as slaves within any State or designated part of 
 a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion 
 against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, 
 and forever free; and the executive government of the 
 United States, including the military and naval author- 
 ity thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of 
 such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such 
 persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make 
 for their actual freedom. 
 
 That the Executive will, on the 1st day of January 
 aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts 
 of States, if any, in which people thereof, respectively, 
 shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and 
 the fact that any State or the people 'thereof shall on that 
 day be in good faith represented in the Congress of 
 the United States by members chosen thereto at elections 
 wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States 
 shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong 
 countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence 
 that such State and the people thereof are not then in re- 
 bellion against the United States. 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, 
 
 I 
 
A PROCLAMATION 93 
 
 President of the United States, by virtue of 
 the power in me vested as Commander in 
 Chief of the Army and Navy of the United 
 States in time of actual armed rebellion 
 against the authority and Government of 
 the United States, and as a fit and necessary 
 war measure for suppressing said rebellion, 
 do, on this 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, 
 and in accordance with my purpose so to do, 
 publicly proclaimed for the full period of 
 one hundred days from the day first above 
 mentioned, order and designate as the States 
 and parts of States wherein the people there- 
 of, respectively, are this day in rebellion 
 against the United States the following, to- 
 wit: 
 
 Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the 
 parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jef- 
 ferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, As- 
 cension, Assumption, Terrebonne, La- 
 fourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, 
 including the city of New Orleans), Miss- 
 issippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South 
 Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia 
 (except the forty-eight counties desig- 
 nated as West Virginia, and also the coun- 
 
94 A PROCLAMATION 
 
 ties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, 
 Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and 
 Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and 
 Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are 
 for the present left precisely as if this proc- 
 lamation were not issued. 
 
 And by virtue of the power and for the 
 purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare 
 that all persons held as slaves within said 
 designated States and parts of States are 
 and henceforward shall be free, and that 
 the executive government of the United 
 States, including the military and naval au- 
 thorities thereof, will recognize and main- 
 tain the freedom of said persons. 
 
 And I hereby enjoin upon the people so 
 declared to be free to abstain from all vio- 
 lence, unless in necessary self-defense; and 
 I recommend to them that in all cases when 
 allowed they labor faithfully for reasonable 
 wages. 
 
 And I further declare and make known 
 that such persons of suitable condition will 
 be received into the armed service of the 
 United States to garrison forts, positions, 
 stations, and other places and to man ves- 
 sels of all sorts in said service. 
 
A PROCLAMATION 95 
 
 And Upon this act, sincerely believed to 
 be an act of justice, warranted by the Con- 
 stitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
 the considerate judgment of mankind and 
 the gracious favor of Almighty God. 
 
 In v^itness whereof I have hereunto set 
 my hand and caused the seal of the United 
 States to be affixed. 
 
 Done at the city of Washington, 
 this 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, 
 (seal.) and of the Independence of the 
 United States of America the eighty- 
 seventh. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 By the President: 
 William H. Seward, Secretary of State, 
 
LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. 
 
 Four score and seven years ago our fath- 
 ers brought forth upon this continent a new 
 nation, conceived in Hberty, and dedicated 
 to the proposition that all men are created 
 equal. 
 
 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
 testing whether that nation, or any nation, 
 so conceived and so dedicated, can long en- 
 dure. We are met on a great battlefield of 
 that war. We are met to dedicate a portion 
 of it as the final resting place of those who 
 here gave their lives that that nation might 
 live. It is altogether fitting and proper that 
 we should do this. 
 
 But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate 
 — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow 
 this ground. The brave men, living and 
 dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 
 
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 97 
 
 it far above our power to add or detract. 
 The world will little note, nor long remem- 
 ber, what we say here, but it can never for- 
 get what they did here. It is for us, the liv- 
 ing, rather to be dedciated here to the un- 
 finished work that they have thus far so 
 nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be 
 here dedicated to the great task remaining 
 before us, — that from these honored dead 
 we take increased devotion to the cause for 
 which they gave the last full measure of de- 
 votion, — that we here highly resolve that 
 the dead shall not have died in vain; that the 
 nation shall, under God, have a new birth 
 of freedom, and that the government of the 
 people, by the people, and for the people, 
 shall not perish from the earth. 
 
 The above is the standard and authentic text made four 
 days after its delivery, by Mr. Lincoln, to be placed with 
 records of the Gettysburg Cemetery Association. 
 
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