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OUE MARTYR PRESIDENT, 
 
 i\ 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 VOICES FROM THE PULPIT 
 
 OF 
 
 NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN. 
 
 ORATION" 
 
 BY 
 
 Hon. GEO. BANCROFT. 
 
 ORATION 
 
 AT THE 
 
 BURIAL, 
 
 BY 
 
 BISHOP SIMPSON. 
 
 TIBBALS & WFITING, NEW YORK, 
 
 6>1U • 
 
 2 f ■/<%' J 
 
.8 j 
 
 Entered, according: to Act of Congress, in the year 1965, by 
 
 T I B P> A L S & WHITING, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
 
 of New York. 
 
 ?^3 
 
 ALYOED, PRINTER, 
 
 Stereotyped by Smith & McDouga,,, S2 & S4 Beekman Street. 
 
fO 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rev. William R. Williams, D.D., 9 
 
 SERMON II. 
 Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 33 
 
 SERMON III. 
 Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., 49 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D.D., 65 
 
 SERMON V. 
 Rev. Charles S. Robinson, 85 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 Rev. William Ives Budington, D.D., Ill 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 Rev. John McClintock, D.D., LL.D., 129 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., 145 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, 159 
 
 SERMON X. 
 Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., 173 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 Rev. James Eells, D.D., 219 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 Rev. Elbert S. Porter, D.D., 233 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 Rev. A. P. Rogers, D.D., 241 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 Rev. S. D. Burchard, D.D., 255 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 Rev. J. E. Rockwell, D.D., 273 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 Rev. Samuel T. Spear, D.D., 289 
 

 CONTENTS. V 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rev. Robert Lowry, 303 
 
 SERMON XVIII. 
 Rev. Albert S. Hunt, 317 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 Rev. William Adams, D.D., 329 
 
 SERMON XX. 
 Rev. Henry J. Fox, 341 
 
 SERMON XXI. 
 Rev. Henry B. Smith, D.D., 359 
 
 ORATIONS. 
 
 Hon. George Bancroft, 383 
 
 Bishop Simpson, 393 
 
 PRAYERS. 
 
 Stephen H. Tyng, D.D., 411 
 
 Rev. E. P. Rogers, D.D., 417 
 
PREFATORY. 
 
 To our Headers : 
 
 "We offer you a memento of times of greatest mo- 
 ment, of events of wondrous and tragic interest, of stupen- 
 dous and successful crime, of unparalleled national grief. 
 
 April 14, 1865 ! Memorable day ! impressed on the nation's 
 heart as none other. Throughout the north the loyal of the 
 people had been exultant as never before ; the power of the 
 Eebellion had departed ; the legions of the Union were press- 
 ing, with victorious tread, hard after the defeated and flying 
 foe ; the tidings of victory, borne on the wings of the light- 
 ning, reached every town and village of the land ; the starry 
 banners were given to the breeze ; the cannon of peace thun- 
 dered echoes to the cannon of war ; that for which all had 
 sighed seemed to approach, and the patriotic and grateful 
 hailed each other with glad voices and glowing faces. Who 
 can tell what a day may bring forth ! The sun set on happi- 
 ness and rejoicing ; the mantle of night fell on the land, and 
 ere it was lifted a deed was consummated the intelligence of 
 which should shake the world. Again the lightning courier 
 sped on his way. Again tidings were borne to every town 
 and village, and from happy slumber the people woke to 
 horror and mourning, to sadness never to be forgotten in 
 time — never to be told. The heads borne so proudly yester- 
 day droop on the breast to-day ; the springing footstep of yes^ 
 
Vlll PREFATORY. 
 
 terday is the funeral pace of to-day. Friends met in silence 
 and tears. When utterance was given, men talked of God — 
 of His providence — of His wisdom. The head of the nation 
 was stricken and slain, and the nation turned to Him who is 
 from everlasting to everlasting. In the centres of commerce 
 and finance there was heard the voice of supplication. The 
 Sabbath came — never more opportune — never more welcome 
 — and in temples dedicated to Jehovah the heart-stricken 
 gathered and waited while the ministers of God interpreted 
 their feelings. 
 
 In time to come, this record of the religious sentiment of 
 the people, as, stricken and sad, they gathered in their places 
 of worship, will be influential in bringing the darkest hour 
 of the nation's life, with its surpassing interest, within the 
 reach of the sympathy of coming generations. When the 
 flowers have many times bloomed and faded on the grave of 
 our martyred President ; when the banner of Peace floats 
 over every acre of the broad territory of our glorious Union; 
 when the hearts that felt the pangs of awful bereavement are 
 still, men will assent to the facts recorded by the historian, 
 but they cannot feel with the generation whose bosom re- 
 ceived the fiery darts, unless they come in contact with their 
 feelings. 
 
 This volume treasures up the utterances of those who 
 were the mouth-pieces of the people, and thus conveys to 
 the readers of the future a better idea of the wonderful 
 effects produced on the national heart by the assassination 
 cf Abraham Lincoln, than can be conveyed in any other way. 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 KEY. WILLIAM E. WILLIAMS, D. D. 
 
 "Terily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, God of Israel, the 
 Saviour." — Isaiah xlr. 15. 
 
 The nation staggers, as if, besmeared and blinded with, 
 their own gore, and stunned with amazement and indig- 
 nation, each of the people felt on his own front the blud- 
 geon, and found delivered on his own brow or throat, 
 the assassin's shot and the assassin's knife, which have 
 been aimed at the chief magistrate of the land, and at the 
 household and person of the statesman highest in position 
 anions; the counselors who formed that President's cabi- 
 net. To calm, to guide, and to brace us, let us recur to 
 the lesson of our text. It is a portion of Lloly Writ, 
 which was a favorite theme for meditation, and a frequent 
 citation with Blaise Pascal, one of the brightest and pro- 
 foundest intellects in the history of our race ; and one too, 
 whom the grace of God had made as eminently devout 
 and Christian as he was great ; leading him to consecrate 
 the splendor of his genius and the fervor of his nature, in 
 lowly and hearty service to Christ and His truth. Amid 
 the lurid tempest of calamity that lowers and growls and 
 howls around us, this great principle stands immovable 
 
 and serene, that the God of Israel, the Saviour, rules vet ; 
 
 1* 
 
10 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 and that, all-wise and almighty as He is, He shall yet yoke 
 even the whirlwinds of carnage and civil war among the 
 outriders of his own predestined triumph. He is hidden 
 in a dim, untraceable majesty, but though thus invisible, 
 is not aloof from the turmoil. In justice and in mercy, 
 in faithfulness and in vigilance, He is hidden behind all 
 this dun, crimson hurricane, which for the time casts its 
 ominous shadow over all the homes, and activities, and 
 charities of the land. The storm is but the dust of his 
 feet. " Clouds and darkness are round about him ;" yet 
 none the less is it true that " righteousness and judgment 
 are the habitations of his throne." Jehovah vailed — and 
 vailed as the Bringer of Salvation — behind the commo- 
 tions and distresses that most perplex and overwhelm a 
 people — is the truth of which we are here reminded. And 
 it is a lesson that may well cheer and hearten us, under 
 losses had they been even more sudden, more startling and 
 irreparable than ours now are. 
 
 God hides himself. We could not, with our present 
 organization, bear the full, bright blaze of His glories ; 
 and would be consumed, instead of being enlightened, 
 by the blasting splendor of the vision. Even the favored 
 Moses might not see Jehovah's full majesty and live. 
 And yet he would not and does not leave himself without 
 sufficient witness of his being and his constant power and 
 supervision. The outer world of material Nature, and 
 the inner witness of reason and conscience in man's own 
 bosom, are more than intimations of the Maker's charac- 
 ter and will. Hence there is no inconsistency between 
 the sentiment of our text, on the one hand, of a withdrawn 
 and shadowed Majesty, and the language of the context, 
 
WILLIAMS. 11 
 
 on the other hand, where in the same chapter,* our Maker 
 and Ruler asserts : " I have not spoken in secret, in a 
 dark place of the earth : I said not unto the seed of Jacob, 
 seek ye me in vain : I, the Lord, speak righteousness. I 
 declare things that are right." The hiding was not entire 
 and absolute. Nature and history throb and palpitate 
 evermore as in the conscious presence of their God. It 
 was in no muttered, grovelling, and darkling oracle that 
 the Most High addressed his Israel. In the centre of the 
 world's ancient civilization, and not in any dark nook and 
 remote corner of barbarism, was his revelation spoken. 
 To prayer he turned no deaf ear, and gave no dilatory 
 response. The Hearer of prayer who answered Jacob at 
 Bethel, answered also Jacob's children as well, not at 
 Shiloh and Mount Zion only, but wherever they kneeled. 
 !Nor were his edicts flagrant wrongs and palpable contra- 
 dictions, that violated all natural equity, and which 
 shocked all right reason, as was the character of the 
 teachings of the forged and rival deities of the heathen. 
 But yet, though an outspoken revelation, and a prompt 
 response to supplication, and a righteous and wise gov- 
 ernment were evermore allowed to his people, on his part, 
 no visible, outlined form shone out upon the Shekinah.' 
 And hence, the classical Pagans who worshiped carved 
 wood, and chiseled marble, and molten brass, contemned 
 in their supercilious ignorance the Hebrew as worshiping 
 empty air, because his God was a Spirit; because the 
 sanctuary at Jerusalem displayed no picture or statue 
 like the shrines of the Gentiles. 
 
 And even in the word of Revelation, that he gave, there 
 
 * Yer?c 19. 
 
12 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 was, beside the much that was plainly told, much that was 
 withheld, or that was but remotely indicated. An at- 
 titude of docile faith and habitual dependence was 
 exacted from the worshipers, and even when he spake to 
 an Abraham or a Moses as a man talked with his friend, 
 it was not to make the favored patriarch the depositary of 
 all God's councils, or to let either of them into the re- 
 served store of his kingly and divine mysteries. They 
 surveyed the day of the Messiah as at a distance ; and 
 saw Canaan's King, as the one of them saw Canaan itself, 
 in the broader, fuller manifestations of his dominion, only 
 as from the remote peaks of Pisgah, seeing but " parts of 
 his ways," and but " a little portion of Him,"* and were 
 reminded that they could not " understand the thunder of 
 his power." Even the most honored thus touched but the 
 hem and outer fringe of Jehovah's vestments. And in 
 this way, there were clues given which left none at a loss 
 who honestly desired guidance and defense : there were 
 obscurities and difficulties left which taught the most 
 favored and the most highly advanced their need of meek- 
 ness, lowliness, and reverence in approaching the Holy, 
 the Only Wise, and the Infallible, as well as the Un- 
 fathomable. And these same difficulties, in God's wise 
 arrangement of discipline and retribution, afforded grounds 
 of caviling to those who sought pretexts for their diso- 
 bedience ; and became occasions of fatal stumbling to 
 those who, in levity and insincerity, sought such occasion. 
 The very book of divine teachings thus became not 
 merely an intellectual discipline to its students, but a 
 moral test. There was light to beam with growing 
 
 * Job xxvi. 14. 
 
WILLIAMS. 13 
 
 brightness on the children of light, who earnestly sought 
 and honestly followed it. There was interspersed gloom, 
 that, to those who loved darkness rather than light, fur- 
 nished plausible coverts under which they might burrow 
 their way back to unbelief, atheism, and perdition. 
 
 Ancl when God came in human flesh, and the Incarnate 
 walked the hill-sides of Palestine, and the streets of Jeru- 
 salem, how wondrously did this — the Unfolding of the 
 divine character and nature — yet retain, in itself, traits of 
 the Enfolding and covering up of the Divine Majesty. 
 The Manifestation enshrouded, on some sides and at cer- 
 tain times, very much of the glory as of the Only Begotten 
 of the Father, which, on other sides and at other times, it 
 allowed brightly to stream forth. It shone on Tabor, but 
 how did it seem eclipsed on Calvary. As the Son of God, 
 how startling and towering were his claims, and how full 
 his divine credentials. Yet, as the Son of Man, how did 
 he wear our sinless infirmities as the exterior wrappers of 
 the Indwelling Divinity, and the mortal Tabernacle and 
 Vail of the Incarnate Jehovah. On the side of his abase- 
 ment, who stooped lower? On the side of his proper and 
 hereditary honor, who towered higher ? What Rabbi, or 
 Sanhedrim, or Prophet, or Sovereign, uttered a loftier 
 claim than that which called men to honor him, the Son, 
 even as they honored the Father? Verily, from the man- 
 ger to the Cross, the Saviour was a God " hiding himself /" 
 and yet, along his whole career, in his discourses and in 
 his miracles, how did he allow the streams of his majestic 
 brightness to break out, as at every window, and loophole, 
 and crevice, of the pavilion under which he moved. His 
 entrance upon the mortal stage, and his withdrawal from 
 
14 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 it, in the interlacing gloom and glory, required, from the 
 eastern sages who saw his star, and the Bethlehem shep- 
 herds who heard his angelic escort, and from the Roman 
 sentinel at his cross, watching all the portents of his death, 
 the acknowledgment that this was indeed the Kino; of 
 Israel and the Son of God. But the Day-dawn from on 
 high, thus visiting us, was, both in its mortal sun-rising 
 and in its mortal sun-setting, begirt with clouds. The 
 first comers saw an infant laid in the manger of the inn, 
 the feeding trough of the cattle. The earliest gossip of 
 Hebrew newsmongers, about the visit of the wise men and 
 the star guiding them, w T as soon intermingled with the 
 tale of the butcheries that left the mothers of Bethlehem 
 frenzied mourners. The attendants around the last scenes 
 of our Lord's earthly career beheld and heard a bruised 
 and plaintive sufferer, and in the cross where he hung saw 
 probably but a trunk, in aspect quite like to the two con- 
 tiguous stakes where writhed, on his right hand and his 
 left, two ordinary, vulgar, and ill-favored malefactors. 
 
 And, as in the Scripture, and in the very Incarnation, 
 the gloom lay, in broad, mantling folds, around and beside 
 the glory, so, too, in his daily Providence, does he allow 
 himself to seem, at times, withdrawn and concealed, in 
 disappointment of our confiding expectations — in disar- 
 rangement often of the wisest human plans, and in what, 
 at least, looks like indifference to our highest interests. 
 Like the disciples in their gloomy conference on the way 
 to Etnmaus, we are perplexed at the frustration, so rude, 
 of what seemed hopes so blessed and so just. Why does 
 Falsehood have for an hour currency, and even, not for 
 weeks only, but for entire centuries, in the realms ruled 
 
WILLIAMS. 15 
 
 over by a God of truth ? Why is Wrong ever allowed a 
 span of impunity — however narrow be that span — under 
 the very eye-lids of a God alike almighty and all-righteous? 
 We may answer, without danger of presumption : Because 
 a state of moral probation for our race requires the doubt 
 and the trial, in order to test the fullness of our loyal trust 
 in the Sovereign and Father ; and in order to awaken and 
 to reward the earnestness and importunity of our filial 
 prayers. We walk by faith, and not by sight. Our hope 
 must be fetched from the unseen ; for, as the apostle 
 argues, " What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" 
 So, too, by sharp and sudden reverses, he weans us from 
 self-reliance, and from undue confidence in our fellow 
 mortal, and braces our trust, more directly and more 
 firmly, upon his own all-sufficiency and unchangeableness. 
 He stains, by disaster, the pride of all human glorying, 
 and checks, by flickering shades of uncertainty and be- 
 reavement, the brightest of our earthly blessings, that 
 man may find nothing beyond Himself — the All-in-All. 
 Here the parent weeps over the child's empty cradle. 
 There the orphan, through blinding tears, gazes on a 
 parent's vacant place. He reminds us of sin, in the per- 
 petual visits of death, and in the suddenness of its inroads ; 
 and he warns us against heedless provocations, and ha- 
 bitual sluggishness, by startling rebuffs, and unlooked-for 
 humiliations and desolations. So, too, it comes to pass, 
 that his richest mercies visit us often in the ffuise, or in 
 the train, of heavy judgments ; and so, on many a shore, 
 his judgments upon a nation are made the forerunners of 
 richest consolation and widest revival to his churches. 
 His keen chastisements but plough and harrow the soil 
 
16 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 for harvests of unexampled blessing, enrichment, and dis- 
 enthralment. The darkness makes the light more vivid 
 while it shines, but the returning shadows teach us that 
 the light is heaven's boon, not man's perquisite. So, to 
 his ancient Israel, amid the wonders of the Exodus, while 
 the angel of the Lord, in the cloudy, fiery pillar, led them, 
 there w T as a continuous admonition of the Divine inspec- 
 tion and control. And yet that captain of the Lord's host 
 walked in darkness, nor let the sound of his footsteps be 
 heard by the quickest ear in all the camps that he now 
 broke up, and that he now again pitched. Yet occasion- 
 ally and gloriously was the shout of a king heard, re- 
 sounding in those same encampments. He was their 
 Saviour, but, ordinarily, an unseen one. He was their 
 Conductor, but, most commonly, an inaudible one. He 
 was their Omnipresent Keeper, neither slumbering nor 
 sleeping ; but no eye was wont to catch sight of their 
 guardian's feet, and no groping quest felt distinctly the 
 pulses of the guardian's outstretched and guiding hand. 
 Among them and before them — their van-guard and their 
 rear-ward — he yet hid himself from them ; constant, and 
 watchful, and bounteous Saviour, though he evermore con- 
 tinued to be. 
 
 Now, in days of calamity and trial, we are prone to ex- 
 aggerate this trait of the divine conduct towards us, as if 
 it were on his part abandonment and desertion — as if, in 
 the sudden lurch given by the ship of the state under the 
 stress of the storm, the helm of the universe had swept out 
 of the Divine Pilot's hand. We complain, with Job, of 
 looking for the Most High on the right hand and the left, 
 alike in vain; of failing, as w T e go forward, or as we re- 
 
WILLIAMS. 17 
 
 trace backward our past steps, to discover any further 
 proofs of his closeness to us, and of his interest in our con- 
 cerns. Is the Mighty and the Just One, any longer, near 
 to us, midst bereavement and disaster, and crimes that 
 unite such cruelty and treachery to such seeming im- 
 punity ? 
 
 'A chief magistrate, chosen to his high post in most diffi- 
 cult times — a man of the people, in his training, and tastes, 
 and habits, and utterances, but simple, massive, sincere, 
 kindly and patient, had filled his first term of four years. 
 And now, but in the second month of his second term of 
 four years, he is congratulating us on the apparent success 
 of the gigantic conflict, in which he and we had embarked 
 for the vindication of the national unity and life. Four 
 years since had the flag of the Union been lowered at Fort 
 Sumter in South Carolina, as the attempted revolution 
 began its treacherous outbreak. On the very anniversary 
 which completed four years of time from the descent of 
 that flag adown the staff whence it had long floated, the 
 noble officer who had been compelled to surrender the post 
 is instructed to raise it again on the ruinous mound. He 
 has probably done it on that fortress of our southern coast. 
 But, unknown to him and to his associates who have been 
 thus heralding the failure of Treason, bearded in its own den, 
 and the return of Authority and Nationality to these their 
 rightful outposts — that president, under whose orders they 
 act, is, at the very centre and seat of the national govern- 
 ment, himself smitten down. It is not in Richmond, the sur- 
 rendered capital of the baffled revolt, that this occurs ; but in 
 Washington, where, for four years of what had almost seem- 
 ed a garrison life, he had been each month of the preceding 
 
18 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 term in greater apparent danger of such assault than now. 
 And this, too, when in a recent visit to that recovered city of 
 Richmond, this eminent victim had shown such disposition 
 to welcome the return of the worsted and baffled insur- 
 gents, by a gentleness and magnanimity which four years of 
 contumelious obloquy had not soured, and with a parental 
 indulgence that many of his staunchest supporters blamed 
 as extreme. Shrewd, apt, penetrating, and yet familiar, 
 honest and firm, he had established himself — against 
 strongest disadvantages — in the popular heart, and in the 
 esteem of the friends of freedom in the Old World. He 
 was widely hailed as akin to our first President Washing- 
 ton in the simplicity, breadth, disinterestedness and in- 
 tegrity of his character ; called of Providence, as he seemed 
 to be, to become the Restorer over a wider territory and 
 against a fiercer foe, where Washington had been the 
 Founder. He fell, not by an open, manful attack, but 
 under a shot fired without warning, from behind : not, in 
 a collision waged upon equal terms, but by an assault 
 marked with a ferocious disregard of all equality of risks, 
 he is dispatched unawares. And the murderer mouths, with 
 a flourish of his dagger, " Such be evermore the tyrant's 
 fate," a motto borrowed from the escutcheon of Virginia, 
 and, upon that State's shield, surrounding a presentiment 
 of David with the head of Goliath. It w r as as if the 
 cowardly stabber would plant himself, in his frenzied 
 avenging of the cause of oppression, on the glorious plane 
 of David, the fearless champion of Israel's freedom, and ot 
 Israel's God; and would fain make his victim a huge, 
 lawless, godless Gittite, who had invaded a country not his 
 own : while actually that murdered magistrate was but 
 
WILLIAMS. 19 
 
 asserting, as his official oath bound him to assert it, the 
 whole nation's right, as banded freemen, to the whole of 
 that nation's territory. 
 
 On that same night and at the same hour a Confederate 
 assassin attacks the Secretary of State, when confined to 
 his couch by a fracture of both the arm and the jaw, and 
 under the vile falsehood of a friendly, not only, but of a 
 medical errand, with a brazen fraud that recalls the Joab 
 or the Judas, simulating friendship, when contriving mur- 
 der, he attempts, himself, the young, vigorous, and sinewy, 
 to sever the throat of this aged, disabled, and bed-ridden, 
 and helpless object of his malignity. Frantically he 
 stabbed and bludgeoned, not the parent only, but the sons 
 and attendants of his intended quarry, and all on the same 
 chivalrous pretext of exterminating tyranny; as if there 
 could be a tyranny viler than that which, in the cause of 
 oppression, resorted to methods so mendacious and remorse- 
 less. 
 
 Was the God of justice indifferent, that he permitted 
 the butchery of a kindly, generous, patriotic, and upright 
 ruler ; and that he allowed what may possibly, if not pro- 
 bably* — be the attendant slaughter of others, whose only 
 fault was that they were that ruler's faithful and chosen 
 counselors, or were but the inmates of the household of 
 that foremost statesman in the cabinet of that massacred 
 chief? While stealthy and craven murder, with bludgeon 
 and knife and pistol, thus raged, and thus — for the time 
 at least — escaped, did the Justice on high slumber, or con- 
 nive, or sanction ? It neither sanctioned deed so foul, nor 
 connived at ferocity so base, nor slumbered for one moment, 
 
 *Apprehensions since, in God's mercy, disappointed. 
 
20 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 through all the slow concoction, and all the swift achieve- 
 ment of the plot. 
 
 But if God — as it may well be — saw that — much as the 
 nation had already learned,* in the few later months of the 
 struggle, to know of the inherent evils, and of the ineradi- 
 cable barbarism of Slavery — it yet needed, by a more 
 malign outbreak, and a more distinguished sacrifice, to 
 have its holy wrath aroused and intensified into a deadly 
 and uncompromising decision against all further tolerance 
 of the system — then might not this very hiding of himself, 
 as the Immediate Avenger — this abstinence from inter- 
 vening to ward off the attack — this delay to entangle the 
 assailants by an immediate pursuit, and a prompt punish- 
 ment on the part of the by-standers — prove him in the end 
 and at the more fitting season, the fuller and the more ef- 
 fectual Yindicator of the rights and lives thus hacked at % 
 Might not the Judge of all the earth — thus for the time 
 withdrawn, and vailing his cognizance of the huge crime — 
 become, by such apparent withdrawal and delay to inter- 
 pose, only the more signally, and the more surely, the Just 
 Extirpator of the usages of a social system, which made 
 for centuries the slave so mute a victim, and the slave-mas- 
 ter so relentless and brutal a foeman ? In a document, 
 which was his own last message, Abraham Lincoln had 
 spoken of God's possible purpose to compensate each drop 
 of blood drawn by the driver's lash, by another drop 
 of blood streaming from the soldier's sword. Might not 
 the All- Wise God emphasize and rubricate that message, . 
 so to speak, by allowing the dying spasms of the tyranny 
 which wielded that driver's lash, to dash, as it were, upon 
 the face of this prophetic admonition, the blood of its 
 
WILLIAMS. 21 
 
 utterer ; and thus leave it, for all after-time of our national 
 history, slavery's bloody hand set at its own clumsy seal, 
 slavery's crimson endorsement of its own indictment? 
 Might not the very champions of the institution become 
 thus God's select and appointed expositors of its true 
 . hideousness, and his unconscious executioners of their own 
 idol, whilst they deemed themselves its heroic avengers ? 
 They had been wont to speak with profuse, unstinted 
 eulogy, of the slaveholder's relations to his bondmen as 
 rearing a nobler civilization, and nursing a rare and true 
 chivalry, like that of the old Paladins and Bayards. In a 
 school book prepared in Britain for the use of their own 
 Southern youth, they had spoken of Southern society as 
 lacking but titles to make it the peer and welcome mate of 
 the nobler classes of Europe. When this chivalry, thus 
 disdainful of Northern industry, had 'been left, as at 
 Andersonville and Belle Isle to famish and dismember 
 and craze its prisoners ; to butcher, as at Fort Pillow, its 
 surrendered, disarmed, and unresisting prisoners because 
 of their dusky skin ; to plan the burning of Northern 
 hotels, with their unarmed inmates, non-combatants, and 
 many of them helpless women and children ; to offer in 
 their own public journals large moneyed rewards for the 
 heads of their Northern opposers, as if the Dayak and 
 the New Zealander were the crowning types of their 
 vaunted chivalry ; and to carve into finger-rings the bones 
 of their Northern foemen fallen in battle ; and then, to 
 inaugurate private assassination as the -supplement of fail- 
 ure in open war, was not the system, so employing its 
 lease of domination, and so carrying out its demonstrations 
 of vaunted superiority in knightly valor, and honor, and 
 
22 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 refinement, and courtesy, left virtually in the avenging 
 wisdom of God, to fill up before the nations of the earth, 
 the measure of its own dishonor and their loathing % The 
 cry of the assailant, as he brandished the knife, ■ ■ Such be 
 evermore the tyrant's fate," was not, as he intended it, the 
 verdict of conscience and history against the murdered, 
 but the assassin's self-recited verdict of that conscience and 
 that history, and of the God who implanted the one and 
 who shapes the other, against the murderers, and against 
 the yet more tyrannous system that bred them. " To 
 perish in their own corruption," is the fearful doom of 
 Scripture against sinners — a rotting away in the leprous 
 sloughing of their own vices. And the embodied Tyranny 
 that, defiant, elate, and vaunting, wrote itself thus bloody, 
 thus ruthless, and thus false, and then seemed to look round, 
 assured of sympathy and applause, was in fact, but building 
 its own gibbet by the feat, and writing in red letters its own 
 death-sentence for the amazement of a gazing and loath- 
 ing Universe ; at the very same time, and in the very act, 
 by which it supposed itself the rival of old Roman hero- 
 ism and of old Hebrew devotedness, treading in the steps, 
 as it thought, of Brutus and of David. In the mysteries 
 of the Divine government, it is needed that a certain range 
 and swoop be given for " sw" to show, in the affecting and 
 inimitable language of Scripture, its own " exceeding sin- 
 fulness" And God may have given to rebellion and slave- 
 breeding their long tether of domination and their high, 
 broad stage of glorying, and this new glut of eminent 
 victims, only in the just intent that thus they might earn 
 a wider execration, and go down amid a more unanimous 
 tempest of denunciation and abhorrence ; the shriek of 
 
WILLIAMS. 23 
 
 ilieir own frenzied triumph, but, in another and juster 
 sense of it, the world's indignant acclaim over the tyranny 
 that dealt so craven a blow, and contrived so dastardly aud 
 ferocious a treachery. 
 
 God, again, removes his own useful and honored instru- 
 ments, at dates that to us seem untimely, and in modes, 
 that, although painful and even shocking to themselves and 
 to the survivors and friends who mourn them, yet do, in 
 reality, round the course of the departed as into a more 
 epic symmetry, and crown the hero's or statesman's career 
 of enfranchisement and victory, as with something that 
 resembles the palm of religious martyrdom. The success- 
 ful policy, and the triumphant campaign might secure 
 to him who had ordered the one or the other, a niche of 
 honor in the nation's gallery of her chief worthies, who 
 had deserved well of the Republic. An earlier assassina- 
 tion of this chosen ruler had been menaced and probably 
 intended at Baltimore, when he was first going to be 
 inducted into office. It was, in God's good providence, an 
 utter failure. How much, in the interval between the two 
 terms of the first, frustrated attempt, and the final con- 
 summation of the second attempt, had God permitted this 
 chief of our people to witness and to accomplish ? And 
 all the intervening denunciation by frenzied opposers and 
 now at last the bullet of fanatical hate, have served finally 
 to give to the character thus developed, and the career, 
 thus suddenly shut, a yet loftier niche in the nation's 
 grateful memory. It has now become shelved, apart from 
 predecessors — and it may be trusted, from successors also — 
 the name and fame of a vast revolt successfully quelled — 
 of a great social reform, that seemed to require centuries, 
 
24 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 completed in a half decade — a name and fame safely 
 sealed by so tragic and fonl a death. 
 
 In the fierce hate of Catholic Spain against Protestant 
 Holland the pistol of Balthazar Gerardt let out the life 
 of Holland's noblest and ablest champion. But when the 
 honored Prince of Orange, William the Taciturn, died, 
 thus foully and suddenly, although Spain conferred patents 
 of nobility as her guerdon for the act on the murderer's 
 kin, did the death daunt and overwhelm the nascent free- 
 dom and the suffering Protestantism of the Netherlands ? 
 Has the world a literature or an ethical system that can 
 long glorify our Balthazar Gerardt ? In an early day of 
 the European Eeformation, one brother, in his frenzied 
 detestation of the new doctrine killed another — under the 
 guise of friendship — his own brother because a protestant 
 heretic. The persecuting church applauded the new Cain 
 who had thus struck down, by perfidy and fratricide, a 
 new Abel. But did the honors of the church arrest the 
 world's general judgment of the slaughter; or stay the 
 contagious power of the faith professed by the martyr? 
 The St. Bartholomew Massacre was, for the time, a sad 
 discouragement of the Calvinists of France and Europe. 
 But the field of Ivry, and the Edict of Nantes came in its 
 ultimate train. And, meanwhile, did it most damage and 
 blacken the victims, or the atrocious authors of the plot ? 
 And who of us would not rather choose to go down to 
 posterity with the aged Coligny, with his white hairs 
 bedabbled in blood, whom it sacrificed, than with the wily 
 and ruthless Catharine de Medici, and her son Charles IX., 
 who survived the butchery, and for the time chuckled and 
 gloated over the success of their crime ? It is the victim, 
 
WILLIAMS. 25 
 
 meekly faithful, in such a fierce collision, and such a 
 solemn crisis, who, by the judgment of man's conscience, 
 and the decree of the Divine Lord of conscience, remains 
 the real conqueror, and not his unpunished slayer. As 
 said cheerily the aged Latimer, when they had bound him 
 to the stake and lie turned to a fellow confessor with no 
 wail in his tone, and no gloom in his eye : " We light this 
 day, brother Ridley, a candle in England, which they will 
 never put out." Many were the murders of that Marian 
 era; but Foxe's Book of Martyrs which records them, 
 remains to this day one of the bulwarks and safeguards of 
 the National Protestantism. And so in later days of 
 English history, the sufferings of Puritan and Noncon- 
 formist, at the hands of the Stuart line of kings, only 
 served to bar, finally and effectually, the return of that 
 royal house to the English throne. Talleyrand, a perspi- 
 cacious observer of man's nature and of the currents of 
 social change, spoke of guilty acts that were worse than 
 crimes — they were blunders. Now, really, and under the 
 divine legislation, all crime is blundering. It blunders, as 
 to its aims ; it blunders, as to its methods ; and it blunders, 
 as to its results. But there are crimes of singular atrocity 
 which have as much of absurdity as atrocity. The slaughter 
 by Herod of the babes of Bethlehem was such a sin. 
 Aimed at the absent and invincible Messiah, it immor- 
 talized the plotter, as one, who shrunk not from the 
 massacre of innocent nurslings, in his most impotent hope 
 of foiling the Infallible, and achieving a successful Deicide. 
 Crimes that are of an especial zest to their authors and their 
 patrons, may yet, before the bar^of posterity, be adjudged 
 
 incrediblv foolish for the blindness that filled the contrivers 
 
 2 
 
2f) DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 as to the inevitable recoil of their own effort. And so the 
 men, who plotted this slaughter in our high places, when 
 talking of tyranny as if that tyranny inhered mainly or 
 only in the soul which they unhoused, were actually stab- 
 bing to the heart that form of society, that slavebred 
 chivalry, which they affected to advocate, and expected, 
 in this savage fashion, to illustrate and to vindicate. The 
 curse invoked by the Jews on the head of the Crucified 
 came, hurtling back, in bloody rain, on them and their 
 children's children, through long centuries and across wide 
 continents. Those old Hebrews denounced their victim 
 as a deceiver of the people ; but were in fact, themselves, 
 the most deceived of all people, in thus rejecting their 
 true Deliverer, and choosing to be thralled by the veriest 
 delusions of the destroyer. So, in less degree, is it with 
 lesser and later crimes. " The curse causeless " travels 
 back, dire and swift, on the heads of its guilty shouters. 
 The banner may — or may not, have been that day, restored 
 by its old defenders to the walls of Fort Sumter. But the 
 pistol-shot, discharged that same day, in Washington, if 
 we do not read all wrongly the omens of Providence, 
 saluted another and more momentous flag-raising. The 
 bullet-shot and the knife-stab, that evening delivered, have 
 effectually nailed to the mast of the ship of state the 
 banner of Emancipation — of universal — unconditional — 
 uncompensated and unrepealable enfranchisement. This 
 evil, Slavery, has been through our whole national lifetime 
 the Achan, troubling our peace. We must bury it now, 
 in this valley of Achor, the scene of our national mourn- 
 ing. Let them massacre without stint, the witnesses of 
 Right at the North, wherever they may choose them, in 
 
WILLIAMS. 27 
 
 legislative halls, pulpits, at presses or in professors' chairs. 
 But the slaughterers have even thus but fixed that banner 
 of enfranchisement. These men of the South have them- 
 selves driven, with their own violent hands, the nails that 
 fasten it in place. Who, Korth or South, has power to 
 draw the nails so driven ? So perishes tyranny, drunk in 
 the frenzy of its hate, and shouting its own doom, like 
 Caiaphas, a truer prophet than it had imagined itself, 
 when supposing itself triumphant over its gasping victims. 
 The men of our own State may well, at such times, find 
 happy and blessed lessons, as they remember the yet 
 loftier motto, borne on the escutcheon of our own free 
 State, " Higher." Let us, in the fear of our God, rise 
 higher and higher, through the storms and glooms of the 
 time, to the purer and serener regions above, where the 
 Lord God of our fathers sits in untroubled Sovereignty. 
 Let us calm and brace ourselves in the assurance, that no 
 event, however unwelcome, or guilty, or disastrous — no 
 influence for evil however defiant — no effort towards good 
 however feeble, obscure, or powerless it may to us seem, — 
 is there on our lower plane of action and observation, 
 but it is distinctly and exactly ordered, permitted, or over- 
 ruled, as a part of the great scheme of Providence, which 
 on that loftier plane above is moving steadily on to its 
 blessed consummation. Let us rejoice that our misguided 
 foes must strike " higher " than they have yet aimed, if 
 they would hope to uproot our confidence and to kill our 
 principles. They must stab out the sun on high — the 
 mounting, morning sun, as portrayed on the State shield, 
 and in its place there a fit emblem, as we may read it, of 
 the rising Sun of Righteousness — if. they would proscribe 
 
28 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Liberty, and banish Kighteousness, and exile effectually 
 Conscience, and Hope, and Truth, from the earth. Can 
 those who would " frame mischief by a law " expect to 
 succeed, unless they can persuade the Common Father to 
 interpolate it into his own legislation ? Till they do, can 
 they hope ; or need we despair ? And the Jehovah dwell- 
 ing in the high and holy place can bring, and is of old 
 wont to bring, great deliverance in the train of vast 
 sorrows, and even of hideous crimes. This the Judge of 
 all the earth has, like earthly magistrates, his certain set 
 times of visitation. In these eras of crisis, and of inquisi- 
 tion, and of retribution, he often precipitates, into a 
 brief space, the decision of questions that, have been slowly 
 ripening for long generations before. He " cuts short his 
 work in righteousness." May not the changes and wastings 
 that are upon us be regarded but as a summons from his 
 secret pavilion, bidding us to look up, with loftier aims, 
 and calmer trust, and more untiring prayer ? Methinks it 
 is but the trumpet peal that heralds the intervention and 
 fuller manifestation of the God, who, as the hearer 
 of prayer, is thus demanding from his people a more 
 earnest and importunate use of prayer. He waits to be 
 inquired of; and he is pledged that this inquiry shall not 
 be left, as to his people's interests, a fruitless one. May 
 we not well believe that the dreadful mutations of our 
 times and of this present war, are in his survey of them, 
 but newer and deeper and broader channels which he has 
 opened to evangelization, and along which shall rush a 
 more rapid and wide stream of truth ? Will not the God 
 of Israel — the Saviour thereof — not from trouble — but 
 the Saviour thereof by means of trouble — if earnestly and 
 
WILLIAMS. 29 
 
 passionately invoked, come forth out of the very scenes of 
 bereavement, desolation, and carnage that have littered 
 the land with ruins ; and show himself the Zerubbabel of 
 a larger captivity than that which followed Nehemi ah and 
 Ezra from the Euphrates to the Jordan ? Is not the residue 
 of the Spirit with him, but awaiting the ascent of prayer, 
 then to descend in showers of benediction over a regene- 
 rate, accordant, and prosperous nation \ Those celestial 
 and God-given influences wait not for man's permission 
 to take their free and mighty course. He cannot curb 
 them or exclude them more than he can shut out heaven's 
 dropping rains, or returning daylight. A "higher" 
 power overrides earthly schemings, and barriers, flooding 
 and dominating them, like " morning spread on the moun- 
 tains." Reminded how terribly may be exacted the vast 
 arrears of long unpunished sin, let us put promptly and 
 thoroughly away the relics, habits, and spirit of oppression. 
 Admonished how suddenly the paths of worldly ambition 
 and activity may terminate in the tomb, should not the 
 young, the busy, and the eager, and the giddy be startled, 
 amid these funeral solemnities, to bethink themselves of 
 that eternity, of which we are but too easily and generally 
 forgetful ? Was there not wisdom in his time, and is 
 there not equal wisdom for our time, in the prophet's 
 decision : " And I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his 
 face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.* 
 Has he not, and by the same Isaiah, replied to such a quest 
 at such a time : " In a little wrath I hid my face from thee 
 for a moment ; but with everlasting kindness will I have 
 mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."f " And 
 
 * Isaiah viii. 11. f Isaiah liv. 8. 
 
30 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God ; we have 
 limited for him, and he will save us; this is the Lord; we 
 have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his 
 salvation"* In the days of his incarnation he seemed 
 sheltering himself from the prayers of the Syrophcenieian 
 mother, importunate in her pleadings for her child ; but 
 the withdrawal was but in kindness, to make more signal 
 the faith that persisted in praying, and more exuberant 
 the benediction which descended on that persistent, 
 undaunted trust. High, therefore, and yet " higher " let' 
 the intercessions of the home, the closet, and the sanctuary 
 arise, that, out of this crisis and agony of the national life, 
 may yet revolve untold deliverances, and enduring and 
 pervasive reformation. 
 
 Is it not a refreshment and a delight to remember that 
 the Jesus whom we preach, and in whose name your 
 prayers and hymns mount heavenward, and who is now 
 exalted to the throne of supremest dominion, was himself 
 once the maligned, the sacrificed, and the blasphemed? 
 But in his rejection and entombment he was but preparing 
 the overthrow of unbelief, and the triumph of his own 
 gospel and kingdom. "Light is sown for the righteous." 
 Christ reigns in this very day of our nation's mourning ; 
 and this Christian nation lives, whoever of its trusted 
 captains falls; and this Christian freedom rises vindicated, 
 consecrated, and necessitated by every gash and bullet- 
 wound made in her confessors. When from under the 
 altar the souls of those slain for the truth of God were 
 heard asking, "How long, Lord?" the infinite faith- 
 fulness of that most high and Holy One was heard, 
 
 * Isaiah xxv. 8. 
 
WILLIAMS. 31 
 
 admeasuring the time, and assuring the ultimate victory, 
 however long delayed. 
 
 We cannot but believe, that the nobler minds of the 
 South will themselves recoil from a cause that has such 
 patrons as the conspirators and assassins, now betraying 
 their hand — that the new crime will, by God's gracious 
 alchemy, furnish a test which shall clear from clinging 
 delusions many of the better intellects and nobler hearts 
 of the southern States. If, in others of that population, it 
 but precipitate a new and darker ferocity, it pillories their 
 own cause; and sentences the fanatical tyranny to a more 
 general reprobation, and a speedier and more irrevocable 
 overthrow. And as of old Pentecost came in the wake of 
 the last Passion, may we not well hope, and should we not 
 earnestly pray, that the Holy Spirit, the Enlightener, and 
 the Ken ewer, and the Consoler — will go forth over the 
 very track of devastation, unspent in his infinite energy, 
 on his errand of enkindling, and renovating, reconciling, 
 sanctifying and restoring? May not his own churches, 
 rejoicing in the life, inaccessible and indestructible, of this 
 Blessed Friend, entrust cheerfully to his guardianship 
 their own earthly lives, so soon and perchance so suddenly 
 to close ? It is his right not only, but it is his wont, to 
 confer a peace which no earthly wars or commotions can 
 shatter, and a life for the human soul, which death itself 
 can not spill, but only enhance and defecate. He waits 
 for the prayer of Zion ; and he responds victoriously to 
 her trust. 
 
 Be the Lord's, that you may be all the more truly and 
 more effectively classed among your country's guardians 
 and bulwarks. Free by his grace, the man who is the 
 Lord's freeman — be his worldly infelicities what they 
 
32 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 may — is at the last free as a denizen of the New Jerusa- 
 lem, beyond and above these lower scenes of carnage, 
 strife, woe and sin. This Captain of salvation may be 
 hidden from the worldly, careless and impenitent ; and 
 seem effectually concealed beneath the thick vails of 
 Nature and Providence, which neither wholly reveal, nor 
 yet wholly disguise his worldly pathway. But, if hidden to 
 them who believe him not and seek him not, he tenderly 
 and habitually reveals himself to the eager inquirer, the 
 praying disciple, and the obedient follower. Sweet are 
 the glimpses which faith and hope and love win of him, in 
 the earthly pilgrimage; but what shall be the full-orbed 
 manifestation of that Saviour seen in his heavenly man- 
 sions, not for a time but forevermore. " We shall be like 
 unto him, for we shall see him as he is." Some, even in 
 the judgment, shall, like Balaam, see him " but not near," 
 and, repelled from his throne, shall be sentenced to a yet 
 greater removal, and to the long, sad exile of an endless 
 night and a hopeless sorrow. What a hiding shall that 
 be, on the part of a long refused Saviour, now clothed in 
 all the tremendous majesty of an incensed Judge, with- 
 drawn entirely and eternally from the sufferers who 
 steadily spurned his consolations, and the sinners who 
 slighted, defied and forfeited the grace which would fain 
 have blessed and rescued them. In outraging him, they 
 missed pardon and flung away the glory and repose and 
 felicity of Paradise. " They are hidden from thine eyes," 
 was his own lament over obdurate Jerusalem. Let not 
 ours be the stubborn ingratitude and unbelief that eclipses 
 the Lio\ht of Life, and leaves us the heirs of such a wrath 
 and such a ban, as the rejected Saviour must pronounce 
 against the rejecting sinner. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 KEY. TTEKRY WAED BEECHEE. 
 
 " And Moses went up from the plains of Moab, unto the mountain Oi 
 Nebo, to the top of Pisgali, that is over against Jericho ; and the Lord 
 showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land 
 of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, 
 and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, 
 unto Zoor. And the Lord said unto him, this is the land which I swear unto 
 Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed : 
 I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over 
 thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, 
 according to the word of the Lord."' — Deut. xxxiv. 1-5. 
 
 There is no historic figure more noble than that of the 
 Jewish lawgiver. After so many thousand years, the 
 figure of Moses is not diminished, but stands up against 
 the background of early days, distinct and individual as 
 if he had lived but yesterday. There is scarcely another 
 event in history more touching than his death. He had 
 borne the great burdens of states for forty years, shaped 
 the Jews to a nation, filled out their civil and religious 
 polity, administered their laws, guided their steps, or 
 dwelt with them in all their journeyings in the wilder- 
 ness ; had mourned in their punishment, kept step with 
 their march, and led them in wars, until the end of their 
 labors drew nigh. The last stage was reached. Jordan 
 only lay between them and the promised land. The pro- 
 
 9* 
 
34 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 mised land ! — oh, what yearnings had heaved his breast 
 for that divinely promised place ! He had dreamed of it 
 by night, and mused by day. It was holy and endeared 
 as God's favored spot. It was to be the cradle of an 
 illustrious history. All his long, laborious, and now 
 weary life, he had aimed at this as the consummation of 
 every desire, the reward of every toil and pain. Then 
 came the word of the Lord to him, " Thou mayest not 
 go over. Get thee up into the mountain, look upon it, 
 and die." 
 
 From that silent summit, the hoary leader gazed to the 
 north, to the south, to the west, with hungry eyes. The 
 dim outlines rose up. The hazy recesses spoke of quiet 
 valleys between the hills. With eager longing, with sad 
 resignation, he looked upon the promised land. It was 
 now to him a forbidden land. It was a moment's anguish. 
 He forgot all his personal wants, and drank in the vision 
 of his people's home. His work was done. There lay 
 God's promise fulfilled. There was the seat of coming 
 Jerusalem ; there the city of Judah's King ; the sphere of 
 judges and prophets ; the mount of sorrow and salvation ; 
 the nest whence were to fly blessings innumerable to all 
 mankind. Joy chased sadness from every feature, and 
 the prophet laid him down and died. 
 
 Again a great leader of the people has passed through 
 toil, sorrow, battle, and war, and come near to the prom- 
 ised land of peace, into which he might not pass over. 
 Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people ? 
 Since the November of 1S60, his horizon has been black 
 with storms. By day and by night, he trod a way of 
 danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a govern- 
 
BEECHER. 35 
 
 ment dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity i 
 millions of men were striking at home. Upon this govern- 
 ment foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in 
 a sea full of storms ; and evefy tide and wave seemed 
 eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sor- 
 rows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and 
 in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, 
 our faithful and sainted Lincoln. .Never rising to the en- 
 thusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, 
 and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of defeat to 
 the depths of despondency, he held on with immovable 
 patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that 
 it might not be premature, and hope against caution, that 
 it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled 
 ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial 
 years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of his "people 
 as by fire. 
 
 At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the coun- 
 try. The mountains began to give forth their forms from 
 out the darkness ; and the East came rushing toward us 
 with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for 
 him to be glad exceedingly, that had sorrowed immeas- 
 urably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy, 
 such rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he 
 looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. 
 Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone 
 from among us. JSTot thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted 
 soul. Thou hast indeed entered the promised land, while 
 we are yet on the march. To us remains the rocking of 
 the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights 
 of watching ; but thou art sphered high above all dark- 
 
36 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 ness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, oh 
 weary heart ! Rejoice exceedingly, thou that hast enough 
 suffered ! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee 
 in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. 
 Around thee are the royal men that have enobled human 
 life in every age. Kingly art though, with glory on thy 
 brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for ever more. 
 Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that 
 now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou 
 art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide 
 us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount 
 Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing 
 sought in vain ; and thy name, an everlasting name in 
 heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as 
 men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere 
 truth, fidelity, and goodness. 
 
 Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one 
 hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week 
 in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had ex- 
 pected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere 
 from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept busi- 
 ness from its moorings, and ran down through the land in 
 irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brother- 
 hood that were strangers in the ilesh. They sang, or 
 prayed, or, 'deeper yet, many could only think thanks- 
 giving and weep gladness. That peace was sure ; that 
 government was firmer than ever; that the land was 
 cleansed of plague ; that the ages were opening to our 
 footsteps, and we were to begin a inarch of blessings ; 
 that blood was staunched, and scowling enmities were 
 -inking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear 
 
BEECHEE. 37 
 
 fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in 
 unexampled honor among the nations of the earth — these 
 thoughts, and that unclistinguishable throng of fancies, 
 and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul 
 with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days — 
 all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may 
 describe. 
 
 In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam, 
 or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as 
 huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling 
 thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, daunting 
 every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness 
 and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did 
 ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such 
 boundless feelings ? It was the uttermost of joy ; it was 
 the uttermost of sorrow — noon and midnight, without a 
 space between. 
 
 The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible 
 that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men 
 awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered 
 to find everything that they were accustomed to trust 
 wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. 
 The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight 
 to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after 
 some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some 
 one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other 
 as if each would ask the other, " Am I awake, or do I 
 dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men 
 bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged 
 to some one in chief: this belonged to all. It was each 
 and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land 
 
38 • DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 felt as if its first-born were gone. Men were bereaved, 
 and walked for daj^s as if a corpse lay unburied in their 
 dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They 
 could speak of nothing but that ; and yet, of that they 
 could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. 
 Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week 
 ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was 
 still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely 
 moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear 
 to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and 
 write his name above their lintels ; but no monument will 
 ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow 
 that in a moment swept down lines and j^arties, and 
 covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided 
 people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of 
 anguish. 
 
 For myself, I cannot yet command that quietness of 
 spirit needed for a just and temperate delineation of a 
 man whom goodness has made great. Leaving that, if it 
 please God, to some other occasion, I pass to some consid- 
 erations, aside from the martyr President's character, which 
 may be fit for this hour's instruction. 
 
 1. Let us not mourn that his departure was so sudden, 
 nor fill our imagination with horror at its method. Men, 
 long eluding and evading sorrow, when at last they are 
 overtaken by it, seem enchanted, and seek to make their 
 sorrow sorrowful to the very uttermost, and to bring out 
 every drop of suffering which they possibly can. This is 
 not Christian, though it may be natural. When good 
 men pray for deliverance from sudden death, it is only 
 that they may not be plunged without preparation, all 
 
BEECHER. 39 
 
 disrobed, into the presence of their Judge. "When one is 
 ready to depart, suddenness of death is a blessing. It is a 
 painful sight to see a tree overthrown by a tornado, 
 wrenched from its foundations, and broken down like a 
 weed; but it is yet more painful to see a vast and vener- 
 able tree lingering with vain strife against decay, which 
 age and infirmity have marked for destruction. The 
 process by which strength wastes, and the mind is 
 obscured, and the tabernacle is taken down, is humiliating 
 and painful ; and it is good and grand when a man departs 
 to his rest from out of the midst of duty, full-armed and 
 strong, with pulse beating time. For such an one to go 
 suddenly, if he be prepared to go, is but to terminate a 
 most noble life in its most noble manner. Mark the 
 words of the Master : 
 
 " Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burn- 
 ing; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their 
 lord, when he will return from the wedding ; that when 
 he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him imme- 
 diately. Blessed are those servants whom the lord when 
 he cometh shall find watching." 
 
 Not they that go in a stupor, but they that go with all 
 their powers about them, and wide-awake, to meet their 
 Master, as to a wedding, are blessed. He died watching. 
 He died with his armor on. In the midst of hours of 
 labors, in the very heart of patriotic consultations, just 
 returned from camps and councils, he was stricken down. 
 No fever dried his blood. No slow waste consumed him. 
 All at once, in full strength and manhood, with his girdle 
 tight about him, he departed, and walks with God. 
 
 Nor was the manner of his death more shocking, if we 
 
40 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 divest it of the malignity of the motives which caused it. 
 The mere instrument itself is not one that we should 
 shrink from contemplating. Have not thousands of sol- 
 diers fallen on the field of battle by the bullets of the 
 enemy ? Is being killed in battle counted to be a dreadful 
 mode of dying? It was as if he had died in battle. Do 
 not all soldiers that must fall ask to depart in the hour of 
 battle and victory ? He went in the hour of victory. 
 
 There has not been a poor drummer-boy in all this war 
 that has fallen for whom the great heart of Lincoln would 
 not have bled ; there has not been one private soldier, 
 without note or name, slain among thousands, and hid in 
 the pit among hundreds, without even the memorial of a 
 separate burial, for whom the President would not have 
 wept. He was a man from the common people that never | 
 forgot his kind. And now that he who might not bear I 
 the inarch, and toil, and battles with these humble citi- 
 zens has been called to die by the bullet, as they were, do 
 you not feel that there was a peculiar fitness to his nature 
 and life, that he should in death be joined with them, in a 
 final common experience, to whom he had been joined in 
 all his sympathies. 
 
 For myself, when any event is susceptible of a higher 
 and nobler garnishing, I know not what that disposition 
 is that should seek to drag it down to the depths of gloom, 
 and write it all over with the scrawls of horror or fear. 
 I let the light of nobler thoughts fall upon his departure, 
 and bless God that there is some argument of consolation 
 in the matter and manner of his going, as there was in 
 the matter and manner of his staying. 
 
 2. This blow was but the expiring rebellion. As a 
 
BEECHEE. 41 
 
 miniature gives all the form and features of its subject, so, 
 epitomized in this foul act, we find the whole nature and 
 disposition of slavery. It begins in a wanton destruction 
 of all human rights, and in a desecration of all the sancti- 
 ties of heart and home ; and it is the universal enemy of 
 mankind, and of God, who made man. It can be main- 
 tained only at the sacrifice of every right and moral 
 feeling in its abettors and upholders. I deride the man 
 that points me to any man bred amid slavery, believing 
 in it, and willingly practicing it, and tells me that he is a 
 man. I shall find saints in perdition sooner than I shall 
 find true manhood under the influences of so accursed a 
 system as this. It is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, 
 violently destroying manhood in the oppressed, and insidi- 
 ously destroying manhood in the oppressor. The problem 
 is solved, the demonstration is completed, in our land. 
 Slavery wastes its victims; and it destroys the masters. 
 It destroys public morality, and the possibility of it. It 
 corrupts manhood in its very centre and elements. Com- 
 munities in which it exists are not to be trusted. They 
 are rotten. Nor can you find timber grown in this accursed 
 soil of iniquity that is fit to build our ship of state, or lay 
 the foundation of our households. The patriotism that 
 grows up under this blight, when put to proof, is selfish 
 and brittle ; and he that leans upon it shall be pierced. 
 The honor that grows up in the midst of slavery is not 
 honor, but a bastard quality that usurps the place of its 
 better, only to disgrace the name of honor. And, as long 
 as there is conscience, or reason, or Christianity, the honor 
 that slavery begets will be a bye-word and a hissing. 
 The whole moral nature of men reared to familiarity and 
 
42 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 connivance with slavery is death-smitten. The needless 
 rebellion ; the treachery of its leaders to oaths and solemn 
 trusts ; their violation of the commonest principles of 
 fidelity, sitting in senates, in councils, in places of public 
 confidence, only to betray and to destroy ; the long, gene- 
 ral, and unparalleled cruelty to prisoners, without provo- 
 cation, and utterly without excuse : the unreasoning- 
 malignity and fierceness — these all mark the symptoms 
 of that disease of slavery which is a deadly poison to soul 
 and body. 
 
 1. I do not say that there are not single natures, here and 
 there, scattered through the vast wilderness- which is 
 covered with this poisonous vine, who escape the poison. 
 There are, but they are not to be found among the men 
 that believe in it, and that have been moulded by it. They 
 are the exceptions. Slavery is itself barbarity. That 
 nation which cherishes it is barbarous ; and no outward 
 tinsel or glitter can redeem it from the charge of barbar- 
 ism. And it was fit that its expiring blow should be 
 such as to take away from men the last forbearance, the 
 last pity, and fire the soul with an invincible determina- 
 tion that the breeding-ground of such mischiefs and monsters 
 shall be utterly and forever destroyed. 
 
 2. We needed not that he should put on paper that he 
 believed in slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with 
 cruelty infernal, hovered around that majestic man to 
 destroy his life. He was himself but the long sting with 
 which slavery struck at liberty ; and he carried the poison 
 that belonged to slavery. And as long as this nation lasts, 
 it will never be forgotten that we have, had one martyred 
 President — never ! Never, while time lasts, while heaven 
 
BEECHER. 43 
 
 lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that 
 slavery, by its minions, slew him, and, in slaying him, 
 made manifest its whole nature and tendency. 
 
 3. This blow was aimed at the life of the Government 
 and of the nation. Lincoln was slain ; America was 
 meant. The man was cast down ; the Government was 
 smitten at. The President was killed : it was national 
 life, breathing freedom, and meaning beneficence, that 
 was sought. He, the man of Illinois, the private man, 
 divested of robes and the insignia of authority, represent- 
 ing nothing but his personal self, might have been hated ; 
 but it was not that that ever would have called forth the 
 murderer's blow. It was because he stood in the place of 
 government, representing government, and a government 
 that represented right and liberty, that he was singled out. 
 
 This, then, is a crime against universal government. It 
 is not a blow at the foundations of our government, more 
 than at the foundations of the English Government, of the 
 French Government, of every compacted and well-organ- 
 ized government. It was a crime against mankind. The 
 whole world will repudiate and stigmatize it as a deed 
 without a shade of redeeming light. For this was not the 
 oppressed, goaded to extremity, turning on his oppressor. 
 Not the shadow of a cloud, even, has rested on the South, of 
 wrong ; and they knew it right well. 
 
 In a council held in the City of Charleston, just pre- 
 ceding to the attack on Fort Sumter, two commissioners 
 were appointed to go to Washington ; one on the part of 
 the army from Fort Sumter, and one on the part of the 
 Confederates. The lieutenant that was designated to go 
 for us said it seemed to him that it would be of little use 
 
44 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 for him to go, as his opinion was immovably fixed in favor 
 of maintaining the Government in whose service he was 
 employed. Then Gov. Pickens took him aside, detaining, 
 for an hour and a half, the railroad train that was to con- 
 vey them on their errand. He opened to him the whole 
 plan and secret of the Southern conspiracy, and said to 
 him, distinctly and repeatedly (for it was needful, he said, 
 to lay aside disguises), that the South had never been 
 wronged, and that all their pretences of grievance in the 
 matter of tariffs, or anything else, were invalid. " But," 
 said he, " we must carry the people with us ; and we allege 
 these things, as all statesmen do many things that they 
 do not believe, because they are the only instruments by 
 which the people can be managed." He then and there 
 declared that the two sections of country were so antago- 
 nistic in ideas and policies that they could not live 
 together, that it was foreordained that Northern and 
 Southern men must keep apart on account of differences 
 in ideas and policies, and that all the pretences of the 
 South about wrongs suffered were but pretences, as they 
 very well knew. This is testimony which was given b}^ one 
 of the leaders in the rebellion, and which will, probably, 
 ere long, be given under hand and seal to the public. So 
 the South has never had wrong visited upon it except by 
 that which was inherent in it. 
 
 This was not, then, the avenging hand of one goaded by 
 tyranny. It was not a despot turned on by his victim. 
 It was the venomous hatred of liberty wielded by an 
 avowed advocate of slavery. And, though there may 
 have been cases of murder in which there were shades of 
 palliation, yet this murder was without provocation, with- 
 
BEECHER. 45 
 
 out temptation, without reason, sprung from the fury of a 
 heart cankered to all that was just and good, and cor- 
 rupted by all that was wicked and foul. 
 
 4. The blow has signally failed. The cause is not 
 stricken : it is strengthened. This nation has dissolved — 
 but in tears only. It stands four-square, more solid, to-day, 
 than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither 
 wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery 
 and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than 
 ever before. The Government is not weakened, it is made 
 stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks 
 closed! Another stepped forward, in the hour that the 
 one fell, to take his place and his mantle ; and I avow my 
 belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct 
 of liberty ; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him ; 
 vigilant of the Constitution ; careful of the laws ; wise 
 for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has known 
 what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to 
 prize liberty from bitter personal experiences. [Applause.] 
 
 Where could the head of government in any monarchy 
 be smitten down by the hand of an assassin, and the 
 funds not quiver nor fall one-half of one per cent ? After 
 a long period of national disturbance, after four years of 
 drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of 
 the country, in the height and top of our burdens, the 
 heart of this people is such that now, when the head of 
 government is stricken down, the public funds do not 
 waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our mountains. 
 
 Republican institutions have been vindicated in this ex- 
 perience as they never were before ; and the whole history 
 of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke 
 
46 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 seems, in the providence of God, to have been clothed, 
 now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an apt- 
 ness, and with a significance, such as we never could have 
 expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the 
 voice of this event, to all nations of the earth, " Republi- 
 can liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the 
 foundation of the globe." [Applause.] 
 
 5. Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been 
 clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who 
 now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. 
 Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like 
 those of Washington, and your children, and your child- 
 ren's children, shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and 
 deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in 
 party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new im- 
 pulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal 
 the whole country which he loved so well. 1 swear you, 
 on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the 
 country for which he has perished. [Applause.] They 
 will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that 
 slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquish- 
 ing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I 
 swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery 
 with an unappeasable hatred. [Applause.] They will 
 admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible 
 conscience for the right ; and yet his gentleness, as tendei 
 as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which, not all tliG 
 heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturb- 
 ances of this country shake out of its place. I swear you 
 to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his 
 mercy. 
 
 You I cam comfort ; but how can I speak to that twi- 
 
BEECHER. 47 
 
 light million to whom his name was as the name of an 
 angel of God ? There will be Availing in places which no 
 minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in 
 cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the fi Ad throughout the 
 South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that 
 Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the 
 land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall com- 
 fort them % O, thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst 
 comfort thy people of old, to thy care we commit the 
 helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved. 
 
 And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, 
 mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every 
 stage of his coming. Cities and states are his pall-bearers, 
 and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. 
 Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh ! Is Washington dead ? 
 Is Hampden dead ? Is David dead ? Is any man that 
 ever was fit to live dead \ Disenthralled of flesh, and 
 risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, 
 he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted 
 upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life 
 can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome ! Your sorrows, 
 oh people, are his peace! Your bells, and bands, and 
 muffled drums, sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep 
 here ; God makes it echo joy and triumph there. Pass 
 on! 
 
 Four years ago, oh, Illinois, we took from your midst 
 an untried man, and from among the people. We return 
 him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, 
 but the nation's ; not ours, but the world's. Give him 
 place, oh, -ye prairies! In the midst of this great con- 
 tinent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who 
 
48 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and 
 patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places 
 of the West, chant his requiem ! Ye people, behold a 
 martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads 
 for fidelity, for law, for liberty ! 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 EEV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 
 
 " Sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I will tell you the truth. 
 It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter 
 will not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send him unto you." — St. 
 John xvi. 6, 7. 
 
 So Jesus, in view of his own approaching death, com- 
 forted his disciples ! He was to leave them, robbed b} r 
 violence of their accustomed leader ; he whom they had 
 believed should redeem Israel, snatched wickedly and igno- 
 miniously from their side ; all their hopes of prosperity and 
 power in this world utterly destroyed. He was to leave 
 them a dismayed and broken-hearted band, terror-stricken 
 and scattered abroad, the enemies of their beloved Lord 
 triumphant over him ; his words and teachings as yet in- 
 volved in obscurity and mystery ; their souls ungrown in 
 his likeness ; the nature of their Master's errand in this 
 world not yet understood — nay, misunderstood almost as 
 sadly by his disciples as by the Jews who murdered him. 
 Knowing, as our Saviour did, just how they were to be 
 affected by his death, how utterly appalled and bewildered, 
 he still tells them, " It is expedient for you that I go away, 
 for if I go not away the Comforter (who should abide with 
 them forever) will not come unto you ; but if I depart I 
 will send him unto you.'' 
 
O » DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 We understand now, looking back nineteen centuries, 
 how truly Jesus spake. We see that without that death 
 there could not have been that resurrection from the dead ; 
 that Jesus Christ was revealed to his disciples as a spirit- 
 ual prince and deliverer, as Lord over the grave and king 
 of saints immortal, in the defeat of all ambitions having 
 their seat in this world ; that he died to prove that death 
 was not the end of being, but the real beginning of a true 
 life ; rose again to show that if it was " appointed unto all 
 men once to die," it was not because fate and matter were 
 stronger than spirit, or because death was inevitable, but 
 simply because thus man broke out of fleshly garments into 
 a higher mode of existence. We see now that he finally 
 left his disciples, and ascended into heaven, to show them 
 that absence in the flesh is often only a greater nearness of 
 the spirit — that his power to enlighten, guide, animate, 
 and bless them — yes, to comfort and cheer them — was 
 greater as an unseen Saviour, sitting at the right hand of 
 God, than as a present incarnate Master, in whose bosom 
 John could lie, and into whose side and into the prints 
 of the nails Thomas could thrust his doubting fingers. 
 And what he promised he fully performed ! The Cruci- 
 fixion which darkened the heavens with its gloom, gave 
 way to the Resurrection, which not only broke Christ's 
 own tomb and the tombs of many saints, but slew the An- 
 gel of Death himself, leaving him only the mock dignity 
 of a name without reality, which let into the Apostles' 
 minds, and through them into the world, their first con- 
 ception of the utter spirituality of Christ's kingdom ; con- 
 verted them from Jews into Christians; indeed, began the 
 new era, and from ordinary fishermen created those glori- 
 
BELLOWS. 51 
 
 ous, sublime Apostles, whose teachings, character, deeds, 
 and sufferings built up the Church on the chief corner- 
 stone, and established our holy religion in the world. 
 
 And it was not only expedient for Jesus Christ to die, 
 that he might rise again clothed with his conquest over 
 the grave, his victory over the doubts and fears of his dis- 
 ciples, and the bold predictions and short triumph of his 
 murderers — but expedient for him, in his ascension, to go 
 away utterly from all bodily presence with his disciples 
 and followers, drawing their thoughts and affections after 
 him into the unseen world. Thus alone could Jesus keep 
 the minds and hearts of his disciples wide open and 
 stretched to the full compass of his spiritual religion — 
 keep them from closing in again with their narrow earthly 
 horizon — keep them from falling back into schemes of 
 worldly hope— from substituting fondness for and devotion 
 to his visible person, for that elevated, spiritual consecra- 
 tion to his spirit and his commandments, on which their 
 future high and holy influence depended. Jesus went 
 away, that the Christ might return to be the anointing, 
 and illumination, and Comforter of his disciples. His 
 nearest friends never knew him till he had wholly gone 
 away. They never loved him till he was beyond their 
 embraces. John, lying in his bosom, was not as near his 
 heart as thousands of his humblest disciples have been, who 
 have had Christ formed within them by communion with 
 his Holy Spirit. That going away created and inspired 
 the Apostles, who, under God and Christ, created and in- 
 spired the Church. Jesus shook off his Judaic, his local, 
 and his merely human character, and became the universal 
 Son of Man, the native of all countries, the contemporary 
 
52 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 of all times and eras, the ubiquitous companion and com- 
 mon Saviour. His death, his resurrection, his ascension, 
 rehearsed and symbolized the common and sublime des- 
 tiny of humanity. Man is mortal, and must die ; man is 
 immortal, and must rise again; man is a spirit, and must 
 quit the limitations of earth and sense, to dwell with God 
 in a world of spiritual realities. 
 
 Thus Jesus honored the flesh he took upon himself, and 
 the world he lived in ; honored by accepting the universal 
 lot of life and death. But at the same time that he hon- 
 ored our visible conditions and circumstances, he dis- 
 crowned them of their assumed sovereignty over us by 
 triumphing over the grave, and returning in the flesh to 
 life and to its duties and necessities, and then, finally, he 
 lifted man above not only the grave, but above time and 
 sense, matter and affairs, by ascending into the unseen 
 world, as into a more real state of existence, and promis- 
 ing from that invisible seat to conduct the triumph of his 
 Church, to visit and cheer the hearts of his disciples, and 
 to be with them until the end of the world, when his 
 kino-dom should come fullv, and God's will be done in 
 earth as in heaven. Then he would deliver the kingdom 
 up unto the father, that God might be all in all. 
 
 And has it not, indeed, been so ? The Comforter has 
 come ! He came to the Apostles, and wiped away their 
 doubts and fears, their personal ambitions, their Jewish 
 prejudices, their self-seeking and self-saving thoughts ! 
 For tongues that spake only the dialects of their local ex- 
 perience, it gives them tongues of fire, burning with an 
 eloquence intelligible in all lands and all ages. 
 
 And what but a Holy Spirit, a descending Saviour, 
 
BELLOWS. 53 
 
 taking of the things of God and showing them unto men, 
 has been the strength and salvation of human hearts from 
 that hour to this ? How has the Master's influence grown, 
 how mighty his consolations, how irresistible the inspira- 
 tions of his grace and truth ! Buried in catacombs, over- 
 whelmed with the wrath of mighty kings and princes, re- 
 sisted and withstood by all the pride of philosophers and 
 sages, protested by the vulgar senses and denied by the 
 coarse appetites of man — the holy faith, planted in Christ's 
 broken tomb, has withstood the rigors of every climate, 
 outlived the swords and axes that have turned their edge 
 against it, the hoofs of horses and the iron heels of mailed 
 hosts that have trampled it in the dust, been nourished by 
 the blood of the martyrs that died for its glory and de- 
 fence, and has overrun the very cities that slew its Apos- 
 tles, crossed oceans unknown to the empires that defiled or 
 despised it, become the glory and hope of a civilization, 
 known only by its name ! The Comforter indeed ! What 
 visible bodily master could visit every day the millions of 
 homes that the ascended Christ now takes in the daily 
 circuit of his divine walk \ And what lips could articu- 
 late the unspeakable wisdom he distills into lowly hearts 
 that feel, but can never tell, the joy and trust and truth 
 he imparts ? Ah ! the best part of the Gospel is that 
 Word which cannot be uttered, but which comes and abides 
 with the believing soul — that tender experience of a life 
 hidden with Christ in God, which it is no more given to 
 reveal in language, than it is given to describe the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love him ! Yes ! 
 on this holy Easter morning ! when the mild spring air is 
 full of God's quickening love, and the breeze goes whis- 
 pering in the ear of every dry root and quivering stalk, 
 
54 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the promise of a new life, a glorious resurrection, is there 
 not a winged but viewless Comforter, noiselessly fluttering 
 in at the windows of all Christian homes, and gently stir- 
 ring in the hearts that have inherited their fathers' faith, 
 the blessed assurance of God's eternal love ; of the soul's 
 superiority to time and sense, to death and hell ; of the 
 supporting presence of a Saviour's love and care, with all 
 the gracious invitations, encouragements, and comforts that 
 breathe from the Gospels, vital with the spirit and life, the 
 death and resurrection of him whose history they record ? 
 Can we read the New Testament to-day and feel that it is 
 only common print that we peruse ? Are Christ's living 
 words only remembered phrases ? or do we seem to hear 
 them spoken from heaven by him who is the Word of 
 God, and with a music and a meaning that all " the harp- 
 ers, harping witli their harps," could not intensity or 
 sweeten, making our souls burn within us as when of old 
 he walked and talked by the way, at Emmaus, with his 
 disciples ? 
 
 It is, dear brethren, the faith, and hope, and trust of 
 those inspired by the Comforter Jesus sent, that enables 
 us to confront without utter dismay the appalling visita- 
 tion that has just fallen with such terrible suddenness upon 
 the country and the national cause ! With a heart almost 
 withered, a brain almost paralyzed by the shock, I turn in 
 vain for consolation to any other than the Comforter. 
 Just as we were wreathing the laurels of our victories and 
 the chaplets of our peace in with the Easter flowers that 
 bloom around the empty sepulchre of our ascended Lord; 
 just as we were preparing the fit and luminous celebration 
 of a nation's joy in its providential deliverance from a 
 most bloody and costly war, and feeling that the Resur- 
 
BELLOWS. 55 
 
 rection of Christ was freshly and gloriously interpreted by 
 the rising of our smitten, humiliated, reviled, and crucified 
 country, buried in the distrust of foreign nations and the 
 intentions of rebel hearts ; a country rising from the tomb, 
 where she had left as discarded grave-clothes, the accursed 
 vestments of slavery that had poisoned, enfeebled, and 
 nearly destroyed her first life ; a country rising to a higher, 
 purer existence, under the guidance of a chief whom it 
 fondly thought sent from above to lead it cautiously, 
 wisely, conscientiously, successfully, like another Moses, 
 through the Red Sea into its promised land ; just then, at 
 the proud moment when the nation, its four years of con- 
 flict fully rounded, had announced its ability to diminish 
 its armaments, withdraw its call for troops and its restric- 
 tions on intercourse, comes as out of a clear heaven the 
 thunderbolt that pierces the tender, sacred head that we 
 were ready to crown with a nation's blessings, while trust- 
 ing to its wisdom and gentleness, its faithfulness and pru- 
 dence, the closing up of the country's wounds, and the 
 appareling of the nation, her armor laid aside, in the 
 white robes of peace. • 
 
 Our beloved President, who had enshrined himself not 
 merely in the confidence, the respect, and the gratitude of 
 the people, but in their very hearts, as their true friend, 
 adviser, representative, and brother; whom the nation 
 loved as much as it revered ; who had soothed our angry 
 impatience in this fearful struggle with his gentle modera- 
 tion and passionless calm ; who had been the head of the 
 nation, and not the chief of a successful party; and had 
 treated our enemies like rebellious children, and not as 
 foreign foes, providing even in their chastisement for 
 
56 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 mercy and penitent restoration ; our prudent, firm, hum- 
 ble, reverential, God-fearing President is dead ! 
 
 The assassin's hand has reached him who was belted 
 round with a nation's devotion, and whom a million sol- 
 diers have hitherto encircled with their watchful guardian- 
 ship. Panoplied in honesty and simplicity of purpose, too 
 universally well-disposed to believe in danger to himself, 
 free from ambition, self-consequence and show, he has 
 always shown a fearless heart, gone often to the front, 
 made himself accessible to all at home, trusted the people, 
 joined their amusements, answered their summons, and 
 laid himself open every day to the malice and murderous 
 chances of domestic foes. It seemed as if no man could 
 raise his hand against that meek ruler, or confront with 
 purpose of injury that loving eye, that sorrow-stricken 
 face, ploughed with care, and watchings, and tears. So 
 marked with upright, patient purposes of good to all, of 
 justice and mercy, of sagacious roundabout wisdom, was 
 his homely, paternal countenance, that I do not wonder 
 that his murderer killed him from behind, and could not 
 face the look that would have disarmed him in the very 
 moment of his criminal madness. 
 
 But he has gone ! Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
 United States during the most difficult, trying, and im- 
 portant period of the nation's history ; safe conductor of 
 our policy through a crisis such as no other people ever 
 had to pass ; successful summoner of a million and a quar- 
 ter of American citizens to arms in behalf of their flag and 
 their Union ; author of the Proclamation of Emancipation ; 
 the people's President ; the heir of "Washington's place at 
 the hearths and altars of the land ; the legitimate idol of 
 
BELLOWS. 57 
 
 the negro race ; the perfect type of American democracy ; 
 the astute adviser of our generals in the field ; the careful 
 student of their strategy, and their personal friend and in- 
 spirer ; the head of his Cabinet, prevailing, by the passion- 
 less simplicity of his integrity and unselfish patriotism, 
 over the larger experience, the more brilliant gifts, the 
 more vigorous purposes of his constitutional advisers ; a 
 President, indeed ; not the mere figure-head of the state, 
 but its helmsman and pilot ; shrinking from no perplexity, 
 magnanimous in self-accusation and in readiness to gather 
 into his own bosom the spears of rebuke aimed at his 
 counselors and agents ; the tireless servant of his place — 
 no duty so small and wearisome that he shirked it, none 
 so great and persistent that he sought to fling it upon 
 others; the man who, fully tried, (not without fitful 
 vacillations of public sentiment, which visited on him the 
 difficulties of the times and the situation), tried through 
 four years in which every quality of the man, the states- 
 man, the Christian, was tested ; in the face of a jeering 
 enemy, and foreign sneers, and domestic ribaldry, elected 
 again by overwhelming majorities to be their chief and 
 their representative during another term of office, in which 
 it was supposed even superior qualities and services would 
 be required to meet the nation's exigencies — this tried, 
 this honored, this beloved head of the Government and 
 the country is. alas ! suddenly snatched from us at the 
 moment of our greatest need and our greatest joy, and 
 taken up higher to his heavenly reward ! Thank God, he 
 knew how the nation loved and reverenced him ; his re- 
 election was the most solid proof of that which could pos- 
 sibly have been given. He had tasted, too, the negro's 
 
58 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 pious gratitude, and tearful, glorious affection ! He had 
 lived to give the order for ceasing our preparations for 
 war — an act almost equivalent to proclaiming peace ! He 
 had seen of the travail of his soul, and was satisfied. He 
 had done the work of a life in his first term of service ; 
 almost every clay of his second term, not forty days old, 
 had been marked with victories, until no good news could 
 have been received that would have much swelled his joy 
 and honest pride ! And now, as the typical figure, the 
 historic name of this great era, its glory rounded and full, 
 the Almighty Wisdom has seen fit to close the record, and 
 isolate the special work he has done, lest by any possible 
 mischance the flawless beauty and symmetric oneness of 
 the President's career should be impaired, its unique glory 
 compromised by after issues, or its special lustre mixed 
 with rays of another color, though it might be of an equal 
 splendor ! 
 
 The Past, at least, is secure ! Nothing can touch him 
 further. Standing the central form in the field of this 
 mighty, providential struggle, he fitly represents the 
 purity, calmness, justice, and mercy of the loyal Ameri- 
 can people ; their unconquered resolution to conquer 
 secession and break slavery in pieces ; their sober, solid 
 sense ; their religious confidence that God is on their side, 
 and their cause the cause of universal humanity ! Let us 
 be reconciled to the appointment which has released that 
 weighty and patient head, that pathetic, tender heart, that 
 worn and weary hand from the perplexing details of 
 national rehabilitation. Let the lesser, meaner cares and 
 anxieties of the country fall on other shoulders than those 
 which have borne up the pillars of the nation when shaken 
 with the earthquake. 
 
BELLOWS. 59 
 
 And seeing it is God who has afflicted us, who doeth all 
 things well, let us believe that it is expedient for us that 
 our beloved chief should go away. He goes, to consecrate 
 his work by flinging his life as well as his labors and his 
 conscience, into the nation's cause. He that has cheered 
 so many on to bloody sacrifice, found unexpected, surpris- 
 ing opportunity, to give also his own blood ! He died, as 
 truly as any warrior dies on the battle-field, in the nation's 
 service, and shed his blood for her sake ! It was the na- 
 tion that was aimed at by the bullet that stilled his aching 
 brain. As the representative of a cause, the type of a vic- 
 tory, he was singled out and slain ! His life and career 
 now have the martyr's palm added to the statesman's, phi- 
 lanthropist's, and patriot's crown. His place is sure in the 
 innermost shrine of his country's gratitude. His name 
 will match with Washington's, and go with it laden with 
 blessings down to the remotest posterity. 
 
 And may we not have needed this loss, in which we 
 gain a national martyr and an ascended leader, to in- 
 spire us from his heavenly seat, where with the other 
 father of his country he sits in glory, while they send 
 united benedictions and lessons of comfort and of guidance 
 down upon their common children — may we not have 
 needed this loss to sober our hearts in the midst of our 
 national triumph, lest in the excess of our joy and our 
 pride we should overstep the bounds of that prudence and 
 the limits of that earnest seriousness which our affairs de- 
 mand? We have stern and solemn duties yet to perform, 
 great and anxious tasks to achieve. We must not, after 
 ploughing the fields with the burning share of civil war, and 
 fertilizing them with the blood and bones of a half million 
 noble youth, lose the great harvest by wasting the short 
 
60 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 season of ingathering in festive joy at its promise and its 
 fulness ! We have, perhaps, been prematurely glad. In 
 the joy of seeing our haven in view we have been disposed 
 to slacken the cordage and let the sails flap idly, and the 
 hands go below, when the storm was not fairly over nor 
 all the breakers out of sight ! God has startled us, to ap- 
 prise us of our peril ; to warn us of possible mischances, 
 and to caution us how we abuse our confidence and over- 
 trust our enemy. I hope and pray that the nation may 
 feel itself, by the dreadful calamity that has befallen it, 
 summoned to its knees ; called to a still more pious sense 
 of its dependence, toned up to its duties, and compelled to 
 watch with the most eager patience the course of its gene- 
 rals, its statesmen, and its press. It cannot be for anything 
 short of the utmost importance, that the venerated and 
 beloved head of this people and his chief counselor and 
 companion have thus been brought low in an hour, one to 
 his very grave, the other to the gates of death ! 
 
 It would seem as if every element of tragic power and 
 pathos were fated to enter into this rebellion, and mark it 
 out forever as a warning to the world. It really began in 
 the Senate House, when the bludgeon of South Carolina 
 felled the State of Massachusetts and the honor of the 
 Union in the person of a brave and eloquent senator. The 
 shot at Fort Sumter was not so truly the fatal beginning 
 of the war as the blow in the Senate Chamber. That 
 -blow proclaimed the barbarism, the cruelty, the steal thi- 
 ness, the treachery, the recklessness of reason and justice, 
 the contempt of prudence and foresight which a hundred 
 years of legalized oppression and inhumanity had bred in 
 the South ! And now, that blow, deepened into thunder, 
 echoes from the head of the Chief Magistrate, as if slavery 
 
BELLOWS. 61 
 
 could not be dismissed forever, until her barbaric cruelty, 
 her reckless violence, her political blasphemy had illus- 
 trated itself upon the most conspicuous arena, under the 
 most damning lijrht and the most memorable and unfor- 
 getable circumstances in which crime was ever yet com- 
 mitted ! 
 
 And in the same hour that the thoughtful, meek, and 
 careworn head of the President was smitten to death, a 
 head that had sunk to its pillow for so many months full 
 of unembittered, gentle, conciliatory, yet anxious and 
 watchful thoughts — the neck on which that President had 
 leaned with an affectionate confidence that was half wo- 
 manly, during all his administration, was assailed with 
 the bowie-knife, which stands for Southern vengeance and 
 slavery's natural weapon ! The voice of the free ^North, 
 the tongue and throat of liberty, was fitly assailed, when 
 blavery and secession would exhibit her dying feat of ma- 
 lignant revenge. Through the channels of that neck had 
 flowed for thirty years the temperate, persistent, strong, 
 steady currents of this nation's resistance to the encroach- 
 ments of the slave power, of this people's aspirations for 
 release from the curse and the peril of a growing race of 
 slaves. That throat had voiced the nation's great argu- 
 ment in the Senate Chamber. The arm that had written 
 the great series of letters which defended the nation from 
 the schemes of foreign diplomatists, was already accident- 
 ally broken ; the jaw that had so eloquently moved was 
 dislocated too ; but slavery remembered the neck that 
 bowed not when most others were bent to her power ; re- 
 membered the throat that was vocal in her condemnation 
 when most others in public life were silent from policy or 
 
62 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 fear ; remembered the words of him who, more than any 
 man, slew her with his tongue ; and so her last assault was 
 upon the jugular veins of the Secretary of State. Her 
 bloodhounds sprang at the throat of him who had denied 
 their right and broken their power to spring at the neck 
 of the slave himself ! 
 
 But thus far, thank God, slavery is baffled in her last 
 effort. Mr. Seward lives to tell us what no man knows so 
 well — the terrible perils through which we have passed at 
 home and abroad ; lives to tell us the goodness, the wis- 
 dom, the piety of the President he was never weary of 
 praising. " He is the best man I ever knew," he said to 
 me, a year ago. What a eulogy from one so experienced, 
 so acute, so wise, so gentle ! Ah, brethren, the head of 
 the Government is gone ; but he who knew his counsels 
 and was his other self, still lives, and may God hear to-day 
 a nation's prayer for his life. 
 
 Meanwhile Heaven rejoices this Easter morning in the 
 resurrection of our lost leader, honored in the day of his 
 death ; dying on the anniversary of our Lord's great sacri- 
 fice, a miffhfy sacrifice himself for the sins of a whole 
 people. 
 
 We will not grudge him his release, or selfishly recall 
 him from his rest and his reward ! The only un pitied 
 object in this national tragedy, he treads to-day the courts 
 of light, radiant with the joy that even in Heaven cele- 
 brates our Saviour's resurrection from the dead ! The 
 sables we hang in our sanctuaries and streets have no 
 place where he is ! His hearse is plumed with a nation's 
 grief; his resurrection is hailed with the songs of revolu- 
 tionary patriots, of soldiers that have died for their coun- 
 
BELLOWS. 63 
 
 try. He, the commander-in-chief, has gone to his army 
 of the dead ! The patriot President has gone to our 
 Washington ! The meek and lowly Christian is to-day 
 with him who said on earth, " Come unto me, all ye that 
 labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest," and 
 who, rising to-day, fulfils his glorious words, " I am the 
 resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, though 
 he were dead, yet shall he live : and whoso liveth and 
 believeth in me shall never die." 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 KEY. STEPHEN" H. TYXG, D. D. 
 
 " And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, 
 shall I smite them ? shall I smite them ? And he answered, Thou shalt not 
 smite them. Wouldst thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with 
 thy sword and with thy bow ? Set bread and w r ater before them, that they 
 may eat and drink, and go to their master." — II Kixgs vi. 21, 
 
 The point of this story is very manifest. The principle 
 which it establishes is also very clear. The simple ques- 
 tion proposed to the prophet and answered by him was: 
 What shall be our treatment of an enemy subdued? One 
 class of sentiment demands, in the very language of man's 
 nature : " Shall I smite them ?" Another replies in the 
 spirit of the divine teaching: "Set bread and water before 
 them, and let them go." The combination of both would 
 be in the analogy of the divine administration. " Behold 
 the goodness and the severity of God." There are those 
 involved in every such crisis, the sparing of whom is false 
 to the true operation of mercy. There are those also, the 
 punishing of whom would be an avenging undue to justice. 
 
 Both mercy and justice derive their very nature and 
 power from a proportionate discernment. When man 
 describes either of them as blind and unlimited, he paints 
 them as arbitrary, tyrannical, and unreasoning. In a just 
 and equitable administration of government, whether dis- 
 
66 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 tributing its rewards or its penalties, there must be the 
 most accurate discerning of varied responsibility. The 
 leaders in crime should never be excused from the just 
 penalty of their offence. The subordinates — subjects of 
 relative influence, — victims of determined power, — often 
 more sinned against than sinning — are never to be dealt 
 with, — on the same plane of responsibility. For them, 
 mercy delights to rejoice against judgment, and the high- 
 est sovereignty may well display itself in the most complete 
 forgiveness. 
 
 In the story which lies before us now, four separate 
 facts are very remarkable, and to our purpose extremely 
 appropriate. I. The warfare was really against the God 
 of Israel. II. The power which prevailed was the provi- 
 dence of God. III. The victory attained was the gift of 
 God. TV. The resulting treatment of the captives was 
 the example of God. 
 
 These are very important propositions in any earthly 
 crisis. The field of their illustration was very limited in 
 the history of Israel. The extent of the field, however, 
 will not affect the propriety of their application. I deem 
 them remarkably applicable to our own national condition. 
 And as you require and expect me, on these occasions of 
 a nation's worship, to speak on the subjects of the nation's 
 interest, I shall freely speak of the elements and obliga- 
 tions of the present crisis. I assume these four propositions 
 as absolutely and minutely illustrated by our national 
 condition. 
 
 I. The warfare which this Southern rebellion has made 
 on our Government and nation, has been really a warfare 
 against God. Not Israel was more truly a nation divinely 
 
TYNG. 67 
 
 collected, divinely governed, divinely commissioned, di- 
 vinely prospered, than have been the United States of 
 America. It is no boastful nationalism, to say that this 
 nation, in its establishment and prosperity, was the last 
 hope in a weary world that man could ever on earth enjoy 
 a peaceful and protected liberty. This broad, unoccupied 
 continent, which God had reserved for its possession, was 
 the last open field of earth remaining on which to try the 
 grand experiment of a moral, social, intellectual advance- 
 ment of the peaceful poor of the human family. 
 
 Freedom, education, orderly government, secure posses- 
 sions, equal social rights, triumphant, stable law, universal 
 possibility and prospect of advancement, complete freedom 
 in man's personal relations to God, had been in all genera- 
 tions, and among all people, flying before the violence of 
 savage force and brutish selfishness. Here was the last 
 possible opening for their peaceful conquest. Here only 
 on earth could human welfare be attained, without the 
 violence of destructive revolutions and the overthrow of 
 nations in the confusion of war and blood. To make the 
 other three quarters of the globe free and happy, demanded 
 a process of previous destruction of reigning evil. To 
 make America free, happy, and prosperous, required only 
 that it should be settled in peace, prospered in liberty, and 
 hallowed in prayer. If it could thus be settled with plants 
 of renown, generations to come should gather from it the 
 fruits of paradise and glory. 
 
 The actual circumstances combining to make up the 
 history of the settlement of this nation, were so peculiarly 
 and remarkably an ordering and arrangement in divine 
 providence, that I will not waste your time, or trifle with 
 
68 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 your intelligence, by demonstrating in detail the fact, that 
 God had chosen this place and this people for a special 
 exhibition of his own wisdom and goodness in the govern- 
 ment of man, and for the accomplishment of great results 
 in human happiness, which had been nowhere else attained. 
 I should be ready to affirm that whoever warred with the 
 integrity, prosperity, and onward growth of this nation, 
 warred with the plans and purposes of God. 
 
 But the warfare through which we have now passed, 
 was organized expressly to overthrow the government and 
 integrity of the American nation, for the establishment of 
 local sectional sovereignties. It was avowed to be for the 
 arrest and destruction of the dominion of universal liberty, 
 and for the maintenance and perpetuation of American 
 slavery. It was to establish a perpetual degradation of 
 honorable labor and of the hard-toiling laboring classes, 
 by making the capital of wealth the owner of the labor of 
 poverty. It was to create and maintain a repulsive rival- 
 ship of distinct and contending peoples, in the place of one, 
 united, and mutually sustaining nation. It was to over- 
 turn the whole power which this nation was exercising as 
 a nation, to bless and exalt the earth, by breaking it up 
 into inferior and inefficient communities, an example of 
 good to none, a probable curse to all. 
 
 I cannot conceive of a warfare, in its inauguration and 
 purpose, more completely against the purposes and the 
 commands of the Most High. If we could imagine its 
 success in the accomplishment of these avowed purposes 
 of this rebellion, it would be impossible to calculate, in 
 human reasoning, the sorrows which it would have 
 brought upon a laboring earth. It would have been the 
 
TYNG. 69 
 
 success of savage, bloodthirsty hatred, over all the arts of 
 peace, and the employments and habits of patient and 
 civilized men. It would have been the triumph of murder 
 and cruelty, in spirit and habit, intensified by the pride 
 of power, over all the barriers of law and the restraints of 
 opinion. It would have been the overthrow of all the 
 efforts of Christian benevolence, in the mere hardihood of 
 selfish gain and acrid hostility. It would have been the 
 ruin of the Christian Church, with all its associations for 
 the spreading of the Gospel and honoring and establishing 
 the Word of God. It would have spread a desolation, 
 moral and physical, over this whole continent, devouring 
 the hopes of coming generations, and blasting the anticipa- 
 tions of future goodness and greatness to the children of 
 men. 
 
 The spirit, the mind, the heart of this rebellion have 
 been displayed in the long-continued sufferings of the 
 negro, — in the oppression and contempt of the poor 
 whites, — in the native love of bloodshed, which has 
 delighted in dueling and schooled itself in the skill of 
 murder, — in the foulness of lust, which has left its fruits 
 and marks in indelible monuments through the whole 
 Southern country. They have now displayed themselves 
 far more distinctly, but in an accordant manner, in the 
 unprecedented and incredible cruelties which have been 
 inflicted on our captive soldiers — deliberately planning the 
 murder of thousands perfectly helpless, and the objects 
 of pity to all other nations, by starvation, cruelty, and 
 neglect. The whole exhibition of that people, as a 
 people, has been so deeply, intensely wicked, that it was 
 incredible, and was not and could not be believed, that 
 
70 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 such a race of men, within the limits of outward civiliza- 
 tion, were to be found on earth. Their success would 
 have been the most shocking social desolation and 
 accumulated crime that the human race has ever seen. 
 
 But even all this has not aroused the public sentiment 
 of our nation to the conviction that we were really fight- 
 ing the battles of the Lord against the enemies of man. 
 And it has required this last ripened fruit of a demoniac 
 hatred, in the shocking murder of the President of the 
 Republic in the quietness of secure repose, and the cowardly 
 assassination of his cabinet minister in the helplessness of 
 a bed of sickness and suffering, long planned, encouraged 
 and urged in public papers as a deed of honor, to make 
 perfectly manifest that this whole warfare has been an 
 assault of the most violent of men upon all that was 
 orderly, conservative, and beneficent, in the gift of God 
 and in the enjoyment of mankind. And no unprejudiced 
 and impartial reader of history will hereafter, in his 
 survey of the whole period, hesitate to say : " Never was 
 there more clearly on earth an instance of that heavenly 
 war, when Michael and his angels fought against the 
 dragon, and Satan which deceiveth the whole world, was 
 cast out into the earth." 
 
 II. The power which has prevailed was the providence 
 of God. The whole survey of this contest past has been 
 a review of divine providence. The facts succeeding have 
 been successive steps in this remarkable development of 
 providence. The divine concealment of the real issue 
 from the body of our people at the commencement of the 
 struggle, was the opening line of this providence. How 
 few were willing to accept the thought, that thus God 
 
TYNG. 
 
 n 
 
 would overturn the giant wrong of human slavery ! How 
 few could look upon the apparently mad attempt of John 
 Brown, in the feeling that he was, after all, the Wickliffe 
 of the corning day — the morning star of a new reforma- 
 tion ! We did not justify him ; we do not, — we need not 
 justify him now. But we see him now as we dared not 
 believe him then, opening a battle in a single duel, which 
 should have no other end than the universal destruction 
 of the slavery of man. 
 
 We were then combining to contend for a Constitution 
 as it was. We asked no change. How few imagined that 
 we were to fight out its glorious amendment on the side 
 of liberty, until the signature of every State to its adop- 
 tion should be written in the blood of its noblest citizens 
 and youth ! We then pressed a compensated emancipa- 
 tion, and were ready to pay for it, at any conceivable 
 price. How few could imagine that the States involved 
 would madly refuse the offer, until God's peculiar plan 
 should be wrought out, to let his captives go, but not by 
 price or reward. 
 
 JVIost slowly did even that wisest man among us, who 
 has been the last great sacrifice upon the altar of liberty, 
 reach even a measure of willingness that the issue of 
 liberty should be in the war at all. And yet how persistently 
 did this great issue rise, as much by reproachful objections 
 against it, as by growing clearness of perception concern- 
 ing it, till at last South and North combined to see that 
 the one grand question for white and black, for bond and 
 free, was that which they called " the everlasting negro." 
 
 How completely hidden from our possible view was the 
 extent of time and suffering to which the war should 
 
72 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 reach ! Could all its demands have been calculated and 
 surveyed, how few would have been willing to embark 
 upon a sea so troubled and apparently so hopeless ! We 
 thought of thousands of precious lives. Who would have 
 dared to confront the certainty of a million? On the 
 one side was ample and long -planned preparation and 
 thought, adequate material, and the edge of united purpose 
 whetted to its utmost temper ; men that were prepared to 
 fight, and determined to fight, not in a question of local 
 liberty, but of universal conquest. On the other side was 
 the habit of good-natured yielding of every thing for 
 peace, a total want of preparation of material, a greater 
 want even of spirit and desire to enter upon the contest. 
 How gladly would they have made any concession and 
 accepted any compromise, before the grand determination 
 for the trial was wound up ! Years of defeat were in 
 store ; apparently certain divisions were prepared ; men's 
 hearts failed them when they looked at the things which 
 were coming ; and yet all that they saw or imagined was 
 but a mere toying with the great issue, when compared 
 with the approaching reality, which they did not see. 
 
 How wonderfully and unexpectedly was the union of 
 the North created, by the very assault on Sumter which 
 was to fire the Southern heart ! How few would have 
 believed that all the Southern calculation upon a divided 
 North, all the fears of mutual contests in our own streets, 
 were to be put to rest for ever in the mere process of the 
 controversy ! What a providence for us was that sudden 
 seizing of all forts and arsenals and public property, in 
 the incredible violence of mad earnestness, when a calm 
 and pretentious scheme of counsel would probably have 
 betrayed our giant power in its sleep. 
 
TYNG. 73 
 
 How graciously God lias all the time stimulated pur- 
 pose, and elevated faith, and new-created hope, by the 
 mere mortification of defeats ! How mercifully he has 
 trained us up to the national idea, that we are a people, 
 that we are one people, by scattering the blood of New- 
 England and the West, of the Middle and the South, of 
 the hill-tops and the shore, in one common sprinkling, 
 through the whole field of warfare ; burying the dead of 
 the whole land side by side, in far distant but fraternal 
 and equal cemeteries ; giving a title to every State, in 
 every soil, in this precious planting of their strength and 
 glory ; until at length we have come to rejoice in being 
 one people, under one ruler, — and in the one title, 
 American, we know no North, no South, no East, no 
 West ! How remarkable is that providence which has 
 given us a new currency, negotiable throughout the con- 
 tinent, founded upon the aggregate of the property of the 
 nation, and cherished and made certain by the very pride 
 of the people ; making that which is proverbially, in 
 social economy, the weakness of a nation, the very strength 
 of ours ! 
 
 What a providence was that which settled the question 
 of our iron-clads on the sea ! " Man had not designed or 
 intended it. Our authorities did not suspect the coming, 
 if they were aware even of the character of the Merrimac, 
 when she bore down upon our wooden fleet in the harbor of 
 Norfolk. No preparation had been made sufficient to meet 
 her. The Monitor, the only vessel in our whole navy that 
 was able to cope successfully with her terrible armament and 
 iron-plated sides, was considered of so little importance, that 
 when she steamed out of the port of New-York, on her trial 
 
74 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 trip, few were aware of her departure. She was not sent 
 to engage her powerful foe. On the contrary, while upon 
 her passage south, an order from the Navy Department 
 was sent to call her back. But God interposed. The 
 order was not permitted to be delivered. Winds and 
 storm were made the executors of his will. Her voyage 
 was retarded sufficiently to permit her antagonist to come 
 forth and display her character and power, but not suffi- 
 ciently to prevent her coming in time to save and defend 
 the nation's property and the nation's honor. At the very 
 moment when really needed, when most desired, and all 
 was apparently lost, she came to the rescue and secured a 
 glorious victory. It was a victory given of God." It 
 secured the succession of similar victories and the peren- 
 nial monuments of the skill and courage of American 
 naval warfare. 
 
 All these are lines of providence, — exalted, hidden, be- 
 yond our conception or arrangement. We might multiply 
 them almost indefinitely, for they cover the whole field of 
 observation. Every step which these Southern rebels have 
 taken, they have been fighting against a providence that 
 has been resistless, and have been compelled to defeat 
 themselves. They have fought for slavery as a divine in- 
 stitution, until they were compelled absurdly to promise 
 liberty to their slaves, if they would enlist and fight for 
 slavery with them. Emancipation was made the boon for 
 the black equally by the North and the South. They had 
 vast crops of cotton, which they laid up for Northern 
 armies to seize. They issued an unlimited order to plant 
 only for food, to cover their territory with corn, and thus 
 prepared the way for the support of Northern troops, in 
 
TYNG. 75 
 
 their glorious march through the whole length of the re- 
 belling territory. 
 
 They have lain in constrained idleness around Rich- 
 mond, until the gathering hosts from abroad were too 
 manifestly encircling them to permit a longer quiet. And 
 then Richmond must be evacuated, and their whole 
 armies, driven from their burrow, be made to surrender in 
 the field. These are wonderful providences of God. 
 
 Perhaps the last act of providence is the most remark- 
 able of all. They have combined for the murder of the 
 President and his cabinet, in the hope of creating an un- 
 expected anarchy of a nation without a ruler, and of in- 
 volving the nation, in the suddenness of its despair, in an 
 inextricable and hopeless revolution. But how God has 
 confounded the counsel of Ahithophel ! Satan was not 
 more deceived when he plunged the Jewish mob into the 
 murder of their Lord, than when, on this very commemo- 
 ration day of his crucifixion, he has aimed a traitor's bul- 
 let against the exalted ruler of this people. It .is a costly 
 sacrifice, indeed, to us, but the blessings which it will pur- 
 chase may be well worth the price. It has demonstrated 
 the spirit and fruit of this rebellion. It has made it ab- 
 horrent and hateful in the eyes of the whole nation. It 
 has cut up all partial, trifling dealing with it by the roots. 
 It has introduced a ruler whose stern experience of South- 
 ern wickedness will cut off all pleas of leniency to the base 
 destroyers of their country. It has cemented for ever the 
 national union and spirit of this people, by making the 
 man whom they most loved and honored the last great 
 sacrifice for the liberty and order of the people. And just 
 as the murder of Charles the First has been the one grand 
 
76 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 support of the English throne for two centuries, has made 
 rebellion inconceivably hateful to the loyal mind, and 
 warned off generations of Englishmen from all approaches 
 to rebellion, so will the murder of Mr. Lincoln sanctify 
 the right and power of Government, and make rebellion 
 for ever hateful to the American nation. 
 
 If there be this day a single fact which especially 
 strengthens the royal house and government of England, 
 it is the unrighteous murder of the first Charles. The 
 severed head of a Stuart is the foundation stone beneath 
 the throne of Britain and Victoria. And if there be one 
 fact of providence which hereafter will especially conse- 
 crate the right of national authority, and overwhelm the 
 first suggestion of secession or treason, it will be this mur- 
 der of the man whom all history will acknowledge the 
 wisest, purest, greatest, best of American rulers ; if not 
 the Father of his country, at least the loved brother of all 
 his people, and the friend and defender of the poorest and 
 lowest of all its generations. Thus has providence tri- 
 umphed over our enemies and given us the victory. 
 
 III. The victory is the gift of God. This is so clear in 
 fact, and so clearly a consequence of the series of facts 
 which we have already considered, that I need not illus- 
 trate it in minute detail. The time is too recent for our 
 forgetfulness of any of the great distinguishing facts which 
 have marked this warfare, or to permit us to arrogate the 
 honor to our own skill and power alone. It is impossible 
 to forget the gloomy aspect of the first years of this strug- 
 gle — when at the East we were for a time severed from 
 all communication with the national capital, — and in the 
 West, all the states watered by the Mississippi up to the 
 
TYNG. 77 
 
 Ohio, and higher on the western side, were held and forti- 
 fied by the rebellion. It is impossible to forget the sad- 
 ness of defeat after defeat in Virginia ; the inaction and 
 unwillingness, on the part of some of our leaders, to act 
 in positive aggression against this Southern power, so con- 
 spicuously exalted, so defiant, so boastful, so encouraged 
 from abroad ; the threatening aspect of the Border States, 
 as they were called ; the bold threats of the leaders of the 
 rebellion, of the devastation and ruin they were to bring 
 upon this Northern land. 
 
 It is impossible to undervalue the courage, the union, 
 the determination, the spirit with which these Southern 
 rebels were inspired and sustained in their infuriated pur- 
 pose. It is impossible to forget the devout humbleness of 
 spirit with which our beloved and exalted President called 
 the thoughts and dependence of the people, like some 
 ancient ruler in the Theocracy, back to God. And when 
 in the opening of the second year General Grant com- 
 menced his victorious career in the West, — and Donelson, 
 and Pittsburgh Landing, and Yicksburgh, were rapid 
 fruits of his valor, wisdom, and fidelity ; and Dupont 
 made his great opening on the coast of South Carolina; 
 and Burnside effected his permanent lodgment on the in- 
 land shore of North Carolina; and the noble Farragut 
 opened the Mississippi to New Orleans, meeting in his up- 
 ward ascent the fleets which came down from the waters 
 above: and Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland, 
 were all recovered to a permanent Union ; and Antietam 
 and Gettysburgh were the remarkable tokens of divine 
 protection within the limits of our own eastern soil ; it was 
 impossible not to discern the hand of God, giving victory 
 
78 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 from the very hour that the war was acknowledged to be 
 a war for liberty as well as order, — and for the deliverance 
 of the oppressed, as truly as for the conserving of the pros- 
 perous and peaceful. 
 
 Accordingly, again and again did our exalted and be- 
 lieving President issue his proclamations of thanksgiving, 
 sounding the appeal in the ears of the whole nation, — Oh ! 
 give thanks unto the Lord, who maketh us to triumph 
 over our enemies. But later victories are even more re- 
 markable. The rapid campaign of Sherman, and the 
 quiet imperturbable wisdom, faith, and purpose of General 
 Grant, in the combination of all his varied concentrating 
 forces, — in his calm endurance, — in his modest self-abne- 
 gation, in his fidelity to duty, and success in duty, have 
 no parallel in the greatness of character which they sever- 
 ally manifest, in human history. All these displays, 
 though grand in themselves, are but a part of the one 
 wonderful divine scheme. All talent, calculation, courage, 
 and force opposed to them, seem to have been paralyzed 
 and made useless. And as I survey the whole scene, thus 
 rapidly noted, I should hold myself an infidel in spirit, 
 not to say, It is God alone who giveth us the victory. 
 
 But I deem all these displays inferior and secondary. 
 The moral greatness of the President, — his meekness, — 
 his faith, — his gentleness, — his patience, — his self-posses- 
 sion, — his love of the people, — his confidence in the 
 people, — his higher confidence in God, — his generous 
 temper never provoked, — his love fearing no evil, pro- 
 voking no evil, — are such an elevation of human character, 
 such an appropriate supply for our very want, that I can- 
 not but adore the power of that God, whose inspiration 
 
TYNG. 79 
 
 giveth man wisdom, as the one author of this gift, bringing 
 an unknown, a reproached, a despised man, to reveal a 
 greatness of ability, and a dignity of appropriation, which 
 surrounding men had not suspected, which shone too 
 purely and too beautifully to be envied or hated by any, — 
 and which have at last commanded universal confidence 
 and homage from those who had never united to sustain 
 him. 
 
 Yet the divine interposition does not leave the field even 
 here. The creation of the wonderful spirit f nd reach of 
 human beneficence and ministration, which we have seen 
 in the midst of this war, and by this war, and for this war, 
 throughout our country, is even a higher demonstration 
 of the divine presence and power. The calling forth of the 
 Sanitary and Christian Commissions, like the father and 
 mother of the household, in their separate relationships 
 and responsibility — the one striving for material provision, 
 the other ministering the words and acts of kindness and 
 love to those made the objects of their protection ; the 
 creating of the Freedmen's Commission, to search and 
 care for the poor outcasts, for whom nothing was pro- 
 vided, — the prompting of the Union Commission, to min- 
 ister to the wants of those whom rebellion had stripped, 
 and rendered homeless and destitute, for whom no other 
 protection seemed prepared, — the starting forth of Homes 
 for Disabled Soldiers, and the orphans of soldiers, and the 
 millions of dollars given by a people heavily taxed and 
 burdened by all the cost of defending their liberty and 
 their nation, for the grand and glorious purpose of minister- 
 ing increased comfort to their varied objects of spon- 
 taneous consideration and sympathy, — displaying a love, 
 
80 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 and tenderness, and purpose, which have grown brighter 
 in the midst of the very sorrows which have filled every 
 house and heart, — have been such a divine display of 
 God's interposition, as nothing on earth beside has 
 equaled. 
 
 How strangely contrasted has all this divine teaching and 
 guidance appeared with the recklessness of life and comfort 
 which have marked the history of the agents of this rebel- 
 lion 1 How most highly contrasted in the different relations 
 adopted toward the prisoners of war ! No cruelty to our 
 prisoners in Southern hands could move our Government 
 to a bitter retaliation. Even though sometimes an occa- 
 sional excitement of acerbity among the people, excessively 
 provoked by the tales of suffering which they heard, has 
 demanded some retaliation, the President could never be 
 brought to be the agent of revenge or cruelty ; and the 
 general sentiment of this people would never have con- 
 sented to it as a principle of national rule. That God, 
 who has given them the victory in the line of their fidelity 
 to himself, would have vindicated his own honor in their 
 humiliation if they had laid such unhallowed hands upon 
 the ark of God. And now all this survey is of a finished 
 work. God hath given us the victery. And there re- 
 mains as the one absorbing thought that which is our 
 fourth point, — 
 
 IV. The resulting treatment of the captives in the 
 Lord's example : " My father, shall I smite them ? Shall 
 I smite them ?" " Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldst 
 thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy 
 sword, and with thy bow? Set bread and water before 
 them, that they may eat and drink, and let them go/' 
 
TYNG. 81 
 
 The carrying out of this resuscitating plan seemed emi- 
 nently adapted to the mind and heart of President Lincoln. 
 But too great personal honor and influence it is not the 
 will of God to entrust to individual men. When Moses 
 came to the entrance upon the Land of Promise, he was 
 permitted, by faith enlightened, to see something of its 
 glory. But he was not personally to minister in its settle- 
 ment or distribution. He beheld the glowing future 
 spread before his people, and laid down in the land of Moab 
 to die. 
 
 So our beloved leader has been allowed to live until, as 
 from Pisgah's height, he could contemplate the fast ap- 
 proaching future for his nation. He saw the enemy sub- 
 dued, their strongholds taken, their army scattered every 
 man to his home, and the sure prospect of union, liberty, 
 and peace before the nation. The one remaining question 
 was, What shall be done with those whom God has thus 
 subdued ? The generosity of his spirit and wish, his read- 
 iness to give the utmost possible latitude to mercy in the 
 arrangement of their return to national duty and penitent 
 loyalty, were perfectly understood and known. All this 
 future he was calmly, kindly considering, when his life 
 was taken from him by the hand of violence. We shall 
 not withhold our lament that death found him in the sanc- 
 tioning by his presence of the demoralizing influence of 
 the theatre, unwillingly as he evidently went there. That 
 he should have been slain in a Moab like this, can never 
 be anything but a sorrow to every serious mind. The full 
 purpose of that providence we do not yet read. This 
 death, like the burning of the Richmond theatre, many 
 years since, may awaken a feeling of increased horroi and 
 
82 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 aversion to the seductive influence of the theatre through- 
 out our religious community, and may thus be a blessing 
 in the divine providence to arise from this sad incident in 
 his departure. 
 
 But he has gone before the settlement, and without the 
 settlement of this great problem of the coming influence 
 and relation of his administration. That his death will 
 change in some degree the character and measure of that 
 influence cannot be doubted. That a restriction si i all 
 come as the consequence of his death upon the freeness of 
 the action of mercy to the conquered is most natural and 
 just. Human law knows no crime greater in its malig- 
 nity, or in its effects, than the murder of the ruler of a 
 nation, the final, heaviest guilt of treason against its 
 authority. That others, whose influence and example 
 have nourished this spirit, whose words and avowals have 
 often before encouraged and incited it, shall be held respon- 
 sible for it, is inevitable and just. And our Government 
 owe it to the majesty of the nation, and to the authority 
 of God, which they represent, not to allow such an abhor- 
 rent violation of human authority and safety to pass with- 
 out a very clear and distinct retribution upon the guilty 
 inciters and accessories in such a crime. 
 
 Still, let not a spirit of individual vengeance be allowed 
 to rear the monument to our fallen head. Let not passion 
 seize the reins of guidance in an hour so momentous. Let 
 the widest possible door be oj^ened for the exercise of kind- 
 ness, and the utterance of welcome to those who honestly 
 desire to return to their loyalty and duty to the nation 
 which they have outraged, and the Government which 
 they have insulted and despised. The intelligent leaders 
 
TYNG. 83 
 
 in this rebellion deserve no pitj from any human being. 
 Let them go. Some other land must be their home. Their 
 own attained relations and results will be punishment and 
 sorrow enough in time to come. Their property is justly 
 forfeited to the nation which they have attempted to 
 destroy, and to the oppressed, over whom they have tyran- 
 nized and triumphed. If the just utterance of law con- 
 demns them personally to suffer as traitors, let no life be 
 taken in the spirit of vengeance. Let the world see one 
 instance of a Government that is great enough to ask no 
 revenge, and self-confident and self-sustaining enough to 
 need no retributive violence to maintain the majesty of its 
 authority. Let the Lord's own example be, to the utmost 
 extent of personal relations, our rule and purpose, deter- 
 mined in the spirit of union and patience and kindness, to 
 edify and restore, in the widest possible application of the 
 spirit, consistent with the nation's safety and the honor of 
 the laws, — the multitudes who have been swept down the 
 current of rebellion, by the dominant influence and ex- 
 ample of those whom they have been taught to regard as 
 their leaders in the path of public duty. 
 
 There may be great difficulties in the details of the re- 
 suscitation of our afflicted land. But there can be none 
 which such a spirit and purpose as were displayed in Pres- 
 ident Lincoln would not soon overcome and remove. And 
 upon nothing will memory more delight to dwell than 
 upon that high forgiving temper which lifts up a fallen 
 foe, restores a wandering brother, and repays the cruelty 
 of hatred by an overcoming benignity and love. Little 
 was he known in character and tendency by those who 
 met his first administration with violent threats, and re- 
 
84 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 proachful libels. And little has the real spirit of this 
 Northern people been known by the great body of the 
 South, who really know but little upon any subject, but 
 as their accredited superiors have been accustomed to 
 teach them. They have heard from their highest rebel 
 officers nothing but terms of low and ribaldrous reproach 
 and scorn applied to us. They have called us hyenas, and 
 satisfied their hatred by the freedom of unlimited abuse. 
 But in reality there has never been a time when this whole 
 Northern people have not been ready to meet the first 
 offer of conciliation with the most cordial response of 
 kindness. Let that spirit now prevail. Open the arms 
 of fraternal concord. Spread through all the land the 
 priceless blessings of liberty and education to all the peo- 
 ple. Give the full rights of respected and acknowledged 
 citizenship to all. Blot out, cover up thje last remnant of 
 that slavery which has been the parent and the child of 
 every species of oppression — the one line of division be- 
 tween a free North and a beggared South — and plant 
 around the grave that holds the monument and the me- 
 mory of our beloved President a mingled grove of the 
 pine-tree and the palm, the orange and the apple, to flour- 
 ish in immortal union, and to rival each other only in the 
 beauty of their growth, the abundance of their fruit, and 
 the perennial verdure of their living foliage, that God may 
 be glorified in all and by all for ever. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 REV CHARLES S. ROBINSON. 
 
 He was a good man, and a just. — Luke xxiii. 50. 
 
 One other Sabbath like this I remember, and only one ; 
 that of which this is the exact anniversary, four years ago. 
 What humiliated the nation then is now measurably rec- 
 tified. The ensign of our country floats once more on 
 the ramparts from which it had just been torn by the 
 fierce hand of treason. The same batteries that hurled 
 shot and shell at the fortress, whose name has become 
 historic, have been forced to pour forth their empty salutes 
 in honor of the restoration. And the proclamation is 
 already in the air, which was to summon a grateful 
 Republic to a thanksgiving for the manifold mercy of 
 Almighty God. 
 
 Right in the midst of our rejoicing we are dashed into 
 sorrow deeper than ever. To-day it is not the humbling 
 of pur pride that makes us mourn, but the wounding of 
 our hearts in their keenest sensibilities. For he who has 
 been our leader lies low in his coffin ; foul murder has 
 been clone at the capital ; andtf ^lation stands hushed in 
 the presence of its unburied^j W 
 
 Have the old days of barbarism returned u^Hn us ? Is 
 
86 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 assassination become civilized ? Has the bullet of a mur- 
 derer recognition as a belligerent right ? In what age do 
 we live ? Is justice dead ? Where are we ? How hap- 
 pens it that the wires quiver with tidings of deeds worthy 
 only of the darkest years of Yenetian conspiracy and 
 shame ? 
 
 I said, we have got the flag back again on Sumter. So 
 we have. But only at half-mast. It reached the staff 
 just in time to droop. Men began to cheer — suddenly 
 they turned to wailing. The triumph seems a mockery. 
 Victory waits recognition unheeded, for the bells are 
 tolling. He who made our success welcome is not here to 
 share it. Abraham Lincoln, the honored and beloved 
 head of the nation, is no more ! 
 
 My brethren, bear me record here to-day. This pulpit 
 has never uttered one timid, troubled word in these four 
 years. I have not lost heart for a moment in the essential 
 righteousness of our cause, nor confidence in the final 
 success that would come to it. You will misunderstand 
 my language now, and mistake my temper," if you imagine 
 I am cowed into any wavering, startled into any irresolu- 
 tion, or grieved into any distrust, by the terrible events of 
 the hour. But I shall not attempt to conceal from you 
 that I am shocked more than ever before, and under the 
 cloud of God's providence as I never expected to be. I do 
 not know the meaning of this awful transaction. I could 
 almost wish it was the custom to wear sackcloth, and put 
 ashes on mourners' heads. All the day would I fittingly 
 sit silent under the shj^M|uf a common grief with you. 
 I speak truly when I n . wave met no greater sorrow in 
 my manljKife than this. ~""I behave myself as though he 
 
ROBIXSON. 87 
 
 had been my friend or brother ; I bow down heavily, as 
 one that monrneth for his mother." And all this sensibil- 
 ity I know von are sharing with me. 
 
 The feeling which rests on each mind and heart to-day 
 is not a simple feeling. To us all it is, in some measure, 
 undefined. I cannot be of any real help to you, I fear, 
 save in the way of giving you an analysis of your grief, 
 and suggesting the form of its expression. 
 
 I. — Let me say, then, that in this complex mourning of 
 heart, is found, first of all, our admiration of that great 
 man's character, whose sudden death has saddened the 
 entire nation. Surely, you will not need that I enter into 
 argument to prove that these words of the text that I have 
 chosen, applied to the counselor from Arimathea in the 
 inspired record, are most fitting when applied to our late 
 Chief Magistrate. 
 
 He was " a good man." Called by the great voice of 
 the American people to leave his rural home, and assume 
 the highest honors it could confer, his parting request to 
 his old friends and neighbors was only for their continuous 
 prayers. With the sincerest humility, he accepted his 
 place as the minister of the nation, and the servant of God. 
 He had no higher ambition than to know his duty and 
 perform it. He felt himself swept out into the current of 
 a purpose, as majestic in grandeur as it was celestial in 
 origin ; the sublime purpose of Him to whom nations be- 
 long, to care for this western Republic in the hour of its 
 manifest peril. From that day to this, he has never 
 swerved from the line of his integrity. jSo man has ever 
 been maligned as he has ; no man has ever outlived abuse 
 as he has. "When the nation shall have laid his remains 
 
88 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 in the burial yard of the village where he lived, there 
 will never be heard a hiss by his tombstone, there will be no 
 trail of any serpent across his grave. Even now we have 
 hardly ceased to hear the dignified tones of his voice, 
 wonderfully pathetic, almost prophetic, as he told us, in 
 the second inaugural address, of the simplicity of his faith, 
 the humility of his estimate of himself, and his profound 
 reliance upon the infinite God. 
 
 He was a "just" man. Through all these years it has 
 been touching to notice how implicitly the true-hearted 
 believed Abraham Lincoln to be true. The mean hirelings 
 of place, and the mere parasites of office, kept out of his 
 way. The demagogues and partisans grew passionate 
 over his perversity to their principles, and called him an 
 impracticable leader, because of his steadfast loyalty to 
 truth and fairness as between man and man. When one 
 received injustice, and could not, in the confusion of the 
 times, make his righteousness appear, how instinctively 
 he thought of the President, and knew, if he could only 
 have a hearing from him, all would be well. When mili- 
 tary commanders failed, and popular clamor was raised 
 under the dangerous disappointment, calmly and gen- 
 erously the good man waited until they should make 
 another trial. He stood true to those who were seeking 
 to undermine his power, with a magnanimity sublime. Oh, 
 the patience of that great, kind heart, in the days when it 
 cost something to be considerate ! And now, after the 
 smoke has cleared away from two political battle-fields, 
 fought more savagely than any other such in our history, 
 there comes to view no one act of his at which a citizen 
 will blush. His sun went down while to us it yet seemed 
 
ROBINSON. 89 
 
 day ; but at the evening time it was light. He died at the 
 height of his fame. All rancor of party has disappeared. 
 The clouds that dimmed his noon gather now, at the twi- 
 light, to glow* in his praise. 
 
 So much, then, is true ; " he was a good man, and a 
 just." But there is a question, which our intelligent 
 Bible-reading people are wont to ask, when any one of 
 their great men dies — was he a Christian man % There is 
 no reason why we should turn away, unanswered, an 
 inquiry like this. It is not an impertinent and obtrusive 
 investigation of his interior life. He made no mystery of 
 his faith. His own tale of his religious experience is 
 something like this — coining in more than one way, and 
 attested with more than one witness : 
 
 " When I left Springfield, I felt my utter dependence 
 upon God. The responsibility weighed heavily upon my 
 heart. I knew I should fail without a divine help. But 
 I was not then a Christian. When my child died, I felt 
 that I needed the comfort of the Gospel. It was the 
 severest affliction that ever fell upon me. Then I wanted 
 to be a Christian. But never did I feel that I reached 
 the point, till I wandered one day, alone, among the graves 
 of the boys that fell at Gettysburg. There, when I read 
 the inscriptions, so full of hope and faith, I began to think 
 I loved and trusted Jesus as my Saviour." 
 
 Thus, our image of this humble, noble man, rises on 
 our vision complete. Gifted with great intellectual power; 
 proverbial for his rectitude ; bearing " honest " for his 
 title as Aristides bore " just " for his ; affectionate, with 
 all the instincts of common humanity, even to the lowest ; 
 
90 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 fearless and brave; he added tile crowning grace to Lis 
 memory with his unaffected piety as a Christian, 
 
 II. — For all this the nation mourns his loss. But I am 
 not mistaken in believing there is an element in our sor- 
 row here to-day, far more subtle and experimental than 
 mere admiration of his spotless character. There is, in 
 the second place, a feeling of personal bereavement. 
 Singularly identified with us all has this man come to be. 
 Test your heart now. Tell me, of all the leaders in civil 
 life, of all the commanders in the field, who has the hold 
 upon your manly affections that this great-hearted man of 
 the people had ? Your ideal of him was like that of a 
 relative — one of your household. Never, till the hand of 
 an assassin struck him, did you know how dear he was. 
 I see, in all this, that which makes me happy and hopeful ; 
 here is a token of the infinite capacities of tenderness in 
 the spirit of the American people. 
 
 I think, to-day, as the fearful news is flashed across the 
 land, of the families that live in the valleys, and among 
 the hills, and over the prairies, to some member of which 
 he has been kind, and so has endeared himself to all. 
 How they will weep as for a brother beloved ! Village 
 bells are knelling all over the continent. A great hand 
 waved darkly across the landscape, and swooped the 
 banners down from exultation into grief. Oh, we have 
 never known how many letters his own pen has written to 
 bereaved wives and mourning mothers ! When news of 
 a terrible death in many an inconspicuous household was 
 to be communicated, the President of the United States 
 took time, from his few hours of privacy, to send an epistle, 
 so generous, so full of grateful sympathy, so gentle and 
 
ROBINSON. 91 
 
 appreciative, that tlie wounded hearts felt soothed, and 
 bore the bereavement without breaking. He knew how 
 to say kind things so well, and loved to say them ! 
 
 I think of the soldiers, also, whose interests he watched 
 like a jealous parent. In these trying times of partisan- 
 ship and confusion there was always a likelihood of haste, 
 and consequent injustice, in the administration of military 
 tribunals. Many a man, innocent of alleged inadvertence 
 or crime, was unable to show it, and so was in peril of 
 shame or death. Patiently that busy President studied 
 out complicated accounts ; bent all his legal ability to the 
 investigation of contradictory testimony ; read the ' long, 
 tedious documents on either side ; simply determined that 
 every man should get his due ; and then, beyond that, as 
 much leniency as was safe to give him. How the soldiers 
 loved him ! They are telling to each other, this very day, 
 stories of his kindness to them. Only last week he spent 
 the day that remained to him in Richmond, going through 
 the wards of the hospitals, saluting, with his warm-hearted 
 grasp, each wounded hero in turn ; and, when they had 
 no hands to offer, he laid his big palm on their foreheads, 
 and thanked them in the name of the country ! 
 
 I think, more than all, of the poor freedmen, when they 
 hear of the President's death. How they will wonder and 
 will wail ! They called him " Father," as if it were part of 
 his name. Oh, they believed in Abraham Lincoln ! They 
 expected him, as the Israelites did Moses. Some, no doubt, 
 imagined he was a deity. They were unsophisticated and 
 ignorant, and that good, kind man seemed so like a being 
 from heaven. They said he would come. They prayed he 
 would come. They waited for him to come. And then he 
 
92 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 came ! When those untutored sons of slavery saw him 
 in the streets of the rebel capital, after its capture, they 
 fairly blasphemed, without being aware of it. He seemed 
 to them and their children a second Messiah. He never 
 broke a promise to their hope. When they were certain 
 he had uttered one word, they rested on it, as they would 
 on God's. He stood by the poor creatures his hand had 
 freed, under all obloquy and suspicion. He put his signa- 
 ture to a parchment that made them men and women 
 with souls and bodies. Then the enfranchised millions 
 opened their very souls to him, as if out under the sun- 
 shine. His name was a spell to quiet or to rouse them. 
 What will they do, now he is dead ! Alas ! alas ! for the 
 weeping and the wonder they will have, when they know 
 how he died ! 
 
 Thus, we all weep together. Christian resignation 
 oilers its high consolations, and we have no spirit of 
 murmuring or complaint. Yet none of us will deny that 
 this is the severest blow, which, as a great people, we 
 have ever received. The nation has, twice before, lost its 
 Chief Magistrate by death ; but there has been no mourn- 
 ing like this to-day. 
 
 III. — A third element in our grief, under this afflictive 
 dispensation of Providence, is the fear of impending 
 calamity. It is impossible to free our minds of the deepest 
 solicitude for the future. Alas ! we say, for the nation 
 bereaved of its pilot, when out in the midst of such a sea 
 as this ! Palinurus has been suddenly swept, by a wave, 
 from the helm. 
 
 I suppose this anxiety is natural; and yet, I am sure, it 
 is needless. Difficult questions are coming up. Tlu* 
 
ROBINSON. 93 
 
 practical wisdom of our recognized leader was cutting 
 knots which men's perversity kept tying. We trusted 
 him. We were knitting ourselves together in closer con- 
 tidence in his decisions. That shrewd, native judgment, 
 that clear-sighted penetration, that incorruptible integrity 
 — oh, how we used to throw ourselves back upon qualities 
 like these, and feel secure ! We found fault with him 
 more than once ; but, eventually, he was justified in his 
 course. We said he was slow ; but he went as fast as 
 God did. He reasoned with logic that events taught him. 
 We were inordinately cast down under defeat ; he kept 
 us cheerful. We grew boisterous under victory ; he was 
 calm himself, but glad to have us so happy. He was 
 never disheartened, never unduly elated. When he failed, 
 he became humbler; when he succeeded, he thanked God. 
 When the way was open, he was as alert as anybody; 
 when the way was hedged up, he was strong enough to sit 
 still. By and by we learned to know him well and rest 
 in him sublimely. Meantime he urged us to look beyond 
 him. He made us devout. Put a man on the busiest 
 street-corner, and let him keep looking upward, and he 
 will gather a crowd that will all be looking upward, So 
 our President gave unaffected praise to God, until we all 
 began to sing with him. Spectacles like these, which 
 have been witnessed daily, have never been known in this 
 land before ; Mammon has learned the doxologies belong- 
 ing to God. 
 
 When such a leader is taken suddenly away, there is 
 nothing unphilosophical in the feeling of utter dismay and 
 apprehension that men are apt to experience. But, in our 
 case, all this is needless. My brethren, I commend to 
 
94 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 your calm consideration, one solemn thought, concerning 
 the lessons of all history. Men are nothing but instru- 
 ments in the hands of their Maker, in working out his 
 purposes. Just as a sculptor needs now a chisel, now a 
 file, now a graver, and never thinks he must apologize or 
 explain to us, who stand by to watch him, why he drops 
 one tool or takes up another; for he is making a statue, 
 which he intends for a worthy immortality, — so the all- 
 wise God, carrying out his vast plans, assumes one man 
 and lays aside another, and never answers any of our curi- 
 ous questions, while his " eternal Thought moves on his 
 undisturbed affairs." We are to blame seriously, if we 
 allow ourselves to be depressed with forebodings. God's 
 rule, in all this four years' war, has been, to bring to 
 naught the things that are, not by the things that are, but 
 by the things that are not. We have lived under the un- 
 varying discipline of surprise. By this time we ought to 
 have learned our lesson. 
 
 With courage undiminished, therefore, let us believe 
 that God w T ill fit this coming man for the duties of his un- 
 expected office. Be on the alert now for the discovery of 
 some new purpose. The infinite plans of the Almighty 
 are shifting their phase for some disclosure that will re- 
 lieve our embarrassment. It is expedient that even such 
 offences as these should come. There can be no doubt 
 that God means to make good out of this evil. And the 
 question is this: Will you and I be quiet in all the pain 
 of our bereavement, if we are only sure that the event 
 will be overruled to the benefit of the cause, the race, the 
 nation ? Will we accept the counsel of Caiaphas as pos- 
 sibly adapted to our crisis: "Ye know nothing at all; 
 
ROBINSON. 95 
 
 nor consider that it is expedient that one man should die 
 for the people, and that the whole nation perish not '?" 
 Perhaps, in this very alarm for the future, there will be 
 found a healthier spirit for us all. 
 
 IV. — For, in the fourth place, I remark, we find, as an 
 element in our mourning to-day, a deep-seated indignation 
 at the horrible crime which has been committed. Hu- 
 manity sickens and shudders at the diabolical ingenuity, 
 the malignant hatred, of this culminating act of the rebel- 
 lion. If there ever was a time in which to obey the com- 
 mand, " Be ye angry, and sin not," that time has come 
 now. "There was no such deed done nor seen from the 
 day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of 
 Egypt unto this clay ; consider of it, take advice, and 
 speak your minds." 
 
 Let a vast public sentiment be aroused and organized, 
 that shall exhibit this vile wickedness in its true light. 
 Let us invoke Christendom to make it an eternal hissing. 
 With a recoil of feeling so violent that it wearies my will, 
 and shocks my very being, with uttermost loathing for an 
 offence so abominable ; seeing in it that keen, fine relish 
 of depravity that marks it not only as devilish, but one of 
 the master-works of the prince of devils, I stand simply 
 appalled — wondering, with unspeakable wonder, how it 
 can be accepted by any creature wearing the form of 
 civilized humanity! It is an outrage on the community, 
 whose tolerance it defies. It is an insult to decency, a 
 rebuke to forbearance, an offence unto God. It is without 
 the power of language to reach the condemnation it merits. 
 The words of denunciation die on my lips in their own 
 feebleness. It is with an affecting sense of gratitude to 
 
96 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 God that I discover the positive poverty of my mother- 
 tongue in epithets of vileness befitting its description. As 
 much as in you is, live peaceably with all men ; but there 
 ought to be a voice of opinion so stern, so outspoken, that 
 no man of credited decency should stand tamely by and 
 hear a crime, so unparalleled in its baseness, even extenu- 
 ated. 
 
 Is the world going back into savagery? Is this Chris- 
 tian land to become the rival of Dahomey? This is no 
 isolated act. The history of this slaveholders' rebellion is 
 full of such. Again and again have the lives of our chief 
 men been threatened with the dirk, the bullet, and the 
 knife. Poison has been put in their food. Their homes 
 have been entered by spies. Their steps have been way- 
 laid in the streets. And our common people have fared 
 no better. Quiet villages have been invaded, and women 
 and children shot down with fiendish glee. Cars, crowded 
 with unsuspicious travelers, have been thrown from the 
 track. Public buildings have been fired over a whole city 
 at once. And all this under the shadow of authority 
 claimed through a paper commission. Yet the nation has 
 kept its temper. The spectacle of a great people, thus 
 outraged beyond a parallel, yet so patient and forbearing, 
 has been sublime enough to make our enemies wonder. 
 They have called our magnanimity meanness, and com- 
 plimented us upon our manifold spaniel-like virtues, with 
 sarcasm that burnt in upon manly sensibility like fire. 
 
 This assassination is the earliest reply which chivalry 
 has had to make to forbearance unmeasured and friendli- 
 ness almost fraternal. Now, let us have done with it ! 
 Talk to me no more of " our misguided brethren." Some 
 
ROBINSON. 97 
 
 are misguided — and it is those who misguide them I 
 denounce. Cain was brother to Abel. Relationship is a 
 perilous thing when it says, " Art thou in health, my 
 brother," and then stabs under the fifth rib. Talk to me 
 no more of the "same race, educated at the same colleges, 
 born of the same blood." Satan was of the same race as 
 Gabriel, and educated at the same celestial school of love 
 and grace ; but one became a rebel, and between them 
 ever thereafter was " a great gull' fixed." He cannot be 
 brother of mine, he belongs to no race of mine, who, in the 
 foul cause of human bondage, fights with a rural massacre, 
 makes war with midnight arson, and crowns his unmanly 
 barbarity with stabbing a sick man in his bed, and 
 shooting an unarmed husband in the very sight of his 
 wife. 
 
 Let no one deem this violence unnecessary. They tell 
 us that none of our utterances are lost ; the vibrations of 
 the air on which they fall perpetuate them into an eternity 
 of circles, spreading wider and wider. If I am ever again 
 to meet these denunciations of mine, conscientiously 
 spoken in this Christian pulpit, let me find them in 
 company with a declaration that will explain them. 
 There are, in this community, to-day, men and ivomen — 
 God forgive them ! — nurtured under the hot debasements 
 and vile luxuries of the slave system, sojourning here on 
 our charitable sufferance, in order meanly to escape the 
 perils of the ruinous war they have helped to incite, who 
 clap their hands in applause of this murder ! I think, in 
 serious self-defence, we are to see that this thing is ended. 
 This wickedness clamors for retributive judgment, and 
 invokes the wrath of God. 
 
 5 
 
98 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 V. — Thus I am led, naturally, to speak of a fifth element 
 in our feeling of mourning to-day ; the profound conviction 
 of necessity that the law of the land should now take its 
 course in relation to all the aiders and abettors of this 
 infamous rebellion. There was, perhaps, needed one more 
 proof of the unutterable sin of treason. Here has it been 
 flashed out upon us, like the final stroke of a departing 
 thunder-storm, the least expected, but the most fearfully 
 destructive of all that have fallen. We have been growing 
 more and more loose in our estimates of guilt. We were 
 catching from each other a spirit of sentimentalism that 
 boded no good. Tired of war, longing for quiet, eager for 
 trade, sickened with bloodshed, we were ready to say, let 
 the criminals be pardoned, let the penalties of law be 
 remitted. The next act in our national history was, in all 
 likelihood, to be a general amnesty proclamation. Sud- 
 denly, the hand which would have signed it was smitten 
 down into death. Then our eyes were opened to the fixed, 
 unalterable malignity in the temper of our foes. A great 
 conspiracy is disclosed. Murder is done at the capital. 
 Our beloved President becomes a victim to the very 
 magnanimity he was inculcating. Warned fully of the 
 peril, he would not believe human nature could be so base. 
 He trusted, and was betrayed. The entire government 
 was menaced, in the moment of its open-hearted proffer of 
 good will. 
 
 We are satisfied that all this is perilous pusillanimity 
 now. There is no fitness of generosity to malignants 
 venomous as these. So, while our hearts are chilled, their 
 affections hurried back on themselves in curdling horror, 
 with pity ineffable, and sorrow that cannot be repressed, 
 
ROBINSON. 99 
 
 we are united in saying, let the will of the law be done ! 
 When there was a rebellion in heaven, the rebels were 
 punished. God sent the fallen angels to hell. We are 
 not to find fault with that kind of administration. Men 
 can forgive. I do not believe there is one unkind senti- 
 ment in any heart in the house of God this day. We 
 draw a distinction, world-wide, between a crime and a 
 criminal. The one we denounce, the other we pity. But 
 the majesty of law must be vindicated. JSTo puritan had 
 a right to be the defender of Guy Fawkes. No patriot 
 had a right to screen Benedict Arnold from justice. Let 
 there be now no violence. Let the common people be 
 spared. But, on the track of the villains that have 
 opened this insurrection, and urged it along its bloody 
 track even to this dreadful consummation, let the footsteps 
 of justice follow swiftly, relentlessly. 
 
 It may, possibly, be said, by some, that this assassina- 
 tion of the officers of government is a mere act of mad- 
 ness, done by a brace of frantic fanatics ; and that it is 
 not equitable and fair to hold a whole people responsible 
 for its wickedness. 
 
 Let it be said, in reply, that the tidings of this murder, 
 going into the ranks of rebellion, will be hailed with a 
 howl of gladness and satisfaction, equal to the yell in Pan- 
 demonium, when Satan seduced Adam, and buried a race 
 in ruin. It will never be disowned, save by a few of the 
 most exposed leaders, who, seeing in it their own ruin, will 
 repent, not like Peter, for sin, but like Judas, for the re- 
 sults of sin. Even now, the instincts of every rebel sym- 
 pathizer are on the alert to befriend the assassins, and 
 block the way of justice. Furthermore, let it be said, that 
 
100 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 this crime happens to be conspicuous and heart-rending, 
 because it has marked the nation's idol for its victim ; 
 but it is only one of fifty thousand murders, actual, in- 
 telligent, committed during the last two years by the 
 parties in power through the revolted States. And 
 these murders in the prisons are, every one of them, just 
 so much the more diabolical, as starvation slowly is more 
 horrible than the quicker death of the bullet. The spirit 
 is the same in all cases. This wickedness is the legitimate 
 outgrowth of that system of slavery which originated the 
 rebellion, and debauched, from time immemorial, all the 
 finer instincts of man. 
 
 Hence, there is no revenge in the popular heart to-day, 
 but only retribution. We pity the malefactors ; we pray 
 for them ; but in this determination we are fixed — let the 
 majesty of the law be vindicated upon them as traitors ; 
 let justice pursue them, one by one ; let the gates of the 
 world be closed to their search for asylum ; let judgment 
 follow on as implacable as doom. 
 
 YI. — I might well pause here, in the enumeration of 
 elements in the feelino; we are all cherishino* under the 
 pressure of this heart-rending sorrow. But there is one 
 more, which I detect in my own heart, and know is in the 
 hearts of my hearers. We desire to know what instruc- 
 tion the all-wise God has intended us to receive. We 
 we would inquire for His counsels, and humbly learn of 
 Him. My office, as a Christian minister, will be dis- 
 charged this morning, when I have sought to point out to 
 you some few of the lessons forced into vivid illumination 
 by this terrible dispensation of Providence. 
 
 1. First of all, then, let us learn here how history is 
 
ROBINSON. 101 
 
 composed. I am certain we have no proper conception 
 of the magnitude of an event like this. "We are too near 
 it to discover its proportions. Travelers tell ns they are 
 always disappointed with the earliest glimpse of vast 
 mountains. Standing close under the shadow of awful 
 forms, so peerless in majesty, they have no adequate no- 
 tions of their loftiness and amazing mass. These need 
 distance on the landscape to be truly appreciated. So an 
 event like this is never really reverenced as it should be. 
 It needs time for the free play of the imagination. We 
 are all unconscious of the spectacle we are to present to 
 posterity. 
 
 The dreadful deed, which has filled our minds with hor- 
 ror, will be a growing vision of weird wickedness, shining 
 with a strange luriclness of its own, as one of the wildest 
 tragedies of the world's most unwelcome remembrance. 
 It ranks with the suicide of Cleopatra, the death of Csesar, 
 the murder of William the Silent, the conspiracy of Cati- 
 line, the gunpowder plot of Guy Fawkes, the imperial 
 incidents in the wide empire of crime. To us the event 
 seems simply personal ; our views of it are necessarily 
 narrow. Our leader has fallen. Our Government has 
 been menaced. But we only speculate upon its immedi- 
 ate results. The criminals will soon be apprehended. The 
 insurrection will end, and all the excitement will subside. 
 But when the mighty future shall receive the inheritance, 
 it will be weighed by other balances, and estimated more 
 truly. 
 
 Thus history selects and perpetuates its own materials. 
 Each thought, each word, each deed, each flash of senti- 
 ment, each outbreak of passion, each exercise of influence, 
 
102 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 enters into the grand aggregate of human recollection and 
 intelligence, which we call our Age. Out of this the pen 
 of unerring history compiles its annals. 
 
 "For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the martyr stands, 
 On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands ; 
 Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling fagots burn, 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn." 
 
 2. In the second place, let us learn the essential iniquity 
 and barbarism there is in any system of human oppres- 
 sion. It was long ago remarked by Lamartine, that no 
 man ever bound a chain around the neck of his fellow- 
 man, without God's binding a chain of equal links around 
 his own. Whoever debases the image of God will cer- 
 tainly become debased. This thought receives an illus- 
 tration here that amounts almost to a demonstration. 
 This crime is the manifest outshoot of American slavery. 
 
 I suppose no one remains now who doubts that all this 
 aggregated mass of abomination, this summation of vil- 
 lanies, whose tide of murky violence is rolling itself 
 along before our weary eyes, had its fountain-head in the 
 malignant ambition of a few men, who started the stream 
 of revolution in order to waft themselves into continuous 
 power. These miserable criminals, whom justice is pur- 
 suing with eager scent, are but the merest minute-hands 
 on the outermost dial of that popular sentiment which 
 they represent. The spring that has set them in motion, 
 the mechanism that gave them all their power, even the 
 delicate balances that have timed their present success, 
 are out of sight, yet easily discoverable in the dark intri- 
 
ROBINSON. 103 
 
 cacies of that domestic and political life based on the 
 humiliation of a feebler race. You may tear these index- 
 pointers away, but the clock-work will run on. There 
 will still remain the secret progress of debasement, on the 
 bold face of which they have happened to become con- 
 spicuous. You w T ill gain nothing till you tear the hideous 
 system to pieces, and break the spring that lies coiled 
 within it. 
 
 "What is this crime ? Nothing new, surely ; only more 
 public. It is one of a million crimes, each of which God 
 has seen. The same reckless imperiousness of will, that 
 has so many times struck at laws, has now struck at the 
 Executive of law — that is all. The same thwarted passion, 
 that has more than once shot a slave unpunished, now has 
 shot a President — that is all. The same spirit is unsub- 
 dued. It is ready to fly in the face of anything that stands 
 in its way. To continue a system of social life that now 
 has become a necessity in a measure, as a minister to lazi- 
 ness and lust, these people have dismembered the church, 
 divided the republic, fought their own brothers, and at last 
 taken to murder and assassination. ISTo one can fail to 
 see that there is one single line of connection running all 
 through the history of this infamous rebellion. The pride 
 of power, engendered by the tyranny, petty at first, over 
 the unprotected black race, has betrayed these miserable 
 wretches into the mistake of supposing they could lord 
 it over the white race — that is all. 
 
 This latest crime is more showy, but the hearts are no 
 blacker than before. And the hearts have been made 
 black by the system. How else will you explain this ap- 
 palling fact ; there are women, with babes in their arms, 
 
104 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 who will declare that this murder in cold blood of a man 
 in the presence of his wife is chivalrous ! This is mon- 
 strous, when judged by any system of philosophy. There 
 • is but one solution of the mystery: underlying all the 
 ferocity of such a sentiment, is found the subtle working 
 of mere pride of caste. Slavery has debased the feminine 
 and human sentiments with which they were born. That 
 code of morals always did tend to barbarism. The young 
 men of the South were corrupt before the war. The wo- 
 men were brutalized in the finer feelings of natural de- 
 cency. They would send women to be stripped and 
 whipped by men for a price. Passion grows wild with 
 mere indulgence. Hence it is that a deed combining so 
 much of execrable meanness with so much of hellish cru- 
 elty, find women unsexed enough to applaud it ! Home 
 on the diabolical system it represents, do I soberly urge 
 the responsibility of this murder. It is high time to have 
 done with it, root and branches. 
 
 3. Once more : Let us learn here to-day the power of 
 martyrdom in fixing great principles. President Lincoln 
 has been useful in his life, far beyond what falls to the 
 common lot of even the most patriotic and public-spirited 
 men. But his death has confirmed his usefulness — made 
 it illustrious, influential, and immortal. 
 
 In the natural course of time his period of official service 
 would have ended. His administration of the govern- 
 ment would have been canvassed cautiously, and, perhaps, 
 uncharitably criticised, and, by some parties, condemned. 
 By this sudden, tragic close of it, however, it has been 
 forced into prominence. It will now be marked forever. 
 All the principles it has aimed to establish are settled 
 
ROBINSON. 105 
 
 hereafter beyond a peradventure. The documents he has 
 added to the archives of the nation are sealed with blood. 
 This republic will take no step backwards from the vantage- 
 ground to which he had led the banner of its sovereignty. 
 Even his policy will have weightier influence than that 
 proposed by any living man. The noble archer has fallen 
 in death, before he could really know how princely were 
 the shots he made ; but the arrows he sped latest are' yet 
 out in the air, over the sea, and will strike unerringly the 
 mark. And when they who stand nearest to the spot 
 where the shafts hang quivering, look around to discover 
 whose was the sinewy strength that sent them so forcefully 
 and so true, they will find that another hand, just as firm, 
 has assumed the bow, and another eye, just as keen, has 
 discerned the same target. 
 
 They who oppose an honest man living, are ever among 
 the first to honor him dead. JSTobody dares uproot a 
 standard planted by a loved leader who poured out his 
 life at the foot of its staff. Perhaps it was this which was 
 needed to bring our people together permanently. Per- 
 haps this was the essential condition of our restoration to 
 unity, that we become reconciled over an open grave. It 
 may be that party-spirit will yield now, and bury the 
 bitterness of its animosity in a martyr's tomb. 
 
 You will recall the touching fable of Pom an history. 
 A vast seam opened in the land, in the very midst of the 
 Forum, disclosing a yawning abyss which they could not 
 fill with rocks or with soil. At last the soothsayers 
 declared that the commonwealth could be preserved only 
 by closing the gulf ; and the gulf could be closed only by 
 devoting to the gods, who had opened it, what constituted 
 
106 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the principal glory and strength of the people. At this 
 all stood aghast. But there was one Curtius, a youth of 
 high birth, who, hearing the deliverance, demanded of his 
 countrymen whether their arms and their courage were 
 not the most valuable possessions they owned. They 
 gave him assent with their silence. And then the heroic 
 warrior, arraying himself in full armor, and mounting his 
 horse, rode headlong into the chasm ; whereupon the earth 
 immediately closed, and over the memorable spot swept a 
 placid lake bearing his name. 
 
 Shall we say that now our divided country will come 
 together again, when he who seemed the glory and strength 
 of the American people has gone down in the breach ? 
 Shall not his sacrifice avail for propitiation to that foul 
 spirit of sectional pride which rent the land asunder ? 
 
 4. And this leads me on to mention a final lesson. We 
 see now the inevitable triumph and perpetuity of our 
 cause. We are not hero-worshipers in any degree. We 
 never were. But we believe in God. We entered upon 
 this war not willingly, not of our own accord. We have 
 been fighting for a principle. That we have never sur- 
 dered nor forgotten. What we loved this leader for was 
 what we deemed truth to our cause. 
 
 What is our cause ? It is easier to say what it is not ; 
 for its essence is negative. Whatever this crime of assas- 
 sination is, -whatever it represents, whatever it aimed at, 
 whatever was the spirit that prompted it, whatever may be 
 now wickedly offered in its apology — just not that is our 
 cause. And as that crime, in spirit, in purpose, in instiga- 
 tion, was all in the interest of human bondage, so our cause 
 embraces all that is antagonistic to that system. There 
 
ROBINSON. 107 
 
 never has been but one issue in this terrible contest. Under- 
 neath all these evident questions has been lying one which 
 some of us studiously labored to ignore ; and that was 
 concerning the dignity of universal labor, and the absolute 
 equality of all races before the common law. He who, at 
 this late day, shuts his eyes to this fact, is neither intelli- 
 gent nor wise. We have fought for an open Bible, a free 
 school, an unfettered press, and a Scriptural pulpit. 
 
 In all the doctrines ostentatiously put forth by our foes 
 — States' rights, uncontaminated blood, family pride, 
 sectional independence — there has ever been this keen, 
 sharp liking for slavery as a social system. They recognized 
 it as a kind of secret zest among themselves ; as voluptu- 
 aries recognize, with an understood leer, a favorite lust ; 
 as wine-bibbers recognize the subtle flavor of an indescrib- 
 able liquor. Our cause consists in precise opposition to 
 that. We, therefore, have stood for the rights of men, 
 the truth of the Gospel, the principles of humanity, the 
 integrity of the Union, the power of Christian people to 
 govern themselves, the indefeasible equality of all the crea- 
 tures of God in natural conditions of existence, no matter 
 what may be the color of their skin. So the nations of 
 the world have looked upon us, and held us responsible. 
 We were the enemies of all class-systems, castes, and aristoc- 
 racies. W r e were the champions of manhood in all that 
 was noble, of womanhood in all that was pure. This has 
 been, and still is, our cause. 
 
 And what I call you to learn now is, that this cause is 
 safe. A martyr's blood has sealed the covenant we are 
 making with posterity. Oh, the glories of our immediate 
 prospect of usefulness in the years to come ! The Republic 
 
108 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 is secure. The Union is confirmed as a perpetual federa- 
 tion of States. The peril through which we have just 
 passed has no parallel. Our Government, as an entirety, 
 was aimed at with one savage blow. Such a stroke, on 
 any other nation, would have rocked Christendom to its 
 centre. Yet our nation is untremulous as the primeval 
 granite. The most delicate balances of commercial life 
 show not even the semblance of noticeable variation, even 
 when this violence of a ton's weight all at once jars the 
 beam ! Our cause is eternally secure ! 
 
 Think, then, as we close our meditation upon this martyr 
 life, how strangely God has overruled much that seemed 
 so destructive to our good. On that very day — they call 
 it Good Friday — there is annually represented, in the 
 Sistine Chapel, at Home, the disaster of the world when 
 the Redeemer was crucified. Thirteen lamps are lit in the 
 darkness, ranged in pyramidal form, the topmost one con- 
 ceived to be the symbol of Messiah. A low, mournful 
 chant from the Lamentations continues to echo through 
 the building, while one light after another is extinguished 
 at intervals until twelve are gone out. Only the loftiest 
 and the brightest remains ; and still the chant moans on. 
 Then the last one is struck, and every glimmer perishes in 
 total gloom. Thereupon the music ends. A moment 
 succeeds, of unutterable oppression — rayless and stifled — 
 and then one voice breaks the silence ; a voice, wailing, 
 piercing, as if from a crushed and broken heart, lifting the 
 burden of the Miserere ; the grief of the race over its 
 Helper and its Hope. 
 
 Fitting seems the symbol to us now, as we look only on 
 the earthly side of this tremendous loss ; on that same day, 
 
ROBINSON. 109 
 
 while the shadows were gathering in the chapel of that 
 seven-hilled city, our light appeared to go out, and the 
 nation was in the gloom. 
 
 But to-day, let us look on the heavenly side. How 
 sweet and calm it is to think of that great, brave heart, 
 this Easter Sabbath ! He is not here, but risen. Far 
 beyond the sound of battle, far beyond the turmoil of 
 state, in the infinite realms of gladness, that troubled 
 mind has found its rest. Mourned, as never before martyr 
 was mourned ; loved, as never before statesman was loved ; 
 honored, as never before patriot was honored ; he has gone 
 down to a spotless grave. High over all human passion 
 that disembodied spirit stands, free as the thought that 
 follows him ; the eye of faith seems to behold him even 
 now on the radiant plain of eternity ; on either side falls 
 away every official adornment ; the soul of the Christian 
 man bends in all humility before his Maker's presence, 
 saved by grace ; saved, not because he wore the robes of 
 the highest station on the globe ; saved, not because of his 
 rare gifts of affection or intellect ; saved, not by reason of 
 the blessed deeds he had done ; saved, merely because of 
 his faith in the Saviour, that he learned by the graves of 
 the boys that fell at Gettysburg ; and, as you gaze after 
 him, with a subdued and tearful heart, you can only pay 
 him the tribute that trembles on the lip that speaks it — 
 
 " He was a good man, and a just ! " 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 EEV. ¥11. IVES BUDESTGTOX, D. D. 
 
 u Surely ihe wrath of man shall praise thee : the remainder of wrath shalt 
 thou restrain." — Ps. TG: 10. 
 
 Our honored, trusted, and beloved President is dead, and 
 by the hand of an assassin. Can we believe it? Can we 
 bear it ? He has been growing upon our confidence and 
 affection, so constantly and so largely, that it is both a 
 personal and a national bereavement ; it is a loss to each 
 of us and to all of us. We have lost a friend who was a 
 father to the humblest in the land, and a Ruler who was 
 the Saviour of the country. I have been looking for com- 
 fort for myself and for you ; I have found it, and I think 
 you will, in the familiar, but still unexhausted and inex- 
 haustible truth contained in the text. The wrath of man 
 shall praise God! Suppose it were not so; that God 
 could not do it, or would not? What then? God would 
 not be God ; he would not have the power, or he would 
 not have the love, that is the very essence of his nature. 
 So sure is the doctrine which is the foundation of our 
 peace and hope before God. " Surely," says the psalmist, 
 and " shall" — observe how strong the words he chooses — 
 " Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." The latter 
 clause is susceptible of another and better rendering : 
 
112 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 " The remainder of wrath shalt thou gird about thee." It 
 is not that he restrains it ; his power and wisdom are 
 still more conspicuous in giving it license, and yet making 
 it his servant. It is not necessary for God to restrain hu- 
 man wrath, as if any parts, or consequences of it, passed 
 beyond his control, and he was compelled to meet power 
 with power; but having made men free, he uses their 
 freedom, so that the remainder of wrath, its last shreds, he 
 girds himself with, as a man buckles his sword-belt around 
 him. He makes it his strength and ornament. It is not 
 enough to say, human malice effects nothing against God ; 
 it praises him, it brings about his purposes, he uses it as a 
 weapon, it is made so subservient as to seem to be, what 
 the wisdom of God forbids us to believe it is, necessary to 
 his glory. This is a strong statement of a precious truth. 
 We may repose the most perfect confidence in God, that 
 instead of being thwarted by the rage of men, he will use 
 it as an instrument, and whether men are good or bad, 
 they will be made to serve him : the good, of their own ac- 
 cord ; the bad, in spite of their evil designs. 
 
 I might show the truth of this by many examples, some 
 of which are familiar, and have been cited by inspired 
 authority to establish the doctrine. Pharaoh and Sen- 
 nacherib are said, in Holy Scripture, to have been raised 
 up for the very purpose of exhibiting God's power in them, 
 and making him known throughout all the earth. And 
 this, without in the least abridging human freedom and 
 blameworthiness, as was most conspicuously shown in the 
 killing of the Lord of glory, " delivered by the determi- 
 nate counsel and foreknowledge of God," but " taken by 
 wicked men, and by wicked hands crucified and slain." 
 
BUDINGTON. 113 
 
 But we" need not go to past histories, not even when in- 
 terpreted by inspired penmen. The event of to-day pro- 
 claims God, his power, and wisdom, and love, as really as 
 any event which ever provoked a nation's tears, and 
 clothed them in sackcloth. The w T rath oi man has praised 
 God, shall praise him, and is praising him now. Be not 
 afraid of any manifestation of human wickedness and 
 rage. Be not surprised, and let no sense of loss and de- 
 feat overwhelm you, because the spirit of Rebellion, in its 
 dying throes, mad with shame and despair, has stung 
 itself to death by striking at the sacred person of the 
 Chief Magistrate. Even now, amid the wild excitement 
 of this hour, with the surges of grief sweeping over the 
 nation, every patriot bosom tumultuating. with conflicting 
 emotions, we already see enough to say, " The wrath of 
 man shall praise God." It is not all darkness above us ; 
 through the rifts of the clouds the light is shining, glimpses 
 of the infinite flood filling the eternal heavens. 
 
 Let me, now, ask your attention to a few of the con- 
 siderations, which may aid you to understand how the 
 wrath of man, in compassing the death of our President, 
 shall yet praise God. 
 
 1. In the first place, it shall do it by revealing the 
 wickedness of this rebellion. 
 
 There would seem to have been evidence enough of this 
 already ; with bursting hearts we are ready to exclaim, we 
 did not need this last act to make the rebellion the most 
 tragic of crimes. Considered simply as rebellion against 
 just authority, it must be held to be a sin against God, so 
 long as the 13th chapter of Romans maintains its place in 
 the Bible, and binds the consciences of Christians. Eor 
 
114 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 is it possible to mitigate this sentence, by quoting the 
 exceptional cases in which the right of revolution is to be 
 allowed. Our enemies themselves being judges, this was 
 no exceptional case; no grievance had been endured by 
 the South ; on the contrary, her foremost statesman, the 
 Yice President of the Confederacy, hacl publicly declared, 
 and abundantly shown, that the Government at "Wash- 
 ington had never done them a wrong, but had been the 
 most beneficent of governments, and that from the begin- 
 ning the South had controlled the legislation of the 
 country, and had received the lion's share of the honors 
 and emoluments of the Government, while bearing the 
 least considerable portion of its burdens. If rebellion 
 ever was a sin, therefore, and St. Paul declares it always 
 is, this was the greatest 6in against God that ever was 
 inaugurated. It began in a conspiracy worse than Cati- 
 line's ; it secretly plotted death to the constitution, w r hile 
 in the enjoyment of its honors and immunities ; it raised, 
 organized, and drilled armies, while nobody, but them- 
 selves, believed that war was possible, or intended ; and 
 when at last the strange rebellion was actually born, it 
 came not less of perjury towards God, than of treason 
 towards man. 
 
 Thus conceived, and thus brought forth, its whole history 
 has been marked by cruelties, which have been only the 
 more diabolical, because they have been practised under 
 the studied hypocrisies of thanksgivings, and fasts, and 
 humble professions of humanity and injured innocence. 
 The most flagrant falsehoods have been invented to fire 
 the Southern heart; the most ferocious passions engen- 
 dered, venting themselves upon wounded men, and the 
 
BUDINGTON. 115 
 
 unresisting bodies of the slain ; and all this, while the 
 Government, actuated by the most merciful of men, and the 
 most paternal of rulers, was holding the olive-branch in one 
 hand, and the sword in the other. At length, in its adult 
 stature, the rebellion culminated in a malignity, which 
 has absolutely no parallel in the military annals of man- 
 kind, in the starvation of prisoners of war, adopted 
 when the novelty of the war had worn off, when no 
 apologies of impulse and sudden gusts of passion could be 
 pleaded, but entered upon as a system, and prosecuted 
 with a calm and unrelenting purpose, until by tens of 
 thousands the naked, the frozen, and the starved were 
 consigned to a death in comparison with which the cruel- 
 ties of Indians and Sepoys were mercies. I do not over- 
 state the facts — would God I did ! I have just seen a 
 letter from Dr. C. R. Agnew, a gentleman of the highest 
 professional skill in the city of New York, and who, from 
 love of country, and in the midst of a large and lucrative 
 practice, has consecrated conscientiously one-third of his 
 time to the service of his country in connection with the 
 Sanitary Commission. No one can doubt his competency 
 to testify, nor his character as a Christian man ; and I 
 will now read from his letter, dated at Wilmington, N. C, 
 March 20, 1865. It is painful for me to read it in your 
 presence, ye mothers and sisters and wives ; it will be 
 painful for you to hear it, but you must do it, and hold 
 your minds to the facts which are thus certified to you, 
 for only by knowing these facts, and feeling as they will 
 make you feel, can you understand this rebellion, and the 
 justice of God in dealing with it. Dr. Agnew writes : 
 " Many of the men were in a state of mind resembling 
 
116 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 idiocy, unable to tell their names, and lost to all sense of 
 modesty, unconscious of their nakedness and personal con- 
 dition. Some of them moved about on their hands and 
 knees, unable to stand upon their gangrenous feet, looking 
 up like hungry dogs, beseeching the observer for a bite of 
 bread or a sup of water. Some of them hitched along on 
 their hands, as they were able, pushing gangrenous feet, 
 literally reduced to bone and shreds, before them. Others 
 leaned upon staves, and glared from sunken eyes through 
 the parchment-like slits of their open eye-lids into space, 
 without having the power to fix an intelligent gaze upon 
 passing objects. Others giggled and smirked and babbled 
 like starved idiots ; while some adamantine figures walked 
 erect, as though they meant to move the skeleton home- 
 wards so long as vitality enough remained to enable them 
 to do so. To see the men who remain here in hospital 
 would move a heart as hard and cold as marble. Their con- 
 dition is that of men who have for months suffered chronic 
 starvation. Their arms and legs look like coarse reeds 
 with bulbous joints. Their faces look as though a skillful 
 taxidermist had drawn tanned skin over the bare skull, 
 and then placed false eyes in the orbital cavities. They 
 defy description. It would take a pen expert in the use 
 of every term known to the anatomist and the physician 
 to begin to expose their fearful condition." 
 
 But all this long history of war, culminating in this 
 frightful crime against humanity, was not enough to make 
 apparent the wickedness of the rebellion ; there were 
 among ourselves not a few sympathizers and apologists, 
 and among foreign nations it still wore an air of respecta- 
 bility. " Its authors and leaders," we were told, " were 
 
BUDINGTON. 117 
 
 honorable, chivalric men ; they never could be subjugated ; 
 we must let them go and establish a slave empire, or by 
 an inglorious compromise become ourselves partners of 
 their crime." And one thing more was necessary to unite 
 all hearts at home, and make the cause of freedom the 
 cause of civilization and mankind : the arm that had 
 struck at the life of the American nation must be per- 
 mitted to strike clown the person of the American Presi- 
 dent. It has been done. The wrath of man has expended 
 itself, and who does not see that that wrath shall praise 
 God ? This last revealing act has brought home to every 
 man the murderous irialignity with which the rebellion 
 was instinct. When our President fell, " you and I and 
 all of us fell down." 
 
 The rebellion is no longer an abstraction — it is murder. 
 Treason is no longer a mere opinion, as respectable as any 
 other while the war lasts, and the better opinion if it tri- 
 umphs ; but it is red-handed violence, stealing behind the 
 back of our chief to murder him, and breaking into the 
 sick-room of our leading statesman to stab him in his bed. 
 Let who will speak well of this rebellion hereafter, neither 
 you nor I may care. The venue is changed ; we are hence- 
 forth no more concerned than the rest of mankind ; our 
 enemies have made themselves outlaws, and our cause is 
 merged in the cause of humanity. Eternal justice is 
 avenged. The wrath of man praises God ! 
 
 2. But I proceed to make a second point in illustration 
 of the text. We learn the wickedness of that system of 
 slavery, which has nurtured the implacable, man-hating 
 and God-defying spirit, revealing itself in the murder of 
 the President. 
 
118 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 It is no new thing that we see to-day, only now we see. 
 it, and feel it, as we did not when it was grinding the poor 
 bondman in the earth. The wisdom and goodness, in one 
 word the glory of God, is conspicuous in this, that men 
 now take part with God in his abhorrence of crime per- 
 petrated upon the humblest of his creatures. If yon will 
 reflect a moment, if you will call to mind the facts by 
 which slavery has expressed itself, ever since yon can re- 
 member, you will recognize the same spirit, and the great 
 criminal of to-day, who has draped our houses and our 
 churches in black, is a legitimate child of slavery ; no new 
 thing has happened under the sun, only a new exhibition 
 of an old thing ; it is but the outcome of that prond insur- 
 rection against human rights, which has trampled on men 
 for more than two centuries. Call it what you will, a 
 Patriarchal system, which brings down to our times the 
 virtues and blessings of the highest style of manhood ; a 
 system of domestic life, good enough for gentle woman to 
 cherish in the name of the family and the sanctities of 
 private life ; an order of society which the minister of God 
 is to baptize with a Christian name, and in the conserva- 
 tion of which, the church of God in America is to find 
 her mission ; call it what you will, I know that the separa- 
 tion of husband and wife, the sale of little children out of 
 a mother's lap, the withholding of wages from the laboring 
 poor, and the denial of knowledge to the mind, which is 
 as much the birth-right of the human soul, as the light of 
 the sun is of the human body ; I know that these things 
 are sins against God, and sins against him who said, " In 
 as much as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it 
 unto me," such that even all the tears and blood and groans 
 
BUDINGTON. 119 
 
 of this civil war, are not too severe an expression of the 
 righteous judgment of God ! But oh ! the difference be- 
 tween knowing this, and feeling it, as we do to-day, when 
 ^this violent invasion of the sacred rights of man has 
 entered our hearts through the sacred person *of the 
 rej>resentative head of the nation ! Many a poor black 
 man has fallen, shot from behind, who died, as our Presi- 
 dent did, for the assertion of human rights ; and although 
 each of these murders revealed as much of wickedness to 
 the infinite heart of God, as this last, they did not to us. 
 Many a traveler at the South, not black but white, for no 
 greater crime than the declaration of his belief in the 
 inalienable rights of all men, and many suspected of such a 
 declaration, or of such a belief without the declaration, 
 have been murdered and left swinging from the branches 
 of trees ; but the intelligence, when it came North, only 
 wrapped in mourning some solitary family, or some little 
 circle of relatives bereaved ; we did not feel it, and could 
 not feel it, as now when the fell spirit of slavery has 
 stricken down our President, and draped a nation in the 
 emblems of mourning. 
 
 I do not presume, with my present knowledge, to charge 
 this crime upon individuals ; we must await the develop- 
 ments of the trial to know who are implicated in the 
 bloody conspiracy ; but I do take it upon myself to say, 
 that slavery is responsible for this crime, the proof is 
 demonstrative, it could not be stronger. The only right, 
 that slavery has, is the might of a superior over an inferior 
 race ; and as if conscious of its origin, it has always opposed 
 violence to reason. It has taught that it was right to kill 
 a resisting black man, and equally a protesting white man. 
 
120 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Since the war has raged, nothing has been more common 
 than to threaten with assassination the agents of the Gov- 
 ernment, and especially its head. Rewards have been 
 offered ; vicious and uneducated young men have been 
 inspired with the ambition; and when at last one has 
 been found, bold enough and mad enough to do it and 
 succeed, it will be impossible, in the recoil of public feel- 
 ing, and in the fear of the execration of mankind, to deny 
 the parentage and training of the act. It matters not, 
 who or what the miserable tool was, what his name or his 
 antecedents, whether a Northern sympathizer, or Southern 
 rebel, he but embodies the spirit of slavery, he is but the 
 hand that executes its savage command. This, therefore, 
 is the vindication of God's providence. He has given 
 vent to the wrath of man, till it has fully declared itself, 
 and arl men seeing detest it. Slavery stands revealed, 
 for the abhorrence of mankind ; its last act, in the rebound 
 strikes itself upon the head, and in the excess of its wrath, 
 it praises God ! 
 
 3. We learn the folly, as well as madness of sin. And 
 so the wrath of man shall praise God. 
 
 The thought of the murderer was to avenge the South, 
 and destroy our national Government ; the effect is to 
 bury the cause of the South beneath the execration of 
 mankind, and gather around the Government the strength 
 of all loyal hearts, and the sympathy of every civilized 
 people. Was there ever an instance like this of the 
 insanity of wickedness ? Destroy the Government ! 
 ISTever was it stronger. It is the revelation of a strength 
 we scarcely dared claim, and which was never suspected 
 abroad. It is lodged in the hearts of the people, and is 
 
BUDINGTON. 121 
 
 as indestructible as the people themselves. The ship of 
 state scarcely feels a tremble as the helmsman falls at 
 his post ; another hand is on the wheel, the machinery 
 never intermits its action, nor even feels a jar, the good 
 ship falls off not so much as a point from her course, and 
 is now as safe and sound as when our loved and elected 
 chieftain guided her with a wisdom, patience, and faithful- 
 ness never surpassed. Probably no two men in the 
 nation could be struck down, whose death would be a 
 greater calamity to leading rebels .than that of Lincoln 
 and Seward. The Government can spare them, for by the 
 blessing of God upon their wise administration of public 
 affairs, it is now sure of the support of the people, and of 
 the respect of foreign nations; and there are other men, 
 as capable to guide the policy of pacification and recon- 
 struction. But the rebels, the leading and responsible 
 rebels, cannot spare these men, least of all by a death 
 occasioned or inspired by them. The armies of Grant 
 and Sherman have destroyed the body of the rebellion. 
 Mr. Lincoln's death its spirit. From this hour forth not 
 a shred of respectability remains to it ; and as this intel- 
 ligence shall reach the nations of the old world, its adher- 
 ents, from very shame, will fall off from it, and its 
 representatives abroad in the midst of the horror of man- 
 kind be compelled to employ the language of apology and 
 deprecation. And this by their own act ! Their mad 
 threats, their insane spirit has at last found a head and a 
 hand; and nothing has been wanting but success to 
 defeat it. God is praised, and by the wrath of man. 
 There is something wonderful about this. " How unsearch- 
 able are the judgments of God, and His ways past finding 
 
122 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 out ! " The very mercifulness of Mr. Lincoln, the fact that 
 as far as possible in faithfulness to public interests, he was 
 bent upon showing kindness to individuals, the fact that 
 of all men in this country he least of all deserved to die 
 by' a rebel bullet, this has made him the fittest sacrifice for 
 his country, and given his blood a power over friend and 
 foe, to make friends, or to banish enemies, which no other 
 event could possibly equal. A man who was regarded as 
 the father of the people, and the saviour of his country, 
 has been murdered, for no fault of his own, but as the 
 representative of a righteous cause, as the man who stood 
 for you and me, and for the cause of the down-trodden, 
 and for the liberties of millions yet to be ; and his blood, 
 thus shed, is doing and will do, what his life, and no other 
 life could accomplish. It has united our countrymen, as 
 they never were before ; around the bier of Lincoln, they 
 have felt and acted as one family. This great national 
 sorrow, if it has not made us one nation, has proved us 
 one. Common emotions have done much to knit to each 
 other the hearts of our countrymen ; taking his life and death 
 together, I do not hesitate to say, that Abraham Lincoln 
 has done more than any one man that ever lived to make 
 the American people one nationality ! I do not mourn 
 for Lincoln ; his best friend need not mourn for him ; he 
 died at the acme of his fame : he died in a wav to make 
 the most of his virtues, his loving, kindly nature, it has 
 all borne fruit in his death ; he is embalmed forever in the 
 hearts of his countrymen, and his blood is the cement of 
 that Union to the preservation of which he religiously 
 consecrated his life. He was happy too, in the time of 
 his death, it was the sunrise of peace upon the land ; a 
 
BUDINGTON. 123 
 
 momentary pang, he knew not whence or what it was, 
 and he was happy in death. 
 
 " His suffering ended with the day, 
 
 Tet lived he at its close, 
 And breathed the long, long night away, 
 
 In statue-like repose. 
 But when the sun, in all his state, 
 
 Illumined the eastern skies, 
 He passed through Glory's morning gate, 
 
 And walked in Paradise." 
 
 If then he has not suffered loss, and the country, nnited 
 by sorrow, has gained ; behold the folly and madness of 
 this great wickedness ; see ! how the wrath of man praises 
 God! 
 
 4. There is another influence of Mr. Lincoln's death 
 which illustrates the text. It checks that unreasonable, 
 and I will add unchristian charity, which ignores the guilt 
 of sin, and denies the necessity of its penalty. 
 
 People are talking of justice now, not forgiveness. 
 There is for the moment wild talk of vengeance ; for one 
 extreme is apt to generate another ; and vengeance is an 
 extreme, but no more so than indiscriminate pardon. 
 Before this war broke out, a lax theology prevailed 
 amongst us, which had succeeded, to a considerable extent, 
 in banishing from our pulpits, and from the minds of our 
 people, the old and vital doctrines of the Gospel, the 
 intrinsic evil of sin, and the absolute necessity of penalties 
 to vindicate the law of God, and, by consequence, the 
 need of an infinite atonement to open the way for pardon. 
 Men ceased to fear God, or reverence his law; the guilt 
 of sin was denied, it was only a mistake at worst ; hell 
 
124 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 was derided as a superstition ; and many were lapsing 
 into infidelity and atheism. At the same time, and by 
 legitimate consequence, low views were entertained of 
 government, as God's ordinance, capital punishments 
 were abolished, penitentiaries were no longer penal, 
 criminals were sympathized with, and pitied rather than 
 blamed, and the greatest criminals were the most shielded ; 
 treason had shrunk to the dimensions of a political theory, 
 and was no longer a crime, much less the greatest crime 
 known to the statute-book and possible to the citizen, 
 while murder had lost its revolting character, by no longer 
 putting the murderer's life in peril. From all this the 
 war, we thought, had redeemed us ; it had certainly taught 
 us fundamental lessons of right and wrong, and made a 
 chasm between them, in the blood of our sons, which 
 nothing ever seemed able to fill up. But with the success 
 of the national arms, and the comparative subsidence of^ 
 the rebellion, there was fast returning upon us our old and 
 loose way of thinking and talking. Bloody treason began 
 to be whitewashed ; and the chief traitors found apologists, 
 and men pleaded for the lives of traitors, who would have 
 been the first to fall by assassination had the treason 
 triumphed. How far this reaction would have gone, but 
 for the last great crime of the rebellion, none can tell. 
 The dying viper might, and probably would have been 
 nursed into life again by the warm confidence of a country 
 into whose bosom it had struck its venomous fangs. The 
 genius and the virtues of the military leaders of the South 
 were praised, as if the brilliant qualities of criminals, 
 instead of enhancing, diminished the crime. A base-born 
 hero-worship was already preparing to sacrifice the sacred 
 
BUDINGTON. 125 
 
 interests of right to the pretensions of a proud aristocracy. 
 But blessed be God ! we have been spared this shame ; in 
 the hour of our triumph we have not been permitted to 
 fall down, and beg pardon of our conquered foes for the 
 heroism of our slaughtered sons. God's providence has 
 saved us this ! The wrath of man has been allowed one 
 more expression, that we may not mistake, and that all 
 the world may know, the malice, strong in death, of this 
 man-hating and God-defying rebellion ! It has stood for 
 its picture once more, lest through the smoke of battle the 
 features of the demon should be obscured ; now upon the 
 dark back-ground of the war, like a retiring tempest, a 
 miscreant leaps upon the stage, brandishing the assassin's 
 dagger, exulting in the murder of our good President ! 
 Blessed be God ! the wrath of man shall praise Him ! 
 
 5. There is a still more impressive lesson to be learned. 
 God has a right to the blood of his servants, no less than to 
 their life. There are times when the death of a good man 
 will do more than his life can by any possibility. Suffer- 
 ing wrong with patient love will sometimes triumph, when 
 everything else fails. God needed, for His purposes, the 
 death of His Son, so imperatively needed it that not even 
 the prayer of that Son, whom His Father always heard, 
 could avail to make the cup pass from him. God needed 
 the blood of the martyrs, in their day, to corroborate and 
 sanctify His Gospel ! God needed, likewise, the blood of 
 Abraham Lincoln ! We can already see that it is doing 
 what his life and his best services were powerless to accom- 
 plish. When leaving his home at Springfield, giving him- 
 self to his country, and asking the prayers of God's people 
 for him, he gave himself equally to life and death. Even 
 
126 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 then threats of assassination new thick and fast about 
 him, they paved his way to the capitol, he was almost in- 
 volved in their toils before he reached it, and, now that 
 the threat is accomplished, he has fallen a sacrifice, not 
 unprepared nor unwillingly. It is a high distinction — I 
 might say the highest and not over-state it — when a man's 
 death is needed to accomplish his life's work ; and, useful 
 as he may have been while he lived, to be still more use- 
 ful when he died. There are few men of whom this can 
 be said. God places not many in such circumstances, 
 that, even when through mortal weakness they die, it 
 adds strength to the whole influence and force of their 
 lives. Most men die because they must, and their time 
 has come ; and, however much their removal may be 
 mourned, their death is simply a loss ; it is the payment 
 of a debt to nature. But not so with the soldier-like death 
 of Lincoln. It gives him an immortality of fame, seals 
 with blood and consecrates forever the history of which 
 he has been the anointed leader ; and out of such a death 
 there is a resurrection of new life for the nation and man- 
 kind ! No man's life is to be compared with Christ's, 
 and no man's death with His ; but he comes nearest to 
 the Divine Man who receives a trust for humanity, carries 
 it to a successful issue, and at last dies for it, making his 
 life to culminate and triumph in death. This is the high 
 calling of men treading after and next the person of 
 Christ ! This is the crown of martyrs ! This the calling 
 and the crown of Abraham Lincoln ! 
 
 I cannot cease speaking without commending to your 
 prayers and confidence him who is called so suddenly to 
 the Chief Magistracy of the land. I feel compelled to 
 
BUDINGTON. 127 
 
 do this, because of the unfortunate impression made upon 
 the country by Mr. Johnson at the late inauguration. 
 With a haste as unreasonable as it is uncharitable, he has 
 been condemned, as if an act proved a habit. There is 
 not a man in this assembly who would not feel that .the 
 deepest injustice had been done him by such treatment. 
 Admitting the worst that has been said, or that can be 
 said, of Mr. Johnson's condition on that day, it is as sus- 
 ceptible of a favorable interpretation as of an unfavorable. 
 It may have been, nay, we are bound to believe it was an 
 accident, pure and simple — proof only of an enfeebled 
 body,, and of an anxiety, in spite of sickness, to discharge 
 a public duty. We have the amplest assurances that this 
 was the case. The Vice-President, now President of the 
 United States, is entitled to the respectful confidence of 
 the American people. The strong and generous testimony 
 of General Burnside, yesterday, in New York, is sufficient, 
 and will be cordially regarded as such by all loyal and 
 patriotic citizens. Let us give him our confidence, and 
 pray for him, as we did for his lamented predecessor. 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 EEV. JOHiN HcCLmTOCK, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 " Remember them which have the rule over you, . . . whose faith 
 follow." — Heb. xiii, 1. 
 
 It is the Lord ; his will be done. The blow has stun- 
 ned the nation. Had we no trust in him who conquers 
 even the last enemy, " the victory of the grave" which 
 calls us together to-day would fill us with despair. And 
 even with all the light which the word of God affords, and 
 with all the strength which our faith in God gives us, we 
 can still only say, " His way is in the sea, and his path in 
 the deep waters." We shall know hereafter what he 
 doeth ; but we know not now. 
 
 " Remember" says our text, and "follow." 
 There is little fear of our forgetting — there is little fear 
 of the world forgetting the name of Abraham Lincoln. 
 It was the remark of Heine, the German poet and satirist, 
 that " men preserve the memory of their destroyers better 
 than that of their benefactors ; the warrior's name outlasts 
 the philanthropist's." There is some truth in this, taking 
 the world's history as it has been. But • it is one of the 
 best signs of the times that men's hearts are, more than 
 ever, attracted by moral greatness, and that all laurels are 
 
130 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 not stained with blood. The day is dawning, even though 
 its rising sun be dimmed by clouds, and struggles up amid 
 gloom, and tears and blood, in which the glory of the re- 
 former shall outshine that of the conqueror — in which the 
 
 Saints of humanity, strong, yet tender, 
 Making the present hopeful with their life, 
 
 shall be held the true heroes in men's thoughts, as they 
 are the true heroes in the progress of humanity, and before 
 the eye of God. And to this heroic class belongs the 
 name of Abraham Lincoln, who fell, if ever man did, 
 fighting the battles of humanity. 
 
 A voice came to us ten days ago from beyond the sea. 
 Here is what it says of Abraham Lincoln : " When the 
 heats of party passion and international jealousy have 
 abated, when detraction has spent its malice, and the 
 scandalous gossip of the day goes the way of all lies, the 
 place of Abraham Lincoln in the grateful affection of his 
 countrymen and in the respect of mankind, will be second 
 only, if it be second, to that of Washington himself." 
 When Robert Cairnes penned those prophetic words, how 
 little did he dream that in a few weeks his prediction 
 should become history ! " When the heats of party pas- 
 sion are abated !." A work of long and weary time, no 
 doubt. Yet it has been done in a day. The fame of 
 Abraham Lincoln has not had to wait for the revolving 
 years to set it right. The bullet of the assassin has done 
 the work of an age. To-day that name stands as high 
 before this whole people, of all parties, of all sects, of all 
 classes, as it would have stood in a half a century, had the 
 blow of the assassin never fallen. Party spirit, for the 
 
m'clintock. 131 
 
 time at least, is dead. Who thinks of party now ? There 
 are doubtless, in this congregation, many men who voted 
 against Abraham Lincoln ; is there one of them who does 
 not mourn him to-day ? When yon heard that Abraham 
 Lincoln was dead — you, who a year ago, perhaps, made 
 his name an object of abuse and calumny ; you, whose 
 lips were accustomed to speak of that brave, noble, loving 
 man as a usurper, perhaps, or at least as a foolish imbecile, 
 and an unfit tenant of the highest place in all the world — 
 I ask you, when you heard on Saturday morning that Lin- 
 coln was dead, did not your heart throb as never before ; 
 did not your throat become husky and the damp gather in 
 your eyes in spite of you, as you spoke of it ? Party spirit 
 for the moment is indeed forgotten. Do not forget the 
 lesson ; and when your party journals begin, as they will 
 begin very soon, to assail Andrew Johnson, as they have 
 in the past assailed Abraham Lincoln, do not be led away ; 
 let not opposition be sullied with calumny or embittered 
 by hate. 
 
 The streets of the city of New York, and of every city 
 in the Union, from Portland to San Francisco, are clad in 
 mourning. I have been struck, in going through the 
 poorer streets of this city, to find the emblems of sorrow 
 more general, if possible, on the abodes of the humble and 
 the lowly, than on the stately dwellings of the rich in the 
 grand avenues. All over this land, and over all the 
 civilized world, I dare say, there shall be grief and mourn- 
 ing in the hearts and homes of those who are called the 
 " common people" — of whom was Abraham Lincoln. The 
 "ruling classes" abroad will grieve also, but for a very 
 different reason. The Tories and aristocrats of England 
 
132 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LTNCOLN. 
 
 have watched, with fear and wrath, the later progress of 
 the Eepublic towards triumph ; and they will feel the 
 tremor of a new fear when they learn that this good and 
 generous man — so tender, so merciful, so forgiving, so full 
 of. all peaceful thoughts, that revenge or cruelty could 
 find no place in his heart ; this noble, steadfast man of the 
 people, at whose feet all their taunts and gibes had fallen 
 harmless, whose simple dignity of nature achieved for him 
 that serene indifference, that high superiority to abuse and 
 calumny which have been claimed as the peculiar attri- 
 butes of what are called high birth and breeding — has 
 passed away from earth. For they were just learning that 
 he loved peace next to justice, and, in the vague terror of 
 their conscious guilt, as abettors of the slaveholders' rebel- 
 lion, they looked to the gentle ruler, whom they had so 
 vilely traduced, to avert the war which their consciences 
 told them ought to come. 
 
 But while, for this reason, there will be real grief among 
 the ruling classes, there shall be sorrow of another sort 
 among all the liberal hearts, among all who have hoped 
 and struggled for the future equality of the race, and who, 
 these four weary years, have been watching the issues of 
 our great war for freedom, with an intensity of feeling 
 only next to our own. As for the working classes, every- 
 where through the British islands, and on the continent 
 of Europe, the name of Abraham Lincoln had come to be, 
 for them, the synonym of hope for their cause ; for 
 
 Love had he found in huts, where poor men lie, 
 
 not only in every slave cabin in the South, where he is 
 canonized already, but in many a shepherd's lodge of 
 
m'clintock. 133 
 
 Switzerland — in many a woodman's cabin of the Black 
 Forest — in many a miner's hut of the Hartz Mountains — 
 in many a cottage in Italy, for there, as well as here, the 
 poor had learned to look upon him as the anointed of God 
 for the redemption of the liberties of mankind. It is but 
 lately that Garibaldi named one of his grandchildren 
 Lincoln, little dreaming how soon that name was to be 
 enrolled among the immortals. Oh ! how his great heart 
 will throb, how the tears will roll like bullets down his 
 seamed and furrowed face, when to him shall come the 
 sad message, " Lincoln is dead !" 
 
 And now let us ask why all this sorrow? "Whence this 
 universal love ? Certainly it was not intellectual gran- 
 deur that so drew all hearts towards Lincoln. And yet I 
 do not sympathize with much that has been said in 
 disparagement of his intellect, although mere mental gifts, 
 of the highest order, might well have been eclipsed, in the 
 popular estimation, by the sublimity of that moral power 
 which overshadowed all his other qualities. But it is 
 stupid to talk of him as a man of mean intellect. He had 
 a giant's work to do, and he has done it nobly. Called 
 upon to steer the ship of state through the mightiest and 
 most rapid tide of events that ever swept over a nation, he 
 guided her safely, and was within sight of the harbor, when 
 he was struck clown at the helm. Even in his speeches and 
 writings, where defects of form reveal the want of early 
 culture and give room for the carping of petty critics who 
 can see no farther than the form, I do not fear to say that 
 the calm criticism of history will find marks of the highest 
 power of mind. Do you remember his little speech over 
 the graves of our martyrs at Gettysburg? I remember 
 
134 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the thrill with which I read it, across the sea. It is 
 Greek-like in its simple majesty of thought, and even in 
 the exquisite felicity of some of its phrases. Nor could 
 that have been a mean intellect which enabled this simple 
 son of the people, standing among men who piqued them- 
 selves upon their refinement and culture, among men of 
 large acquirements and polished speech, to hold on his 
 own way among them, to take or reject their advice, to 
 hear all plans and all arguments, and after all to be the 
 real ruler of the nation and of the times. With such gifts 
 as God gave him, he was enabled to pierce to the very 
 core of a matter, while others, with their fine rhetoric, 
 could only talk around it. 
 
 Yet it was not for the intellect, but for the moral qual- 
 ities of the man that we loved him. It is a wise order of 
 Providence that it is so that men are drawn. We never 
 love cold intellect. We may admire it ; we may wonder 
 at it ; sometimes we may even worship it, but we never 
 love it. The hearts of men leap out only after the image 
 of God in man, and the image of God in man is love. 
 Oh ! what a large and loving heart was stilled last 
 Friday ! How fine, how tender, how all-embracing was 
 the love of that old man ! Those of you who have never 
 seen him, and never have known the inexpressible charm 
 of his simple manner, can never understand how much 
 there was in him to love. Men of all classes were alike 
 won by his personal magnetism. Those who have 
 traduced him most, and those who have been most carried 
 away by the blind fury of partisan hate, and have gone to 
 Washington to see him, have always come away disarmed. 
 Whenever they had talk with the President, whenever 
 
m'clintock. 135 
 
 those tender eyes opened gently upon them, (they had the 
 habit of opening gently,) and they looked through those 
 portals of his soul and saw the infinite wealth of tender- 
 ness that was there, they yielded to the spell. Illustra- 
 tions of the tenderness of his nature abound. A colonel 
 in the army was telling a friend the other day, of a time 
 in 1862, when he had command of one of the posts, and 
 the President visited the place for a few days. This 
 officer had never met the President, and had no very 
 exalted opinion of him, " but at the end of those ten 
 days," said he, " I found that I was in love with him, and 
 I could not help it." He related an incident that took 
 place one evening while sitting alone with the President. 
 Mr. Lincoln was reading Shakspeare, when suddenly 
 turning his eyes upon the officer, he said : " Colonel, d6 
 you ever find yourself talking with a dead friend as if he 
 was present and still living ?" " Yes," said the colonel, 
 " I know the feeling, for it has occurred to me often." 
 " I am glad I asked you the question," said Mr. Lincoln, 
 closing his book and leaning his head upon his hand, " I 
 did not know that it was common, but ever since my little 
 boy died, I find myself talking with him every day." 
 
 The entire absence of vindictiveness, either personal or 
 political, was one of the ripe fruits of Lincoln's native 
 tenderness. Did you ever hear of his saying a hard thing 
 of his opponents ? After all the vile calumnies heaped 
 upon him at home and abroad, did you ever know him to 
 utter a single word showing personal hate, or even 
 personal feeling? It is a marvellous record. Test our 
 public men by this standard, and you will see how loftily 
 he towers above them in moral dignity. He lived as he 
 
136 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 died : the last of his public utterances closed with the 
 words, " "With malice towards none, with charity for all." 
 This phrase will fall hereafter into that small number of 
 phrases, not Scripture, but which men often cite, unwit- 
 tingly, as though they were. 
 
 Another striking element of his moral nature was his 
 profound faith — a faith not like that of the man who now 
 stands at the head of the French people, a blind fatalistic 
 confidence in his own destiny, or in the destiny of the sys- 
 tem with which he is identified. Nor yet merely an 
 uncalculating faith in the wisdom, virtue or steadfastness 
 of the American people. Abraham Lincoln had this, in- 
 deed ; but it was not all ; he had a profound religious 
 faith ; not simply a general recognition of the law of order 
 in the universe, but a profound faith in a Personal God. 
 He once remarked to me, at a sudden turn in conversation, 
 " Ah, Providence is stronger than either you or I," and he 
 said it in such a tone as to reveal a habit of thought. It 
 was out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth 
 spoke. We were discussing at the time the relations of 
 this country with Europe, and the effects of his Proclama- 
 tion of Emancipation. " When I issued that Proclama- 
 tion," said he, " I was in great doubt about it myself. I 
 did not think that the people had been quite educated up 
 to it, and I feared its effects upon the Border States, yet 
 I think it was right; I knew it would help our cause 
 in Europe, and I trusted in God and did it." I be- 
 lieve that no President since George Washington ever 
 brought in so eminent a degree to his official work a deep 
 religious faith. Of his personal religious^xperience I can- 
 not speak of my own knowledge, but we have more than 
 
m'clintock. 137 
 
 one cheering testimony about it. I have been assured that 
 ever after the battle of Gettysburg he was daily in the 
 habit of supplicating in prayer the throne of divine grace, 
 as a believer in Jesus Christ, and that from that time he 
 classed himself with believers. Oh ! what prayers those 
 must have been in the dark days of '63, and how wondrously 
 has God answered them. 
 
 I shall not speak of the patriotism of Abraham Lin- 
 coln, though it is one of the points of which I had 
 intended to speak, but you know all about it. You know 
 what a tremendous duty fell to him, and how he did it all 
 the way through ; seduced by no blandishment, frightened 
 by no threats from the steady pursuit of his one duty — to 
 restore the integrity of the Government. How far he 
 succeeded is known to you all. The " forts and places w 
 which he said he would retake are all ours to-day, and the 
 main army of the rebellion is scattered and gone ! 
 
 The manners of Abraham Lincoln have been a matter 
 of a great deal of comment, and of snobbish comment 
 too. If unaffected simplicity, the most entire ease, and 
 the power to put one's visitor at ease, and to do it uncon- 
 sciously ; if these are the ultimate results and the final 
 tests of refinement, as they unquestionably are, then was 
 he the peer of any nobleman in manners. When you 
 shall learn to be as easy, as gentle, as truly unaffected, as 
 free from all thought of yourself, as Abraham Lincoln 
 was, then indeed will you have finished manners. What 
 if there were a few accidental remnants of his former 
 habits ? Of all the people in the world, we are the very 
 last that should think of these. 
 
 Just now, across the sea, men are grieving over the 
 
138 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 death of a plain man of the people, like Abraham Lincoln, 
 a man of the same kind of manners, a man bred to the 
 plough, and whose early years were given to trade — Richard 
 Cobden. And not merely in naturalness of manners, but 
 also in moral elevation, in guileless sincerity, in delicate 
 regard for the feelings even of enemies, in true devotion 
 to the good of their fellow-men, especially to the cause of 
 the poor and oppressed, and in earnest religious faith, were 
 these men twin-brothers. Even in outward look there 
 was a marked resemblance ; the same tenderness of eye, 
 the same pathetic sadness of general expression, and the 
 same lurking smile of humor. 
 
 In two weeks after the fall of Sumter, I heard the news 
 of it in Paris. Cobden arrived in town, from Algiers, I 
 think, just then. Early the next morning I went to him, 
 and said, " Are you enough interested in the American 
 question to have a few words ? " " Interested ! " said he, 
 " interested ! " and the tears started to his eyes. " My 
 Grod ! sir, I do not sleep at night ! " We then talked over 
 all the probable phases of this great question and its tre- 
 mendous issues. Never, until I came home and sat down 
 alone with Abraham Lincoln, as I had sat down with 
 Richard Cobden, did I know how much alike these two 
 men were. How prophetic is it of the near coming of 
 the time when all the sophisms of power, by which a few 
 have held, and are still striving to hold, the mass of man- 
 kind in their iron grasp to make them the tools of their 
 ambition and avarice, shall be swept away forever, that, 
 all over the earth, in palaces as well as in hovels, there is 
 mourning over Richard Cobden and Abraham Lincoln ; 
 men that worked with their hands and yet raised themselves 
 
Yi CLINTOCK. 139 
 
 Liglier than nobles ; precursors of that triumphant Chris- 
 tian civilization that is yet to gladden the hearts of all 
 mankind with the reign of universal brotherhood. In 
 seven years Cobden bowed the neck of the proudest aris- 
 tocracy in the world. In five years Lincoln destroyed and 
 buried the most cruel, the most dangerous aristocracy that 
 ever sought to establish itself in a civilized nation. The 
 two representative men of the spirit of the age have passed 
 away from earth together. 
 
 We had no fear about Abraham Lincoln, except the 
 fear that he would be too forgiving. Oh ! what an epitaph 
 — that the only fear men had was that he would be too 
 tender, that he had too much love ; in a word, that he 
 was too Christ-like ! And how Christ-like was he in 
 dying ! His last official words in substance were, " Father, 
 forgh'e them, they know not what they do." And on 
 Good Friday he fell a martyr to the cause of humanity. 
 I do not think there was adequate ground for the fear 
 that he would ever have sacrificed substantial justice 
 upon the altar of his personal tenderness ; or, that he had 
 not the strength and the resolution to punish the authors 
 of the rebellion ; yet, after all, in coming ages, it shall not 
 be the least of his titles to the veneration and love of 
 mankind, that his compeers found no fault with him, 
 except that he had too much love. 
 
 Last Friday, we are told, President Lincoln asked Gene- 
 ral Grant if he had heard from General Sherman ? Gene- 
 ral Grant replied that he had not ; but that he was hourly 
 in expectation of receiving despatches announcing the 
 surrender of Johnston. " Well," said the President, " you 
 will hear very soon now, and the news will be important." 
 
140 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 " Why do you think so ? " said the General. " Because," 
 said Mr. Lincoln, " I had a dream last night, and ever since 
 the war began I have invariably had the same dream 
 before any important event has occurred." He then 
 instanced Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburgh, &c., and 
 said that before each of those events he had had the same 
 dream. Turning to Secretary Welles, he said : " It is in 
 your line, too, Mr. Welles. I dreamed that I saw a ship 
 sailing very rapidly by, and I am sure that it por- 
 tends some important national event." Dear friends, the 
 life of Abraham Lincoln is closed. After a very, very 
 stormy voyage, the ship has reached her harbor at last. 
 And how, after all these tempests, these fierce blasts, 
 these rising floods, how did the ship sail in ? Shattered 
 and sinking, with sails all torn and rent ? No, dear friends, 
 God ordered it otherwise. Not a mark of the storm* was 
 on the noble vessel ; the hull was sound, the spars were 
 strong, the sails were spread, with the broad flag flying 
 again as it never waved before, and with pennants of red, 
 white and blue streaming gloriously and triumphantly over 
 all, the ship sailed into port, and the angels of God said 
 their glad " All hail ! " So now say I — and I venture to 
 speak in your behalf, as well as in my own — Abraham 
 Lincoln, Patriot, Philanthropist, Christian, Martyr, Hail ! 
 and Farewell ! 
 
 And now, what are to be the results of this tragedy to 
 the country and to mankind? It is God that rules, and 
 already we see that, even in this terrible crime, He has 
 made the wrath of man to praise Him. One thing is 
 clear : even now the American people are united as they 
 were never united before. Four years ago (or it will be 
 
h'clintock. 141 
 
 four years within a week), in 1861, I stood in Exeter Hall 
 in the City of London, with an audience of nearly four 
 thousand people. The London Times of the day before 
 had said "the Great Republic is gone." I made these 
 words the texts of a little speech to these four thousand 
 Englishmen. I ventured to say to them, what in my heart 
 I believed to be true, that whatever might be the result 
 of civil war elsewhere, and however a single battle 
 might turn in the United States, the Government of the 
 United States was impregnable ; that the great Republic 
 would come forth out of the trial stronger than ever ; that 
 however the first battle might go, we should win the last, 
 and the rebellion would be crushed. It is but right to 
 say that these remarks met with sympathy. The four 
 thousand people that sat before me showed every sign of 
 feeling; they rose from their seats, they clapped their 
 hands, they stamped their feet, they shouted. The four 
 years have passed, and the Republic is not gone, thank 
 God, but stands out in grander proportions, is established 
 upon a firmer foundation than ever before. In the four 
 days that have passed since the shot that laid Abraham 
 Lincoln low, the work of fifty years in the consolidation of 
 the Republic has been done. The morning of the same 
 day that saw one President die, saw another quietly 
 inaugurated and as quietly performing his functions. True 
 there were a few men in Wall street, who seemed to look 
 upon it as the harbinger of a golden harvest ; men who, 
 if allowed by any chance to pass the gates of the Celestial 
 City, would go with their eyes bent downward studying 
 some plan to pluck up the golden pavement. Naturally 
 enough, these men mistook the mighty import of passing 
 
142 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 events, and bought gold for a rise. On Monday gold was 
 ten per cent lower than on Saturday. 
 
 Another lesson we have learned is this : that in our 
 Government no one man. is essential. The Harpers have 
 just published a book by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte on 
 the life of Julius Caesar. Its object is to teach the world 
 that it must be governed by its great men ; that they make 
 epochs and not merely mark them. How suddenly that 
 book has been refuted, and what a blow has been given to 
 this gospel of Napoleon, by the assassination of Lincoln 
 and its issues. Here is one greater than Caesar struck 
 down as Caesar was, and yet the pillars of the Republic 
 are unshaken. What a pitiful anachronism does the 
 Imperial plea for Caesarism appear, in presence of the dead 
 Lincoln, and the mourning, yet living and triumphant 
 Republic ! 
 
 Let us now gather one or two practical lessons for our- 
 selves and our children. Hatred of assassination is one of 
 these lessons, if, indeed, we needed to learn it. The work 
 that Brutus did to Caesar was just as bad a work as that of 
 Booth to Lincoln. It was centuries before humanity re- 
 covered from the poisoned wound it received from the 
 stroke of the dagger that pierced the breast of Caesar. 
 Teach your children, moreover, not only to hate assassina- 
 tion, but treason as well ; for treason breeds assassins, as it 
 breeds all other forms of crime and wrong. You cannot 
 be too severe upon it in your thoughts or in your talk ; you 
 are severe upon the robber and the assassin ; shall you be 
 lenient towards the treason which has begotten both rob- 
 bery and assassination? 
 
 Remember, too, that as treason is the parent of assassi- 
 
m'clintock. 143 
 
 nation, so slavery has been the parent of treason. Is it 
 necessary for me to exhort yon to teach yonr children to 
 hate slavery too % In this one thing I ask yon to join with 
 me this day. Let us bow ourselves before Almighty God, 
 and vow that so far as in us lies, none of us will ever agree 
 to any pacification of this land, until slavery be utterly 
 extirpated. Watch your editors, then ; watch your clergy ; 
 watch your generals and soldiers, your admirals and sailors, 
 watch even Andrew Johnson, though of that I apprehend 
 there will be no need. Watch them all, if need be, and 
 see to it that this sprout of hell never shoots* up again in 
 the American soil. 
 
 One more lesson, and not the least. If anything I 
 have said, or anything that you read or hear in these sad 
 days, breeds within you a single revengeful feeling, even 
 towards the leaders of this rebellion, then think of Abraham 
 Lincoln, and pray God to make you merciful. Think of 
 the prayer of Christ, which the President said, after his 
 Saviour, " Father forgive them, they know not what they 
 do." Let there be no place for revenge in our souls ; jus- 
 tice we may and must demand, but revenge, never. 
 " Yengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." I 
 counsel you also to discountenance all disorder, all attempts 
 by private persons to avenge the public wrong, or even to 
 punish sympathizers with treason. I have been sorry to 
 hear from the lips of generous young men, under the 
 pangs of the President's assassination, sentiments of bitter- 
 ness and indignation, amounting almost to fierceness. It 
 is natural, no doubt, but what is natural is not always 
 right. Indulge this spirit, and you may hear next that 
 this man's house or that man's should be mobbed. Mobs 
 
144 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 are alien to our northern soil ; they belong to another at- 
 mosphere than that of free schools and free men. The 
 region of slavery was their natural home ; let us have none 
 of them. And soon, when the last shackles shall have 
 fallen, and throughout our land, from sea to sea, there 
 shall be no master and no slave, the blessed Peace shall 
 come> for which we have looked, and prayed, and fought 
 so long, when the Republic shall be established upon the 
 eternal foundations of Freedom and Justice, to stand, we 
 trust, by the blessing of God, down to the last syllable of 
 recorded Time. 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 EEV. A. N. L1TTLEJOHN, D. D. 
 
 " Know ye not there is a prince and a gre at man fallen this day in Israel." 
 — II Samuel iii. 38. 
 
 Brethren, you know the event which has called us 
 together amid these badges of sorrow. All sights and 
 sounds proclaim it. The very air is full of it. Its min- 
 gled horror and sadness may not be uttered. The grief 
 that hangs so heavy upon us moves a continent to tears. 
 We are but a small company of mourners in the vast mul- 
 titude who will to-day bend in anguish over the bier of the 
 nation's head. "We were just beginning to see the bow of 
 peace wearing out from the vapor and settling over the 
 troubled waters. We were just beginning to feel that the 
 last chapter had been written in the record of blood. The 
 disappointment is bitter and terrible. Without question 
 we have at last reached the Marah of the nation's journey 
 through the wilderness. The sword that was to pierce us 
 through, God has reserved for the hour of victory. The 
 land is a fountain of tears, and the hearts of the people 
 are bowed as the heart of one man. There could be no 
 sorer lamentation, though every house had in it one dead. 
 It is made the duty of the pulpit, beyond any other organ 
 of public sentiment, to deal with the overwhelming sorrow 
 of the hour, to guide and temper the nation's grief, to 
 
146 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 teach it how and for what to weep, to interpret the sober 
 philosophy of the grave, and to press home upon the soft- 
 ened, pain-stricken sensibilities of the people those gifts, 
 privileges, and destinies which the world can neither give 
 nor take away. Certainly our century, with all its intense 
 and changeful life, has witnessed no such impressive in- 
 stance of the sudden ruin and intrinsic vanity of earthly 
 fortunes in the high places of power. Yesterday, Abra- 
 ham Lincoln stood upon an eminence which the wisest 
 and the best might have envied. His word was clothed 
 with the force of law. His hand was upon the secret 
 spring of a nation's energies. His opinions were scanned 
 and weighed as the foreshadowing of the settled policy of 
 a redintegrated republic. On his will and purpose largely 
 depended the peace of the world. He had but to speak, 
 and two continents gave him audience. To-day, he is 
 still in death. He lies where each of us must lie. He 
 fills no more space than that allotted to the humblest 
 member of the race. Yesterday, he was of good cheer 
 at the approaching reward of four years of honest, anxious, 
 patriotic toil, with an out-look upon honors manifold, 
 and with an assured release from the bitterness of days of 
 darkness and fields of blood, his own unexultant but manly 
 smile reflecting the profound joy of a redeemed and tri- 
 umphant country. To-day, he is gone, as the rest of us 
 shall go, to give account of his stewardship to God. 
 Alas ! the brevity and uncertainty of the noblest earthly 
 career! Let us know and feel that we can mourn intelli- 
 gently over this terrible bereavement only as we shall in- 
 dividually see in it a new and more pointed admonition 
 from our final Judge. 
 
LITTLEJOHN. 147 
 
 The deed which has deprived the land of its Chief Ma- 
 gistrate and, perhaps, the Department of State of its illus- 
 trious incumbent, let us not hesitate to say, was worthy 
 of the cause which has filled the land with widows and 
 orphans — a cause conceived in wickedness, brought forth 
 in iniquity, and consummated in a crime which shall live 
 forever as the sufficient commentary upon the spirit that 
 gave it being. Under no provocation should we be 
 tempted to harshness and injustice. But it is neither 
 harsh nor unjust — but the simple truth gradually forced 
 upon us by the stern logic of events — to say that the mur- 
 derous hand which has brought upon us this stupendous 
 calamity is, in reality, the same hand which wielded the 
 merciless lash upon unresisting victims whose cry there 
 was none to hear — the same hand which, tutored*»into law- 
 less violence by the cruel and arbitrary instincts of slavery, 
 struck clown a senator of New England for presuming to 
 exercise freedom of speech — the same hand which kindled 
 and led an unprovoked and suicidal rebellion against the 
 mildest and freest of governments — which hung and 
 slaughtered in cold blood thousands who remained faith- 
 ful to their allegiance, and occupied itself at intervals 
 with the torture and starvation of the captured in prison 
 camps and noisome dungeons. There is no help for it. 
 Charity itself can invent no sufficient mitigation of the 
 fact. This crime must go into history as the legitimate 
 embodiment of the spirit of that greater and once legal- 
 ized — protected crime of oppression which, by the decree of 
 God, has been swept away, and the very traces of it surged 
 out by fire, battle, and blood. It seems as though the last 
 bite of the serpent was needed to convince us of its incu- 
 
148 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 rable and dreadful venom. Henceforth slavery will have 
 no apologist in the court of the world's civilization. The 
 mark of Cain is upon it, and no hand will be found bold 
 enough to brave the infamy of attempting to hide it. 
 Consigned at last to the gulf of perdition, with a wild 
 and heartless malice, it sought to drag down with it all 
 that lay within its reach. It has perished in a way to 
 satisfy the proprieties of retributive justice. Its end is 
 not merely ruin, but dishonor. Its name will rot with 
 the bones of the assassin who directed its last blow. And, 
 hereafter, though the common life of the republic shall be 
 freed from its insult, menace, treason, and atrocity ; yet 
 trumpet-tongued it will continue to bear witness through 
 the ages, by a thousand scars, to the malignant and tre- 
 mendousfpower of the demon that once possessed it. 
 
 In the death of Abraham Lincoln, the people who have 
 been in arms against the national authority, and who will 
 soon be sueing for mercy, have lost their wisest and truest 
 friend. They have lost one who, beyond any other man 
 in official position, was ready to pity their desolation, to 
 commiserate their folly, and to receive them back as pro- 
 digal sons. They have lost one who had already antici- 
 pated and given expression to the latent magnanimity and 
 clemency of the national mind. They have lost one who 
 would have spared no effort, consistent with the public 
 safety and honor, to enable them to retrieve their broken 
 fortunes, and renew at the common altar their plighted 
 faith. 
 
 But if they from whom we have been estranged during 
 these four years of conflict, have lost so much by this 
 calamity, what shall be said of our own loss. Say what 
 
LITTLEJOHN. 149 
 
 we will ; interpret Providence as we may, it cannot be ex- 
 aggerated. Happily party differences no longer stand in 
 the way of a suitable recognition of the transcendent ser- 
 vices of our late Chief Magistrate. It may be doubted 
 whether any instance can be cited, in which the mists of 
 prejudice have so suddenly parted, only to reveal behind 
 them a fame so free from challenge or disparagement. 
 Certainly history furnishes no case in which death has so 
 instantly invested its victim with the sanctity of an ap- 
 proval more spontaneous and universal. The character of 
 this man had grown so evenly, so silently, and from such 
 modest beginnings ; it had borne vast burdens, wrought 
 mighty issues with so little friction ; it had sent its root so 
 deep into the core of our life, that w r e knew neither what 
 it was to lis, nor how large it was destined to appear in 
 coming time, until death spread out before us the quiet 
 and solemn shadow of its proportion. The work of the 
 public mind in dealing with this character, since it has 
 taken its place in the sphere of the unchangeable, has 
 been that of recognition, not of discovery. We say to-day 
 only what we might have said a week ago, but for the re- 
 serve with which the living must always be spoken of. 
 The same pure, simple, honest, incorruptible, large-brained 
 force of will and conscience that w r e see to-day, and whose 
 departure we mourn as something not likely to be replaced, 
 has been toiling for us all through these recent years of 
 doubt and peril. We saw it, and yet feared to speak too 
 strongly of it, lest some flaw or soil should appear before 
 its career should close. But now that its record is made rip, 
 we may love, revere, and praise in language which, before, 
 might have seemed that of partial admiration. 
 
150 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 History, when it shall give its final verdict, may modify, 
 in some particulars, the glowing eulogies of the hour. It 
 may be that the nation, under the impulse of sudden and 
 profound grief, may claim too much for this man of the 
 people. But this much is sure, he will go forever into 
 their memory, and the seal will be immovably set upon 
 it — that never have they had in that highest and most re- 
 sponsible position, an uprightness more unquestioned, a 
 wisdom more balanced, luminous, and practical, a gene- 
 rosity more lofty, a patriotism more ardent, a cheerfulness 
 more patient, a purpose more brave in the day of trouble, 
 or a consecration of talent and energy to the common weal 
 more absolute. All agree that his heart was too open and 
 large to harbor a mean or selfish intent. And as for anger 
 and revenge, under immense provocation, none need be 
 told that they found no place in word or deed. No ruler 
 was ever more reluctant to strike, even when crime crossed 
 his path and demanded the blow. There is scarcely an 
 infirmity imparted to him by the most unsparing criticism, 
 which was not traceable to a certain gentleness of spirit, 
 which, however harsh and knotty wills that "make haste 
 to the hangman's office" may sneer at, will be accounted 
 hereafter, in calmer days, as the only flower of Paradise 
 that was able to float on this sea of blood. 
 
 There are some who scruple to call Mr. Lincoln great. 
 We are not among them. If he was not great, then, by 
 some strange fortune, it fell to his lot to achieve results 
 hitherto deemed possible only to the highest order of 
 faculty. If he was not great, history will have its most 
 startling wonder to record. It will have to show how an 
 ordinary man wrought the most extraordinary things in a 
 
LTTTLE.TOHN. 151 
 
 sphere of action where personal character and official in- 
 fluence are subject to the severest scrutiny. It will have 
 to show how something less than greatness did what con- 
 ceded greatness has always pronounced most difficult. 
 The nation, at this hour, grudges not to own him great, 
 There is a wisdom in the popular instinct which adjusts 
 sorrow to the sense of loss. Judged by this rule, there can 
 be no doubt where the common mind of the country 
 places this man. There were qualities, gifts, enrichments, 
 which he lacked. He had not the severe dignity of Wash- 
 ington, nor the acumen and breadth of Hamilton, nor the 
 versatility of John Quincy Adams. He had not the electric 
 eloquence of Clay, nor the matchless finish of Everett, nor 
 the massive strength of Webster. And yet there was in 
 him a fullness, ripeness, directness of power, which, if 
 measured by what it did, will prove him inferior to none 
 of the illustrious names gone before him. There can be 
 no dispute as to what was really in him, for he pretended 
 to nothing which he had not, and concealed nothing that 
 he had. His simplicity and candor made him appear less 
 than he was. He spoke and acted with such absence ot 
 parade, that all who did not weigh him well thought him 
 an honest mediocrity, plodding slowly toward a great end. 
 The cheerful ease with which he mastered the most intri- 
 cate questions of the time, deceived all but those nearest to 
 him as to the magnitude of his labors. He made no claim 
 to eloquence. All the more striking attributes of the 
 orator w T ere wanting. And yet, in his plain, strong way 
 he said things — as when he stood over the heroic dead at 
 Gettysburg — which the world will never forget. As a 
 writer he was singulary deficient in the ordinary graces ol 
 
152 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 style. And yet he has left State Papers which will be re- 
 garded hereafter as the ablest expositions of the momen- 
 tous issues of our time. The elaboration bestowed by 
 those in quest of fame upon the vehicle of thought, he be- 
 stowed upon the thought itself. Destitute of methodical 
 training, utterly without what is technically known as 
 culture, there was that in his handling of obscure and 
 complicated subjects which evinced the finest fruit ot 
 careful intellectual discipline. He never said anything 
 that would imply that he thought himself a man of cour- 
 age or inclined to self-sacrifice on behalf of imperiled 
 principle ; but there are none who knew him well that 
 will not at once accord him all the moral qualities of the 
 true hero. No man, perhaps, ever had a career which, 
 taken in its whole length, was better calculated to invite 
 vanity, boasting, and self-sufficiency ; or to develope the 
 small weaknesses which, with most men, follow in the 
 wake of rapid and unexpected success. But the keenest 
 eye fails to detect in him the traces of such qualities. His 
 modesty and humility kept pace with his rising eminence. 
 And of him it can be said truly — and nothing could be 
 more wonderful — that such was the habitual gentleness — 
 such the native, robust magnanimity of his character — 
 such his incorruptible fairness, that, amid all the fiery 
 strifes and clashing factions of a period of tumult and 
 revolution, he never alienated a friend, or justly made an 
 enemy. 
 
 The word greatness is variable and elastic. It is often 
 a term of comparison conveying no absolute meaning. It 
 covers all degrees of power from that of confessed genius 
 down to that of common-place, but successful talent. 
 
LITTLEJOHN. 153 
 
 Still, loose and vague as may be the use of the word, it 
 has, after all, a very definite signification to the settled 
 judgment of mankind. There are certain tests — certain 
 properties of character which, wherever they are found, 
 assert the presence of true greatness, and secure for it, in 
 the critical estimate of the world, the attribute of immor- 
 tality. I shall name some of these tests and properties, 
 and then inquire how they were answered in the character 
 and career of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 1st. It is a proof of greatness to discharge immense 
 responsibilities in times of change and peril, and to hand 
 over a trust of extraordinary powers without even the 
 suspicion of failure or abuse. There can be no question 
 that Mr. Lincoln met this test as completely as any ruler 
 of ancient or modern times. He parted with power with 
 less regret than he received it. It had no attractions to 
 him. It stirred no ambition, tempted to no self-aggran- 
 dizement, awoke no dreams of dynastic fame. No one in 
 high office could be more scrupulous to mark the rightful 
 limitations of authority, or more reluctant to overpass 
 them under the pressure of danger to the national life. 
 
 2nd. It is an evidence of greatness to lead and to 
 fashion, amid all possible elements of hazard and convul- 
 sion, an era of transcendent success in the life of empires 
 or republics. Without controversy, we find this in the 
 character and administration of this man. He began his 
 work amid disadvantages which never can be adequately 
 estimated. He encountered difficulties which would have 
 utterly overwhelmed a will less patient, cheerful and self- 
 poised than his own. And yet the civic and military 
 achievements of the Government over which he presided 
 
154 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 have never been surpassed. The contrast between the 
 commencement and the close of his administration will be 
 one of the wonders of history. When it began one-half 
 the country was ablaze with the flame of rebellion, and the 
 other half was dumb with perplexity and the sense of 
 coming disaster. There was not only the division of 
 geographical sections, but the division of heterogeneous 
 races and clashing social institutions. It was an open 
 question whether the will of a single part should override 
 or obey the sovereign will of the whole body — whether the 
 nation was only a heap of atoms or an organic force. In 
 the Old World, where it was believed that our trouble 
 would develope sympathy, if not friendship, we found only 
 envy of our growth, fear of our strength, and studied pre- 
 dictions of our failure and ruin. Western Europe was 
 rejoicing that the day had come for writing the epitaph of 
 republics. How changed all this when Mr. Lincoln's 
 career closed. He lived long enough to see the tokens of 
 returning peace, the defeat and surrender of hostile 
 armies, the closing up of the terrible wound upon the 
 nation's life, the utter destruction of the political heresy 
 that had plunged the land in fratricidal blood, the fusion 
 into a more compact and homogeneous unity of diverse 
 races, the confession of all nations that the Republic had 
 triumphed, and the joy of the oppressed throughout the 
 world over another mighty advance of liberty and justice 
 in the affairs of the race. 
 
 3rd. It belongs to the highest order of mind and char- 
 acter to mould and govern the opinions of a free people. 
 This, Abraham Lincoln did as few have done before him. 
 He mastered and directed public sentiment upon the most 
 
LITTLEJOHN. 1 55 
 
 vital questions. He did it fairly, conclusively, perma- 
 nently. With a skill and prescience which will challenge 
 the admiration of posterity, he gathered up and crystallized 
 the fluid thought of the masses into the statesmanship and 
 policy of the hour. Iiis success on this difficult task was 
 clue, in the main, to marked peculiarities of intellect and 
 administration. He had no theories, no pet fancies, no 
 schemes with which he believed his fame identified. He 
 was not a bookish statesman. He had no historic idols. 
 No school of political thought could wholly claim him. 
 He studied all questions demanding his decision under the 
 light of facts. His course waited upon events. His 
 policy grew naturally out of the emergencies around him. 
 His wisdom was of the sort which neglects no fact, but 
 gives to each its proper force. He knew how to walk 
 with the people, and yet to assert his function as a leader 
 and prophet. The time was when some believed him 
 slow, timid and vacillating. Results have shown that he 
 was only patient, cautious and comprehensive ; and that 
 the hot, hasty wills who judged him lived in an atmos- 
 phere of fog and confusion. We have had no statesman 
 of whom it can be so truly said, that he was, in the work 
 that fell to him, so wise an imitator of the developing, 
 sanative forces of Nature and Providence, whose great law 
 it is to be progressively conservative and conservatively 
 progressive. 
 
 4th. It is a quality of greatness to win and to hold in 
 high station and amid days of change and peril the con- 
 fidence of millions. In this Mr. Lincoln was pre-eminent. 
 No case can be named in which a vast people surrendered 
 into the hands of their ruler more of their lives, fortunes, 
 
156 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 and destinies, and yet were freer from doubt, suspicion, or 
 complaint. In the darkest hour of the four years past, 
 whatever else might give way, there was no change or 
 abatement of the popular trust in their head. 
 
 5th. It has always been reckoned a mark of greatness 
 to preserve an original, uncorrupted individuality amid 
 the frictions and abrasions of a rulership which makes the 
 incumbent the depositary of all men's notions, the prey 
 of flatterers, deceivers and parasites, the victim of the 
 menace.or the blandishments of a dominant party. Who 
 has shown this mark of greatness more clearly than this 
 man ? The day he died he was no other than he was 
 when he left his home for the capitol — save in knowledge, 
 experience, trial, service, and suffering. He was ever so 
 truly himself that custom could not alter, conventionality 
 could not spoil, fashion could not beguile him. Faction, 
 with its secret schemes, put its teeth on a file when it 
 struck his simple, healthy, honest will. And court syco- 
 phants found their occupation gone, as there was in him 
 absolutely no vanity, or private ambition to work upon. 
 
 6th. It is the effect of a great man's life to enrich 
 by character, deeds, and sufferings, the annals of a people, 
 and to multiply their traditions of endurance, heroism, 
 and triumph. In this our late President, by general con- 
 sent, will rank second only to Washington. 
 T 7th, and finally. The sovereign and unchallenged test 
 of greatness, as adjudged by all nations and ages, is to 
 complete service by sacrifice ; to attest by death what was 
 toiled and fought for in life ; to add the martyr's crown to 
 the patriot's work. This alone was needed to round out 
 and immortalize Abraham Lincoln. God gave him the 
 
LITTLE.TOHN. 157 
 
 baptism of blood, as he had already given it to the cause 
 which he represented, and so translated him into the list 
 of the world's leaders, deliverers, emancipators, who plead 
 more mightily from their graves than living rulers from 
 the seats of power. Let us not doubt, then, that a great 
 man has passed from us into history, and joined the powers 
 which cannot die. Let us not doubt that our time of sor- 
 row has brought forth a character worthy to enshrine its 
 immortal issue. This man has gone from us. He needs 
 no other monument than the race whom he led forth from 
 bondage, and the country saved, under God, by his guid- 
 ance. . He has been followed to his grave by such majesty 
 and sincerity of grief as never yet waited upon king or 
 conqueror, and his memory may be safely left to the keep- 
 ing of all lands and ages. 
 
 We have lost the mortal. We have gained the im- 
 mortal. We have lost a Chief Magistrate. We have 
 gained one who shall henceforth be known among the 
 world's benefactors. We have lost a virtue subject to 
 change. We have gained a virtue which shall be the same 
 until the heavens shall be no more. We have lost a voice 
 that might have faltered and a will that might have fallen 
 away from its task. We have gained both, exalted and 
 consecrated to a wider and nobler mission. We have lost 
 a rare combination of gifts. May it not be that we have 
 gained another, which, in view of emergencies yet to come, 
 shall prove the foresight and adaptation of God's. We 
 have lost a man built up into greatness by the institutions 
 of liberty and law. We shall gain another proof of the 
 power of those institutions to repair all damage and waste 
 in the life committed to their keeping. 
 
158 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 I have spoken of the man, his character, career, and 
 services ; I have sketched his place in history, and shown 
 why the gratitude and love of this bereaved people should 
 cherish and venerate his name. Permit me, in conclusion, 
 to indicate what God teaches ns in this sorrow. Once 
 more he admonishes us that our strength is not in chariots 
 or horses, or men of war, or an arm of flesh. Once more 
 He tells us that in the development of His plans there is 
 no necessary man. Again He interposes to check the 
 instinctive gravitation of mankind toward great person- 
 alities, and to strike at the root of all civic and military 
 idolatries engendered by illustrious fortune or command- 
 ing genius. Again He shifts from shoulder to shoulder 
 the mantle of the ruler, the statesman, the conqueror, the 
 prophet, to show us that it is only in His wisdom and 
 might that we can safely glory. " The earth is weak and 
 all the inhabitants thereof. I bear up the pillars of it." 
 " God is the Judge. He putteth down one and setteth up 
 another." Once more, too, amid the far-sounding joy 
 and the waving of multitudinous banners, He suddenly 
 opens at our feet the path of humiliation winding on into 
 the valley of the shadow of death. Thus, by a calamity 
 and bereavement which have pierced the common heart, 
 He has seen fit to set up another check to the pride and 
 self-confidence of a great people flushed with victory. 
 May these admonitions not be in vain. May the grace 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ be so poured out to-day upon 
 the weeping, prostrate millions of this land " that peace 
 and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may 
 be established among us for all generations," 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 KEV. THEODOEE L. CUYLEK.* 
 
 "And the Lord blessed Abraham in all things." — Genesis xxiv. 1. 
 
 ' A few hours since, I came home from witnessing the 
 resurrection of the flag over Sumter's walls, and on our 
 way the arrow of fatal tidings met us and pierced us 
 through. I came in tears to find you all in tears. And 
 to-day I only seek to give utterance, in the broken lan- 
 guage of grief, to the artless, spontaneous outgush of our 
 every heart. " I cannot see to read in the valley of the 
 shadow of death," said Christopher North to his class, 
 when he returned to them their essays unread, a few days 
 after the death of his wife. Nor could I see to write under 
 the shadow of this overwhelming sorrow. Let me, in the 
 most unstudied language, just talk to you about that dear 
 departed father, whose form lies but a few leagues off 
 to-day, on its way to the burial. 
 
 It is more than two. centuries since the civilized world 
 has received a shock like this. I open the page of history 
 and read, that on the 10th of July, 1584, William the 
 
 * The above report of an extemporaneous discourse, delivered in the 
 Lafayette avenue Presbyterian Church, on April 23d, is mainly recalled 
 from memory. 
 
160 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Silent, the founder of the Dutch Republic, was passing 
 from his dining-hall to his private apartments, attended 
 by his wife. Near the stairway was an obscure arch sunk 
 deep in the wall, and almost hidden from view. The 
 Prince of Orange had just reached the second of the flight 
 of stairs, when a hired assassin darted out from the dark 
 archway, and standing within a few feet of the prince, dis- 
 charged a pistol at his heart. Three balls entered his 
 body ; one of them rebounded even from the wall beyond ! 
 William exclaimed, as he felt the wound, " Oh ! my Gocl, 
 have mercy upon this poor people !" In a few moments 
 he breathed his last in the arms of his faithful wife, Louisa 
 of Coligny. 
 
 Gerard, the assassin, dashed out of a side door and en- 
 deavored to make his escape by a narrow lane to a spot 
 where a horse stood in waiting for him. He stumbled 
 over a pile of rubbish in his path, and before he could rise 
 again he was seized by several halberdiers who had fol- 
 lowed him from the house. He was brought at once 
 before the magistrates, was subjected to the most excruci- 
 ating tortures, and in a few days was condemned to die 
 under the terrible triple agonies of burning, quartering, 
 and decapitation. 
 
 No one can read the narrative of the murder of the de- 
 liverer of Holland, without being amazed at the coinci- 
 dence between the crime of Balthazar Gerard and the crime 
 of the brutal Booth. One could almost believe that the 
 American miscreant had learned his horrible part from the 
 Burgundian fanatic. The lofty and magnanimous character 
 of the two illustrious victims — the same cowardly assault 
 upon both when unarmed and unprotected — the same wea- 
 
CUYLEK. 161 
 
 pon employed — the fact that both the victims were at- 
 tended by their wives — the method of attemped escape — 
 all these furnish a resemblance that is as startling as it 
 drawn from the realm of a horrible fiction. The crimes 
 were not more coincident than the characters of those who 
 figured in these two foremost assassinations of modern 
 history. 
 
 William the Silent was a noble representative of Protestant 
 heroism, Protestant faith, and Protestant liberty. Gerard 
 was the fiendish embodiment of all that was crafty, bigot- 
 ed, and revengeful in Spanish Popery. Abraham Lincoln 
 was the representative of American Republicanism in its 
 most pure and primitive type. In Booth, the butcher, was 
 incarnated the diabolical spirit of Southern slavery. He 
 is a specimen of the pupils which the " peculiar institu- 
 tion" has graduated for half a century. Proud, indolent, 
 dissipated, licentious, a slave of the wine-cup, and accus- 
 tomed to the unbridled indulgence of his passions, he was 
 the very man to step forth as at once the representative 
 and the champion of the traitor-confederacy. What Pres- 
 ton Brooks mofe feebly attempted in the " Freshman 
 class" of slavery, John Wilkes Booth achieved in the 
 " Senior year" of its matured iniquity. This astounding 
 tragedy at Washington is but the legitimate product of 
 the same accursed system that tore down the nation's 
 standard at Sumter, that massacred the heroic garrison of 
 Fort Pillow, that starved the thousands of Union soldiers 
 at Belle Isle, Anderson ville, and on the Charleston race- 
 course, and had been for a century, maiming, and branding, 
 and torturing God's poor bond-children on innumerable 
 plantations. Abraham Lincoln, holding the pen that 
 
162 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 pierced oppression through with its edict of emancipation, 
 is the embodiment of Christian democracy. John Wilkes 
 Booth, wielding the assassin's weapon, is the embodiment 
 of the bowie-knife barbarism of the slaveholding oligarchy. 
 Thanks be to God that the days of that oligarchy are 
 numbered ! 
 
 But let ns turn away from the harrowing crime to its 
 illustrious victim himself. Let us, as a bereaved house- 
 hold, sit down and talk together, in the soft, low accents 
 of affection, about the great, the good, the honest, the 
 patient, the gentle-hearted, the beloved head of our na- 
 tional family, whom God has taken to himself. We are 
 too near his coffin to criticise him ; our hearts are yonder 
 in that coffin with him. God knows that when the tidings 
 of his murder first smote me through on that steamer's 
 deck, I could hardly have felt a keener agony if I had 
 heard that my wife or child were gone. So you felt ; so 
 millions feel ; such will be the pang that will attend this 
 tragedy in its circuit around the globe. No man of our 
 time could be stricken from his orbit that would leave 
 such a startling void ; and no man of any time was ever 
 followed to his burial by such myriads of mourners, or 
 laid in a grave that was so literally drenched with a na- 
 tion's tears. Yes ! the poor ploughboy of a Kentucky 
 homestead has a funeral that was not accorded to a Napo- 
 leon or a Wellington. 
 
 In selecting a passage for the motto of this unpre-: 
 meditated tribute, I could find scores of lines in God's 
 word that would be appropriate to the eulogy of our 
 martyr-president. But none, perhaps, that could tell 
 more briefly his history than these simple words — " The 
 
CUYLER. 1G3 
 
 Lord bier':- 1 . Abraham in all things.'''' In blessing our 
 Abraham., God blessed our regenerated country, and the 
 whole household of humanity. Let me point you to some 
 of the crowning mercies of the Divine gift — with devout 
 gratitude to the Heavenly Giver. 
 
 I. — And first, God blebeed our President with a lowly 
 birth. Abraham Lincoln was thoroughly a man of the 
 people. The common people of America saw the very 
 best that was in themselves when they looked at him. So 
 plebeian a President we have never had. Benjamin 
 Franklin has hitherto been the type-man of American 
 democracy. For remember that our Washington came of 
 gentle blood, and belonged to the colonial aristocracy of 
 Virginia. He had many of the traits of an English 
 country gentleman ; his associates were such men as Lord 
 Fairfax, and the patricians of the " Old Dominion." But 
 Lincoln was made of that homely stuff that was wrought 
 into Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster. 
 
 Look for a moment at the career that is photographed 
 in the following dozen lines : — Born in Hardin County, 
 Kentucky, of farmer parentage, on the 12th of February, 
 L809 ; his boyhood spent in clearing forests with the 
 woodman's axe; one year only spent in the rudimentary 
 studies of a district school ; at the age of nineteen toiling 
 as a hired hand on a Mississippi flat-boat ; then a clerk in 
 a country store of Illinois ; next a student of law from a 
 few books borrowed in the evening, to be returned on the 
 next morning ; in 1834: a member of the State Legislature ; 
 in 1816 in the National Congress; through the year 1858 
 measuring weapons with Douglas in the most protracted 
 and brilliant political canvass yet waged between Amer- 
 
164 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 ican debaters ; in I860, chosen triumphantly to the 
 Presidential chair ; for four years the central figure in the 
 most stupendous conflict of modern times ; re-elected to 
 the Presidency by a voice of the people " like the sound 
 of many waters"; and from that lofty eminence, in the 
 very moment of victory, translated through martyrdom to 
 a seat in history beside our first Washington himself; I 
 ask you, where is a record like unto this in our modern 
 annals ? Yet to the last, and through all his wondrous 
 steps of exaltation, he is the same plain, modest, homely, 
 simple-hearted Abraham Lincoln who hewed out rails in 
 an Illinois forest, and " sorted " farmers' letters in a rustic 
 post-office. Since the day when a Corsican lieutenant of 
 artillery presided over a congress of conquered kings at 
 Tilsit, history has recorded no such extraordinary eleva- 
 tion. Napoleon grew dizzy ; but honest Lincoln's head 
 never lost its balance. Lifted into the gaze of all Chris- 
 tendom, his calm spirit reposed in a majestic serenity ; for 
 he felt that the Hand that raised him thither, held him 
 there with an infinite grasp until the Divine purpose was 
 accomplished. Suppose that, when the coarsely clad boat- 
 man of Illinois was floating down the Mississippi in his 
 rude craft, some prophetic angel had tolcl him that he would 
 yet make that river the scene of prodigious exploits, of which 
 he should be the prime controller, and would one day 
 sweep from all that river's bank the gigantic system of 
 human bondage, would he not have smiled at the bare 
 thought as the dream of an enchanter 1 Yet the dream 
 was fulfilled. To Joseph's sheaf all the other sheaves 
 made obeisance. I count it as an especial mercy that, 
 through all his career, God blessed our Abraham with 
 
CUYLER. 165 
 
 true humility ; and kept him as free from selfish ambitions 
 as the lowliest sentinel who ever paced his solitary rounds 
 on a rampart. 
 
 Secondly, God blessed our good President with more 
 than an unselfish heart ; He gave him a clear and vigorous 
 head and a most marvellous sagacity. It has been too 
 common to speak of Mr. Lincoln as merely a good, honest 
 man, whom the " accidents " of politics made conspicu- 
 ous — a man who merely drifted on a current of events 
 that he was powerless to control. Such will not be the 
 verdict of posterity. The next generation will acknow- 
 ledge that the man who rose from a log cabin to the 
 Presidential chair — who led a vast republic through its 
 wilderness of perilous confusions, and its Red Sea of 
 horrible carnage, with a patience that never gave way, a 
 faith that never faltered, and a sagacity that made never 
 a serious mistake, was a man who has no superior in the 
 American annals. I predict that, fifty years hence, the 
 foremost name in American history will be the name that 
 was signed to the Edict of Emancipation. Napoleon's 
 test of ability was a very simple one — "Who did all 
 that % " We apply this test to our departed President, 
 and ask — who has achieved more than Lincoln ? who did 
 his life-work better than he ? The backwoodsman of 
 Illinois did not lay claim to Hamilton's imperial intellect, 
 yet Hamilton never read events more sagaciously. He 
 did not claim John Jay's profound wisdom, yet Jay never 
 decided more wisely. He did not pretend to Daniel 
 Webster's massive and magnificent oratory ; but Webster 
 never put more truth into a portable form for the common 
 people. Lincoln's speech in the Cooper Institute of New 
 
166 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 York, in 1859, was a master-piece of clear trenchant 
 argumentation. With him, common sense did the work 
 of genius. He clove at once to the root of the matter. 
 Some of his homely sayings will live alongside of Benja- 
 min Franklin's. His pleasant jokes had more meaning in 
 them than many another man's pompous harangues. 
 
 For example, when Mr. Lincoln wrote to a Kentucky 
 friend these simple words " if slavery is not wrong, then 
 nothing is wrong," he answered in one sentence all the 
 detestable logic of Thornwell and Calhoun. When he 
 said in 1858, " it is impossible for this Union to exist, 
 one-half slave, and the other half free," he announced a 
 truth which previous statesmen had either failed to 
 perceive or else failed to utter. His brief address on the 
 battle-ground of Gettysburgh is sublime in its pathos. 
 His last memorable i( Inaugural " will take its place 
 beside the Farewell Address of Washington. The carping 
 London Times did not dare to sneer at that. When I read 
 it on the street in a daily journal, I said to myself, " God 
 be praised for a President who can utter God's Word 
 from a Presidential chair ! " There are few finer passages 
 in the English language than this oft-quoted sentence, so 
 sonorous in its roll, and so severely true in its portent. 
 " If it is the will of God that this war continue until all 
 the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty 
 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
 drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by 
 another drawn by the sword, then, as was said three 
 thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 
 
 Scoffers at home and secessionists abroad have been wont 
 
CUYLEK. 167 
 
 to flout at Mr. Lincoln as a "jester," a "clown" and a 
 "buffoon." As well denounce Washington as a cynic be- 
 cause he seldom laughed. Lincoln's humor was as natural 
 to him as breathing. It was a happy gift. It kept his 
 temper sweet, and lubricated his mind, that might other- 
 wise have been worn into sulleness or into despondency 
 by the tremen.. is friction of care and overwhelming 
 anxieties. None of his jokes were ill-timed or malevolent. 
 Some of them were exceedingly adroit. For instance, 
 when an inquisitive visitor questioned him too closely as 
 to the destination of the Burnside expedition, the Presi- 
 dent inquired with mock gravity, "my friend, can you 
 keep a secret ? " " Yes, Sir," he eagerly rej^lied. " Then," 
 said Mr. Lincoln, " I will venture to inform you that the 
 expedition has gone to sea." 
 
 The shrewd sense that made this ready answer was the 
 same shrewd sense that dictated every Presidential message, 
 that aimed the emancipation-edict at slavery's guilty head, 
 and guided his every footstep along the dark dangerous 
 way that duty commanded him to tread. I do not claim 
 for our beloved President a profoundly philosophical mind. 
 I do not claim for him brilliant genius. But I do claim 
 that when the Almighty made Abraham Lincoln for this 
 great national crisis, He did not make a mistake. 
 
 III. Let us look now a moment at another blessing w T hich 
 God gave to our beloved and martyred ruler. Beneath 
 that manly head He gave him a woman's heart. Did 
 you ever hear that our Father Abraham ever spoke a 
 harsh word to one of his children ? Did you ever see his 
 now dead hands stained with cruelty % With almost 
 unlimited powder entrusted to him, did he ever play " the 
 
168 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 tyrant % " He loved everybody, and wanted everybody to 
 love him. Nobody was afraid of him — except rogues and 
 traitors, and be was too lenient even toward them. The 
 humblest "blue-jacket" that entered the White House 
 was sure of a hearty grasp of that open honest hand, and 
 if the soldier's child came along, the tall ungainly form 
 would lift it up for a kiss. He never could stand a 
 woman's tears ; they were almost certain to melt down a 
 death-sentence into a pardon. His last act was one of 
 clemency to a notorious traitor ; if he had lived, he was 
 in more danger of surrendering to rebel prayers than he 
 ever was of surrendering to rebel swords. 
 
 All the common people had felt of Lincoln's heart, and 
 they loved him. His political foes were his personal 
 friends : " he is a kind honest man after all " was the con- 
 fession that followed even the bitterest assault upon his 
 public policy. The popular names given to great men 
 are a clue to the popular estimate of their characters. 
 We once had a resolute piece of stuff in the Presidential 
 chair whom the people styled " Old Hickory." We had 
 an " Old Tippecanoe " — so named from his principal 
 battle ; we called another gallant veteran " Hough and 
 Heady." But this plain homespun kind-voiced President 
 was so near to every one of us — so like our own relative 
 that we were wont to call him " Uncle Abe " and " Father 
 Abraham." There was no disrespect in this ; but rather 
 a respect so deep and honest that it could afford to be 
 familiar. 
 
 Hid this abounding kindness of heart ever warp his 
 sense of right, and lead him to compromise his principles % 
 This was his danger, but I think that in the main he 
 
CUTLER. 169 
 
 avoided it. Not for a moment did he yield to the false 
 counsels of the treacherous, the bribes of the corrupt, or 
 the weak fears of the desponding. Abraham Lincoln's 
 religion, as far as the world saw it — lay in two cardinal 
 principles — a rigid sense of right — and an unfaltering 
 faith in the Providence of God. He was a child of Prov- 
 idence. " If I did not seek help from God every morning 
 I could not stand up under the load laid upon me," was 
 the substance of a remark made to an intimate friend 
 during a gloomy period of the war. What was the degree 
 of our President's heart-faith in Jesus Christ is known only 
 to the Omniscient. He worshiped in G©d's sanctuary; 
 he once taught in the Sabbath School ; he was rigidly 
 moral ; he practised abstinence from the wine-cup as well 
 preached it ; he set a noble example of industry, conti- 
 nence, fortitude and integrity. He never made any public 
 confession of his faith in the Redeemer. This I regret 
 from my inmost heart. Would to God that the lofty 
 philanthrophy which made him our Wilberforce, had also 
 been coupled with Wilberforce's devout, tender and 
 fervid piety ! Praises be rendered too unto God for the 
 faith in an overruling Providence which dwelt in Lincoln's 
 great kindly heart ; and for the beautiful law of right 
 which guided his glorious career! Never had a public 
 man a -harder path to tread ; but he never lost his way — 
 for he simply and steadily kept to the straight road. After 
 issuing the proclamation of freedom he said to a friend, 
 " I did not think the people had been educated up to it ; 
 but I thought it ivas right to* issue it, and so I did it." 
 
 And now that great, generous child-like heart has ceased 
 to throb ! Those deep, melancholy eyes — deep wells of 
 
170 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 sorrow as they always looked to me — are dimmed forever. 
 Those gaunt -ungainly limbs with which he strode along 
 his patient way under the burthen, are laid to rest. The 
 hand that broke four million of fetters is lifeless clay ! 
 Lincoln in his coffin has put a world in tears. Never 
 was a man so mourned ; never before did all Christendom 
 stand mourners around one single bier. That pistol-shot 
 at Washington echoes round the world in the universal 
 wail of humanity. God pity our noble friends abroad 
 when they hear the tidings! Kossuth will weep as he 
 wept for the lost crown of Maria Theresa. John Bright's 
 heart will bleed as it bled but yesterday over the grave 
 of Cobden. Garibaldi will clasp that little grandson to 
 his bosom with a tenderer love, that the child bears the 
 name of " Abraham Lincoln." Our missionaries in Syria 
 and China and the Pacific Isles will drop warm tears on 
 the pages of those Bibles that they are rendering into 
 heathen tongues. Here at home I see the sorrow in every 
 eye ; the air is heavy with the grief; " there is not a house 
 in which there is not one dead." 
 
 Intense as is our grief, who shall fathom the sorrow of 
 those to whom he brought the boon of freedom, when 
 they shall learn of the death of their liberator ? What 
 wails shall mingle with the voices of the sea along Caro- 
 lina's shore ! Miriam's timbrel in a moment drowned in 
 Rachel's cry of anguish ! 
 
 Last Saturday morning I addressed one thousand freed 
 men's children in the doomed city of Charleston. When 
 I said to them, " May I invite for you your father Lin- 
 coln to come to Charleston and see the little folks he has 
 made free?" a thousand black hands flew up with a shout. 
 Alas ! at that moment a silent corpse lay in the East Room 
 
CUTLER. 171 
 
 at Washington. On reaching Fortress Monroe, — under 
 the first stunning blow of the awful tidings, I went aside 
 to a group of poor negro women who were gathered about 
 a huckster's table, which was hang with a few coarse strips 
 of black muslin. "Well, friends, the good man is gone." 
 " Yes, sah," spake out a gray-haired Aunt Chloe — " yes, 
 sah ! Linkum's dead ! They killed our best friend. But 
 God be libin yet. Dey can't kill Him. I'se sure of dat !" 
 How instinctively the childish faith of those long-suffering 
 hearts reached up to the Almighty arm ! In that poor 
 freedwoman's broken ejaculation, " Linkum dead — but 
 God still libin," I find the only solace for your smitten 
 heart and mine. 
 
 Did Lincoln die too soon ? For us and for the world 
 he did ; but not for himself. It is all sadly right. God's 
 will be done ! The time had come when, like Samson, 
 our beloved leader could slay more by his death than in 
 his life. He has slain the accursed spirit of slavery yet 
 lurking in the North. He has slain the last vestige of 
 sympathy with the discomfited rebellion in every candid 
 foreign mind. That pistol's flash has revealed the slave- 
 drivers' conspiracy to the world — 
 
 "Not only doomed, but damned." 
 
 Our father died at the right time ; for his mighty work 
 was done. He lived to see the rebellion in its last apv>nies : 
 he lived to enter Richmond amid the acclamations of the 
 liberated slave, and to sit down in the arch-traitor's deserted 
 seat ; he lived until Sumter's flag rose again like a star of 
 Bethlehem in the southern sky, and then, with the mar- 
 tyr's crown upon his brow, and with four million broken 
 fetters in his hand, he went up to meet his God. In a 
 
172 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 moment his life crystallizes into the pure white fame that 
 belongs only to the martyr for truth and liberty ! Terri- 
 ble as seems the method of his death to us to-day, it was 
 after all the most fitting and glorious. He fell by the 
 hand of the same iniquity that slew Lyon and Shaw, and 
 Sedgwick and Rice, and Wadsworth and McPherson. In 
 God's sight Lincoln was no more precious than the hum- 
 blest drummer-boy who has bled away his young life on 
 the sod of Gettysburgh or Chattanooga. He had called 
 on two hundred thousand heroes to lay down their lives 
 for their country ; and now he too has gone to make his 
 grave beside them. 
 
 " So sleep the brave who sink to rest 
 By all their country's wishes blest." 
 
 When that grave that now opens for its illustrious vic- 
 tim on yonder western prairie shall finally yield up its 
 dead, glorious will be his resurrection ! Methinks that I 
 behold the spirit of the great Liberator in that judgment 
 scene before the assembled hosts of heaven. Around him 
 are the tens of thousands from whom he struck the op- 
 pressor's chain. Methinks I hear their grateful voices ex- 
 claim, "we were an hungered, and thou gavest us the 
 bread of truth ; we were thirsty for liberty, and thou 
 gavest us drink ; we were strangers, and thou didst take 
 us in ; we were sick with two centuries of sorrow, and 
 thou didst -visit us ; we were in the prison-house of bond- 
 age and thou earnest unto us." And the King shall say 
 unto him, " inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of 
 the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me. 
 Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy 
 of thy Lord." 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 EEV. JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D. 
 
 The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that raleth 
 over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the 
 light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds ; 
 as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.* — 
 II Samuel xxiii. 3, 4. 
 
 I count it one of the noblest acts in the history of the 
 race, an impressive proof of the progress of human society, 
 that a nation has rendered its spontaneous homage, — a 
 tribute without precedent in its own annals, and hardly 
 equaled in the annals of the world, — to a man whom it 
 had not yet learned to call great. It teaches us that there 
 is something greater than greatness itself. l$o inspiration 
 of genius had enrolled him among the few great names of 
 literature ; no feats of arms nor strategy upon the field, 
 had given him a place among military heroes ; no contri- 
 bution to the science of government, no opportunity of 
 framing a new civil polity for mankind, had raised him to 
 the rank of publicists, of philosophers, or of founders of 
 states. Great he was in his own way, and of a true and 
 rare type of greatness — the less recognized and acknow- 
 ledged the more it is genuine and divine ; — but the people 
 had not begun to accord to him the epithets and the 
 
 ♦Preached in the Broadway Tabernacle Church, April 30th, 1865. 
 
174 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 homage of greatness, nor is the loss of a great man to the 
 world the chief calamity in his death. Not greatness bnt 
 grandeur is the fitting epithet for the life and character of 
 Abraham Lincoln ; not greatness of endowment nor of 
 achievement, but grandeur of soul. Grand in his sim- 
 plicity and kindliness ; grand in his wisdom of resolve and 
 his integrity of purpose ; grand in his trust in principle 
 and in the principles he made his trust; grand in his 
 devotion to truth, to duty, and to right; grand in his 
 consecration to his country and to God, he rises above the 
 great in genius and in renown, into that foremost rank of 
 moral heroes, of whom the world was not worthy. 
 
 Had the pen of prophecy been commissioned to delineate 
 his character and administration, it must have chosen the 
 very words of my text ; "just," so that his integrity had 
 passed into a proverb ; " ruling in the fear of God," with 
 a religious reverence, humility and faith marking his 
 private life and his public acts and utterances ; bright as 
 " the light of the morning," with native cheerfulness and 
 the serenity of hope ; and with a wisdom that revealed 
 itself as " the clear shining after rain ; " and gentle withal 
 " as the tender grass springing out of the earth ;" — such 
 was the Euler, whose death the Nation mourns. 
 
 He hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-off : 
 And Pity — like heaveu's cherubim, horsed 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air — 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
 That tears shall drown the wind. 
 
THOMPSON. 175 
 
 The life of Abraham Lincoln, the life by which he has 
 been known to the people, and will be known in history, 
 covers less than live years from the day of his nomination 
 at Chicago to the day of his assassination at Washington. 
 Before this brief period, though he had been in posts of 
 public life at intervals during thirty years, and had 
 gained a reputation as a clear and forcible political 
 debater, evincing also a comprehensive faculty for states- 
 manship, he had done nothing, said nothing, written 
 nothing that would have given him a place in history or 
 have caused him to be long remembered beyond the 
 borders of his adopted State. And yet for that brief 
 historical life which is now incorporated imperishably 
 with the annals of the American Republic, and shall be 
 woven into the history of the world while human language 
 shall remain, he was unconsciously preparing during fifty 
 years of patient toil and discipline. 
 
 Those seven years of poverty and obscurity in Kentucky, 
 in which he never saw a church or a school-house, when 
 he learned to read at the log-cabin of a neighbor, and 
 learned to pray at his mother's knees ; those thirteen years 
 of labor and solitude in the primeval forests of Southern 
 Indiana, when the axe, the plow, and the rifle trained him 
 to manly toil and independence ; when the Bible, Pil- 
 grim's Progress, and JEsop's Fables, his only library, read 
 by the light of the evening fire, disciplined his intellectual 
 and moral faculties, and a borrowed copy of " Weems' Life 
 of Washington " acquainted him with the Father of his 
 Country ; and when the Angel of Death sealed and 
 sanctified the lessons of her who taught him to be true 
 and pure and noble, and to walk uprightly in the fear of 
 
176 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 • 
 
 God ; that season of adventure in the rough and perilous 
 navigation of the Mississippi, when the vast extent of his 
 country, and the varieties of its products and its popula- 
 tion, were spread out before his opening manhood; the 
 removal to the fat bottom-lands of the Sangamon, in the 
 just rising State of Illinois; his further discipline in 
 farming, fencing, rafting, shop-keeping, while feeling his 
 way towards his vocation in life ; his patient self-culture 
 by studious habits under limited opportunities ; Iris 
 observation of the two phases of emigration, Northern and 
 Southern, that moved over the prairies side by side, along 
 different parallels, without mingling ; his brief but arduous 
 campaign in the Black Hawk War ; his studies in law and 
 politics, and his practical acquaintance with political and 
 professional life ; — all this diverse and unmethodical disci- 
 pline and experience was his unconscious preparation for 
 leading the nation in the most dark, critical and perilous 
 period of its history. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a " self-made man ; " but in just 
 the sense in which any man of marked individuality is 
 self-made. So far was he from affecting superiority to 
 academic culture or independence of the schools, that it 
 may be said of him as of his great counterpart in charac- 
 ter, in aims,, and in influence, the plebeian sovereign of 
 England, Richard Cobden, that while he was " a statesman 
 by instinct," and was calmly self-reliant upon any question 
 that he had studied or any principle that he had mastered, 
 he always deferred greatly to those whose opportunities 
 of information and means of culture had been better than 
 his own. The true scholar is " self-made ; " for he is a 
 scholar only so far as he has digested the works of others 
 
THOMPSON. V* 
 
 I I 
 
 by his own processes of thought, and has assimilated the 
 treasures of learning into the independent operations of 
 his own mind. Whether his books or his teachers be few 
 or many, whether his education be in professional schools 
 or in the open school of Xature and of practical life, he 
 who would become a power either in the world of opinion 
 or in the world of action, must make himself a man of 
 self-discipline and culture with such helps as are at his 
 command. Mr. Lincoln made himself, not by despising 
 advantages which he had not, but by using thoroughly 
 such advantages as he had. He did not boast his humble 
 origin nor the deficiencies of his early education as a title 
 to popular favor, nor use these as a back-ground to render 
 the more conspicuous his native genius or the distinction 
 which he had achieved ; but while he never forgot his 
 birth, nor repudiated his flat-boat and his rails, nor 
 divorced himself from the "plain people," he yet recog- 
 nized the value of refinement in manners, and cultivated 
 the highest refinement of feeling. When Mr. Douglas 
 had recourse to personalities in political debate, Mr. 
 Lincoln in his rejoinder said, " I set out, in this campaign, 
 with the intention of conducting it strictly as a gentleman, 
 in substance at least, if not in the outside polish. The 
 latter I shall never be, but that which constitutes the 
 inside of a gentleman I hope I understand, and am not 
 less inclined to practice than others. It was my purpose 
 and expectation that this canvass would be conducted 
 upon principle, and with fairness on both sides, and it 
 shall not be my fault if this purpose and expectation are 
 given up."" This self-made man, recognizing his lack of 
 * Speech at Springfield, 111., July 17, 1858. 
 
1 * 
 
 78 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 courtly breeding, so far from affecting indifference to 
 good manners, studied to practice the truest gentility of 
 speech and of feeling. Born in the cabin, reared in the 
 forest, a hardy son of toil, whose early associations were 
 with the rougher and coarser phases of life, he made 
 himself a gentleman without even the " petty vices " that 
 sometimes discredit the name ; and when raised to the 
 highest social position, proved that the heart is the best 
 teacher of gentility. Never despising a good thing which 
 he had not, he made always the best use of that which he 
 had. 
 
 He himself has told how resolutely and thoroughly he 
 sought to discipline his mind, in later life, by studies and 
 helps of which he was deprived in youth. " In the course 
 of my law-reading," said Mr. Lincoln to a friend,* " I 
 constantly came upon the word demonstrate, and I asked 
 myself, what do I do when I demonstrate, more than when 
 I reason or prove — what is the certainty called demonstra- 
 tion ? Having consulted dictionaries and books of reference 
 to little purpose, I said to myself, ' Lincoln, you can never 
 make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate 
 means.' I had never had but six months' schooling in my 
 life ; but now I left my place in Springfield, and went 
 home to my father's, and stayed there till I could give any 
 proposition of the six books of Euclid at sight." Thus, 
 at twenty-five years of age, Abraham Lincoln paid his 
 honest tribute to that very means of mental discipline 
 which experience has placed at the foundation of a college 
 course. He " made himself," by using the same methods 
 of training that Daniel Webster used as a student at Dart- 
 * Rev. J. P. Gulliver, Norwich, Conn. 
 
THOMPSON. 179 
 
 mouth, and Edward Everett at Cambridge ; and having 
 determined upon the profession of law, he fenced in his 
 mind to book-study with the same energy and resolution 
 with which he had once split 3000 rails to fence in the 
 fields for tilling. There is no royal road to learning, and 
 Mr. Lincoln's success demonstrates anew the law that 
 persevering labor conquers every obstacle. He did his 
 utmost to repair the deficiencies of his youth in the only 
 way in which they could be remedied, and by that con- 
 quest over his own mind, which was the key to all other 
 victories, he showed himself a man. But for this, his 
 mind would have remained a broad unfenced prairie, and 
 he but a pioneer squatter, making no improvements, or at 
 best a surveyor, staking out some general boundaries of 
 knowledge, but having no proper sense of ownership in 
 the tract, or in the treasures that lay hidden beneath its 
 surface. 
 
 I have thus sought to redeem from perversion that 
 much-abused term "the self-made man." None can quote 
 Abraham Lincoln in justification of boorishness, of illiter- 
 ateness, of opinionativeness, of uppishness, as prerogatives 
 of a self-made man ; nor can his name and life be used 
 as in any sense an argument against that culture of so- 
 ciety and of the schools, of which he scarcely knew, until 
 he had attained his majority. The unconscious plan of 
 his life was none the less apian of that Divine mind whose 
 constant guidance he owned ; and his first fifty years were 
 a training-school of Providence for the five that constitute 
 his historical life. 
 
 An analysis of the mental and the moral traits of Mr. 
 Lincoln, will show us how complete was his adaptation for 
 
180 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 that very period of our national history which he was 
 called to fill, and which he has made so peculiarly his own. 
 
 I. — His mental processes were characterized by origin- 
 ality, clearness, comprehensiveness, sagacity, logical fitness, 
 acumen and strength. He was an original thinker : — not 
 in the sense of always having new and striking ideas, — 
 for such originality may be as daring and dangerous as it 
 is peculiar and rare; — but he was original in that his ideas 
 were in some characteristic way his own. However com- 
 mon to other minds, however simple and axiomatic when 
 stated, they bore the stamp of individuality. Not a mes- 
 sage or proclamation did he write, not a letter did he pen, 
 which did not carry upon the face of it, " Abraham Lincoln" 
 his mark. He thought out every subject for himself; and 
 he did not commit hfmself in public upon any subject 
 which he had not made his own by reflection. Hence 
 even familiar thoughts, coming before us in the simple 
 rustic garb of his homely speech, seemed fresh and new. 
 He took from the mint of political science the bullion 
 which philosophers had there deposited, and coined it into 
 proverbs for the people. Or in the great placer of political 
 speculations, he sometimes struck a lode of genuine metal, 
 and wrought it with his own hands. 
 
 " The Union is older than the Constitution ;" " The 
 Union made the Constitution, and not the Constitution 
 5the Union ;" " Can aliens make treaties easier than friends 
 can make laws?" "The states have their status in the 
 Union, and they have no other legal status;" "Capital is 
 the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor 
 had not first existed ;" " In giving freedom to the slave, we 
 assv re freedom to the free;" "Often a limb must beam- 
 
THOMPSON. 1 81 
 
 pntated to save a life ; but a life is never wisely given to 
 save a limb ;" — what volumes of philosophy, of history, 
 of political economy, of legal and ethical science are con- 
 densed in these pithy sentences, each bearing the -mark 
 of Mr. Lincoln's individuality. Much of this individuality 
 of thought was due to the seclusion of his early life from 
 books and schools, and to the meditative habit induced by 
 the solitude of the forest. 
 
 To the same quality, and partly to the sarn£ cause, may 
 be ascribed the clearness of his mental processes. Com- 
 pelled in childhood to find out by observation, by expe- 
 rience, by meditative analysis, knowledge in which he had 
 no teacher, and for lack of external aids, thrown back 
 habitually upon his own thoughts, he knew always the 
 conclusions he had reached, and the process by which he 
 reached them. If he must plunge into the depth of the 
 forest, he took care* to trace his path by blazing the trees 
 with his mark ; and if sometimes he seemed slow in emerg- 
 ing from the wilderness, it was because, when a boy, he 
 had learned not to halloo till he was out of the woods. 
 Deliberation and caution were qualities in which he was 
 trained, when compelled to hew out a clearing for a home 
 within sound of wild beasts and of savage men ; — but be- 
 cause of these very qualities, lie knew always where he 
 stood, and how he came there. That communion with 
 nature which has taught Bryant such clear, terse, fitting 
 words in rhythm with her harmonies, taught Abraham 
 Lincoln clear, strong thoughts, whose worth he knew, be- 
 cause he had earned them by his own toil. 
 
 I am not here dealing in conjecture. His own narra- 
 tive, already quoted, as he gave it familiarly to a clergy- 
 
182 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 man of Connecticut, informs ns that, when a boy, he used 
 to get irritated when any body talked to him in a way 
 that he could not understand, " I don't think I ever got 
 angry at any thing else in my life ; but that always dis- 
 turbed my temper, and has ever since." Often after hear- 
 ing the neighbors talk in his father's house upon subjects 
 he did not comprehend, he would walk up and down his 
 room half the night, trying to make out the exact mean- 
 ing of them " dark sayings." When once upon such a 
 hunt after an idea, he could not sleep till he had caught 
 it, and then he would " repeat it over and over, and put it 
 in language plain enough for any boy to understand." 
 This simplifying of thought was a passion with him ; and 
 in his own pithy words, " I was never easy until I had a 
 thought bounded on the North, and bounded on the South, 
 and bounded on the East, and bounded on the West." 
 
 How much the American people will hereafter owe to 
 him for having staked, out the boundaries of political ideas 
 hitherto but vaguely comprehended. How conclusive 
 against the right of secession is this clearly-bounded state- 
 ment of the first Inaugural: "I hold that in the contem- 
 plation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the 
 Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, 
 if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national 
 governments. It is safe to assert that no government pro- 
 per ever had a provision in its own organic law for its own 
 termination. Continue to execute all the express provi- 
 sions of our National Constitution, and the Union will 
 endure for ever, it being impossible to destroy it, except 
 by some action not provided for in the instrument itself." 
 
 The opening sentence of his Springfield speech, June 
 
THOMPSON. 183 
 
 17, 1858, which was the foundation of his great debate 
 with Douglas, bounded the question of nationalizing slav- 
 ery so clearly and sharply, that Mr. Lincoln had only to 
 repeat that statement, from time to time, to clinch every 
 argument of every speech. "A house divided against it- 
 self cannot stand. I believe this government cannot en- 
 dure permanently half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
 pect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house 
 to fall,— •but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It 
 will become all one thing, or all the other." Mr. Doug- 
 las' policy was fast making it "all one thing"; Mr. Lin- 
 coln lived to make it, and to see it, " all the other !" 
 
 Imagination and a poetic sensibility were not wanting 
 in a soul that could conceive the last inaugural, or could 
 indite the closing sentence of the first : — " The mystic 
 chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and 
 patriot's 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." — He was an ardent admirer 
 of Burns, and a discriminating student of Shakspeare. 
 
 Enthusiasm was not lacking in a mind that, in the midst 
 of a wasting civil war, could prophesy, " There are already 
 those among us who, if the Union be preserved, will live 
 to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions. The 
 struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day ; it is for a 
 vast future also. But neither enthusiasm nor imagination 
 ever mastered that calm, clear judgment, trained to a 
 cautious self-reliance by the early discipline of the forest 
 school. 
 
 Comprehensiveness was equally characteristic of Mr. 
 
184 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Lincoln's views, upon questions where breadth was as im- 
 portant as clearness of vision. Those who have had 
 occasion to consult with him upon public affairs have 
 often remarked, that even in the course of protracted and 
 able deliberations, there would arise no aspect of the ques- 
 tion which had not already occurred to the mind of the 
 President, and been allowed its weight in forming his 
 opinion. His judgment was round-a-bout, encompassing 
 the subject upon every side ; it was circumspect, attend- 
 ing to all the circumstances of the case, and patiently in- 
 vestigating its minutiae. He would not approve the find- 
 ing of a court-martial without reading over carefully the 
 details of the evidence and hearing the pleas of the con- 
 demned and his friends ; and this conscientious legal and 
 judicial habit, applied to questions of state policy, gave 
 to his views a breadth and solidity beyond the grasp of 
 the mere speculative politician. Hence came that reputa- 
 tion for sagacity and insight, which grew with our obser- 
 vation of the man, and with the unfolding of events rati- 
 fying his judgment. How often, where his seeming hes- 
 itancy had tried our patience, have we come to see that he 
 had surveyed the whole question, had anticipated what 
 lay beyond, and was biding his time. His studied silence 
 touching his own intentions, in his replies to speeches of 
 welcoine along the route from Springfield to Washington 
 in 1861, was dictated by this comprehensive wisdom. At 
 every point he baffled curiosity and rebuked impatience, 
 by avowing his determination not to speak at all upon 
 public questions until he could speak advisedly. " I deem 
 it just to you, to myself, and to all, that I should see every- 
 thing, that I should hear everything, that I should have 
 
THOMPSON. 185 
 
 every light that can be brought within my reach, in order 
 that when I do speak I shall have enjoyed every opportu- 
 nity to take correct and true grounds ; and for this reason 
 I don't propose to speak at this time of the policy of the 
 government."* This was not the evasiveness of the poli- 
 tician, but the wise reserve of the statesman. 
 
 He maintained the same reticence upon the difficult 
 problem of reorganization, which was the burden of his 
 latest public utterance, after the fall of Richmond. His 
 adroit substitution of a story or a witticism for a formal 
 speech, at times when his words were watched and weighed, 
 was but another illustration of this practical sagacity. And 
 when the secret history of the dark periods of the war 
 shall be disclosed, Mr. Lincoln will stand justified before 
 the world, alike for his reticence while waiting for light, 
 and for a policy guided by an almost prophetic insight, 
 when by patient waiting he had gained clearness and com- 
 prehensiveness of view. 
 
 The mental processes of Mr. Lincoln were characterized, 
 moreover, by a logical fitness, keenness, and strength. 
 Not for naught did he master the science of demonstration. 
 His speeches are a catena of propositions and proofs that 
 bind the mind to his conclusions as soon as his premises 
 are conceded. In his great debate with Mr. Douglas, — 
 a debate accompanied with all the excitements of a politi- 
 cal canvass, and in which he was called upon to reply to 
 his opponent in the hearing of eager thousands, — it is 
 remarkable that he never had occasion to retract) r even 
 to qualify any of his positions ; that he never contradicted 
 himself, nor abandoned an argument that he had once 
 
 * Speech to the Legislature of New York. 
 
186 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 assumed. His caution and circumspection led him to 
 choose his words, and to state only that which he could 
 maintain. His clear and comprehensive survey of his 
 subject made him the master of his own position ; and his 
 calm, strong logic and his keen power of dissection made 
 him a formidable antagonist. He who had such force of 
 resolution that, in full manhood, after he had been a mem- 
 ber of the State Legislature, he could go to school to Eu- 
 clid to learn how to demonstrate, was likely to reason to 
 some purpose when he had laid down his propositions. 
 
 But it was mainly his adherence to ethical principles in 
 political discussions that gave such point and force to his 
 reasoning ; for no politician of this generation has applied 
 Christian ethics to questions of public policy with more 
 of honesty, of consistency, or of downright earnestness. 
 Standing in the old Independence Hall at Philadelphia, 
 he said, " All the political sentiments I entertain have 
 been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from 
 the sentiments which originated in and were given to the 
 world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, politi- 
 cally, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in 
 the Declaration of Independence."* But the sentiments 
 of the Declaration which Mr. Lincoln emphasized are not 
 simply political ideas — they are ethical principles. That 
 " all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by 
 their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among 
 these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," — 
 these are principles of natural ethics, sustained by the 
 august sanctions of that God who is no " respecter of 
 persons." And it was as truths of moral obligation that 
 
 * Speech of 21st February, 1861. 
 
THOMPSON. 187 
 
 Abraham Lincoln adopted them as the rule of his political 
 faith. He entered into public life, thirty years ago, with 
 the distinct avowal of the doctrine whose final ratification 
 by the people he has sealed with his blood — that " the 
 institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
 policy."* His whole life was true to that conviction. His 
 great campaign for the senatorship in 1858, was conducted 
 throughout upon moral grounds. " I confess myself as 
 belonging to that class in the country, who contemplate 
 slavery as a moral, social, and political evil, having due 
 regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficul- 
 ties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all 
 the constitutional obligations which have been thrown 
 about it ; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to 
 the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to 
 the time when, as a wrong, it may come to an end."f 
 # * * « jf slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." J 
 " One only thing," said he in his speech at Cooper In- 
 stitute, " will satisfy our opponents. Cease to call slavery 
 wrong, and join them in calling it right. If our sense of 
 duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly 
 and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those so- 
 phistical contrivances, wherewith we are so industriously 
 plied and belabored— contrivances such as groping for 
 some middle ground between the right and the wrong, 
 vain as the search for a man who should be neither a liv- 
 ing nor a dead man — such as a policy of ' don't care,' on 
 a question about which all true men do care — such as 
 
 * Protest in Illinois House of Representatives, March 3, 183 T. 
 
 f Speech at Galesburgh, Oct. 7, 1858. 
 
 % Letter to A. G. Hodges, Esq., of Kentucky. 
 
188 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Union appeals, beseeching true Union men to yield to 
 Disnnionists, reversing the Divine rule, and calling, not 
 the sinners, but the righteous, to repentance — such as in- 
 vocations of Washington, imploring men to nnsay what 
 Washington said, and undo what Washington did. Nei- 
 ther let ns be slandered from our duty by false accusations 
 against ns, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruc- 
 tion to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. 
 Let ns have faith that right makes might ; and in that 
 faith, let ns to the end, dare to do our duty, as we under- 
 stand it." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's logic was pointed with wit, and his ethi- 
 cal reasoning was often set home by a pithy story. The 
 reputation of a story-teller and a jester was turned by his 
 opponents to his disparagement ; but his stories were 
 philosophy in parables, and his jests were morals. If 
 sometimes they smacked of humble life, this was due not 
 to his tastes bnt ' to his early associations. His wit was 
 always used with point and purpose ; for the boy who 
 committed all Esop's fables to memory had learned too. 
 well the nse of story and parable to forego that keen 
 weapon in political argument. The whole people took 
 his witty cantion "not to swop horses in the middle of 
 the stream." 
 
 The base-born plea that social amalgamation would fol- 
 low the emancipation of the negro, he met by a rare 
 stroke of wit. " I do not understand that because I do 
 not want a negro woman for a slave, I mnst necessarily 
 want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just 
 let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I cer- 
 tainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or 
 
THOMPSON. 189 
 
 a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get 
 along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. 
 I recollect but one distinguished advocate of the perfect 
 equality of the races, and that is Judge Douglas's old 
 friend, Col. Richard M. Johnson."* 
 
 Yet Mr. Lincoln's wit was never malicious nor rudely 
 personal.. Once when Mr. Douglas had attempted to 
 parry an argument by impeaching the veracity of a Sen- 
 ator whom Mr. Lincoln had quoted, he answered that the 
 question was not one of veracity, but simply one of argu- 
 ment. " By a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all 
 the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. 
 Now if you undertake to disprove that proposition, would 
 you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar ?"f 
 
 II. — Passing from the* intellectual traits of Mr. Lincoln 
 to his moral qualities, we find in these the same providen- 
 tial preparation for Iris work, through long years of hardy 
 training. He was of a meek and a patient spirit — both 
 prime elements in a strong character. It might almost be 
 said of him as it was said of Moses, that " he was meek 
 above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." 
 The early discipline of poverty, toil, and sorrow, accom- 
 panied with maternal lessons of submission to God, had 
 taught him to labor and to wait in the patience of hope. 
 It was a household saying of his mother, when times 
 were hard and days were dark, " It isn't best to borrow 
 too much trouble. We must have faith in God." And so 
 Abraham learned that "it is good for a man that he bear 
 the yoke in his youth ; and it is good that a man should 
 
 * Speech at Columbus, February, 1859. 
 
 f Speech at Charleston, September 18, 1858. 
 
190 DEATH OF PEESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord." 
 And when the yoke of a nation's burdens and sorrows 
 was laid upon his shoulders, his gentle, patient spirit ac- 
 cepted it without faltering and without repining. He 
 did not borrow too much trouble, but had faith in God. 
 Neither the violence of enemies nor the impatience and 
 distrust of friends could irritate him ; neither the threats 
 of traitors nor the zeal of partisans could disturb his 
 equanimity, or urge him faster than Providence, speaking 
 through the logic of events, would seem to lead him. 
 " Thy gentleness," said the Psalmist, " hath made me 
 great." And a certain divine gentleness had possessed 
 and fortified the soul of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Cheerfulness was with him a moral quality, as well as 
 the native cast of his temperament. It sprang from the 
 consciousness of sincerity, from good-will toward men, 
 and from habitual trust in God. His playful humor 
 sometimes belied him ; since no man was farther removed 
 from levity and frivolity of mind. A thoughtful earnest- 
 ness pervaded his being — an earnestness that sometimes 
 verged upon sadness, yet never sank into moroseness. It 
 was a cheerful earnestness; and while cheerfulness was 
 the tone of his temperament, he cultivated this quality 
 for the relief of his own mind, and for the stimulation of 
 others against despondency. I shall ever cherish among 
 the brightest memories of life, an hour in his working- 
 room last September, which was one broad sheet of sun- 
 shine. He had spent the morning poring over the returns 
 of a court-martial upon capital cases, and studying to 
 decide them according to truth ; and upon the entrance 
 of a friend, he threw himself into an attitude of relaxa- 
 
THOMPSON. . 191 
 
 tion, and sparkled with good humor. I will not repeat, 
 lest they should be misconstrued, his trenchant witticisms 
 upon political topics now gone by ; yet one of these can 
 wound no living patriot. I spoke of the rapid rise of 
 Union feeling since the promulgation of the Chicago 
 platform and the victory at Atlanta ; and the question 
 was started, which had contributed the most to the reviv- 
 ing of Union sentiment — the victory or the platform. 
 "I guess," said the President, "it was the victory; at 
 any rate I'd rather have that repeated." 
 
 Being informed of the death of John Morgan, he said, 
 " Well; I wouldn't crow over any body's death ; but I can 
 take this as resignedly as any dispensation of Providence. 
 Morgan was a coward, a nigger-driver; a low creature, 
 such as you Northern men know nothing about." 
 
 The political horizon was still overcast, but he spoke 
 with unaffected confidence and cheerfulness of the result ; 
 saying with emphasis, " I rely upon the religious sentiment 
 of the country, which I am told is very largely for me." 
 
 Even in times of deepest solicitude, he maintained this 
 cheerful serenity before others. It may be said of him, as 
 of his great prototype, William of Orange, " his jocoseness 
 was partly natural, partly intentional. In the darkest 
 hours of his country's trial, he affected a serenity which he 
 did not always feel, so that his apparent gaiety at momen- 
 tous epochs was even censured by dullards, who could not 
 comprehend its philosophy. He went through life bear- 
 ing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with 
 a smiling face." It is pleasant to know that what was 
 perhaps the last official act of the President before the fatal 
 night, was performed in this spirit of joyousness. The 
 
192 % DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Governor of Maryland called upon him with a friend late 
 on Friday, and found him very cheerful over the state of 
 the country. At the close of the interview, one of the 
 visitors asked a little favor for a friend; the President 
 wrote the necessary order, and said, " any thing now to 
 make the people happy." 
 
 His kindness and sensibility were proverbial almost to a 
 fault. Yet no other single trait so well exhibits the 
 majesty of his soul ; for it was not a sentimental tender- 
 ness, the mere weakness of a sympathetic nature, but a 
 kindness that proceeded from an intelligent sympathy and 
 good will for humanity, and a Christian hatred of all 
 injustice and wrong. He once said in a political speech, 
 " The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any human 
 creature could be perfect as the Father in Heaven ; but 
 He said, As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also 
 perfect. He set that up as a standard, and he who did 
 most toward reaching that standard, attained the highest 
 degree of moral perfection." With a noble contempt for 
 political prejudices, and with a touching moral simplicity, 
 Mr. Lincoln avowed this principle in his treatment of the 
 negro. " In pointing out that more has been given you [by 
 the Creator] you cannot be justified in taking away the 
 little which has been given him. If God gave him but 
 little, that little let him enjoy. In the right to eat the 
 bread, without the leave of any body else, which his own 
 hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge 
 Douglas, and the equal of every living man." In his 
 highest prosperity he never forgot his kindred with men 
 of low estate. Amid all the cares of office, his ear was 
 always open to a tale of sorrow or of wrong, and his hand 
 
THOMPSON. 193 
 
 was always ready to relieve suffering, and to remedy 
 injustice. I seem to see him now, leaning against the 
 railing that divides the War Office from the White House, 
 while the carriage is waiting at the door, and listening to 
 the grievance of a plain man, then sitting down upon the 
 coping and writing on a card an order to have the case 
 investigated and remedied. An undignified position do 
 you say ? it was the native dignity of kindness. 
 
 Sometimes a personal sorrow opens a little rift through 
 which you can look down into the depths of a great soul. 
 I once looked thus for an instant into the soul of Richard 
 Cobden. Having had some slight association with Mr. 
 Cobden, in England, upon the question of common school 
 education, when he came here in 1859, I attended him to 
 some of our public schools. On leaving the Thirteenth 
 Street School, I inquired if he would go over to the Free 
 Academy. " No," said he, with a quick emphasis, " you 
 must not take me to any more boys' schools ; I can't bear 
 it." The drop that trembled in his eye interpreted his 
 meaning. Just before leaving home, he had laid his only 
 son, a bright lad of 14, in the church-yard where he him- 
 self now lies. Like Burke, " he had begun to live in an 
 inverted order ; they who ought to have succeeded him 
 had gone before him." I had honored Mr. Cobden 
 before, I have loved him since. 
 
 In the spring of 1S62, the President spent several days 
 at Fortress Monroe, awaiting military operations upon the 
 peninsula. As a portion of the cabinet were with him, that 
 was temporarily the seat of government, and he bore with 
 him constantly the burden of public affairs. His favorite 
 diversion was reading Shakspeare, whom he rendered 
 
194 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 with fine discrimination of emphasis and feeling. One 
 day, (it chanced to be the day before the taking of 
 Norfolk,) as he sat reading alone, he called to his Aide in 
 the adjoining room, " You have been writing long enough, 
 Colonel, come in here ; I want to read you a passage in 
 Hamlet." He read the discussion on ambition between 
 Hamlet and his courtiers,* and the soliloquy in which 
 conscience debates of a future state.f This was followed 
 by passages from Macbeth. Then opening to King John, 
 he read from the third act the passage in which Constance 
 bewails her imprisoned, lost boy. 
 
 [The King commands] — Bind up your tresses. 
 
 Constance. — Yes, that I will ; and wherefore will I do it ? 
 I tore them from their bonds ; and cried aloud, 
 that these hands could so redeem my son 
 As they have given these hairs their liberty! 
 But now I envy at their liberty, 
 And will again commit them to their bonds, 
 Because my poor child is a prisoner : 
 
 Never, never 
 
 Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. 
 
 King Philip. — You are as fond of grief, as of your child. 
 
 Constance. — Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
 Then have I reason to be fond of grief. 
 lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son ! 
 My life, my joy, my food, my all the world I 
 My widow- comfort, and my sorrow's cure. 
 
 He closed the book, and recalling the words — 
 
 And, father cardinal, I have heard you say 
 That we shall see and know our friends in heaven, 
 If that be true, I shall see my boy again. — 
 * Act II., Scene ii. f Act III., Scene i. Act III., Scene iv. 
 
THOMPSON. 195 
 
 Mr. Lincoln said, " Colonel, did yon ever dream of a 
 Lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet commu- 
 nion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness 
 that it was not a reality ? Just so I dream of my boy 
 Willie." Overcome with emotion, he dropped his head 
 on the table, and sobbed aloud. Truly does Col. Cannon 
 observe, that "this exhibition of parental affection and 
 grief, before a comparative stranger, showed not only his 
 tender nature, but his great simplicity and naturalness — 
 the transparency of his character. It was most suggest- 
 ive.* 
 
 It was meet that Willie should be borne with him in 
 his last long journey, to rest hereafter in the same tomb ; 
 for, believe me, he would have prized the love of his little 
 Willie above all the homage of the nation's tears. 
 
 Akin to this kindliness and sensibility was his magna- 
 nimity of soul. " I would despise myself," said he, in his 
 debate with Douglas, " if I supposed myself ready to 
 deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing to 
 be treated myself." And again, he said, "If I have 
 stated anything erroneous, if I have brought forward any- 
 thing not a fact, it needed only that Judge Douglas should 
 point it out ; it will not even ruffle me to take it back. 
 I do not deal in that way." How magnanimously he 
 disclaimed personal praise, and accorded honor to others. 
 You will at once recall his letter to General Grant, after 
 the capture of Vicksburg. " I do not remember that you 
 and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful 
 acknowledgment of the almost inestimable service you 
 
 * I am indebted for this incident to Col. Le Grand B. Cannon, then of 
 Gen. Wool's stuff. 
 
196 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 have done the country. I write to say a word further. 
 * # * When you took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and 
 vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join 
 General Banks, and when you turned northward, east of 
 the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to 
 make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, 
 and I was wrong." 
 
 How gently he assuaged the tumult of party strifes, by 
 his tone of magnanimity toward his defeated opponent, in 
 acknowledging a popular ovation rendered him upon his 
 re-election to the Presidency. 
 
 Such was the whole spirit of his public life, culminating 
 at last in an utterance which shall be immortal: — " With 
 
 MALICE TOWARD NONE, WITH CHARITY FOR ALL." 
 
 The inflexible integrity of Mr. Lincoln has imprinted 
 itself upon the heart and the history of the American 
 people in that familiar but honorable epithet — " Honest 
 Abe." His was not simply a commercial honesty, in dol- 
 lars and cents, but honesty in opinion, honesty in speech, 
 honesty of purpose, honesty in action. " Always speak 
 the truth, my son," said his mother to him, when, in her 
 Sabbath readings, she expounded the ninth command- 
 ment. " I do tell the truth," was his uniform reply. 
 
 When Douglas attempted to impeach a statement of a 
 brother senator who was Mr. Lincoln's personal friend, 
 Lincoln replied, " I am ready to indorse him, because, 
 neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years 
 that I have known Lyman Trumbull, have I known him 
 to fail of his word, or tell a falsehood, large or small ;" and 
 that, to Abraham Lincoln, was a certificate of character. 
 
 His integrity carried him through arduous political cam- 
 
THOMPSON. 197 
 
 paigns without the shadow of deviation from principle. 
 He adopted great principles, and by these he was willing 
 to live or to die. His debate with Douglas, as I have be- 
 fore said, was throughout a struggle for principle — the 
 principle that slavery was wrong, and, therefore, that the 
 nation should not sanction it nor suffer its extension. " I 
 do not claim," he said, " to be unselfish ; I do not pretend 
 that I would not like to go to the United States Senate. I 
 make no such hypocritical pretence ; but I do say to you that, 
 in this mighty issue, it is nothing to you, nothing to the mass 
 of the people of the nation, whether or not Judge Douglas 
 or myself shall ever be heard of after this night. It may 
 be a trifle to either of us; but, in connection with this 
 mighty question, upon which hang the destinies of the 
 nation perhaps, it is absolutely nothing." 
 
 When about to assume the grave responsibilities of the 
 Presidency, he said to his fellow citizens, " I promise you 
 that I bring to the work a sincere heart. Whether I will 
 bring a head equal to that heart will be for future times 
 to determine."* That his head was equal to his task all 
 now agree ; but it is far more to his honor that, through 
 all the temptations of office he held fast his integrity. 
 One who was much with him testifies that, " in every- 
 thing he did he was governed by his conscience, and when 
 ambition intruded, it was thrust aside by his conviction 
 of right." What he said he did, without shadow of turn- 
 ing. He was as firm for the right as he was forbearing 
 toward the wrong-doer. How solemn his appeal to the 
 seceders, at the close of his first inaugural — " You have 
 no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government ; 
 
 * Speech at Philadelphia, Feb. 20, 18G1. 
 
198 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, pro- 
 tect, and defend it." That oath he kept with all honesty 
 and fidelity. 
 
 This honesty of principle inspired him with true moral 
 heroism. Abraham Lincoln always met his duty as calmly 
 as he met his death. He knew at any time in the last 
 four years that to do his duty would be to court death ; 
 but in his first message he laid down the moral considera- 
 tions that overruled all personal fears. u As a private citi- 
 zen the Executive could not have consented that these 
 institutions shall perish ; much less could he, in betrayal 
 of so vast and so sacred a trust as these free people had con- 
 fided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, 
 nor even to count the chances of his own life in what 
 might follow. In full view of his great responsibility, he 
 has so far done what he has deemed his duty. Having 
 thus chosen our cause without guile, and with pure pur- 
 pose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward with- 
 out fear and with manly hearts." 
 
 Bishop Simpson has quoted from a speech of Mr. Lin- 
 coln in 1839, a declaration of the most heroic patriotism. 
 Of the slave power, he said, "Broken by it? I too may 
 be asked to bow to it. I never will. The probability that 
 we may fail in the struggle, ought not to deter us from 
 the support of a cause which we deem to be just. It shall 
 not deter me. If I ever feel the soul within me elevate 
 and expand to dimensions not wholly unworthy of its 
 Almighty architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of 
 my country deserted by all the world beside, and I stand- 
 ing up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victo- 
 rious oppressors. Here, without contemplating conse- 
 
THOMPSON.. 199 
 
 quences, before high Heaven and in the face of the world, 
 I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of 
 the land of my life, nry liberty, and my love." 
 
 With what a lofty courage, too, did he stand by the 
 rights and liberties of those to whom he was pledged by 
 his proclamation of January 1st, 1863. What nobler 
 words could be inscribed upon his monument than these 
 from his last message ? "I repeat the declaration made a 
 year ago, that while I remain in my present position I 
 shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation 
 Proclamation. Nor shall I return to slavery any person 
 who is free by the terms of that Proclamation, or by any 
 of the Acts of Congress. If the people should, by what- 
 ever mode or means, make it an executive duty to re- 
 enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their 
 instrument to perform it." 
 
 It was that decree of emancipation that inspired the 
 hatred that compassed his murder. Yet from the day of 
 his nomination he had been marked for a violent death ; 
 and knowing this, he had devoted his life to the cause of 
 liberty. At Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he said, 
 in 1861, " Can this country be saved upon the basis of the 
 sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence ? 
 If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men 
 in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be 
 saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. Lut it 
 this country cannot be saved without giving up that prin- 
 ciple, I was about to say / would rather be assassinated on 
 this spot than surrender it. I have said nothing" but what 
 I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of 
 Almighty God, die by." 
 
200 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 A calm trust in God was the loftiest, worthiest charac- 
 teristic in the life of Abraham Lincoln. He had learned 
 this long ago. " I would rather Abe would be able to read 
 the Bible than to own a farm, if he can't have but one," 
 said his godly mother. That Bible was Abraham Lin- 
 coln's guide. Mr. Jay informs me that, being on the 
 steamer which conveyed the governmental party from 
 Fortress Monroe to Norfolk, after the destruction of the 
 Merrimac, while all on board were excited by the novelty 
 of the excursion and by the incidents it recalled, he missed 
 the President from the company, and on looking about 
 found him in a quiet nook reading a well-worn Testament. 
 Such an incidental revelation of his religious habits is 
 worth more than pages of formal testimony. 
 
 The constant recognition of God in his public docu- 
 ments shows how completely his mind was under the do- 
 minion of religious faith. This is never a common-place 
 formalism nor a misplaced cant. To satisfy ourselves of 
 Mr. Lincoln's Christian character, we have no need to 
 resort to apochryphal stories that illustrate the assurance 
 of his visitors quite as much as the simplicity of his faith ; 
 we have but to follow internal evidences, as the workings 
 of his soul reveal themselves through his own published 
 utterances. On leaving Springfield for the capital, he 
 said, U A duty devolves upon me which is, perhaps, greater 
 than that which has devolved upon any other man since 
 the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded 
 except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he 
 at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without 
 the same Divine aid which sustained him, and on the same 
 Almighty Being I place my reliance for support ; and I 
 
THOMPSON. 201 
 
 hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive 
 that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but 
 with which success is certain." He knew himself to be sur- 
 rounded by a religious community who were acquainted 
 with his life, and his words were spoken in all sincerity. 
 
 At Gettysburg, with a grand simplicity worthy of De- 
 mosthenes, he dedicated himself with religious earnestness 
 to the great task yet before him, in humble dependence upon 
 God. Owning the power of vicarious sacrifice, he said, 
 " We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 
 hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, 
 who struo-o-led here, have consecrated it far above our 
 power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor 
 long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget 
 what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be 
 dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus 
 far so nobly carried on." 
 
 We distinctly trace the growth of this feeling of religious 
 consecration in his public declarations. " We can but press 
 on guided by the best light God gives us, trusting that in his 
 own good time and wise way,' all will be well. Let us not 
 be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be 
 quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never 
 doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give 
 us the rightful result." * " The Nation's condition is not 
 what either party, or any man, desired or expected. God 
 alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. 
 If God now wills the removal of a great wrung, and wills 
 also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, 
 shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impar- 
 
 * Letter to Kentucky. 
 
202 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 tial history will find therein new cause to attest and re- 
 vere the justice and goodness of God." * This devout 
 feeling culminated ' at length in that sublime confession 
 of faith, of humility, of dependence, of consecration, 
 known as his last inaugural. 
 
 It is said upon good authority, that had he lived he 
 would have made a public profession of his faith in Christ. 
 But Abraham Lincoln needed no other profession than 
 that which he made on the 4th of March last, in the hear- 
 ing of all nations. 
 
 A Christian lady who was profoundly impressed with 
 the religions tone of the inaugural, requested through 
 a friend in Congress, that the President would give her 
 his autograph by the very pen that wrote that now im- 
 mortal document, adding that her sons should be taught 
 to repeat its closing paragraph with their catechism. The 
 President, with evident emotion, replied, " She shall have 
 my signature, and with it she shall have that paragraph. 
 It comforts me to know that my sentiments are supported 
 by the Christian ladies of our country." 
 
 His pastor at Washington, after being near him steadily, 
 and with him often, for more than four years, bears this 
 testimony. "I speak what I know, and testify what I have 
 often heard him say, when I affirm, the guidance and the 
 mercy of God were the props on which he humbly and 
 habitually leaned ;" and that " his abiding confidence in 
 God, and in the final triumph of truth and righteousness 
 through Him and for His sake, was his noblest virtue, his 
 grandest principle, the secret alike of his strength, his 
 patience, and his success." 
 
 * Letter to A. G. Hodges, April, 1864. 
 
THOMPSON. 203 
 
 Thus trained of God for his great work, and called of 
 God in the fullness of time, how grandly did Abraham 
 Lincoln meet his responsibilities, and round up his life. 
 How he grew under pressure. How often did his pa- 
 tient heroism in the earlier years of the war serve us in 
 the stead of victories. He carried our mighty sorrows, 
 while he never knew rest, nor the enjoyment of office. 
 How wisely did his cautious, sagacious, comprehensive 
 judgment deliver us from the perils of haste. How 
 clearly did he discern the guiding hand and the unfolding 
 will of God. How did he tower above the storm in his 
 unselfish patriotism, resolved to save the unity of the na- 
 tion. And when the day of duty and of opportunity came, 
 how firmly did he deal the last great blow for liberty, 
 striking the shackles from three million slaves ; while 
 "upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice war- 
 ranted by the Constitution, (upon military necessity), he 
 invoked the considerate judgment of mankind, and the 
 gracious favor of Almighty God." Rightly did he regard 
 this Proclamation as the central act of his administration, 
 and the central fact of the 19th century. Let it be en- 
 graved upon our walls, upon our hearts; let the scene adorn 
 the rotunda of the capitol, henceforth a sacred shrine of 
 Liberty. It needed only that the seal of martyrdom upon 
 such a life should cause his virtues to be transfigured before 
 us in imperishable grandeur, and his name to be emblazoned 
 with heaven's own light upon that topmost arch of fame 
 that shall stand when governments and nations fall. 
 
 Moderate, resolute, 
 Whole in himself, a common good. 
 Mourn for the man of amplest influence 
 
204 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Yet clearest of ambitious crime, 
 Our greatest yet with least pretence, 
 Rich iu saving common-sense, 
 And as the greatest only are, 
 In his simplicity sublime. 
 
 Who never sold the truth, to serve the hour, 
 Nor palter' d with Eternal God for power; 
 Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow 
 Thro' either babbling world of high aud low ; 
 Whose life was work, whose language rife 
 With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 
 Who never spoke against a foe. 
 
 And to this, borrowed of England's laureate, we add the 
 spontaneous offering of our own uncrowned bard, the 
 laureate of the people. 
 
 Oh, slow to smite, and swift to spare, 
 
 Gentle and merciful and just ! 
 Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 
 
 The sword of power, a nation's trust ! 
 
 In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 
 
 Amid the awe that hushes all, 
 And speak the anguish of the land 
 
 That shook with horror at thy fall. 
 
 Thy task is done; the bond are free ; 
 
 We bear thee to an honored grave, 
 Whose proudest monument shall be 
 
 The broken fetters of the slave. 
 
 Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 
 Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 
 
 Among the noble host of those 
 
 Who perished in the cause of Right. 
 
 But this grand life imposes upon us lessons of duty, as 
 
THOMPSON. 205 
 
 well as claims of honor. And we best honor the life 
 itself by worthily fulfilling its lessons. 
 
 1. The life of Mr. Lincoln should incite us to unswerv- 
 ing fidelity to our institutions of civil government, as 
 identified both with the existence of the nation and with 
 the welfare of mankind. Standing by his grave, we must 
 renew for ourselves the vow which he made in our name 
 by the graves of our dead at Gettysburgh — resolving that 
 " the dead shall not have died in vain — that the nation 
 shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that 
 the government of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 In Ms first message lie taught us that on the side of the 
 Union, the struggle was for " maintaining in the world that 
 form and substance of government whose leading object is 
 to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights 
 from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit 
 for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance 
 in the race of life ; — this is the leading object of the gov- 
 ernment for which we contend." 
 
 And, again, in his second message, he showed that " the 
 insurrection was largely, if not exclusively, a war upon 
 the first principle of popular government — the rights of 
 the people." We have saved that principle, not for our- 
 selves alone, but for mankind. 
 
 To be true to Abraham Lincoln, is to be true to the 
 American Union as the inviolate and the inviolable heri- 
 tage of freedom ; — true to that great idea of a nationality 
 undivided and of a sovereignty in the Nation above the 
 State. In his own piquant words, we must put down 
 effectually "the assumed right of a State to rule all 
 
206 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 which is less than itself, and ruin all which is larger than 
 itself."* 
 
 2. We must take measures for the utter extinction of 
 slavery, by severing every tie of the slave-oligarchy to the 
 polity and to the soil of the country. We must end this 
 rebellion so effectually that not a solitary root or fibre of 
 it shall remain to plague us in the future. We owe it to 
 ourselves, in view of all that we have done and suffered 
 in the cause ; we owe it to our dead, who gave themselves 
 for our salvation ; we owe it to our posterity, who shall 
 reap what we now sow ; we owe it to mankind, to whom 
 we should now furnish an example of a free, just, and 
 peaceful government ; and we owe it to the memory of 
 the leader and martyr who hath consecrated our cause by 
 his great sacrifice, that we guard effectually against the 
 recurrence of a war of opposing sections or civilizations. 
 And for this it is indispensable that we stamp this rebel- 
 lion as a crime, that we measure out to its sponsors and 
 abettors appropriate penalties, and that we root out the 
 whole system of society by which it was inspired, and for 
 which it has been maintained : — for this conspiracy was a 
 crime, without excuse, on the part of its leaders, whether 
 of ignorance, of provocation, or of motive ; without color 
 or mitigation from beginning to end. It should be held 
 up as a crime, to the execration of our children and of 
 coming ages ; and to this end we must condemn the con- 
 spirators by a national judgment, that will ever after 
 deter unprincipled and unscrupulous demagogues from a 
 like attempt. It is not .enough that they who have 
 brought this terrible ruin upon the country be left simply 
 
 * Speech to Legislature of Indiana, 1861. 
 
THOMPSON. 207 
 
 to share its natural consequences to themselves. There 
 must be a verdict against the crime, and a judgment upon 
 the criminals, that shall stand as a warning, dark, frown- 
 ing; terrible, to all agitators and conspirators within the 
 bosom of the republic. No timid or time-serving policy, 
 no weak and sickly sentimentalism, no pity for the crimi- 
 nals themselves, no good-natured forbearance toward a 
 section or class once courted with political favoritism, 
 should be suffered to restrain the judgment due to this 
 stupendous crime. 
 
 Now, since slavery inspired the rebellion, and since this 
 was hi' turn inspired by pride of social caste and by lust 
 of political domination, the axe should be laid at the roots 
 of the system that gave to the conspiracy its pretext and 
 its vitality. The penalty of a voluntary and determined 
 participation in the rebellion should be the peremptory 
 alienation of the estates of the conspirators, and the per- 
 petual disfranchisement of the conspirators themselves. 
 This I urge as the most radical and effective form of jus- 
 tice, and as indispensable to the peace of the country and 
 to the safety of liberty. 
 
 Two popular cries, u Slavery is dead," and " Hang the 
 traitors," are diverting the public mind from that broader 
 and sterner justice which is needed for the destruction of 
 the conspiracy itself, and as a warning against another 
 such attempt in after times. Slavery is not dead. In 
 two States it remains untouched by the Proclamation of 
 Emancipation. In nearly the whole region of the rebel- 
 lion, the local laws, which gave it life, are unrepealed ; 
 and should the rebel States be restored to their status in 
 the Union without the previous dispossession and disfran 
 
208 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 chisement of the rebels themselves, those laws would con- 
 front the proclamation in the courts. The Constitutional 
 Amendment, prohibiting slavery, is not yet sanctioned by 
 the requisite number of States, nor even by all the North- 
 ern States. Southern planters professing loyalty to the 
 Union, have been known to boast that they would recover 
 their slaves; and they would find politicians at the North 
 ready to aid them, and to divide the country upon that 
 issue. Slavery is not dead. Now, hanging a few traitors 
 will not kill slavery ; and our danger is, that slavery itself 
 will slip through the noose, and that when it shall begin 
 to revive from the shock, many who are now shouting, 
 "Hang the traitors," will take up the old familiar cry, 
 " Hang the abolitionists." It is because of this now im- 
 minent peril, a peril that makes peace more threatening 
 than war, that I would urge upon all who love Peace, 
 Liberty, and Union, a measure dictated not by leniency 
 toward criminals, but by the broadest considerations of 
 justice and of public policy. As a help to the discussion 
 of this measure, I submit the following propositions : 
 
 1. Capital punishment is the appropriate penalty for 
 the crime of murder; and civil government is clothed 
 with the sword for the punishment of crimes against the 
 life of society. 
 
 2. The conspirators against the Government of the 
 United States should have justice meted out to them as 
 criminals against society and the state. 
 
 3. Since the Constitution carefully defines the crime of 
 treason, but leaves it to Congress to declare its penalty, 
 we are not shut up to any single form of penalty against 
 these traitors ; but should a capital indictment under the 
 
THOMPSON. 20f> 
 
 law of 1 790 fail, or should a jury fail of a capital con- 
 viction, the several damnatory acts of Congress during the 
 rebellion are still valid as penal ordinances. 
 
 4. There can be no doubt that the leading traitors de- 
 serve to forfeit their lives for their crime. 
 
 5. There can hardly be a doubt, that the execution of 
 the leaders within ninety days after the conspiracy broke 
 out, would have crushed the conspiracy by inspiring ter- 
 ror ; but slavery would have remained intact, the mob by 
 this time would have been at its old work of hanging 
 negroes and abolitionists, and the seeds of rebellion would 
 have ripened into another crop of traitors, nourished from 
 the blood of men reputed martyrs for the South and its 
 institutions. 
 
 6. The rebellion, which at the outset was simply a 
 traitorous conspiracy, had grown to the gigantic propor- 
 tions of a civil war, long evenly balanced in the scales of 
 battle. The great powers of Europe recognized the rebels 
 as belligerents, and we were compelled to an indirect 
 
 1 recognition of them, so far as the exchange of prisoners ; 
 and moreover, our late President, with the Secretaryof 
 State, held informal consultations with their commission- 
 ers upon terms of peace. Now, there is a growing tend- 
 ency in the civilized world to place political crimes in a 
 different category from common crimes against person and 
 life ; and in dealing with the rebel leaders, we must have 
 due respect to the enlightened sentiment of Christendom, 
 and be able to justify ourselves in the verdict of impartial 
 history. The question is not simply what the traitors 
 deserve, but what form of penalty is now best for the 
 safety of the country and for our good name in the com- 
 
210 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 ing centuries ; and therefore, not for their sakes but for 
 our own, we can afford to let them live, seeing that we 
 can inflict upon them a penalty more trenchant and more 
 radical, dooming them to obscurity and ignonimy without 
 exciting sympathy for them at home or abroad. More- 
 over, since those who have been in arms against the gov- 
 ernment, — which is the overt act of treason — are virtually 
 set free of the gallows by the military action of the gov- 
 ernment itself, would it satisfy the claims of justice to 
 hang the officials of the bubble confederacy ? and — what 
 is of more consequence — would this break down effectually 
 the spirit of the rebellion, and root out its motive and cause % 
 
 ]No doubt these conspirators richly deserve such a fate ; 
 and should it befall them, I would accept it with becoming 
 resignation. But the question is one of an enlightened 
 and comprehensive policy for the nation. We must be 
 careful to keep our hands clean of even the imputation of 
 a passionate revenge ; and we must be careful also to 
 keep our soil clear of the seeds of rancor and of treason 
 for the future. It is worthy of consideration, then, 
 whether the mode of dealing with the traitors that I here 
 propose, will not be more effectual than would be the 
 capital execution of a few ; for I take it that the public 
 mind would soon be glutted with such executions, and 
 then there might come a reaction of pity and of sympathy 
 that would allow the real authors of the conspiracy as a 
 class — the slaveocracy — to go unwhipt of justice. But 
 shall the way be open for Lee, or any of the paroled con- 
 spirators, to resume their citizenship within the Union they 
 have labored to destroy ? 
 
 I do not ask, could we trust them again in the places of 
 
THOMPSON. 211 
 
 power they once desecrated by perjury and treason. I do 
 not ask, could there be good-fellowship with them again in 
 the Senate ? — confidence in them in the Cabinet % I ask, 
 is there nothing due to Justice? Nothing due to the dig- 
 nity of the Nation ? Nothing due to History ? Nothing 
 due to posterity ? We must brand this monster crime 
 with a penalty that will be felt, with an infamy that will 
 never be forgotten at home or abroad. 
 
 Commonly, but not invariably, capital punishment is the 
 most dreaded as well as the most ignominious form of pen- 
 alty. But there are cases in which penalty comes in forms 
 more dreadful and more ignominious than the scaffold. 
 Our first feeling was one of regret that the murderer of 
 the President was not brought to the gallows. But he 
 would have then had the histrionic effect of a state trial, 
 and perhaps a degree of pity, such as even the greatest 
 criminal draws to himself, after the first hideousness of his 
 crime has passed. Now, what a fate was his ! I shudder 
 at the terrors of divine retribution. In bodily anguish and 
 tortured by fear, skulking from the view of men, with 
 none daring to screen him, nor to give him succor, dying 
 daily a thousand deaths, tracked at length to his hiding 
 place, smoked out like some noisome beast from his lair, 
 and shot down without mercy, yet knowing his miserable 
 fate; the nerves of motion paralyzed, the nerves of feeling 
 intensified^ so that he begged for death as a relief from 
 misery ; and at the very time that the honored body of 
 his victim was being borne through the land amid the 
 mournful tributes of the whole people, his unpitied car- 
 case, unshrouded and uncoffined, was carried out into the 
 darkness, the stars forbearing to look upon it, the earth 
 
212 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 and the sea refusing it burial, while for every tear that 
 dropped upon the bier of the martyred President an ex- 
 ecration fell upon the assassin, as he sunk in the fathom- 
 less unknown. There may be a justice more terrible than 
 the scaffold, or there may be a living infamy worse than 
 death. 
 
 If now we strip all who have knowingly, freely, and 
 persistently upheld this rebellion, of their property and 
 their citizenship, they will become beggared and infamous 
 outcasts ; fleeing the country, not as hunted exiles court- 
 ing sympathy abroad and creating sympathy at home, 
 but like Cain, with the brand upon their forehead, and 
 with a punishment greater than they can bear. They 
 will not dare to return to the South, for their wealth 
 being gone, and their social and political power broken, 
 they would find none so poor to do them reverence ; nor 
 would they risk their lives among the common people, 
 whom they have deceived and ruined. The landed aristo- 
 cracy which had fostered slavery, being thus evicted of 
 the soil, and the political power that had upheld it, being 
 evicted of the state, slavery would die beyond the possibil- 
 ity of resuscitation. The Union people of the South, and 
 the mass of the common people, won back by kindness, 
 uniting with our veterans and Northern emigrants, would 
 plant farms and villages upon the old slave plantations, 
 and, with our help in schools and churches, a new social 
 order would arise upon the basis of freedom and loyalty ; 
 —to be guaranteed by the institutions of education and 
 religion, and by placing the ballot in the hands of every 
 man who is known to be loyal, and who can read it. 
 
 All this . must be a work of time ; but the work is 
 
THOMPSON. 213 
 
 nothing less than to build up society and the state from 
 the foundation, and this in the midst of chaos. There is 
 now nothing of the old order of things that we can safely 
 build upon, or that will serve as material for building. 
 For, since the States rebelled in their organic character, 
 they forfeited existence, and lapsed into anarchy ; every 
 rebel then forfeited all his privileges as a citizen of the 
 United States ; so that, as I said at the opening of the 
 war, there could be no question of in the Union or out 
 of it, but the only alternative was in the Union, with full 
 allegiance to its supremacy, or under it, subject to its 
 authority, but debarred from all its privileges ; and now 
 from that chaotic territory, new States must arise under 
 the tutelage of Congressional law. Our immediate danger 
 is from the recognition of old State forms in the South, 
 and the rapid restoration of crude State governments. 
 When you consider that except in the naturalization of 
 foreigners, not Congress but the State fixes the condition 
 of citizenship, you will see how great the danger is in re- 
 admitting to their status in the Union States scarce hall 
 purged of treason. 
 
 Loyal men in the South, having good means of infor- 
 mation, estimate that seventy-five per cent, of the land in 
 the Southern States is held by men who have been directly 
 or indirectly in complicity with treason against the United 
 States. If this tremendous political and social power be 
 restored to these men by the mere fiction of an oath of 
 allegiance, what shall hinder their imposing disabilities 
 upon the colored race and the poor whites that will virtu- 
 ally restore the old regime of the slave-aristocracy ? With 
 land and legislation in their hands, they will again become 
 
214 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the dictators of Southern sentiment, and by concentrat- 
 ing upon a common policy will make terms with political 
 parties at the North for their own aggrandizement. 
 
 The time has fully come when, as Mr. Lincoln signifi- 
 cantly said in his first Inaugural, we must " provide by 
 law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution 
 which guarantees that the citizens of each State shall be 
 entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in 
 the several States." The time has fully come when we 
 must make good his official declaration of July 30, 1863, 
 that " it is the duty of every Government to give protec- 
 tion to its citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition." 
 The time is fully come when we must give vitality and 
 practical effect to the fourth section of the fourth article 
 of the Constitution, that " the United States shall guar- 
 antee to every State in this Union a republican form of 
 government." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has laid down with his usual clearness the 
 principle that governs the case : " An attempt to guar- 
 antee and protect a revived State government, constructed 
 in whole or in preponderating part, from the very element 
 against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, 
 is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to sepa- 
 rate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the 
 sound." But just at the critical point of fixing the test,, 
 Mr. Lincoln's confiding kindness got the better of his good 
 judgment. He did not make sufficient allowance for 
 human depravity, nor for political chicanery ; and his 
 amnesty oath opens a wide door for perjured rebels to 
 plot new mischief within the State. 
 
 But let us once clear the ground of the rebellious lead- 
 
THOMPSON. 215 
 
 ers, by unrelenting confiscation and disfranchisement, then 
 let Congress fix the status of citizens, and these in due 
 time frame a free State constitution, and all is clear and 
 safe. Do you shrink from the time and cost of each meas- 
 ures ? I grant it were easier and cheaper to hang a few 
 rebels ; but we should aim to destroy the rebellion, so that 
 it shall have no issue and no successor. If true to Mr. 
 Lincoln, we shall see that the work of emancipation is 
 made sure, and we shall but follow his example by going 
 beyond his own position, as the logic of events shall lead 
 us forward. That the nation may live, slavery must utterly 
 die. 
 
 3. Our last lesson from the life of Abraham Lincoln is 
 that of unwavering confidence in God, for the guidance, 
 the defence and the deliverance of the nation. Mr. Cob- 
 den was wont to say of men in public life, " You have no 
 hold of any one w T ho has no religious faith." Our hold 
 upon Mr. Lincoln was in his character as a man of posi- 
 tive and earnest religious convictions ; and his hold upon 
 us and upon posterity is mainly through that character. 
 He never distrusted God, and he was willing to follow im- 
 plicitly the teachings of the Bible and of Divine Provi- 
 dence. His death has thrown us back once more upon 
 God as our helper and our trust. In his own words, " I 
 turn and look to the great American people, and to that 
 God who has never forsaken them." 
 
 The historian of France has written, that when Louis 
 XIY. died, " it was not a man, it was a world that 
 ended." But with Abraham Lincoln a new era was born, 
 that is glorified and made perpetual through his death. 
 He has told how once he was startled and terrified at 
 
216 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 being awakened at midnight to see the stars falling and to 
 hear the cry that the end of the world had come. But he 
 looked up to the Great Bear and the Pointers, and seeing 
 them unshaken, he returned to his rest. And now that 
 he has gone so calmly to his last rest, we look up through 
 the cloud and see the steady pointers of the sky. A star 
 of the first magnitude has fallen from the meridian ; but 
 the pole is unchanged, and the world holds on its course. 
 Angel hands are only shifting the curtains of the sky for 
 the dawn. The day is brightening ; let us turn from this 
 night of sorrow and of blood to welcome it with our 
 morning hymn of hope and praise. 
 
 North, with all thy vales of green, 
 
 South, with all thy palms, 
 From peopled towns and fields between, 
 
 Uplift the voice of psalms. 
 Eaise ancient East, the anthem high, 
 And let the youthful West reply. 
 
 Lo ! in the clouds of heaven appears 
 
 God's well beloved Son ; 
 He brings a train of brighter years — 
 
 His kingdom is begun ; 
 He comes a guilty world to bless 
 With mercy, truth, and righteousness. 
 
 Father, haste the promised hour 
 
 When at his feet shall lie, 
 All rule, authority, and power, 
 
 Beneath the ample sky. 
 When He shall reign from pole to pole, 
 The Lord of every human soul. 
 
 "When all shall heed the words He said 
 Amid their daily cares, 
 
THOMPSON. 217 
 
 And by the loving life he led, 
 
 Shall strive to pattern theirs ; 
 And He who conquered death shall win 
 The mighty conquest over sin.* 
 
 * Hymn by W. C. Bryant, read by Eev. S. Osgood, D. D., at the commem- 
 orative service in Union Square, April 25, 1865. 
 
SERMON XI. 
 
 KEY. JAMES EELLS, D. D. 
 
 " I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 
 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." — Psalm 
 cxxi. 1, 2. 
 
 It is impossible for me to preach the sermon I designed 
 for this morning. My heart beats too closely in sympathy 
 with your own to allow the consideration of any ordinary 
 theme, while I feel wholly unfitted to speak to you on 
 that which will give place to no other. Never within my 
 recollection — perhaps, never since the formation of our 
 government — have the masses of the people been more 
 profoundly moved with consternation and grief than with- 
 in the past twenty-four hours. I went through our great 
 thoroughfares of business soon after the first awful tidings 
 reached us yesterday morning, that I might learn some- 
 thing more definite, even though it should be the con- 
 firmation of my fears ; and the faces of all classes of men 
 presented the most sad, yet most eloquent, commentary 
 on the great calamity that has befallen the nation. The 
 laborers, gathered on the corners of the streets, were 
 speaking in low and mournful tones of the President's 
 death. The companies around the bulletin boards read 
 
 219 
 
220 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the dispatch which sealed all hope with the manifest con- 
 viction of the public loss. The men of business greeted 
 me only with exclamations which made known their deep 
 concern in so solemn an emergency. Political distinctions 
 were not regarded — there was a universal feeling of dis- 
 tress and astonishment that the two chief officers of the 
 government should be the victims of an assassin. Such 
 a day as yesterday has rarely been known in the history 
 of nations. Such a Sabbath as this has come to us in no 
 part of the terrible history of the past four years ; and we 
 should be thankful that its sacred calm, its blessed privi- 
 leges, its hallowed inspirations of peace, and comfort, and 
 trust, and hope come so soon to relieve and cheer a Chris- 
 tian people. ' 
 
 There are many things which conspire to occasion the 
 feelings which oppress us. That the President should 
 be killed is itself a fact awakening anxious thought in the 
 minds of those who value the stability and strength of 
 republican institutions. That he should be killed at such 
 a crisis as we have reached in the great struggle through 
 which we have been passing adds much to the excitement 
 that in any event would prevail. Whatever opinions may 
 be held respecting the policy pursued by him, it was uni- 
 form, and his own ; it was identified with the whole mili- 
 tary and political state of affairs ; it was comprehended 
 by him, of necessity, as no other can comprehend it ; and 
 a radical change at this juncture is impossible. The ad- 
 ministration is to continue; yet he who seemed alone 
 able to prosecute its measures has dropped from his place. 
 Moreover, we were in the midst of almost unrestrained 
 jubilation on account of returning peace. The force of 
 our enemies was broken ; the power of the government 
 was acknowledged ; the hearts of the people were thrilled 
 with the news that day communicated, that the prepara- 
 
EELLS. OOI 
 
 tions for war need no longer continue, and those who had 
 long been absent as the country's defenders would soon 
 come back to their families and homes. The pulse never 
 had been higher and stronger in the arteries of popular 
 interest, and hope and joy mingled in all demonstrations, 
 without regard to the differences that had existed. The 
 most wonderful week of our national history was drawing 
 to a close. We looked forward to this day as one of gen- 
 eral and overflowing thanksgiving to God. Alas ! how, 
 as in a moment, has all been changed, and a mourning 
 people gather in their sanctuaries, with tokens of their 
 bereavement, and feel humbled under the mighty h?nd 
 whose stroke they did not anticipate. 
 
 Then, the character of the President, which has beei. so 
 fully revealed to us, adds greatly to the grief we do not 
 seek to repress. It is not too much to say that he has oc- 
 cupied his place in the most turbulent era — all things con- 
 sidered — through which any nation ever passed success- 
 fully. Issues were involved affecting millions of people 
 and untold interests, monetary and political, on each side. 
 Passions were roused to frenzy. There was no possibility 
 that men should agree as to the proper course to be pur- 
 sued. There was no hope that any policy that should be 
 adopted would be admitted by all to be wise. Yet the 
 President must adopt some course and pursue it as wisely 
 as possible, meeting the opposition that could not be 
 avoided from men excited to the highest pitch. It is a 
 marvel that, after passing through such an ordeal for four 
 years, his opponents unite with his associates in the belief 
 that he was an honest as well as able man ; that, to a de- 
 gree which the feelings of the people this day exhibit, he 
 was beloved as well as respected. Multitudes who never 
 saw him weep for him as though he was one of their own 
 families ; and there is a consciousness, not a few of us con- 
 
222 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 fess with melancholy pleasure, that he had a warm place 
 in our hearts as a man in full sympathy with what we 
 cherish as nohle and good. No man can have a grander 
 monument. No man will have a record more pure and 
 worthy of those qualities which all will ultimately honor, 
 whatever may be the judgment of history upon the policy 
 he felt constrained to pursue. He was remarkable for 
 nothing more than for his simple, rigid integrity — his 
 settled purpose to do what he believed to be wise and 
 right. This made it impossible for professed politicians to 
 manipulate him. This gave him that noble epithet with 
 which he came from his Western home to Washington, 
 after a career where his character was often severely test- 
 ed. This has coupled that epithet with his name, during 
 his public life, wherever it has been spoken. This is ut- 
 tered as one of the people's most endearing words of honor, 
 now that his body is borne back to his early home ; and 
 upon his monument — sacred because the occasion of his 
 murder — will weeping pilgrims read the inscription in 
 after years that he was " honest." No man ever showed 
 himself more true to what he announced as the principles 
 of right. Great in the simplicity of his character, his mo- 
 tives, his perceptions, his acts ; gentle as a woman in his 
 regard for others, yet resolute as fate in his determination 
 to crush evil ; ostentatious in no part of his duties, made 
 vain by no flattery, turned aside from his course by no 
 abuse ; from the first having decided upon the outlines of 
 his policy, yet listening ever for advice respecting its 
 details, and reverently watching for any signal from 
 Heaven that he should change ; to the end, as the nation's 
 acknowledged leader, the same man, except as his powers 
 had been greatly developed by the weight he carried, as 
 when he came to do the nation's bidding amid the fore- 
 bodings of those who knew he had not been tested — 
 
EELLS. 223 
 
 there could be no more worthy type, in all essential fea- 
 tures, of an American citizen. That he was killed, be- 
 cause just such a man, has enshrined him in our hearts. 
 
 It is not my purpose, however, to speak at length upon 
 the character or acts of Mr. Lincoln. I allude to them 
 only to show that our loss can hardly be estimated, at a 
 time when such qualities as were eminent in him are to be 
 far more needed than towering ability, and such indepen- 
 dence of will. as would refuse to be at once the exponent 
 and the leader of the people's wishes. 
 
 There are some aspects of this affliction to which we 
 should give attention, that afford some relief and many 
 lessons of singular importance. They relate to the past 
 and to the future, and have possibly been in your hearts 
 and on your lips as you have met each other. One is 
 this, that our common feeling of loss and outrage will 
 tend, more than any arguments and appeals could have 
 done, to bring all classes of our people together and ce- 
 ment them by the impulses it will rouse in all alike. 
 Xever have we needed unanimity of the masses so much 
 as now, that the tiemendous issues to be settled at the 
 close of the war may be so determined that the country 
 may be permanently prosperous. The most logical trea- 
 tises on political economy would not be sufficient to out- 
 weigh the gains of intrigue and party rule. The most 
 able statesmanship would not control the excitable and 
 unreasoning, who compose the large majority of our citi- 
 zens, who are nevertheless, in heart, patriotic, and de- 
 voted to the interests dear to us all. AVe could see 
 already how the people were beginning to drift apart 
 upon questions that must arise, and a spirit might be fo- 
 mented that would bode evil. May it not be that the 
 blood of the President and his chief adviser shall be a 
 bund of union which their couneel and acts could not 
 
224 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN!. 
 
 have been ? May it not be that the horrors of extreme 
 views, when allowed to ride over all civil protections, 
 and find expression in so terrible a tragedy, will urge ns 
 upon common ground, where, at least, we shall cultivate 
 the feelings which are essential to happiness and success 
 in a republic ? If this shall be the result, the illustrious 
 victims may not be too costly a price for the blessing to 
 the land. 
 
 Another lesson we should heed respects the necessity 
 of having men in office who have the regard and love of 
 the people, that they may become such a bond of union, 
 whether living or dead. 
 
 And still another, that real honor is bestowed on good- 
 ness, integrity, devotion to right, in our great men, 
 rather than on extraordinary talent and brilliant acts, 
 however great may be the powers with which they are 
 associated. 
 
 But, upon these and others which might be suggested, 
 I will not dwell, as they are more appropriate to some 
 other time. My object is, rather to bring more distinctly 
 than ever before your minds, as the great lesson and 
 most abundant source of consolation to which we should 
 give heed, that truth, made so familiar, yet in such an 
 hour of sorrow and extremity, all the more dear, because 
 familiar, that our hope and our help are in God ! 
 
 We learn from experience and necessity to rely on the 
 men who become prominent and successful in leading 
 our affairs, until almost imperceptibly we rest on them 
 the responsibility and our hope. Probably none of us 
 were aware how much we depended on the President, for 
 safe guidance through the complications we cannot es- 
 cape, and which must be attended with so much diffi- 
 culty. Could a voice from the skies more startle us with 
 its emphasis, as it should declare, " It is better to trust in 
 
EELLS. 225 
 
 the Lord, than to put confidence in princes," than do the 
 tidings from Washington which have thrilled through, 
 the nation ? We know not who can take the vacant 
 places, whose incumbents have been so suddenly re- 
 moved, with any safety to the government ; but God 
 knows, and he can prepare the men who shall assume 
 them, so that in the end we shall acknowledge these dark 
 days to be full of blessing for the land ! Oh ! what a 
 sight for men and angels, were this mighty nation, when 
 it has demonstrated its unparalleled resources and power, 
 when it commands the honor of all realms, to consign its 
 Chief Magistrate to his grave, with the devout expression 
 of dependence upon the great God, who can never die. 
 u I will lift my e3'es unto the hills, from whence cometh 
 my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made 
 heaven and earth !" Is not this mysterious removal of 
 the President and principal Secretary, just at this stage of 
 our affairs, entirely in harmony with the conduct by 
 Providence, of the whole struggle in which we have been 
 engaged ? If I were looking for proof that there is a 
 God, outside of revelation, in the history of men, I would 
 not go beyond the events of the last four years, to be 
 most abundantly convinced ; and the peculiarity which 
 has most distinguished Mr. Lincoln, and has given him 
 success, has been his purpose to follow the lead of events, 
 and shape his course as they might indicate. Iso great 
 device of statesmanship or military strategy was per- 
 mitted to succeed, while God's design to discipline and 
 educate the people, was in process of execution. There 
 was a power behind the agents in the drama, guiding to 
 points they did not intend to reach, and solving difficul- 
 ties, at each advance, they knew not how to solve. Men 
 were raised up in due time, as though specially endowed 
 and appointed by God for their several stations, both civil 
 
226 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN". 
 
 and military. And the wonderful events of the past 
 week, notwithstanding the brilliant instrumentality of 
 those who have been permitted to battle for them, are so 
 signally marked by the interposition of God, and so 
 much in excess of our expectations, that from the whole 
 land rose the expression of thanks to him for the result. 
 Who shall say that the mystery of this great bereavement 
 we now experience will not have a solution equally, 
 perhaps even more marked, as the continued proof that 
 God is working his pleasure in the strange procession of 
 our national affairs ? Let it be, that this assassination 
 shall defeat the end it was intended to promote ; let it be, 
 that it shall cause all classes among us to feel, as some 
 have not seemed to feel heretofore, the atrocious nature 
 of this attempt to destroy the government ; that it shall 
 make a unit, in spirit and purpose, of those who might 
 not otherwise be so united ; let it be, that there shall be 
 a new, and more pervading, and more thorough sense of 
 our dependence upon God, under which we shall be 
 humbled and more completely prepared for his will, 
 and we shall have still further occasion to acknowledge 
 his hand ! 
 
 He can take possession of him, whom this strange 
 Providence elevates with such solemnity to the highest 
 office, as he seems to have taken possession of him whom 
 he resolved to make our great military chief, when he 
 had, in a measure, lost the confidence of the people, by 
 his submission to unworthy habits ; and can inspire him 
 for his work, and bear him on to its completion. And 
 there is no prayer we should utter with more earnestness, 
 this day, than that he will do this. Should the great man 
 whose life was also sought, be unable to survive his 
 wounds, God can place our relations with foreign powers 
 in the hands of some man, whom he can make strong, 
 
EELLS. 227 
 
 and wise, and true ; though we have been so wont to feel 
 that our Secretary of State is essential to the proper dis- 
 position of these intricate questions. Oh ! brethren, the 
 whole race of men is as nothing ; the great, the wise, the 
 good, the mighty, perish ; none can by any means re- 
 deem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him, that 
 he shall not die! "The lathers, where are they? and 
 the prophets, do they live forever?" Death heads the 
 vast throng in which we are all gathered, and we are 
 marching to the grave! "But the Lord liveth, and 
 blessed be our rock, and let the God of our salvation be 
 exalted !" 
 
 The interests he has espoused, with which he is identi- 
 fied, will never perish. His kingdom, which cannot be 
 shaken, will remain and triumph. That life is not passed 
 in vain which has been consecrated to his service. Xor 
 is that trust idle, which from the borders of the tomb, 
 where is laid a mortal co-worker, " lifts up its eyes to the 
 hills," from whence help never fails to come. I cannot 
 believe that any other than God is leading our nation 
 through this wonderfully mingled experience of joy and 
 grief — ot glory and humiliation. I cannot doubt that 
 this day there are assembled hosts whose mingled feelings 
 of praise and prayer are evidence that his discipline is 
 not lost upon us. We needed enough prosperity to ren- 
 der us fit for the position we can see but little above us — 
 and enough continued chastening to render us willing 
 that God shall be exalted as our Saviour and Help. There 
 is promise of good in the subdued manner in which the 
 nation will now move on to enter upon the blessings from 
 which God had begun to roll away the clouds. There is, 
 possibly, more auspicious music, for the world, and for 
 future ages, in the requiem that rises to-day from our sor- 
 rowing country than there would have been in the Te 
 
228 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Deums and songs of exultation which should express our 
 uninterrupted joy. There may be more hope for those 
 who look for the supremacy of right and the overthrow 
 of wrong, as the result of the war we have waged, now 
 that a tinner purpose to deal justly with those who have 
 instigated it, takes the place of the feeling that was ready 
 to speak kindly, even of the unrepentiug traitors, who 
 favor this horrible crime, as the first return for the mag- 
 nanimity and kindness our noble-hearted President was 
 glad to manifest. Certain it is we are not yet prepared 
 to go back to the dark days of assassination as a mode 
 of removing what may be opposed to us. Barbarism 
 is still at a great distance from the people of this 
 land. The foul spirit of which this act is the outburst 
 has mistaken the pulse of the American heart. There 
 have been more conversions to the extreme of hostility to 
 treason within the last twenty-four hours, than any other 
 means could have produced in a year. Its abettors have 
 killed their best friend, and in doing so have raised a 
 myriad arms that are moved by no such lenient soul, 
 and this fact may be one evidence that God, who is the 
 most relentless foe of infamy and crime, intends to over- 
 rule even so dreadful a loss to the attainment of his ends. 
 At all events, it is wise — it is our only recourse — to trust 
 in him — to rest upon the conviction that after such a glo- 
 rious manifestation of his returning favor, he does not 
 design to mock our hopes. The cloud is fearful and dark 
 under which we have passed, but the heavens are not all 
 overcast, nor is there any less proof that the awful storm, 
 which has been beating upon us, while the steady hand 
 of him who is now dead, held the rudder, has for the most 
 part died away. 
 
 A Christian nation, even though bowed and over- 
 whelmed by its sorrow, should never despair or lose con- 
 
EELLS. 229 
 
 tidence in God ; much less should a nation that has such 
 a history as ours. " Lift up your eyes to the hills from 
 whence cometh your help." The eternal throne is not sha- 
 ken, and he who sitteth thereon is as serene as he has 
 ever been, while he urges on his grand designs. "Trust 
 ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is conso- 
 lation and strength." 
 
 No considerations like these, however, should lead us 
 to put aside from us the most impressive truth which lias 
 in this event so solemn an illustration, that our life on 
 earth is hedged about by no circumstances that can guar- 
 antee its contin nance. 
 
 No qualities of nature which render us delightful to 
 those around us — no pressure of necessity arising from 
 our connection with momentous interests — no scenes of 
 opening hope and prosperity, just coming within our vis- 
 ion after a dark and stormy night of years — can keep 
 back the ruthless messenger of death when his errand is 
 given him. If any one could have been spared would it 
 not have been the man to whom more hearts were ten- 
 derly attached than any other in the nation ? Oh ! how 
 we recall the many incidents that show how worthy he 
 was of this love. One was related only yesterday, by a 
 gentleman who was with him in a hospital at City Point: 
 The President, though by no means well, resolved to 
 visit and speak to every sick and wounded man in the hos- 
 pital, of whom there were more than 6,000. While going 
 from cot to cot, the agent of the Christian Commission 
 came and begged of him that he would go, if but for a 
 moment, to the tent of the Commission and see something 
 of their work, but he replied : " No, sir ; I have great in- 
 terest in the Christian Commission, but I have resolved 
 that I owe most to these suffering heroes, and have only 
 time to say a word to each before I must leave " — then 
 
230 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 passed on, and the poor men would try to raise them- 
 selves in their couches as the President of the nation bent 
 towards them and laid his hand upon their foreheads, or 
 gently parted their hair, with some pleasant word of sym- 
 pathy and cheer, till all were visited. 
 
 And do you not remember that exquisite letter to the 
 poor widow in New England, whose sons had all been 
 killed in the war ? and that wonderful speech on the day 
 after his election, when in the flush of a most remarkable 
 victory, he said he took no pleasure in the defeat of any 
 man, since it is principles, not men, whose success should 
 be hailed with joy ? 
 
 If the most kindly regard for others would ward off 
 death, would not such a man have been spared ? Yet he 
 has fallen and gone from earth. 
 
 If the demands of teeming events could interpose, 
 would not our nation's head, just now, be kept in his 
 place 1 ISTo, my friends, there is no exception — there is 
 no escape. The warning sounds from our capital over 
 the land, and it should be heeded by every one of us ; 
 we must all die — we may die in a moment, and when we 
 think ourselves in the least danger. 
 
 And how blessed, in connection with this truth, so sadly 
 illustrated, is that other truth, of which we are reminded 
 on this Easter Sunday, that upon the night which is thus 
 gathered about us, Christ has brought the morning of 
 hope and immortality to those who believe on him. We 
 see the angels who have rolled away the stone from the 
 door of the sepulchre. We look upor the vacant space 
 where the body of Jesus had lain, and are assured that be- 
 yond, where he has gone, there is a higher and nobler life. 
 This assurance becomes our comfort and support. It lights 
 up our own descent to the tomb. It makes the tombs of 
 all believers only resting places where they sleep in Je- 
 
EELLS. !>3i 
 
 ms, and tlieir spirits seem to greet us as we weep because 
 the j are gone, with those words of hope : " Those who sleep 
 in Jesus will God bring with him." In view of such a 
 revelation in the midst of our national grief, the question 
 lias intense interest, which was asked me many times yes- 
 terday : " Is there evidence that our honored President 
 was a Christian V That he was killed in a theatre is no 
 proof that he was not, for in Washington, as in European 
 courts, the officials are expected to attend these places of 
 public resort, occasionally, merely to satisfy the desire of 
 the people to see them, and Mr. Lincoln often expressed 
 a preference to remain at home. On that fatal night it 
 was only his unwillingness that the people should be dis- 
 appointed which induced him to go ; yet all of us regret 
 that his death occurred in such a place, whatever may 
 have been the motive that took him there. Of his reli- 
 gious views, however, indeed, of his religious convictions 
 and experience, there is pleasing evidence. A promi- 
 nent Xew York clergymen, who found it necessary to call 
 upon him very early in the morning, learned that he was 
 engaged in his private devotions, in which nothing was 
 permitted to disturb him. A well known Christian lady 
 was asked by him, about a year ago, what were the sim- 
 plest proofs of change of heartj and as' she spoke particu- 
 larly of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and renunciation 
 of self, and comfort in prayer, he delighted her with the 
 reply : " Then I may believe that I am really a Chris- 
 tian." 
 
 And you, no doubt, call to mind his answer to the man 
 who closed a business interview with the direct question, 
 " Mr. President, before we part, will you permit me to 
 ask you, do you love Jesus ?" Mr. Lincoln rested his 
 head on his hand a moment, then said, "When I left my 
 home for Washington, I was not a Christian, though I 
 
232 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 desired the prayers of God's people ; when my little son 
 died — the heaviest affliction of my life — I was not a 
 Christian, though I deeply felt the need of grace and 
 comfort. But when I walked among the graves of those 
 thousands, who at Gettysburg had been swept into eter- 
 nity, I resolved to give my heart to God ; and since then 
 I do love Jesus !" Oh ! there is balm for the troubled 
 hearts which bleed to-day, in such testimony as this, even 
 though we know not the details of his experience. The 
 nation mourns, yet rejoices. Over our whole domain is 
 heard the dirge ; yet following close upon its strains, 
 rises the Easter anthem, as we bid farewell for earth to 
 one who will take his place among the most distinguished 
 in the annals of the world ! 
 
 My countrymen, let us rise to-day to a more distinct 
 conviction that this nation is under the direction of God. 
 Thousands of martyrs have been sacrificed at its altar ; 
 and at last, when we thought no more would be de- 
 manded, we have been obliged to yield the most illus- 
 trious of them all. In this fresh baptism of blood, let us 
 consecrate it to Jehovah, and hold ourselves in readiness 
 for any demands such consecration may make of us. Let 
 us feel that for this brief life we can make no worthier or 
 more valuable contribution to our race, than our resolute, 
 sincere devotion to the interests of right, liberty, and re- 
 ligion. Nay ! there can be no more worthy or valuable 
 treasure laid up for the life eternal ! The life eternal ! 
 how near to its confines do we every moment stand ! 
 God grant that all of us may be prepared, through his 
 grace, when the summons shall come to us, to leave for- 
 ever our stations and our work on earth, for the service 
 and the bliss of heaven 1 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 REV. ELBERT S. PORTER, D. D. 
 
 "" What aileth the people that they weep?" — 1. Samuel xi. 5. 
 
 A great indignity had been offered Israel by Nahash 
 the cruel Ammonite. When the people heard of it they 
 wept, and Saul, beholding the public sorrow, exclaimed : 
 " What aileth the people that they weep V When told 
 the cause thereof the Spirit of God came upon Saul, and 
 his anger was kindled greatly. 
 
 High crimes always awaken corresponding indignation. 
 For there is that in human nature which arises into flame 
 when touched by the presence of a flagrant wrong. The 
 instinct of justice which has been implanted in the hu- 
 man soul by the Author of all justice, is quick in its spon- 
 taneous protest against every form of palpable outrage. 
 A woe is denounced against them that call good evil, or 
 evil good, for when men lose ability or willingness to dis- 
 tinguish between right and wrong, to approve the one and 
 condemn the other, then society is fatally wounded and 
 vice becomes the equal of virtue ; and it is the Spirit 
 of a just God which kindles a holy indignation in the hu- 
 man mind against crimes, whether committed against na- 
 tions, communities, classes, or individuals. It may be 
 
 233 
 
234: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 taken for a maxim that a righteous abhorrence of malig- 
 nant and criminal passion is an essential element of pop- 
 ular virtue. Where this is wanting, a nation has parted 
 from all integrity of feeling. It has fallen into the 
 depths of moral putridity, and rots in the infectious at- 
 mosphere generated by abominable atheism. So long as 
 men retain God in their thoughts and reverence him as 
 the Supreme Lawgiver, they must cry out against com- 
 mon offences and extraordinary crimes. They forfeit their 
 noblest instincts when they come short of this duty. 
 
 It is not strange, therefore, that the assassination of 
 the President of the United States should awaken 
 feelings of horror, and evoke the indignation of every 
 right-minded man. That it has done this, admits of no 
 question. Never, since its beginning, until yesterday, 
 has this nation felt, so profoundly as it does now, the an- 
 guish of a sacred indignation, because of a monstrous, 
 and, in our country, hitherto unknown crime. This in- 
 dignation is none the less because it is, for a moment, sti- 
 fled by tears and sobs of genuine sorrow. Need we ask, 
 " Why do the people weep ?" 
 
 Whatever be the reason, one thing is certain, that there 
 has been no attempt to feign or affect sorrow. It has been 
 as spontaneous as light, and as universal too. There was 
 no waiting on yesterday for proclamations, or resolutions, 
 or any of the customary methods of forming and shaping 
 opinions. Men were speechless with grief, and pallid in 
 the presence of a great calamity. Business there could 
 be none, for the people had no heart to engage in traffic. 
 They looked into each other's faces and conversed only 
 through their falling tears. Funeral woe hung over our 
 cities. An appalling blow had paralyzed the popular 
 heart, and it communed in bitterness with its own woe, 
 waiting to be comforted. Undoubtedly the manner of 
 
PORTER. 235 
 
 the President's death gave particular character and shape 
 to the all-pervasive grief, and yet we may ask whether, 
 if he had been allowed to end his useful life upon a quiet 
 bed in this period of our national conflict, there would 
 not have been an unusual lamentation over his death. 
 
 He is done with earth. His record is made ; his deeds 
 have passed into history, and he will be judged like other 
 men who have occupied conspicuous public positions. It 
 is too soon yet to undertake to estimate his services or to 
 measure his influence. This generation must first pass 
 away before a just and impartial criticism shall assign 
 him his true place among the illustrious benefactors of 
 mankind. 
 
 When on the 4th of March, 1861, Abraham Lincoln 
 became President of these United States, he ceased to be 
 the chieftain of a political party. Perils, great, vast, and 
 immediate, were around him. He could no longer give 
 up to party what he owed to the whole country. From 
 that moment it became his supreme care to do what 
 seemed right and necessary for the preservation of the Un- 
 ion and the maintenance of its just governmental author- 
 ity. In the excitement and confusion of the times it was 
 not in the power of any fallible man to adopt measures 
 exactly suited to please the prej udices, the passions, and 
 the interests of all. During our most tranquil periods 
 the high office of President has been compassed with im- 
 mense difficulties. If its dignity is great its responsibil- 
 ities are far greater. In a republic like this, where opin- 
 ions rave and rage like tempests over the deep, our chief 
 magistrates, even in the more quiet times of the repub- 
 lic, have never found themselves free from grave embar- 
 rassments, or threatening dangers. But the difficulties of 
 administration experienced by his predecessors were as 
 nothing compared with those which beset Mr. Lincoln. 
 
236 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Secession, long plotted, thoroughly organized and defiant, 
 had already brought the national government to the 
 verge of ruin. Men were everywhere asking whereunto 
 will all this infernal mischief come? The popular mind 
 was without definite convictions concerning what ought 
 to be done. The leaders of public opinion, following 
 their themes, their abstractions, and their low ambitions, 
 held few doctrines in common. The President was then, 
 perforce, obliged to take counsel only from his oath of 
 office, and to go forward, trusting in God and the recti- 
 tude of the cause he had been elected to defend. 
 
 Looking back over the four years of his official history, 
 it is possible to detect some mistakes ; but these mistakes 
 will be very differently defined and described by opposite 
 schools of opinion. The criticisms to which his adminis- 
 tration of affairs has been subjected by avowed political 
 dissenters, have not, perhaps, in the main, been any more 
 ungenerous or embarrassing than those emanating from 
 adverse faction, in the party claiming to be his particular 
 supporters. I allude to this only to remind you of the 
 immense difficulties which from the first have ever beset 
 his public life. Yet he seemed to be oblivious of parties 
 and of party factions alike. lie inquired for the men 
 who were willing to stand by their country, and them he 
 called into civil and into military service. He had one 
 thing to do — to save the country — to preserve the Union 
 — and who will or can doubt that he gave himself wholly 
 and entirely to that work ? If he had been able to fore- 
 see all things, he might have avoided some alleged errors. 
 Had he been possessed of divine intelligence, he would 
 have timed and adjusted measures with a skill forbidding 
 criticism. Yet after all allowance is made for any real 
 or imaginary imperfection of official judgment, it must 
 still be confessed that the President who, under God, con- 
 
PORTER. 237 
 
 ducted tliis nation through a great war with a powerful 
 foe, and within sight of returning peace, will ever be 
 honored and held worthy of honor by those who consider 
 the magnitude of his task and the magnitude of the re- 
 suits it has secured. 
 
 I think all candid men, ol whatever shade of opinion, 
 will concur with me in this estimate of the official career 
 of our lamented President. That he did, or tried to do, 
 whatever seemed to him right and expedient for the sal- 
 vation of our government, will be readily admitted even 
 b} r those who were free to censure particular acts. Mr. 
 Lincoln was not a fanatic, nor a theorist. He had no 
 hobbies. His mind was broad, comprehensive, and prac- 
 tical. His motto seemed to be that of Edmund Burke, 
 "A true statesman must deal with practical affairs in a 
 practical way." This furnishes a key to his policy. In 
 the summer of 1862, I passed an hour with the President 
 in his summer retreat at the Old Soldiers' Home. There 
 were but three others present, and the conversation was 
 free and unrestrained. He spoke of slavery as a thing 
 which had grown up with the nation and grown into it — 
 said that one section was no more responsible than another 
 for its original existence here, and that the whole nation 
 having suffered from it, ought to share in efforts for its 
 gradual removal. His mind at the time was impressed 
 with the necessity of adopting a scheme of gradual and 
 compensated emancipation. That scheme, however, found 
 no favor among the insurgents, and was violently con- 
 demned by certain organs of opinion at the North. 
 When, however, foreign intervention became imminent, 
 the President issued as a war measure the proclamation 
 of freedom to the slaves. It was a measure concerning 
 which men have differed — but that it was believed by the 
 President to be necessary for the preservation of the 
 
23S DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Union, I have no manner of doubt, and since the South- 
 ern people have themselves come to the conclusion that 
 slavery as an institution is dead, and have by their own 
 acts helped it to its end, there is no longer reason at this 
 day to revive disputes, which have ceased to possess any 
 practical utility. But whatever men may choose to think or 
 say respecting the official acts or intellectual characteristics 
 of our late President, one thing must be held as true by all 
 — and that is, that the popular confidence in his moral 
 integrity has well-nigh approached sublimity. That con- 
 fidence has been as a wall of defence round about us. I 
 shall not enter into particulars illustrative of this. You 
 must all remember that the war has produced through all 
 its vicissitudes a tremendous strain upon popular feeling 
 of adverse kinds. There have been ambitious men not a 
 few, planning and plotting for their own advancement, 
 and they have built up little parties around them, whose 
 interest could be subserved by destroying confidence in 
 Mr. Lincoln. But while they had always some success, 
 after all, the people would fall back upon that plain, un- 
 pretending, every-day sort of a man, who maintained his 
 faith in God unimpaired, and trusted that the future 
 would reverse all the misjudgments of the present. The 
 lesson of such a political example of unimpeachable in- 
 tegrity is worth a great deal to this nation. 
 
 Several of our Presidents and statesmen have risen from 
 obscure life. They w T ere not born to the silver spoon and 
 silken bed of luxury. Jackson, the son of a poor Irish 
 widow ; Henry Clay, a poor white of the South ; Yan 
 Buren, a lad of humble means, have filled important pages 
 in the history of the world. Mr. Lincoln was born in 
 Kentucky, and passed all his early, and some of his ma- 
 turer years in a hard conflict with poverty. This, by 
 some, has been used to stigmatize and defame him. But 
 
POP.TER. 2?> ( ,» 
 
 right-thinking men will find in it occasion to bestow upon 
 him double honor. It is not difficult for the favored few 
 to gain a full share of worldly success. Born to wealth, 
 to social position — surrounded by friends, ever ready to 
 bestow or secure patronage — they have the current with 
 them. They do but float down its surface to the harbor 
 they desire. But the many are poor, have few friends to 
 help them, and they must not only struggle against wind 
 and tide, but at the same time endure the scornful jeers 
 and malevolent opposition of the more favored mortals. 
 No poor boy is allowed to make his way unless he has 
 heart, and courage, and purpose enough to disregard the 
 contempt of supercillious wealth, the secret malignity of 
 interested rivals, together with all the other common or 
 uncommon obstacles in the road to success. Our free 
 institutions embody the principles of a Christian democ- 
 racy. The Bible favors no class distinctions. It teaches 
 that all are required to use what talents they possess, and 
 that each shall be compensated according to his fidelity in 
 their use. And that is what our political s} T stem also 
 says. In the world it is not so. The poor remain poor — 
 the ignorant remain ignorant, and the rich heap up riches. 
 This at least is the rule where aristocracy bears sway. It 
 is, thank God, not so here. Our churches, our schools, 
 our newspapers, our whole life, inculcate the doctrine of 
 Christ, respecting the right of each man to rise in intelli- 
 gence, virtue, dignity, and influence. Against this life, 
 secession lifted its murderous hand in the beginning, and 
 to add to the " sum of all villainies," has assassinated the 
 President. I do not wish to employ the language of pas- 
 sion. But I hate, with a perfect hatred, this infernal spirit 
 of rebellion which has plunged our land iiito mourning, 
 filled hundreds of thousands of graves with the bodies of 
 martyrs slain for their loyalty to principles taught us hj 
 
240- DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the Son of God. Can there be a doubt respecting this 
 issue % The American people are to be executors of the 
 unrecorded will and testament of their generous, humane 
 and patriotic President. Let them be true to their trust. 
 Do any undervalue the inestimable privileges of our 
 American institutions, let them look abroad and see how 
 " privilege " oppresses the many. The few are masters of 
 the people. Here the many have advantages which as- 
 sure them opportunity of being all they have capacity to 
 become. Abraham Lincoln was the representative of 
 popular rights, manhood, and liberty. The people weep 
 because they loved him in character as a President, and 
 as a man. The assassin who struck him, assailed every 
 loyal citizen through him — and dealt a murderous blow 
 upon the nation, in murdering its head. We have our 
 duties. We must stand by the successor of Mr. Lincoln. 
 Andrew Johnson is worthy of our support. He is now 
 our Chief Magistrate — and as he wears the mantle of his 
 immediate predecessor, so let us give him the support of 
 our prayers and our loyal devotion to the cause he serves. 
 Henceforth the name, fame, and virtues of each are in the 
 keeping of so much of the world as delight to honor rare 
 ability, unimpeachable integrity, and fervent devotion to 
 the rights of all mankind. Washington was indeed the 
 father of his country, and some future Bancroft shall re- 
 cord on the page of history that Abraham Lincoln was the 
 political savior of what Washington and his compatriots 
 had founded. We weep, but we shall dry our tears in 
 the sunlight of Hope. The President is no more — but 
 the Republic lives. Let it be perpetual. 
 
SERMON XIII. 
 
 REV. A. P. ROGERS, D. D. 
 
 " Shall there he evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" — Amos 
 iii. 6. 
 
 " Be still, and know that I am God." — Psalm xlvi. 10. 
 
 A sudden and awful calamity has fallen upon the na- 
 tion. It has come like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. 
 It has no precedent in all our history, and we reel and 
 stagger under the unexpected and mighty catastrophe. 
 In the midst or our grateful joy for victory, in the midst 
 of our congratulations at the prospect of peace, the sad 
 and startling intelligence which has flashed along the 
 wires from the capital of our nation, has prostrated us in 
 the depths of affliction, and pierced the great heart of 
 loval America with unutterable anguish. For the first 
 time in the history of our fair country, the murderous 
 hand of the assassin has been successfully lifted against 
 the Chief Magistrate of the nation, and our strong staff 
 is broken in a moment. Passing successfully through the 
 tremendous ordeal of his first official term, bearing bur«= 
 dens and meeting responsibilities such as none of his pre- 
 decessors had ever known, with a manly courage, a ge- 
 nial patience and entire single-heartedness, a wonderful 
 il 241 
 
242 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 wisdom, and an honest devotion to the country which 
 commanded the respect of his enemies, and surpassed the 
 expectations of his friends, he has been struck down by a 
 cruel, dastardly blow, in the very hour of success, and 
 amid a grand chorus of national thanksgiving and praise. 
 Oh ! how suddenly has this grand national anthem given 
 place to a dirge of wailing and woe ! In how brief a 
 moment has our glorious flag, which floated so proudly 
 from ten thousand heights in token of triumph, been 
 veiled in mourning, not, thank God, in defeat and dis- 
 grace, but in the deepest national anguish. Who among 
 us all anticipated such a catastrophe? Among all the 
 possible contingencies of our eventful times, who appre- 
 hended this ? And who of us can resist for a time the 
 pressure of this terrible calamity ? I confess to you, my 
 brethren, that I come to you with a heavy heart to-day. 
 Never since that fearful blow which brought desolation 
 to my own household in the first month of my ministry 
 here have I come to this pulpit with such a lingering step, 
 with such a burdened spirit. I have never feared for my 
 country's final triumph and safety. I will not fear for 
 her now. But a dispensation so unexpected, so mysteri- 
 ous, so overwhelming in itself, its circumstances, and its 
 possible results, may well make us tremble and bow our- 
 selves before the mighty hand of God. I confess to you 
 that I have shrunk from meeting you in this house of God 
 to-day. I had anticipated and prepared for a very differ- 
 ent occasion. I had hoped to welcome Easter Sunday 
 under circumstances grateful alike to the Christian and 
 the patriot, and with anthems of joy, and lessons of Holy 
 Scripture, appropriate to this blessed Christian festival, 
 to have greeted you in the sanctuary. But the providence 
 of God has inaugurated a different method, and altered 
 the key-note of the service of this hour. I know that 
 
ROGEKS. 24:3 
 
 there is but one thought uppermost in the minds of all 
 who have assembled here. It is not the thought of Easter, 
 not the thought of resurrection, life, gladness, and hope, 
 which, would express itself in a hallelujah of grateful 
 praise. It is the thought of the awful event which has 
 clothed a nation in mourning, and exchanged the garment 
 of praise for the spirit of heaviness. From the capital of 
 our land, where our Chief Magistrate lies in death, the 
 victim of a foul and fiendish deed, comes a sad, stern 
 message, which we cannot ignore. It has gone over the 
 lightning's track to every city and village from the At- 
 lantic to the Pacific. It has hushed the accents of joy 
 and triumph ; it has oppressed the national heart with 
 sorrow ; and there is probably not a pulpit in the loyal 
 States to-day which has not taken its key-note from this 
 calamity. For myself, my thoughts, so far as I could 
 rally them, have turned to that great truth, of the sover- 
 eignty of God in calamity, which is so forcibly illustrated 
 in this direful hour. Atheism has no consolation to offer 
 us now. Philosophy is cold and comfortless. Faith must 
 find something firm and durable to rest on amid these 
 dissolving shadows of earth and time. " Shall there be 
 evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it ?" Above 
 the wailings of a stricken nation, above the tide of disap- 
 pointed hope, outraged sensibility, or vindictive passion, 
 the awful voice of Jehovah is heard, saying : " Be still, 
 and know that I am God." 
 
 There is no lesson so hard to learn as that of divine 
 sovereignty and human dependence. Yet there is none 
 which is inculcated so constantly in the teachings of the 
 Bible, none illustrated so sternly in the dispensations of 
 Providence. ISTo man can study the dealings of God 
 with men, either in the operations of his providence, or 
 in the plan of salvation, without seeing that they tend to 
 
244 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 
 
 this end, " That the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, 
 and the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, and 
 the Lord himself exalted in that day." Creatures of a 
 day, as we are, whose habitation is in the dust, and who 
 are crushed before the moth, whose strength is weakness, 
 and whose wisdom is folly, we often presumptuously rebel 
 against the absolute sovereignty of an infinitely perfect 
 God, and desire to find out some more palatable and less 
 humbling reason for occurring events than his single, 
 sovereign, indisputable will. Whenever we can discover 
 what are called second causes, which seem to be adequate 
 to the effects which are occurring around us, we go no 
 farther in our investigations ; we confine ourselves to 
 these, and forget that great Being who sits behind them 
 all, who " doeth according to his will in the armies of 
 heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth ; and 
 none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest 
 thou?" 
 
 But this foolish and wicked forgetfulness of God's sov- 
 ereignty is sometimes rebuked with amazing distinctness 
 and awful severity. Events sometimes occur in our 
 world in isolated instances or in a dreadful succession, 
 which confound our sagacity, baffle our shrewdness, cast 
 contempt on our philosophy, contradict our experience, 
 abash our presumption, humble our pride, disappoint our 
 hope, and drive us irresistibly to the very footstool of our 
 Maker, wringing out from our bewildered and breaking 
 hearts the exclamation, " It is the Lord ; let him do as 
 seemeth him good !" 
 
 Such are the stern lessons of this day. Our national 
 history during the last four years — a history of treason, 
 cruelty, war, and misery, written in tears and blood, and 
 culminating in this last awful tragedy, ought to bring us 
 all to our Maker's feet, impressing on every heart the 
 
ROGERS. 245 
 
 great fact of his sovereignty as the only solution of the 
 mystery which envelopes it, and the only ground of hope 
 that it will work together for our good. 
 
 We cannot be indifferent to such events as those which 
 have, in such an awful succession, passed before us. Such 
 would neither be the dictate of reason nor religion. It 
 would be rebuked by the admonitions of God's "Word, 
 and by the example of our Divine Teacher. In the dis- 
 charge of his earthly ministry, he adapted his instruc- 
 tions, in the best sense, to the peculiarities of the times. 
 " He addressed himself to men's present duties, and their 
 present sins and snares, and the passing events of the 
 day, or the scenery of the spot where he taught fur- 
 nished him with ready and appropriate illustrations. 
 The news of a cruel butchery, or a melancholy calamity ; 
 the tidings of the Galileans slaughtered over their sacri- 
 fices, or of the unhappy victims in Siloam crushed by a 
 falling tower ; the news that for the time was the burden 
 of all tongues, and made all ears to tingle, was seized by 
 him as affording the occasion of riveting some keen truth 
 upon the memory and conscience of the multitude." 
 And so it is both the dictate of duty and piety to look care- 
 fully at the record of passing events, to learn from their 
 varied history how God governs his world, and orders 
 human destiny. " For all that occurs in his wide empire, 
 from the fall of a leaf to the extinction of a race — from 
 the death of a sparrow to the blotting out of a star — is 
 only the fiat of Him who is from everlasting to everlast- 
 ing God, whose counsel shall stand, and who will do all 
 his pleasure." 
 
 The teachings of an appalling calamity, ouch as has 
 just occurred, are very impressive and solemn on the 
 great point of the absolute sovereignty of God. The ap- 
 pearance of second causes is sometimes apt to obscure 
 
246 DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN". 
 
 this sublime truth. Had our lamented President died by 
 the process of ordinary disease, we should have seen a 
 sufficient explanation of the catastrophe in the immediate 
 instrument, and would have been content, perhaps, to 
 leave the matter there. But his sudden, unexpected, aw- 
 ful death by the cowardly hand of a vile assassin, drives 
 the bewildered and affrighted mind directly back to this 
 great eternal truth, and forces an appalled and stricken 
 people to reflect that God is sovereign on his throne, and 
 that- even the machinations and crimes of wicked men 
 are but the agents of his will. He is able to make even 
 the wrath of man to praise him, while the remainder 
 thereof he can restrain. 
 
 Yet the catastrophe itself, so fearful and overwhelm- 
 ing, is for the moment a staggering blow to the faith and 
 submission of the tried arid tempted soul. The climax, 
 as it is, of all that is dreadful for four long and bloody 
 years, it is not easy for us to acquiesce in its wisdom, its 
 justice, or its goodness. The mind, stunned and crushed 
 by a sense of loss and desolation, finds itself asking, as it 
 views only the stupendous crime and its fearful results, 
 " Is there a sovereign God in the heavens? Is he wise 
 and just ? Are these the methods of his administration ?" 
 It seems, at first, a cold and harsh way of solving the 
 difficulties that encircle an event like this to refer it to 
 the sovereign will of God, and say it is because he chooses 
 that it shall be. May not the infidel find his triumph in 
 scenes like these, as lie points to the dreadful history, and 
 sneeringly says, " Behold your God ?" 
 
 JSTo, no, my friends ; if we take from this catastrophe 
 the idea that it is ordered by a sovereign God, we take 
 from it the only star which relieves its fearful darkness. 
 We abandon the whole scene to the undisputed sway of 
 gloom and despair. What if it be a heavy, yea, an over- 
 
ROGERS, 247 
 
 whelming: stroke? Is it not more tolerable from a wise 
 Father's hand than from that ot a malignant foe ? If yon 
 take away God and God in his sovereignty from this 
 scene, able to have prevented it, and yet allowing it to 
 occur, what can yon put in its place that can better 
 satisfy or support the mind ? "Will the doctrine of an in- 
 evitable fate ; will the dogma of a lawless chance afford 
 more light and comfort ? ]STo ! Let us enthrone above 
 these scenes of apparent confusion or arbitrary infliction, 
 a sovereign God, a God of wisdom, a God of love, a God 
 of power, who sees the end from the beginning, and or- 
 ders all things according to the counsel of his will ; and 
 here, at least, we have an anchorage for faith — a place 
 where she can cling, and look up amid the jarring ele- 
 ments, and say, "Even so Father, for so it seemed good 
 in thy sight." 
 
 So far, then, from the truth is the assertion that the 
 sovereignty of God furnishes a cold and barren source of 
 comfort in a calamity like this, that, on the other hand, 
 we find in this fact great consolation. Who would not 
 prefer, if called on to submit uncomplainingly and abso- 
 lutely to the most trying circumstances and dealings, that 
 these should be ordered by an intelligent, just, and good 
 Being — one whose unerring wisdom enabled him to know 
 the best things, whose infinite love inclined him to choose 
 them, and whose unlimited power enabled him to accom- 
 plish them ? Who would not choose that a Father's hand 
 should pour the bitter cup which he was to drink to the 
 dregs? h God be taken from our prosperity we may 
 bear it, but who or what can supply his place in the days 
 of adversity? Oh! to be taught that a sovereign God 
 rides on the billow, and directs the storm which sweeps' 
 our precious things away, though we be left beggared and 
 forlorn, is a lesson worth to the tried and tempted soul all 
 
248 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 that it can cost ; and there are some dispensations of God's 
 providence that seem especially calculated to teach just 
 this lesson. May not this be one of them ? Is it not adapt- 
 ed to impress on the thoughtful mind the fact that " God 
 giveth no account of his matters ?" We are astounded at 
 the suddenness of the calamity. "We are heart-broken by 
 its severity. We wonder, we suffer, we bleed, but still 
 faith rallies where reason is staggered, and says, " Clouds 
 and darkness are round about him ; yet righteousness and 
 judgment are the habitation of his throne." His path is 
 in the great waters, and we cannot follow its windings, 
 but we know that his feet are there. Those deep waters 
 go over us ; they bury our fondest hopes ; they swallow 
 up our most precious things ; our idols all go down into 
 the abyss ; all his waves and billows go over us. But the 
 rushing t«ide cannot sweep away from us the conviction 
 that the storm is guided by infinite wisdom and perfect 
 goodness, and that the crested billows are rolling on God's 
 great and wise designs to a glorious consummation. And 
 that is a cruel hand that would tear away from a believing 
 soul this refuge of faith, this anchor of hope. Plant 
 above that awful scene at the capital, an inexorable Fate 
 guiding that deadly ball ; let a senseless and frantic chance 
 triumph in that awful hour, and have you given help or 
 comfort to this stricken nation mourning over this her 
 sorest bereavement? O no. Give the weeping nation a 
 God, though his way be in the sea, and his path in the 
 great waters ; give us a God, though clouds and darkness 
 are round about him ; give us a God, though his ways are not 
 as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. If you would 
 not wrench away from this bereaved people their greatest 
 stay and solace in this dark hour, let them listen to the 
 voice of the great Jehovah as he speaks to us from behind 
 the cloud, saying, " Be still, and know that I am God !" 
 
SOGERS. 249 
 
 Let ns then be reminded, first of all, by this awful 
 event, that "the Lord reigneth." We are in great dan- 
 ger of looking first at the secondary cause of calamity. 
 We reason that if this or that had not occurred ; if one 
 expedient or another had been adopted ; if something had 
 been different from what it was, the catastrophe might 
 have been averted. But these things did not occur; 
 these expedients were not so used. It did not please God 
 to order it thus, and this is the only account which we 
 can give of the matter. To my own mind, this fearful 
 event, in all its horrors, is full of teaching on that great 
 point which lies at the foundation of all religion, but 
 which men are so prone constantly to forget, that there is a 
 sovereign God in the heavens, to whom we must all bow, 
 and all must give account. It has been well said that 
 " some of the judgments of Divine Providence need no 
 interpreter. Sorrow and guilt, in the natural- workings 
 of man's conscience, and in the general estimate of man- 
 kind, are closely conjoined. And there are times when a 
 nabob perishes before the altar he has desecrated, or an 
 Uzzah is blasted before the ark, or when the storm of fire 
 comes clown upon the cities of the plain, or the ark of 
 Noah rides on the waters past the drowning sinners who 
 had derided his warnings ; times when God's judgments 
 follow man's transgressions so closely that he who runs 
 may read the purport of his visitation, and see in the pe- 
 culiar guilt of the sufferers the reason of their peculiar 
 fate." But it is not so in this case. Our honored and 
 lamented President has not perished in this awful way, 
 because he was a sinner above all them that dwelt in the 
 land. This is no judgment upon him for great personal 
 guilt. Doubtless, he, like all of us, was a sinner, and 
 needed, as we all need, the pardoning grace of God, 
 
 through Jesus Christ, for his personal sins. But no can- 
 
 11* 
 
250 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 did mind will ever look upon this event as a judgment on 
 him. He has come to the grave full of honors, at the 
 zenith of his fame, and the cruel circumstances of his 
 death will only make his name more illustrious, and his 
 memory more dear. To our sympathies and reasoning, 
 it seems like a hard thing that so great and good a man 
 should have fallen by a murderer's hand ; that his honest 
 and generous heart, which had no feeling, even for those 
 who had so bitterly reviled him, and made such deadly 
 war upon the country which he ruled, but of conciliation 
 and kindness, should have been stilled in its life-beating 
 by an assassin's hand in such a malignant and cowardly 
 way. It seems hard that the wearing toils and anxieties 
 of four such dreadful years as composed his first official 
 term, should not have been followed by a term of success- 
 ful reconstruction of this divided land. But all this must 
 be left with the wisdom of that God who has ordered all 
 his history, and gives no account of any of his matters. 
 
 The great lesson, therefore, which I desire to take to 
 my own soul from this stunning calamity, is that which 
 is appropriately presented in the text : " Be still, and 
 know that I am God I" I think it a very needful an$ prof- 
 itable lesson. I find myself daily prone to be forgetful of 
 the fact that God reigns in the earth, and will do all his 
 pleasure. This is unfavorable to that humility, faith, and 
 submission which are not only so appropriate to the rela- 
 tions of creatures like us, but which are so constantly de- 
 manded by the peculiar exigencies of our earthly state. 
 We cannot be too deeply impressed with this truth. It 
 is not only needful to stimulate us to duty and excite us 
 to humility ; but it is sometimes the only truth on which 
 we can lean, when unexpected and crushing calamities, 
 like this come upon us. 
 
 But while Christian faith recognizes in this deplorable 
 
ROGERS. 251 
 
 event the hand of a sovereign God, and bows in submis- 
 sion to the fiat of his will, still this must not be construed 
 into anything like indifference to the crime itself. " It 
 must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man 
 by whom the offence cometh." This deed is a brutal, das- 
 tardly, atrocious murder. Think of the circumstances. 
 A scene of festivity, to which the kindness of the Presi- 
 dent's heart, unwilling to disappoint an expectant assem- 
 bly, rather than any special love for such a place, had 
 carried him ; surrounded by his family and friends ; 
 unarmed, and unconscious; thus, he meets the vile as- 
 sassin's blow ! The occupant of the most distinguished 
 place on earth — in the midst of the triumphs and joy of 
 a nation for whose best interests he had toiled and prayed 
 and spent anxious days and sleepless nights for four long 
 years of strife and T)lood — just four years from the trag- 
 edy of Fort Sumter, and when its dishonored flag was 
 floating again in triumph over its dismantled walls ; on a 
 day dear to the Christian world as commemorating the 
 death of the Saviour of the world — these were the cir- 
 cumstances which stamped its fearful character on this 
 deed of horror and of shame. It was no sudden ebulli- 
 tion of insane fury ; the murderer had cherished his pur- 
 pose for weeks and months, and coolly waited his time 
 and opportunity — not alone, but with a fellow-fiend who 
 could attack a helpless invalid in his bed w T ith the mur- 
 derous knife. Such is the character of this deed, which 
 has no parallel in the annals of crime. I say, before God, 
 that such a deed is worthy of hell itself, and nothing 
 should be allowed to screen its guilty perpetrators, and 
 their equally guilty abettors and friends, whoever and 
 wherever they may be, from the fate they so richly de- 
 serve. This is no time to talk about leniency and concilia- 
 tion ; there has been already too much of this, when the 
 
252 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 spirit which can apply the incendiary's torch to peaceful 
 cities, and use the murderer's weapons on unarmed and 
 helpless men, is rampant in our midst. Is not this the 
 real spirit of those who have been in arms against us .? 
 Does it not find its counterpart in the black record of An- 
 dersonville, and Salisbury, and the Libby Prison '? Is not 
 this the essential spirit of treason ? Is not this the legiti- 
 mate teaching of the barbarous and barbarizing institu- 
 tion of slavery ? Yes! This is the way in which the 
 Confederate government makes war. This is the method 
 of the slave power. 
 
 Then I say, before God, make no terms with rebellion 
 short of its utter extinction, and of that accursed system 
 which has been the cause and groundwork of rebellion. 
 Pursue it as long as a vestige of it remains. Let every 
 loyal citizen register a vow before high heaven that noth- 
 ing short of the utter crushing out of treason and its cause, 
 at any expense of treasure and of blood, shall satisfy him. 
 Had I twenty sons, and all as dear as the gallant boy who 
 sleeps in his bloody grave on the field of Gaines' Mill, 1 
 would give them all, and lead them myself to the fight, 
 if it were needed to ensure the utter extermination of a 
 rebellion so causeless in its origin, so atrocious in its 
 spirit, so malignant in its methods, so obnoxious to the 
 curse of God and the abhorrence of all good men. 
 
 And finally, my brethren, let not this dreadful catas- 
 trophe lead you to despond in regard to your country. 
 . President Lincoln is dead, but the republic lives — aye, 
 God lives, and is sovereign on his throne. He makes the 
 wrath of man to praise him, and can restrain the remain- 
 der thereof. Our President has gone suddenly to his 
 grave ; but he goes to sleep in an honored grave, heading 
 the noble army of patriot martyrs who have given their 
 lives to their countiy. He has done a great and good 
 
ROGERS. 253 
 
 work for the nation; he rests from his labors, and his 
 works will follow him. The nation are his mourners, 
 and will enshrine his memory in their hearts. It is not 
 tpo much to say that all his work was done, for " man is 
 immortal till his work is done !" There is good reason to 
 hope that this fearful summons did not find him unpre- 
 pared to meet his God. It seems as if he could ill be 
 spared ; but learn a lesson from the history of your father- 
 land, ye children of Holland ancestors. It was a darker 
 day for the Netherlands when William of Orange fell by 
 the assassin's hand than for our country now, and yet how 
 nobly that little republic weathered that terrible storm 
 which, broke her strong staff and her beautiful rod. So 
 we need not despair of our republic. Our fathers' God is 
 ours ! He is teaching us to trust in his everlasting arm. 
 In the very flush of our triumph we are taught how vain 
 is the help of man — a hard lesson for this people to learn, 
 but which God has determined to teach us ; for he will 
 have all the glory of our deliverance, and his glory he 
 will not give to another. Humble yourselves under the 
 mighty hand of God. Pray, oh pray for his blessing on 
 him who, untried, enters upon the arduous and delicate 
 duties of the" presidential chair. The prayers of God's 
 people made President Lincoln what he was to the nation. 
 It is not beyond the power of prayer to make President 
 Johnson even more of a blessing to us in the clays that 
 are to come. 
 
 Let the nation bow itself before God, who hath smitten, 
 and he will raise us up. Through the darkness of the 
 present I see the brightness of the future as the sun in 
 hea,ven. I see the picture of a glorious land, her sins 
 purged away, every blot removed from her stainless 
 escutcheon — the home of civilization, liberty, and Chris- 
 tianity — a beacon light among the nations of the earth, 
 
254 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the friend of the oppressed, the sun of the benighted, the 
 messenger of a resurrection to all the slumbering hopes of 
 humanity, the great benediction of God to the world. 
 Oh ! if this picture may be a reality, and if this awful 
 catastrophe which has clothed us in mourning shall but 
 help on the grand consummation, then, indeed, our la- 
 mented President will have blessed his country and the 
 world far more in death than in his life, and this last cli- 
 max of agony and blood will not have been reached in 
 vain. 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 REV. S. D. BURCHARD, D. D. 
 
 "And by it, he "being dead yet speaketh." — Hebrews xi. 4. 
 
 The chapter from which our text is taken contains a re- 
 cord of the achievements of faith in the days of the pa- 
 triarchs — a record designed to stimulate us in these far-off 
 ages of the Christian Church. 
 
 "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent 
 sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he 
 was righteous, God testifying of his gifts ; and by it he 
 being dead yet speaketh." 
 
 Abel, the accepted worshipper and martyred brother, 
 still lives in his faith and speaks in his example, declaring 
 that sin can be pardoned only through the propitiation of 
 Christ, of which his offering was the appropriate and sig- 
 nificant type. Though this is the personal and primary re- 
 ference of this brief sentence, it mav be regarded as con- 
 taining a general principle — a lesson to the living, as well 
 as a touching memorial of the dead. 
 
 The world is full of voices — the voices of those that 
 have lived, but are gone. 
 
 Their utterences did not cease when their voice was no 
 
 longer heard. 
 
 255 
 
256 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 They have a continuous oratory, awakening emotions 
 and memories in the nursery, around the family hearth- 
 stone, and in the places of public concourse. Does not 
 the voice of the little child still linger in your dwelling, 
 though its form is no longer visible ? Do not its familiar 
 toys, its unused dress, its well-remembered smile, its last 
 kiss speak in a tone of pathos such as no living voice 
 could articulate % 
 
 Our fathers and mothers may be gone. Long years 
 may have passed since the tie of affection was sundered, 
 and we wept disconsolate orphans over their graves, but 
 the father speaks still in his manly words and deeds, and 
 the mother in the closet of her devotions. 
 
 The great — the good — the loving live ; they are invis- 
 ible, yet life is filled with their presence. They are with 
 us in the sacredness and seclusion of home — in the paths 
 of society, and in the crowded assemblies of men. They 
 speak to us from the lonely wayside — from the council 
 halls of the nation, and from the sanctuaries that echo to 
 the voice of prayer. 
 
 Go where we will and the dead are with us. Their 
 well-remembered tones mingle with the voices of nature — 
 with the sound of the autumn leaf — with the jubilee shout 
 of the spring time. 
 
 Every man who departs leaves a voice and an influence 
 behind him. 
 
 The graves of the peasant and of the prince are alike 
 vocal. The sepulchral vault in which the remains of our 
 beloved President were laid the other day, as well as the 
 cold, wet, opening earth in which the humble laborer was 
 buried, utters a silent yet all-subduing oratory. From 
 every one of the dead a voice is heard in the living circles 
 of men, which the knell of their departure does not 
 drown, which the earth and the green sod do not muffle, 
 
BURCHAED. 
 
 257 
 
 which neither deafness nor distance, nor anything that 
 man may devise, can possibly extinguish. The cemetery 
 often speaks more thrilling accents than the senate house, 
 and the chamber of the dead is often more eloquent 
 than the council hall of the living. You perceive the 
 sentiment then, which we gather from the text, that the 
 influence of a man in his deeds and words while living 
 survive him, so that he being dead yet speaketh, and his 
 words and influence may abide forever through the ages. 
 
 Let this thought engage our meditations and give us 
 fresh incentives to virtue and usefulness. It is a thought 
 which may well mingle in the solemnities of this hour. 
 
 Thenation weeps over the tragic end of its chief magis- 
 trate, but his kindly words and well-remembered deeds 
 are left us as an imperishable legacy. They are enshrined 
 in our hearts, and will live in our lives, and will help to 
 form the nation's life and character. 
 
 Does not the principle thus stated find illustration in 
 our daily life and experience? Do not the sayings and 
 doings of your departed friends often arrest you in the 
 stir of business or pleasure, imparting a new impulse 
 either for good or evil ? Do not their words often echo in 
 the chambers of memory, stirring the heart to its deepest 
 depths ? Do not their features and forms start into bright 
 contrast with the darkness of actual absence, and make 
 the present radiant with the light of early recollections ? 
 Do not the sounds of the one and the sight of the other 
 daguerreotype themselves upon our moral life ? 
 
 Can we isolate and divest ourselves utterly from the 
 impressions made upon us by those who have ceased to 
 move in the throng of living men % 
 
 We are shaped and moulded in our characters, not less 
 by the memories and forces of the past, than by the sur- 
 roundings of the present. We are cheeked and sti inula- 
 
258 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 ted by the example and teaching of those who have rested 
 from their labors, and which now come to ns like a pro- 
 phet's voice from out the dark and dreamlike past. 
 
 A young man, for instance, who has been trained under 
 the best maternal influence, becomes restless and discon- 
 tented, and leaves the home of his childhood and the re- 
 straints of former years, and yields himself a victim to 
 passion and to crime. In the lapse of time, and in the 
 far-off land of his prodigality, the ghosts of departed 
 scenes of innocence flit before him, and the voice of the 
 heart-broken mother rings amid his heart's emptiness, and 
 though dead, she yet speaketh with an emphasis and effect 
 she could not command when living. 
 
 We may vary the illustration and take that of a de- 
 parted minister of Christ. He stood as the ambassador 
 of God, and his eye kindled with the fires of inspiration, 
 and his face glowed with rapture as he gave utterance to 
 the great messages of truth and salvation. He shunned 
 not to declare the whole counsel of God : 
 
 " Yet he was humble, kind, forgiving, mild, 
 And with, all patience and affection taught, 
 Rebuked, persuaded, solaced, counselled, warned, 
 In fervent style and manner. Needy poor 
 And dying men, like music, heard his feet 
 Approach their beds, and guilty wretches took 
 New hope, and in his prayers wept and smiled 
 And blessed him as they died forgiven ; and all 
 Saw in his face contentment, in his life 
 The path to glory and perpetual joy." 
 
 But he died ! the voice that brought consolation to the 
 mourner's heart has become silent. The tongue which 
 poured forth the irresistible stream of sacred eloquence 
 has become mute and still. The eye that kindled with 
 almost insufferable lustre has become rayless, and the 
 lips on which hundreds hung with breathless attention 
 
BUKCHARD. 259 
 
 have been closed forever. But has all that excellence 
 died ? Is all his usefulness at an end ? No, my breth- 
 ren, u he being dead yet speaketh." His example lin- 
 gers behind him. The good and imperishable of his 
 nature walks among his nock, visiting their homes, com- 
 forting the sorrowing, warning the wicked, and reasoning 
 in the crowded assembly " of righteousness, temperance, 
 and judgment to come." And the multitude may not 
 perceive till they see the parting wing that an angel has 
 been with them. 
 
 Often there comes from the pastor laid in his grave a 
 more tender and melting eloquence than there came from 
 the same pastor when standing in the holy place and an- 
 ointed for his work, and from the herald of Jesus wrap- 
 ped in his winding sheet, a more successful sermon than 
 from the herald of Jesus robed in the vestments of his 
 official character. And aside from this, precious and per- 
 petual harvests may be reaped by his successors from the 
 seed sown by hands that have done their work. But, my 
 brethren, this is the fair side of the picture, and were the 
 influence left behind by the dead always of this charac- 
 ter, then would men be throughout their entire history 
 like angels of mercy scattering a golden radiance from 
 their wings, or as glorious meteors rising in rapid succes- 
 sion over a world of darkness, anticipating and heralding 
 the light of the millennial day. 
 
 But alas ! if many of the dead yet speak for God and 
 truth, and freedom, and oppressed humanity, others utter 
 a different voice, and leave behind them a curse in- 
 stead of a blessing. Reverse the portraits we have just 
 sketched. 
 
 Suppose the mother to whom we have alluded, instead 
 of training up her children " in the nurture and admoni- 
 tion of the Lord," had encouraged them both by precept 
 
260 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN". 
 
 and example to walk in the ways of fashion, worldliness, 
 and sin, to neglect God and the great salvation, what is the 
 influence she leaves behind her % The same voice comes 
 from her grave as from her home. And often and 
 again will her evil maxims be quoted, and her life of 
 thoughtless gayety appealed to as a sanction for more ex- 
 cessive frivolity and sin. She is dead, but the bane of 
 her example lives ; her form is beneath the sod, but her 
 voice is still heard, and her spectre still lingers in the cir- 
 cle of her children and friends as a mighty incentive to evil. 
 We may pass from this to a higher sphere, and take 
 the minister whose character is just the reverse of that to 
 which we have referred : 
 
 " He swore in sight of God 
 And man to preach his master Jesus Christ, 
 Yet preached himself ; he swore that love of souls 
 Alone had drawn him to the Church, yet strowed 
 The path that led to hell with tempting- flowers, 
 And in the ear of sinners, as they took 
 The way of death, he whispered peace. 
 The man, who came with thirsty soul to hear 
 Of Jesus, went away unsatisfied ; 
 For he another gospel preached than Paul, 
 And one that had no Saviour in it, and yet 
 His life was worse." 
 
 Now, what will be the posthumous influence of such 
 a minister ? Can it be other than evil only, evil con- 
 tinually ? 
 
 The field on which he labored will have received a 
 blight and a mildew. The gospel has been belied, and 
 there will spring up a harvest of infidelity 
 
 Thus far have we spoken of the influence for good or 
 evil, which men leave behind them in the immediate 
 circle in which they moved while living. But there are 
 other ways in which men may speak to the coming gen- 
 
DURCHAED., 261 
 
 erations, as with a voice echoing through the ages. \Ve 
 refer not to the lettered tombstones, which often tell of 
 deeds of valor and of a loving trust in God ; nor of monu- 
 ments erected to commemorate illustrious worth ; nor of 
 splendid legacies to the cause of beneficence, which en- 
 shrine the donor in the memory and affection of the 
 Church. But the earth is filled with the labors — the 
 works of the dead. 
 
 Almost all the literature — the discoveries of science — 
 the glories of art — the ever-enduring temples — the dwell- 
 ing places of many generations — the comforts and utilities 
 of life — the very framework of society — the institutions 
 of nations — the principles of government — the fabrics of 
 empire — all are the works of our predecessors, and by 
 these, though dead, they yet speak. Their memorials are 
 all around us — our footsteps are in their paths — their 
 presence is in our dwellings — their voices are in our ears; 
 they speak to us in the sad reverie of contemplation — in 
 the sharp pang of feeling — in the cold shadow of memory 
 — in the bright light of hope ; and can it be that we shall 
 not be influenced by the language they utter % 
 
 But the dead speak through the press — the books they 
 may have written — and thus perpetuate their influence 
 through all time. Baxter, Bunyan, Doddridge, Howe, 
 and Edwards are at this moment speaking to thousands, 
 with all the freshness and force of personal eloquence, 
 and more souls have doubtless been converted through 
 their instrumentality since they entered upon their rest, 
 than when their voices were heard in the assemblies of 
 men. The gospel trumpet which they here put to their 
 lips has not ceased its reverberating echo. It rolls like 
 the voice of a clarion along down through the ages, and it 
 shall continue until another trumpet shall be heard sound- 
 ing the funeral knell of time. 
 
262 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 But wicked men, too, speak through the press, and live 
 in their writings to poison the fountains of influence, to 
 corrupt hearts that might otherwise have been pure, 
 and to desolate homes that otherwise might have been 
 happy. 
 
 It will be the keenest sting of the worm which never 
 dies, and the most agonizing pang of the fire which shall 
 never be quenched, that they have written volumes which 
 are circulated by every library and sold by every vender, 
 in which the foundations of morality are sapped, and 
 thousands of souls effectually and forever ruined. 
 
 The press, my brethren, is a mighty illustration of the 
 truth of our text. It shows that the dead live and speak 
 and exert an influence in moulding the character of the 
 generations which succeed them. And if the wise and 
 glorified in heaven wish that their pens had been more 
 industriously employed, the fallen and lost in hell wish 
 that their hands had been palsied ere they touched the 
 scroll which was to scatter plague and pestilence through 
 ranks of living men. Thus is the sentiment of our text 
 illustrated and confirmed, that a man lives and speaks, in 
 his words and deeds and influence, after he is dead. 
 
 There is, indeed, a voice in the providence which has 
 bereaved us, that touches the great heart of the nation, 
 filling it with sorrow as no other conceivable event could 
 have done. We can conceive of nothing short of a uni- 
 versal earthquake, or the sound of the archangel's trump, 
 which would have produced the gloom, the awe, the con- 
 sternation which now surround us. Who that contem- 
 plated our country a few days previous to this dreadful 
 calamity, and heard the shouts of victorious men, and saw 
 everywhere the symbols of joy and of triumph, and lis- 
 tened to the expressions of hope, could have named any 
 event, not miraculous, which, in a moment, as it were in 
 
BUECIIAUD. 203 
 
 the twinkling of an eye, would have changed the whole 
 aspect of things, would banish mirth from all the gay, 
 composure from all the serene ; make the merchant lay 
 clown his fabrics, the scribe his pen, and the mechanic 
 his tools; unrobe the bride of her ornaments and the 
 bridegroom of his attire, change the proclamations of chief 
 magistrates from days of rejoicing to days of lamentation, 
 and command a universal pause to business and pleasure, 
 as though we all were anticipating the ushering in of the clay 
 of doom ! Such a shock was inconceivable from the most 
 natural causes ! But God has done it, and we stand con- 
 fronted before a providence so mysterious, a providence 
 that bereaves us, without a moment's warning or anticipa- 
 tion, of one of the purest, wisest, and safest of men that ever 
 presided over the interests and destinies of a great people. 
 In a lecture delivered in this place a year ago, I charac- 
 terized him as " the type man of the age." Now that 
 death has ensphered and immortalized him, and disarmed 
 envious and malignant criticism, I may venture to quote 
 what I then said, without fear of giving offence to any 
 one. 
 
 "Having thus presented Jefferson Davis as the type 
 and exponent of Southern civilization, we come now 
 briefly to consider our type man, or the exponent of 
 Northern civilization. 
 
 "The two forms of civilization are distinctly before 
 you, the bases on which they respectively rest, the prin- 
 ciples which they embody, and the spirit with which they 
 are animated. And of all the men now before the public 
 eye, whether in the cabinet or in the field, Abraham 
 Lincoln, the censured and the praised, is our ideal, the 
 impersonation of republican principles, the thinker, and 
 the type man of the age ! I am aware that this avowal 
 is in advance of the popular sentiment, but posterity will 
 
264 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 do him justice and give him his appropriate niche in the 
 temple of fame. lie is not perfect ; he needs refinement 
 and taste. Just as our civilization is not perfect ; it is in 
 its boyhood state ; it needs development, especially in its 
 aesthetic forms. It is not graceful ; nor wrought out into 
 perfect symmetry and beauty. Neither is Lincoln hand- 
 some ; but he is frank, generous, and true. He has 
 muscle and sinew. He has wrought in the log cabin ; on 
 the flatboats of the Mississippi: he has wrestled with 
 poverty and the tall forest trees of the West. He is, in 
 the strictest sense, a man of the working classes. He was 
 born to the inheritance of hard work as truly as the poor- 
 est laborer's son that digs in the field ; and yet, by the 
 strength of his intellect and by his untiring devotion to 
 truth and right, he has come up, through an ascending 
 series, from the walks of the lowly, from the toils of a 
 day-laborer, to stand at the head of one of the most pow- 
 erful nations on the earth ! Is he not great ? Is he not 
 entitled to our confidence and esteem? 
 
 " Our ship of state is now in a storm of fearful magni- 
 tude — the elements are in high commotion, and every 
 part of her noble structure is strained to the utmost ten- 
 sion, but the mind of the thinker is calm, and his strong 
 hand is on the helm. The eyes of all nations are turned 
 to this plain back-woodsman, with his good sense, his no- 
 ble generosity, his determined self-reliance, and his incor- 
 ruptible integrity, as he sits amid the war of conflicting 
 elements, striving to guide the national ship through a 
 tempest, at whose violence and perils the world's wisest 
 and oldest statesmen stand aghast ! Leave him at the helm 
 and he will bring the vessel, with all her sails set and her 
 pennants flying, to the desired haven, though the old 
 scow which she has towed and which has retarded her pro- 
 gress from the beginning will have been sunk to the bot- 
 
BrRCiiAEB. 265 
 
 torn, never again to rise to the surface on our American 
 waters ! 
 
 " Lincoln is a strong man, but Lis strength is of a pecu- 
 liar kind; it is not aggressive so much as passive, and 
 among passive things it is like the strength, not so much 
 of a stone buttress as of a wire cable. It is strength 
 swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and on 
 that to popular and present needs, yet tenaciously and 
 inflexibly bound to carry its great end. Surrounded at first 
 by all sorts of conflicting claims and elements, by traitors, 
 by timid loyalists, by radicals, and conservatives, he has 
 listened to all, weighed the words of all, watched, waited 
 for light ; but still self-reliant and full of hope, he has kept 
 steadily to the one great purpose ; and let him alone and 
 the issue is certain — the rebellion will be crushed — the 
 Union restored — our national honor vindicated, and 
 America shall be all that poets have dreamed or sung : 
 ' The home of the brave and the land of the free ! ' " 
 
 Are not these true words % Some of you then thought 
 that they were said for party effect, but they were spoken 
 out of the convictions of an honest heart. Has he not 
 done what was predicted of him ? And when the storm- 
 fiend was on the waters and the tempest rose high, and 
 we all trembled with apprehension, did he not abide calm 
 in the ship, his hand steady on the helm, and when the 
 storm lulled and the sky began to clear and the sun to 
 burst forth from the darkened clouds, and we saw the old 
 ship gallantly nearing a peaceful harbor, the stars and 
 the stripes floating from her topmost mast, and the multi- 
 tude on the shore all jubilant with hope — all elated with 
 joy — lo ! the pilot falls by a cowardly assassin, cold and 
 unconscious on the deck, his hand still at the helm. The 
 commander is dead, but the ship is safe ! The flag floats 
 
 at half mast, but the stars and stripes are all there ! Let 
 
 12 
 
2QQ DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 our mourning then be tempered with gratitude that our 
 beloved chief was permitted to live to accomplish his 
 work. He could not have died with greater lustre, when 
 his laurels were all fresh and green, and now, the auroral 
 halo of the martyr will preserve them unfading through 
 all ages. And now, my hearers, what is the voice ad- 
 dressed to us from the life, teachings, and example of our 
 deceased President ? 
 
 First, that "honesty is the best policy;" that to do 
 right is the wisest and safest, leaving our reputation and 
 all consequences in the hand of God. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's administration was characterized 
 by no crooked or sinister policy. He was called to his 
 responsible position at a time the most difficult and dan- 
 gerous to the interests and life of the nation, when trea- 
 son was rampant in the different sections of the land — 
 when rebellion assumed an attitude the most menacing 
 and appalling — when the great republic seemed to be 
 shaken to its very foundations and the wisest statesmen 
 trembled for the result. But the President was calm and 
 firm. lie sought to know his duty and then to do it. He 
 adopted his policy, and determined to maintain the integ- 
 rity of the government and to vindicate her laws. To 
 this end he saw that the rebellion must be subdued, and 
 when those in arms would not yield to wise and paternal 
 counsel he resolved to settle the great questions at issue by 
 the stern arbitrament of the sword. He called for large 
 forces and the munitions of war. The people nobly and 
 promptly responded, for our national honor had been in- 
 sulted and our national life was in jeopardy. Thousands 
 of our best and bravest from all the loyal North rushed 
 to the rescue of our imperiled country. They fought — they 
 . fell on many a battle-field. The rebels were desperate, and 
 when our noble President discovered that slavery was to 
 
BUECHAED. ;>j- 
 
 them a source of strength, he resolved to strike the mon- 
 ster to the earth. The timid feared ; the semi-loyal press 
 howled, and the more rebellions heaped abuse upon the 
 President. Nothing was too vile for them to say. His 
 policy was all wrong. He was threatened and villified. 
 But Abraham Lincoln was firm in the calm consciousness 
 of right and duty. 
 
 But where are his accusers now ? The Daily Nevis and 
 the World, that never had a kind word to offer — that in- 
 dulged in unmeasured vituperation and abuse while he 
 was living, are among the first to do him honor now that 
 he is dead. Have they been converted? Has death 
 changed their views ? No, my brethren ; in their deep 
 heart they knew that Abraham Lincoln was honest and 
 true to his country's weal. But they were under the ban 
 of party, and could not speak peaceably of him. His acts 
 survive him ; his deeds live, and by these, though dead, he 
 yetspeaketh. Posterity will do justice to his memory, and 
 he will be known in history as the great Emancipator — 
 the savior of his country. The almost universal feeling 
 even now is, that in his death liberty has lost her greatest 
 champion, humanity her truest friend, and America Lev 
 purest patriot. 
 
 What then is the voice that comes to us from out the 
 back-ground of his noble life ? 
 
 Be honest — true to your convictions of right — firm in 
 duty, leaving all issues with God. This marked his char- 
 acter and will give immortality to his name. 
 
 Another voice, which he being dead, yet speaketh to 
 us, is the folly and sin of putting our trust in an arm of 
 flesh. He did not. 
 
 If any man ever cherished a firm reliance on Divine 
 Providence, it was Abraham Lincoln. Listen to his ad- 
 dress to his fellow-citizens, when first leaving his home 
 
2C>8 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 for the scene of his labors. He says: " A duty devolves 
 upon me which is perhaps greater than that which has 
 devolved upon any other man since the days of Wash- 
 ington. He never would have succeeded except for 
 the aid of Divine Providence, upon wdiich he, at all 
 times, relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the 
 same -Divine aid, which sustained him, and on the same 
 Almighty Being I place my reliance for support ; and I 
 hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may recieve 
 that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, 
 but with which success is certain." 
 
 Through all the progress of this terrible war, his trust 
 has been not so much in the strength of his armies, or the 
 skill of his chief captains, as in the favoring providence 
 of God. His last inaugural is an outflow of a heart trust- 
 ing in God, in which he confesses he has been the child of 
 his providence, and simply an instrument in his hand. 
 
 But our danger all along has been in trusting to an 
 arm of flesh. In the early history of the war one man 
 received almost universal homage until hope deferred, the 
 national heart fainted. And now, in our more recently 
 brilliant successes, we are in danger of overlooking the 
 true source of success in the prominence given to the in- 
 strumentalities employed. But from the life, as well as 
 from the grave of the President, comes this startling ad- 
 montion : 
 
 " Lean not on earth ; 'twill pierce the to thee heart ; 
 A broken reed at best — but oft a spear, — 
 On its sharp point, peace bleeds and hope expires." 
 
 A similar warning comes from the Divine Oracle : 
 " Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, 
 in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he re- 
 turneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts per- 
 ish." — Psalm clxvi. 3, 4. 
 
BUKCIIAED, 9(]Q 
 
 The thoughts of our late President respecting the wel- 
 fare, peace, and prosperity of the county, though they 
 lingered with him to the last, have perished. lie had 
 done his work of subduing the rebellion. Other hands 
 must do the work of punishing the rebels and reconstruct- 
 ing the government, and in this, as in the other, we need 
 the Divine guidance and blessing. 
 
 Not Seward nor all the wisdom of the national council, 
 but God, must help us to the end. And as his hand has 
 been so obviously in the great struggle guiding our ar- 
 mies, may we not hope that he will be with us presiding 
 over our councils in the restoration of peace and union ? 
 And in' this work of pacification and reconstruction, in 
 my utterance this day I think I have the mind of God. 
 If I were the President I would show no mercy to traitors 
 and rebels and assassins at the expense of justice. I 
 would see to it that the majesty of law was vindicated 
 and the government sustained, if it required a whole hec- 
 atomb of human victims. Shall we hate and punish theft 
 and arson, and murder, and shall we fraternize with trea- 
 son and rebellion ? " Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in 
 the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philis- 
 tines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised tri- 
 umph." 
 
 Again, had I the ears of the heads of this government, 
 I would say, in its reconstruction, whatever else you do 
 or fail to do, let not one vestige or germ of that ac- 
 cursed system, which has been the cause of all our trouble, 
 remain. Let it be uptorn, root and branch, and thrown 
 into the great dead sea of past time ! Let there be no 
 yielding, no concession, no compromise here, unless you 
 would have history repeat itself in a second fratricidal, 
 and still more desperate and bloody war ! 
 
 The only remaining utterance or voice which conies to 
 
270 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 ns from the life and the grave ot our lamented President, 
 is in reference to the evanescent nature of all earthly 
 good. He had reached the acme of human fame ; he was 
 the commander in chief of half a million of armed men ; 
 he was the ruler of a mighty nation ; he was in the 
 meridian of his days ; he was esteemed for his personal 
 character and worth ; and yet in a moment how is the 
 mighty fallen, and all the glory of his fame is to him as 
 though it had never been. 
 
 But few of all the wrestlers reach the goal of their am- 
 bition, or realize their hopes. And such as do, have only 
 stood for a short time on the giddy height, and then van- 
 ished like the passing meteor, or died a sudden and, per- 
 haps, a violent death. Csesar met with the assassin's 
 dagger in the Roman senate. Charles the First, King of 
 England, and Mary, Queen of Scots, were beheaded. 
 Henry the Fourth, King of France, died by the knife of 
 the assassin. Napoleon the First was banished. Alex- 
 ander, after his brilliant career, died in a drunken revel, 
 at an early age. And now our beloved President is 
 added, as an illustration of the vanishing nature of all 
 human greatness. He, too, has died by the hand of vio- 
 lence. 
 
 " Death sitteth in the Capitol ! His sahle wing 
 Flung its black shadow o'er a country's hope, 
 And lo ! a nation hendeth down in tears." 
 
 Never was grief so heartfelt and universal. It is 
 said that death loves a shining mark, and often against 
 such are his swiftest arrows hurled. All that we love, 
 value, venerate, and press to our hearts, must bow 
 to the inevitable decree, " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
 thou must return." But when the end comes by vio- 
 lence, how doubly inconsolable is the grief! But still 
 
BUECHARD. 271 
 
 this tragedy Las its voice, and will answer its providen- 
 tial end. 
 
 " A thrill of horror through the nation sweeps, 
 And tears of anguish from, the eyelids fall ; 
 All party ties and lines forgotten are, 
 And thus in grief, if not in patriotic joy, 
 The nation is as one. 
 'Twere well to weep such tears, 
 They purge the heart, and to the soul give strength 
 To do great deeds, when deeds are needed most ; 
 Who loves his Coventry, therefore, shame not now 
 O'er her great woe, with me to weep. 
 For now each sigh is but a hitter oath, 
 Each tear a seal, which makes the oath a bond, 
 That every loyal heart doth feel and swear 
 Upon the altar of his country's cause, 
 Which, by the sacrilegious hand of one 
 Who would deface the noblest work of God 
 Without a sigh, hath been outraged, 
 As never did a fiend the laws of God 
 Or man outrage before !" 
 
 But the assassin, though he may elude the vigilance of 
 the government for a time, cannot escape. The mark of 
 Cain is on his brow, the murderer's guilt is on his soul, 
 and the Nemesis of vengeance will find him out, and 
 bring him to an awful retribution. But though justice 
 may thus be satisfied, though the act may have been suf- 
 fered in the Divine providence to tone up the public 
 mind to a keener sense of retributive justice, still all this 
 does not recall the people's favorite — the type-man of his 
 time — our generous, noble, and patriotic President. 
 
 " Gone, gone, gone, to his blest and honored grave, 
 Gone, gone, alas ! our noble, and true, and brave ; 
 When fond hopes clustered around his life, 
 When every heart with love was rife, 
 Our brave, true chieftain fell. 
 
272 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Lincoln, Lincoln, beloved, fare thee well ! 
 
 Our country's flag around him fold, 
 What shroud more meet for heart so brave, 
 
 A nation's prayer shall bless his mould, 
 A nation's tears bedew his grave. 
 
 And shall we bear one word of scorn ? 
 One rebel taunt, one hostile sneer ? 
 
 No ! freemen, no ! his foes we spurn, 
 And pledge our fealty round his bier. 
 
 Freemen ! behold your murdered chief, 
 His memory to your care we trust ; 
 
 Let mercy mingle with your grief, 
 But strike the traitors to the dust. 
 
 Sleep on, brave chief, the flag you bore 
 O'er North and South, shall surely wave, 
 
 And Union, peace, and love once more 
 Shall meet and mourn around your grave." 
 
SERMON XV. 
 
 KEY. J. E. ROCKWELL, D. D. 
 
 " All ye that are about him bemoan him ; and all ye that know his name 
 say, how is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod. "«- Jeremiah 
 xlviii. 17. 
 
 " The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see 
 thy name ; hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it." — Micah vi. 9. 
 
 The solemn providence which has called our nation to 
 mourning in the very midst of its joy and exultation over 
 the hopes of returning peace, finds a most appropriate ex- 
 pression in these words of inspired wisdom. For the 
 third time since our existence as an independent govern- 
 ment, we have been called upon to mourn over the death 
 of our Chief Magistrate. Yet never before has the na- 
 tion passed through such an experience as this. At the 
 close of four long and weary years of bloody war against 
 the foulest and most causeless rebellion that had ever 
 stained the annals of the world, our nation was exultant 
 over the tidings of victories which it was evident to all 
 were soon to end the struggle. Our President, but lately 
 taking the oath of office for a second term of service, had 
 returned home from a visit to the city which had been the 
 seat and centre of rebellion, and from which the grand and 
 
 only important army in the interest of traitors had been 
 i£* 273 
 
274 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 driven, only to be followed by the stern hosts of freedom 
 until it had broken up forever, while the leaders of the 
 conspiracy were fugitives from the arm of avenging jus- 
 tice, seeking safety in an ignominious flight. The rancor 
 of party feeling was fast dying out in the nation ; men 
 were fast honorably submitting to the voice of the peo- 
 ple expressed through the ballot box ; and they were 
 gradually yielding to the conviction that Abraham Lincoln 
 was an honest and a good man, and, under the guidance 
 of heaven, was pursuing a wise and judicious policy, 
 which would result in the restoration of peace upon the 
 great and immutable principles of truth, liberty, and 
 righteousness. On him the eyes of the whole people were 
 turning as the man by whose- wisdom, prudence, and con- 
 ciliatory course treason was to be crushed out and the re- 
 bellious States brought back upon the great platform of 
 the Constitution, with only the one condition of a destruc- 
 tion of the great system of slavery, which had been the 
 weapon used by their leaders against the life of the na- 
 tion. It was evident to all that this institution had re- 
 ceived its death-blow at the hands of its friends. Aready 
 Missouri, Maryland, and Tennessee had accepted these 
 terms and broken the last shackle that had held their fel- 
 low-men in bondage ; and even in South Carolina — the 
 very hot-bed of treason — such a man as Governor Aiken 
 led the way in emancipation by striking off the chains of 
 his one thousand slaves, and giving them farms to culti- 
 vate with free labor. A few more blows only were to be 
 struck and the whole system would fall, and the South, 
 restored to the Union and to the affections of their breth- 
 ren, would resume its place, out of which it had only 
 been jostled for a time by ambitious and unprincipled 
 leaders, who had held over the seceded States a reign of 
 terror. For the solution of all the intricate and delicate 
 
ROCKWELL. 275 
 
 questions which would arise in the final restoration of the 
 Union ; for the proper punishment of the men who had 
 instigated the rebellion; for a wise and just discrimina- 
 tion between the leaders and the misguided victims; for 
 a course of kind conciliation towards the men who had 
 been forced into the war against their better judgment 
 and wishes, and for a discovery and due reward of those 
 who had all the while been loyal to the Union — the na- 
 tion were looking to Abraham Lincoln with' increasing 
 confidence and hope. No man had ever gained more rap- 
 idly in the respect and affections of his political enemies ; 
 never was man more warmly loved by his friends since 
 the days of Washington. He seemed to have been raised 
 up by a kind Providence to meet the most solemn and 
 momentous crisis in the history of this nation, and to deal 
 with the most gigantic rebellion that had ever been wit- 
 nessed in the world's history. Again and again was the 
 anxious whisper heard, as it was known that he had gone 
 to the front of the army, and then to Richmond : Is it safe 
 for the President to put his life in jeopardy, on which so 
 many interests are suspended ? And the whole nation 
 breathed more freely when his safe return to Washington 
 was announced. It has been said a man's life is immortal 
 till his work is done. And so has it proved. Our hon- 
 ored and beloved President, who had safely reached the 
 capital when traitorous fiends were determined to prevent 
 his first inauguration; who had for four years been un- 
 harmed, even while bitter and open enemies were plot- 
 ting against him under the very shadow of the vast dome 
 beneath which our national Congress gathers ; who had 
 safely passed through Richmond, around which were still 
 lingering traitorous bands who had for four years nursed 
 against him their most bitter hatred — returned to his 
 home only to die. In the midst of a scene of pleas urc,. 
 
276 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 whither lie had gone that he might not disappoint the 
 crowds that had assembled to see him and the gallant and 
 glorious general under whose giant blows rebellion had 
 staggered and fallen — surrounded by his family and 
 friends — he was struck down by the hand of an assassin, 
 who, for many weeks, had been watching his opportunity, 
 and whose act turned that scene of festivity to a house of 
 death and woe, sending a thrill of horror and agony over 
 the whole nation. Who can describe the gloom that set- 
 tled over our land like a pall of death when the dreadful 
 deed was announced, and the tidings spread from city to 
 city, from ocean to ocean, with the speed of the light- 
 ning : The President has been assassinated ! The Pres- 
 ident is dying ! The President is dead ! 
 
 How appropriate might the murderer have repeated, 
 as he was preparing for his fearful deed of blood, the 
 words — which must have been familiar to his mind — 
 placed in the lips of Macbeth when contemplating the 
 assassination of his king: 
 
 " He hath home his facilities so meek, hath heen 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trnmpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking oft. 
 And Pity, like a naked new-horn "babe, 
 Striding the "blast, or heaven's cherubim horsed 
 Upon the sightless courier of the air, 
 Shall hlow the horrid deed in every eye, 
 That tears shall drown the wind." 
 
 Yet no such reflections entered his mind or heart to bid 
 him pause in his horrid work. Abandoned of heaven, 
 nerving his arm by the intoxicating draught, fully bent 
 upon his fiendish purpose, resolved to accomplish what 
 had evidently been in his heart, and in the hearts of his 
 accomplices and abettors — he deliberately entered the 
 scene of mirth and festivity, where sat his victim, and 
 
ROCKWELL. 277 
 
 with unerring aim struck at the life of the man who was 
 
 pursuing but one noble impulse — the salvation of the 
 Union — and whose kind and loving heart was waiting to 
 extend mercy to even his enemies and the enemies of his 
 country. How is the strong staff broken and the beauti- 
 ful rod ! Yet as we stand mute and sorrow-stricken in 
 the midst of our national calamity, let us hearken to 
 God's voice saying to us, "Hear ye the rod, and him that 
 hath appointed it," How often has death stricken down 
 men to whom the people were looking, and on whose wis- 
 dom and firmness they depended in the midst of great 
 national crises. 
 
 1. Is not, therefore, the first lesson which we are taught, 
 the folly of putting our trust in man I There is a con- 
 stant proneness to look to means for our security and pros- 
 perity, rather than to the Divine energy and power that 
 alone make those means successful, or that can or will ac- 
 complish its purpose by other instrumentalities and in 
 other ways. In times of commercial embarrassment the 
 nation turns to some favorite statesman, by whose politi- 
 cal sagacity impending evils may be averted. When the 
 dark cloud of war hangs gloomy and portentous over the 
 land, how few turn to Him who hath said, "The battle is 
 not with the strong," who alone gives success to our arms, 
 while the land rings with the praises of him who is ap- 
 pointed to lead our armies, and whose skill and bravery 
 is their only earnest of success. What crowds attend the 
 career of a nation's idol ; how few think of giving the first 
 and highest praise to Gocl ! And may we not now hear 
 in this new and terrible calamity the solemn and instruc- 
 tive warning : " Cease ye from man, whose breath is in 
 his nostrils ?" What though lie treasured up all the 
 stores of human wisdom ; what though he possess the re- 
 spect and confidence of every section, and be able to pro- 
 
278 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 pose terms of peace that shall forever heal the wounds 
 through which the nation's life-blood is flowing, and make 
 honorable and abiding reconciliation between a distracted 
 people ; what though at his call vast armies start up in 
 the defence of the republic, and mighty navies sweep the 
 sea to guard our nation's honor and protect its commerce ; 
 — in a moment, when all his well-matured plans are ripe 
 for execution, when the strife of party is hushed, and the 
 whole nation acknowledges his wisdom and goodness, 
 death steps in to close up his career, and he passes away 
 forever from among the living. Oh, what folly, then, for a 
 nation to trust in an arm of flesh ! Gather around that 
 coffin, ye who look to man and not to God for help and 
 safety ; look upon those pale features ; touch that cold 
 forehead and those motionless hands, and hear ye the rod 
 and who hath appointed it. Oh ! that we might learn, in 
 the solemn lesson of God's providence that God alone is 
 our trust. Oh! that now, ere we begin to inquire into 
 the qualifications of him who now has assumed the gov- 
 ernment of the nation, we might pause and remember 
 that God alone is great, and that he alone is worthy of 
 our trust and confidence. 
 
 2. Again : In this solemn dispensation of Divine Prov- 
 idence we are taught to recognize God's power and sov- 
 ereignty. One of the great sins of our nation has been a 
 virtual denial of the Divine authority. Infidelity makes 
 open and unblushing assaults upon all that is sacred in 
 his word and character. The institutions of religion 
 have become subjects of conventional debates and angry 
 discussion. The press teems with the most direct assaults 
 upon the laws and authority of God, as made known in 
 his word, and the minds of multitudes are tainted with 
 the dreadful poison. Look at many who are high in office 
 and political influence, and how little evidence they give 
 
ROCKWELL. 279 
 
 of any respect for the word of God as laying any claim 
 to public and national obedience. Look at our broken 
 and dishonored Sabbaths. How many turn their feet 
 away from the sanctuary ; how crowded are all our great 
 avenues w r ith old and young, intent only on pleasure, even 
 amid the very sound of the Sabbath bells. And what 
 evidence do w T e here find of a growing disregard for Di- 
 vine law and authority. Such evidence is found, too, in 
 the increasing sin of profanity, in the prevalence of in- 
 temperance, and the open and gross violation of all 
 healthful laws for its suppression. Such is the horrible 
 increase of infidel and licentious literature, showing a 
 most depraved state of public morals that could either 
 demand or sanction such infamous and demoralizing: 
 sources of vice and profligacy. Such is the open and 
 growing disregard for sound and wholesome laws, and a 
 w^ant of submission to constituted authority, culminating 
 at last in treason and rebellion, and aided and encouraged 
 by men who have thus sought to gratify their party pre- 
 judices or personal ambition. These and a thousand sim- 
 ilar evils have been terrible indications that our nation 
 has been drifting away from its allegiance to God and 
 casting aside his authority and law. Thanks be to his 
 name, the evil has been checked in a measure, and among 
 our leaders and rulers there has been evidence of a desire 
 to acknowledge his sovereignty and look to him for help. 
 Yet by what a terrible process have we been brought to 
 a sense of duty and of obligation to him ! And oh ! that 
 now, standing in the very presence of death, we might 
 feel that God is our sovereign, and that, as a nation, we 
 owe him supreme allegiance ! 
 
 3. And in immediate connection with this thought, is not 
 God, in this solemn and terrible providence, recalling tc 
 our minds and consciences the sanctions and guards and 
 
280 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 penalties by which, he has ever designed his law should 
 be honored and human life preserved. Amid the earliest 
 statutes ever given to man was that which guarded human 
 life from violence, by requiring the life of the murderer. 
 To Noah it was said : — " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by 
 man shall his blood be shed." And that law was again 
 and again repeated in such language as this : — " He that 
 smiteth a man so that he die shall surely he put to death." 
 "Moreover, ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a 
 murderer which is guilty of death ; for blood defiletli the 
 land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is 
 shed therein but by the blood of him that shed it." No 
 one can read the word of God and not see how carefully 
 he has thrown around human life the sanctions and penal- 
 ties of his law. Nor can we fail to see how fearful w T ould 
 be the consequences were society to be exposed to brutality 
 and crime, unchecked by these -dreadful consequences of 
 transgression. Yet who has not observed the growing 
 disposition on the part of many modern radical reformers 
 to do away with capital punishment, and to treat murder- 
 ers as ordinary criminals are treated? Who has not no- 
 ticed that, while our papers contain almost daily notices 
 of acts of violence and assassination, but few of the crimi- 
 nals are ever brought to justice and punished with death ? 
 And this spirit of leniency towards convicted murderers 
 was showing itself even in relation to the men who have 
 plotted and executed the foul act of treason that has re- 
 sulted in untold suffering and misery, and the death of 
 thousands and hundreds of thousands of our noblest and 
 bravest- men. I confess that I have read with shame and 
 indignation the speeches and editorials of men who, hav- 
 ing done all in their power to awaken angry and excited 
 passions in past years between the two sections of our 
 country now at war, who have sneered at and denounced 
 
ROCKWELL. 281 
 
 conservative men for their efforts to retain peaceable rela- 
 tions between the North and the South by upholding the 
 provisions of the Constitution, now ask that the arch trai- 
 tors and plotters of rebellion, who have for forty years been 
 laying their plans for secession, and have used slavery and 
 abolition simply as the best means for accomplishing their 
 foul and infernal purposes, should be kindly treated ; and 
 that — in the language of one of these orators — we should 
 say to them as we would to a wasp whom we first had 
 thought to crush, "There is room enough in the world for 
 thee and me." We punish with death the man who takes 
 a single life. Shall we do less to him on whose soul is the 
 blood of thousands who have perished on the battle-field, 
 and of thousands more cruelly and brutally starved to 
 death in their dark and horrible prisons, while those of 
 their number who have fallen into our hands have been 
 fed and clothed, and cared for in the very spirit and letter 
 of the command, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if 
 he thirst, give him drink." No, no. God's law lays upon 
 us its demands that these murderers should die, not to 
 gratify a thirst for revenge, but that all coming ages may 
 read a lesson of justice and righteousness in the punish- 
 ment of treason and rebellion, and learn to keep the law, 
 which declares, " Thou shalt do no murder." And may 
 it not be that God has permitted this great crime, which 
 has struck at the head and the heart of the nation, to 
 awaken us to a sense of justice and to a full exaction of 
 the penalty of God's law upon those who have planned 
 and accomplished the horrible scenes of the past four 
 years ? God punished treason and rebellion when it broke 
 out in heaven by the immediate and condign punishment 
 of the angels that kept not his law. We cannot be wiser 
 and kinder than God. We cannot find fault with his 
 administration, or question the justice of that law that 
 
282 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 dooms the murderer to punishment. I yield to no 
 man in my love of mercy and clemency to the erring. 
 I yield to no man in the respect and affection I have had 
 for many noble-hearted and honorable men whom I have 
 known in other clays at the South, and who have been 
 forced into an apparent if not real acquiescence of the 
 doctrine of secession. I will be among the first to extend 
 to such my hand when they shall again stand with me 
 under the same broad folds of our national banner, and 
 pledge themselves to be henceforth true to the Union. I 
 will be among the first to give, to the utmost of my abil- 
 ity, aid and support to the thousands of misguided men 
 who have staked and lost their all in this dreadful rebel- 
 lion. But every sense of justice, every prompting of love 
 for truth and law and peace and human safety and national 
 life and honor, demand for the men who have instigated 
 and fomented this foul, unnatural, and monstrous rebellion, 
 that God's law be fully vindicated. " Whoso sheddeth 
 man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." " He that 
 taketh life by the sword shall perish by the sword. Their 
 chief associates must be sent forth and banished with the 
 mark of Cain upon their foreheads." Anything less than 
 this will only be a premium offered to treason and law- 
 lessness and murder — will only throw into our future politi- 
 cal contests elements of strife and discord, and national 
 dishonor and ruin. 
 
 4. Again : This dispensation of God's providence re- 
 minds the Church of the duties she owes to the nation 
 and her rulers. I exhort, saith the apostle, that, first of 
 all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of 
 thanks be made for all men, for kings and all in authority. 
 God has placed his Church in this nation not to seek un- 
 holy alliance with the State, but to throw into it ele- 
 ments of virtue and piety and justice and truth. Ten 
 
E K'KWKLL. 283 
 
 righteous men would have saved the cities of the Plain. 
 The Church alone, under God, can save this nation. She 
 can throw over it the shield of her faith and love and 
 prayer. She can by her efforts arrest the torrent of infi- 
 delity and lawlessness and crime, and secure such a state 
 of public morals as shall constitute that righteousness 
 that exalteth a nation. And is not the present the time 
 for special prayer and earnest effort in this behalf ? — now 
 that the spirit of party is hushed ; now that men of the 
 most opposite political principles are nobly laying aside 
 all previous prejudices, and uniting to support the gov- 
 ernment and uphold the Union ; now that all classes are 
 standing hushed and subdued and thoughtful around the 
 remains of departed worth and greatness ; now when our 
 rulers are made to feel that they are mortal, and to know 
 that they must give an account of their stewardship ? Is 
 not this the hour when we may hope and ought earnestly 
 to pray that around the grave of our late honored Execu- 
 tive every selfish and unholy feeling may be buried, and 
 the hearts of men become the seat of a generous love of 
 country, and the passions be brought under a sense of re- 
 sponsibility to God ? Oh, what a patriot was Moses when 
 he stood between an incensed and avenging God and a 
 guilty nation and plead that he would spare his people ! 
 And may not Christians in this country be equally in 
 earnest in their prayers for their rulers and for the 
 nation ? Here is the last grand experiment of freedom. 
 If we fail, the hope of oppressed millions expires in the 
 darkness. "Where else shall Liberty find her home ? 
 Where else shall be fostered those influences that are now 
 felt in every nation, and are inspiring millions with con- 
 fidence of eventually rejoicing in the removal of every 
 yoke of spiritual or political bondage. He who has been 
 so suddenly taken from us has left us a rich legacy in his 
 
284 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 noble and unfaltering purpose to preserve the Union. 
 Let us gather around his grave as the children of one 
 great family, and catching his spirit — or rather brea'hing 
 it in with our common Christianity — offer up our prayers 
 to Him who heareth prayer, for our rulers and the per- 
 petuity and prosperity of our nation. 
 
 5. Again : We behold in the death of our President a 
 lesson of the vanity of earthly honor and power. What 
 does our whole nation present but an incessant struggle 
 for wealth and office ? How many neglect in this pursuit 
 the deathless soul and all its interests ! How many would 
 willingly barter away every manly and noble principle to 
 attain the exalted position — or even one far inferior to it 
 — which Abraham Lincoln but lately occupied! Yet 
 what does all avail him now ? Never, perhaps, since the 
 days of Washington was a man more reluctantly and un- 
 ambitiously drawn to the possession of such distinguished 
 honors. Seldom has a path to glory been so modestly 
 and unobtrusively pursued. Seldom has one risen from 
 an humble position to a higher eminence. He became 
 what he was not by inheritance from a long line of kingly 
 ancestors. He sat not upon a throne reared up by blood 
 and oppression ; but, making his way from an humble 
 and obscure cottage in the Western wilderness — self-sup- 
 ported and self-educated — he passed on by untiring in- 
 dustry, and sustained by a cheerful and hopeful heart, 
 through the profession of his choice, until the voice of a 
 great people called him to occupy a position which 
 monarchs might envy. And then, too, by his purity and 
 honesty of purpose, by his noble and generous qualities 
 of mind and heart, he drew towards him even the respect 
 and reverence of his political opponents ; and men who 
 once denounced him have approved and sustained his ad • 
 ministration. Yet what does all this avail him now \ 
 
ROCKWELL. 285 
 
 What to him is the splendor of his palace, the wealth and 
 the honors of earth ? Oh, how infinitely are they all sur- 
 passed by one word from that Saviour whom we believe 
 he loved ! " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Life's 
 fitful fever is over, and he sleeps as lowly as the poor sol- 
 .dier that sunk to his grave amid the tumult of battle. 
 Go to that sepulchre, and read there the vanity of earthly 
 possessions and honors. The illustrious dead sleeps on 
 undisturbed, while they who sought his favor drop a tear 
 to his memory and then turn to gaze upon the new star 
 now in the ascendant, and who must in his time pass 
 away to be numbered with the dead. 
 
 " Why all this toil for triumph of an hour ; 
 What though we wade in wealth or soar in fame ; 
 Earth's highest station ends in ' Here he lies,' 
 And ' Dust to dust' concludes our nohlest song." 
 
 Such is the vanity of life; and oh, that this whole na- 
 tion might hear the voice of God calling us away to the 
 pursuit of what is alone fully worthy the soul — the ser- 
 vice of God, and preparation to meet him in judgment. 
 How solemn and awful is the monition that comes to its 
 from the hushed repose of the grave which has now 
 closed upon the mighty dead. His high official position, 
 his brilliant career, his exalted character, could not avert 
 the winged messenger as it came from the hand of an as- 
 sassin, yet directed by a sovereign God. No more shall 
 he hear the shouts df the victors, or the plaudits of a 
 grateful and exultant people. No more shall his wisdom 
 direct the councils of the Cabinet, and his mind project 
 schemes for the union and perpetuity of the nation. His 
 eye is closed that shone with unaffected gentleness and 
 wept in pity over the dying, or brightened witli thoughts 
 of his country's greatness and glory. In the midst of all 
 
2 5 G DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 his pleasures and his honor, he has sunk to his grave. 
 Alas ! even in the garden there is a sepulchre. We walk 
 beneath its shades, we gaze upon its beauties, and, while 
 plucking its flowers, we feel the damp mould of the 
 grave. Behold the house appointed for all the living, and 
 read the unvarying lessons of nature : " All flesh is grass, 
 and all the goodliness thereof as the flowers of the grass." 
 Oh ye who are toiling lor earthly wealth or fame, enter 
 that princely mansion where beauty and honor and power 
 have often met, and see in his narrow cofiin the man at 
 whose command thousands rushed together to stand up 
 in defence of the republic ; at whose word the shackles 
 of millions were broken ; around whom were gathered 
 the wisdom and strength of the nation ! Yet all now is 
 hushed and still. His work is done. Tread lightly around 
 the honored dead, and listen to the voice that speaks 
 from the repose of death, and that bids you seek those 
 joys which are unfading and eternal. Oh turn your eyes 
 to the grave whither you are hastening, that home of 
 man — 
 
 " Where dwells the multitude. We gaze around, 
 We read their monuments ; we sigh, and while 
 We sigh, we sink and are what we deplored — 
 Lamenting or lamented, all our lot." 
 
 6. Lastly, this solemn providence reminds us all of 
 the necessity of immediate prepartion for death. Oh how 
 terrible is the lesson which we are here reading of the 
 uncertainty of life. How solemn is the monition which 
 conies to each of us. "What thine hand findeth to do, do it 
 with thy might. Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as 
 ye think not the Son of Man cometh. How rapid was the 
 transition of our beloved President from time to eternity ! 
 Think of it, my hearers, and be warned in time to secure 
 an interest in the great salvation. We believe that he 
 
ROCKWELL. 2 8 7 
 
 over whom a nation now mourns had, in life and health, 
 accepted of Christ as his Saviour; that he had calmly- 
 looked at the great subject of his soul's salvation, and, 
 convinced of his need of mercy through a Divine Re- 
 deemer, had, with the simplicity of a child, trusted his 
 eternal interests into the hands of him who was mighty 
 to save, and whose blood cleanseth from all sin. Oh, 
 then, let his death — so sudden, so dreadful as to its circum- 
 stances — remind you of the need of immediate prepara- 
 tion for that eternity to which we are all hastening. 
 Christ, and Christ alone, is the hope of the soul. In him 
 we are safe. He who relies upon his death and merits 
 is alone fitted to die. When death comes to him it finds 
 him ready. He can hear unmoved, and fearless, the sum- 
 mons which calls him away to grapple with the last ene- 
 my. He alone can see in death a friend that beckons 
 him to come up higher, and can look upon the scenes of 
 earth, as they fade away from his vision, without regret, 
 and go to his dying bed, 
 
 " Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 Ahout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 Oh, my hearers ! — ye men of business and care ! ye chil- 
 dren and youth ! — will you not to-day listen to the provi- 
 dence of God which calls upon you to seek first the king- 
 dom of God and his righteousness ? Christ alone can fit 
 you to live. He alone can prepare you to die ; and in 
 that solemn hour, when heart and flesh fail, he will be 
 the strength of 3 r our heart and your portion forever. 
 
SERMON XVI. 
 
 KEY. SAMUEL T. SPEAR, D. D. 
 
 I meet you to-day, my friends and fellow-countrymen, 
 under circumstances of the greatest public grief and 
 sorrow. I had risen early Saturday morning to com- 
 plete the first of two sermons, having for my theme 
 " Victory and its Duties," and expecting to have preached 
 that sermon to you at this time. I waited for the morn- 
 ing paper, and when it came it brought to me, as it did 
 to you, the intelligence of the most awful event in the 
 history of this country. The carrier greeted me with a 
 tearful and saddened countenance, exclaiming : u Sad 
 news this morning! The President is shot!" I could 
 scarcely believe it true ; yet I opened the paper and read 
 the dispatches, and saw that it was so. Ere this the news 
 has spread through all parts of the land, kindling emotions 
 in in the hearts of the nation which no words can describe. 
 But yesterday we were joyous and hopeful, thanking God 
 for his mercies, and congratulating each other upon 
 the bright prospects of the future. Our recent vic- 
 tories gave promise of a speedy and lasting peace. We 
 saw, as we supposed, the end of this terrible war. How 
 suddenly and how awfully have our emotions been 
 changed into those of the deepest sorrow ! Who can refuse 
 13 289 
 
290 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 to weep ? Who can withhold his tears or command his 
 feelings at such a moment ? And is it so ? Has the Presi- 
 dent of these United States ; the personal representative 
 of the honor, glory, and dignity of this nation ; the man 
 of the people's choice ; the man who has guided the ship of 
 state with consummate wisdom and unfaltering integrity 
 during these stormy years ; the man whom God seems to 
 have raised np and signally qualified for the duties of this 
 great crisis — yes, has Abraham Lincoln, good in his great- 
 ness and great in his goodness, fallen the victim of mur- 
 derous assassination, just in the moment of our triumph? 
 And has his honorable Secretary of State been assailed 
 with the instrument of death for a like purpose ? We 
 pause in the profoundest astonishment. Our indignation 
 in one direction, and our sorrow in the other, are past all 
 utterance. The American people never felt this as they 
 do to-day. They never before had such an occasion for 
 feeling. We all feel the dreadful blow. It has fallen 
 upon us like a thunderbolt in the midst of our joys. To 
 the deep and pungent thrill of the national heart no hu- 
 man words can do any adequate justice. 
 
 1. Looking towards earth, and at man, one instinctively 
 inquires, Avhy has the assassinating hand sought the life 
 of Abraham Lincoln and that of William H. Seward ? 
 Why has the President of these United States been 
 marked for death ? The answer is a plain one. It con- 
 sists in the fact that he was the President, officially en- 
 trusted with the executive duty of administering the 
 military power of this government for the suppression of 
 a wanton and wicked rebellion against the constituted 
 authorities of the land. This was Mr. Lincoln's sole of- 
 fence. The murderous weapon was not aimed at him as 
 a man, but as the President of these United States — as 
 God's minister for the punishment of evil doers and the 
 
SPEAR. 
 
 291 
 
 praise of them that do well. It was therefore aimed at 
 you and at me — at every man, woman and child living 
 under the protection of this government; at public order, 
 at the sanctity of law, at the integrity of the Union, and 
 at the God who commands our subjection to the powers 
 that be. This is the true interpretation of the blow 
 sought to be struck ; and this it is that gives significance 
 to the act. We look upon Mr. Lincoln as a murdered 
 President, and not as a man falling in the private walks 
 of life, the victim of a purely personal vengeance. The 
 blood that flowed from his lacerated brain was in the cir- 
 cumstances official blood. The pistol-shot that hurried 
 him to his doom was fired into the heart of the nation. 1 
 do not wish to stir either your passions or my own to un- 
 due violence ; yet I think it best in this dreadful hour to 
 look at facts as they are and speak of things as they are. 
 Abraham Lincoln will go down to posterity as a murdered 
 and a martyred President — slain for discharging his duty, 
 honored by God, and trusted by a grateful people. In 
 his death we all feel the pangs of death. Well may the 
 nation bow in grief. Well may all party feeling and ran- 
 cor subside, while a whole people weep before God under 
 an oppressive sense of the calamity which has befallen 
 them. 
 
 2. Looking at the circumstances attending this snd 
 event, we inquire : Whence came the blow ? It was on 
 the evening of the clay when the flag of the Union again 
 floated in triumph over the war-scarred walls of Fort 
 Sumter. It was when the nation had flung her proud 
 flag to the breeze in the fulness of grateful joy; when 
 victories had seemingly extinguished the last hope of the 
 rebel insurgents ; when Jefferson Davis, the traitor and 
 the tyrant, was fleeing from the hand of avenging justice. 
 It was at a time and in a place when and where our great 
 
2;»*J DEATH OF PKESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 military commander was expected to be present, who was 
 doubtless marked for the same fate. The thing was done 
 under circumstances that clearly imply plan and concert 
 of action, and more parties than one as involved in this 
 stupendous guilt. Why was Mr. Seward assaulted at the 
 same time and in a different place ? And who held the 
 horses of these fiends in human shape, while each pro- 
 ceeded to the work of death ? I know not, my friends, 
 who these men are ; but I cannot well resist the conclu- 
 sion that they represent a class — and, I must add, a very 
 large class — of those with whom we have been contend- 
 ing in this war, who will rejoice when they hear the 
 news, and laud these murderous wretches as distinguished 
 heroes. I do not say that a large number of persons 
 were directly privy to this assassinating conspiracy ; yet, 
 you may depend upon it, the agents thereof had their ac- 
 complices. This, let me tell you, is the work of traitors, 
 coming from the same impulses and inspired by the same 
 hellish motives which have governed traitors in seeking 
 the destruction of this government. It is one of the 
 dread incidents of their treason, accomplished in the mo- 
 ment of their extremest desperation. It is the work of 
 men the same in kind as those who sought to wrap the 
 city of New York in one universal conflagration ; the 
 same in kind as those who refused all quarter to our col- 
 ored soldiers at Fort Pillow ; the same in kind as those 
 who sacked the city of Lawrence, in Kansas, and mur- 
 dered its helpless citizens. It is a work proceeding from 
 the same spirit, the same style and temper of humanity, 
 that has, by the precess of slow starvation, deliberately 
 murdered our prisoners of war by thousands and tens of 
 thousands. 
 
 Jefferson Davis, the head of the rebel Confederacy, has 
 not personally assassinated the President, I am aware — per- 
 
spear. 293 
 
 haps lie had no direct connection with this atrocious mur- 
 der — yet, by his authority, by his agents, with his know- 
 ledge and approbation, thousands of our soldiers have been 
 literally starved to death in rebel prisons. General Lee 
 may be a Christian gentleman — some people say he is — 
 yet he is a traitor to his country, who richly deserves to be 
 hung for his crimes. Libby Prison and Belle Isle were 
 directly under his eye at Richmond ; he knew how our 
 prisoners were treated in those dens of death as well as 
 elsewhere ; he was, too, the man of great influence in the 
 Confederate government ; and when and where did Gen- 
 eral Lee ever lift his voice, or do a solitary tiling to miti- 
 gate these outrageous enormities ? I am speaking in a 
 plain way. My soul is stirred within me. These are se- 
 rious times. Let me tell you, my friends and fellow 
 countrymen, that this act of assassination does not stand 
 alone by itself. It is one of a series. It has a common 
 basis with other acts of kindred character. It represents 
 and identifies itself with a class of acts, as it will crown 
 them with an immortality of infamy. It is the creature 
 of treason ; and this treason is the child of slavery ; and 
 this slavery has made the traitors barbarians, who would 
 rather rule in hell than submit in heaven. The history of 
 this war proves it. We may as well understand first as 
 last with what kind of men we are and have been dealing 
 in this dreadful contest of arms. They are desperate men. 
 slavery has made them insensible to the rights of our 
 common humanity, ruined their moral sense, and just 
 fitted them for the work of treason and death. Our ex- 
 cellent President, for whom we have so often thanked the 
 God of heaven, who in his life so beautifully recognized 
 the providence and the grace of the King of kings, from 
 whose past wisdom we have received so many blessings, 
 and in whose future we had hoped so largely, now lies in 
 
294 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 death — stricken down by a traitor's hand. I have been 
 compelled to ask, in view of the circumstances, whence 
 came the blow? ~Not simply from the daring fiend who 
 inflicted it, but from a source more generic and universal. 
 Treason fired that shot, and treason killed the President, 
 and slavery made the man and the men fit for such deeds. 
 And treason wants nothing but power to kill this nation. 
 It has never yielded to anything but power, and it never 
 will. The men in whom is embodied this spirit of treason, 
 who are its leaders and great sources, must be absolutely 
 crushed and utterly blasted in this country. You can 
 never have any peace with them. You can never make 
 any peace with them. They are not the men of peace. 
 The military arm of the government must first subjugate 
 them; and then a just and righteous retribution must so 
 dispose of them that they will be virtually dead to the 
 country. Then you will have peace; and till then you 
 will not. 
 
 3. Looking again at this sorrowful event, I am led 
 to submit another question : Who are the mourners, 
 the men and women that will be afflicted by this appal- 
 ling tragedy ? The family of our dead President, his 
 wife and children and immediate kindred, are at this mo- 
 ment bathed in the most heart-rending sorrow. He who 
 was the pride and glory of their lives, whose relation to 
 them had lifted them to position and honor, in whose pri- 
 vate and public character they could not but rejoice, has 
 fallen in a way to give death its deepest affliction and 
 grief its most poignant sting. Alas ! for them the hus- 
 band, the father, and the guide, is no more. May the 
 God of crace comfort them with tliat comfort which God 
 only can supply. The members of his cabinet, who have 
 so often shared with the President in the councils of 
 state ; the generals and other officers of his appointment, 
 
speak. 295 
 
 who have so nobly borne the banner of their country on 
 many a hard-fought field ; the common soldiers who, un- 
 der this waving banner, have braved the storm of death 
 and driven the rebel hosts in confusion before them; — 
 these men of wisdom and these men of valor are to-day 
 in tears. Their sensibilities are overwhelmed. They mourn 
 the loss of one whom they had learned to trust, and who 
 had learned to trust them. All truly loyal men and wo- 
 men throughout the nation are mourners to-day. Every 
 right-thinking man feels as if he had lost a dear friend. 
 During his administration Mr. Lincoln has displayed qual- 
 ities of intellect and heart which have commended him 
 to the strongest confidence and affection of the American 
 people. His sterling honesty, his sagacious and far-reach- 
 ing common sense, his abiding faith, his hopeful temper, 
 his enduring patience, his fidelity to the country's cause, 
 his aimable, forgiving, and unre vengeful mood of feeling, 
 his profound respect for the rights of man, and his deep 
 reverence for God, mark him as the man whom the peo- 
 ple loved. Millions who never saw him felt towards 
 Mr. Lincoln the tender attachments of personal friendship. 
 There was a charm about his character and his life which 
 it is not in human nature to defy or resist. Go where 
 you will to-day throughout the length and breadth of this 
 land — in the cottages of the poor, or the palaces of the 
 rich — and you will see a people bowed in sorrow. A na- 
 tion weeps to-day. A nation's President has been assas- 
 sinated in the capital of the country; a nation's President 
 has fallen in the midst of his usefulness, when his experi- 
 ence was so much needed to complete what he had so well 
 begun ; and now a nation mourns, as perhaps no other 
 people ever did mourn. When I think of the foul and 
 villainous murderer, and of the generic inspiration which 
 he represents — by which he was moved — my rage, I con- 
 
296 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 fess, knows no bounds ; and when I think of the sequel 
 of that deadly shot, my heart sinks within me. As I feel, 
 so you feel ; and so feels every man that deserves the 
 name of an American citizen. Honored and sacred dead ! 
 this tribute we bring to thy memory. Thy name shall be 
 dear to us. Thou art embalmed in a nation's grief. There 
 is another class of our fellow-men that may well mourn 
 to-day, bringing their tribute of gratitude and love, and 
 placing it upon the altar of a great and good man. I allude 
 to the suffering sons of human bondage. These sable vic- 
 tims of outrage and wrong have heard of Mr. Lincoln. 
 They have heard of his emancipation proclamation. They 
 have learned to identify their hopes of liberty with his 
 name ; and when they shall hear of his death, in the sim- 
 plicity and honesty of their hearts they will feel that a 
 friend has departed. Mr. Lincoln, though not a fanatic, 
 was by nature and conviction, by those generous moral 
 sentiments with which kind heaven had inspired his bo- 
 som, the friend of the oppressed. He saw and deplored 
 the great evils of slavery, and gave his public influence 
 on the side of freedom. When he issued his emancipa- 
 tion proclamation as a measure of war, he appealed to 
 the God of nations and the moral sense of the civilized 
 world for the justice of the act. To that proclamation 
 he declared his purpose to adhere; and to it he has ad- 
 hered with unflinching fidelity. That proclamation will 
 make Mr. Lincoln's name dear in all ages. It will be 
 read and quoted as a state paper of the highest rank and 
 the largest philanthopy. Well may the outcast sons of 
 bondage bless God for the life of such a man, and well 
 may they mourn over his death. They have tears to shed 
 to-day — tears, too, that do honor to the man for whom 
 they weep. One of their most eminent and valuable 
 friends now lies in death, assaulted by hands red with 
 
SPEAR, 207 
 
 treason, a victim of the malign and cruel spirit which has 
 so long afflicted them. They will understand, and the 
 world will understand, that slavery is at the "bottom of 
 the causes which have murdered our President. And, 
 my hearers, when the sad news shall cross the water, and 
 fly over the nations of Europe, all the lovers of liberty 
 will stand aghast with surprise. They will join with us 
 in our public sorrows. The excitement and grief occa- 
 sioned by this fearful tragedy will be world-wide. The 
 memory of the scene will last as long as time endures. 
 Alas ! alas ! for my country, when her Presidents, her 
 men in high office, her patriots, her good and great men, 
 must fall before the dagger of the traitorous assassin! 
 Let the power of God expurgate such a soil, if need be, 
 with the dire bolts of his providential vengeance ! Let 
 the power of God kill the last relic of treason, and drive 
 the accursed monster from this fair land ! Shame, eter- 
 nal shame on the men who have the least sympathy with 
 this awful wickedness ! They are are not fit to inhabit a 
 country they so grossly dishonor. 
 
 4. Looking now, in the fourth place, at the nation in 
 its present status, and in reference to the duties which 
 now press upon every loyal heart, I am happy to say 
 to you that, though the President is dead, the nation 
 lives. The blow which, in being aimed at him, was meant 
 for the nation, will miss its mark. We have heard in these 
 latter days of happy feeling not a few exhortations that wo- 
 should conciliate the rebels and deal very tenderly with 
 them ; that, having conquered them, and spent millions 
 upon millions of money and thousands upon thousands of 
 lives for this purpose, we should now treat the conflict as 
 a mere collision of ideas, and be careful not to punish the 
 leaders, even Jefferson Davis himself, should they fall into 
 our power. My conciliation embraces the folio *ing pro- 
 
 13* 
 
298 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LT2nCOLN. 
 
 gramme : — First, I would give this rebellion war to the 
 knife, and nothing but war, till the last vestige of it is 
 dead. This I believe the short and only safe road to final 
 peace. I would then, secondly, extend a generous and 
 liberal amnesty to the masses of the people, upon the con- 
 dition that they re-organize their State governments upon 
 the basis of absolute loyalty, discarding traitors and aban- 
 doning slavery, holding them in the meantime subject to a 
 military government till they resume their proper relation 
 to the Union upon these terms. I would then, thirdly, 
 divide the responsible leaders and prime authors of the 
 rebellion into three classes, according to the grade of their 
 guilt. The first of which and the smallest — of which 
 Jefferson Davis is a conspicuous example — I would hang 
 by the neck till they are dead ! The second class of 
 which, and a larger class, I would expel from the country, 
 and send them forth as fugitives over the face of the earth. 
 The third of which, and a still larger class, I would dis- 
 possess of all political power, denying to them the right to 
 vote, and making them ineligible to any office of profit or 
 trust under the government of the United States. I would 
 visit these penalties upon these men for the enormous 
 crimes which they have committed. Justice requires it. 
 The future safety of the nation demands it. Away with 
 that mawkish sympathy that ignores justice and ruins 
 government. It is alike stupid and cruel. Such, in brief, 
 is my conception of the great and pressing duties which 
 belong to the hour, and in the faithful discharge of which 
 we may confidently hope to save our country. I repeat, 
 our President is dead ; we can no longer be availed of his 
 counsels ; he has done his last acts and said his last words ; 
 and now what we have to do, while mourning the sad 
 loss, is to take good care of that country and those institu- 
 tions to which he gave his rare powers. May the mantle 
 
SPI^AR. 209 
 
 of his wisdom fall upon his official successor. Andrew 
 Johnson is as yet an untried man in this sphere, yet I have 
 strong hopes that the nation will not be disappointed in 
 either his capacity or integrity. ] accept him as the 
 President of these United States. I intend to honor and 
 obey him as the minister of God, and do what I can to 
 support the government of my country as administered by 
 him. Let us, my friends, lay aside all partizan animosities, 
 and unite together as one people in again bringing peace 
 and prosperity to this land. This, I am persuaded, would 
 be the advice of our President dead could he speak to us 
 from that world whither his spirit had gone. 
 
 5. Lifting our thoughts finally above all the scenes of 
 earth, and contemplating God as sitting upon the throne 
 of eternal providence, permitting and ordering all things 
 after the counsel of his own will, I advise you, while dis- 
 charging the duties of the present, to trust his providence 
 for the future. His providence gave us our President, 
 and preserved him to us in the days of our greatest dark- 
 ness. He was the pupil and the creature of providence. 
 He sat at the feet of providence, and sought to walk in its 
 ways. This providence has permitted what seems to us 
 an untimely fall. I cannot explain it — I shall not try- 
 Yet I am comforted with the thought that God has made 
 no mistake. Under his providence all men are immortal 
 till their work is done; and then they go the way of all 
 the earth by an arrangement which in heaven is no error, 
 however painful it may be to man. Our late President 
 had finished his allotted task, and well and truly has he 
 done so. If we, his survivors, trust providence and do our 
 duty, God will complete this work and preserve us by 
 other hands than those we had anticipated. Hitherto he 
 has made our cause his care, imposing upon us a severe 
 discipline for our good, postponing our final triumph till 
 
300 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the ends of his providence should be realized ; and now 
 he has permitted this great apparent calamity for some 
 wise reason, perhaps now perfectly simple to the enlarged 
 intelligence of our President in heaven. On* earth we 
 may never see this reason ; yet the Lord knows, and this 
 should suffice for us. Let us bow in faith and weep in 
 hope. God's government is not dead. God's providence 
 is not dead. These will prevail when empires perish. 
 No fiendish hand, can strike the supremacy of God's throne. 
 ]No assassin's shot or traitor's dagger can suspend his con- 
 trol in human affairs. 
 
 " God moves in a mysterious way 
 His wonders to perform ; 
 He plants his footsteps in the sea 
 And rides upon the storm. 
 Deep in unfathomable mines 
 Of never-failing skill, 
 He treasures up his bright designs, 
 And works his sovereign will." 
 
 Such, my friends, are the remarks which I have thought 
 fitting to the occasion. I have prepared them amid the 
 haste and excitement of this soul-stirring hour. I have 
 had ro time to revise them, or recast my words. I have 
 spoken to you just as I feel. And now I ask you, one 
 and all, to be solemnly reminded of the fact that you are 
 mortal, that your days are uncertain, that soon you must 
 resign all the trusts of earth, and appear before the Judge 
 of quick and dead. I point you to the Bible for your 
 light, and for your salvation to Him whose atoning blood 
 cleanseth from all sin. I hope — from what I have heard 
 I am led to believe — that Abraham Lincoln was a Chris- 
 tian, a man of prayer ; and hence that his sudden and ap- 
 palling death has been to him sudden glory. We leave 
 the fallen with God. We beseech the God of grace to 
 
6PEAR. 301 
 
 make this providence a blessing to our hearts. We com- 
 mend our suffering country to his care and keeping. We 
 here pledge ourselves to each other, and call upon high 
 heaven to witness the covenant, that to the cause for 
 which Abraham Lincoln lived, and in which he died, we 
 will be true to our last breath ; we will never desert the 
 Stars and the Stripes ; we will never lay clown the sword 
 till the supremacy of this government is vindicated ; we 
 will never pause till the daring criminals who have 
 brought this evil upon the land are themselves brought to 
 merited justice. God helping us, we will crush treason 
 and suitably punish traitors, cost what it may. Just now 
 we are in no mood to be trifled with by that senseless 
 philanthropism, that shallow and almost soulless senti- 
 mentality, that has no foundation in the moral nature of 
 man, and none in the moral government of God. We are 
 not dealing with wasps — perfectly harmless if we let them 
 alone — but with traitors, with the enemies of public order, 
 with men who have virtually raised the black flag over 
 our defenceless and helpless soldiers captured in war, a 
 fit representative of whom has just murdered our Presi- 
 dent. Such are the men who are at the head of this re- 
 bellion and with whom we have to do, and our duty in the 
 premises is as clear as light. May the God of heaven 
 prepare us for the work and crown it with his blessing. 
 
SERMON XVII. 
 
 REV. ROBERT LOWRY. 
 
 " And the victory that day "was turned into mourning, unto all the peo- 
 ple." — 2 Samuel xix. 2. 
 
 You do not expect a sermon to-day. I have no sermon 
 to give yon. The air is laden with sorrow, and our hearts 
 are plunged together in one common grief. The mind re- 
 fuses to think of anything but the great public calamity. 
 Our dear, good President is dead ! We are all mourners to- 
 day. It is not for me to comfort you ; we can only weep 
 together in our overwhelming family bereavement. 
 
 We have looked forward to this day as the Resurrection 
 Sunday of our Lord. We had adjusted our minds to the con- 
 templation of the event, which broke the seals of the dark 
 world, and opened up life and immortality to the sons of 
 men. But the smile has fled from our faces to-day. We 
 weep as at a burial, though we stand by the empty grave 
 of our Saviour. There is no jubilant music from the organ 
 to-day. There is no glad song of victory on our tongues 
 to-day. No bright flowers of gladness decorate our church 
 to-day, but, instead, we sob forth our funereal dirges. We 
 cover our faces and drop our bitterest tears. We hang 
 these walls with the deep drapery of woe. We droop our 
 
 303 
 
30-i DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 beautiful flag over the pulpit*, and gaze on its craped folds 
 till our eyes cannot see it for the tears that blind them. 
 Why does the sun shine to-day ? It seems to mock us 
 with its brightness. We could have wished that the heav- 
 ens had been hung in black, and the clouds had wept 
 their sympathy. We have no heart for sunshine. We 
 are prostrate in our profoundest grief. 
 
 We did not know how much we loved him. We have 
 talked of his geniality, his tender-heartedness, his patient 
 endurance, his broad common sense ; but we thought of 
 these qualities with the quiet appreciation which attends 
 familiarity. We only learn his great worth when he is 
 taken from us. We feel now how good a man he was, 
 how great, how noble. 
 
 Four years ago the people called him to preside over 
 a country drifting toward a whirlpool. It was a time 
 when the largest experience, the clearest statesmanship, 
 and the most intelligent tact were scarcely adequate to 
 meet the appalling demands of the crisis. He went to 
 Washington, taking with him neither polish, nor state- 
 craft, nor the learning of the schools; but he carried there 
 a lofty patriotism, a sterling honesty, and a full American 
 manhood. The work before him was not one of courtly 
 genuflexion in the reception room. The time for fresh 
 thoughts and manly vigor had come. lie was God's gift 
 for the crisis. We did not all think so then. The surge 
 of popular excitement sometimes swept far beyond the 
 cool stand-point of the President. When rebellion seemed 
 to be strengthening itself in every point, and even assert- 
 ing superior prowess on the battle-field, there were not 
 wanting those who clamored for this policy and that, and 
 poured the vials of their hasty anger on the head of the 
 patient President. But no menace of friend or foe could 
 drive him into a policy, when the essential elements of a 
 
lowry. 305 
 
 policy that would endure had not } T et germinated. lie 
 stood amid the conflict of passion and opinion, as one 
 who felt that the issues of the problem were with him. 
 And with this temper he has filled the years of his ad- 
 ministration. He had learnt that " he that ruleth his 
 spirit is better than he that taketh a city." How well he 
 has performed his task, a mourning nation is now ready to 
 acknowledge. 
 
 There was not a nerve in his body that did not thrill 
 with love for the Union. He lived only for the Union. 
 If a commander was appointed or deposed, it was that 
 the Union might the better be defended. If a change 
 was made in the cabinet, it was in subserviency to the 
 interests of the Union. If the just demands of the gov- 
 ernment on foreign powers were held in abeyance, the in- 
 tegrity of the Union was the all-controlling motive. In the 
 early stages of the rebellion he announced that, with slav- 
 ery or without slavery, the Union must be saved. To this 
 sole end he gave his wearisome days and sleepless nights. 
 For this consummation he issued his proclamations, or 
 withheld his signature from the laws of Congress. While 
 it was possible to preserve the unity of the nation without 
 invading the institutions of the States, he forbore to in- 
 terfere with domestic laws. When it was evident that 
 the salvation of the Union demanded the extirpation of 
 human bondage, he did not hesitate to write the immor- 
 tal paper that gave freedom to four millions of enslaved 
 humanity. 
 
 If the people were slow to give him all their confidence, 
 they learnt at last to look to him as their worthily-trusted 
 chief. It is seen now that he was the appointed instru- 
 ment of God, more than even the choice of the people. 
 When this conviction fastened itself on the popular mind, 
 it was not difficult to determine that, in the midst of an 
 
306 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 unsettled struggle, we should have no change of rulers. 
 There were those who deemed him yet to be below the lev- 
 el of the crisis. But the popular will swept them away like 
 chaff. We said that the man who had conducted ns 
 through four vears of fearful war, and made himself the 
 target for traitorous hatred, should carry ns through to its 
 completion. We elected him for a second term. Not 
 even an opponent possessed of extraordinary personal 
 accomplishments could divert the instinct of the popular 
 heart. All classes accepted the decision of the ballot. 
 We gave ourselves up to no vehement rejoicings, but w T e 
 cherished a calm satisfaction in the result. We felt that 
 the country was more safe in the hands of its now tried 
 leader, than it could be under any new administration. 
 We looked hopefully for the end. 
 
 Nor did we wait long. The expression of the popular 
 will gave nerve to the government, the army, and the 
 people. Faction was silenced, and loyalty became more 
 clearly defined. Rebel sympathizers slunk out of sight, 
 and military combinations closed more effectively on the 
 focal points of the insurrection. With crushing weight 
 fell the final blows. City after city was taken ; fort after 
 fort captured ; army after army beaten ; till the whole 
 loval land shouted for victory, and gave thanks to God 
 that our beloved country was saved. How gaily our flags 
 leaped up to the mast-head ! How joyfully our guns 
 thundered out the rejoicings of the people ! How sym- 
 pathetically our hearts fluttered with the restored banner 
 of Sumter! The heavens were growing brighter every 
 hour. Charleston, the cradle of the rebellion, was a deso- 
 late ruin. Richmond, that became its coflio, was a cap- 
 tured city. The insurgent government were ileeing be- 
 fore our arms. The rebel chief- had become a fugitive from 
 the justice that pursued him. The bastard rag that had 
 
lowhy. 307 
 
 flaunted its insolent folds in the sight of "Washington, hid 
 itself from the face of the national banner. The rebel 
 hosts that had defended the strongholds of treason for four 
 years, were conquered and shattered. From the subdued 
 capital of the Slave Confederacy, the President sent dis- 
 patches to the federal city. O, how glad we have been 
 over the victory ! What blessing God has been pouring 
 upon us, till we could scarcely find room to contain it ! 
 
 And now, behold these emblems of woe ! Look at 
 these strong men weeping ! The nation that two days ago 
 surged with joy, now heaves with unutterable grief. The 
 flags creep sadly down to half-mast. There is crape on 
 our banner to-day, and crape on our hearts. We are over- 
 whelmed in our great affliction. Wc are unable to think 
 calmly, or speak without quivering lips. We are in a 
 paralysis of sorrow. It has come to us in a moment. It 
 has smitten us when we were most jubilant. "The vic- 
 tory tin's day is turned into mourning, unto all the 
 people." Would that it were only a rebel son that had 
 been slain. But the head of the nation has been snatched 
 from us. The friend of the people has fallen. We have 
 lost our father. The kind, the good, the loved Abraham 
 Lincoln lies dead at the capital. Alas ! how can we bear 
 a grief like this ! 
 
 Shall I speak to you of the honored dead ? His glo- 
 rious deeds are known to us all. He needs no eulogy 
 from the pulpit. His sublime life is cherished in the 
 hearts of his countrymen. His death of martyrdom will 
 cover his name with immortelles. Shall I tell you that 
 he was patriotic? You know that every heart-beat was 
 devotion to the country. He lived for his country. He 
 died for his country. Who else could have done her 
 so much good in the terrible ordeal of civil war ? Whose 
 death could have brought her to such bitter tears, 83 his ? 
 
3° 8 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Shall I tell yon of liis humanity f The eolumns of the 
 press beam with the records of his tenderness and sym- 
 pathy. How pathetic was that exhibition of his loving 
 heart at City Point. Six thousand sick and wounded 
 soldiers lay in the hospitals. The President was on his 
 way from Richmond to Washington. The pressure of 
 public business could not deprive him of an interview 
 with these brave defenders of the republic. He moved 
 down the long lines of prostrate men — visiting each cot — 
 taking the sick soldier by the hand — lajnng his fingers on 
 the pale brow — speaking a kind word to this one and 
 that — till he had shed sunshine in every invalid's heart. 
 In the midst of this philanthropic work, an agent of the 
 Christian Commission approached him with a request that 
 he would give them the pleasure of entertaining him in 
 their tent. " No," replied the warm-hearted President, 
 " I have only so many hours to stay at City Point, and 
 all that time must be devoted to the soldiers." Dearer to 
 him were the answering smiles of those wounded soldiers, 
 than all the honors which official dignitaries could be- 
 stow upon him. How feelingly will those brave men 
 now cherish the memory of that visit, with its tender 
 hand-pressure, and words of aifectionate sympathy ! 
 
 Shall I tell you of his religions character? This, from 
 its very nature, has engaged our attention less than his 
 patriotism and his humanity. And yet, how deeply are 
 we concerned in it this morning. We long, as Christians, 
 to follow him beyond the river into whose waters he so 
 suddenly entered. For him there was no death-bed pre- 
 paration. The blessing of a sick chamber, granted to 
 many a soul for reflection and faith, was not vouchsafed 
 to him. Can we look with a cheerful gaze through the 
 death mist that closed so suddenly around him ? 
 
 1 venture to express my conviction that Abraham Liu- 
 
LOWKY. 30L) 
 
 coin was one of the Lord's people, h is impossible to 
 penetrate the inner life of a man in his position, as we can 
 tli at of a private and familiar citizen. But there are at 
 our command a few important elements, strengthening a 
 conviction that he had "passed from death unto life." 
 Our lamented President is known to have been a man of 
 prayer. It may not be that when, in 1861, he uttered his 
 last request in Springfield, "pray for me," he grasped the 
 full blessing for which he asked. But never did Christians 
 pray for a ruler more sincerely and more importunately 
 than for our over-burdened President during the last four 
 years. And if the White House has not heretofore been 
 regarded as holding intercourse with the court of heaven, 
 it is certain that for months past its walls have looked on 
 the bent form of the Chief Magistrate invoking the grace 
 of Almighty God. 
 
 A clergyman in ]STew York, having business with the 
 President, sought an interview early in the morning. 
 Being detained in the waiting-room longer than seemed to 
 be indispensable at that time of day, he inquired the reason 
 of the President's non-appearance. He was answered, 
 that this hour was employed by the President in the read- 
 ing of the Scriptures and prayer, and no interruption 
 would be permitted until these sacred exercises had closed. 
 
 When little Willie Lincoln passed from earth, the mind 
 of the bereaved father wa deeply affected by thoughts of 
 death. But the vortex of public duties held him from 
 pursuing the serious thoughts to which his mind had been 
 directed. But when he stood on the battle-field of Gettys- 
 burg, and beheld the graves ot the brave men who had 
 gone down to death for the principles of which he was the 
 exponent, such a sense of the presence i t God and of his 
 own unworthiness took possession of his soul, as to over- 
 whelm him. From that day he dated his entrance into a 
 new life. 
 
310 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 1 am told that, a few months ago, a lady, visiting the 
 Presidential mansion, was invited to a seat in the family 
 carriage. In the course of the ride, the conversation 
 turned on the subject of religion. The President was 
 deeply interested, and begged the visitor to describe, as 
 clearly as possible, what was that peculiar state of mind in 
 which one might know himself to be a Christian. She 
 repeated to him the simple story of the cross ; and ex- 
 plained, that when a poor sinner, conscious that he could 
 not save himself, looked to Jesus, and saw in his death a 
 full atonement for the sinner's sins, and believed that 
 Christ's death was accepted as a siibstiiute for the sinner's 
 death, he felt himself to have been delivered from Divine 
 wrath, and to be " at peace with God through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." The President replied, in a tone of satis- 
 faction, "That is just the way I feel ." 
 
 Who can read his second Inaugural, and fail to see the 
 evidences of a Christian spirit ? What State paper, in all 
 our official literature, ever revealed such sense of Divine 
 justice, and such sublime faith in God ? It reads as if the 
 writer had been wandering over the earthly boundary, 
 and drank of the spirit of that better land of which so soon 
 he was to be a resident. 
 
 And now I come to meet a question which will disturb 
 every Christian mind. The President was shot in the 
 theatre. We would have had it otherwise. Pulpits will 
 speak of it. The press will comment on it. The people 
 in the streets will talk about it. Let us look at it with a 
 calm judgment. 
 
 It cannot be said that the President went to the theatre 
 because he loved to be there. He was not, in the common 
 acceptation of the term, a theatre-goer. It is known that 
 he went with great reluctance. He was in no state of 
 mind to enjoy a scene like that. But the newspapers had 
 
LOWKY. 3H 
 
 announced -that the President and General Grant would 
 be there on that evening. The people thronged the house 
 to do honor to the great men who had saved the country 
 General Grant, who had no time to waste in amusement.-, 
 left Washington in the evening train, to superintend the 
 removal of his family to Philadelphia. The President 
 knew that the people would be disappointed, if they saw 
 neither of the faces that they delighted to honor. Weary 
 as he was, he decided to go. He went, nol to see a com- 
 edy, but to gratify the people. If he had a weakness, it 
 was that he might contribute to the joy of the people. For 
 the people he had spent four toilsome years in lofty self- 
 abnegation. For the people he gave up his life on the 
 night of that fatal Friday. 
 
 There is another consideration. In all the countries of 
 Christendom, the rulers are expected to visit the theatre 
 as an act of state. We may deplore the custom, but it is, 
 nevertheless, universal. It is an observance that stretches 
 back through long generations. There is a supposed 
 necessity for it. It is only there that the Executive 
 can receive the formal acclaims of all classes of citizens. 
 There they feel free to give him the tribute of popular 
 plaudits. They cannot so recognize him at church, nor 
 in public receptions, nor in casual appearances abroad. 
 The President's box, like the reception room, is an ar- 
 rangement of state policy. It is an established point of 
 contact between the chief magistrate and the people. 
 ? From a religious stand-point, we cannot approve of it. But 
 we must not confound the act of the President, prompted 
 by high considerations of state, with the visit of a private 
 citizen, moved thereunto by the low desire of a mere self- 
 ish gratification. 
 
 With what profound awe we contemplate this mystery 
 of permissive providence ! We close our mouths beforo 
 
312 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the mandate of the Almighty — " Be still, and know that 
 I am God." We cannot understand it. We can only re- 
 ceive it. God employs his instruments according to his 
 own sovereign purpose. His principle of selection con- 
 founds all our philosophy. He creates — he destroys. If 
 Moses was the best man to form a great people for a 
 higher nationality, Joshua was a better one to lead them 
 into the promised land. God chose Abraham Lincoln 
 because no other could do his work so well. What if his 
 work were done, and other hands were needed to per- 
 fect what he so successfully begun % We have seen too 
 plainly the goodness and wisdom of God in our national 
 affairs, to doubt that he will sanctify to us* this awful ca- 
 lamity. We have learnt to acknowledge God in triumph 
 and in defeat, as never before in our history. And God 
 is bringing us closer to himself in this severest of all his 
 dealings. He gave us the best of Presidents. He has 
 taken away our prop, that we might all the more trustfully 
 lean on him. That he will cause "the wrath of man to 
 praise him," who can question ? " He hath not dealt so 
 with any nation " as with ours. In this unparalleled af- 
 fliction he will not desert us. Let us look for the good 
 hand of our God in this calamitous visitation. The 
 tender heart that has been laid low by violence, may have 
 shrunk from the stern duties of the coming time. He 
 was so free from bitter vindictiveness, so prone to len- 
 ient dealing even with his enemies, that even the just in- 
 fliction of punishment on the worst of traitors, might 
 have been too hard a task for a nature so generous and 
 charitable. The good he has done will embalm his name 
 to the latest generation. Thank God that he ever blessed 
 us with Abraham Lincoln ! 
 
 And who is this new instrument of God, into whose 
 hands thus suddenly and fearfully has been cast the lead- 
 
LOWRY. 313 
 
 ership of the nation % No man would liave chosen him 
 for President, but God has thrust him on a prostrate, bewil- 
 dered people. The scene of the inauguration day filled 
 us with shame, and now affects us with apprehension, 
 ljut, has God mistaken his instrument, or been foiled in 
 his purpose? Already we hear voices that dispel the 
 dark foreboding. General Burnside, Senator Foster, 
 Representative Odell, speak words in the popular ear that 
 lift up the new President from the shadow that enveloped 
 him. We will rally around the new man whom God has 
 given to us. If we prayed for President Lincoln, let us 
 pray all the more for President Johnson. We know there 
 is a providence in all this, and we cannot doubt that God 
 will interpret it to us in his own good time. 
 
 Two qualities loom before us in the character of our 
 new chief. First, he is /patriotic. In the dark hour when 
 the faithful were few, he loved his country too much to 
 love his section. In the very dawning of the insurrec- 
 tion, he stood firm in his place, and denounced the arch 
 traitors who were plotting their country's ruin. He has 
 been tried in the hottest fires of persecution, and betrays 
 no alloy in the gold of his patriotism. We may trust him 
 as possessing the full measure of devotion which the 
 warmest patriot could demand. 
 
 Secondly, he is radical. We live in times when child's 
 play is criminal. Andrew Johnson has " understanding 
 of the times." He has measured the atrociousness of re- 
 bellion. He has sounded the wickedness of slavery. He 
 will make no compromises with traitors. He will not plane 
 down treason into a mere difference of opinion. He is a 
 bold man to meet a bold evil. President Johnson has no 
 glove on his hand. President Johnson has no velvet in 
 his mouth. Treason, to him, is the worst of crimes, and 
 the traitor will struggle against justice in vain. 
 
314 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 See the effect on the people of this dastard blow ! ¥e 
 are melted down into unity. Who speaks a word against 
 Lincoln now ? Who stands aloof from the government 
 now ? Who dares sympathize with traitors now ? We 
 have rubbed out our party lines, and fly together as if 
 nothing had divided us. In a common fraternity of suf- 
 fering, we weep as with one sorrow, and burn as with one 
 indignation. The government may do anything now 
 against treason, and the people will approve the righteous 
 deed. 
 
 We have lost all sentiment of clemency. Satan over- 
 leaped himself when he lifted the deadly weapon. If we 
 indulged mercy to rebels before, now we have none. 
 There is one deep, loud cry for justice ! The animus of 
 the rebellion has betrayed itself. The bullet that entered 
 our loved President's brain, lodged in the heart of the 
 people. It rankles there. It needed the assassin's foul 
 deed to nerve us to the punishment of traitors. I speak 
 not the name of this heaven-abandoned wretch. I call 
 him The Assassin. He has lifted us to a new view of 
 this colossal conspiracy. We see the unmitigated turpi- 
 tude of the huge crime. It is the same spirit that buried 
 our soldiers at Bull Run with faces downward, and made 
 trinkets of their bones — that starved our unhappy prison- 
 ers in the pens of Andersonville — that butchered our men 
 in cold blood at Fort Pillow — that devoted the peaceful 
 inhabitants of Lawrence to indiscriminate massacre — that 
 froze our veterans to death on Belle Island — that crowded 
 our officers in the damp dungeons of Richmond, till you 
 could gather the mold from their beards by the handful ! 
 And we call on President Johnson to close his hard, ham- 
 mer hand, and bring it down with its heaviest blows, till 
 he shall crush in the brazen front of this infernal rebellion, 
 and hurl its foul carcass from the land it has polluted ! 
 
LOWRY. 315 
 
 This land is not large enough to hold the leaders of the 
 rebellion. The flag they have sought to dishonor should 
 not be allowed to cover them. They have forfeited, a 
 thousand times over, the mercy of the government thev 
 assailed. And this last and vilest culmination of their 
 crimes puts them beyond the possibility of pardon. Let 
 ns make this soil red-hot to the foot of every traitor. Let 
 the warm breath of our holy indignation sweep from our 
 cities every rebel sympathizer. Let us vow, in God's 
 house to-day, that treason shall be destroyed, trunk and 
 branch, root and rootlet, till not one hand be left to give 
 the sword such a vintage of blood again. Then will our 
 land be a land of peace and freedom. Then will our na- 
 tion be the joy of the whole earth ! 
 
 14 
 
SERMON XVIII. 
 
 REV. ALBERT S. HUNT. 
 
 " The- wisdom of God was in him to do judgment." — 1 Kings iii. 28. 
 
 We meet in tears. The darkness and the grief which 
 have made us faint have fallen upon myriads besides 
 " for in every house there is one dead." Never since the 
 world began has heaven looked down, at any one time, 
 upon so many mourning assemblies as crowd the Chris- 
 tian temples of this land to-day. Why is it so? Is not 
 this the festive day when believers in " Jesus and the 
 resurrection" should adorn their altars with garlands, 
 and sing joyful anthems ? And have we not heard too, 
 since we last met, such tidings of victory over an armed 
 foe as almost never before cheered the hearts of a loyal 
 and God-fearing people ? All true ! but our Easter an- 
 thems give place to dirges, and our " victories are turned 
 into mourning unto all the people " to-day, because 
 Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated. What do I say I 
 Strange, sad words ! Are we in the midst of a troubled 
 vision ? God of our fathers, have mercy upon us ! 
 
 We mourn the death of one of the most commanding 
 personages of HISTORY. His life has been a magnificent 
 
 317 
 
318 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 success. I will not attempt, by words, to prove this state- 
 ment. " If you seek his monument, look about you." 
 The Union is saved ! 
 
 Where now shall we find an explanation of this tri- 
 umphant success ? "The wisdom of God was in him to do 
 judgment." That this text furnishes the only full response 
 to our inquiry, will become more apparent if we seek the 
 explanation elsewhere. 
 
 Is it to be found in the essential worth of his charac- 
 ter f It is too early to attempt a finished portraiture, or 
 even a full outline, but a glance at a few features which 
 most attract us will serve the purpose of our argument. 
 
 He had a clear, strong intellect. This was manifest in 
 the ease with which he grappled with great public ques- 
 tions. If his logical processes were not always conducted 
 in obedience to the rules of the schools, his conclusions 
 would yet silence the most orderly thinkers. 
 
 The same clearness was always evident in his easy in- 
 tercourse with others, when his mind was unbent and at 
 play. 
 
 He was also justly distinguished for the tenderness of 
 his heart. This was indicated, not only in his care to oc- 
 casion no needless suffering in the discharge of his execu- 
 tive duties, but also in numberless words and ways which 
 were unofficial. You remember the touching letter he 
 wrote to the mother in Boston, who had lost her sons in 
 the cause of the country. His address at Gettysburg, 
 remarkable as it is for the grandeur of its thought, is even 
 more so for the tenderness he breathed into it. And only 
 a few days ago, when at City Point, on his way from Rich- 
 mond to Washington, he refused multiplied invitations 
 which promised ease and entertainment, because " he had 
 only time," as he said, " to go through the hospital and 
 
HUNT. 31<j 
 
 speak to the sick and wounded boys." Thus he passed 
 from one cot to another, clasping the hands of such as 
 had them, and pressing the foreheads of the handless, 
 smiling through his tears upon all, and thanking them 
 for their self-sacrificing patriotism. 
 
 He was a man, too, of more than ordinary conscientious- 
 ness. Here we find the explanation of the hesitancy which 
 appears, at times, in his action. A legion of politicians 
 might beset him and urge him to effort, but having heard 
 them all, he would take counsel of his conscience, and 
 perhaps still remain inactive. He would do nothing un- 
 less he could see clearly what it was right to do. Here, 
 also, we find the explanation of his undeviating firmness, 
 when once he had become convinced of the rectitude of 
 his measures. 
 
 Thus have we touched the salient points of his character. 
 The study has indeed been superficial, but sufficiently 
 thorough to convince all candid inquirers that we must 
 look elsewhere for a full explanation of his success. We 
 have discovered elements of character which exalt him. 
 to a place among the truly great, and without which he 
 could never have succeeded, but which must be largely 
 supplemented before we are furnished with a credible so- 
 lution of his wonderful mastery. 
 
 But again. "We may be told that although the secret 
 of Abraham Lincoln's success has not yet been discovered, 
 we are not driven to the explanation suggested by the text 
 as the only alternative, since there is another method of 
 detecting the hiding-place of the power of imperial men. 
 We discover that all such personages are perfectly familiar 
 with. the elements they have to mould and control, and 
 that they also have a commanding position above their 
 fellow-men, in consequence of greatness which was born 
 
320 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 in them — a kind of genius which is beyond the reach of 
 analysis. They know all about the common people, and 
 yet are made greater and nobler than they, by towering 
 gifts. 
 
 Shall we find here the explanation we are seeking \ It 
 is .rue that he knew all about the materials he was called 
 to mould and control. Without the social elevation which 
 results from aristocratic associations, born in a humble 
 home and reared with the common people, he thoroughly 
 understood all their wants, failings, foibles, and excellen- 
 cies. He had, too, a certain native greatness of soul, 
 which gave him a commanding position above the crowd. 
 He was of them, yet not of them. He had a strange 
 power over all who approached him, which did not find 
 its spring in the arts of statesmanship, nor in familiarity 
 with the great models of history. His soul was broad, 
 deep, and lofty. He had a genius for command. All this 
 is true of him, and if it had not been true he would have 
 failed, yet it does not fully solve the marvel of his suc- 
 cess. Had he been called to preside over thirty millions 
 of people during a period of peace, such powers would 
 surely have been no more than equal to his duty, but he 
 entered upon his work at the opening of a vast civil war, 
 whose close was coincident with the close of his career. 
 The unknown quantities of the problem he was called to 
 solve were well-nigh infinite in number, and the common 
 processes of elimination were too slow to serve the 
 demands of the work. A power was required which 
 could arrive at results with electric haste, but which 
 would neither flash nor thunder on its way. Or, to use 
 another illustration, his work has often been as delicate as 
 that of the dagnerreotypist, whose pictures would quickly 
 fade if he did not gild them, but who applies his gold in 
 the form of a solution. His vast abilities have been em- 
 
HUNT. Z'i 1 
 
 ployed, but not according to common methods. Held, as 
 it were, in solution by heavenly wisdom, they have been 
 poured out in blessings on the land. 
 
 Elilm declared to Job that " great men are not always 
 wise ; " but the great man whose loss Ave mourn to-day 
 was one of whom we may truly say " The wisdom of God 
 was in him to do judgment." 
 
 Why now should we hesitate to accept the statement 
 of the text as the true explanation of his success ? wab 
 there not a religiousness in his wisdom which cannot be 
 accounted natural % His conscientiousness, of which we 
 have spoken, was perhaps chiefly a natural endowment ; 
 but he was more than conscientious. He wished to obey 
 right, not only because it was right, but because he saw 
 the relation of all that is right to the righteousness of 
 God. He obeyed conscience, not simply because he re- 
 cognized its eminent authority, but because he felt it to 
 be the voice of God in the soul of man. "He did not 
 care to have the Lord on his side, but did most sincerely 
 desire to be always found on the Lord's side." All this, 
 I repeat, was not of nature. " The wisdom of God was in 
 him." J^or need we wonder at this, if we believe that 
 the God of Israel is our God, and that there is power in 
 prayer. It is evident that he was not unwilling to be di- 
 rected by the Almighty, for when he left his home in 
 Springfield to enter upon his presidential duty, he asked 
 the prayers of his neighbors for his success. Now con- 
 sider what multitudes have been interceding for him ever 
 since that day ! Was there ever a man for whose success 
 so many earnest prayers were offered i If God has not 
 heard these prayers our faith is vain ; if he has heard them, 
 it is easy to understand how the " wisdom of God" came to 
 
322 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 be in him. The prayers of millions have aided materially 
 to make him what he was. 
 
 It is well worthy of our thought, too, that he was not 
 only the gift of God in answer to prayer, but he was two 
 gifts in one. Four years ago, the ears of the Almighty 
 were continually filled with petitions from two classes of 
 suppliants, concerning two great subjects which we now 
 perceive were only one, but which then seemed, to the 
 majority even of the intelligent and good among us, to be 
 distinct. On the one hand, we were beseeching God to 
 interpose for us, and preserve the Union of the States ; 
 while on the other, there were earnest cries and tears 
 from an oppressed race dwelling within our borders, who 
 had long been pleading for liberty, and were moved as 
 by inspiration to a new trust that the time of their deliv- 
 erance was drawing near. God heard us all. He heard 
 us, for our cause was the cause of order and of law, — 
 his own cause. He heard the prayers of the enslaved, for 
 it is his wont to have mercy upon such. There was a 
 people of the African race in the olden time, oppressed 
 under Persian rule, who, having heard of Jehovah through 
 the ministry of fugitive Jews, cried unto him, and " he 
 sent them a savior, and a great one," in the person of 
 Alexander. And now, in answer to the cries of an op- 
 pressed people of the same race, he sends another mighty 
 deliverer in the person of Abraham Lincoln ; one who was 
 a more efficient savior for them, because he was also a 
 gift of God to us, in answer to our prayers ; and who, as 
 the secpiel demonstrates, has achieved far greater things 
 for us than he could have done if he had not been the 
 great emancipator. We can never sufficiently adore the 
 Divine goodness, which has not only liberated the en- 
 slaved and preserved the Union of the States, but has also 
 made one man the instrument in the accomplishment of 
 
hunt. 320 
 
 both these stupendous results. lie might have given us 
 a leader made after the sternest Jacksonian model, and 
 endowed him with ability to save the Union by the force 
 of an iron will, without paying special regard to the ques- 
 tion of slavery. Such a man would have been the very 
 gift multitudes thought desirable. Then lie might have 
 raised up a deliverer for the enslaved from among them- 
 selves, who would have inspired his race for the work of 
 a bloody insurrection. This was the fearful method by 
 which many of us believed their liberty would be secured. 
 
 Had God thus dealt with us, how entirely different 
 would have been the present condition of all concerned. 
 True, the Union would have been preserved, and the op- 
 pressed would have been delivered from bondage ; but 
 how much more perplexing for us would have been the 
 problem of reconstruction, and how much less hopeful 
 would have been the future of the emancipated race. 
 Then, too, we should have been without the ennobling 
 consciousness which now is ours, that our blood has been 
 spilled and our treasure lavished, not only in defence of 
 the Constitution, but also in the solution of a vast moral 
 question. This fact, which passes into history, is one of 
 that class of grand facts whose grandeur increases with the 
 growth of the ages. It is like a mountain whose summit 
 is covered with perpetual snow, — glorious always, but 
 most glorious, not when we are standing at its base, but 
 when we behold it towering in the distance. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was God's gift to us all ! Nor need 
 we wonder that he served us all so well, when we consider 
 that countless prayers were ottered for his success to the 
 Divine Redeemer, who was a full Saviour for the Jews 
 only because he became our Saviour also. The one gift 
 of God to us all — he has made us one. We are all free ! 
 Nor should this excite our wonder when we consider that 
 
324: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the wisdom of that Divine Emancipator and Harmonizer 
 was in him, of whom the apostle says, " He is our peace 
 who hath made both one, and broken down the middle 
 wall of partition between us." 
 
 But he is dead ! It is a signal fact in our history, that 
 Adams and Jeiferson, two men who had occupied the 
 presidential chair, w T ere removed by death on the same 
 day, and this day, too, was the fiftieth anniversary of 
 the nation's independence ; but the period appointed of 
 God for the removal of our late President was not less 
 remarkable. Two days ago, as we doubt hot, the identical 
 old banner of the republic which was first dishonored by 
 armed treason, was raised over the ruins of Fort Sumter 
 — a token to all the world that the nation's life was saved ! 
 Its savior's work was done ! He was assassinated on 
 the evening of that very day. Probably he was not con- 
 scious for an instant after the infliction of the fatal wound, 
 but his spirit lingered with us until after the rays of one 
 rising sun had gilded anew the dear old flag. Then it 
 was a fitting time for him to die, for his fame shall be like 
 the glory of the sun in its rising. 
 
 We cannot discover the full meaning of this sad 
 providence, yet it clearly conveys to us an invaluable 
 lesson concerning the stability of porular government. 
 A new and most severe test having been applied, the struc- 
 ture is proved to be as solid as the granite hills. Once 
 our -enemies told us we were not strong enough to con- 
 tend successfully with a foreign foe. This we disproved 
 fifty years ago. Then, we were told that it would be im- 
 possible for us to conquer a domestic enemy. After a pro- 
 tracted period of the fiercest conflict the world ever saw, 
 we have just now entered the capital of the traitors, and 
 
HUNT. : > .L , ."» 
 
 broken their military power. Tims again the ill-omen:-'] 
 prophets of both hemispheres have been brought to con- 
 fusion. There was yet one other declaration of the carp- 
 ing defamers of popular government to be proved false. 
 They have asserted time and again, that a military power 
 sufficiently lar^e to overcome treason, would never sub- 
 mit to the claims of the constitution, but would become a 
 law unto itself, and establish a despotism upon the ruins 
 ot civil authority. We did not believe this, but we did 
 not certainty know that it was false until this awful assas- 
 sination of our Chief Magistrate opened the way lor a 
 demonstration which will silence the base calumny now 
 and forever. The greatest captain of the age, and the 
 idol of the nation, fresh from the field of his grandest 
 triumph, stands in the presence of all the people. Has a 
 single tono-ue lisnecl a desire to exalt him to a throne and 
 crown him as the first of a new line of monarchs ? JSTot 
 one ! The Constitution designates another as our chief 
 ruler. It is enough — the people hail him ! You re- 
 member the first expression of the nation's purpose to de- 
 fend the flag, after it had been insulted at Charleston. 
 Kor will you forget that solemn day of last November, 
 when, after years of the severest discipline, the people 
 declared anew, with the silent eloquence of the ballot, 
 their undying love for the country. Both these expres- 
 sions of the popular heart, were truly sublime, but neither 
 impresses me so profoundly as this steady bearing of the 
 nation during the past thirty hours. I am proud of my 
 countrymen ! 
 
 Perhaps, too, this calamity was needful to prepare the 
 people for the stern work we have yet to do. It would 
 seem that we ought to have learned the real temper of 
 the rebellion before now. It has instigated the most 
 fiendish riot known in human history — has practiced cru- 
 
326 * DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 elties upon our kindred, taken in battle, in comparison 
 with which the deeds of the old Spanish inquisition 
 seem merciful — has conspired, in its hellish hate, to 
 bury us in the ashes of our own dwellings — and still we 
 were talking of a display of clemency and of magna- 
 nimity towards a conquered foe. It was needful that the 
 nation should be brought to a better mind ; for Congress, 
 which has the (constitutional right to declare the punish- 
 ment of treason, is but the servant of the people. The 
 heathful laws already upon our statute books, which make 
 death the traitor's reward, seemed harsh to many. Do 
 they seem so now ? 
 
 Treason has taken the life of our loved and honored 
 President. It has entered the sick room of our Secretary 
 of State, and indicted wounds which there is too much 
 reason to fear will prove fatal ; and w r e must believe that, 
 horrid as all this is, it is only part of a vast and skillfully 
 planned conspiracy to overthrow the entire executive 
 power of the government. Let us go now together and 
 gaze upon the form of our honored dead. Around him 
 are the folds of the nag in whose defence myriads have 
 fallen. Not one of all the host of heroes loved the dear 
 " stars and stripes " with a truer love than that which 
 inspired the breast of our Chief Commander. Treason 
 had not done its worst until it laid him low. The fiendish 
 deed is done ! Shall we turn now and open the arms of 
 brotherly tenderness to monsters of iniquity who would 
 count it all joy to trample his lifeless remains beneath 
 their feet % They mock us who ask it ! Shall traitors be 
 welcomed to our fellowship ? Shall we longer hug a sen- 
 timental theory of clemency ? No ! a thousand times no ! 
 We will not be vindictive, nor revengeful, but, God help- 
 ing us, we will be just. 
 
 Our duty is stern and painful, but we must not shrink 
 
HUNT. 3 W 27 
 
 from its performance. Our voices may be feeble, bnt we 
 will raise them for justice, and do all that in us lies to 
 sustain our newly-inaugurated President in the faithful 
 execution of the laws. At least we will demand that the 
 leaders of this rebellion shall suffer the extreme penalty 
 of the law in death. This is duty. We owe it to our- 
 selves, to coming generations, and to God. 
 
 Let us go now to our homes, akd to our closets. Now, 
 if ever, we need to pnr\ These are " times that try men's 
 souls." Are we true men ? Do we love our country ? 
 Do we love humanity? Do we love Jesus? This last 
 question was proposed, not long ago, to our departed Presi- 
 dent. He replied with tears, " When I left my home in 
 Springfield to come to Washington, though I felt my re- 
 sponsibility and asked my neighbors to pray for me, I was 
 not a Christian. When my dear boy, Willie, was taken 
 from me, I ^till was not a Christian, but when I stood on 
 the field of Gettysburg and looked upon the graves of its 
 heroes, I gave myself to God, and now I can say that I do 
 love Jesus." 
 
 Great Emancipator ! The whole earth is filled with thy 
 fame, and millions will mourn at thy tomb, yet thou art 
 our brother in the fellowship of Jesus 1 
 
 In Jesus sleep ! 
 
SERMON XIX. 
 
 REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D. 
 
 Few are the words which are needed to-day. God has 
 spoken, and we are dumb. These funereal emblems — this 
 sombre, melancholy black — these pale faces of anxious, 
 sorrowful men ; this leaden weight at our hearts, an- 
 nounce the terrible affliction which has befallen the na- 
 tion in the sudden and violent death of its honored Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 I had expected to address you this morning, in a joyous 
 strain, on the most joyous event in the history of our 
 world. I had prepared a discourse on the resurrection of 
 our Lord, and the rising of individuals and nations in 
 him to a new life. But the circumstances in which we 
 are assembled are so appalling that all ordinary topics 
 are for the moment entirely superseded. When God 
 speaks out of the whirlwind it would betray profane in- 
 sensibility not to pause and consider. J^ever, I will not 
 say in our history, but in the history of the world, was 
 there such a conjunction of events as that which, in an in- 
 stant, has thrown this nation from the heights of joy into 
 profounclest mourning. This is not the hrst instance in 
 which a public man has been assassinated to a nation's 
 
 329 
 
330 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 dismay. "William the First, Prince of Orange, the founder 
 of Dutch freedom, was shot, when fifty-two years old, in 
 his own house by a young man, hired for the purpose by 
 a Jesuit priest, with the promise of eternal salvation. The 
 universal lamentation of Holland on that occasion is one 
 of the great pictures of history. 
 
 Henry the Fourth, of France, who, with all his faults 
 and vascillations, was the best of all the French kings, in 
 his fifty-seventh year, was stabbed in the streets of Paris 
 when on his way to consummate alliances in favor of the 
 Protestant interest against Spain and Austria. But these 
 incidents furnish no parallel to the abrupt and terrible 
 calamity which we deplore. Forty-eight hours ago we 
 were in the highest exultation. Everything justified na- 
 tional joy. This Easter would have been celebrated as 
 never before, amid spring blossoms and flowers, and doxol- 
 ogies, and anthems, and high throbbing hearts. The air was 
 fanned with jubilant flags as the winter had passed and 
 the time for the singing of birds was nigh. We were 
 looking for the speedy termination of the war and the re- 
 turn of peace, when the plough would skip along the 
 mellow furrow, commerce flap her long-folded wings, and 
 the land would laugh with industry, plenty, and pros- 
 perity. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we are 
 brought down into the deepest affliction. A single night 
 has wrought the greatest of changes. It was " a night 
 long to be remembered." We have not yet rallied from 
 the shock sufficiently to command thought or language. 
 Our children and our children's children will speak of it, 
 and read of it, as one of profound horror. The Chief 
 Magistrate of the nation has fallen by the hand of an as- 
 sassin. To lend all possible aggravations to the tragic 
 event, an accomplice, simultaneously, with more than 
 brutal, fiendish violence, invaded the chamber of the 
 
ADAMS. 331 
 
 Secretary of State, where domestic love was tenderly 
 watching him, disabled and shattered by an accident, and 
 endeavored to butcher him in his bed ! 
 
 It is, indeed, a time for lamentation and mourning. It is 
 not to be wondered at that strong men auiong us, as they 
 met each other yesterday, grasped hands in silence and 
 sobbed. So to feel and act was manly. All political 
 partialities, all differences of opinion in regard to modes 
 and measures, are merged, ocean-deep, in the astonish- 
 ment and grief which this event has produced. We cannot 
 believe that throughout all the loyal States there was a 
 single man or woman who heard of this tragedy without 
 a shudder of horror. Consider the circumstances. As- 
 sassination even of a private citizen is frightful. To as- 
 sault a man when unsuspecting, unarmed, defenceless, 
 whatever motive may have prompted the crime, is cow- 
 ardly and dastardly. But this was the head of the na- 
 tion — the lawful, chosen President of the United States. 
 This was a blow aimed at the very heart of the country. 
 It was a blow which was intended to exterminate you and 
 your children. It reminds us of the frenzied passion of 
 Nero, who wished, on one occasion, that all Home had 
 but one neck, that he mi«;ht sever it at one stroke. 
 
 Consider the personal character of the man thus immo- 
 lated. He was not a hard, rough-shod, truculent, stern, 
 cruel man or magistrate. He bore no resemblance to 
 Marat, gorged with blood, assassinated by Charlotte Cor- 
 day. He was the mildest and most inoffensive of men. 
 Called by Providence to solemn and painful duty, he 
 was always inclined to leniency. He was most tender- 
 hearted, as gentle, by nature, as a woman. I do not re- 
 call a word of his which was intended to insult, goad, 
 taunt, or exasperate any man; not one act which looked 
 like unnecessary severity, bearing any resemblance to 
 
332 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 cruelty. Many acts of kindness and generosity are re- 
 ported of him ; for he was benignant, honest, and thor- 
 oughly conscientious. Such were the qualities which 
 met in our President. God is making us to feel, and 
 many are astonished to discover it, how much of real ten- 
 derness is implied in that epithet. The Indian tribes in 
 our territories call the President of the United States 
 their " Great Father." It is a beautiful designation. 
 Twice, during my professional life, have I officiated when 
 death smote the President of the country, and distinctly 
 do I recall, when Harrison and Taylor died, the depth of 
 true and gentle affection which was developed out of 
 that relation between the people and their chosen Presi- 
 dent. In times of political asperity, of free debate, of 
 earnest discussion, this is forgotten. God intends that we 
 should not forget it always. It is right and proper that 
 we should feel it and express it now. The head is smitten 
 and the whole body shudders. The father of the country 
 is slain, and a whole nation are the mourners. There are 
 many whom the world could easily spare. Some in con- 
 spicuous places, of whom to be rid would be a vast reliel. 
 There are others who are so related to good and great 
 causes that their fall convulses the civilized world. Such 
 was our President at the hour of his death. There is 
 mourning to-day away on the shores of the Pacific. 
 Something more than a profound sensation will be pro- 
 duced on the other continent. I know of more than one 
 praying circle in the heart of Switzerland and Germany, 
 whore intercessions for a long time have been offered for 
 the President of the United States. The event will be 
 felt, for various reasons, throughout all Christendom. 
 One thing is certain. They who plotted his death, and 
 all who in any way sympathize with them may know it 
 — his immortality is sure beyond all tarnish or eclipse. 
 
ADAMS. 333 
 
 His name will live forevermore. By this very event he 
 is secure of his place in the hearts of his countrymen, en- 
 shrined and honored, whatever becomes of the name of 
 every other President since that illustrious man, who was 
 the first and greatest of all. When faithfulness is crowned 
 with martyrdom, there is no waning to renown, and obliv- 
 ion never can reach his pure and exalted fame. 
 
 " Follow now as ye list ! The first mourner to-day 
 Is the nation whose father is taken away. 
 Wife, children and neighbor may moan at his knell ; 
 He was lover and friend of his country as well. 
 For the stars on our banner grown suddenly dim, 
 Let us weep, in our darkness, but weep not for him : 
 Not for him, who departing leaves millions in tears, 
 Not for him who has died full of honors and years ! 
 Not for him who ascended Fame's ladder so high ; 
 From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky !" 
 
 The wantonness of this atrocious act is another feature of 
 the event. What does it accomplish ? What could they 
 who instigated and perpetrated the deed expect to gain 
 by it ? It cannot help the rebellion. It is certain to con- 
 summate its overthrow. It cannot arrest or embarrass 
 the lawful government of the country. That will stand. 
 The Constitution provides for this very exigency, and when 
 the bursts of tumultuous and vehement emotions which 
 this calamity has occasioned have subsided into gentler re- 
 flection, men everywhere will admire the sublime ease 
 and smoothness with which the lawful successor of the 
 murdered President was inaugurated into office, gov- 
 ernment not intermitted, nor even in the imagination of a 
 single citizen imperilled for a moment. Never did our 
 government stand so firm, so strong, as at this very 
 hour, notwithstanding the tremendous blow by which it 
 has been struck. Millions of people, to-day, amid their 
 
334 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 mourning and prayers at the altars of religion, have 
 sworn, in their hearts, before Him who sitteth on the 
 throne, that in dependence on Him this government shall 
 be preserved and upheld forever. 
 
 The origin of this deplorable deed is no secret. It was 
 not a sudden burst of passion. It was a cool, deliberate, 
 long-intended plot. It is a part and a most fitting climax 
 of a most atrocious attempt on the life of the country. 
 When it was announced that there was a conspiracy to 
 assassinate Mr. Lincoln as the President elect before his 
 inauguration, it was hooted at by many as a most ludi- 
 crous imagination. The event has proved that these fears 
 were not groundless. It shows the intensity of that hate 
 which has been cherished by the leaders of the rebellion, 
 just as the crucifixion of our Lord was no sudden act of 
 frenzy, but the culmination of a long, deep and bitter ha- 
 tred. Believing that this rebellion was conceived in sin 
 and brought forth in iniquity, a distinction should be 
 made between those who instigated it and the multitudes 
 who have been involved in it — some innocently, against 
 their emphatic protests, and others, in vast numbers, 
 through misjudgment and falsities. It was a part of the 
 policy of the original conspirators to fabricate and circu- 
 late falsehoods in regard to the intentions of the govern- 
 ment, by which multitudes were misled and inflamed. No 
 opportunity was given for the correction of these falsities 
 before the torch was actually applied and the fire was rag- 
 ing. Editors of those newspapers, through which this 
 mischief was propagated, have a tremendous load upon 
 their consciences when arraigned before an enlightened pub- 
 lic sentiment, and at the bar of God. It would be a sin 
 against all truth and honor not to make the distinctions 
 and exceptions to which allusion has been made. Multi- 
 tudes of men and women dragged into this rebellion — 
 
ADAMS. 335 
 
 good Christian people — will shudder at this enormous 
 crime, even as we do. But no such kindly judgment will 
 exempt the leaders of this vast and wicked sedition. 
 They knew that this rebellion was without good and ade- 
 quate cause, and therefore, before God and man, unjusti- 
 fiable. It had no origin or necessity but passionate will 
 and pride, on the part of men foiled by the solemn march 
 of the census in the purpose of extending and perpetuating 
 slavery. When you have given credit for all the human- 
 ity and piety of those who, by the circumstances of their 
 birth and education, were complicated with a system of 
 slavery which they did not originate ; after making all 
 the qualifications and exceptions which charity and justice 
 require, the truth will come forth now like the sound of 
 many waters, that slavery is barbarism ; that its effects on 
 character must be bad ; that those who constantly inhale 
 its mephitic gases must be insensibly poisoned thereby ; 
 that cruelty to prisoners to the point of starvation, the 
 attempt to burn cities, and throw from the track by night 
 rail-cars freighted with women and children, are a legiti- 
 mate part of its progeny ; and if anything was wanting 
 to complete the measure of detestation which belongs to 
 this great crime of rebellion against a government which 
 never was otherwise than lenient and benignant, it was 
 just this wanton, unprovoked, and horrible assassination 
 of the President. It would seem that all Christian na- 
 tions must turn now with ineifable loathing and disgust 
 from a rebellion which, inspired and fostered in the inter- 
 est of slavery, could prompt to such an enormity of crime. 
 Palsied be my tongue before it utters one syllable in 
 the spirit of revenge. We are the disciples of that Sa- 
 viour, who, upon the cross, prayed for his own enemies. 
 While I have not a word to utter in the way of exciting 
 vindictiveness, but many in the way of interdicting and 
 
336 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 denouncing it, much have we all to learn in regard to 
 the tremendous necessities of justice and the solemnities 
 of constitutional law. There has been growing up, for 
 the last twenty years, throughout this country, the off- 
 spring of a certain kind of humanitarianism, called re- 
 ligion, supplanting the old sturdy theology of the Bible, 
 — loose notions concerning the processes of justice, in the 
 form of opposition to capital punishment. At this hour, 
 in one of the jails of Massachusetts, is a man who, some 
 two years ago, murdered a defenceless clerk in a bank at 
 Maiden, — as unprovoked and horrible an instance of 
 crime as ever was perpetrated. He was arraigned, tried, 
 convicted, and sentenced to death. But that sentence 
 has never been executed. Certain men, known as philan- 
 thropists, of a notorious class, have declared against the 
 cruelty and barbarism of capital punishment. The Gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts — all honor to his vigor and prompt- 
 ness in upholding the arm of the national magistracy 
 throughout the war — not concealing his personal and 
 theological notions in regard to the extreme penalty of 
 the law, has persistently refused to sign the warrant for 
 execution, and so the culprit is likely to escape the gal- 
 lows. There is too much of this mawkish sentimental ism 
 abroad ; this milky, rose-water religion, which, beginning 
 with a denial of future punishment, and arguing for uni- 
 versal salvation against the explicit assertion of the Scrip- 
 tures, which declare that God will turn the wicked into 
 hell, if they repent not, would dispense with all the 
 severities of justice, and resolve all government, human 
 and Divine, into an aromatic essence. 
 
 One such act as that which now conv ulses the country was 
 perhaps needful to correct all these meretricious notions. 
 There is a tender mercy which is cruelty. If any one has. 
 ever staggered and been confounded as to the meaning ot 
 
ADAMS. 337 
 
 the imprecatory psalms, lie has the interpretation now in 
 his own bosom. Pie hits the truth by an intuition. With 
 not a particle of vindictiveness, not one thought or feeling 
 foreign to the spirit of Christ, who does not wish that the 
 perpetrators of this crime may be brought to condign 
 punishment ? What David, a man after God's own heart, 
 felt and wrote in regard to Doeg and Ahithophel, we feel, 
 and ought to feel, in regard to all who aim their blows 
 against the life of society. What would become of us, if 
 we are to tolerate crime, and be lenient towards atrocious 
 offenders ? If passion is to usurp supremacy, and men are 
 to murder governments and murder citizens at their will, 
 and be unmolested and unpunished, the sooner we find an 
 asylum for ourselves beyond the reach of such barbaric 
 philanthropy, the better for ourselves. The eyes of the 
 world are upon us now to see whether by liberty we mean 
 license and lawlessness, — whether democracy is synony- 
 mous with a mob. Let us so conduct ourselves as to 
 create the impression that no people revere laws — I mean 
 laws distinctively so called, with penalties and armed mag- 
 istracy to execute them — more cordially than the citizens 
 of these United States, thus proving ourselves the friends 
 of humanity and true liberty. 
 
 In regard to the honored person himself who has fallen, 
 he has completed his task. Who has made more out of life 
 than he ? Till thirty years of age he was addicted to 
 manual labor. A, model of republican simplicity, he was 
 raised, by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens, to the high- 
 est office in the land. He asked the prayers of the coun- 
 try when entering upon that office. He shrank from ex- 
 treme measures at the beginning, but when duty demand- 
 ed he announced, in his first proclamation, his purpose, 
 in the name of the American nation, to raise the coun- 
 try's flag' where it belonged on all the forts which had 
 
 15 
 
338 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 been wrested by fraud and violence from the national 
 control. He lived to see that purpose accomplished. On 
 Friday last the symbol of our nationality was raised over 
 the fortress which was first assaulted by rebellion. On 
 the same day — his work complete — he fell, and at this 
 hour that ensign hangs at half-mast all over the land, in 
 token of universal mourning. Illustrious citizen, long 
 will it be ere thy name and thy death will be mentioned 
 without tears. 
 
 What are the intentions of Divine Providence in the 
 permission of such an event it would be presumption in 
 any man to affirm. Frequently have we been reminded 
 of the ease with which the Almighty makes the wrath 
 of man to praise him, and we are confident that this sad 
 occurrence will be overruled for the unifying of the whole 
 country, and in many ways, which we will not predict, for 
 promoting our ultimate advantage. Mr. Lincoln seems to 
 have been impressed with the conviction that he was a 
 child and servant of Providence, whose direction he ap- 
 pears to have implored. I have just received, from a 
 friend, the following copy of a letter written by the Pres- 
 ident to a person who had been greatly moved to guide 
 his mind into the channels of religious faith : 
 
 Executive Mansion, j 
 Eliza P. Gtjrney: Washington, Sept. 4th, 1864. J 
 
 My esteemed Friend — I have not forgotten, probably never shall 
 forget, the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends vis- 
 ited me on a Sabbath forenoon, two years ago ; nor has your kind 
 letter, written nearly a year later, ever been forgotten. 
 
 In all it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance upon 
 God. I am much indebted to the Christian people of the country 
 for their Christian prayers and consolations ; and to no one of them 
 more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, 
 and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to perceive them 
 in advance. 
 
ADAMS. 339 
 
 We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war Ions before 
 this, but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet 
 acknowledge his wisdom and our own errors therein. Meanwhile, we 
 must work earnestly in the best light he gives, trusting that so work- 
 ing still induces to the great end he ordains. Surely he intends some 
 great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could 
 make and no mortal could stay. 
 
 Your people, the Friends, have had, and are having, very great 
 trials in principles and faith ; opposed to both war and oppression, 
 they can only practically oppose oppression by war. In this hard di- 
 lemma some have chosen one horn and some the other. For those 
 appealing to me, on conscientious grounds, I have done, and shall 
 do, the best I could and can in my own conscience and my oath to the 
 law. That you believe this I doubt not, and, believing it, I shall still 
 receive for our country and myself your earnest prayers to our Father 
 
 in heaven. 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 (Signed) A. Lincoln. 
 
 Most appropriate are these words to the event of his 
 own death. We find the consolation we need in the be- 
 lief of an over-ruling Providence, who directs all things, 
 great and small, with reference to his own ultimate pur- 
 poses : — ■ 
 
 Peace — be still! 
 In this night of sorrow bow, 
 O ! my heart contend not thou, 
 What befalls thee is God's will : 
 
 Peace — be still! 
 
 Peace — bo still! 
 All thy mourning words aro vain — 
 God will make the riddle plain — 
 Wait his word and hear his will : 
 
 Peace — tie still ! 
 
 Hold thee still! 
 Though the Father scourge thec sore, 
 Cling thee to him all the more, 
 Let him mercy's work fulfill : 
 
 Hold thee still! 
 
340 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Hold thee still ! 
 Though the Good Physician's knife 
 Seem to touch thy very life ; 
 Death alone he means to kill : 
 
 Hold thee still ! 
 
 Lord, my God, 
 Give me grace, that I may "bo 
 Thy true child, and silently 
 Own thy sceptre and thy rod, 
 
 Lord, my God ! 
 
 Shepherd mine, 
 From thy fulness give me still 
 Faith to do and bear thy will, 
 Till the morning light shall shine, 
 
 Shepherd mine. 
 
 This is the substance of our counsel to-day. Be still, and 
 know that this is God ! When opportunity for reflection 
 shall come, I may address you with more specific instruc- 
 tion. Amid the tumultuous emotions of this morning my 
 compendious advice is, be calm, be prayerful, be firm in your 
 faith in God. Pray for your country, and pray especially 
 for him who is thus suddenly called to be the President of 
 the Republic. • Let us bury the dead with all honor and 
 grief, and turn to the living with sympathy, with confi- 
 dence, and with hope. Presidents die, the country lives. 
 Agents disappear, but the kingdom of God advances. 
 
 IIow worthless, how transient is every thing here on 
 earth, save as it is related to that kingdom of our Lord 
 which never shall be moved. Death, how mysterious ! 
 To-day, a man so great, so powerful in command of ar- 
 mies and navies — to-morrow, nothing but ashes ! He 
 that would be immortal, in the true sense, must identify 
 himself with that kingdom of Christ which gives to time 
 all its importance, and to eternity all its glory. 
 
SERMON XX. 
 
 REV. HENRY J. FOX. 
 
 " Death is come up into our windows and entered into our palaces." — 
 Jeremiah ix. 21. 
 
 " Is he slain according to the slaughter of them that were slain by him ?" 
 — Isaiah xxvii. 7. 
 
 " If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small." — Prov- 
 erbs xxiv. 10. 
 
 "Vengeance belongeth unto me ; I will recompense, saith the Lord." — 
 Hebrews x. 30. 
 
 The great and slowly revolving wheel of history, has 
 again dipped itself in blood. Never, in the annals of na- 
 tions was a people plunged into greater affliction, than 
 have been the people of this great country since the morn- 
 ing of Saturday last. 
 
 The spectacle which this nation presents to-day is one of 
 the most imposing and solemn that ever men or gods have 
 looked down upon. If the spirits of the departed can 
 stoop from their lofty abode and behold the dwellers upon 
 earth — if they are permitted to become cognizant of what 
 is transpiring among men, then does the spirit of Abraham 
 Lincoln realize, to-day as never ruler of men lias realized 
 before, how deep — how wide-spread — can be the affection 
 
342 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 and grief of a people for a man exalted by the providence 
 of God, to stretch out over them a governing and protect- 
 ing hand. 
 
 A little over four years ago Abraham Lincoln left his 
 western home. As he left it, he said to his friends and 
 neighbors, " My friends, no one not in my position can 
 appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To this peo- 
 ple I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than 
 one-quarter of a century. Here my children were born, 
 and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon 
 I shall see you again." These words in their very sadness 
 seem to me to have been a prophecy. 
 
 You will remember, that in that brief, touching, parting 
 address, he also spoke of the duty he would be called to 
 perform, as " one greater than any that had fallen to the 
 lot of any man, since the days of Washington " — of Wash- 
 ington as only succeeding because aided by Divine Prov- 
 idence ; and, said he, " on the same Almighty Being I 
 place my reliance, and I hope you my friends will pray 
 that I may receive that Divine assistance without which I 
 cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." 
 
 It has been said by one of our public journalists, that 
 our city is like " a vast burial ground whose monuments 
 are hung with the symbols of woe," and as it is with this 
 city, so it is with every city and village and. hamlet in the 
 land. "It is as if a pall overhung the land, and in the 
 shadow of it dwelt a chilled and awe-struck people." We 
 may, indeed, say with the prophet, " death is come up into 
 our windows and entered into our palaces." Never, in the 
 history of the world was there, I apprehend, so spontaneous 
 and so general an exhibition of the sigas of mourning. And 
 it is not the mansions of the rich merely that put on sad 
 drapery, the poor out of their scanty means have vied with 
 their wealthier neighbors in displaying the emblems of 
 
fox. 343 
 
 grief. Whilst the millionaire has spent his hundreds on 
 funereal upholstery, the poor mother, made a widow by 
 the war, has spent her last dollar in humble insignia of 
 woe; and even the maimed drummer-boy with but a few 
 cents in his pocket has denied himself their use, that his 
 armless sleeve might have its narrow band of crape. 
 
 It is solemn and appalling to be in the presence of death 
 in any form. We are affected and moved by it. But 
 when it smites down, as in this case it has, one around 
 whom all the affections of a great people were closely and 
 indissolubly entwining themselves, then new and pro- 
 founder elements enter into and are mixed with, the cup 
 of our sorrow. 
 
 As a nation we liave been called to follow other Presi- 
 dents to an untimely grave. Harrison and Taylor both died 
 during their term of office. But in these instances death 
 w.as ushered, if not invited, in, by disease and overwork. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln fell after a long and dreadful storm, 
 just as the rainbow was spanning the clearing sky, just as 
 he was about to open, in the name of the nation, the bright 
 gates of the temple of peace, just when passion was 
 cpienching her fires, and the spear and the bow were being 
 broken asunder, — just then was he struck down by the 
 hand of the assassin. For the first time in the history of 
 our hitherto happy land, so far as the government is con- 
 cerned, the hand of the assassin has been stretched out to 
 the completion of a most bloody work. Hamilton, it is 
 true, fell in a duel, and there have been others high in au- 
 thority who have engaged in bloody personal frays, but 
 never before have we had a chief magistrate or any gov- 
 ernment official foully and basely murdered. 
 
 With regard to the assassin, there is no ingenuity by 
 which he can escape his doom. lie may be hidden fur a 
 while; he may wander like a wild beast through the tan- 
 
344: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 gled briars of impassible swamps, but go where lie may, 
 the wide world will be to him a vast prison-house. Un- 
 tamed brutes, hungry though they may be for blood, will 
 slink away abashed at his approach. Men will hunt him 
 as they would a tiger that had robbed them of their sons. 
 He will be branded by rulers and people everywhere as a 
 second Cain, and as the enemy of his race. Even the 
 cannibal king of Dahomey would surrender him to the 
 merited vengeance which he has invoked. If he could 
 even evade, for a time, the avenging hands of his fellow- 
 men, he cannot escape from himself. 
 
 If ever remorse scourged, as with scorpion thongs, any 
 soul of man, surely his soul will receive its severest seath- 
 ings. Even Nero, we are told, started at the unearthly 
 trumpet which sounded nightly over the grave of his mur- 
 dered mother. Even Charles IX. saw bloody streaks in the 
 sky, and heard strange noises in the leads of the Louvre ; 
 will not he, then, on whose hands the stain of Lincoln's 
 blood is not yet washed away, hear unearthly sounds and 
 see unearthly sights ? Yes ; and he will utter at midnight, 
 in the wild, weird darkness of the desolate spot in which 
 he shall attempt to hide himself, and in which insulted 
 and outraged nature may allow him to linger for an hour, 
 the soliloquy now far more appropriately his own, than it 
 ever was that of the king whom he perhaps so often pro- 
 fessionally personified. 
 
 " My conscience hath, a thousand, several tongues, 
 And every tongue "brings in a several tale, 
 And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
 
 " Perjury ! Perjury ! in the highest degree, 
 Murder ! Stern murder ! in the direst degree, 
 And several sins all used in each degree, 
 Throng to the bar crying all, Guilty ! Guilty 
 I shall despair, there is no creature loves me, 
 And if I die no soul will pity me." 
 
fox. 345 
 
 If I could have the ears of those who instigated, or who, 
 if they did not instigate this cruel murder, participated 
 in its criminality by rejoicing over it, I would remind 
 them that all political assassinations have resulted in the 
 defeat and overthrow of the parties and principles for the 
 furtherance of which the guilt of their consummation was 
 assumed. I would tell them that it was most univisdy 
 done ; that it was a blunder as well as a crime. Up to 
 last Friday evening, there was a breakwater between the 
 long-accumulating wrath of the North and the leaders of 
 rebellion at the South. But those few grains of powder 
 with which the murderer's pistol was charged have done 
 more in a single moment than a hundred mines, although 
 they had been as deep and wide as that of Petersburg, 
 could have done to break down and to destroy the only 
 barrier between them and the vengeance of an incensed 
 and outraged people. 
 
 They have struck down the hand that was lifted oftener 
 and more lovingly than that of any other man, to shield, 
 protect and befriend them. They have stiffened in death 
 the fingers that were impatiently waiting to write such an 
 amnesty as was never granted to rebels before. They 
 have silenced the voice which would have proclaimed 
 their pardon in stronger, sweeter strains than ever fell 
 under like provocations from human lips. 
 
 This assassination is but the full ripe fruit of that cruel 
 and hellish spirit of slavery, which years ago would 
 have assassinated Sumner in the Senate, and which im- 
 prisoned and tortured, wherever it has had the power, all 
 who have dared to sympathize with the slave. 
 
 The event, in its sadness, appals us. We are stunned. 
 We are as men bewildered, and in part bereft of rea- 
 son. That we can talk to you at all is a miracle; if we talk 
 in a way that may need revision, the circumstances are our 
 ample excuse. 
 
DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 I cannot clivest myself of the conviction that this was 
 a 'premeditated event. The facts, as they develope them- 
 selves, will show, I think, that it was the culmination of 
 a deep, a wide-spread, a long-maturing conspiracy, which 
 contemplated not the death of Lincoln alone, but of Sew- 
 ard, of Johnson, Stanton, Grant and others. 
 
 That the wicked leaders of this rebellion are capable 
 of such a crime against the nation and against God, as 
 such a conspiracy involves, it seems to me needs no proof. 
 The men who could deliberately fire upon the nation's 
 flag as it floated over Sumter, when they knew that that 
 first shot would involve the death of countless thousands ; 
 who could, with wicked and deliberate intent, starve the 
 thousands of prisoners, who, by the misfortunes of war, 
 were so unhappy as to fall into their hands ; who were ca- 
 pable of plotting the destruction of this city, with its 
 helpless women and children, by a sudden midnight con- 
 flagration, and who have been overtaken and detected in 
 other infamies, were capable of planning and taking the 
 necessary means to execute this crime, than which his- 
 tory does not present another so truly appalling. 
 
 My thoughts revert, as I am sure yours must, to the 
 week immediately preceding the first inauguration of Mr. 
 Lincoln. We heard of a plot for destroying him as he 
 passed through a Southern city. We were too much 
 blinded then to believe it, now we know it to have been 
 true. Through the acumen and vigilance of the heads 
 of the police department of our own city that conspiracy 
 was discovered, and the conspirators baffled. At last, how- 
 ever, their secret machinations have succeeded, and lo ! a 
 nation prostrate in sorrow before its God. 
 
 It is not for us to say why the Almighty has permitted 
 so great a calamity to befall us. I confess, that in this, his 
 ways are not only inscrutible, but unless we specially 
 
fox. 347 
 
 guard ourselves, they may be the occasion of infidel and 
 despairing doubts. 
 
 Future events in the history of the nation, as they 
 shall slowly or rapidly develope themselves, will doubt- 
 less show us that after all it was best for the great body 
 of the people. Until then we must say, 
 
 " God moves in a mysterious way, 
 His wonders to perform." 
 
 I think it may be said, our enemies being the judges, that 
 this blow was without the shadow of an excuse. There 
 have been men in power, men at the head of our armies, on 
 whom, justly or unjustly, the stigma of cruelty has fallen ; 
 but who ever in the hour of the wildest excitement ventur- 
 ed to hint that Lincoln was cruel ? Never was there a more 
 tender-hearted man. If a sentry was detected sleeping at 
 his post he was never arrested until a pardon interposed be- 
 tween him and a disgraceful death. I venture to say that 
 Abraham Lincoln has pardoned more men deserving 
 death, than any man ever entrusted with executive power. 
 To talk of him as being a tyrant is grovelling folly. 
 Wherever he has erred it has been on the side of mercy. 
 His leniency has ever exposed him to abuse, and, if I 
 mistake not, a strong party was growing up in our very 
 midst, based upon the theory that our Chief Magistrate 
 dealt with offenders with too gentle a hand. And there are 
 those, who listen to me to-day, who think that Provi- 
 dence has permitted this calamity to befall us that a 
 sterner hand might rule in our national affairs. 
 
 The second passage I have quoted from the word of 
 God, as applicable to this sad occasion, is from Isaiah. 
 The prophet asks concerning the Son of God, or of some 
 of the ancient kings, what we may ask as we look upon 
 the fallen form of him, who was, but as yesterday, the 
 
348 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 pride and hope of the nation : " Is he slain according to 
 the slaughter of those that were slain by him." We answer 
 no ! Those who have been slain because he would not con- 
 sent to let the nation die, have been slain in honorable war- 
 fare, upon an open and fair field, with an opportunity to 
 protect and defend themselves, or, by a timely withdrawal 
 from the wicked strife, escape the impending blow. But 
 he was smitten when disarmed ; struck down when and 
 where he could not shield himself, in the night, from be- 
 hind his back, 'in the presence of a shrieking, fainting 
 wife. He met death not struggling with a noble, manly 
 foe ; it was the misfortune of his terror-stricken friends 
 to see him slaughtered by a cowardly, and, for ought I 
 know, hired assassin. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln will be spoken of to-day and for genera- 
 tions to come, on every anniversary of this day, as a great 
 and noble man. I say a great man. At first, and for 
 some time, the small wits of Europe, and their despicable 
 imitators here, dared to speak and write of him as an illit- 
 erate and boorish man, of but small parts. All that has 
 been changed. The most appreciative, not to say laucli- 
 tory, things that I have ever read respecting Mr. Lincoln 
 have been from British pens. British journalists now 
 confess that his state papers (more remarkably his own 
 than were those of any chief magistrate that ever pre- 
 ceded him) are marvels of strength and logical power. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was the incarnation of solid common sense. 
 He was slow, it may be, to decide on great matters, but 
 when he did decide, he decided wisely, he decided for 
 himself, and he decided for ever, and it may be said of 
 him, as it cannot be said of many, he never failed the 
 country in an emergency. Never was there ever a more 
 modest man. His modesty was the modesty of genius. 
 He rarely ever thought of his own personal interests, and 
 
fox. 349 
 
 therefore scarcely ever spoke of himself. It was his coun- 
 try and the people that were in all his thoughts ; if their 
 interests were promoted, his own were either secondary or 
 ignored altogether. We naturally, in an hour like this, 
 think of the great men that went before ; we think of 
 Washington, and we remember that he was pure, so pure 
 that we call our children by his name, so in ages to come, 
 our children will be glad to remember that on Lincoln's 
 escutcheon no cloud of impurity has ever cast a dimming 
 shade. We remember Jackson, and proudly say that he 
 was firm ; so of Lincoln, it may be said, that with greater 
 gentleness he was never moved in the great grand outlines 
 of his policy the breadth of a hair. We remember Jeifer- 
 son and Hamilton, and talk of their astuteness, but it shall 
 be said of Lincoln that he was more astute than they, be- 
 cause he made Providence his guide. 
 
 Standing, as I do, in the house of God, and as a minis- 
 ter of God, it is particularly fitting that I say a word or 
 two with regard to his moral and religious character. 
 Much has been said by some, whom I will not trust myself 
 to characterize, of his having been in a theatre that fatal 
 night. I frankly confess that I would rather the hand of 
 the assassin had smitten him on the steps of the Capitol, 
 or while he had been seated in the executive chair. I do 
 not, however, consider the unfortunate fact of his being 
 in a theatre as having in it much moral or religious signifi- 
 cance ; certainly not as much as some would suppose it 
 has. His visit was for political rather than for personal 
 reasons. He was the President of all the people; he had 
 to gratify, especially in a time of great public anxiety, the 
 demand of his constituency to sec and honor him. He 
 only did what Washington and the other Presidents be- 
 fore him had done. There has been but one of our Presi- 
 dents who did not frequent places of public amusement, 
 
350 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 and even the enemies of our departed Chief Magistrate 
 will not injure his memory by assuming that in real 
 morality and in an honest respect for the things of God, he 
 could suffer by comparison with him. It is to the credit 
 of Mr. Lincoln that he was for years a most successful ad- 
 vocate of the temperance reform. I have been informed, 
 by a bishop of our own Church, that one of our most distin- 
 guished ministers and scholars, one whom the whole 
 Church now delights to honor, was once a school-teacher at 
 the West, and that when in this position the use of intoxicat- 
 ing liquors was becoming a snare to him and threatening 
 him with ruin. Just at this juncture an application was 
 made by a distinguished gentleman, for the use of his 
 school-house that a temperance meeting might be held in 
 it. It was granted. The time for the meeting earne. 
 The first address was delivered by a man of some reputa- 
 tion as a speaker. It was made with great dignity, but it 
 was powerless, and accomplished nothing. Then there 
 arose an awkward young man, who talked on in a plain, 
 straight-forward manner, interspersing his remarks with 
 numerous stories and apt illustrations. When this young 
 man had got the audience to the highest pitch of excite- 
 ment, he drew out of his pocket a pledge and a pen with 
 which to sign it. The young schoolmaster was the first to 
 do it, and thus threw around himself a bulwark of pro- 
 tection. I need hardly tell you that this temperance lec- 
 turer was Abraham Lincoln. He was the enemy not only 
 of intemperance, but of vice in every form.' Never, to 
 my knowledge, has pen or tongue dared to charge him 
 with the slightest immorality. He was virtuous ; that 
 much, at least, we think all must allow. With regard to 
 religion, I do not dare to say that our deceased President 
 has been known for any length of time as a pious man. 
 It can be said of him, however, that he never outraged 
 
fox. 351 
 
 the religious convictions of Christian people, as did Jef- 
 ferson and others of his school. There has always been a 
 marked and a growing recognition of God and of Divine 
 Providence in his speeches, letters, and state papers. I 
 believe, from evidence which I cannot doubt, that he had 
 been for some time prior to his death a lover of prayer ; 
 that since the consecration of the cemetery, in which are 
 to slumber the bones of the heroes who fell at Gettys- 
 burg, there is reason for believing that he knew the com- 
 forts of a personal trust in Christ. His religion was not 
 of the demonstrative, certainly not of the puritanical 
 type ; nevertheless, I think it was healthy and exhibited 
 the signs of a gradual growth. 
 
 I think he was not unprepared for this event, as its sud- 
 denness would seem to suggest might have been the case. 
 With great men, presentiments of death are so common, 
 that they would seem to follow a natural law. Mr. Lin- 
 coln was not an exception to the general rule. We have 
 all heard of the poem which he repeated line by line, to 
 Mr. Carpenter. How striking the last stanza : — 
 
 " 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a "breath, 
 From the "blossom of health, to the paleness of death, 
 From the gilded saloon, to the "bier and the shroud — 
 Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" 
 
 Whether there was any significance in his affection for 
 these lines, or it was only a simple coincidence ; whether 
 they reflected his forecastings, or whether they did not; 
 whether he was prepared or unprepared, he is gone, and 
 God will be his judge, and, I doubt not, his " exceeding 
 great reward." 
 
 We are left ! Left overwhelmed in grief ! The effect 
 of this national calamity should be a more unwavering 
 dependence upon and trust in God. God rules the nations 
 and not men. Presidents and kings are but his vicegerents 
 
352 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 on the earth. When lie has served his purpose with any 
 great man he suffers him to pass away. He doubtless 
 saw that it was best that Abraham Lincoln should be ta- 
 ken from us ; that he thould be taken from us at the time 
 and in the very manner in which he was taken. The 
 great work of national regeneration which God began on 
 this continent by him will not be stayed by his death. It 
 will go on. God will lay his hand upon other men and put his 
 Spirit in their hearts, and all the people shall yet praise him* 
 
 The effect which this calamity will have tqjon the 
 South is a subject concerning which I need not speak to 
 you at length. You understand it without a word from 
 me. That it will insure the punishment of the guilty, 
 and in the end more thoroughly purify the States now in 
 rebellion, I think but few can doubt. We need, Kowever, 
 perhaps, to remind ourselves of what Paul said to the 
 Hebrews : " Vengeance belono;eth unto me, and I will 
 recompense, saith the Lord." It is our prerogative to 
 punish; to visit upon the head of every criminal the 
 justly merited penalty denounced against his offence. 
 Not to do this is a weakness and a sin against society and 
 against God. But to take vengeance ; to indulge in a 
 spirit of revenge to visit upon the innocent it may be as 
 well as upon the guilty, the consequences of this great 
 wrong doing, is not Christian, it is not politic. This 
 Avill be the great task of the hour, to hold ourselves in 
 as with bit and bridle lest we seek in our vengeance to 
 sweep the land as with the besom of destruction. 
 
 How and by what processes this event will result in the 
 more thorough regeneration of the South, it is the prov- 
 ince of the politician to explain ; but of the fact I have 
 no doubt. And such being the case, it will greatly miti- 
 gate the sum of our misery and lighten the load we shall 
 have to carry for years to come. 
 
fox. 353 
 
 Nor need I speak to you, at any length, of the effect it 
 will have at home. That you can picture to yourselves. 
 It has already toned up thousands that were of doubtful, 
 wavering loyalty, and it will tone up thousands of oth- 
 ers. 
 
 The occasion is one that demands vigilance. For aught 
 I know that fearful pistol shot may have been the signal 
 for a fresh onset at the South — for combinations and plots 
 at the North. If not the signal, it may be made the oc- 
 casion. To prevent it we must be constantly on our 
 guard. If we never stood shoulder to shoulder before, 
 let us do so now. If we have tolerated the utterance of 
 treason and been silent when the enemies of the estab-» 
 lishecl government have hissed their seditious hopes and 
 threats in our ears, let us tolerate them no longer, but 
 treat them, be they at home or abroad, as we should treat 
 the enemies of liberty and of all human rights. 
 
 This event will not, of course, be without its effects upo?i 
 the negro. Its first effect, so far as they are personally 
 concerned, will be extraordinary grief. As I met one 
 yesterday — sad in countenance, looking at the emblems 
 of woe that were all around him — I said to myself, what 
 will be the effect upon his mind of the expressions of 
 so general a grief? I thought he would come to the con- 
 clusion, from what he saw, that there was not, after all, 
 the barrier between him and others that he supposed 
 there was — that there are times when all human beings, 
 be they black or white, can have feelings in common. I 
 could almost think I heard the poor negro saying : " If 
 the white man, the rich white man — if the white men of 
 every class and degree so loved my best friend, there may 
 be — there will be -justice at last for me." 
 
 This, our great bereavement, will have its effects upon 
 all the nations of the earth. It will, doubtless, secure for 
 
354: DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 us, from foreign powers, a sympathy such as we never 
 had. before. Even tyrants cannot favor assassination. 
 They must frown upon it. They must sympathize with 
 those who suffer in consequence of it, even though it be 
 from no higher motive than an instinct of self-preservation. 
 If assassins are to be let loose upon the world, they will rea- 
 son, the foundations of society will be broken up, we are no 
 longer safe, and there will be terror everywhere. The 
 greatest and grandest result, so far as foreign nations are 
 concerned, will be that it will demonstrate that we have 
 power to govern ourselves. In any other land than ours, 
 an event like this would be the signal for revolutions and 
 •counter-revolutions; but with us, one President expires 
 and. in less than six hours his successor is peacefully inau- 
 gurated. The wheels of the government never stand 
 still. There is no embarrassing interregnum ; no disputes 
 about succession. We have not to satisfy ourselves with 
 a boy for a ruler. The change is made without the shed- 
 ding of a single drop of blood, or the intermission of a 
 single duty. Foreign nations will understand, as they 
 never understood before, the nature of the spirit which 
 has moved and. controlled this rebellion. The demon is 
 unveiled, before the eyes of the whole world, who will see 
 it in a clearer, stronger light than ever — that slavery was, 
 and is, a spirit of cruelty and murder. 
 
 This is an occasion that calls for fortitude. We must 
 meet it not with stoical indifference, that would be un- 
 worthy of us ; but with a manly, resolute spirit that shall 
 show to the world that we are equal to occasions of great 
 sorrow, as well as to occasions of exceeding joy. It may 
 be that Solomon only uttered a truism when he said, in 
 the language of the third passage quoted at the beginning 
 of this sermon, " If thou faint in the day of adversity 
 thy strength is small, 1 ' yet the truism is one by which we 
 
fox. 355 
 
 should be admonished to-day as we bow before our God. 
 The nations are looking on. Let them not conclude from 
 what they shall see of us in this fiery hour, that we have 
 no strength, or that our strength is -but small. Let them 
 learn that the principles upon which our government is 
 founded are equal to the most terrible emergency, and 
 that when our great men are smitten down we do not be- 
 come imbecile or despairing, but that we take hold upon 
 Omnipotence and receive our strength from God. Never 
 let a nation, such as we are, with such a history ; never 
 let such a people, with such a God, succumb to fear. As 
 Sojourner Truth — the prophetess of her race — exclaimed 
 in an hour of great discouragement and gloom, " God is 
 not dead ;" no ! he still " rides upon the heavens in our 
 help. God reigns, let the earth rejoice." 
 
 If ever an occasion called for union and firmness, this 
 is that occasion. Do we really estimate, as we ought, all 
 that is at stake ? Our lives and property are imperilled. 
 The future of our children is threatened. All our an- 
 cient national landmarks may be swept away. An- 
 archy and universal political and social chaos may be im- 
 pending. If we make one false step, or even falter in the 
 ri^ht way, we may be precipitated into the abyss. Let 
 us, around God's altar to-day, enter into a covenant that 
 in whatever else we may differ, we will not differ on the 
 question of loyalty to the flag. Let us be true to that, and 
 then — 
 
 " When the hour seems dark with doom, 
 Our sacred banner lifted higher, 
 Shall flash away tho gathering gloom 
 "With unextinguishablc fire." 
 
 Let tjs go home to pray. Let us, in our closets and at our 
 family altars, remeinbv v those who have been specially 
 
356 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 bereaved. There is a widow and two fatherless sons that 
 demand our sympathy and our intercession before the 
 throne of the heavenly grace. The Washington expe- 
 rience of this now never-to-be-forgotten family has not 
 been one of unalloyed enjoyment. During the President's 
 first term, the angel of death entered the White House 
 and bore away a beautiful and much loved boy, and to- 
 day the bereaved mother and those affectionate brothers 
 are drinking of a cup, the bitterness of which none can 
 tell. 
 
 Above all, let us pray for the land which our fathers 
 and sons have died to save, that having had its very bosom 
 sprinkled with the red gore drops, it become not drunken 
 with blood. Let us pray God to save us from universal 
 vengeance and death. Let us pray that the serpent of 
 slavery, hacked and writhing with the wounds which this 
 war has inflicted upon it, may never raise its hideous head 
 from the ground, but that it may die the death which 
 shall forever forbid its rising again. Let us pray that our 
 land, nestling as under the wings of the Almighty, may 
 again have rest and universal joyfulness. 
 
 I told you once from this desk ; it was just after my visit 
 to the bloody field of Gettysburg, that I had a dream 
 that was not all a dream. It was a waking dream. I saw 
 a tree riven from its topmost branches to its very roots ; 
 around it were all the symbols of disunion and civil war. 
 Now I see that riven tree restored, the wounds healing^ 
 and hanging on its branches are all lovely flowers and 
 precious fruits ; but at its spreading roots I see a tomb, 
 and on it there is written in laurel leaves two names — 
 names that are with us, as they will be with all other na- 
 tions, household words. They are entwined forever: 
 George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Let us now 
 arise, fellow-citizens, and adorn that tomb with the palm 
 
fox. 357 
 
 leaves, the chaplets and flower-wreaths of peace, for they 
 lie all about ns. Let us drape it with scrolls on which 
 admiring angels shall see mercy and forgiveness written 
 in unfading letters of love. Then let us sing! yes, sing! 
 sing in a low, soft, clear voice, as a fitting requiem for 
 such an hour as this : " They rest from their labors and 
 their works follow them. Peace on earth, good will to- 
 ward men." 
 
 " Hush that sohbing — weep more lightly, 
 On we travel daily, nightly, 
 To the rest that they have found. 
 Are we not upon the river 
 Sailing fast to meet forever 
 On more holy, happy ground ?" 
 
SERMON XXI. 
 
 KEY. HENKY B. SMITH, D. D. 
 
 " I am the Lord, and there is none else ; there is no God heside me. I 
 girded thee, though thou hast not known me." — Isaiah xlv. 5. 
 
 We are apt to believe that man makes history. We 
 look at the outside of events, and see not the secret 
 springs that move and guide their progress. We judge 
 them as they affect our transient feelings, interests, or 
 plans. We measure them as they appear in time, and 
 forget the past eternity in which they were all determined, 
 and the future eternity in which they will all be inter- 
 preted. 
 
 But there is one who seeth the end from the bejnnnino;. 
 
 There is a God who hideth himself, and only now and 
 
 then revealeth himself. He alone fully knows what all 
 
 things are and mean. He setteth up one, and putteth 
 
 down another ; and none can stay his hand, or say unto 
 
 him, What doest thou ? The lot is cast into the lap, but 
 
 the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. In his hand 
 
 is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all 
 
 mankind. At one time he setteth every man's sword 
 
 against his fellow, even throughout all the host (Judges 
 
 vii. 22) ; at another time he leads us to say, Thou Lord 
 
 350 
 
360 DEATH OF PEESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 wilt ordain peace for us; for thou also hast wrought all 
 our works in us. So that in self-renunciation we are com- 
 pelled to acknowledge, that now, O Lord, thou art our 
 Father ; we are the clay, and thou our potter ; and we 
 all are the work of thy hands. The king's heart is in the 
 hand of the Lord ; as the rivers of water he turneth it 
 withersoever he will. In our text he says of Cyrus, as 
 may be said of all great rulers guided by his providence 
 in ways they knew not : " I girded thee, though thou hast 
 not known me ; that they may know from the rising of 
 the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. 
 I am the Lord, and there is none else." 
 
 And there are times in every individual, and in every 
 national history, when these majestic and awe-inspiring 
 truths underlying all events and all religion, are brought 
 so distinctly home to every mind and heart, that they could 
 not be made more impressive if written in lines of light 
 upon the canopy of heaven. There are times when we 
 must flee to the refuge of God's providence, if we would 
 avoid the blindness of chance, or the despair of fatalism ; 
 for between these three, lawless chance, pitiless fate, or 
 Divine providence, we must all at last choose in estimat- 
 ing the events of time. In the great crises and junctures 
 of history, in its staggering vicissitudes, when viewing 
 the hecatombs sacrificed upon fields of carnage, when 
 bowed down by the stroke of speechless private woe, or 
 mute with horror before appalling crime committed 
 against the embodied majesty of the State, at the mo- 
 ment when a nation's destiny seems trembling in the 
 balance — how deeply, how solemnly is the conviction 
 forced upon us, that if there be any comfort, any refuge, 
 it is only under the shadow of the Divine wings ; it is 
 only in the belief, that He who ruleth in the heavens 
 ruleth also upon the earth, and that the wrath of man 
 
SMITH. 3G1 
 
 shall praise him. But as for yon, said Joseph to his 
 brethren, ye thought evil against me ; but God meant it 
 unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much 
 people alive. 
 
 And if ever a people were called upon, by an unparal- 
 leled concurrence and combination of circumstances, to 
 recognize the hand of God in history, the hand of him 
 who both forms the light and creates darkness, who 
 maketh peace and createth evil, it is surely this American 
 people under the present conjuncture of events, some of 
 which have so recently filled us with thankful exultation, 
 while others have plunged us in the depths of national 
 grief, mingled with awe, as if the very contradictions of 
 destiny were at the same instant appointed to be our lot. 
 An all-wise and inscrutable Providence has been guiding 
 us in ways we knew not of; girding us for a work which 
 no man could foresee, or which, if foreseen, no man would 
 have dared to attempt ; enabling us, with faith and 
 patience and sacrifice, to pass through all the vicissitudes 
 of the greatest civil war in history, unexampled in its in- 
 tensity, tenacity, resources, and cost both of treasures 
 and men, until we had just come to see, as from the sum- 
 mit of another Pisgah, the promised land stretched out, 
 inviting us to enter in and make of it a goodly land in the 
 name of the Lord of hosts. And then, just at the moment 
 when all hearts were jubilant with the hope of a quick- 
 coming peace ; when the great rebellion was staggering 
 and crumbling down under the quick and sharp strokes by 
 which alone it could be felled to the earth ; when the 
 nation was awaiting its jubilee, and the very air was ring- 
 ing with the glad acclaims of myriad voices of the free- 
 men and the freed ; and when many, too, in the fulness 
 of their too exuberant joy, had begun to forget justice to 
 the wrong-doers, and were speaking of an almost total 
 17 
 
302 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 amnesty and forgiveness ; then the providence of God 
 stalled us as;ain with a lesson which can never be for- 
 gotten, and, by the foulest crime of modern history, 
 brought us once more face to face, in the most awful form 
 imagination can conceive, with that gigantic sin which 
 has brought all these woes upon us. As the great leader 
 of the Israelites came only to the verge of the land of 
 promise, and was not permitted to enter in, so the recog- 
 nized and chosen leader of our republic was not allowed 
 to share the full fruition of all he labored for with such 
 sleepless watch and paternal care. An execrable assassin 
 has sent him to his grave amid lamentation and wailing. 
 A people stricken by the mighty hand of God, bowing 
 low in the dust, can only say : I am dumb, I open not my 
 mouth, because thou didst it. 
 
 And thus is the providence of God teaching us the high- 
 est lesson of trust, as well as the constant duty ef submis- 
 sion. Some things in this providence are so open and leg- 
 ible, that only an atheist can be blind to them ; others are 
 so mysterious, that only God himself can interpret them 
 unto us. How plainly, for example, during these four 
 years of embittered strife and untold calamities, he has 
 taught us the inmost meaning of this war as a punishment 
 for our national sins, and as involving the highest moral 
 aims and issues. Who now doubts that the sin of slavery 
 was in part to be atoned for by our sufferings and blood ? 
 that a God of justice has been vindicating the rights of the 
 oppressed ? and that in this he has been true and righteous 
 altogether % Who now can doubt that the war has been 
 so desperate and prolonged, in part that its great moral 
 issue might be made up, and that its ethical lessons 
 might be imprinted as with the point of a diamond, 
 as in lines of fire, upon the nation's conscience and 
 heart? As our late President, in his last Inaugural, so 
 
SMITH. 363 
 
 solemnly said : — "If we shall suppose American slavery 
 one of those offences which in the providence of God must 
 needs come, but which, having continued through his ap- 
 pointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives 
 io both North and South this terrible war, as was due to 
 those by whom the offence came, we shall not discern that 
 there is any departure from those Divine attributes which 
 believers in the living God always ascribe to him." And 
 who can now doubt that the great Emancipation Procla- 
 mation of Abraham Lincoln was the turning-point in the 
 strife, the decision on which all was hanging ; that it gave 
 to the North its moral supremacy, while it added two 
 hundred thousand ardent patriots to our armies ; that it 
 took from the rebellion its last prop, and from foreign 
 powers all possibility of intervention against the repub- 
 lic ? And what a wonder-working providence appears in 
 all the knots and stadia of our slow yet ever growing suc- 
 cess : in the unexampled supply of armed men to meet 
 each new emergency; in the stimulus given to ]abor, and 
 the increase of our resources from month to month, from 
 year to year; in the decrease of poverty and crime 
 through all the North, and in its never-failing crops ; in 
 the moral training of our people, making them willing to 
 endure hardships and to give up what was best and dear- 
 est to them for the sake of the good cause ; in the open- 
 handed devotion with which the sicknesses and wounds of 
 our suffering and dying soldiers have been ministered to in 
 the hospital and on the field of battle by an army of self- 
 denying men and women all through the land, spreading 
 the broad mantle of charity over the horrors and carnage 
 of war ; in reviving and deepening the love of the Union 
 and its glorious flag, and identifying the cause of the na- 
 tion with the cause of human freedom ; in the fact that our 
 very defeats as well as in our successes have subserved the 
 
364 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 o'ermastering end; in our successive changes of comman- 
 ders until we put the right men in the right places, and 
 the foremost captain in the foremost place of all, giving 
 concentration and unity to our scattered hosts ; in guard- 
 ing the land against latent conspiracy and sedition at the 
 North, as well as against open treason and rebellion at the 
 South ; in carrying us safely through the most costly war 
 ever waged, and enabling us, as a people, to shoulder and 
 carry the staggering burden of our national debt, without 
 a sensible diminution of the permanent capital of the coun- 
 try; and, above all this, in that ever-deepening trust in 
 God's guidance and recognition of his authority, which 
 have pervaded the very heart of this people as never be- 
 fore, imparting the assured confidence that their deeds and 
 sacrifices were furthering the highest temporal ends of Di- 
 vine justice, wisdom and- love. In all these things the lead- 
 ings of Divine Providence have been so manifold and con- 
 spicuous, that even the thoughtless have been led to join 
 in the adoration : " The Lord he is God, and beside him 
 there is none else." Nor is this providence less marked, 
 had we time to trace it, in the course of affairs in respect 
 to the revolted States, revealing by a sure process the in- 
 most nature of a rebellion, formed and impelled in the in- 
 terests of a slave-holding oligarchy. It was perjured in its 
 very beginning, and reckless of truth and law, imperious, 
 denunciatory and violent, acting on the principle that might 
 makes right; it squandered lives and property in reckless 
 disregard of all interests but those of the dominant class, 
 and carried on warfare with such barbarities towards our 
 wounded and imprisoned soldiers as no modern civilized na- 
 tion has ever known ; and it has reaped the reward of these 
 foul crimes in the impoverishment of States, in the de- 
 struction of a large majority of their white male popula- 
 tion in the very prime of manhood, and in bringing 
 
SMITII. 
 
 mourning and desolation into a million families all o ver 
 our wide republic. Fearful has already been their pun- 
 ishment ; but its full measure no human tongue can tell. 
 This rebellion will live in all history as one of the most 
 awful of national crimes, followed by a no less signal ret- 
 ribution, illustrating the severity of the Divine judgments. 
 When God's judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants 
 will learn righteousness. 
 
 And now to these examples of Divine Providence in 
 our national affairs, has been added yet another, in some 
 respects the most affecting, and certainly the most unex- 
 pected of all, coming without warning, like the stroke of 
 a thunderbolt from the clear sky, and at the very moment 
 when the land was rejoicing in the plentitude of its victo- 
 ries. God has turned our joy into mourning, and the 
 wail of grief chokes the utterance of the song of triumph. 
 
 A crime has been committed, unparalleled in the annals 
 of modern history. The chosen head of our nation has 
 fallen by the frenzy of an assassin. The land mourns for 
 its chief with such unanimity of sorrow as to show that 
 republics are not ungrateful. Never was a king borne to 
 his burial with such regal honors. On Wednesday last, 
 through all the land from Maine to California, by all com- 
 munions, in every church, funeral services were held with 
 solemn rites and unfeigned grief. Almost every house, 
 almost every person, bore some badge of mourning. A 
 nation bowed before its God, stricken and sorrowing ; its 
 speech was low out of the dust. And so will it continue 
 while the sacred remains of him we loved are borne in 
 solemn pomp, with all the pageantry of woe, for fifteen 
 hundred miles, through many of the chief cities of our 
 country, until they are brought to his distant home in 
 Springfield, which he has not re-visited since he there bade 
 his fellow-citizens fare well four years ago, with the afi'ecting 
 
366 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 words : " I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty 
 devolves upon me which is, perhaps, greater than that 
 which has devolved upon any other man since the days 
 of Washington. He never would have succeeded except 
 for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all 
 times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the 
 same Divine aid which sustained him, and in the same 
 Almighty- Being I place my reliance for support ; and I 
 hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that 
 Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but 
 with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an af- 
 fectionate farewell." These simple, trustful words be- 
 came at once dear to us ; now they are embalmed in our 
 memory forever, and every generation of coining time 
 shall read them with tears. We now know that they 
 came from the heart of a martyr. And as here, so through 
 all time, the names of Lincoln and Washington will be 
 linked in the. nation's memory, and embalmed in the na- 
 tion's heart. Different as they were in their training and 
 character, they were both equally the vessels of Omnipo- 
 tence ; God chose them to do an unequalled work, not 
 only for this land, but also for mankind. 
 
 The death of the humblest man by malice and violence 
 arouses deep indignation, and an instant resentment de- 
 mands the punishment of the murderer or he that 
 sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. 
 The assassination of the beloved ruler of a mighty nation 
 in the very crisis of a nation's fate, at first strikes all men 
 dumb with consternation at the atrocity of the deed ; and 
 next demands that justice be executed, with a voice so 
 clear and irresistible that all fine-spun sentimentalism 
 about the wrong of capital punishment is consumed in the 
 blaze of a righteous wrath. It is not the language of re- 
 venge, but of justice. 
 
SMITH. 3G7 
 
 This awful deed will take its place among the great 
 crimes of history, and stand out with its startling lessons 
 more and more distinctly as time recedes. No similar 
 crime has been freighted with more momentous issues. 
 There have not been many terrible assassinations of great 
 rulers in the zenith of their power : Julius Csesar, Henry 
 the Fourth of France, William the Silent, Abraham Lin- 
 coln. And the name of Booth will go down in history, 
 not with that of Brutus, who struck for the cause of the 
 republic, but with that of Ravaillac, impelled by fanati- 
 cism, and of Gerhard Balthasar, inflamed by the rancor 
 of a persecuting church, which afterwards canonized him. 
 Eyen these might plead that they acted in behalf of a 
 cause which had once inspired the faith of martyrs, and 
 done some service to humanity. But the murderer of our 
 President seems to have been urged on by a senseless 
 hatred, which was born of the worst passions, allied with 
 the most desperate of causes, working for the triumph of 
 despotism and barbarism. ]STo man was ever murdered 
 so wantonly, with such insanity o£ villainy, and no one's 
 death was ever so fatal to those that brought it about. 
 At the very time the murderer's bullet pierced him, he 
 was anxiously meditating the largest amnesty for the foes 
 of our republic, and who were his enemies only because 
 he was the nation's chosen ruler. lie was then standing 
 between them and justice. Words of pardon for his ene- 
 mies were upon his dying lips. And what a contrast be- 
 tween the victim and the assassin — representing in some 
 sort the contesting principles that have been at work in 
 this war. The one was simple, guileless, frank, truthful, 
 just, ruling in the fear of God : the other was crafty, the- 
 atrical, of external polish, yet implacable, wedded to a 
 caste, unscrupulous, boastful, defiant of God and man, 
 hating with a bitter hate, because he hated the light. 
 
3G8 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 Alas ! that such a victim was needed for the good cause ! 
 Alas ! that any man bom of a woman, who had ever 
 heard a mother's voice or known aught of human love, 
 could have been left to commit so foul a deed ! 
 
 " Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
 Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death." 
 
 And he, our President, 
 
 " Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking off." 
 
 This crime, we say, stands out conspicuous, and full of 
 instruction, whether we consider its source, its circum- 
 stances, its victim, or its probable influence. 
 
 What was its real and proper instigation ? This is not 
 to be sought alone or chiefly is the personal character and 
 history of the murderer, but in the influences, which de- 
 termined his fateful deed. No matter whether there was 
 an avowed and wide-spread conspiracy or not, his murder 
 was the fruit of a conspiracy. It is the rebellion itself, 
 taking the form of an incarnate fiend ; it is the rebellion 
 concentrated and impersonated, all its principles and mo- 
 tives gathered together in one fatal stroke. It is secession, 
 treason, perjury, cruelty, fraud, and bitter hatred, getting 
 hold of a man as with a demoniacal possession, and trans- 
 forming him into a fiend. It is the despair of a desperate 
 and lost cause in its last blind and infuriate assault upon 
 a righteous, civilized and benevolent government. It is 
 the very spirit of slavery, its pride of caste, its impatience 
 of restraint, its ungovernable passions, its rooted selfish- 
 ness, its malignity and barbarism when fully roused, its 
 recklessness of all obligations human or Divine ; and, we 
 may add, its frantic and impotent fury against the hand- 
 
SMITH. 309 
 
 writing on the wall — in its last expiring act, intended to 
 show ns, so that none shall ever forget it, against what 
 we have been contending, and that our costly sacrifices 
 have been well offered if this foul spirit can be forever 
 ejected from the body politic. 
 
 The circumstances of this crime will also ever give it a 
 marked place in history. In different forms it seems to 
 have been long premeditated ; and at last it was astutely 
 planned, with a wide foresight of contingencies. It was 
 a most foul and deliberate murder, executed in more than 
 the light and crowd of a common noon-day even in a pop- 
 ulous city ; and yet the well-known assassin by his very 
 daring managed to escape, and has since as yet been un- 
 tracked. In an instant, unwarned, it struck down the head 
 of the republic, all unarmed, all unsuspicious; -on the 
 evening of Good Friday, when a still more awful sin was 
 commemorated ; at the close of a day when our nation's 
 flag had again been planted with joyful shouts upon the 
 walls of Fort Sumter, where first it was trailed in the dust 
 by our foes. On this very day Mr. Lincoln, it is said, had 
 been expressing such a feeling of relief from exhausting 
 cares as he had not known for years. Many of his highest 
 hopes had been fulfilled. Through four long years he had 
 watched and prayed ; and the rays of the coming morning 
 had just struck upon his vision, when the light of his eyes 
 was at once and forever quenched. Yictory was every- 
 where crowning our arms in that last masterly campaign, 
 more complete in its plans and execution than any cam- 
 paign since the wars of the first JSapoleon. The end for 
 which our care-worn President had been toiling seemed to 
 be in his very grasp. He was enthroned as never before 
 in the hearts of his countrymen. No man in this world 
 held a more lofty or a more responsible position ; none 
 
 seemed so needful for the welfare of the state. In the 
 17* 
 
370 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 noon-tide of his career he was struck down suddenly ; and 
 after he fell no .word passed his lips, until he slowly 
 breathed his last amid the grief and silent awe of a whole 
 nation. 
 
 What an impressive lesson of the vanity of all human 
 hopes ! of the frailty of all human dependence ! It seems 
 to say to every one in this land : — Our days are swifter 
 than a post ; they flee away. They are passed away as 
 the swift ships ; as the eagle that hastetli to his prey. We 
 know not what a day nor an hour may bring forth. 
 
 But his work, may we not say % was done, and well done. 
 He was true to the last ; and he died in the zenith of his 
 well-earned fame. His care-worn and sad face, with its 
 ever-benignant smile, seems now, as we recall it, to have 
 indicated a certain presentiment of destiny. He may have 
 had a dim consciousness, that thus it might be, from the 
 time of the first plot against his sacred life, on his journey 
 to Washington just before his first inauguration. Some 
 times he alluded to it, as in his well-remembered speech at« 
 Philadelphia about two years ago. But yet he was guard- 
 ed against all harm, until by his triumphant re-election the 
 success of the national cause was well-nigh assured. He 
 lived to see the great points gained for which he had been 
 struggling. He had early expressed the determination of 
 retaking all the fortified places that had been wrenched 
 from the nation's hands ; and by the fall of Mobile the 
 day before he died, all east of the Mississippi had become 
 ours. His place in history is assured. He is the costliest 
 sacrifice to the great slaveholders' rebellion of the nine- 
 teenth century. He is the chief victim of this dire con- 
 spiracy against human rights and Divine law. His sacred 
 imao-e shall henceforth be encircled with the aureole that 
 befits a martyr's brow ; for, as much as any man that ever 
 fell, is he a martyr to the principles for which he lived and 
 
SMITH. 371 
 
 died. And his name shall be named among the great ben- 
 efactors of the race. In every earthly sense, death to him 
 is swallowed np in victory. And in a more than earthly 
 sense, we believe that this is also true of him ; for Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was a man of prayer, of simple trust in God, 
 acting upon and repeating, in his later years, according to 
 the light given unto him, those words of our blessed Lord : 
 " Not my will, but thine be done." 
 
 And thus this greatest tragedy of our country's history 
 is made forever memorable by the character of its victim, 
 as well as by its circumstances and instigators. 
 
 Of our late President it may, without extravagant 
 eulogy, be said, that he became endeared to the whole 
 nation, and won their confidence, as has no other man 
 since the days of Washington. Ana this was the work 
 of five short years. When nominated for the Presidency 
 he was neither widely nor intimately known by the mass 
 of the people. Almost from the necessity of the circum- 
 stances in which he has since been placed, he has been 
 vilified, traduced, and misinterpreted without stint. 
 Through obloquy he won his way to fame. And what a 
 fame, to be built up in so short a time ; and how worthily, 
 on the whole, it has been won ! Public confidence in him 
 has been steadily growing ever since he came to the chief 
 chair of state ; his own high character was also ever 
 growing, until he became the man in whom the great 
 body of the people felt an almost unlimited trust. This 
 was owing, not to any stirring elocpience, of which Ameri- 
 cans are so passionately fond, for he was not an eloquent 
 man ; not to his political astuteness, for herein he was 
 surpassed by many of his compeers ; not to his skill in 
 using the arts of a demagogue, for he disowned the ways 
 of intrigue and bargain ; but partly to the fact of his pro- 
 verbial honesty ; in part to the conviction that he was 
 
372 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 truthful in speech and character ; partly to his keen logic, 
 accompanied with a certain flavor of quaintness and 
 homeliness in his popular addresses ; in part to the sim- 
 plicity of his character ; partly to that kindliness, which 
 fascinated those who knew him best ; in part to his broad 
 and genial sympathies with the popular mind and heart ; 
 yet chiefly, perhaps, to his being to so unusual an extent 
 the embodiment and representative of the average and 
 substantial character of the American people, especially 
 as brought out in the great battle we are now waging. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was not a model man, but he was a 
 representative man. Called to what was at that juncture 
 the very highest and most important post in the world's 
 affairs, he so discharged the sacred trust and bore the 
 heavy burden laid upon him, that now all men see that 
 he was a faithful, wise and sagacious ruler, misled by no 
 extremes, blinded by no false lights, wedded to no im- 
 practicable theory, waiting for events long enough to 
 study them, yet speaking and acting decisively when the 
 opportunity came: thus being the man we needed to 
 represent us in the perilous times when he was called to 
 play so high a part. Many were oft asking for sharper 
 words and more abrupt action ; others were ever fearful 
 that rashness would rule the hour and hurry us on to 
 anarchy. But there was a wise man at the helm, and his 
 hand, and his alone, has firmly held it during these four 
 eventful years ; and through all danger the ship of state 
 has made its course, avoiding the shoals and the breakers, 
 until it is now sailing on again, the storm behind it, upon 
 the broad and open sea. It is verily God that hath 
 wrought this ; and he wrought it through the mingled 
 caution and firmness of our late President. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, we say, was a representative man in his 
 epoch — a fair representative of the best average character 
 
q no 
 
 SMITH. o i 6 
 
 of the loyal people of the United States in our great cri- 
 sis. Though he had not the breeding and mien of the 
 courtier, he had the breeding and bearing of a strong and 
 genuine manhood. God does not always choose those 
 persons to execute his purposes, whom short-sighted men 
 might think best fitted for the task. Hard work requires 
 strong muscles. "When great principles are to be main- 
 tained, we need manly sense, unblemished integrity, and 
 practical sagacity, rather than fine-spun theories, courtly 
 grace, or the arts of the skillful demagogue. In a great 
 crisis, the demand is for a man in whom we can have en- 
 tire confidence. He may make mistakes, for he is 
 human ; but he will rectify them, for he is intent on the 
 public welfare. We like a strong man, of whom it can 
 be truly said, that he means well, and is about right. This 
 is better than genius, or eloquence, or external polish ; it 
 is better than either conservatism or radicalism, for it is 
 the mean between the two. Such a man the people 
 found in Abraham Lincoln ; and they gave him their 
 confidence in spite of the mere politicians and wire- 
 pullers. He was emphatically our representative man. 
 He was this in his homely sense, his practical shrewd- 
 ness, his love of a good story and an apt illustration, his 
 logical use of the queerest anecdotes, his constant appeals 
 to a roundabout common-sense ; as also in his kindliness 
 of heart, his sympathy w T ith the details of private griefs, 
 and his magnanimity towards his enemies. He was our 
 representative, too, in his willingness to hear all sides be- 
 fore he made up his mind ; in his apparent hesitation 
 about coming to a final decision when such vast interests 
 were at stake ; in his desire to see the way out before he 
 put his foot in; and in his inflexible earnestness and in- 
 vincible pertinacity when the decision was at length 
 reached. He had the rare sagacity, better than any 
 
DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 theoretic anticipations, of feeling as it were the pulse of 
 the nation ; of knowing how far it was safe to go at any 
 one time ; of pausing when doubtful ; of keeping just far 
 enough in advance of the current as to seem to guide it 
 while really borne upon it, being neither dashed upon 
 the rocks ahead nor left struggling in the eddy behind. 
 And if he had not done so — just about this and neither 
 more nor less — who can tell how different might have 
 been the result in many a trying hour % If we were now 
 asked, who, during the last four years, has, on the whole, 
 best represented, and so guided, this whole nation in its 
 fearful burdens and struggles, we must, after all, I think, 
 name the name of Lincoln. We have had abler politi- 
 cians, more eloquent lawyers, more polished diplomats ; 
 men more learned in literature, history and law ; more 
 magnetic leaders, and more decisive characters ; but we 
 have not had for many a year a wiser, a better, a more 
 patient and faithful ruler, nor one who has so deeply 
 touched the best sympathies and emotions of the general 
 mind and conscience of this nation. He lacked enthusi- 
 asm, but enthusiasm is apt to be partial ; he could not 
 stir the people as with the voice of a trumpet, but many 
 a time his wise and tender and trustful words have swept 
 the chords of their better natures. Even his favorite 
 measures he never sought to press by threats and violence ; 
 and yet most of them were carried in spite of all opposi- 
 tion ; and he never urged those that were merely tentative 
 and involved no final principles, when they were judged 
 inexpedient. He was a thorough republican in the sim- 
 plicity of his character, habits and speech, never elated 
 by his honors, nor affecting greatness. Without pride 
 and without vanity he bore the dignities of his high 
 office. 
 
 He was also a thorough republican, and in this sense 
 
SMITH. 6 I O 
 
 too a representative man, in his inwrought conviction of 
 the safety and power of our republican institutions. lie 
 loved the republic as a republic. His heart and mind were 
 steeped in its fundamental principles. He believed that 
 the people might be trusted with power. Our institutions 
 had made him what he was, and he loved a country which 
 could so mould men, taking them from the lowliest places 
 and setting their feet in the palaces of kings. He had 
 known the full stimulus and blessings of this government, 
 and felt that it was strong and must endure. Next to his 
 trust in God was his trust in this people, under the belief 
 that God was guiding it to a high destiny. In the dark- 
 est hours he still believed that the republic was safe and 
 would come out triumphant in the end. He did not ad- 
 mit the thought that secession could divide us, or rebellion 
 subdue us, or slavery rule us. For all these States he saw 
 only one country, one constitution, and one destiny, and 
 that destiny determined by the principle of freedom. 
 
 He likewise represented the prevailing sentiment of the 
 country in respect to the causes and results of the war, as 
 well as the method of its prosecution in relation to the sub- 
 ject of slavery. He saw in slavery the real cause of the 
 rebellion, and came slowly yet irresistibly to the convic- 
 tion, that slavery must die in order that the nation might 
 live. And ever after, no man in the land was more re- 
 solved, that the end of the war must also be end of slavery 
 in all the revolted States. This moral issue forced itself up- 
 on him with ever-increasing earnestness and distinctness, 
 and found its most definite expression in the ever memora- 
 ble words of his last inaugural address — a document 
 which, for its originality, simplicity, wisdom and moral 
 earnestness, will go down to other and far-distant days. 
 In solemn words our calamities are traced to the Divine 
 judgments, which are confessed to be true and righteous 
 
376 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 altogether. And then his wise and noble heart finds ut- 
 terance : — u With malice towards none, with charity for 
 all, with firmness in the right as God gives ns to see the 
 right, let ns strive on to finish the work we are in, to 
 bind up the nation's wounds, to care for those who shall 
 have borne the battle, and for their widows and orphans. 
 And with all this let us strive after a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
 
 Equally conspicuous, and also expressive of the heart of 
 this people, was his firm trust in Divine Providence, as 
 ever guiding us, though in ways we knew not of. This, 
 we doubt not, was the key-stone of his policy, as it has 
 been the corner-stone of our strength. It was often ex- 
 pressed, and never more touchingly than in a letter he 
 wrote to that well-known philanthropist, Miss Eliza P. 
 Gurney, dated Executive Mansion, Washington, Septem- 
 ber 4, 1864, in the course of which he says : — " I am much 
 indebted to the Christian people of this country for their 
 Christian prayers and consolations, and to no one of them 
 more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are 
 perfect and must prevail, though we erring mortals may 
 fail to perceive them in advance. Surely he intends some 
 great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no 
 mortal could make and no mortal can stay." Such words 
 are doubly dear to us now that he is gone ; they are an in- 
 valuable legacy. God will not forget or leave a nation 
 that has such rulers. 
 
 In coming, now, to speak of the influence and effects of 
 this great crime, we must never forget, that though clouds 
 and darkness may surround it, yet, with all its mystery and 
 all its horrors, it is ordained by Him of whom it is said, 
 that justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. 
 He who girded our late ruler as he did Cyrus of old, has 
 taken him from us, and thus bids us learn the lesson of 
 
6MITH. 377 
 
 submission to his sovereign authority. "We may perchance 
 vainly ask, why was such a precious sacrifice needed ? 
 Why might not the thousands already slaughtered suffice ? 
 Why cannot a good cause succeed except by the blood of 
 patriots and martyrs ? Why must the death of the world's 
 best friends be evermore the price of the world's best bless- 
 ings ? But this is the law of life, the law of history, the 
 method of Christian progress. The higher must live and 
 die for the lower, that the lower may be disenthralled and 
 elevated. So it always has been. In the perennial and 
 awe-inspiring conflict between sin and righteousness, so 
 it must needs be. Redemption is purchased by sacrifice. 
 God spared not his own Son ; God spares not the best of 
 men. This shows us, and is meant to show us, not only 
 the evil of sin, but also the priceless worth of justice and 
 righteousness. And so it is here and now. This country 
 never fully realized all the turpitude and enormity of this 
 rebellion, until our President fell a victim to it. It never 
 knew how costly were the principles and blessings for 
 which we have been contending, until it estimated their 
 worth in this great sacrifice. Now it has learned the 
 lesson, and it will never forget it. 
 
 Sin is sin; perjury is perjury; oppression is oppression ; 
 treason is treason ; assassination is assassination. If there 
 is a crime, there must be a penalty. It is a wrong to the 
 innocent to let the guilty escape. The spurious mercy of 
 the hour may be cruelty to the next generation. It is 
 trifling with our country's future welfare, to blot out the 
 record of all these crimes, and welcome to hospitable 
 boards and public honors the very leaders of the most self- 
 ish, inexcusable and barbarous revolt in history. It is an 
 old maxim, quoted by jurists :— il JVe pereat Israel , pereat 
 Absalom;" "Absolom must perish that Israel may not 
 perish." Mercy may and must be shown to those that 
 
378 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 have been hoodwinked and misled ; but that mercy can 
 be made safe and right, only as justice is meted out to those 
 who have brought all these flagrant woes and unnumber- 
 ed ills upon our peaceful land, and 
 
 "many a soul 
 Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades 
 Untimely sent." 
 
 If these leaders live it must not be in this land ; those 
 that plotted and fought to destroy their country must 
 henceforth be without a country ; and through dishonored 
 lives, with the mark of Cain upon them, go down to un- 
 honored graves. From half a million of graves all over 
 the land, from widows and orphans in every hamlet, from 
 the lips of justice, from the very heart of liberty itself, 
 comes up the cry for justice upon the guilty chieftains of 
 this dire revolt. Their names must be evermore named 
 with those of Catiline and Nero ; and we will teach our 
 children, and they theirs, to carry them down through all 
 coming time as the dread symbols of an unequalled per- 
 fidy and an unpardoned crime against humanity itself. 
 There are some crimes that a nation cannot forgive. Na- 
 tions have no future being ; and national justice must be 
 executed here or it never will be executed. 
 
 If we are to have a permanent peace, not merely the 
 form, but the animating spirit of the rebellion mus be sub- 
 dued. And this can only be done in two ways. That 
 caste in which the revolt was rooted, must as a caste be ex- 
 tirpated ; partly by emancipation thoroughly carried out ; 
 partly by executing justice upon the chief authors and 
 abettors of the crime. The other way is, by pouring all 
 our treasures of education, philanthropy and religion into 
 the States now impoverished and devastated by war, and 
 uniting them to us by new and closer ties. And this last 
 work is to be our greatest work ; and in it will be found 
 
SMITH. 3 < 9 
 
 and realized one of the greatest and most needed triumphs 
 of modern civilization. Especially must we use all means 
 to raise up the class of freed men to the dignity and respon- 
 sibilities of their new position, as men and as citizens. The 
 prejudice of color must yield to the claims of civilization, 
 philanthropy and religion. 
 
 And in all our grief let us not forget the mighty work 
 which God hath wrought upon and in us during these 
 quick-passing and eventful years, in which Abraham Lin- 
 coln sat in the highest seat of the nation. So great a 
 revolution was, perhaps, never accomplished in so short 
 a time, still leaving the old foundation and structure of 
 the state unharmed. Four millions of bondmen have 
 been virtually freed. Freedom has become the settled 
 policy of the whole country. The unity of the republic 
 has been ensured for a long generation. Our supremacy 
 on this continent is no longer doubtful. No European 
 power will here attempt any new projects of subjugation 
 or colonization. ~No foreign nation will willingly molest 
 us. Our resources are boundless ; a new tide of emigra- 
 tion will soon set in; in all industrial pursuits we shall be 
 independent of foreign aid. We have passed, amid these 
 throes, from the careless and boastful youth to the more 
 firm and thoughtful manhood of our career. We are 
 more truly a nation now than we have ever before been ; 
 we are independent of European thought and opinion ; we 
 are self-reliant. We have taken our place, in full panoply, 
 in the very van of the world's progress, representing, as 
 dare no other people, the rights of humanity and the 
 worth of man. Our place in the general history of the 
 world is assured, as is also the place of him who, at such 
 a juncture, during just these years of travail and trans- 
 ition, was the lawful and the honored ruler of the repub- 
 lic. If Lincoln lived for fame, he surely has his reward ; 
 
£>$0 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 as he did not live for fame, but for truth and justice, .his 
 reward shall be greater yet. 
 
 Let us, then, this day thank God that the republic still 
 lives, stronger than ever before ; its foes put under its feet ; 
 its revilers put to shame ; yea, cemented still more strongly 
 by the sacred blood which was shed in passion to destroy 
 its life. The workman is gone; the work abides. A 
 reckless assassin assailed the impersonated majesty of the 
 state, and every drop of blood from those gaping wounds 
 has made this imperial republic stronger yet ; has made 
 its pulse beat with a higher vitality — a life more full of 
 blessings to those that love it — a life throbbing with inten- 
 ser indignation against those who would assail its rights 
 and undermine its power. The republic lives ! Hardly 
 was there a pause except of momentary awe, as it held its 
 bated breath, incredulous of this awful crime, and then it 
 moved right on again with conscious power ; and its feet 
 are more swift, and its eye is more keen, and its mailed 
 hand is more stalwart than ever before against those who 
 plot its downfall, defy its laws, and infringe its rightful 
 honor. The republic lives ! Ah ! not in vain have been 
 these cruel years of long suspense and awful strife, 
 
 " This purple testament of bloody war ;'* 
 
 these precious lives of our best* and noblest sons slain in 
 defence of its imperilled majesty; these costly sacrifices 
 for the down-trodden ; these awe-inspiring lessons of a God 
 of justice. From this baptism of blood it shall emerge a 
 regenerated nation, giving equal justice to all, a refuge as 
 never before to the oppressed from every land. In an am- 
 pler freedom and a purified national life, the coming gener- 
 ation shall pluck the fair and ripe fruits growing from the 
 soil so rudely and deeply turned by the plough-share, and 
 yet ever so hallowed. Liberty shall reign through the land, 
 
SMITH. 3S1 
 
 and then there will be true human brotherhood, and so a 
 lasting peace. And the blessed Gospel, for which these con- 
 vulsions and overturnings do but prepare the way, shall be 
 preached unto all the people, and we will pray the Lord 
 to pour out his Spirit upon all flesh ; and so shall the land 
 be quickened with a higher life and bound together as 
 never before. And the Lord will make use of us to spread 
 his name and his praise, not only over our continent, but 
 to the isles of the sea and the ends of the earth. These 
 earthly conflicts prepare the way for the coming of the 
 Son of Man. And when he cometh there shall be no more 
 war ; for he is the Prince of Peace. And to him be glory 
 for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
ORATION. 
 
 HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 Our grief and horror at the crime which has clothed the 
 continent in mourning, find no adequate expression in 
 words, and no relief in tears. The President of the Uni- 
 ted States of America has fallen by the hands of an assas- 
 sin. Neither the office with which he was invested by 
 the approved choice of a mighty people, nor the most sim- 
 ple-hearted kindliness of nature, could save him from the 
 fiendish passions of relentless fanaticism. The wailings 
 of the millions attend his remains as they are borne in sol- 
 emn procession over our great rivers, along the seaside, 
 beyond the mountains, across the prairie, to their resting 
 place in the valley*of the Mississippi. His funeral knell 
 vibrates through the world, and the friends of freedom of 
 every tongue and in every clime . are his mourners. 
 
 Too few days have passed away since Abraham Lincoln 
 stood in the flush of vigorous manhood, to permit any at- 
 tempt at an analysis of his character or an exposition of 
 his career. We find it hard to believe that his large eyes, 
 which in their softness and beauty expressed nothing but 
 benevolence and gentleness, are closed in death ; we al- 
 most look for the pleasant smile that brought out more 
 
 383 
 
381 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 vividly the earnest cast of his features, which were serious 
 even to sadness. A few years ago he was a village attor- 
 ney, engaged in the support of a rising family, unknown 
 to fame, scarcely named beyond his neighborhood ; his 
 administration made him the most conspicuous man in his 
 country, and drew on him first the astonished gaze, and 
 then the respect and admiration of the world. 
 
 Those who come after us will decide how much of the 
 wonderful results of his public career is due to his own 
 good common sense, his shrewd sagacity, readiness of wit, 
 quick interpretation of the public mind, his rare combi- 
 nation of fixedness and pliancy, his steady tendency of 
 purpose ; how much to the American people, who, as he 
 walked with them side by side, inspired him with their 
 own wisdom and energy ; and how much to the overrul- 
 ing laws of the moral world, by which the selfishness of 
 evil is made to defeat itself. But after every allowance, 
 it will remain that members of the government which pre- 
 ceded his administration opened the gates to treason, and 
 he closed them ; that when he went to Washington the 
 ground on which he trod shook under his feet, and he left 
 the republic on a solid foundation ; that traitors had seized 
 public forts and arsenals, and he recovered them for the 
 United States, to whom they belonged^ that the capital, 
 which he found the abode of slaves, is now the home 
 only of the free ; that the boundless public domain which 
 was grasped at, and, in a great measure, held for the diffu- 
 sion of slavery, is now irrevocably devoted to freedom ; 
 that then men talked a jargon of a balance of power in a 
 republic between slave States and free States, and now the 
 foolish words are blown away forever by the breath of Ma- 
 ryland, Missouri, and Tennessee ; that a terrible cloud of 
 political heresy rose from the abyss, threatening to hide 
 the light of the sun, and under its darkness a rebellion. 
 
BANCROFT. 385 
 
 was growing into indefinable proportions ; now the atmos- 
 phere is purer than ever before, and the insurrection is 
 vanishing away ; the country is cast into another mould, 
 and the gigantic system of wrong, which had been the 
 work of more than two centuries, is dashed down, we hope 
 forever. And as to himself, personally: he was then 
 scoffed at by the proud as unfit for his station, and now 
 against usage of later years and in spite of numerous com- 
 petitors he was the unbiased and the undoubted choice 
 of the American people for a second term of service. 
 Through all the mad business of treason he retained the 
 sweetness of a most placable disposition ; and the slaugh- 
 ter of myriads of the best on the battle-field, and the more 
 terrible destruction of our men in captivity by the slow 
 torture of exposure and starvation, l^ad never been able to 
 provoke him into harboring one vengeful feeling or one 
 purpose of cruelty. 
 
 How shall the nation most completely show its sorrow 
 at Mr. Lincoln's death ? How shall it best honor his 
 memory ? There can be but one answer. He was struck 
 down when he was highest in its service, and in strict con- 
 formity with duty was engaged in carrying out principles 
 affecting its life, its good name, and its relations to the 
 cause of freedom and the progress of mankind. Grief must 
 take the character of action, and breathe itself forth in 
 the assertion of the policy to which he fell a victim. The 
 standard which he held in his hand must be uplifted 
 again higher and more firmly than before, and must be 
 carried on to triumph. Above everything else, his proc- 
 lamation of the first day of January, 1863, declaring 
 throughout the parts of the country in rebellion, the free- 
 dom of all persons who had been held as slaves, must be 
 affirmed and maintained. 
 
 Events, as thev rolled onward, have removed every 
 
 18 
 
386 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 doubt of the legality and binding force of that procla- 
 mation. The country and the rebel government have 
 each laid claim to the public service of the slave, and yet 
 but one of the two can have a rightful claim to such ser- 
 vice. That rightful claim belongs to the United States, 
 because every one born on their soil, with the few excep- 
 tions of the children of travellers and transient residents, 
 owes them a primary allegiance. Every one so born has 
 been counted among those represented in Congress ; every 
 slave has ever been represented in Congress ; imperfectly 
 and wrongly it may be — but still has been counted and 
 represented. The slave born on our soil always owed al- 
 legiance to the general government. It may in time past 
 have been a qualified allegiance, manifested through his 
 master, as the allegiance of a ward through its guardian, 
 or of an infant through its parent. But when the master 
 became false to his allegiance, the slave stood face to face 
 with his country ; and his allegiance, which may before 
 have been a qualified one, became direct and immediate. 
 His chains fell off, and he rose at once in the presence of 
 the nation, bound, like the rest of us, to its defence. Mr. 
 Lincoln's proclamation did but take notice of the already 
 existing right of the bondman to freedom. The treason 
 of the master made it a public crime for the slave to con- 
 tinue his obedience ; the treason of a State set free the 
 collective bondmen of that State. 
 
 This doctrine is supported by the analogy of prece- 
 dents. In the times of feudalism the treason of the lord 
 of the manor deprived him of his serfs ; the spurious feu- 
 dalism that existed among us differs in many respects 
 from the feudalism of the middle ages, but so far the pre- 
 cedent runs parallel with the present case ; for treason 
 the master then, for treason the master now, loses his 
 slaves. 
 
BANCROFT. 3S7 
 
 In the middle ages the sovereign appointed another 
 lord over the serfs and the lands which they Cultivated ; 
 in onr day the sovereign makes them masters of their own 
 . persons, lords over themselves. 
 
 It has been said that w T e are at war, and that emanci- 
 pation is not a belligerent right. The objection disappears 
 before analysis. In a war between independent pow- 
 ers the invading foreigner invites to his standard all who 
 will give him aid, whether bond or free, and he rewards 
 them according to his ability and his pleasure, with gifts 
 or freedom : but when at a peace, he withdraws from the 
 invaded country, he must take his aiders and comforters 
 with him ; or if he leaves them behind, where he has no 
 court to enforce his decrees, he can give them no secu- 
 rity, unless it be by the stipulations of a treaty. In a 
 civil war it is altogether different. There, when rebellion is 
 crushed, the old government is restored, and its courts 
 resume their jurisdiction. So it is with us ; the United 
 States have courts of their own, that must punish the 
 guilt of treason and vindicate the freedom of persons 
 whom the fact of rebellion has set free. 
 
 Nor may it be said, that because slavery existed in 
 most of the States when the Union was formed, it cannot 
 rightfully be interfered with now. A change has taken 
 place, such as Madison foresaw, and for which he pointed 
 out the remedy. The constitutions of States had been 
 transformed before the plotters of treason carried them 
 away into rebellion. When the Federal Constitution was 
 framed, general emancipation was thought to be near ; 
 and everywhere the respective legislatures had authority, 
 in the exercise of their ordinary functions, to do away 
 with slavery. Since that time the attempt has been 
 made in what are called slave States, to render the 
 condition of slavery perpetual ; and events have proved, 
 
388 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN!. 
 
 with the clearness of demonstration, that a constitution 
 which seeks to continue a caste of hereditary bondmen 
 through endless generations is inconsistent with the ex- 
 istence of republican institutions. 
 
 So, then, the new President and the people of the United 
 States must insist that the proclamation of freedom shall 
 stand as a reality. And, moreover, the people must never 
 cease to insist that the Constitution shall be so amended as 
 utterly to prohibit slavery on any part of our soil for ever- 
 more. 
 
 Alas! that a State in our vicinity should withhold its 
 assent to this last beneficent measure: its refusal was an 
 encouragement to our enemies equal to the gain of a 
 pitched battle ; and delays the only hopeful method of 
 pacification. The removal of the cause of the rebellion is 
 not only demanded by justice ; it is the policy of mercy, 
 making room for a wider clemency ; it is the part of order 
 against a chaos of controversy ; its success brings with it 
 true reconcilement, a lasting peace, a continuous growth 
 of confidence through an assimilation of the social con- 
 dition. 
 
 Here is the fitting expression of the mourning of to-day. 
 
 And let no lover of his country say that this warning is 
 uncalled for. The cry is delusive that slavery is dead. 
 Even now it is nerving itself for a fresh struggle for con- 
 tinuance. The last winds from the South waft to us the 
 sad intelligence that a man who had surrounded himself 
 with the glory of the most brilliant and most varied 
 achievements, who but a week ago was counted with affec- 
 tionate pride among the greatest benefactors of his coun- 
 try and the ablest generals of all time, has initiated the 
 exercise of more than the whole powder of the Executive, 
 and under the name of peace has, perhaps unconsciously, 
 revived slavery, and given the hope of security and politic 
 
BANCROFT. 389 
 
 cal power to traitors,. from the Chesapeake to the Hio 
 Grande. Why could he not remember the dying advice 
 of Washington, never to draw the sword but for self-de- 
 fence or the rights of his country, and when drawn, never 
 to sheath it till its work should be accomplished? And, 
 yet, from this ill-considered act, which the people with 
 one united voice condemn, no great evil will follow save 
 the shadow on his own fame, and that, also, we hope will 
 pass away. The individual, even in the greatness of mili- 
 tary glory, sinks into insignificance before the resistless 
 movements of ideas in the history of man. No one can 
 turn back or stay the march of Providence. 
 
 No sentiment of despair may mix with our sorrow. We 
 owe it to the memory of the dead, we owe it to the cause 
 of popular liberty throughout the world, that the sudden 
 crime which has taken the life of the President of the 
 United States shall not produce the least impediment in 
 the smooth course of public affairs. This great city, in 
 the midst of unexampled emblems of deeply-seated grief, 
 has sustained itself with composure and magnanimity. It 
 has nobly done its part in guarding against the derange- 
 ment of business or the slightest shock to public credit. 
 The enemies of the republic put it to the severest trial ; 
 but the voice of faction has not been heard ; doubt and 
 despondency have been unknown. In serene majesty the 
 country rises in the beauty and strength and hope of youth, 
 and proves to the world the quiet energy and the durabil- 
 ity of institutions growing out of the reason and aifec!iuns 
 of the people. 
 
 Heaven has willed it that the United States shall live. 
 The nations of the earth cannot spare them. All the 
 worn-out aristocracies of Europe saw in the spurious feu- 
 dalism of slaveholding, their strongest outpost, and band- 
 ed themselves together with the deadly enemies of our 
 
3£0 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 national life. If the Old "World will discuss the respec- 
 tive advantages of oligarchy or equality; of the union of 
 clmrch and state, or the rightful freedom of religion ; of 
 land accessihle to the many, or of land monopolized by an 
 ever-decreasing number of the few, the United States 
 must live to control the decision by their quiet and unob- 
 trusive example. It has often and truly been observed, 
 that the trust and affection of the masses gather naturally 
 round an individual ; if the inquiry is made, whether the 
 man so trusted and beloved shall elicit from the reason of 
 the people, enduring institutions of their own, or shall se- 
 quester political power for a superintending dynasty, the 
 United States must live to solve the problem. If a ques- 
 tion is raised on the respective merits of Timoleon or Ju- 
 lius Caesar, of Washington or Napoleon, the United States 
 must be there to call to mind that there were twelve 
 Caesars, most of them the opprobrium of the human race, 
 and to contrast with them the line of American Presidents. 
 
 The duty of the hour is incomplete, our mourning is in- 
 sincere, if, while we express unwavering trust in the great 
 principles that underlie our government, we do not also 
 give our support to the man to whom the people have en- 
 trusted its administration. 
 
 Andrew Johnson is now, by the Constitution, the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and he stands before the world 
 as the most conspicuous representative of the industrial 
 classes. Left an orphan at four years old, poverty and; 
 toil were his steps to honor. His youth was not passed in y 
 the halls of colleges ; nevertheless he has received a thor- 
 ough political education in statesmanship, in the school 
 of the people, and by long experience of public life. A 
 village functionary; member successively of each branch 
 of the Tennessee Legislature, hearing with a thrill of joy, 
 the words, "the Union, it must be preserved;" a rcpre- 
 
BANCROFT. 301 
 
 rontative in Congress for successive years ; Governor of 
 the great State of Tennessee, approved as its Governor 
 by re-election; he was at the opening of the rebellion a 
 Senator from that State in Congress. Then at the Capitol, 
 when Senators, im rebuked by the government, sent word 
 by telegram to seize forts and arsenals, he alone from that 
 southern region told them what the Government did not 
 dare to tell them, that they were traitors, and deserved 
 the punishment of treason. Undismayed by a perpetual 
 purpose of public enemies to take his life, bearing up 
 against the still greater trial of the persecution of his wife 
 and children, in due time he went back to his State, de 
 termined to restore it to the Union, or die with the 
 American flag for his winding sheet. And now, at the 
 call of the United States, he has returned to Washington 
 as a conqueror, with Tennessee as a free State for his tro- 
 phy. It remains for him to consummate the vindication 
 of the Union. 
 
 To that Union Abraham Lincoln has fallen a martyr. 
 His death, which was meant to sever it beyond repair, 
 binds it more closely and more firmly than ever. The 
 blow aimed at him, was aimed not at the native of Ken- 
 tucky, not at the citizen of Illinois, but at the man, 
 who, as President, in the executive branch of the govern- 
 ment, stood as the representative of every man in the 
 United States. The object of the crime was the life of 
 the whole people ; and it wounds the affections of the 
 whole people. From Maine to the southwest boundary 
 on the Pacific, it makes us one. The country may have 
 needed an imperishable grief to touch its inmost feeling. 
 The grave that receives the remains of Lincoln, receives 
 the costly sacrifice to the Union ; the monument which 
 will rise over his body will bear witness to the Union ; 
 his enduring memory will assist during countless ages to 
 
C92 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 bind the States together, and to incite to the love of our 
 one undivided, indivisible country. Peace to the ashes of 
 our departed friend, the friend of his country and of his 
 race. He was happy in his life, for he was the restorer of 
 the republic; he was happy in his death, for his martyr- 
 dom will plead forever fur the Union of the States and the 
 freedom of man. 
 
ORATION 
 
 AT THE BURIAL AT SPRINGFIELD 
 
 BISHOP SIMPSOK 
 
 Near the capital of this large and growing State of 
 Illinois,, in the midst of this beautiful grove, and at the 
 open mouth of the vault which has just received the re- 
 mains of our fallen chieftain, we gather to pay a tribute of 
 respect and to drop the tears of sorrow around the ashes 
 of the mighty dead. A little more than four years ago he 
 left his plain and quiet home in yonder city, receiving the 
 parting words of the concourse of friends who, in the midst 
 of the dropping of the gentle shower, gathered around 
 him. He spoke of the pain of parting from the place 
 where he had lived for a quarter of a century, where his 
 children had been born, and his home had been rendered 
 pleasant by friendly associations, and, as he left, he made 
 an earnest request, in the hearing of some who are present 
 at this hour, that, as he was about to enter upon responsi- 
 bilities which he believed to be greater than any which had 
 fallen upon any man since the days of Washington, the 
 people would offer up prayers that God would aid and 
 sustain him in the work which they had given him to do. 
 His company left your quiet city, but, as it went, snares 
 were in waiting for the Chief Magistrate. Scarcely did he 
 
394 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 escape the dangers of the way or the hands of the assas- 
 sin, as he neared Washington ; and I believe he escaped 
 only through the vigilance of officers and the prayers ot 
 his people, so that the blow was suspended for more than 
 four years, which was at last permitted, through the provi- 
 dence of God, to fall. 
 
 How different the occasion which witnessed his de- 
 parture from that which witnessed his return. Doubtless 
 you expected to take him by the hand, and to feel the 
 warm grasp which you had felt in other days, and to see 
 the tall form walking among you which you had delighted 
 to honor. in years past. But he was never permitted to 
 come until he came with lips mute and silent, the frame 
 encoffined, and a weeping nation following as his mourners. 
 Such a scene as his return to you was never witnessed. 
 Among the events of history there have been great pro- 
 cessions of mourners. There was one for the patriarch 
 Jacob, which went up from Egypt, and the Egyptians 
 wondered at the evidences of reverence and filial affection 
 which came from the hearts of the Israelites. There was 
 mourning when Moses fell upon the heights of Pisgah and 
 was hid from human view. There have been mournings 
 in the kingdoms of the earth when kings and princes have 
 fallen, but never was there, in the history of man, such 
 mourning as that which has accompanied this funeral pro- 
 cession, and has gathered around the mortal remains of 
 him who was our loved one, and who now sleeps among us. 
 If we glance at the procession which followed him, we see 
 how the nation stood aghast. Tears filled the eyes of 
 manly, sunburnt faces. Strong men, as they clasped the 
 hands of their friends, were unable to find vent for their 
 
sevipson. 395 
 
 grief in words. Women and little children caught up the 
 tidings as they ran through the land, and were melted into 
 tears. The nation stood still. Men left their plows in the 
 fields and asked what the end should be. The hum of 
 manufactories ceased, and the sound of the hammer was 
 not heard. Busy merchants closed their doors, and in the 
 exchange gold passed no more from hand to hand. Though 
 three weeks have elapsed, the nation has scarcely breathed 
 easily yet. A mournful silence is abroad upon the land ; 
 nor is this mourning confined to any class or to any district 
 of country. Men of all political parties, and of all reli- 
 gious creeds, have united in paying this mournful tribute. 
 The archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in New 
 York and a Protestant minister walked side by side in the 
 sad procession, and a Jewish rabbi performed a part of the 
 solemn services. 
 
 Here are gathered around his tomb the representatives 
 of the army and navy, senators, judges, governors, and 
 officers of all the branches of the Government. Here, too, 
 are members of civic processions, with men and women 
 from the humblest as well as the highest occupations. 
 Here and there, too, are tears, as sincere and warm as any 
 that drop, which come from the eyes of those whose 
 kindred and whose race have been freed from their chains 
 by him whom they mourn as their deliverer. More per- 
 sons have gazed on the face of the departed than ever 
 looked upon the face of any other departed man. More 
 races have looked on the procession for 1,600 miles or 
 more — by night and by day — by sunlight, dawn, twilight, 
 and by torchlight, than ever before watched the progress 
 of a procession. 
 
396 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 "We ask why this wonderful mourning — this great pro- 
 cession ? I answer, first, a part of the interest has arisen 
 from the times in which we live, and in which he that had 
 fallen was a principal actor. It is a principle of our nature 
 that feelings, once excited, turn readily from the object by 
 which they are excited, to some other object which may for 
 the time being take possession of the mind. Another 
 principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather 
 around some human form in which are incarnated the 
 living thoughts and ideas of the passing age. If we look 
 then at the times, we see an age of excitement. For four 
 years the popular heart has been stirred to its inmost 
 depth. War had come upon us, dividing families, separa- 
 ting nearest and dearest friends — a war, the extent and 
 magnitude of which no one could estimate — a war in 
 which the blood of brethren was shed by a brother's hand. 
 A call for soldiers was made by this voice now hushed, and 
 all over the land, from hill and mountain, from plain to 
 valley, there sprang up thousands of bold hearts, ready to 
 go forth and save our national Union. This feeling o± 
 excitement was transferred next into a feeling of deep 
 grief because of the dangers in which our country was 
 placed. Many said, " Is it possible to save our nation ?" 
 Some in our country, and nearly all the leading men in 
 other countries, declared it to be impossible to maintain 
 rthe Union ; and many an honest and patriotic heart was 
 deeply pained with apprehensions of common ruin ; and 
 many, in grief and almost in despair, anxiously inquired, 
 What shall the end of these things be ? In addition to 
 this wives had given their husbands,- mothers their sons, 
 the pride and joy of their hearts. They saw them put on 
 
simpson. 397 
 
 the uniform, they saw them take the martial step, and 
 they tried to hide their deep feeling of sadness. Many clear 
 ones slept upon the battle-field never to return again, and 
 there was -mourning in every mansion and in every cabin 
 in our broad land. Then came a feeling of deeper sadness 
 as the story came of prisoners tortured to death or starved 
 through the mandates of those who are called the re- 
 presentatives of the chivalry, and who claimed to be the 
 honorable ones of the earth ; and as we read the stories ot 
 frames attenuated and reduced to mere skeletons, our 
 grief turned partly into horror and partly into a cry for 
 vengeance. 
 
 Then this feeling was changed to one of joy. There 
 came signs of the end of this rebellion. We followed the 
 career of our glorious generals. We saw our army, under 
 the command of the brave officer who is guiding this pro- 
 cession, climb up the heights of Lookout Mountain and 
 drive the rebels from their strongholds. Another brave 
 general swept through Georgia, South and North Carolina, 
 and drove the combined armies of the rebels before him, 
 while the honored Lieutenant-General held Lee and his 
 hosts in a death-grasp. 
 
 Then the tidings came that Richmond was evacuated, 
 and that Lee had surrendered. The bells rang merrily all 
 over the land. The booming of cannon was heard ; 
 illuminations and torch-light processions manifested the 
 general joy, and families were looking for the speedy 
 return of their loved ones from the field of battle. Just 
 in the midst of this wildest joy, in one hour — nay, in one 
 moment — the tidings thrilled throughout the land that 
 Abraham Lincoln, the best of Presidents, had perished by 
 
398 DEATH OF PKESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 the hands of an assassin ; and then all the feelings which 
 had been gathering for four years, in forms of excitement, 
 grief, horror, and joy, turned into one wail of woe — a sadness 
 inexpressible — an anguish unutterable. But it is not the 
 times merely which caused this mourning. The mode of 
 his death must be taken into the account. Had he died 
 on a bed of illness, with kind friends around him; had 
 the sweat of death been wiped from his brow by gentle 
 hands, while he was yet conscious ; could he have had 
 power to speak words of affection to his stricken widow, 
 or words of counsel to us like those which we heard in his 
 parting inaugural at "Washington, which shall now be im- 
 mortal — how it would have softened or assuaged something 
 of the grief. There might, at least, have been prepara- 
 tion for the event. But no moment of warning was given 
 to him or to us. He was stricken down, too, when his 
 hopes for the end of the rebellion were bright, and pros- 
 pects of a joyous life were before him. There was a cabinet 
 meeting that day, said to have been the most cheerful and 
 happy of any held since the beginning of the rebellion. 
 After this meeting he talked with his friends, and spoke 
 of the four years of tempest, of the storm being over, and 
 of the four years of pleasure and joy now awaiting him, 
 as the weight of care and anxiety would be taken from his 
 mind, and he could have happy days with his family again. 
 In the midst of these anticipations he left his house never 
 to return alive. The evening was Good Friday, the sad- 
 dest day in the whole calendar for the Christian Church — 
 henceforth in this country to be made sadder, if possible, 
 by the memory of our nation's loss ; and so filled with 
 grief was every Christian heart that even all the joyous 
 
simpson. 399 
 
 thought of Easter Sunday failed to remove the crushing 
 sorrow under which the true worshiper bowed in the 
 house of God. 
 
 But the great cause of this mourning is to be found in 
 the man himself. Mr. Lincoln was no ordinary man. I 
 believe the conviction has been growing on the nation's 
 mind, as it certainly has been on my own, especially in 
 the last years of his administration, that, by the hand of 
 God, he was especially singled out to guide our Govern- 
 ment in these troublesome times, and it seems to me that 
 the hand of God may be traced in many of the events 
 connected with his history. First, then, I recognize this 
 in the physical education which he received, and which 
 prepared him for enduring herculean labors. In the toils 
 of his boyhood and the labors of his manhood, God was 
 giving him an iron frame. JSText to this was his identifi- 
 cation with the heart of the great people, understanding 
 their feelings because he was one of them, and connected 
 with them in their movements and life. His education 
 was simple. A few months spent in the schoolhouse gave 
 him the elements of education. Pie read few books, but 
 mastered all he read. Bunyan's Progress, (Esop's Fables, 
 and the Life of Washington were his favorites. In these 
 we recognize the works which gave bias to his character, 
 and which partly molded his style. His early life, with 
 its varied struggles, joined him indissolubly to the working 
 masses, and no elevation in society diminished his respect 
 for the sons of toil. He knew what it was to fell the tall 
 trees of the forest and to stem the current of the broad 
 Mississippi. His home was in the growing "West, the 
 heart of the Republic, and, invigorated by the wind which 
 
400 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 swept over its prairies, he learned lessons of self-reliance 
 which sustained him in seasons of adversity. 
 
 His genius was soon recognized, as true genius always 
 will be, and he was placed in the Legislature of his State. 
 Already acquainted with the principles of law, he devoted 
 his thoughts to matters of public interest, and began to 
 be looked on as the coming statesman. As early as 1839 
 he presented resolutions in the Legislature, asking for 
 emancipation in the District of Columbia, when, with but 
 rare exceptions, the whole popular mind of his State was 
 opposed to the measure. From that hour he was a steady 
 and uniform friend of humanity, and was preparing for 
 the conflict of latter years. 
 
 If you ask me on what mental characteristic his great- 
 ness rested, I answer, on a quick and ready perception of 
 facts ; on a memory unusually tenacious and retentive ; 
 and on a logical turn of mind, which followed sternly and 
 unwaveringly every link in the chain of thought on every 
 subject which he was called to investigate. I think there 
 have been minds more broad in their character, more com- 
 prehensive in their scope, but I doubt if ever there has 
 been a man who could follow step by step, with more 
 logical power, the points which he desired to illustrate. 
 He gained this power by the close study of geometry, and 
 by a determination to perceive the truth in all its relations 
 and simplicity, and, when found, to utter it. 
 
 It is said of him that in childhood, when he had any 
 difficulty in listening to a conversation to ascertain what 
 people meant, if he retired to rest he could not sleep till 
 he tried to understand the precise points intended, and, 
 when understood, to frame language to convey it in a 
 
SIMPSON. 401 
 
 clearer manner to others. "Who that has read his messages 
 fails to perceive the directness and the simplicity of his 
 style ? And this very trait, which was scoffed at and 
 decried by opponents, is now recognized as one of the 
 strong points of that mighty mind which has so powerfully 
 influenced the destiny of this nation, and which shall, for 
 ages to come, influence the destiny of humanity. 
 
 It was not, however, chiefly by his mental faculties that 
 he gained such control over mankind. His moral power 
 gave him pre-eminence. The convictions of men that 
 Abraham Lincoln was an honest man led them to yield to 
 his guidance. As has been said of Cobden, whom he 
 greatly resembled, he made all men feel a sense of himself 
 — a recognition of individuality — a self-relying power. 
 They saw in him a man whom they believed would do 
 what is right, regardless of all consequences. It was this 
 moral feeling which gave him the greatest hold on the 
 people, and made his utterances almost oracular. When 
 the nation was angered by the perfidy of foreign nations 
 in allowing privateers to be fitted out, he uttered the sig- 
 nificant expression, " One war at a time," and it stilled 
 the national heart. When his own friends were divided 
 as to what steps should be taken as to slavery, that simple 
 utterance, "I will save the Union, if I can, with slavery ; 
 if not, slavery must perish, for the Union must be pre- 
 served," became the rallying word. Men felt the strug- 
 gle was for the Union, and all other questions must be 
 subsidiary. 
 
 But, after all, by the acts of a man shall his fame be 
 perpetuated. What are his acts ? Much praise is due to 
 the men who aided him. He called able counselors around 
 
402 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 him — some of whom have displayed the highest order of 
 talent, united with the purest and most devoted patriot- 
 ism. He summoned able generals into the field — men 
 who have borne the sword as bravely as ever any human 
 arm has borne it. He had the aid of prayerful and 
 thoughtful men everywhere. But, under his own guiding 
 hands, wise counsels were combined and great movements 
 conducted. 
 
 Turn towards the different departments. We had an 
 unorganized militia, a mere skeleton army, yet, under his 
 care, that army has been enlarged into a force which, for 
 skill, intelligence, effciency, and bravery, surpasses any 
 which the world had ever seen. Before its veterans the 
 fame of even the renowned veterans of Napoleon shall 
 pale, (applause), and the mothers and sisters on these hill 
 sides, and all over the land, shall take to their arms again 
 braver sons and brothers than ever fought in European 
 wars. The reason is obvious. Money, or a desire for 
 fame, collected those armies, or they were rallied to sus- 
 tain favorite thrones or dynasties ; but the armies he called 
 into being fought for liberty, for the Union, and for the 
 right of self-government ; and many of them felt that the 
 battles they won were for humanity everywhere and for 
 all time ; for I believe that God has not suffered this ter- 
 rible rebellion to come upon our land merely for a chas- 
 tisement to us, or as a lesson to our age. There are mo- 
 ments which involve in themselves eternities. There are 
 instants which seem to contain germs which shall develop 
 and bloom forever. Such a moment came in the tide of 
 time to our land, when a question must be settled which 
 affected all the earth. The contest was for human freedom, 
 
SIMPSON. 403 
 
 not for this republic merely ; not for the Union simply, but 
 to decide whether the people, as a people, in their entire 
 majesty, were destined to be the government, or whether 
 they were to be subject to tyrants or aristocrats, or to class- 
 rule of any kind. This is the great question for which we 
 have been fighting, and its decision is at hand, and the 
 result of the contest will affect the ages to come. If suc- 
 cessful, republics will spread in spite of monarchs, all over 
 this earth. (Exclamations of " Amen." " Thank God.") 
 
 I turn from the army to the navy. What was it w T hen 
 the war commenced ? Now we have our ships-of-war at 
 home and- abroad, to guard privateers in foreign sympa- 
 thizing ports, as well as to care for every part of our own 
 coast. They have taken forts that military men said could 
 not be taken, and a brave admiral, for the first time in the 
 world's history, lashed himself to the mast, there to remain 
 as long as he had a particle of skill or strength to watch 
 over his ship, while it engaged in the perilous contest of 
 taking the strong forts of the rebels. 
 
 Then, again, I turn to the treasury department. Where 
 should the money come from ? Wise men predicted ruin, 
 but our national credit has been maintained, and our cur- 
 rency is safer to-day than it ever was before. Not only 
 so, but through our national bonds, if properly used, we 
 shall have a permanent basis for our currency, and an in- 
 vestment so desirable for capitalists of other nations that, 
 under the laws of trade, I believe the centre of exchange 
 will speedily be transferred from England to the United 
 States. 
 
 But the great act of the mighty chieftain, on which his 
 fame shall rest long after his frame shall molder away, is 
 
404 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 that of giving freedom to a race. We have all been 
 taught to revere the sacred characters. Among them 
 Moses stands pre-eminently high. He received the law 
 from God, and his name is honored among the hosts of 
 heaven. Was not his greatest act the delivering of three 
 millions of his kindred out of bondage ? Yet we may 
 assert that Abraham Lincoln, by his proclamation, libe- 
 rated more enslaved people than ever Moses set free, and 
 those not of his kindred or his race. Such a power, or 
 such an opportunity, God has seldom given to man. 
 When other events shall have been forgotten ; when this 
 world shall have become a network of republics ; when 
 every throne shall be swept from the face of the earth ; 
 when literature shall enlighten all minds ; when the claims 
 of humanity shall be recognized everywhere, this act shall 
 still be conspicuous on the pages of history. We are 
 thankful that God gave to Abraham Lincoln the decision 
 and wisdom and grace to issue that proclamation, which 
 stands high above all other papers which have been 
 penned by uninspired men. [Applause.] 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a good man. He was known as 
 an honest, temperate, forgiving man ; a just man ; a man of 
 noble heart in every way. As to his religious experience, I 
 cannot speak definitely, because I was not privileged to 
 know much of his private sentiments. My acquaintance 
 with him did not give me the opportunity to hear him speak 
 on those topics. This I know, however, he read the Bible 
 frequently ; loved it for its great truths and its profound 
 teachings ; and he tried to be guided by its precepts. He 
 believed in Christ the Saviour of sinners ; and I think he 
 was sincere in trying to bring his life into harmony with 
 
SIMPSON. 405 
 
 the principles of revealed religion. Certainly if there 
 ever was a man who illustrated some of the principles of 
 pure religion, that man was our departed President. Look 
 over all his speeches, listen to his utterances. He never 
 spoke unkindly of any man. Even the rebels received no 
 word of anger from him, and his last day illustrated in a 
 remarkable manner his forgiving disposition. A dispatch 
 was received that afternoon that Thompson and Tucker 
 were trying to make their escape through Maine, and it 
 was proposed to arrest them. Mr. Lincoln, however, pre- 
 ferred rather to let them quietly escape. He was seeking 
 to save the very men who had been plotting his destruc- 
 tion. This morning we read a proclamation "offering 
 $25,000 for the arrest of these men as aiders and abettors 
 of his assassination ; so that, in his expiring acts, he was 
 saying, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they 
 do." 
 
 As a ruler, I doubt if any President has ever shown 
 such trust in God, or in public documents so frequently 
 referred to Divine aid. Often did he remark to friends 
 and to delegations that his hope for our success rested in 
 his conviction that God would bless our efforts, because 
 we were trying to do right. To the address of a large 
 religious body he replied, " Thanks be unto God, who, in 
 our national trials, giveth us the churches." To a min- 
 ister who said he hoped the Lord was on our side, he re- 
 plied that it gave him no concern whether the Lord was 
 on our side or not, for, he added, " I know the Lord is 
 always on the side of right," and with deep feeling added, 
 " But God is my witness that it is my constant anxiety 
 and prayer that both myself and this nation should be on 
 the Lord's side." 
 
406 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 In his domestic life he was exceedingly kind and affec- 
 tionate. He was a devoted husband and father. During 
 his presidential term he lost his second son, Willie. To 
 an officer of the army he said, not long since, " Do you 
 ever find yourself talking with the dead ? " and added, 
 " Since Willie's death I catch myself every day involun- 
 tarily talking with him, as if he were with me." On his 
 widow, who is unable to be here, I need only invoke the 
 blessing of Almighty God that she may be comforted and 
 sustained. For his son, who has witnessed the exercises 
 of this hour, all that I can desire is that the mantle of his 
 father may fall upon him. [Exclamations of " Amen."' 
 
 Let us pause a moment in the lesson of the hour before 
 we part. This man, though he fell by an assassin, still 
 fell under the permissive hand of God. He had some 
 wise purpose in allowing him so to fall. What more 
 could he have desired of life for himself? Were not his 
 honors full ? There was no office to which he could 
 aspire. The popular heart clung around him as around 
 no other man. The nations of the world had learned to 
 honor our chief magistrate. If rumors of a desired alliance 
 with England be true, Napoleon trembled when he heard 
 of the fall of Richmond, and asked w T hat nation would 
 join him to protect him against our Government under the 
 guidance of such a man. His fame was full, his work was 
 done, and he sealed his glory by becoming the nation's 
 great martyr for liberty. 
 
 He appears to have had a strange presentiment, early in 
 political life, that some day he would be President. You 
 see it indicated in 1839. Of the slave power he said, 
 " Broken by it I too may be ; bow r to it I never will. The 
 
SIMPSON. 407 
 
 probability that we may fail in the strngg e ought not to 
 deter us from the support of a cause which we deem to be 
 just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within 
 me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly 
 unworthy of its Almighty architect, it is when I contem- 
 plate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world 
 besides, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling 
 defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here without con- 
 templating consequences, before high Heaven and in the 
 face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, 
 as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my 
 love." And yet, secretly, he said to more than one, " I 
 never shall live out the four years of my term. When the 
 rebellion is crushed my work is done." So it was. He 
 lived to see the last battle fought, and dictate a despatch 
 from the home of JeiFerson Davis ; lived till the power of 
 the rebellion was broken ; and then, having done the work 
 for which God had sent him, angels, I trust, were sent to 
 shield him from one moment of pain or suffering, and to 
 bear him from this world to the high and glorious realm 
 where the patriot and the good shall live forever. 
 
 His career teaches young men that every position of 
 eminence is open before the diligent and the worthy. To 
 the active men of the country, his example is. an incentive 
 to trust in God and do right. 
 
 Standing, as we do to-day, by his coffin and his sepul- 
 chre, let us resolve to carry forward the policy which he 
 so nobly began. Let us do right to all men. To the 
 ambitious there is this fearful lesson : Of the four candi- 
 dates for Presidential honors in 1SG0, two of them — 
 Douglas and Lincoln — once competitors, but now sleeping 
 
408 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 patriots, rest from their labors ; Bell perished in poverty 
 and misery, as a traitor might perish ; and Breckinridge is 
 a frightened fugitive, with the brand of traitor on his brow. 
 Let us vow, in the sight of Heaven, to eradicate every 
 vestige of human slavery ; to give every human being his 
 true position before God and man ; to crush every form 
 of rebellion, and to stand by the flag which God has given 
 us. How joyful that it floated over parts of every State 
 before Mr. Lincoln's career was ended. How singular 
 that, to the fact of the assassin's heels being caught in the 
 folds of the flag, we are probably indebted for his capture. 
 The flag and the traitor must ever be enemies. 
 
 Traitors will probably suffer by the change of rulers, 
 for one of sterner mould, and who himself has deeply suf- 
 fered from the rebellion, now wields the sword of justice. 
 Our country, too, is stronger for the trial. A republic 
 was declared by monarchists too weak to endure a civil 
 war ; yet we have crushed the most gigantic rebellion in 
 history, and have grown in strength and population every 
 year of the struggle. We have passed through the ordeal 
 of a popular election while swords and bayonets were in 
 the field, and have come out unharmed. And now, in an 
 hour of excitement, with a large majority having preferred 
 another man for President, when the bullet of the assassin 
 has laid our President prostrate, has there been a mutiny ? 
 Has auy rival proffered his claims ? Out of an army of 
 near a million, no officer or soldier uttered one note of 
 dissent, and, in an hour or two after Mr. Lincoln's death, 
 another leader under constitutional forms, occupied his 
 chair, and the government moved forward without one 
 
SIMPSON. 409 
 
 single jar. The world will learn that republics are the 
 strongest governments on earth. 
 
 And now, my friends, in the words of the departed, 
 " with malice towards none," free from all feelings of 
 personal vengeance, yet believing that the sword must not 
 be borne in vain, let us go forward even in painful duty. 
 Let every man who was a senator or representative in 
 Congress, and who aided in beginning this rebellion, and 
 thus led to the slaughter of our sons and daughters, be 
 brought to speedy and to certain punishment. Let every 
 officer educated at the public expense, and who, having 
 been advanced to position, perjured himself and turned 
 his sword against the vitals of his country, be doomed to 
 a traitor's death. This, I believe, is the will of the 
 American people. Men may attempt to compromise, and 
 to restore these traitors and murderers to society again. 
 Vainly may they talk of the fancied honor or chivalry of 
 these murderers of our sons — these starvers of our prison- 
 ers — these officers who mined their prisons and placed 
 kegs of powder to destroy our captive officers. But the 
 American people will rise in their majesty and sweep all 
 such compromises and compromisers away, and will 
 declare that there shall be no safety for rebel leaders. 
 But to the deluded masses we will extend the arms of 
 forgiveness. We will take them to our hearts, and walk 
 with them side by side, as we go forward to work out a 
 glorious destiny. 
 
 The time will come when, in the beautiful words of him 
 whose lips are now forever sealed, " the mystic chords of 
 memory, which stretch from every battle-field, and from 
 
410 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 every patriot's grave, shall yield a sweeter music when 
 touched by the angels of our better nature." 
 
 Chieftain ! farewell ! The nation mourns thee. Mothers 
 shall teach thy name to their lisping children. The youth 
 of our land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen shall 
 study thy record and learn lessons of wisdom. Mute 
 though thy lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is thy 
 voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the 
 world, and the sons of bondage listen with joy. Prisoned 
 thou art in death, and yet thou art marching abroad, and 
 chains and manacles are bursting at thy touch. Thou 
 didst fall not for thyself. The assassin had no hate for 
 thee. Our hearts were aimed at, our national life was 
 sought. We crown thee as our martyr — and humanity 
 enthrones thee as her triumphant son. Hero, Martyr, 
 Friend, Farewell ! 
 
PRAYER, 
 
 BY REV. S. H. TYNG, D. D., UNION SQUARE, APRIL 25, ON 
 
 THE OCCASION OF THE FUNERAL OBSEQUIES 
 
 OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 The Citizens' Committee, with their guests, assembled 
 at the close of the municipal procession, in the presence 
 of a large concourse of people, and Mr. Blodgett, Chair- 
 man of the Committee of Arrangements, announced Hon. 
 John A. King as the President of the meeting. Gover- 
 nor King then introduced Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D. D., 
 who offered the following 
 
 PRAYER. 
 
 I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord ; he 
 that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
 die. I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall 
 stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though, after 
 my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I 
 see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
 behold and not another. We brought nothing into this 
 world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The 
 Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the 
 name of the Lord. O God, who art the God of the spirits 
 
4i;2 DEATH OF PKESLDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 of all flesh, in whose hand our breath is and whose are all 
 our ways, in thine infinite wisdom Thou hast seen well to 
 take away the desire of our eyes with a stroke, the anointed 
 of the Lord and the faithful choice of a loving people, 
 under whose shadow we hoped and desired to dwell before 
 Thee. We bow before thy righteous will with deep hu- 
 miliation, submission, confidence, and faith. We revere 
 and acknowledge Thee as the high and lofty One who 
 inhabitest eternity, whose name is Holy, with whom is 
 no variableness, neither shadow of turning. We look 
 up to Thee as a Father of infinite tenderness, reconciling 
 us unto Thyself in Thy dear Son ; and as a father pitieth 
 his own children, so to have compassion on all them that 
 fear Thee. We confess Thee as the Saviour and defence 
 of Thy people, Who hast put away their sins by an infi- 
 nite sacrifice, and as far as the east is from the west, 
 and rememberest our iniquity no more. We acknowl- 
 edge Thee this day the God of all comfort and consola- 
 tion, Whose gracious command in Thy word is, " Com- 
 fort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God ; cry unto 
 them that their warfare is accomplished and their iniquity 
 is pardoned." O God, we would bow with deep humility 
 before the righteousness of Thy will, and with unfeigned 
 gratitude acknowledge the fullness of Thy grace. A 
 mourning and bereaved people gather together at Thy 
 feet ; we would come with the deepest feeling of thank- 
 fulness for that which Thou hast given and that which 
 Thou hast taken away. We bless Thee for all the influ- 
 ence, example, wisdom, and fidelity of the loved and ex- 
 alted ruler whom Thou didst set over us, and whom Thou 
 hast now taken to Thyself. We praise Thee that Thou 
 
i'fiAYER BY KEV. S. H. TYNG, D. D. 413 
 
 hast made liim the instrument of saving this nation from 
 overthrow and ruin — that Thou hast made him Thine 
 agent in subduing a rebellion terrific and atrocious, whose 
 condemnation is recorded by Thee. "We bless Thee that 
 Thou hast spoken peace by him to the oppressed and suf- 
 fering, proclaiming liberty to those held in bondage, and 
 bidding millions of the helpless and despairing lift up their 
 heads with joy among Thy people. We thank Thee for 
 the remembrance of all his fidelity in government, ruling 
 in equity as the morning which ariseth without a cloud, 
 and for all that meekness and gentleness, and faithfulness 
 and love, so attractive and so conspicuous in his example. 
 And while with the deepest sense of our loss we bow, as 
 bereaved and mourning ones, at Thy feet, with the most 
 humble thankfulness for all that the nation has gained 
 through his instrumentality and faithfulness, we adore 
 and glorify Thy name. We meet throughout this land 
 to-day in the spirit of accordant supplication and praise. 
 We implore Thy blessing upon this whole nation, that 
 this chastisement, painful and mysterious as it appears, 
 may be Thine instrument for uniting this people in bonds 
 of fellowship and love, and bringing the hearts of all in full 
 accord in the support of the government which Thou hast 
 set over us, and in seeking the things which make for peace 
 and the things whereby one may edify another. We pray 
 that in the midst of Thy judgments this whole nation may 
 learn righteousness. We implore Th}^ gracious blessing 
 upon the sorrowing and the suffering, upon the wounded 
 and the bereaved, who have given their joy on earth, their 
 health in early life, as a service and sacrifice for their 
 fidelity to us and their obedience to Thee. We unite in 
 
414 DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 supplication for Thy blessing upon the widow and the 
 fatherless, who stood in the tenderest relations to our hon- 
 ored and exalted ruler, and while from them, as from us, 
 Thou hast hidden lover and friend in darkness, we implore 
 Thee to be the everlasting Ruler of this people, and make 
 them to remember and feel that the Most High ordereth 
 all things among the nations of the earth, putting down 
 one and setting up another. We implore Thy blessing 
 upon him whom, in Thine own providence, Thou hast ex- 
 alted to be the present ruler of this nation. Guard his 
 valued life from outward violence and from fear of wrong ; 
 guide him by Thine own wisdom and judgment, and suc- 
 cor and defend him by Thine own protecting power. Give 
 him wise and faithful counsellors who shall combine to 
 rule this people in equity and truth ; prosper all their 
 efforts for a speedy, stable, and righteous peace through- 
 out this nation. O God ! in the sorrow of this day, hasten 
 the coming hour when this people shall desire to learn 
 war no more ; when they shall speak peace to all the 
 nations of the earth, and North and South, East and 
 West, dwelling in concord and harmony, we shall be one 
 people, known by one name and feeling, and that we have 
 one interest forever. Set up Thy glorious Gospel through 
 all this land ; make it Emmanuel's land ; and as Thou 
 wast our fathers' God, be Thou our God and the God of 
 our seed afterwards, from generation to generation, through 
 successive Presidents of fidelity, usefulness and honor ; 
 that this people may be a prospered people, a thankful 
 people, a useful people, a holy people, under Thy govern- 
 ment and by Thy blessing. And this day we ask that 
 for all the nations of the earth a dominion of righteous- 
 
PRAYER BY REV. S. H. TYNG, D. D. 415 
 
 ness and peace — Thine everlasting dominion — may be set 
 up, and the kingdoms of the world may become the king- 
 dom of our Lord and of His Christ. Meet us; sanctify 
 us, and bless us as we are here together ; and in the spirit 
 of filial gratitude and humility teach us to unite in using 
 those precious words of our Divine Redeemer : Our Fa- 
 ther, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name ; Thy 
 kingdom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in 
 heaven ; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us 
 our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against 
 us ; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
 evil ; for Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the 
 glory, for ever and ever. — Amen. 
 
PRAYER. 
 
 Eev. E. P. Kogers, D. D., offered the following Prayer: 
 Almighty and everlasting God, Thou art our God, and 
 we will praise Thee. Thou wert our fathers' God, and 
 we will magnify Thy holy name. Thou art the high and 
 lofty One that inhabiteth eternity. Thou doest all things 
 according to Thy will, among the armies of heaven and 
 among the inhabitants of earth. None can stay Thy hand 
 or say, "What doest Thou ?" Thy way is in the sea and 
 Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not 
 known. Clouds and darkness are around and beneath, 
 but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of Thy 
 throne. Thou hast, in Thy inscrutable providence, called 
 us together in sadness and sorrow, and stricken a mourn- 
 ing people. We bow beneath the stroke of Thy hand, 
 and we lift up our hearts to Thee out of the depths of the 
 calamity. Thou hast removed by a sudden, violent and 
 unexpected blow our honored President. Thou hast bro- 
 ken our strong staff and our beautiful rod, and from one 
 end of this land to the other the sound of wailing and of 
 woe is borne on every breeze. The nation follows the 
 body of its lamented chief with mourning hearts and 
 streaming eyes to its last earthly resting-place. We hum- 
 ble ourselves, O God, beneath the stroke of Thy hand, 
 and we find comfort and hope in the thought that it is 
 not an enemy that has dealt us the blow, but a just 
 
418 PRAYER BY REV. E. P. ROGERS, D. D. 
 
 God, in His infinite wisdom, and who doeth all things 
 well ; and so we would say in the midst of our sorrows 
 over the bier of our lamented and murdered President, 
 " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed 
 be the name of the Lord." But O, our God, while we 
 mourn, we thank Thee for the circumstances of mercy 
 which are mingled with this stroke. We bless Thee in 
 the midst of our sorrow that Thou didst give us Thy servant 
 to be the leader and commander of Thy people in times 
 of peril. And we bless Thee that Thou hast girded him 
 with wisdom and might in counsel and in the field. We 
 bless Thee that Thou didst guide him in all his difficult and 
 delicate way, and didst permit him to .live so long and do 
 so much for the benefit and welfare of this land. And 
 we bless Thee that since it was Thy will to take him away, 
 Thou didst remove him in the midst of his years and 
 honors, with no shadow upon his fame, but to be cherished 
 in the memory of a grateful people to the latest genera- 
 tions. We bless Thee that Thou didst permit our lamented 
 chief to see this atrocious and causeless rebellion crushed. 
 We bless Thee that Thou didst permit him to see the 
 loved banners of our country waving again in triumph 
 over all its States and Territories. We bless Thee that 
 Thou didst permit him to bring freedom to the captive 
 and liberty to the bondsmen, and to go to his honored grave, 
 to be kept ever green by the tears of a grateful people, 
 having done his work and done it well, to the glory of 
 God, and for the best welfare of his native land. And 
 while we sorrow, we sorrow not as others who have no 
 hope. We bless God for his memory, enshrined in our 
 deepest hearts. Oh ! let it be sacred to the remotest 
 
DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 419 
 
 times in the great heart of the American people. Let it 
 be an inspiration to all that is pure, all that is honest, all 
 that is faithful, all that is patriotic ; to all that is patient, 
 gentle, loving and kind ; to all that is firm, to all that is 
 Christian ; and let peace, with freedom, with justice, with 
 righteousness and with Christianity, raise an everlasting 
 monument above the spot where sleeps his honored dust. 
 Onr Father, we commend to Thee the country for which 
 he loved and wept, and toiled and prayed and died. We 
 bless Thee that Thou hast given to that wearied brain 
 rest — rest to that anxious heart — rest to that troubled 
 spirit — a blessed rest. But we bless Thee that though the 
 President died, the Republic lives, God lives, our just God, 
 and we bless Thee that when our Moses led the people 
 through the wilderness to the borders of Canaan, and saw 
 as from Mount Pisgah the glorious land of Promise, and 
 laid him down *to die — that Thou hadst another Joshua to 
 take his work upon him and to clear this beautiful land 
 of the last remnant of the rebellious tribes. O God, 
 assist our new President in his work ; let him administer 
 justice and maintain truth ; and with purity, with hon- 
 esty, with piety and patriotism, like his honored prede- 
 cessor, let him accomplish the great and delicate work 
 that yet remains to be done, and be a benefit to the land. 
 Remember the widow and the fatherless, O Thou who art 
 the widow's God and Father of the fatherless. Have 
 them in Thy holy keeping, and wipe their tears away ; x 
 and let them be cherished by the sympathies and prayers 
 of a grateful people. We ask Thy tender mercy in be- 
 half of Thy servant, the Secretary of State. O Lord, 
 heal his wounds, make his broken bones rejoice, raise him 
 
 / 
 
420 PRAYER BY REV. E. P. ROGERS, D. D. 
 
 up from the bed of weakness whereon lie lies, and let his 
 counsel yet be given to his country, and his life be spared 
 to her services ; and, O Lord, let Thy blessing be on the 
 land in all its beauty and glory. Let our fathers' God be 
 our God, and never in all its after history let the least ves- 
 tige of treason or of slavery do anything to dishonor God 
 or man, or rest as a dark curse upon us. But let the 
 whole country be the home of freedom, of intelligence, of 
 true and pure Christianity — a beacon light among the 
 nations of the earth and a great benediction to the people. 
 Hear this our prayer. Let Thy blessing be upon us all, 
 forgive our sins, and graciously hear, in the name of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Holy Ghost shall be 
 honor and glory, world without end. — Amen. 
 
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