Qass £-'^ - 
 
 Book. 
 
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 THE MARTYR-PRESIDENT. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 I'REArHEI) IN 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, LEAVENWORTH, 
 
 ON THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTP]R EASTER. 
 
 AND AGAIN BY REQUEST 
 
 ON THE NATIONAL FAST DAY 
 
 JUNK 1st, IH60. 
 
 BY THE REV. JOHN H. EGAR, B, D., 
 
 RECTOR. 
 
 LEAVENWORTH: 
 
 VR[NTED AT THE UULLETIN JOB l'RINTIN<4 ESTABLISHMENT 
 
THE MARTYR-PRESIDENT. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, LEAVENWORTH, 
 
 ON THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 
 
 AND AGAIN BY REQUEST 
 
 ON THE NATIONAL FAST DAY, 
 
 TUNE 1st, 18Q3. 
 
 BY THE REV. JOHN H. EGAR. B. D., 
 
 RECTOR. 
 
 LEAVENWORTH : 
 
 PRINTED AT THE BULLETIN JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 
 

Leavenworth City, Kansas, June 1, 1865. 
 
 Ri'V. John 11. Egar, Rector of the Church of ,SV. Foul, Leaven- 
 ivorfh, Kansas: 
 
 Sir: In common with many other of your parishioners, we 
 desire to see the influence of the sermon preached by you this 
 morning on the assassination of the late President extended to a 
 wider circle than had the opportunity of hearing its delivery, be- 
 lieving that much good may be effected thereby ; we would, there- 
 fore, most respectfully request a copy for publication in pamphlet 
 form. Very respectfully, yours, 
 
 E. N. 0. CLOUGH, 
 M. P. RIVELY, 
 CIEO. W. NELLES. 
 JOHN KERR. 
 J. C. HEMINGRAY. 
 
 Leavenworth, June 2, 1865. 
 Col. E. N. 0. doughy and others : 
 
 Gentlemen : Though my own judgment considers the ser- 
 mon delivered by me yesterday to be not quite up to the standard 
 which I think justifies printing, yet the suggestion of those who 
 heard it, that good may be done by its circulation, leaves me no 
 alternative but to place the manuscript at their disposal. 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 JOHN H. EGAR. 
 
S l] E M O N 
 
 "He being dead, yet speaketh." — Heb. xi, 4. • 
 
 These words, as you remember, were spoken by St. Paul of 
 Abel, the second son ol* our first fotlier, Adam, whose short me- 
 morial in the Old Testament, seems to have been recorded as the 
 type offthe history of this wicked world ; where what is good and 
 noble, and pure, and true, seems to be foreign and alien, and to 
 provoke the most malignant efforts of diabolical hatred. If we are 
 ever tempted to forget that this world is not the home of goodness 
 and truth, ever recurring experience brings it back to us ; the in- 
 tenser malice of our powerful and eternal enemy is aroused at the 
 nearer prospect of their triumph ; and the history of Abel recurs in 
 every page of the larger history of universal humanity. The second 
 son of our first father, Adam — the second person born into this 
 world — the first person who died under the curse pronounced upon 
 all mankind ; the first victim of that terrible root of sin and crime 
 planted in the world by the transgression of his parents, which 
 bore fruit instantly in full and dire perfection of evil, was the inno- 
 cent sufferer under the greatest, most dreadful crime of all that 
 humanity is capable of — murder — assassination. The parallel in 
 the fact re-produced in this last act of our national history, justifies 
 the appropriation of the test to him whom the nation at this time 
 mourns with a deep and swelling sorrow, its murdered President. 
 " He being dead, yet speaketh." He speaks from a bloody grave, 
 a martyr to the national integrity now all but re-established, by 
 his fearful and inauspicious death, by his simple, blameless, single- 
 hearted, earnest life ; by his fulfillment of the high responsibilities 
 of the chief station in the Government — speaks more emphatically, 
 by the connection between this crime, and the crime against the 
 nation; by the causality which the Divine will, without whose 
 Providence no life is begun or ended, permitted to be the means of 
 calling him away from the world. He died at the moment most 
 fortunate for his fame ; when the plans which he had matured were 
 meetin"- their full success, when the instruments he had chosen had 
 
(» 
 
 justified his insiglit by their efficiency, when the vision of a re- 
 united nation had risen fully above the horizon, and the dark night 
 of national danger was merging into day ; and his martyr's death 
 v/ill stamp all that is good in his history indelibly on the hearts of 
 i':e people, and bind his memory by all that is good and holy and 
 virtuous and patriotic — by the shame for the deed, and the sorrow 
 at its success — by all that reverences authority, and all that respects 
 character, and all that rises indignantly against crime — to the soul 
 of the Republic, to live as long as history is read, and martyrdom 
 consecrates the principles for which it is endured. 
 
 It is our duty, brethren, both in respect to the memory of our 
 late Chief Magistrate, and also to fulfill all we can of our office, not 
 only as teachers of religion but of virtue, to gather together accord- 
 ing to our poor ability, the lessons which the present calamity — for 
 a national calamity it is of the deepest character — presents to our 
 minds. To this, then, let us address ourselves, praying for the 
 Divine blessing to enable us to consider the subject with the words 
 of Christian truth and soberness. 
 
 I. The crime of murder, considered without respect to station 
 or any other extraneous circumstance — considered as against any 
 one who bears our common nature — is one which is, and which 
 needs to be met with the utmost abhorence. The murderer of whom- 
 soever, high or low, is an object of Divine wrath, and the curse of 
 Uod, and of the detestation and horror of all thinking people. But 
 brethren, this crime — and it may have been permitted to teach us 
 the sacredness of human life — sinks into the nation's heart deeper 
 than can any private crime ; not because it is physically less easy to 
 kill a President than a private citizen, not because it needs a heavier 
 bullet to do its fearful work ; but because, inthis conspicuous exam- 
 ple, the moral foundation of our institutions is attacked, and the very 
 law itself of our national and social being is assaulted in this dread- 
 ful crime. It is in vain to seek to disconnect it from the chain of 
 causes which has brought upon the country all the devastation and 
 bloodshed of the past years. We may, and for the honor of our 
 common nature, we will hope that it is no part of the organized 
 effort to disrupt the country — that it is the private act of a few des- 
 perate conspirators, too cowardly to stand in tlie ranks of open war- 
 fare; but it is none the less true, that it is a calamity and a crime 
 growing out of the cause of all the other calamities which have 
 afflicted the nation in every nev. ■ (if its manifold life; and, there- 
 
fore, that the ultimate responsibility for it, as for all the other 
 effects of this state of things, foreseen and unforeseen, must by dire 
 necessity rest upon and be borne as best it may, by those whom the 
 public opinion of the world will judge as the authors of all this mis- 
 chief. It was as the executive of national law — the repository of 
 constitutional power, exerted by mighty armies to preserve the 
 unity of the nation, that the late President was the object of the 
 individual hate of the worthless drunkard who took hia life — aside 
 from that no human being would have borne him malice — it was 
 his responsibility in his office to uphold the trust which it was his 
 above all others to uphold, which made him the assassin's mark. 
 It was an effort against the very life of the nation ; and it is this 
 which arouses the terror and the sorrow that moves the nation to 
 the depths of its nature. For if the minister of the law, be he high 
 or low, be not safe in his person in carrying out those measures 
 which are necessary for government — whether it be by marshalled 
 armies or by individual police, makes no difference — where then is 
 the guarantee of social order ? where is the bulwark against wild 
 anarchy and universal destruction? And this, brethren, it is, which is 
 the underlying principle of this mighty struggle. The possibility of 
 free government under the universal supremacy of law, whether our 
 institutions were sufficiently strong to uphold the fundamental con- 
 dition of our lives, our liberties and our manifold interests, though 
 the universal obedience. to those conditions of all the parts and sec- 
 tions of the country, P]ast, West, North and South alike — it was 
 against this, when armies had failed, that the assassin's hand was 
 raised — raised, just at the moment when the solution of the question 
 seemed to be attained — raised fearfully, with self avenging success^ 
 to spread its effects beyond the immediate criminals to the antece- 
 dent causes — to make the terms of reconciliation harder, and to 
 repress the budding magnanimity of successful vindication by the 
 stern resolve to exact the extreme penalty. 
 
 I do not say that this revulsion of feeling is desirable, and I do 
 not say that it is not desirable. There is at this time and in this 
 place a higher and a nobler use to be made of the terrible crime and 
 awful calamity, than to make it the text of denunciation of that 
 misguided people who are now suffering so fully the penalties of 
 their great mistake. It is to take account of the virtues in the 
 character of him whom we mourn. In the presence of so recent 
 and so sudden and so terrible a death, the personal peculiarities 
 
8 
 
 the minor mistakes, if any there were, the incidental trivialities, the 
 partial misunderstandings, the party animosities are forgotten, and 
 we seek for and dwell upon those great, broad, noble characteristics of 
 our better nature, which are the deep substratum of humanity, and 
 we seek to sum up the life-work of him who is taken away. And 
 surely we cannot but recognize in one who, born in the floorless 
 cabin of a Western wilderness, by his own industry, clear sighted- 
 ness, honesty of purpose, and sympathy with the heart of the nation , 
 won for himself the call to the seat of the great founder of the Re- 
 public, and who, under circumstances of equal responsibility and 
 complexity with the birth-throes of the Revolution, so carried on 
 the great work committed to him as not to be laid aside when the 
 term of his first election ceased, those great qualities which made 
 hie pre-eminence of station not a mere fortuitous conjunction of 
 accidents, but the testimony for all time, to a fitness for the work, 
 to principles which were necessary and just and true, to an adapta- 
 tion to the place and the occasion, sufficiently complete to give him 
 a name in history by his own right. If we have any faith in hu- 
 manity, if these earthly interests which compel so large a share of 
 our time and thought and absorbing care, are realities of Divine 
 Providence, if there is any hope of a triumph of human nature ove^ 
 its ills, and a real progress in the history of mankind, if God is the 
 ruler of the world and his instruments are fitted to his operations, 
 then "he being dead, yet speaketh," by an example, which in its 
 essential particulars we may imitate, and a work which in its gen- 
 eral scope and design his survivors must complete. 
 
 1 1. We may attribute to the deceased President, without 
 fear that the judgment of history will reverse the decision, a con- 
 scientious devotion to the great trust with which he was charged, 
 and an honest purpose to discharge it to the best of his understand- 
 ing of its requirements, and of his ability to meet them. The proof 
 of this is the course of his administration as a whole, and the com- 
 plete revelation of the man in his endeavors towards the preserva- 
 tion and the permanent security of the nation's unity. It would be 
 superfluous to attempt the enumeration of the acts in which this 
 spirit showed most conspicuously ; and in like manner it would be 
 impertinent to offer an unlearned opinion upon any measures which 
 he thought necessary to accomplish the end in view. There are 
 doubtless those here present, the course ol" whose studies has been 
 directed that way in the practice of a learned and laborous profes- 
 
sion, at whose feet it would be my proper place to sit and be taught 
 in matters of this nature ; and it is no derogation from them to say 
 that he was at least their equal in that profession to which his life 
 and theirs have been directed , and, therefore, that his opinion of 
 the legal authority of these acts which have been the most dicusssed 
 is neither to be confirmed norcalled in question by those like my- 
 self, whose studies, if they are faithful to their high calling, are 
 turned in another and widely different direction. The tribunal of 
 ultimate decision on such questions is neither the pulpit nor the 
 press. It is ours to look, in this place, not at the legal formalities 
 which limit and define actions in their external shape, but, as far as 
 we can, at the inner spring and source of the life which animates 
 them. And I am confident that all, however, divided in opinion 
 respe<!ting the particular measures developed by the course of events, 
 whether they seemed to them too fast or too slow, too mild or too 
 severe, will agree, now that the end is seen, that the spirit and in- 
 tention of the man and the magistrate, shining through all the diffi- 
 culties of position and circumstance, in a state of things unprece- 
 dented in the history of the world, was a highly conscientious^ 
 honest, patriotic spirit. He was in his exercise of the powers of the 
 (Tovernment, a patriotand not a politician. The two are wide apart. 
 The difference between them is indelibly stamped upon the percep- 
 tions of all right-minded and intelligent men. The general voice 
 of public opinion speaks of the one with contempt as surely as of 
 the other with approval ; and the difference between them is simply 
 that of the internal, conscious rectitude and conscientousness and 
 devotion to principle and to country — the unselfish devotion to duty 
 and to responsibility, — which contrasts, by the whole space between 
 light and darkness, with the hollow, insincere, selfish, mean and 
 crooked course of unprincipled greed and unhallowed ambition. 
 
 We may add to this sterling integrity, as another evident part 
 of his character, a judicious firmness and a practical wisdom in the 
 development of his plans and the selection of his instruments, and a 
 clear perception of the times and steady consistency in shaping the 
 progress of events toward the attainment of the end in view. It is 
 evident that he was, as his position required him to be, the master 
 spirit in his Cabinet ; that his subordinates were subordinate, and 
 that, though he called statesmanlike ability and organizing tact, 
 and trusty council to his side, yet that his actions werc^his^own, and) 
 therefore, that he is to be judged by the success of his measures* 
 
10 
 
 and not stinted by the reward they return. It was his labor, not 
 only to prevent the present disruption of the nation, but to secure, 
 if possible, its permanent and lasting pacification ;to keep the nation 
 one, not only for the few years of his term of ofiice, but as far as in 
 him lay, to dig the foundations of a broader and deeper structure of 
 unity and prosperity for the common country of us all. lie lived 
 long enough to see the beginning of the end for which he labored. 
 The result must tell in the centuries that are to come, whether he 
 has been successful; but this at least is clear, that as he was con- 
 scientiously and honestly devoted to his work, so he brought to it 
 those qualities of character, that firmness of purpose, that practical 
 wisdom in phmning, that judicious discrimination of opportunity in 
 executing, that insight in chosing his chief helpers, that singleness 
 of aim, and power of seizing on circumstances to s;et forward that 
 aim, Which, under the irresistible logic of events, has approved 
 itself to the people as sagacious, and consistent, and necessary, 
 and which we may hope, under (lod's blessing, will result, not only 
 in re-uniting our country, but in perpetuating its peace, and adding 
 to the happiness and prosperity of all sections and of every indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 And here again we cannot too highly appreciate these quali- 
 ties of the late President, in their effect upon the destiny of the 
 country. The singular freedom of his nature from all dramatic 
 eff"ect or rhetorical artifice blinds us to the weight of his influence, 
 until we carefully analyse the exact history of the times. It is 
 one thing to see the judiciousness of measures after they have suc- 
 ceeded, it is another thing to foresee their effect ; and this was his 
 prerogative. The ability to reduce order out of the chaos of public 
 opinion, to lead the preponderating power of the country, by a 
 steady progress, step by step, to unity of opinion and steadiness of 
 resolve, as the necessary antecedent to external unity restored, to 
 be firm in judgment and merciful in disposition, and so to temper 
 each with the other, as to sacrifice neither, to adapt the policy to 
 the circumstances and yet to keep in view the single end of all 
 operations, was not less necessary for the nation, than evident in 
 him who had the destinies of the nation in his earthly keeping. 
 It requires no extraordinary memory to recall the vacillation and 
 uncertainty which held the minds of men in unbearable suspense, 
 during the months immediately preceding and at the beginning of 
 his incumbency. The press of those days wj united upon none 
 
11 
 
 of the issues involved. Party maxims had no authority upon 
 which to fjround an opinion as to the course to be pursued. The 
 uncertainty was not only as to the next step to be taken, but as to 
 the general direction in which to move. It was a period of anxious 
 waiting for the authoritative voice of the government ; and never, 
 perhaps, in the history of the nations, was there a time when gov- 
 ernment was so thrown upon itself to be in truth the leader and 
 director of the people, as in those days of the beginning of the 
 modern history of the llepublic. There was no organized and 
 settled public opinion to indicate the way, no path beaten by the 
 footsteps of old established precedent, or surveyed and mapped out 
 by the logic of precise theory, in which the nation knew that it 
 was to march. Men tiirned to the new and untried administration 
 as the only guide in their perplexity. The strong deep instinct 
 of devotion was in their hearts, but the way in which to exert it 
 was not plain. And yet in this time of suspense, the utterances of 
 the government were not hasty and unreflecting. The suspense 
 might be painful ; but the consequences of a false estimate of the 
 position would be fatal. And when the government did develop 
 its method of procedure, the course pursued reflected equal lustre 
 upon the practical sagacity of the head of the nation, and the true 
 loyalty to authority of the mass of the people. The principle ol' 
 obedience to the constituted depositaries of the law, because they 
 are clothed with the authority of the law, (which is the only true 
 meaning of the word loyalty, and upon which the very existence of 
 our institutions depends) receives its most sublime illustration in 
 the spontaneous response which met fully the demands of the gov- 
 ernment as soon as its will was declared — the more marked as 
 following upon the preceding uncertainty — proves that the sense 
 and realization of constituted authority, as distinguished from mere 
 personal influence or personal opinion, is a stable foundation of our 
 national freedom. And that that confidence thus fully given at 
 first was never afterwards withdrawn — that amid all the impatience 
 of some, and the hostile criticism of others, the people still recog- 
 nized and confided in him for their leader, is proof sufficient that 
 that leader had the sound practical judgment which the occasion 
 required, adapted his action to the times, made a fit selection of 
 associates in council and subordinates in action, and pursued his 
 general course in the exigencies of the nation, with a wisdom and 
 independence and a straight forwardness as rare as they were ue- 
 
12 
 
 cessary to adapt to the principles by which he was guided, the 
 public mind and temper by which he must be sustained. 
 
 And thirdly, we may discover in the late President, an un- 
 failing faith in the rectitude and the final triumph of the principles 
 which he brought to the administration of public aff'airs. The cir- 
 cumstances under which he entered upon his incumbency of his 
 high office were such as might have made any man falter ; but he 
 kept heart, and infused it into the people, and secured them to 
 himself, because he had principles and he had faith in them. He 
 had. as I have already remarked, comparatively no training in 
 statesmanship ; but it might have been that .such training would 
 have been gained at the expense of principle. A long and exclu 
 KJve devotion to public life is apt to sink the patriot into the poli- 
 tician—and, steady principle wanting, no practical wordly wisdom 
 will supply its place. This can be obtained in subordinates, that 
 cannot be dispensed with in the chief. His election was an infusion 
 of new blood into the decaying- vitals of public aftairs — the ele- 
 vation of one immediately from among the people ; who, being in 
 sympathy with the popular heart should confirm and steady it, 
 and keep it true to the aspirations which it honestly entertained. 
 And indeed, through all his character this was prominent, his 
 being one with the mass of the people in all their better nature — 
 his kindliness of heart, and geniality of temper, his unassuming- 
 manners and frank directness of speech and address, — all that is 
 public and all that is private in his character and actions, now 
 that the mists of prejudice are swept away by his sad and sudden 
 death — will be recognized as of one who was emphatically of the 
 people, and a leader among their hosts. 
 
 And indeed, it was this thorough honesty and straight- forward- 
 ness of character — this simple rectitude in pi'ivate as well as in 
 public life, which was his great strength with the people of the 
 country. P]ven those who made his election to the Chief Magis- 
 tracy the pretext of the attempt to break up the Union, feel and 
 confess that they have lost in him their best and truest friend. 
 And it may be, by that Providence which brings good out of evil, 
 that his martyrdom may exert an influence more potent than any 
 other cause to turn the hearts of the disobedient children of the Re 
 public to the Government of their Fathers. There are arguments 
 plausible enough to those who are under their influence for the ap- 
 peal to arms ; but the crime of assassination is too palpable to the 
 
13 
 
 most obtuse mind uot to produce a horror of the cause which it is 
 Hought to advance by sucli meaus. lu such a death, the scales drop 
 from the eyes of prejudice, and of hatred itself, and the conscience 
 opens to the real moral conditions involved. The world does him 
 justice now, and sees that in him the nation sought to its foundations 
 and quarried the strong tough granite of simple honesty and uncor- 
 rupted .sincerity for the base of her re-edifieation. Comparatively 
 unknown before his selection for the Presidency, and altogether 
 unused to the arts which are the stock-in-trade of the professional 
 statesman — the trivial expedients by which party politicians post- 
 pone action and evade responsibility, and hide under precedent and 
 do nothing with busy earnestness, ho came to the conduct of public 
 aifairs, at a time when such arts would have been chaff in the whirl- 
 wind, with a strength in the rugged instincts of natural virtue which 
 was better than all art, more timely than all expediency, truer than 
 all precedent, and equal to all responsibility. The times required 
 a recurrence to first principles; they were past dallying with accord- 
 ing to the recognized forms of parliamentary and political inaction. 
 Years and years before the spirit of secession became overt rebellion 
 it was a deep and solemn question in the minds of thinking and 
 religious men, whether the nation was uot about to be broken up ; 
 whether it could live with the corruption and dishonesty circulatiuti,- 
 in its life-blood, which selfish politicians had infused into its veins 
 and arteries. The tactics of party had well nigh stifled government 
 itself. Shrewdness and astuteness and cunning had so overlaid the 
 true wisdom of righteousness with the multiplicity and success of 
 their arrangements for moving the masses, that honest and sincere 
 men washed their hands of the consequence, and retired from the 
 unequal contest with the professional gambler in the spoils of office. 
 The evil brooding in sullen shapeless darkness upon the face of the 
 land, took shape more suddenly than was looked for, and ere men 
 woke to the reality, the crisis was upon them. It was a day when 
 the ordinary maxims of political action had no force. Something 
 more was necessary than oftice-seeking cunning, and the art of 
 bargain and sale. That Providence which rules mankind, made 
 him the available man, and so guided his election, and brought to 
 the Chief Magistracy his sterling honesty, his sound unsophisticated 
 sense of right and wrong, his uncorrui)tcd mind and heart. During 
 the four years of his first incumbency, the nation learned that tlie 
 simplicity and the directness of a recurrence to first principles — to 
 
14 
 
 honor and honesty and justice and truth — are the only sure founda- 
 tion of stability and permanence. A second election was a tribute to 
 the broad, genial characteristics of an honest Western life, stamping 
 it with approval after the fiery trial. And now, though his perish- 
 able body is laid in its mother earth, he himself stands in history 
 like one of the granite statues which face an old Egyptian temple, 
 the representative of what the men of this nation must be, and of 
 what, by the discipline of God, wc hope and believe they are be- 
 C'oming through the purifying crucible of the national tribulation. 
 And it may be another reason for the permission by Providence of 
 this tragedy, that the country needed it to fix the lesson forever in 
 the hearts of men. The principle of martyrdom consecrates and 
 hallows every witness to great and holy truth. The baptism of 
 blood and the crown of fire arc everywhere the .Divine symbols of 
 the ultimate triumph of the right. The martyred President would 
 have been none the less honest, none the less kind, none the less 
 sincerely desirous to save even his enemies, had he not been stricken 
 down ; but he would not have passed into history with the same 
 nimbus of glory that now surrounds his memory. His image would 
 not have struck so deeply into the heart of the nation, and the force 
 of his example, and the purity of his life, and tlie|grandeur of his 
 character would have failed of half their lesson to posterity. Even 
 now, let us hope, there is in the atmosphere around us the impulse 
 of a better, higher, more noble aim for our energies. God grant 
 that this impulse may exert its full efiect upon our own generation 
 and upon those who are to come after us. 
 
 III. It is a judgment which history will confirm, that the 
 position of the nation this day, — its ordered movement through 
 the hurried series of events of the past four years — the gerniinant 
 principles of its future course — owe as much to the personal cha- 
 racteristics of the man thus feebly and imperfectly sketched, as to 
 any other single human instrumentality. A people can no more 
 act in unity and concert without a leader in sympathy with their 
 instincts, than an army without a general in whom they have con- 
 fidence. The late President is one of the main links which bind 
 the future to the past. It needs only to contemplate the different 
 possibilities which might have come to pass, contrasting them with 
 what is now the accomplished fact, to see this. Circumstances and 
 the Mian combine to make up the lesson of his history, and neither 
 is an empty cypher. Without the circumstances the man would 
 
15 
 
 have lived comparatively unknown, and died unmarked ; without 
 the man, the circumstances might have developed differently. The 
 examples in history of rulers who have not risen to the height of 
 great occasions are too numerous not to be capable of application to 
 illustrate the possible condition of a President unequal to the task. 
 Four years ago there seemed to be two at least, — and perhaps 
 Miany — different possibilities. Unity, or Disunion, or Universal 
 Anarchy depended, humanly speaking, upoa the administration. 
 In the progress of the nation from its infant existence to its 
 growth over half a continent, there had developed too great diver- 
 sity of social states, as the principle of discord. Moral ideas on 
 the one side, and material interests on the other, entered into con- 
 flict,and the time had come to solve permanently the question wheth- 
 er diverse social states should develop into diverse nationalities, or 
 whether national unity should be preserved by making the social 
 state everywhere the same. Two answers were possible then ; one 
 has been given now, never to be reversed, by the grace of Provi- 
 dence using him as its chief instrument. The institution of slav- 
 ery has fallen before the principle of national supremacy, the 
 guarantee that the country once pacified will remain permanently 
 secure. With this guarantee, his great work, all lesser question, 
 are of no importance. Not that it is due to him alone. Ideas 
 and forces had to be called into activity and guided to their re- 
 sults, and without them he would have been powerless. But as 
 the helmsman at the wheel guides the direction of all the forces 
 (none of which he could originate) which give motion to the ship ; 
 so it was his, here to restrain, there to impel onward, and so to 
 bring the ship of state thus far on its course. 
 
 The work, brethren, is not yet ended. It is our country which 
 has suffered, though it triumphs in its suffering. After war comes 
 peace ; and the result of war at this moment is so sure and certain, 
 that all can look for peace in the shortest, surest way, — peace 
 that shall be permanent and enduring. It is the business of the 
 people now to heal the nation's wounds. The same God who called 
 him by the people's voice to the helm, and granted him to sec so 
 much accomplished, still rules in Heaven, and has frustrated the 
 plot to throw the government into confusion, has preserved his 
 successor, and assigns our pathway between those fences of IMercy 
 and Judgment which hedge round all human walks, whether of 
 the individual or the community. "By Him kings rule, and princes 
 
16 
 
 decree justice." It may suit the presumption which reckons itself 
 competent to pi-oclaim beforehand on every occasion the secret 
 counsels of the Almighty and Infinitely Wise Being, who has de- 
 clared that "His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways 
 as our ways," to expound what is or what ought to be the policy 
 henceforward of the Cxovernment, the chief depositary of whose 
 power has been changed by Divine permission and by human 
 crime. I humbly decline the endeavor. I believe in the Provi- 
 dence of God, and that that Providence vindicates itself in the re- 
 sult, though its counsels may not be known beforehand, except by 
 prophetic Inspiration ; and I am sincerely of the opinion, that they 
 who by that Providence are vested with the trust taken from the 
 hand of him we mourn, are abundantly competent to consider their 
 responsibilities without my advice, and to resolve wisely and to 
 act well. Providence calls us to the humbler duty of obedience 
 to the powers that are by His ordaining. To them it is for us 
 to look for guidance, and for them it is ours to pray, that God will 
 give them the wisdom and the strength to secure to our posting 
 the heritage given to our fathers, and to bring the storm -tossed 
 ship of state, securely into the harbor of a stable and permanent 
 peace. 
 
a' 
 
 %m 
 
LB 
 
 S'12