w 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "-* " 
 
 
 *K 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Lincoln Centenary Services 
 igog 
 
 Temple Adath Israel 
 
 L on is: 'illc , Ken tuck) ' 
 
Lincoln Centenary Set vices 
 igog 
 
 Temple Adath Israel 
 
 Louisville, Kentucky. 
 
 By transfer 
 The White House 
 Marcfc 3rd, l'Ji'J 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 LINCOLN, THE PATRIOT— Rabbi H. G. Endow, D. D 3-11 
 
 Sermon preached Sunday Morning, February 7, 1909 
 
 PROGRAM OF THE LINCOLN CENTENARY SERVICE .... 12 
 
 THE MEMORY OF LINCOLN— Rabbi H. G. EneW, D. D 13-14 
 
 A SOUTHERN SOLDIERS VIEW OF LINCOLN— Judge W.O.Harris. 15-17 
 
 A NORTHERN SOLDIERS REMINISCENCE OF LINCOLN- 
 
 Col. Andrew Cowan 18_24 
 
 LINCOLN, A POEM— Mr. Madison Cawein 25-26 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE PROPHET OF DEMOCRACY— 
 
 Professor Albion W. Small, Ph. D 27-38 
 
Lincoln, the Patriot 
 
 Rabbi H. G. Enelow, D.D. 
 
 So much has been said and written about Abraham 
 Lincoln that it is hardly possible to add anything new. 
 There are not only numerous formal lives of the great 
 President, but also a multitude of subjective studies and 
 appreciations. It is doubtful whether even the approach- 
 ing centenary will bring forth much new material. There 
 may be some hitherto unknown letter or fragment, some 
 hitherto unpublished portrait — and every such little treas- 
 ure, we may be sure, will be wrested from obscurity by 
 lovers of Lincoln. Very little, however, can possibly be 
 added to our store of information about the stirring period 
 of which Lincoln was the central figure and towering hero. 
 
 What the Lincoln Centenary, on the other hand, is cer- 
 tain to do, is this: it will emphasize the ethical element 
 of Lincoln's life. It will turn the mind of mankind once 
 again to his wondrous personality. It will fasten the at- 
 tention of the Nation anew upon the qualities of his unique 
 character and the high motives behind it. And must we 
 not believe that, when all is said and done, it is just this 
 that forms the chief legacy of any great man to his fellow- 
 men? The achievements of the leaders of humanity would 
 be of little worth and of short duration if behind them 
 there were not some moral force, if they were not imbued 
 with some perennial ethical value. The actual deeds of 
 the world's great men may prove of little interest to dis- 
 tant posterity — they may be superseded, they may dwindle 
 in proportion, they may become the unconscious part of 
 ordinary life, or they may be forgotten altogether. But 
 the moral power behind the deeds, the devotion and ideal- 
 ism that quickened the personality, the divine fire that 
 burnt in the soul of the leader, remains unforgetable and 
 
precious to the end of time. That is the substance that 
 must enter into the noble acts and aims of all ages, though 
 from age to age this substance may change in outward 
 appearance and application. 
 
 All this, of course, cannot be said literally of Lincoln. 
 His deeds are not forgotten. His figure is not remote from 
 those living today. The events of his life are still fresh 
 in our minds. On all hands do we meet with people who 
 took part in them. Even the details of his career captivate 
 our attention. The things he achieved are of supreme mo- 
 ment to every citizen. None the less, I do not hesitate to 
 say that the chief inspiration the world is destined to de- 
 rive from the life of Lincoln will emanate from the con- 
 templation of his personality, rather than from any one 
 thing he attained — from the marvel of his character, from 
 that rare combination of qualities which singled him out 
 as one of the greatest men in the annals of the world. 
 
 What was the secret of Lincoln's personality? Many 
 attempts have been made to explain it ; to analyze its ele- 
 ments and antecedents — to trace it back to race and envi- 
 ronment. After all, all such efforts must be in vain. Lin- 
 coln is Lincoln. Neither genealogy nor geography can 
 quite account for him. You can no more solve his mystery 
 than that of any other unique personality in history. 
 There may be much virtue in the modern critical theory 
 which looks in antecedents and surroundings — in the 
 milieu — for light on the character and the ambitions and 
 achievements of great men. Nevertheless, there is a resi- 
 due at the heart of every great man that baffles analysis — 
 a secret that the key of origin and surroundings cannot 
 unlock. Can you explain the secret of Moses — who was 
 inspired to flee the luxuries and lolling of a royal palace 
 and cast his lot with his slave-brothers, thus to become 
 his people's deliverer and the world's greatest prophet? 
 Can you explain the secret of Amos — impelled to leave his 
 sheep and sycamores at Tekoa and journey to the joyous 
 capital of Samaria and there proclaim the word of God 
 
and the doom of the people? Can you explain the mystery 
 that has resided in the soul of every one of the world's 
 undying prophets, heroes, and leaders? No more will it 
 ever be really possible to account for the lone loftiness of 
 Lincoln. Suffice it to say that in him the American people 
 have had a man who has stirred up the reverence, the af- 
 fection, the wonder of all alike. Rulers have been aston- 
 ished at his sagacity and power; scholars have marveled at 
 his intellect; orators have paid tribute to his eloquence, 
 and he possesses the love of all the people. And if any- 
 thing was needful to give supreme and final consecration 
 to his name in the memory of mankind, there was the 
 tragedy of his martyr-death. 
 
 If the praise of poets be the measure of fame, Lincoln 
 is secure. I doubt whether Washington, even, has formed 
 the theme of as many of our poets as Lincoln. Muses the 
 most diverse have been inspired by his memory : Walt 
 Whitman, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, 
 Edward Rowland Sill, Edwin Markham. Indeed, not a 
 poet of note but has sought to express in melody the mar- 
 vel and the mystery of Abraham Lincoln. "New birth of 
 our new soil, the first American" — is the way Lowell de- 
 scribed him in his Commemoration Ode. And Mr. Edwin 
 Markham has more recently sought to portray the secret 
 of Lincoln in the following words: 
 
 "When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 
 Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 
 She bent the strenuous heavens and came down 
 To make a man to meet the mortal need. 
 She took the tried clay of the common road — 
 Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth — 
 Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; 
 Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 
 It was a stuff to wear for centuries, 
 A man that matched the mountains, and compelled 
 The stars to look our way and honor us." 
 
 Thus the poets! "Walt Whitman's noble dirge on the 
 death of Lincoln, "O Captain, My Captain," — as noble a 
 
poem as we possess — is known to all. "New birth of our 
 new soil, the first American !" Tried clay of the common 
 road, dashed through with a strain of prophecy! What 
 do all these tributes mean? The common realization that 
 in Lincoln was found the culmination and the summary of 
 Americanism, that in him liyed the soul of our democracy, 
 that the spirit and the essence and the hope of the New 
 World were fused together in his personality in all their 
 elemental strength and everlasting significance. He was a 
 child of the soil, he loved the soil, he kept in touch with 
 the soil, deriving strength from it, like the giant in the 
 ancient Greek myth, and his life was dedicated to the per- 
 petuation of those ideals which from the beginning of our 
 Republic have hallowed this American soil, and without 
 which it would be deflowered of all its honor and glory. 
 
 This leads us to what formed the chief quality — the 
 ruling passion — of Lincoln. It inay sound trite, but su- 
 premely important it is none the less. His ruling passion 
 was patriotism. I have said that a great deal has been 
 said and written about Lincoln in formal biographies and 
 in subjective studies. A perusal of some of these works 
 brings one face to face with most diverse, sometimes 
 antipodal, appraisals of his motives, his acts, his charac- 
 ter. The best approach to Lincoln, however, is by way of 
 his own writings. Read his letters, his speeches, his mes- 
 sages. They contain the portrait of a lofty, resolute, tender 
 soul. They are a liberal education in Americanism. There 
 is in them candor, lucidity, eloquence. But the one point 
 of convergence for all that he wrote is his patriotism. This 
 is his master passion. This is the strain that runs through 
 all his utterances, from the time he served in the General 
 Assembly of Illinois, to those solemn moments made sub- 
 lime and immortal by his Gettysburg speech and his Inau- 
 gural Addresses. Patriotism pulsed through his veins, 
 quivered in his bosom, was inscribed in his countenance. 
 
 Patriotism, you say? What more common than this? 
 Who is not patriotic? His, however, was the patriotism 
 
that means more than a mere sentimental attachment to 
 one's native land, or even the readiness to die for it. His 
 patriotism was, first of all, a profound love of American 
 institutions. It was a solemn consciousness of the high 
 ideals of freedom and justice and brotherhood that brought 
 this Republic into being, a passionate loyalty to all its 
 institutions, because of their import to the cause of free- 
 dom and justice, a conviction that the hopes and the hap- 
 piness of all mankind are bound up with the triumph of 
 these institutions, a dread of anything that might impair 
 even a tittle or iota of their glory, and a soul-deep deter- 
 mination to do all in his power to protect, defend, and pre- 
 serve them. The American Republic and human happi- 
 ness and progress were synonyms to his mind and heart; 
 they were ideas indissolubly intertwined. In this sense he 
 was a patriot, and this sort of patriotism inspired every- 
 thing he said and did throughout his marvelous and 
 troublous career. 
 
 There is a passage in one of his earliest recorded 
 speeches that throws light on this aspect of Lincoln's pa- 
 triotism. It shows how much reverence and love for 
 American institutions from the first formed the chief in- 
 gredient of his make-up. In an address delivered January 
 27, 1837, before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, 
 Illinois, on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institu- 
 tions," he uttered the following words: "We find our- 
 selves under the government of a system of political insti- 
 tutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and 
 religious liberty than any of which the history of former 
 times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, 
 found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental 
 blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establish- 
 ment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed us by a once 
 hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and de- 
 parted race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly 
 they performed it) to possess themselves, and through 
 themselves us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its 
 
hills and its valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal 
 rights; and it is ours only to transmit these to the latest 
 generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This 
 task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty 
 to posterity, and love for our species in general, all im- 
 peratively require us faithfully to perform." 
 
 On another occasion, in the course of a speech in the 
 Illinois House of Representatives, in the year 1839, he 
 says: "Many free countries have lost their liberty, and 
 ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest 
 plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never 
 deserted her *****. if eV er I feel the soul within me 
 elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly un- 
 worthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate 
 the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, 
 and I standing up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance 
 at her victorious oppressors." 
 
 Again, on July 16, 1852, Lincoln delivered a eulogy of 
 Henry Clay, at the State House, in Springfield. What he 
 said in praise of Clay was an indication to a large extent 
 of his own character. For, is not the study of the great 
 men of the past very often a quest and token of spiritual 
 affinity? One passage in Lincoln's address is particularly 
 interesting in this connection. "Mr. Clay's predominant 
 sentiment," he said, "from first to last, was a deep devo- 
 tion to the cause of human liberty — a strong sympathy 
 with the oppressed everywhere, and an ardent wish for 
 their elevation. With him this was a primary and all-con- 
 trolling passion. Subsidiary to this was the conduct of 
 his whole life. He loved his country partly because it was 
 his own country, and mostly because it was a free country ; 
 and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity, 
 and glory, because he saw in such the advancement, pros- 
 perity, and glory of human right, human liberty, and 
 human nature. He desired the prosperity of his country- 
 men, partly because they were his countrymen, but chiefly 
 to show to the world that free men could be prosperous." 
 
Such was the basic character of Lincoln's patriotism. 
 To understand it fully is to understand his attitude to the 
 critical questions of his age — an attitude which at that 
 time was largely misunderstood and misinterpreted. And 
 who will say that in this day and generation there is no 
 need for a new emphasis on Lincoln's idea of patriotism? 
 With the growth of our material prosperity, with the ex- 
 pansion of our country to the isles of the sea, with the 
 many changes that have taken place in the life and the 
 aims of our people, with the obscuring of our ideals, with 
 the tendency in some quarters to scorn the Declaration of 
 Independence as an aggregate of glittering generalities, 
 it is essential to bear in mind the purpose for which our 
 institutions were created — to bring freedom, justice, and 
 happiness to men — and that to serve this purpose is the 
 highest form of American patriotism. 
 
 Another phase of Lincoln's patriotism right now de- 
 serves the special attention of the people of our Common- 
 wealth. I refer to Lincoln's constant insistence on obe- 
 dience to the law as the quintessence of patriotism. The 
 supreme safeguard of our democratic institutions lies in 
 the scrupulous maintenance of our laws. Violation of law 
 means the subversion of all government. It means the 
 destruction of civilization. Our State, in recent years, has 
 suffered as seriously as any other section, if not more se- 
 riously, from a reign of lawlessness. Think of the acts of 
 violence that have been perpetrated in the best parts of 
 our State during the tobacco troubles, to say nothing of 
 the feuds and bloodshed that are the disgrace of our less 
 civilized mountain regions. Do you think patriotism can 
 thrive in such an atmosphere? Do you think our free in- 
 stitutions can thus be preserved? Do you think American 
 civilization can thus be perpetuated? And the same ques- 
 tion must be put to any one who breaks, or is willing to 
 allow others to break, any of the laws on the integrity of 
 which rests the whole fabric of our democracy. It matters 
 not whether such violation occur in our social, our politi- 
 
 9 
 
cal, our commercial life. Obedience to the law is the first 
 condition of patriotism. It is the first exhibition of the 
 patriotic spirit. This is the way Lincoln puts it in one of 
 those early speeches that so finely foreshadow his future : 
 "Let every American/' he says, "every lover of liberty, 
 every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the 
 ^Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws 
 of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by 
 others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support 
 of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of 
 the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his 
 life, his property, and his sacred honor — let every man re- 
 member that to violate the law is to trample on the blood 
 of his fathers, and to tear the charter of his own and his 
 children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed 
 by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles 
 on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and 
 in colleges ; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and 
 in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed 
 in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, 
 in short, let it become the political religion of the Nation ; 
 and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the 
 grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and 
 conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars." 
 
 I cannot close without alluding to one other aspect of 
 Lincoln's patriotism: its religious aspect; his faith in God. 
 Lincoln believed firmly in the presence of God in the his- 
 tory of our Kepublic, and in the unfailing guidance of 
 Providence. Without such implicit faith it is hard to think 
 of Lincoln bearing up under his great burden, and per- 
 during to the very end. His life reminds one of the simple 
 words in our children's hymnal : 
 
 "To this their secret strength they owed 
 The martyr's path who trod, 
 The fountain of their patience flowed 
 From out their thought of God." 
 
 10 
 
We are all familiar with those fateful farewell words 
 he addressed to his neighbors at Springfield before his de- 
 parture for the National capital. What a ring of sadness 
 and trust ! "I now leave, not knowing when or whether 
 ever I may return, with a task before me greater than 
 that which rested upon Washington. Without the assist- 
 ance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot 
 succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail." And this 
 note of faith in God, who has never forsaken this land in 
 its difficulties, and who is shaping its course to the high 
 ends of human freedom and happiness, this note of devout 
 confidence, he strikes again and again in the course of his 
 memorable journey to Washington and of the sad and 
 heavy years of his leadership. 
 
 And has he failed? If ever life was a triumph, his 
 was. If ever career was a blessing to millions, his was. 
 If ever death was a victory, a self-sacrifice, a transfigura- 
 tion, it was Abraham Lincoln's. His tragic death sealed 
 the covenant of his lofty patriotism. He lived and died 
 that our country might remain the home of liberty, of jus- 
 tice, of brotherhood — that, to use his own noble words, 
 this Nation might have a new birth of freedom, and that 
 government of the people, by the people, for the people 
 might not perish from the earth. 
 
 "O martyred one, farewell ! 
 Thou hast not left thy people quite alone, 
 Out of thy beautiful life there comes a tone 
 Of power, of love, of trust, a prophecy, 
 Whose fair fulfilment all the Earth shall be, 
 And all the Future tell." 
 
 11 
 
Centenary Service 
 
 Friday Evening, February 12, 1909 
 
 PROGRAM 
 
 Prelude — Andante Guilmant 
 
 "Holy Art Thou" Handel 
 
 the choral club 
 Invocation 
 
 Address — "The Memory of Lincoln" Rabbi H. G. Enelow, D. D. 
 
 "The Lord Is My Shepherd" Schubert 
 
 WOMEN'S CHORUS 01 THE CHORAL CLUB 
 
 Address — "A Southern Soldier's View of Lincoln" ...Judge W. O. Harris 
 "Great Is Jehovah" Schubert 
 
 THE CHORAL CLUE 
 
 Address — "A Northern Soldier's Reminiscence of Lincoln" 
 
 Col. Andrew Cowan 
 "The Star Spangled Banner" 
 
 the congregation 
 
 "Lincoln : a Poem" Mr. Madison Cawein 
 
 'Traise the Lord" Randegger 
 
 the; choral club 
 
 Address — "Abraham Lincoln, the Prophet of Democracy" 
 
 Professor Albion W. Small, Ph. D. 
 
 "America" 
 
 the congregation 
 
 Benediction 
 
 Postlude— Allegro Eddy 
 
 12 
 
TEMPLE ADATH ISRAEL 
 
 LOUISVILLE 
 
The Memory of Lincoln 
 
 Rabbi H. 0. Enelow, D.D. 
 
 We are assembled to pay tribute to the memory of one 
 of the greatest men of history, the most wonderful son of 
 our Republic, the most illustrious child of Kentucky — 
 Abraham Lincoln. Upon the death of Lincoln, a poet 
 wrote the following lines : 
 
 "And always in his land of birth and death, 
 Be his fond name — warnrd in the people's hearts — 
 Abraham Lincoln, the Dear President !" 
 
 This prayer is certainly coming true. From State to 
 State, from town to town, from village to village there 
 stretches today the garland of homage woven in his honor. 
 Everywhere paeans of praise are sung — testimony to the 
 universal love for the memory of Lincoln. The Dear Pres- 
 ident — that he is, indeed ! With the passage of years, as 
 his work has grown clearer, as his figure stands out more 
 distinct against the background of his age, as his aims and 
 ideals have received appreciation more intelligent and 
 just, he has become ever dearer to the soul of the American 
 people. 
 
 Today North and South, with one accord, seek words to 
 express for his memory both reverence and affection, and 
 the whole world's eyes are fixed upon the humble spot of 
 his nativity. And who has more cause for rejoicing and 
 pride than Kentucky? In Kentucky Abraham Lincoln 
 was born, his wife was a Kentucky woman, his dearest 
 friend was a Kentuckian and for Kentucky in particular 
 he again and again displayed that love and kindness 
 which he never ceased to feel for the whole South. 
 
 "The opinions of men are organic," says Emerson. The 
 reason why we are drawn to Lincoln, why we spontaneous- 
 
 13 
 
ly give to his life and character our full measure of praise, 
 is that his name embraces all that is best in us, in human- 
 ity, and especially in American democracy. In his own 
 life — so humbly begun, so bravely and nobly carried on, 
 and so tragically ended — he incarnated the highest and 
 most heroic qualities of human nature, battled for the de- 
 fense of our most precious and most inspiring principles, 
 devoted all his soul and body and might to the purest and 
 loftiest ends of civilization. 
 
 It is futile to attempt to describe Lincoln. When all is 
 said — when all the portraits have been drawn, all the 
 poems written, all the eulogies spoken — we cannot but 
 feel unsatisfied. We feel that above all, and beyond all, 
 there was a wonderful personality, a God-given person- 
 ality, whom it is impossible to explain, to analyze, to por- 
 tray altogether, as it is impossible to explain altogether 
 the joy and the inspiration the human heart derives from 
 the radiance, the glory of the sun. "His going forth is 
 from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends 
 of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." 
 
 But our gatherings in Lincoln's honor, and our efforts 
 to portray and praise him, are rather to the end that we 
 might kindle our own spirits at the flame of his enthu- 
 siasm, that we might possess ourselves in some measure of 
 his high qualities, that we might consecrate our own lives 
 anew to the great and noble work to which he dedicated 
 his. 
 
 Oh, that this assemblage might experience such conse- 
 cration ! As we think again of Lincoln's devotion to free- 
 dom — of his heroic endeavor "to keep the jewel of liberty 
 within the family of freedom" — as we think of his devo- 
 tion to the cause of justice and humanity, of his combina- 
 tion of strength and tenderness, of his love for the op- 
 pressed, of his all-controlling loyalty to democracy and 
 its institutions, let us try to draw inspiration from his 
 memory and to turn his life into an ever-present example. 
 
 14 
 
A Southern Soldiers View of Lincoln 
 
 Judge W. 0. Harris 
 
 On April 15, 1865, I was riding with a companion on 
 a muddy road in Amherst county, Virginia. I was a very 
 young soldier, my companion much my senior in age and 
 military rank. We were fugitives from Lee's Army, and 
 were just emerging from the mountains, debating whether 
 we should turn our horses' heads eastward, towards our 
 homes, or westward, towards the Army of Kirby Smith, 
 across the Mississippi, then the last faint hope of the 
 Confederacy. We had just learned of the surrender of the 
 arm}', and the consequent collapse of the Confederacy 
 East of the Mississippi. We were both sunk in despair. 
 I myself was, in addition, plunged into the deepest grief 
 by the news just received of the death of a brother, to 
 whom I was tenderly attached, on the field of battle at 
 Sailor's Creek, on April 7th, the last stand of the Army of 
 Northern Virginia. As I remember that ride and that 
 day, it seemed to me that the very sun was blotted out of 
 the heavens. While we were discussing our future course 
 and what would be the probable fate of those we left be- 
 hind us, whether there was to be the long-dreaded servile 
 war, what was to be the treatment of the soldiers lately in 
 rebellion — while these sad thoughts were revolving in our 
 minds, we met a man who told us that Abe Lincoln had 
 been assassinated the night before. As I remember, the 
 impression then produced, it seemed to arouse us a little 
 while from the contemplation of our own sorrows and 
 those of the country. We received the news with in- 
 credulity. Perhaps one said it was too good to be true. 
 This, I confess, was the impression on my own mind. Lin- 
 coln's death seemed to me like a gleam of sunshine on a 
 winter's day. I had no thought but of gratified revenge. 
 
 15 
 
And why should it not have been so at that time? Lin- 
 coln was known to us as the leader of the abolition party, 
 a party which sought to destroy the institution of slavery, 
 which was of the very web and woof of Southern society. 
 In that institution was invested a thousand millions of 
 dollars of property and that property, with one stroke of 
 his pen, he had recently swept away. He was the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the Armies and Navies which had 
 burned our cities and laid waste our farms and homes. 
 
 So far as we knew his personal traits, they accentuated 
 the Southern feeling of hostility towards him. He was 
 called the "rail splitter,'' and manual labor was looked 
 upon by slave owners as servile. It was inconceivable to 
 us that a rail splitter should be chief of the governing- 
 class. He was also known to us as a joker, and in those 
 tragic days that was by no means a recommendation. He 
 was called a Nero, who fiddled while Rome was burning. 
 Certainly it is not an over-statement to say that down in 
 Dixie in '65 Lincoln was by no means a popular character. 
 
 But with the years which have passed since then, the 
 attitude of the South towards the cause for which Lincoln 
 died has slowly but completely changed. The servile war, 
 so dreaded for so many generations as a consequence of 
 emancipation, did not come to pass. The consequent dis- 
 arrangement of our industrial system soon passed away. 
 The negro has made a better laborer as a freeman than he 
 was as a slave. The South has recovered from the devasta- 
 tion of the war and the effect of the confiscation of this 
 property, and is now vastly richer than it ever was under 
 the slave regime. The paroles of her soldiers were sacredly 
 respected. There were practically no indictments and no 
 punishments for treason. The rich and prosperous South 
 now views slavery from a standpoint entirely different from 
 that of '05. The peculiar institution may not have been a 
 crime, but it was worse — it was a blunder. 
 
 With this change of sentiment towards the cause of 
 which Lincoln was the representative, there has been a 
 
 16 
 
corresponding change toward the man. His manual labor, 
 his humble origin, his rise to the Chief Magistracy of the 
 Republic, his transcendent success in his great office, re- 
 flect, honor upon him and upon the race from which he 
 sprang. His humor is looked upon, as it always should 
 have been, as the offspring of kindliness and gentleness 
 and a catholic understanding of the subjects with which 
 it dealt. All the world now admires his eloquence, which 
 was of that higher sort, the eloquence of deeds rather than 
 of words. His words also possess a lofty beauty and sim- 
 plicity comparable to those of the old Hebrew prophets 
 whose effigies look down upon us from the windows of this 
 church. 
 
 Surely, as he lay upon his bed of death in Washington, 
 this man, as he looked back over his life, might have said 
 with Paul the Apostle: "I have fought a good fight; I 
 have finished my course ; I have kept the faith ; henceforth, 
 there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness." 
 
 And thus the people of the South find themselves in the 
 position in which Count Tolstoi describes himself as being 
 after his conversion to Christian^. He says: "I was 
 like a man journeying along a path who turns back. Those 
 things which were formerly upon my right hand are now 
 upon 1113' left. Those things which were formerly upon 
 my left hand are now upon my right." 
 
 And so it is that the Southern people, and all the peo- 
 ple, have met today in countless thousands, in sacred 
 places like this, to do honor to the memory of Lincoln, the 
 Restorer of the Republic, and in their imaginations he is 
 in the world of spirits the companion and the equal of the 
 august shade of Washington, the Founder. 
 
 17 
 
A Northern Soldier s Reminiscence 
 of Lincoln 
 
 Colonel Andrew Cowan, Commander of the Artillery Brigade of 
 the Sixth Corps, Army of the Potomac 
 
 The reference made by Judge Harris to the battle of 
 Sailor's Creek and the loss of a brother in that battle, has 
 filled me with emotion. I directed the guns of the Federal 
 forces against the Confederates at Sailor's Creek. At that 
 battle the last gun of the artillery brigade of the Sixth 
 Corps, which I commanded, was fired. The force opposed 
 to us was that of Ewell's Corps of Gen. Lee's army. They 
 were surrounded by Custer's cavalry and the Sixth Corps 
 of infantry and artillery; and that night, just as darkness 
 came on, I saw about eleven thousand soldiers, wearing 
 the gray, who had surrendered to our superior forces. 
 
 I have known Judge Harris for many years. There is 
 no man in Louisville whom I more deeply respect. I may 
 say that I entertain for him a feeling of warm affection. 
 I knew something of his service in the Confederate Army 
 — a mere boy, taking part in one of the most remarkable 
 charges that has ever been known, but I have heard to- 
 night, for the first time, that his brother had been killed 
 in that battle at Sailor's Creek. Do 3 7 ou wonder that my 
 voice trembles and my eyes are wet ! 
 
 A distinguished citizen of this country, residing 
 abroad, was asked by a foreign prince: "Sir, what are the 
 chief products of your State?" He answered : "Sire, the 
 chief products of Maine are men." 
 
 Kentucky, famous everywhere under the sun for beau- 
 tiful, gracious, queenly women, has also bred men. Their 
 sires blazed the forest trail and made the wilderness road; 
 they paddled their canoes and steered their boats down 
 
 18 
 
the tawny waters of the Ohio from its source to its mouth ; 
 God showed them their land of Canaan and they went 
 down and took it from the heathen. In this beautiful land 
 of forest and stream, of hill and dale, of the blue grass 
 and the bear grass, they and their descendants made the 
 "Old Kentucky Home.*' Statesmen, jurists, scholars, 
 preachers, hunters, soldiers, farmers, merchants — their 
 names and deeds are woven into the history of the State 
 and of the Nation. 
 
 When the war between the states divided North and 
 South into armed camps, Jefferson Davis, a Kentuckian, 
 born and reared in affluence, already become famous in 
 the South, commanded the Southern Confederacy; and 
 Abraham Lincoln, born on Kentucky soil, in a lowly cabin, 
 self-made and self-educated, the untried choice of an un- 
 tried political party, held the Ship of State true to her 
 course, through four years of bloody war, bringing her 
 into the haven of peace at last with the old flag flying, 
 bloody and torn, but with not a star missing from its azure 
 field. 
 
 I well remember the nomination of Abraham Lincoln 
 by the Republican party, in the spring of 1SG0, and I had 
 knowledge of the chagrin and sorrow it brought to the 
 friends of my distinguished townsman, Governor William 
 H. Seward. That presidential campaign was probably 
 the most exciting which has ever been known. I marched 
 in the torchlight procession of the Little Giants, in red 
 capes, and with the Kail Splitters, in black, and brought 
 home to my patient mother the odor and staius of whale 
 oil from the dripping lamps. I also banged the bell in the 
 parades of Bell and Everett, for we boys only saw the fun ; 
 the tragedy was revealed to us later. 
 
 My regiment, which was among the first to march up 
 Pennsylvania avenue, was camped on Kalorama Heights, 
 now a beautiful part of our National Capitol, but then a 
 distant, sun-baked farm. We were known as the Seward 
 Eegiment, and to our camp came President Lincoln, one 
 
 19 
 
blazing hot clay in the month of June, 1S61. I ran to the 
 Colonel's quarters to feast my eyes on a President. There 
 was Abraham Lincoln, surrounded by nearly a thousand 
 men of our regiment, and as I gazed on him my heart sank, 
 for he was very homely and, to my notion, he seemed un- 
 couth and without dignity. He was shaking hands, right 
 and left, while the sweat streamed down his strong, homely 
 face. On his head was a "plug" hat, weather beaten and 
 faded, well tilted above his brow. He wore an old, faded 
 linen duster coat, such as all travelers by rail or coach 
 wore in those days, and it seemed to make his long, thin 
 figure appear more elongated, for he towered above all the 
 men about him. While I watched and gradually pressed 
 closer to where he stood, the linen coat became saturated 
 from his neck down to his waist and the outline of his 
 suspenders became plainly visible. The President wore no 
 vest. I was but a boy; my young eyes could not see 
 through that homely husk "the whitest soul a Nation 
 knew." I turned away without shaking his hand. 
 
 A month later Bull Run was fought,, a victory for the 
 South, a defeat for the North, but it silenced opponents of 
 the war in both sections. The school boys who had enlisted 
 for a three months' frolic, began to see that their school 
 days were past; the tragedy of the war was unfolding for 
 them. Nearly a year later McClellan's Army had pushed 
 its way up the peninsula from Fortress Monroe, until we 
 could see the church spires in the city of Richmond — the 
 goal we were striving to win. The army was planted in 
 the Chickahominy swamps ; the treacherous river splitting 
 it in twain; when General Lee took the offensive. After 
 two days' terrific fighting, ending with the defeat of 
 Porter's Corps, McClellan decided to change the base of 
 his army from the Pamunkey river, at White House, to 
 the James, at Harrison's Landing. Then followed battles 
 by day and marching by night, until the Army of the Po- 
 tomac turned to give battle again, at Malvern Hill, the 
 seventh in succession. Here, the advantage of position 
 
 20 
 
was ours, and our great train of artillery was at last to 
 have its day. The "charge of the Light Brigade" at Balak- 
 lava was gallant and bloody and famous we know, but 
 compared to repeated charges which I witnessed that day, 
 when Magrader's Confederate infantry charged across the 
 fields almost to the foot of the height where our guns were 
 planted and poured forth their iron hail, the charge of the 
 "gallant Six Hundred'' was as a summer breeze to the 
 fierce tropical hurricane. Victory was then with the Army 
 of the Potomac, and that night both armies were exhausted. 
 There, McClellan's army had the right to remain, but at 
 midnight, in rain and thunder and darkness, we again took 
 up the weary tramp. 
 
 Coming to Harrison's Landing, there was no way 
 to rest our weary bodies but to lie down in a sea of mud, 
 churned by the wheels of thousands of wagons which had 
 preceded the troops. The Army of the Potomac was not 
 alone exhausted — it was largely a demoralized army, for 
 the only time in its history, as I know well. We quickly 
 recovered our strength and spirits and had constructed a 
 line of rifle pits and redoubts, which made our new posi- 
 tion secure and safe, when President Lincoln came from 
 Washington to see for himself whether certain disturbing 
 rumors concerning us were true. 
 
 A review of the army was ordered by General McClel- 
 lan, and now I was to see President Lincoln for the second 
 time. The army was paraded for review, standing in its 
 rifle pits and redoubts, while the reviewing officers rode 
 out in front of the line of intrenchments. I think this had 
 never been seen before, nor was it ever repeated in the 
 Army of the Potomac. I stood on the parapet of the re- 
 doubt occupied by the guns of the First New York Battery, 
 which I commanded, so that I was able to see the reviewing 
 party riding from the left, long before the commanding 
 officer was abreast of us. This is what I saw: General 
 McClellan, a superb horseman, rode at the left of Presi- 
 dent Lincoln, who was mounted on a big, high-spirited bay 
 
 21 
 
horse. They wore followed by McClellan's brilliant staff, 
 with foreign princes and dukes, and military attaches from 
 all European countries, and then a regiment of Lancers, 
 each man carrying a lance with a red pennant waving 
 from its point. It was a brilliant spectacle. The Presi- 
 dent held the reins in his left hand, without pressing on 
 the horse's mouth, like an accomplished rider, and he sat 
 his horse with ease, like a boy who had learned to ride 
 bareback. He was dressed in black broadcloth, like a 
 preacher, and in his right hand was a shining, new silk 
 hat, which he waved as we cheered him, and his face was 
 smiling and kind as he looked toward us. The man rode 
 with kingly grace, and I would then have given my 
 shoulder straps for the privilege of grasping his hand. 
 
 I saw President Lincoln under fire, watching the battle 
 between a division of the Sixth Corps and part of Early's 
 army, on the outskirts of Washington. This incident has 
 been treated with some doubt, but I witnessed it, as I shall 
 now relate: 
 
 General Early's army was sent by General Lee, in the 
 early summer of 1864, to raid the Shenandoah Valley, 
 drive out the Federal forces and push them back upon 
 Baltimore and Washington. He was confronted, after 
 crossing the Potomac, by a force under General Lew Wal- 
 lace, made up of odds and ends gathered in from different 
 outposts. The third division of the Sixth Corps (to which 
 corps I belonged from its organization to the close of the 
 war), under General Ricketts, w r as shipped from City Point 
 to Baltimore and moved out by rail to re-enforce Wallace 
 at Monocacy Junction, in Maryland. So firm was the resist- 
 ance put up by Ricketts, that Early was held in check for 
 forty-eight hours, which gave the second division of the 
 same corps time to reach Washington, just as Early's 
 army had arrived before its undefended forts. The steam- 
 er carrying my battery and horses was the first to arrive 
 after the infantry. I was met with orders to march to 
 Fort Stevens without sparing my horses. 
 
 22 
 
When I arrived abreast of the fort, our infantry was 
 already engaged with the enemy in the valley below us, 
 and I had orders to halt and wait developments. I then 
 saw General Wright, our corps commander, standing on 
 the parapet of Fort Stevens, to my left, watching the fight- 
 ing that was going on, and at his side I recognized Presi- 
 dent Lincoln. Numbers of rifle balls from the enemy 
 struck in the dust of the road where we were waiting, and 
 doubtless as many or more fell where the President stood 
 with ( reneral Wright, yet he did not move. I was told af- 
 terwards that General Wright had begged the President 
 not to expose himself, but he paid no heed to his advice. 
 
 The Potomac river, closed by ice, had held ray com- 
 mand at Washington, when we marched in from the 
 Shenandoah Valley campaign, which gave me the oppor- 
 tunity to shako hands with the President in the White 
 House (a little more than a month before his death), on the 
 eve of embarking m}' brigade of light artillery for City 
 Point, which we had left the summer before to come to 
 the relief of the capital, then threatened by General 
 Early's Confederate Army. The battles of Winchester and 
 Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek had been fought. Early's 
 army had been destroyed and Grant's grasp on Petersburg 
 was tightening. We were now to take part in the final 
 actions of the great Civil War. 
 
 After the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
 that army which had but one comparable to it for splendid 
 loyalty to duty and undaunted courage — the Army of the 
 Potomac — (now become the victor through superior force 
 and unlimited resources), our corps marched from Appo- 
 mattox to Burkesville Junction, Va., where we received 
 the startling and shocking news of President Lincoln's as- 
 sassination. As guests at my headquarters were as many 
 surrendered Confederate officers as we had room for. They 
 came to us as our guests the morning after the surrender, 
 and when we were halted at Burkesville Junction, as we 
 expected to continue our march through Petersburg, Va., 
 
 23 
 
near their homes, they remained and were with ns 
 when the news of the assassination of President Lin- 
 coln came. Their sorrow, I believe, was as genuine as our 
 own. That he died at the zenith of his career, I have never 
 doubted. I stood today in the little log cabin wherein he 
 was born, feeling that surely God raised up this wonder- 
 ful man for the saving of the Nation and the emancipa- 
 tion of a race. Our God, in whom we trust, will still use 
 the people of this great Nation for His omnipotent pur- 
 poses, and He can raise up the humblest to do His will. 
 
 "He hath sounded forth His trumpet 
 Which hath never known retreat. 
 
 He is searching out the hearts of men 
 Before His judgment seat. 
 
 O, be swift our souls to answer Him, 
 Be jubilant our feet, 
 
 Our God is marching on." 
 
 24 
 
Li 
 
 /incom 
 
 FEBRUARY 12, 1809-1909 
 Madisun C awe in 
 
 I. 
 
 Yea, this is he, whose name is synonym 
 Of all that's noble, though but lowly born ; 
 Who took command upon a stormy morn 
 When few had hope. Although uncouth of limb, 
 Homely of face and gaunt, but never grim, 
 Beautiful he was with that which none may scorn — 
 With love of God and man and things forlorn, 
 And freedom mighty as the soul in him. 
 Large at the helm of State he leans and looms 
 With the grave, kindly look of those who die 
 Doing their duty. Staunch, unswervingly 
 Onward he steers beneath portentous glooms, 
 And overwhelming thunders of the sky, 
 Till, safe in port, he sees a people free. 
 
 II. 
 
 Safe from the storm ; the harbor-lights of Peace 
 
 Before his eyes ; the burden of dark fears 
 
 Cast from him like a cloak ; and in his ears 
 
 The heart-beat music of a great release, 
 
 Captain and pilot, back upon the seas, 
 
 Whose wrath he'd weathered, back he looks with tears, 
 
 Seeing no shadow of the Death that nears, 
 
 Stealthy and sure, with sudden agonies. 
 
 So let him stand, brother to every man, 
 
 Ready for toil or battle; he who held 
 
 A Nation's destinies within his hand; 
 
 Type of our greatness ; first American, 
 
 By whom the hearts of all men are compelled, 
 
 And with whose name Freedom unites our land. 
 
 25 
 
III. 
 
 He needs no praise of us, who wrought so well, 
 Who has the Master's praise; who at his post 
 Stood to the last. Yet now, from coast to coast, 
 Let memory of him peal like some great bell. 
 Of him as woodsman, workman, let us tell ! 
 Of him as lawyer, statesman, without boast! 
 And for what qualities we love him most, 
 And recollections that no time can quell. 
 He needs no praise of us, yet let us praise, 
 Albeit his simple soul we may offend. 
 That liked not praise, being most diffident; 
 Still let us praise him, praise him in such ways 
 As his were, and in words, that shall transcend 
 Marble, and outlast any monument. 
 
 20 
 
Abraham Lincoln — the Prophet of 
 Democracy 
 
 Professor Albion \V. Small, The University of Chicago 
 
 It is surely not presumption, but duty, for a stranger, 
 coming under these circumstances, to declare himself be- 
 fore he can be entitled to your tolerant hearing. I was 
 cradled in the most partisan of the New England States 
 at the time of the bitterest tension between the North and 
 the South. My earliest recollections are of the marching 
 away of the choicest young men of the city, as I afterward 
 understood, to fight to the death against the noblest sons 
 of the South. All the prejudices of that time and place 
 were the stuff of my boyhood education. Since I have 
 reached man's estate I have repeatedly visited Richmond, 
 and have always made a pilgrimage to that neighborhood 
 of Eichmond College, and I have stood with uncovered 
 head genuinely respectful before the eloquent statute of 
 Robert E. Lee, and I have devoutly thanked God that I 
 am part of a people that produced such as he. 
 
 I belong to the generation of sons of those who fought 
 against each other in that fraternal strife, who naturally 
 and not perfunctorily walk softly from memorial to 
 memorial of the Blue and the Gray at Gettysburg, and 
 through the mists that shroud the memory of valor North 
 and South, learn the beginnings of one of the profoundest 
 lessons of human life. 
 
 Men who follow the fiery pillar of human reason may 
 wander far from each other, and far astray from the 
 straight path of truth; but if those same men have at the 
 same time the courage to follow the cloudy pillar of con- 
 science, in due time the two guides will coalesce and lead 
 those erring men into a better promised land than their 
 imaginations could foresee. 
 
 27 
 
I am no stranger to the Southland. Kentucky and Ten- 
 nessee are the only Southern states in which I have not 
 often made public addresses and received private hospi- 
 tality. I do not feel out of place among you. My only em- 
 barrassment is the consciousness that I can never give 
 half that I receive from the enjoyment of your society. 
 May I have the privilege of saluting these noble veterans 
 of the Blue and the Gray, and of testifying that from their 
 exchange of sentiments I have received a new impression, 
 which I hope will be indelible, of the chivalry of Southern 
 men? 
 
 As a citizen of the State of Lincoln's residence during 
 his manhood, I cannot exaggerate my sense of the privi- 
 lege of sharing in the celebration of his anniversary with 
 citizens of his native State. Every civilization that has 
 progressed has capitalized its pattern man. Let us follow 
 popular usage and call these pattern men "great" men; 
 Confucius, Gautama, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, Mahomet, have 
 lived their lives and then have passed into the immortality 
 of memory. They have been put on deposit in the imagi- 
 nation of society. They have drawn compound interest. 
 They have accumulated. They have endowed and empow- 
 ered nations and states and culture areas and epochs. For 
 better or for worse, these men have worked more mightily 
 in the immortality of memory than in their lives. 
 
 When we say civilizations have progressed by capital- 
 izing their great men, we do not thereby commit ourselves 
 to the great man interpretation of history. This is only 
 one part of the explanation. There are other parts. The 
 great man factor is not the whole story. It is, however, a 
 factor which we may not neglect. 
 
 What is a great man? A great man is a man who 
 amasses in himself unusual amounts of qualities which 
 his fellows value, or which subsequent generations learn 
 to approve. The great man is not sufficient unto himself. 
 Emerson said, "No man can be heroic except in an heroic 
 world," and it is a part of the truth. If he could be, he 
 
 23 
 
could not have credit for it. A Comanche tribe gave its 
 honor medals to its brave who took the most scalps. The 
 tribe of Carnegie gives its medals to bread winners and 
 life savers. If the Barbary pirates had discovered a Cap- 
 tain Seelby among them, they would have thrown him over- 
 board. No going down with the ship for them. They 
 wanted to breed the kind of men who would knock the pas- 
 sengers on the head, and scuttle the ship, and make off 
 with all the loot they could land. There was a great man 
 in Athens once, whom the Athenians could not see. All 
 they could see about him was a corrupter of youth, and the 
 hemlock poison was good enough for him until generations 
 long after discovered something in him worthy of the 
 respect of men. Dante, during his life time, was cold- 
 shouldered from Italian city to city, that afterwards bat- 
 tled for the privilege of burying him. To most of Europe 
 during his life time Luther was merely a roistering rene- 
 gade from the priesthood, and we have the whole case 
 summed up in "Tom" Reed's cynical aphorism : "A states- 
 man is a successful politician who is dead.'' If by some 
 miracle Lincoln had been born among Tartars, they would 
 have wondered what that sort of a freak of soft hearted- 
 ness could be worth, and they would probably have told 
 him off to do woman's work. They could have had no 
 other use for such a monstrosity. 
 
 A great man is not an orchid. He is an oak. And he 
 must have the sustaining social soil into which to send his 
 roots. The great man requires the elements of greatness 
 in his fellows in order to his greatness. We must, there- 
 fore, ask : What is there in this country of ours which gave 
 Lincoln a chance to be great? 
 
 Possibly you will discover in my answer a faint reflec- 
 tion of Carlylean mysticism. If so, I must abide your 
 judgment. I venture the proposition that in the natural 
 history of nations America must be classified as a requi- 
 sition for Democracy. 
 
 29 
 
It is not a very difficult feat of the imagination to pro- 
 ject ourselves as far into the future as we are from Magna 
 Charta in the past, and eliminating those details which 
 confuse our judgment today, to look back and to say of the 
 landing of those groups at Jamestown and Plymouth : 
 There is a decisive proclamation in the heraldry of history 
 that henceforth the essentially human shall come to its 
 own. With this Nation was born a new Messianic pur- 
 pose. It was a requisition that man as man should be at 
 liberty to express himself and to develop himself. It was a 
 demand that men as they are, not as puppets of an arbi- 
 trary control or ritual or pageantry of life, and no matter 
 what may happen to jealous and obstructive preposses- 
 sions and conventionalities and institutions, men as men 
 shall be at liberty to explore and to bring to light and sel 
 in action the unfathomed mysteries of their powers. This 
 is what I mean when I say that our Nation is a requisition 
 for Democracy. Is it wonderful that, our Nation being- 
 such as that, Lincoln gravitated into the position of our 
 popular great man? 
 
 Democracy, the tcord, had been the magician's wand, 
 the conjurer's spell, the hypnotist's suggestion, the agita- 
 tor's slogan, the cynic's epithet, the sophist's fallacy, the 
 quack's specific, the theorist's shifty hypothesis; but it 
 has been coming to be more and more the wise man's in- 
 terrogation point. Meanwhile, Democracy the fact, such 
 as we have had, has been such an unstable equilibrium of 
 conditions that it has constantly made hari kari of the 
 definitions. Yet all the time there has been on the horizon 
 the American's thought of an unrealized and undiscovered 
 something, a far-off divine event when this word and this 
 fact should be completely realized, a something so splendid 
 that it would sanctify any name, and Lincoln has been 
 coming to be more and more identified with that develop- 
 ing, becoming something that will be worthy to fill the 
 name Democracy. 
 
 30 
 
We have had other great men. Washington and Jeffer- 
 son were great men, great citizens, great patriots; in many 
 respects, as hinted in the remarks already made this eve- 
 ning, much more eminent in certain details than Lincoln 
 could ever, by his most extravagant eulogist, be proved to 
 be. Yet, all in all, Lincoln has somehow appealed to our 
 American judgment as the incarnate Democrat. With 
 Lincoln, Democracy was not a word, it was not a theory, 
 it was not a program — it was a spirit of life. What, then, 
 were the qualities of that spirit of life which made Lincoln 
 the incarnate Democrat? 
 
 As has already been hinted, it would be impossible and 
 preposterous to attempt an analysis of that personality in 
 such a way as to comprehend all the reasons for its force. 
 I ask you to accept a schedule of {lie salient points in Lin- 
 coln's personality which have appealed to me from my 
 childhood, as I have studied, first as a boy in school, and 
 then as a student of history, the monumental features of 
 his democratic personality. 
 
 In the first place, I would say that Lincoln was a great 
 Democrat because of his fellow feeling with all sort* mid 
 conditions of men. 
 
 An Episcopal bishop of one of the Southern states said 
 to me not long ago, in a private conversation : "The differ- 
 ence between the Northern man and the Southern man on 
 the race question is just this: The Northern man loves 
 'the negro/ but he has no use for an individual black 
 man. The Southern man can love an individual black 
 man, but has no use for 'the negro.' " Whether this is the 
 correct summing up of the case with reference to the race 
 question or not, you can judge better than I. It is a sum- 
 ming up of a fatal fallibility in our qualifications as dem- 
 ocrats. It is easy for us to love humanity in large gener- 
 alizations; it is hard for us to take interest in an unlov- 
 able fellow who meets us in his time of need. One of 
 the most eminent college presidents in the United States 
 said to me casually, in a railway train : "The reason why 
 
 31 
 
socialism cannot come is not a logical reason, it is no1 a 
 psychological reason, it is not an economic reason. It is 
 an aesthetic reason. Just as soon as we are able, we don't 
 want to mix any more with our fellow men. We want to 
 be away from them. We want to keep the rabble away 
 from us." Whether that is to be the finish of socialism or 
 not, I shall not attempt to judge, but my friend put his 
 finger on a familiar note of human nature. We feel for our 
 fellow men chiefly in large generalizations and in the ab- 
 stract. Most of us draw the line most of the time, when 
 brought face to face with the unattractive individual. 
 
 Whenever Lincoln found a genuine person, man, wom- 
 an, or child, who was not covered up with some ungenuine 
 veneer or splash or pretension of something that he was 
 not; whenever he found a real human being, in that human 
 being he recognized a fellow child of God. 
 
 I was just ten years old when the report came to us of 
 the assassination of President Lincoln. The rumor reached 
 our house just before daybreak. I dressed myself as quick- 
 ly as possible and ran down town to see if more news could 
 be had. I saw, coining on horseback, perhaps the most 
 prominent citizen of the town. He was the president of 
 the largest bank, a man whom I had often seen. As I re- 
 call him now he resembled, not merely in his social position 
 but also in his personal appearance, Marshall Field, of 
 Chicago. Under ordinary circumstances, I, a ten-year-old 
 boy, would no more have accosted him than a ten-year-old 
 boy in Chicago would have ventured to start a conversa- 
 tion with Marshall Field. But, under the circumstances, 
 my instincts were reversed. I ran to meet him, with the 
 eager question : "Mr. Stickney, have you heard the news?" 
 Yes; he had heard the news. He dismounted and, there, 
 on the footing of equality established by the leveling loss 
 of that great Democrat, holding his horse's bridle with one 
 hand, he conversed with the casual boy about the reason 
 for the Nation's grief. It has always seemed to me that 
 the incident was not only an unconscious tribute to the 
 
 32 
 
character of Lincoln, but it was a symbol of the benedic- 
 tion of that spirit of equality which Lincoln shed over our 
 whole society. 
 
 I would say, second, that Lincoln was a great Demo- 
 crat because of Ms candid belief that life is good. There 
 had been many periods of pessimism before Lincoln's time. 
 He had not entered into that end-of-the-century pessimism 
 which expressed itself in the world-weary question, "Is life 
 worth the living?" Lincoln frankly and candidly accepted 
 life as it came, believing that it is opportunity, believing 
 that something better is coining, believing that this world 
 by man's living candidly will sometime be made into a 
 beneficent human society. Yon will surely, in your 
 thoughts, ask if T have forgotten Lincoln's hours of gloom, 
 of depression, of discouragement, almost of melancholia. 
 I remember all tins; bnt what man in modern times had 
 more cause for gloom and discouragement and almost de- 
 spair? Did that make Lincoln a pessimist? It would be as 
 logical to say that India rubber is not resilient because it 
 gives to the first impact. Lincoln's very upspring from 
 gloom and despair was proof as strong as Holy Writ that 
 the under-current of his life was not pessimism, but the 
 philosophy of optimistic hope. 
 
 Lincoln was the great Democrat, third, because of his 
 deep veneration for justice. The most dramatic scene in 
 some respects that I saw was in the late seventies, in Music 
 Hall, in Boston, at that time the largest hall in the city. 
 The mind of the country was intently occupied with the 
 so-called Eastern question, the relations of the Balkan 
 States. Rev. Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, was accredited with 
 being the profoundest student of that question in our coun- 
 try, and he was invited by Boston citizens to deliver a 
 series of three lectures. At these lectures, each of which 
 occupied two hours, the hall was filled with the finest au- 
 dience that Boston and vicinity could furnish. On the 
 platform were from one hundred to two hundred of the 
 leading men, known at home and many of them abroad: 
 
 33 
 
James Russell Lowell, I>r. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Presi- 
 dent Eliot, and men of that type. At one point in his dis- 
 course Dr. Storrs, who was a pattern pulpit orator of the 
 most dignified type, in his most measured manner uttered 
 this single sentence, the only recollection I have carried 
 away from those lectures: "But, nothing is settled in this 
 world until it is settled rightly!" And, instantly, as 
 though moved by one electric current, those impassive, 
 cold, unresponsive Boston intellectuals were upon their 
 I'wt, applauding and cheering, as though it were a new rev- 
 elation. The dramatic motive in the demonstration was 
 that, deej) in our inner consciousness, is the belief that 
 there is such a thing as justice in the affairs of men, and 
 though it tarry, and though it lag, and though it hide, 
 some day, sometime, somewhere, it will show its face, it 
 will show its power, it will be mighty, and it will prevail. 
 If I, a younger man and an alien, may dare to express a 
 judgment, it seems to me that, more than any other single 
 factor, this may account for the change in the estimate of 
 Lincoln in the South — the fact that, in spite of the misin- 
 terpretations so natural at the time, he has exhibited him- 
 self to posterity as a man standing, as it were, between the 
 upper and the nether mill stone of conflicting interests, 
 saying, from his heart of hearts, daily and hourly to Al- 
 mighty God: "Show me what justice is and where it is, 
 and by Thy grace, so far as in me is, it shall be done." 
 This Avas Lincoln, and in this veneration for justice, this 
 determination to try to do the right, though he be ground 
 to powder, was his title to be called the Supreme American 
 Democrat. 
 
 I would say Lincoln was the incarnate Democrat, 
 fourth, because lie loved and revered his own government. 
 Ah, but our sophisticated age says, as my little nephew 
 said to his grandmother, when she was reproving him for 
 telling something that was not true, and was reminding 
 him of the Ten Commandments : "Oh, well, grandma, the 
 Ten Commandments are out of fashion." We say : "Oh, 
 
 34 
 
respect for government is all out of fashion." It is archaic, 
 it is passe, especially in our country. A German lawyer 
 said to me the other day : ''There is this difference between 
 the attitude of Germans and Americans toward govern- 
 ment. In Germany the government is not popular, but it 
 is respected; in America the government is not respected, 
 but it is popular." 
 
 The first lesson in democratic citizenship may be 
 learned in the character and career of Abraham Lincoln, 
 namely: Government at its worst is an enormous human 
 achievement. The best government is fallible. The best 
 government makes mistakes. The best popular government 
 that has ever been invented is subject to corruption, but 
 government such as men have been abb 1 to devise is the 
 sheet anchor of human progress. The good Democrat, the 
 Democrat that can help Democracy to develop, is the Dem- 
 ocrat who is able, as Lincoln was, to look upon his govern- 
 ment, with all its faults, as that instrument and founda- 
 tion with which it is necessary to work in order to improve 
 even that government itself, and therewith all the rest of 
 human life. 
 
 Lincoln was a great Democrat, fifth, because he trusted 
 in the com Dion sense of the people. Lincoln had none of 
 the superstition that the people never make a mistake. He 
 never believed in the catchy proverb: "The voice of the 
 people is the voice of God," in the superficial sense that 
 it is right, fair, and safe always to follow the popular 
 whim. But this, I believe, was what Lincoln believed: If 
 he could get beyond the interests of the clique immediately 
 surrounding him, if he could brush away the formal con- 
 clusions of the people in power whether rightly or wrong- 
 ly; if he could get at the under-current of the disinter- 
 ested mind and heart of the plain man, there, he felt, that 
 he was getting into the deep ocean tides which convey 
 along toward the goal of a righteous voyage. Lincoln was 
 not willing that the classes, whether high or low, should 
 decide. Lincoln wanted all the interests concerned to 
 
 35 
 
have ;i chance, to have their say for what it was worth. He 
 seems to have learned by instinct the deep lesson which 
 democracies are just now working out by clumsy experi- 
 menting. The only safety for a Democracy is the principle 
 that if anything is right to do, it is right to do it in the 
 open, where everybody interested can know what it means 
 and can have a chance to say his say, in shaping the course 
 of action. Publicity is the necessary disinfectant of 
 Democracy. 
 
 And, finally, Lincoln was a great Democrat because 
 he lot/all y accepted a moral hue of work. Lincoln had none 
 of the vulgar idea that the world owed him a living. He 
 knew that all generations of men had worked hitherto, and 
 that in working out the plan of human society, each gener- 
 ation, as it shall come upon the stage of life, must take up 
 its share and bear its burden. 
 
 A few weeks ago I heard President Eliot, of Harvard, 
 tell this incident. He said : "My Harvard class inaugu- 
 rated the plan of saving our graduation photographs and 
 at the fortieth anniversary binding them in books opposite 
 photographs taken at that distance from graduation." He 
 said : "I had just received my book. It was lying on my 
 library table, when I received a call from a Frenchman, 
 who had never been in this country before. He came on 
 some business connected with libraries. I was dressing 
 for an appointment and he had to wait. When I came 
 down we transacted the business very quickly, and then 
 my caller said to me, 'I wish you would explain this book.' 
 After I had done so, he said : 'Do you know, I have looked 
 these pictures through, and this is the only one whose 
 younger picture I like better than the older!'' And, 
 President Eliot said: "That man whose younger picture 
 was more attractive than the older was the only man in 
 the class who had gone wrong. He was then under indict- 
 ment for misapplication of trust funds. And the visitor, 
 after talking the matter over a few minutes longer, took 
 his leave, with the testimony : 'I think, Mr. Eliot, that 
 
 36 
 
book is the most optimistic human document I ever saw.' ' 
 And President Eliot added: "I think he drew the correct 
 conclusion." 
 
 Work is the most salutary niolder and ennobler of 
 men. Work is, all in all, the surest reliance we have in 
 this world as a balm of grief, as a cure of vice, as the elixir 
 of life. 
 
 I am not among those who imagine that the race prob- 
 lem can be settled by wireless telegraphy from the North, 
 bill 1 do not believe you will contradict me when I say that 
 all (lie other forces put together will fail to solve the race 
 problem, until the race that Lincoln emancipated is rad- 
 ically evangelized with Lincoln's gospel of work. 
 
 Everything considered, there is no more heartening 
 hero than Lincoln in the whole roster of the world's great. 
 He did magnificent things with humility and he made the 
 homely heroic. In Lincoln, Democracy did not mean par- 
 tisan, it did not mean demagogue, it did not mean doc- 
 trinaire. It meant — and I say it without fulsomeness on 
 the one side or theological vagary on the other — I remem- 
 ber, too, that I am in a Jewish temple, and this is no new 
 experience with me, either; for during the last fifteen 
 years I have at least once annually taken Dr. Hirsch's 
 place at his Sunday service in Sinai Temple, so I feel at 
 home in a Jewish congregation, and I would not, by word 
 or thought, violate the courtesy of the place — I do not 
 know whether what I was about to say is altogether sanc- 
 tioned uoav by Jews or Christians. I believe it will be 
 endorsed by the sane after-thought of both Jews and 
 Christians. I started to say that, in its time and place 
 and degree, Lincoln's Democracy was the same fellowship 
 with the lot and the tasks and the hopes and the heritage 
 of the plain man which gave its real meaning to that royal 
 title of the Master Democrat of the Ages — the Son of Man. 
 Lincoln's Democracy was unfaltering belief in the under- 
 lying purpose of Sovereign God to open the right of way 
 for the eternally human in man to inarch on whithersoever 
 
 37 
 
its divine destiny may lead. Whether we see it clearly or 
 not, this anniversary, celebrated from one end of America 
 (o the oilier, is a National feast of purification. It is an 
 uplifting of the host of democratic ideals as warning, re- 
 proof, and instruction in righteousness of civic life. But 
 no substitutional oblation can accomplish human atone- 
 ment. Men, in the last account, are only what they pur- 
 pose and endeavor and achieve. If we Avere simply holding 
 up for admiration the memory of Lincoln, and that were 
 all, we should be entering a voluntary plea in moral bank- 
 ruptcy. We honor a great man only as we re-enact oar 
 allegiance to that which made him great, 
 
 Americans are careless enough. Americans are undem- 
 ocratic enough. Americans sacrifice enough at the altar 
 of gross and unworthy aims; but underneath, after all, in 
 our better moments, inconsistently perhaps, and intermit- 
 tently and half-heartedly, we are still in search of the 
 Holy Grail of Democratic realization. When the true 
 Democrat comes, the Democrat who will be the standard 
 citizen to make the finished Democracy, that Democrat 
 will not be the man in the saddle, he will not be the man 
 with the championship belt, he will not be the man who 
 makes the all-American, he will not be the man who manip- 
 ulates Wall Street, he will not be the man who "swings 
 votes" — although I believe a sublimated something of each 
 of these will be in the standard Democrat, The standard 
 Democrat will be, first and foremost, right at the core. He 
 will be a man whose only selfishness is a splendid self re- 
 spect; a man whose self respect is the alphabet of his 
 Golden Rule of respect for his fellowman; a man whose 
 creed is human fellowship; whose pride is human service; 
 whose ambition is the unlimited progress of human kind! 
 
 I thank you for admitting me into your fellowship in 
 this attempt to get inspiration from the story of Lincoln's 
 life. 
 
 38 
 

 <& *+ 
 
 *h ^ :\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 » ^ 
 
 
 
 & 
 
 4 cu