LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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 THE NATIONAL TRAGEDY. 
 
 • FOUR SERMONS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 FIRST CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY, NEW BEDFORD, 
 
 Jjjd± 
 
 ON THE LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 OF ^ 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 BY WILLIAM J. POTTER. 
 
 Nefo JSefcforto, iflass. : 
 
 ABRAHAM TABER & BROTHER, 
 1865. 
 
-LOo, 
 
THE NATIONAL TRAGEDY: 
 
 FOUR SERMONS 
 
 DELIVERED HEFORE THE 
 
 FIRST CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY, NEW BEDFORD, 
 
 ON THE LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 / 
 
 OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 BY WILLIAM J. POTTER. 
 
 Ncfo BetJforU, fflass.: 
 ABRAHAM TABER & BROTHER. 
 

 
 FEINTED BY REQUEST. 
 
 NEW BEDFORD : 
 E. Anthony & Sons, Printers. 
 
I. 
 
 THE ASSASSINATION OF THE PKESIDENT. 
 
 Wo looked for peace, but no good came ; and for a time of health, and behold, trouble ! 
 Jer. viii. 15. 
 
 Their sword shall enter into their own heart. Ps. xxxvii. 15. 
 
 My Friends, how can I fitly speak to you to-day ? How 
 can any human words lift the burden from our hearts ? 
 How can any human wisdom fathom the Providence of 
 this national tragedy under whose awful shadow we come 
 together ? Our staggered faith asks, indeed, if there be 
 any Providence in this foul deed ; and reason and reverence 
 and piety, all that is most cogent in truth and all that is 
 most holy in religion, cry out, — No ! there is no Providence 
 in it ! No Providence save that which belongs to the 
 blackest crime, — no Providence save that which permits 
 the foulest cruelty to wreak its demoniac spirit on unoffend- 
 ing innocence, and does not, by miraculous interposition, 
 stay the stealthy assassin's blow, — no Providence save that 
 which always surrounds the dreadful fact of sin, and by 
 which sin is made, in its last desperate madness, to 
 overleap all bounds, even of its own appointing, and to 
 bring down upon itself, in its own destruction, all the 
 
righteous indignation and vengeance of Heaven's justice ! 
 It were blasphemy to speak of any other Providence than 
 this in the dark, midnight crime that has slain our President. 
 It is the hand of Satanic wickedness that has done this 
 thing ; and the hand of the Lord is not in it, save as it 
 enters into every crime, to neutralize, overturn, and destroy 
 it, result and cause together. 
 
 I pray not — I dare not pray — for meek submission, 
 as if this were God's act. I pray rather for a just 
 indignation, for a wise and righteous wrath to inspire us, — 
 not for any littleness of vindictive passion, not for any 
 spirit of human vengeance, — but with reverent earnestness 
 and solemn sense of the hour's need, I pray that the mighty 
 spirit of Heaven's retributive justice may possess and stir 
 our hearts, and put into us the iron nerve that is wanted for 
 the stern tasks now given to our hands. I pray, indeed, 
 that thy will, Lord, not ours, may be done, — but it is not 
 thy will to slay the beauty of Israel on our high places, — it 
 is the unsanctified, maddened, wicked will of man that has 
 done this deed, thinking, in its insensate frenzy, to fight 
 against and overthrow thy will. Yea, Lord, thy will be 
 done ! Thus may we ever pray. And may we listen 
 reverently, docilely, courageously, to hear thy will even in 
 this fearful tragedy, with hearts and hands ready to do to 
 the utmost whatsoever duty is required of us. For, though 
 not by thy righteous will has this dreadful thing been done, 
 yet in it thou sendest us warning, and instruction, and great 
 commands. Let us listen and obey. 
 
 Listen for yourselves, friends. I cannot hope, and I 
 have not the heart to attempt to-day, to interpret this 
 
national calamity, and this crime against the nation, in their 
 full significance. Our sense of loss is too personal, — it will 
 not let us yet fully uncover the sacred reserve of our grief; 
 it is yet too soon — we cannot bear — to have the curtain 
 lifted wholly, and the fearful horror exposed in all its secret 
 causes and consequences. But listen — listen each for him- 
 self — to what truth and justice and a wise, true love, are 
 trying, through the passages of this grief, to utter to-day in 
 every loyal heart. Listen, my friends, for God's voice, as 
 he shall utter in your stirred and agonized souls the moral 
 of this awful tragedy. Listen and obey. 
 
 The lesson must come. But I can only hint at it to-day. 
 It is not yet the hour for analysis, but for grief. 
 
 For grief! Oh, double grief, that in the hour of our 
 triumph this wickedness has been consummated ! that into 
 the hour of our rejoicing this heavy sadness falls ! that the 
 bells had hardly rung out their gladness through the land 
 before they had to mournfully toll the people's sorrow ! 
 Double grief, that he who had led us so wisely, and with so 
 much honor to himself and the country, through the terrors 
 of war, has fallen by the assassin's hand, just as he was 
 going through the gates of victory to receive the crown of 
 peace and of a nation's gratitude ! The crown of peace ! 
 He wears it now from God's own hands. The crown of a 
 nation's gratitude ! He is henceforth our martyr and our 
 saint. 
 
 Grief not for him ! But grief that our hands cannot 
 bestow the crown which his have so nobly won, and that 
 our eyes cannot see him wear it, moving with honors and 
 grateful love among us down to serene old age. Double 
 
grief, that just as peace was dawning, and the whole east 
 was radiant with the coming sun of prosperity and joy, the 
 sky is suddenly darkened with the blackness of this guilt 
 and this tempest of a nation's tears ! 
 
 I thought to speak to you to-day, my friends, of the 
 glory of Petersburg and Eichmond; of the overthrow and 
 surrender of the great army of the rebellion, and of the old 
 flag raised again by brave Anderson's hands over Fort 
 Sumter, — of the open door and auspicious harbingers of 
 peace. But "we looked for peace, and behold trouble." 
 We looked for peace, and behold a sword. 
 
 Four years ago this crime would not have shocked us as 
 it does now. Then we almost expected it, and it was 
 almost a miracle that it did not come. But now, after 
 being saved through the hazards of four years of open war 
 and stealthy treachery, that this precious blood should 
 be spilled, by the dastardly assassin's hand, on the very 
 threshold of final victory, — it is for this that our hearts 
 weep and almost refuse to be comforted, and our shocked, 
 staggering faith asks, "Why, why, was this consecration, 
 and this baptism needed, before we could enter again the 
 holy temple of peace ? " 
 
 We weep not for him. His career is finished gloriously. 
 Few public men in this, or any, land will have so honorable 
 a record in history. The people's president — not the 
 president of politicians, or of a party, but the president of 
 the people and the country, — coming from the people, 
 respected, honored, trusted, beloved, chosen and re-chosen 
 by the people, he aimed always with upright and manly 
 purpose to serve the people, and advance their interests and 
 
their rights. The most magnanimous and tender-hearted 
 and forgiving of magistrates, he has almost fallen a victim to 
 his own generous nature. Standing in presence of the open 
 grave which violence has prepared for him, we forget even 
 the few faults of his character. His life rounds before us 
 in majestic fulness and completion; and whether for the 
 sober pen of the future historian, or for the dramatic demands 
 of some coming Shakspeare, he could hardly have himself 
 asked for a longer continuance of life. For him, — for his 
 fame, for a sure place in his country's gratitude, for his im- 
 mortality in history or in dramatic story, his life is finished 
 with rare and aesthetic felicity. It received its crown when, 
 a few days ago, he made that modest but triumphant entry 
 into Richmond, hailed, not by the rich and the powerful, but by 
 the poor blacks, whose chains by his command had just fallen 
 from their limbs, and who crowded the way and followed 
 him through the streets, showering their blessings upon him 
 as their deliverer and saviour. That was the crown of his 
 presidency and his life. After that there was no honor 
 which the country or the world could give him. We weep 
 not, then, for him. He is henceforth our hero as well as our 
 martyr-president. 
 
 Nor do we mourn for our country's cause, as if that were 
 lost. In thus completing and crowning his own life, he had 
 conducted the nation to the point of assured triumph and 
 safety. Not for our country's cause can we now grieve or 
 fear. That, thanks to our dead president, thanks to our 
 generals and their armies, thanks to the Lord of Hosts, is 
 now beyond the power of any one man's life or death either 
 to save or to destroy. 
 
8 
 
 Not for our country's cause do we mourn ; but we do weep 
 for our country's loss and dishonor. We weep for the 
 State, bereaved of an honest, faithful, unselfish ruler. We 
 weep for philanthropy, bereaved of a sagacious counsellor 
 and helper. We weep for humanity, bereaved of the 
 tenderest and most compassionate of hearts. We weep for 
 the whole world of mankind, bereaved of a statesman who 
 had faith, without regard to race, or color, or country, in the 
 laws of divine justice, and in a government of equal rights 
 and equal chances for all. But most of all do we weep for 
 the enormity of this crime, — that the assassin, at home 
 under despotism, but a stranger to our free government, 
 has been permitted to put his brand of infamy upon the 
 Republic, and to stain forever its hitherto fair escutcheon 
 with more precious than imperial blood. Flow, tears of 
 this people, till you wash out in expiation the "damned 
 spot" of this guilt ! Drop your tears in floods, clouds, to 
 cover our shame ! Let the sun and the moon and the pure 
 heavens be darkened, that they see not our sin ! Oh, 
 humanity, that thou couldst have borne this dreadful crime in 
 thy bosom ! In all the world there is but one that equals it. 
 We must go back eighteen hundred years, to Gethsemane 
 and Mount Calvary, to find its fitting mate in atrocity. 
 
 Yet not upon the skirts of the Republic, not upon the 
 sceptre or royal robes of freedom, rests this stain. It is 
 the exotic spirit of despotism that has committed this 
 horror. Slavery has done this deed. Slavery, which has 
 educated a whole community in barbarism, which has 
 corrupted all sense of honor and right and truth in its 
 upholders, which gave birth to the monstrous theory of 
 
secession, and fomented treason and conspiracy and this 
 wicked rebellion, — slavery, which has scattered families, 
 and desolated homes, and starved prisoners, and shot down 
 men and women in cold blood, — slavery, which has eaten up 
 the wealth of the country, and murdered your sons, or sent 
 them to you as living skeletons, — slavery, this fiend, has 
 now slain your president. Slavery is the assassin. It 
 is the same spirit that has ruled the rebellion from the 
 beginning. It began with the hanging of John Brown, and 
 it has gone on demanding ever fresh and greater horrors to 
 feed upon, until it ends with the murder of Abraham Lincoln. 
 The awful laws of dramatic unity, stricter in the actual 
 than in any fictitious tragedy, could not spare it this result, 
 even though itself may have begun to shrink from the horror 
 of it. It could not be permitted that this war, originated 
 and fed by such a spirit, could end, and leave even a tradition 
 of chivalry or honor or heroism on the side of slavery. 
 All Southern valor and skill and self-sacrifice and devotion, 
 which might otherwise have challenged and won the admira- 
 tion of the world and posterity, are now swept from human 
 memory by the infamy of this transcendent crime. Hence- 
 forth, through all history, the rebellion is branded as assassin. 
 And slavery, which instigated and sustained the rebellion, 
 has, by the law of its own necessities, brought it helplessly 
 bound to this infamous end ; and so it is forever proclaimed 
 before all the world how purely evil and inhuman and dia- 
 bolical a thing slavery is. It is the divine law by which evil 
 works its own destruction, and, in attempting to undermine 
 the good, digs its own grave. "Their sword shall enter 
 into their own heart." 
 
 B 
 
10 
 
 And is not this, my friends, a hint of the moral of this 
 tragedy ? Whether we needed the lesson or not, is it not 
 clear to us now, that we cannot safely leave in the soil, 
 anywhere in all the land, the smallest seed or root or filament 
 or atom of that wrong against God and man out of which 
 all this crime and curse of treason and war and assassination 
 have grown? This may have been the last, desperate 
 struggle of the monstrous wrong in its mortal agony, but it 
 shows us that, until dead and utterly exterminated, it carries 
 with it satanic stealth and violence and murder. And 
 secondly, is it not plainly taught us that, if we cannot trust 
 the spirit of this evil so long as the evil is anywhere above 
 the ground, so we cannot safely trust, in any efforts at 
 reconstructing the Republic, the men who have been con- 
 spirators for the defence and extension of this evil, — that 
 we cannot trust them in any offices of the nation or the 
 states ? They must be outlawed. They challenged and 
 defied the federal government, they threw down the gauntlet 
 against justice and for slavery : they have failed, and now 
 let them abide the issue. Let justice be done : pardon and 
 freedom and suffrage for the mass of the people, for white 
 and for black j the penalty of treason or the outlaw's fate 
 for the leaders. Not alone justice, but gratitude and honor 
 and a true magnanimity and mercy demand, that, in our 
 reconstructed Union, we shall not hold off at arm's length 
 those who have been our firmest and most faithful friends in 
 the South, and refuse to them the equal rights of the 
 government which they have helped to maintain, while we 
 take to our compassionate bosoms the men who, so long as 
 they were able, stood against us as our enemies, and who 
 
11 
 
 even now may stab us as we lean confidingly upon them. 
 There is room for honorable magnanimity and for christian 
 mercy, without risking the very cause for which our armies 
 have fought and our victories been gained. We want no 
 unholy passion, no vindictive wrath ; let the majesty of law 
 be maintained; let there be no belittling of the great 
 occasion by any assumption of the powers of retribution by 
 private hands ; but there are eternal laws of divine justice 
 to be nationally vindicated for white and for black; and 
 when we talk of magnanimity, we must not forget the race 
 that has been waiting in patient suffering these many years 
 for the magnanimity of this nation, and by whose help wo 
 have been lifted to a position where we have now the power 
 to be magnanimous. 
 
 Is it possible, my friends, that we needed this awful 
 calamity to teach us this lesson ? to urge us to some duty 
 that we were shrinking from ? to push us to the full com- 
 pletion of this dire work of war by the establishment of 
 absolute and impartial justice? Is it possible — is it not 
 possible — that even now we could not build a true and 
 lasting Union without this sacrifice, the greatest and highest 
 that we could make ? that, even with these gates of victory 
 open, we could not enter the temple of perfect peace, unless 
 the blood of our president should sprinkle the threshold 
 and consecrate the altar ? Let each ask and answer for 
 himself; and answering, heed the promptings of solemn duty. 
 Christianity was only a partial reform of Judaism until its 
 leader was put to death by the hands of wicked men on 
 Mount Calvary. Then it was transfigured, and became a new 
 religion. Jesus lived a holy and wonderful life, but not till 
 
12 
 
 he was led to the cross did the hour come in which he was 
 to be glorified. And this, friends, may be the hour in 
 which this nation is to be glorified. It may be, and God 
 grant it, that half-measures of justice will now be swallowed 
 up in absolute and complete equity ; that partial reform will 
 give way to thorough regeneration; and that the nation 
 henceforth will be no more the same, but transfigured and 
 impelled by a new spirit. Through our great leader, we 
 are crucified. God grant that we may also be glorified, even 
 as he is glorified ! Of all the days in the year, the assassins 
 chose Good Friday to strike their fatal blow, — the day that 
 their brother assassins, eighteen hundred years ago, put to 
 death the Redeemer in Judea. Auspicious omen ! The 
 tomb shall not hold him. The stone shall be rolled away 
 from this sepulchre also. And he shall appear among us 
 again in another form, pleading for truth and justice and 
 humanity, so that our hearts shall burn within us by tho 
 way ; and in closet and council he shall still come to us, and 
 speak " Peace " to our troubled souls. One duty also, 
 chiefest of all, will he enjoin : " Lovest thou me ? Feed 
 my lambs; feed my sheep, — the weak and little ones, the 
 poor, neglected, oppressed, whose bonds I loosed." 
 
 Friends, this is Easter Sunday. Already it is time we 
 were at the door of the sepulchre to await his coming, to 
 listen for his higher bidding. Let the night of darkness 
 
 and distraction and fear vanish. Lift up your eyes ; behold 
 ic glories of 
 
 April 1G, 1865. 
 
 the glories of the resurrection morning. 
 
II. 
 
 DISCOURSE ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL RITES. 
 
 My friends, this is not the hour for long or elaborate 
 speech. We have come together by a natural and sponta- 
 neous impulse, that we may join, even at this distant point, 
 in the funeral solemnities of our late honored President. 
 Our hearts are too bitterly shocked and grieved, our souls 
 too full of sadness, for many words : a sadness, not only for 
 the great loss that our nation, and the world even, have 
 sustained, but a still deeper sadness because of the infamous 
 crime and lasting shame to our country through which this 
 sudden loss has come ; for not in the ordinary course of 
 nature and Providence does the nation suffer this bereave- 
 ment, but through the agency of a deed of the most atrocious 
 wickedness. Providence permitted it, — but only as it 
 permits, only as it does not interfere with, the freedom of 
 the human will, even though, swayed by satanic purposes, 
 that will should lie in wait for innocent blood, or lay its 
 murderous hand upon the Lord's anointed. Providence 
 permitted it: and the infinite Providence will neutralize 
 and transform it, as it does all evil, into final good and 
 blessing, — we cannot doubt that : and yet divine Providence, 
 for the very reason that it is infinitely good and holy, must 
 
14 
 
 shrink in utter aversion and horror from the sight of such a 
 crime. The whole race of humanity is stained by it, and 
 the very heavens are blackened, and weep for shame. 
 
 But I would not use this hour to utter even the just 
 indignation and anguish of horror that fill us at the cause 
 of this national calamity and grief. Justice to society, the 
 honor and progress of humanity, may in such a case demand 
 that there be no act of human pardon; but with God — with 
 God — while He looks down with a keenness of paternal 
 sorrow, that we can have no conception of, upon the crime, — 
 with God, there' is yet always some way of forgiveness for 
 the criminal, — because, what is not always the case with 
 man, there is with Him always some way, at some time, in 
 some world, for bringing even the greatest criminal back, 
 through the path of repentance, to newness and purity of 
 life. With Him also, with God, is almighty power in 
 some way to overrule all evil, even the blackest and most 
 grievous, to draw from it its poisonous and agonizing sting, 
 and to transmute it by degrees into the pure gold of truth 
 and integrity and holiness. None but the Infinite One has 
 this power : and so to Him we turn in this hour, seeking 
 through this thought, on the wings of this faith, to 
 mount up, up, above all this earthly darkness and woe 
 and sin and despairing grief— up to the unshaken, eternal, 
 unchangeable wisdom and might of the Infinite, — up to such 
 point of spiritual elevation that we can see how, amidst all 
 the conflicts, and perplexities, and complexities, and evils, and 
 crimes, and sorrows of our finite lives, an overruling, uni- 
 versal Law, holding them all firmly in its grasp, works out 
 unswervingly its wise designs ; and how, over all special 
 
15 
 
 wills and deeds, with their warrings and weaknesses and 
 aberrations, there is one general will and providence, aim- 
 ing always at the utmost possible good, and never moved 
 from its path, never thwarted for a moment, by what passes 
 on this little planet, among our little race. 
 
 Yes, my friends, in this hour of all hours do we need faith 
 in God, — in a God who is a present Providence and Ruler 
 in the earth, and whose designs cannot be circumvented by 
 any wandering will, or disobedience, or even heaven-defying 
 crime, of man. In God is our trust, our refuge, and our 
 hope, — in the eternity of His Laws, in the eternity of His 
 Love. Over all the failures and sins and crimes of men, 
 the great Law still works on, taking up and solving all 
 these lower disturbances in its higher spiritual harmonies. 
 Look up, friends, even from out of this depth of national 
 humiliation and grief, — look up into the heavens, above the 
 earth, above its clouds and ills, and see ever " beauty for 
 ashes." See how, in the pure vault above our heads, the 
 eternal stars come out, and take our little earth into their 
 company, — take it with all its disorders into the harmony 
 of the celestial spheres, its very perturbations being provided 
 for and cancelled in their grander revolutions. And so we 
 may ever read in the wise beneficence of the great provi- 
 dential laws, even in the midst of our strifes and wars and 
 deeds too black to name, the everlasting gospel of " Peace 
 on earth, good will to man." All things are transformed 
 for man's eternal welfare, and the evil doers themselves arc 
 compelled to nullify their own purposes ; their crimes, how- 
 ever black, and though wholly the result of human will and 
 human depravity, and never foreordained by God, are yet 
 
16 
 
 not outside of His eternal laws, and are not unprovided for 
 in His benign plan of the universe. No sooner is crime 
 committed than it touches some secret spring in these 
 infinite, all-embracing laws, which the wicked men who 
 plotted it had no thought of, and which sets in motion moral 
 forces that are freighted with sure retribution for them and 
 sure overthrow of the evil principle and passion out of 
 which their wickedness came. Or where we cannot see the 
 operation of this benignant law, we can at least bow in 
 silent trust, as we do before the infinite Providence to-day, 
 with hands upon our lips reverently hushing all questions, all 
 doubts, satisfied that the grand centre around which all 
 these finite spheres of life revolve is Infinite Love, which is 
 therefore amply able to cancel all their errors, to redeem 
 all infamies, — satisfied that whatever else may go down, 
 the Heart of the universe cannot fail ; — 
 
 " And so, by faith correcting sight, 
 We bow before His will, and trust 
 Howe'er they seem, He doeth all things right." 
 
 To-day the nation buries its president. And such a 
 president ! than whom we have had none better, none more 
 honored and beloved since our first. If Washington was 
 the father of our country, Lincoln was its savior. And in 
 many respects he came nearer to the heart of the people 
 than did even Washington. A gentle, kind, lovable man, 
 who, in all the bitterness of this civil war, with all its 
 political and personal strifes, has never said a harsh thing 
 of any of his enemies North or South, and who never did a 
 cruel thing in all his life. His faith in human nature and 
 
17 
 
 in the good intentions of even his worst foes, and his 
 tenderness in judging others' conduct and motives, were 
 almost pathetic in their simplicity. Perhaps he had not 
 severity and roughness enough for the stern work that the 
 time demands. And yet, as we look back from his grave 
 upon this trait of his character, so christian in its type of 
 mercy, so constant always in all his words and deeds, 
 so forever characterizing him in all history as our good 
 president, we can hardly wish that he had been otherwise. 
 His few public faults, which were relative only to the times in 
 which he had to act, all lay on the side of great virtues, and 
 at any other time would have been great virtues. An honest, 
 conscientious, unselfish, philanthropic man was he ; thoroughly 
 incorruptible ; devoted with single, uncompromising aim to 
 the good of his country and the interests of humanity ; and 
 believing most earnestly in the God-given equal rights and 
 privileges of all men. Not an enthusiast, but wise ; reticent 
 of his opinions and public purposes, yet familiar, and un- 
 willingly turning his ear from any comer ; exquisitely modest 
 and unassuming, — always Abraham Lincoln still, though 
 president, — the man always more than, and above, the 
 president ; never in all the events of these years claiming 
 anything for himself, but giving the credit ever to others, 
 and to events, and to the people, whose servant he always 
 called himself, and to God, whose will, without any affectation 
 of piety, he meant religiously to follow. Not a rapid man 
 in coming to an opinion, but coming surely, he never had to 
 take a step backward through having taken a misstep ; he 
 never went farther than he saw to be clearly right, but 
 always just as far as he saw, and held to his position, until 
 
18 
 
 new light should lead still farther forward, with a heroic 
 persistency; — a man seeking new light, constantly progres- 
 sive, and meaning to do his whole duty ; a man of great 
 sagacity, and knowledge of men, intuitively quick in perceiv- 
 ing the means necessary for any proposed ends, keen in the 
 use of arguments, believing in the application of absolute 
 principles to politics, and possessing large common sense 
 for devising the practical policies necessary for making the 
 application; — therefore a true and eminently successful 
 statesman. 
 
 And this man, thus gifted, thus devoted, has led the 
 country through four years of unexampled civil war and 
 peril to the final glory of military triumph, and to the very 
 verge of assured peace ; and, crowning honor of all, under 
 God he has been the instrument of delivering from bondage 
 a whole race among us that former administrations of the 
 government for long years had helped to oppress, — a race 
 who now gaze wistfully after him as their ascended savior, — 
 while the country advances through this door, which his 
 hands have opened and no man's now can shut, to a new 
 career and to a glorious destiny, — free, united henceforth in 
 institutions and spirit as well as in form, and the hospitable 
 home and helper of universal humanity. 
 
 Here, my friends, in these capacities and in these oppor- 
 tunities and deeds, are the elements of a rare greatness as 
 well as goodness ; and history, I believe, will adjudge that 
 Abraham Lincoln was not only our good president, but also 
 one of our few great presidents. Here are elements of 
 deed and character, which, if we will put them together, 
 not essentially different from what they were in his life, will 
 
19 
 
 give us the hero that we have been asking for all through 
 these years of war. The true hero is seldom entirely 
 recognized when present. But it is of such characters as 
 this that a nation's history makes up its most precious 
 jewels. 
 
 And this man, thus gifted, thus devoted, thus trusted in, 
 and followed, and beloved, the nation buries to day : buries 
 him — oh, bitter memory! — from the assassin's fatal hand. 
 Henceforth our cause is consecrated by his martyrdom. 
 Bury him ? We bury only what was the least and outermost 
 part of him. While the stricken people all through the 
 land, in city and in country, join in these obsequies over his 
 grave, he himself is more vital in the nation than ever 
 before. ' Already his spilled blood is coursing with quicker 
 pulses in the veins of the country ; and treason, conspiracy, 
 and despotism, tremble before this dead president more than 
 they did before him living. He reigns to-day in hearts that 
 never admitted him before. People, that laughed at him in 
 life drop heavy tears on his bier, and wherever there is a 
 heart that had a single spark of loyalty left, it is kindled 
 into a generous, active patriotism now. Lifted up from the 
 earth, he draws all men unto him. Bury him ? We enthrone 
 him ! He is henceforth our leader more than when he led 
 us in the flesh, — our leader now in the spirit. They have 
 crucified him ; the country, humanity, Heaven, glorifies him. 
 
 Farewell, departed form ! and sweetly rest from the tur- 
 moil of war beneath the friendly sods of thy prairie home. 
 Hail, risen and glorified spirit ! not lost to earth, though 
 gained to Heaven. 
 
 April 19, 1865. 
 
ill. 
 
 TEE CAPACITY AND HISTORICAL POSITION OF 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 The memorial of virtue is immortal : because it is known with God and with men. When 
 it is present, men take example at it; and when it Is gone, they desire it : it wcareth a crown, 
 and triumpheth forever, having gotten the victory, striving for undeflled rewards. Wis. of 
 Sol. iv. 1, 2. 
 
 Again we are summoned together to give utterance in 
 some more deliberate manner to our sense of national loss, 
 and to express our reverence- for the national leader and 
 the man whom we have lost. Six weeks have passed away 
 since the bloody crime was committed that brought us the 
 bereavement. Yet it needs not that anything of praise or 
 affection that was then said, in the first moment of indignant 
 grief, be now unsaid. Not even the words of eulogistic love 
 and admiration that were pressed burning from a nation's 
 outraged heart, will give Abraham Lincoln so high a place 
 in history, as will the sober pen of the historian, a hundred 
 years from to-day, writing with cool nerve the simple facts 
 of his life. For myself, the farther 1 get away from the 
 inhuman scene of his death, the farther I go back of all the 
 accidents and concomitants, whether of his death or his life, 
 to the real man that he was, the more do I wonder and 
 
21 
 
 admire. He has left words and deeds and a finished work 
 of statesmanship and philanthropy, which, aside from all 
 interest excited by his tragic fate, worthily secure to him, 
 not only the present gratitude and homage of the nation, 
 but historic immortality among the few great names that 
 America has produced. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
 Lincoln, — will not these be the four names that, a hundred 
 years hence, will shine with most lustre in the first century 
 of our national history ? 
 
 I would speak to-day no mere eulogy. There is no need 
 to exaggerate or to conceal. In discussing such a character 
 we can afford to utter the simple, naked facts. All rhetori- 
 cal adornment seems but tinsel where there is such pure 
 gold. I would keep strictly within the limits of truth and 
 soberness, while I attempt, though with very inadequate 
 success, to bring together some of the elements by which 
 Abraham Lincoln's capacity, and place in history, must be 
 measured. We shall find, also, that in this life and death, 
 is matter for such history as Shakspeare wrote, which 
 records not only outward events and measures outward 
 greatness, but traces in national events and through indi- 
 vidual lives the course and conflicts of absolute, vital 
 principles ; and shows how men, though they die, yet triumph 
 in their death, because over their graves the cause they lived 
 for is lifted up out of the arena of conflict and passion, to 
 receive ever after the undivided homage and reverence of 
 the world. Abraham Lincoln, the man, is one of the noblest 
 gifts of our Republic to history ; but Abraham Lincoln, the 
 martyr, sanctifies republican freedom and makes our history 
 forever sacred. 
 
22 
 
 la measuring the character and historical value of this 
 man, the first question to be asked is, What was his 
 individuality? that is, had he original power in himself? 
 were there in his own being such elements of strengtli that 
 he impressed himself strongly upon other men and upon 
 events ? did he have personal greatness and weight ? And 
 this question is put first, because the answer to it is most 
 obvious, and leads us to one of the main elements of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's character and national strength. 
 
 We have had few public men in America — scarcely one, 
 I think — more purely original, — scarcely one who relied 
 more, or with greater safety and success, upon native, inborn 
 capacity, and upon the individual convictions and experience 
 developed out of native capacity. Few men, in any age or 
 nation of the world, placed in so high a position, have borne 
 its responsibilities so naturally and so easily, or, in the midst 
 of great events and dangers, have assumed responsibility so 
 naturally and borne it so safely. In the great crises of the - 
 war, we have sometimes asked indeed for more show of 
 power in the executive branch of the government ; we have 
 wanted to be consciously led by the will of a strong man, 
 and to see the display of that will in the nation. Yet all 
 the while that we have been praying for a leader, this man 
 has been really leading us. I doubt if we have ever had a 
 president — I do not except even Jackson or Washington — 
 who was more truly the leader and ruler of the people than 
 Abraham Lincoln. And the fact that he took this position 
 so easily, and held it so quietly, that the people were not 
 conscious of his hand holding and guiding them, is additional 
 and consummate proof that he possessed the individual, 
 
23 
 
 native power that makes one a natural leader. He led 
 without even knowing it himself. He disclaimed all idea of 
 leadership, — disclaimed it in perfect sincerity; said that 
 the president was the servant of the people and only followed 
 to do their bidding. But in the very effort and claim to be 
 their servant, he became their master. Refusing to put 
 himself at the head of any party or clique, listening respect- 
 fully and sincerely to all, but deciding for himself and taking 
 the responsibility in his own hands at last, he became in 
 reality the head of the nation. 
 
 And this position he held, because of the inherent strength 
 and force of his individual character. When the war first 
 burst upon the country, and Abraham Lincoln — a Western 
 lawyer, with little general culture and experience in states- 
 manship — almost by accident was at the helm of affairs, 
 selected with no reference to the great events that were 
 coming, men began to look at each other with doubt and 
 anxiety ; and prominent persons of the party that had elected 
 him wished that they could have foreseen, so that they might 
 have chosen a stronger man. But Providence foresaw, and 
 was wiser than the politicians would have been, or were. 
 They did at Chicago better than they knew. They were 
 thinking only of a temporary availability during an elec- 
 tioneering campaign, and so chose Abraham Lincoln for the 
 presidential candidate j Providence, foreseeing a four years 
 struggle with the power of slavery, was thinking of availa- 
 bility in its highest sense, and so let them choose him. For 
 had they foreseen, where would they have found their 
 stronger man ? William H. Seward was then the foremost 
 statesman of the party. Does any one now regret that ho 
 
24 
 
 was not the successful candidate ? As events have proved, 
 does any one believe that he has comprehended the struggle 
 with a keener insight or with a broader grasp ? He has 
 held the first place in the cabinet and done good service 
 there ; some of us have sometimes thought that he had too 
 much influence with the president for the president's good — 
 that he was in reality president. But when the facts are 
 all known, we shall find that the Western lawyer was never 
 overmatched in his cabinet by the shrewd, cultivated, expe- 
 rienced, philosophic statesman of New York. Nor would 
 Chase have made a stronger president for the crisis. His 
 policy, in some respects, from the outset might have been 
 bolder and more radical ; personally, in the early stages of 
 the war, it might have suited you and me better j but it 
 would have inevitably put him at the head of a party rather 
 than at the head of the loyal nation; and with all our 
 admiration and reverence for him, we may well doubt 
 whether he could have led the country through these four 
 years of perils on the right hand and on the left so safely 
 as it has been led under its actual leader. We have had, 
 too, the benefit of his strength in the cabinet. 
 
 And other strong men, officially and unofficially, have 
 stood as advisers of the president. Yet he has stood the 
 real head of the nation, clear and clean above them all. 
 No ruler was ever readier to listen to opinions from all 
 quarters, — to admit all comers, and give every class of men 
 and every party and every individual citizen a chance to be 
 heard. But all these opinions went through the crucible of 
 his own keen judgment, and came out into deed through his 
 own will, if they ever came out at all. His cabinet officers 
 
25 
 
 sometimes complained that they were not even advisers, but 
 only clerks, so independently did he frequently act of them. 
 During Buchanan's administration, and for many years 
 preceding, the policy of the government and all its great 
 measures were decided by a vote of the cabinet, the presi- 
 dent making himself strictly the executive of the will of 
 the majority. Lincoln, from the outset, made the cabinet 
 only an advisory body, seeking their advice or not according 
 to his feeling of need, and in any event reserving to himself 
 the right of decision. Sometimes he consulted a part with- 
 out the knowledge of the rest ; sometimes took important 
 steps without the knowledge of any of them. But equally, 
 whether acting by their advice or not, the responsibility was 
 always his, and he was willing and sought to bear it, not for 
 ambition's but for conscience' sake, before the country and 
 the world. Congress passed a resolution of censure against 
 a member of his cabinet : immediately he sent a message to 
 Congress, announcing that the acts censured were his, — and 
 the country, though it had been clamorous against the secre- 
 tary, said directly that the president was right." Again, a 
 furious party were crying down the secretary of war for 
 withholding supplies from, and secretly plotting against the 
 success of, their favorite general : the president, in a public 
 speech, said that he himself had done the deeds complained 
 of, — and the people were silenced. He declared the report 
 of a cabinet-officer to Congress to be his own, and changed 
 it, if it ran counter to his own ideas. And so, generally, he 
 never shrank from taking upon himself any responsibility in 
 the conduct of affairs that the emergency demanded. He 
 initiated measures and assumed powers that in any other 
 
 D 
 
26 
 
 time but that of war would have been in clear contravention 
 of the Constitution ; and sometimes his habit of free and 
 solitary action, even when there seemed to be no great 
 emergency, alarmed the friends of the administration and 
 excited the constitutional jealousy of Congress. And in 
 any other man almost, in a selfish and ambitious man, such 
 a habit would have been dangerous. But in him it was so 
 balanced by transparent integrity, and unselfish, conscientious 
 devotion to the country's good, that the people instinctively 
 felt, whatever the opposing politicians might say, that the 
 alarm was groundless and even ludicrous. Yet it was well, 
 perhaps, that there were such sharp critics even among the 
 friends of the administration, as Wade and Chandler and 
 Winter Davis, to keep the old moorings of the Constitution 
 and the powers and dignities of Congress in sight, that the 
 people might easily lay hold of them again, in the event of 
 a really dangerous man assuming arbitrary power. 
 
 Now these acts and ways of the late president arc the 
 acts and ways of a man of large original individuality and 
 strength. * Not speaking of them now either to censure or 
 to praise, but simply as evidence of character and capacity, 
 they denote a man of great personal power ; of large native 
 resources; of inherent ability to lead and command, — a man 
 of independent thought and energy and will, — a man, who, 
 though standing among strong men, impressed them more 
 than he was impressed by them, and so showed himself 
 stronger than they all. He impressed himself also upon 
 events ; and, though wisely accepting their teachings — indeed, 
 by accepting their teachings — kept himself always above 
 them, and held them in a manner within his control. He 
 
27 
 
 was strong enough to disregard custom and precedent and 
 fashion, the politic ways of more experienced statesmen, 
 and the secret arts of diplomacy, and to walk in a path of 
 his own appointing, — to hew out his way, indeed, as he 
 went along. And this he did with no bluster of innovation, 
 with no appearance of meeting antagonistic forces, but with 
 the quiet modesty and easy self-possession and assurance of 
 true greatness. He did it from the sheer greatness of his 
 manhood, — from the sheer strength and power of the native 
 stuff out of which the individuality of his manhood was 
 developed. We have not always, I know, accorded to him 
 this commanding ability. But history, I believe, will correct 
 our decision : we are already correcting it ourselves. 
 
 Next, we are to inquire more particularly what were the 
 elements of this large, commanding individuality ? through 
 what special faculties came this general efficiency ? 
 
 First, as to the intellectual. Dividing the intellect into 
 the intuitive, or philosophical, intellect ; the imaginative, or 
 poetical, intellect ; and the logical, or practical, intellect, — we 
 should not claim for Mr. Lincoln any remarkable develop- 
 ment of the two former divisions. In the imaginative and 
 poetical faculties, he was deficient. He seems to have had 
 little appreciation of the beautiful in any of its forms. He 
 was as plain and rugged in his style of writing and thought 
 as in his person and manners. He was entirely wanting in 
 intellectual enthusiasm. His state papers, for the most 
 part, though on subjects dear to his heart and of great 
 popular interest, have been cold and practical only, and 
 though satisfactory in substance, have awakened little popu- 
 lar emotion. More imagination would have enhanced his 
 
28 
 
 power. It would have given him an enthusiasm, a warmth, 
 a consciousness something like the heroic of the magnitude 
 of events and of his own part in them, which the people 
 have missed, and to which they would have responded with 
 a more buoyant patriotism. It might have made him even 
 to their consciousness the leader and hero that he actuallv 
 
 w 
 
 was, so that he could have carried the country with greater 
 ease than he did through some of the valleys of despondency 
 and over the mountainous difficulties of the four years' 
 struggle. 
 
 Nor should we claim for President Lincoln any remarkable 
 development of the intuitive, or philosophical, intellect. 
 He was no metaphysician. He seldom traced even the 
 great principles upon which he acted back to their absolute 
 sources or grasped them in their theoretical relations. In 
 establishing his principles, he did not go back farther than 
 was necessary for the practical purpose in hand. He relied 
 more upon observation and experience than upon intuition. 
 Compared with Mr. Seward in respect to this, division of 
 the intellect, he was inferior: yet perhaps the inferiority 
 did not make him the worse leader for the times. Com- 
 pared with Jefferson in this particular, he would fall far 
 short; with Washington, he might stand on about the same 
 level. 
 
 But his practical and logical intellect was extraordinary. 
 He had wonderful greatness and quickness of understand- 
 ing, — an immense amount of common sense. In this was 
 concentrated the whole force of his mental nature : and here 
 lay one of the main elements of his individual power. 
 Seward stood far below him in this regard ; and so, when it 
 
29 
 
 came to affairs of practical statesmanship, the Western 
 lawyer distanced his philosophical competitor on the first 
 trial, though the latter had thirty years of public training 
 behind him. In amount of practical intellect, neither Jeffer- 
 son, nor Washington, nor even Franklin, was his superior. 
 I think we have had no public man in America who, on this 
 point, surpassed him. It was this that made him the keen 
 and powerful logician, and the worthy antagonist, even in 
 their own field, of greater philosophers and more experienced 
 statesmen. It was this that gave him a style of oratory 
 more convincing than any grace of manner or beauty of 
 diction could have done : he had something sensible to say 
 and he made his auditor see it to be sensible ; no rhetorical 
 art could put things in writing more strongly than his plain 
 common sense did. It was this — this extraordinary amount 
 of practical common sense — that gave him his knowledge 
 of men, and his quick insight into motives and character, 
 and his ready understanding of the ways of managing men 
 and quietly moving great affairs. It was this that, in his 
 high position and among men of broad culture, more than 
 made up for any deficiency in the knowledge of books and 
 the polish of colleges. It was this in a great measure, 
 combined with his remarkable humor — which also belonged 
 to the practical side of his intellect — that kept the people 
 on such terms of cordial understanding with him, and held 
 them to him in such close bonds of sympathy and trust. 
 Whenever there was dissatisfaction or partial alienation, a 
 speech or a letter came, filled with such homely, honest 
 words of common sense, that they drew men to him in 
 admiration of his sagacity, and silenced, if they did not 
 
30 
 
 convince. His letters to the Springfield Convention, and to 
 Governor Magoffin and Mr. A. G. Hodges of Kentucky, arc 
 specimens of argumentative political epistles hardly to be 
 matched elsewhere. They are decisive, and make answers 
 impossible. So also was the characteristic argument with 
 which he pricked the bubble of Douglas's oft repeated pro- 
 slavery sophistry of popular sovereignty. " My distinguished 
 friend," said he, " says it is an insult to the emigrants of 
 Kansas and Nebraska to suppose that they are not able to 
 govern themselves. We must not slur over an argument of 
 this kind because it happens to tickle the ear. It must be 
 met and answered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas 
 and Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but I deny his 
 right to govern any other person without that person's consent.' 11 
 His public letters and speeches are filled with similar sharp 
 thrusts of logic ; and he has left words of wisdom and wit 
 that the world will never allow to die, — words that will 
 give him a place in history among the first order of men 
 honored for practical sagacity and power. 
 
 But when we turn to President Lincoln's moral nature, we 
 find a still richer field for admiration and study. In moral 
 qualities he stood almost without a peer among the world's 
 great rulers and magistrates. No living statesman surpasses 
 him in that element of personal greatness that accrues from 
 moral strength. In this regard, he goes above Jefferson 
 and Franklin ; Washington is his only rival among our chief 
 historic names ; and in some particulars he is superior even 
 to Washington. The equanimity of Washington was some- 
 times disturbed by the malicious charges and inventions of 
 his enemies ; his rare dignity and reserve gave way, and he 
 
31 
 
 stormed with indignant passion. Lincoln, though he may 
 have had less of official and personal dignity, yet had a more 
 equable temperament. Amidst all the partisan and personal 
 strifes of these years of civil commotion and war — the 
 slanders and indignities and evil machinations of his foes, the 
 vexatious criticism and distrust and falling off of friends — 
 his natural serenity and self-command seem never for a 
 moment to have forsaken him. I do not think he has left a 
 harsh or bitter word against his worst or most annoying 
 enemy ; for there was no harshness or bitterness in his heart, 
 not in its most secret corner. He was capable of feeling 
 only pity, charity, and forgiveness. Unconsciously he wrote 
 the motto of his own life in the phrase of his last Inaugural, — 
 "Malice toward none, charity for all." 
 
 There was, too, a wonderful warmth and tenderness in 
 his moral nature. The people felt the pulsations of a great 
 brotherly heart beating within that gaunt, ill-compacted 
 frame, and making even it almost beautiful. His eyes were 
 great deeps of sympathy and honest affection ; transparent, 
 yet no one ever saw to the bottom of them. His mouth 
 moved naturally to expressions of sincerity and good-will ; 
 and his whole face, which, when in repose, was heavy and 
 melancholic in its cast, was transfigured with a strange and 
 tender beauty, when anything touched the subtle wires that 
 made connection with his heart, and sent upward its thrilling 
 pulses : and his heart was always the first part of him to be 
 touched. Pressed on all sides by the gravest public cares 
 and anxieties, he could yet find time to write with his own 
 hand to a poor woman in Boston, who had given five sons 
 to glorious deaths for the republic on the field of battle, and 
 
32 
 
 whose sixth was lying severely wounded. — a letter which, 
 to that lone woman, will always be a more precious legacy 
 of wealth than all the riches which a grateful government 
 or a generous public could give her. After a wearying day 
 in his office, burdened with dispatches to be read, with 
 papers to be examined and judged, with personal calls and 
 questions innumerable, private and public, to be disposed 
 of, seeking finally, long past the accustomed hour, to retreat 
 to his private room for rest, he hears without the door a 
 sound like the hushed cry of a child. Immediately weari- 
 ness is forgotten, the usher is summoned and asked, if a 
 woman with a child in her arms is in the ante-room. " Yes, 
 sir, — been trying three days to see you, and on a very 
 important matter, if I may be permitted to say it," was the 
 answer. " Let her come in at once," responded the presi- 
 dent. And soon the poor woman goes out again, with light 
 steps now, her hunger and weariness forgotten, and covering 
 her baby with kisses and tears of joy ; for she has saved her 
 soldier son's life. Thus did our dear president never weary 
 of kind and merciful deeds. He could not help doing them. 
 And this moral tenderness compensated in considerable 
 measure for his want of intellectual enthusiasm, and sent 
 some throbs of warmth even through his mental dryness 
 and coldness. It shows itself in his official papers, other- 
 wise so wanting in fervor, and gives to them sometimes a 
 pleading, persuasive earnestness and pathos, that might 
 almost draw the tears from an enemy. When his pen goes 
 down to this part of his nature, his words, always clear and 
 strong, come forth mellowed with beauty, and rise some- 
 times into real grandeur. What could be more gentle, or 
 
33 
 
 more touching in its simple eloquence, than the closing 
 words of his first Inaugural address : " I am loath to close. 
 We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained, it must not break our 
 bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretched 
 from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living 
 heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
 swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely 
 they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 
 
 This natural kindness of his heart showed itself every- 
 where, in all his domestic and social and public life ; made 
 him the good husband and father, as well as good president ; 
 and held those who were his intimate friends very close to 
 him with a rare greatness of love. Combined with his sense 
 of justice and his democratic principles, it rose also to the 
 height of philanthropy, and made him, in the providence 
 of God, the natural and inevitable leader of this nation in 
 its struggle with the powers of despotism and slavery, and 
 the trusted and now glorified redeemer of an oppressed 
 and outraged race. 
 
 But not alone by these rare qualities was his moral nature 
 characterized. All the moral sentiments and faculties appear 
 to have been fully and symmetrically developed in him. 
 No vices are recorded against him ; and this, in itself, indi- 
 cates a rare virtue. We should not credit him, perhaps, with 
 the most delicate moral sensitiveness. His moral strength 
 lay rather in principles and habits than in nicety of feeling. 
 He had a large and powerful conscience, which ruled his 
 own conduct with a puritanic severity; but he had no 
 moral squeamishness, which repelled him from all contact 
 
34 
 
 with vice itself and from vicious men. He knew very well 
 that the world, in the present ethical state of mankind, 
 could not be governed by saints alone, — that the good could 
 not withdraw from the bad, but must stand together with 
 them, in order that the whole may be made better as fast as 
 possible. He did not remove men from office, or decline to 
 appoint men to office, because of any bad habits they may 
 have had, provided their bad habits would not detract from 
 their usefulness for the work assigned them. It is reported — 
 and probably with truth — that, when, during the siege of 
 Vicksburg, some delegation asked for the removal of Gen- 
 eral Grant because of his alleged intemperate use of whiskey, 
 the President replied, that he would like to ascertain what 
 kind of whiskey General Grant was in the habit of using, 
 that he might give it to some of the other generals. Yet 
 the president himself was temperate to the degree of total 
 abstinence; and he made this reply, not because he was 
 insensible to the evil of intemperance in the army, but 
 because he believed, what has proved to be the case, that 
 General Grant, with the immense responsibility that was 
 placed upon him, would have strength to resist temptation, 
 and so give unimpaired his consummate ability to the salva- 
 tion of the republic. President Lincoln was no moral 
 Pharisee. He was a Pharisee in no respect. He had none 
 of the u I-am-holier-than-thou " spirit. He grasped the hand 
 of every man as a brother. He was no moral exquisite, 
 standing aloof from his kind, with nerves too delicate for 
 contact with men of common frailties. 
 
 Yet, though his moral nature was not of the extremely 
 sensitive order, it was extraordinarily strong and sure, and 
 
35 
 
 was never harmed by contact with vice. He was eminently 
 above being influenced by evil example. He had an integ- 
 rity upon which the foulest slander of partisan strife has 
 left no stain; an honesty that at once summoned and held 
 the confidence of the country ; a frankness and sincerity that 
 astonished politicians accustomed to concealed and sinister 
 ways; a simplicity of habit that excited the derision of 
 fashionable and conventional circles of society ; a conscien- 
 tiousness that knew no indirection,, and startled the habitues 
 of political circles in Washington; an ambition that aimed 
 only at his country's welfare, and saw only his country's 
 glory; an unselfish, unswerving, unflagging devotion of him- 
 self and all his means and abilities to what he saw to be 
 right; a humility that never knew pretence, and never 
 even allowed him credit for his good deeds ; and a moral 
 courage that, though not bold at radical innovation, was 
 never prevented from innovation by any thought of popularity 
 or unpopularity, and which held to every step that had been 
 taken from a conviction of its justice, and to every principle 
 that had been adopted because it was right, with a firmness 
 that was anchored to the very throne of God. Here are 
 moral qualities that made Abraham Lincoln preeminently 
 the moral leader for the times. "When we sum them up, .we 
 have a greatness of moral nature for which we shall not 
 soon find the peer among the great magistrates of the world. 
 President Lincoln's moral qualities rose naturally into the 
 religious ; and of the religious character of the man, we 
 come, finally, to speak. But here he has a right to the 
 reserve which covers every person's deepest and inmost life. 
 Because we have put a man into a public position and made 
 
30 
 
 him our servant, it does not give us a claim to enter with 
 hiin into his closet, to lurk as eaves-droppcrs for his prayers, 
 or to sit in judgment on his religious emotions. I shall not 
 seek to spy behind the sacredness of this private veil. It 
 is the religious character of the man only so far as publicly 
 manifest that we have any right or proper interest to 
 examine. 
 
 And keeping within these limits, we should not say that 
 President Lincoln had the finest spiritual quality. He was 
 not a Fenelon, a Thomas a Kempis, a Channing, or an Edwards . 
 He lacked the intuitional faculty, I judge, in spiritual things 
 as he did in intellectual ; and, as was necessary from his 
 cast of mind, he approached religion from the ethical and 
 practical side. With its metaphysics or its prophecies, its 
 theologies or its ecstacies, its Transcendental visions or its 
 Methodistic raptures, he did not trouble himself. His re- 
 ligion was on the broad level of common sense. His sharp 
 logic and keen humor could not fail to perceive and prick 
 some of the long-standing theological absurdities, — as when, 
 in his reply to an ecclesiastical delegation who, in the com- 
 mon phrase of their faith, had expressed the hope that the 
 Lord would be on his side, he said : " I have not given 
 myself any care whether the Lord is on our side ; but I do 
 feel anxious that myself and the people should be on the 
 Lord's side." 
 
 Whatever were his ecclesiastical associations or training, 
 we may be sure that such a mind was thoroughly unsectarian 
 and liberal. There was no cant in his religion ; no meaning- 
 less professions of piety. He, clearly, believed more in 
 performing duty than in subscribing to theologies, — believed 
 
37 
 
 in a religion of righteousness-^- of obedience to God and 
 helpfulness towards man. I do not credit the account, 
 recently published, of an interview had with him by some 
 Western clergyman, in which phrases are put into the presi- 
 dent's mouth that sound very much like the exclamations 
 heard in an excited meeting of revivalists. They do not 
 tally with his marked characteristics of calmness and re- 
 ligious sobriety ; he was no spiritual, more than intellectual, 
 enthusiast; and this account doubtless received its flavor of 
 pious zeal from the fervid evangelical conduits through which 
 it passed. Nor, on the other hand, do I give much weight 
 to what I heard on better authority, in Washington, — that 
 President Lincoln was a warm admirer of Theodore Parker, 
 and in sympathy with that great heresiarch's rationalistic 
 views of religion, — though, from the cast of Mr. Lincoln's 
 mind, I should credit this report sooner than the other : I 
 can well conceive that he would find much to attract him in 
 Mr. Parker's plain, practical sense in religious things, and in 
 the rugged, homely way in which he dealt with some of the 
 metaphysical absurdities of theology. There was really 
 much in common between the characters of the two men, — 
 so much, that of this we may be sure : whatever Mr. Lincoln's 
 theological views were, and though it is not very probable 
 they were in agreement with Mr. Parker's — quite likely he 
 had not even read Mr. Parker's books — yet he would not 
 have been frightened away, by any theological heresies of 
 Mr. Parker, from admiring the sturdy moral courage of the 
 man, or sympathizing with his efforts for the advancement 
 of public morals and the elevation of humanity. Outwardly, 
 President Lincoln was connected with the Presbyterians, — 
 
38 
 
 that is, when he had leisure from public duties, he went to 
 a Presbyterian church, and probably, without giving much 
 thought to the matter, accepted in the main the doctrines there 
 preached ; but he was not a member of any church, and not 
 an habitual attendant on the services of any. He was too 
 broad to be a zealot of any sect ; too practical to care much 
 for the creed of any. He believed in a religion of work 
 and duty. 
 
 Yet he was also a man of prayer, and faith, and trust. 
 This country has hardly had a president who tried more 
 sincerely to know and to do God's will; or who had a 
 stronger belief in an overwatching and overruling Provi- 
 dence. When he said in respect to the progress and 
 issues of the war, that God alone could claim to have con- 
 trolled events, we see that the language in his mouth was 
 no common-place of piety, and no mere convenient phrase- 
 ology, easily used, as an apology for some unexpected 
 or uncomprehended turn of affairs ; but that the words 
 expressed what he really meant and believed. More and 
 more he came to consider himself as but an instrument in 
 the hands of the Almighty. 
 
 His faith, it is true, was of conviction, rather than of 
 temperament; his trust, the lesson learned through the 
 stern tasks of an eventful life, rather than the childlike 
 instinct of dependence. He had no ecstacies of faith. It 
 was not given him to see spiritual visions. His religion did 
 not fly ; it had to walk the whole dusty way of life ; it kept 
 him close to the duty of earth, seldom allowing him even a 
 glimpse of the height or splendor of heaven. We could 
 wish, for his own joy, that his trust had been more intuitional ; 
 
39 
 
 that his spiritual temperament had been more ardent and 
 hopeful ; that the severe tasks of duty had been sometimes 
 relieved by the prophetic imagination of coming glory. 
 Yet, though not, by nature, of a peculiarly religious organi- 
 zation, he did come to a very sublime height of religious 
 faith, — came to it through years of patient toil and endur- 
 ance and suffering and brave fidelity to duty. We have had 
 presidents who were more punctual in religious observances ; 
 but we never had one who believed more really in God, or 
 more truly walked with Him in daily life. In the speeches 
 and official papers of no former president, has religious faith 
 shown itself to be so vital an element of character and of 
 official conduct. From the day that he took leave of his 
 neighbors in Illinois and requested them to remember him 
 in their prayers, to the morning that his soul, through ruffian 
 violence, was released from its weary, toil-worn body, his 
 life was inspired, and sustained, and borne up higher every 
 day, by this firm trust in God. Literally, he believed himself 
 to be president of the republic '•' under God." His utter- 
 ances of faith are sometimes of the Cromwellian order. 
 Still, there was no rapture of divine communion, no enthusi- 
 asm, no fanaticism. There was stern self-denial and self- 
 consecration ; but no joyous abandonment of self to religious 
 emotion. He made vows before God, and was in agony of 
 travail until they should be accomplished. His will was 
 utterly surrendered to the divine will ; but it was the con- 
 scious self-surrender of a strong man to Almighty power 
 and wisdom, rather than the instinctive nestling of a depend- 
 ent child in the arms of Infinite love. 
 
 But, though with never ceasing strain upon his will, and 
 
40 
 
 with a sense of duty never relaxed, lie had to climb the 
 whole rugged ascent to his height of faith, what a sublime 
 height it was when once attained ! His last inaugural 
 address measures a majesty and comprehensiveness of re- 
 ligious faith of which we shall hardly find the like among 
 all the great civil magistrates of the world, living or dead. 
 It reminds us of Cromwell's official speech ; but it surpasses 
 the papers of England's Great Protector, since it rises above 
 all taint of bigotry and all color and warmth of partisanship. 
 Unique as a State paper, we shall with difficulty find for it 
 a fitting comparison save in the utterances of Moses, Isaiah; 
 and Paul. Here is a faith which has come " out of great 
 tribulation," and washed its robes, and made them white in 
 the blood of sacrifice ; a faith which " through much tribula- 
 tion " has climbed very close to the portal of the kingdom 
 of God. Let the stealthy assassin strike when he will. 
 Any moment will be too soon for the nation ; but for such 
 a faith, earth can never too soon pass away : for Heaven is 
 already won. 
 
 The memorial of this man, my friends, is with us. Great 
 in personal influence and power, great in logical and practi- 
 cal ability, great in all moral and humane faculties, great in 
 religious faith, Abraham Lincoln takes his position by 
 unquestionable right in the calendar of exceptional great 
 men. The leader of one of the four greatest civil powers 
 of the world in a triumphant contest against the most 
 gigantic rebellion that the world has known ; the represent- 
 ative of democratic liberty in a fierce struggle for national 
 existence with aristocracy and despotism ; the emancipator 
 
41 
 
 of millions of slaves, and, through the connection of events, 
 the practical destroyer of the institution of slavery through- 
 out the whole territory of the United States ; the martyr, 
 slain in the hour of his triumph by the consummate wicked- 
 ness of the cause he had contended against, and sealing his 
 testimony to democratic liberty with his blood, — he will 
 take his place in history, not only among the men of rare 
 greatness, but among the great men who had also rare 
 opportunities, and filled them with rare achievements. Great 
 in endeavor and in power, great always in goodness, he was 
 equally great in fortune and success. To his name the 
 muse of history will affix the title, — the Preserver of the 
 American Union ; the Destroyer of American slavery; the 
 Representative Man of American Democracy. The memo- 
 rial of his virtue is immortal : being " known with God and 
 with men." Present, it was our example and guide ; gone, 
 we desire it : " it weareth a crown and triumpheth forever, 
 having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards." 
 National Fast, June 1, 1865. 
 
IY. 
 
 THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT IN THE CAREER OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be tho death of the testator : for a 
 testament is of force after men are dead. Hebrews ix. 1G, 17. 
 
 I owe, perhaps, an apology for venturing to renew a 
 theme on which so much has already been spoken, and for 
 attempting to say to-day what might have been more appro- 
 priately said last Thursday, had not the subject grown under 
 my pen into unforeseen proportions. But it is sweet to 
 linger in the fragrance of a good man's memory. The part, 
 moreover, that Abraham Lincoln has acted in our history 
 can never become old or worn. It is a career upon which 
 historians will ever love to dwell, and which will never lose 
 its charm for the people. And after all that has been spoken 
 and written concerning him, there is yet one phase of his 
 wonderful life and tragic destiny which has great attractive- 
 ness, and which I have hinted at once or twice in previous 
 discourses, but which, so far as I have seen, has not anywhere 
 been fully developed or much noticed. Mr. Sumner, in his 
 eulogy just spoken, touches more closely upon what I refer 
 to than any other writer or speaker whose words have come 
 
43 
 
 to my eye ; but the object he had proposed to himself did 
 not allow him to more than skirt the border of this phase 
 of the great theme. 
 
 The point of view that I have in mind, is the •perfect dra- 
 matic unity and progress of Abraham Lincoln's life; — the 
 wonderful line of destiny, or of providence, by which his 
 career, from his birth to his death, was unfolded, in all its 
 parts and acts, and through all its shiftings of place and 
 scene and time, on the thread of a single vital truth, and to 
 a single moral end. This life moves across the stage of 
 history with the dramatic march of one of Homer's heroes. 
 The stern demands of ancient Grecian tragedy were not 
 more observed by its great artists in their greatest works, 
 than they have been observed in the actual life of this 
 American president. Here must be no side issues ; no con- 
 founding of moral lessons ; no division and distraction of 
 one prevailing moral purpose and force ; no departure, amid 
 whatever private or professional or domestic • episodes, or 
 whatever change and variety of action, from the one truth 
 which this individual career from its outset was chosen to 
 embody and to teach for humanity : from its entrance on the 
 stage of earthly being to its exit, this life must be moved 
 by one inexorable purpose and will, and march to one inevi- 
 table fate, — in order to print upon the heart of the world one 
 of the grandest truths of human civilization and government 
 and progress. 
 
 This is our theme. But why bring it here, and make it a 
 subject of religious meditation ? It may belong to the 
 dramatist and the poet, it may serve the uses of the lecture- 
 room and the magazine, but why bring it to the church ? 
 
44 
 
 Because, first, there is a providence behind the scenes — the 
 hidden, infinite manager of the great drama. The ancients 
 called it fate, destiny; we call it Providence, God, the 
 Infinite Spirit. Abraham Lincoln, though self-possessed to 
 an extraordinary degree, though having great independence 
 and originality of being, and native resources and capacities 
 very largely at his command, was yet impelled, as few men 
 have been, by a power beyond his own, — possessed, used, 
 chosen for a special work, by a spirit above himself. And, 
 secondly, I bring the theme here, because of the grand moral 
 importance to humanity of the truth which his life was 
 selected thus dramatically to unfold and teach. 
 
 And what is this truth ? It is the truth of republican 
 freedom, simplicity, and equality ; in one word, the truth of 
 Democracy, as theoretically stated by Jefferson in the open- 
 ing sentences of the Declaration of Independence. By the 
 strict line of this truth, the life of Abraham Lincoln, act by 
 act, and scene by scene, was developed, from the day his 
 eyes first saw the light in a log-cabin on the western fron- 
 tier of civilization, to the day when, as president of the 
 United States, standing at the very topmost height of official 
 position and honor, he was slain by the hand of an assassin, 
 and those eyes closed forever to mortal things. To this 
 truth he was born ; to it he was apprenticed by the necessary 
 conditions of his lot, during all the years of his boyhood 
 and youth ; at manhood it became his property purchased 
 by conviction ; it stamped henceforward his whole character, 
 and all his personal, social, and professional habits ; when 
 he was called into political life, this was at once his creed 
 and the central principle of all his measures and acts ; and 
 
45 
 
 when this truth was challenged and defied by rebellion to 
 the government founded upon it, then he, seemingly by 
 accident, yet inevitably, became the leader of the loyal hosts 
 in the fierce struggle with despotism and slavery, — led 
 them to triumph, and, in the hour of triumph, fell : fell that 
 he might have the greater triumph, — as the Greek tragedians 
 made their heroes fall, in order that they might ascend to 
 Olympus and to the society of the gods ; — fell that he might 
 seal his testament to this truth of republican |jeedom, sim- 
 plicity, and equality, with his blood, and sanctify it henceforth 
 as the solemnly established polity of the nation. Is not 
 here a life-drama such as is seldom enacted on this earth ? 
 
 But let us bring out some of its features in fuller relief. 
 Let us see how, in every part of its course, this career is 
 vitalized, and its direction and progress determined, by the 
 truth I have stated, — see how close the hidden, inimitable 
 Artist ever holds it to the one purposed aim, — how statelily 
 and solemnly it advances, by steps that seem almost to know 
 whither they tend, to the inevitable tragic end. 
 
 The drama opens in the rudest and humblest condition of 
 democratic life, — the'farthest possible removed from wealth 
 and culture, and from any influences that may have been 
 transmitted across the seas from the forms and refinements 
 of monarchical civilization. Not amid the schools and cities 
 and growing luxuries of the East, but in the far West, where 
 nothing is yet established but the pure democratic idea, 
 must the hero be born who is to testify for that idea through 
 life and by death. He must be born of nothing but pure 
 democracy. The world must see that this future republican 
 ruler owed nothing by birth save to republican freedom, 
 
46 
 
 simplicity, and equality. Therefore he is born in a hut 
 without floor, with but one room, with no articles of luxury, 
 with very few even of comfort or necessity ; born to toil 
 and poverty ; born of parents having no lineage, no learning, 
 no library, — having nothing but a little spot of soil, and a 
 rough shelter over their heads, and honest hearts, and hard 
 working hands. Yet according to the theory of the country 
 written in the Declaration of Independence, and partially 
 established ^y the revolution, those parents are a part of 
 the sovereignty of the land; and from their loins must be 
 born the strong man who is to be leader and ruler of the 
 nation through the severest contest that Democracy has ever 
 known, and who is to testify to all history, and throughout 
 all time, for the truth of the democratic idea. 
 
 But the contest against Democracy has already begun. 
 There is an institution in the land that flagrantly denies its 
 most fundamental principles, — an institution of caste, ine- 
 quality, oppression, and despotism. This institution has 
 spread out to the frontier settlements. It is closing around 
 that democratic nut, menacing its prosperity, its virtue, and 
 the precious promise it holds. Slavery joins issue with the 
 democratic idea in Kentucky, and threatens utterly to over- 
 whelm it. But the times are not yet ripe for the great 
 struggle ; the hero is still a boy ; the strength and integrity 
 that his honest parentage and home have given him must be 
 saved from contamination. The drama is just beginning. 
 Not prematurely must the crisis be developed. The parents, 
 indeed, do not thus reason with conscious reference to the 
 future : but the genius of the republic is jealously guarding 
 its hero ; the prophetic Spirit of Truth, sitting calm behind 
 
47 
 
 the scenes, will not permit the whole future to be changed 
 and robbed at this dangerous point. The little spot of 
 land, which slavery was already beginning to envelop and 
 impoverish, is sold j the rude home is abandoned ; the parents 
 escape from the snares and dangers of slaveholding Ken- 
 tucky, and seek across the Ohio, still farther in the wilder- 
 ness, a new home, but on free soil. 
 
 And now still further is our hero trained for the stern 
 tasks of democratic sovereignty before him. It seems as if 
 he must understand every atom of that sovereignty, by going 
 through the condition of every individual constituent of it, 
 before he can be ready to assume it in his own person for 
 the great ends designed. Hence he must exhaust every 
 democratic occupation from the most menial to the most 
 honored. He is a pioneer, and day after day, with sturdy 
 blows, cuts a way through the forest to his home and to the 
 land that is to feed him ; he is a farmer, and by the sweat 
 of his brow gathers his daily bread from the soil ; he is a 
 mechanic, and helps build the family house and its furniture j 
 he is a famous rail-splitter, and fences the farm with his own 
 hands ; he is a flatboatman down the Mississippi ; he is a 
 clerk in a store j he is a militia captain, and has a little 
 touch of war in the Indian troubles of the frontier ; he sets 
 up in business by himself as a country trader j he is post- 
 master, land-surveyor, and finally lawyer and legislator. 
 
 And all this time, too, he is gathering knowledge, — not 
 in schools and colleges and lyceums and public libraries, but 
 out among the Western forests and prairies j gleaning from 
 nature, from life, and from the few books to be found among 
 his scattered neighbors or bought with hard-earned savings j 
 
48 
 
 laboring over his books in solitude by his democratic fireside, 
 with his solitary democratic brain j — gathering knowledge, 
 not to veneer over weakness and poverty of capacity, not 
 enough even to cover and conceal the rugged fibre and 
 homely solidity of the native stuff from which his being is 
 made ; all his knowledge is perfectly assimilated and used 
 by his nature : for this man, born out of the loins of pure 
 Democracy, and destined to be the leader of American 
 Democracy in a deadly contest for national existence and to 
 die its martyr, must be purely American and democratic 
 through every nerve and fibre and pulse of his being. 
 
 But again the scene changes. The great struggle between 
 Democracy and Despotism is approaching. The hosts are 
 preparing on either side for the combat, and the destined 
 leader of freedom must come forth into the public arena. 
 Already in Congress he had voted steadily for freedom and 
 equality in the national territories, and even at that early 
 day had tried to make the national capital free soil. But 
 now the contest had thickened, and the smell of blood was 
 already in the land. The virgin soil of Kansas was the 
 prize. Should it be polluted and ruined by the demon of 
 slavery, or given in pure wedlock to freedom ? The plot 
 against Democracy begins to unfold its horrors : the " coming 
 man " must now come. Unavoidably he is drawn from his 
 retirement into the political field; and, although several 
 years have yet to pass before he is hailed as leader, his 
 powerful sword can never be sheathed again. 
 
 In the contest concerning Kansas, and in the famous 
 Senatorial campaign with Stephen A. Douglas, which grew 
 out of the Kansas conflict, it is remarkable how sharply the 
 
49 
 
 lines were drawn between freedom and slavery ; how the 
 debates constantly turned on this one point ; and how radical 
 and thorough Mr. Lincoln's utterances always were as the 
 chosen champion of liberty. It is to be noticed, too, how 
 he uniformly planted himself on the broad ground of the 
 Declaration of Independence, — that is, of free and equal 
 government for all classes and races; and he attacked 
 slavery, because slavery attacked this invincibly true and 
 fundamental principle of the Republic. 
 
 And at this point in the development of this dramatic 
 history, we come to a very important and rarely noticed 
 fact, — the key of the wonderful drama. Abraham Lincoln 
 was the first politician or statesman who publicly proclaimed 
 the doctrine of the " irrepressible conflict " of ideas between 
 the South and the North. This he did on the 17th of 
 June — the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill — 1858, 
 in a speech to the State Convention of Illinois, which 
 nominated him for Senator against Douglas. That speech 
 opened almost with the words now become so famous and 
 familiar : "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 dis- 
 solved — 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 
 all the other." And this was the beginning of that noted 
 Senatorial campaign, which was but preliminary to the 
 Presidential campaign. It was the striking of the key-note 
 of this great American contest; it was the clarion voice of 
 the true, destined leader, summoning the hosts of freedom 
 to his standard. For, mark you again, this was the first 
 
 G 
 
50 
 
 political utterance of the doctrine of the irrepressible con- 
 flict between freedom and slavery, declaring that one of the 
 antagonists, even in the domain of the States, must yield 
 before the other. The moral reformers — the abolitionists — 
 had declared it ; but no statesman or leading politician 
 proclaimed it before Abraham Lincoln. It was he that first 
 took up and ingrafted upon the politics of the country the 
 moral ideas of the abolition reformers. He made this 
 remarkable speech several months before Mr. Seward took 
 the same idea, clothed it in philosophic shape, and christened 
 it by the name of " irrepressible conflict." 
 
 Can we longer wonder that Abraham Lincoln should be 
 the chosen leader of the hosts of democracy and freedom, 
 when this conflict comes to arms ? that he, the first states- 
 man who announced the divine necessity of the moral con- 
 flict, should be summoned to represent divine justice in the 
 martial struggle, and to give thereto the costly testimony 
 of his life ? Not otherwise could the drama preserve its 
 unity. Blind fate, destiny, could have made no other choice. 
 Shall Providence be less wise than destiny ? Shall the pro- 
 phetic, preparing, managing Spirit, be balked of its purpose ? 
 Shall a mighty national contest, involving national existence 
 and the virtue and happiness of millions of human beings, 
 be subject to accident? its sublime end postponed or 
 thwarted by some political marplot ? No ! Providence is 
 as grandly steady as destiny or fate ; and not more inevi- 
 tably, in the old Greek tragedy, did the fate-impelled hero, 
 at the proper moment, come upon the stage, than did Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, in the dramatic ripeness of events, assume the 
 political leadership of this nation. Consciously or uncon- 
 
51 
 
 sciously, when the clash of arms had come, the hosts of 
 loyalty and liberty could only rally around the man whose 
 voice had first uttered the true battle-cry. And therefore 
 it was that, when that moment came, we found Abraham 
 Lincoln, the leader that democratic freedom had been' pre- 
 paring in the West, in the President's chair at Washington, 
 and Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United 
 States. 
 
 And now events hasten more rapidly to the grand 
 denouement. Yet, like Hamlet, the hero hesitates. Ho 
 dreads the awful conflict. He shrinks, as it were, from the 
 very greatness of the task imposed upon him. Already, 
 too, villany lurks in his path, — assassination is dogging his 
 steps ; and he walks henceforth as if burdened with a mys- 
 terious, foreboding consciousness of his destiny. In his 
 kindly, democratic nature, there should be, and is, no taste 
 for civil war and blood. He tries to conciliate, — puts forth 
 his arm to avert the rushing fates : he holds the chalice of 
 the Constitution to the white, maddened lips of the foe. 
 But all in vain. With boastful, furious words, the cup is 
 dashed to the ground: "We have a new Constitution, 
 founded on the divine right of slavery, — we fight for it, and 
 take and give no quarter ! " And so freedom's leader is 
 held to his divinely purposed work, — defied by despotism, 
 until forced in self-defence into the impregnable citadel of 
 equal justice. 
 
 Yet the steps were all taken, not in passion, not in routed 
 haste, but deliberately and with dignity ; some of us thought 
 too slowly and hesitatingly taken, and feared lest freedom 
 would be betrayed. But the great Dramatist knew better 
 
52 
 
 than we, — knew the metal of the man; and knew he would 
 not, could not, yield the principle to which his life had been, 
 as it were by solemn vow, devoted. 
 
 Months before, in his contest with Douglas, with inspired 
 earnestness, and in the old Roman spirit of absolute self- 
 consecration to the highest welfare of the Republic, he had 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " Think nothing of me ; take no thought for the political 
 fate of any man whatsoever, but come back to the truths 
 that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do 
 anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these 
 sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the 
 Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. * * * * 
 I charge you to drop every paltry, insignificant thought for 
 any man's success. It is nothing. I am nothing. Judge 
 Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal 
 emblem of humanity — the Declaration of Independence." 
 
 And again, on his way to Washington, in the old Indepen- 
 dence Hall in Philadelphia, after inquiring what great senti- 
 ment it was in the Declaration there adopted which held 
 the Colonies so firmly together in the revolutionary struggle, 
 he answered, " It was that sentiment which gave liberty, 
 not alone to the people of this country, but I hope, to the 
 world, for all future time ; it was that which gave promise 
 that in due time the weight would be lifted from the 
 shoulders of all men,"— and then he added, — "If this coun- 
 try cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was 
 about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot 
 than surrender it," — and closed the remarkable speech with 
 the solemn words : " I have said nothing but what I am 
 willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, 
 
53 
 
 die by." It was not in the nature of the man who had 
 given himself to the whole truth of republican government 
 with such vows as these, and whom the angel of the Republic 
 was guarding for her highest service and greatest glory, to 
 betray the sacred office for which he had thus received 
 Heaven's commission. He was cautious; he saw every 
 difficulty in the way; for a time it seemed as if he reasoned 
 with destiny ; but he could not betray the cause so solemnly 
 committed to his hands. 
 
 He was mortal, indeed, and with all the care in preparing 
 him for his high office, it was impossible that he should 
 escape entirely all infection of the evil from which the whole 
 nation suffered. He still had some respect for the local 
 laws of slavery. And so the conflict must go on in him, as 
 in the nation, until he should be purified by the fires of 
 battle from all taint of the evil, and. be lifted clear above 
 all its entanglements, ready to strike the fatal blow with 
 full moral strength. Observe, too, that consistently with 
 his past record and training, he came to the contest, not as 
 an abolitionist per se, but on the broad ground of democracy. 
 He was an emancipationist because a true democrat. He 
 believed in freedom and equality for all, and therefore for 
 the black man. He came to the conflict not avowedly to 
 destroy slavery, but to save democratic government; and he 
 destroyed slavery because incompatible with the continued 
 existence of democratic government. The one is the broader 
 position, and necessarily includes the other. Democracy 
 necessitates abolitionism. This is the truth he is to proclaim 
 to the world, and lead on to victory. 
 
 And now see the solemn steps of the grand march. We 
 
54 
 
 shall notice that there is no retrograde movement, — that 
 there is really no delay, — that every step comes in its place 
 with the sublime constancy of fate, but also with the pater- 
 nal, humane promise of a tender Providence ; and that every 
 step lifts the nation upward upon higher and broader ground, 
 and nearer to the glory of its final triumph. Even in the 
 first Inaugural Address, though conciliatory and seeking in 
 some respects by compromise to avert the conflict, the key- 
 note of democratic faith and assurance is sounded. " Why," 
 said the President, " should there not be a patient confi- 
 dence in the ultimate justice of the people ? Is there any 
 better or equal hope in the world ? In our present differ- 
 ences, is either party without faith of being in the right ? 
 If the Almighty Ruler of events, with his eternal truth and 
 justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the 
 • South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the 
 judgment of this great tribunal of the American people." 
 We passed these words by at the time with little notice ; 
 but now that the drama is complete, they sound like the 
 solemn utterances of the chorus in ancient tragedy, pro- 
 nouncing upon the gathering combatants the warning and 
 the judgment of the gods. It was the presiding, oracular 
 genius of the Republic that uttered them, giving judgment 
 in advance. 
 
 Again, in the first message to Congress, dated July 4, 
 1861, though slavery is not directly attacked, there are 
 brave sentences that strike at its root, and that must one 
 day strike the fetters from all men's limbs. " This is essen- 
 tially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a 
 struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance 
 
55 
 I 
 
 of government whose leading object is to elevate the con- 
 dition of men ; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders ; 
 to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all ; to afford all 
 an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." 
 None but the Western pioneer, cradled in poverty, and, by 
 his own sturdy hands and the "fair chance " that democratic 
 institutions put into them, hewing his way into public posi- 
 tion by a purely democratic path, could have uttered these 
 words from the Presidential chair. Already we see in them 
 the promise of a united and emancipated country. These 
 are the same syllables that, by a little change of articulation, 
 are to pronounce Richmond fallen, and the slave of South 
 Carolina free. 
 
 In the message of December, 1861, there is an elaborate 
 discussion, on principles of political economy, of the question 
 of capital and labor, — in which the pure democratic ground 
 is taken, that labor is superior to capital, and must be free 
 and own capital, and not capital, labor. The discussion 
 seemed to us abstract and ill-adapted to the pressing emer- 
 gency of the hour ; but we see now how fittingly it takes 
 its place in the great struggle to complete the loyal argu- 
 ment. It is the bud of emancipation in the loyal border 
 states. It is an appeal to prudent, thinking men', on grounds 
 of industrial prosperity and self-interest. It brings the 
 reenforcement of material and social well-being to the cause 
 of divine justice. Hear, too, how at the close, the grand 
 choral strain comes in again, giving utterance to the sublimer 
 principles that underlie the irrepressible conflict, and sum- 
 moning the contestants again to the bar of future judgment. 
 
 " This [the free system of labor] is the just, and generous, 
 
56 
 
 I 
 
 and prosperous system, which opens the way to all, gives 
 hope to all, and consequent energy, and progress, and im- 
 provement of condition to all. No men living are more 
 worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty, — 
 none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have 
 not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a 
 political power which they already possess, and which, if 
 surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of ad- 
 vancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities 
 and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost. * * 
 The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day ; it is for 
 a vast future also." 
 
 Closely following — only three months later — a special 
 message is sent to Congress, recommending the passage of 
 a resolution by which the federal government shall be 
 authorized to cooperate by pecuniary aid with any state that 
 will enact gradual abolition of slavery. Two months after- 
 ward, in a public proclamation, attention is called to this 
 resolution, which was adopted by Congress, and the states 
 most interested are earnestly appealed to, to avail themselves 
 quickly of its privilege. Says the President, — 
 
 "You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of 
 the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged considera- 
 tion of them, ranging, if it may be, far above partisan 
 and personal politics. This proposal makes common cause 
 for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It 
 acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would 
 come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking 
 anything. Will you not embrace it ? So much good has 
 not been done by one effort in all past time, as in the provi- 
 dence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the 
 vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it." 
 
 And so the chorus echoes back with added intensity the 
 
57 
 
 divine plea of impartial justice that was the sublime burden 
 of the previous message. 
 
 In the regular message of December, 1862, the same sub- 
 ject is taken up again, and discussed more elaborately and 
 with greater scope. It is now proposed that Congress 
 shall not wait for the states to accept, at their option, its 
 offer of pecuniary aid toward emancipation, but shall initiate 
 emancipation. An amendment to the Constitution is recom- 
 mended, by which slavery shall be gradually, yet entirely, 
 abolished in all the states and throughout the country. But 
 the great import of the paper was not so much what it 
 recommended — for its plan of emancipation was too heavily 
 conditioned to be practically available — as the fact that the 
 abolition of slavery was for the first time boldly and seri- 
 ously discussed, and made the most important topic, in a 
 regular Presidential message. More memorable still is the 
 message for its closing words, in which the chorus of the 
 drama again speaks, inspired by the genius of republican 
 freedom, who thus urges her champions up to the true battle 
 ground, and holds the now fast developing action close to 
 its divine intent. Hear the deep, stately, measured tones, 
 as they seem to come from the distant heavens : 
 
 " The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the 
 stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, 
 and we must rise with the occasion. • * * We must dis- 
 enthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. * * 
 No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or 
 another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will 
 
 light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. 
 # * * ^y e — even we k ere — ^old t } ie p 0wer an d b ear 
 
 the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure 
 
 H 
 
58 
 
 freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and 
 what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the 
 last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this 
 could not, cannot fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, 
 just, — a way which, if followed, the world will forever ap- 
 plaud and God must forever bless." 
 
 But this paper coupled with its plan of gradual abolition 
 the principles of compensation and voluntary colonization. 
 Its proposed method of action was not so lofty as the spirit 
 that inspired it. The noble goal aimed at condemned the 
 halting effort. It was not for any such imperfect result that 
 this mighty contest was proving the metal of the nation. 
 The human instrument was not so far-sighted as the Provi- 
 dence which wrought through him, — the actor not so wise 
 as the manager behind the scenes. Yet he is faithful and 
 true, and submits himself with unwavering loyalty to the 
 teaching of events and of God : and with ever lengthening 
 and bolder paces he goes forward. One after another all 
 imposed conditions of emancipation drop away. Compen- 
 sation, gradualism, colonization, vanish and become obsolete 
 ideas ; and the champion stands, clean from all alloy of the 
 evil he is to annihilate, alone with God and justice. 
 
 In August, 1861, he had modified General Fremont's proc- 
 lamation of emancipation in Missouri to conciliate Kentucky. 
 In May, 1862, he had countermanded General Hunter's de- 
 cree of abolition in the department of the South, only 
 because he reserved the great right for himself and would 
 not allow it to be frittered away powerlessly, and with little 
 moral effect, by subordinates. It is evident in the very 
 order of countermand that he begins to see clearly what the 
 line of duty and destiny must be. He appeals to the in- 
 
59 
 
 surgent states, in the words already quoted, to smooth the 
 way to peaceful emancipation by voluntarily acceding to the 
 logic of events and to the plain intent of divine Providence. 
 Even as late as the 13th of September, he had received a 
 religious deputation from the city of Chicago, appointed to 
 urge him to declare emancipation by military proclamation, 
 and replied to their arguments with such a strong array of 
 objections to the measure that the deputation had departed 
 in great doubt as to his adopting it. But it is as clear as 
 noonday now, that the President had been debating the 
 measure in his own mind for months, and marshalling the 
 arguments for and against it, and that, in this interview, he 
 summed up the difficulties in the way, as they had presented 
 themselves to him, in order to draw forth, if possible, from 
 the deputation, new light upon the question. He also sig- 
 nificantly added at the close of the conference : "I can assure 
 you the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than 
 any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will 
 do." And now God's will is rapidly revealed to him, — not 
 through miraculous interposition, for, as he says, " these are 
 not the days of miracles " ; but through an earnest desire to 
 " ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be 
 wise and right." Events are his instructors. The spirit of 
 Almighty Justice, unfolding its high purpose more and more 
 in the daily history of the struggle, is his teacher. He 
 consults his cabinet for suggestion, not for advice. Upon 
 him Heaven has put the responsibility, and he will decide 
 and bear the weight of the decision alone. And the deci- 
 sion being made, the duty clear, on the 22d of September, he 
 issues the preliminary declaration, and gives the final warn- 
 
60 
 
 ing to the rebellious states; and on the 1st of January, 
 1863, appears the great Proclamation of immediate emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 The critical blow has now been struck. The deed is done 
 for which all before has been only preparation : and all that 
 comes after — emancipation in the border states, the enlist- 
 ment of negroes in the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, the 
 anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution — is only the 
 gathering up of the fruits of that victory and making it 
 secure forever. The issuing of the Proclamation was the 
 crisis in the drama ; and so when that blow was given, the 
 embattled hosts rushed to the conflict with a more furious 
 and deadlier onset. It was now life or death to the foe and 
 slavery, life or death to the nation and freedom. But 
 through all the deathly contests on the martial field, and 
 
 through all the struggles on the equally dangerous field of 
 politics, threatened by foes and importuned by friends, the 
 president never recedes from that decree. " The promise," 
 he says, " being made, must be kept." " While I remain in 
 my present position, I shall not attempt to retract or modify 
 the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery 
 any person who is free by the terms of that Proclamation, 
 or by any of the acts of Congress." And again, " If the 
 people," he says, " by whatever mode or means, should make 
 it an executive duty " to reverse the action of that procla- 
 mation, " another, and not I, must be their instrument to 
 perform it." Here speaks the stern stuff from which strong 
 men are made and martyrs come. But the people will stand 
 by the Proclamation ; nor will they choose any other hand 
 than his that had written it, to execute it. Not to another 
 
61 
 
 can the true champion's glory be given before the field is 
 wholly won. 
 
 And now, with clearer vision, and more entire surrender 
 to the divine purpose of events, he consecrates himself to 
 the remaining tasks before him. Henceforth Union and 
 Freedom are synonymous. Two conditions are necessary 
 to peace, — the abolition of all acts of secession, the accept- 
 ance of emancipation. But hear again the lofty strains of 
 the chorus, pronouncing judgment on the new aspect of 
 affairs : 
 
 " Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it 
 will come soon and come to stay ; and so come as to be 
 worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been 
 proved that among freemen there can be no successful ap- 
 peal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take 
 such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. 
 And there will be some black men who can remember that 
 with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and 
 well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this 
 great consummation, while I fear there will be some white 
 ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful 
 speech they have striven to hinder it. Still, let us not be 
 over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite 
 sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubtino- 
 that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the 
 rightful result." 
 
 And so, with ever broader comprehension of the divine 
 
 meaning of the contest and deeper conviction of the divine 
 
 hand controlling it, the President renews his vows, and leads 
 
 on the loyal hosts of freedom to new achievements. Under 
 
 God, and the providential choice of the nation, he is the 
 
 instrument for establishing the government on the true 
 
62 
 
 democratic basis of liberty, justice, and equality ; and so lor 
 fulfilling, at last, the prophecy of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence to all the people of the land. 
 
 At Gettysburg, standing among the graves of the heroes, 
 who on that glorious field had given their bodies to death, 
 but who, with their blood, had written their names in the 
 book of immortal life, he opens his address with these 
 memorable sentences : " Four score and seven years ago 
 our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
 conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 
 all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great 
 civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
 conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." And then he 
 solemnly consecrates himself and the nation to finish the 
 work which the heroes there buried had so nobly died for, 
 in order " that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth 
 of freedom, and that government of the people, by the 
 people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 What a perfect recognition of the eternal principles in- 
 volved in the conflict, and of the Providence watching over 
 and directing with far reaching vision the struggle, does this 
 reverent dedication disclose ! Henceforth the nation's Presi- 
 dent is God's servant; and the war is a religious war, — a 
 religious war more really than if it were to set up some 
 idol of theology, or to enthrone some ecclesiastic power, or 
 to rescue the tomb of Jesus from the hand of unbe- 
 lieving Saracens : for it is a war to disenthrall and redeem 
 humanity ; to rescue a whole continent from being the grave 
 of liberty to become its throne ; to lift from the shoulders 
 of a whole people, through the expiatory suffering of just 
 
63 
 
 retribution, the monstrous burden of a gigantic iniquity ; and 
 to bring, through the reconciliation of obedience to divine 
 law, the grandest opportunity for national and individual 
 development that was ever offered to the human race : it is 
 a war, conducted by unseen powers in the heavens, for the 
 divine right of mankind, without reference to race or class 
 or color, to self-government and self-development, — and the 
 President acknowledges himself but a willing instrument in 
 the hands of the mighty celestial forces directing the com- 
 bat. Hear hpw the lips of the loyal leader give utterance 
 to the sentiment of this advanced position : " Now, at the 
 end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is not 
 what either party, or any man, devised or expected. God 
 alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If 
 God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also 
 that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay 
 fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history 
 will find therein new causes to attest and revere the justice 
 and goodness of God." 
 
 From this high position it is but a step to the final con- 
 summation of the moral progress of the drama. After a 
 political struggle, filled with critical and perilous incidents, 
 and the most solemnly momentous of any that has occurred 
 in our history, the people rechoose for their leader the man 
 who now confesses himself to be, not only the servant of 
 the people, but the servant of God,- and they choose him 
 with the express purpose that he may finish the work for 
 republican freedom which the retributive justice of Almighty 
 God has given to his hands. And now the recognition of 
 this truth of the expiatory nature of the war, and the divine 
 
64 
 
 instrumentality of his office culminates in the majestic, almost 
 awful solemnity of the second Inaugural Address, — which 
 rises clear above all earthly taint, and human infirmity and 
 reservation, to the prophetic and divine stand-point. The 
 political orator is clothed with the mantle of the inspired 
 prophet ; the wise statesman utters his counsels as from the 
 tribunal of heaven ; the leader of the nation becomes the 
 oracle of divine laws and judgments. From the mouth of 
 what other human magistrate in all history, shall we find 
 such utterances as these ? 
 
 " The Almighty has his own purposes. ' Woe came into 
 the world because of offences, for it must needs be that 
 offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence 
 cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 
 of these offences, which in the providence of God must needs 
 come, but which, having continued through his appointed 
 time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both 
 North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those 
 by whom the offence came, shall we discern that there is any 
 departure from those divine attributes which the believers 
 in a living God always ascribe to him ? Fondly do we 
 hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war 
 may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue 
 until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
 and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
 every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by 
 another drawn with the sword, — as was said three thousand 
 years ago, so still it must be said, that, the 'judgments of the 
 Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice 
 toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, 
 as God gives U3 to see the right, let us strive on to finish 
 the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care 
 for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
 
65 
 
 and his orphans, — to do all which may achieve and cherish a 
 just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
 
 In these words the highest possible utterance of the strug- 
 gle is reached : the moral triumph of the drama is here 
 achieved ; the eternal majesty of the divine laws is acknowl- 
 edged and vindicated ; and the hero stands perfectly sub- 
 missive to the divine purpose, — docile to the slightest behest 
 of Almighty power, and his eye anointed with heavenly 
 wisdom. These sentences read like a solemn choral response 
 to the half-illuminated, oracularly uttered judgment of the 
 first Inaugural : it is the genius of the Republic, gathering 
 up, as in the ancient chorus, the whole meaning and purpose 
 of the drama, and echoing back, through all the vast, inter- 
 vening events of the action, the august announcement, that 
 the mystery is unravelled, the struggle ended, the judgment 
 finished and unalterably given. Battles, victories, capitula- 
 tions, the surrender of armies and towns, the submission of 
 the whole rebellion to the cause that is thus decided for by 
 the celestial umpires, follow in rapid and natural course. 
 
 But is the hero to have no more visible triumph than this ? 
 Yes ; he enters the fallen capital of rebellion and slavery. 
 His entrance into Richmond, with no imperial pomp, with no 
 military escort even, attended only by a few sailors from 
 the navy — emblem of republican Executive simplicity; walk- 
 ing up the long, desolate streets of the captured city, in plain 
 citizen's dress, holding his little boy by the hand— emblem 
 of republican domestic simplicity ; followed by a growing 
 throng, as the news ran from street to .street, of men, 
 women, and children, from whose limbs his hands had broken 
 the shackles of slavery, — their skin black, but hearts white 
 
 \ 
 
66 
 
 with joyous gratitude, as they crowded round to hail their 
 deliverer, — baring their heads in reverence before him, and 
 he with instinctive courtesy standing with uncovered head 
 in response — emblem of democratic liberty and equality ; — 
 this journey is his triumphal procession; this throng of 
 emancipated slaves, his imperial escort; the benedictions 
 of these new-made freemen are his crown, — the crown of 
 democratic sovereignty. 
 
 There is now but one remaining glory that can be accorded. 
 The strict laws of tragedy require that the hero shall die 
 for the truth he has lived for — shall fall in the hour of 
 triumph. And so the President must fall. Does Providence 
 therefore direct the assassin's blow ? By no means : only 
 as the providential laws surround, limit, and penetrate every 
 contest between good and evil. But the deadly blow is 
 aimed by the hand of the foe. It is the last, desperate, 
 maddened effort of the struggling combatant. It is the 
 crowning wickedness of the rebellion and slavery. The 
 evil principle of the drama must culminate as well as the 
 good, — it must develop all its inherent and hidden horrors 
 of evil ; it must leave no seed of crime that belongs to 
 itself unfruitful ; it must leave not the smallest vestige of 
 honor attached to its name. And so, filled with revenge, 
 mad with defeat, inspired with demoniac frenzy, it puts forth 
 all the remaining energy of its mortal strength to slay the 
 man whom it recognizes as the incarnation of all the princi- 
 ples that have contended against it, and the leader of the 
 hosts that have defeated it in battle. It slays him ; and 
 thereby, according to the moral intent of the drama, brands 
 itself with everlasting infamy, while it lifts him to an immor- 
 
67 
 
 tal glory, and saves forever the truth to which his life was 
 devoted. The assassin's crime is the rebellion's infamy, and 
 his and freedom's apotheosis. The President falls. But over 
 his grave the nation has a new birth — a resurrection. He 
 seals his testament with his blood, and sanctifies republican 
 truth forever. The President falls. But over his grave his 
 spirit rises into the renowned halls of the celestial heroes, 
 welcomed amid the triumphant songs of a nation redeemed, 
 a people emancipated, a country saved. 
 
 With the hero's triumphant departure from earth the 
 drama is ended ; but the Spirit of the drama lingers, and 
 utters an epilogue for the awe-struck, listening spectators ; 
 and this is the epilogue it speaks : 
 
 The President falls: for "where a testament is, there 
 must also of necessity be the death of the testator." The 
 President falls. But his testament remains with us : for a 
 testament is of force after men are dead." The testament 
 remains. The nation, humanity, the world, are its legatees ; 
 but we, the people of this generation, are its executors: 
 and we have given sacred bonds, written and attested on 
 many a battle-field with our kindred's blood, that we will 
 administer it, — administer it with exact and impartial jus- 
 tice to all classes and castes and races among us, — in order 
 " that government of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 June i, 1865. 
 
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