In hard and incessant labor, under a burden of care and anxiety that were making him an old man before his time, the term for which Mr. Lincoln was elected President passed slowly away. And the question came to the Nation, “Who shall be our next President? Shall it be the man who has led us thus far through the wilderness, or shall we make choice of another leader?”
There was a difference of opinion. Some were in favor of General Fremont, many favored Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, and there is no doubt that both of these two eminent men wished for the office. Mr. Lincoln, too, wished to be re-elected, not, I am sure, because power was sweet, but because he wished to carry out to the end the mighty work which it had been given to him to do. He knew that Mr. Chase desired to succeed him, but it did not make him less friendly; nor when it devolved upon him to appoint a successor to Chief-Justice Taney, did it prevent him from conferring upon his chief rival that high office. He considered Mr. Chase, of all men, most fit to fill the position, and that with him was the paramount consideration.
However politicians may have differed with regard to the Presidency, the people were with Mr. Lincoln. They had learned to trust him, and the politicians were obliged to acquiesce in their choice. He was nominated, and duly elected, and the country breathed more freely. It was an assurance that the war would proceed till the rebellion was crushed out, and the restoration of the union was now looked upon, under God, as certain.
During the campaign, Senator Sherman, of Ohio, in a speech at Sandusky, gave this rough but accurate sketch of Mr. Lincoln and his claims to support. It was addressed to a Western audience, and doubtless produced a powerful impression:
“I know old Abe,” said the Senator, “and I tell you there is not, at this hour, a more patriotic or a truer man living than that man Abraham Lincoln. Some say he is an imbecile; but he not only held his own in his debates with Douglas, whose power is admitted, and whom I considered the ablest intellect in the United States Senate, but got a little the better of him. He has been deliberate and slow, but when he puts his foot down it is with the determination and certainty with which our generals take their steps; and, like them, when he takes a city he never gives it up. This firm old man is noble and kind-hearted. He is a child of the people. Go to him with a story of woe, and he will weep like a child. This man so condemned works more hours than any President that ever occupied the chair. His solicitude for the public welfare is never-ceasing. I differed from him at first myself, but at last felt and believed that he was right, and shall vote for this brave, true, patriotic, kind-hearted man. All his faults and mistakes you have seen; all his virtues you never can know. His patience in labor is wonderful. He works far harder than any man in Erie County. At the head of this great nation—look at it! He has all the bills to sign passed by Congress. No one can be appointed to any office without his approval. No one can be punished without the judgment receives his signature, and no one pardoned without his hand. This man—always right, always just—we propose to re-elect now to the Presidency.”
One of the most important and critical battles of the Civil War took place on the soil of Pennsylvania. The battle of Gettysburg commenced on the 1st day of July, 1863, and lasted for three days. The invasion of Pennsylvania by Lee’s forces was a bold turning of the tables upon the Federal forces, but fortunately they had a brave, cool, and skillful commander in General Meade, who beat back the Confederates with terrible loss.
It is needless to say that excitement, amounting to panic, prevailed throughout the North. Had Lee been successful in his bold movement, he would probably have continued his victories through the State, and menaced more than one Northern city. The danger was averted, but the victory was won at large cost. The Federal loss in dead, wounded, and missing amounted to twenty-three thousand, though considerably less than the losses on the other side. A piece of land adjoining the cemetery of the town was given by the State as a last resting-place for the loyal soldiers who had fallen in the battle, and on the 19th of November it was dedicated. Two addresses were made—one by Hon. Edward Everett, which was not unworthy of the eminent Massachusetts orator; but the second, though brief, was a gem which will live longer than the stately periods of Everett. It was by President Lincoln himself, and surprised even those who best appreciated him. There are few of my readers to whom it is not familiar, but I can not deny myself the pleasure of recording it here:
“Four score and seven years ago,” said Mr. Lincoln, “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. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Is there anything to be found in the addresses of any orator, ancient or modern, more elevated in sentiment or admirable in expression? Yet the speaker had been reared in the backwoods, a stranger to schools and colleges, and his eloquence was neither acquired nor inherited. This speech alone proclaims Abraham Lincoln a man of genius.
An Oriental monarch, fearing that in the plenitude of his power he might forget the common fate, engaged a trusted attendant from time to time to remind him of his mortality.
Abraham Lincoln needed no such reminder. Before his first inauguration, and at intervals during his official life, he received frequent threatening letters, menacing him with death. These he kept in a package by themselves. Though he never permitted them to influence his action, they had their natural effect upon a mind and temperament subject to despondency, and not free from superstition. Mr. Lincoln had a strong impression that he would not live through his term of office. When, however, he was inaugurated for a second time, amid the plaudits of the nation, and the clouds of civil war seemed lifting to reveal a brighter future, his spirits, too, became buoyant, and he permitted himself to believe that all would end well, and he would be permitted to reconcile the disaffected States, and bring them back into the national fold. His heart was full of tenderness and magnanimity toward the States in rebellion. His large heart was incapable of harboring malice, or thirsting for revenge.
But he was only to come in sight of the Promised Land. It was for another leader to finish his weary and protracted task, and reap where he had sown.
On the evening of the fourteenth of April, 1865, President Lincoln and wife with two friends occupied a box at Ford’s Theatre, by invitation of the manager, to witness a performance of Tom Taylor’s “American Cousin.” They arrived late, and their entrance was greeted with enthusiasm, the large audience rising to their feet and cheering.
Not long afterward, John Wilkes Booth, a young actor, who, throughout the war, had made no secret of his sympathy with the Confederate cause, entered the theatre, and, not without difficulty, made his way through the crowded dress circle to the back of the box in which the President’s party were seated.
“The President has sent for me,” he said to the servant, showing his card, and thus he gained admission.
Standing in the door-way, after a hasty glance at the interior, he took a small Derringer pistol in one hand, holding at the same time a double-edged dagger in the other, he aimed deliberately at Mr. Lincoln, who sat in an arm-chair, with his back to him. There was a quick report, and the fatal bullet had entered Mr. Lincoln’s brain. Major Rathbone, the only other gentleman present in the box, quickly comprehending the truth, tried to seize the assassin, but he was too quick for him. Striking at him with his dagger, he sprang to the front of the box, leaped upon the stage, crying in a theatrical tone, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and “The South is avenged!” and, favored by his knowledge of the stage, escaped at the rear before the actors and audience, stupefied by the suddenness of his act, could arrest his flight.
Too well had the assassin done his work! The President never spoke, or recovered consciousness. He was carried from the theatre to a house near at hand, where, at twenty-two minutes past seven the next morning, he expired, with his mourning friends around him.
On the same evening another tragedy came near being enacted in another part of the city—a branch, no doubt, of the same wicked conspiracy. Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, lay sick at his house, having been thrown from his carriage and severely injured a few days before. A man, who proved to be Lewis Payne Powell, gained admission by a subterfuge, and, though warned by the servant that no one was admitted to see Mr. Seward, pushed past him into the Secretary’s chamber. At the entrance the Secretary’s son, Mr. Frederick Seward, forbade him to enter, but Powell struck him upon the forehead with the butt of a pistol, and, rushing to the bed, stabbed the helpless Secretary three times, and would have killed him but for his nurse, a soldier named Robinson, who grappled with him, receiving severe blows in the struggle. Powell escaped from the house, after stabbing no less than five persons.
To describe the grief, anger, and consternation which these two tragedies produced throughout the country, would be well-nigh impossible. Then, for the first time, it became apparent how dear to the popular heart was the plain, honest, untiring man who, for more than four dark and gloomy years, had borne the national burden, and labored as best he might to restore peace and harmony to a distracted land.
The conspirators had been only too successful, but they had not accomplished all they had in view. It had been expected that General Grant would form one of the President’s party; fortunately, he had excused himself, and left the city. Could he, too, have fallen a victim, dark indeed would have been the dawning of the next day, and the wide-spread feeling of horror would have been deepened.
In a recent conversation General Grant thus speaks of this sad time: “The darkest day of my life was the day I heard of Lincoln’s assassination. I did not know what it meant. Here was the rebellion put down in the field, and starting up again in the gutters; we had fought it as war, now we had to fight it as assassination. Lincoln was killed on the 14th of April. I was busy sending out orders to stop recruiting, the purchase of supplies, and to muster out the army. Lincoln had promised to go to the theatre, and wanted me to go with him. While I was with the President a letter came from Mrs. Grant, saying that she must leave Washington that night. She wanted to go to Burlington to see her children. Some incident of a trifling nature had made her resolve to leave that evening. I was glad to have it so, as I did not want to go to the theatre. So I made my excuse to Lincoln, and, at the proper hour, we started for the train. As we were driving along Pennsylvania Avenue, a horseman rode past us on a gallop, and back again around our carriage, looking into it.
“Mrs. Grant said: ‘There is the man who sat near us at lunch to-day with some other men, and tried to overhear our conversation. He was so rude that we left the dining-room. Here he is now, riding after us.’
“I thought it was only curiosity, but learned afterwards that the horseman was Booth. It seemed that I was to have been attacked, and Mrs. Grant’s sudden resolve to leave changed the plan. A few days after I received an anonymous letter from a man, saying that he had been detailed to kill me; that he rode on my train as far as Havre de Grace, and as my car was locked he failed to get in. He thanked God that he had failed. I remembered that the conductor had locked the car, but how true the letter was I can not say. I learned of the assassination as I was passing through Philadelphia. I turned around, took a special train, and came on to Washington. It was the gloomiest day of my life.”
Of the imposing funeral ceremonies, and the manifestations of deep grief throughout the nation, I need not speak. As Dr. Holland well says: “Millions felt that they had lost a brother, or a father, or a dear personal friend. It was a grief that brought the nation more into family sympathy than it had been since the days of the Revolution. Men came together in public meetings, to give expression to their grief.... There were men engaged in the rebellion who turned from the deed with horror. Many of these had learned something of the magnanimity of Mr. Lincoln’s character; and they felt that the time would come when the South would need his friendship.”
There is no reason to believe that the Southern leaders countenanced or instigated this atrocious deed. It was the act of a half-crazed political fanatic, and the few who were in sympathy with him, and cognizant of his plans, were men of like character. Justice overtook them in the end, as might have been expected, but they had wrought irreparable mischief, and plunged a whole people into mourning.
No one probably was better fitted to give a discriminating analysis of Mr. Lincoln’s character than Mr. W. H. Herndon, for more than twenty years his law-partner. From an address delivered at Springfield, Ill., Dec. 12, 1865, by that gentleman, I shall, therefore, quote freely, without indorsing everything that is said, but submitting it as the opinion of a man who knew Mr. Lincoln well:
“Mr. Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America. No man can put his finger on any great book written in the last or present century that he read. When young he read the Bible, and when of age he read Shakespeare, This latter book was scarcely ever out of his mind. Mr. Lincoln is acknowledged to have been a great man, but the question is, What made him great? I repeat that he read less and thought more than any man of his standing in America, if not in the world. He possessed originality and power of thought in an eminent degree. He was cautious, cool, concentrated, with continuity of reflection; was patient and enduring. These are some of the grounds of his wonderful success.
“Not only was nature, man, fact, and principle suggestive to Mr. Lincoln—not only had he accurate and exact perceptions, but he was causative; i.e., his mind ran back behind all facts, things, and principles to their origin, history, and first cause,—to that point where forces act at once as effect and cause. He would stop and stand in the street and analyze a machine. He would whittle things to a point, and then count the numberless inclined planes and their pitch, making the point. Mastering and defining this, he would then cut that point back and get a broad transverse section of his pine stick and point and define that. Clocks, omnibuses, and language, paddle-wheels, and idioms, never escaped his observation and analysis. Before he could form any idea of anything—before he would express his opinion on any subject, he must know it in origin and history, in substance and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his subject inside and outside, upside and downside. He searched his own mind and nature thoroughly, as I have often heard him say. He must analyze a sensation, an idea, and words, and run them back to their origin, history, purpose, and destiny.”
“All things, facts, and principles had to run through his crucible and be tested by the fires of his analytic mind; and hence, when he did speak, his utterances rang out gold-like—quick, keen, and current—upon the counters of the understanding. He reasoned logically, through analogy and comparison. All opponents dreaded him in his originality of idea, condensation, definition, and force of expression, and woe be to the man who hugged to his bosom a secret error if Mr. Lincoln got on the chase of it! I say, woe to him! Time could hide the error in no nook or corner of space in which he would not detect and expose it.”
“Mr. Lincoln was a peculiar man, having a peculiar mind. He was gifted with a peculiarity—namely, a new lookout on nature. Everything had to be newly created for him—facts newly gathered, newly arranged, and newly classed. He had no faith, as already expressed. In order to believe, he must see and feel and thrust his hand into the place. Such a mind as this must act strongly,—must have its time. His forte and power lay in his love of digging out for himself and hunting up for his own mind its own food, to be assimilated unto itself; and then, in time, he could and would form opinions and conclusions that no human power could overthrow. They were as irresistible as iron thunder, as powerful as logic embodied in mathematics.”
“An additional question naturally suggests itself here, and it is this: Had Mr. Lincoln great, good common sense? Different persons of equal capacity and honesty hold different views on this question—one class answering in the affirmative and the other in the negative.
“These various opinions necessarily spring out of the question just discussed. If the true test is that a man shall quickly, wisely, and well judge the rapid rush and whirl of human transactions as accurately as though indefinite time and proper conditions were at his disposal, then I am compelled to follow the logic of things, and say that Mr. Lincoln had no more than ordinary common sense. The world, men, and their actions must be judged as they rush and pass along. They will not wait on us—will not stay for our logic and analysis; they must be seized as they run. We all our life act on the moment. Mr. Lincoln knew himself, and never trusted his dollar or his fame on his casual opinions—he never acted hastily on great matters.”
“The great predominating elements of Mr. Lincoln’s peculiar character were—first, his great capacity and power of reason; secondly, his excellent understanding; thirdly, an exalted idea of the sense of right and equity; and fourthly, his intense veneration of what was true and good. His reason ruled despotically all other faculties and qualities of his mind. His conscience and heart were ruled by it. His conscience was ruled by one faculty—reason; his heart was ruled by two faculties—reason and conscience. I know it is generally believed that Mr. Lincoln’s heart, his love and kindness, his tenderness and benevolence were his ruling qualities; but this opinion is erroneous in every particular. First, as to his reason. He dwelt in the mind; not in the conscience, and not in the heart. He lived and breathed and acted from his reason,—the throne of logic and the home of principle, the realm of Deity in man. It is from this point that Mr. Lincoln must be viewed. His views were correct and original. He was cautious not to be deceived; he was patient and enduring. He had concentration and great continuity of thought; he had a profound analytic power; his vision was clear, and he was emphatically the master of statement. His pursuit of the truth was indefatigable—terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness, that the tallest intellects in the land bowed to him with respect. He was the strongest man I ever saw—looking at him from the stand-point of his reason, the throne of his logic. He came from that height with an irresistible and crushing force. His printed speeches will prove this; but his speeches before courts, especially before the Supreme Courts of the State and Nation, would demonstrate it. Unfortunately none of them have been preserved. Here he demanded time to think and prepare. The office of reason is to determine the truth. Truth is the power of reason—the child of reason. He loved and idolized truth for its own sake. It was reason’s food.
“Conscience, the second great quality and forte of Mr. Lincoln’s character, is that faculty which loves the just. Its office is justice; right and equity are its correlatives. It decides upon all acts of all people at all times. Mr. Lincoln had a deep, broad, living conscience. His great reason told him what was true, good and bad, right, wrong, just or unjust, and his conscience echoed back its decision; and it was from this point that he acted and spoke and wove his character and fame among us. His conscience ruled his heart; he was always just before he was gracious. This was his motto—his glory; and this is as it should be. It can not be truthfully said of any mortal man that he was always just. Mr. Lincoln was not always just, but his general life was. It follows that if Mr. Lincoln had great reason and great conscience, he was an honest man. His great and general life was honest, and he was justly and rightfully entitled to the appellation, ‘Honest Abe!’ Honesty was his great polar star.
“Mr. Lincoln had also a good understanding, that is, the faculty that understands and comprehends the exact state of things, their near and remote relation. The understanding does not necessarily inquire for the reason of things. I must here repeat that Mr. Lincoln was an odd and original man; he lived by himself and out of himself. He could not absorb. He was a very sensitive man, unobtrusive and gentlemanly, and often hid himself in the common mass of men, in order to prevent the discovery of his individuality. He had no insulting egotism and no pompous pride; no haughtiness and no aristocracy. He was not indifferent, however, to approbation and public opinion. He was not an upstart and had no insolence. He was a meek, quiet, unobtrusive gentleman. These qualities of his nature merged somewhat his identities. Read Mr. Lincoln’s speeches, letters, messages, and proclamations; read his whole record in his actual life, and you can not fail to perceive that he had good understanding. He understood and fully comprehended himself; and what he did, and why he did it, better than most living men.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“There are two opinions—radically different opinions—expressed about Mr. Lincoln’s will by men of equal and much capacity. One opinion is that he had no will, and the other is that he was all will—omnipotently so. These two opinions are loudly and honestly affirmed. Mr. Lincoln’s mind loved the true, the right, and good—all the great truths and principles in the mind of man. He loved the true first, the right second, and the good the least. His mind struggled for truths and his soul for substances. Neither in his heart nor in his soul did he care for forms, methods, ways,—the non-substantial facts or things. He could not by his very structure and formation in mind and body care anything about them. He did not intensely or much care for particular individual man—dollar, property, rank, order, manners, and such like things. He had no avarice in his nature, or other like vice.... What suited a little, narrow, critical mind, did not suit Mr. Lincoln’s, any more than a child’s clothes did his body. Generally, Mr. Lincoln did not take any interest in little local elections—town meetings. He attended no gatherings that pertained to local or other such interests, saving general political ones. He did not care (because he could not in his nature) who succeeded to the presidency of this or that Christian Association or Railroad Convention; who made the most money; who was going to Philadelphia; when and for what; and what were the costs of such a trip. He could not care who among friends got this office or that—who got to be street inspector or alley commissioner. No principle of goodness, of truth, or right was here. How could he be moved by such things as these? He could not understand why men struggled for such things. He made this remark to me one day—I think at Washington: ‘If ever this free people—if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office; a way to live without work; from which nature I am not free myself.’ It puzzled him a good deal at Washington to know and to get at the root of this dread desire,—this contagious disease of national robbery in the nation’s death-struggle.
“Because Mr. Lincoln could not feel any interest in such little things as I have spoken of, nor feel any particular interest in the success of those who were then struggling and wriggling, he was called indifferent—nay, ungrateful—to his friends. Especially is this the case with men who have aided Mr. Lincoln all their life. Mr. Lincoln always and everywhere wished his friends well; he loved his friends, and clung to them tenaciously, like iron to iron welded; yet he could not be actively and energetically aroused to the true sense of his friends’ particularly strong feelings of anxiety for office. From this fact Mr. Lincoln has been called ungrateful. He was not an ungrateful man by any means. He may have been a cool man—a passive man in his general life; yet he was not ungrateful. Ingratitude is too positive a word—it does not convey the truth. Mr. Lincoln may not have measured his friendly duties by the applicant’s hot desire; I admit this. He was not a selfish man,—if by selfishness is meant that Mr. Lincoln would do any act, even to promote himself to the Presidency, if by that act any human being was wronged. If it is said that Abraham Lincoln preferred Abraham Lincoln to any one else in the pursuit of his ambitions, and that, because of this, he was a selfish man, then I can see no objections to such an idea, for this is universal human nature.
“It must be remembered that Mr. Lincoln’s mind acted logically, cautiously, and slowly. Now, having stated the above facts, the question of his will and its power is easily solved. Be it remembered that Mr. Lincoln cared nothing for simple facts, manners, modes, ways, and such like things. Be it remembered, that he did care for truth, for right, for principle, for all that pertains to the good. In relation to simple facts, unrelated to substance, forms, rules, methods, ways, manners, he cared nothing; and if he could be aroused, he would do anything for anybody at any time, as well foe as friend. As a politician he would courteously grant all facts and forms—all non-essential things—to his opponent. He did so because he did not care for them; they were rubbish, husks, trash. On the question of substance, he hung and clung with all his might. On questions of truth, justice, right, the good, on principle—his will was as firm as steel and as tenacious as iron.... Ask Mr. Lincoln to do a wrong thing, and he would scorn the request; ask him to do an unjust thing, and he would cry ‘Begone!’; ask him to sacrifice his convictions of the truth, and his soul would indignantly exclaim, ‘The world perish first!’ ”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Mr. Lincoln sometimes walked our streets cheerily, good-humoredly, perhaps joyously—and then it was, on meeting a friend, he cried, ‘How d’ye?’ clasping one of his friend’s hands in both of his, giving a good, hearty soul-welcome. Of a winter’s morning he might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market-house, basket on arm, his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck, his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels, asking a thousand little quick questions, which his father heard not, not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there, so abstracted was he. When he thus met a friend, he said that something put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or elsewhere, and tell it he would, and there was no alternative but to listen.
“Thus, I say, stood and walked and looked this singular man. He was odd, but when that gray eye and face, and every feature were lit up by the inward soul in fires of emotion, then it was that all those apparently ugly features sprang into organs of beauty, or sunk themselves into a sea of inspiration that sometimes flooded his face. Sometimes it appeared to me that Lincoln’s soul was just fresh from the presence of its Creator.”
“This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our county in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon River, friendless, penniless, powerless, and alone—begging for work in this city,—ragged, struggling for the common necessaries of life. This man, this peculiar man, left us, in 1861, the President of the United States, backed by friends and power, by fame and all human force; and it is well to inquire how?
“To sum up, let us say, here is a sensitive, diffident, unobtrusive, natural-made gentleman. His mind was strong and deep, sincere and honest, patient and enduring; having no vices and having only negative defects, with many positive virtues. His is a strong, honest, sagacious, manly, noble life. He stands in the foremost rank of men in all ages,—their equal,—one of the best types of this Christian civilization.”
One evening when Mr. Carpenter, the artist, was alone with Mr. Lincoln in his study, the President said: “There is a poem that has been a great favorite with me for years, to which my attention was first called when a young man, by a friend, and which I afterward saw and cut from a newspaper and carried in my pocket till, by frequent reading, I had it by heart. I would give a great deal to know who wrote it, but I could never ascertain.”
He then repeated the poem, now familiar to the public, commencing, “Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”
This poem, which was written by William Knox, a young Scotchman, a contemporary of Sir Walter Scott, suits well the thoughtful, melancholy mood habitual to Mr. Lincoln. It is said that a man may be known by his favorite poem. Whether this can be said of men in general may be doubted. In the case of Abraham Lincoln I think those who knew him best would agree that the sadness underlying the poem found an echo in the temperament he inherited from his mother. I am sure my readers will be glad to find the poem recorded here, even though they may have met with it before:
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie—
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant’s affection who proved:
The husband, that mother and infant who blest—
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye
Shone beauty and pleasure,—her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep,
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
The saint, who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner, who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
So the multitude goes—like the flower or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes—even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink
To the life we are clinging, they also would cling,—
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.
They loved—but the story we can not unfold;
They scorned—but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved—but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed—but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
They died—ay, they died; we things that are now,
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
And make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
’Tis the wink of an eye—’tis the draught of a breath—
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud:—
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
The last stanza will call to mind the startling suddenness with which Abraham Lincoln, the Chief Magistrate of a great nation, passed from the summit of power to the solemn stillness of death. Was it a sad, prophetic instinct that caused the mind of the great martyr to dwell so constantly upon these solemn strains?
No man seems to have been more clearly indicated as the instrument of Providence than Abraham Lincoln. It seems strange in the eyes of men that a rough youth, born and reared in the backwoods, without early educational advantages, homely and awkward, and with no polish of manner save that which proceeded from a good heart, should have been selected as the Guide and Savior of a great nation. But God’s ways are not as our ways, nor is His choice as ours. Mr. Lincoln had this advantage,—coming from the ranks of the people, he never lost sight of his sympathy for his class. His nature and his sympathies were broad and unconfined.
He has been well described by one reared like himself, in the free atmosphere of the West: “Nearly every great figure of history is a kind of great monstrosity. We know nothing about Washington. He is a steel engraving. No dirt of humanity clings to his boots. Lincoln lived where men were free and equal, and was acquainted with the people, not much with books. Every man is in some sort a book. He lived the poem of the year in the fields, the woods, the blessed country. Lincoln had the advantage of sociability. He was thoughtful, and saw on the horizon of his future the perpetual star of hope. To him every field was a landscape; every landscape a poem; every poem a lesson, and every grove a fairy land. Oaks and elms are far more poetical than streets or houses. A country life is in itself an education. It gives the man an idea of home. He hears the rain on the roofs, the rustle of the breeze, the music of nature’s fullest control. You have no idea how many men education spoils. Lincoln’s education was derived from men and things, and hence he had a chance to develop. He had many sides. He not only had laughter, but he had tears, and never that kind of solemnity which is a wash to hide the features. He was not afraid to seek for knowledge where he had it not. When a man is too dignified he ceases to learn. He was always honest with himself. He was an orator; that is, he was natural. If you wish to be sublime you must keep close to the grass. You must sit close to the heart of human experience—above the clouds it is too cold. If you want to know the difference between an orator and a speaker read the oration of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and then read the speech of Everett at the same place. One came from the heart, the other was from out of the voice. Lincoln’s speech will be remembered forever. Everett’s no man will read. It was like plucked flowers.
“If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity—only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy. When he had power he used it in mercy. He loved to see the tears of the wife whose husband he had snatched from death.”
I draw near the close of my task, having given, as I hope, some fair idea of one whose memory will always remain dear to the hearts of his countrymen. In that chequered life there is much to imitate, much to admire, little to avoid or censure. Happy will be the day when our public men copy his unselfishness, his patriotic devotion to duty!
Within a few months, on the eighteenth anniversary of Mr. Lincoln’s assassination, a poem was read at his grave by John H. Bryant, of Princeton, which will fitly close my story of the Backwoods Boy:
Not one of all earth’s wise and great
Hath earned a purer gratitude
Than the great Soul whose hallowed dust
This structure holds in sacred trust.
How fierce the strife that rent the land,
When he was summoned to command;
With what wise care he led us through
The fearful storms that ’round us blew.
Calm, patient, hopeful, undismayed,
He met the angry hosts arrayed
For bloody war, and overcame
Their haughty power in Freedom’s name.
’Mid taunts and doubts, the bondsman’s chain
With gentle force he cleft in twain,
And raised four million slaves to be
The chartered sons of Liberty.
No debt he owed to wealth or birth;
By force of solid, honest worth
He climbed the topmost height of fame
And wrote thereon a spotless name.
Oh! when the felon hand laid low
That sacred head, what sudden woe
Shot to the Nation’s farthest bound,
And every bosom felt the wound.
Well might the Nation bow in grief,
And weep above the fallen chief,
Who ever strove, by word or pen,
For “peace on earth, good-will to men.”
The people loved him, for they knew,
Each pulse of his large heart was true
To them, to Freedom, and the right,
Unswayed by gain, unawed by might.
This tomb, by loving hands up-piled,
To him, the merciful and mild,
From age to age shall carry down
The glory of his great renown.
As the long centuries onward flow,
As generations come and go,
Wide and more wide his fame shall spread,
And greener laurels crown his head.
And when this pile is fall’n to dust,
Its bronzes crumbled into rust,
Thy name, O Lincoln! still shall be
Revered and loved from sea to sea.
India’s swart millions, ’neath their palms,
Shall sing thy praise in grateful psalms,
And crowds by Congo’s turbid wave
Bless the good hand that freed the slave.
Shine on, O Star of Freedom, shine,
Till all the realms of earth are thine;
And all the tribes, through countless days,
Shall bask in thy benignant rays.
Lord of the Nations! grant us still
Another patriot sage, to fill
The seat of power, and save the State
From selfish greed. For this we wait.
The End