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 a^ 
 
 THE ISTA-TION'S LOSS 
 
 A DISCOUESE 
 
 THE LIFE, SEEYIOES, AND DExiTH 
 
 ABEAIIAM LIKCOLN, 
 
 L^TK PRESIDENT OF THE XJN'ITEID STA.TES. 
 
 H. P. CROZIER. '^^FWASHms32> 
 
 Delivered at Huntington, L. I,, April 19tJi, 1S65. 
 
 JOHN A. GRAY & GREEN, PRINTERS, 16 & IS JACOB STREET. 
 
 
 1865. 
 
 :9e 
 
THE NATION'S LOSS. 
 
 My Friexds : Less tlian one short Aveek ago we were gathered 
 in this Hall, to rejoice and congratulate one another for the signal 
 victory of our national arras, boding the brighter victory of peace. 
 Even while we were then speaking, and pleading for forgiveness 
 tOAvard the South AvhencA^r she shall lay down her arms, the as- 
 sassin Avas doing his work of death. The chief head of a great 
 nation has been laid Ioav in death. An insignificant man, inspired 
 by the passions of a flying fiend, shoots the President of thirty 
 millions of people, AA^hen this people, seemingly, most need his 
 great Avisdom, justness, mercifulness, goodness of heart, to direct 
 them through the perils that beset the state. We were all look- 
 ing at the rainbow of a near peace, and behold ! the dagger of 
 the assassin. A mine is sprung beneath us, the earth upheaves, 
 SAralloAVS up our leader, and threatens to engulf, with him, the 
 first statesman of the age ; and henceforth we tremble at the pos- 
 sibilities around us. .We knoAV no limit to evil plots and traps 
 after the gigantic evil consummation of the last week. Patient 
 investigation has shown that the plot, if not Avide-spread, was 
 deep-laid, and awful beyond parallel in its infamy. It contem- 
 ]ilatcd the assassination of CA'cry chief head of the National Goa'- 
 urnment, hoping thereby to bcAvilder and stun the intellect and 
 heart of the great American people — to palsy its great arm lifted 
 in Avar, and during the syncope of the nation, the paralysis of its 
 Avar-poAver, to revive the staggering fortunes of the rebellion, and 
 compel a false peace by recognition and separation. The plot so 
 awful has signally failed, although in part so mournfully success- 
 ful. The saviour of the country has fallen that the aA'^nger may 
 arise ! The people, already believing that they had seen the bot- 
 tom of the rebellion, are suddenly called upon to look loAA'^er 
 doAvn into the frightful cup of horrors given them in the murder 
 of their President and the attempted murder of their Secretary 
 of State ; and as the first shot of the rebellion against Sumter 
 aroused the North and fused the North, so this last stroke of re- 
 bellion, through the bloody hand of the assassin, will steel every 
 heart, nerve every arm, brace every will, quicken into life every 
 
4 THE nation's loss, 
 
 ounce of blood, and make articulate the demand that this rebel- 
 lion, Avith slavery, its first cause, its continued inspiration, and its 
 last fiendish instigator, shall utterly and forever perish, and that the 
 principal and conspicuous leaders in this crime of all crimes in 
 history shall have condign punishment. When before was a man 
 in public life assassinated for his goodness, his impartial sense of 
 right, and truth, and justice, his love of clemency ? William of 
 Orange, " the father of his country," fell by the hand of the as- 
 sassin, I3althazar Gerard, in 1584, while the little States of Hol- 
 land were in the midst of their great struggle with the gigantic 
 power of Spain. But that was almost three hundred years ago. 
 That was the middle and last of the sixteenth century. That was 
 in the days of the Inquisition, the days of intolerance, the days 
 of intrigue, when court-lying, bribery, and assassination were the 
 rule, not the exception. When we look into the history of the 
 Roman Empire, that great cauldron of social forces, boiling with 
 feculent scum, we are not surprised that civil war should break 
 out between CtBsar and Pompey ; that Pompey should be assas- 
 sinated ; that Co3sar should fall by the hand of Brutus and Cas- 
 sius ; that men, palsied with fear, should league together, form 
 triumvirates, and, calling their league the government, brand all 
 their opposers as public enemies, and mark them for execution. 
 So Cicero and many of the best citizens of Rome fell victims to 
 Octavius, Anthony, and Lepidus. We do not wonder that mon- 
 stei's like Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, drunk with crime and blood, 
 should be born amid these pestilent social vapors. We see that 
 the times fitted the men, and the men the times. The crucifixion 
 of Christ, coming into a province of Rome, ceases to astonish us. 
 The imprisonment of some of his apostles, the beheading of John 
 and Paul, the ten jDersecutions, were all natural growths upon the 
 poisoned soil of a false religion, a false state, bound to shut out 
 the new and maintain the old. That the new and true should 
 come and conquer the old and the false, with such tremendous 
 odds to overcome, is proof of the amazing forces of the higher 
 faculties of human nature, and of the immortal spiritual powers 
 with which they are leagued, and from which a deathless inspira- 
 tion comes to uplift and save mankind. Tlie whole history and 
 character of this war, beginning in bloody revolt against benig- 
 nant and republican authority, and growing into the barbarism of 
 making relics and charms out of the bones of loyal soldiers, starv- 
 ing to death loyal jjrisoners, massacring colored soldiers, and 
 culminating in the assassination of President Lincoln, while aim- 
 ing to strike down every head and paralyze every arm of the 
 Govermnent, shows us, what every page of past history repeats, 
 that evil, falsity, crime, oppression, enthroned wrong of any kind, 
 none of these demons ever are cast out of a people without teai*- 
 ing and rending them. No great truth throws its disinfecting 
 light into tlie depths of a nation's darkness and barbarism, with- 
 out intensifying that liglit Avith the halo of martyrdom. Half a 
 million of brave men, and the head man of the nation, crown the 
 
TnE nation's loss. 6 
 
 offering vre have already jiaid to the demon of slavery and false 
 conservatism, in Church and State, not yet fully cast out ! 
 
 As we, my friends, in sympathy gather around the lifeless 
 corpse of our beloved President, let us try to patiently look at his 
 life, weigh his character and otHcial acts, and see what was the 
 " gift of God " in this man to ns, and Avliat is the nation's loss. 
 
 1. We are not to he curious about all the little incidents of his 
 early and unofficial life at this time. This is the province of his- 
 tory. It seems proper to say that he was born obscure, poor, and 
 struggled in early life and early manhood for support and social 
 recognition. This is said, not that this is the only country in 
 which poor and obscure men can and do rise to great usefulness 
 and eminence, but because it seems a universal law^, with very 
 few exceptions, that the prophets, leaders, sages, heroes, martyrs, 
 saviours of the race shall spring- from the humble classes. The 
 scholars, kings, and conservatives spring from the wealthier 
 classes. 
 
 All the prophets of the Hebrew nation but one sprang np from 
 the soil of the common people. But one, Jeremiah alone, was of 
 the sacerdotal race. He wept with his people, and perished in 
 their captivity. Jesus was born of a peasant-gii'l and cradled in 
 a manger. Mohammed's patrimony was only five camels and 
 one slave, and his early life was serving in a store at Mecca. Lu- 
 ther was the son of a ^^oor miner of Mansfeld, and in his i:)0verty 
 sang for his bread from door to door ! Calvin's father was nei- 
 ther rich nor learned, but an obscure man in Picardy. "Wesley 
 w^as the son of an English clergyman having only the living at 
 Epworth. 
 
 It is no rare or exceptional thing that providential great men 
 should arise from humble conditions. " God hath chosen the weak 
 things of this world to confound the mighty, .... and things 
 that are not, to bring to nauglit things that are." If any extra- 
 ordinary mission of a beneficent character has been given of God 
 to Abraham Lincoln, for the deliverance of this nation from the 
 demon that has scourged it, and torn it, and driven it into the 
 fury and flame of civil war, then the early poverty, struggle, em- 
 barrassment, obscurity of the great leader whom the nation 
 mourns to-day, are all in keeping with the line of descent from 
 which like-minded men usually spring. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, Feb- 
 ruary 12, 1809. He early removed to Sangamon Coimty, Illinois. 
 In 1830-31, as he was attaining his majority, the whole region 
 was covered breast-high Avith a snow-storm ; winter wheat per- 
 ished, cattle and horses died, the settlers' meagre stock of provi- 
 sions ran out. " For three months,'.the old settlers said, not a 
 warm sun shone upon the surface of the snow." Commimication 
 from house to house by teams was cut off". Many wealthy settlers 
 came near starving ; poorer ones actually did starve. Sui)plies 
 were sent from house to house, and exchanges made by brave and 
 stout young men on foot, able to bear the perils of the snow. In 
 
6 THE nation's loss. 
 
 these labors of simple linmanity, that prove the really true and 
 great-hearted man, young Lincoln was active. The good Samar- 
 itan, that helps his fellow-man in trouble, is the all of practical 
 Christianity. " This is more than all burnt-ofibrings and sacri- 
 fices." " This do, and thou shalt live." 
 
 In 1836-7, Mr. Lincoln was elected a member of the Illinois 
 Legislature. The State was radically pro-slavery, and in both 
 branches of the General Assembly resolutions of a strong pro- 
 slavery character having been passed, you will find a protest 
 against them on the journals of the House, dated March 3, 1837 : 
 
 " The undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same. 
 They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and 
 bad policj', but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to 
 increase than abate its evils. 
 
 (Signed) "Dan. Stone, 
 
 "A. Lincoln, 
 " Representatives from the County of Sangamon." 
 
 Here gleams the moral courage and the political prudence which 
 both together illustrated Mr. Lincoln's life. To say the slave- 
 trade is piracy, cost Garrison his liberty and a fine of fifty, 
 dollars in Baltimore in 1832. To discuss slavery in Boston, in 
 1836, cost him a mob. To call slavery a sin and a crime in 1836, 
 in Utica, cost Gerrit Smith and hundreds a violent mob, which 
 followed them thirty miles, to Peterboro, hooting, and yelling, 
 and throwing missiles and odorous eggs along the way. To ar- 
 raign slavery in 1846-7, during the ^lexican War, cost mobs in 
 Central iSTew-York. To arraign slavery and Webster's and Fill- 
 more's Fugitive Slave Law in 1850-1, cost mobs in New-York, 
 Boston, Philadelphia, and in every considerable town in the land. 
 To declare war against slavery, after slavery has declared war 
 against the life of the nation, has cost riots, bloodshed, and armed 
 resistance to the draft. To stand by the Government during 
 these four years of bloody agony, and sweat, and almost death, has 
 cost menace^ and misrepresentation, and onob violence in this 
 town. Then think of Dan. Stone and A. Lincoln, in benighted 
 Illinois, in 1836-7, twenty-nine years ago, putting on the jom-nals 
 of the House their public protest : " We believe that the institu- 
 tion of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy." 
 Courage like that is the stufi" out of Avhich God makes Presidents 
 for revolutionary times. 
 
 In 1846-7, ]Mr. Lincoln was a member of the Thirtieth Con- 
 gress. This was, perhaps, the ablest and stormiest Congress that 
 ever assembled in our country. Debates ran high between Whigs 
 and Democrats on Tariffs, River and Harbor Improvements, the 
 liights of Petition, the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Co- 
 lumbia, and that great piece of national wickedness, the Mexican 
 War. Mr. Lincoln's first vote was in favor of the Harbor and 
 lliver Improvement Bill. The vote was given in fiivor of these 
 resolutions : 
 
THE NATION'S LOSS. 7 
 
 . "Hcsohed, That if, in the judgment of Congress, it be necessary to im- 
 prove the navigation of a river, to expedite and render secure the move- 
 ments of our army, and save from delay and loss our arms and munitions 
 of war, Congress has the power to improve such river. 
 
 " Resolved., That if it be necessary to the preservation of the lives of our 
 seamen, repairs, safety, or maintenance of our vessels of war, to improve a 
 harbor or inlet, either on our Atlantic or Lake coast, Congress has the 
 power to make such improvement." 
 
 These resolutions, the very essence of wise statesmansMp, were 
 laid upon the table, Mr. Lincoln voting for them. 
 
 The next clay Mr. Giddings presented a memorial from cei'tain 
 persons in the District of Columbia, asking Congress to repeal all 
 laws upholding the slave-trade in the District. Mr. Giddings 
 moved to refer the memorial to the Judiciary Committee, with 
 instructions to inquire into the constitutionality of all laws by 
 which slaves are held as j^roperty in the District of Columbia. 
 Mr. Lincoln voted for the resolution. 
 
 The Mesica2T "Wae. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was opposed to the Mexican War from principle — 
 opposed to the declaration of war against Mexico by the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and on December 22, 1847, he intro- 
 duced an elaborate yet concise preamble and set of resolutions of 
 inquiry, criticising the Messages of President Polk, and throwing 
 the responsibility for the first aggressions upon the administration, 
 for sending a hostile force across the boundary-line in opposition 
 to the advice of General Taylor, who said to the President: 
 " That, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the 
 defense or protection of Texas." The war was a Democratic 
 war ; but, nevertheless, after the President had commenced the 
 war, a Whig House of Representatives, by a vote of 192 to 14, 
 voted sixteen million dollars for supplies, Mr. Lincoln voting for 
 the bill. 
 
 When the war was over, and new territory was acquired from 
 Mexico for indemnity, Mr. Lincoln voted, with Clay, Corwin, 
 Webster, and the great lights of the Whig party, to shut slavery 
 from all the new territories. So, in August, 1847, when the bill 
 came up for the organization of the Territory of Oregon^ a mo- 
 tion was made to strike out that part of the bill which ex- 
 tended the Jeflersonian proviso, known as the ordinance of 1787, 
 over Oregon Territory. That ordinance excluded slavery from 
 all the then North-Western Territories. Mr. Lincoln voted, with 
 one hundred and thirteen other members, to retain the ordinance. 
 
 The Gott Resolution. 
 
 On the 21st of December, 1848, Mr. Gott offered in the House 
 the following resolution : 
 
8 THE nation's loss, 
 
 " Wliei'eas, The traffic now prosecuted in this metropolis of the Repub-. 
 lie, in human beings as chattels, is contrary to natural justice and the fun- 
 damental principles of our political system, and is notoriously a reproach to 
 our country throughout Christendom, and a serious hindrance to the prog- 
 ress of republican liberty among tlie nations of the earth ; therefore 
 
 ^^ Besolved, That the Committee for the District of Columbia be in- 
 structed to report a bill, as soon as practicable, prohibiting the slave-trade 
 in said District." 
 
 Here Mr. LincolM^s policy ruled him for once — not the hitherto 
 uniform principle of his life. He forsook his party — forsook men 
 like Aslimun, Bingham, Dickinson, Gicldings, Greeley, Hale, and 
 voted with the opposition — with such men as Botts, Crozier of 
 Tennessee ; Pendleton, Stephens, and Toombs. He voted against 
 the abolition of the slave-trade in the capital where he was assas- 
 sinated. Aaron and Moses, that had led the children of Israel for 
 years in the wilderness and through their various vicissitudes, 
 both died on the borders of the promised land — one on Mount 
 Hor, the other on Mount Nebo. Neither were allowed to enter 
 it for one sin against God. But the joeople went forward under 
 new leaders and possessed it. I am not superstitions — not given 
 to believe in special providences, only as all providences are spe- 
 cial. But certainly I believe this great people are going forward 
 to possess a free land, and certainly we know that he wlio has 
 visibly led ns thus far leads us no more. The ways of God are 
 past finding out. 
 
 The bill passed the House by a vote of 98 to 88, Mr. Lincoln 
 having no part nor lot in voting to free the capital of the nation 
 from the sin and crime of the slave-trade. Said the National 
 Era : 
 
 " Men will wonder, twenty-five years hence, how eighty-eight men, in an 
 American Congress, could stand up before God and virtually vote for the 
 continuance of the trade in human beings in tlie capital of the foremost 
 Republic in the world." 
 
 It is less than twenty years since this vote was given, and lo ! 
 what hatli God Avrought ! 
 
 On the 10th January, 1849, the Gott resolution against the 
 slave-trade in the District of Columbia was again before the 
 House, a motion to reconsider having been previously enter- 
 tained. Mr. Lincoln now, by the courtesy of his colleague, Mi*. 
 Wentworth, who had tlie floor, offered a substitute for the Gott 
 resolution. It provided : 
 
 " 1. That no person not then in the District of Columbia, nor owned 
 there, nor hereafter born there, should be held in slavery there. 
 
 " 2. That no person so held, or owned, or born a slave in the District, 
 shall be held as a slave out of the District ; save that officers of the United 
 States Government there, on government duties, might bring tlieir servants 
 as slaves with them, and return without impairing their rights. 
 
 " 3. That all children born of slave mothers, within said District, on or 
 
THE nation's loss. 9 
 
 after J;inuary 1, 1850, shall be free, and shall bo reasonably supported and 
 educated by their respective owners until they arrive at — age, when they 
 shall be entirely free. 
 
 " 4. That all persons then held as slaves in the District of Columbia 
 shall so remain at the will of their owners, provided said owners do not 
 elect to sell said persons, for their full value, to the United States. The 
 President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of the Treasury were made a 
 board for determining such value. 
 
 "5. The municipal authorities in "Washington and Georgetown were re- 
 quired to arrest and deliver up all fugitive slaves escaping into the District, 
 
 " 6. This act was to take effect only on condition that it was approved 
 by a majority of the electors of the District." 
 
 YotT will see tlint policy predominates over principle in this 
 bill — that expediency is put before right. It is not a bill at all, 
 in any of the ordinary features of legislation. It is simply an en- 
 abling act for the electors of the District of Columbia, to enable 
 them, if thcT/ so voted, to sell out, for the full value, their slaves to 
 the Government of the United States. So late as 1858, in his 
 great debate with Mr. Douglas, which placed Mr. Lincoln in the 
 very front rank as a leader, a ready debater, a statesman, and a 
 patriot, he frankly put himself on record before the world as "not 
 pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
 and not in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law." I have been patient and particular on this point for two 
 reasons : first, it is fitting that the truth should be spoken ; second, 
 this bondage of Mr. Lincoln to what he honestly deemed consti- 
 tutional obligations, will disarm his enemies when they charge 
 him with abolitionism, and also serve as a landmark from which 
 we may trace the growth of his convictions and character. No 
 man but the wavering man, the unstable man, the insincere man, 
 is ever injured by the comparison of his present with his past life. 
 The good man grows ; the bad man stands still, or, attempting to, 
 " like a crab goes backward." The true man sees the new light, 
 and sees old things in the new relations which new light always 
 discovers. The false man, " having eyes, sees not ; having ears, 
 hears not," simply because he has chosen not to see and hear ! 
 This was the sin of the Jews — not that they did not see Cln-ist 
 before he came, but they would not see him after he came. The 
 very works which he wrought they charged to Beelzebub, the 
 prince of devils. This is the sin of the South, and of the mis- 
 guided opponents of the Government all over South and North at 
 this hour. And for this sin alone the whole land is blasted with 
 war and shrouded with mourning ! 
 
 Public Lands. 
 
 Before leaving Congress, Mr. Lincoln put himself on record in 
 favor of the Homestead Bill. Pie voted for Mr. McClellan's Land 
 Bill, crude as it was, because, he said, he was willing to give the 
 public lands to the people rather than to speculators. In Con- 
 
10 THE KATION'S loss. 
 
 gress he was true, as he believed then, to his anti-slavery i^^rinci- 
 plcs, always voting against the extension of slavery in the Terri- 
 tories, standing with such statesmen as Webster and Clay. On 
 the Mexican War he acted with the Whig party, refusing to just- 
 ify the war itself, but votnig supplies for it that the war debt 
 might be liquidated. He steadily and earnestly opposed the an- 
 nexation of Texas, and labored with all his powers in behalf of 
 " the " Wilniot Proviso." 
 
 Ten years in so-called private life. In the National Convention 
 of 1S48, Mr. Lincoln was a member, and advocated the nomina- 
 tion of General Zachary Taylor, and sustained the nomination by 
 an active canvass in Illinois and Indiana. He sought no reAvards 
 from the Government for his labors, but settled down to tlio hard 
 work of his profession of law, from 1849 to 1854, losing his inter- 
 est in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and 
 the Kansas and Nebraska villainies, brought him before the pub- 
 lic, and roused all the slumbering energies of his great nature. 
 Circumstances don't make men. God makes them, but circum- 
 stances discover them. George Washington would have been 
 George Washington had there been no American Revolution. 
 He would have been known, however, only as a practical sur- 
 veyor, a large and thrifty farmer, a good neighbor, a true hus- 
 band and friend. All his qualities of command, of patience, of 
 hope, of patriotism, that have made him, like William of Orange, 
 his great prototype, " the father of his country," were brought 
 out hi the furnace of the American devolution. When there is 
 need of great men they are sure to be produced. The political 
 convulsions of 1850-54 made Abraham Lincoln widely known as 
 emphatically one of the very ablest debaters in the land, and 
 opened up the way for his first nomination for the Presidency in 
 1860. Those who in 18G0 asked the question, " Who is Abra- 
 ham Lincoln ?" merely proclaimed their ignorance of tohat he 
 teas. His historian says : 
 
 " Fully three fourths of the ability and the unwearying labor, wliich re- 
 sulted in the redemption of Illinois, and the election of Lyman Trumbull 
 to the Senate of the United States, should be awarded to Abraham Lincoln. 
 He confronted Mr. Douglas at every point throughout that greatest State 
 of the AVest, confounded his sophistries, answered his arguments, impaled 
 his shabbj'- theory of squatter sovereignty ! A revolution swept the State. 
 Mr. Lincohi pressed the slavery issue upon the people of Central and South- 
 ern Illinois, largely made up of emigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, Vir- 
 ginia, and North-Carolina, with all the powers of his great mind. He car- 
 ried every thing before him. For the first time, Illinois had a republican 
 Legislature. The election came on, and Mr. Lincoln, after uniting all the 
 strength of his party, on repeated ballots, for the high honor of United 
 States Senator, went to his own friends and desired them to drop his name, 
 and unite on Judge Trumbull. He thus secured, by an act of generous 
 self-sacrifice, a triumph for the cause of right, and an advocate on the floor 
 of the Senate not inferior in zeal for the principles of republicanism to any 
 member of that body." 
 
THE nation's loss. 11 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was oiFerecT the nomination for Governor by the 
 anti-Nebraska party in 1854, but lie declined in favor of Mr. Bis- 
 sell. 
 
 In 1858 came the greatest senatorial contest ever waged on this 
 continent, between Mi-. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas. Mr. Lincoln 
 again put forth great exertions and great talents as a del)ater, 
 and won in the popular election, while Mr. Douglas secured the 
 legislative triumph, lie impaled Mr. Douglas on his own double 
 doctrine of tlie Dred Scott decision and poj^ular sovereignty. 
 Mr. Lincoln's friends told him at Frccport : 
 
 " That if Mr. Douglas was cornered on the Drecl Scott decision, he would 
 throw the decision overboard, and take up popular sovereignty, and tlw.t^ 
 they said, will make him Senator. ' That may be,' said Mr. Lincoln, and 
 his large gray eye twinkled, 'but if he takes that shoot, he never can be 
 President.' " 
 
 The great progress of Mr. Lincoln's mind on the question of 
 human rights is distinctly traced in this senatorial contest. No 
 man ever had a more wily, or more unscrupulous adversary than 
 was Senator Douglas. Mr. Douglas, of course, sought to arouse 
 popular prejudice against Mr. Lincoln by charges of negro equality 
 rung with such persistent misrepresentation by smaller men all 
 over the land. Mr Lincoln's reply was : 
 
 " I hold that the negro is as much entitled to all the'rights enumerated 
 in the Declaration of Independence, ' The right to life, liberty, and the pur- 
 suit of happiness,' as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas— he 
 is not my equal in many respects ; certainly not in color ; perhaps not in 
 moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, with- 
 out the leave of any one else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, ajid 
 the equal of Judge Douglas^ and the equal of every living man.'''' 
 
 Here Mr. Lincoln's early training is overcome. Here the j^rin- 
 ciple of chattelhood, so painfully manifest in his own bill for the 
 regulation of slavery in the District of Columbia, six years be- 
 fore, 1848, is manfully pushed away. Here the simple manhood 
 of the negro slave, however weak or despised that manhood may 
 be, is recognized, and the duty of Government maintained to pro- 
 tect it, with all its essential rights, as quick as it would protect 
 Judge Douglas, Mr. Lincoln himself, or any other living man ! 
 Here expediency and policy, the bane of politics, are brushed 
 away, and solid principle put in their stead. Here the corner- 
 stone is laid for that unyielding character, which made him the 
 leader of a great people through the Red Sea of their distresses 
 to the borders of the promised land ! 
 
 In Mr. Lincoln's speech to the Convention which nominated him 
 for the Senate, were these words of truth and prophecy, so often 
 used, both by his enemies and friends : 
 
 " A house divided against itself can not stand. I believe this Govern- 
 ment can not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
 
12 TnE nation's loss. 
 
 pect the Union to be dissolvcil — I do not expect the house to fall, but I do 
 expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing, or all 
 the other." 
 
 Peeside:xt op the U:nited States. 
 
 In the Republican Convention which met at Chicago, May, 
 1860, there were present four hundred and sixty-five delegates. 
 On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln received three hundred and fifty- 
 four votes, and then, on motion of Mr. Evarts, of New- York, the 
 nomination for the high ofiice of President of the United States 
 was made inianimous. 
 
 His election Avas secured through a vigorous and exciting cam- 
 paign. It was the moral uprising of a great people rebuking 
 slavery propagandism, the Lecomj^ton swindle, the Dred Scott 
 inlamy, the Kansas tyrannies and cheats, in the sugar-coated name 
 ol Democracy. Not a man in the nation had done more to secure 
 the triumph than Mr. Lincoln himself, working with might and 
 main in the West years before he was thought of as standard- 
 bearer, and even when he had no chance of election as Governor 
 of Illinois, because his political principles would not yield to the 
 prejudices of his people. Mr. Douglas yielded and fiiiled. Mr. 
 Lincoln had faith iu God, faith in man, faith in the future, and tri- 
 umphed. No man in the nation was more worthy of the honors 
 of victory ! No man in the nation could have so safely carried 
 us over the first arch of the bridge from the old civilization to the 
 new ! 
 
 His route to the capital was an ovation. He was needed there. 
 "Weakness, incapacity, treason, disintegration, were visible in ev- 
 ery part of the Government when Mr. Lincoln took the reins. 
 Secession was already accomplished. The rebel government was 
 inaugurated at Montgomery, February 18, 1861,"by the election 
 of Jeflersou Davis and Alexander H. Stephens. l)nvis issued a 
 flauntmg address, in which he declared the day of compromise 
 past. (He sj)oke the truth for once — it is 2)cist.) 
 
 " The South," he said, " will maintain her position, and make all who 
 oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel, if coercion is 
 persisted in. He felt sure of the result. It might be thei/ would have to 
 encounter inconveniences at the hcg inning, but he had no doubts of the final 
 issue." 
 
 We still think he spoke the truth. They have encountered in- 
 conveniences ; and we think Mr. Davis, a fieeing vagabond from 
 his own cai)ital, with cause and army and country lost, "has no 
 doubts of the final issue." 
 
 Twelve days before Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated in Washiilg- 
 ton, having escaped assassination in Baltimore, treason was inau- 
 gurated in Montgomery. Forty days after he had taken the oath 
 to preserve, protect, and defend tlie Constitution of the United 
 States, Fort Sumter was bombarded by order of the rebel con- 
 spiracy. Civil war was begim by the South, President Lincoln 
 
THE nation's loss. 13 
 
 patiently but firmly acting on the defensive. Tlis Inaugural Ad- 
 dress was a marvel of magnanimity, containing not one Avord of 
 rei)roach to the South — not one menace — not one threat. On the 
 other hand, it leaned toward them — it took them by the hand — 
 it assured them of certain protection of all their old rights \mder 
 the Constitution. It closed with these words of warning and en- 
 treaty, without a parallel in any state paper in the history of the 
 world : 
 
 " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the 
 momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You 
 can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have 
 no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the 
 most solemn one * to preserve, protect, and defend it.' 
 
 " I am loth to close. "\Ye 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, stretching from every battle-field and pa- 
 triot-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 is a faithful father imploring his willful children. A great, 
 tender, human heart, yearning over the dangers that threaten his 
 country. Christ wept over Jerusalem, and they repaid his sym- 
 pathy with crucifixion. President Lincoln yearned over the South, 
 and the South repaid his sympathy with civil war, firing upon his 
 country's flag, shedding innocent blood in the streets of Balti- 
 more, menacing the very capital, and threatening to overrun and 
 engulf the whole laud ! 
 
 The Issue Accepted. 
 
 On the 15th of April, 1861, proclamation and call for seventy- 
 five thousand men was made, " to suppress treasonable combina- 
 tions, and cause the laws to be duly executed." This proclama- 
 tion, and the imminent danger of the Government, united the 
 North. The very first day after the call, Massachusetts had her 
 Sixth Regiment completely equipped, on the road to the national 
 capital. Those troops were fired upon by a mob in Baltimoi-e. 
 Governor Hicks, of Maryland, and Mayor Brown, of Baltimore, 
 asked that no more troops be sent through Baltimore. President 
 Lincoln yielded, and sent them by way of Annapolis. 
 
 On the 19th of April, a temperate proclamation of blockade 
 was made, and the nation stood calmly on the defensive, wliile 
 the South was making the most vigorous preparations for war. 
 
 Seeing this, President Lincoln convened Congress on the 4 th 
 of July, 1861, and asked for four hundred thousand men and 
 four hundred million dollars. Congress acted with the utmost 
 promptness and liberality. They passed acts apj^roviug and le- 
 galizing all that President Lincoln had done, on his own respon- 
 sibility, to save the Government. Tiiey passed the Confiscation 
 
14 THE NATIONS LOSS, 
 
 Act by a, vote of 93 to 55, altliougli John C. Breckinridge, and 
 such men, since open traitors, were in their seats. They passed a 
 resohition dechiring it to be " no part of the duty of the soldiers 
 of the United States to capture and return fugitive slaves." 
 They voted five hundred thousand men and five hundred million 
 dollars for the war for the Union. Thus was President _ Lin- 
 coln not only indorsed by the people, but commended, justified, 
 and more than sustained. One hundred thousand more men and 
 one lumdred million dollars more money than he called for were 
 promptly given him by the people. 
 
 On the'eth of March, 1802, President Lincoln sent a special 
 message to Congress recommending a joint resolution to compen- 
 sate ail States for their abolition of slavery, as a war measure and 
 a measure of public safety. The resolution to compensate was 
 l-)assed in both houses and signed by the President ; and in Presi- 
 dent Lincoln's correspondence with both Generals Hunter and 
 Fremont, who had both declared martial law and the abolition of 
 slavery, he gives as the reason for the revocation of the eman- 
 cipation part of their military proclamations the fact, that they 
 had transcended the laws of Congress, Avhich he, as Executive, 
 was to execute and not to obstruct. He had not yet made up his 
 mind as to his power, under the Constitution, to free the slaves, 
 and he therefore revoked the proclamations of Generals Hunter 
 and Fremont, and held out the olive-branch of comiiensated eman- 
 cipation. Next to the fatal mistake of commencing war at all, 
 the refusal of the slave States to accept of this proposition was 
 their awful blunder. 
 
 In August 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote his brief and 
 pertinent letter to Horace Greeley, defining his policy, of which 
 Mr. Greeley and many others were hitherto uncertain. In that 
 letter he said : 
 
 " My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or 
 destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I 
 would do it. If I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And 
 if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. 
 . . . . I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I 
 shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. 
 
 " I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish, that all 
 men, everywhere, could be free." 
 
 On the 22d September, 1862, one month from the date of hits 
 letter to Mr. Greeley, the President issued the conditional " Pro- 
 clamation of Emancipation," which, by being rejected by the reb- 
 els, sealed the fate of human slavery on this continent, and ren- 
 ders its speedy extinction by the war power of 'he Government 
 certain. On the first day of January, 1863, the supplemental 
 proclamation came, naming all those States and parts of States in 
 rebellion where the emancipation proclamation should take efl^ect. 
 It i)ledged the executive, military, and naval j^ow^er of tli^Gov- 
 ernment to maintain their freedom. It enjoined the freednien to 
 
THE nation's loss. 15 
 
 abstain from nil violence, unless in necessary self-defense. It re- 
 commended them to labor for wages Avherever allowed. It in- 
 formed them that they would be received into the armed service 
 of the United States, and closed with this solemn appeal : 
 
 " And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted 
 by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judg- 
 ment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 
 
 My friends, it is no part of my intention, or of the duty of this 
 hour, to enter into a minute and critical history of President Lin- 
 coln's conduct of the war. Your judgments are as well informed 
 as mine on this subject. His renomination and reelection by one 
 of the largest popular majorities ever given a candidate in this 
 country, sweeping every thing, from Maine to California, except 
 three States, is proof that the great body of the American people 
 approve of his conduct of the war ; and the deliberate, impartial 
 judgment of history will be, that the nation has suflered more 
 from his clemency than his severity ; more from his goodness of 
 heart, and simiilc fiith in his kind, than from any fancied strain of 
 power ; more from the absence of martial law, than from its 
 abundant presence ; more from the lack of arbitrary arrests, than 
 from the multiplication of them ; more from traitors all over the 
 North, and all along the war-jiath to the South, who have been 
 unmolested, than from the denial of the great writ of habeas cor- 
 pus to the few who have been imprisoned. 
 
 " In war, laws are silent," is a proverb of Roman history. The 
 safety of the Republic is the su23reme law. The Constitution it- 
 self provides for all the extraordinary measures which President 
 Lincoln saw needful for the public welfare ; and history will mar- 
 vel, that in a civil war which marshaled two millions of men in the 
 field — which lasted four years, at least — which overran more ter- 
 ritory than half of all Europe, so little excess was committed, and 
 so little severity was dealt out. 
 
 President Lincoln took up into his long arms — his capacious 
 mind — his great heart, all the jarring elements of factions — all 
 the differences of his friends — all the necessities of his enemies. 
 He was patient with all congressional differences, silent imder all 
 attacks, forgiving to a fault as a child. He was approachable by 
 the humblest citizen in the Republic. You not only approached 
 his bodily frame — he allowed you to approach his interior person- 
 ality. You could not fail to believe in his sympathy for all that is 
 just, and good, and true. He, more than any other man we have 
 ever raised, was the Chief Magistrate of the people, and not of a 
 party. He found time to receive and listen to all sorts of delega- 
 tions, from all sorts of people and societies — ministers, laymen, 
 Quakers, colored people — all were taken into his kindly consider- 
 ation. Like William of Orange, "he bore the sorrows of his peo- 
 ple with a smiling face." He had not only tim^e to visit the poor, 
 sick soldiers in the camps and hospitals aroimd Washington, but 
 
16 THE nation's loss. 
 
 he had time to write hopeful and thankful letters to the working- 
 men of Lancasliire and London, thanking them for tlieir genuine 
 sympathy in our cause, and returning the sympathy of a great hu- 
 man heart for their distresses, occasioned by our strict blockade 
 and the stoppage of their cotton-mills. He was a laboring man. 
 He had no jjatrimony but honesty, industry, frugality. When a 
 boy only eight years of age, he lielped to cut the road for the ox- 
 team that was transporting his father's earthly all into the wilds of 
 Indiana. From the lowest social condition to the highest social 
 condition of the Avorld he arose, by the purity of his purpose, the 
 discipline of his mind, and the majesty of his will. Elevation to 
 power had no intoxication for him. Pie was no party man. He 
 neither punished his political enemies, nor rewarded his political 
 friends, as such. He sought for the right man in the right place. 
 With all the horrors of war arovmd him, he never became intolei*- 
 ant, revengeful, or bloodthirsty. He drove through the pickets of 
 the Army of the Potomac, to pardon a boy condemned to death 
 for sleeping on his post. With the smoke of battle around liim, 
 and the roar of hostile cannon in his ear, he all the time kept an 
 open ear for peace. He went to meet the enemy, and tell him 
 peace, by cessation of hostilities on the part of the rebellion, 
 would be followed by a liberal construction of the pardoning 
 power. After victory brought thousands of his proud enemies at 
 his feet, he exulted in no hope of personal revenge, but exulted in 
 the hope of a near j^eace for his distracted country. He died 
 with forgiveness on his tongue, and forgiveness in his heart. He 
 was simple as a child in his liabits, temperate, chaste, devout, re- 
 ligious. Though no sectarian, he was a firm believer in God, and 
 a great believer in man. He died a martyr to his country, and a 
 martyr to his faith in human kind. He did not even believe tliat 
 slavery could educate a man up to the depravity of killing him. 
 Such, my friends, very imperfectly and hastily told, is the man 
 this nation mourns to-day as it never mourned a loss before. 
 Such is the friend of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, 
 the wliite and the black, the learned and the ignorant, tlie free 
 and the bond, avIio will be mourned by the struggling millions of 
 Europe and the world when they shall hear of his untimely death. 
 When the despair of our grief is over, and the panoply of mourn- 
 ing wliich hangs over the land is laid aside, may we better mourn 
 him by emulating his simple, homely virtues and his lofty patriot- 
 ism ! May God bless the memory of Abraham Lincoln, and grant 
 that liis blood, slied by unnatural and wicked hands, may cement 
 tlie union of these States, foimded upon equal liberty for all men, 
 and may tliat union and his memory live together long as the stars 
 shall endure ! 
 
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