^ V^V v«V v^*V 
 
 
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 FROM WHITE HOUSE 
 
 To 
 
 LOG CABIN 
 
 Compiled by 
 
 LOUIS A. WARREN 
 
 ROOSEVELT, TAFT AND WILSON, 
 At The Birth Place of 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
FROM WHITE HOUSE 
 
 To 
 
 LOG CABIN 
 
 Compiled by 
 
 LOUIS A. WARREN , 
 
 ROOSEVELT, TAFT AND WILSON, 
 At The Birth Place of 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 

 Copyright 1921 
 LOUIS A. WARREN 
 
 §)S!.A624669 
 
 SEP 12 
 
 WPI 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Lincoln Farm Association which was responsible for 
 the development of the birthplace of Abraham Linccln at Hod- 
 genville, Kentucky, brought to the historic spot during the 
 period it managed and carried to completion the project, three 
 president of the United States. 
 
 The purpose of this publication is to present under one 
 cover the addresses delivered by these three visiting presidents; 
 Roosevelt Taft, and Wilson. The occasions, so much alike in 
 purpose, although occurring at periods in three administrations, 
 called from the speakers remarks of much the same character; 
 which fact will allow the reader to judge in what esteem the 
 Emancipator was held by the Progressive, the Republii-an and the 
 Democratic leader mentioned above. 
 
 Those interested in the literary ability of these men of 
 letters will find in these three orations of about the same length 
 an opportunity to compare addresses delivered in the same en- 
 vironment and resulting from a common source of inspiration- 
 No attempt is made by the author in the introductory re- 
 marks preceeding each article, to give other than the immediate 
 data necessary to acquaint the reader with the program of the 
 occasion under which the address was delivered. For illustrated 
 description of the Lincoln National Park, see book under afore- 
 said caption by the same author, and printed by the same pub- 
 lisher as the volumn in hand. 
 
 Hodgenville, Ky. LOUIS A. WARREN. 
 
CORNER STONE CEREMONIES 
 
 With Address by 
 Theredore Roosevelt. 
 
 The corner stone of the Memorial Building erected at 
 the birth-placs of Abraham Lincoln was laid at a celebration on 
 February 12, 1909, in commemoration of the one hundredth anni- 
 versary of Lincoln's birth. The program of the occasion was as 
 follows: 
 
 Invocation — E. L. Powell, Minister First Christian Church, 
 
 Louisville, Ky. 
 Address on behalf of the United States of America — 
 
 President Theodore Roosevelt. 
 Address on behalf of the State of Kentucky — Governor 
 
 Augustus Wilson. 
 Address on behalf of Lincoln Farm Association — Governor 
 
 Joseph Folk President of Association. 
 Address on behalf of Federal Army — General James 
 
 - Grant Wilson. 
 Address on behalf of Confederate Army — General Luke 
 
 E. Wright. 
 Documents deposited in Corner Stone — Copy of Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation, I. T. Montgomery, ex-slave; Coins of che 
 day, Clarence H. Mackay, Treas. of Lincoln Farm Association; 
 History of Lincoln Farm Association, Richard Lloyd Jones, Sec- 
 retary of Association; Copy of LaRue County Herald Feb. 11, 
 1909, Robert J. Collier, V-President of Association; Silk Ameri- 
 can Flag, President Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. 
 
 Wo have met here to celebrate the 100th anni- 
 versary of the birth of one of the two great Ameri- 
 cans; of one of the two or three greatest men of the 
 Nineteenth century; of one of the greatest men in 
 ^.he world's history. This rail splitter, this boy who 
 passed his ungainly youth in the dire poverty of the 
 
poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary 
 and painful labor, lived to lead his people through 
 the burning flames of a struggle from which the na- 
 tion emerged purified as by fire, born anew to a 
 loftier life. After long years of iron effort and 
 of failure that came more often than victory, he at 
 last rose to the leadership of the republic, at the mo- 
 ment when that leadership had become the stupen- 
 dous world-task of the time. He grew to know great- 
 ness, but never happiness, save that which springs 
 from doing well a painful and a vital task. Power 
 was his, but' not pleasure. The furrows deepened on 
 his brow, but his eyes were undimmed by either 
 hate of fear. His gaunt shoulders were bowed, but 
 his steel sinews never faltered as he bore for a bur- 
 den the destinies of his people. His great and ten- 
 der heart shrank from giving pain; and the task al- 
 lotted him was to pour out like water the life blond 
 of the young men, and to feel in his every fiber the 
 sorrow of the women. Disaster saddened but never 
 dismayed him. As the red years went by they found 
 him ever doing his duty in the present, ever facing 
 the future with fearless front, high of heart and 
 dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by 
 scorn, he worked and suffered for the people. 
 Triumph was his at the last, and barely had he 
 tasted it before murder found him, and the kindly 
 patient, fearless eyes were closed forever. 
 
 As a people we are indeed beyond measure for- 
 tunate in the characters of the two greatest of our 
 public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely tho 
 they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gen- 
 tleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were 
 alike in essentials, they were alike in the great quali- 
 fies which rendered each able to render service to 
 
his nation and to all mankind such as no other man 
 of his generation could or did render. Each had 
 lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty 
 ideals was guided by the soundest common sen^e. 
 Each possessed inflexible courage in adversity, and 
 a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each pos- 
 sessed all the gentle virtues commonly exhibited by 
 good men who lack rugged strength of character. 
 Each possessed also all the strong qualities com- 
 monly exhibited by those towering masters of man- 
 kind who have too often shown themselves devoid 
 of so much as the understanding of the words by 
 which we signify the qualities of duty, of mercy, of 
 devotion to the right, of lofty disinterestedness in 
 battling for the good of others. There have been 
 other men as great and other men as good; but in all 
 the history of mankind there are no other two good 
 men as great. Widely though the problems of today 
 differ from the problems set for solution to Wash- 
 ington when he founded this nation, to Lincoln when 
 he saved it and freed the slave, yet the qualities they 
 showed in meeting these problems are exactly tJie 
 same as those we should show in doing our work to- 
 lay. 
 
 Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic 
 imagination usually vouchsafed only to the poet and 
 the seer. He had in him all the lift toward great- 
 ness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's 
 fanaticism or egotism, without any of the visionary's 
 narrow jealousy of the practical man and inability to 
 strive in practical fashion for the realization of an 
 ideal. He had the practical man's hard common 
 sense and willingness to adapt means to ends; but 
 there was in him none of that morbid growth of mind 
 and soul which binds so many practical men to the 
 
higher thing's of life. No more practical man ever 
 lived than this homely backwoods idealist; but he 
 had nothing- in common with those practical m.-n 
 whose consciences are warped until they fail to dis- 
 tinguish between good and evil, fail to understand 
 that strength, ability, shrewdness, whether in the 
 world of business or of politics, only serve to make 
 their possessor a more noxious,, a more evil member 
 of the community, if they are not guided and con- 
 trolled by a fine and high moral sense. 
 
 We of this day must try to solve many social 
 and industrial problems, requiring to an especial de- 
 gree the combination of indomitable resolution with 
 cool-headed sanity. We can profit by the way in 
 which Lincoln used both these traits as he strove for 
 reform. We can learn much of value from the very 
 attacks which following that course brought upen 
 his head attacks alike by the extremists of reaction. 
 He never wavered in devotion to his principles, in 
 his love for the Union, and in his abhorrence of slav- 
 ery. Timid and lukewarm people were always de- 
 nouncing him because he was too extreme; but, as a 
 matter of fact, he never went to extremes, he worked 
 step by step; and because of this the extremists 
 hated and denounced him with a fervor which new 
 seems to us fantastic in its deification of the unreal 
 and the impossible. At the very time when one side 
 was holding him up as the apostle of social revolu- 
 tion because he was against slavery, the leading abo- 
 litionist denounced him as the " slave hound of Illi- 
 nois," When he was the second time candidate for 
 President the maority of his opponents attacked him 
 because of what they termed his extreme radicalism, 
 while a minority threatened to bolt his nomination 
 because he was not radical enough. He had con- 
 
tinually to clieck those who wished to go forward 
 too fast, at the very time that he overrode the oppo- 
 sition of those who wished not to go forward at all. 
 The goal was never dim before his vision; but he 
 picked his way cautiously, without either halt or 
 hurry, as he strode toward it, through such a morass 
 of difficulty that no man of less courage would have 
 attempted it, while it would surely have overwhelm- 
 ed any man of judgment less serene. 
 
 Yet perhaps the most vitally important was 
 the extraordinary way in which Lincoln could fight 
 valiantly against what he deemed wrong and yet 
 preserve undiminished his love and respect for the 
 brother with whom he differed. In the hour of a triumph 
 that would have turned any weaker man's head, in 
 the heat of a struggle which spurred many a good 
 man to dreadful vindictiveness, he said truthfuUv 
 that so long as he had been in his office he had never 
 willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom, and 
 besought his supporters to study the incidents of the 
 trial through which they were passing as philosophy 
 from which to learn wisdom and not as wrongs to be 
 avenged; ending with the solemn exhortation that, 
 as the strife was over, all should reunite in a common 
 effort to save their common country. 
 
 He lived in days that were great and terrible, 
 when brother fought against brother for what each 
 sincerely deemed to be the right, In a contest so 
 grim the strong men who alone can carry it through 
 are rarely able to do justice to the deep convictions 
 of those with whom they grapple in mortal strife. At 
 such time men see through a glass darkly; to only the 
 ?*arest and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear 
 vision which gradually comes to all, even to the 
 lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds 
 
are forgotten and peace creeps back to the hearts 
 that were hurt. But to Lincoln was given this su- 
 preme vision. He did not hate the man from whom 
 he differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness 
 to his strong, gentle nature; but his courage was of 
 a quality so high that it needed no bolstering of dark 
 passion. He saw clearly that the same high quali- 
 ties, the same courage and willingness for self-sacri- 
 fice, and devotion to the right as it was given them 
 to see the right, belonged both to the men of the 
 North and to the men of the South. 
 
 The years roll by and as all of us wherever we 
 dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and 
 self-devotion alike of the men who wore the blue and 
 the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will 
 grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the man 
 whose blood was shed for the union of his pople and 
 for the freedom of a race; the lover of his country 
 and of all mankind; the mightiest of the mighty men 
 who mastered the mighty dav, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
DEDICATORY SERVICES 
 
 With Address by 
 William Howard Taft 
 
 Upon the completion of the building erected for the purpose 
 of housing the cabin in which Lincoln was born, dedicatory ser- 
 vices were arranged by the Lincoln Farm Association for No- 
 vember 9th. 1911. The principle speakers for the occasion were: 
 
 William Howard Taft — President of the United States. 
 
 Joseph W. Folk — Ex-Governor of Missouri. 
 
 Augustus E. Wilson — Governor of Kentucky. 
 
 William A. Borah — Senator from Idaho. 
 
 Gen. John C. Black— Washington, D. C. 
 
 Henry Watterson — Louisville, Ky. 
 
 The invocation was offered by Rabbi Enlow and the Bene- 
 diction by Bishop Byrne. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. 
 
 There is nothing so fascinating- on the one hand 
 and nothing so difficult on the other as tracing; by- 
 heredity the developments of genius and real 
 greatness. Perhaps this is because there are so few .in- 
 stances in history that prompt the search. The ex- 
 planation of Lincoln and his wonderful character 
 from his origin and environment is almost as diffi- 
 cult as the explanation of Shakespeare; but the 
 passion of the world grows for more intimate knowl- 
 edge of his personality and a deeper inquiry into the 
 circumstances of his wonderful life. 
 
 "No year passes that something more is not 
 written of him, and testimonials in loving mercy and 
 interest increase. The nation itself, has yet to em- 
 body in marble or bronze its widened appreciation of 
 
him as its savior. Nothing- of his characteristics is 
 too incidental for those who study over again his 
 great speeches and messages and trace again the 
 amazing story from the lowly home in Kentucky 
 whence he sprang to the height of his glory in his 
 martyrdom. 
 
 "It is eminently appropriate that the farm 
 where Lincoln was born should come into public 
 possession and should have erected on it a suitable 
 memorial in which to preserve mementoes of his per- 
 sonality and biographies of his life. , 
 
 "Few men have come into public prominence 
 who came absolutely from the soil, as did Abraham 
 Lincoln. It is difficult to imagine the lack of com- 
 fort, accomodations, and the necessities of life 
 that were in the cabin in which he was born. With 
 an illiterate and shiftless father, and a mother, who, 
 though of education and force, died before he reach- 
 ed youth, his future was dark indeed. In the step- 
 mother that his father formed for him, however, lie 
 had a woman with strength of character and education 
 enough to assist him. He says he never received any 
 education except reading and writing and arithmetic 
 to the rule of three; but he had access to books, and, 
 whether he kept a store or acted as a flatboatman on 
 the Mississippi or finally came to study law, he read 
 the books he had thoroughly and they included the 
 Bible and Shakespeare. 
 
 ''One of his biographers who knew him well, 
 says that after he had finished this small library, he 
 read some but he thought much more. He thought of 
 what he read, and he exercised his intellect by con- 
 stant practice till he made his logical processes an in- 
 strument to search truth and analvze facts that 
 
lias rarely been equaled in anyone. The almost 
 squalor in which he passed his early life, made him 
 familiar with the sufferings, thoughts and sympa- 
 thies of the plain people; and when he came to great 
 power, his understanding of their reasoning and of 
 their views gave him an advantage in interpreting 
 their attitude which cannot be overstated. He fol- 
 lowed closely the popular judgment, but he did not 
 yield to it, save when his reasoning faculties estab 
 iished its correctness. 
 
 ''His evident sympathy for the colored race, his 
 roused sense of justice in their behalf, his earnest 
 passions to secure them freedom and equality of op- 
 portunity, had their inspiration in the sufferings and 
 limitations of his own early life. 
 
 "He was not slow, but he was cautious, deliber- 
 ate, attentive, as befitted one who insisted on estab- 
 lishing every proposition that he adhered to by ori- 
 ginal reasoning from fundamental postulates. The 
 lucidity and clearness of his thought manifested it- 
 self in the simplicity, directness and clearness of his 
 style. He had imagination and he loved poetry. He 
 had the rythm of languages, and though purely self- 
 educated, these circumstances developed a power of 
 literary expression that the world and especially the 
 literary world lias come fully to recognize and enjoy. 
 
 "Humor he used in his conversation, stories of 
 humor he told, as he said once, to enable him to 
 deny requests or to express difference of opinion 
 without abruptness and without hurting the feelings 
 of his petitioner. But humor he rarely introduced 
 into his carefully prepared speeches or his messages. 
 A serious aspect on the subject he was discussing 
 and his intense earnestness in framing the reasons 
 
for his conclusions so as to impress its justice on the 
 reader or the listener, prevented him from the use 
 of wit or humor, though it was always at his com- 
 mand. 
 
 "He was a lawyer, and a good one. He studied 
 his cases hard, and he prepared his arguments with 
 the force and cleverness that might have been expec- 
 ted from one of his mental makeup. His mind was 
 luminous with truth. His conscience was governed by 
 devotion to right, and the tenderness of his heart 
 was only restrained by his intellect and his con- 
 science. His determination to see both sides and 
 reason out conflicting arguments to a satisfactory 
 conclusion, made him tolerant and patient beyond 
 conception. 
 
 'The story of his dealings with McClellau, with 
 rhe members of his Cabinet, and with others uncon- 
 scious of the great genius and heart with whom they 
 were in personal touch, exasperates the sympathetic 
 reader and arouse a protest that vents itself in con- 
 tempt toward many of those who surrounded him 
 and yet did not measure the great nature they were 
 privileged to know. The diary of his Cabinet of- 
 ficers show how under his very nose and generally 
 with his clear conception of it, political combina- 
 tions were formed, only to be dissolved and fall 
 harmless through the patient tact of this master of 
 men, this greatest of diplomatists. 
 
 "When he came to the Presidency he had only 
 experience of two terms in the Legislature, of one 
 term in Congress, of the political discussions and 
 debates in the interior districts, and of the great de- 
 bate with Douglas. He had no training at all in ad- 
 ministrative matters, and when they were presented 
 to him the awful task which the threatened secession 
 
of the Southern States presented lie had to feel his 
 way. 
 
 " Seward, having been beaten by Lincoln by ac- 
 cident as he conceived, and feeling himself fnch btt- 
 ter qualified for the Presidency, did not hesitate to 
 attempt to usurp Lincoln's function as President, by 
 distributing patronage in various departments until 
 that quiet, masterly but humorous way, Lincoln took 
 the reins and held them to the end. With Seward, 
 with Stanton, with Chase, he had his trials. Chase 
 was a great lawyer, a sincere, courageous and con- 
 sistent abolitionist, an astute politician with the 
 highest ambition and with no delicacy or embarras- 
 sing sense of loyalty that would prevent him from 
 organizing a combination to defeat Mr. Lincoln's 
 political purposes and to elect Mr. Chase. Stanton 
 was a great, rough, able, administrator, but he was 
 rugged and honest and effective, and Lincoln crossed 
 him only when he had to and treated his excesses of 
 impatience with that humorous tolerance that shows 
 itself in so many stories of encounters between them 
 With no knowledge of military strategy, he develop • 
 ed out of his own study a clearness of perception and 
 a common sense view of the needs of the army which 
 makes his letters models of stragetic suggestion. 
 
 "In the outset Mr. Lincoln encountered the dif- 
 ficulties that fall to the lot of any responsible head 
 of a Government; difficulties which are intensified 
 by the greatness of the issues at hand, but which all 
 have the same characteristics when they arise from 
 the overzeal of moral reformers. Those who wished 
 slavery abolished felt toward Mr. Lincoln a greater 
 degree of hatred and contempt during the two years 
 of his administration than even the rebels them- 
 selves. Brooking no delay, accepting every excuse 
 
as a mere pretext, they pounced upon Mr. Lincoln 
 with emphatic denunciation and bitter attack, but 
 he knew better than they what was necessary before 
 he took the step of emancipation they were suppres- 
 sing . 
 
 ' 'He knew better than they the loss of support he 
 would suffer in the border States. He knew better 
 than they that he must delay until the emancipation 
 proclamation could be issued, not to break up slav- 
 ery, but to effect a constitutional amendment, but 
 only for military reasons and with military purposes 
 and so he bared his breast to the shafts of criticism 
 from the most important element of the Republican 
 party and waited. No man in public life was ever 
 so much abused as Lincoln. The contrast between 
 his position in history today and the description of 
 him by his friendly critics during the Civil War 
 can hardly be credited. 
 
 ''The great reason for the present memorial is 
 the constant reminder it furnishes of the unexplained 
 and unexplainable growth and development, from 
 the humblest and homeliest soil, of Lincoln's genius, 
 intellect, heart and character that have commanded 
 the gratitude of his countrymen for the good he 
 worked with them and awakened the love and de- 
 voted administration of a world." 
 
FORMAL ACCEPTANCE PROGRAM 
 
 With Address by 
 Woodrow Wilson 
 
 On September 4th., 1916, The Lincoln Farm Association 
 presented to the United States Government the rarm on which 
 Abraham Lincoln was born together with the beautiful granite 
 structure containing the sacred cabin. The program follows- 
 
 Invocation — Dr. Ganfield of Centre College. 
 
 Address — Gen. John B. Castleman. 
 
 Address — Gov. Joseph W. Folk. 
 
 Address — Senator John Sharp Williams. 
 
 Presentation of the Lincoln Birth-place Farm — Robert J. 
 Collier. 
 
 Acceptance on behalf of the United States of America — 
 Newton D. Baker. 
 
 Flag Raising Ceremonies. 
 
 Address — President Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 Benediction — Rev. Shahan. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. 
 
 We would like to think of men like Lincoln and 
 Washington as typical Americans, but no man can 
 be typical who is so unusual as these great men were. 
 It was typical of American life that it should pro- 
 duce such men with supreme indifference as to die 
 manner in which it produced them, and as readily 
 here in this hut as amidst the little circle of cultiva- 
 ted gentlemen to whom Virginia owed so much in 
 ]eadership and example. And Lincoln and Wash- 
 ington were typical Americans in the use they made 
 of their genius. But there will be few such men at 
 best, and we will not look into the mystery of how 
 and why they come. We will only keep the door 
 
open for them always, and a hearty welcome — after 
 we have recognized them. 
 
 I have read many biographies of Lincoln; I have 
 sought out with the greatest interest the many inti- 
 mate stories that are told of him, the naratives of 
 nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in 
 which those who had the privilege of being associa- 
 ted with him have tried to depict for us the very man 
 himself "in his habits as he lived;" but I have no- 
 where found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I nowhere 
 get the impression in any narrative or reminiscence 
 that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart 
 of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate to 
 the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real fa- 
 miliars. 1 'get the impression that it never spoke out 
 in complete self-revelation, and that it could not re- 
 veal itself completely to anyone. It was a very lonely 
 spirit that looked from underneath those shaggy 
 brows and comprehended men without fully com- 
 muning with them, as if, in spite of all its general 
 efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions 
 of duty where no man looked on. There is a very 
 holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of 
 every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs 
 for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well 
 as for individuals. That privacy no man can in- 
 trude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for 
 the right perhaps no man can resist. This strange 
 child of the cabin kept company with invisible things 
 was born into no intimacy but that of its own silently 
 assembling and deploying thoughts. 
 
 I have come here today, not to utter an eulogy ;>n 
 Lincoln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to 
 interpret the meaning of this gift to the nation of 
 the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar 
 
upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire 
 of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the 
 deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from 
 age to age he rekindled ? For these hopes must con 
 stantly be rekindled, and only those who live can 
 rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain the life- 
 giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the 
 hopes of mankind cannot he kept alive by words 
 merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right aud 
 codes of liberality. The object of democracy is to 
 transmute these into the life and action of society, 
 the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and 
 women willing to make their lives in embodiment of 
 right and service and enlightened purpose. The com- 
 mands of democracy are as imperative as its privi- 
 leges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its 
 compulsion is upon us. It will be great and lift a 
 great light for the guidance of the nations only if we 
 are great and carry that light high for the guidance 
 of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here 
 unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real dem- 
 ocrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our 
 very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual 
 exaltions of the great nation which shelters and 
 nurtures us. 
 
 No more significant memorial could have been 
 presented to the nation than this. It expresses so 
 much of what is singular and noteworthy in the 
 history of the country; it suggests so many of the 
 things that we prize most highly in our life and in 
 our system of government. How eloquent this little 
 house within this shrine is of the vigor of democracy ! 
 There is nowhere in the land any home so remote, 
 so humble, that it may not contain the power of 
 mind and heart and conscience to which nations 
 
yield and history submits its processes. Nature pays 
 no tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed or 
 caste, renders fealty to no monarch or master of any 
 name or kind. Genius is no snob. It does not run 
 after titles or seek by preference the high circle of 
 society. It affects humble company as well as great. 
 It pays no special tribute to universities or learned 
 societies or conventional standards of greatness, but 
 serenely chooses its own comrades, its own hunts, its 
 own cradle even, and its own life of adventure and 
 of training. Here is proof of it. This little hut was 
 the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of 
 singular, delightful, vital genius who recently emerg- 
 ed upon the great stage of the nation's history, gaunt, 
 shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural 
 ruler of men, himself inevitably the central picture 
 of the 'great plot. No man can explain this, but every 
 man can see how it demonstrates the vigor of demo- 
 cracy, here every door is open, in every hamlet and 
 countryside, in city and wilderness alike, for the 
 ruler to emenge when he will and claim his leader 
 ship in the free life. Such are the authentic proofs 
 of the validity and vitality of democracy. 
 
 Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. 
 Who shall guess this secret of nature and providenc 
 and a free policy ! Whatever the vigor and vitality 
 of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor 
 and soundness do not explain where the man got his 
 great heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind 
 in its catholic and benignant sympathy, the mind 
 that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melan- 
 choly eyes, whose vision swept many a horizon which 
 those about him dreamed not of — that mind that 
 comprehended what it had never seen and under- 
 stood the language of affairs with the ready ease of 
 
one to the maimer born — of that nature which seem- 
 ed in its varied richness to be the familiar of men of 
 every way of life. This is the sacred mystery of 
 democracy, that its richest fruits spring up out of 
 soils which no man has prepared and in circumstan- 
 ces amidst which they are the lest expected. This is 
 a place of mystery and of reassurance. 
 
 It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise 
 than our own Lincoln could not have found himself 
 or the path of fame and power upon which he walk- 
 ed serenely to his death. In this place it is right that 
 we should remind ourselves of the solid and striking 
 facts upon which our faith in democracy is founded. 
 Many another man besides Lincoln has served the 
 nation in its highest places of counsel and of action 
 whose origins were as humble as his. Though the 
 greatest example of the universal energy, richness, 
 stimulation and force of democracy, he is only one 
 example among man. The permeating and all-per- 
 vasive virtue of the freedom which challenges us in 
 America to make the most of every gift and power we 
 possess every page of our history serves to empha- 
 size and illustrate. Standing here in this place, it 
 seems almost the whole of the stirring story. 
 
 Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end 
 and consummation of that great life seem remote and 
 a bit incredible. And yet there was nobreak anywhere 
 between beginning and end, no lack of natural se- 
 quence anywhere . Nothing really incredible happen- 
 ed. Lincoln was unaffectedly as much at home in the 
 White House as he was here. Do you share with me 
 the feeling, I wonder, that he was permanently at 
 home nowhere? It seems to me that in the case of a 
 man — I would rather say of a spirit — like Lincoln 
 the question where he was is of little significance, 
 
that it is always what he was that really arrests our 
 thought and takes hold of our imagination. It is 
 the spirit always that is soverign. Lincoln, like the 
 rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world 
 — a very rough and exacting discipline for him, an 
 indispensable discipline for every man who would 
 know what he is about in the midst of the world's af- 
 fairs; but his spirit got only its schooling there. Tt 
 did not derive its character or its vision from the ex- 
 periences which brought it to its full revelation. The 
 test of every American must always be, not where he 
 is, but what he is. That also is of the essence of dem 
 o^racy, and is the moral of which this place is most 
 gravely expressive. 
 
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