THIS BUST OF LINCOLN WAS MADE BY MAX BACHMANN, SCULPTOR, 
 
 FOR THE REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 AND WAS EXECUTED IN THE SPRING OF 19()9. THE 
 
 ORIGINAL IN BRONZE IS AT THE CLUB-HOUSE. 
 

 ADDRESSES 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE LINCOLN 
 DINNERS OF 
 
 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 IN RESPONSE TO THE 
 TOAST 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 1 887- 1 909 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 FOE 
 
 The Republican Club of the City of New York 
 1909 
 

 Uncofni 
 
 tWt 
 
 Copyright, 1909 
 
 BY 
 
 The Eepublican Club of the City of New York 
 
 This Edition is limited' to five hundred copies, 
 of which this copy is 
 
 Nnmher 
 
/o 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ADDRESSES BY— „ 
 
 Page 
 
 Joseph R. Hawley 7 
 
 William M. Evarts 17 
 
 Horace Porter 27 
 
 Shelby M. Cullom 37 
 
 H. L. Wayland 47 
 
 G. E. Strobridge 61 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll 71 
 
 John P. Newman 81 
 
 John M. Thurston 89 
 
 Chauncey M. Depew 101 
 
 Melancthon W. Stryker iii 
 
 Albert J. Beveridge 127 y 
 
 Howard Duffield 141 
 
 Robert G. Cousins 153 
 
 John N. Baldwin 167 
 
 James W. Gleed 179 
 
 Frank S. Black 205 
 
 Hamilton W. Mabie 215 
 
 Jonathan P. DoUiver 229 
 
 Horace Porter 245 ■/ 
 
 Oliver 0. Howard 257 
 
 James H. V/ilson 271 
 
 Morris Sheppard 279 
 
 Charles E. Hughes 29r 
 
 Theodore E. Burton 301 
 
 Booker T. Washington 317 
 
 APPENDIX: 
 
 Benjamin Harrison 329 
 
 William McKinley 333 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt 341 
 
 Hannibal Hamlin 355 
 
PREFACE 
 
 On the 12tli day of February, 1887, The Repuhlican Club of the 
 City of New York held its first banquet to commemorate the birth 
 of Abraham Lincoln, and on each succeeding year the event has 
 been fittingly observed. The function is now one of the largest 
 of its kind held in the United States and has assumed proportions 
 of National significance. 
 
 The orations here published, in response to the toast of "Abra- 
 ham Lincoln," were delivered by men distinguished for their elo- 
 quence, prominent in our National life and many of whom were 
 personally acquainted with Lincoln. Their speeches, therefore, 
 add valuable material and new and important facts to Lincoln 
 literature. 
 
 In the Appendix will be found speeches delivered at the Lincoln 
 Dinners by former Presidents of the United States — Harrison, Mc- 
 Kinley and Roosevelt — and by Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's 
 Vice-President. 
 
 This volume is published in the hope that the lessons of Lincoln's 
 life, so eloquently portrayed in its pages, may prove an inspiration 
 to the readers, and add to the love, respect and admiration that the 
 world has always manifested for the far-seeing, lovable spirit of 
 our martyred President, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 CHAELES H. YOUNG, 
 
 President. 
 April 15th, 1909. 
 
THE FIRST 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of tte 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1887 
 
 Address of 
 HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 
 
JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLEY, LL.D. 
 
 Senator Hawley was born in Stewartsville, S. C, 
 1826, but spent his early life in New York and Con- 
 necticut. He graduated from Hamilton College, 1847; 
 was admitted to the Bar but gravitated to journalism 
 and became an ardent Abolitionist and one of the 
 founders of the new Republican party. He was part 
 proprietor of the Hartford "Courant." He enlisted at 
 the outbreak of the Rebellion and was brevetted a 
 major-general in 1864, taking part in many important 
 battles of the Virginia campaigns. In i865 he was 
 elected Governor of Connecticut. In 1868 he was presi- 
 dent of the Republican National Convention that nom- 
 inated Grant for the presidency. He was elected Con- 
 gressman for the First Connecticut District, and in 1881 
 U. S. Senator from that State. He was president of the 
 Centennial Commission in 1876. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 
 
 I am profoundly fateful for the cordiality of your greeting. 
 Three days ago I received notice that this evening I was to address 
 what I understood was the Young Men's Republican Club of New 
 York, and that I would be expected to say something concerning 
 Abraham Lincoln. I have had no leisure hour since that time — no 
 hour of entire peace and quiet, save those spent in sleep. It is not 
 given to every man to have entire leisure for study, reflection and 
 penmanship — like our friend Depew, who doubtless has a thor- 
 oughly-prepared speech. His lateness in arrival was certainly sus- 
 picious. 
 
 I thought it was a young men's Republican club, and it is; 
 for we are^ a few of us, at this moment, looking into the mirrors; 
 and a man is as old as he feels; a woman, perhaps, as old as she 
 looks. We are feeling young to-night, and I had (thinking the in- 
 vitation a compliment to my youth) many things in my mind to 
 say concerning the pleasure that I feel in hearing of the organiza- 
 tion of young men's Republican clubs in several of the New Eng- 
 land States and elsewhere. It is getting to be a fashion with us in 
 New England — in Rhode Island and in Connecticut especially — 
 that the really young men, the boys of twenty-one, twenty-five, 
 thirty and thirty-five, should organize young men's Republican 
 clubs, taking up the glorious traditions that have come down to 
 them from the history of the last twenty-five years, and prepar- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ing to make the future as true to whatever is noble and beautiful 
 in the idea of the republic as the past twenty-five years have been. 
 
 I was asked to say something concerning Lincoln. Well, sir, 
 like all the rest of you, and like the rest of the world, I have been 
 thinking of nothing but what was good of Abraham Lincoln. No, 
 not all the rest of the world ; but like all of the Republicans. "Why, 
 it is only a very few years, it seems to me, since men spoke of 
 him in the public prints, habitually, as a "guerilla" ; even sneer- 
 ing at him, after his glorious death, as the "late lamented" — that 
 being the favorite phrase of a great metropolitan journal at one 
 time; and there were men who called him "uncouth," "coarse," 
 "brutal," "ignorant," and "rail-splitter" in jest and not in honor. 
 But all that has gone by now, and there is not in the civilized 
 world a voice or a pen that does not place Abraham Lincoln among 
 the foremost of the world's history — not one — and it has become 
 the fashion, even among our friends, the enemy, to speak of him 
 with respect. 
 
 I have here Abraham Lincoln's biography, as written by him- 
 self, about thirty years ago, for Larman's Dictionary of Congress: 
 "Born February 12, 1809" — well, he would not be the oldest of our 
 dear old friends if he were with us now — "in Harden County, 
 Kentucky. Education defective. Profession, lawyer. Have been 
 a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war." What is a 
 captain nowadays? The distinguished man is a private! "Post- 
 master at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois 
 Legislature" — Hew York men don't think much of that — "and 
 was a member of the lower house of Congress. Yours, &c., Abra- 
 ham Lincoln." 
 
 Well, there has been an addition made to that biography since 
 that time. "Education defective." I suppose that there are still 
 people in the world who will say that Abraham Lincoln was de- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 
 
 fective in what is called culture. He had none of the advantages 
 that the salon gives to men. There were no gatherings of intel- 
 lectual, trained, travelled and experienced people to improve his 
 manners or his language; yet none since Socrates has spoken like 
 him; and there have been very few in all the world's history whom 
 the common people heard more gladly. 
 
 What was it, then, that made Abraham Lincoln one of the 
 men who, in truth and justice, was of the very finest human cul- 
 ture known to mankind ? Let the eminence to which he attained, 
 the power he had over men, the almost divine sagacity with which 
 he led them — let these things, then, be an encouragement to all 
 men who believe in the possibility as well as the necessity of pop- 
 ular government in the coming ages of the world. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had a profound faith in the people. Oh, if 
 one of us says, nowadays, that you may in the end trust the peo- 
 ple; that it is a magnificent jury; that if you have a good cause and 
 will fight for it, and write for it, and talk for it, and preach for 
 it, you may trust the great heart of the American people to act 
 right finally, there are not lacking men all around Europe, and in 
 considerable numbers in the United States, who put up their 
 glasses, as I am obliged to do mine, and look at us with curiosity. 
 
 I am not going to read to you at length, but I have here in a 
 delicate little volume, selected by the author of "The Man With- 
 out a Country" — which was a regiment, a brigade of itself — some 
 extracts from what Abraham Lincoln said: 
 
 "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate 
 justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the 
 world? In our present difference is either party without faith 
 or 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 your side of the South, then truth and justice will surely pre- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 vail by the judgment of the great tribunal of the American 
 people.'' 
 
 Again: "There are among us those who, if the Union be pre- 
 served, will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions 
 of population. The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to- 
 day ; it is for the vast future also." 
 
 Again: "No men living are more to be trusted than those who 
 toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take that which they 
 have not honestly earned." Which I believe to be true. 
 
 And in February, 1861 : "I cannot but know what you all know, 
 that, without a name" (as that biography shows), "perhaps with- 
 out a reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon 
 me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of his Coun- 
 try; and, so feeling, I cannot but turn and look for that support 
 without wliich it v/ill be impossible to perform that great task. 
 I turn, then, and look to the great American people, and to that 
 God who has never forsaken them." 
 
 I must necessarily speak somewhat disjointedly and from the 
 impulse of the moment. My friend on my right, whom I asked 
 for an idea, or a point, or a text, said: "Some people say that 
 Abraham Lincoln would not be a P^epublican if he were here 
 to-day." I wish I felt as sure of my own salvation, or of anything 
 else in this world, as I do that Abraham Lincoln would be drift- 
 ing along to-day with that indescribable and wonderful thing that 
 people call "the spirit of the age." He could not have been any- 
 thing else. 
 
 We are Republicans to-day because we inherit the most mag- 
 nificent bcdy of tradition that ever was given to a party in the 
 world. If I were to live forty years hence I would vote for the 
 name. We reconstructed the foundations of the great Republican 
 Government. V/e demonstrated that v/lienever anything is to be 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 
 
 done by a whole people it can better be done by a free people 
 than by any other people. We demonstrated that all men can 
 know more than any one man; which is the foundation of Re- 
 publican government. We cleaned out, and cleared out, erased 
 and wiped out forever all distinctions, not in race, not in knowl- 
 edge, not in ability, but all distinctions between the rights of 
 different classes and races of men. 
 
 We have changed European history. We have changed the his- 
 tory of the world. For, had we failed, no man knows how far 
 backward would have gone, or how many centuries would have 
 been delayed, the great Republican experiment. Are there any 
 men in this country who love and worship — yea, worship the flag 
 as we do? To whom is it sacred if not to us? Are there any 
 men in the country who so value the honor — financial and in all 
 things — of this country ? 
 
 From whom came these feelings but from the men who, during 
 the war, whether in the ranks of the great armies of the re- 
 public or in the equally courageous and far-sighted hall of the 
 legislators of the republic, who dared to legislate, to trust the 
 future, and to trust the people? 
 
 Abraham Lincoln would have been with us to-day not satisfied 
 with everything, for I do not know any man who is satisfied with 
 everything that has been done, and with everything that is — the 
 man who is a Bourbon; he has no hope for the future, and no pur- 
 pose of improvement. Lincoln certainly could not have been a 
 Democrat. Could he have been a Mugwump? I have some de- 
 lightful friends who proudly bear that name. I have no quarrels 
 with them. They are gentlemen of culture, of education ; they are 
 patriots; they hope the best for their country. I divide them. 
 There is the Mugwump who boasts of his departure from his old 
 brethren simply upon a difference concerning one man. Well, 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 that election has passed, and I do not see why he should have 
 that difference now. In common cases he does not. He had a 
 right to entertain that difference. My judgment of the facts was 
 altogether different from his; but I am looking to the votes, and 
 I will have no controversy with him about an election which 
 was over two years ago, if he is right in the future — in Connecticut 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 But the term "Mugwump" I have applied with a larger range. 
 There are men who are Mugwumps politically, intellectually, scien- 
 tifically and religiously. They are pessimists in the whole field of 
 the world's thought and activity. They apparently believe in 
 nothing. And while the great toiling millions of the world must 
 go along the dusty or the alternately muddy highway, doing the 
 best they can to carry the burdens of their town, of their state, 
 and of their country, to say nothing of their families, there is a 
 class of men who sit on the fences and leisurely laugh at us poor 
 devils who wear the blue, and have got to get to Gettysburg or 
 to Vicksburg by daylight. 
 
 While we are not all religious men, yet we all pray once in four 
 years, or oftener, for the flag and for the republic. I have no 
 liking for a man who does not believe something; and I feel a 
 great hostility toward the man who would take away the belief of 
 anybody without giving him something better in return. 
 
 There is a distinguished disbeliever in the United States (but 
 I do not come any nearer naming him), who came into the read- 
 ing-room of the Riggs House one day. A distinguished gentle- 
 man (not of the Republican party, but, on the whole, a very good 
 sort of a fellow), who was sitting there and enjoying his morn- 
 ing cigar, said to him : 
 
 "Robert" — I beg your pardon, I will not name him — "do you 
 see that man crossing the road?" 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY 13 
 
 It was a slushy day on the asphalt streets of Washington; he 
 wore two crutches; he was honorably entitled to them; and he 
 was coming across very carefully. Said he, "Robert, blank you." 
 
 Said Robert, "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Why," said he, "you belong to the class of men that are kick- 
 ing away that poor devil's crutches and giving him nothing else to 
 help him through this world." And they are Mugwumps. 
 
 I think this is the greatest country, the best country, the most 
 promising country, the leading country of the world; the nearest 
 to perfection in its constitution, in its laws, in its hopes, and in its 
 ambitions; and altogether and in every way the best nation that 
 ever lived on the face of the earth. I think it has the best history 
 to boast of. I think that if you begin with Washington, come 
 down to Adams and Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, 
 Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler and Polk even, and old Zach and Fill- 
 more, and even Buchanan, to Lincoln and Johnson, and all of them 
 to this day, we can challenge any other nation in all the world 
 to compare the rulers of a hundred years with us. 
 
 There is no nation, I think, in all the world that has had a 
 country so free from great revolutionary and fundamental changes 
 as ours has been; although the philosophers make as a favorite 
 objection to a democratic form of government that it is subject 
 to violent revolutions and unreasonable changes. It is the Re- 
 publican party — the Republican party under whatever name it 
 may be, whatever changes it may undergo, and whatever possible 
 changes of name it may have (although I do not see why any- 
 body should throw away the good will of the name) — it is the 
 Republican party of the Republic that carries the Ark of the 
 Covenant as the instinct of the future — a belief in liberty, justice 
 and equality — and the blessed flag that symbolizes all. 
 
THE SECOND 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY ii, 1888 
 
 Address of 
 HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 
 
WILLIAM MAXWELL EVARTS, LL.D. 
 
 Senator Evarts was born in Boston, Mass, 1818. He 
 graduated from Yale, 1837, and after a year of study at 
 the Harvard Law School, was admitted to the bar in 
 1840. For many years he successfully practised law in 
 New York City. He was attorney for the defence in the 
 impeachment of President Johnson, and afterwards At- 
 torney-General of the U. S. In 1877 he became Secre- 
 tary of State, and in 1885 he entered the U. S. Senate. 
 He died in 1901. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of tlie Republican Club: I am quite 
 sure that you will allow me to count myself with the Club, and 
 as one of its members, and not as a stranger by invitation entitled 
 to the special courtesies we pay to our invited guests. We are 
 all at home here in New York, we honest and earnest Republicans 
 of this club, and we rejoice to have the opportunities and the 
 means of spreading an inviting feast to eminent public men of our 
 party to join in the celebration of that party in its homage to the 
 name and the fame of Abraham Lincoln. Your overflowing tables 
 and your animated faces and exuberant spirits teach me as well 
 as our visitors to look upon you as the examples and the leaders 
 engaged in a renovation of the Republican party, and not in any 
 lamentation at any of its disasters. 
 
 How great a thing it is that in our generation a political party 
 should have furnished to the admiration of the world so great 
 a character, so great a conduct, so great a fame, so great an in- 
 fluence in this wide world of ours as Abraham Lincoln. Accus- 
 tomed to look upon the overspreading fame and influence of Wash- 
 ington as incapable of appropriation, in our later politics, to the 
 just pretensions and pride of any one party, how great a thing it 
 is for our party, — an actual living, leading party of our day, — 
 that v/e have produced in the secular order of time a name to match 
 that of Washington, and to give a new word to conjure with for 
 
i8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 American liberty and American independence. The great State of 
 the old thirteen had claimed, perhaps, as the chiefest glory of its 
 own greatness, that it was the birthplace of Washington ; that its 
 great son, the Father of his Country, slept on the banks of their 
 own river, the Potomac. Now one of the new States since added 
 to the old thirteen, the great State of Illinois, has been lifted up 
 out of the whole body of the thirty-eight states and put on the 
 same plane and height with old Virginia, as the home and growth 
 and scene of the triumph of Abraham Lincoln; and Illinois, in 
 the long ages, shall stand out as the State identified with him, as 
 Virginia is with George Washington. This glory of these two 
 great names, thus now diffused over the whole nation and shared 
 between the old and the new States, is to become henceforth, let us 
 hope, a new security against discords between North and South, 
 East and West, for all alike shall worship at these shrines of lib- 
 erty and justice. 
 
 I cannot, Mr. President, speak as in narrative, nor even as in 
 illustration, of the wonderful career of this most remarkable Amer- 
 ican. I can only ask your attention to the very brief span of 
 years which covers his first introduction to the general knowledge 
 of his countrymen, and the great stages, so few and so vast in their 
 upward rise, to the last solemn culmination of his life in our 
 sorrow at his death. Mr. Lincoln, in 1S56, was spoken of in the 
 Kepublican party, as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and re- 
 ceived, I think, something over one hundred votes for that place; 
 but I do not think it is saying too much, as to the country at large, 
 that, except among his neighbors in his own State and in the 
 neighboring States, this was the first mention of that name on the 
 wide theater of public fame of the United States. Two years after- 
 ward he was made a candidate, in the purposes of the Ptcpublicans 
 of Illinois, as their leader and champion in the campaign then 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 19 
 
 opening:, to send him to the Senate of the United States to dis- 
 place the power and favor held by Mr. Douglas with the people of 
 Illinois. Out of that great contest, in which this somewhat new 
 champion of Ilepublican principles of liberty and of duty, was 
 matched against the Democratic purposes represented by Mr. Doug- 
 las, came the name of Abraham Lincoln to be known almost as 
 fully, and as clearly, and as warmly throughout the land, as was 
 the young stripling David throughout Judea, after the smooth 
 stone from his sling had smitten the giant Goliath. And from that 
 step forward you v/iil find in sacred or profane history no more 
 wonderful and no more rapid advance in human affairs, than this 
 of Abraham Lincoln's since the elevation of the young shepherd 
 to be king of Judea, the king that this religious people honor and 
 admire as the great king of ancient times. 
 
 Now, wonderful, is it not, that from that first step taken in 1858, 
 but two years afterwards he became the leader and the candidate, 
 not of a party in the ordinary contests and competitions of politics, 
 but the leader of an aroused, and indignant, and resentful na- 
 tion against the evil shames into which we had been plunged by 
 the Democratic party; and thus he v/as made the leader, not of a 
 party, but of a nation that was rising in its power to shake off the 
 manacles and fetters that had bound its limbs. Then, from the 
 opening of his authority of rule under the Constitution, see how 
 everything that he had to do and everything that he did was great 
 and noble, and wonderful and nev/. In the first month follov/ing 
 his inauguration what more v/onderful bugle-note was ever blown 
 by human breath than that v/hich caiied upon the people of the 
 United States who loved their country and were loyal to its insti- 
 tutions, to ccme out in arms to suppress a rebellion that expected 
 to be triumphant by our negligence and indifference! Upon this 
 same great summons behold how swiftly, covering this great coast 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of ours from the capes of Delaware to New Orleans and Galveston, 
 and on the Pacific Coast, the whole sea was crowded with ships 
 to enforce a blockade that the world had never dreamed of as 
 possible of enforcement. And so on, step by step, the great army 
 of citizen soldiers grew, and the zeal and the fervor and the pa- 
 triotic sacrifices of the nation marshaled the manhood of the 
 country, and marshaled the wealth of the country, all to be poured 
 into the lap of the great Government and placed at its service 
 to preserve for all this people, the American nation, with its con- 
 stitution unpolluted and its territory unmutilated. Great occur- 
 rences in the history of the world ! The example is set, and here- 
 after the people may rest secure without an army and without a 
 navy when it is known that a people like this, when their honor 
 or their interests are struck at by intestine or by foreign foes, is 
 able to array on battlefields and to display on the wide ocean 
 enough of warlike power to meet the warfare of the world. But 
 see how all this material pride and power was but the attendant 
 and the servant, as it has been from the beginning, but the min- 
 ister of the great design of Providence, of whom Abraham Lin- 
 coln was the trusted instrument. Then we come to the greatest 
 act in the history of our world of personal influence in its affairs, 
 the emancipation, by the pen of a ruler, of the millions of the 
 enslaved fellow-countrymen of ours. And to crown all, to make 
 that fact permanent and constitutional, that had been justified and 
 was needed as a step in the war, he lived to see a proclaimed peace 
 not over a subjugated people, but over a suppressed rebellion. 
 
 By a happy inspiration given to few orators, Abraham Lincoln 
 did what no orator since Pericles' time has been able to do — that 
 is, to add one exhilarating and ennobling thought to the ever mem- 
 orable oration which Pericles delivered over the dead of Greece 
 that died for Greece. Every scholar that has read that perfect 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 
 
 piece of patriotic feeling and eloquent truth of the Greek orator, 
 must admit that Abraham Lincoln's single phrase, at Gettysburg, 
 "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, 
 but it can never forget what they did here," will live with the 
 splendid rhetoric of Pericles. 
 
 Now, what was there, in the future of his life, of great historic 
 fame, of great and arduous yet completed and triumphant duty, left 
 for Abraham Lincoln to live for and to do? There might be much 
 else for this country that he should have survived for, but who 
 that looks at a rounded and complete character and fame but must 
 recognize that there was nothing left for him in the stages of hu- 
 man greatness and of grades of perpetual homage from mankind, 
 but that this great chosen and triumphant leader should be made a 
 martyr? Was there anything left in the role of human glory to 
 crown that of Abraham Lincoln after he had received the surrender 
 of the rebellion and the acclaim of the nation as its savior, but 
 that he should receive the consecrating crown of a martyr? And 
 this consecration came about, this blow of malice and treason 
 struck down Abraham Lincoln, on the day of all the year, the day 
 which we celebrate as Good Friday, the day the Savior fell. Can 
 we then fail to associate — who in Christendom, in the hearts of 
 the religious and Christian people of the world but must asso- 
 ciate — this death of Lincoln, the martyr for liberty and the hopes 
 of civil institutions for man, with that dreadful day of the cru- 
 cifixion ? That was a sad night for this country to be sure, when, 
 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he lost all consciousness 
 to things of earth. He slumbered through that long, sad night, 
 
 "But when the sun in all his state, 
 Illumed the Eastern skies, 
 He passed through Glory's morning gate, 
 And walked in Paradise." 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 But it is not wholly to-day that we are to celebrate the mem- 
 ory of Lincoln. This marvelous history of an American boy, ended 
 at the age of fifty-six, tells a story that belongs to the whole 
 world. For us, gathered here, his example, his lessons are to be 
 accepted for practical duties and practical objects by the great 
 political party that shares with him the glories of his achieve- 
 ments, as he did of ours. It is in that name and by that sign that 
 the Republican party expects now to take up and carry forward 
 the great and continual, and let us hope perpetual, growth and ele- 
 vation, and exaltation of the American people, purged of all that 
 human nature below the skies may hope to miss, as it goes on 
 step by step; but not, let me remind you, Republicans of New 
 York, by belittling or explaining away the greatness of Lincoln 
 and the greatness of the Republican party. Who would think 
 that, under the exigencies of political agitations and political 
 aspirations, we should come to find in great numbers of our coun- 
 trymen a disposition to belittle and defame the greatness of those 
 achievements and the wonderful credit that attends them all? Or, 
 that the nation in the next following generation should think 
 that it was irksome and tedious to renew and perpetuate those 
 feelings, which arouse and animate us in the discharge of our 
 duty? 
 
 Let us then be true to ourselves. By our next election we are 
 to launch our Government with a new President for the first 
 term, upon our second hundred years. We are bound to trust it 
 only with men and with principles, and with courage, and with 
 patriotism that can be followed in the coming century, and long 
 after, in the path that is illuminated by the public virtues of 
 Washington and of Lincoln. Does not every Republican that de- 
 serves the name kindle with new feelings and with new purposes 
 whenever the name and the birthday of Lincoln are mentioned? 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM M. EVARTS 23 
 
 Have we anything to explain or to explain away ? Do we want to 
 put any new glosses and any new interpretations on the triumph- 
 ant period of the Republican party and the culminating fame 
 of Abraham Lincoln? Do you wish to send it out to European 
 nations that the sober second thought of the American people 
 is a little disposed to call that a period of enthusiasm which all 
 Republicans know was, from the beginning to the end, and from 
 the common soldier and the common voter up to Abraham Lin- 
 coln and the great generals and the great statesmen about him, 
 an honest, and a noble, and an unflinching, and an inflexible pur- 
 pose that this country of ours should be independent and free, able 
 to take care of our industries, our prosperity, our character and 
 our conduct in the face of the world ? Where are those idle and 
 frivolous trumpeters of the subsequent fame of another party? 
 Some unwise but apparently well-wishing friend of the President 
 has thought it a good thing to bring the two names of the Pres- 
 ident of the day and the great President of our time, Abraham 
 Lincoln, together for comparison. Who raised this comparison? 
 Did any Democrat ever think it worth his while to put those two 
 names together? Did any Republican ever wish to do it? Who 
 under Heaven dared to do that injury to the living President, 
 thus to reinflame the enthusiasm for the great dead whose birth- 
 day we celebrate? 
 
 Now, the solemn character of Lincoln, shown by his pious 
 phrases and his sober reverence, brings us to this as the wisdom 
 of the sacred Scripture: "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the 
 Lord directeth his steps." Abraham Lincoln, in his honest heart, 
 devised his way that he would serve his country — that he would 
 serve humanity, that he would serve it in peril, serve it in pros- 
 perity, serve it for the country, serve it for the world; but the 
 Lord directed those steps that he could not foresee, could not 
 
24 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 imagine; the Lord directed his steps, and there was no crown 
 for him but that which should lift him into the higher sphere 
 of nearness to the God whom he revered and worshipped. And 
 now, the undiscovered country which the steps of Abraham Lin- 
 coln now traverse, and toward which all our steps tend, is crowded 
 with heroes and martyrs, servants of their time, prophets and 
 great captains in the service of truth; but we must all reverently 
 feel that among those majestic shades there is found, and not 
 the least among them, the august form and glory of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
THE THIRD 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1889 
 
 Address of 
 GEN. HORACE PORTER 
 
GENERAL HORACE PORTER, LL.D. 
 
 General Porter was torn at Huntingdon, Pa., in 1839. 
 He was educated at the Lawrence Scientific School and 
 at West Point, graduating from the latter in i860. He 
 served throughout the Civil War, winning every com- 
 missioned grade up to brigadier-general and receiving 
 a Congressional medal of honor for gallantry at Chicka- 
 mauga. From 1897- 1905 he was U. S. Ambassador to 
 France. In 1904 he received the Grand Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. He is the author of several books, 
 the best known being "Campaigning with Grant." 
 He has been the orator on many notable occasions, 
 among others at the Inauguration of Washington Arch, 
 New York, May 4, 1895; the dedication of Grant's Tomb, 
 New York, April 7, 1S97; the Inauguration of the 
 Rochambeau Statue, Washington, D. C, May 24, 1902; 
 Centennial of the foundation of the U. S. Military 
 Academy at West Point, June 11, 1902. In 1905 he re- 
 covered the body of John Paul Jones at his own ex- 
 pense, and had charge of its reinterment at Annapolis. 
 He is a member and officer of many important patriotic 
 and learned bodies, and was a delegate to The Hague 
 Peace Conference of 1907. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 GENERAL HORACE PORTER 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen: I am oppressed with divers mis- 
 givings in being called upon to rise and cast the first firebrand into 
 this peaceful assemblage^ which has evidently been enjoying it- 
 self so much — up to the present moment. From the Herculean 
 task accomplished by the Republican party last fall, we have 
 learned to look upon its members as men of deeds and not of 
 words — except the spellbinders, and when I am called upon to 
 initiate these proceedings by words, I am reminded of the days 
 when Pythagoras of Athens inaugurated his school of silence, and 
 Phryne made the opening speech. 
 
 I fear your committee is treating me to-night like one of those 
 toy balloons that are sent up previous to the main ascension to 
 test the currents of the air, but I hope that in this sort of bal- 
 looning I may not be subjected to the remark that interrupted the 
 Fourth of July orator in the West while he was tickling the 
 American Eagle under both wings, delivering himself of no end of 
 platitudes, and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of fancy, 
 when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on 
 throwin' out his ballast in that way, the Lord only knows where 
 he'll land." 
 
 Perhaps I can assist in demonstrating to-night that dryness is 
 a pronounced quality of the champagne, of the diners, and of 
 these opening remarks. I have partaken in a very conservative 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 manner, however, of that beverage, in consequence of the remark 
 that Mr. Lincoln once made about it when he arrived at City 
 Point, after having been shaken up the night before aboard his 
 boat in a storm on Chesapeake Bay, and complained that his 
 stomach was still suffering from certain gastronomic uncertain- 
 ties. A young staff officer, who was generally too previous on 
 momentous occasions, now saw before him the one great opportu- 
 nity of his life, and rushed up to Mr. Lincoln with a bottle of 
 champagne and said: "This is the cure for that sort of an ill, 
 Mr. President." Said the President: "No, young man, I have 
 seen too many fellows seasick ashore from drinking that very 
 article." 
 
 When the Italian fisherman puts out to sea, he is accustomed 
 to offer up a prayer for strength, because the sea is so vast and 
 his bark is so small, and I feel like entering a plea for strength 
 to-night, because the subject which you have assigned to me is 
 so vast and my ideas are so few. The story of the life of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln savors more of romance than reality; is more like a 
 fabled tale of ancient days than the story of an American citizen 
 of the nineteenth century. As light and shade produce the most 
 attractive effects in a picture, so the strange contrasts, the sin- 
 gular vicissitudes in the life of our martyred President surround 
 him with an interest which attaches to few men in history. Of 
 humble origin, he early had to struggle v/ith the trials of mis- 
 fortune and to learn the first lessons of life in the severe school 
 of adversity. He sprang from that class which he always alluded 
 to as the "plain people." He always possessed an abiding confi- 
 dence in them; he always retained his deep held upon their af- 
 fections; even when he was clothed with the robes of a master, he 
 forgot not that he was still the servant of the people. He be- 
 lieved that the government was made for the people, not the peo- 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 29 
 
 pie for the government. He felt that trne Repuhlicanism is a 
 torch — the more it is shaken in the hands of the people, the 
 brighter it will burn. 
 
 He was transcendently fit to be the first great successful bearer 
 of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican party. 
 
 If, in the days of his power, men had sneered at him on ac- 
 count of his humble origin, he might well have said to them 
 what a Marshal of France, raised from the ranks of Dukedom, said 
 to the haughty Nobles of Vienna, who boasted of their long line 
 of descent, when they refused to associate with him: "I am an 
 ancestor; you are only descendants." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln possessed in a marked degree that most un- 
 common of all virtues, common sense. With him there was no 
 practicing of the arts of the demagogue; no posing for effect, no 
 attitudinizing in public; no mawkish sentimentality; no indul- 
 gence in mock heroics; none of that puppyism so often bred by 
 power; none of that dogmatism which Johnson said was only 
 puppyism grown to maturity. He sought not to rise in a chariot 
 of power, the golden dust from whose wheels might dazzle and 
 blind his followers. He preferred to trudge along on foot, so 
 that the people might keep abreast with him. While his mind 
 was one great storehouse of facts and useful information, he made 
 no pretense to knowledge he did not possess. He felt like Addi- 
 son, that ''pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy in religion — 
 a form of knowledge without the power of it." He had nothing 
 in common with those men of mental malformation who are edu- 
 cated beyond their intellects. 
 
 The names of two Presidents will always be inseparably as- 
 sociated in the minds of Americans — Washington and Lincoln. 
 And yet, from the manner in which the modem historian loves 
 to dwell at length upon trivial incidents, we would suppose that 
 
3c THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 one had spent his entire life in cutting down trees, and the other 
 in splitting them up into rails. These men differed in some re- 
 spects. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. 
 Lincoln's stories possessed the true geometrical requisites of ex- 
 cellence. They were never too long and never too broad. He 
 never forgot a point. A sentinel, who was pacing near a camp- 
 fire while Lincoln was visiting the field, listening to the stories 
 he told, made the philosophical remark that that man had a 
 mighty powerful memory but an awful poor forgettery. He did 
 not tell a story for the sake of the anecdote, but to point a moral, 
 to clinch a fact. I do not know a more apt illustration than that 
 which fell from his lips the last time I ever heard him converse. 
 We were discussing the subject of England's assistance to the 
 South, and how, after the collapse of the Confederacy, England 
 would find she had aided it but little, and only injured herself. 
 He said, "That reminds me of a barber in Sangamon County. He 
 had just gone to bed, when a stranger came along and said 
 he must be shaved; that he had a four days' beard on his face and 
 was going to a ball^ and that beard must come off. Well, the 
 barber reluctantly got up and dressed, and seated the man in a 
 chair with a back so low that every time he bored down on him 
 he came near dislocating his victim's neck. He began by lather- 
 ing his face, including his nose, eyes and ears, stropped his razor 
 on his boot, and then made a drive at the man's countenance as 
 if he had practiced mowing in a stubble field. He made a bold 
 swath across the right cheek, carrying away the beard, a pimple, 
 and two warts. The man in the chair ventured the remark, 'You 
 appear to make everything level as you go.' Said the barber, 
 'Yes, and if this handle don't break, I guess I'll get away with 
 what there is there.' The man's cheeks were so hollow that the 
 barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor, and the 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 31 
 
 ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man's 
 mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clear through 
 the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of 
 the man's mouth, snapped the blood off it, glared at him and 
 said, 'There, you lanterned-jawed cuss, you've made me cut my 
 finger.' 
 
 ''Now," said Mr. Lincoln, "England will find that she has got 
 the South into a pretty bad scrape by trying to administer to her, 
 and in the end she will find she has only cut her own finger." 
 
 But his heart was not always attuned to mirth, its chords 
 were often set to strains of sadness. The slaughter in the field; 
 the depletion in the treasury; the work of traitors in rear as 
 well as in front; the foreign complications which arose were 
 sometimes so overwhelming that his great soul seemed to melt. 
 Men slandered and reviled him; they could not understand him. 
 His wit was too keen; his logic too subtle; his statesmanship too 
 advanced. It passed their understanding. He realized that "re- 
 proach is a concomitant to greatness as satire and invective were 
 an essential part of a Roman triumph." He learned that in pub- 
 lic life all hours wound — the last one kills. But throughout these 
 periods of gloom he never lost the courage of his convictions; he 
 never took counsel of his fears. When hope was fading, when 
 courage was failing, when he was surrounded on all sides by 
 doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented 
 Catilines, as the Danes destroyed the hearing of the war horses in 
 order that they might not be affrighted by the din of battle, so 
 Abraham Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all doubts and despondency, 
 and exhibited an unwavering and unbounded faith in the jus- 
 tice of the cause and the integrity of the Union. His was a faith 
 which saw a bow of promise in every storm cloud; which saw in 
 the discords of the present the harmonies of the future; a faith 
 
32 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 that can be likened only unto the faith of the Christian in his 
 God. 
 
 Men learn little in this world from precept; they learn much 
 from example. "The best teachers of humanity are the lives of 
 great men." It is said that for 300 years after the battle of Ther- 
 mopylffi, every child in the public schools of Greece was re- 
 quired to recite from memory each day the names of the three 
 hundred immortal martyrs that fell in the defense of that Pass. 
 It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education, if every 
 school child in America could be taught each day to contem- 
 plate the grand character and utter the inspiring name of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. Singular Man! No one can lessen the measure of 
 his fame; no one can pluck a single laurel from his brow. Mar- 
 velous man ! In all the annals of history, we fail to find another 
 whose life was so peaceful, whose nature was so gentle, and yet 
 who was called upon to marshal the armed hosts of an aroused 
 people; to direct and control the uprising of an entire nation, 
 and for four long years to conduct a fierce, a bloody, a relentless 
 fratricidal war. In the annals of all history, we fail to find an- 
 other whose training was of the cabinet, not the camp, yet who 
 died a more heroic death. 
 
 Seldom has it fallen to the lot of man to strike the shackles 
 from the limbs of bondmen, and proclaim liberty to a race by a 
 single stroke of the pen. Seldom has it fallen to the lot of man 
 to die the death of an honored martyr with his robes of office 
 still about him, with his laurels fresh upon his brow, at the mo- 
 ment of the restoration of his country to peace within her borders 
 and to peace with all the world. 
 
 We buried him, not in Roman Pantheon; not in a domed St. 
 Paul's ; not in an historic Westminster. We gave him still nobler 
 sepulchre. We laid him to rest in the bosom of the soil his efforts 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 33 
 
 had saved. That tomb shall henceforth be the true Mecca of all 
 true sons of the Republic; future ages will pause to read the in- 
 scription on its portals, and the prayers and the praises of a re- 
 deemed and regenerated people will rise from that grave as in- 
 cense rises from holy places, pointing out even to the angels in 
 heaven where rest the ashes of him who had filled to the very 
 full the largest measure of human greatness. 
 
 He has passed from our view. We shall not meet him again till 
 he stands forth to answer to his name at rollcall, when the great 
 of earth are summoned on the morning of the last great reveille. 
 Till then, farewell, gentlest of all spirits, noblest of all hearts! 
 A child's simplicity was mingled with the majestic grandeur of 
 your nature. You have handed down unto a grateful people the 
 richest legacy which man can leave to man — the memory of a 
 good name, the inheritance of a great example ! 
 
THE FOURTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1890 
 
 Address of 
 HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 
 
SHELBY MOORE CULLOM 
 
 Senator Cullom was bom in Wayne Co., Ky., 1829. 
 After an academic education he commenced the practice 
 of law at Springfield, III. He served in the Illinois 
 Legislature, 1856, 1860-61, 1872, 1873-4. He was a 
 member of Congress, 1865-71; Governor of the State of 
 Illinois 1876-83, and U. S. Senator from Illinois since 
 1883. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of the 
 City of New York : I esteem it a great honor to be present on this 
 occasion, and a still greater honor to be called upon to respond to 
 the announcement just made by your president. 
 
 How true the utterance of the matchless Shakespeare of the 
 Old World when applied to immortal Lincoln of the New! "The 
 elements were so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say 
 to all the world, 'This is a man.' " His life was gentle, pure, 
 noble, and courageous ; and from his early manhood all who knew 
 him were ready to say of him, "This is a man." The name of 
 Lincoln, Mr. President and gentlemen, has been to me as a house- 
 hold word from my very earliest recollection. He was the friend 
 of my father in my early boyhood, and I am proud to believe 
 that he was my friend for many years before his death. I knew 
 him somewhat in the sacred circle of his family. I knew him in 
 the ordinary walks of life. I knew him as a practising lawyer 
 at the bar. I knew him at the hustings as a public speaker and 
 debater. I knew him as President of the United States, in that 
 period in our history when men's souls were tried, and when the 
 life of our nation seemed to be suspended as by a thread. In the 
 home circle he was gentle, affectionate, and true. In the ordinary 
 walks of life he was plain, simple, and generous; a perfect type, 
 so far as men can be, of all that makes a worthy citizen of a 
 
38 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 great Eepublic. At the bar he was conscientious, fair, powerful, 
 and he seldom failed to gain his cause against the most able 
 legal antagonists. 
 
 On the platform of debate he had few, if any, equals in this 
 or any other country. 
 
 Mr. President, the world has had few such men as Abraham 
 Lincoln. He was of gentle nature, great in heart, in head, and 
 in deed. As a political leader he was actuated in his movements 
 by strong convictions of duty, and had great power in convincing 
 people of the righteousness of his cause. No man could stand in 
 his presence and hear him without feeling sure of the honesty 
 of his purposes and declarations, or of the strength of his argu- 
 ments in behalf of whatever cause he championed. I have heard 
 him often. I heard several of the famous debates between him 
 and the great Douglas. I heard his great speech in which he 
 uttered, I may say, that immortal declaration, that a house di- 
 vided against itself cannot stand. It must be all one thing or 
 the other; and I do not believe that an address was ever delivered 
 in this country that produced a more profound and lasting impres- 
 sion upon the minds of the people of the country than this. 
 
 As Chief Magistrate of the nation, he was wise and prudent. 
 He lived to witness that foul blot of slavery, which gave the lie 
 to the Declaration of Independence, swept away. He was the 
 savior of the Union and the liberator by his own hand of four 
 millions of slaves. 
 
 Great-hearted patriot, and martyr to the cause of union and 
 liberty, how we honor your name and your memory to-night! You 
 fought a good fight. You finished your work. The world is bet- 
 ter for your having lived in it, and it will call you blessed as 
 long as the love of liberty shall dwell in the soul of humanity, 
 which will be as long as time shall last upon the earth. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 39 
 
 Mr. President, if I may be allowed to say it, Abraham Lincoln 
 was given to the nation by Illinois. It seems to me but yester- 
 day that I felt the warm grasp of his hand, and saw him leave 
 his home at the capital of his state, where I have the honor of 
 residing, to enter upon a larger field of usefulness at the capital 
 of the nation, where he won immortality and died v/ith a martyr's 
 crown of glory upon his brow. 
 
 Never was a nobler man born of woman, and never throbbed a 
 purer heart in human breast. The distinguished of the Old World, 
 proud of their claims of long descent, may sneer at his humble 
 birth; but, in my estimation, he was one of the greatest of men. 
 
 I do not know, fellow-citizens, but you may think me too partial 
 toward that great man; but I have read his speeches, have seen 
 him in the common walks of life, walked with him, as my friend 
 here said, upon the streets, heard him talked about ever since I 
 was ten years old, and I have deliberately come to the conclu- 
 sion that no man has ever existed on the American continent 
 superior to Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Ey his consummate statesmanship he saved the republic from 
 the evils of anarchy, and with self-denying patriotism refused 
 to assume almost regal power when it was within his reach. He 
 educated public opinion until it became ready to endorse what 
 he knew to be right, and what wise statesmanship demanded at 
 his hands. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, if you will think of his career as Chief Magis- 
 trate of the nation in that period of national peril, you will 
 ag^ee with me that his course and wisdom were such as to lead 
 the people, and teach them as though he taught them not, and 
 then he did what the country was ready to have done. 
 
 While Abraham Lincoln had not the advantages of a scholastic 
 education, yet he fully appreciated and understood the beautiful 
 
40 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 in sentiment and diction, and no man has uttered more elegant 
 language and tender words, touching the hearts of humanity, 
 than he. To me his utterances were both powerful and elegant, 
 and I would rather be the author of that great paper by which 
 he gave freedom to four millions of slaves than be the author 
 of the poems of Homer or the plays of Shakespeare, He was the 
 savior of the Union, but though he did live to see the power of the 
 Rebellion broken, he did not live to see the authority of the 
 Union established in all the rebellious States. He was per- 
 mitted to go up into Mount Nebo and to catch a glimpse of the 
 promised land of the restored "Union, but his weary feet were not 
 allowed to cross the border that separated it from the wilderness 
 of Civil War. In the very moment of victory he was robbed of 
 life by the cruel hand of a traitorous assassin, and his body was 
 brought back amid the lamentations of a whole nation — even his 
 foes giving to his merit the meed of tears — to find its last resting 
 place in the soil of Illinois. As I gazed for the last time upon 
 his face on the solemn occasion, sad and gentle in death as it had 
 been in life, I thanked God that the good that he had done would 
 live after him and give his name in honor to story and to song. 
 
 It is said that the story of every human life, if rightly told, 
 may be a useful lesson to those who survive. There are none 
 whose lives teach to Americans or to the world a grander or more 
 profitable lesson than the life of Abraham Lincoln. The study of 
 his life leads to private and public virtue; to correct ideas of our 
 relations to each other; and to moral courage to stand by our 
 convictions. 
 
 Lincoln was a child of Providence, raised up in a period in our 
 history when there was need of such a man. A pioneer raised in 
 a cabin, laboring with his hands, acquainted with the woods and 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 41 
 
 fields, he communed with nature in all its beauty and grandeur 
 as it voiced itself to the quiet man of destiny. He was a martyr 
 to the cause of union and liberty, a noble victim to duty. 
 
 To repeat the sentiment embodied in the announcement of the 
 President, "The fight must go on," and I am glad to the very bot- 
 tom of my heart that I have the honor of standing in the presence 
 of a great assembly of intelligent, earnest Republicans, who will 
 join in that sentiment when I say that the fight must go on. "The 
 cause of liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even 
 one hundred defeats." Such words uttered by Lincoln, gave evi- 
 dence of his convictions to duty. "Yes," said he, "I will speak 
 for freedom against slavery so long as the Constitution of our 
 country guarantees free speech; until everywhere in this broad 
 land the sun shall shine, the wind shall blow, and the rain shall 
 fall upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil." 
 
 Mr. President and gentlemen, the fight must go on in favor 
 of liberty and justice to the people of all classes, colors, and con- 
 ditions in our country until every man in all this broad land 
 shall stand equal before the law, in civil and political rights, equal 
 in fact and equal in law, with no system of intimidation at elec- 
 tions, or fraudulent counting when the polls are closed. 
 
 The fight must go on, and no surrender at the end of one or 
 one hundred defeats, until honest elections are secured every- 
 where in this country. 
 
 The fight must go on until merciless monopolists are subor- 
 dinated, and the interests of the great body of the people are 
 carefully regarded. 
 
 The fight must go on until trusts and combinations, prompted 
 by greed and inordinate avarice, shall be broken up. 
 
42 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 The fight must go on until the mission of the Republican party, 
 founded by Lincoln and his compeers, shall have been fully ac- 
 complished in the destruction of all barriers to perfect equality 
 in the civil and political rights of all the people of the country. 
 
 Gentlemen, how glorious the results of the great culminating 
 struggle in which Lincoln was the mighty leader on the side of 
 liberty! Did you ever reflect upon the consequences of a divided 
 Union? Thanks to Lincoln, the great leader; and to that wise 
 statesman, William H. Seward of New York, another great leader 
 of the Republican party; and to my distinguished friend — and I 
 am proud to have him here in your presence to-night — the gallant 
 pathfinder and hero of the late war. General Fremont; and to 
 Grant, that silent man; and to Sherman; and to Sheridan and 
 Thomas; and to Hancock, the gallant leader; and to my dearest 
 friend of latter days, the gallant John A. Logan ; and to the great 
 army of patriots whom they and others commanded in the strug- 
 gle for national life, the dissolution of. the Union was not ac- 
 complished. 
 
 How we are blessed as a nation ! No standing army worth the 
 name. No royal dynasty in this country. Fellow-citizens, in a 
 little while every nation on the American continent, I trust, will 
 be in full sympathy with each other, from the frozen regions of 
 the North to the lower peninsula of the South. The people sov- 
 ereign. No danger from foreign foe. Surrounded by the two 
 oceans, the lakes, and the gulf. What an opportunity to build 
 up the greatest nation the world ever saw ! 
 
 A career of unprecedented glory awaits this nation. Slavery 
 gone. Secession banished, I trust for all time. No gloomy clouds 
 to obscure the light. "Let the mystic chords of memory swell 
 the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM 43 
 
 will be, by the better angels of our nature," and let us as citizens 
 study and imitate the life and character of Lincoln, in its devo- 
 tion to liberty, in the hope that the great principle for which 
 Lincoln lived and died shall preserve this country as the purest 
 and best country on the face of the globe. 
 
THE FIFTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1891 
 
 Address of 
 REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 
 
HEMAN LINCOLN WAYLAND, D.D. 
 Dr. Wayland was a well known clergyman, educator 
 and editor. He was born in Providence, R. I., 1830, and 
 graduated from Brown University in 1849. The fol- 
 lowing year he studied at Newton Theological Institute, 
 and in 1854 entered the Baptist ministry. His first 
 pastorate was the Main Street Baptist Church, at 
 Worcester, Mass. He enlisted at the outbreak of the 
 Civil War, and served three years as chaplain of the 
 Seventh Connecticut Volunteers. He became Professor 
 of Rhetoric and Logic at Kalamazoo College, and later, 
 president of Franklin College. From 1872-94 he was 
 editor of the "National Baptist" of Philadelphia, Pa. 
 He was also engaged in other editorial work and was 
 an extensive magazine contributor on sociological and 
 educational topics. He was an ardent advocate of Civil 
 Service reform, and an able public speaker. He died 
 in 1898. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club : You have 
 assigned me a difficult task. You bid me speak of the virtues of 
 Abraham Lincoln and the debt due him from posterity ; and I sup- 
 pose that you expect me to be through before the rising of the 
 sun. Now, if you had asked me to speak of the private and civic 
 virtues of Aaron Burr, if you had bidden me speak of the iron 
 resolution and uncalculating patriotism of James Buchanan, of 
 the nobleness and magnanimity of the sympathy extended us in 
 our hour of trial by the nations of the Old World, I could have 
 finished the subject far within fifteen minutes, and have had 
 twenty minutes to spare! 
 
 Was Abraham Lincoln a great man? History is very apt to 
 ask about a man, "What did he do?" As the executive head of 
 the nation and as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, 
 he carried the country through the most gigantic war of modern 
 times, to the achievement of a complete and unsurpassed victory. 
 He restored the union of the states, and re-established the na- 
 tional authority. He annihilated slavery, which had been 
 through all history, our calamity and curse and shame and menace. 
 
 And his work was marred by no drawback. Napoleon, at the 
 close of a career of unparalleled splendor, left his country hu- 
 miliated, prostrate. Oliver Cromwell died ; and the majestic work 
 which he had done was marred, and a wave of reaction swept 
 
48 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 over the landmarks of liberty which he had erected. But, in 
 Lincoln's own words, "When peace came, it came to stay"; and 
 with it came and stayed liberty, and every blessing for which 
 the war was waged. The Proclamation of Emancipation was 
 never revoked. 
 
 Was he a great man? It has been the happy lot of some men 
 to achieve a great work without having to contend with obstacles. 
 What did he overcome ? How truly did he say, when thirty years 
 ago yesterday, amid the tears and prayers of his neighbors, he 
 left the home to which he was to return four years later, a war- 
 rior who died upon the field of victory — how truly and modestly 
 did he say, "I leave you on an errand of national importance, 
 attended as you are aware, with considerable difiiculties." Great 
 need had he to say to his neighbors, "I hope you will all pray 
 that I may receive that divine assistance, without which I can- 
 not succeed, but with which success is certain." Never did a 
 man enter upon so great a work, attended with obstacles so por- 
 tentous. All through the months following his election, the 
 enemies of the country had their way; the then President of the 
 United States served, as a former Governer of Illinois said, "as 
 a bread and milk poultice to bring the rebellion to a head." And 
 Lincoln's hands were tied. At last when he took the oath, what 
 did he find? The situation was described in a sort of parable 
 by a letter which Lincoln himself wrote years before. A business 
 house in the East had written asking about the resources of Mr. 
 Brown, with whom they had some dealings. Mr. Lincoln replied: 
 
 "I am well acquainted with Mr. Brown, and know his circum- 
 stances. First of all, he has a wife and baby; together they 
 ought to be worth $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an 
 ofi&ce in which there is a table worth $1.50 and three chairs 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 49 
 
 worth, say $1. last of all, there is in one corner a large rat-hole, 
 which will bear looking into. 
 
 "Respectfully yours, 
 
 "A. LINCOLN." 
 
 When he came to take the inventory of the national assets 
 he found in many a home mothers, children, affections, hopes, not 
 to he counted by dollars. He found in the national treasury 
 a table worth $1.50 and three chairs worth $1, which Floyd and 
 Cobb had not carried away — because they were screwed to the 
 floor; and he found on the south side of the national premises, 
 a large rat hole, which, indeed, would bear looking into, for down 
 it had vanished prosperity, honor, justice, and the national ex- 
 istence itself was just disappearing, when Abraham Lincoln res- 
 cued it; though strange to say, he was criticised because he grasped 
 it by the hair of its head. 
 
 He, a country lawyer, found himself called upon to create and 
 command an army and navy, to reorganize the national service 
 which had become honej'-corabed v/ith treason. He had to con- 
 front open enemies with steadfast opposition, to countermine the 
 plots of secret foes, and to unite and to re-animate the often 
 discouraged friends of liberty. He had to count upon the stead- 
 fast opposition of the classes in the Old World, and to reckon 
 as his friends, less than half a dozen members of the House of 
 Commons, and the plain toiling people, like the weavers of Lan- 
 cashire, v/ho, in the agonies of the cotton famine, said to the 
 Government, "We will clem a bit longer; but you shall not array 
 Great Britain against our brothers in Am.erica, and against him, 
 their chief." A few years ago, when spending a Sunday in Lan- 
 cashire, I could not resist the impulse to thank these heroic men 
 for their friendship in our hours of agony ; I felt that I could stoop 
 
50 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 and kiss the ground on which those men stood. He had to con- 
 tend in the Arena of International Law with the veteran pub- 
 licists of England and France; and, while walking, to use his 
 own illustration, like Blondin, upon a wire across an unfathom- 
 ahle abyss, he had to listen to the angry and querulous complaints 
 of those who would urge him forward and of those who would 
 hold him back. 
 
 We criticize him now because of the mistakes and the delays. 
 We could achieve the same results at much less cost, in much less 
 time. Perhaps, yes; because he broke out the path. As well 
 might the summer tourist who crosses the ocean inside of six 
 days, criticize Columbus for the tediousness and deviousness of 
 his voyage, or the men of the Mayflower, because they were 
 ninety days from the old Plymouth to the new. 
 
 It demands much more greatness to be the constitutional ruler 
 of a free nation in time of peril than to be an absolute monarch. 
 The autocrat consults no one. He simply says: "So I will; so I 
 order," as the Czar of the Russias marked out the course of the 
 railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, by laying down a ruler 
 and drawing a straight line on the map. That required no 
 genius, no labor; an idiot could have done it. The labor, the 
 ability was demanded of the engineers who followed. The mag- 
 istrate of a free state has to consult public opinion. He must 
 take, not the course that is ideally the best, but the one that 
 will command the assent and the co-operation of the legislature, 
 and of the people who are behind both ruler and congress. He 
 must argue, he must explain, he must pacify, he must win; and 
 all this often at the expense of that promptness and secrecy 
 which is the life and soul of success in war. Nowhere does the 
 greatness of Mr. Lincoln more plainly appear than in the blended 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 51 
 
 wisdom, patience, cheerfulness, kindliness, with which he gained 
 those whose co-operation was a condition of victory. 
 
 Was he great, judged by what he said? His speeches and 
 writings were the embodiment of compact reasoning, expressed 
 with homely sense, inspired by humanity, radiant with patriot- 
 ism. Is not he a great man who says that which no one has 
 ever said before, but which, the moment it is said, everyone rec- 
 ognizes as an eternal verity? No one had said, "If slavery is 
 not wrong, then nothing is wrong" ; but when he said it, every 
 one recognized it as an axiom. If slavery is not wrong, then the 
 words "right" and "wrong" cease to have any meaning. His 
 words are a lesson to every young man, teaching that the secret 
 of great speech is, to have yielded one's self to great impulses. 
 He was not often mistaken; but certainly he erred when, in the 
 immortal address at Gettysburg, he said, "The world will little 
 note nor long remember what we say here." So long as men re- 
 member those immortal three days of July; so long as history 
 records that there the rebellion reached its high-water mark, and 
 that Gettysburg made Appomattox; so long as men shall go on a 
 sacred pilgrimage to Bound Top and Devil's Den, to the grove 
 where Eeynolds fell, and to the slope up which Pickett made his 
 charge (glorious, but for the cause), so long shall men remember 
 every word which he spoke, standing under the November sky 
 of 1863, words in which human speech makes a near approach 
 to perfection; so long men will "highly resolve that government 
 of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth." 
 
 The great historic party, which in 1860 placed at the head 
 of its column Abraham Lincoln, and beside him the illustrious 
 man who is your guest this evening, the party which has achieved 
 for the Republic such great and beneficent victories as were never 
 
52 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 achieved by any other party, might well take as its platform 
 through all coming time the sentiments and utterances of Lin- 
 coln, adapted to the ever varying demands of the hour. 
 
 Of his greatness, we can argue from what he was. Single in 
 aim, unselfish, patient, cheerful, not seeking personal ends, doing 
 things most disagreeable to himself because he thought they were 
 for the welfare of the country; appointing men to high station 
 who were personally repugnant to him, because he thought the 
 popular voice demanded it; sagacious, honestly shrewd, far- 
 sighted, almost unerring in his judgment of events and of men — 
 his character was a great part of the strength of the national 
 cause, was another army re-enforcing the Army of the Potomac. 
 If he had shown in the smallest degree petulance, avarice, fraud, 
 personal ambition, it would have been a greater calamity than 
 ten defeats like Chancellorsville. The concentration of effort, the 
 unity of purpose, which, under a monarchy, would have been se- 
 cured by force, came to him solely through the confidence which 
 gradually he won. "I have seen," says the most brilliant of 
 American essayists, "I have seen the v/isest statesman and most 
 pregnant speaker of our generation, a man of humble birth and 
 ungainly manners, of little culture beyond what his own genius 
 supplied, become more absolute in power than any monarch of 
 modern times through the reverence of his countrymen for his 
 honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith in God and man, and 
 the nobly humane simplicity of his character." 
 
 He had a wise generosity toward his lieutenants. You remem- 
 ber that Louis ZIV stayed safely in his palace while a siege was 
 being carried on, until the general reported to him that it was 
 absolutely certain that the beleaguered city must fall within a cer- 
 tain time; and then the Grand Monarch would set out in state 
 for the camp, and would arrive just in time to receive the surren- 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 53 
 
 dered keys ; and his flatterers said, "Turenne failed sometimes, and 
 luxembourg sometimes; but victory always waits upon the steps 
 of His Sacred Majesty." And so he pocketed the glory, which of 
 right belonged to the planning general and the toiling soldier. 
 But never a man gave more generous tribute of praise than Lin- 
 coln bestowed upon every one who was enlisted in the national 
 cause; and so, like begetting like, it came about that never ruler 
 had more noble and uncalculating devotion than he from the 
 great-souled army, and especially from those two unparalleled 
 leaders, one of whom, five years ago last August, was borne with 
 more than royal honors to his grave in the metropolis which he 
 loved. The other — how can I trust myself to speak of him? — 
 peerless captain, unsullied patriot, a thunderbolt on the field of 
 battle, in peace the gentlest of men, the most loving of friends, 
 laden with the gratitude, the reverence, the love of a nation, the 
 first citizen of the republic, lingers betv/een life and death, 
 ready, when the bugle sounds the recall to join the army of the 
 immortals. May a kindly Providence still spare him to us and 
 lengthen out the golden sunset of his honored day. 
 
 It seems to be a demand of human nature that every great 
 cause shall somewhat incarnate itself in a person and a name; and 
 so the name of Lincoln came to be, to America, and to all the 
 world, the rallying cry, the embodiment of the idea of Liberty and 
 Union. Those who sneeringly spoke of the Boys in Blue as "Lin- 
 coln's hirelings," spoke more wisely than they knew. "Hirelings" 
 they were not; but they were "Lincoln's" just as truly as the 
 best soldiers that ever trod the soil of Great Britain were "Crom- 
 well's" Ironsides. 
 
 Lincoln was great in that he knew his bounds, and attempted 
 nothing which would lead to ruin. 
 
 I cannot call a man great who is not a whole man. Napoleon, 
 
54 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 colossal upon the intellectual side, had not even the rudimentary 
 organs of a moral nature. He was a great half-man. A semi- 
 circle is not a circle, even though it have a radius of a million 
 miles. In our hero the soul matched the intellect. 
 
 He was a leader, always in front, yet never so far in advance 
 as to lose his hold upon those who followed. He did not, like a 
 too progressive locomotive, dash ahead and break the coupling and 
 leave the train stalled and helpless. 
 
 His vast common sense gave him the grasp of principles and 
 made him a master, alike in diplomacy and in war, in everything 
 that did not depend upon arbitrary technicalities. 
 
 He was born great, and he became great. He was great when, 
 at the age of twenty-two, seeing in the Crescent City, a slave 
 woman flogged, he, an obscure flat-boatman on the Mississippi, 
 said, "If ever I get a chance at that institution, I will hit it hard." 
 He was great when he was hardly known beyond Sangamon 
 County. After he became prominent in the nation, Richard 
 Fletcher, one of the justices of the Supreme Court of Massachu- 
 setts, said to Francis Wayland (from whom I have the incident), 
 "Years ago I had some correspondence with him on a legal mat- 
 ter; and he reminded me more of John Marshall than any one with 
 whom I have ever conferred." He was great, when disregarding 
 the counsels of timid friends, on the 17th of June, 1858, in his 
 speech accepting the nomination for Senator, he said, "A house 
 divided against itself cannot stand." But he grew, and especial- 
 ly during those four years when men lived fast. From the cau- 
 tious conservator of the Fugitive Slave Law to the author of the 
 Emancipation Proclamation, from the inaugural address of 1861 
 to that of 1865, there is a progress such as has rarely been meas- 
 ured by mortal man. What men call his inconsistency was in 
 reality only his growth. 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 55 
 
 He was the typical American. He was the product of our soil. 
 In forming him, Nature 
 
 Chose sweet clay from the breast 
 
 Of the unexhausted West; 
 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 
 Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 
 
 It will always be the glory of America that she offers a career to 
 such men as Lincoln and Grant, who, in monarchical or aristo- 
 cratic States, could never have risen to the destiny for which they 
 were created. He was the typical American; not Washington; 
 Washington was the product of the monarchy under which he 
 was born, and, in spirit, belonged to the Old World. Is it pos- 
 sible to think of Washington, in a public address, asking, "Shall 
 we carry on the war with an elder stalk squirt charged with 
 rose-water?" Is it possible to think of Washington, at mid- 
 night, dancing about in his chamber, with long, lean legs pro- 
 truding from a somewhat abbreviated night-gown, as Lincoln did 
 when Stanton carried to him the news from Gettysburg? General 
 Washington would have arrayed himself in full regimentals be- 
 fore receiving the tidings; or, he would have said, "Mr. Stanton, 
 I shall be at the President's office to-morrow morning at 9 o'clock, 
 if you have any important communication to make." 
 
 Andrew Jackson was born under a monarchy; anybody might 
 know that; and he believed devoutly in the divine right of His 
 Imperial Majesty, the Czar, Andrew the First. 
 
 Lonely and sorrowful in his life, Lincoln was fortunate in his 
 death. Years could have added nothing to his fame. Wolfe, had 
 he lived a hundred years, could never again have fought a battle 
 which gave a continent to the English-speaking race. Nelson, 
 
56 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 had he sailed the seas for many a year, could never again have 
 found a fleet of the enemy to annihilate; nor could Mr. Lincoln, 
 by any possibility, have had the opportunity to carry his coun- 
 try through another war for the national existence, nor was there 
 another race waiting to be emancipated. When there remained 
 nothing that earth could give, God himself bestowed the honor 
 which He reserves for only a few of his most beloved children, 
 the crown of martyrdom; and "he went up to heaven" (as O'Con- 
 nell grandly said of Wilberforce), "bearing three million broken 
 fetters in his hands." 
 
 History has long ago pronounced its award. Venerated by his 
 countrymen, worshipped by the race which he freed, honored by 
 those who had been his sharpest critics, his name is a spell to 
 charm with through the civilized world, calling sleeping nations 
 into life, awakening hope in the burdened and oppressed. Pa- 
 tiently he waited for victory in life; and it came. Patiently he 
 has waited for recognition in death; and it has come. History is 
 slow in its advances; but it arrives. 
 
 Those men, if I may call them men, who jeered at him as an 
 uncouth backwoodsman, a boor, a clown, a baboon, a gorilla — 
 where are they to-day ? Oblivion searches for them in vain ; while 
 he, reversing the laws of nature, grows larger and more distinct 
 as he withdraws into history. 
 
 He knew to bide his time. 
 
 And can his fame abide. 
 Still patient, in his simple faith sublime 
 
 Till the wise years decide. 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
 
 (and, I may venture to add, some captains not so very great, who 
 have only drums, who have left their guns at home,) 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. H. L. WAYLAND, D.D. 57 
 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour; 
 But at last silence comes; 
 
 These all are gone, and standing like a tower, 
 Our children shall behold his fame. 
 
 The kindly earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American. 
 
THE SIXTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1892 
 
 Address of 
 
 REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 
 
GEORGE E. STROBRIDGE 
 
 Dr. Strobridge was pastor of the Washington Square 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, located at West Fourth 
 Street, New York City. He has retired from the min- 
 istry. As a preacher and writer he was well known. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 
 
 Mr. President, Members of the Republican Club and Gentlemen: 
 I would be glad to have you all understand that I feel that I 
 am at present undertaking a large contract. If you had asked 
 me in the brief space of some twenty minutes allotted traditionally 
 to an after-dinner speech, to tell you how much the Cleveland 
 Democrats loved the Hill Democrats, I could get through in the 
 time and have still space to tell just about how much time Senator 
 Hill has spent at Washington. And, indeed, I would still have a 
 margin out of the twenty minutes to take you up in thought to 
 Albany and allow you to listen to the serenade given to the Dem- 
 ocratic majority by the sv/eet-faced Mugwumps; but to ask any 
 one to do justice to this great subject in this limited time is like 
 trying with a pocketknife to cut down one of the great pines of 
 California. I have a fancy that you will think when I get 
 through the sermon has broken down under the text. There is 
 a line which some of us that possibly visit the churches a 
 little more than some of the rest of us — have heard occasionally, 
 "Though they may forget the singer, they will not forget the 
 song." I have a fancy that you will forget presently both the 
 singer and the song in this instance. But at all events, I ask 
 you to remember what I say, for the sake of the subject I have. 
 K you don't recall much of what I say, please to observe that 
 I have undertaken at least to speak about a great name. 
 
62 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 Macaulay, in one of his spasms of asperity, breaks out with 
 this remark: "The multitude is more easily interested for the 
 most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for 
 the most important principle." There are many who will think 
 that this observation is as unfair as it is caustic. But, however 
 that may be, you, Mr. President, in announcing this toast, have 
 just pronounced a name which has always and everywhere a spell 
 to charm the multitude, because it is a great name ! a name which 
 dignifies us in its utterance, because it is of itself a badge of no- 
 bility! a name which stirs always a whirl of enthusiasm, be- 
 cause it stands for the incarnation of the most important prin- 
 ciples that ever roused a great nation to action or led humanity 
 to an advance movement! — the name of Abraham Lincoln, "the 
 war President, statesman, patriot; the great and good man!" 
 
 Truth was the pole-star of his mind. His one concern was to 
 be guided by it. The right was the only oracle at which he made 
 any inquiries. His utterance was free from confusion, because his 
 thought was unmixed with any falsehood. When he spoke, you 
 recall the maxim, "The clear is the true." 
 
 His mental processes were all logical, and his conclusions were 
 rightfully his, because he had travelled in thought all the way 
 up to them. With him action was the response to reason rather 
 than the product of passion. He could deliberate when smaller 
 and excited minds insisted upon action, but no difiiculties could 
 discourage nor dangers deter his action when its hour and oppor- 
 tunity had arrived. 
 
 Because he reached his conclusions by these legitimate processes 
 and knew that he was right, he was absolutely immovable in his 
 firmness, and stood amid storms of persuasion like a rock amid the 
 hissing but helpless spray. His judgment was of the forecasting 
 sort. Beneath his sombre but never stern brow, his calm and 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 63 
 
 sometimes sad eye took in long reaches of time, and this country 
 has not yet outgrown his predictions. 
 
 Great, however, as he was in mind, he was equally great in 
 heart. Adversity found him always braced and steadied by an 
 unflinching fortitude. Justice to him was sacred as the presence 
 of the Deity itself. However men might differ in other respects, 
 all were equal in their claim upon justice. To make him con- 
 scious of an unjust act would have been to make him conscious of 
 exquisite pain. 
 
 He was "Honest Abe" before he became President Lincoln. And 
 it is to the credit of the American people that it was largely be- 
 cause he was the first that he became the second. When post- 
 master at a little cross-road village, he brings forth the old leather 
 bag and counts out in triumph to the inspector the last cent due 
 to the government. He dismisses untouched any lawsuit in which 
 truth declines to be his client. And, as a principle which it were 
 well for every tempted lawyer to observe, he has left this 
 aphorism: "The law never sanctions cheating and a lawyer must 
 be very smart indeed who can twist it so that it will seem to 
 do so." 
 
 His heart would swim sometimes to the surface in tears, as over 
 the untimely death of Ellsworth. His tenderness made him at- 
 tentive to little children, and moved him to leave his busy desk 
 and hasten to visit the soldier under sentence of death, talk lov- 
 ingly with him and rescue him from his terrible fate. When but 
 a stripling, having landed a flat-boat in New Orleans, he chanced 
 to witness an auction in that city, and he said: "My heart bled at 
 seeing that family separated and sold. My God! if ever I get 
 a chance to hit that institution, I'll hit it hard." That was the 
 first sentence of the Emancipation Proclamation, given out years 
 before the official document was issued. That proclamation broke 
 
64 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 upon the shore-line of history in clanging bells, falling fetters 
 and shouts of free men. But the wave started far back there in 
 New Orleans; it began as a silent swell out in the midocean of 
 Lincoln's great heart. 
 
 He was an unselfish man. "Wielding almost unlimited power, 
 no one suffered wantonly at his hands or from a personal motive. 
 At the opening of his second administration, he said, "While I 
 am deeply sensible of the high compliment of a re-election, it 
 adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be 
 pained or disappointed by the result." At the opening of his first 
 administration, when he might have justly dismissed William H. 
 Seward from his cabinet because of an offensive note, he mag- 
 nanimously chose to judge the man not by his mistakes, but by 
 his merits — he rescued him from political suicide and gave him 
 the opportunity to win, as he did, a first place among the great sec- 
 retaries. When his irrevocable decision to accept Mr. Chase's 
 resignation was announced, he said, "And yet there is not an- 
 other man in the Union who would make as good a Chief Justice 
 as Chase. And if I have the opportunity I will make him Chief 
 Justice of the United States." He was as good as his word, the 
 occasion came, he promptly honored it, and the man who had ap- 
 parently sought to annoy the President and disturb the country 
 at a critical moment, is by the grace of that same President sent 
 down into history decorated with the ermine of the chief court 
 of the world. Magnanimity could mount no higher, never had 
 it worn a nobler crown! 
 
 The patience of Mr. Lincoln was phenomenal. It was not the 
 quiet of torpidity or indifference, but it was the masterful con- 
 trol of powers throbbing with activity. He could command him- 
 self. He could bide his time. He could and always did stop on 
 the safe side of the premature. But when patience had fulfilled 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 65 
 
 her mission, then restraint was changed to aggressive energy, and 
 might became force. Thus it was he could wait without com- 
 plaining while McClellan was delaying, but after that he could 
 move like a thunderbolt when Grant was advancing. 
 
 As we look back now to those years thickened over with clouds 
 and shot with streaks of blood we say: What man of all the 
 world could have guided so safely this nation? A man he was 
 whose faith in eternal principles was unfailing. Listen, above 
 the storm we hear his voice in these clarion v/ords — "Let us have 
 faith that right makes right and in that faith let us to the end 
 dare to do our duty as we understand it." When the night is 
 blackest, we may harken at the door of his private thought and 
 hear him say: 
 
 "My soul be true ! 
 Though on the shrine of truth the blaze 
 Shed in the dark its dying rays. 
 Keep though thy vigil, in such ways 
 The Heavens smile on you." 
 
 Thank God! his soul was true. He did keep his sleepless vigil. 
 And therefore not only did the Heavens smile on him, but the 
 clouds rolled back, the long night ended, and as on no other peo- 
 ple the Heavens also smiled on us! 
 
 This is the man to whom we are happy to-night to pay high 
 honors, great in mind, great also in heart, an all-around great 
 man. His character was not a bulge, it was a circle. His great- 
 ness was not an eccentricity, it was a symmetry. Its lines were 
 not an hyperbola chasing away from the center, but the sweep 
 of a magnificent circumference around which the sturdy virtues 
 march and within which the gentler graces sing! 
 
66 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 What he said and did was in keeping with what he was. Words 
 falling from his letters, addresses, messages and proclamations will 
 be texts for freedom and humanity in all languages down to the 
 end of time. And a nation saved from ruin, man's capacity for 
 self-government established beyond all debate, the rupture of the 
 Union of these States forever distanced in the march of events, 
 every star snatched out of the eclipse of secession and planted 
 to shine again in the congenial blue of the flag, a race rescued 
 from bondage, slavery eternally impossible on this continent — all 
 these are accomplished facts, compacts made with all time, and 
 each one signed by the name of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Not only has his work been so done that it never can go back, 
 but it must advance and has steadily gone forward. The pen that 
 •wrote the Emancipation Proclamation was lifted and pointed like 
 a prophet's staff to the Constitutional amendments that gave cit- 
 izenship and franchise to the race but lately wearing chains, and 
 it is still pointing to the yet unfinished legislation which will 
 make the black man's suffrage secure against bribery, menace or 
 fraud. Wonderful man that he was ! Out of the quiet of his Illi- 
 nois home he stepped upon the pivotal point in this nation's his- 
 tory, turned it into another course, and sent it bowling along the 
 upward path of progress with such a momentum that the little 
 men and diminished politicians who venture to stay its career will 
 receive the simple consideration of being ground to dust and 
 dashed aside. 
 
 And in all this he was our own Lincoln ! In our deliverer we 
 borrowed nothing from alien lands. The stream of his ancestry 
 had parted with foreign shores so far back that it had shaken it- 
 self entirely free from the sediment of monarchical ideas, and had 
 mn itself pure in freedom's healthy soil. Slavery and disunion 
 
 i 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. G. E. STROBRIDGE, D.D. 67 
 
 were an American problem, and it was worked out to right results 
 in the American way, and by the greatest American of them all. 
 
 He, the most honored son of this century, has raised in this 
 land the standard of manhood. Go stand in front of St. Gau- 
 dens' matchless bronze, and you will think and rightly think 
 that it ought to be more than ever mean and diiHcult and unman- 
 ly in this country to be dishonest, because he was honest; cruel 
 because he was tender; selfish because he was magnanimous; hasty 
 because he was patient; despotic because he was just; despondent 
 because his faith never failed. 
 
 We may tarry to notice briefly one more lesson taught by 
 this life and death, and that is. Sacrifice is ever the one price 
 of liberty and progress. He who lives to-day may declare, 
 
 "I am the owner of the sphere, 
 
 Of the Seven Stars and the solar year. 
 
 Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain. 
 
 Of the Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 
 
 But we are not to forget what it cost of struggle, agony, and 
 death to secure ail these for us, John Erown said that he was 
 worth more to hang than for anything else, and it is not aside 
 from the truth to add that the rope with which he was strangled 
 was needed to drag the car of our nation's progress out of the 
 mire of conservatism and compromise, and whirl it along its pres- 
 ent rapid and brilliant path. The world gets a new uplift when- 
 ever some manly life is bit off by the feverish jaws of sacrifice. 
 Over a soldier's grave on one of the Southern battlefields was 
 found this inscription: 
 
 "Whether on the tented field, 
 Or in the battle's van. 
 The fittest place for man to die 
 Is where he dies for man." 
 
68 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 This is true and has always been true all the way from Her- 
 mann, the German liberator in the first century, to Lincoln, the 
 American liberator in the nineteenth century. He willingly lost 
 his life for a great cause; he fell the last and sufficient offering 
 into the gulf of civil war. The chasm closed. The war is over! 
 There is no dispute now save the honorable strife between the 
 ardent sons of the South and the stalwart sons of the North, as 
 to which shall hasten first to the defense of the common flag. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's work is done; it is well done; it can never 
 be undone. We say of him as Carlyle said in closing his essay 
 on Goethe, "Vixit, vivit !" "He has lived, he still lives." 
 
 From out the west, of broadening plain 
 Where skies bend low o'er wavering grain 
 Our Leader came, unmarred from nature's mould, 
 In honor clear, in truth and conscience bold. 
 
 A broken State he caught in giant hands, 
 And bound it fast in blood-cemented bands. 
 The Union's safe, forever safe! and more, 
 This land is free from shore to shore! 
 
 Each man's a man, no serfs or chattels here, 
 Brows black as well as white God's image bear. 
 No lash now falls when unpaid toilers lag, 
 All stripes are laid alone upon our flag. 
 
 It bears those gleaming lines of red, 
 To show how heroes died in others' stead ; 
 And Lincoln's blood flows there, the price 
 Of freedom's costly sacrifice. 
 
THE SEVENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY ii, 1893 
 
 Address of 
 COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 
 
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll was born in Dresden, N. Y., 1833, but 
 spent his boyhood in Wisconsin and Illinois. He prac- 
 tised law in Illinois. In 1866 he was appointed Attor- 
 ney-General of Illinois, and in 1876 won national fame 
 as an orator in a speech in the Republican National Con- 
 vention, nominating James G. Blaine. For many years 
 he was noted as a cultured and powerful opponent of the 
 Christian religion and most of his lectures and books 
 had this origin. Among the latter were, "The Gods," 
 "Some Mistakes of Moses," "Prose Poems," etc. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Club: Abraham Lincoln, 
 the genius of goodness, strange mingling of mirth and tears, of 
 the tragic and grotesque, of cap and crown, of Socrates and De- 
 mocritus, of ^sop and Marcus Aurelius, of all that is gentle, just, 
 humorous and honest, merciful, wise, lovable and divine, and all 
 consecrated to the use of man, while through all and over all were 
 an overwhelming sense of obligation, of chivalric loyalty to truth, 
 and upon all the shadow of the tragic end. 
 
 Nearly all great historical characters are impossible monsters, 
 distorted by flattery, or by calumny deformed. We know nothing 
 of their peculiarities, or nothing but their peculiarities. To these 
 great oaks there clings but little of the soil of humanity. Wash- 
 ington is now only a steel engraving. About the real man who 
 loved, and lived, and hated, and schemed, and fought, we know 
 but little ; the glass through which we look at him is of such huge 
 magnifying power that the features have grown exceedingly in- 
 distinct. 
 
 Hundreds of people are now engaged in smoothing out the lines 
 in Lincoln's face — forcing all features to the common mould so 
 that he may be known, not as he really was, but as they think he 
 should have been. 
 
 Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone. He had no ances- 
 tors, he had no fellows, and he has no successors. 
 
72 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 How can we account for this great man? First of all, he had 
 the advantage of living in a new country of social equality, of 
 personal freedom, of seeing in the horizon of his future the per- 
 petual star of hope. 
 
 He preserved his individuality; his mental independence; his 
 self-respect. 
 
 He knew and mingled with men of every kind — and, after all, 
 men are the best books — he became acquainted with the ambitions 
 and hopes of the heart, the means used to accomplish ends, the 
 springs of action and the seeds of thought. 
 
 He was familiar with nature, with actual things, with com- 
 mon every-day facts. He loved and appreciated nature, the poem 
 of the year, the beautiful drama of the seasons. In a new coun- 
 try a man must possess at least three virtues — at least three — 
 honesty, courage and generosity. In cultivated society cultiva- 
 tion is often more important than soil, and a well-executed coun- 
 terfeit passes more readily than a blurred genuine. It is neces- 
 sary only to observe the unwritten laws of society, to be honest 
 enough to keep out of prison, and generous enough to subscribe 
 in public where the subscription can be defended as an invest- 
 ment. 
 
 In a new country, character is essential ; in the old, reputation 
 is often sufficient. In a new country they find out what a man 
 really is ; in the old he is apt to pass for what he resembles. 
 
 People only separated by distance are much nearer together than 
 those divided by walls of caste. After all, it is of no advantage to 
 live in a great city, where poverty degrades and where failure 
 brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets, and 
 the oaks and elms are more poetic than steeples and chains. In 
 the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and the 
 setting sun. You become acquainted with the stars and with the 
 
ADDRESS OF COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 73 
 
 clouds. The constellations become your friends. You hear the 
 rain on the roof, and you listen to the sigh of the wind. You are 
 thrilled by that resurrection called Spring; you are touched and 
 saddened by Autumn, the curse and poetry of death. Every field 
 is a picture, a landscape, every landscape is a poem; every flower 
 is a tender thought, and every forest is a fairy land. In the 
 country you preserve your identity, your personality. There you 
 are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom 
 of an aggregation. In the country you keep your cheek close to 
 the breast of nature. You are calmed and ennobled by the space, 
 the amplitude and scope of earth and sky, and you are ennobled by 
 the constancy of the stars. 
 
 Lincoln never finished his education. He was a learner. To 
 the night of his death, a pupil, an inquirer after knowledge. You 
 have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called finish- 
 ing their education. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that many colleges were places where 
 pebbles were polished and diamonds were dimmed, and I have 
 often thought, with fear, suppose Shakespeare had graduated at 
 Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney or a hypocritical 
 parson. 
 
 Lincoln was a perfectly natural man. He was also a great law- 
 yer, and why? There is nothing shrewder in this world than 
 intelligent honesty. Perfect candor is sword and shield. 
 
 Lincoln understood the nature of man, and as a lawyer he al- 
 ways endeavored to get at the truth, at the very heart of the case. 
 He was not willing to deceive himself, no matter what his in- 
 terests said, what his passion demanded. He was great enough 
 to find the truth and strong enough to decide and pronounce 
 judgment against his own desire. 
 
 He was a many-sided man, acquainted with smiles and tears, 
 
74 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 complex in brain, single in heart, direct as liglit, and his words^ 
 candid as the mirror, gave the perfect image of his thought. 
 
 He was never afraid to ask, never too dignified to learn, never 
 too dignified to admit that he did not know, and no man born be- 
 neath our flag had keener wit or kinder humor. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that humor is the pilot of reason. 
 
 People without humor drift unconsciously into absurdity. Hu- 
 mor sees the other side. Humor stands in the mind like a 
 sceptre, a good-natured critic and gives its opinion before judg- 
 ment is pronounced. Humor goes with good nature, and good 
 nature is the climate of reason and of genius. In anger, reason 
 abdicates and malice extinguishes the torch of the mind. Such 
 was the humor of Lincoln that he could tell even unpleasant 
 truths as charmingly as most men can tell what we wish to hear. 
 He was not solemn. Solemnity is a mask worn by ignorance and 
 hypocrisy. Solemnity is the preface, prologue and index to the 
 cunning of a stupid. 
 
 Lincoln was natural in his life and thought. He was the mas- 
 ter of the story-teller's art; in illustrations apt; in applications 
 perfect. Liberal in speech, shocking pharisees and prudes, using 
 any word that wit could disinfect. 
 
 He was a logician. His logic shed light. In its presence the 
 obscure became luminous, and the most intricate political and 
 metaphysical knots seemed to untie themselves. Logic is the 
 necessary product of intelligence and sincerity. It cannot be 
 learned. It cannot be taught. It is the child of a clear head 
 and a good heart. 
 
 Lincoln was candid, and that candor often deceived the de- 
 ceitful. 
 
 He had intellect without arrogance, genius without pride, and 
 religion without cant, that is to say without bigotry and with- 
 
ADDRESS OF COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 75 
 
 out deceit. He was an orator, clear, sincere, natural. He did 
 not pretend. He did not say what he thought others thought, but 
 what he thought, and if you wish to be sublime you must be natu- 
 ral. You must keep close to the grass. You must sit by the fire- 
 side of the heart. Above the clouds it is too cold. You must be 
 simple in your speech, too much polish suggests insincerity. The 
 great orator idolizes the real, transfigures the common, makes even 
 the inanimate thrill and throb, fills the gallery of the imagina- 
 tion with statues and pictures, perfect in form and color; brings 
 to light the gold hoarded by memory, the miser shows the glitter- 
 ing coin to the spendthrift. Hope enriches the brain, ennobles 
 the heart, quickens the conscience, between his lips words bud 
 and blossom. 
 
 If you wish to know the difference between an orator and elocu- 
 tionist, between what is felt and what is said, between what the 
 heart and brain can do together, and what the brain can do alone, 
 read Lincoln's wondrous speech at Gettysburg, and then the 
 speech of Edward Everett. The oration of Lincoln will never be 
 forgotten, it will live until languages are dead and lips are dust. 
 The speech of Everett will never be read. 
 
 The elocutionist believes in the virtues of voice, the sublimity 
 of syntax; the majesty of long sentences and the genius of gesture. 
 
 The orator loves the real, the simple, the natural, and he places 
 thought and feeling above all. He knows that the greatest ideas 
 should be expressed in the shortest words. He knows that a great 
 idea is like a great statue, and he knows that the greater the 
 statue the less drapery it needs. 
 
 Let me read from this beautiful souvenir a few lines of what I 
 call sculptured speech, and these words are as applicable to-day 
 in many of the States of this Union as when they were first ut- 
 tered. Let me read: 
 
76 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 "And when by all these means you have succeeded in human- 
 izing the negTo, when you have put him down and made it im- 
 possible for him to be but as the beast of the iield; v/hen you 
 have extinguished his soul in this world, and placed him where 
 the ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, 
 are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn 
 and rend you? What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty 
 and independence? It is not our frowning battlement, our 
 bristling seacoast, our army and our navy. 
 
 "These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of these may 
 be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle. 
 
 "Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted 
 in us. Our defence is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the 
 heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. 
 
 "Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism 
 at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves within the bondage 
 and you prepare your own limbs to wear them." 
 
 lincoln was an immense personality. Firm, but not obstinate. 
 Obstinacy is egotism; firmness, heroism. He influenced others 
 without effort, unconsciously, and they submitted to him as men 
 submit to nature, unconsciously. He was severe with himself 
 and for that reason lenient with others. He did merciful things 
 as stealthily as others committed crimes. Almost ashamed of 
 tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with 
 that charming confusion, that awkwardness, that is the perfect 
 grace of modesty. 
 
 As a nobleman, wishing to pay a small debt to a poor neigh- 
 bor, reluctantly offers one hundred dollars and asks for change, 
 fearing that he may be suspected of making a display of wealth, of 
 a pretense of payment, so Lincoln hesitated to show his wealth 
 
ADDRESS OF COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 77 
 
 of goodness even to the best he knew, a great man stooping, not 
 wishing to make his fellows feel that they were small or mean. 
 By his candor, by his perfect freedom from restraint, by saying 
 what he thought and saying it absolutely in his own way, he made 
 it not only possible but popular to be natural, to be true. 
 
 He w^as the enemy of mock solemnity, of the stupidly respect- 
 ful, of the cold and formal. He wore no official robes either on 
 his body or his soul. He never pretended to be more or less, or 
 other, or different from what he really was. He had the uncon- 
 scious naturalness of nature's self. He built upon a rock. It did 
 not satisfy him to have other people think he was right. He 
 wanted to think that he was right. He built upon a rock, and 
 the foundation was secure and broad. The structure was a pyra- 
 mid, narrowing as it rose, and through days and nights of sor- 
 row, through years of grief and pain, with unswerving purpose, 
 with malice toward none, and with charity for all, with infinite 
 patience, with unclouded vision, he hoped and toiled. There was 
 no cloud in his brain. There was no hate in his heart. Stone 
 after stone was made, until at last the proclamation found its 
 place, and on that the goddess now stands. He knew others be- 
 cause he was perfectly acquainted with himself. He cared nothing 
 for place, everything for principle, and to the great man, place 
 is only an opportunity for doing good. He cared nothing for 
 money, but everything for independence. 
 
 When no principle was involved, he was easily swayed, willing 
 to go slowly if in the right direction. Sometimes willing to stop, 
 but he wouldn't go back, and he wouldn't go wrong. 
 
 He was willing to wait. He knew slavery had defenders, but 
 no defense. He was neither tyrant nor slave. He neither knelt 
 nor scorned. With him men were neither great, rich, nor poor, 
 nor small. They were right or wrong. 
 
78 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 Through manners, clothes, titles, rags and race he saw the real, 
 that which is beyond accident, policy, compromise and war, he 
 saw the end. 
 
 He was patient as destiny, whose undecipherable hieroglyphs 
 were so deeply graven on his sad and tragic face. Nothing dis- 
 closes real character like the use of power. It is very easy for 
 the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity, but if you 
 wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the 
 supreme test. 
 
 It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he 
 never abused it except on the side of mercy. "Wealth could not 
 purchase it, power could not awe this divine, this loving man. 
 
 He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong. Hating 
 slavery, pitying the master seeking to conquer, not persons, but 
 prejudices, he was the embodiment of the self-denial, the courage, 
 the hope and the nobility of a nation. He spoke not to inflame, 
 not to upbraid, but to convince. He raised his hands, not to strike, 
 but in benediction. 
 
 He longed to pardon. He loved to see the pearls of joy on the 
 cheeks of a wife whose husband he had rescued from the dead. 
 
 Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He 
 is the gentlest memory of our world. 
 
THE EIGHTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1894 
 
 Address of 
 
 BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 
 
JOHN PHILIP NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Dr. Newman was bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church from 1888 till his death. He was born in New 
 York, 1826. He received his education at Cazenovia 
 Seminary, studied theology and entered the Method- 
 ist Episcopal ministry in 1849. The years 1850- 
 1887 covered pastorates in Hamilton, N. Y.; Albany, 
 N. Y.; New York City, and Washington, D. C; the 
 foundation of schools, conferences and colleges; exten- 
 sive travel (Palestine and Egypt, 1860-1); the chap- 
 lainship of the Senate, 1869-74; ^^^ consular work, 
 1874-6. He was noted as a pulpit orator and lecturer, 
 and as the author of many books, among them "From 
 Dan to Beersheba," "Christianity Triumphant," "Amer- 
 ica for Americans," "The Supremacy of Law." 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of the 
 City of New York: "On this memorable occasion let us call the roll 
 of honor, recount the great benefactors who have blessed mankind, 
 and call up the great statesmen of the past, and you will agree 
 with me that there is one name that is worthy of immortal re- 
 nown and deserving of imperishable fame, and that name is 
 Abraham Lincoln. Human glory is sometimes as fickle as the 
 winds, and as transient as a summer day, but some things are 
 fixed beyond revocation. Lincoln's place in history is assured. 
 Empires may rise and fall; republics may be born and die. Lib- 
 erty may be a homeless wanderer among the tribes of men, but 
 so long as men shall revere wisdom and admire patriotism and 
 love liberty, so long will they recall his illustrious name with 
 acclamations of gratitude and delight. 
 
 He has all the symbols of the world's admiration, embalmed in 
 song, recorded in history, eulogized in panegyric, cast in bronze, 
 sculptured in marble, painted on the canvas, loved in the hearts 
 of his countrymen, and alive in the memories of mankind, he is 
 destined to live among the few mortals God has ordained into im- 
 mortality thereunto. 
 
 Some men are eminent while living, but their memory passes 
 from the vision of the world because their words and deeds are 
 of little worth to history, their fame is buried with them largely 
 
82 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 because their mission was limited and transient, because the 
 world had taken possession of greater thoughts, because docu- 
 ments have been discovered that revealed their selfishness. The 
 sun of many a conspicuous man has gone down while yet it is day ; 
 but Lincoln's fame can never suffer from either of these causes, 
 for his life mission was this great country, and vast as humanity 
 and enduring as time; and it is not possible, gentlemen, that any 
 thought can occupy the mind of humanity greater than obedience 
 to law in opposition to rebellion, or greater than freedom or lib- 
 erty in opposition to slavery. 
 
 Knowing him as we did in private ways and public walks, amid 
 the sanctities of home and the duties of the presidential chair, 
 in social correspondence and in public utterances, the grave does 
 not contain aught against his fair fame as a man, a citizen or a 
 president. Some men are not honored by their contemporaries, 
 benefactors of mankind though they have been. They die neglect- 
 ed, unsung and unmonumented, but future generations call their 
 memories forth and embalm them in affection and gratitude. 
 Lincoln had a three-fold greatness; great in life, great in death 
 and great in the history of the world. 
 
 And why was he great? "What had he accomplished to merit 
 this renown ? Ask the old flag that floats over a unified republic ; 
 ask this prosperous country of ours with its happy homes, its fertile 
 fields, its metallic mines and mineral mountains, its splendid com- 
 merce and its hitherto prosperous manufactories. Ask the Grand 
 Army of the Eepublic. Ask millions of freed men advancing to 
 a better civilization; ask the nations of the Old World who now 
 have a profound respect for this proud and glorious country of 
 ours. 
 
 Great men appear in groups, and in groups they disappear from 
 the vision of the world. Isolated greatness is a stranger to our 
 
ADDRESS OF BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 83 
 
 race. Solidarity is the law of national progress. Wherever there 
 is one who is eminently great, around him are coadjutors. Take 
 for instance that magnificent group of historic characters in the 
 sixteenth century — Maximilian I. and Charles V.; Francis I. and 
 Henry VIII.; Isabella and Ferdinand; Columbus and Luther; and 
 then as contemporaries, Napoleon in France, Wellington in Eng- 
 land and Washington in America, and all the galaxies of glory 
 that have been resplendent in any country. Remember that his- 
 toric group of our own country, Lincoln and Grant; Seward and 
 Chase; Stanton and Sumner; Morton and Conkling; Sherman and 
 Sheridan ; Porter and Farragut. Beat that if you can. 
 
 We are to measure Lincoln by the greatness of his associateSc 
 Some men are great because of the littleness of their surround- 
 ings. He only is great, Mr. President, who is great amid greatness, 
 and this law of historic groupings is true of our day in piping times 
 of peace. Genius is not aflame and greatness is not apparent ; but 
 when the crisis comes God lifts the curtain from obscurity and 
 the man of the hour comes forth. The crisis is upon us. It re- 
 minds us of the darker days of 1860, but on the throne of the 
 universe is the God of our fathers, and we have nothing to fear, 
 with a Sherman in the Senate, and Reed in the House, and Mc- 
 Kinley in Ohio, and God over all. 
 
 Our English cousins remind us of the lowliness of the birth 
 of Mr. Lincoln, of his neglected childhood, of his terrible strug- 
 gles against poverty, but we are not ashamed of the lowliness of 
 his birth; we are proud of his greatness as illustrative in him of 
 the possibilities of the American citizen. We never placed a pre- 
 mium upon neglected childhood. Of the nineteen presidents of 
 this republic, fourteen were university men, having graduated 
 with the highest honors, and, with two or three exceptions, all 
 occupied a high social position from the cradle to the grave. But 
 
84 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 I confess to you, my honored friends, that I would rather be the 
 rail-splitter of Illinois, or the canal-boat driver of Ohio, or the 
 tanner of Galena, and die the honored President of the United 
 States, than to be born a royal prince and die a royal scoundrel. 
 
 Lincoln was a providential man, but he had so much humility 
 that while he believed that God had raised him up to save a great 
 nation and to advance the great interests of humanity, he never 
 had pride enough to suppose that he was greater than Congress 
 or greater than the American people. His character was strange- 
 ly symmetrical; temperate but not austere; brave but not rash; 
 constant but not stubborn; he laid caution over against hope, 
 lest hope should be premature, and hope over against caution, lest 
 caution should fail in the hour of dread and danger. His love 
 of justice equaled his love of compassion; his self-abnegation 
 found its highest expression in the welfare of the people, and his 
 honesty was never suspected; his integrity was never questioned. 
 The beauty of his moral character has thrown into the shade the 
 splendor of his intellect. The time will come when the severest 
 critic of mental philosophy and mental development will sit in 
 judgment of admiration upon the splendid furniture of that great 
 mind. He was a logician by nature. His terse and beautiful 
 rhetoric rivals the utterances of the greatest orators of the past 
 and present; and when the orations of the Roman Forum, and the 
 Greek Bema, and the British Parliament have ceased to inspire 
 the admiration of the scholar, Lincoln's inaugurals and his Gettys- 
 burg panegyric will excite the admiration of the critic and the 
 scholar in all lands and under all circumstances. 
 
 We are to measure him by the obstacles he surmounted; by the 
 results that he achieved. It is not philosophy, gentlemen, for us 
 to judge of a man aside from his surroundings. Every age has 
 its heroes, every crisis has its master. Every man must stand on 
 
ADDRESS OF BISHOP JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D. 85 
 
 his own pedestal of renown. It will not do to say that Talleyrand 
 was greater than Lincoln, or Pitt was greater. We do not know 
 what Talleyrand would have done if he had been in Lincoln's 
 place, or what Pitt would have done, nor do we know what Lin- 
 coln would have done had he been in the position of either. We 
 must, therefore, judge of the man's greatness by his own sur- 
 roundings, by his own age. 
 
 He entered political life amid the most virulent convulsions in 
 the annals of time. He was in a death grapple with a people that 
 we had as companions of a hundred years; a proud, chivalrous 
 people with an army of the bravest soldiers, commanded by gen- 
 erals that were equal to the marshals of France, backed by a 
 people that had been educated in treason and by a womanhood 
 schooled in rebellion. Nay, more than this, in all these terrible 
 purgatorial years through which the nation passed, his hope- 
 fulness inspired the despondency of the North when our armies 
 were defeated in the South, He arose in supernal majesty against 
 foes abroad and copper-head Democrats at home. You are 
 therefore, to judge of him by these great achievements. Nay, 
 more than this, if there is anything that places him highest in 
 our estimation it is the singleness of his purpose as the President 
 cf the United States. He knew the philosophy, Mr. President, of 
 a supreme thought, and that supreme thought was to maintain 
 the Union of the United States. His guide was the Constitution. 
 He would consent to no compromise. He would not abate one jot 
 or tittle. He would have the Union or nothing. He would have 
 the Union with slavery or without slavery. As a great constitu- 
 tional lawyer he grasped this fundamental fact : he said the slave 
 would be better off in the Union of the United States than in a 
 Confederacy with a live slave for its chief corner-stone. The 
 emancipation of slavery was a subordinate consideration with 
 
86 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 him, and all other cognate thoughts were subordinate. But like 
 a magnificent vision, the perpetuity of the nation arose before 
 him and he bent all his energies for that preservation. 
 
 Would you ask for a higher or nobler standard ? Remember his 
 rare discrimination, his sagacity in selecting men to maintain 
 that Union, to perpetuate it, which, I trust, will be perpetuated 
 until the last syllable of recorded time. And in nothing more is 
 the greatness of his mind displayed than in his persistent and 
 enthusiastic support of General Grant to crush the rebellion. Jeal- 
 ousy and ambition were rife. Wild passions of war had given 
 birth to a pandemonium of defamation. Grant was opposed at 
 every upward step. He was neglected or left without command; 
 he was maligned, and in every possible way obstacles were thrown 
 in his path. But Lincoln stood firm by him, and these two men 
 go down hand in hand into history amid the benedictions of a 
 grateful people. 
 
 It is well, therefore. Republicans, that you gather here once a 
 year around this festive board to commemorate the character of 
 this illustrious man. Gather here to rekindle the fires of patriot- 
 ism ; gather here to protect the purity and the freedom of the bal- 
 lot in the North and in the South. Gather here to swear by the 
 better angels of your nature, that the Republican party shall have 
 a new baptism of patriotism, and once more control the interests 
 and destinies of this country. That by your voice and your ener- 
 gies and your patriotism you shall see to it that those great prin- 
 ciples advocated by Mr. Lincoln shall never be neglected, and 
 above all, that the free trade of the South shall not destroy the 
 protected industries of the North. 
 
THE NINTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1895 
 
 Address of 
 
 HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 
 
JOHN MELLEN THURSTON 
 
 Ex- Senator Thurston was bom in Montpelier, Vt., in 
 1847, t'Ut moved to Wisconsin in early boyhood. His 
 youth was one of rugged struggle against adverse con- 
 ditions in the effort to secure an education; during his 
 college course at Wayland University, Wisconsin, he 
 supported himself by farm work and the roughest man- 
 ual labor. He was admitted to the Bar in 1869, and 
 started practice in Omaha. He soon won prominence in 
 local municipal affairs; became a member of the Legis- 
 lature of the State of Nebraska in 1875, and U. S. 
 Senator for Nebraska in 1895. He was Chairman of the 
 Republican National Conventions of 1888 and 1896, and 
 U. S. Commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition in 1901. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 
 
 Mr. Toastmaster and Gentlemen of the Republican Club : In the 
 days of Abraham Lincoln, a deserter or a conscript was not re- 
 ceived with favor. I am both. I enlisted for a Michigan banquet, 
 and I find myself drafted in New York. To the charge of deser- 
 tion I plead detention by imperative professional duty. As a 
 drafted man I throw myself upon the mercy of the court. I 
 have already disappointed one magnificent audience, and am 
 about to disappoint another. I say it, advisedly, for you coming 
 here to sit at the feet of a master, find only a humble disciple of 
 that great lawyer, orator and logician, whose place upon your 
 program no living man can adequately fill. I am from the re- 
 generated West, where the bison and the Populist no longer 
 bellow and cavort, where fusion is confused, and where the polit- 
 ical ragtag and bobtail have taken to the woods. The West 
 is once more Republican and American. Strong in the knowledge 
 of her growing power, her coming empire, she leaves sectionalism 
 and provincialism for those who educate their children, spend 
 their vacations and receive their political ideas abroad. This 
 mighty West has furnished all the Republican presidents and 
 some of the statesmen of the country, and I assure you that the 
 supply of raw material is not exhausted yet. We shall offer you 
 the best we have in 1896. But the people of the West are not 
 patriots for office. Their Republicanism does not depend upon 
 
go THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 the location of candidates, and the nominee of the next national 
 convention will receive the vote of every Western state in this 
 country. We will stand by our farms and our mines, but not to 
 the injury of the commerce or the capital of the East. 
 
 I love my State, her sturdy people, her matchless progress, her 
 growing industries, her thriving cities, her mellow sunshine, yea, 
 her mighty storms, but I love my country first. Nebraska put one 
 star in the azure of the flag and New York put another, but when 
 they took their places in that flag, they were no longer the stars 
 of New York and Nebraska, but stars of the mightiest nation of 
 the earth, shining for the protection and prosperity of every 
 American citizen. 
 
 I am commissioned to-night to speak of Abraham Lincoln, the 
 simplest, sweetest, saintliest, sublimest character of the age. 
 Sixty million free people join with us in commemoration of his 
 birth, yet he wielded no sceptre and wore no crown; but in his 
 life he exercised greater powers, called into existence grander 
 armies, and won for his country and humanity grander victories 
 than any who preceded him upon the earth, and in his death he 
 reached to the full stature of immortal fame. 
 
 It is not my purpose to-night to review the life of Abraham 
 Lincoln, for that is a part of the history of our country. That 
 history remains with all loyal men, it is emblazoned upon the 
 nation's battle-flags; it speaks from silent lips; it lingers in the 
 shadow of desolate lives; yea, and it blooms in beauty above the 
 sacred dust of those who fell by river and by sea. Vtt should be 
 cherished in every public school ; it should be preached from every 
 Christian pulpit; it should be honored, venerated, loved, wherever 
 liberty is dear to man. 
 
 I shall refer to-night to only one event in the public career of 
 Abraham Lincoln, but the happening of that event was the har- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 91 
 
 binger of a new civilization, the dawn of a new epoch in human 
 affairs. Not long since, as I sat in a crowded court room, engaged 
 in the trial of a case involving the title to a valuable tract of 
 real estate, there came to the witness stand a venerable 
 white-haired negro. Written all over his old, black face was the 
 history of three-quarters of a century of such an existence as few 
 persons have ever known. Born a slave, he had stood upon the 
 auction block and been sold to the highest bidder; he had seen 
 his wife and children dragged from his side by those who mocked 
 his breaking heart; he bore upon his back the scars and ridges 
 of a master's lash. When asked his age he drew himself proudly 
 up and said: "For fifty years I was a chattel; on the first day of 
 January, 1863, Old Uncle Abe made me a man." 
 
 The act which set that old man free was the crowning glory 
 of Lincoln's life, for by it he not only saved a nation, but eman- 
 cipated a race. 
 
 We of the Anglo-Saxon tongue are justly proud of Magna 
 Charta, that great constitutional enactment, set up by the Barons 
 of Runnymede against the unlimited exercise of kingly power. 
 We are justly proud of the Declaration of Independence, that first 
 complete written assertion of the equality of men, and the right 
 of government by the people. The genesis of American liberty 
 was in the Declaration of Independence, but the gospel of its new 
 testament was vmtten by Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation 
 Proclamation. And the Magna Charta of man's real freedom and 
 equality is the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the 
 United States. 
 
 I am a believer in the overruling providence of Almighty God. 
 I cannot so far belittle the miracle of my own existence and the 
 incomprehensible splendors of the universe as for a moment to be- 
 lieve that they came of chance. What thoughtful student of his- 
 
92 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 tory can deny that this continent of ours has been under the guid- 
 ance of an especial Providence, which kept it through all ages of 
 early man until the civilization of the Old World had grown and 
 expanded and was ready for transposition to the New; which put 
 the preposterous idea of a round world into the quickened brain 
 of the Genoese sailor; gave him courage to go from court to 
 court until his prayer was answered by the sympathetic queen ? It 
 filled his sail with favoring breezes, stood at the helm and guided 
 his ship aright; when he landed on the unknown strand, he had 
 raised above him the great vdiite cross of a Savior's love, the em- 
 blem of immortal hope. 
 
 Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, Grant; discoverer, father, pre- 
 server, hero. Did chance select them each for his glorious work 
 so gloriously performed ? Let the fool answer hov/ he will, I pre- 
 fer to see the finger of Divine design. The rail-splitter of Illi- 
 nois became the President of the Republic in the darkest hour of 
 our history. Inexperienced and untried in public affairs, he orig- 
 inated national policies, overruled statesmen, directed armies, re- 
 moved generals, and when it became necessary to save the na- 
 tion, gave a new interpretation to the Constitution of the United 
 States. He amazed politicians and offended the leaders of his 
 own party, but the people from whom he sprang trusted him 
 blindly, and followed him by instinct. The child leads the blind, 
 not by greater strength or intelligence, but by certainty of vision. 
 Abraham Lincoln was above the clouds and stood in the clear 
 sunshine of Heaven's indicated will. 
 
 So stands the mountain, 
 While the murky shadows thicken at its base; 
 Beset by the tempest, lashed by the storm, 
 Darkness and desolation on every side; 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 93 
 
 No ray of hope in the lightning's lurid lances, 
 
 No voice of safety in the crashing thunderbolt ; 
 
 But high above the topmost mist, 
 
 Vexed by no wave of angry sound, 
 
 Kissed by the sun of day, wooed by the stars of night, 
 
 The eternal summit lifts its sunny crest, 
 
 Crowned with the infinite serenity of peace. 
 
 God said let there be light, and there was light: light on the 
 ocean, light on the land. God said let there be light: light on 
 Calvary, light for the souls of men. God said let there be light, 
 and there was light : light on the Emancipation Proclamation, light 
 on the honor of the nation, light on the Constitution of the 
 United States, light on the black faces of patient bondsmen, light 
 on every standard of liberty throughout the world. 
 
 Divine justice would not permit that the nation should be pre- 
 served under a Constitution which meant the perpetuation of hu- 
 man slavery. The careful student of that great conflict readily 
 discovers that up to the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, 
 the doubtful tide of battle set most strongly against the Union 
 shore, reverse followed reverse until the boasting host of the Con- 
 federacy seemed apt to make their declaration good that they 
 would proclaim the Confederate government from the steps of the 
 National Capitol. But from the hour when the cause of the Union 
 became the cause of humanity; from the hour when the flag of 
 the republic became the flag of liberty; from the hour when its 
 stars and stripes no longer floated above a slave; yea, from the 
 sacred hour of the nation's new birth, that dear banner never 
 faded from the sky, and the brave boys who bore it never wavered 
 in their onward march to victory. 
 
 With the single exception of Chancellorsville, and that stub- 
 
94 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 born, doubtful day at Chickamauga, no decisive field of battle was 
 ever lost by the men who sang with double enthusiasm: 
 
 "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
 But his soul goes marching on." 
 
 From the Potomac to the Shenandoah, from Chattanooga to the 
 sea, the war-worn, battle-scarred veterans took new hope, touched 
 elbows with new courage, saw in each other's eyes a new fire. 
 Sang with a new inspiration that glorious anthem : 
 
 **In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea, 
 With the glory in His bosom, that transfigures you and me. 
 As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. 
 For God is marching on." 
 
 The blue and the gray lie in eternal slumber side by side, heroes 
 all; they fell face to face, brother against brother, to expiate a 
 nation's sin. The lonely fireside, the unknown graves, the memory 
 of the loved, the yearning for the lost, desolated altars and the 
 broken hopes are above recall. The wings of our weak prejudices 
 beat in vain against the iron doors of fate, and through the min- 
 gled tears, that fall alike upon the honored dead of both North 
 and South, turn hopeful eyes to that new future of prosperity and 
 power, only possible under the shelter of the dear old flag. To 
 the North and South; the master and the slave; the white man 
 and the black, Abraham Lincoln was God's providence. 
 
 What is the heritage to us? Lincoln on the immortal field of 
 Gettysburg said, "A government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people." A government of the people so broad that it covers 
 land, home and liberty to the down-trodden and oppressed of all 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 95 
 
 the earth, so strong that the sheathed swords of its citizen soldiery 
 need never again be drawn to protect it from foes without or dis- 
 sensions within; so liberal that in its sky the star of every faith 
 may find a place and by its altars individual conscience fears 
 neither Church nor State; so well beloved that the bright bayonet 
 does honor in every American hand, and the certain bulwark of its 
 liberty in every American heart. 
 
 A government by the people in which the unit of political 
 power is individual citizenship. Government of the people is or- 
 ganized to protect the weak against oppression by the strong, 
 to protect the poor against unjust exaction by the rich, to protect 
 the ignorant from the subtleties of the learned. The ballot-box is 
 the safety of a people's government and of the United States of 
 America. That government that will not protect its citizens in 
 the exercise of their highest privilege of citizenship should not 
 be permitted to cumber the earth. God's justice will mark it for 
 destruction as it has marked other nations for lesser crimes. 
 
 What we need in this country is the Emancipation Proclamation 
 and the stars and stripes at every polling place. We need a re- 
 vival of the American flag. Let it float over every American 
 school-house; let the true story of every American battlefield be 
 taught in every public school. Set the stars of the Union in the 
 hearts of our children, and the glory of the republic will remain 
 forever. It does not matter whether the American cradle is 
 rocked to the music of "Yankee Doodle" or the lullaby of "Dixie," 
 if the flag of the nation is displayed above it, and the American 
 baby can be safely trusted to pull about the floor the rusty scab- 
 bard and the battered canteen, whether the inheritance be from 
 blue or gray, if from the breast of a true mother and the lips 
 of a brave father its little soul is fllled with the glory of the 
 American constellation. 
 
96 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 A government for the people, for the American people; not for 
 those alone of native birth, but for the men who will loyally and 
 in good faith subscribe to the Constitution of the United States 
 and obey the laws of the land. Every man who loved our coun- 
 try well enough to fight for it, if need be to die for it; every 
 man who loved it well enough to bid good-bye to his native land, 
 look for the last time on the graves of the loved ones, and chance 
 himself to the ocean and the unknown shore beyond in the hope of 
 securing to himself and children liberty and opportunity, is worthy 
 of American citizenship and to participate in the best govern- 
 ment on the earth. 
 
 Open the gates of Castle Garden wide to every God-fearing, lib- 
 erty-loving, law-abiding, labor-seeking, decent man. But close 
 them at once and forever upon all whose birth, whose policy, 
 whose teachings, whose practices would endanger the safety of 
 American labor. 
 
 It is related that in Pittsburgh, on the night of the last elec- 
 tion, after the returns had made it certain that the country had 
 gone Republican, two hard-handed workingmen, clothed in 
 their working blouses, climbed to the top of a smokeless chimney 
 and there, in the glare of the city's electric light, nailed to it an 
 American flag, and when the morning sunshine blessed the earth 
 it kindled the waves of that dear old flag with glory. That flag 
 on that dismantled chimney meant that prosperity would come 
 back to the United States with the triumph of the Republican 
 party. It meant that whatever labor is to be done for the people 
 of the United States shall be done by the people of the United 
 States under the stars and stripes. It meant that the hope of the 
 common people, the salvation of American labor, the permanency 
 of American institutions, is only safe with the party of Abraham 
 Lincoln. And this government of the people shall not perish from 
 
 I 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN M. THURSTON 97 
 
 the earth. Our nation has stood for twelve decades, a menace 
 to oppression and hope for the oppressed. Mother of republics — 
 her lullaby is sung over every cradle of liberty throughout the 
 world. The last throne has disappeared from the western con- 
 tinent, and the conscience of the twentieth century will not tol- 
 erate a crown. 
 
 On Freedom's scroll of honor the name of Abraham Lincoln is 
 written first. The colossal statue of his fame stands forever on 
 the pedestal of a people's love. About it are the upturned, glori- 
 fied faces of an emancipated race; in its protecting shadow, liberty, 
 equal rights and justice is the heritage of every American citizen. 
 The sunshine of approving Heaven rests upon it like an infinite 
 benediction, and over it calmly floats the unconquered flag of the 
 greatest nation of the earth. 
 
THE TENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNEE 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1896 
 
 Address of 
 HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW, LL.D. 
 
 Senator Depew was born in Peekskill, N. Y., 1834. 
 He graduated from Yale in 1856 and was admitted to 
 the Bar in 1858. In 1861-2 he was a member of the 
 Assembly of the State of New York and in 1872 declined 
 the appointment of U. S. Minister to Japan. He has 
 been since i856 closely associated in the management of 
 the New York Central & Hudson River R. R., its prede- 
 cessors and allied lines; from 1885-98 he was president 
 of the N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R. and afterwards chairman 
 of the boards of directors of the various railroads com- 
 prising the N. Y. C. Lines. Since 1899 he has been 
 United States Senator from the State of New York. He 
 is a director of numerous railroads and banking corpor- 
 ations and is distinguished as an orator and after-dinner 
 speaker. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen: Celebrations of the anniversaries 
 of heroes and statesmen, of battlefields and significant events, have, 
 as a rule, only an historical interest. They lack the freshness 
 and passion of touch and attachment. It has always been the 
 habit of peoples to deify their heroes. After a few generations 
 they are stripped of every semblance to humanity. We can reach 
 no plane where, after the lapse of 100 years, we can view George 
 Washington as one of ourselves. He comes to us so perfect, full- 
 rounded, and complete that he is devoid of the defects which make 
 it possible for us to love greatness. The same is largely true of 
 all the Eevolutionary worthies, except that the Colonial Dames 
 have raised — or lowered — Benjamin Franklin to the level of our 
 vision by deciding that lie was so human that his descendant in 
 the fourth generation is unworthy of their membership. Thank 
 Heaven, we can still count as one of ourselves, with his humor, and 
 his sadness, with his greatness and his every-day homeliness, with 
 his wit and his logic, with his gentle chivalry that made him 
 equal to the best born knight, and his awkward and ungainly ways 
 that made him one of the plain people, our martyred President, our 
 leader of the people, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The Revolutionary War taught liberty from the top down; the 
 Civil War taught liberty from the people up to the colleges and 
 pulpits. The Revolutionary struggle was the revolt of property 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 against unjust taxation until it evoluted into independence. It 
 was the protest of the leaders in commercial, industrial, and agri- 
 cultural pursuits against present and prospective burdens. Sublime 
 as were its results, and beneficial as was the heritage which it left 
 behind, there was a strong element of materialism in its genesis 
 and motive. The Civil War threw to the winds every material 
 consideration in the magnificent uprising of a great and pros- 
 perous people moved to make every sacrifice for patriotism, for 
 country and for the enfranchisement of the bondsmen. The 
 leaders of the Revolutionary struggle represented Colonial suc- 
 cess. Washington was the richest man in the United States. 
 Jefferson and Hamilton, Jay and the Adamses v/ere the best 
 products cf the culture of American colleges and of opportunity. 
 In the second period, when the contest was for the supremacy 
 of the principle of the preservation of the Union against the 
 destructive tendencies of the State rights, Daniel Webster and 
 Henry Clay represented the American farmers' sons who had also 
 received the benefits of liberal education. In the third period the 
 protest against the extension of slavery, the war for the Union — 
 with the contributions which came to our statesmanship from the 
 newly settled territories, we had the heroes born in the log cabins. 
 Their surroundings and deprivations were not those of poverty, 
 but of struggle. The great leader was born in the log cabin. 
 A little clearing in the wilds of Kentucky, a shiftless wandering 
 to Indiana, and a repetition of the experience, another shiftless 
 movement to Illinois, with no better results, a neighborhood of 
 rough, ignorant, drinking and quarreling young men, and with 
 no advantages of books, of household teachings, of church in- 
 fluences, of gentle companionship — these were the environments 
 from which there came, without stain, the purest character, the 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 103 
 
 noblest, the most self-sacrificing and the loftiest statesman of our 
 country or of any country. 
 
 The age of miracles has passed, and yet, unless he can be ac- 
 counted for upon well-defined principles, Lincoln was a miracle. 
 At twenty years of age, dressed in skins, never having known a 
 civilized garment, he was the story-teller of the neighborhood 
 the good-natured giant who, against rough and cruel companions 
 used his great strength to defend the weak and protect the op 
 pressed. He thirsted for knowledge, and he exhausted the libra 
 ries for miles around, whose resources were limited to five vol 
 umes, "Pilgrim's Progress/' "Robinson Crusoe," "Weems' Wasb 
 ington," a short history of the United States and the Bible. As a 
 laborer upon the farm he was not a success, because he diverted 
 his fellow-laborers from their work with his marvelous gift of 
 anecdote and his habit of mounting a stump and eloquently dis- 
 cussing the questions of the day. As a flat-boatman upon the 
 Mississippi, he was not a success, because, while he was among 
 the class which delighted to call itself half-horse and half-alliga- 
 tor in the mad debauches on the route and in New Orleans, he 
 was not of them. As a keeper of a country store he was not a 
 success, because his generous nature could not refuse credit to 
 the poor, who could never pay. As a surveyor he was a failure, 
 because his mind was upon other and larger questions than the 
 running of a boundary line. As a lawyer he was successful only 
 after many years of practice, because unless he was enlisted for 
 right and justice, he could not give to the case either his elo- 
 quence or his judgment. As a member of the Legislature of Illi- 
 nois he made little mark, for the questions were not such as stirred 
 his mighty nature. As a member of Congress he came to the 
 front only once, and then on the unpopular side. The country 
 was wild for war, for the acquisition of territory by conquest, 
 
104 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 and for an invasion of the neighboring republic of Mexico. When 
 to resist the madness of the hour meant the present, and perhaps 
 permanent, annihilation of political prospects, among the few 
 who dared to rise and protest against war, and especially an 
 unjust one, was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The orators of all times have had previous orators for their 
 models ; but Lincoln formed his style by writing compositions with 
 a piece of charcoal upon shingles or upon the smooth side of a 
 wooden shovel, and copying them afterward upon paper. In this 
 school, poverty of resources taught Lincoln condensation and 
 clearness, and he learned the secret of success in appealing to the 
 people — that is directness and lucidity. Caesar had it when he 
 cried: **Veni, vidi, vici!" Luther had it when he cried: "Here 
 I stand; I can do no other; God help me. Amen." Cromwell 
 had it when he cried to his soldiers: "Put your trust in God and 
 keep your powder dry." Napoleon had it when, before the battle 
 of the Pyramids, he called upon his soldiers to remember that 
 forty centuries looked down upon them. Patrick Henry had it 
 when he uttered those few sentences which have been the in- 
 spiration of the school books since the Colonial days. Webster 
 had it when he said, "Union and liberty, one and inseparable, now 
 and forever." Grant had it when he said, "I will fight it out on 
 this line if it takes all summer." And Lincoln had it when he 
 drew to him his people and the men and women of his country by 
 the tender pleadings of his first inaugural, by the pathetic, almost 
 despairing appeal of his second inaugural, and by that speech at 
 Gettysburg which made every hero, who had died a soldier, again 
 in the person of a new hero created to take his place by that 
 marvelous invocation. He expressed in a single sentence the 
 principle and policy of the purchase of Louisiana, and the su- 
 premacy of the United States upon the North American continent 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 105 
 
 when lie said, **The Mississippi shall go unvexed to the sea." He 
 added to the list of immortal utterances which go down the ages 
 to lead each new generation to higher planes of duty and patriot- 
 ism, "With malice toward none; with charity for all." 
 
 The reception held by the President day by day was a series 
 of amusing or affecting scenes. He at once satisfied and recon- 
 ciled an importunate but life-long friend, who wanted a mission 
 to a distant but unhealthy country, by saying, when all argu- 
 ments failed, "Strangers die there soon, and I have already given 
 the position to a gentleman whom I can better spare than you." 
 But when a little woman, whose scant raiment and pinched features 
 indicated the struggle of respectability with poverty, secured, after 
 days of effort, an entrance to his presence, he said, "Well, my 
 good woman, what can I do for you?" She replied, "My son, my 
 only child, is a soldier. His regiment was near enough our house 
 for him to take a day and run over and see his mother. He was 
 arrested as a deserter when he re-entered the lines and condemned 
 to be shot, and he is to be executed to-morrow." Hastily arising 
 from his chair, the President left behind Senators and Congressmen 
 and generals, and seizing this little woman by the hand he dragged 
 her on a run as with great strides he marched with her to the 
 office of the Secretary of War. She could not tell where the regi- 
 ment then was, or at what place, or in what division the execution 
 was to take place, and Stanton, who had become wearied with 
 the President's clemency, which, he said, destroyed discipline, 
 begged the President to drop the matter; but Mr. Lincoln rising, 
 said with vehemence, "I will not be balked in this. Send this 
 message to every headquarters, every fort and every camp in the 
 United States, 'let no military execution take place until further 
 orders from me. A. Lincoln.' " 
 
 He called the cabinet to meet, and as they entered they found 
 
io6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 Mm reading Artemus Ward. He said : "Gentlemen, I have found 
 here a most amusing and interesting book which has entertained 
 and relieved me. Let me read from a new writer, Artemus Ward." 
 Chase, who never understood him, in his impatient dignity, said, 
 "Mr. President, we are here upon business." The President laid 
 down the book, opened a drawer of his desk, took out a paper, 
 and said, "Gentlemen, I wish to read you this paper, not to ask 
 your opinion as to what I shall do, for I am determined to issue 
 it, but to ask your criticism as to any change of form of phrase- 
 ology," and the paper which he read v/as the immortal Proclama- 
 tion of Emancipation, which struck the shackles from the limbs of 
 4,000,000 of slaves. And when the cabinet, oppressed and over- 
 whelmed by the magnitude of this deed about to be done, went 
 solemnly out of the room, as the last of them looked back he 
 saw this strangest, saddest, wisest, most extraordinary of rulers 
 reading Artemus Ward. 
 
 To-day for the first time since Lincoln's death, the twelfth of 
 February is a legal holiday in our State of New York. And it 
 is proper that the people should, without regard to their party 
 afiiliations, celebrate in a becoming manner the birth and the story 
 and the achievements of this savior of the republic. But it 
 is equally meet and proper for us who are gathered here as Re- 
 publicans to celebrate, also, the deeds and the achievements and 
 the character of the greatest Republican who ever lived. This 
 party to which we belong, this great organization of which we 
 are proud, this mighty engine in the hands of Providence for the 
 accomplishment of more for the land in which it has worked than 
 any party in any representative government ever accomplished be- 
 fore, has its teachings and inspirations more largely from the 
 statesmanship and utterances of Abraham Lincoln than from any 
 other man. The first speech he ever made was a speech for that 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 107 
 
 policy which was the first policy of George Washington, the first 
 policy of the greatest creative brain of the Revolutionary pe- 
 riod, Alexander Hamilton, the principle of the protection of Amer- 
 ican industries. With the keen and intuitive grasp of public 
 necessity and of the future growth of the republic, which always 
 characterized Lincoln, he saw in early life that this country, 
 Tinder a proper system of protection, could become self-supporting; 
 he saw that a land of raw materials was necessarily a land of 
 poverty, while a land of diversified industries, each of them self- 
 sustaining and prosperous, was a land of colleges and schools, a 
 land of science and literature, a land of religion and law, a land 
 of prosperity, happiness and peace. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln would draw the last dollar the country pos- 
 sessed and draft the last man capable of bearing arms to save the 
 republic. He would use any currency by which the army could 
 be kept in the field and the navy upon the seas. When the peril 
 was so great that our promise to pay only yielded thirty cents on 
 the dollar, he prevented the collapse of our credit and the ruin 
 of our cause by pledging the national faith to the payment of our 
 debts and the redemption of our notes and bills at par in money 
 recognized in the commerce of the world. The Republican party 
 stands for a policy which will furnish abundant revenue for 
 every requirement of the government, and which will maintain the 
 credit of the United States at home and abroad up to the standard 
 which is justified by its unequaled wealth and power. 
 
 All hail the spirit, all hail the principles, all hail the example, 
 the inspiring example of that man of the people, that wisest of 
 rulers, that most glorious of Republicans, Abraham Lincoln! 
 
THE ELEVENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, i8gg 
 
 Address of 
 REV, MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 
 
MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 
 
 Dr. Stryker was born in Vernon, N. Y., in 1851, 
 Graduated from Hamilton College, 1872, and from the 
 Auburn Theological Seminary in 1876. From 1876-92 he 
 filled pastorates at Auburn, N. Y.; Ithaca, N. Y.; Holy- 
 oke, Mass., and Chicago; since 1892 he has been presi- 
 dent of Hamilton College. He is an authority on 
 hymnology and has published several volumes of 
 hymns and poems and one of sermons. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 
 
 Mr. President and all fellow Republicans, without distinction as 
 to present condition of servitude: Though it is somewhat out of 
 my line, you will permit me to remark that clubs are trumps ; and 
 I suppose I should add of them all this club is the ace. Certainly 
 in the last twelvemonth a remarkable hand has been played for all 
 it is worth. And the superiority of the American lead to "bumble 
 puppy" has been demonstrated, and the absurd finesse from the 
 two-spot to a jack — from the platform to the candidate — having 
 failed the best hand has won by tremendous odds, with what 
 Charles Lamb delighted in — "A clean hearth, a good fire and the 
 rigors of the game." Of a v/ise and timely administration the 
 best pledge so far is afforded in the appointment of that old Oneida 
 County boy, Lyman J. Gage, to be Secretary of the Treasury. His 
 clear head is mounted upon a first-class backbone. He will do. I, 
 for one, am thankful that Mr. Speaker Eeed is still at the old 
 stand, where he can be gotten at in 1900. Brighter days are at 
 the door, empiricism is passing. A trusty leader, with his party 
 about him, shall carry us over the glad threshold of the new 
 century. 
 
 But to my errand — the holiday and the man. Thanks, under 
 God, to him whose singular greatness is the token of all these 
 your greetings, we have a republic undivided and indivisible. 
 Your name and history is national ; so be your sympathies and your 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 endeavors. Ke whom we are met to celebrate was a Republican, 
 and was not ashamed to say so. Confusion is revealed in the 
 sterility of the hybrid. Be it ours to wear the name of Repub- 
 lican as he defined and ennobled it, who held party as an instru- 
 ment, politics as his opportunity, patriotism his motive, and the 
 people's ultimate truth his goal. 
 
 Upon this radiant and solemn anniversary you are assembled to 
 relight the torch of the wide-awake and the flambeau of mourn- 
 ing, gazing through all upon yonder untorn emblem, the guerdon 
 of our awful travail when freedom was reborn and the guidon 
 of our forward marching. Beautiful flag ! He loved it and main- 
 tained it. Dearer for his true sake! In the crises and exactions 
 of the unrevealed years may the great price of which he was part 
 never be forgotten; may its folds never be dimmed by dishonor nor 
 its glory abated by the recreancy of those nursed under its shelter ! 
 Having beamed over broken manacles, may it never blush over 
 broken promises! From fort and fleet, from school and capitol and 
 home, let it float unsullied — the morning bloom of freedom and 
 equal justice to all who hope because they remember. And if by 
 foes without, or dire foes within, its^ true meaning shall ever be 
 menaced, may it be protected and lifted higher yet by hands that 
 shall take heart of grace in recalling that knight of the axe and 
 master of the pen who made ours, whatever else it shall be, Lin- 
 coln's land. 
 
 Eighty and eight years ago his birthday. Long ere this, even 
 with no foreclosure, he would have died. How swift are the 
 years ! Thirty-six backward, and last night the fair skies weeping, 
 he was saying his good-by to Springiield neighbors. Thirty-six 
 years to-morrow, and in the House of Representatives, while hate 
 howled its impotence, the electoral vote was oiScially declared. 
 Let not that time of astonishment and trembling be named with- 
 
ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 113 
 
 out recalling how Dix and Holt and Stanton stood fast, while Floyd 
 and Thompson and the rest were rotting like maggots from a 
 corpse! And with the true in deathless fame name that last of 
 the better Whigs — that rugged Virginian — Winfield Scott, whose 
 loyalty alone safeguarded the all-important seat of government, 
 and who, when Wigfall asked whether "if for an overt act he 
 would dare arrest a Senator of the United States," replied : "No ; I 
 would blow him to hell!" Such determination sent the familiar 
 spirits of secession to their own place. There was a "dread Scott" 
 decision worth having. 
 
 Far more, gentlemen, than we are wont to realize, does the 
 dissemination of their whole biographies spread the influence and 
 perpetuate the motives of our lamented and departed leaders. 
 Through all the first half of the century the popular knowledge of 
 Washington thus diffused was an incalculable, however unrecog- 
 nized, force in educating that loyal sentiment lying back of the 
 tremendous resolution which the sixties registered and fulfilled. 
 Speaking of the hold had upon him by the story of the Jersey 
 campaign, Lincoln himself said : "I remember thinking that these 
 men must have been encouraged by something uncommon to suffer 
 so willingly." 
 
 The lately issued volume that has gathered so much that is new 
 and nearly all that can be authentic concerning Lincoln's early 
 life merits our fullest attention. With every item and shred of 
 such a story every American heart should be familiar. But to my 
 thinking the numerous and various portraitures, many of them not 
 before printed, are of pre-eminent importance. These even alone, 
 in a sequence which clearly exhibits the development of his char- 
 acter, contain the supreme biography. The last seven years of his 
 life are in those likenesses; there is the story of the great war. 
 His brow changes from 1861 to 1864 as if under the pressure of 
 
114 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 thrice as many years. And under the shadow and palimpsest 
 of strife is — peace ! His representative responsibility for a people's 
 trial and doubt and victory is told there, and 
 
 "There was manhood in his look 
 That murder could not kill." 
 
 What a personality, and what a story! How acutely, how ex- 
 haustlessly fascinating in its pathos! My poor sickle can only 
 glean. At first, as we think of his heredity and environment, 
 we wonder how such a man could have issued from such cir- 
 cumstances; but, reflecting, we discern that those antecedents were 
 not accidental, but providential, and that the God who intended 
 the result furnished the discipline. 
 
 Sprung from the loins of the people to be their leader and com- 
 mander, he was one by whom it shall always mean more to be 
 an American and a man! God was the tutor of this great com- 
 moner, and, as he so often said, "God knows what is best." One 
 of that God's surprises — his career — is a standing rebuke of all 
 dilettante idleness and freezes the sneer upon the thin lips of 
 caste. He inherited his father's frame and his mother's heart as 
 his sole fortune. They were enough. They gave him, as his pre- 
 eminent traits, that courage and that sympathy which were the 
 outfit of a peerless manhood. 
 
 Humanly speaking, he was never brought up — he came up by 
 the hardest struggle, dismal lack and stark necessity. But up 
 he came, and up he stands forever, distinctly the typical Amer- 
 ican nobleman. Let those who would hold the stirrup of alien 
 underlings and play the flunkey to titular rank, however rank 
 its ignobility, summon their scant brains to consider this in- 
 digenous soul and to learn that no cradle of Plantagenet or 
 
ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 115 
 
 Hanover, of Bourbon, Hapsburg or Brandenburg, ever rocked so 
 much of immortal renown. 
 
 Opportunity for the lowliest to become the loftiest — this is the 
 lesson of that frontier hovel. Spite of all contrary opinion, true 
 beauty and integrity of manhood is not incompatible either with 
 harsh beginnings or with the strenuous exactions of affairs. His 
 education, as Lincoln said, was ''picked up under the pressure of 
 necessity." Of school attendance one year was all he had. But 
 always a learner, he came at last in practical wisdom to be a 
 scholar, and to the last day of his life he grew in mental and moral 
 stature. How must that example of painful struggle toward self- 
 improvement sham.e the most of us ! For who of us has made his 
 best of those advantages for which this backwoodsman pined in 
 vain? 
 
 His books were chiefly these: Burns, "The Pilgrim's Progress," 
 Shakespeare, Weems' "Life of Washington," the English Bible. 
 But these he knew. Of the Bible he memorized much. Its style 
 and natural phrase were at his large command, and its supreme 
 ideas, as well as its elastic idiom, gave power to many of his most 
 critical utterances. This apparatus of education, gentlemen, if 
 small, was not meagre — allegory, humor, moral imagination, 
 dramatic feeling, patriotic history, folk-lore, devotion — these were 
 in those few but potent books. He mastered his material, and 
 one language sufficed him. No one can ponder the substance, 
 the solidity, the tact, the appeal of the majestic second inaugural 
 and not feel that here was a master of arpeggios. Who, to take 
 an earlier instance, can consider his acumen and precision of 
 emendation in the matter of Seward's State despatch over the 
 matter of the Trent affair and not confess Lincoln as "cunning 
 with the pen" as he was astute in diplomacy? Carlyle wrote, "All 
 true greatness is melancholy." There ran through this introspect- 
 
ii6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ive soul a deep vein of sentiment. The sad-faced child became a 
 brooding and silently yearning man. He saw visions and dreamed 
 dreams. His adroit humor is pathetic as we think how truly he 
 could have said, after Desdemona, 
 
 "I am not merry; but I do beguile 
 The thing I am by seeming otherwise." 
 
 There was a minor note which gave the people's heart a near 
 access to him which few had as individuals; for most reverently 
 we can say that he, too, was "a man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief." Much misery had taught him mercy, and there is 
 a most plaintive longing in that admonition to his little Tad — 
 "My bey, I would have the whole human race your friends and 
 mine." Lincoln's love of that poem, "Oh, Why Should the Spirit 
 of Mortal be Proud?" has re-written it, and not for "Trilby," but 
 for his sake who loved it dearly, shall we still sing "Ben Bolt." 
 For he, too, had his "sweet Alice" — long dead. 
 
 Farmhand, flatboatman, store clerk, land surveyor, militiaman, 
 country lawyer, then all and at one the heart and the will of a 
 mighty party — nay, of a people; then the object-lesson of the 
 world; then the lament of a generation; then — immortal! The 
 path fitted the goal. For his sake, if for no other, the Potomac 
 and the Ohio and the Sangamon are the "three principal rivers" of 
 America. What a time was that for which he came to his more 
 than kingdom! Curtis said: "The world sneered as it listened 
 and laughed at a republic founded upon liberty and afraid to speak 
 the word at home. Our feet had slipped to the very brink of the 
 pit and were scorched with fire." The Missouri compromise had 
 been repealed, the "dread Scott" decision had seemed to make the 
 
ADDRESS OF MELANCTPION V/OOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 117 
 
 Ship of State a slave-ship! The President's place, as one has 
 sternly said, was vacant, while James Buchanan drew the salary! 
 
 The Chicago convention of 1860 did not at all realize what it 
 had done in placing- its banner in Lincoln's hand; but which one 
 of all his apparent peers could so have borne it? Neither he nor 
 the wisest could then have comprehended his mission or its 
 grandeur. But he went on his way "with firmness to do the 
 right as God gave him to see the right," and the common people, 
 who once had flocked to listen to his court pleas, still flocked and 
 still listened to their leader. 
 
 With what broad sagacity he composed that first cabinet, and 
 with what surprise they discovered the calm self-reliance and de- 
 term.ination of their master! From the onset his remarkable es- 
 timating of men, his keen perception of aptitude, his dignified 
 independence, his finality of cautious decision, stood revealed. 
 No "boss" whispered behind that chair which some before him 
 had occupied, but which Lincoln filled successfully. He re- 
 deemed the chief magistracy from those associations of mediocrity 
 which a Tyler, a Polk, a Pierce had imposed upon him. Such 
 as this unshorn Nazarite be all our Presidents to come! Seward 
 had imagined that for himself to be Secretary of State was to be 
 first in the cabinet groiip, but he learned that even he was as a 
 boy driving with a father's hands over his upon the reins! He 
 recognized the situation, as later Stanton also did — Stanton, so 
 magnanimously appointed, and whose affection was at once his 
 own rarest honor and to his chief the most masculine tribute. 
 Would that Chase had been as great ! 
 
 Then came the solemn "So help me God!" of that fourth of 
 March, and, when, after the long suspense during the first part of 
 that deliverance, the shout of the concourse broke out in floods, 
 rebuking the faces of disloyal hate that glowed about, this Union 
 
ii8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 knew that it had found not only an official, but a man ! As over 
 Israel's first king, "Certain sons of Belial said, 'How shall this 
 man save us?' but he held his peace." Fast went the strange 
 foreboding days until there came the hour of that other Ken- 
 tuckian — Robert Anderson! Then rang out the awful trumpet, 
 and every good hand was at the halliards. Tip went the flag to 
 the watchword of John A. Dix. This city was scarlet with it as 
 never since — save once. The Sixth Massachusetts marched out 
 of your Astor House to the tune of "Yankee Doodle !" After her 
 fwept your own true Seventh to the Capitol. Stephen A. Douglas 
 declared: "When hostile armies are marching under new and 
 odious banners against our common country, the shortest road to 
 peace lies in the most unanimous and stupendous preparation for 
 war!" There leaped the live thunder, and every rattling crag 
 of liberty answered it. 
 
 Sounded out mightily the first of those proclamations demand- 
 ing the great price of freedom! From the lumber camps of the 
 Androscoggin and the Escanaba; from the quarries of Vermont 
 and New Hampshire; from the fishing smacks of Massachusetts 
 and the spindles of Rhode Island ; from the colleges of Connecticut 
 and New York and Ohio; from the mines of Pennsylvania and 
 Michigan; from the counting rooms of the cities of Sam Adams 
 and Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin, and cities a hundred 
 more; from the Adirondacks and the AUeghanies and the far 
 Sierras; from village and prairie and lakeside and highway, there 
 rose the answer of the free — "All up !" The old Liberty Bell that 
 had so long slumbered, found its voice again. The giant was 
 awake. 
 
 Froude, of whom Birrel writes that his "antipathies seemed 
 stronger than his sympathies," declared in February, 1864, 
 "Washington might well have hesitated to draw the sword against 
 
ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 119 
 
 England could he have seen the country which he made as we see 
 it now." The trouble with some Britons, gentlemen (thank God 
 not all), has been that they spelled the word prophets with an 
 "f" and an "i." There was another England — the England of the 
 Prince Consort and of John Bright. But desperate indeed were 
 those ransoming years. In 1860 we only hoped that we had a 
 country. In 1865 we knew that it was more than we had asked 
 or thought. 
 
 While the plough rusted and the anvil was dumb, one high soul 
 never doubted nor hesitated. Leading always, even when he 
 seemed only to follow, he was the piston behind which the pulse 
 of the people pushed irresistibly. Firm, conservative, moderate, 
 sure, this great emancipator understood that there is both a time 
 to wait and a time to strike. Too swift for some, too slow for 
 others, his vast common sense, his judgment, that became an in- 
 tuition, perceived both the right word and the right moment. 
 Wendell Phillips, whose electricity was so much of it generated 
 by the reaction between metal and vitriol, called Lincoln a "tor- 
 toise"; but Lowell said "he knew to bide his time." 
 
 At a New Orleans slave auction in the forties, he had said of 
 that devilish system : "If I ever get a chance to hit it, I will hit 
 it hard." When the hour struck he crushed it forever, and now 
 there is none so low but does him reverence. Can you not see 
 him (when at last the dream of Sophism was broken to awake 
 and find itself empty), pressing the streets of fallen Richmond, 
 and can you not hear that aged negro : "May the good Lord bress 
 you, Massa Linkum"? Silently the great man raises his hat, 
 bows and passes by. There fell the benediction of a disenthralled 
 race, and there responded the salutation of a martyr — the true 
 "Moriturus, saluto" of a gladiator in the Arena of Time and from 
 Tinder the shadows of Death. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 What words, what elemental words, he spake — this ■uncondi- 
 tional man! What a repertoire is his untarnished phrases of 
 patriotism and high devotion! His proclamations were battles, 
 conclusions, anthems ! Apt in adage and apothegm, his illustrated 
 speech, so homely yet so constructive, was like that of ^sop, and 
 his plain wisdom was most of all like that of Socrates. ''I have 
 talked with great men," said Lincoln, "and I do not see how they 
 differ from others." No, not in talk, in meaning, nor in wit, so 
 much as in the will to use it wisely. Lincoln had that true 
 oratory which in Webster's words, "does not consist in speech, but 
 exists in the man, in the occasion, and in the subject." Candor, 
 conviction, clearness — these were his; and of him David Davis 
 said: "All facts and principles had to run through the crucible 
 of an iniiexible judgment." 
 
 This homely oracle, though never clouded by abstractions, was 
 withal a supreme idealist. He saw above the storm the white- 
 winged Angel of Peace, and therefore with all his heart and soul 
 he urged forward the necessary war. 
 
 Having handled every rung of the ladder, Lincoln was in all 
 things practical. He would jettison any theory to save the fact. 
 Intense, yet tranquil; temperate, yet unaustere; bold, but never 
 rash; informal, but self-respecting; as modest as resolute, his were 
 no footlight graces. 
 
 He felt for others, and plain men trusted him by instinct. Him- 
 self walking upon hot ploughshares, he smiled and looked up! 
 He loved the whole nation and the whole nation now loves him. 
 In him the South that was^ lost its ablest friend, and the South 
 that is, has come to know it. 
 
 In the study of that lofty individuality I note first his courage. 
 Of desponding temperament, he was the stubborn conqueror of 
 his own fears. That critical utterance concerning "a house di- 
 
ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, DD. 121 
 
 vided" recalls it. Manipulators shrank, time-servers winced, 
 friends protested, but with all the fearlessness of Luther at Worms 
 he said: "By this statement I will stand or fall." That declara- 
 tion was at once a war and a peace — peace with honor. There 
 this Atlas bowed his back to lift a world! Detraction and jeers 
 but steadied him. His was that forbearance which, in the words 
 of Governor Black's late inaugural, "is the highest proof of 
 courage." When the timid press ranted, raved, caricatured, he 
 told the story of the man who prayed in a frightful thunderstorm, 
 "Oh, Lord, a little more light and a little less noise." He replied 
 to nervous advisers in 1863: "Grant tells me by the Fourth of 
 July he v/ill take Vicksburg, and I believe he will do it; and he 
 shall have the chance." It was done. In April, 1864, he put 
 his whole confidence in the same Grant, saying to him as he went 
 down to that awful reaping, "With a brave army and a just 
 cause, may God sustain you!" When Early, in 1864, checked but 
 not stopped by the tremendous resistance of Lew Wallace at 
 Monocacy, thundered at the very gates of Washington, Lincoln 
 never doubted, but waited for the Sixth Corps and deliverance. 
 
 His courage was rooted in his sublime faith. It was excep- 
 tional, absolute, grand. It moved mountains. His central power 
 was moral. Herndon said, "His conscience is his ruling attribute." 
 Mr. L. E. Chittenden in his invaluable "Reminiscences" has col- 
 lected in a whole chapter Lincoln's own and many words as a 
 devout believer in the power of the Highest. It should forever 
 stop the mouths of gainsayers, whether infidel or theological. 
 "Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do," was his con- 
 stant attitude, and than that naught can deeper go. 
 
 This is of record: ¥pon the third day after the "Peach Orchard," 
 Lincoln called upon the wounded Sickles. Talking of the great 
 slaughter, with streaming eyes the President told of his own as- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 surance of the result of his praying in his own locked room as 
 never before: "I told God that I had done all that I could, and 
 that now the result was in His hands ; that if the country was to 
 be saved it was because He so willed it. The burden rolled off 
 my shoulders, my intense anxiety was relieved, and in its place 
 came a great trustfulness; and that was why I could not doubt 
 the result of Gettysburg." Others may say for themselves what 
 they like of that; I say that this is the demonstration of the 
 anointed — of the Nation's High Priest. 
 
 Diplomat, strategist, master of speech, monarch of occasions, 
 humane, believing, often did he weep; but never did he flinch or 
 falter; and when he was not it was with ''abundant entrance" 
 that he went to find his Anne Rutledge and his Lord! "Oh, 
 piteous end!" "Fallen, cold and dead" the captain lies. That 
 face, with all its rugged honesty, its homely beauty, its lines of 
 leadership in suffering, its august peace, is gone! The long col- 
 umns that tread Pennsylvania Avenue, with the smoke of the great 
 sacrifice behind them, shall not salute the chief. 
 
 But those other squadrons invisible that crowd the air — the 
 loyal legions of those who have passed from the camp-fire to the 
 Hosanna, from the blood-red bayonet to the wreath of amaranth, 
 "the great cloud of witnesses" — there he is, passed over to the 
 ranks of the immortal great. At its very meridian, snatched from 
 our skies, that soul shines on and will shine "till the stars are 
 cold." 
 
 The completions of such a life are not withheld — they are trans- 
 fused. We are to-day what Lincoln helped us to become. That 
 God he so trusted and served grant that this may be the nation 
 Lincoln strove and died to make it! His work is not yet done. 
 That tale, fit for the foundation of a mighty drama, worthy of a 
 deathless epic, will never be exhausted while the last American 
 
ADDRESS OF MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D.D. 123 
 
 remains who is a man. The hills sink as we leave them, the moun- 
 tains rise. 
 
 Once more, all true Eepublicans, by this immutable renown 
 are you bidden to that patriotism to which all other narrower 
 titles are but subordinate and instrumental. This people's man 
 certifies to us that the republic must voice the people, else it 
 shall sink into autocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, anarchy. God 
 purge us of bad men and their bad ways. 
 
 Still sings Columbia: 
 
 "Bring me men to match my mountains, 
 Bring me men to match my plains ; 
 Men with empires in their purpose. 
 
 And new era in their brains; 
 Pioneers to clear thought's marshlands 
 
 And to cleanse old error's fen; 
 Bring me men to match my mountains — 
 Bring me men!" 
 
 We shall be just as good a party as we are determined to be. 
 We shall have just as good leaders as we deserve — no better. We 
 must summon to our ranks and be worthy to keep there all who 
 love our nation's truth. We must be sworn anew not to sur- 
 render our independence to unauthorized proxies. We must hold 
 to the most exact audit the men we select and trust — to watch, 
 to cheer, to correct, to promote or to depose them. 
 
 "Oh, Ship of State! 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 
 
 * 5|: * * * * >;: 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
 Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears. 
 Are all with thee." 
 
 V 
 
THE TWELFTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1898 
 
 Address of 
 HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
, ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 Senator Beveridge was bom on a farm in Adams 
 County,©., in 1862; though after the war the family- 
 moved to Illinois. His early life was one of constant 
 struggle and privation in the eSort to secure an educa- 
 tion. At fifteen he had already worked as plow-boy, 
 teamster, common laborer and logger; but he managed 
 to attend high school at Sullivan, 111., and in 1885 grad- 
 uated from De Pauw University. He read law in the 
 office of Senator McDonald; was admitted to the Bar 
 and rapidly made a name for himself in the conduct 
 of cases. He is regarded as one of the best campaign 
 speakers in the Republican party and is a frequent 
 magazine contributor. Since 1899 he has been U. S. 
 Senator from Indiana. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: To-day, when the Re- 
 publican party is marshalling its forces for its second great battle 
 for civilization, it is an inspiration to remember that Abraham 
 Lincoln was a Republican. He was a Republican in order that 
 he might most truly be an American. He was a Republican be- 
 cause Republicanism meant equal opportunities for all — because 
 it meant the rights of man reduced from theory to practice. 
 Abraham Lincoln was a Republican because the Republican party 
 was the first organization that ever asserted and accomplished the 
 nobility of labor — the first to put the plough, the loom, the anvil 
 and the pick in the heraldry of honor and of glory. He was a 
 Republican because the Republican party was practical — because 
 it changed dreams into deeds, proposed as well as opposed, builded 
 where it tore away, and destroyed only when destruction would 
 not be fatal to that which should remain. This soul of the com- 
 mon people was a Republican because Republicanism meant the 
 nation triumphant over sections; because Republicanism meant the 
 organized conscience of the people guided by their sanity ; because 
 it meant the common man working out the problems of civilization 
 through the methods of conservatism. Abraham Lincoln was a 
 Republican because he believed in a national government strong 
 enough to live; because he believed that maintenance of law needs 
 no apology; because he believed, to use his own words, that 
 
128 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 "there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by a mob." He 
 was a Republican because he was a logician of progress, and, 
 therefore, understood that a home market is the major premise, a 
 foreign market the minor premise, and American supremacy 
 throughout the world the conclusion of the great argument of 
 commerce. He was a Eepublican because, above national pros- 
 perity, above national peace, dearer than all besides, Abraham 
 Lincoln counted the honor of the American people and raised his 
 warning hand to Congress even when war called out the emer- 
 gency financial powers of government. ^ And our hero was a Re- 
 publican because the Republican party meant a new hope to all 
 mankind; because in the word Republican, as Abraham Lincoln 
 uttered it, was mingled the music of falling fetters, the songs of 
 toiler in factory and field, the shouts of happy children made heirs 
 of opportunity and the anthem of God's plain people raised to their 
 just estate. This was our leader — this is our master still. Let 
 those who will adopt repudiation's financial creed, embrace the 
 sectional doctrines dug from Calhoun's grave and accept the gos- 
 pel of hate preached from pessimism's pulpit. But "with malice 
 toward none and charity for all," the host of conservatism, called 
 the Republican party, believing ever in the eternal good, will re« 
 ceive our principles, our policy and our inspiration from Abraham 
 Lincoln, the first of Republicans. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln is the nation's well-beloved, and so all men 
 write unto his life their individual opinions. But we the heirs of 
 his party and his purposes, have a right to know the truth. This 
 great achiever was practical. When preparing for his work he 
 said: "How to do something is the desideratum." And, seeking 
 an answer he found that, where manhood suffrage prevails, no 
 thought can be written into law, no purpose find fulfillment ex- 
 cept through that organization of those who think alike, called a 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 129 
 
 political party. And so he believed in this co-operation, in prin- 
 ciple, that brotherhood of belief called partisanship. He was him- 
 self a partisan — the partisan of a cause — that cause the saving 
 of a nation. All else compared to that was unimportant. That 
 was why he wrote that impatient tempest of patriotism, Horace 
 Greeley, "My paramount object is to save the Union." That was 
 the issue that burned from every star in the flag. Until that was 
 settled — until the nation's life was safe — he asked patriots every- 
 where to forget everything but that and become in every election 
 the partisans of civilization. And to-day, when the honor of 
 American people is the issue; to-day, when free institutions are 
 on trial ; to-day, when questions that search out the very heart of 
 organized society are involved, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln 
 commands all who agree on the principles of conservatism to for- 
 get incidental differences and strike together everywhere and al- 
 ways until repudiation, sectionalism and the spirit of class are 
 utterly exterminated. Any issue that beclouds the issue of all 
 issues is an instrument of defeat. In Lincoln's day one issue was 
 supreme — loyalty to the nation. Had he not acted on that, and 
 that alone, New York to-day would have been the port of a sec- 
 tion instead of a metropolis of the mightiest nation on the globe. 
 
 To-day disintegrations are advocated. Bizarre beliefs abound. 
 Old convictions are being unanchored. And it is time the steady 
 elements of the American people answered the command of conser- 
 vatism to "Fall in." We hear of a new Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. I prefer the old Declaration of the fathers. We need no 
 new philosophy of society of politics to-day. We only need a 
 renaissance of common sense. The political philosophy of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln is guide enough. If you ask me to state that phil- 
 osophy in a phrase I should answer that his life spells out these 
 two immortal words^ patriotic conservatism. He knew that the 
 
130 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 conservative elements of the American people are always in the 
 majority. No matter what individual views on incidentals might 
 be, he knew that the sight of the country's imperiled flag would 
 marshal those elements into an irresistible host. He knew that 
 they need only to see the main issue and they will respond. And 
 so out of the men of all parties who agreed on the issue of integ- 
 rity of the nation, Abraham Lincoln fashioned that splendid party 
 of conservatism which met the emergency of war and won, met 
 the emergency of reconstruction and won, met the emergency of 
 resumption and won, met the problem of national prosperity for 
 thirty years and solved it, and stands to-day strengthened as it 
 was created by the conservative elements of all parties, ready to 
 meet the emergency of repudiation and industrial chaos and tri- 
 umph as of old. Across the page of events the spirit of Lincoln 
 has written the mission of the Republican party. The mission is 
 conservatism — the rejection of extremes — the conduct of the gov- 
 ernment by common honesty and common sense rather than by 
 fanaticism and revenge. Conservatism is merely progress by the 
 processes of growth. It is government by experience instead of 
 experiment. It is moderation instead of violence. 
 
 How does the present situation require Lincolnian conservatism ? 
 
 On the one hand the tendency of the Democracy of to-day is 
 toward destruction. The Huns and Vandals among them are on 
 the march. There is an implied promise of piracy in every utter- 
 ance of some of the leaders. They awaken expectations which 
 nothing but the abolition of property and the reversal of civiliza- 
 tion can fulfill. Every sane man knows that free silver alone 
 would not quench the flames which reckless extremists are fanning. 
 The readjustment of society is the ultimate answer to the implied 
 question which the new commune thoughtlessly puts to civiliza- 
 tion. That is one extreme. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 131 
 
 On the other hand, there are abuses of capital which furnish 
 the pillagers a war cry — improper uses of riches which the 
 Catilines use as examples to discredit all wealth; vulgar ostenta- 
 tions of money which unsheathe envy and whet hatred ; a meddling 
 with the making and the execution of the laws; a controlling of 
 the natural laws of trade by unlawful devices. But these financial 
 developments are not structural defects. Free institutions are not 
 responsible for them. They are merely a natural tendency de- 
 veloped beyond their rightful sphere and requiring rebuke, regu- 
 lation and restraint. These developments have no party, gentle- 
 men. They use all parties for their purpose. There are only two 
 things in civilization which are absolutely non-partisan — a mug- 
 wump and a trust. 
 
 What is the policy of the Republican party in this situation? 
 Go, as Lincoln always did, to the plain people and learn from 
 them. They will tell you that our policy is Lincolnian conser- 
 vatism. Abraham Lincoln's plain people are weary with both ex- 
 tremes. They demand that the party of Abraham Lincoln shall, 
 with one hand, take by the throat that idiot Greed, who gives 
 the demagogue his incendiary text, and with the other hand take 
 by the throat the demagogue himself and knock their heads to- 
 gether until robbery is knocked out of the one and anarchy out 
 of the other, and common sense and patriotism knocked into the 
 heads of both. The producing millions demand a truce to needless 
 agitation. They demand an opportunity to create prosperity. 
 They demand that the honor of the nation be put beyond the reach 
 of the demagogue or fool. They repudiate revenge as a motive 
 of political action. They expect improper commercial develop- 
 ments to be corrected without violating the principles upon which 
 civilization rests. They demand laws so just and so equally en- 
 forced that the lips of sedition will be padlocked by the peace they 
 
132 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 bring-. In short, Abraham Lincoln's plain people demand Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's conservatism, and Abraham Lincoln's party is here 
 to give it to them. 
 
 The plain people! There is the source of Abraham Lincoln's 
 wisdom. Lincoln, the rail-splitter, and Emerson, the scholar, 
 agreed. The unprejudiced instinct of the masses is unerring. 
 The common sense of the plain people, who in peace create the 
 wealth, and in v/ar carry the muskets of the republic, is ultimate- 
 ly an unfailing guide. Abraham Lincoln was one of these. Their 
 conscience was his oracle. Their thought was his counsel. He 
 preferred the matured judgment of the ploughman, the blacksmith 
 and the merchant to the opinion of any doctrinaire who ever 
 lived. And the lesson of his life to the party he so loved is to 
 take our orders from the plain people who founded the Republican 
 party, and for whom alone this republic is worth preserving. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln coined the phrase "The plain people." He be- 
 queathed it to us, and it is ours. It is and shall forever be the 
 Republican party's shibboleth. But demagogues have learned its 
 power, and used it, too, until, like liberty, crimes are committed 
 in its name and its Lincolnian meaning is obscured. The profes- 
 sionally miserable are not the plain people. The "plain people" 
 are not those who preach the gospel of despair; not those whose 
 trade is discontent and whose occupation is idleness. A man does 
 not become one of the plain people by merely getting into debt — 
 nor cease to be one of them by getting out of debt. Rags are not 
 a necessary badge of the "plain people," although a pauper may be 
 one of them — nor is wealth, although a millionaire may be one 
 of the "plain people," too. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln's plain people are those who understand 
 that labor is the law of life for all, be they railroad presidents, or 
 section hands. They are those who believe in that old phrase, "the 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 133 
 
 brotherhood of man." They are those who acknowledge and ac- 
 cept the opportunities of American institutions. The plain peo- 
 ple of Lincoln's love are they who understand that Liberty did not 
 intend to abolish Labor, Thought and Thrift, that blessed trinity 
 that presides over all prosperity. They are these who believe that 
 Nature should not be repealed — those who do not expect law to 
 do for them what they should do for themselves. These are the 
 plain people that produced an Abraham Lincoln and a Republican 
 party, and it is time that those who misuse the term should be 
 reminded of what it means^ and rebuked in the reminding. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was the spirit of the plain people incarnate 
 and therefore he was the spirit of nationality incarnate. For the 
 plain people know no sections — they only know American citizen- 
 ship. Sections only exist in the minds of politicians too small for 
 the nation. Abraham Lincoln knew that the people's Constitu- 
 tion begins with "We, the people"; that the people's nation "guar- 
 antee to every State a Eepublican form of government," and so 
 he sent the plain people, wearing the nation's uniform and carry- 
 ing the nation's flag wherever the nation's Constitution required it, 
 and asked no treasonable governor's permission. He taught the 
 American people that the golden rule of patriotism is unity. This 
 imperial city is not New York's alone — she is the pride of the en- 
 tire nation. Your prosperity depends on the prosperity of the 
 American people. You dare not be selfish even if you would. 
 We heal men talking about New York and its business men want- 
 ing to injure the American people. How absurd! since injury to 
 the American people is suicide to you, and since injury to you is 
 misfortune to them. Your v.asest selfishness is to help the gen- 
 eral welfare. Whatever truly blesses Nebraska blesses New York 
 as well. You are not "the enemy's country." New York is too 
 great to be anybody's enemy. To be an enemy to an American 
 
134 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 citizen is to be an enemy to yourself. We of the Central West 
 would not let you be our enemy even if you wished to. Why? 
 Because you are too useful, and because you are an American 
 port. No foreign ship can ever shell Indianapolis — no foreign 
 force invade it. Yet, because we believe as Lincoln believed, be- 
 cause the Pacific Coast is our coast and Sandy Hook American soil, 
 Indiana and the republic's heart is in favor of coast defenses and 
 a navy that can render every port of the republic as secure as In- 
 dianapolis itself. And I will say, for the benefit of Mr. Roose- 
 velt, that we are not only in favor of the ships, but we are in 
 favor of dry-docks good enough to hold them. For, although 
 we are landsmen, we know enough to know that a ship without a 
 dry-dock is like a man without a wife — it cannot travel far with- 
 out getting out of repair. If invasion should come to you the 
 West would give her blood to help defend you, our brothers of 
 the flag, and we prefer to help protect you first. All this is true 
 because at the firesides of the West the national spirit of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln is dwelling still, and the new sectionalism has not 
 gangrened our hearts. All this is true because the virile, un- 
 spoiled and exhaustless West, that gave you Morton, Grant and 
 Lincoln, is still true to their teachings and, therefore, still Re- 
 publican. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln knew no class — he only knew the people. At- 
 tempts to divide the land into sections and the people into classes 
 is accursed, whether the time be 1860 or 1896. The Constitution 
 says, "We, the people"; therefore, whoever says "We are the 
 classes"' is a traitor to American institutions. Classes in a repub- 
 lic is a contradiction in terms. What is the dividing line? 
 Wealth? If so, how much? If a man is poor is he one of the 
 masses ? When labor, thought and thrift have filled his pockets is 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 135 
 
 he one of the classes ? If so, all men may destroy the dividing line. 
 If not, there is no line to destroy. 
 
 Yet Lincoln's name is used to incite labor against capital. Let 
 Lincoln's words rebuke the maligners of his thought and deeds. 
 This is what he said: "That men who are industrious and sober 
 and honest in the pursuit of their own interests should, after a 
 while, accumulate capital, and, after that, should be allowed to 
 enjoy it, is right." "Labor is the superior of capital, and de- 
 serves much higher consideration"; but "capital has its rights, 
 which are as worthy of protection as any other rights." That was 
 Lincoln's idea. Labor is as necessary as food; capital is as neces- 
 sary as civilization. Nothing but malevolence would create 
 hatred between them, or prejudice against either. It is as in- 
 famous to lay the practices of financial pirates at the door of cap- 
 ital as it is to lay the deeds of anarchists and outlaws at the door 
 of labor. Evils of wealth there are, and the party of Abraham 
 Lincoln proposes to remedy them by Lincoln's methods of conser- 
 vatism. Evils of wealth there are, and the American Robespierres 
 propose, not to remedy, but to annihilate by reaction and revenge. 
 The whole issue is summed up in this: The Republican party 
 means evolution; the Democratic means revolution. And in a 
 republic there can be no excuse for revolution. 
 
 Lincoln loved the people so well that nothing was too good 
 for them — not even the truth. "I have faith in the people. Let 
 them know the truth and the country is safe." These are Lin- 
 coln's words, spoken for this very hour. He did not regard it as 
 a criminal act to buy a government bond. His chief financial con- 
 cern was to get them sold. He regarded the promises of this 
 nation of honest men as the most sacred things in all this world. 
 He knew that the faith of American institutions is written in 
 the American people's obligations. Why? The bonds of a mon- 
 
135 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 archy are the promises of the people's masters; if they default it 
 is only another king dishonored. But the bonds of a republic 
 are the promises of the people; if they default free institutions are 
 dishonored. Abraham Lincoln believed that the obligations of the 
 American people should be made the most attractive investment 
 and kept the best security known to man. So does the Republican 
 party. Abraham Lincoln believed that they should be sold to and 
 held by the people; so does the Republican party. Abraham Lin- 
 coln loved the people too much to permit their promissory notes 
 to be libeled even by the Senate of the "United States; and so does 
 the people's chosen successor to Lincoln's place and principles, 
 William McKinley. If any man doubts where the Republican 
 party stands, let him inquire where Abraham Lincoln would stand 
 if he were alive to-day, and there he will find the Republican party 
 "standing like a stone wall." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was as sound on finance as he was on liberty. 
 He had indulged in thought on the subject of money. He had 
 read the history of his country. And history and thought inspired 
 this prince of purity to use language for which an Altgeld court- 
 martial would have convicted him of being a hireling of the 
 money power. For Lincoln told Congress that redundant issues 
 of paper money had "increased prices beyond real values, thereby 
 augmenting the cost of living to the injury of labor, and the cost 
 of supplies to the injury of the whole country." These are Lin- 
 coln's words, and their keenness cuts the heart out of inflation, 
 and inflation is all there is of Bryanesque finance. History and 
 thought had taught Abraham Lincoln that inflated prices mean im- 
 mediate loss to labor and ultimate loss to all. He had mastered 
 first principles. He knew that a government cannot make money; 
 that the only way a government gets money is to take it by taxa- 
 tion or to get it by borrowing; that if the government can make 
 
ADDRESS OF HON, ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 137 
 
 money all taxation is a crime; and that if it cannot make money 
 its credit is a principal asset. And, taking first principles for his 
 premises, he stated the necessary conclusion — for Lincoln was a 
 logician and did not stop on the road of his reasoning to refresh 
 himself with his own rhetoric — and become intoxicated on mixed 
 metaphors. He did not understand this latter-day logic which 
 eliminates the conclusion from a syllogism, substitutes a philippic 
 for the syllogism itself, calls the whole process oratory, and writes 
 quod erat demonstrandum beneath a jeremiad. But he stated his 
 conclusion with truth's simplicity and said: "A return to specie 
 payments at the earliest period should ever be kept in view. 
 Fluctuations in the value of currency are always injurious, and to 
 reduce this fluctuation to the lowest possible point will always be 
 a leading purpose in wise legislation." That is not the language of 
 Wall street, gentlemen — nor of Lombard street — it is the solemn 
 warning of the savior of the country. And Abraham Lincoln said 
 all this, too, when the angel of war sowed fire and death through- 
 out the land, and the nation bound up its wounds with the money 
 of emergency. Shall we depart from his principles now, after a 
 generation of prosperity and in a time of profoundest peace? By 
 our belief in his wisdom, no ! We appeal from his misinterpreters 
 to Lincoln's very words. We appeal from passion to reason. 
 We appeal from sectionalism to nationality. In the name of Lin- 
 coln we appeal to that infallible judge — the conscience of the 
 conservative masses whom our hero loved to call the plain people 
 of the republic ! With that ultimate judge, whose voice is indeed 
 the voice of God, we fearlessly leave the rendering of this decree 
 of destiny. 
 
 Mr. President and gentlemen, standing at the daybreak of the 
 twentieth century, Abraham Lincoln's party tells free institutions 
 to take courage. With his life as an inspiration, with his prin- 
 
138 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ciples as a guide, we will, we can know no defeat. We fight a 
 battle of patriotic affection. Even our opponents are our brothers 
 — kinsmen in liberty. We appeal to them as did our master *'with 
 malice toward none and charity for all." In our hearts there is no 
 hate. We seek no partisan victory which does not mean a healing 
 to the nation and a hope to all mankind. We are enlisted in a 
 holy crusade of patriotism. We go forth as our fathers did at 
 Lincoln's call, to preserve and not destroy. We fight because we 
 love and not because we hate. With a past with memories so 
 heroic and so glorious, so sacred and so sweet that mankind has 
 set them next to the memories of the Cross — memories which that 
 old sword that father left to some of us calls upon from our full 
 hearts — memories of Donelson and Vicksburg, of Mission Ridge 
 and Appomattox and all those heroic fields of glory — and, finally, 
 with memories of him whose name brings loving tears to every 
 patriot's eye — of him, our leader, master, friend and friend of all 
 mankind — with memories like those to chasten, ennoble and di- 
 rect, we turn our faces full to the morning, ready to perform the 
 mission which he gave into our keeping, "to bind up the nation's 
 wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle," and 
 to see "that a government of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people shall not perish from this earth/' because it is the wisest, 
 safest, purest, most prosperous and most honorable government 
 known to man. 
 
THE THIRTEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 13, 1899 
 
 Address of 
 
 REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 
 
HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 
 
 Dr. Duffield was born in Princeton, N. J., in 1854, " 
 
 and is a graduate of Princeton University. Since 1891 
 he has been pastor of the "Old First" Presbyterian 
 Church, New York, and is prominent as a pulpit orator. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 
 
 Mr. President and Senator: It is altogether possible, sir, that 
 the developments of history may teach us to reverse this order 
 of address and address you as Mr. Senator and after that as Mr. 
 President. It is not popularly supposed that a canon of the church 
 is a rapid-iiring gun. 
 
 This committee has touched me oif with very little warning 
 to myself, and if the discharge should go wide of the mark, or if 
 it should prove a blank cartridge, I hope you will credit that to 
 the committee and not to myself. "Brethren," said an old negro 
 minister, ''I have a three-dollar sermon and I have a two-dollar 
 sermon, and before I preach I will have a collection taken up to 
 find out which is most appropriate for this audience." The fact 
 is, that for the present audience there is nothing that can be too 
 good, but to-night, fellow Republicans, you will have to take sim- 
 ply the best that I can hastily bring. 
 
 The toast, as the president of the club has remarked, is an in- 
 spiring one, and it is also an embarrassing one. The very name of 
 Lincoln sets every drop of patriotic blood a-tingling. His story 
 is the Iliad of our American history, and when the conflict of 
 heroes upon the plain of Troy shall have been forgotten, many 
 a heart with tear-wept impulse will read the simple chronicle of 
 the life of that humble man who was honored of God to equip this 
 great nation for the mighty task to which to-day the same finger 
 
142 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of God is beckoning her. I labor under the additional embar- 
 rassment, fellow Republicans, of never having come in personal 
 contact with this remarkable individuality. That little cockade 
 of red, white and blue that was pinned upon the lapel of my boy- 
 hood's jacket, the echo of the awful guns that roared upon Sum- 
 ter, the stately swinging tread of armed men hurrying into the 
 front of battle, the shuddering dawn of that April morning when 
 the country was plunged into sackcloth by the news that her be- 
 loved President lay dead, all these things are recollections of my 
 earlier years that arise to perish never. But it was not my happy i 
 lot to look upon the face of him who carried upon his heart in 
 those faithful hours, the great destiny of this nation. And, gen- 
 tlemen, to those who saw him then it seemed as though the vision 
 of the eye somehow dulled the keener optic sense of the soul, and as 
 we are carried from him by the passage of years he is lifted into 
 clearer light and we can mark with truer measure the grandeur 
 of his outline. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was little known before the Chicago convention of 
 1860, when he was somehow to become the standard bearer of the 
 Republican party in the throes of the great conflict which was be- 
 ginning already to make itself felt throughout the land. At the 
 bugle call of the new formed party there stepped down from an 
 attorney's office in the far West a gaunt backwoodsman who en- 
 tered the arena where Titans were stripping themselves for bat- 
 tle, and there went up from every quarter of the compass an in- 
 stinctive cry. Who is Abraham Lincoln? And from every quarter 
 of the heavens there ran back answers that peal strangely in our 
 ears to-night. Who is Abraham Lincoln? And the East replied 
 he is only an accident; he is a creature of the mob; he is lifted 
 upon the cross of an unreasonable enthusiasm, for all of the dele- 
 gates to the Chicago convention from these Eastern states were 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 143 
 
 on their way homeward to this seaboard, trailing in the dust the 
 banner of the Empire State, and they could only see in Abraham 
 Lincoln in that hour one who had with uncouth hand dashed the 
 chaplet from the hands of the polished and splendid William 
 Seward, and they could not but look upon him as the accident of 
 the hour. Who is Abraham Lincoln ? 
 
 And from the West came back the answer, he is an experiment. 
 His neighbors had taken his measure; his friends knew that, 
 though he was as shell-barked as hickory, he was just as solid at 
 the heart and just as tough in every fibre of his character, but 
 they also knew he was all unused to government, that he was 
 not schooled in the niceties of the technicalities of diplomacy, 
 and they knew that his election had been largely a victory of 
 merit and had been due to the pride of neighborhood, that he was 
 a new creation of that then young and rising West, that, feeling 
 the power of its strength, was rejoicing as a strong man to run a 
 race. Who is Abraham Lincoln ? And from the South there came 
 back the bitter cry, he is the gauntlet flung in the very face of 
 our most cherished institutions, he is the gage of battle; for re- 
 member, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, 
 it was that antediluvian period in our history when the office of 
 President was vacant, and a party named Jimmy Buchanan was 
 drawing the salary, it was the period in our national history 
 when Adams, of Georgia, arose in the United States Senate and 
 declared he would as soon kill the rest of his slaves at the foot 
 of the Bunker Hill monument. But Mr. Adams forgot that where 
 the Bunker Hill monument stands American liberty was bom, 
 and ai her very birth she had strangled the twin serpents of 
 tyranny and injustice, and that she had been clothing herself for 
 all these years with the thoughts and sentiments of freedom, and 
 all she needed was to be aroused to plant her war-shod foot upon 
 
144 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 the hydra-head of disunion and of slavery. But those, friends, 
 were the days when the South v/as spoiling in its efforts after 
 compromise, and so the nomination of Abraham Lincoln to the 
 presidency was regarded in the South alone as the pretext for un- 
 buckling the sacred girdle of our national union. There v/as an- 
 other curious answer to this question, it came from the a,bolition- 
 ists in the Republican party itself. Abraham Lincoln was not an 
 extremist and therefore political fanatics branded him as a traitor. 
 Abraham Lincoln was of all things a practical man, and he 
 stood in politics for the best that could be had, not all that might 
 be desirable, and, therefore, he was anathematized by political 
 visionaries, and that little group of men whom you cannot but 
 regret, high of thought, pure of feeling, strong in speech, voicing 
 the emotions of their hearts through the lips of ¥/endell Phillips, 
 great orator as he was, shrewd, shrewish, able to scold in periods 
 of polished rhetoric and to utter sentiments that had in them more 
 of the venom of Xantippe than of the wisdom of Socrates, when 
 he heard of the work of the convention said, "What, that wolf 
 hound?" Oh, friends, ask to-day who is Abraham Lincoln. Go 
 the wide world through and ask any man who believes in simple 
 manhood and bares his brow before the grandeur of character, 
 who is Abraham Lincoln, and there will spring instantly into the 
 mind a vision of that well-known and v/idely-loved face, that 
 massive brow on which dark care seemed ever seated, those lus- 
 trous, deep-set eyes with a wistful far-off look as though they 
 pierce the minds of lesser men, that shaggy mane of unkempt hair, 
 those cheeks sunken and scarred with sorrow and with sacrifices, 
 that jaw so strongly set and hinged, all uniting in features over 
 which the cloud and sunshine play across the depths of the un- 
 fathomable sea. And the passing of years haloed that head with 
 a more beautiful light, and v/e are learning the truth of what 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 145 
 
 Walt Whitman long ago said, "Lincoln is the supremest charac- 
 ter upon the crowded canvas of this nineteenth century." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was a lonely man. He can be put into no class. 
 He rises in our history v/ith the hauteur, dignity and grandeur of 
 an obelisk. He is the Melchisedek of our story, with no lineage 
 and no ancestry. He towers above the rarely eminent men which 
 God gave to his time. Round about Mr. Lincoln in his cabinet 
 sat a trio of marvellous statesmen ; there was his courtly Secretary 
 of State, Mr. Seward; there was his profound and sagacious Sec- 
 retary of Treasury, Mr. Chase; there was his indomitable Sec- 
 retary of War, Mr. Stanton. Mr. Seward was a skilled and an ex- 
 perienced diplomat, but he simply learned that he was only prime 
 minister after all and that Mr. Lincoln was President. Sagacious 
 and experienced was that Secretary of Treasury, but Mr. Chase came 
 to learn that the President was taking soundings in deeper waters 
 than hio plummets could fathom. Most indomitable, like a god of 
 war, was that Mars-like Stanton, clad in complete mail, but that 
 inflexible resolution, when the kindly purpose of Mr. Lincoln's 
 views came sweeping down on that iron plane — the miracle of the 
 Scriptures was repeated and "The iron did swim." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was privileged to have on the field of battle a 
 train of warriors worthy of being mentioned beside the royal 
 fighters of King David of the old scripture days. There was that 
 silent, sphinx-like man, whose tongue was still, whose sword was 
 eloquent, whose deeds speak to the generations to come, who fought 
 the fight of humanity in the dark glades of the Wilderness, and 
 who fought the fight of the hero on the lonely summit of Mt. 
 McGregor. There was the gallant Sheridan, whose fiery heart 
 and earnest ardor outran the fleet-footed coursers of his com- 
 mand; Sheridan, that splendid cavalier sans peur et sans reproche. 
 
146 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 the hero of the American army. There was the Cromwellian figure 
 of Grant. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, this splendid mirage of triumph has at last 
 reached the eternal sea, and its memory shall never grow dim in. 
 the hearts of the lovers of their country. Grand men! But we 
 know now, whatever we thought then, that Mr. Lincoln was sweep- 
 ing a wider horizon and was more nearly to the heart of things 
 and understood better the impulses and the issues of that day than 
 these great leaders of men. 
 
 He was a lonely man. He was born to loneliness as a heritage. 
 He was a great deal of the time in the dim recesses of the Western 
 forests. He learned what the wilderness and the streams could 
 teach him, and he grew up far from the conventional restraints 
 of society ; he grew up under conditions where nothing was recog- 
 nized as worthy except inherent manhood, and from his boyhood he 
 drew the breath of loneliness. He was created with a hunger for 
 knowledge, in his coonskin hat and buckskin suit he marched 
 back and forth every day nine miles to the schoolhouse. He 
 touched every side of life until he came to be the martyred Pres- 
 ident. He was a hostler, a surveyor, a Mississippi boatman, a 
 storekeeper, he was entered in a lawyer's office. He was like 
 some great pine tree that winds its roots into a soil that is little 
 but rock and feeding upon its inhospitable condition raises its 
 columnar top into the sky, defying the storm and deriding the 
 hostilities of the tempest. 
 
 Let me tell you about the first speech that Mr. Lincoln is said 
 to have made. His friends thought he would be a good candidate 
 for the Legislature, so they put him into nomination ; he came from 
 his retreat in the woodlands to a country town where he was to 
 meet his opponent. As he approached the town he passed the 
 house in which his antagonist dwelt. He saw rising from the roof 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 
 
 M7 
 
 a thin spire of iron, and he says, "What's that?" "Oh," said his 
 friend, "that is a lightning rod," and he explained the uses of a 
 lightning rod. Mr. Lincoln had never before seen such an ap- 
 pendage to a dwelling, and he thought over it a good deal until his 
 time to speak. The man against whom he was running was the 
 first to occupy the platform, and he addressed his fellow-citizens by 
 saying that they would not throw him overboard for this unknown 
 man, whose life they did not know and with whom they were not 
 acquainted, who had come up there from the unexplored tracts of 
 the wilderness. Mr. Lincoln arose and said, "Friends, you don't 
 know very much about me. I haven't had all the advantages that 
 some of you have had, but," he said, "if you did know everything 
 about me that you might know, you would be sure there was noth- 
 ing in my character that made it necessary to put on my house a 
 lightning rod to save me from the just vengeance of Almighty 
 God!" 
 
 There are three great papers in the story of English-speaking 
 peoples that mark the progress of the race. One is the Magna 
 Charta, and one the Declaration of Independence, and one the 
 Emancipation Proclamation. The Magna Charta was produced by 
 a company of belted knights with glittering steel, swords bared, 
 with lances in rest; the Declaration of Independence was uttered 
 to the world by a splendid company of scholars, but the Eman- 
 cipation Proclamation was wrought out by one lonely man sus- 
 taining a burden that might have borne to earth an ancient Atlas. 
 It was the time when disaster and reverse was hovering over the 
 American arms, when the great efforts that had been made to go 
 on to Richmond resulted only in going back to Washington, and 
 Lincoln, one eventful day, called together his cabinet. Said he to 
 them, "Gentlemen, I have called you together to state to you what 
 I propose to do." He said, "I do not ask any advice as to the 
 
I4S THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 doing' of it, but I shall be very glad to hear from you as to the 
 best method in which it may be done, but I intend to issue this 
 proclamation." He then read to them that paper which he had 
 wrought out in solitude. A great hush fell upon the company of 
 his advisers. Soon Mr. Seward suggested the change of a sen- 
 tence. Mr. Bates said, "I think that this will cost you the fall 
 election." Mr. Chase told how he thought certain parts of it 
 might be made stronger. Mr. Seward finally said, "Mr. Lincoln, 
 if you issue this proclamation just at this present time it will sound 
 like a cry of despair. Wait until we have won a great victory 
 and then let loose this thunderbolt." Mr. Lincoln then said, "Very 
 well, gentlemen, I will wait," and like Siegfried in the play, who 
 in the hollow of the mountain forged the sword with which he 
 should do to death the dragon, Mr. Lincoln in quiet tempered 
 that bolt with which he was at one blow to strike off the shackles 
 of millions of souls. Well^ by and by came Wednesday and the 
 Cabinet sat on Saturday, and the proclamation went forth on 
 Sunday, and the sons of men throughout the world shouted as if 
 they were the witnesses of a new creation, for there came to us 
 a new heaven from which the dark cloud of judgment was rolled 
 back, and a new earth that was printed with no foot of a slave; 
 and the Americans could say for the first time that their land was 
 not only the land of the brave, but the home of the free. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was a profoundly religious man, he subscribed to 
 no particular "ism" ; he enrolled himself in no special church. It 
 would have been to my thinking almost a false note for this 
 unique and solitary character to have done so. In society he al- 
 ways looked to manhood rather than to etiquette; in law he al- 
 ways consulted common sense more than he did the statutes; in 
 prestige and in religion he asked for a sincere heart more than 
 for a mere creed. Mr. Lincoln refused to wear the strait-jacket 
 
ADDRESS OF REV. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 149 
 
 of a bigot who says I am holier than thou, and he just as strenu- 
 ously refused to wear the mantle of the fool who says in his heart, 
 or he will say it with his lips if you make it a sufficient financial 
 inducement for him to do so, he will say there is no God. But 
 from the very moment that he took the cars at Springfield and 
 tracked through the snow fields of that late springtime and 
 asked his neighbors and his whole people to pray to God for him, 
 until the hour when his great spirit went back to the Giver of it, 
 he follov/ed the teachings of God as though he saw that pillar 
 of cloud and of fire at all times. 
 
 There was a delegation that v/ent to Mr. Lincoln at one time 
 in a dark day of our story, and they wanted him to abandon the 
 conflict ; they wanted him to give up his unequal warfare, as they 
 called it, and restore peace to this unhappy land. His reply to 
 them was, "Gentlemen, you remind me of an experience of my 
 early life. I was working for a farmer, as a farm hand for old 
 Deacon Jones. In the middle of the night I heard him call to 
 me 'Abraham, Abraham, get up, the world is coming to an end.' " 
 Says he, "I looked out of the window in my little attic room in the 
 old log cabin, and I saw the stars raining from their places in the 
 heavens, and my heart gave way within me, and I trembled with 
 fear, feeling that the judgment hour had come. But, gentlemen, 
 as I looked, I saw behind that blinding meteoric shower the old 
 North Star shining just v/here it always had been, and the Dipper 
 which I knew was there in all its glory, and I came to the con- 
 clusion that the world was not at an end, and I would steer by 
 the stars that God had set to remain in his heavens." 
 
 Friends, we are at an another hour when opinions are divided. 
 There are those that make the air to quiver with apprehension; 
 there are those who tell us that we violate the Constitution and 
 that we are false to the Declaration of Independence, but yet 
 
ISO THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 through the shower of meteors, through the roar of all the disturb- 
 ances of this time, we will still behold the star of American inde- 
 pendence, the star that shines for the right of liberty, the right 
 of political liberty and religious liberty; that star is still fixed and 
 immovable in God's heavens. By that we steer, by the light of it 
 our fathers saw over the sea to lay the course of the Mayflower, 
 until its prow had touched on Plymauth Rock. By that star 
 Washington laid his course from Bunker Hill until it led to victory 
 and Yorktown. By that star our martyred President guided his 
 course from Sumter to Richmond. And that star is now sending its 
 beams into the waters of a f ar-oflf sea, it has risen upon the horizon 
 of the Orient, it is hanging like a beacon above those distant 
 islands, and its shining will tell the world that a new day, a day 
 of liberty for man, has arisen upon the face of the earth. 
 
THE FOURTEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1900 
 
 Address of 
 HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 
 
HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 
 
 Congressman Cousins was born in Cedar Co., Iowa, 
 in 1859. He graduated from Cornell College, Iowa, 1881. 
 He was admitted to the bar in 1882 and has since been 
 in active practice. Since 1893 he has represented the 
 Fifth Iowa District and has won prominence as a con- 
 gressional orator. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 
 
 In every part and in almost every city of America, on this last 
 anniversary in the century which produced him, a grateful peo- 
 ple meet to pay their homage to the memory of Abraham Lin- 
 coln. Not that it is possible for human speech to add to his re- 
 nown, but rather that we may dedicate ourselves and the nation 
 which he loved to a better understanding of his character and 
 to the principles for which he lived and died. 
 
 The nineteenth century brings to the threshold of the twen- 
 tieth, perhaps the greatest and most distinguished names ever 
 given to the list of the immortals by any single century of human 
 progress, and chief of all those names is Lincoln. 
 
 Somebody said that the history of a nation is the history of 
 its great men. If our century has produced greater, better, 
 nobler men who have achieved more for the human race than 
 any other century, it indicates, if it does not prove, the progress 
 of our world. It is a great thing to feel that this is true. 
 
 The dream of the eighteenth century was free government — 
 democracy — the thought that civilized and enlightened mankind 
 could govern themselves, and that security, progress and endurance 
 would attend that system. But it was doubted by the world even 
 when our independence was achieved, doubted when Abraham Lin- 
 coln was bom, doubted when a free people chose him as Presi- 
 dent. The test of rebellion had not yet been made. When it 
 
154 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 finally came, most of the Old World's intellects volunteered the 
 force and influence of their opinions against the possibility of the 
 unity and survival of the republic. Even Mr. Gladstone expressed 
 a disbelief in the possible restoration of the Union. But it should 
 always be remembered in justice to that empire of the snows, ruled 
 by the Imperial Czar, that when the supreme test of Republican 
 government and human liberty was being made, no voice of dis- 
 couragement ever emanated from the Russian Empire. 
 
 The problem of human slavery — whether one human being could 
 rightfully be claimed as the property of another, was the con- 
 tention on which the tremendous test of Republican government 
 arose. Being a question of both property and morals, all the 
 prejudices and all the selfishness of human nature were neces- 
 sarily aroused. Destiny had not seen fit to give the new republic 
 the simple problem of solving the question of its unity, identity, 
 and federal authority by a mere abstract interpretation of the 
 Constitution upon the direct issue as to whether, for any cause, 
 the Union might be dismembered. It seemed as though Infinite 
 Wisdom sought to couple with the problem every passion that 
 could come from human avarice, every prejudice that might arise 
 from forfeiture, every bias that material considerations could 
 arouse. The terrible test must be made for all time and with 
 every aggravation that could possibly attend it. To reach the 
 summit of free government and to there proclaim to all the world 
 and for all time the unity and independence of the American re- 
 public, the pilgrim of human progress must bear the heaviest pack 
 that all the hands of prejudice and politics and doubt could pile 
 upon his back. 
 
 But it must be remembered that in our world of strife and toil 
 and suffering and glory, nothing which is easy can be great. 
 
 In the rumbling thunder of that approaching storm could be 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 155 
 
 heard summons only for the bravest and the mightiest men. It 
 was no place for pigmies. In the lightning's flash of the awful 
 hour, human intellect, stimulated to intensity, must foresee the 
 way by which the dearest hope of all the centuries could march 
 to certain and enduring victory, and carry its cause into the per- 
 manence of the ages. Ah, America, how great shall be the grati- 
 tude to him who, standing in the flashlight of that crisis, shall 
 discern with certainty the way for the new republic to work out 
 its ultimate salvation — the way for liberty to live — the course by 
 which a nation torn asunder shall reach a perfect and enduring 
 Union ! 
 
 Fifty years have passed and gone — half a century since all men 
 learned his name — and now we come again as citizens of that 
 permanent and perfect Union, to voice our gratitude to him who 
 studied out the way, to him who said, "We shall nobly save, or 
 meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth," 
 
 He came into the contest as a countryman, out of the loins of 
 labor and from the very heart of the continent. No trumpet 
 sounded his arrival. No family of pedigree gave him prestige. 
 He had to reason his way out of the woods into the world, out of 
 poverty into position, out of politics into statesmanship, out of 
 greatness into glory, and finally he went from life into the cal- 
 endar of saints which never happens except by the unanimous 
 consent of all mankind. 
 
 America first knew him when he finished with Stephen A. Doug- 
 las. The torch of his intellect, shining above all others, attracted 
 attention. He had driven Douglas to evade the tenet of his party, 
 that slavery was a creature of the Constitution, illimitable and 
 uncontrollable, and made him say: "The people of a territory can, 
 by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the 
 formation of a State constitution." 
 
156 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 This declaration of Mr. Douglas was made in answer to Mr. 
 Lincoln's famous second interrogatory in joint debate, and it 
 ruined Douglas with the extreme Democrats. It was heterodox 
 for one undertaking to speak for the Democracy and for slavery 
 to admit that slavery could be anywhere or in any way impeded. 
 The question was propounded by Mr. Lincoln against the advice 
 of all his political counsellors. They feared it would give Mr. 
 Douglas a chance to say what he did say, and thereby strengthen 
 him with the conservative Kepublicans of Illinois. But by being 
 careful, in Illinois^ he became an outlaw in Mississippi. Mr. Lin- 
 coln foresaw this. He was looking to the future and to a wider 
 horizon than that of a single State. Some people thought that his 
 heart was set on the Senatorship of Illinois, but he was talkingi 
 for the ages. He was running for a seat in that exalted place 
 at the right hand of Infinite Justice. He was getting rid of Mr. 
 Douglas so that the extreme Democrats in the coming presidential 
 campaign would nominate a candidate as extreme and as bad as 
 they were themselves. He was driving the friends of human 
 slavery to their logical position, and he was demonstrating to the 
 world the wickedness of that position. He was serving the con- 
 servative men, the reasoning men of both parties, for the final con- 
 flict that was coming on the wings of war. This was fine work. 
 Its diplomacy was worthy of a Talleyrand; its reasoning worthy 
 of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 When he had done with Douglas he was wanted everywhere. 
 His reason had set a torch upon the hilltops. The close of the 
 senatorial contest in Illinois was but the beginning of that larger 
 contest which involved all States and all the future. The people 
 of the country who had been confused by constitutional niceties 
 were everywhere repeating over and over again the wondrous 
 words : 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 157 
 
 "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this 
 country cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I 
 do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the 
 house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all one thing or the other. Either the opponents of 
 slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the 
 public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ul- 
 timate extinction or its advocates will push it farther until it be- 
 comes alike lawful in all States, old as well as new, North as 
 well as South." 
 
 Perhaps never were words spoken by man which made such deep 
 impression on the public mind. It was a prophecy carrying con- 
 viction with its very utterance, and everywhere men wondered and 
 inquired among themselves "what manner of man is this?" Ohio 
 must have him in the campaign, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hamp- 
 shire and Minnesota — every place in which the light of his un- 
 rivaled wisdom had proceeded, called for him, and as Lord Lytton 
 said about his famous Doctor Lloyd, finally, "Abbey Hill let him 
 feel its pulse." He was invited to New York. He came to Cooper 
 Institute, and in the presence of such men as William Cullen 
 Bryant, David Dudley Field, and Horace Greeley, he who has 
 been mentioned as the "rude lank Westerner," spoke to an audi- 
 ence described by the Morning Tribune as an "assemblage of the 
 intellect and mental culture of our city." 
 
 It was here that he described the friends of human slavery and 
 their audacity as "sinners calling the righteous to repentance." 
 It was here that his genius gave him national renown and his 
 logic unfolded the principles of the Constitution from its origin- 
 ators and marked out the way of life for the republic. It was 
 here that he made it possible to be President, and finally to be 
 crucified. 
 
158 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 The dreaming child of the Kentucky woodland, the country 
 boy of Indiana, the flat-boat pilot of the Mississippi, the village 
 postmaster, lawyer, legislator and logician of Illinois, the orator 
 and statesman of America, became our President. In the midst 
 of the dissolving Union, standing before the Chief Justice who 
 was to administer the oath of office, he had to say: "A disruption 
 of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably 
 attempted." And then came the sentence which voiced the senti- 
 ment of loyalty in America for all time and showed the metal of 
 this courageous and patriotic President: 
 
 "I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Con- 
 stitution, the union of these States is perpetual." 
 
 Then finally came that matchless utterance of loyalty and love, 
 that lifts the name of Lincoln into the loftiest place of literature : 
 / "I em 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 lov- 
 ing heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will swell the 
 chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, 
 by the better angels of our nature." 
 
 There have been men who ruled in this world by force and arbi- 
 trary mandates and history calls them great. But in a republic, 
 ruling power is granted only by the individual judgment and ap- 
 proval of the millions which can only be reached by reason. When 
 Abraham Lincoln had finished his first inaugural and taken the 
 oath of office, he had convinced the better judgment of America 
 not only of the justice of the Union's cause, but of his pre-eminent 
 worthiness to represent that cause. His thought had reached the 
 hearthstone, his argument was on the lips of countrymen; his 
 love had touched the hearts of loyalty; his gentle spirit permeated 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 159 
 
 every fireside; his matchless genius took possession of superior 
 minds; his wondrous reasoning reached, like penetrating light, 
 the intellects of all the lands and consequently at his beck and 
 bidding stood the grandest army ever organized upon this earth 
 from civil life — The Grand Army of the Union. 
 
 Confronting it, there was the greatest force "ever forged into 
 a thunderbolt of rebellion" against any nation. The conflict that 
 ensued was awful and unequaled in the annals of our world. The 
 memories of broken hopes, of blighted love, of scattered families re- 
 main forever as the shadows and the lines of care upon the sad 
 and love-illumined face of the immortal Lincoln. Every sorrow 
 touched his tender heart and every sacrifice that heroism gave its 
 country left a scar upon his sorrowful and homely features. But in 
 all the trials of that tremendous war, his judgment proved un- 
 erring and his never-failing reason was the guiding light. His 
 was the master mind, not only in the matters of momentous pol- 
 icy and statecraft, but wisely practical in all the details of de- 
 partmental difficulties. Not only was he the most unerring judge 
 of men, but wondrous in his judgment of maneuvering and in 
 foreseeing and in planning for emergencies. He was perhaps the 
 first promotor of the Ironclad. When he learned that one of the 
 Confederate batteries at Charleston Harbor had been made to resist 
 the heaviest shot by being covered with bars of railroad iron, he 
 asked Mr. Fox, his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, what difficulty 
 there was in the way of using such a defense upon a vessel. He 
 was told that naval officers feared that "an armor heavy enough 
 to make them effective would sink them as soon as launched." 
 *'But is not that a sum in arithmetic?" inquired the President. 
 "On our Western rivers we can figure just how many tons will 
 sink a flat-boat. Can't you clerks do the same for an armored 
 vessel?" From the idea of that conversation undoubtedly the 
 
i6o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 Monitor was built ! The President was the friend of Ericsson and 
 Captain Worden. Two days before the famous battle of the Moni- 
 tor and Merrimac he said, "I believe in the Monitor and her com- 
 mander. If Captain Worden does not give a good account of him- 
 self I shall have made a mistake in following my judgment. I 
 have not made a mistake in following my clear judgment of men 
 since the war began. I followed that judgment when I gave 
 Worden the command of the Monitor. The Monitor should be in 
 Hampton Roads now, she left New York eight days ago." When 
 he was told by Captain Fox that it was not prudent to place any 
 reliance in the Monitor, he replied: 
 
 "I respect your judgment as you have good reason to know, 
 but this time you are all wrong. The Monitor was one of my in- 
 spirations; I believed in her firmly when that energetic con- 
 tractor first showed me Ericsson's plans. Captain Ericsson's plain 
 but rather enthusiastic demonstration made my conversion per- 
 manent. It was called a floating battery then; I called it a raft. 
 I thought then and I am confident now, it is just what we 
 want. I am sure the Monitor is still afloat and that she will yet 
 give a good account of herself. Sometimes I think she may be the 
 veritable sling with a stone that shall yet smite the Merrimac 
 Philistine in the forehead." 
 
 On the second night after that utterance, anxiously waiting 
 with oflicers of the Navy, he heard the joyful news of the victory 
 from Hampton Roads. The idea which was developed by Erics- 
 son had become the monarch of the seas and revolutionized the 
 navies of the world. 
 
 There seems to be a kind of aiflnity in great minds for the sea 
 and for sea-craft. No nation has ever become great in the world 
 of nations that has not taken its place fearlessly and permanently 
 as a co-tenant of the ocean. The sea is treacherous to ignorance, 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS i6i 
 
 to enlightenment it is kind. Queen Elizabeth used to say, "Quid 
 mihi Maris scribet?" "What does the sea say to me?" On that 
 memorable Sunday night, March 9, 1862, the sea said to Abraham 
 Lincoln, "Henceforth we shall be friends. The child of your 
 mind has become the master of the mighty deep." A little while 
 ago the sea said to President McKinley, "Come this way." And 
 in the gray dawn of the morning Admiral Dewey carried the stars 
 and stiipes, the emblem of civilization, by the cannon of Cavite, 
 saying to Gridley, "You can fire when you are ready," and when 
 the smoke had cleared away, the world beheld the banner of the 
 stars triumphant in Manila Bay. It said to Sampson and to 
 Schley, to Clark and to Wainwright, to Fighting Bob and Praying 
 Philip, "Catch Cervera and I'll give your country rich posses- 
 sions near to Nevis of the Lesser Antilles, the birthplace of Alex- 
 ander Hamilton," and in less than two hours the sea gulls looked 
 in vain for a Spanish flag ! Such are the exploits of the Ironclad, 
 the child of Abraham Lincoln's genius. 
 
 Being himself great, he was a judge of greatness. He recog- 
 nized ability when he saw it. Therefore the greatest military 
 genius of the century did not escape his keen, observing eye. He 
 watched the movement of the Western army. He saw the triumphs 
 at Belmont, Donelson and Shiloh. He saw the army of the Ten- 
 nessee with the hope of all the centuries, trying to find a way to 
 cross the river with no place to embark and no place to land; he 
 saw the final triumph at Vicksburg, and with the millions of 
 America he called for General Grant to take command of all the 
 Union forces. He listened to some small general enviously say, 
 "Grant drinks," and then he calmly and ironically said, "What 
 does he drink? I want to send some of the same brand to all 
 my generals." Henceforth Grant was unmolested, and within two 
 years from the time America really knew she had a Grant, the 
 
i62 THE REPUBLI'lAN CLUB 
 
 banner of the stars was shining on the Continent, the stars and 
 stripes were floating over Richmond. 
 
 /Abraham Lincoln saw the final triumph. He witnessed the 
 j 'fulfilment of his mission. He carried out his proclamation of 
 r universal liberty. His wisdom bound together the matchless army 
 / of the Union which made forever good the declaration of his first 
 inaugural, "The union of these States is perpetual." He went 
 to Gettysburg, and with his living heart upon the hearts of com- 
 rades dead, his lips pronounced those words of love and eloquence 
 \ that live forever as the matchless gem of concentrated speech in 
 ^-.-jdL-OttxJitejra^tureJ With stockinged feet before the White House 
 gpate, he watched the flickering fire on many an anxious night, 
 /just as he had done in old Kentucky and in Indiana and in Illi- 
 / nois in youthtime and in early manhood, and in fancy saw fan- 
 / tastic figures, sometimes droll, amusing him in lonely hours, and 
 then sometimes he saw ambition in its selfish form and hated it. 
 / He saw the widowed mother and her hungry child; he saw the 
 lover dying on the battlefield for country's sake and then he saw 
 ; the face of his betrothed in agony at home. He saw the charge 
 
 \ of cavalry and heard the crash of death; he saw the steady lines 
 
 of infantry starting for the cannoned crest and felt the shot and 
 \ shell that mangled human forms. And there in the last, long, 
 
 \ flickering light, he saw the emblem of the union carried to the 
 
 \ eternal heights. ] With sad but hopeful heart he laid his head 
 upon the pillow in the mansion where Washington had slept; at 
 early morn he awoke from troubled sleep from day to day until 
 'twas done, the mission of a mighty soul. 
 [ Bone of the bone, and sinew of the sinew, heart of the very 
 \ heart of the American nation, incarnation of its spirit, he rea- 
 \\soned out his course in the darkest epoch of its troubled, glorious 
 listory. 
 
 / 
 
 1iis1 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. COUSINS 163 
 
 The most assuring fact which the twentieth century takes from 
 the last lesson of the nineteenth is this : In the greatest revolution 
 ever known upon this earth — the struggle for the unity and the 
 survival of free government — the guiding spirit of the Union's 
 cause and the greatest general who bore his shield was born and 
 bred and reared in the average environment and among the middle 
 classes of the commonwealth, where the illustrious examples and 
 their wholesome patriotic precepts are learned, revered and prac- 
 tised by the great majority of the successive generations who con- 
 stitute American citizenship. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was chosen President by the better judgment 
 of the populace which his reason had convinced before the actual 
 strife began. Called again by the unanimous voice of loyalty, 
 when the contest had practically ended, he sat securely in the seat 
 of triumph and of glory, when the greatest tragedy of fact or 
 fiction in the annals of our tragic world took him from the vision 
 of mankind before their grateful hearts could hear his final bless- 
 ing and his benediction. 
 
 I think it was Theophile Gautier who conceived in his imagina- 
 tion a magician who could exchange the souls of men. If by some 
 magic power the soul of J. Wilkes Booth could have been placed 
 in the breast of the martyred President, after the fatal shot was 
 fired, so that it could have gone to the judgment seat with the 
 face of Abraham Lincoln, it might have passed the pearly gates un- 
 challenged. And if the spirit of the murdered President could 
 have entered the breast of that most depraved of all assassins, the 
 murderous hand might momentarily have been forgiven the great- 
 est crime in history, just for the sake of keeping in our sad and 
 grateful world, even for a little while, the loftiest soul, the sweet- 
 est spirit, it has ever known in mortal man. 
 
THE FIFTEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1901 
 
 Address of 
 HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 
 
HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 
 
 Mr. Baldwin was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 
 1858, and practised law there until in later life he was 
 made General Attorney of the Union Pacific Railroad. 
 He removed to Omaha, Nebraska, where he died in 1908. 
 A volume of his speeches has been published in that 
 city. His reputation as a lawyer and orator extended 
 throughout the entire West. 
 
 i 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen: From the prairies of the North- 
 western States, recently swept by the breezes of the Republican 
 victory, I salute you! 
 
 The work of holding some States steadfast, returning to the fold 
 those that had been lost, and making and keeping all Republican, 
 was accomplished by following the precepts and principles of 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Upon an occasion when Republicans have assembled to com- 
 memorate Lincoln's birth, life and services, the tillers of the soil 
 extend the hand of Republican fellowship to the master of the 
 mart and bid me greet you! I come as a humble but earnest Re- 
 publican of the rank and file, feelingly alive to the supremacy of 
 Lincolnian principles, to speak briefly of the virtues which guided 
 Lincoln's private and public life, founded the Republican party, 
 and which must be followed in the solution of future problems 
 and the creation of future policies if that party is to long con- 
 tinue. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln stands in no need of a vindicator or a eulogist. 
 "His life speaks its own best eulogy." There need be no fear that 
 if these commemorations should cease, Lincoln would sink in pub- 
 lic estimation or his deeds be lost in history. He had received the 
 heart homage of the world before the beauties of his character 
 were pointed out by the critical wand of the orator or the subtler 
 
i68 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 insight of the poet. Not, however, until poets cease to sing of 
 love, duty, justice, simplicity, sincerity and truth, will men cease 
 to talk about Lincoln. 
 
 The hero-worshipper notes carefully the birthtime, place and 
 childhood environment of his idol. We are all familiar with 
 the stressful action through which Lincoln's character was de- 
 veloped and the strange frontier country in which his imagina- 
 tion was unfolded. I believe the cardinal virtues of this life, 
 that have challenged the world's attention, were simplicity, sin- 
 cerity and truth, and I also believe that the Providence of God 
 ordered and set the scenes of Lincoln's early pilgrimage through 
 life to create, form and fashion these virtues. A family of four, 
 a log cabin, no window, one room and a door. No furniture but 
 rude logs. No machinery, but an axe. No light but the flames 
 from burning brush. No steam, but muscle to rive the rail. 
 No college, but Bible lore, fairy tales and country legends. No 
 art, but the field and forests. No music but the song of the lark. 
 No painting but the sun dipping his golden plumage in the West. 
 It was under these and similar conditions that Abraham Lincoln 
 was born, his character framed, his imagination formed, and his 
 noble and heroic soul entered on life. 
 
 Not by birth or opportunity was this man made. 
 
 In the strange twilight of the prairies, unheralded and un- 
 known, this grandly simple life began, and yet the whole world 
 has heard the story from his studies by the log-light to the speech 
 at Gettysburg. 
 
 In the solitude of the forest, in close communion with nature 
 and nature's God, in the rude, humble toil of the frontiersman, was 
 developed the innate selfhood of the man, the power that touched 
 with the glory of transfiguration that simple, earnest, sincere 
 man, as he uttered the closing appeal of his first inaugural. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 169 
 
 To study in libraries, surrounded by works of art and within 
 the hearing of man-made melodies, would have interfered with 
 that necessary, fearless and constant endeavor after truth which 
 made the hand of a rail-splitter pen the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion. 
 
 We catch a glimpse of the effect of his communion with nature 
 in giving tint or shape to his thoughts, and how vividly he shaped 
 a simple truth, in his speech before the Republican state conven- 
 tion of Illinois, in 1856. He said: 
 
 *'In 1824 the free men of our State, led by Governor Coles, de- 
 termined that these beautiful groves should never re-echo the 
 dirge of one who has no title to himself. By their resolute de- 
 termination the winds that sweep across our broad prairies shall 
 never cool the parched brow, nor shall the unfettered streams that 
 bring joy and gladness to our free soil water the tired feet of a 
 slave; but so long as those heavenly breezes and sparkling streams 
 bless the land, or the groves and their fragrance or their memory 
 remain, the humanity to which they minister shall be forever 
 free." 
 
 Simplicity, sincerity and truth — each element necessary to the 
 existence of the other — so early and deeply imbedded in his strong 
 and simple nature, always continued to be Lincoln's noblest char- 
 acteristics. This great triumvirate of power and virtue kept step 
 with his advance, ruled him well, made him the founder of a great 
 party, the deliverer of a nation, and the preserver of a Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln would have the truth, and the truth which 
 he felt to be true. 
 
 Truth, that only one of which there are no degrees, but breaks 
 and rents continually; that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pil- 
 lar; that golden and narrow line, which the very powers and vir- 
 
170 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 tues that lean upon it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, 
 which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows 
 with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity 
 dims with her tears. There are some faults, slight in the sight 
 of love; some errors, slight in the estimate of wisdom, but truth 
 forgives no insult and endures no stain. 
 
 I venture the suggestion that no man will ever write his his- 
 tory and entitle it "The True Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln ! His simplicity and directness in thought, ut- 
 terance and writing! He began his studies with a wooden shovel 
 for a slate, logs and boards for paper. He died the greatest mas- 
 ter of prose ever produced by the English race. 
 
 His sincerity! Enslaved by poverty and deprivation, his youngs 
 darkly struggling heart longed for freedom. He died the eman- 
 cipator of a race. His truth! It can be said of him, that which 
 cannot be said of any other uninspired man, that some there are 
 who doubt God, but no one the God-likeness of Lincoln. 
 
 It is not that Lincoln needs us, but that we need him, that we 
 are met. 
 
 There are practical uses of great men, and when they depart 
 they leave their character and services as public property. The 
 deeds of Abraham Lincoln will live forever. It remains with us 
 and succeeding generations to determine whether his counsel shall 
 prevail, for "the most valuable truths, though known, are use- 
 less if not applied." 
 
 If certain prophets and philosophers are to be believed, then if 
 we were to detach any arc or segment from the total cycle of hu- 
 man records we should find that it did not at its beginning promise 
 or prefigure as much of good or evil, happiness or misery, liberty 
 or thraldom, a millennial armistice or an seon of war, than the 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 171 
 
 present course upon which the human race has just started to 
 take its way. 
 
 It is said : That this is no longer a government fashioned after 
 the precepts and principles of Abraham Lincoln ; that the declara- 
 tion that "all men are created equal" is unheeded; that capital 
 and labor are opposed and uncommunicating ; that it is an age of 
 mammon and machinery; that manufacturers are gorged with the 
 largeness of a plundering tariff; that the existing financial sys- 
 tem is ?, conspiracy against the human race; that imperialism and 
 militarism are the spirit of the times, and that forts are con- 
 veniently located so that a standing army can suppress by force 
 discontent among laboring people. 
 
 If these conditions do really exist, they put the state in dan- 
 ger, and, if not amended, will destroy it. 
 
 If these conditions do not really exist, but by certain peculiar 
 practices, prophecies and platforms are made so to appear to six 
 millions of voters, we have a social anomaly which also bodes 
 peril to the state. 
 
 Let us not deceive ourselves. There are social anomalies and 
 phenomena that portend trouble to the republic, and the party of 
 Abraham Lincoln is morally pledged to an honest investigation 
 as to the cause and the remedy. Recent records show that a party 
 in its efforts to investigate and solve these questions and difficul- 
 ties, summoned the expert, rather than the eyewitness; consulted 
 with prognosticators rather than the practical; gathered men in 
 swarms, and under the influence of its magnetic leader so charmed 
 them that they were ready to receive "the stupidest absurdities as 
 axioms of Euclid" ; a party whose leader appealed to the sublimest 
 declaration of independence and equality one moment^ and the 
 next to the passions and prejudices of his auditors; fulminated 
 against certain governmental policies and yet swore before the 
 
172 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 assessor that under four years of the administration of these self- 
 same policies, his estate was increased sixteen to one and a frac- 
 tion over; declared one day that he "did not believe in weighing 
 the dollar against human life and liberty," and the next, weighing 
 his words, shouted, "Great is Tammany, and Croker is its prophet." 
 And yet the same records show that these schemes, dreams, falsi- 
 ties, abstractions and practices, destitute of everything but pro- 
 portion in their presentment, received the support and approval 
 of nearly one-half of the voters of this country. 
 
 That such a party with such a leader and with just such sim- 
 plicity enough to confuse, just sincerity enough to pretend, and 
 just truth enough to deceive, could thus be sanctioned by so large 
 a proportion of the American people, almost passes belief. 
 
 The lustre of Lincoln's name is our inheritance and if we ex- 
 pect a continuance of the happy consequence of his labors we must 
 drink deep of the spring of his precepts, draw from the copious 
 resources of his wisdom and move up into the radiations of his 
 spirit. Happy for this people, happy for this nation, that "it is 
 a provision in the moral government of the world, to hold out 
 constantly to mankind both the example of virtue for imitation 
 and its precepts for obedience, and the moral constitution of man 
 is never so depraved as to be totally insensible to either." 
 
 It should be noted here that Lincoln's life was devoted to the 
 question of slavery and its cognate questions. The paramount 
 issue then was the maintenance of the government itself — internal 
 regulations were of secondary importance. The great, portentous 
 and momentous questions of finance, tariff, capital and labor, and 
 the policy of acquiring and holding territory without our borders 
 were not present during Lincoln's life, at least in their present 
 proportion. If the proper study of his life has taught us anything, 
 it is that in the solution of these questions Lincoln would have 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 173 
 
 brought to bear the same methods and principles which guided 
 him in the solution of the great problems he so grandly and so 
 successfully met and solved. 
 
 Let us not be discouraged. Only search unweariedly for the truth. 
 We must not assume that the power of wealth is the cause of the 
 discontent of the poor, but must investigate. The right distribu- 
 tion of wealth cannot be fixed by "swarmery." We need a simpler 
 and finer contrivance. In making laws for the protection of the 
 poor and the incompetent, we must not bring about the death of 
 ambition, for ambition is the spring of enterprise, and enterprise 
 the leading spirit of progress. Opportunity must be given to 
 great ability to wield the power of great wealth. There must 
 be protection for the strong as well as the weak, otherwise the 
 arm of enterprise is paralyzed and the power of progress is in abey- 
 ance. A law which has not justice for the last dollar of the 
 millionaire will have no protection for the orphan's invested pence 
 or the laborer's savings. The best laws are those which in their 
 administration will "leave capital to find its most lucrative course, 
 commodities their fairest price, industry and intelligence their 
 natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, main- 
 taining peace by defending property, by diminishing the price of 
 law and by observing strict economy in every department of the 
 state." 
 
 The poor, the discontented and the distressed, can safely leave 
 their cause in the hands of those who will endeavor, at least, to 
 determine it according to the principles of Abraham Lincoln — he 
 who worked unselfishly for selfish men, "in whose large heart with 
 its large bounty, wretchedness found a solacement, and they that 
 were wandering in darkness the light as of a home," he who stands 
 in crowned sovereignty the simplest, gentlest and noblest of 
 men. 
 
y 
 
 174 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 The birth of George Washington was the sign of American 
 freedom; the death of Abraham Lincoln was its consummation. 
 When Washington died part only was free; when Lincoln died 
 there was no slave. 
 
 The same spirit of civil liberty that animated Washington in 
 his struggle to make this land free, and Lincoln to make every 
 man free, is to-day moving over the waters of our governmental 
 life. It recognizes no limitations and has no frontiers. It will 
 move as easily and as surely over an ocean as it has over state, 
 treaty and boundary lines. 
 
 It may not be in your day or mine; but, as the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity will some day encompass this earth, so will the spirit of 
 civil liberty enter into the formation of all governments and 
 control all nations. 
 
 In the work of libertyizing this world the American flag will 
 always be seen in the lead. On whatever land the Stars and 
 Stripes are raised it will be for Freedom; whenever lowered it 
 will be for honor; and wherever unfurled it will be forever and 
 forever. 
 
 Along with the utterances of Abraham Lincoln I place that of 
 our President, fighting for peace, aye, a peace-loving ruler in a 
 warring world. 
 
 "Peace first; then with charity for all, establish a government 
 of law, protecting life and property, and occupation for the well- 
 being of all the people who will participate in it under the Stars 
 and Stripes. 
 
 "If these counsels or this work be of men, it will be overthrown, 
 but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow it." 
 
 We do not know, but we believe, that Lincoln's wondrous work 
 was done under a higher guidance than ours; and it will not be 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN N. BALDWIN 175 
 
 overthrown, because it is of the counsel of the same power which 
 ballasts the constellations while penciling the pink. 
 
 We do not know, but we believe, that in his last hour, when 
 "all the faculty of the broken spirit had faded away into in- 
 anity — imagination, thought^ effort, enjoyment — then, at last, the 
 night flower of belief alone continued to bloom, and refreshed 
 with its perfume his last darkness." 
 
 We do not know, but we believe, that when death's cold kiss 
 made him dreamless here for evermore, instantly he felt the 
 warm touch of the Infinite and became immortal! 
 
THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1902 
 
 Address of 
 HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 
 
JAMES WILLIS GLEED, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 Mr, Gleed was born in Morrisville, Vt., in 1859. He 
 graduated from the State University of Kansas, 1879, 
 and the Columbia Law School, 1884. Since 1884 he 
 has been in the active practice of law. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 
 
 Forty years have passed since the inauguration of Abraham Lin- 
 coln. His great secretaries and military commanders, his lieu- 
 tenants in Congress, his staunch allies, the war governors of the 
 States, the great intellectual, financial and political leaders of 
 that far-off time, his friends and his enemies, both North and 
 South, who could properly be called his contemporaries, are all, 
 or nearly all, at rest. Even the youngest of the boys who fought 
 for and against him begin to be warned by the dimmed eye, the 
 heavy ear, or the faltering step, that the time draweth nigh. 
 
 The President of to-day was in his cradle forty years ago. A 
 new generation has come, to whom the stress and storm and pas- 
 sions of the great Rebellion are but as a story that is told; and 
 even to the oldest of my hearers the fife, the drum, the tread of 
 marching feet, the clash of arms and the roar of cannon are an 
 echo and a memory growing ever dimmer and more distant. 
 
 During these forty years a thousand books have been written 
 and published about Abraham Lincoln, and ten thousand essays 
 and addresses. His career has been described and his character 
 has been analyzed; he has been placed and sung and glorified till 
 history and philosophy and eloquence and poetry are exhausted 
 and no new thing remains to be said. 
 
 But while, as each new anniversary arrives, we can only say 
 the old things, it is fitting and proper that the old things should 
 
i8o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 be said; and it is certain that they will be said every year more 
 simply and reverently and sincerely. We cannot praise him; we 
 cannot glorify him. We cannot even describe him, no words are 
 simple and majestic enough but his own. I can think of no com- 
 memoration on an occasion like this quite fitting and adequate, ex- 
 cept the Gettysburg address, the second inaugural, and a few mo- 
 ments of silent thankfulness to Almighty God for Abraham Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 And yet we must remember that such deep feelings of reverence 
 and gratitude are not native to the human heart — they do not 
 come spontaneously to each new generation — but are born of study 
 and reflection and, therefore, it is necessary that new books should 
 be written and new addresses be made and that the old things 
 should be said and said again. 
 
 In the few minutes allotted to me to-night I suppose it is not 
 very important or material what special features of his career or 
 his character or his teachings I endeavor to recall. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln in a marvelous way embodies the history and char- 
 acter of the American people. The tragedy of his life, like the 
 tragedy of the nation's life, takes root a long way back. It was 
 in Virginia that the first African slaves were landed. It was a 
 Virginian, Colonel Mason, who said, in the Federal convention: 
 "Slavery brings the judgment of Heaven upon a country. As 
 nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they 
 must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects 
 Providence punishes national sins by national calamities." It 
 was another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, who later said of 
 slavery : "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God 
 is just; and that his justice cannot sleep forever." When the 
 national punishment came, it was Virginia that suffered most. 
 In Virginia the great tragedy came to an end ; it was in Virginia 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED i8i 
 
 that the father and mother of Abraham Lincoln were born. Thu3 
 the tree of healing springs from the Old Domain where the na- 
 tional disease was first planted. 
 
 It is, perhaps, due to slavery that his father and mother can 
 neither read nor write ; that he is shiftless, inefficient and nomadic. 
 It is, perhaps, due to slavery that we see the future President born 
 as in a manger, amid surroundings most barren, hopeless and de- 
 pressing. No angel of the Lord warns the shepherds of his ad- 
 vent. No star comes and stands over where the young child lies. 
 No Wise Men of the East visit his cradle. And had vision warned 
 and star directed and were the Wise Men here, they could not wor- 
 ship; they could not believe that this rude log cabin, without 
 window or door, on this barren farm in Hardin County, Kentucky, 
 holds the savior of a nation. To the Wise Men of the East no 
 place more unlikely to cradle a great statesman than the rude 
 hovel of this vagrant "poor white"; just as to the Wise Men of 
 the West no place more unlikely to cradle a great, rugged, hu- 
 mane man of the people than a mansion of a merchant prince here 
 in New York. Fortunately under our form of government neither 
 Hardin County, Kentucky, nor New York City is barred. For- 
 tunately under our form of government the merchant prince as 
 well as the wandering pioneer may be father to a president. For- 
 tunately under our Constitution we can avail ourselves of wisdom 
 and of worth wheresoever they spring. 
 
 Regarding Mr. Lincoln the important thing is, of course, to com- 
 prehend what he became, what he did and what he taught; and 
 yet we love to dwell on the becoming — the early processes — and 
 to go over the dramatic outward incidents of his life. 
 
 We follow him from Kentucky into Indiana. We see him at 
 school there, in the open woods all day and by the firelight after 
 the day's work is done. We take interest in his college days; we 
 
i82 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 see him at his athletics in that wide, leafy, whispering gymnasium 
 of his — axe in hand — building him a body of iron; and we see 
 him in his library with the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress and 
 Shakespeare and the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
 stitution of the United States; and somehow we know that these 
 professors of his, Moses and David, and Isaiah, and Bunyan, and 
 Shakespeare, and Washington, and Jefferson, and the Great World 
 of Nature and the Human Struggle and Suffering, are never in 
 the future to be anywise ashamed of their handiwork. 
 
 In 1830 we see him moving his family, with their scant and 
 meagre chattels, westward to Illinois; we see him on his southern 
 journey floating slowly down to his first shuddering contact 
 with human slavery — that thing which he said "had and con- 
 tinually exercised the power of making him miserable." We see 
 him hunting his place in the world of work; he is a farm laborer, 
 a flat-boatman, a clerk, a small merchant. He meditates becoming 
 a blacksmith. He is a captain in the Black Hawk War. He be- 
 comes a surveyor and a postmaster, and flnally devotes himself to 
 the study and practice of the law. 
 
 We see him lifted and ennobled by the joy and the pain of a 
 great and tender love. How pathetic the story of Ann Rutledge ! 
 He stands by her dying bed ; he follows her to the grave ; darkness 
 overwhelms him; he sits at night with a friend, unnerved, trem- 
 bling, tears trickling through his fingers, racked with the thought 
 of the snow and the rain upon the grave ; for months he is on the 
 verge of insanity; and the shadow is on his face and the melan- 
 choly is in his eyes that are to remain there and grow deeper to 
 the end. 
 
 Always after this we feel the man to be above and outside the 
 things he is doing, and apart from them. He does not seem 
 ambitious. He does not seem to struggle. He seems to move pa- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 183 
 
 tiently forward, faithfully performing the tasks as they come. He 
 serves in the Legislature; he practises law; he is elected one term 
 to Congress; he finds it disappointing; he applies for the General 
 Land Ofiice; and is refused; he goes back to the practice of his 
 profession, giving up politics, as he thinks, for all time. 
 
 And now, after a considerable interval of quiet professional life, 
 comes an ominous and fateful year. The period of mutual re- 
 straint. North and South, is at an end; slavery must be extended 
 and live, or it must be restricted and die ; the Missouri Compromise 
 is repealed and the great battle is begun. 
 
 Fifty-four marks the beginning of the last decade of Lincoln's 
 life. It marks the beginning of his ministry. Now we are to 
 find what manner of man he has become and what place he is 
 to hold in the history of the nation and of the world. 
 
 Biography should be read backward — first find what at ma- 
 turity a man was and did — all else is incidental — and Mr. Lin- 
 coln's should begin here. From this on, he stands always in the 
 white light. From this on, we can see ourselves the great, patient 
 purpose driving, the great intellect executing, the great heart suf- 
 fering. From this on, we need take no man's word for him; we 
 may study Lincoln direct; we have an authentic record — twelve 
 hundred printed pages of his own words — his letters, speeches, 
 messages and proclamations. 
 
 And what a marvelous record it is. Let any young American 
 of this or future generations, who seeks the true image, the un- 
 broken melody, take up this record first — and last. And if he 
 shall come to the task a little skeptical; if his observation in a 
 peaceful and progressive age shall have taught him that things 
 are not always what they seem, that high power and high char- 
 acter are not always found in high places, that reputations are 
 sometimes manufactured; that public opinion is often wrong; if 
 
i84 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 he shall come to the task in a spirit tinged with cynicism; with 
 a vague impression or suspicion that Lincoln's place in history 
 and his hold on human hearts was won by a mere shrewd, good- 
 natured, story-telling politician; that his nomination v/as in part 
 an accident and in part a compromise ; that some or many of his do- 
 ings and sayings will have to be apologized for; that he was a 
 man who drifted with the current and who happened to be at the 
 head of affairs during a highly critical period ; that under pressure 
 he developed good capacities, but that he was so placed as to reap 
 the glory of other people's achievements; that the manner of his 
 death, and the time of it, set a halo and mystic glory around him 
 which make just criticism and sound judgment impossible — if, I 
 say, the young American of this or any future generation shall 
 sit down to read that record with such prepossessions, or with 
 any of them, he will rise up ashamed. He will rise up with the 
 feeling that those twelve hundred pages, recording the thoughts, 
 feelings, purposes, triumphs and sufferings of the last decade of 
 Lincoln's life, make a book matchless since the Bible. It will be 
 to him like a spiritual baptism — a new birth. And ever there- 
 after, when he listens to the words of any man, however great, 
 however eloquent, about Lincoln, he will feel that he has the meas- 
 ure of the speaker or the writer, perhaps, but never the measure 
 of Lincoln, He will feel ever more deeply that Lincoln, looked at 
 through the eyes of any man however sympathetic, is simply Lin- 
 coln diminished, Lincoln lessened; and he will turn back unsat- 
 isfied to Lincoln's own printed pages and recorded words. 
 
 Oh, the strength and the grandeur of that record! Oh, the 
 beauty, the gentleness, the tenderness of it ! It seems to-day forty 
 years after, fresh-wet with tears; the blood stains are not dry; 
 the prayers still beat up to Heaven — or are but just now hushed ! 
 The meanest of us rises from it awe-stricken, with bated breath, 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED X85 
 
 humbled, comforted, inspired — with something of that heroic 
 heart new-growing in his own; with something of those melan- 
 choly eyes new-shadowed in his, with something of that dauntless 
 courage and invincible purpose knitting itself into his innermost 
 being. There shines the mind, there throbs the heart, there moves 
 the divine, undeviating purpose ! Twelve hundred pages of words 
 pressed out like drops of blood and sweat by a great civil strug- 
 gle — burned out in the fiery furnace of war! No hatred, no scorn, 
 no pride, no exultation, no selfishness, no weakness of any kind 
 anywhere to be found! Every page with something to moisten 
 the ey3, to stiffen the will, to exalt the aspirations, to illumine the 
 intellect, to set the heart throbbing or the nerves tingling! On 
 every page some sentence that flashes like a searchlight or rings 
 like a rifle-shot. No other such record is to be found in all lit- 
 erature. 
 
 In 1860, just after the Republican national convention, Mr. 
 Beecher said to Mr. Raymond of the Times, "Your candidate 
 (Seward) would not do in a crisis like this; he has too much head, 
 and too little heart." "And yours," said Raymond, "has, I fear, 
 too much heart and too little head." 
 
 Wendell Phillips, sincere to the core, refusing to misstate his 
 real views even by the cofiin's side and under the pressure of uni- 
 versal sorrow, said in '65: "No matter now that unable to lead 
 and form the nation, he was content to be its mouthpiece and 
 representative." 
 
 Had Mr. Lincoln "too little head?" Was he "unable to lead 
 and form?" What does the record show? 
 
 Take, for a moment, the great debate with Douglas, which real- 
 ly began in 1854 and lasted until 1860. What shall we expect 
 of this debate? Mr. Lincoln has a great reputation for humor; 
 he has been bom and has grown up and has always lived on the 
 
i86 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 border; he is supposed to be deficient in education; his audiences 
 are supposed to be rude, rough, pioneer audiences. What shall 
 we expect then of this debate ? Wit, anecdote, personalities, keen 
 thrusts, excess of emotion and ornamentation, a tinge of coarse- 
 ness, something of blare and breath and broadness; much to be 
 apologized for and excused, yet all to be redeemed by a certain 
 rugged strength and underlying sincerity — and occasional flashes 
 of insight and foresight proving him a native, though untrained, 
 undisciplined genius? 
 
 Will the form and manner be crude and faulty, the matter 
 bold, audacious and free even to lawlessness? We read and rub 
 our eyes astonished. It is all so simple, so lucid, so logical, so 
 chaste and unadorned, so tremendously earnest, and oh, so in- 
 effably fair and candid and kind ! No laughter, no personalities, 
 no play upon the emotions, no tricks of oratory; nothing but the 
 light of reason and the steady fire of moral conviction. He does 
 not dazzle, nor drive, nor overwhelm, but he wins, he melts, he 
 persuades, he steals his very enemies away from their most cher- 
 ished beliefs. We read the speeches of others and we say: "What 
 an orator! How bold! How brilliant! What learning! What 
 logic! What power!" We read this long debate and we say: 
 "How was it possible to think or feel otherwise?" 
 
 And as for lawlessness! It was Mr. Beecher, of Brooklyn, who 
 wanted it graven on his tombstone that he "scorned and spit 
 upon the fugitive slave law." Mr. Lincoln said: "Every pro- 
 vision of the Constitution must be obeyed in good faith." It was 
 Boston's voice that condemned that Constitution as a league with 
 hell ; Mr. Lincoln maintained it was the Ark of the Covenant. 
 
 How shall we mark the great mind, the real leader, in public 
 affairs? Must he not be the man who most fully comprehends ex- 
 isting conditions ; the man whose aims are highest, broadest, most 
 
 i 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 187 
 
 far-reaching, and most steadily maintained; the man who applies 
 to existing conditions those measures best calculated to work the 
 result desired? 
 
 Measured thus, what shall be said of Mr. Lincoln? In 1854 he 
 understood, better than any other man, the existing conditions, 
 North and South. He comprehended the entire slavery question. 
 He saw and pitied the bondage of the blacks. He saw and pitied 
 the bondage of the whites. "He who would be no slave," said he, 
 "must have no slave." Slavery was slavery to whites as well as 
 to blacks. The institution was not only morally wrong — it was 
 materially destructive and wasteful. It ate up, it wasted the 
 power and virtue of the very soil. Its steady tendency was more 
 land, more slaves — less product. It must be extended to live; 
 confined to the old slave states it would destroy itself. He saw 
 this. He saw, too, the bondage and the blindness of the people 
 of the North — their servility, their cowardice, their moral leth- 
 argy. He saw a part cringing, pliant, prostrate; a part ut- 
 terly indifferent; almost all, in 1854, selfishly engrossed. 
 
 Thus he understood the conditions of 1854. He understood 
 something else. He understood the Constitution; he revered, he 
 worshipped the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with 
 all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thy- 
 self." This Mr. Lincoln confessed as the substance of his religion, 
 and this is the very pith and core and essence of his political faith 
 and teaching. It was his religion, his morals, his politics and 
 his statesmanship. "Thy neighbor as thyself," translated into 
 government, meant to him, "All men are created free and equal." 
 
 He believed in the Declaration of Independence. He believed 
 that the sufferings, the life-and-death struggle of the Revolu- 
 tionary fathers, lifted them for the time being to new heights of 
 
i88 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 spiritual vision; and that in the end they conquered not only the 
 armies of King George, but they conquered themselves and Old 
 World prejudices and inherited evils and errors. The Declaration 
 was the source of all his political sentiments; he frequently said 
 so. It is the text of all his political teaching and the motive of 
 all his political measures. It runs like a strand of gold through 
 the whole fabric of his life. It is the very background and 
 atmosphere of the picture — the theme and melody of the whole 
 majestic composition — "All men are created equal — all men are 
 created equal." 
 
 He believed in equality. In that attitude of mind under which 
 society says to each new soul as it appears, not: "What have you?" 
 — not, "What bring you?" "Whence come you?" — race, caste, 
 class, color? — but simply, "What are you — what can you do?" 
 
 Lincoln believed in equality. It was not a "self-evident lie," 
 it was not a mere glittering generality; it was a great political 
 and spiritual truth; it was a wide-sweeping, all-embracing, life- 
 giving principle; the very sun of the true social and political 
 system. 
 
 He not only believed in the Declaration as a religion, but he 
 understood it as a policy — he saw more and more clearly, as time 
 went on, the extreme wisdom of it. He saw more and more as 
 time went on, the spread of intelligence that lay in it, the growth 
 of virtue that lay in it, the increase of wealth that lay in it, the 
 perpetual harvest of patriotism, of manhood, of national strength 
 and power, to spring from that simply stated truth if really under- 
 stood and faithfully followed. 
 
 And how has history justified his faith! It is a great argu- 
 ment for this great doctrine of equality that it has made us rich; 
 it is a greater argument that it gave us that splendid army of 
 volunteers in '61 ; it is the greatest argument that when our exist- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 189 
 
 ence as a nation hung in the balance, when the Declaration itself 
 was on trial for its life, this doctrine of equality gave to us, gave 
 to that army and gave to humanity the life and services of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 Now one more factor in the problem. He appreciated the value 
 of the Union. The Union was everything. The extreme Abol- 
 itionists, hating slavery, were demanding immediate, universal 
 emancipation; otherwise, disunion. The extreme Southern lead- 
 ers understanding slavery, that it must be extended or die — were 
 demanding extension or disunion. Mr. Lincoln saw that to give 
 up the Union was to confess the failure of free constitutions be- 
 fore the world — the inability of democracy to maintain itself in 
 a crisis. It meant the negro abandoned. It meant weakness, 
 waste p.nd perpetual warfare — if not chaos — to North and South. 
 The anti-slavery cause, the cause of the Constitution and of the 
 Declaration, all hung on the preservation of the Union. 
 
 Restrict slavery, give it no new land to feed on, let the nation as 
 a nation stand once more on the Declaration, preserve the Union 
 and slavery will starve and suffocate. The spirit of slavery and 
 the spirit of the Declaration "cannot stand together. They are as 
 opposite as God and Mammon; and whosoever holds to the one 
 must despise the other." This he said to the people of Illinois in 
 1854; and in 1858 he tolled forth the same warning to the whole 
 nation. 
 
 "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this 
 government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 
 I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the 
 house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided." 
 
 Thus Mr. Lincoln, understanding slavery and hating it, under- 
 standing the Declaration, the Constitution and the Union, and lov- 
 ing them, framed the issue. Slavery is wrong; it shall not be ex- 
 
igo THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 tended, but restricted and left to destroy itself. The Declaration 
 is right and shall be. restored. The Constitution shall be pre- 
 served and the Union forever maintained. This was the broad 
 issue. Lincoln made it in fifty-four ; he made it broad ; he kept it 
 broad. On this issue thus framed, the whole battle was fought 
 from fifty-four clear down to Appomattox. 
 
 Is there no evidence here of intellect, of understanding, of real 
 leadership ? 
 
 The position taken and maintained in this great debate was 
 not compromise — as many charged then. It was a wide view of 
 the present, a far view into the future — as we understand now. 
 It was not compromise in any sense; it was complete comprehen- 
 sion, complete wisdom, complete sanity. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was always supremely sane. 
 
 We love the leader of a forlorn hope; we love the man who 
 will sacrifice all for a cause; we admire the man who speaks out — 
 who utters all that he thinks or feels — and even a little more 
 out of the excess of courage and sincerity; the heart leaps in sym- 
 pathy with him who will not equivocate, will not excuse, will not 
 retreat a single inch, and who will be heard — and even with the 
 blind old fanatic who, single-handed and alone, takes up arms 
 against a nation. 
 
 Such things awe and dazzle us like a storm. But beyond the 
 roar and dazzle of the storm, above the angry cloud, behind the 
 thunderbolt, is the Firmament, is Providence, is Supreme Intelli- 
 gence and Changeless Purpose. "God dwelleth in eternity and has 
 an infinite leisure to roll forward the affairs of men." And as 
 the scales fall from our eyes, shall we not more and more see and 
 feel how much greater, grander, and more sublime is the silent, 
 suffering intelligent patience and endurance of Lincoln, than the 
 holy scorn and righteous, tempestuous wrath of these others ? 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 191 
 
 And SO the period of debate came to an end, and the period of 
 action arrived. The nation, blind and tormented, was feeling 
 about for its deliverer; and we cannot believe that the hand that 
 groped in darkness was left to chance or fortune; we must be- 
 lieve that it was by some divine guidance that it rested finally 
 upon Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 With that pathetic farewell to his friends at Springfield, he 
 journeyed down to Washington. We know what he finds there. 
 Mr. Buchanan willing, as he said, to give up a part of the Con- 
 stitution, or even the whole of it, if perchance he might save the 
 rest, had left everything undone that ought to have been done. A 
 great rebellion has been inaugurated. Mr. Lincoln confronts not 
 mere ill-controlled mobs risen against the very idea of govern- 
 ment, but seven sovereign states — later eleven — fully organized, 
 officered, armed, equipped with all the machinery of government 
 running smoothly and all compact and united for the protection 
 of a vast material interest. With the seceding states have gone 
 senators, representatives, secretaries, federal judges, foreign min- 
 isters and consuls, army and navy commanders, inferior officers, 
 heads of departments and clerks without number — carrying over 
 to the enemy all the resources of knowledge, skill, experience, and 
 leadership — depriving the federal government of its very memory 
 and leaving every department confused, unnerved and paralyzed. 
 Hidden disloyalty, more deadly than open desertions, lurks in 
 every branch of the civil service. No man knows whom to trust. 
 The treasury is empty. Arms, arsenals, ships, navy yards, fortifi- 
 cations, and garrisons have been betrayed or abandoned. Foreign 
 governments are unfriendly, prejudiced and ready to intervene. 
 The people of the North are torn with confiicting views. For 
 them no obvious material interest is at stake — their lives are not 
 threatened, their property not endangered ; and on the question of 
 
192 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 right and wrong public opinion is for the moment divided, con- 
 fused, without form and void. Barkness is on the face of the 
 deep and even when the light dawns and the dry land of righteous- 
 ness, the granite peaks and fertile plains of loyalty appear, there 
 also appear here and there throughout the North the bogs and 
 swamps and rotten morasses of sordid self-interest, secret sym- 
 pathy, and silent treachery! 
 
 To bring order out of such chaos, to put down such a rebellion, 
 is the task confronting the new Executive. And it is not enough 
 to restore order and put down the rebellion; it must be done with- 
 out the destruction of popular institutions ; without injury to free 
 government ; it must be done in such a way as to make the Union, 
 when restored, as nearly as possible a real Union ; it must be done 
 in such a way as to leave no wasting wounds — no incurable dis- 
 eases in the body politic. 
 
 And more, the crisis is new in human experience. There is 
 no history, no precedent to go by. Eebellions have indeed been 
 put down, but not by such governments as ours. The very mate- 
 rial Lincoln has to work with is of a new sort. Napoleon put 
 down a revolution, but the people had long been accustomed to 
 despotic rule. There was civil war in Cromwell's time, but the 
 people were wonted to one-man government. But here is a people, 
 free, peaceful, unused to arms, jealous of power, and accustomed 
 to no government at all in the Old World sense. Thus out of the 
 character of our people and the form of our government a hun- 
 dred vast and perplexing questions arise that are not new here 
 alone, but new in the world. 
 To such tasks, under such conditions, comes Abraham Lincoln, 
 / of Springfield, Illinois, age fifty-two, attorney-at-law, commercial 
 I rating three thousand dollars besides homestead exempt. He comes 
 \ without military experience, without diplomatic experience, with- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 193 
 
 out any experience at all, we may almost say, in the administration 
 of large affairs. His personal acquaintance is small. He is a 
 stranger to his own party ; and that party really a minority party, 
 is new and strange to itself — made up of discordant elements bound 
 together only by a determination that the Union of the whole 
 country must and shall be preserved. 
 
 The tasks are gigantic enough ; the conditions to the last degree 
 perplexing; his experience and preparation almost nothing. 
 
 On the other hand, there is the just God in Heaven in whom he 
 trusts; and there is the American people whose temper and power 
 he understands. He trusts in God; he understands the American 
 people. 
 
 The American people! Ah, there was the arsenal! There was 
 the courage, there was the conscience, there was the overwhelm- 
 ing power ! Latent, dormant, for the time being, yet there was the 
 power; there it was, spread across the continent like a sleeping 
 sea ! There it lay in the hearts of some millions of common Amer- 
 ican men — and boys — and v/omen ! There it lay as it lies now, in 
 the stored intelligence, skill, conscience, self-control, devotion, and 
 invincible courage of the American people. Intelligence, con- 
 science, strength, heroism were common then, as they were three 
 years ago — as they are to-day. What we had then, what we have 
 now, was, and is, an almost limitless store of human skill and 
 capacity. It was this which constituted our real wealth then. It 
 is this which constitutes our wealth and strength to-day. This Mr. 
 Lincoln understood. He knew the common people. He knew the 
 farm boys who could be turned into captains and colonels — good 
 enough in time of war. He knew the canal drivers, the real 
 estate agents and the tanners who could command armies and 
 win victories. 
 
 He said in that special message of his, "So large an army as the 
 
194 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 government has now on foot was never before known without a 
 soldier in it but who has taken his place there of his own free 
 choice. 
 
 "But more than this: There are many single regiments whose 
 members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all 
 arts, sciences, professions and whatever else is known in the 
 world, and there is scarcely one from which there could not be 
 selected a president, a cabinet, a congress, and perhaps a court, 
 abundantly competent to administer the government itself." 
 
 It was this high and sympathetic estimate of the talent and 
 capacity of the American people which enabled Mr. Lincoln to 
 rally and make effective the real strength of the country. 
 
 We cannot follow him in detail through those four years of 
 blood end fire — we cannot tell the story of the war — but there it 
 is in that record! There you see him pleading with the South; 
 uniting the North; holding onto the border states; watching the 
 newspapers; watching elections; watching public demonstrations; 
 watching Congress ; controlling the various executive departments ; 
 flanking copper-heads and peace Democrats; flanking his own un- 
 reasonable friends; flanking regiments of office and commission- 
 seekers, as well as regiments of rebels; raising troops; creating a 
 navy; studying maps; planning campaigns; making, encouraging, 
 stimulating, rebuking and unmaking generals ; protecting the pub- 
 lic credit; pondering foreign relations; solving great constitutional 
 problems; encouraging and comforting his soldiers and his people; 
 issuing a steady stream of messages, proclamations, decisions and 
 various state papers — all calm, matured, prudent, eloquent, wise; 
 destroying four million slaves and putting in their places four 
 million free men; rebuilding from the outside loyal state govern- 
 ments; collecting and spending millions upon millions of wealth; 
 holding as in the hollow of his hand the lives and properties of 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 195 
 
 more than half a continent ; wielding a power really as great and 
 absolute as any despot ever had in history, yet exercising that 
 power reluctantly, mercifully and with scrupulous and painful re- 
 gard to every constitutional limitation and every individual right. 
 
 There he stands for four awful years, hasting not, resting not, 
 looking forward and backward, surveying all, controlling all, 
 like Fate or Providence itself. Calmly he takes each man's cen- 
 sure; steadfastly he reserves his judgment; nothing too soon; 
 nothing too late. The people must have time to think; the battle 
 is theirs. Emancipation cannot come at once; its necessity must 
 be seen; the border states must, if possible, be held. McClellan 
 must be kept awhile; till the people and the army can see him 
 as he is. Negro regiments will not do at first, but negro regi- 
 ments come as Northern prejudice melts. On this general and 
 that, on this question and on that, he bides his time. The present 
 is not oil; there is the future. The army is not all; there are the 
 people. In the midst of a war, the most gigantic of modern times, 
 every move and measure must in sixty-four, in accordance with 
 the constitution, be submitted to the people; the people must be 
 held as well as fields of battle — for Democratic measures will^ 
 never save a nation. 
 
 And so in the fulness of time all is submitted to the people and 
 by the people approved; and the war goes on and the great task 
 is finally performed. The clear, simple, definite issue is abol- 
 ished ; the Declaration restored, the Constitution intact, the Union 
 preserved, and established on a firmer foundation. Is there not 
 some evidence here of intellect and leadership ? 
 
 We know from many speeches delivered on that journey from 
 Springfield to Washington, that Mr. Lincoln himself had Ray- 
 mond's doubts about his head and Phillips's doubts about his fit- 
 ness to lead. let us hope that in those last bright days in early 
 
196 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 April, 1865, when he was down there at City Point sending in 
 glad tidings hour by hour to the stern old lion of the war de- 
 partment — the victory sure, the burden lifted — that he allowed 
 himself a little pleasant human consciousness of the greatness 
 of his leadership and the grandeur of his achievements; that for 
 one fleeting moment he opened his heart to "the gentle pride and 
 joy of noble fame." 
 
 Great as was Lincoln's intellectual endowment, it was not his 
 greatest. 
 
 "A power was his beyond the touch of art, 
 Of armed strength; his pure and mighty heart." 
 
 We may pass over the dry, uninteresting, unpoetic virtues. He 
 had no vices; he was scrupulously honest and scrupulously truth- 
 ful. These things make an admirable man, but not necessarily 
 an adorable one. Lincoln was adorable! His soul seems inde- 
 scribably spacious. The mere cataloguing of admirable characteris- 
 tics with incidents and illustrations will not convey the full sense 
 of his magnanimity. 
 
 Take his loyalty, his faithfulness, his deep and abiding rever- 
 ence for his country's institutions. He hated slavery. Notwith- 
 standing this, he said: "We are under a legal obligation to catch 
 and return the runaway slaves. I confess I hate to see them 
 hunted down and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil, 
 but I bite my lips and keep quiet." At another time he said, 
 "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. I cannot re- 
 member when I did not so think and feel; and yet I have never 
 understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted 
 right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was 
 in the oath I took that I would preserve, protect and defend the 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 197 
 
 Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office 
 without taking the oath, nor was it in my view that I might take 
 an oath to get power and break the oath in using the power." 
 
 Thus in every emergency we find him slow and reluctant in 
 the assumption and exercise of unusual or extraordinary powers 
 and swift and eager in laying them down. To him, the law, the 
 Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, are sacred and holy. 
 
 He was very anxious about the election in 1864. Doubtless he 
 had some wish for personal approval and vindication, but we 
 cannot see this personal motive in him very strong. We know he 
 was weary; we know he was heavy-laden; we see him as pic- 
 tured by Carpenter, gazing out toward the Virginia horizon and 
 repeating to himself: 
 
 "How sleep the brave who sunk to rest 
 By all their country's wishes blest," 
 
 and he goes on: "How willingly would I change places with the 
 humblest private who sleeps to-night on the banks of the Poto- 
 mac!" This was his deep mood; the end was drawing nigh for 
 him ; he had passed through the fiery furnace ; the desire for earth- 
 ly reward could not have been pulling very hard at his heart- 
 strings then; but he believed that the fate of the blacks, the fate 
 of the nation, the fate of humanity, hung upon that election; and 
 he was extremely anxious for Republican victory. And yet, de- 
 siring it so much, wielding a power so vast, observe how fair, how 
 just, how scrupulous he is ! 
 
 Consider his unselfishness. See how devoted he is to his cause 
 and how careless of his own personal success — how inconsiderate 
 always of Abraham Lincoln. In '54 he gave way to Trumbull to 
 make sure of a vote in the Senate against the extension of slavery. 
 
198 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 In '58 he deliberately risked defeat by Douglas in order to make 
 sure of national Republican success in '60. In the Douglas can- 
 vass he says: "I claim no extraordinary exemption from personal 
 ambition; that I like preferment as well as the average man may 
 be admitted; but I protest that I have not entered this hard con- 
 test solely or even chiefly for a mere personal motive." 
 
 We cannot think of Lincoln as in the ordinary sense ambitious. 
 Public affairs do not present themselves to him as an arena, a race- 
 course, for Abraham Lincoln; but as a field or a vineyard to be 
 made fruitful for the common good. 
 
 When he comes to the presidential chair, how free he is of all 
 consciousness of Lincoln, how unspotted by pride of any sort, how 
 extremely careful of the feelings and prejudices and honor of 
 other men, how careless of his own. The first inaugural is so pa- 
 thetic in its appeal to the seceding states that it has been crit- 
 icised as unmanly. To the border states he said : "I do not argue. 
 I beseech that you make arguments for yourselves." 
 
 All there is of Abraham Lincoln — his pride and dignity and 
 honor, so-called, and reputation — every feeling and emotion of just 
 and proper resentment — everything but principle — he is ever will- 
 ing to sacrifice to attain the great end. 
 
 Greater than all this was his justice, his fairness toward the 
 South, his sympathy with the Southern people, his magnanimity 
 toward even the leaders of the Rebellion. 
 
 In the matter of slavery the South was guilty, but the North 
 was not innocent. The South kept slaves, but the North used the 
 sugar and cotton and so shared in the profit. "God gives to both 
 North and South," he said, "this terrible war as the woe due to 
 those by whom the offense cometh." 
 
 He did not slur over or ignore the guilt of secession, but if you 
 will observe him throughout the four years of his service, with 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 199 
 
 the press misrepresenting him; radical anti-slavery leaders stab- 
 bing him; the public at times misunderstanding him; the gov- 
 ernors and generals complaining of him; his enemies jeering, his 
 friends faltering, doubting and scolding; with armies meeting dis- 
 aster after disaster; with the Union he loved shattered into frag- 
 ments; with the slavery he hated securing perhaps a still firmer 
 foothold ; with the cause of popular institutions trembling in the 
 balance ; with the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, 
 the wail of the widowed and fatherless ringing in his ears; torn, 
 wounded, crushed in every way; suffering as only One suffered — 
 there yet is not a note of scorn, not even an epithet of hate, not 
 a word of bitterness in all that matchless record ! 
 
 He had the gentlest, tenderest heart that ever beat. He could 
 be firm. General Grant wired in August, 1864, that he was 
 unwilling to break his hold where he then was. To which the 
 President replied, ''Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull- 
 dog grip and chew and choke as much as possible." This is an 
 order stern and strong enough to please the most resolute, and 
 yet we know he had the gentlest, tenderest heart that ever beat. 
 It was always so. 
 
 Riding across the prairies of Illinois with his fellow lawyers 
 on the circuit, he discovered one day some new-fledged birds, 
 blown too early out of the nest, in great distress. He stopped, dis- 
 mounted, gathered the little frightened creatures in his great 
 hand and hunted till he found the nest and put them back. Walk- 
 ing down a street of Springfield on one occasion after his return 
 from Congress, he found a little girl weeping. She was to go on a 
 journey, her trunk was packed, the train was almost due, but the 
 baggageman was missing. It was all arranged in a moment, 
 and a huge ex-Congressman, with a trunk on his shoulder and a 
 little girl by the hand, reached the station just in time. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ■William Scott, a lad from Vermont, stood guard one night in 
 place of a sick friend. The next night he was detailed on his own 
 account. He was caught asleep, tried, found guilty, and sen- 
 tenced to be shot by his own comrades. And thereupon, the great 
 gentle-hearted President of the United States, commander-in-chief 
 of the army and navy, throwing aside all his overwhelming cares 
 and duties, went in person to Chain Ridge and hunted up William 
 Scott, and investigated the circumstances, and issued such orders 
 that William Scott died a martyred hero fighting for his coun- 
 try, and not a condemned and disgraced traitor. 
 
 Hundreds of such instances are known. He is always saying, 
 "It will do the boy no good to shoot him." Everywhere you find 
 yearning and pathetic appeals for opportunity to pardon. He 
 never seeks excuse for severity — but always excuse for clemency. 
 He is always trying to evade what he calls "this butchering busi- 
 ness." His tenderness of heart is by no means confined to ques- 
 tions of life and death. He appeals to have a boy's pay restored. 
 "Loss of pay falls so hard upon poor families. He wants no stain 
 or shadow upon any soldier's record for immaterial causes. 
 Nothing more impresses you in his letters than the effort he makes 
 to wound no man's feelings unnecessarily. When he says it 
 pains him not to make the appointment asked for, you know it 
 does. His sympathy is not assumed — it is not diplomatic; it is 
 not "a glove of velvet on a hand of steel"; it is deep, sincere, in- 
 exhaustible. This is not a hand of steel at all, but a warm, kind, 
 human, ungloved hand of flesh and blood. 
 
 With so much gentleness, tenderness and sympathy, no wonder 
 he is described as — 
 
 "That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 
 For storms to beat on." 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES WILLIS GLEED 
 
 And how the storms beat and what suffering is his! His proc- 
 lamations plead and pray. His military dispatches sob. "How is 
 it now, how is it now?" he asks. How pathetically thankful he 
 is for every bit of good news. "A thousand thanks for the relief 
 your dispatches give me." He suffers, but he does not flinch, 
 he does not stop his ears ; he will, he must, know all, feel for all, 
 care for all. Yet each added month of torture finds him gentler, 
 kinder, tenderer. He loves most who suffers most. Nothing in 
 all that record to incite any man to hate; not a page to harden 
 any man's heart ; nothing that does not seem to cleanse and melt. 
 "Die when I may," he said a little before the end, "I want it said 
 of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle 
 and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow." 
 And so through all this rude business of battle he planted flowers 
 to the end. 
 
 His leligion was to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly 
 with his God. How deep through all his fiery trials was his 
 trust, how simple and sincere his faith, how complete his sub- 
 mission. "And thus having chosen our course," he said in the 
 beginning, without guile and with pure purpose, "let us renew 
 our trust in God and go forward without fear and with manly 
 hearts." And toward the end, "The purposes of the Almighty 
 are perfect and must prevail. We hoped for a happy termina- 
 tion of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best and 
 has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was not a self-made man, nor a luck-made man, but 
 a God-made man. God needed him and God made him. God 
 guided and sustained him. "And he was not, for God took him." 
 When the great sad eyes were closed, Stanton said, "And now he 
 belongs to the ages." A million soldiers sobbed, "My Captain, 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 my Captain !" A nation bowed its head in grief and hearts were 
 washed with tears. 
 
 Thank God for Abraham Lincoln. However lightly the words 
 may sometimes pass our lips, let us speak them now and always 
 of this man, sincerely, solemnly, reverently; as so often dying 
 soldiers and bereaved women and little children spoke them. 
 Thank God for Abraham Lincoln — for the Lincoln who died and 
 whose ashes rest in Springfield — for the Lincoln who lives in the 
 hearts of the American people — in their widened sympathies and 
 uplifted ideals. Thank God for the work he did, is doing and is 
 to do. 
 
 Thank God for Abraham Lincoln! 
 
THE SEVENTEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNEE 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1903 
 
 Address of 
 HON. FRANK S. BLACK 
 
 / 
 
FRANK SWETT BLACK, LL.D. 
 
 Ex- Governor Black was born in Limington, Me., in 
 1853, and graduated at Dartmouth, in 1875. For sev- 
 eral years he was employed in editorial and literary 
 work. He was admitted to the Bar in 1879. From 
 1895-7 lie served as a member of Congress and from 
 1897-99 as Governor of the State of New York. 
 
 I 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, there are subjects upon 
 which nothing new can be said, but which still arouse the 
 fervor awakened at their first enunciation. If the song was 
 true when it started on its journey it will be sung as long 
 as human hearts vibrate and human tongues retain the 
 power of speech; it will be lisped by those tottering on toward 
 the end and echoed by those whose hearts are filled with the 
 promise and the glow of youth. If the product was genuine when 
 it passed from the Creator's hand, it will neither be dimmed by 
 age nor cheapened by familiarity; for honor is not decreased by 
 contact, and truth is never out of tune. If none of the old stories 
 are ever to be retold, many a noble inspiration must be lost and 
 many a tender chord must remain untouched. 
 
 This is the age, I know, when the search is at its height for the 
 new and marvelous, and in this eagerness the primeval forests 
 are swept away, the bowels of the earth are punctured, and even 
 on the remotest sea the observant eye detects the fiutter of a sail. 
 The watchword is energy, the goal is success, but in the fever of 
 modern enterprise a moment's rest can do no harm. We must not 
 only acquire, we must retain. We must not only learn, we must 
 remember. The newest is not always the best. The date or lustre 
 of the coin does not determine its metal. The substance may be 
 plain and unobtrusive and still be gold. Whoever chooses without 
 
2o6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 a proper test may die both a pauper and a fool. The paintings of 
 recent times have evoked the praise of critics, and yet thousands 
 still pay their homage to an older genius. Modem literature is 
 ablaze with beauty and with power, and yet millions are still 
 going to one old and thumbworn text for their final consolation. 
 
 Remembering the force of these examples, it will be profitable 
 sometimes to step one side for the serious contemplation of rugged, 
 lasting qualities, in whatever age or garb they have appeared. 
 The hero of an hour will pass as quickly as he came. The flash- 
 light will dazzle and blind, but when the eyes are rubbed the 
 impression has passed away, but the landscape that comes slowly 
 into view with the rising sun, growing more resplendent and dis- 
 tinct with his ascending power, and fading gently from the vision 
 at the approach of night, will remain in the mind forever to il- 
 luminate, to strengthen and to cheer. And men are like impres- 
 sions. There are more examples of the flashlight kind than there 
 are fireflies on a summer's night, but there is no nobler representa- 
 tive of the enduring and immortal than he in whose name this 
 event is celebrated. Whoever imparts a new view of his char- 
 acter must tell it to the newborn, to whom all things are new, 
 for to the intelligent and mature his name and virtues have been 
 long familiar. His was the power that commanded admiration 
 and the humanity that invited love; mild but inflexible, just but 
 merciful, great but simple, he possessed a head that commanded 
 men and a heart that attracted babes. His conscience was strong 
 enough to bear continual use. It was not alone for public occa- 
 sions nor great emergencies. It was never a capital, but always 
 a chart. It was never his servant, to be dismissed at will, but 
 his companion, to be always at his side. It was with him, but 
 never behind him, for he knew that a pursuing conscience is an 
 accuser, and not a guide, and brings remorse instead of comfort. 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 207 
 
 His greatness did not depend upon his title, for greatness was Ms 
 when the title was bestowed. He leaned upon no fiction of aris- 
 tocracy, and kissed no hand to obtain his rank, but the stamp of 
 nobility and power which he wore was conferred upon him in that 
 log hut in Kentucky that day in 1809 when the eyes that first 
 beheld that sad and homely face were the eyes of Nancy Hanks — 
 and it was conferred by a power which, unlike earthly potentates, 
 never confers a title without a character that will adorn it. 
 When we understand the tremendous advantages of a humble 
 birth, when we realize that the privations of youth are the pillars 
 of strength to maturer years, then we shall cease to wonder that 
 out of such obscure surroundings as watched the coming of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln should spring the colossal and supreme figure of 
 modern history. 
 
 Groves are better than temples, fields are better than gorgeous 
 carpetings, rail fences are better than lines of kneeling slaves, 
 and the winds are better than music if you are raising heroes 
 and founding governments. 
 
 Those who understand these things and have felt the heart 
 of nature beat will not wonder that this man could stand the 
 shock and fury of war, and yet maintain that calm serenity which 
 enabled him to hear above the roar of the storm that enveloped 
 him the low, smothered cry that demanded the freedom of a race. 
 
 If you look for qualities that dazzle and bewilder you must 
 seek them elsewhere than in the character of Abraham Lincoln. 
 It was not by show or glitter, or by sound, that the great mo- 
 ments of history were marked and the great deeds of mankind 
 were wrought. The color counts for nothing. It is the fibre 
 alone that lasts. The precept will be forgotten unless the deed 
 is remembered. The wildest strains of martial music will pass 
 away on the wind, while the grim and deadly courage of the 
 
2o8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 soldier, moving and acting without a word, will mark the spot 
 where pilgrims of every race will linger and worship forever. 
 
 No character in the world more clearly saw the worth of sub- 
 stance and the mockery of show, and no career ever set in such 
 everlasting light the doctrine that although vanity and pretence 
 may flourish for a day, there can be no lasting triumph not found- 
 ed on the truth. 
 
 The life of Lincoln moved upon that high, consistent plane 
 which the surroundings of his youth inspired. Poverty is a hard 
 but oftentimes a loving nurse. If Fortune denies the luxury of 
 wealth, she makes generous compensation in that greater love 
 which they alone can ever know who have faced privations to- 
 gether. The child may shiver in the fury of the blast which no 
 maternal tenderness can shield him from, but he may feel a help- 
 less tear drop upon his cheek which will keep him warm till the 
 snows of time have covered his hair. It is not wealth that counts 
 in the making of the world, but character. And character is 
 best formed amid those surroundings where every waking hour 
 is filled with struggle, where no flag of truce is ever sent, and 
 only darkness stays the conflict. Give me the hut that is small 
 enough, the poverty that is deep enough, the love that is great 
 enough, and I will raise from them the best there is in human 
 character. 
 
 This lad, uncouth and poor, without aid or accidental circum- 
 stance, rising as steadily as the sun, marked a path across the sky 
 so luminous and clear that there is not one to mate it to be dis- 
 covered in the heavens, and throughout its whole majestic length 
 there is no spot or blemish in it. 
 
 That love of justice and fair play, and that respect for order 
 and the law, which must underlie every nation that would long 
 endure, were deeply embedded in his nature. These, I know, are 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 209 
 
 qualities destitute of show and whose names are never set to music, 
 but unless there is in the people's heart a deep sense of their ever- 
 lasting value, that people will neither command respect in times 
 of their prosperity nor sympathy in the hour of their decay. These 
 are the qualities that stand the test when hurricanes sweep by. 
 These are the joints of oak that ride the storm, and when the 
 clouds have melted and the waves are still, move on serenely in 
 their course. Times will come when nothing but the best can save 
 us. Without warning and without cause, out of a clear and 
 smiling sky may descend the bolt that will scatter the weaker 
 qualities to the winds. We have seen that bolt descend. There 
 is danger at such a time. The hurricane will pass like the rush- 
 ing of the sea. Then is the time to determine whether govern- 
 ments can stand amid such perilous surroundings. The American 
 character has been often proved superior to any test. No danger 
 can be so great and no calamity so sudden as to throw it off its 
 guard. This great strength in times of trial and this self-re- 
 straint in times of wild excitement have been attained by years 
 of training, precept and experience. Justice has been seen so 
 often to emerge triumphant from obstacles which seemed to chain 
 her limbs and make the righteous path impossible, that there is 
 now rooted in the American heart the faith that, no matter how 
 dark the night, there will somehow break through at the appointed 
 hour a light which shall reveal to eager eyes the upright forms 
 of Justice and the Law, still moving hand in hand, still supreme 
 over chaos and despair, the image and the substance of the world's 
 sublime reliance. 
 
 I should not try, if all the time were mine, to present Lincoln 
 as an orator, lawyer, statesman or politician. His name and his 
 performances in the lines which he pursued have been cut into the 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 rock of American history with the deepest chisel yet made use of 
 on this continent. 
 
 But it is not by the grandeur of his powers that he has most 
 appealed to me, but rather by those softer, homelier traits which 
 bring him down to a closer and more affectionate view. 
 
 The mountain that pushes its summit to the clouds is never so 
 magnificent to the observer on the plain below as when by some 
 clear and kindly light its smaller outlines are revealed. 
 
 And Lincoln was never more imposing than when the milder 
 attributes of his nature came in view. He was genuine, he was 
 affectionate, and after all is said and the end is reached what is 
 there without these two? You may measure the heights and 
 sound the depths; you may gain the great rewards of power and 
 renown; you may quiver under the electric current of applause — 
 the time will come when these will fall from you like the rags 
 that cover your body. The robes of power and the husks of pre- 
 tense will alike be stripped away, and you must stand at the end 
 as you stood at the beginning, revealed. Under such a test 
 Abraham Lincoln might stand erect, for no man loved the hum- 
 bler, nobler traits more earnestly than he. Whatever he pre- 
 tended to be, he was; genuine and sincere, he did not need em- 
 bellishment. There is nothing in the world which needs so little 
 decoration or which can so well afford to spurn it altogether as 
 the absolutely genuine. Imitations are likely to be exposed, 
 unless carefully ornamented. Too much embellishment generally 
 covers a blemish in the construction. It therefore happens that 
 the first rate invariably rejects adornment and the second rate 
 invariably puts it on. The difference between the two can be 
 discovered at short range, and safety from exposure lies only 
 in imperfect examination. If the vision is clear and the inspec- 
 tion careful, there is no chance for the sham ever to be taken for 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR FRANK S. BLACK 211 
 
 the genuine. And that is why it happens that among all the 
 forms of activity in this very active age no struggle is more sharp 
 than that of the first rate to be found out and of the second not 
 to be. It is easier to conceal what a thing is than to prove it to 
 be what it is not. The first requires only concealment, the second 
 requires demonstration. Sooner or later the truth will appear. 
 Some time the decorations will fall off, and then the blemish will 
 appear all the greater because of the surprise at finding it. 
 
 None have less to fear from such a test than Abraham Lincoln, 
 and his strength in that regard arose, it seems to me, from the 
 preservation through all his life of that fondness for his early 
 home, of the tender recollections of his family and their strug- 
 gles, which kept his sympathy always warm and young. He was 
 never so great but that the ties of his youth still bound him. He 
 was never so far away but that he could still hear the note of the 
 evening bird in the groves of his nativity. 
 
 They say the tides of the ocean ebb and flow by a force which, 
 though remote, always retains its strength. And so with this 
 man, whether he rose or fell, whether he stood in that giant-like 
 repose that distinguished him among his fellow men, or exer- 
 cised that unequaled power, which, to my mind, made him the 
 foremost figure of the world, yet he always felt the tender and in- 
 visible chord that chained him to his native rock. In whatever 
 field he stood he felt the benign and sobering influences of his 
 early recollections. They were the rock to which he clung in 
 storms, the anchor which kept his head to the wind, the balm 
 which sustained him in defeat and ennobled him in the hour of 
 triumph. 
 
 I shall not say he had not his faults, for is there any hope that 
 man will pass through this vale of tears without them ? Is there 
 any danger that his fellow-men will fail to detect and proclaim 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 them? He was not small in anything; he was carved in deep 
 lines like all heroic figures, for dangerous altitudes and great 
 purposes. And as we move away from him, and years and events 
 pass between us, his form will still be visible and distinct, for 
 such characters, built upon courage and faith, and that loyalty 
 which is the seed of both, are not the playthings, but the mas- 
 ters of time. 
 
 How long the names of men will last no human foresight can 
 discover, but I believe that even against the havoc and confusion 
 in which so many names go down, the fame of Lincoln will stand 
 as immovable and as long as the pyramids against the rustle of 
 the Egyptian winds. 
 
THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1904 
 
 Address of 
 
 HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 
 
I 
 
 HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 Mr. Mabie was bom in Cold Spring, N. Y., in 1846. 
 He graduated from Williams College and Columbia Uni- 
 versity. He has been for several years associate editor 
 of "The Outlook"; and is the author of numerous vol- 
 umes of essays, of which the best known are "My Study 
 Fire," 1890 and 1894; "Essays in Literary Interpreta- 
 tion," 1892; "Books and Culture," 1898; "William 
 Shakspere — Poet, Dramatist and Man," 1900; "Works 
 and Days," 1902; "The Great Word," 1905. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen — Among the fairy stories of 
 achievement that have been told, or better still, that have been 
 lived on this continent, none certainly is more inspiring than that 
 which is told of the man whose memory we recall to-night. And 
 I can think of nothing for the moment more profitable than to 
 trace the stages by which this man fitted himself for the great 
 work which he so magnificently performed. It has been the 
 theory in this country — we are fast learning better — that heroes 
 are born, not made. As a matter of fact the hero must not only 
 be born, but made. In our emphasis upon individual initiative, 
 upon the native force of the man, upon the power of character, 
 we have sometimes undervalued the power and the necessity of 
 education. We are in the condition, I think, of the man who was 
 asked if he played the violin, and replied: "I don't know; I never 
 have tried." This attitude was illustrated by the small boy in 
 the country town, the hope and pride of his family, who was sent 
 to the office of the village lawyer to study law, and at the end of 
 the first day when his father said to him: "Well, Jim, what do 
 you think of the law?" ''I don't think much of it," he replied; 
 "'tain't what they say it is. I am sorry I learned it." 
 
 Every natural force, every native talent, which is to reach its 
 end, its highest development, must be trained, and there never 
 yet was a great force well directed to a great end which was 
 
2i6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 not intelligently directed, and never a great man climbed to a 
 great height who did not plan his ascent, never a great achieve- 
 ment made that was not made as the result of a long preparation. 
 The victories of life are not to be explained on the ground where 
 they are won. The victories of life, like victories of war, are won 
 years in advance of the day when the battle is waged. The vic- 
 tory in Port Arthur a day or two ago was not won suddenly, be- 
 cause a group of audacious and brave men dashed without intelli- 
 gence or forethought or premeditation into that great harbor. 
 It has been in the way of being won every day for the last ten 
 years. The battle of Manila was not won in the harbor of 
 Manila; it was won years before at Annapolis, and it was won 
 again in the preparation at Hong Kong. Never a great deed 
 done that is not done because a man has made himself ready to do 
 the deed. No man ever yet rose obscure, summoned by any sud- 
 den call in any great assembly, and sat down famous because the 
 hour inspired him. No man, as you know, ladies and gentlemen, 
 from long and suffering experience, ever has anything in him 
 when he is on his feet that he did not have in him when he sat 
 in his chair. But when, as sometimes happens, a man is suddenly 
 called out by some sudden emergency and says the word that 
 goes ringing home to the very heart of the Nation, you will 
 find that that speech has been in preparation perhaps all the 
 earlier years of his life, just as Webster's superb description of 
 British rule following the sun's came to him years before its de- 
 livery on the citadel of Quebec and awaited the hour and the place 
 when it could be brought from the silence in which it was waiting 
 all those years. No man ever does anything great by accident. 
 Men do great things because they have the capacity to do them 
 and because they have trained that capacity. They make g^reat 
 
ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 217 
 
 achievements because there is in them the force of heroism and 
 because also they have prepared themselves to snatch the prize 
 when the opportunity arises. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln is often numbered among the uneducated, and 
 his career is pointed out among those careers which are supposed 
 to stimulate the man who relies wholly on natural capacity, na- 
 tive pluck and ambition. All these qualities Abraham Lincoln 
 had, but I venture to say that no man in Abraham Lincoln's time 
 was better educated than he, and perhaps no man was so well 
 educated as he to do the work which God appointed him to do. 
 
 He was born of heroic stock, and he educated himself to be the 
 hero that he became. There is no accident in that long career, 
 no chance in that magnificent ascent from the old frontier to 
 the martyr's place in Washington and to the larger place in the 
 Pantheon of the world's heroes. Every step of that ascent was 
 made with patient feet and intelligent purpose, and with fore- 
 cast and grasp on the things that were to be done and the prepa- 
 ration that was to be made for the doing of them. I believe that 
 Abraham Lincoln's education can be traced just as definitely as 
 the education of William E. Gladstone, as thoroughly trained a 
 public man as our time, or perhaps any time, has known. Do not 
 make the mistake, however, that we are so much in the habit 
 of making, of identifying education entirely with academic or 
 formal processes. Fortunate is the man who has the aid of the 
 best instrumentalities and influences in his training; but a man 
 does not need to go to a university in order to become educated, 
 and there are thousands of men who do go to universities with- 
 out becoming educated. Education may be gotten along the solid 
 highway which it has taken the best thought and the best brain 
 and the greatest self-denial of men in all generations to build, or 
 it may be taken in every by-path by which an inspiring and fore- 
 
318 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 casting soul makes its way out of obscurity into reputation and 
 influence. 
 
 Born on the old frontier, under conditions so crude and harsh 
 that it is almost impossible for us to recall them vividly to-day, the 
 man whom we honor to-night had the smallest possible opportu- 
 nities of formal education. His schooling altogether, as he has 
 told us, was by "littles," and those littles were compassed within 
 a year. Of the text-book, the blackboard and the recitation he 
 knew little; but from the beginning he seems to have been pos- 
 sessed with one of the greatest passions and one of the most lib- 
 erating that can take hold of a man's soul — a passion for knowl- 
 edge. In every class of which he was a member he stood at the 
 head, and by the testimony of the boys who stood with him, he 
 easily passed them all. Every book he could lay his hands on 
 he mastered. From the very beginning his eager feet seemed to 
 have turned to the fore; that open, keen, acute mind of his seems 
 to have fastened upon everything that could educate him; every 
 bit of knowledge, every bit of spare time. Lincoln compassed 
 one great secret; he learned the secret of putting detached fiv& 
 and ten minutes together, and sometimes I think that a man that 
 has learned how to husband his minutes and put the detached min- 
 utes together, has gained the power of becoming a highly educated 
 man. Lincoln had a few books. You know it has been said that 
 only three books are necessary to make a library — the Bible, 
 Shakespeare and Blackstone's Commentaries. All these books Lin- 
 coln had ; every one of those books Lincoln knew intimately. But 
 Lincoln had other books as well. He had, to begin with, that 
 great literature in sixty-six volumes with which many of us are 
 now so unfamiliar, that we call the Bible; a library which in- 
 cludes almost every literary form, which touches the loftiest 
 heights of human aspiration and sounds the depths of human ex- 
 
ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 219 
 
 perience and conveys truth to us in the noblest eloquence, both of 
 prose and of verse. This library was sufficient in itself for a 
 man who could read it as Lincoln could, without the aid of com- 
 mentaries and with the flash of the imagination, the power of 
 going to the place where a book lives, which is worth all other 
 kinds of power in dealing with the book. Such a man could be 
 lifted out of provincialism, not only into the great movement of 
 the world, but into the companionship of some of the loftiest of 
 souls that have ever lived, by this single book. And then he had 
 that mine of knowledge of life and of character, ^sop's Fables, 
 at his fingers' ends, so that in all his talk, and later in public 
 life, these fables served the happiest uses of illustration; and he 
 had that masterpiece of clear presentation, Kobinson Crusoe. He 
 was intimately familiar with that well of English undefiled which 
 I think more than any other influence colored and shaped his style 
 — Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 We who read not only three or four newspapers in the morning 
 but a half a dozen different editions during the day, who live not 
 only in our own time but in the minutes of that time, who 
 rarely have a chance to read a book, what do we know in this 
 busy age of the education that a man can get out of four great 
 books which deal not with the passing moments but with the 
 centuries, and for that matter, with the eternities? This was 
 the education that Abraham Lincoln had. 
 
 He borrowed that old-fashioned book which is responsible for 
 a great deal of misinformation, Weems' Life of Washington. And 
 when, in 1861, he spoke in the Senate at Trenton, he said that 
 so thoroughly had he absorbed that book, that he could see Wash- 
 ington crossing the Delaware and could recall all the details of 
 the brilliant march on Trenton and the brilliant march on Prince- 
 ton; those demonstrations of the patient generalship of Washing- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ton which first caught the attention of Europe and made him an 
 authority in the eyes of military experts. Lincoln borrowed that 
 book of a neighbor and took it home. After he had read it he 
 put it between the logs of the log cabin and in the night it rained, 
 and the water, penetrating the mud, soiled the book and discol- 
 ored it. When he saw it in the morning, he was in great trepida- 
 tion. He went to the man who owned it and told him the story, 
 feeling that nothing he could do could compensate for the injury 
 to that priceless volume. And this neighbor said: "Well, Abe, 
 seeing it's you I won't be hard on you; you give me three days* 
 corn shucking and you may have the book." And Lincoln took 
 the book and after he had read it he said to the same neighbor: 
 "I do not always intend to be logging and flat-boating and shuck- 
 ing corn ; I am going to study for a profession." 
 
 Later he came upon Shakespeare and Burns, whom he learned 
 afterwards to love, and whom he knew so intimately that he be- 
 came an acute critic of both writers. Now the man who knows 
 his Shakespeare knows pretty much all that is to be known of 
 life; and if he can put the Bible back of it, he has a very com- 
 plete education. 
 
 All the accounts tell us that Lincoln was always at work with 
 his books when he was not at work with his plough or some other 
 instrument. Whenever there was five minutes of time Lincoln 
 was using that time for study. At the end of the day he came 
 home, cut off a bit of corn bread, and, as one of his companions 
 tells us, drew up a chair, cocked his legs up higher than his head, 
 took out his book and read until the light faded ; and then he read 
 by what artificial light he could find. So that in season and out 
 of season this boy's passion led him from book to book, until within 
 the range of fifty miles there was not a volume which he had 
 not read. 
 
ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 
 
 Well, gentlemen, this would have made him what Bacon calls 
 a full man, but it would not have made him the man of expres- 
 sion which he later became. He not only had the passion for 
 knowledge, but he had the passion for expression, and there was 
 not a flat surface or smooth surface of any kind within his reach 
 that did not bear witness to his endeavor to train himself in the 
 use of language. The flat sides of logs, the wooden ash shovel, 
 the sides of shingles, scraps of paper, anything on which a man 
 could make a mark; on all these things Lincoln put his hiero- 
 glyphics, and these hieroglyphics were to spell out his fortune, 
 his influence and his power in the future. 
 
 Years afterwards, when he was making those marvelous speeches 
 in this part of the country which began in Cooper Union in this 
 city, a professor of English in one of our universities went to 
 hear him, attracted by his attitude on public questions, and was 
 astonished at his command of English, the purity, lucidity and 
 persuasiveness of his style. He heard him three times in succes- 
 sion and then called at his hotel and sent his card up, and when 
 Mr. Lincoln came into the room he said to him: "Mr. Lincoln, I 
 have come here to ask you a single question: 'Where did you get 
 your style V " Mr. Lincoln was astonished to know he had such 
 a thing as style, but the question being pressed home to him, he 
 thought a minute and said: "When I was a boy I began, and I 
 kept up for many years afterward, the practice of taking note of 
 every word spoken during the day or read during the day which 
 I did not understand, and after I went to bed at night I thought 
 of it in connection with the other words until I saw its meaning, 
 and then I translated it into some simpler word which I knew." 
 
 Now, gentlemen, if you knew the "Pilgrim's Progress" by heart 
 and you made it a practice every night to translate everything 
 you had heard during the day into language of the quality of the 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress, there is no English education I venture to 
 say in any university which would so thoroughly equip you to a 
 command of language and the power of persuasion. And that 
 was the way that Abraham Lincoln learned to use the kind of 
 English that he had at his fingers' ends. 
 
 That was a talking age — an age electric with the stir of 
 great questions. Men never met anywhere in Lincoln's neighbor- 
 hood and time that they did not instantly fall into discussion. 
 Books were few, newspapers much fewer in that time than this. 
 Whenever men met they began to talk. In every little gathering 
 at the crossroads, in every country tavern and country store and 
 school-house the endless debate went on. Lincoln had the best 
 practice which a man who was going to do his work could pos- 
 sibly have had in these endless discussions, in these countless 
 school-rooms in the Central West of that day; and it was noted 
 long before he had become a mature man that wherever that gaunt 
 figure was seen and that voice was uttering its speech, men were 
 glad to listen, just as they used to gather around the ragged 
 gown and the worn-out shoes of Sam Johnson at Oxford, because 
 this ragged undergraduate had something to say in a kind of 
 English that everybody could understand. 
 
 Lincoln had insatiable curiosity and he had rare opportunities; 
 he had this book education, persistently and intelligently carried 
 on; and he learned his language because he saw the value of it 
 and discovered the individual method ; and he had the practice in 
 speech of the time and the countiy in which he lived. All these 
 specifically trained him for expression. 
 
 But where did the man's larger education come from — his grasp 
 of great questions, his ability to discern fundamental principles, 
 his insight into the life of his time? Ah, gentlemen, that is the 
 education he got in the University of America. It is here that 
 
ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 223 
 
 we come face to face with the fundamental influences, and I be- 
 lieve the very noblest characteristic of the democratic life. There 
 are many points at which it is a serious question whether a de- 
 mocracy is the best form of government. If it be true, as a great 
 German publicist has said, that administration is two-thirds of 
 liberty, then certainly we have a great deal to learn before we 
 have developed the highest uses of liberty and mastered all its re- 
 sources. So far as protection to the individual is concerned, so 
 far as guardianship of privacy is concerned, so far as comfort 
 is concerned, so far as ministration to the sense of beauty is con- 
 cerned, we have a great deal to learn from our friends across the 
 sea, and it will be a blessed thing if we learn it in a century. 
 
 And it is a serious question, too, whether the democratic form 
 of government is not the most expensive form of government in 
 the world. So far as we have failed to realize the ideals of those 
 who cared most for it, we have failed because we have not been 
 willing to pay the price which our government exacts. It is 
 true, as Benjamin Kidd said, that the fundamental defect in Amer- 
 ica is the lack of civic self-sacrifice, and our institutions will never 
 be what they can be until our American people are willing to 
 pay a great deal more in time and strength and thought for their 
 public life than they have ever yet been willing to pay. But 
 one great redeeming quality at the heart of it all, the influence 
 that issues out of our life itself — of which Abraham Lincoln was 
 the product — is the American spirit. Out of the very heart of our 
 life came the influences which shaped Lincoln. There is nothing 
 so searching as the atmosphere of the country in which a man is 
 born. To be born in England is to be born to an inheritance of 
 fifteen hundred years of free civic life, to belief in patriotism and 
 honesty and honor and to respect for capacity and contempt for 
 weakness. To be born in America is to be born to the conception 
 
224 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 that a man is a man, no matter what his condition is; that every 
 man carries his fortune in his own hands, that all things are open, 
 and that in a democratic society every man goes to the place 
 where he belongs. 
 
 Now that spirit playing on Abraham Lincoln made him the 
 man that he was, opened every door to him, stimulated his am- 
 bition and drove him step by step up that long ascending way. No 
 man has ever yet shown a more remarkable power of being trained 
 by conditions and events than he — a poor, uneducated, untrained 
 boy on the old frontier, then a provincial lawyer, then a State 
 legislator, then a representative of his State in Congress, elected 
 by a section of his country, he became at last the President of 
 the United States. And it is his superb and unique honor that he 
 outgrew every trace of sectionalism as he went along. And al- 
 though he was called upon to rule over a divided household he 
 thought of it always, and he dealt with it always, as if it was 
 one and indivisible. 
 
 I do not need to tell you that a man who has this capacity for 
 growth; who left the frontier behind him, who outgrew Sangamon 
 County, who was larger than Illinois, who was greater than the 
 North, who became at last the President of the whole United 
 States, even in disunion, the first national President, was not ma- 
 chine-made. A politician in his skill, his knowledge, his adroit- 
 ness, he was a statesman by instinct and dealt with fundamental 
 principles; when he thought of the country he thought not of 
 the North, of the South, of the East or of the West, but the United 
 States of America. 
 
 Several years ago I was coming down from the Senate Cham- 
 ber in Washington in company with two of the oldest member-s of 
 that body, veterans in the public service. They began to recall 
 earlier times in their history, and they recalled that almost tragic 
 
ADDRESS OF HAMILTON W. MABIE, LL.D. 225 
 
 morning when Mr. Lincoln came to his Capitol rather as a fugitive 
 
 than as President of the United States. They remembered how he 
 
 came on to the floor of the House of Representatives, the body of 
 
 which they were both members, at that time, and how, as they 
 
 looked across in the dull light of that late February or early March 
 
 morning and saw that tall, gaunt, unkempt figure standing there, 
 
 although they both knew him and respected him, their hearts 
 
 sank and they wondered whether that ungainly man could be 
 
 equal to the crisis which they saw fast approaching. You know 
 
 how the men of his own party questioned and doubted, you know 
 
 the misgivings of the people at large, you know what a storm of 
 
 criticism and comment, suggestion and appeal broke over him; 
 
 you know how he seemed to waver sometimes from side to side, 
 
 how he seemed to be watching the current of public opinion. As 
 
 Mrs. Stowe has beautifully said, he was like a great cable, rising 
 
 and falling with every tide, and yet fast bound at either end. 
 
 You know how one by one the men of his own official family had 
 
 to learn that he was the master of his own administration; you 
 
 know how gradually the faith in his judgment and sagacity grew 
 
 in his own party ranks; you know how the people came to trust 
 
 him; how even his enemies, at least those who stood against him, 
 
 at last began to discern his nobility and his generosity; and then 
 
 at the very climax of his career, when the clouds parted at last 
 
 and the sun shone after that dreadful tempest, and the birds sang 
 
 once more, that last thunderbolt struck him and there began that 
 
 marvelous transformation which changed the uncouth boy of the 
 
 old frontier into the hero of the Nation and one of the great heroes 
 
 of modern times. 
 
 First, untutored vigor, then tempered strength, then a great 
 human character with infinite depths of patience and infinite 
 power of endurance. First, as Thorwaldsen has said, the clay 
 
226 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 model, then the plaster cast, then the finished marble. And when 
 at the end of that struggle the oldest of American universities 
 gathered her children about her to commemorate her own heroic 
 dead, and called upon one of the greatest American poets to sing 
 their requiem, Lowell made the "Commemoration Ode" — one of the 
 nearest approaches to great poetry yet achieved on this continent 
 — a pedestal on which to place the statue of one whom he called 
 "The First American." 
 
THE NINETEENTH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 13, 1905 
 
 Address of 
 HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 
 
JONATHAN PRENTISS DOLLIVER, LL.D, 
 
 Senator DoUiver was bom in 1858, near Kingwood, 
 Preston Co., W. Va., and graduated from West Virginia 
 University, in 1875. He was admitted to the bar in 1878 
 and established a practice in Iowa. From 1889- 1901 h« 
 was Member of Congress from the Tenth Iowa Dis- 
 trict, and from 1900 U. S. Senator from Iowa. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : It has been a good many 
 years, fourteen, I think, since I had the opportunity of joining 
 this club, and one would think that the lapse of that time would 
 be enough to get a man out of the habit of making after-dinner 
 speeches unless he had become, like my friend, Secretary Root, 
 and others here, hopelessly addicted to it. 
 
 The first thing that strikes me is that a good many people have 
 joined this club since I did, and the next thing, that you have had 
 the wisdom to invite your wives here to see that you get home 
 all right. 
 
 It is a circumstance of unusual interest that the President is 
 here; not counting it beneath our highest ofiicial dignity to 
 mingle freely with his political associates, in the party organiza- 
 tion of which he is a member, and to add the inspiration of his 
 eloquent counsel to their celebration of the birthday of the first 
 great Republican leader. For, while the memory of Abraham 
 Lincoln is too great to be claimed by a political party, too great 
 to belong to a single nation, too great to be absorbed in the re- 
 nown of one century, yet there is a sense so sacred that it barely 
 admits of the suggestion in which his name is our peculiar pos- 
 session, the most precious thing in our Republican inheritance. 
 The ministry of his life was to all parties; to all peoples; to all 
 ages. Sut to the children of the old Republican homestead has 
 
230 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 been confided, under the bonds of an especial obligation, the care 
 of his fame and the keeping of his faith. 
 
 Within less than half a century this man, once despised, once 
 derided, once distrusted and maligned, has been transfigured, in 
 the light of universal history, so that all men and all generations 
 of men may see him and make out if possible the manner of man 
 he was. His life in this world was not long, less than three score 
 years; only ten of them visible above the dead level of affairs. 
 Yet into that brief space events were crowded, so stupendous in 
 their ultimate significance, that we find ourselves laying down 
 the narrative which records them, with a strange feeling coming 
 over us, that may be after all we are not reading about a man 
 at all, but about some mysterious personality, in the hands of 
 the higher Powers, with a supernatural commission to help and 
 to bless the human race. Our book shelves were filling up so fast 
 with apocryphal literature of the Civil War that if it had not 
 been for the loving labors of the two men, John Hay and John 
 G. Nicolay, who knew him best, and have gathered up the frag- 
 ments of his life, so that nothing has been lost, we would have 
 had by this time only a blurred and doubtful picture of his re- 
 tiring and unpretentious character. 
 
 Some have told us that he was a great lawyer. He was noth- 
 ing of the sort. It is true that he grasped without apparent 
 effort the principles of the common law, and his faculties were 
 so normal and complete that he did not need a commentary, nor a 
 copy of the Madison papers, thumb-marked by the doubts and fears 
 of three generations, to make him sure that the men who made 
 the Constitution were building for eternity. But he practiced 
 law without a library, and all who were acquainted with him 
 testify that in a law suit he was of no account, unless he knew the 
 right was on his side. It was against his intellectual and his 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 231 
 
 moral grain to accept Lord Bacon's cynical suggestion that there 
 is no way of knowing whether a cause be good or bad till the jury 
 had brought in its verdict. 
 
 The familiar judicial circuit around Springfield, where he 
 cracked his jokes about the office stove in country taverns, where 
 he spoke to everybody by his first name and everybody liked to 
 hear him talk, did much for him in every way; but the noble 
 profession, so ably represented about this board, will bear me wit- 
 ness that an attorney who gives his advice away for nothing, who 
 does not have the foresight to ask for a retainer, and usually 
 lacks the business talent to collect his fee, whatever other merits 
 he may have, is not cut out by nature for a lawyer. I have talked 
 with many of the oldtime members of the bar at which he used 
 to practice law, thinking all the while of other things, and from 
 what they say I cannot help believing that the notion even then 
 was slowly forming in his mind, that he held a brief, with Power 
 of Attorney from on High, for the unnumbered millions of his 
 fellow men and was only loitering around the county seats of 
 Illinois until the case came on for trial. 
 
 Some tell us that he was a great orator. If that is so, the 
 standards of the schools, ancient and modern, must be thrown 
 away. Perhaps they ought to be; and when they are this curious 
 circuit-rider of the law; who refreshed his companions with 
 wit and argument from the well of English undefiled ; this cham- 
 pion of civil liberty, confuting Douglas with a remorseless logic, 
 cast in phrases rich with the homely wisdom of proverbial lit- 
 erature; this advocate of the people, head and shoulders above his 
 brethren, stating their case before the bar of history, in sentences 
 so simple that a child can follow them; surely such a one cannot 
 be left out of the company of the masters who have added some- 
 thing to the conquests of the mother tongue. He was dissatisfied 
 
232 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 with his modest address at Gettysburg, read awkwardly from poor- 
 ly written manuscript; and thought Edward Everett's oration 
 was the best he had ever heard, but Mr. Everett himself discerned 
 without a minute for reflection, that the little scrap of crumpled 
 paper which the President held in his unsteady hand that day 
 would be treasured from generation to generation after his own 
 laborious deliverance had been forgotten. The old school of ora- 
 tory and the new met on that rude platform among the graves 
 under the trees, and congratulated each other. They have not 
 met very often since, for both of them have been pushed aside 
 to make room for the essayists, the declaimers, the statisticians, 
 and other enterprising pedlars of intellectual wares, who have de- 
 scended like a swarm on all human deliberations. 
 
 He has been described as a great statesman. If by that you 
 mean that he was trained in the administrative mechanism of the 
 government, or that he was wiser than his day in the creed of 
 the party in whose fellowship he passed his earlier years, there is 
 little evidence of that at all; the most that can be said is that 
 he clung to the fortunes of the old Whig leadership through evil, 
 as well as good report, and that he stumped the county and after- 
 wards the State ; but the speeches which he made, neither he nor 
 anybody else regarded it important to preserve. His platform 
 from the first was brief and to the point. "I am in favor of a 
 national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement sys- 
 tem, and a high protective tariff." But while for half his life 
 he followed Henry Clay, like a lover more than a disciple, yet 
 when that popular hero died and Lincoln was selected to make 
 a memorial address in the old State House, he dismissed the prin- 
 ciples of his party creed without a word, and reserved his tribute 
 for the love of liberty and the devotion of the Union which shone 
 even to the end, in that superb career. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 233 
 
 To speak of Lincoln as a statesman, whatever adjectives you 
 use, opens no secret of his biography and rather seems to me to 
 belittle the epic grandeur of the drama in which he moved. Of 
 course he was a statesman; exactly so, Saul of Tarsus, setting out 
 from Damascus, became a famous traveller, and Christopher Co- 
 lumbus, inheriting a taste for the sea, became a mariner of high 
 repute. 
 
 There are some who have given a study, more or less profound, 
 to the official records of the rebellion who make of Lincoln an 
 exceptional military genius, skilful in the management of armies 
 and prepared better even than his generals to give direction to 
 their movements. I doubt this very much. He was driven into the 
 war department by the exigency of the times, and if he towered 
 above the ill-fitting uniforms, which made their way, through one 
 influence and another, to positions of brief command during the 
 first campaigns of the Civil War, it is not very high praise after 
 all. One thing, however, he must be given credit for; he per- 
 ceived the size of the undertaking which he had in hand, and he 
 kept looking until his eyes were weary for the man who could 
 grasp the whole field and get out of the Army what he knew 
 was in it. It broke his heart to see its efforts scattered and 
 thrown away by quarrels among its officers, endless in number, 
 and unintelligible for the most part to the outside world. When 
 he passed the command of the Army of the Potomac over to Gen- 
 eral Hooker, he did it in terms of reprimand and admonition, 
 which read like a father's last warning to a wayward son. He 
 told him that he had wronged his country and done a gross 
 injustice to a brother officer. Recalling Hooker's insubordinate 
 suggestion that the Army and the Government both needed a 
 dictator, he reminded him that "only those generals who gain 
 successes can set up dictators," and added, with a humor as grim 
 
234 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 as death, "what I now ask of you is military success, and I will 
 risk the dictatorship." If the General did not tear up his com- 
 mission when he read that letter it was because he was brave 
 enough to bear the severity of the naked truth. 
 
 All this time he had his eye upon a man in the West, who 
 had been doing an extensive business down in Tennessee, "a 
 copious worker and fighter, but a very meagre writer," as he 
 afterwards described him in a telegram to Burnside. He had 
 watched him with attentive interest, noticing particularly that 
 his plans always squared with the event; that he never regretted 
 to report; and after Vicksburg fell and the tide of invasion had 
 been rolled back from the borders of Maryland and Pennsylvania, 
 he wrote two letters, one to General Meade, calling him to a stem 
 account for not following up his victory, and one to General 
 Grant directing him to report to Washington for duty. The 
 letter to General Meade, now resting peacefully in Nicolay's col- 
 lection of the writings of Lincoln, all the fires of its wrath long 
 since gone out, was never sent. But General Grant got his. And 
 from that day there were no more military orders from the White 
 House, no exhortations to advance, no despatches to move upon 
 the enemy's works. He still had his own ideas how the job ought 
 to be done, but he did not even ask the General to tell him his. He 
 left it all to him. And as the plan of the great Captain unfolded, 
 he sent to his headquarters this exultant message: 
 
 "I begin to see it. You will succeed. God bless you all. 
 
 "A. Lincoln." 
 
 And so these two, each adding something to the other's fame, 
 go down to history together; God's blessing falling like a bene- 
 diction upon the memory of both. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 235 
 
 The whole world now knows his stature. But while he lived 
 hardly anybody was able to take his measure. The foremost 
 statesman of his Cabinet, after pestering him for a month with 
 contradictory pieces of advice, placed before him a memorandum, 
 grotesque in its assumption of superior wisdom, which ended with 
 an accommodating proposal to take the responsibilities of the 
 administration off his hands. After the battle of Bull Kun even 
 so incorruptible a patriot as Edwin M. Stanton, known in after 
 years as the organizer of victory, wrote to James Buchanan, then 
 living near the Capital in the quiet of his country seat at Wheat- 
 land, these words of mockery and contempt: 
 
 "The imbecility of the administration culminated in that 
 catastrophe; and irretrievable misfortune and national disgrace 
 never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of peaceful pur- 
 suits and national bankruptcy as the result of Lincoln's 'running 
 the machine' for five full months." 
 
 From the sanctum of the old Tribune, where for a generation 
 Horace Greeley had dominated the opinions of the people as no 
 American editor has done before or since his day, came a confi- 
 dential letter, a maudlin mixture of enterprise and despair; a 
 despair which, after seven sleepless nights, had given up the fight ; 
 an enterprise which sought for inside information of the inevita- 
 ble hour of the surrender near at hand. "You are not consid- 
 ered a great man," said Mr. Greeley for the President's eye alone. 
 
 Who is this, sitting all night long on a lounge in the public 
 offices of the White House, listening, with the comments of a 
 quaint humor, to privates and officers and scared Congressmen and 
 citizens, who poured across the Long Bridge from the first bat- 
 tlefield of the rebellion to tell their tale of woe to the only man 
 in Washington who had sense enough left to appreciate it, or 
 patience enough left to listen to it? Is it the log cabin student, 
 
236 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 learning to read and write by the light of the kitchen fire in 
 the woods of Indiana? It is he. Can it he the adventurous 
 voyager of the Missisippi, who gets ideas of lifting vessels over 
 riffles while he worked his frail craft clear of obstructions in the 
 stream; and ideas broad as the free skies, of helping nations 
 out of barbarism as he traced the divine image in the faces of men 
 and women chained together, under the hammer, in the slave- 
 market at New Orleans? It is he. Can it be the awkward farm 
 hand of the Sangamon who covered his bare feet in the fresh 
 dirt which his plow had turned up to keep them from getting 
 sunburned, while he sat down at the end of the furrow to rest 
 his team and to regale himself with a few more pages of worn 
 volumes borrowed from the neighbors? It is he. Can it be the 
 country lawyer who rode on horseback from county to county, 
 with nothing in his saddlebags except a clean shirt and the code 
 of Illinois to try his cases and to air his views in the cheerful 
 company which always gathered about the court house? It is 
 he. Is it the daring debater, blazing out for a moment with 
 the momentous warning "A house divided against itself cannot 
 stand," then falling back within the defenses of the Constitution, 
 that the cause of liberty, hindered already by the folly of its 
 friends, might not make itself an outlaw in the land? It is he. 
 Is it the weary traveller who begged the prayers of anxious neigh- 
 bors as he set out for the last time from home, and talked in lan- 
 guage sad and mystical of One who could go with him, and re- 
 main with them and be everywhere for good? It is he. 
 
 They said he laughed in a weird way that night on the sofa 
 in the public offices of the White House, and they told funny tales 
 about how he looked, and the comic papers of London and New 
 York portrayed him in brutal pictures of his big hands; hands 
 that were about to be stretched out to save the civilization of the 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 237 
 
 world; and his overgrown feet; feet that for four torn and bleed- 
 ing years were not to weary in the service of mankind. They 
 said that his clothes did not fit him; that he stretched his long 
 legs in ungainly postures; that he was common and uncouth in 
 his appearance. Some said that this being a backwoodsman was 
 becoming a rather questionable recommendation for a President 
 of the United States; and they recalled with satisfaction the grace 
 of courtly manners brought home from St. James'. Little did 
 they dream that the rude cabin yonder on the edge of the hill 
 country of Kentucky was about to be transformed by the tender 
 imagination of the people into a mansion more stately than the 
 White House; more royal than all the palaces of the earth; it 
 did not shelter the childhood of a king, but there is one thing 
 in this world more royal than a king — it is a man. 
 
 They said he jested and acted unconcernedly as he looked at peo- 
 ple through eyes that moved slowly from one to another in the 
 crowd. They did not know him; or they might have seen that 
 he was not looking at the crowd at all; that his immortal spirit 
 was girding for its ordeal. And if he laughed, it may be that 
 he heard cheerful voices from above; for had he not read some- 
 where that He that sitteth in the heavens sometimes looks down 
 with laughter and derision upon the impotent plans of men to 
 turn aside the everlasting purposes of God? 
 
 It took his countrymen the full four years to find Abraham 
 Lincoln out. By the light of the camp fires of victorious armies 
 they learned to see the outline of his gigantic figure, to assess the 
 integrity of his character, to comprehend the majesty of his con- 
 science; and when at last they looked upon his care-worn face 
 as the nation reverently bore his body to the grave, through their 
 tears they saw him exalted above all thrones in the affection of 
 the human race. 
 
238 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 We have been accustomed to think of the Civil "War as an affair 
 of armies, for we come of a fighting stock and the military instinct 
 in us needs little cultivation or none at all. But it requires no 
 very deep insight into the hidden things of history to see that 
 the real conflict was not between armed forces, was not on bat- 
 tlefields, nor under the walls of besieged cities; and that fact 
 makes Abraham Lincoln greater than all his generals, greater 
 than all his admirals, greater than all the armies and all the 
 navies that responded to his proclamation. He stands apart be- 
 cause he bore the ark of the covenant. He was making not his 
 own fight, not merely the fight of his own country, or of the pass- 
 ing generation. The stars in their courses had enlisted with him ; 
 he had a treaty, never submitted to the Senate, which made him 
 the ally of the Lord of Hosts, with infinite reinforcements at 
 his call. The battle he was waging was not in the fallen timber 
 about the old church at Shiloh; nor in the Wilderness of Vir- 
 ginia; he contended not alone with an insurrection of the slave 
 power; he was hand to hand with a rebellion ancient as selfish- 
 ness and greed which in all centuries has denied the rights of 
 man, made of human governments a pestilent succession of 
 despotisms and turned the history of our race into a dull recital 
 of crimes and failures and misfortunes. Thus he was caught up 
 like Ezekiel, prophet of Israel, and brought to the East gate of 
 the Lord's house; and when he heard it said unto him, "Son of 
 Man, these are the men who devise mischief," he knew what 
 the vision meant; for he understood better than any man who 
 ever lived what this endless struggle of humanity is, and how far 
 the nation of America had fallen away from its duty and its op- 
 portunity. 
 
 All his life there had dwelt in his recollection a little sentence 
 from an historic document which had been carelessly passed along 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 239 
 
 from one Fourth of July celebration to another, "All men are 
 created equal." To him the words sounded like an answer to a 
 question propounded by the oldest of the Hebrew sages, "If I 
 despise the cause of my man servant, or my maid servant, when 
 he contendeth with me, what shall I do when God riseth up ? Did 
 not He that made me make him?" — a strategic question that had 
 to be answered aright before democracy or any other form of 
 civil liberty could make headway in the world. All men are 
 created equal. He knew that the hand which wrote that sentence 
 was guided by a wisdom somewhat higher than the front porch 
 of a slave plantation in Virginia; that first principles overshadow 
 time and place ; and that when men take their lives in their hands 
 to lay the foundations of free nations, they must speak the truth 
 lest the heavens fall. With a sublime faith, shared within the 
 limits of their light by millions, he believed that sentence. He 
 had tested the depth of it till his plummet touched the founda- 
 tion of the earth. From his youth that simple saying had been 
 ringing in his ears. "All men are created equal." It was the 
 answer of the Eighteenth Century of Christ, to all the dim millen- 
 niums that were before Him; yet he had heard it ridiculed, nar- 
 rowed down to nothing and explained away. He understood the 
 meaning of the words and came to their defence. 
 
 Brushing away the wretched sophistries of partisan expediency, 
 he rescued the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson from obloquy and 
 contempt. "I think," he said, "that the authors of that notable 
 instrument intended to include all men. But they did not in- 
 tend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean 
 to say that all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral develop- 
 ment, or social capacity. They defined, with tolerable distinct- 
 ness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal — 
 equal, with certain inalienable rights among which are life, lib- 
 
240 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 erty and the pursuit of happiness. This they said and this they 
 meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that 
 all men were then actually enjoying that equality, nor that they 
 were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had 
 no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare 
 the right, so that the enforcement of it should follow as fast as 
 circumstances would permit. They meant to set up a standard 
 maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and re- 
 vered by all ; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even 
 though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated; there- 
 by constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augment- 
 ing the value and happiness of life to all people, of all colors, 
 everywhere." That was the message of Abraham Lincoln to the 
 nations of America. And as if to make it certain, that it was 
 no mere flourish of a joint debate, he turned aside on his trium- 
 phal journey to the Capital, just before he took the oath of office, 
 to repeat the sacred precepts of the Declaration in the hall at 
 Philadelphia, where our fathers first spoke them, and to add his 
 pledge to theirs that he would defend them with his life. 
 
 Here is the summit, the spiritual height, from which he was 
 able to forecast the doom of all tyrannies, the end of all slaveries, 
 the unconditional surrender of all the strongholds of injustice and 
 avarice and oppression; this is the mountain top from which he 
 sent down these inspiring words of good cheer and hope: "This 
 essentially is a people's contest; on the side of the Union, a strug- 
 gle to maintain in the world that form and substance of gov- 
 ernment, the leading object of which is to elevate the condition 
 of men, to lift artificial weights from shoulders; to clear the path 
 of laudable pursuit for all, and to afford all an unfettered start 
 and a fair chance in the race of life." No American, North or 
 South, regrets that this war for the Union ended as it did — "that 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER 241 
 
 we are not enemies, but friends." Nor can I help believing that 
 the words which he has spoken here to-night have brought the 
 President of the United States nearer to our brethren beyond the 
 line, once so real, now happily so imaginary, which formerly di- 
 vided and estranged our people. Thanks be unto God, we are one 
 nation and even in our partisan traditions we share in the heritage 
 of a common faith in the institutions founded by our fathers. As 
 Democrats we repeat the words "equal rights to all and special 
 privileges to none." As Republicans we answer, "an unfettered 
 start and a fair chance in the race of life." The doctrine is the 
 same, nor is the day as far off as some may think when the peo- 
 ple, without regard to the divisions of their political opinions, 
 shall treasure in thankful hearts, the blunt and fearless plat- 
 form of Theodore Roosevelt, "A square deal for every man, no less, 
 no more." The doctrine is the same, and if it is not true there 
 is no foundation for institutions such as ours. But the doctrine 
 is forever true, and by the memory of Abraham Lincoln the Re- 
 publican party stands pledged to make it good, and to keep it good 
 for all men and for all time to come. 
 
THE TWENTIETH 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1906 
 
 Address of 
 GEN. HORACE PORTER 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 GENERAL HORACE PORTER 
 
 Mr. President and Fellow Members of the Republican Club: 
 Abraham Lincoln was of humble birth; he early had to struggle 
 with the trials of misfortune and to learn the first lessons of life 
 in the severe school of adversity. He came from that class which 
 he always alluded to as the "plain people." He always possessed 
 their confidence, he never lost his hold on their affections. He 
 believed that the government was made for the people, and not 
 the people for the government, and that true Republicanism was 
 like a torch — the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the 
 brighter it burns. 
 
 If at the height of his power any one had sneered at him on ac- 
 count of his humble origin, he might well have replied, like the 
 Marshal of France, who was raised from the ranks to a dukedom, 
 when he told the haughty nobles of Vienna, who boasted of their 
 long lines of descent and refused to associate with him, "I am an 
 ancestor; you are only descendants." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln possessed in a remarkable degree that most 
 uncommon of all virtues, common sense. With him there was no 
 practising the arts of the demagogue, no posing for effect, no at- 
 titudinizing in public, no mawkish sentimentality. There was 
 none of that puppyism so often bred by power. There was none 
 
245 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of that dogmatism that Dr. Johnson said was only puppyism 
 grown to maturity. 
 
 While his mind was one great storehouse of facts and useful 
 information, he laid no claim to any knowledge he did not pos- 
 sess. He believed with Addison that pedantry in learning is like 
 hypocrisy in religion, a form of knowledge without the power of it. 
 
 While he was singularly adroit and patient in smoothing down 
 the ruffled feathers of friends who did not understand him, or 
 even of political opponents, he wasted no time upon the absolute 
 recalcitrants. He never attempted to massage the back of a 
 political porcupine. And, as he once said himself, he always found 
 it was a losing game to try to shovel fleas across a barnyard. 
 
 I have often thought how few there are to-day alive who knew 
 Abraham Lincoln intimately, and had conversed with him. His 
 immediate contemporaries have fallen like the leaves of autumn. 
 
 I shall never forget, for it is a circumstance that is indelibly 
 engraved upon my memory, the first day it was my privilege to 
 look upon the features of that illustrious man. 
 
 It was just forty-two years ago when General Grant came from 
 the West with his staff, to receive the commission of Lieutenant- 
 General, which gave him command of all the armies of the Re- 
 public. He arrived, late in the evening, at the hotel, and, hear- 
 ing that Mr. Lincoln was holding a reception in the White House, 
 he and his staff went there quietly. Notwithstanding the years 
 of co-operation of those two men and their extensive correspond- 
 ence, Mr. Lincoln and General Grant had never met. As the gen- 
 eral entered the reception room he was elbowed and jostled by the 
 crowd. No one knew him. When he came into the Blue Room Mr. 
 Lincoln's quick eye caught sight of him, recognized him by the 
 portraits of him he had seen^ and, stepping forward, reached out 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 247 
 
 his long, angular arm, seized the general by the hand, drew him 
 close up to him and said to Mrs. Lincoln: "Why, here is General 
 Grant. What a surprise! What a delight!" And there the two 
 stood conversing. Their figures formed a striking contrast — Gen- 
 eral Grant 5 feet 8 inches in height, standing with his head 
 somewhat bowed, Lincoln towering above him, 6 feet 4 inches tall. 
 That night Mr. Lincoln wore a dress suit with a turned down 
 collar a couple of sizes too large, and a cravat carelessly tied. 
 There was something awkward and angular in his movements, 
 but nothing that bordered upon the grotesque. There they stood 
 conversing intimately for some time. It was a strange sight to 
 watch the first meeting of those two men, one in the cabinet, the 
 other in the camp, into whose hands Providence had seemed to 
 place for a time the destinies of the Republic. It was fortunate 
 for the country that they co-operated as patriots, that they had 
 souls too great for rivalry, hearts too noble for jealousy. Through- 
 out that long and bitter struggle for the Nation's life they stood 
 shoulder to shoulder like the men in the Grecian phalanx of old, 
 locking their shields together against a common foe, and teach- 
 ing the world it is time to abandon the path of ambition when it 
 becomes so narrow that two cannot walk it abreast. 
 
 Their acquaintance ripened into a genuine affection, and Mr. 
 Lincoln three times came down to visit General Grant at his head- 
 quarters at City Point when our armies were investing Richmond 
 and Petersburg, and when he sat about the campfire on a camp 
 chair, his legs crossed, or, rather, one of those long legs wrapped 
 around the other, sweeping away with his large hand the smoke 
 of the fire as it blew in his face, we listened to the words of wis- 
 dom and eloquence that fell from his lips, and to the inimitable 
 stories he told until those evenings in their pleasure rivalled the 
 Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 
 
248 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 When he visited the camp just before the final movement be- 
 gan — the Appomattox campaign — he stepped over with the Adju- 
 tant-general to the telegraph operator's tent, to get the first sight 
 of the dispatches he expected from Washington, There he saw 
 on the floor three little kittens crawling about, and the great 
 man sat down in a chair and picked them up tenderly, put them 
 in his lap, stroked their fur and drew the skirts of his coat around 
 them to keep them warm, and he said to the adjutant-general: 
 "Here are three little motherless waifs ; I hope you will take good 
 care of them." "Oh, yes," was the reply, "we will give them to 
 the camp cook, and he will take care of them." "And will they 
 get some good milk every day?" "Oh, yes," said the adjutant- 
 general. And three times I saw the President go to that tent 
 during his visit and pick up those little kittens, fondle them and 
 take out his handkerchief and wipe their eyes as they lay in his 
 lap purring their gratitude. It seemed a strange sight to us on 
 the eve of a battle, when every one was thinking only of the sci- 
 ence of destruction, to see those little creatures caressed by the 
 hand that by a stroke of the pen had struck the shackles from four 
 millions of bondsmen, that had signed the commission of every 
 officer in that gallant army, from the General in Chief to the 
 humblest lieutenant. It was a very trivial circumstance, but it 
 showed more than greater acts the childlike simplicity that was 
 mingled with the majestic grandeur of his nature. 
 
 He came down to camp just after he had been renominated to 
 the presidency. We were talking about how the Electoral Col- 
 lege was composed, and he said: "Of all our colleges, the Elec- 
 toral College is the only one where they choose their own mas- 
 ters." 
 
 And then, in speaking to General Butler about the historical 
 fact that every place General Grant had ever taken had been held, 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 249 
 
 never yielded up, Mr. Lincoln said: "When General Grant once 
 gets possessed of a place he seems to hang on to it as if he had 
 inherited it." 
 
 There was an officer cleaning his sword at the campfire. Mr. 
 Lincoln came up, looked at it, took it in his hand, and said : "That 
 is a formidable weapon, but it don't look half as dangerous to me 
 as once did a Kentucky bowie knife. One night I passed through 
 the outskirts of Louisville when suddenly a man sprang from a 
 dark alley and drew out a bowie knife. It looked three times 
 as long as that sword, though I don't suppose it really was. He 
 flourished it in front of me. It glistened in the moonlight, and 
 for several minutes he seemed to try to see how near he could 
 come to cutting off my nose without quite doing it. Finally he 
 said: 'Can you lend me five dollars on that?' I never reached 
 in my pocket for money as quick in the whole course of my life, 
 and, handing him a bill, said : 'There's ten dollars, neighbor. Now 
 put up your scythe.' " 
 
 He arrived the next time a few days after the colored troops 
 had been successful in making an assault, and remarked: "I am 
 glad the black boys have done well. I must go out and see them." 
 He rode out with General Grant and staff, and the word was 
 passed along to the colored troops that the President was coming, 
 and then the cry arose everywhere, "Thar's Massa Linkum," and 
 "Ole Fader Abraham is a-comin'," and they shouted, cheered, 
 laughed, got down on their knees and prayed, fondled his horse, 
 and some rushed off to tell their comrades that they had even kissed 
 the hem of his garment. Mr. Lincoln was very much affected; 
 he had his hat off, the tears were in his eyes, and his voice was 
 so choked with emotion that he could scarcely respond to the 
 salutations. It was a memorable sight, to see the liberated paying 
 their homage to the great liberator. He remarked on the way 
 
250 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 back to camp : "When we were enlisting the colored troops there 
 was great opposition to it, but I said to some of my critics one 
 day, 'Well, as long as we are trying to send every able-bodied 
 man to the front to save this country, I guess we had all better 
 be a little color blind.' " I can express my satisfaction with 
 what they have accomplished down here something like an old- 
 time abolitionist did upon another occasion in Illinois. He went 
 to Chicago, and his friends took him to see Forrest play Othello. 
 He didn't know it was a white man blacked up for the purpose, 
 and after the play was over said: "Well, all sectional prejudice 
 aside, and making due allowance for my partiality for the race, 
 darn me if I don't think the nigger held his own with any 
 on 'em." 
 
 I will only mention one more of those stories, for it greatly 
 amused us one night in camp. I had in my hand a grain of the 
 powder manufactured for the big guns. It was as large as a wal- 
 nut. He asked: "Is that a grain of powder? Well, it's larger 
 than the powder we used to use down in Sangamon County. Be- 
 fore the country newspapers were published the fellows mer- 
 chandizing there used to avail of the time before the preacher 
 arrived at the weekly prayer meetings to announce what goods 
 they had received from the East. A man got up one night and 
 said: 'Brethren, before the preacher gets here I want to say that 
 I have just received a new invoice of sporting powder. The 
 grains are so fine you can scarcely see them with the naked eye, 
 and polished up so bright you can stand up and comb your hair 
 in front of 'em just as if it was a looking glass.' There was a 
 rival powder merchant in the congregation who was boiling over 
 with rage to find his competitor getting so much cheap advertis- 
 ing, who rose and said: 'Brethren, I hope you won't believe a 
 durned word Brother Smith has told you about that powder. I 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 251 
 
 have seen it myself. Every lump is as big as a lump of stove 
 coal, and I pledge you my word that any one of you could put 
 a barrel of that powder on your shoulder and march squar' 
 through hell without any danger of an explosion.' " 
 
 There are two names of presidents that will always be in- 
 separably associated in our minds — Washington and Lincoln. But 
 from the manner in which modern historians magnify trivial acts 
 you would suppose one had spent his entire life in cutting down 
 trees and the other in splitting them up into rails. There was one 
 marked diiference between them — Washington could not tell a 
 story; Lincoln always could. 
 
 But he told them not for the anecdote, but to clinch a fact, to 
 point a moral. 
 
 Ah, it was that humor of his that was his safety valve. It 
 lightened his mind and relieved it for the time from the great 
 responsibilities that were weighing upon him. He could cut the 
 sting from the keenest criticism with his wit, he could gild dis- 
 appointment with a joke. He knew better than most men that 
 in speech wit is to eloquence what in music melody is to harmony. 
 
 But his mind was not always attuned to mirth; its chords 
 were too often set to strains of sadness. There was the slaughter 
 in the field, the depletion of the treasury, complications which 
 arose. All these were so appalling that sometimes even the great 
 soul of Lincoln seemed ready to melt. But just when the gloom 
 was blackest he never, never took counsel of his fears. He al- 
 ways had the courage of his convictions. He never had occasion 
 to look to the past with regret, nor to the future with apprehen- 
 sion. He had that sublime faith which is content to leave the 
 efforts to man, the results to God. 
 
 When hope seemed fading and courage failing, when he was 
 surrounded on all sides by doubting Thomases, unbelieving Sad- 
 
252 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ducees and discontented Catilines, as the Danes once destroyed 
 the hearing of their war steeds in order that they might not be 
 affrighted by the din of battle, so Abraham Lincoln turned a deaf 
 ear to all doubts and despondency about him and exhibited an un- 
 swerving, an unbounded faith in the justice of the cause and the 
 integrity of the Union. 
 
 His was the faith that could see in the storm cloud a bow of 
 promise, that could hear in the discords of the present the har- 
 monies of the future. 
 
 Singular man ! He was a Hercules, not an Adonis. 
 
 We learn little in this world from precept — much from ex- 
 ample. Patterns are better followed than rules. 
 
 For ages after the battle of Thermopylae every Greek school 
 child was taught to recite each day the names of the three hundred 
 heroes who fell in the defence of that Pass. It would be a crown- 
 ing act of patriotism if every American school child could be 
 taught each day to contemplate the exalted character and utter 
 the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Singular man ! No one can pluck a single laurel from his brow, 
 no one can lessen the measure of his fame. Marvellous man! 
 In the annals of all history we fail to find another whose life 
 had been so peaceful, whose nature so gentle, and yet who was 
 called upon to marshal the hosts of an aroused people and for 
 four long years to conduct a bloody, relentless, fratricidal war. 
 
 In the annals of history we fail to find another whose edu- 
 cation was that of the cabinet, not the camp, and yet who died a 
 more heroic death. 
 
 It has seldom fallen to the lot of man to strike the shackles 
 from the limbs of bondmen and liberate a race. It has seldom 
 fallen to the lot of man to die the death of an honored martyr, 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER 253 
 
 with his robes of office still about him, his heart at peace with 
 his fellowmen, his soul at peace with his God, at the moment of 
 the restoration of his country to peace within her borders, to peace 
 with all the world. 
 
 We did not bury him in a Roman Pantheon, in a domed St. 
 Paul's, or in an historic Westminster Abbey. We gave him nobler 
 sepulchre; we laid him to rest in the soil his efforts had saved. 
 That tomb will forever be the Mecca of all patriotic American 
 citizens. Future ages will pause to read the inscription on its 
 portals, and the prayers and praises of a redeemed and regenerated 
 people will rise from that grave as incense rises from holy places, 
 pointing out even to the angels in heaven where rest the ashes of 
 him who had reached the highest pinnacle of earthly glory and 
 covered the earth with his renown. 
 
 It is only now that Abraham Lincoln has receded from us far 
 enough in history to enable us to see him in his true proportions. 
 
 A celebrated sculptor in the fourteenth century in Florence 
 was commanded to make a colossal statue, which was to surmount 
 an historic cathedral. When it was placed at the base of the 
 cathedral, the ropes arranged for hoisting it, and it was there un- 
 veiled, the crowd jeered and hooted and criticised unmercifully the 
 sculptor. It was all out of proportion; it was a failure. But 
 soon the ropes began to tighten, and as the statue moved up into 
 the air the crowd ceased to jeer, and finally, when it was placed 
 upon the pinnacle at the proper focal distance as intended by 
 the great sculptor, who created it, the sneers turned to plaudits, 
 and the people then saw it in all the beauty of its true propor- 
 tions. 
 
 And so Abraham Lincoln has so far receded from us in his- 
 tory that he is nov/ in the proper focal distance. We can now 
 
254 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 measure all his great qualities as they appear in their true beauty 
 and symmetry. 
 
 I am glad there is a movement on foot to purchase the farm 
 upon which he was born. It is well that it should be redeemed 
 from individual ownership. It should be made the repository of 
 all the interesting relics connected with him. It ought to be the 
 seat of a national museum and a national park. 
 
 He is gone from us now, crowned with the sublimity of mar- 
 tyrdom. We have bidden a last farewell to him who was the 
 gentlest of all spirits, noblest of all hearts, liberator of a race, 
 savior of a Republic, martyr, whose sepulchre is human hearts. 
 
THE TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1907 
 
 Address of 
 
 GEN. 0. 0. HOWARD 
 
OLIVER OTIS HOWARD 
 
 General Howard was born in Leeds, Me., 1830. He 
 graduated at Bowdoin College, 1850; West Point, 1854. 
 Was a Lieutenant, U. S. A., and instructor in mathe- 
 matics at West Point on the outbreak of the war. In 
 May, 1861, he was commissioned a colonel of the Third 
 Maine Regiment, and a major-general of volunteers in 
 1862. He took part in many of the heaviest engage- 
 ments of the war. From 1865-74, he was a commis- 
 sioner of the Freedman's Bureau, took an important 
 part in the work of Reconstruction, and in the Indian 
 wars of the seventies. In 1864 he was made a brigadier- 
 general, U. S. A., and in 1886, major-general, U. S. A. 
 He retired in 1894. In 1895 he founded the Lincoln 
 Memorial University (collegiate, normal and industrial 
 school) at Cumberland Gap, Tenn. He is also known 
 as an author and a lecturer of repute. He has re- 
 ceived numerous honors for bravery, and is a Chevalier 
 of the Legion of Honor. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 GENERAL O. O. HOWARD 
 
 Fellow Republicans of the Republican Club of New York, Ladies 
 and Gentlemen : I have been seeking for about a half an hour for 
 a definition of the present Republican party. I asked General 
 Porter, and he thinks it consists principally in the following of 
 Abraham Lincoln. I have asked General Dodge, who himself is 
 the epitome of Republicanism, and he says it is the party that is 
 always in favor of patriotism and progress. 
 
 I was thinking while I sat here what a fate it is that a man 
 should be a substitute at all. I wasn't a substitute during the 
 war. Some years ago I was a substitute at a New England din- 
 ner for Mr. Carnegie in this city, and I remarked then: How is it 
 possible for a man who has so little to represent a man who has 
 so much? 
 
 And now I want to say to you that it is very unfortunate to 
 get so small a shotgun to represent a Cannon, but I am willing 
 to make this substitution in the face of that beautiful remark 
 of Speaker Cannon's just read to us, which is the very essence of 
 Republicanism in this country. 
 
 I began with the Republican party at its beginning. Of 
 course, I was in the army then and have been now fifty-seven 
 years, and expect to remain in the army until I die. But while 
 in the army I have always contended. General Dodge, that a man 
 has no right to forego his citizenship. So I say to you that 
 
258 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 I am very, very glad to be welcomed here by seventeen hundred 
 young men who represent the Republicanism of New York. It is 
 a hard place to be a Republican in, New York. I saw a lady the 
 other day, and she said : "Up in Vermont I am an out-and-out Re- 
 publican, but the moment I get to New York I am simply a Tam- 
 many Democrat." 
 
 When during the Civil War our public men were somewhat dis- 
 couraged with reference to its outcome, more than at any other 
 period, there had assembled quite early in the morning in Mr. 
 Lincoln's office room a number of prominent men. Mr. Lincoln 
 was sitting in his office chair with his right hand resting on the 
 table in front of him when he heard a prominent Senator, with 
 deep emotion, remark, "If we only could do right as a people, 
 God would give us a victory." Mr. Lincoln instantly rose to his 
 feet and cried, in that singularly shrill, piercing voice of his, 
 "My faith is greater than yours!" As he stood there, head and 
 shoulders above all of them, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet 
 officials and army officers were gazing upon his shining face. 
 Looking toward the first speaker he repeated, "My faith is greater 
 than yours." The Senator said : "How is that, Mr. Lincoln ?" He 
 answered: "God will make us do sufficiently right as a people to 
 give us the victory." This answer is the gauge of Lincoln's faith, 
 which never at any time was known to falter. 
 
 There is something very close to faith which we are wont to 
 call virtue — public virtue and private virtue — the old English of 
 it is "Valor." 
 
 In the first speech I ever saw of Mr. Lincoln's he said: "Many 
 free countries have lost their liberties, and ours may lose hers, 
 but if she shall, be it my proudest boast, not that I was the last 
 to desert, but that I never, never deserted her." That was valor. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was fond of riding on horseback in the early even- 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 259 
 
 ing to the Soldiers' Home. One night during the latter part of 
 1863 he rode out with an orderly. When part way he sent the 
 orderly back for something which he had left at the White House 
 and rode on alone. After dusk he galloped up to the home stables, 
 and the hostler noticed that he was without his hat. Mr. Lin- 
 coln, answering the hostler's question, said: "Run back a few 
 hundred yards and pick it up." The man had heard a shot, but 
 thought little of it till Mr. Lincoln came galloping in. He found 
 the hat and brought it to the President, who was still waiting 
 at the stable. There was a bullet hole near the top. Mr. Lin- 
 coln made the man promise not to speak of it. "It was probably 
 an accident and might worry my family." And he went to the 
 Soldiers' Home, as usual, but probably never again alone. A man 
 had really undertaken to shoot him. 
 
 You see in this incident, and in a great many others that you 
 can recall, the simple, straightforward courage of the man. It 
 never failed him. 
 
 Now, there was another characteristic, and that was a uniform 
 effort to obtain knowledge from his boyhood to his manhood, and, 
 in fact, all through his manhood. If you will remember at one 
 time when he was a lawyer he said, "I don't understand that word 
 'demonstration' — demonstration — demonstration. Lawyers are al- 
 ways talking about demonstration. I don't know what they 
 mean by it." And somebody suggested it would be wise for him 
 to take up Euclid, and he did so. He went through the whole of 
 that large book, that old book of Euclid, and demonstrated every 
 proposition in it, and when he got through he said: "Now I un- 
 derstand what is meant by demonstration." 
 
 That indicates to you a choice bit of the character of his mind 
 in searching for the truth. He never was satisfied until he had 
 completely mastered a subject that he had put his mind upon. 
 
26o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 At one time some of the officers in Washington rather slighted 
 him. He would go to them for advice and sometimes get quite 
 a rebuff. He made up his mind then that he would study strategy 
 for himself, and he got the hardest books we had upon the sub- 
 ject, and he mastered it, and that is why, if you read history 
 carefully, you will find that he never made a mistake in the line 
 of strategy, though he didn't profess to be a general. 
 
 We have in the schedule of virtues the word temperance. I 
 heard a story here to my right on the subject of Abraham Lin- 
 coln's temperance, and somebody indicated that he had no small 
 vices. After he was nominated to be President of the United 
 States, a committee came down from Chicago to his home in Illi- 
 nois and said to him: "You are nominated; you are nominated." 
 He said: "I suppose I must treat." And he sent out and a man 
 came in with a large tray, and on it were tumblers, and a pitcher 
 in the middle filled with water — cold v/ater. "Oh," he said, "this 
 is Adam's ale. We can ask for nothing better than that." And 
 so he treated the committee, drank their health in good cold 
 water. But you may say : "Did he overdo the matter ?" Well, no ; 
 Mr. Lincoln was not temperate simply in eating and drinking; he 
 was temperate in everything, and, what is more, he wouldn't do 
 business with any man while he was in a passion. 
 
 One day he saw Senator Fessenden, for example, coming toward 
 his ofiice room. Mr. Fessenden had received the promise of some 
 appointment in Maine for one of his constituents. The case had 
 been overlooked. As soon as Mr. Lincoln caught sight of the Sena- 
 tor he saw he was angry, and as Fessenden approached his door 
 he called out: "Say, Fessenden, aren't you an Episcopalian?" Mr. 
 Fessenden, taken aback by the question, answered : "Yes, I belong 
 to that persuasion." Mr. Lincoln then said: "I thought so; you 
 swear so much like Seward. Seward is an Episcopalian. But 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 261 
 
 you ought to hear Stanton swear. He can beat you both. He 
 is a Presbyterian." By this time Fessenden was in hearty good 
 humor, and the President, sending for the papers, soon settled the 
 case to the Senator's satisfaction. 
 
 A like instance occurred when a poor father was beside himself 
 pleading for the life of his son, who was to be shot the next day 
 for desertion. Mr. Lincoln quieted him by a touching story, and 
 then put the coveted pardon of his son into the father's hand. 
 
 You notice he never ended any of those cases without pardon- 
 ing the son. 
 
 Now patience. I never saw in any of my intercourse with Mr. 
 Lincoln, and I have met him a great many times, and General 
 Dodge has seen more of him than I have, but I never knew, and 
 I don't think Dodge can recall an occasion in which Lincoln 
 showed the slightest impatience. Always patient! A poor wom- 
 an came in who wanted her son pardoned. Her son had been 
 sleeping on post. She pleaded her case, she pleaded it very well. 
 The boy had been kept without sleep too long; he had undertaken 
 to do duty for another young man the night before, and he had 
 a second night, and he fell asleep on post, and he was tried by 
 court-martial and sentenced to death. Mr. Lincoln heard the case 
 very carefully and granted the petition. A little later a woman 
 more advanced in age came in, and she wanted her brother out of 
 the old Capitol Prison. He was put in there perhaps by Mr. Stan- 
 ton for using disloyal language. In those days we used to clap 
 them in prison sometimes for things that now they can say on 
 the street. He heard the old lady's case with great care — prob- 
 ably the man deserved to be put in the old Capitol, but he par- 
 doned him and let him out. Then he went with her to the door, 
 and just as he was about to part with her she said: '*0h, you 
 don't know how grateful I am, Mr. Lincoln ; I don't know what I 
 
262 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 can say. I will say this, I hope I may meet you in Heaven." 
 "Well," Mr. Lincoln said, "in the rough and tumble of this world, 
 I don't know, I may never get to that beautiful place you speak 
 of; I may never get there. But," he added, "I know this, it is 
 the best wish you could make for me." And then he turned 
 around as she went out, remarking: "Speed, it seldom happens to 
 a man to be able to make two people happy in the same day." And 
 then he said: "I hope it will be said of me when I am gone, by 
 those who care for me, by those who love me most, that I never 
 allowed an opportunity to pass where I could pluck a thistle and 
 plant a flower where I thought a flower would grow." 
 
 Now, there is another subject I approach with a good deal 
 of delicacy, but I put it down, and you must pardon me for it. I 
 don't believe much in religiousness, never did, but there is one 
 word that I do not know any substitute for — the clergymen call 
 it Godliness. Well, Abraham Lincoln had Godliness. 
 
 General Sickles — I wish he were here to-night — told me over 
 and over again in the first McKinley political campaign this story. 
 He said : "After I was wounded I was carried to Washington after 
 Gettysburg, and I was lying on the stretcher. People thought I 
 would die. While I was there Mr. Lincoln, with his little boy 
 Tad, came in to see me, and he began to talk to me, and I saw 
 that he was a little too sympathetic to suit me, so I began to rally 
 him, and then I said : 'Why, I understand your cabinet and your- 
 self were trying to get out of Washington just before the battle 
 of Gettysburg,' and Mr. Lincoln shook his head and said, 'No, we 
 were not; no, we were not. We had to take some precautions,' 
 he owned." General Sickles pressed him a little hard, and he said : 
 "Well, Sickles, if you want to know what I was doing about that 
 time I will tell you. There was one room in the White House 
 where there was very little furniture, and I went in there and I 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 263 
 
 shut the door, and I got down on my knees and said to the Lord, 
 'You know I have done all I can. This is your struggle and I 
 have done all I can!' And then I cried out with all my heart, 
 *0h, God, give us a victory.' Then suddenly it occurred to me to 
 say: 'Oh, that I might have some token by which I could be as- 
 sured of a victory.' Then such a sweet spirit came over me, such 
 an indescribable spirit that I was as assured of a victory before 
 I heard the news, as I was after." 
 
 There was one young man out in the West that Mr. Lincoln 
 was very fond of. His father used to entertain him on those 
 lawyers' tours, and he always said to the young man : "Whenever 
 you see me, stretch out both hands." Mr. Lincoln remembered 
 him. He became first a professor, then afterwards a president, I 
 think it was of the University of Illinois, so called at that time, 
 and Mr. Lincoln appointed him on the Board of Visitors sent to 
 West Point, and he went there, and the boards knowing that 
 Mr. Lincoln was his friend, made him president of the board, 
 and after they got through with their work he went to Wash- 
 ington and into the War Department to get some facts that were 
 necessary to complete his report. "It occurred to me while there," 
 he said, "that I would like to see Mr. Lincoln in that, the darkest 
 period of the war, and I sat down and wrote him a short note: 
 'Dear Mr. Lincoln, give me five minutes, please.' Mr. Lincoln 
 folded the paper, turned it over and wrote on the back: 'I will give 
 you an hour. A. Lincoln.' " And he went to Lincoln's office. 
 When he came in Mr. Lincoln rose up to his full height, stretched 
 out both hands to him and gave him a welcome and they sat down, 
 and they communed together. Just before he went away he said : 
 "Now, Mr. Lincoln, I want to ask you a question. I hardly dare 
 do it, but if it isn't proper you needn't answer it, of course." Mr. 
 Lincoln said : "Well, if I can't answer it I won't. Go ahead." He 
 
254 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 said : "Out in. Illinois they are very anxious about the termination 
 of this conflict. Shall we succeed in this war?" He said that 
 Mr. Lincoln changed color and became haggard, great tears ran 
 down his face, and it was some time before he could speak at all, 
 and then when he did he said: "President Mannes, we shall suc- 
 ceed in this war, but I don't expect to live to see its termination 
 or its consummation." "Now, Mr. Lincoln," said the other, "sim- 
 ply just one more question: Would you be willing to tell me on 
 what you base your opinion?" Then Mr. Lincoln began in that 
 singular negative way of his: "I do not base it upon my con- 
 stituency, though no man ever had any better constituency than 
 we have, or more faithful ; I do not base it on my generals, though 
 no king or potentate ever had better generals, abler men, ready 
 and willing to sacrifice everything that they have for the good 
 of the Republic ; I do not even base it on the boys in blue of the 
 army and the navy — no, no; though no nation on earth ever had 
 a better army than ours, ready to give everything, even life it- 
 self, for the salvation of the Republic. No, no. I will tell you 
 what I base it on — on the God of our fathers who hath brought 
 this Nation hitherto and will never, never suffer this Nation to 
 perish!" 
 
 There is one other little item, brotherly kindness. I was taken 
 very ill out on Meridian Hill. I was a little overworked and had 
 a bilious turn, and for about three days I was very near the grave 
 — delirious. After that, in about three days more, I was up and 
 at work again. Well, during that time Mr. Lincoln came out to 
 see me. First he came with Charlotte Cushman, whose name you 
 have heard, to inquire about me. I have a very dim recollection 
 of his coming. The next time he came with that same little boy 
 who seemed to attend him always. Tad, whom he loved so much, 
 and Tad walked with the sentinel, backwards and forwards, while 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 265 
 
 his father went to see the doctor to see if he could find out any- 
 thing about my case, and see if anything could be done for me, 
 and Tad said to the sentinel: ''Is the Colonel very sick?" "Yes." 
 "Awful sick?" "Yes." "Well," he says, "father thinks he is not 
 going to live"; and I was then only a very common colonel among 
 thousands of others. It was not only my camp that he visited 
 and looked at my parade and congratulated me upon success, but 
 the Twelfth New York and Burnside's regiments, and all the 
 others around about. And think of the largeness of heart of 
 the man who could so take us in and show us that personal ten- 
 derness. Wasn't it brotherly kindness? 
 
 He once came down to Brooks Station, and I saw him coming 
 in through that bower that the Germans made for me, and he 
 was too tall to come in. He took off that tall hat of his, that 
 postoffice hat, and bowed his head as he came in, and he sat 
 down upon my cot and admired my robe made of a South Amer- 
 ican sheep, its construction and beauty. Then he saw the tablets 
 upon the wall that the American Tract Society had given me, one 
 for every day in the month, and that day was, "The lord is my 
 Shepherd; I shall not want," and he and I looked at it together, 
 and I am sure those words sunk into his heart as they did into 
 mine. It was not long after that that I had some trouble and I 
 came home greatly discouraged, and I looked up where Abraham 
 Lincoln had looked and I said, "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall 
 not want!" — why didn't I think of it before? 
 
 And after Chancellorsville, when ambition sought my removal, 
 they carried the case up to Mr. Lincoln and asked: "Wouldn't it 
 be a wise thing to remove General Howard from the command of 
 the Eleventh Corps? He hasn't succeeded very well." You all 
 know that Stonewall Jackson in that battle was more to blame 
 than I was. But Mr. Lincoln, after hearing them carefully, wind- 
 
266 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ing one foot of his about twice around his leg, said: "Let him 
 alone; let him alone; give him time and he will bring things 
 straight." That is what kept me in the army. 
 
 Most of you have read a little of the last interview that I had 
 with Mr. Lincoln in Washington. I spent over an hour with him, 
 and he called my special attention to what he called afterwards 
 the "loyal refugees of Kentucky and of Tennessee and of Vir- 
 ginia." Your president, when he introduced me, spoke of our 
 Cumberland Gap Tennessee College. That is right in the centre 
 of those three portions of Virginia, of Tennessee and of the Ken- 
 tucky Mountains. Mr. Lincoln turned and looked in my eyes. I 
 can never forget the expression. "Oh^ General," he said, "they 
 are loyal there, they are loyal." And we have built up an insti- 
 tution there to his name as a monument for the benefit of the 
 boys and girls of the mountains. We have got 640 young men 
 and young women, the brightest and best in the country. People 
 call them "poor whites," sometimes "poor white trash." Then 
 WE are trash. They are not trash. They are the very epitome 
 of Americanism, and I do not think it is anything against them 
 that they were always loyal to the flag. 
 
 I was going through a car the other day, and there was an 
 opera troupe coming from New York, going up to Canada, almost 
 all young ladies — there were some gentlemen among them — and 
 the moment I appeared, I don't know why, they cried: "Robert 
 E. Lee! Robert E. Lee!" I said: "Oh, you are mistaken; I fought 
 on the other side." Yes, I fought on the other side. We may 
 be in the minority, but let us stick to it; let us stick to it till 
 death. We don't want anything wrong; we don't want any spot 
 on the escutcheon of the Republican party. We want purity and 
 progress and we propose to have them; we will have them! 
 
 There is only one more item and that is this: You will remem- 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL 0. 0. HOWARD 267 
 
 ber the book, Winston Churchiirs work, in which he so beautifully 
 represents the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He represents also 
 his roughness. In that he is mistaken. Oh, how often I have 
 compared notes with other men! There was no real roughness in 
 Abraham Lincoln. A little homeliness — we are not all of us hand- 
 some; we can't be. But here he took the beautiful Virginia, you 
 remember, to the window of his room and looked forth down 
 there to Alexandria and said: "When that star appeared there of 
 the Confederacy, and I saw that flag, oh, how it oifended me, and 
 I was worrying. Then I thought it was necessary I should suffer 
 for the Republic"; and in conclusion he used these words to her: 
 "I have not suffered BY the South— I have suffered WITH the 
 South. Your sorrow has been my sorrow, and your pain has been 
 my pain. What you have lost I have lost, and what you have 
 gained," he added, sublimely, "I have gained." 
 
 Just think of the sermon of it! The minister who sits here 
 would say: Add to that faith, virtue; to virtue, temperance; to 
 temperance, Godliness; to Godliness, brotherly kindness, and to 
 brotherly kindness, charity. A man who could rise right up 
 and show such love to God and love to his fellow man, even to his 
 enemy, cannot readily be pointed out to-day. 
 
THE TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1907 
 
 Address of 
 GEN. JAMES H. WILSON 
 
JAMES HARRISON WILSON, LL.D. 
 
 General Wilson was born in Shawneetown, 111., in 
 1837. He was educated at McZendree College and at 
 West Point (graduated i860). At the outbreak of the 
 war he was serving in the engineering corps Department 
 of Oregon. He was made Lieutenant- Colonel of Volun- 
 teers, 1862; Captain U. S. Engineers and Brigadier- 
 General of Volunteers, 1863. In 1866 he was brevetted 
 Major-General U. S. A., "for gallant and meritorious 
 services during the war." He was one of the most dis- 
 tinguished engineering ofiScers on the Union side during 
 the Civil War, winning special fame in the Vicksburg 
 and Chattanooga campaigns. After voluntarily resign- 
 ing from the army in 1870, he was connected with many 
 important engineering works at home and abroad. He 
 served with distinction in the volunteer army in the 
 Spanish- American War; commanded the American 
 forces in the China Relief Expedition, and represented 
 the U. S. A. at the coronation of Edward VII. He is 
 the author of numerous works of military biography. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 GENERAL JAMES H. WILSON 
 
 Mr. Chairman, ladies and Gentlemen: I hardly know why I 
 should be called upon to address the Republican Club upon an oc- 
 casion of this sort, especially in reference to Abraham Lincoln, 
 unless it be because Abraham Lincoln and my father were cap- 
 tains together in the Black Hawk War. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's company, I believe, all deserted. Captain 
 Harrison Wilson's company contained all the brigadier and major 
 generals. They all remained in the war, and one of them sur- 
 vived to become a major-general in the War of the Rebellion. It 
 was my good fortune many years afterwards to be called to a 
 bureau office in the War Department during the days of the g^eat 
 Rebellion. I had hardly arrived in the capital city when I re- 
 ceived an invitation to dinner at the White House, and it was 
 my good fortune to partake of its hospitality frequently there- 
 after. 
 
 I was doubtful as to whether or not the President had mistaken 
 me for some one else, but he assured me in a way that was quite 
 acceptable that he had made no mistake. In addition to dining 
 several times with him en famille, I went to the theatre with him, 
 and upon these occasions he resorted to his well-known methods 
 of entertainment, which were most acceptable to me. It so hap- 
 pened that just about that time one of his youngest brigadier- 
 generals had been captured up in the Valley of Virginia with sev- 
 
272 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 eral hundred mules. He said to me: "Oh, no, General, I don't 
 care about the brigadiers; I can make them; but I have to buy 
 mules, and they cost money." 
 
 Well, now, he did make brigadier-generals, and one of the most 
 pathetic of all the stories with reference to his power of manu- 
 facturing brigadiers I am reminded of this evening by a remark 
 of my preceptor and friend, General Howard, in regard to Maine. 
 The great statesmen of that State sent down to Washington, with 
 letters of commendation, a young man of whom they thought well. 
 They did not ask to have him made a high officer, but they asked 
 that he might be appointed to the position of second lieutenant 
 of artillery in the regular army. Mr. Lincoln received him with 
 kindness. His credentials came from William Pitt Fessenden 
 and Hannibal Hamlin, and they were sufficient to make him an 
 Ambassador to England. But he wanted simply to be a second 
 lieutenant. Mr. Lincoln gave him a note to the Secretary of War, 
 asking that this appointment might be made, and after an hour 
 or so his young friend came back looking very much dejected. 
 "What is the matter, Jamison ?" asked Mr. Lincoln. "Mr. Stanton 
 says he won't do it." "Well, I guess if Stanton said he wouldn't 
 he won't. You know Stanton takes the regular army under his 
 protection, and I haven't much influence with him in regard to 
 that branch of the service ; but I'll tell you what I will do, Jami- 
 son, I will make you a brigadier-general of volunteers." And he 
 made him a brigadier-general of volunteers, and fortunately it 
 turned out that he was a good one. When you think about it, 
 what the country had done for Lincoln in compelling him to make 
 major-generals, you will perhaps think better of his exercising 
 the appointing power. You will remember he had a "Young 
 Napoleon" on his hands; he had "Old Rosy" on his hands; he had 
 curled darlings of my lady's chamber on his hands; he had Roman 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL JAMES H. WILSON 273 
 
 pro-consuls on his hands; he had every sort and condition of 
 major-generals, and on the top of them he had "Fighting Joe." 
 Well, if you will now take a glance at the history of the past 
 you will see that he might well have doubted the predilections of 
 his countrymen and turned in to make a few brigadiers on his 
 own account. The subject is one that might be dwelt upon until 
 the "wee sma' hours," but I shall pass on to another subject. 
 
 It so happened that Mr. Lincoln lived during his earlier days at 
 New Salem, a little village six miles north and a little easterly 
 from Springfield, on the banks of the Sangamon. Before leaving 
 there he had consented to become a candidate for the legislature. 
 The nominating conventions in those days were held on Saturday. 
 The first business in order was to dispose of the neighborhood 
 fights. The Cleary's Grove gang were desperate men, and before 
 the convention was called to order a fight took place between one 
 of the gang and one of Mr. Lincoln's friends. You will all re- 
 member that Mr. Lincoln was six feet four. Pushing through the 
 crowd that surrounded the combatants, he grasped his friend's 
 opponent by the back of the neck and the slack of the trousers 
 and threw him outside of the limits of the ring. He then stepped 
 upon the platform, which in those days was always a stump, and 
 this is the speech that tradition credits him with: 
 
 "Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I am plain Abe Lincoln. I have 
 consented to become a candidate for the legislature. My political 
 principles are like the old woman's dance — short and sweet. I be- 
 lieve in a United States bank; I believe in a protective tariff; I 
 believe in a system of internal improvements, and I am for free- 
 dom for every human creature. If on that platform you can give 
 me your suffrages I shall be much obliged. If not, no harm 
 done, and I remain, respectfully yours, Abe Lincoln." 
 
 Now, I call your attention to the fact that that speech was 
 
274 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 delivered seventy-five years ago, and that it carried in its bosom 
 the four cardinal questions of American politics, the four car- 
 dinal principles of the Kepublican party, which was born twenty- 
 five years thereafter. Those fundamental principles remained in 
 the platform of the Kepublican party till the end of the war. 
 There was no surplusage, not a word too many in that speech. 
 It contained a faith as broad as the great Republic. It showed 
 the primal man, and that no pent-up XJtica confined his powers. 
 And you members of the Republican Club of New York may well 
 pause to consider whether Republicanism as it is to-day has not 
 passed beyond those limits. Imagine Abraham Lincoln here to- 
 day. What would he say with reference to the doctrines of the 
 Republican party as they are now promulgated and practiced? 
 Would he not be like that Pennsylvania Dutchman who, having 
 become prosperous, v/ent down to Philadelphia to get a portrait 
 of his father painted? He called upon the most distinguished 
 artist in the city and said : "I vish to haf a portrait of mein fader 
 painted." "Well," says the artist, "send your father down and I 
 will make a sketch of him and paint his portrait." "But mein 
 fader is dead." "Send me down a photograph and I will see if 
 I cannot reproduce his likeness." "But I haf no photograph." 
 "Oh, well, then, describe your father to me." "Well, mein fader 
 was a big man; he had broad shoulders and a high chest; he had 
 high cheek bones and blue eyes, and a stout chin and a big beard." 
 "All right, my friend; I will see what I can do for you." And 
 after a few weeks he sent word back to the countryman that 
 the portrait was ready and to come down with his family and look 
 it over. So they came down, were ushered into the studio, the 
 covering was thrown off, and there was the stout figure. The 
 farmer looked at it for a moment, and then said: "Yes, dat is 
 
ADDRESS OF GENERAL JAMES H. WILSON 275 
 
 mein fader that I loved; that is mein venerated fader vat is 
 dead; but, mein Gott! how he has changed!" 
 
 Now, I am not undertaking to sketch Mr. Lincoln, but of one 
 thing you may be assured — his Republicanism was of the orthodox 
 character, and we may believe that if he had lived to guide us the 
 change in party practice at least would not have been so great. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was somewhat of a strategist, as General Howard 
 has told us. You will recall when Lee began thundering north- 
 ward from the Rappahannock and Fighting Joe with his army 
 was on the north side of that stream he wrote a letter to Mr. 
 Lincoln, saying that he thought he would throw his army across 
 the river to the south and take Lee in flank. Mr. Lincoln wrote 
 back to him: "I note your proposition, and under the right cir- 
 cumstances it would be proper, but if I were in your place I do 
 not think I would do it, for with your army half across the 
 river, Lee would surely turn upon you and then you would find 
 yourself like the bull half jumped over the fence — unable either 
 to gore to the front or kick to the rear." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was also a great politician. He was surrounded 
 and strengthened by great men, some of whom opposed him and 
 some of whom assisted him. Amongst those who were most influ- 
 ential in shaping his destiny was his great rival, Stephen A. 
 Douglas. You will all recall how in that wonderful joint debate 
 Mr. Lincoln gave utterance to his thought about the house di- 
 vided against itself which could not stand. His friends thought 
 it was a false movement on his part. Judge Douglas took every 
 advantage of it, but in the end "the house divided against itself" 
 made Lincoln President of the United States, but it did more. 
 The joint debate made Stephen A. Douglas his friend, and Stephen 
 A. Douglas, after having put himself back of the great cause 
 for which Mr. Lincoln stood, came to be the one man who brought 
 
276 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 more Northern Democrats into the United States Army and into 
 the fold of the Republican party than all the other Democratic 
 statesmen put together. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, however, had another great assistant, the greatest 
 of all those who stood with him in the terrible days. I mean 
 Edwin M. Stanton. 
 
 It was my good fortune to know him as well as to know Mr. 
 Lincoln, and in a small way it was my good fortune to see the 
 greatness of the man, for whenever I went to him with requisi- 
 tions to furnish forth the army, he said : "Give it to them, though 
 it take the last dollar in the Treasury, then they cannot say we 
 did not support them." Short and stout, strong, virtuous and 
 aggressive, in my humble judgment he more than any other man 
 put the force into the administration which made it victorious. 
 
 Philosophy teaches us that mankind have risen to their high 
 estate by the exercise of two faculties, reason and the power of 
 co-operation. With such men as Stanton to support the Presi- 
 dent, the combination between reason and strength in that ad- 
 ministration was perfect. And another illustration of the 
 strength of combination is found in the history of his strongest, 
 most victorious, most successful general. I refer to Ulysses S. 
 Grant, than whom no more modest, no more manly, no more con- 
 stant, no more aggressive general ever lived. But he, too, was 
 supported by a combination. His Pidus Achates, his right arm, 
 his strong, aggressive and ever vigilant supporter was John A. 
 Rawlins, a man who, when twenty-three years of age, was burning 
 charcoal for a living. He was a Douglas Democrat, and he stood 
 by General Grant and "stayed him from falling" until he was 
 victorious, as Stanton stood by Abraham Lincoln until the whole 
 country was victorious. 
 
THE TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 EEPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 City of New York 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1908 
 
 Address of 
 HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 
 
i 
 
 MORRIS SHEPPARD 
 
 Congressman Sheppard was born in Wheatville, Morris 
 Co., Texas, 1875. He graduated from the University of 
 Texas, 1895 and 1897, and from the Yale Law School, 
 1898. He was admitted to the Bar in 1897. Since 
 October, 1902, he has been Member of Congress (Demo- 
 crat) for the First Texas District. 
 
 i 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies, and- Gentlemen of the Republican Club: 
 On the wall of a Southern home there is to-day a letter in a frame, 
 a letter which reads: "Executive Mansion, Washington, Feb. 10, 
 1865. Hon. A. H. Stephens: According to your agreement, your 
 nephew. Lieutenant Stephens, goes to you bearing this note. 
 Please in return to select and send me that officer of the same 
 rank, imprisoned at Richmond, whose physical condition most 
 urgently requires his release. Respectfully, A. Lincoln." In a 
 corner of the frame is a photograph of Lincoln bearing his signa- 
 ture in his own handwriting. At the close of the Hampton Roads 
 Conference early in 1865 Lincoln had asked Alexander Stephens, 
 the Vice-President of the Confederacy and one of the Southern 
 Commissioners, if he could do anything for him personally. 
 "Nothing," said Stephens, "unless you can send me my nephew who 
 has been a prisoner on Johnson's Island for twenty months." "I 
 shall be glad to do it; let me have his name," was the prompt 
 reply. A few days later Lieutenant Stephens left for Richmond, 
 where the exchange was effected, bearing the letter and the picture 
 before described, both the gifts of Lincoln, and for more than 
 forty years they have remained the chief treasures of a Dixie fire- 
 side. This incident was but one of a host of others, showing in 
 Lincoln a spirit that poised on wings of light above the wrath 
 and gloom of war. 
 
28o THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 But for other and wider reasons it is proper that the portrait of 
 Lincoln should adorn this Southern home. He was born of South- 
 ern parentage on Kentucky soil. His father was a Virginian ; his 
 grandfather was a Virginian, his mother was a Virginian. His 
 mother ! The very word hallows the lips that utter it. The world 
 has not yet grasped its debt to the mothers of mankind. The 
 mother is the luster and the hope of history. She is the central 
 figure of all human sacrifice. Life is the flower of her agony, the 
 fruitage of her pain. Humanity is cradled in her tears. That 
 men may be, she fronts the grave, yes, at each birth endures a 
 living crucifixion. 
 
 Lincoln's mother possessed in marvelous measure the qualities 
 that make maternity sacred. He never forgot her prayers, prayers 
 that made the cabin in the wilderness a temple grander than St. 
 Peter's or Cologne. His father, always in deepest poverty, had 
 but recently removed from Kentucky largely because the spread 
 of slavery and the aristocracy surrounding it tended to degrade 
 the status of the whites who were compelled to labor with their 
 hands. Thus in his earliest years were permanently impressed on 
 Lincoln's soul the ideas of liberty, equality and personal rectitude 
 which led him later to acclaim that day the happiest in history 
 when there should be neither slave nor drunkard in the world. 
 Such was his mother's influence that he afterwards ascribed to her 
 all that he was or hoped to be. The clumsy, hand-hewn coffin 
 in which she was interred, the lack of ceremony due to the fact 
 that few ministers visited that remote vicinity, the lonely grave 
 in the clearing, deepened the sadness that solitude and hardship 
 had implanted in his nature. He did not rest until several 
 months afterwards he knelt in the snow while a wandering 
 preacher, summoned at his earnest instance, delivered a funeral 
 sermon over her grave. It should be said here that the devoted 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 281 
 
 woman, a native of Kentucky, who succeeded Lincoln's mother in 
 the Lincoln home, recognized at once his unusual capacities and 
 employed every means to encourage and develop them. To her 
 he gave a love and reverence that were reflected in his spotless 
 conduct. The teachings of these two women gave gentleness and 
 grace to all his acts and must have prompted deed after deed of 
 mercy in the memorable conflict with which his name is forever 
 associated. 
 
 "When Lincoln in 1832 announced his candidacy for the Illi- 
 nois legislature he stated that his supreme purpose was to win the 
 esteem of his fellow-men by being worthy of it. Thus at the age 
 of 23 he proclaimed the basic impulse of his career, the ambi- 
 tion to be useful to mankind. This impulse was but prophetic of 
 the principle of brotherhood that was to mark the consummation 
 of his efforts and to signalize his relation to history. Probably 
 no other man of commanding fame ever struggled so effectively 
 against so unpromising an environment. The family had removed 
 from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indiana to Illinois, following the 
 frontier's westward sweep, locating in secluded forests, felling 
 trees with which to construct the crudest shelter and opening land 
 for cultivation. In the labors of the farm and woods young Lin- 
 coln shared to the fullest degree. The ordinary facilities of the 
 most rudimentary education were beyond his reach. His entire 
 schooling did not comprise twelve months. Yet he managed to 
 obtain and study with absorbing eagerness Bunyan, ^sop, Weems' 
 Washington and the Bible. Perhaps ^sop inspired his celebrated 
 habit of reinforcing argument with parable and anecdote. With 
 what prophetic interest must he have followed the trials of Wash- 
 ington and the patriot armies in founding the nation he was to 
 be summoned to preserve. He seems to have been especially im- 
 pressed with Washington's unvarying trust in God, a sentiment he 
 
282 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 approved and emulated. In the Bible, of which he was a con- 
 stant student, he found the doctrine that supplied the definition of 
 his existence, the doctrine embodied in Christ's answer to the law- 
 yer in the temple, the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of man, the doctrine that Lincoln considered of it- 
 self sufficient to form the basis of a church, the doctrine his life 
 proclaimed and his death ennobled, the doctrine of which the Amer- 
 ican Declaration of Independence is but another form, the doc- 
 trine on which rests all liberty and progress. Such were the mate- 
 rials with which this youthful Vulcan hammered his being into 
 heroic mould and purpose. In that stern pioneer age labor of 
 severest form was honor's essence, equality was the natural state, 
 and men were loved for what they could contribute to the general 
 good. In such a school Lincoln learned to revere humanity, truth 
 and God. In such a school he developed a gentle soul, a giant 
 stature and an iron will. His was a universal sympathy with all 
 human aspiration. Hate found no lodgment in his heart; there 
 kindness and mercy, like twin Portias, pleaded always against the 
 pound of flesh. 
 
 These elements were slowly fusing in the fires of experience 
 and ambition, of conflicts, defeats, successes, for almost thirty 
 years from the date of his first announcement for office. His 
 single term in Congress was marked by faithful service and several 
 comprehensive speeches. It was during his term in Congress that 
 he wrote a letter to his young law partner containing certain 
 rules of conduct which every young man ought to engrave upon 
 his heart, a statement comprising a sounder and more healthful 
 philosophy than any similar number of words in all literature, a 
 statement breathing brotherhood in every line: "The way for a 
 young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never 
 suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to as- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 283 
 
 sure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in 
 any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to 
 keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows 
 his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the at- 
 tempted injury." In a speech a few years before, he had expressed 
 another phase of his love of humanity in this sentence: "If you 
 would win a man to your cause first convince him that you are his 
 sincere friend." There is a verse from Aleyn which elaborates 
 this beautiful idea, an idea so illuminative of Lincoln's soul : 
 
 "The fine and noble way to kill a foe 
 Is not to kill him ; you with kindness may 
 So change him that he shall cease to be so ; 
 And then he's slain. Sigismund used to say 
 His pardons put his foes to death; for when 
 He mortify'd their hate he killed them then." 
 
 In his speech before the convention which nominated him for 
 the United States Senate in opposition to Douglas, in the de- 
 bates with that master of the forum, in inaugural addresses and 
 presidential messages, on the field of Gettysburg and elsewhere, 
 Lincoln gave deliverances that in chaste and lofty eloquence, in 
 simplicity and power stand unsurpassed. The ideal of human 
 brotherhood was with him ever uppermost. Toward the South he 
 exhibited the most tolerant and affectionate spirit. In his speech 
 at Peoria in 1854 he said: "Before proceeding let me say I think 
 I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just 
 what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist 
 among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist 
 among us we should not instantly give it up. When Southern 
 people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery 
 
284 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 than we, I acknowledge the fact." The keynote of his position 
 was opposition to the extension of slavery. 
 
 The opening of the American Civil War made him the chief 
 figure of the most colossal crisis in his country's life. Every ele- 
 ment of his character was hrought into instant and effective play. 
 It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the task he met and 
 mastered. His was the responsible supervision of all civil and 
 military administration. The young party he had led to victory 
 was naturally filled with numerous and discordant groups all 
 clamorous for recognition. Every phase of feeling as to the policy 
 of the government in its most frightful emergency poured a stream 
 of argument and protest across his audience chamber. To har- 
 monize the clashing sentiments and interests required superbest 
 skill. Relations with other nations demanded the coolest and most 
 thorough judgment. He rewrote Seward's dispatch on the sub- 
 ject of England's recognition of Southern belligerency, convert- 
 ing that violent document, which would most probably have in- 
 cited war, into a model of diplomatic propriety. The selection 
 of commanders for the untried millions who assembled at his call 
 involved the rarest penetration. Forbearance, sympathy and keen- 
 est insight marked his treatment of the generals in the field. He 
 studied the art of war and demonstrated military talent of the 
 highest type. His orders and inquiries showed a technical famil- 
 iarity with all the problems of the contest. He grasped the essen- 
 tial features of the proper handling of the Union arms and re- 
 sources. From the beginning he foreshadowed the course of the 
 strife with such accuracy that competent authorities have pro- 
 nounced him one of the ablest strategists of that world-astounding 
 war. Throughout the changing fortunes of the conflict he was 
 the same serene, unyielding, all-compelling force that welded 
 every controversy and every defeat into final and overwhelming 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 285 
 
 triumph. The fires of criticism and calumny found him unresent- 
 ing, calm, yet undeterred. Modest himself to the point of self- 
 effacement, he held himself the humblest of all the Presidents. 
 On his second election to the Presidency he said there was in his 
 gratitude to the people no taint of personal triumph and that he 
 felt no pleasure in succeeding over others. He exercised the pre- 
 rogative of pardon with tenderness and enthusiasm. Mighty as 
 was his brain, still mightier was his heart. He had begun a hu- 
 mane and peaceful reconstruction of several States before he died, 
 and had he lived, the nation's wounds, which he felt were also his, 
 would have far more quickly healed. The knowledge that de- 
 spite his love for all mankind his efforts for human elevation would 
 be distorted and assailed, that however glorious the final victory 
 thousands of American homes were being desolated, that brother 
 was emptying the blood of brother, and the premonition that he 
 would not outlive the struggle, wrapped him in isolation and in 
 sorrow and gave his features an infinite sadness in repose. 
 
 His death was one of the profoundest calamities that ever 
 shocked the earth. To his noble wife he remarked as the clandes- 
 tine assassin was about to fire, "There is no city I desire so much 
 to see as Jerusalem." He was not permitted to see the old Jerusa- 
 lem, but in a few hours he was to stand among the glories of the 
 new. Now what is the relation of his life to the Republic he 
 aided so materially to preserve? It is the development of the 
 idea of brotherhood on which the continued preservation of this 
 Union depends. What lesson emanates from his spectral figure 
 as it rises from that April night in 1865? It is the love of 
 Abraham Lincoln for every man, woman and child beneath the 
 American flag. Invoking his memory I, a Southerner and a Demo- 
 crat, true to every principle that animates my patriotic, valorous 
 and incorruptible people, come among you to-night, Northerners 
 
286 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 and Republicans, equally true to your convictions, as fellow-coun- 
 tryman, friend and brother. New York is my country as well as 
 Texas. Massachusetts, California, Illinois are as dear to me as 
 Louisiana, Georgia or Tennessee. The memory of Abraham Lin- 
 coln is one of the fundamental buttresses of the reunited and un- 
 conquerable America of the twentieth century. In fulfillment of 
 his desires and dreams the American people are to-day a mighty 
 and a deathless brotherhood. Forgotten are the discords of the 
 past; departed are the specters of civil strife. Near Columbus, 
 Ohio, was situated Camp Chase, one of the military prisons of the 
 North during the Civil War. There thousands of Southern sol- 
 diers died, far from the land of their birth and love. But their 
 graves have received the tenderest care from Northern hearts and 
 hands, and an arch has been erected on that solemn spot bearing 
 the word "Americans." This word expresses the spirit of pa- 
 triotism that to-day uplifts and thrills the nation, the spirit in 
 which Lincoln moved and spoke and prayed. It hallows the 
 past, it inspires the present, and 0, may it animate the endless 
 reaches of the future ! It arouses love for every part of our com- 
 mon country, for every city and every state, every mountain and 
 every shore, every forest and every plain — love for our traditions 
 and our history, love for the home of freedom, the hope of lib- 
 erty, the light of time, the radiance of the ages, our own United 
 States. 
 
 The poet sings of Sunny France, 
 Fair olive-laden Spain, 
 The Grecian Isles, Italia's smiles, 
 And India's torrid flame. 
 Of Egypt's countless ages old, 
 Dark Afric's palms and dates ; 
 Let me acclaim the land I name. 
 My own United States. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD 287 
 
 The poet sings of Switzerland, 
 Braw Scotland's heathered moor, 
 The shimmering sheen of Ireland's green, 
 Old England's rockbound shore, 
 Quaint Holland and the fatherland, 
 Their charms in verse relates, 
 Let me acclaim the land I name, 
 My own United States. 
 
 I love every inch of her prairie land, 
 Each stone on her mountains' side, 
 I love every drop of the water clear 
 That flows in her rivers wide ; 
 I love every tree, every blade of grass. 
 Within Columbia's gates. 
 The queen of the earth is the land of my birth, 
 My own United States. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
THE TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1908 
 
 Address of 
 HON. CHARLES E. HUGHES 
 
CHARLES EVANS HUGHES, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 Governor Hughes was born in Glens Falls, N. Y., 1862. 
 He graduated from Brown University, 1881, and from the 
 Columbia Law School, 1884. From 1884-91 he prac- 
 tised law in New York City; from 189 1-3 was Pro- 
 fessor of Law at the Cornell University School of Law, 
 afterwards returning to active practice. He first came 
 into national prominence as attorney for the Armstrong 
 Commission of the New York Legislature for the in- 
 vestigation of insurance company methods. In 1906 he 
 was elected Governor of the State of New York, and 
 upon the expiration of his term was re-elected. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 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, 
 Kentucky; and I envy you the pleasure that you will have in lis- 
 tening 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 hearty rec- 
 ognition of equality. It is also true that on the day when we 
 celebrate the birth of the Father of his Country we render loyal 
 tribute to the distinguished services of a man who, against odds 
 which we can little appreciate, battled for the independence which 
 was so nobly declared ; and v/e feel richer in our manhood because 
 we were introduced to the family of nations by one who so worth- 
 ily represented the best that humanity has offered. 
 
 But there is one man who presents to the American people 
 above all others in his many-sided greatness the type, the repre- 
 
aga THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 sentative of those qualities v/hich distinguish American character 
 and make possible the maintenance of our national strength. And 
 in Abraham Lincoln we recognize not simply one who gave his life 
 for his country and rendered the most important 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 our national power. He is, par ex- 
 cellence, the true American, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 I wish in our colleges and wherever young men are trained, 
 particularly for political life, that there could be a course in Lin- 
 coln. I wish our young men could be taken through the long 
 efforts of his career; I wish they could become more intimately ac- 
 quainted with the addresses he delivered; I wish that they could 
 get in closer touch with that remarkable personality; and 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 monu- 
 ments to shrewdness. We have no memorials by which we desire 
 to perpetuate the records of American smartness. Skill in manipu- 
 lation, acuteness in dealing for selfish purposes, may win their tem- 
 porary victories, but the acuteness that the American people ad- 
 mire is that acuteness which is devoted to the solution of problems 
 affecting their prosperity and directly related to their interests, 
 and which is employed unselfishly and for the benefit of the peo- 
 ple, apart from any individual interest. 
 
 I have long been a student of Lincoln. I have marveled at the 
 ability which he displayed. There has been no greater exponent 
 of that sharpness of intellect which so pre-eminently characterizes 
 the American. But Abraham Lincoln devoted all his talents, 
 his extraordinary perspicacity to the welfare of the people. He 
 was a man of principle. He was a man all of whose acts were 
 
ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR HUGHES 293 
 
 founded upon a recognition of the fundamental principles which 
 underlie our Republic. Said he on one occasion, "I have no senti- 
 ments except those which I have derived from a study of the 
 Declaration of Independence." He was profoundly an apostle of 
 liberty. I have said that he was a man of principle. Rarely has 
 the doctrine of the relation to the nation, to the states, and of gov- 
 ernment to the individual been more lucidly 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 community, must 
 control whatever exclusively concerns it. That is real popular 
 sovereignty." And in that he said it all. 
 
 He was an expert logician. He brought to bear upon his oppo- 
 nents the batteries of remorseless logic. He had a profound confi- 
 dence in the reasoning judgment of the American people. He dis- 
 dained all efforts to capture the populace by other means. There 
 is nothing more illuminating than his conduct of that great cam- 
 paign against Douglas in 1858. He developed his line of attack 
 in a question. He brought to bear upon his opponent an extra- 
 ordinary ability of analysis. He eviscerated the subject of dis- 
 cussion and he presented the whole matter that was then before 
 the great American nation in its bare bones on a perfectly cool 
 and logical consideration ; and, whUe he lost the campaign for the 
 senatorship, he made himself the apostle of thinking America in 
 its opposition to the extension of slavery. He had one foundation 
 principle, and that was this: ''Slavery," he said, "is wrong. It 
 may be recognized where it constitutionally exists, but shall it be 
 extended?" And to every proposition that was presented by his 
 skilful and adroit opponent he presented not abuse, not any appeal 
 to the emotions of the multitude, but cogent reasoning, from which 
 none could escape, and while he lost the senatorship, he appeared 
 
294 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 before the American people as representing their ideal of straight- 
 forward, honest representation of the truth applicable to their 
 crisis, and received the highest honors within their gift. 
 
 There never has been an illustration, I venture to say, within 
 the memory of man where intellect has exerted so potent a mag- 
 netism, where loyalty has been commended simply because reason 
 and early training; and therein there is no man who walks in any 
 station of life in any part of the country but can 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 Lincoln for his service. No one has deserved better of 
 his country. He rendered a service which cannot be eulogized 
 in extravagant terms; but we forget anything that Lincoln ever 
 did or anything that Lincoln ever said in the recognition of the 
 great manhood that was his, which transcended anything he did 
 because of what he was. I have said that he was a man of prin- 
 ciple; and so he was. But he was a progressive man; he was 
 sensitive to the demands of his day. Three or four years — three 
 years, I believe it was, after the outbreak of the war he said, "I 
 have not controlled events, and I confess events have controlled 
 me, and after three years we find ourselves in a situation which 
 neither party and no man devised or expected." He was a man 
 who met each demand as it arose — to the radicals he was too 
 conservative; to the conservatives he was too radical. Few in 
 the community praised him during his life. Probably no man in 
 the whole history of the Republic was ever so severely criticised 
 and so mercilessly lampooned in the dark days of 1864; after three 
 years of trouble he had 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 
 
ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR HUGHES 295 
 
 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, frequently alone, without the sus- 
 taining encouragement 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 diffi- 
 cult situations which is the marvel of our later day. 
 
 My friends, Lincoln represents what the American Republic is 
 capable of and in one personality typifies what we have accom- 
 plished and for what we can reasonably hope. 
 
 He was a humane man, a man of emotion, which he never al- 
 lowed to control his reason ; a man of sentiment and deep feeling. 
 He was a lowly man who never asserted himself as superior to his 
 fellows, but he could rise in the dignity of his manhood to a ma- 
 jesty 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 forwarded the communication, or the substance of it, to the 
 President, the President, without a moment's hesitation or without 
 consultation with anyone, said, in effect: "You shall confine your 
 communications with General Lee to the matter of capitulation, 
 or to minor or military subjects. You shall not discuss with him 
 any political affairs. The President reserves to himself the con- 
 trol 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 simply the realization of 
 the dignity of his office and its responsibility in a supreme crisis, 
 and the willingness to assume that responsibility before the 
 
296 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 American people with that innate confidence of which his su- 
 preme intellect could never deprive him. 
 
 My friends, we see in Lincoln patience, the reasoning faculty, 
 humanity, the democratic sentiment, patient consideration, all 
 combined, and we may well learn from him the lessons which at 
 every hour of our history we should well study. There may he 
 those who look with uncertainty upon our future, who feel op- 
 pressed by the problems of the day. I am not one of them. 
 
 "Why," said Lincoln^ "should we not have patient confidence 
 in the ultimate justice of the American people?" 
 
 Why not, indeed? Who are the American people? They are 
 the most intelligent people organized 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. Why not have 
 patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the American peo- 
 ple? If we can only feel as Lincoln felt and derive our political 
 sentiments from a study of the principles of the Declaration of 
 Independence and proceed as Lincoln did, with remorseless logic, 
 to the consideration of the demands of every exigency, there can 
 be no question but that each problem will be solved, and that 
 every decade of American history will witness a fresh advance, 
 and that the prosperity 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 find themselves impotent. Progress will take no account of 
 
ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR HUGHES 297 
 
 them. The American people will advance step by step surely and 
 inevitably to a realization of their ideals, and nothing whatever 
 will stand in the way in the course of time of that equality of 
 opportunity and of equal rights before the law which the Declara- 
 tion of Independence announces, and which the Constitution 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 natu- 
 rally its leaders, be devoted to the careful and calm considera- 
 tion of remedies in order that we may save our prosperity, and at 
 the same time render every condition which threatens us impotent 
 and powerless, because the will of the people, in the interest 
 of the people, the deliberate expression of the popular judgment, 
 must in this country at all times be supreme. 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 sandbars 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 desires to have the advantages which from boyhood 
 he has been taught that this American Republic affords. He de- 
 sires to have hurdles and obstacles which may have been put in 
 his way by special privilege or by a perversion of government re- 
 moved. He desires to have no disadvantage created by any ill- 
 considered interference with governmental relations. But on the 
 other hand, he intends to have the fullest advantage and oppor- 
 tunity for the exercise of his individual power, with recognition 
 of the equal right of every other man to the exercise of his in- 
 
298 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 dividual 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 accomplished. We are all 
 fortunate that we have had a Lincoln. What 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? What a grand thing it is that 
 we have the inheritance of the memory of a man who had every- 
 thing which we could aspire to in intellectual attainments, who 
 was endowed with a strength of moral purpose, 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- 
 portunities, might survive. 
 
 I am proud, my friends, to have had an opportunity 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 
 thorough 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 a representation of a man upon 
 whose brow God has written a line of superiority, who never ar- 
 rogated it to himself except in his great function of discharging 
 the highest office of government. Defeated again and again, fail- 
 ing to realize the ambition that was nearest to him, again and 
 again he arose 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 the na- 
 tion's representative, the typical American. 
 
THE TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1909 
 
 Address of 
 HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 
 
THEODORE E. BURTON. 
 
 Congressman Burton was bom in Jefferson, 0., 1851. 
 He graduated from Oberlin College, and was ad- 
 mitted to the Bar in 1875, since which time he has been 
 in active practice in Cleveland. Member of Congress for 
 the Twenty-first Ohio District, 1889-91 and 1895- 1909. 
 He is the author of several books and Chairman of the 
 Inland Waterways Commission. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 
 
 Mr. President, Members of the Republican Club of the City of 
 New York, Ladies and Gentlemen : On this twelfth day of Febru- 
 ary, 1909, nearly one thousand meetings have been held in the 
 city of New York to celebrate this anniversary. The attendance 
 upon those meetings has probably been larger than upon any oc- 
 casion in any city for the praise or honor of any human being, 
 living or dead. There have been no ceremonial processions, as to 
 a coronation, no military parade to attract the multitude. It has 
 been simply the plain but impressive tribute of the people to the 
 memory of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Surely this gives reason for a note of optimism. We cannot 
 be so deficient in civic virtue as some of our critics at home and 
 abroad would have us be. To-day the exchanges have been closed, 
 business suspended and patriotism given the right of way. Love 
 of our country and of the great men who have exalted her is not 
 dead; it is not even sleeping! Prosperity has not separated us 
 from patriotism, and the men who have upon them the garb of 
 business could change their garments and readily assume the uni- 
 form of war. So let us be confident for the future. Let us be- 
 lieve that if he whose name we commemorate to-day were to look 
 upon us from the unseen world and were to speak to us he would 
 say, ''Enjoy, children of the twentieth century, the abundance 
 which is g^ven to your country, but always let your hearts and 
 
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 your hands go out to her people, to the poor and lowly, whom I 
 loved, the black as well as the white." 
 
 One hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was born. No pains- 
 taking chronicler has given us the hour of the day, whether it 
 were morning or evening; but we are told that the rude cabin 
 was so poor that there was no cradle, nor even a manger, to re- 
 ceive the infant. The habitation was well-nigh as barren as the 
 abodes of the very foxes and bears that roamed the woods. But 
 if any discerning spirit could have pierced the veil which con- 
 ceals the future, he might well have exclaimed, in the language 
 of Macbeth when frightened at the apparition: 
 
 ''What is this 
 That rises like the issue of a king, 
 And wears upon his baby brow the round 
 And top of sovereignty?" 
 
 For where is the emperor or king who has done so much for the 
 progress of the human race? 
 
 A hundred years creates a broad span in the world's history in 
 any age, but the changes of the century since Lincoln was born 
 have an importance in the world's advance surpassing that of all 
 the cycles of Cathay. It is unnecessary to dwell upon all the 
 marvels of invention, the progress of peace and the growth of 
 popular government. Moreover, previous to the year 1815 the pre- 
 dominant condition among the nations was one of war, while since 
 then the prevailing situation has been one of peace, and con- 
 structive forces have been powerfully at work. And who in all 
 this period will gain such immortality as he whose birthday we 
 are now observing? In studying the careers of men who have 
 marked off milestones in the forward march of humanity we 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 303 
 
 must come to the conclusion that it is only when qualities of the 
 heart have been joined to those of the head that the greatest re- 
 sults have been g-ained. In no man of any age has there been a 
 more superb combination of greatness of intellect with g^reatness of 
 heart and of will than in him. 
 
 Lincoln's influence has not been and will not be confined to any 
 one country or clime. It was the mightiest factor in the estab- 
 lishment of great political principles now gaining the ascendancy 
 almost everywhere. Yet the memory of his deeds will exert its 
 most beneficent influence for all the weak and the struggling who 
 lift their faces heavenward the world over. It may be super- 
 fluous to touch again upon the disheartening surroundings of his 
 youth, the poverty and squalor which rested so heavily upon him, 
 and yet his rise to the most lofty olficial position on the globe af- 
 fords a most inspiring illustration of the possibilities in this free 
 land of ours. 
 
 That to which I wish to call especial attention in the life of 
 Abraham Lincoln is that he was the embodiment — it may be said 
 the incarnation — of the people. Lacking in his youth the life of 
 partial seclusion which belongs to educated men, who are trained 
 in colleges or universities, he possessed a compensating advantage 
 arising from his constant contact with the people, and with neigh- 
 bors and kindred of the less favored ranks of society, whose daily 
 struggle was for the simple necessities of life. Thus he came to 
 understand the emotions, the thoughts, the aspirations of the lowly, 
 and could interpret with unerring instinct those currents of pop- 
 ular feeling with which every public man who expects to succeed 
 must gain familiarity. He was no visionary idealist, for he was 
 peculiarly well informed upon all that interests the mass of our 
 citizens or guides the public opinion of the nation. He did not 
 need to listen for the voices of the time, or as it is expressed in 
 
304 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 modem parlance to keep his ear to the ground. He knew the 
 people — he was one of them, and had lived in such close associa- 
 tion with them that he could not go astray in judging what they 
 would accept or support. 
 
 In every political organization there must be some force which 
 holds the ultimate power. In a military despotism it is a stand- 
 ing army ; in an absolute monarchy it is the influence of the court 
 and those surrounding it. But in a well-ordered republic, such 
 as America, the despotism of public opinion holds sway. Without 
 a favoring public opinion great reforms cannot be accomplished. 
 Lincoln realized that it was best to depend upon the convictions 
 of the people^ and to appeal to their conscience and their judg- 
 ment, rather than to seek to exercise an overbearing influence. 
 These forces upon which he relied were stronger than the armies 
 of potentates, and his rule was more powerful than that of the 
 most absolute monarch. There have been other men who were 
 of a more dominant character, and on the other hand there have 
 been those high — yes, highest — in authority who were more dis- 
 posed to give consideration to the thoughts and sentiments of the 
 time ; but for a combination of both these qualities Lincoln stands 
 forth transcendent. 
 
 Nor was he a servile follower of the dictates of the majority. 
 Indeed he was matchless as a leader, possessing in the highest 
 degree the ability to conciliate men to his measures, as well as to 
 adapt his course of action to time and surroundings. He lived 
 in a time of upheaval, when party lines were being dissolved and 
 old things were giving way to new — in brief, he lived in the 
 midst of a revolution. We had maintained an army of, say, 25; 000 
 men, and were called upon to increase it by more than 2,000,000 
 enlistments. We had enjoyed peace, and had become inured to 
 quietness, when all at once the country was plunged into terrible 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 305 
 
 war. There sprang up the widest and most bitter differences of 
 opinion as to what steps should be taken. With what a masterful 
 hand, with what a marvelous gift in the choice of means and fit oc- 
 casions, did he harmonize all these divergent factions, and bring 
 together, as in one mighty force, all those who sought to save the 
 XTnion! He was never premature, nor yet too late, in the taking 
 of any great step. For example, when generals in the field had 
 declared the slaves in their localities to be free he revoked their 
 orders. Yet later, when the time was ripe, he issued the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation at the opportune moment, and opposition faded 
 away in recognition of the timeliness of the measure. Thus we 
 can aptly compare him to a mighty river which in its course meets 
 many rocks and obstacles, and encounters sharp turns, but as each 
 obstruction is reached, gracefully parts its waters without turbu- 
 lence or hindrance and leaving not one drop behind, flows majes- 
 tically onward with ever increasing volume to the ocean. 
 
 In order that the course of a nation's life may be changed by 
 any single individual there must be first a great occasion, and 
 next a man predestined by his qualities to meet it. Some great 
 problem in which the line between right and wrong can be clearly 
 drawn must demand solution. This occasion existed in 1861 in 
 the call to resist the aggressions of slavery. The nation's con- 
 science was becoming awakened, and this frightful crime was be- 
 ginning to appear to all in its true light. In the second place, 
 the time had come when there must be a settlement of the all- 
 important question of the relations between the central govern- 
 ment and the different units which make it up. A growing spirit 
 of nationality had rendered it imperative that the vagueness and 
 the compromises of the early days should be cleared away. To 
 grapple with these momentous difficulties there was required a 
 leader endowed with clearness of insight, capacity for present- 
 
3o6 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ing unanswerable arguments for the policies he advocated, and a 
 mind and heart which should assure for him popular confidence. 
 And all these requisites Abraham Lincoln possessed in a fullness 
 which made him supreme as the man of the hour. 
 
 With mighty grasp he comprehended his country's needs more 
 clearly than any other statesman, and was able to distinguish the 
 proper remedies and frame the wisest plans for the relief of exist- 
 ing conditions. More courageously and distinctly than any other 
 man of the time he pointed out the irrepressible conflict between 
 freedom and slavery. Unequalled in the keenness of his rea- 
 soning and the cogency with which he could state the grounds of 
 his beliefs, he added to his logical faculty an aptitude in illustra- 
 tion which enabled him to make his arguments clear even to 
 the humblest man. 
 
 Senator Ingalls once told me that in the year 1859 Mr. Lincoln 
 had addressed a meeting out in Kansas. The Senator was a mem- 
 ber of the entertainment committee, and on the following morning 
 he went around to the little hotel and found Mr. Lincoln, with a 
 great pair of old style rubbers on, warming his feet by the stove 
 and entertaining a number of stage drivers with very interest- 
 ing stories. It has been said that occasionally his stories were 
 not of the most refined character. It is unfortunate sometimes to 
 have a good memory. But Mr. Lincoln's anecdotes were like the 
 fables of -ffisop — not the language of a jester, but told to make 
 clear to simpler minds complex and difficult problems, and, besides, 
 in order to relieve the dreadful tensity of the times. With the 
 accounts of slaughter morning and evening, and with the g^eat 
 strain which rested upon him in Washington, there was need of 
 some means of keeping his heart from being overborne and his 
 will from bending. Twenty-five years ago this very evening I re- 
 member having heard from Mr. John Hay, afterwards Secretary 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 307 
 
 of State, a story of Lincoln's which shows the latter's wonderful 
 facility in illustrating the salient points of a situation. When 
 Colonel Hay was private secretary at the White House he had in- 
 structions not to wake the President unless something- of extreme 
 importance was to be communicated. One night a dispatch came 
 from General Burnside from Knoxville, Tennessee, to the effect 
 that defeat and surrender were practically upon him, and deem- 
 ing this sufficiently urgent, Mr. Hay went upstairs and roused Mr. 
 Lincoln with the information. After yawning a little, Lincoln 
 said, "I am glad of it; I am glad to hear it." "But, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, that does not seem an item of news to be glad of." "Well," 
 said Lincoln, "it reminds me of a poor woman I used to know out 
 in Menard County." (His illustrations usually came from Menard 
 or Sangamon or Logan or other counties in that vicinity.) "She 
 had a large brood of children. They wandered through the woods, 
 and it was impossible for her to clothe them properly — she could 
 hardly feed them. The woman always used to say that it did her 
 heart good whenever any of those young ones came around 
 squalling, because then she knew he was still alive, while other- 
 wise she might not know but that he was dead." I think no ex- 
 planation is needed to show how perfectly this applied to the 
 situation. 
 
 After the battle of Malvern Hill Lincoln was approached by a 
 prominent Senator with a very dejected bearing, and the Presi- 
 dent said, "Why, Senator, you have a very sad face to-day. It re- 
 minds me of a little incident." The distinguished caller took it 
 upon himself to rebuke Lincoln, saying, "Mr. President, this sit- 
 uation is too grave for the telling of anecdotes. I do not care to 
 listen to one." Mr. Lincoln was aroused by this remark and re- 
 plied, "Senator, do you think that this situation weighs more 
 heavily upon you than it does upon me ? If the cause goes against 
 
3o8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 US, not only will the country be lost, but I shall be disgraced 
 to all time. But what would happen if I appeared upon the 
 streets of Washington to-day with such a countenance as yours? 
 The news would be spread throughout the country that the Pres- 
 ident's very demeanor is an admission that defeat is inevitable. 
 And I say to you, sir, that it would be better for you to infuse 
 some cheerfulness into that countenance of yours as you go about 
 upon the streets of Washington." A man who was witness of this 
 conversation is still living. 
 
 And we may dismiss the idea that Lincoln was gross in his 
 stories. He may have related some anecdotes which did not rise 
 to the highest degree of dignity, but they were for the purpose, as 
 I have said, of illustrating difficult problems or relaxing the gloom 
 of the times. 
 
 In addition to his penetrating perception of the needs of the 
 day and his remarkable mental equipment for bringing his views 
 home to the minds of the people, Lincoln possessed a rugged sin- 
 cerity and an integrity of purpose which gained for him the un- 
 swerving confidence of his fellow citizens. He sympathized deep- 
 ly with all the best hopes and desires of humanity, and his par- 
 ticipation in the freeing of the slaves was merely one indication of 
 his identity with the plain people whom God had made. Every 
 fibre of his nature was permeated with conceptions which caused 
 him to espouse the cause of the weak and the lowly, and gave him 
 strength with all who were actuated by conscience. Endowed 
 with such a personality, Lincoln was the living representative of 
 the spirit of pure democracy — and of the essential principle con- 
 tained in the immortal declaration that all men are created equal. 
 
 It is to be remembered of Abraham Lincoln, too, that he was an 
 heroic figure in no ordinary time, but in a day of Titanic con- 
 flict. To many of us the Civil War is becoming an indistinct mem- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 309 
 
 ory. I count that person fortunate who was born in time to re- 
 call the stirring events of that thrilling era — the gathering of one 
 of the mightiest armies of all ages from the farms and workshops 
 and counting houses; the undying spirit of patriotism which was 
 aroused; the quick-flashing news of defeats and victories; the ru- 
 mors of the fall of Richmond, reported and denied within a single 
 day; and the unspeakable calamity in the loss of the lives of the 
 flower of the youth of the North and the South alike, whose ab- 
 sence can never be atoned for in our nation's progress, and whose 
 graves are scattered over plain and valley, an everlasting reminder 
 of the magnitude and horror of the great struggle! In this 
 colossal combat Abraham Lincoln looms up as the bulwark of the 
 Union ; as the great force for the maintenance of law and the pres- 
 ervation of our country. When days were dark and friends were 
 falling off he issued a call for troops, and from the great loyal 
 heart of the North came a mighty response, 
 
 "We are coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand more, 
 Prom Mississippi's winding stream, and from New England's 
 
 shore ; 
 You have called us and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide, 
 To lay us down for freedom's sake our brothers' bones beside !" 
 
 The great free people of our land were aroused^ and an army 
 was gathered as strong, as sure to be triumphant, as any that ever 
 mustered beneath the eagles of any sovereign of the old world; 
 and as efficient in its service as the most highly trained and dis- 
 ciplined veterans of Europe's legions, though often meeting with 
 defeat and high mortality losses. And why? Because they were 
 fighting with a leader whom they trusted, and for a great cause. 
 Because there was no hireling or mercenary spirit actuating them, 
 
310 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 but rather their sense of responsibility to the great country which 
 they loved so well and for which they v/ere willing to die. 
 
 Well may it be said that in all the selections of rulers there was 
 never a more fortunate choice than when the great convention at 
 Chicago named Abraham Lincoln. But for the great emergency 
 of the time and the happy circumstance of this nomination he 
 might have remained a mere local figure, with a fame scarcely 
 extending beyond the bounds of a single state. In the hour of 
 the nation's extremest peril he was called to the direction of af- 
 fairs. With a strong hand and a gentle heart he guided the coun- 
 try through and brought victory out of rebellion. Yet in that 
 mighty contest there was not in him any of that overmastering 
 self-seeking which has made many men great. He was great be- 
 cause he must be. The forces which impelled him were rather 
 overwhelming compulsions dwelling within him and driving him 
 onward as if irresistible Fate determined the path, into new and 
 grander ways of goodness and beneficence; making of him, almost 
 before he was aware, emancipator of slaves and the restorer of his 
 country. He executed the decrees of destiny which were laid upon 
 him to execute. 
 
 In all the duties of his great office there was an abiding belief 
 that even those who were his enemies would yet see the right 
 way. The first weapons which suggested themselves to him were 
 not force and violence, but reason and persuasion. Even in the 
 hearts of those who were in rebellion he was sure that better 
 angels existed, and reaching out a hand across the chasm between 
 North and South, which was soon to be so bloody, he appealed to 
 those who were seeking to destroy the government in the historic 
 words so often repeated : "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 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 311 
 
 the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the bet- 
 ter angels of our nature." At the same time he asked why there 
 should not be patient confidence in the justice of the people, de- 
 manding if there were any better or equal hope in the world. 
 
 And again, toward the close of the war, what could have been 
 more noble than Lincoln's policy of preparing the way for lasting 
 peace? His life was cut off before the days of reconstruction, but 
 his policy was always one of conciliation. He resorted to no cruel 
 measures. He recognized the Southern soldiers as belligerents, and 
 took care that prisoners were well provided for; always keeping 
 in mind the time when the disunited states should once more be 
 parts of an even mightier nation within which the North and 
 South would dwell together in harmony and in strength. No one 
 contributed equally with him to the good feeling which now pre- 
 vails between different sections of the country — a good feeling 
 which Lincoln was sure would exist again, though time would be 
 necessary to heal the awful wounds. 
 
 For every great leader who has played a prominent part in the 
 world',s affairs there is what may be called a to-day and a to-mor- 
 row. The to-day of Abraham Lincoln was chiefly made up of the 
 brief period of a little more than four years, during which he 
 acted as chief magistrate. His to-morrow will be made up of the 
 deathless influence which his memory and example will exert 
 upon the world's future. The world will give him more than an 
 immortality of fame; it will give him an immortality of influence 
 as well, an influence as potent as if he still dwelt upon the earth. 
 To all time he will be remembered as a noble type of that true 
 greatness which delights in sympathy and in mercy. I do not re- 
 call that Lincoln ever signed a death warrant. I do know that 
 he saved many a life from death, and that even the weak and 
 the outcast were given equal consideration with the strongest 
 
312 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 and most fortunate, when they came to the White House to se- 
 cure a hearing from the President of the United States. On other 
 anniversaries and in future generations he will he honored not 
 alone because of his great office, nor because of his great place in 
 history, but also because of his kindly nature and the depth of his 
 sympathies. With a melancholy which seemed to forecast his 
 tragic fate he lived the life which we live — unselfish, often in 
 sorrow, noble in all those qualities which become a man. His per- 
 sonal presence is no longer with us, but if ever corruption or trea- 
 son shall be prevalent in the land, if moral desolation shall bring 
 us near to the gates of death, then the patriot who, weary and 
 despairing, grows faint in the struggle, will in the dreams and 
 hopes which give courage to his spirit, see the form of Abraham 
 Lincoln again among the people whom he loved so well, sadder, 
 kindlier, mightier than when alive. 
 
 I congratulate you, citizens of New York, on the prospects of 
 almost limitless development here afforded you in this great 
 metropolis. Its growth has excelled that of any city in the annals 
 of commerce. More than twenty-five hundred years ago the cen- 
 ter of the world's commerce was located at Tyre, described by one 
 of the prophets as "the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, 
 whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth." After the lapse 
 of centuries Carthage assumed the same proud position. Then, 
 after centuries more, the commercial center, by the fortunes of 
 war, shifted to imperial Rome. Later still and by more peaceful 
 forces, Venice and subsequently Amsterdam became the leading 
 marts of trade; until there was made the change which seemed 
 to fix the final seat of commercial power at London. Yet in the 
 past few decades it has become apparent that another change has 
 been coming to pass, this time assuredly the final one, from Lon- 
 don on the banks of the Thames to New York City on the banks 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE E. BURTON 
 
 3x3 
 
 of the Hudson. Other cities there are which take the forefront 
 in some particular department of commerce, industry or finance; 
 but it remains for you to be supreme in all. May your civic life 
 ever be worthy of a city so great and prosperous ! 
 
 Republicans and Democrats, you have your responsibility in 
 the Government of this country, for the standards in politics and 
 in public life. Life should not be made up of trips from uptown, 
 downtown, nor of the sole pursuit of a single profession or branch 
 of business. Our everyday thought should turn to the state, which 
 has given us these golden opportunities of life and to which we 
 owe allegiance as citizens. 
 
 I have sometimes spoken on the rights of politicians. The 
 prevalent idea is that no one is entitled to any large degree of 
 credit who has been in political life until he passes beyond the 
 river. Then he is sometimes called a statesman. But my con- 
 tention is that every politician has a right to be judged carefully 
 and fairly, not superficially. The public should not make up its 
 decisions on the basis of sensational headlines, but each citizen 
 should give that attention to the affairs affecting his country, his 
 state and his city which he bestows on his own profession or oc- 
 cupation. 
 
 President Harrison very appropriately said, in speaking of the 
 framing of our Constitution, that no set of men could have framed 
 an instrument or established a government so perfect that the in- 
 telligent and patriotic members of society could go away and 
 leave the document to take care of itself and of the public weal. 
 Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and eternal diligence is the 
 price of good government. My thought is that the crying evil 
 in the politics of the day is the indifference of the very large 
 share of our citizens. Graft will disappear, corrupt men will be 
 driven out of office — indeed will no longer be able to obtain office — 
 
314 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 if the citizens of this republic give that attention to public af- 
 fairs which they owe, not only for the credit and the glory of 
 their country, but for their own benefit as well. Let this, citizens 
 of New York, be your study, to make for yourselves a model 
 municipality, and then so long as the Hudson flows by to the sea 
 this city will be a source of influence, yes, of almost commanding 
 influence, in the concerns which pertain to the state and nation. 
 
 A hundred years from now others will gather to celebrate the 
 anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I do not know what 
 will be the conditions then. I am not sure whether our sov- 
 ereignty shall be confined within the present borders of what is 
 called Continental America. Our influence may have extended far 
 beyond those limits. But if there shall be expansion I hope that 
 it will not be by conquering legions or battleships, but by the 
 realization on the part of our neighbors that they will be better 
 off with us, as a part of the free United States of America, so that 
 they shall come to us voluntarily seeking annexation. I cannot 
 forecast what will be our means of communication, whether on 
 the earth, or the sea, or in the air. Neither do I know what will 
 be the prevailing type of American manhood and womanhood ; but 
 I most earnestly hope that this type will be cast in the same splen- 
 did mould which has furnished the men and women of the best 
 days of the past and the present — men and women with the high- 
 est ideals; and that then, as now, the memory of Abraham Lincoln 
 will be an inspiration and an example to follow and to emulate, 
 though "dynasties shall have decayed and golden diadems crum- 
 bled into dust." 
 
THE TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER 
 
 of the 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 of the 
 
 City of New York 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1909 
 
 Address of 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 
 
BOOKER TALIAFERRO WASHINGTON, A.M.,LL.D. 
 
 Mr. Washington was bom near Hale's Ford, Va,, 
 1859, of African descent. He was educated at Hampton 
 Institute, Va., where he taught until called to Tuskegee, 
 Ala., by the authorities of that State. His successful 
 founding and administration of the Tuskegee Industrial 
 Institute has made him a commanding figure in work 
 for the Negro. He is well known as a speaker and as 
 the author of many books on racial and social subjects, 
 among them "Up From Slavery," 1901; "Future of the 
 American Negro," 1902; "Working with the Hands," 
 1904; "Tuskegee and Its People," 1905; "Putting the 
 Most Into Life," 1906; "Life of Frederick Douglass," 
 1907; "The Negro in Business," 1907. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 
 
 President Young and Gentlemen : You ask that which he found 
 a piece of property and turned into a free American citizen to speak 
 to you to-night of Abraham Lincoln. I am not fitted by ancestry, 
 nor by training, to be your teacher to-night, for, as I have stated, 
 I was born a slave. My first knowledge of Abraham Lincoln 
 came in this way: I lay sleeping one morning on the dirt floor 
 of our slave cabin; I was awakened by the prayers of my mother 
 kneeling over my bed as I lay wrapped in a bundle of rags, earnest- 
 ly praying that one day Abraham Lincoln might succeed and that 
 one day she and her boy might be free. You give me the chance, 
 Gentlemen of the Republican Club, to celebrate with you and the 
 nation to-night the answer to that prayer. Says the Great Book 
 somewhere, "Though a man die, yet shall he live." If this be true 
 of the ordinary man, how much more is it true of the hero of the 
 hour and the hero of the century, Abraham Lincoln. One hundred 
 years of the life and influence of Lincoln is the story of the strug- 
 gle, the trials, the triumphs, the success of the people of our com- 
 plex American civilization. Interwoven into the warp and woof 
 of this story is the moving story of the people of all races and 
 colors in their struggles from weakness to power, from poverty to 
 wealth, from slavery to freedom. Knit into the story of the life 
 of Lincoln also is the story of the success of the nation, and 
 the welding of all creeds, colors and races into one great composite 
 
3i8 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 nation, leaving each individual, separate group free to lead and 
 live its own special social life, yet each a part of a great whole. 
 If a man die, shall he live? Answering this question as applied 
 to my race perhaps you expect me to confine my words of appre- 
 ciation to the great boon that our martyred president conferred 
 upon my race. My undying gratitude and that of ten millions 
 of my race for that, and yet more. To have been the instrument 
 which was used by Providence to confer freedom upon four millions 
 of African slaves, now grown into ten millions of free American 
 citizens, would within itself have brought eternal fame to any 
 name. But, my friends, this is not the only claim that Lincoln 
 has upon our sense of gratitude and our sense of appreciation. 
 To-day by the side of General S. C. Armstrong, and by the side of 
 William Lloyd Garrison, Lincoln lives. In the very highest sense 
 he lives in the present more potently than fifty years ago. If that 
 which is seen is temporal, that which is unseen is eternal. He 
 lives in the thirty-two thousand young men and women of the 
 negro race learning trades and other useful occupations, in the 
 two hundred thousand farms acquired by those that he freed, in 
 the more than four hundred thousand homes built, in the forty- 
 six banks established and ten thousand stores owned, in the five 
 hundred and Mty millions of dollars worth of taxable property 
 in hand, in the twenty-eight thousand public schools with thirty 
 thousand teachers, in the one hundred and seventy industrial 
 schools, colleges and universities, and in the twenty-three thousand 
 churches and twenty-six thousand ministers. But, my friends, 
 above and beyond all this he lives in the steady, unalterable de- 
 termination of these millions of black citizens to continue to climb 
 the ladder of the highest success, to perfect themselves in the 
 highest usefulness and to perfect themselves year by year in strong, 
 robust American characters. For making all this possible, Lin- 
 
ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 319 
 
 coin lives to-night. But again, for a higher reason, he lives to- 
 night in every corner of the Republic. To set the physical man 
 free means much; to set the spiritual man free means more, for 
 so often the keeper is on the inside of the prison bars and the 
 prisoner on the outside. As an individual, as grateful as I am to 
 Lincoln for freedom of body, my gratitude is still greater for 
 freedom of soul, the liberty which permits one to live up in that 
 atmosphere where he refuses to permit sectional or racial hatred 
 to drag down and warp and narrow his soul. The signing of the 
 Emancipation Proclamation was a great event, and yet it was 
 but the symbol of another still greater and more momentous. We 
 who celebrate this anniversary should not forget that the same 
 pen that gave freedom to four millions of African slaves at the 
 same time struck the shackles of slavery from the souls of twenty- 
 seven millions of American citizens of another color. 
 
 In any country, regardless of what its laws may say, wherever 
 people act upon the principle that the disadvantage of one man is 
 the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever in any coun- 
 try the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent 
 upon the happiness of the weakest individual, there freedom exists. 
 In abolishing slavery Lincoln proclaimed the principle that even 
 in the case of the humblest and lowest of mankind, the welfare of 
 each is still the good of all. In re-establishing in this country the 
 principle that at bottom the interests of humanity and the in- 
 dividual are one, he freed men's souls from spiritual bondage and he 
 freed them to mutual helpfulness. Henceforth no man or no race 
 in the North or in the South need feel constrained to hate or fear 
 his brother. By the same token that Lincoln made America free, 
 he pushed back the boundaries of freedom everywhere, gave the 
 spirit of liberty a wider influence throughout the world and re- 
 established the dignity of man as a man. By the same act that 
 
320 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 freed my race he said to the civilized and uncivilized world that 
 man everywhere must be free, that man everywhere must be en- 
 lightened, and the Lincoln spirit of freedom and fair-play will 
 never cease to spread and grow in power until throughout the 
 world men everywhere shall know the truth and the truth shall 
 make them free. 
 
 Lincoln was wise enough to recognize that which is true in 
 the present and true for all time, that in a state of slavery man 
 renders the lowest and most costly form of service to his fel- 
 lows. In a state of freedom and enlightenment he renders the 
 highest and most helpful form of service. The world 
 is fast learning that of all forms of slavery there is none that is 
 so degrading, that is so hurtful, as that form of slavery which 
 makes one human being to hate another by reason of his race or 
 by reason of his color. One man, my friends, cannot hold an- 
 other man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch 
 with him. When I was a boy I used to have a great reputation 
 for fighting. I could whip every boy with whom I fought and 
 I was careful to maintain that reputation as long as possible, but 
 the people about me did not know how I maintained it. I was 
 always careful in my selection of the boy with whom I fought. 
 I was always sure that he was smaller than I was, weaker than I 
 was. As I grew older I used to take pleasure, as I thought, in 
 getting hold of those little fellows and holding them down in the 
 ditch, but when I grew to manhood I soon learned that when I 
 held those little fellows down in the ditch I had to remain down 
 there with them as long as they remained, and to let them up I 
 had to get up myself. 
 
 My friends, one who goes through life with his eyes closed 
 against all that is best in another race is as narrow and as circum- 
 
ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 321 
 
 scribed as one who fights in battle with one hand tied behind 
 him. 
 
 Lincoln was in the truest sense great because he unfettered him- 
 self. He climbed up out of the valley where his vision was nar- 
 rowed and weakened by the fog and miasma onto the mountain top, 
 where in pure and unclouded atmosphere he could see the truth 
 which enabled him to rate all men at their true worth. Growing 
 out of his universal ascent and atmosphere may there crystallize 
 throughout the nation a resolve that on such a mountain the 
 American people will strive to live. We owe then to Lincoln, 
 physical freedom, moral freedom, and yet not all. There is a debt 
 of gratitude which we as individuals, no matter to what 
 race or nation we may belong, must recognize as due to Abraham 
 Lincoln. Not for what he did as Chief Magistrate of a nation, 
 for what he did as a man. In his rise from the most abject pov- 
 erty and ignorance to a position of the highest usefulness and 
 power, he taught one of the greatest of all lessons. In fighting 
 his own battle from obscurity and squalor he fought the battle 
 of every other individual and every other race that was down, 
 and so helped to pull up every other man that was down, no mat- 
 ter where he lived. People so often forget that by every inch 
 that the lowest man crawls up he makes it easier for every other 
 man to get up. To-day throughout the world, because Lincoln 
 lived and struggled and triumphed, every boy who is ignorant, 
 every boy who is in poverty, every boy who is despised, every boy 
 who is discouraged holds his head a little higher, his heart beats 
 a little faster, his ambition to be something and to do some- 
 thing is a little stronger, because Lincoln blazed the way. 
 
 To my own race at this point in its career there are special 
 lessons for us in the life of Abraham Lincoln. In so far as his 
 life emphasizes patience, long-suffering, sincerity, naturalness. 
 
322 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 dogged determination and courage, courage to avoid the super- 
 ficial, courage to persist insistently and seek after the substance 
 instead of the shadow, so far as it emphasizes these elements, the 
 character, the life of Lincoln points the road that my race is to 
 travel to success. As a race we are learning more and more, I 
 believe, in an increasing degree, that the best way for us to honor 
 the memory of our great emancipator is in trying to be like him. 
 Like him, the negro should seek to be simple, without bigotry and 
 without ostentation. That is great power, not simplicity. Great 
 men are always simple men, great races are those that strive 
 for simplicity. We, as a race, should, like Lincoln, have moral 
 courage to be what we are and not pretend to be what we are 
 not. We should keep in mind that no one can degrade us except 
 ourselves, and that if we are worthy no influence can defeat us. 
 Like other races we shall meet with obstacles. The negro will 
 often meet with stumbling blocks, often be sorely tried, often be 
 sorely tempted, but he should remember that freedom in its highest 
 and broadest sense has never been a bequest, it is always a con- 
 quest. In the final test the success of our race will be in propor- 
 tion to the service that it renders to the world. In the long run 
 the badge of service is the badge of sovereignty. 
 
 With all his other elements of strength, Lincoln possessed in 
 the highest degree, patience, and, as I have said, courage. The 
 highest form of courage is not that which is always exhibited 
 on the battlefield in the midst of the flare of trumpets and the 
 waving of flags. The highest courage is of the Lincoln kind; 
 it is the same kind of courage that is daily manifested by the 
 thousands of young men and young women who are going out 
 from Hampton and Tuskegee and Atlanta, and similar institu- 
 tions, without thought of salary, without thought of personal com- 
 fort, and are giving up their lives in the erection of a school 
 
ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 323 
 
 system, the building of schoolhouses, the prolonging of school 
 terms, the teaching of our people how to build decent, clean homes 
 and live honorable, clean lives. And, my friends, those young men 
 and young women who are going out in this simple way are fight- 
 ing the battles of this country just as truly, just as bravely, as 
 any man who goes out to do battle against a foreign foe. 
 
 In paying my tribute of respect to the martyred president I de- 
 sire to say a word further in behalf of an element of brave and 
 true white men of the South, who, though they thought they saw 
 in Lincoln's policy the ruin of all that they believed in and hoped 
 for, have nevertheless loyally accepted the results of the Civil 
 War and to-day are working with a courage that few people in 
 the North can understand or appreciate to uplift the negro, and 
 thus complete the emancipation which Lincoln began. And here 
 I am almost tempted, my friends, even in this presence, to add that 
 it would require almost as high a degree of courage for men of 
 the type of J. M. L. Curry, John E. Gordon and Eobert E. Lee to ac- 
 cept in the manner and the spirit that they did the results of the 
 Civil War as the courage displayed on the battlefield, by Lincoln, 
 by Grant and Sherman in saving the Republic. 
 
 And in this connection^ my friends, forgive me for adding this 
 in this presence : I am glad to meet here the Bishop of the City of 
 New York : I am glad to meet here the senator-elect from the great 
 State of Ohio; I am glad to meet the president of your club; I am 
 glad to greet and to shake hands with all the noble men who 
 surround this banquet board, but, my friends, there is one man in 
 this room whom I am glad most of all to meet, and that is the 
 young man who played with me when I was a slave, the grandson 
 of the man who owned my body on a Virginia farm — I refer to my 
 friend, Mr. A. H, Burroughs, whom I met for the first time this 
 week since the day of slavery, and who is now an honored lawyer 
 
324 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 in your city. How well do I remember that in the days of slavery 
 we played together in my master's yard, and perhaps fought to- 
 gether. But, my friends, I recall also the picture early one morn- 
 ing of the slaves gathering around the master's house and about 
 hearing for the first time the Emancipation Proclamation read 
 to us that declared us free. The same proclamation that declared 
 me a freeman declared my boyhood friend and the grandson of my 
 former owner a free man at the same time. 
 
 Lincoln also, my friends, let me add, was a Southern man by 
 birth, but he was one of those white men of whom there is a 
 large and growing class who resented the idea that in order to 
 assert and maintain the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race it was 
 necessary that another group of human beings should be kept in 
 ignorance. Lincoln was not afraid or ashamed to come in con- 
 tact with the lowly of all races. His reputation and social stand- 
 ing were not of such a transitory and transparent kind that he 
 was afraid that he would lose them by being kind and just even 
 to a man of dark skin. I always pity from the bottom of my 
 heart any man who feels that somebody else must be kept down 
 and kept in ignorance in order that he may appear great by com- 
 parison. It requires no courage for a strong man to keep a weak 
 man down. Lincoln lives to-day because he had a courage that 
 made him refuse to hate the man at the North or the man at the 
 South when they did not agree with him. He had the courage, as 
 well as the patience and foresight, to suffer the silence to be mis- 
 understood, to be abused, to refuse to revile when reviled, because 
 he knew if he was right the ridicule of to-day would mean the 
 applause of to-morrow. He knew, too, that in some distant day 
 our nation would repent of the folly of cursing its public servants 
 while they live and blessing them only when they die. In this 
 connection I cannot refrain from suggesting the question to the 
 
ADDRESS OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, LL.D. 325 
 
 millions of voices raised to-day in his praise: "Why didn't you 
 say it yesterday? Just that one word of gratitude, one word of 
 appreciation would have gone so far in strengthening his heart and 
 his hand." As we recall to-night his words and deeds we can do 
 so with grateful hearts and strong faith in the future for the 
 spread of righteousness. The civilization of the world is going 
 forward, not backward. Here and there, for a little season, prog- 
 ress may seem to halt or tarry by the wayside, or even slide back- 
 wards, but the trend is ever onward and upward and will be so 
 until some man invent and enforce a law to stop the progress 
 of civilization. In goodness and in liberality the world moves 
 forward. It moves forward beneficently, but it moves forward 
 relentlessly. In the last analysis the forces of nature are behind 
 the progress of the world, and those forces will crush into powder 
 any group of humanity that resists this progress. 
 
 As we gather here to-night, brothers all in common joy and 
 thanksgiving for the life of Lincoln, can I not ask that you, the 
 worthy representatives of seventy millions of white Americans, 
 join heart and hand with the ten millions of black Americans, 
 these ten millions who speak your tongue, profess your religion 
 and have never lifted their voices or their hands except in defense 
 of their country's honor and their country's flag, and with us 
 swear eternal fealty to the traditions and to the memory of the 
 sainted Lincoln? I repeat, may I not ask that you join with us 
 and let us all here highly resolve that justice, good will and peace 
 shall be the motto of our lives? And if this be true, my friends, 
 Lincoln shall not have lived and died in vain. And, finally, 
 gathering inspiration and encouragement from this hour and Lin- 
 coln's life, I pledge to you and to the nation that my race, in so 
 far as I can speak for it, which, in the past, whether in slavery 
 or in freedom, whether in ignorance or intelligence, has always 
 
326 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 been true to the highest and best interests of this country, has al- 
 ways been true to the stars and stripes, will strive so to deport 
 itself that it will reflect nothing but the highest credit upon the 
 whole people in the North and in the South. 
 
APPENDIX 
 

ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. BENJAMIN HARRISON 
 
 Ex-President of the United States 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of New 
 York City: Some bright member here has made my speech for 
 me. There has been some strange incongruity in the places of 
 these toasts to-night. It is not a pleasant assignment to follow 
 the magnificent speech in behalf of the Republican party — detail- 
 ing its achievements, bringing to our recollection the brilliant 
 pathway in which it has walked — with a suggestion that there 
 is to be some reform within it. I suppose the suggestion is hypo- 
 thetical in its character. It was meant to bring to our attention 
 to-night a suggestion that when the Republican party needs re- 
 forming we will do it ourselves. It is a question that we have 
 not debated in Indiana. I am, therefore^ unfamiliar with the 
 arguments by which it should be supported. I must appeal, not 
 to experience, but to philosophy, to defend the suggestion of my 
 toast. I suppose it must be some question of table manners in 
 the Republican party that is giving somebody some trouble. 
 Nothing more serious than that. And, if that be true, then I sug- 
 gest that the instructor who would reform our table manners 
 must belong to the household. The unfriendly criticisms of the 
 man across the street will not be accepted. Or, it may be that 
 somebody is discontented with our tactics. If so, I suggest that 
 he will not promote that reform by deserting to the enemy. He 
 loses the point of influence when he does so. He may from his new 
 
330 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 position kill and destroy, but he cannot promote a reform in 
 tactics. 
 
 If there are barnacles on the old ship it is poor policy to scuttle 
 her. let us put her in the dry-dock and scrape her hull! Or, 
 better still, take her into fresh water and those impediments will 
 drop oif of themselves, and the good old ship will yet show her 
 heels again to the pirates that are pursuing her. The man who 
 thanks God that he is not as other men are has lost the power 
 of persuasion. He can't draw. And, therefore, it is that the 
 reform of the Republican party must come from men who believe 
 in it, who believe in its history, who believe in its power of 
 growth and development, to throw off — not by the lopping of the 
 axe, but by the inherent power of vital growth — everything that 
 may attach itself to it that is unseemly or unsightly. The 
 man who would succeed in life must put his shoulder under the 
 load and not reach down his dainty and hesitating fingers toward 
 the load, as some Republicans seem to have thought was the right 
 policy in these latter years. The great body of the Republican 
 party has always believed in pure methods and in pure men. It 
 only needs, everywhere, that its primaries shall be open to all its 
 voters. It only needs that every Republican in those foundations 
 of political influence and action shall be free to bring to bear 
 upon its policies and upon its nominations an individual influence. 
 
 I do not know whether there are here, or in any of the Eastern 
 States, any restraints or limitations upon this freedom. I do 
 know with us in the West the Republican primaries are free 
 and open to every man who can prove his fidelity to the party 
 by his work at the polls. The influences that formed the Repub- 
 lican party were eclectic in their nature. The call that brought 
 them together was a call to sacrifice and not to spoils, and ever 
 since, that has been the dominating power in the Republican 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT HARRISON 331 
 
 party. The springs from which it drew its inspirations were 
 found in the high hills of truth and duty. Who formed it ? Will 
 some man name its architect? You may call to-night the roll of 
 its first convention, but they were delegates who assembled there, 
 and its platform was first written in the hearts of the people be- 
 fore it was reported to the convention. The men of '56 and their 
 worthy sons constitute the party to-day. I do not hesitate to say 
 that the conscience — the patriotism — of this country is in the Re- 
 publican party. It never responds with more alacrity, or with 
 more magnificent force, than when some moral issue challenges 
 its allegiance and its actions. 
 
 It has been a party of progress. It has pioneered just as the 
 settlers from these Eastern States in the earlier times cut out 
 their pathways for emigration through the wilderness of the 
 West; so has the Republican party, by its great leaders and its 
 great following, marked out new paths in statesmanship and 
 brought after them liberty and peace and an amazing prosperity. 
 
 The Democratic party has been a party of obstruction. It has 
 seemed to me that it was the boulder in this great stream of 
 progress and prosperity which has been bearing us on — resisting, 
 fretting, complaining and making progress itself only as it was 
 borne along by the current that it resisted. I have seen some- 
 times, upon a hot summer's day, on one of our dusty turnpikes in 
 Indiana, a remarkable equipage, a poor lean horse with shuck 
 collar and rope lines, dragging a creaking vehicle, whose wheels 
 followed each other in this fashion, with a sallow, sad-faced man 
 in the wagon, and a more sallow and more sad-faced woman walk- 
 ing behind, and a yellow dog trotting along beneath, and as I 
 have noticed that equipage dragging its weary, dusty way along 
 upon the turnpike that had been made for it, amid cultivated 
 fields, dotted with schoolhouses and with church spires, denot- 
 
332 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 ing and pointing the faith of the people who had the courage 
 to open and settle the country — as I have seen it drawing its 
 weary way along, I have said to myself: "Here comes the Dem- 
 ocratic party!" 
 
 I think these reforms must hegin and progress and end within 
 the party, hecause I do not know of any political organization 
 outside of it that has any reformative power to spare. Certainly 
 not the Democratic party. I know that our mugwump friends 
 think that they have a great deal of surplus reformative energy, 
 but the trouble with those people is that they have put themselves 
 up on the shelf like some dried cakes of Fleischman's compressed 
 yeast, and they can have no power upon the mass that they should 
 leaven, because they have ceased to have contact with it. 
 
 I unite in the invitation, so gracefully extended to them by 
 brother Hawley, to come back, to put the leaven in the lump, 
 and let us have the benefit of it, and to abandon this silly notion 
 that these dried cakes on the shelf can work the reform of the 
 Republican party. 
 
 And so it is. We will do our own work, like the vital force. 
 The Republican party is opening its primaries, making free the 
 sources of power and influence within it, and asking that where 
 there has been a free and fair expression in convention that every 
 man will give his allegiance and his support to the work which 
 the convention does. 
 
 4 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club of New 
 York : Having" heard now for more than three hours just and well- 
 merited reflections upon the Democratic party, I have become sat- 
 isfied that that party needs revision a good deal more than the 
 tariff does ; and I am satisfied, too, that there will be no reduction 
 of the surplus revenues now in the treasury, and the surplus rev- 
 enues now collected, until the Democratic majority in the House 
 of Representatives shall be reduced to a hopeless minority ; and to 
 secure that, gentlemen of the New York club, is one of the great 
 duties devolving upon the Republican party to-day. We have 
 some very singular exhibitions of inconsistency among the people 
 touching this question of the tariff, and the relation of the Con- 
 gress of the United States to this important subject. We have 
 petitions immediately after each Congress is elected^ from Demo- 
 crats praying to be saved from the work of the Democratic Con- 
 gress, and there are in the Ways and Means Committee to-night 
 thousands of petitions from merchants, from laboring men, from 
 farmers, from our fellow-citizens generally, who contributed to 
 make the Fiftieth Congress Democratic — their petitions are now 
 on file in the Committee of Ways and Means, praying to be saved 
 from the work of their own hands. The way to save themselves 
 from the necessity of petitioning against a Democratic Congress 
 is not to elect one — that is the place to begin, and I would not 
 
334 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 assume to speak here to-night upon the subject of the tariff at all, 
 and I am only going to speak a moment — I am going to take my 
 watch out at the beginning; I say I would not assume to speak 
 upon the subject of the tariff to-night except that there is a good 
 deal of ignorance upon that subject everywhere, and a good deal 
 of it in the Congress of the United States. A gentleman rose in 
 his place on the floor of the House less than ten days ago, report- 
 ing back a resolution for the investigation of the strikes in the 
 anthracite regions of Pennsylvania, and the strike of Reading rail- 
 road employees, and he confessed there in open House, that he had 
 had to revise his speech; that he had originally prepared it to show 
 that the iniquitous and oppressive tariff upon coal had been the 
 cause of the strike, and that fortunately he had discovered that 
 very morning that there was no tariff or duty upon anthracite 
 coal at all. Now, I say, if there is so much want of knowledge 
 upon that subject in the House of Representatives, among the 
 gentlemen chosen to make your industrial laws, then I must as- 
 sume that even in the great city and State of New York there may 
 be some little want of information even among the Republicans. 
 Now, these gentlemen have all talked to you a good deal about the 
 tariff — the fact is, they have poached on me — all of them. They 
 knew I was sick. I have been following Senator Sherman for 
 three days, and I want to tell you it is as difficult to follow him 
 as it was to follow his illustrious brother, old Tecumseh, during 
 the war. He sweeps everything before him, and leaves nothing 
 behind for those who follow. 
 
 Now, what is the exact line of difference between the Demo- 
 cratic and Republican parties upon this question of the tariff? 
 The Democratic party is in favor of a revenue tariff — that is, a 
 tax or a duty put upon foreign goods imported into the United 
 States which do not compete with what we produce here. That 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 335 
 
 is a revenue tariff ; a tariff which dismisses all other consideration 
 save and except revenue, and selects out of the group of imported 
 articles those which with the smallest tax will raise the largest 
 amount of revenue, and upon those they put the duty. Now, that 
 is a revenue tariff. What is a protective tariff ? It is a tax or duty 
 put upon foreign merchandise and foreign products, whether of 
 the field, or the factory, or the mine; upon those articles which 
 come in competition with what we produce here; and the Repub- 
 lican idea is to let everything from abroad, save and except lux- 
 uries, come in free, if we cannot produce them in the United 
 States, but put the tax or the duty upon the competing foreign 
 product, and thus encourage our own industries and our own people 
 in their chosen avocations; and that is the way we impose duties 
 under the policy of the Republican party. The fact is, that it is 
 the national policy, and has been from the foundation of the gov- 
 ernment to collect revenues from import duties, and if we would 
 to-day repeal all our internal revenue laws, or so much thereof 
 as might be safely spared, the question of the surplus which now 
 faces us would vex us no longer, and we could raise all the rev- 
 enues needed for the current expenses and obligations of the gov- 
 ernment easily from custom duties, and I believe that is what the 
 Republican party ought to do. That is, to repeal so much of the 
 internal revenue laws, or all if not needed, and let the protective 
 tariff stand. Now, who are they, gentlemen of the Republican 
 club, who complain against this iniquitous tariff? It is not the 
 farmer; it is not the wage-earner; it is not the manufacturer; it 
 is not the capitalist, whose money is invested in protected enter- 
 prises; it is not the consumer. The complaint comes from some 
 other source. I say to you here to-night that there is not a single 
 American interest, or a single American citizen injured by the 
 protective policy of the Republican party. Not one. Who in 
 
336 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 New York is complaining of our protective system? Importers 
 — yes, and mugwumps. This agitation comes from the importers 
 and from the foreign merchant and foreign manufacturers, as 
 Henry Clay put it fifty-six years ago. He said the opposition came 
 from British factors; came from the reviewers, came from the lit- 
 erary speculators — just the kind of mugwumpery we have now. 
 This agitation comes from the school, so-called, from the poets, 
 whose poetry may be good enough, but whose political economy we 
 must decline to accept. This opposition comes from the dilettante 
 and the diplomat, from the men of fixed income — from those "who 
 toil not, neither do they spin," "nor do they gather into barns" — 
 following up the quotation. 
 
 This agitation comes from that class of people — those men who 
 want everything cheap but money; everything hard to get but 
 coin; who prefer the customs^ the civilization of other countries 
 to our own, and who think nothing so wholesome as that which is 
 imported, whether it be merchandise or whether it be manners; 
 and they want no tariff to prevent the free and unobstructed use 
 of both. They want their clothes a little cheaper; they want 
 their hats a little cheaper; they want their French 
 boots a little cheaper. A college-bred American — not a 
 New Yorker — whose inherited wealth had enabled him to 
 gratify every wish of his heart, who had spent very much time 
 abroad, said to me a few years ago, with a sort of listless satisfac- 
 tion, that he had outgrown his country. What a confession ! Out- 
 grown his country! Outgrown the United States! Think of it. 
 I thought at the time it would have been truer had he said that 
 his country had outgrown him, but he was in no condition of 
 mind to have appreciated so patent a fact. He had had no con- 
 nection with the progressive spirit of the country; he had con- 
 tributed nothing to her proud position, and to the uplifting and 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 337 
 
 welfare of her people; he had had no share in the onward march 
 of the republic ; the busy, pushing American boy, of humble origin, 
 educated at the public schools, had swept by him, as effort and 
 energy always lead, and left the laggard behind. His inherited 
 wealth was not invested in protected enterprises, nor was his 
 heart located where it had any sympathy with the people with 
 whom he was bred and reared. The fact is, his country had got 
 so far ahead of him that he was positively lonesome and out of line 
 of the grand procession. He was a free-trader, for he told me so, 
 and he complained bitterly that the tarilf was a trammel upon 
 the progressive men of the country, and that it severely handi- 
 capped him. When I pushed him to say in what particular the 
 tariff was a burden upon him as one of sixty millions of people, 
 he raised his hand — which had never been touched by honest toil 
 — which had never been soiled by labor, and said to me, "Mr. 
 McKinley, these gloves come enormously high by reason of your 
 tariff; the duty of 50 per cent, is actually added to their foreign 
 cost, and it falls heavily upon us consumers." What answer could 
 I make ? Life was too short. If I had pointed him to the trophies 
 of the protective system he would not have understood them, and 
 I could only gaze upon him in speechless silence, with a feeling 
 of mingled pity, sorrow and contempt. And, gentlemen, I learned 
 later that he became a mugwump. That was the newest manifes- 
 tation of protest against our iniquitous tariff law. And, then, 
 it was not a large company, nor a promiscuous one ; he had oppor- 
 tunity of leadership in that organization, for all are leaders, and 
 in the companionship of congenial spirits he found a restful 
 home, a suitable asylum for the man who had outgrown his coun- 
 try. There is another class of our citizens, and then I am through. 
 What time do you close your performance? There is another 
 class of our fellow-citizens who are free-traders; who have been 
 
338 TEE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 SO long" out of the country that they have so lost the aims and pur- 
 poses of parties that they have not been able for twenty years to 
 cast a vote which expressed their views, or even a fraction of 
 them. I believe I quote correctly from Mr. Lowell. There have 
 been no ideas; a perfect absence of ideas, for which these gentle- 
 men could give their support or their suffrages for a period of 
 twenty years. Think of that. The honest payment of the pub- 
 lic debt against threatened repudiation — that was a great issue 
 less than twenty years ago; you will remember the battle that 
 we fought. That was beneath their thoughtful concern. The re- 
 sumption of specie payment, led by the distinguished financier, 
 Mr. Sherman, who sits at this table, who put our finances upon a 
 solid foundation, and who made the old greenback lift its head 
 in its pride and glory and declare that it knew "its redeemer 
 liveth." That issue was wholly unworthy of these gentlemen. 
 And not only have there been no ideas worthy of their support, 
 but there have been no statesmen; there have been no representa- 
 tive Americans ; there have been no typical American citizens since 
 Lincoln was snatched from us — snatched by a cruel bravo from 
 the theatre of things, to become a saint of nature in the Pantheon 
 of kings, and there had been nobody like Lincoln until we got 
 Cleveland. That is what Mr. Lowell said. There has been an ab- 
 sence of representative Americans. If so, what a national hu- 
 miliation! Grant, who closed his lips on the word victory at the 
 Wilderness and refused to speak, but fought it out on that line 
 and in that spirit until the final grand surrender at Appomattox 
 Court House; General Sherman, who delved into the mountains of 
 Cumberland, and made that magnificent march from Atlanta to 
 the sea; that gallant little Irishman, Phil Sheridan, who never 
 stopped to unbuckle his spurs from Harper's Ferry to the rebel 
 rout at Cedar Creek, and who made the scene of Stonewall Jack- 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY 339 
 
 son's fame his field of glory — those three grand men, in the esti- 
 mation of Mr. Lowell, belong to the lower type, or else have been 
 entirely forgotten. We have come to regard those gentlemen as 
 representative Americans, whose matchless courage and intense 
 Americanism have saved America to the worlds the freest and best 
 government to mankind, forever and forever. Garfield and Sum- 
 ner, Wilson and "Wade, Hayes and Arthur — the latter your own 
 fellow-citizen, who made one of the best Presidents we ever had — 
 John Sherman and James G. Blaine, ex-Senator Warner Miller and 
 Senator Evarts, and Senator Allison, any one of whom lightning 
 may strike, God only knows whom ; and it does not make any dif- 
 ference which one it does strike, for whichever one it does he will 
 lead the grand old Republican party to victory, and this New York 
 club will stand by him and follow him to glorious triumph. These 
 gentlemen, mugwump gentlemen, cannot find any ideas that suit 
 them; and I thank God it is so; I thank God that such ideas can- 
 not thrive and live on free soil and among free men, and that it is 
 so is the proudest monument of our intelligence, our civilization, 
 and our patriotism. I wish I might talk the tariff to you to- 
 night, but I cannot. I can only appeal to you to stand by the pro- 
 tective system, and thus preserve the dignity and independence of 
 American labor, and maintain the American schoolhouse, and the 
 American home, and American possibility, to the present and to the 
 future generations. I thank you, gentlemen. 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Ex-President of the United States 
 
 Mr. President, and you, my fellow members of the Republican 
 Club, and you, my fellow guests of the Republican Club, before I 
 come to the matter which I have specially to lay before you to- 
 night let me say a word on another subject. 
 
 Prior to receiving the invitation to address this club on this day 
 I had already accepted an invitation from one who is a guest with 
 me to-night. General Howard, who was to give a dinner to-night 
 in behalf of a cause which every man who believes in the memory 
 of Abraham Lincoln, and who believes in the Union, should have 
 at heart. 
 
 On the last occasion when General Howard spoke with the great 
 martyred President, President Lincoln showed himself deeply in- 
 terested in the welfare of the people of East Tennessee, Kentucky 
 and the Virginia mountains, and spoke so earnestly of their wel- 
 fare that General Howard then pledged himself to do all he could 
 to promote the welfare of those people among whom Lincoln was 
 born, and in pursuance of that pledge he and those associated 
 with him have established a group of schools, called the Lincoln 
 Memorial University, at Cumberland Gap, for the industrial, nor- 
 mal and academic training of those people. And the General has 
 felt that he was in a peculiar way carrying out the purpose of 
 Abraham Lincoln in dedicating himself to that work. 
 
 I should not have felt at liberty to disregard his invitation to 
 
343 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 me for any other invitation except that which I have accepted 
 this evening. But when I told the General what this club meant 
 to me, and what it meant to me to come as President of the 
 United States among my fellow members here, the General at 
 once released me from my promise to him. 
 
 And now in what I have to say to you to-night I shall not strive 
 to entertain you. I shall try to speak to you in a manner to ex- 
 press what you and I, I believe, have most at heart. 
 
 I do not — I will change the form of that sentence — you here 
 are Republicans only secondarily — you are Americans first. And 
 I speak to you to-night as a typical gathering of my fellow Amer- 
 icans. Typical in the fact that we represent different creeds, 
 that some of us were born here and some abroad, that some of 
 us live here, some in the West and some in the South, but that we 
 are each and all, every one of us, without regard to creed or 
 birthplace, good Americans and nothing else. 
 
 I speak to you, my old friends and companions, to you, with 
 many of whom I have been intimately associated in political life 
 from the time that I cast my first vote, to you the men of the 
 great war to whom I looked up from the time I came to manhood, 
 as setting the example for every young American to follow should 
 ever another war call for the people of the United States, to one 
 or two of you beside whom I had the good fortune to fight in a 
 little v/ar — it wasn't a big war, but it was all the war there 
 was. I speak to a body of men who have rendered in the past, 
 end are rendering in the present, in the army, in the navy, on 
 the bench, in the Senate, in private life, the kind of service which 
 makes us content, and more than content to be American citizens. 
 And, therefore, I intend to speak to you to-night, not as Repub- 
 licans only, not as New Yorkers only, but as good Americans, good 
 citizens of the United States, and, therefore, having deeply at 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 343 
 
 heart the problems connected with any and all of our fellow- 
 citizens in whatever part of the Union they live. 
 
 In his second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long 
 as the memory of this nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by 
 saying : 
 
 "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm- 
 ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on 
 to finish the work we are in; . . . to do all which may achieve 
 and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with 
 all nations." 
 
 Immediately after his re-election he had already spoken thus; 
 mind you, gentlemen, speaking this within twenty-four hours 
 after his re-election to the presidency in the midst of a civil war 
 which, because of its extreme bitterness, would have corroded 
 with a like bitterness the soul of any man less high-minded than 
 he was. He said: 
 
 "The strife of the election is but human nature practically ap- 
 plied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case 
 must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. 
 In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, 
 we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad, 
 and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as 
 philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to 
 be revenged. . . . May not all having a common interest 
 reunite in a common effort to serve our common country? For 
 my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any 
 obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here" — thus spoke 
 Abraham Lincoln — "I have not willingly planted a thorn in any 
 man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compli- 
 ment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty 
 God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as 
 
344 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction 
 that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result. 
 
 "May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with 
 me in this same spirit toward those who have?" 
 
 This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up 
 the nation's wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce 
 hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful 
 passions provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all 
 Americans should show now, when there is so little excuse for 
 malice or rancor or hatred, when there is so little of vital con- 
 sequence to divide brother from brother. 
 
 Lincoln, himself a man of Southern birth, did not hesitate to 
 appeal to the sword when he became satisfied that in no other 
 way could the Union be saved, for high though he put peace he 
 put righteousness still higher. He warred for the Union; he 
 warred to free the slave; and when he warred he warred in 
 earnest, for it is a sign of weakness to be half-hearted when blows 
 must be struck. But he felt only love, a love as deep as the ten- 
 derness of his great and sad heart, for all his countrymen alike 
 in the North and in the South, and he longed above everything 
 for the day when they should once more be knit together in the 
 unbreakable bonds of eternal friendship. 
 
 We of to-day, in dealing with all our fellow-citizens, white or 
 colored, North or South, should strive to show just the qualities 
 that Lincoln showed ; his steadfastness in striving after the right, 
 and his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw 
 the right less clearly than he did ; his earnest endeavor to do what 
 was best, and yet his readiness to accept the best that was prac- 
 ticable when the ideal best was unattainable ; his unceasing effort 
 to cure what was evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 
 
 345 
 
 situation worse by any ill-judged or ill-timed effort to make it 
 better. 
 
 The great Civil War, in which Lincoln towered as the loftiest 
 figure, left us not only a reunited country, but a country which 
 has the proud right to claim as its own the glory won alike by 
 those who wore the blue and by those who wore the gray; by 
 those who followed Grant and by those who followed Lee, for 
 both fought with equal bravery and with equal sincerity of con- 
 viction, each striving for the light as it was given him to see 
 the light, though it is now clear to all that the triumph of the 
 cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the welfare 
 of mankind. We are now one people, a people with failings which 
 we must not blink, but a people with great qualities in which 
 we have the right to feel just pride. 
 
 All good Americans who dwell in the North must, because they 
 are good Americans, feel the most earnest friendship for their 
 fellow-countrymen who dwell in the South, a friendship all the 
 greater because it is in the South that we find in its most acute 
 phase one of the gravest problems before our people, the problem 
 of so dealing with the man of one color as to secure him the rights 
 that no man would grudge him if he were of another color. To 
 solve this problem it is, of course, necessary to educate him to per- 
 form the duties a failure to perform which will render him a curse 
 to himself and to all around him. Mind that. And it is true 
 of every one. In addition to rights in every republic there are 
 correlative duties. And if the man, black or white, is not trained 
 to do his duty he becomes necessarily a festering plague-spot in 
 the whole body politic. 
 
 Most certainly all clear-sighted and generous men in the North 
 appreciate the difficulty and perplexity of this problem, sympathize 
 with the South in the embarrassment of conditions for which 
 
346 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 she is not alone responsible, feel an honest wish to help her where 
 help is practicable, and have the heartiest respect for those brave 
 and earnest men of the South who, in the face of fearful difficul- 
 ties, are doing all that men can do for the betterment alike of 
 white and of black. 
 
 The attitude of the North — I would always rather preach about 
 the sins prevalent in the particular congregation I am addressing 
 — the attitude of the North toward the negro is far from what 
 it should be, and there is need that the North also should act in 
 good faith upon the principle of giving to each man what is justly 
 due him, of treating him on his worth as a man, granting him no 
 special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor 
 and the reward of labor. But the peculiar circumstances of the 
 South render the problem there far greater and far more acute. 
 
 Neither I nor any other man can say that any given way of 
 approaching that problem will present in our time even an ap- 
 proximately perfect solution, but we can safely say that there 
 can never be such solution at all unless we approach it with the 
 effort to do fair and equal justice among all men, and to demand 
 from them in return just and fair treatment for others. Our 
 effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color, equality 
 of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law. 
 
 And let me interject right here. It is forty years since the 
 Civil War came to a close within a few weeks, it is nearly forty 
 years, this anniversary of Lincoln's birthday, since the anniver- 
 sary of Lincoln's death, and surely in all this land there should 
 be no audience to whom such an appeal as that I am making 
 should appeal more than to this which I am now addressing. 
 
 As a people striving to shape our action in accordance with 
 the great law of righteousness, we cannot afford to take part 
 in or be indifferent to the oppression or maltreatment of any 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 347 
 
 man who, against crushing disadvantages, has by his own in- 
 dustry, energy, self-respect and perseverance struggled upward 
 to a position which v^ould entitle him to the respect of his fel- 
 lows if only his skin were of a different hue. 
 
 Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrust- 
 ing down instead of helping up such a man. To deny any man 
 the fair treatment granted to others no better than he is to com- 
 mit a wrong upon him — a wrong sure to react in the long run 
 upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon 
 ■which Americans can act is that of "all men up," not that of 
 "some men down." If in any community the level of intelli- 
 gence, morality and thrift among the colored men can be raised, 
 it is, humanly speaking, sure that the same level among the 
 whites will be raised to an even higher degree, and it is no less 
 sure that the debasement of the blacks will in the end carry with 
 it an attendant debasement of the whites. 
 
 The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of 
 different ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor 
 jeoparded; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter 
 into the possession of true freedom — not false freedom — true free- 
 dom, while the forward race is enabled to preserve unharmed the 
 high civilization wrought out by its forefathers. The working 
 out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not possible in 
 off-hand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boons of free- 
 dom, industrial efficiency, political capacity and domestic moral- 
 ity. And that is a lesson that some of our good friends in this 
 country need to learn in dealing with outside peoples. All the 
 resolutions passed at all the anti-imperialist gatherings held in 
 the United States since the close or the beginning of the war 
 with Spain, have not availed for the welfare of the people of 
 the Philippines one one-hundredth part as much as what was 
 
348 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 done by any one day's work of the present Secretary of War, Sec- 
 retary Taft. Gentlemen, this meeting is all right. Nor is it only 
 necessary to train the colored man; it is quite as necessary to 
 train the white man, for on his shoulders rests a well-nigh un- 
 paralleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem demanding 
 the best thought, the utmost patience, the most earnest effort, the 
 broadest charity — that is the word Lincoln used — charity toward 
 all — the broadest charity of the statesman, the student, the phil- 
 anthropist, of the leaders of thought in every department of our 
 national life. The Church can be a most important factor in 
 solving it aright. But above all else we need for its successful 
 solution the sober, kindly, steadfast, unselfish performance of duty 
 by the average plain citizen in his everyday dealings with his 
 fellows. 
 
 The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the 
 ideal we should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day 
 before we attain to it, and unless we show not only devotion to it, 
 but also wisdom and self-restraint in the exhibition of that devo* 
 tion, we shall defer the time for its realization still further. In 
 striving to attain to so much of it as concerns dealing with men 
 of different colors, we must remember two things. 
 
 In the first place, it is true of the colored man, as it is true of 
 the white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far 
 more upon his own effort than upon the efforts of any outside 
 friend. That applies to every man. There is not one of us that 
 does not occasionally stumble, and shame to each of us if he does 
 not stretch out a hand to help the brother who thus stumbles. 
 Help him if he stumbles, but remember that if he lies down there 
 is no use in trying to carry him. It will hurt both of you. 
 Every vicious, venal or ignorant colored man is an even greater 
 foe to his own race than to the community as a whole. The 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 349 
 
 colored man's self-respect entitles him to do that share in the 
 political work of the country which is warranted by his individual 
 ability and integrity and the position he has won for himself. 
 But the prime requisite of the race is moral and industrial up- 
 lifting. 
 
 Laziness and shiftlessness, these, and, above all, vice and crim- 
 inality of every kind, are evils more potent for harm to the black 
 race than all acts of oppression of white men put together. The 
 colored man who fails to condemn crime in another colored man, 
 who fails to co-operate in all lawful ways in bringing colored 
 criminals to justice, is the worst enemy of his own people, as well 
 as an enemy to all the people. Law-abiding black men should, for 
 the sake of their race, be foremost in relentless and unceasing 
 warfare against law-breaking black men. If the standards of 
 private morality and industrial efficiency can be raised high 
 enough among the black race, then its future on this continent 
 is secure. The stability and purity of the home are vital to 
 the welfare of the black race as they are to the welfare of every 
 race. 
 
 In the next place, the white man, who, if only he is willing, can 
 help the colored man more than all other white men put to- 
 gether, is the white man who is his neighbor, North or South. Let 
 me interject here, it is a good thing to remember, that while it is 
 occasionally proper to join in mass meetings and call attention to 
 our neighbor's shortcomings, it is normally better to attend to our 
 own. Each of us must do his whole duty without flinching, and 
 if that duty is national it must be done in accordance with the 
 immutable principles upon which our nation stands, but in en- 
 deavoring each to be his brother's keeper, it is wise to remember 
 that ordinarily each can do most for that brother who is his next- 
 door neighbor. If we are sincere friends of the negro, let us 
 
350 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 each in his own locality show it by his action therein, and let us 
 each show it also by upholding the hands of the white man in 
 whatever locality, who is striving to do justice to the poor and 
 the helpless, to be a shield to those whose need for such a shield is 
 great. 
 
 The heartiest acknowledgments are due to the ministers, the 
 judges and law officers, the grand juries, the public men, and the 
 great daily newspapers in the South, who have recently done 
 such effective work in leading the crusade against lynching in 
 the South ; and I am glad to say that during the last three months 
 the returns, as far as they can be gathered, show a smaller num- 
 ber of lynchings than for any other three months during the last 
 twenty years. Those are rather striking figures and I take a cer- 
 tain satisfaction in them in view of some of the gloomy fore- 
 bodings of last summer. Let us uphold in every way the hands 
 of the men who have led in this work, who are striving to do all 
 their work in this spirit. I am about to quote from the address 
 of the Right Reverend Robert Strange, Bishop Coadjutor of North 
 Carolina, as given in "The Southern Churchman" of October 8, 
 1904— October 8th last. 
 
 The bishop first enters an emphatic plea against any social in- 
 termingling of the races, a question which must, of course, be 
 left to the people of each community to settle for themselves, as 
 in such a matter no one community — and indeed no one indi- 
 vidual — can dictate to any other; always provided that in each 
 locality men keep in mind the fact that there must be no confus- 
 ing of civil privileges with social intercourse. Civil law cannot 
 regulate social practices. Society, as such, is a law unto itself, 
 and will always regulate its own practices and habits. Full recog- 
 nition of the fundamental fact that all men should stand on an 
 equal footing as regards civil privileges in no way interferes with 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 351 
 
 recognition of the further fact that all reflecting men of both 
 races are united in feeling that race purity must be maintained. 
 The bishop continues (I am quoting what this Southern bishop 
 says) : 
 
 "What should the white men of the South do for the negro? 
 They must give him a free hand, a fair field and a cordial god- 
 speed, the two races working together for their mutual benefit 
 and for the development of our common country. He must have 
 liberty, equal opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, 
 to build his home. He must have justice, equal rights, and pro- 
 tection before the law. He must have the same political priv- 
 ileges; the suffrage should be based on character and intelligence 
 for white and black alike. He must have the same public ad- 
 vantages of education; the public schools are for all the people, 
 whatever their color or condition. The white men of the South 
 should give hearty and respectful consideration to the exceptional 
 men of the negro race, to those who have the character, the abil- 
 ity and desire to be lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, lead- 
 ers of thought and conduct among their own men and women. We 
 should give them cheer and opportunity to gratify every laudable 
 ambition, and to seek every innocent satisfaction among their own 
 people. Finally, the best white men of the South should have 
 frequent conferences with the best colored men, where, in frank, 
 earnest and sympathetic discussion, they might understand each 
 other better, smooth difficulties, and so guide and encourage the 
 weaker race." 
 
 Surely we can all of us join in expressing our substantial agree- 
 ment with the principles thus laid down by this North Carolina 
 bishop, this representative of the Christian thought of the South. 
 
 I am speaking on the occasion of the celebration of the birth- 
 day of Abraham Lincoln, and to men who count it their peculiar 
 
352 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 privilege that they have the right to hold Lincoln's memory dear 
 and the duty to strive to work along the lines that he laid down. 
 We can pay most fitting homage to his memory hy doing the tasks 
 allotted to us in the spirit in which he did the infinitely greater 
 and more terrible tasks allotted to him. 
 
 Let us be steadfast for the right, but let us err on the side of 
 generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those 
 who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let 
 us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield 
 from wrong the humble, and let us likewise act in a spirit of 
 the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all 
 our fellow countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness, 
 but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of lo- 
 cality than it does of class or of creed, a spirit which is resolute- 
 ly bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and 
 which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and 
 greater throughout the ages for evermore. 
 
 I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I be- 
 lieve that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will 
 in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. 
 I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty 
 people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people. 
 Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and 
 not worse, and this is as true of one part of the country as it is 
 of another. I believe in the Southerner as I believe in the North- 
 erner. I claim the right to feel pride in his great qualities and 
 in his great deeds exactly as I feel pride in the great qualities and 
 deeds of every other American. For weal or for woe we are knit 
 together, and we shall go up or go down together, and I believe 
 that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward in- 
 stead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith 
 
ADDRESS OF EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 353 
 
 in the generosity, the courage, the resolution and the common 
 sense of all my countrymen. 
 
 The Southern States face difficult problems, and so do the North- 
 ern States. Some of the problems are the same for the entire 
 country. Others exist in greater intensity in one section, and yet 
 others exist in greater intensity in another section. But in the 
 end they will all be solved, for fundamentally our people are 
 the same throughout this land, the same in the qualities of heart 
 and brain and hand which have made this republic what it is in 
 the great to-day; which will make it what it is to be in the 
 infinitely greater to-morrow. I admire and respect and believe 
 in and have faith in the men and women of the South as I admire 
 and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women 
 of the North. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners, 
 Easterners and Westerners, can best prove our fealty to the na- 
 tion's past by the way in which we do the nation's work in the 
 present, for only thus can we be sure that our children's children 
 shall inherit Abraham Lincoln's single-hearted devotion to the 
 great unchanging creed that "righteousness exalteth a nation." 
 
i 
 
ADDRESS OF 
 
 HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN 
 
 Lincoln's Vice-President 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Republican Club : I thank 
 you for this cordial greeting. It stirs the blood of age and makes 
 the pulses leap. But I am too sensible that it is a demonstration 
 belonging not to me, but to the great and important events in 
 which I was a very humble participator. Men are as unimportant 
 in crises like those through which we have passed as the merest 
 atom of dust that is borne away upon the bosom of the wind. It 
 is principle, everlasting and undying principle, that commands 
 and challenges our attention and our respect. 
 
 Mr. President, I fear there is a grave misunderstanding. I 
 came here with what I supposed an express understanding that 
 I should not be called upon to speak. My age alone should excuse 
 me. Yes, Mr. President, young in years while the heart shall 
 throb. But, alas, the limbs will tell you another story. 
 
 I came from my home to be with you to-night to do homage 
 to the memory of one of the greatest men the world has ever 
 known. I left my home at the hazard of my health, that I might 
 testify by my presence here in joining with you in paying a 
 tribute to the memory and the worth of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 It was for that I came, and not to talk. But I had a thought 
 in my mind which it was my purpose to suggest to this noble club, 
 and I will do it. We speak of Washington as the Father of his 
 Country, and we know that by his Fabian policy, the liberties and 
 
356 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 the independence of these colonies were finally secured. We know 
 the wisdom of George Washington aided in laying deep and strong 
 the foundations upon which our government rests. We know that 
 he aided in launching the old ship of state upon that foundation 
 that has outridden all the storms in the past, as, in God's name, we 
 trust it will outride all the storms in the future. All honor then 
 to George Washington and the commemoration of his name. 
 
 I think, Mr. President, that you have in your by-laws a pro- 
 vision that this day shall he saved to the memory of the birth of 
 Mr. Lincoln. Do you remember that we have incorporated in the 
 statutes of our country, one that makes the birthday of George 
 Washington a national birthday? It rests upon no separate ar- 
 ticles of political organisation, but it rests upon the everlasting 
 law. I have come here to-night, and if I have any power, I would 
 ask it with all the force I can urge, that you join with me in mak- 
 ing the birthday of Abraham Lincoln a national birthday. That, 
 in addition to participating v/ith you on this occasion, has brought 
 me here. They are equally entitled to have their birthdays com- 
 memorated. Every age has produced its great and distinguished 
 men, the names of some of whom shall never die. In art, in lit- 
 erature, in arms, in the mechanic arts^ in everything that serves 
 to aid and elevate the people, the world has produced its great 
 and distinguished men. Abraham Lincoln was not an educated 
 man, but he was a learned man. The world was the school in 
 which Abraham Lincoln graduated. It was not confined to the 
 walls of your colleges and your higher schools. He was educated 
 in the great school of the world. His professors, his tutors, were 
 the lesson of humanity which belonged to the world. Such was 
 the school in which Abraham Lincoln was educated. Why, that 
 little gem of a speech which he made at Gettysburg will be taught 
 by our mothers to their children, and it will stand as a gem of 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN 357 
 
 English literature in all the ages that shall come. It was a little 
 speech that spoke from the man who was educated in the schools 
 of the world, and it came closer home to the hearts and the fire- 
 sides of our people. Yes, read carefully the Life of Lincoln by 
 Nicolay and Hay. They give you a better idea of the early train- 
 ing and the early schooling of that eminent man, and you can 
 learn there how close he was to the hearts of all our people. Was 
 it an education equal to that other school? I will not stop to 
 discuss the question. Undoubtedly the blending of the two would 
 be the desideratum, but which is the better, I stand not here to 
 declare. 
 
 One was an education that brought the man home directly to 
 the great mass of our people. They felt it. They felt his words, 
 that would have been cold as an icicle dropping purely from the 
 educated man of the schools. 
 
 Now, shall we not, good Republicans of this club — and I am glad 
 to meet every one of them — although I am old in years, time 
 has not staled, or custom cloyed, the interest that I feel in sound 
 Republicanism. But, alas, I am grieved at some of the doings of 
 our National Legislature. They cast a shade of sadness over my 
 daily life, when I witness the treachery, the dishonesty, and the 
 degraded condition in which some of our Senators stand. 
 
 Now, Mr. President, the time has come when all the bitter as- 
 perities that existed against Mr. Lincoln have ceased. The world 
 will say that his birthday should be a national holiday. Had I 
 remained in the Senate to this hour, it would have been done be- 
 fore now. You are a strong, a vigorous, an active, an intelligent, 
 and purely a Republican party. Now, you can put that wheel in 
 motion which shall roll on to success. See to it that the birthday 
 of Abraham Lincoln is made a national holiday. Perhaps I may 
 say that mainly to utter those few words I was induced to come 
 
358 THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 
 
 here. Remember, I can see the hoys in blue as they tread their 
 solitary rounds in their camping grounds, and I can hear a voice, 
 gentle, but potent to my ear, that commands me from them to 
 regard the memory of Abraham Lincoln as they would have 
 done had God in his inscrutable wisdom changed our relative 
 positions. 
 
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