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 t!i:i)f (Greatness of ilincoln 
 

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 At 
 
 
 b/ 
 
By permissio 
 of "McCture's 
 
 Abraham Lincoln 
 
 By transfer 
 Tho White House 
 1913 
 
This address was delivered in the First Baptist 
 Church, at Parsons, Kansas, on February 12th, A. D. 
 1912, on the occasion of the celebration of the one 
 hundred and second anniversary of the birth of 
 Abraham Lincoln, which patriotic function was held 
 under the avspiccs of Parsons Camp, Sons of Veterans, 
 of the Department of Kansas. 
 
Hebudtton 
 
 This tribute I pay to Abraham Lincoln today, is 
 dedicated to the memory of my father, Richard Tyner 
 Wagstaff, a private in Company A, Eighty-third 
 Illinois Infantry, United States Volunteers, and his 
 late and living comrades in arms. 
 
 THOMAS EDWARD WAGSTAFF. 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, KANSAS. 
 
Cf)e (Greatness of Lincoln 
 
 m "A blend of mirth and sadness, smiles and tears, 
 
 ' A quaint knight errant of the pioneers, 
 
 A hero born of star and sod, 
 A p/easant prince, 
 
 A masterpiece of God." 
 
 We are come, to this house of God and dedicated 
 for humanity's good, to commemorate the birth, pay a 
 tribute and do honor to the name and worth of 
 Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. 
 
 Rich are we, the loyal sons of patriotic and militant 
 sires, in the heritage of patriotism and devotion to our 
 country's welfare ; sons of those warriors of '61 to '65, 
 who formed the mightiest of hosts ever mustered under 
 one flag since Freedom's name was known. 
 
 We come not here today to lay upon the altar of our 
 devotion a libation of tears for those loved ones now 
 gone or those still here, in the sear and yellow leaf of 
 life; but soothed and sustained by that ennobling and 
 splendid thought, we are the direct heirs of that senti- 
 ment and unalloyed patriotism for that principle, 
 
 "Liberty unrestrained is humanity's own reward." 
 
 Could rocks their fastness break, could nature throw 
 aside that mysterious sable mantle, called death, could 
 
our illustrious fathers appear once again upon the scene 
 of action, we call life — how could we, present or in 
 future, touch the heart chords of their truest emotions, 
 or quicken, perchance, the pulse of their beings, show 
 more respect, a purer love portray, than on this natal 
 day of their Grand Commander proclaim, declare, affirm 
 and say, "Thank God, there was a Lincoln." 
 
 I pause upon the very threshold of this address to 
 assert that I, yea ! 
 
 "Words in no language spun 
 
 Could appropriately depict his worth 
 Or the deeds he has done." 
 
 In all history, either Christian or profane, there is 
 none save One, whose character and good offices for the 
 uplift of the human race, stands forth in more bold 
 relief — yes, there is One, or One in Three — the Lowly 
 Man of Galilee. And how not dis-similar the birth, the 
 life and death of each. One born in a manger, the other 
 near it ; the One a carpenter, the other a son of a poor 
 but honest cabinet maker ; One, the first known artificer 
 of our spiritual grace, the other His prototype on earth 
 of the truest application of His teachings. 
 
 Both were born to strife, to grief and to die that 
 you and I might live and today truthfully say: 
 
 "We are living, we are dwelling, 
 In a grand and glorious time, 
 In an age on ages telling, 
 To be living is sublime, 
 
 And like the distant mountains uprear 
 Their granite bastions to the skies 
 Are crossed by pathways that appear, 
 As we to higher levels rise." 
 
But oh, how unfair to both and to their sainted 
 mothers, is history's page. Thanks be to God, in this 
 late day, under the searchlight of investigation and the 
 white light of truth and fact, every stain has been 
 erased from their fair names. To the extent, that in 
 verse and in song we rise and sing: 
 
 "Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, 
 A saint in Heaven and on earth. 
 Pure sweet Nancy Hanks, 
 God bless you for Lincoln's birth. 
 
 Right forever on the scaffold, 
 Wrong forever on the throne ; 
 And behind the dim unknown 
 Standeth God within the shadow, 
 Keeping watch above his own." 
 
 History does not again produce a parallel in per- 
 sonalities and happily, nothing of grace or of beauty 
 is lost to the One or the other, by the equation. One 
 died that we might live, the other lived to die because 
 he loved his fellowman, not sentimentally but funda- 
 mentally. 
 
 It is therefore meek and right that we, the sons 
 of the comrades of the latter should pay him this trib- 
 ute in the House of God, for the Immortal Lincoln never 
 took an important step without first bending the preg- 
 nant knee for Divine guidance and His blessing. No 
 man ever lived, either of state craft or of letters, who 
 more truthfully recognized the omnipotence of Him 
 whose hand guides all our destinies. His favorite say- 
 ing was: 
 
 "There is a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough-hew them how we may." 
 
Away back yonder in 1849 Lincoln realized, though 
 he did not then act in unison with his belief, that the 
 retributive justice of God Almighty awaited this na- 
 tion for the awful sin of chattel slavery. 
 
 It was Lincoln's rugged philosophy, that man born 
 of woman had one certain definite purpose or object 
 in life to attain, short of that, was failure. In support 
 of this postulate, in his homely dialectics, he would 
 often by way of example, refer to the lovable charac- 
 ter of the Christ. And who amongst us of this later 
 day can deny the force of such illustration. Not to be 
 tautological, Christ was single-purposed. To deny His 
 mission, its accomplishment or that the seeds thereof 
 though sown among tares and thistle, have reaped an 
 abundant harvest for good and the betterment of all 
 mankind, is to contradict the grace and stability of 
 modern civilization. 
 
 So likewise with Lincoln, seemingly destiny alone 
 or that unaccountable lorce which sways the judgment 
 or guides the path of man, ordained, that his major 
 act in the drama of life, was to preserve the union of 
 the sisterhood of states. 
 
 Mankind is ever prone to connect the greatness of 
 the idea of unity with means, and God with ends. 
 Finite thought is to compel all men to follow the same 
 course to gain the object desired. But my conception 
 of Deity is that He introduces infinite variety of action 
 and so combines them, that all those acts or routes 
 lead a multitude to the accomplishment of one great 
 design. 
 
 I believe Jefferson Davis and his cohorts honestly 
 believed they were right, but in choosing, they selected 
 
the human idea of unity, which is almost always barren 
 of results. It was the Confederacy's definite purpose 
 to compel the establishment of slavery, or at least its 
 acknowledgment and legal sanction by the entire 
 nation. 
 
 Lincoln at the helm of state, held to the Divine idea 
 of unity, which is always pregnant with attendant re- 
 sults. I do not claim that Lincoln was inspired or 
 immortal, but I do maintain it was the purpose of a just 
 God, and of both spiritual and natural development in 
 Lincoln and civilization, that someone, sometime, some- 
 way, somehow, should forever cement the bonds between 
 the sisterhood of states. To do so effectually and per- 
 petually, was to wipe out forever the hated stain of 
 slavery from within their midst. It matters not 
 whether the emancipation of the negro was constitu- 
 tional, revolutional or the result of conquest. Unity 
 came only when chattel slavery was dead. Lincoln 
 accomplished it and that is enough for all. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's pre-eminent greatness lay in that 
 combination or faculty both of analysis and synthesis 
 — added to that, the mighty force of a high resolve. 
 Frequently we touch elbows with those who possess 
 the ability to analize, those to construct, and some with 
 perseverance; but how many, if any, do we know in 
 life or in history who possess the three fundamentals 
 of true greatness? How aptly is illustrated such 
 genius in Lincoln when in closing his Second Inaugural 
 he said: 
 
 "With malice toward none. 
 With charity for all, 
 With firmness in the right, 
 As God gives us the light, 
 
Let us finish tiie work we are in, and bind up the 
 nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne 
 the battle and his widow and his orphans, to do all 
 which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
 
 Again how beautiful, graceful and poetical is that 
 epic of all English literature when he said: 
 
 "Fondly do we hope. 
 Fervently do we pray. 
 That this mighty scourge of war 
 May speedily pass away." 
 
 Pull down if you may the musty volumes of ancient 
 or mediaval history, examine, forsooth, the rhetorical 
 or didactical utterances of a Confucius, an eloquent 
 Phillipic of Demonsthenes, the cold, stern and forebod- 
 ing comands of all the Ceasars; not in any or all of 
 them is there such strength, such logic or such state- 
 craft as in those lines I now quote from Lincoln's 
 First Inaugural: 
 
 "I hold that in the contemplation of universal 
 law, and of the constitution, the union of these 
 states is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not 
 expressed in the fundamental law of all national 
 government." 
 
 Alone is comparable with the strength of such 
 logic, the immeasurable force of Old Ocean's wild, 
 angry waves as they beat against the granite rocks of 
 St. Helena's lonesome shore, and in seething retreat 
 borne upon their crests, the storm4ossed wreck of am- 
 bition's highest hope and unholy desire. 
 
 Is it any wonder, when the cruel hand of the 
 assassin fired the fatal shot, that made midday mid- 
 
night without a space between, the Bard in requiem of 
 sorrow and the realization of loss penned such verse: 
 
 '•There's a burden of grief on the breezes of Spring, 
 And a song of regret from the bird on its wing; 
 There's a pall on the sunshine and over the flowers. 
 And a shadow of grave on these spirits of ours ; 
 
 For a star hath gone out from the night of our sky. 
 On whose brigtness we gazed as the war cloud rolled by ; 
 So tranquil and steady and clear were its beams. 
 That it fell like a vision of peace on our dreams. 
 
 A heart that we knew had been true to our weal, 
 And a hand that was steadily guilding this wheel ; 
 A name never tarnished by falsehood or wrong, 
 That had dwelt in our hearts like a soul-strring song; 
 
 Ah, that pure, noble spirit has gone to its rest. 
 And the true hand lies nerveless and cold on his breast ; 
 But the name and the memory, these never will die, 
 But grow brighter and dearer, as the ages go by." 
 
 Courageous he was, but not reckless, kind, but not 
 sentimental, at all times modest and unasuming; a 
 martyr whose very blood ever pleads to you, to me and 
 to posterity, for fidelity, for law, for liberty. In the 
 life and worth of him whom we, as sons of his comrades 
 do delight to honor, can we not fittingly say? His 
 name, his statecraft and his greatness is worthy of the 
 emulation of others to the emolument of all who so 
 strive. 
 
 "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." To the extent that you and I may say: 
 
"Your flag and my flag 
 See it floats today, 
 Over your land and my land 
 And half a world away. 
 
 Rose red, blood red. 
 
 Its stripes forever gleam; 
 
 Pure white, soul white, 
 
 Our fathers' fondest dream , 
 
 Sky blue, true blue, 
 Its stars that shine aright ; 
 A glorious guidon by the day, 
 A shelter through the night. 
 
 Your flag and my flag, 
 And oh, how much it holds! 
 Your land and my land, 
 Safe within its folds. 
 
 Your heart and my heart 
 Quickens at the sight, 
 Sun kissed, wind tossed, 
 The red, the blue, the white. 
 
 The one flag, the great flag, 
 The flag for me and you. 
 Glorified all else beside. 
 The red, the white, the blue." 
 
RICHARD TYNER WAGSTAFF 
 
 Private in Company A., Eighty-Third 
 
 Illnois Infantry, U. S. V. 
 

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