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SPEECH OF 
 HON. CHARLES E. HUGHES, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 LINCOLN DINNER OF THE REPUBLICAN 
 CLUB, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Waldorf-Astoeia, New York, 
 February 12, 1908. 
 
 Governor Hughes: Mr. President, Gentlemen of 
 the Republican Club and Ladies: The exigencies of 
 the gubernatorial office have not given me oppor- 
 tunity to prepare any address which would be 
 worthy of the traditions of this anniversary, and 
 I appear before you without any set speech. I 
 am very glad, indeed, of the opportunity of wel- 
 coming to the State of New York the Governor 
 of our sister State of Kentucky, and I envy you 
 the pleasure that you will have in listening to 
 those who will adequately present the memories of 
 this occasion. But, my friends, from a boy I have 
 been full of Lincoln. There is no day in the year 
 that is so eloquent to me as the day in which we 
 commemorate his birth. It is true that on that 
 day of all days, when we celebrate the Declaration 
 of Independence, the American heart is warm with 
 the sentiments of liberty and of free opportunity 
 and of party recognition of equality. It is also 
 true that on the day when we celebrate the birth 
 of the Father of his Country, we render loyal 
 
 Law Reporting Compaut, 67 Wall Street, New York. 
 
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 tiibiite to the distinguished services of the man 
 who, against odds which we little ai^preciate, bat- 
 tled for the independence which was so nobly 
 declared; and we all feel richer in our manhood 
 l)eeause we were introduced to the family of 
 nations l)y one who so worthily represented the 
 l)est that humanity has olfered. But there is one 
 man who presents to the American people above 
 all others in his many sided greatness the type 
 representative of those qualities which distinguish 
 American character, and make possible the main- 
 tenance of our national strength, and, in Abraham 
 Lincoln we recognize, not simply one who gave his 
 life for his country and rendered the most impor- 
 tant service that any man could render in the 
 preservation of the Union, but one who seemed to 
 have centered in himself those many attributes 
 which we recognize as the sources of oixr national 
 l)ower. He is, par excellence, the true American, 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 I wish in our colleges, and wherever young men 
 <ire trained, particularly for political life, that 
 there could be a course in Lincoln. I wish our 
 young men could be taken through the long efforts 
 of his career, I wish they could become more in- 
 timately acciuainted with the addresses that he de- 
 livered, I wish that they could get in closer touch 
 with that remarkable personality and then they 
 would never find it possible to take a low or sordid 
 view of American opportunity. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was an acute man, but we 
 erect no monuments to shrewdness. We have no 
 memorials by which we desire to perpetuate the 
 lecords of American smartness. Skill in maniim- 
 lation, acuteness in dealing for selfish purposes, 
 may win their temporary victories, but the acute- 
 ness that the American people admire is that acute- 
 ness which is devoted to the solution of problems 
 
 ■^.U^OJULltw 
 
affecting their prosperity ami directly related to 
 their interests, and which is employed imselfishly 
 and for the benefit of the people, apart from any 
 individual interest. 
 
 I have long been a student of Lincoln. I have 
 marvelled at the ability which he displayed. There 
 has been no greater exi^oneut of that shrewdness 
 of intellect which so pre-eminently characterizes 
 the American, but Abraham Lincoln devoted all his 
 talents and his extraordinary perspicacity to the 
 welfare of the people. He was a man of principle. 
 He was a man, all of whose acts were founded 
 iipon a recognition of the fundamental principles 
 which underlie our Republic. Said he, on one 
 occasion, "I have no sentiments except those which 
 I have derived from a study of the Declaration of 
 Independence. ' ' He was jirofoundly an apostle of 
 liberty. I have said that he was a man of prin- 
 ciple. Rarely has the doctrine of the relation of 
 the Nation to the States, and of government to 
 the individual, been more hicidly expounded than 
 he expounded it in those sentences which probably 
 are familiar to you all. He said: "The nation 
 must control whatever concerns the nation. The 
 States, or any minor political communities, must 
 control whatever exclusively concerns them. The 
 individual shall control whatever exclusively con- 
 cerns him. That is real popular sovereignty." 
 
 He was an exjjert logician. He brought to bear 
 upon his opponents the batteries of remorseless 
 logic. He had a profound confidence in the rea- 
 soning judgment of the American people. He 
 disdained all efforts to capture the populace by 
 other means. 
 
 There is nothing more illuminating than his con- 
 duct of that grand cam]>aign against Douglas in 
 1858. He developed his line of attack in a ques- 
 tion. He brought to bear upon his opponent an 
 
extraordinarj^ ability of analysis. He eviscerated 
 the subject of discussion and he presented the 
 whole matter that was then before the great 
 American Nation in its bare bones, in a perfectly 
 cool and logical consideration; and, while he lost 
 the campaign for the senatorship, he made him- 
 self the apostle of thinking America in its oppo- 
 sition to the extension of slavery. He had 
 one foundation principle, and that was this: 
 "Slavery," he said, "is wrong. It may be recog- 
 nized where it constitutionally exists, but shall it 
 be extended ? ' ' And to eveiy proposition that was 
 ])resented by his skillful and adroit opponent he 
 presented not abuse, not any appeal to the emo- 
 tions of the multitude, but cogent reasoning from 
 which none could escape, and, while he lost the 
 senatorship, he ajipeared before the American peo- 
 jile as re])resenting their ideal of straightforward, 
 honest representation of the truth applicable to 
 their crisis, and received the highest honor within 
 their gift. 
 
 There never has been an illustiatiou, I venture 
 to say, within the memory of man, where intellect 
 has exerted so potent a magnetism, and where 
 loyalty has been commended simply because rea- 
 s(in exerted its sway. I love to dwell upon these 
 historic events. Any American who has failed 
 to take a(h-antage of their study has lost largely 
 his opportunity. 
 
 "Whenever you are tempted to think in a dis- 
 couraging manner of the future of the American 
 Republic, you should read the annals of those times 
 when the Union itself was in the balance, and you 
 should realize how inevitably the American public 
 res])ouds to the demands of reason and how neces- 
 sarily anything that cannot stand against honest 
 judgment must fail in this enlightened Republic. 
 
Lineoln was a humlilo man, nnpretentions and 
 of lowly birth. He was without affectation. He 
 was the most democratic of men. No one that 
 has ever lived among ns has been so much a 
 l)rother to every man, however lowly bora or un- 
 fortunately circumstanced. His was not the early 
 training of those who like many of our dis- 
 tinguished men had the advantages afforded by 
 parentage with noble traditions, although in poor 
 circumstances, with schooling and environment 
 which would stimulate the loftiest of aspirations. 
 He sprung from conditions which would seem to 
 stifle ambition. He simply was a man, — a man 
 born, — a great American ; superior to all the dis- 
 advantages which surrounded his bii-th and early 
 training, and there is no man who walks in any 
 station of life in anj' part of the country who can- 
 not call Lincoln his brother, his friend, a man of 
 like passions and like experiences with himself. 
 
 We recognize some men for the services that 
 they have rendered. They have deserved well of 
 their country. We recognize Lineoln for his ser- ' 
 vice. No one has deserved better of his country. 
 He rendered a service which cannot be eulogized in 
 too extravagant terms; but we forget anything 
 that Lincoln ever did or anj^thing that Lincoln ever 
 said in the recognition of the great manhood that 
 was his, which transcendetl anything he did be- 
 cause of what he was. 
 
 I have said that he was a man of principle; 
 and so he was. But he was a progressive man ; he 
 was sensitive to the demands of his day. Three or 
 or four years — three years, I believe it was, after 
 the outbreak of the war he said, "I have not con- 
 trolled events; I confess events have controlled 
 me. After three years we find ourselves in a situ- 
 ation which neither party and no man devised or 
 expected." He was a man who met each demand 
 
as it arose. To the raflieals he was too conserva- 
 tive; to the conservatives he was too radical. Few 
 in the community praised him durino; his life. 
 Prohably no man in the whole history of the Re- 
 public was ever so severely criticised and so merci- 
 lessly lami)ooned in the dark days of 1864, after he 
 had, throu,a,'h years of trouble, sustained a burden 
 which would have broken down an ordinary man. 
 He said in August of that year that it seemed 
 there were no friends, and he looked forward to 
 the next election as almost certain to go against 
 the party which he represented. 
 
 Without sacrilege I may say he was "a man of 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief." And fre- 
 quently alone, without the sustaining encourage- 
 ment of even those who were close to him in his 
 official family, he endeavored to exercise that 
 judgment which history commends and that 
 extraordinary talent for analyzing difficult situa- 
 tions which are the marvels of our later day. 
 
 My friends, Lincoln represents what the Amer- 
 ican Republic is capable of and, in one personality, 
 typifies what we have accomplished and of what 
 we can reasonably hope. 
 
 He was a humane man, a man of emotion which 
 he never allowed to control his reason: a man of 
 sentiment, of deep feeling. He was a lowly man 
 who never asserted himself as superior to his fel- 
 lows, but he could rise in the dignity of his man- 
 hood to a majesty that has seldom been equalled 
 by any ruler of any people under any form of 
 government. When Lee sent to Grant and sug- 
 gested that there might be some talk with regard 
 to the disposition that might be made of public 
 affairs in the interest of peace, and Grant for- 
 warded the communication or the substance of it 
 to the President, the President, without a mo- 
 ment's hesitation, or without consultation with 
 
any one. said, in effect, "You shall confine your 
 communications with (leneral T^ee to the matter of 
 capitulation or to minor or military .subjects. You 
 shall not discuss with him any political affairs. 
 The Pi'esident reserves to himself the control of 
 those questions and will not submit them to any 
 military convention." 
 
 It was not an assertion of any superiority 
 which he felt above his brother man. It was sim- 
 ply the realization of the dija^nity of his office and 
 its responsibility in a supreme crisis, and the will- 
 ingness to assume that responsibility before the 
 American people with that iimate confidence of 
 which, with his supreme intellect, he could never 
 be deprived. 
 
 My friends, we see in Lincoln patience, the rea- 
 soning faculty, humanity, the democratic senti- 
 ment, patient consideration, all combined, and we 
 may well learn from him the lessons which at 
 eveiy hour of our history we should well study. 
 
 There may be those who look with uncertainty 
 upon our future, who feel oppressed by the prob- 
 lems of the day. I am not one of them. 
 
 "'\Miy," said Lincoln, "should we not have 
 patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the 
 American people?" 
 
 Why not, indeed ? Who are the American peo- 
 ple? They are the most intelligent people organ- 
 ized into any civil society on the face of this broad 
 earth. They have abundant opportunities for 
 education. They are keen and alert. They are 
 those whom you meet in every walk of life. Their 
 common sense is of general recognition among all 
 the peoples of the world. A\Tiy not have patient 
 confidence in the ultimate justice of the American 
 people? If we could only feel, as Lincoln felt, and 
 derive our political sentiments from a study of the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence and 
 
8 
 
 proceed, as Lincoln did, with remorseless logic to 
 the consideration of the demands of every exi- 
 gency, there can be no question but what each 
 problem will be solved, and that every decade of 
 American history will witness a further advance, 
 and that the i)rosperity of the future will far 
 transcend anything that we have realized in the 
 past. 
 
 Undoubtedly abuses exist; undoubtedly abuses 
 must be cured. If there is any man who thinks, or 
 any set of men who think, that by any astuteness 
 they may stand in the way of progress and may 
 prevent the correction of evils that exist, let them 
 beware. They will tiud themselves impotent. 
 Progress will take no account of them. The Amer- 
 ican people will advance step by step surely and 
 inevitably to a realization of their ideal, and noth- 
 ing whatever will stand hi the way, in the course 
 of time, of that equality of opportunity and of 
 equal rights before the law which the Declaration 
 of ludependence announced and which the Con- 
 stitution was intended to conserve. 
 
 What we need to-day is a definition of evils. 
 What we need to-day is a delimiting of abuses, and 
 let the whole power and strength of the Republic, 
 as represented by those who are naturally its 
 leaders, be devoted to the careful and calm consid- 
 eration of remedies in order that we may save our 
 prosperity and, at the same time, render every 
 condition which threatens us impotent and power- 
 less, because the will of the peoi)le in the interest 
 of the people, the deliberate expression of the pop- 
 ular judg-ment, must in this country at all times be 
 su])reme. 
 
 There is plenty of coal on board; every man is 
 at his post; steam is up, and the only question is 
 as to the direction and to avoid the sand-bars and 
 the shoals; it is a question of the selection of the 
 
right course. I believe most thoroughly in the 
 judgment of the American people. Every man in 
 this country worthy of his citizenship desires to 
 work. He desires to get a fair opportunity to 
 show what is in him. He desii-es to have the ad- 
 vantages which from boyhood he has been taught 
 that this American Eepublic affords. He desires 
 to have hurdles and obstacles which may have 
 been put in his way by special partiality or by a 
 perversion of government removed. He desires 
 to have no disadvantage created by any ill-consid- 
 ered interference with government relations. But, 
 on the other hand, he intends to have the fullest 
 advantage and opportunity for the exercise of his 
 individual power, with recognition of the equal 
 right of every other man to the exercise of his 
 individual power; so that all may be prosperous 
 and all may succeed; and all that we need is to put 
 a stop to those things which are inimical to our 
 common advantage, and insist upon our common 
 rights, and reason together in regard to what is 
 fair and what is just, and accomplish things with 
 full ascertainment of the facts because they are 
 right, and because the people, in their deliberate 
 judgment, demand that they should be accom- 
 plished. 
 
 We are all fortunate that we have a Lincoln. 
 "\A^iat would the country be if we were all a lot of 
 sordid money grabbers with nothing to point to 
 but the particular sharpness of A. or the special 
 success in some petty manipulation of B? T^Hiat 
 a grand thing it is that we have the inheritance of 
 the memory of a man who had everything which 
 we could aspire to in intellectual attainment ; who 
 was endowed with a strength of moral piirpose; 
 who was perfectly sincere in the interest of the 
 people, and who gave his life work and eventually 
 his life itself in order that our Union with its op- 
 portimities might survive. 
 
10 
 
 I am proud, my friends, to have had an oppor- 
 tmiity to study Lincoln 's life. If any of you have 
 failed to take advantage of that opportunity, do 
 not let another year go by without making a thor- 
 ough study of that career. It is an epitome of 
 Americanism. It will realize all that you have 
 dreamed of and all that you can possibly imagine. 
 It is simply the representation of a man upon 
 whose brow God had written the line of superioi'- 
 ity, who never arrogated it to himself except iu 
 his great function of discharging the highest office 
 of government. Defeated again and again, failing 
 to realize the ambition that was next to him — 
 again and again he rose by sheer force of intellect 
 and character until he came to the point where a 
 Nation 's burden was put upon him, and he carried 
 it so nobly that forever he will be to us a Nation's 
 representative of the typical American. 
 
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