Class, 
 Book. 
 
 SMITIISOXI.W |ii:i'()SIT. 
 
i 
 
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA BULLETIN 
 
 Vol. V APRIL 1, 1911 No. 2 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES 
 
 OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 By Samuel W. Belford 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVE STATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 POINT OF VIEW 
 
 By Joseph Edward Stubbs, President of the University. 
 
 
 
 Published Quarterly by the University of Nevada 
 Reno, Nevada 
 
 Entered in the Postoffice at Reno, Nevada, as second-class matter under the Act of CongreaB, 
 
 July 16, 1894 
 
 ^Oftograpl 
 
Note.— The University of Nevada publications are ^ 
 
 offered in exchange for certain periodicals and for the 
 
 publications of learned societies and institutions, uni- ] 
 
 versities, and libraries. For sample copies address the \ 
 
 University Library, Reno, Nevada. \ 
 
 James Edward Church, Jr., 1 
 
 Carl. Alfred Jacobson, ^ 
 
 Herbert Wynford Hill, ] 
 
 Committee on Publications. s 
 
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA BULLETIN 
 
 Vol. V APRIL 1, 1911 No. 2 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES 
 
 OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 By Samuel W. Belford 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVE STATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 POINT OF VIEW 
 
 By Joseph Edward Stubbs, President of the University 
 
 Published Quarterly by the University of Nevada 
 Reno, Nevada 
 
 Entered in the PostofRce at Reno, Nevada, as second-class matter under the Act of Congress, 
 
 July 16, 1894 
 
LiNC0LNIAN4 
 
 PROGRAM 
 
 LINCOLN MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 February 11, 1911. 
 
 Presiding Officer . . President Joseph E. Stubbs 
 
 Music Cadet Band 
 
 Lincoln, the Master Administrator .... 
 Hon. Tasker L. Oddie, Governor of Nevada 
 
 Music University Glee Club 
 
 The Character and Public Services of Abraham 
 Lincoln Samuel W. Belford 
 
 Music Cadet Band 
 
 Brief addresses were made by the following state 
 and legislative officers : 
 
 Hon. Gilbert C. Ross, 
 
 Lieutenant Governor 
 
 Hon. Clay Tallman, 
 
 President Pro-tem of the Senate 
 
 Hon. August Frohlich, 
 
 Speaker of the Assembly 
 
 Hon. A. A. Codd, 
 
 President of the Board of Regents 
 
 The members of the Legislature were the guests of 
 honor. 
 
THE CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.* 
 
 By Samuel W. Belford 
 
 The influence of environment on nations opens a do- 
 main of historical speculation that is well-nigh limitless. 
 The habits and customs of men are controlled by the nat- 
 ural conditions which surround them. The Mediterranean 
 and the Aegean seas produced a maritime people. The 
 fertility of the soil, the warm sunshine shedding its glow- 
 over the land of Italy, Greece, and Africa, brought forth 
 innumerable harvests for which the water opened a market 
 with far distant races. Commerce was encouraged, and 
 association with a greater and 'broader world led to cul- 
 ture, knowledge, and refinement. The development of 
 art, the spread of learning, the acquisition of comforts 
 and luxuries established an earlier civilization, where 
 nature had so generously provided the means for its 
 gro"\\i:h. 
 
 In the colder North, the products of the soil were 
 meager, insufficient in themselves to sustain life or furnish 
 food for a numerous people. The forests, dense and im- 
 penetrable, were not adapted to encourage the knowledge 
 of one tribe by another, but they afforded to man a 
 means of sustenance in the perils of the chase. A nomadic 
 race of hunters was the result — barbarous and ignorant 
 warriors, lusty for battle, hardy and courageous, who 
 sought a better field for their exploits and an escape from 
 the prison of the Avoods. 
 
 The necessity for food extended their wanderings and 
 
 *An address delivered at the Lincoln Memorial Services at the University of 
 Nevada, February 11, 1911. 
 
2 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 conquests, and they finally reached the shores, to become 
 wayfarers on the tides of the ocean. It was the only 
 highway to tempt their restless ambition. An outlet from 
 trouble at home, an open way to more genial climates, a 
 means of retreat or communication, in the event of vic- 
 tory or defeat, the ocean called to these people as to her 
 own children. They understood the moods and foibles 
 of each other, played with life and jested with death. 
 
 The Viking heard a battle cry in the raging tempest, 
 beheld the favor or threats of heaven in sunshine or low- 
 ering cloud, and felt himself rocked to sleep on the bosom 
 of the waves, w^hose chant was the primitive music that 
 roused, or soothed, the instincts of the primitive man. 
 If the sea was cruel, it was also kind. If it took life, it 
 gave it in return, and this element, working on man, fash- 
 ioned a race which it has led to the uttermost parts of 
 the earth. Proud and imperious, dominating and exult- 
 ant, its blood touched with the wanderlust of ever-moving 
 tides and currents, scornful of obstacles, heedless of dan- 
 ger, the seed of Norman and Saxon has overrun the world 
 to conquer its barren places. 
 
 Nature with them had ever been a jealous mistress. 
 Her favors w^ere only for the strong and hardy, for she 
 demanded vigor of mind and body, prodigious labor, 
 clean living and right thinking. The rude buffeting of 
 ocean storms was but the prelude to the ruder conquest 
 of an unknown continent. The men Avho could survive 
 the one could overcome the hardships of the other. Con- 
 tact with her made us a pioneer people, a civilizing, lib- 
 erty-loving race, fit to cope with forest and mountain, 
 with plain and river. 
 
 So it was when Greenland beckoned to the Norsemen, 
 when the Cavalier stepped upon the shores of Virginia, 
 when the Mayflower turned her prow to the west and the 
 Pilgrims knelt upon the .soil of a new land, and so it w^as, 
 
Abraham Lincoln 3 
 
 in 1809, when Abraham Lincoln looked out upon the 
 lights and shadows of the Kentucky wilderness. 
 
 Had the imagination of man in that year sought to 
 light upon a child of promise in whose destiny the future 
 was likely to become interested, Abraham Lincoln would 
 have been among the least of these. No pride of ancestrj'- 
 was his; no hereditary place of distinction was awaiting 
 him; no fortune, gathered by the labors of others, was 
 at his call. Poor whites, in a community as wretched as 
 themselves, untutored except in the ways of poverty, far 
 from civilization, on a desolate frontier — these were the 
 companions of his early childhood and this was the stock 
 from which he sprang. And such a childhood, half- 
 clothed and ill-fed, finding comfort only in the dreams 
 that haunt the infant mind. A cheerless window by day, 
 a lighted tallow dip by night were the looms upon which 
 were woven the somber colors of his fate. His heritage 
 was merely the common heritage of his race, rich in 
 promise, if strength of character could grow in a soil of 
 hopeless misery. 
 
 The crosses of childhood are as real to those who bear 
 them as were the ones on Calvary. Abraham had more 
 than his share of those that were real and hardest to bear. 
 Between him and his father there was no mystic bond 
 of sympathy. Thomas Lincoln w^as scarcely fitted to enjoy 
 the good will of those among whom he lived; and he 
 could not understand or encourage a quest for things 
 that lay beyond his own horizon. The axe and plow, the 
 rifle and log cabin determined the limits of his world, 
 while the hardest kind of hard labor, shifted to the boy, 
 was its daily exaction. But in the mother love of gentle 
 Nancy Hanks was the good fairy of those early years. 
 She understood him and became his refuge and inspira- 
 tion, leading his spirit past danger and pitfall to the 
 heights where the sun was shining. If the burden was 
 
4 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 too heavy, she lightened it ; if the cross was too hard, she 
 took it upon herself; if the way was too long for his 
 lonely heart, she traveled it with him. As a potter with 
 his clay, so she moulded the soul and character of her 
 boy, marking deep by sorrow and patience the lines of 
 strength, and giving him a stature that could endure re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 What wonder that their cabin, standing midway be- 
 tween clearing and forest, became in his eyes strangely 
 invested with the solemn beauty of a temple ! It was 
 illumined from within by the quenchless light of a meas- 
 ureless love. And when she had gone to watch over him 
 from another shore, the despairing lad trudged for miles 
 through sleet and snow to find some minister of God to 
 say "Memoriam" by the lonely grave where his heart lay 
 buried. 
 
 From Kentucky to Indiana, and from Indiana to Illi- 
 nois, was the pilgrimage of the Lincolns, moving from 
 one scene of shiftless living to another, until time had 
 marked the end of Abraham's youth. If it was a dreary 
 stretch of twenty-one years, it was all behind him, and 
 he dared to lift his eyes in confidence to the future. He 
 had discharged his duties to the utmost limit. There were 
 no obligations to father or family which remained unful- 
 filled. The coarsest and most galling labor he had given 
 freely and without stint, submitting to take a place beside 
 the beast of burden, the yoke on man and ox alike, as 
 the plow made its troubled way through the virgin soil. 
 When the work on the Lincoln place was over, his toil 
 had just begun. There were other fields to be tilled, other 
 rails to be split and fences built, and Thomas Lincoln 
 always found it convenient to sell the labor of his son to 
 those who needed hired men. 
 
 Lincoln never had religious training such as this age 
 affords. He read the Bible, because it was one of the few 
 
Abraham Lincoln 5 
 
 books within his reach, just as he read the Statutes of 
 Indiana. His father looked upon religion with an unusual 
 catholicity of spirit, easily gliding from one church to 
 another as eacli in turn, appeared where he happened to 
 be living. Probably the Baptist faith was the most im- 
 pressive with Thomas Lincoln, as it gave him one of the 
 few shocks he ever received, and it clung to him until he 
 dried. 
 
 It was such a life as must test the mettle of the strong- 
 est, such a training that only the hardiest could survive ; 
 and yet it rounded out the character of Abraham Lincoln 
 as no other life could possibly have done. He learned by 
 the bitterness of his own experience the virtues of patience 
 and forbearance. He acquired the habits of self-reliance 
 and foresight, and he knew how to keep his eye on the 
 furrow and to follow it to the end. But above all, he 
 gained a master's knowledge of the character of men. 
 He knew right and justice, because both had been repeat- 
 edly denied to him. He had tasted privation, disappoint- 
 ment and want, and drunk their dregs. There Avas no 
 form of suffering or sorrow to which he was a stranger, 
 while his ear Avas always tuned to catch the voice of de- 
 spair. He saw things as they were, not as they were sup- 
 posed to be. He distinguished reality from appearance, 
 and his instinct was for truth. He recognized the weak- 
 ness of human nature, feeling how prone it was to err, 
 how worthy of forgiveness it could become. He gave to 
 the tenderness of love and sj^mpathy a full measure of 
 appreciation, though he had known them so little, and 
 he yielded to duty an undivided devotion that neither 
 flagged nor faltered. 
 
 To these were added the greater belief in the capacity 
 of man to dictate his own destiny. Abraham Lincoln had 
 overcome so much that he felt that nothing good was ever 
 wholly lost; that somehow and somewhere the right would 
 
6 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 assert itself ; that it could not be crashed nor permanently 
 kept down. lie must have seen the beginning of the new- 
 beliefs that are giving comfort and hope to the children 
 of men ; that as we are made in the image of God, so do 
 we partake of His power; that our mission is the accom- 
 plishment of good, the certain elimination of evil, and 
 the establishment here of a happiness for the human race 
 not dependent upon the frail limitations of material sense. 
 
 Lincoln had developed and educated himself. Endowed 
 with qualities latent in nearly all men, he had by intense 
 application, by constant exercise of mind and heart and 
 body, brought forth the mental and spiritual strength 
 which in after years sustained him. 
 
 His journej" to New Orleans was momentous, for it 
 brought him into actual contact with slavery. It 
 showed him the ownership of one man by another, 
 the one who labored and the other who took the fruits 
 of that labor. Its heartless injustice, the cruelty of a 
 law-protected evil, its violation of every natural and 
 humanizing impulse, the degradation of men to a state 
 where they were no longer entitled to recognition as 
 men, the bondage of the son flowing from the bondage 
 of the mother, the overturning of all the purposes of a 
 righteous God — all these combined to make an inefface- 
 able impression upon Lincoln and to burn its image upon 
 his soul. 
 
 It is singular and interesting that he should at this 
 period have been in the Prairie State, which bore a name 
 of promise, sweetened by the memory of Marquette. It 
 is related that, years before civilization had spread over 
 the face of the country, the forest priest, speeding his 
 canoe on the "Father of "Waters", had come upon an 
 Indian camp. They took him through the woods to the 
 lodge of their chief and, marvelling at his pale face, plied 
 him with a hundred questions, as if he were, in truth, a 
 
Abraham Lincoln 7 
 
 celestial visitor. He quietly asked them who they were. 
 The chief replied, '*We are the Illinois", which being 
 interpreted means, "We are Men". And surely, in that 
 land God raised up men. 
 
 A legislative career followed Lincoln's failure as a 
 merchant and his activitj^ as a surveyor. It was notable 
 in only two respects : it furnished an index of his intellec- 
 tual honesty, it was a symbol of his intellectual develop- 
 ment. In a county where Andrew Jackson was idolized, 
 Lincoln made his lirst essay into politics as a Whig. 
 
 Facing certain defeat as a candidate for the Legis- 
 lature, he declared his adherence to the policies of Henry 
 Clay and told his neighbors, "I have been too familiar 
 with disappointment to be much hurt by defeat." At 
 this time, too, he Avas growing in the power of expression, 
 in his spreading fame as an orator, and in the crystalliza- 
 tion and maturity of ideas which he never afterwards 
 abandoned. 
 
 And here occurred an incident the importance of 
 which neither participant ever realized. A young Ver- 
 monter, by the name of Stephen A. Douglas, crossed the 
 narrow orbit of Lincoln's life and heard the raw legis- 
 lator from New Salem denounce slavery before an assem- 
 blage of its friends. Douglas, from the North, its apolo- 
 gist, Lincoln from the South, its assailant — it would be 
 difficult to imagine two men so totally at variance, and 
 it might not be uninteresting to take a mental picture 
 of both. Douglas was State's attorney, clever, captiva- 
 ting, volatile, of good address, short of stature, with a 
 handsome head resting closely upon graceful shoulders. 
 Lincoln, partaking of the soil, the hero of the wrestling 
 ring and of the frontier combat, but lately clothed in 
 skins, tall, gaunt, uncouth, a half-starved look on his 
 sunken cheeks, big-boned and awkward, homel}^ of gait 
 and gesture, was a storm-beaten figure, emerging from 
 
8 SAMUEii W. Belford 
 
 the tempest. Upon these two history was preparing to 
 focus its attention while Providence worked out the des- 
 tiny of a nation. 
 
 The legislative career closed ingloriously. Lincoln 
 went back to his narrow life; Douglas moved in an ever- 
 w^idening sphere, exciting the admiration of his wonder- 
 ing countrymen. Lincoln had studied lavv^ — how, only the 
 Lord and himself ever knew. A term in Congress, brief 
 and inconspicuous, and a rejected application for an 
 appointment to office, seemed to close the chapter of his 
 bid for fame. 
 
 But there never was a decade where man and cause 
 were preparing for each other as that which followed 
 Lincoln 's retirement from public life. He became a noted 
 figure on his judicial circuit, moving constantly among 
 the farmers of Illinois, establishing friendships in every 
 town, earning the esteem and respect of their people, and 
 drawing to himself the personal affections of a multitude 
 to whom Douglas was only a name. He became a leader in 
 his profession, bench and bar alike recognizing the master 
 mind. Skillful in debate, persuasive, keen-minded, grasp- 
 ing the fundamentals of his case and holding fast to the 
 right, such was Lincoln, as developed by the court room. 
 His memory has enriched the best traditions of his pro- 
 fession and has convinced those of us who follow it that 
 in adherence to its highest standards is the open road to 
 success. 
 
 The legal profession is one of opportunity and responsi- 
 bility, charged as it is with the duty of making and apply- 
 ing the laws of the land to every relation of human 
 society. What greater incentive should exist for the exer- 
 cise of the loftiest ideals than mere brotherhood in such 
 a calling! The lawyer who ignores his duty, who violates 
 the ethical spirit of the law, who encourages a contempt 
 for it, or brings it into disrepute, is disloyal to his state 
 
Abraham Lincoln 9 
 
 and country. It matters not whether it be the counsel 
 for great corporations, who aids them to pervert the law 
 and to conquer through chicanery, or the obscure harpy 
 of divorce courts — both stand alike upon the stool of pro- 
 fessional unworthiness. Lincoln regarded the upright 
 practice of law as a public duty, and the people knew 
 he so regarded it. His reputation became more than state 
 wide and, in an age before the press did our thinking, his 
 power as an orator, his fame as a lawyer, the sincerity 
 and depth of his convictions, had won for him the heart 
 of Illinois. 
 
 And as he grew so grew the cause that was to claim 
 him. The group of great men who founded the Nation 
 recognized the danger of slavery and, so far as their 
 influence extended, they sought to curtail it. Jefferson 
 had caught a glimpse of the impending conflict, and with 
 all his earnestness he endeavored to persuade Virginia 
 to give up her slaves. Washington and Madison were 
 no less emphatic in their denunciation of its curse — a 
 curse that rested not alone upon the slave, but even more 
 upon the master — and not upon the master alone, but 
 even more upon the Nation. The generation of the Revolu- 
 tion condemned slavery as a moral wrong. Many of their 
 descendants, blinded by the wealth of an economic system 
 resting upon unrequited toil, declared that it was right. 
 
 The challenge was accepted by Lovejoy, Garrison, and 
 Phillips, who dedicated their lives to its abolition. The 
 growth of public opinion was slow, but it was steadily 
 attaining strength. Calhoun and Jackson had already 
 come into collision, not ostensibly, but in reality, over 
 slavery, and the South was quick to realize that its favored 
 institution was in danger. A great historian has observed 
 that no government was ever overthrown except with the 
 help of some of its departments. So the slave power 
 organized itself politically to make government the ally 
 
10 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 of its interest, and, to fasten its hold upon the country, 
 seized the fountains of justice. It played upon the pas- 
 sions of the people ; it incited them to party loyalty, when 
 it controlled all parties. It suppressed honest discussion 
 by social discrimination and by pleas for business stability. 
 It seduced men from their duty by the gratification of an 
 empty ambition, in which principle was to play no part. 
 It beguiled the people by allowing them to juggle with 
 other issues. It forced the Dred Scott decision and the 
 Missouri Compromise. It kept Webster out of the Presi- 
 dency^ and filled that office wnth men of its own choosing. 
 What a splendid expanse of mediocrity it produced from 
 Jackson to Lincoln ! 
 
 Do we not own its modern successor? Have we not 
 seen the same tactics and the same plan with concen- 
 trated and unscrupulous wealth holding the reins? The 
 abuse of the courts, the subservience of government, the 
 insolence of a Senate, the feebleness of a House, the 
 raising of false issues to distract the public mind, social 
 ostracism and religious cant when unlawful usurpations 
 by capital are questioned, appeals to party loyalty when 
 neither party is worthy of public confidence and when 
 both bid for the support of the same influence, the 
 betraj^al of principle, the procession of smiling acquies- 
 cence to the White House — what a glorious stretch of 
 mediocrity it has given us between Lincoln and Roosevelt ! 
 i\Iay there be another such answer to our prayer, as Lin- 
 coln was the answer to the prayer of his time. May there 
 be found in this great land another prophet to remove 
 the bandage from our eyes and to turn us toward the light. 
 
 The Missouri Compromise was illogical and inefficient. 
 It could not last permanently because it was fundamen- 
 tally wrong. It represented and stood for a strange spec- 
 tacle — the national conscience attempting to lull itself to 
 sleep — and yet it was the result of years of agitation from 
 
Abraham Lincoln 11 
 
 the time of the fatal mistake in the Constitution, which 
 recognized slavery, to the day of its enactment. It pro- 
 vided that Missouri might be admitted as a slave state 
 on condition that, thereafter, northwestern territory 
 should forever be free. All sections of the country had 
 apparently acquiesced in this settlement of a dangerous 
 problem. The Compromise was entirely satisfactory to 
 Big Business and it was forced upon the people b}'- that 
 sordid class which, from the beginning of time, has railed 
 at progress and cried, "Let well enough alone" — a class 
 which has wrought the ruin of every nation which allowed 
 it to control or which listened to its threats. 
 
 Slavery had cast its covetous eyes upon Missouri, and, 
 to secure her then, agreed to give up the indefinite future. 
 Men were found, even a majority, who believed that a 
 compact would be kept by Wrong, but the growth of 
 Kansas and Nebraska excited the foes and friends of 
 slavery, the one to keep it out of the new states, the 
 other to force it upon them. With a ruthless disregard of 
 all obligations of faith and honesty, of fair and open 
 dealing, the Compromise was repealed that slavery might 
 be extended, and Douglas, to divert the anger of the 
 North, went before the Country with the specious plea 
 that the Compromise should be repealed in order that the 
 new states themselves might have the right to declare 
 whether they wanted slavery or not. 
 
 The storm broke over the country like the wrath of 
 an avenging angel. It swept men and states from their 
 moorings, unbridled their passions, and stirred to its 
 depth the heart of a free people. Wrong had refused to 
 keep its treaty. The South met the outbreak with threats 
 of disunion, declaring that only by the acceptance of its 
 terms could the Union be preserved, that only as its 
 creature could the Nation live. But it went further than 
 this. Relying upon the noblest of sentiments, the pride 
 
12 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 of nationality, the leaders of the South resolved that they 
 would allow the Union to continue, upon the condition 
 that no restriction whatever should be placed upon the 
 extension of slavery, which, thereafter, should be per- 
 mitted to roam wheresoever it willed. These declarations 
 were the forerunners of the famous peace congress at 
 Richmond, which two years later issued its manifesto that 
 the South would resume its place in the Union when an 
 amendment to the Constitution should be adopted pro- 
 hibiting Congress and the states from in any manner 
 interfering with slavery. Thus early did it become clear 
 that the slave power, to protect itself, would unhesita- 
 tingly sacrifice the integrity of the Nation. 
 
 Yet Douglas took up its cause, and a formidable cham- 
 pion he was, the foremost man of his day, owning an 
 international renown, strengthened by the quiet sympa- 
 thy of envious Europe, his fame secure, his words cour- 
 ageous. His very audacity quieted the storm, and he 
 waited in serene confidence for an antagonist to brave 
 the lightning. None seemed to come, none seemed to 
 measure up to his battle stature. The North was without 
 its knight, vv^hen Destiny beckoned to Lincoln and whis- 
 pered that the hour was at hand. 
 
 Then the way was made clear. Perhaps he could see 
 at last why his whole life had been centering toward this 
 supreme effort ; why labor had been his lot, with suffering 
 ever at his side ; why poverty and toil in shutting out one 
 light had given him another within himself; why the 
 frontier had blessed him with a strong body wherein he 
 might nurture a clear mind. He, perhaps, realized that 
 contact with the soil was after all a broadening education, 
 teaching him to make articulate the inmost feelings of the 
 people. When all seemed lost, everything had, in fact, 
 been won. The trials and disappointments which had 
 attended him in his slow, upward movement had given 
 
Abraham Lincoln 13 
 
 him patience with himself and charity for others. Depri- 
 vation had spiritualized Lincoln and made him feel the 
 truth before others had caught a glimpse of the fleeting 
 vision. 
 
 It was a struggle of Titans, because both realized that 
 Freedom and Slavery at last stood face to face and that 
 one or the other must yield. The last compromise was 
 over, the last quibble had been spoken, the conflict had 
 indeed become irrepressible. I have heard men who 
 listened to the debate tell of this victory of Douglas and 
 that one of Lincoln ; how the tide rose and fell over these 
 two men, the one the embodiment of grace, the other 
 standing as stark and gaunt as Truth ; how anomalous 
 that slavery should exist in one State and not in another; 
 that evil could be partly good, and good partly evil; 
 how, if slavery was right, it was wholly right, if wrong, 
 it was wholly wrong. With the consummate skill of a 
 master, Lincoln drove Douglas from one position to an- 
 other, shattered his hold upon the South, destroyed the 
 confidence of the North in his sincerity, and left him a 
 national figure without a following and one whose race 
 was run. 
 
 The climax of the debate was Lincoln's declaration 
 that a house divided against itself could not stand, and 
 his question whether, in the opinion of Douglas, the Fed- 
 eral government had the power, under the Constitution, 
 to exclude slavery from the Territories. It v.'^as a startling 
 question. If Douglas answered in the affirmative, he lost 
 the South, if he answered in the negative, he lost the 
 North. The result was as Lincoln had foreseen ; his great 
 antagonist threw away the future for a present advantage, 
 while Lincoln yielded the moment and gained eternity. 
 Who can ever forget the pathos of his life when Lincoln 
 simply said, "With me the race of ambition has been a 
 failure, with him it has been a splendid success. Every- 
 
14 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 body expects Judge Douglas to be President, nobody be- 
 lieves that I will ever be President." 
 
 Throughout the debate, Lincoln's appeal was more 
 to the South than to the North, as he tried to recall his 
 own people to their sense of duty before the stern necessi- 
 ties of war should desolate the land. He hated slavery 
 with all the vigor of his nature, but he sought to reclaim 
 the slave holder by every concession, short of principle, 
 which the Nation could yield. To Lincoln the Union was 
 everything, to the preservation of w^hich even slavery 
 must be sacrificed. His election to the Presidency in 1860 
 was the direct result of the conflict of 1858. America, 
 even in those days of internal strife, was still the land of 
 opportunity. Within tAventy-five years from the time 
 Lincoln ceased to be a hired laborer, he was President 
 of the United States, called to the exercise of more power 
 than any sovereign since Napoleon has attempted to wield. 
 ^ It may perhaps be said that the darkest period of his 
 
 life was the stretch of four months between the date of 
 his election and his inauguration. He was committed to 
 the preservation of the Union. Without knowing or car- 
 ing to know, without a proper understanding of his aims, 
 heedlessly and impetuously the South had embraced seces- 
 sion. Lincoln had not promised to destroy slavery, he 
 had no intention of interfering with the economic condi- 
 tions of the South, nor of breaking up its domestic ar- 
 rangements. He had thought and hoped that slavery 
 would itself reach a position of gradual extinction by the 
 purchase of the freedom of the slaves by the government. 
 Emancipation was not involved in the contest, except as 
 the South itself involved it, and with Lincoln it was al- 
 ways compensated emancipation. He realized that the 
 South of 1860 had inherited its slaves, that it had grown 
 up under a system for which it was not responsible, but 
 which had come to it from generations of the past. And 
 
Abraham Lincoln 15 
 
 he knew that the South had itself in the earlier days, 
 against the opposition of New England, attempted to 
 wipe out the stain of involuntary servitude. In his broad 
 charity and deep sense of justice, Lincoln shrank from 
 the infliction of suffering upon the Southern people, either 
 through the loss of property, for which he earnestly sought 
 to pay, or through the calamities of war, which he was 
 strenuously struggling to prevent. 
 
 But their attitude admitted of no accommodation and 
 they attempted to force the recognition of their program 
 by the destruction of the Union. To this mad policy was 
 added the greater error of the establishment on this con- 
 tinent of a distinctive slave power, with an independent 
 government of its own. and the folly of making one people 
 strangers and aliens. Day after day, during this period 
 of the most melancholy forebodings, the administration 
 of Buchanan, quietly and treasonably, continued to under- 
 mine the foundations of the Republic. It is dou])tful if 
 history can produce a parallel for the perfidy and cunning, 
 for the shameless betrayal of trust which characterized 
 the last months of that administration. There is some- 
 thing so sinister in covert treason, so despicable in him 
 who betrays, that the hearts of men instinctively recoil in 
 horror. Lincoln knew that the strength of the Union was 
 slowly ebbing away, already he felt the blows that were 
 struck against its existence, and he saw armies made ready 
 to attack it. State after state went out; the supremacy 
 of the law and of the Constitution was destroyed; Wash- 
 ington slept in lethargy, while only those who sought the 
 life of the country were active. That period was his 
 Gethsemane, and it aged him in a hundred days. 
 
 His inauguration was to be taken as a proclamation of 
 war, as the time when the South should capture Washing- 
 ton, dissolve the Union, and force the recognition of its 
 own independence. The preparations were made. Beaure- 
 
16 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 gard was in South Carolina, Lee in Virginia, at the head 
 of hosts, ready to attack; Lincoln was in Springfield, 
 powerless to stop their machinations. He w-as conscious 
 of the gravity of his peril, and, better than all others, he 
 realized the overshadowing danger into which he was 
 about to step. But his agony was the agony of a strong 
 man, not v/orn upon the sleeve, but written upon the 
 heart. 
 
 To save the Union, he had a divided North, unarmed 
 and unprepared, its counsels distracted by dissension and 
 faction, the Treasury bankrupt, its credit on the verge 
 of ruin, and an army and navy vv^hich existed only on 
 paper. Even his Cabinet added to the troubles of the 
 already overburdened man. Subjected to their abuse, 
 their quiet jibes and sneers, the new President in his own 
 official famil.y was a stranger. 
 
 Stanton had treated Lincoln with the most cruel abuse 
 at their first meeting, and in describing him had given a 
 scurrilous tongue its full and unimpeded range. The 
 great newspapers of the country attempted to make Lin- 
 coln an object of nation-wide contempt. There was noth- 
 ing too sharp or too bitter for the pens of the scribes who 
 pictured him. Yet through it all was his same unending 
 patience, his charity and his good will, even for those who 
 defamed him most. He seemed to dread praise more than 
 he feared criticism. It is related that upon one occasion, 
 when his genius was so conspicuous as to arouse the 
 reluctant admiration of Stanton, a kindly word of appreci- 
 ation for Lincoln escaped from the lips of the great war 
 minister. When this praise reached Lincoln's ear, he 
 said it reminded him of the Hoosier blacksmith who told 
 his neighbors he guessed he loved ginger bread more than 
 any one in the world and got less of it. 
 
 Seward and Chase, great as they undoubtedly were, 
 were not yet great enough to sink their personal differ- 
 
Abraham Lincoln 17 
 
 ences in the face of the coming; storm. It required all 
 the infinite tact, patience, and humility which Lincoln had 
 to hold them top:ether, and to keep each within his own 
 sphere. It seemed to them that the man of least impor- 
 tance in the Lincoln administration was Abraham Lincoln. 
 To be sure, he was President, but they had been selected 
 b}' some occult interposition to relieve him of the responsi- 
 bilities of his office. 
 
 The country awaited Lincoln's inauji'uration with in- 
 tense anxiety, first, because of what he might say, and, 
 secondly, because of the results of his declaration. In- 
 stead of proelaiminc: war, his inaugural was a prayer for 
 peace ; a call to the South to come back to the Union and 
 to abandon the frenzied passions of the moment. Stand- 
 ing at the east front of the Capitol, overlooking- a sea of 
 upturned faces, under conditions that would appal the 
 bravest soul, Lincoln made his appeal to the heart and 
 sympathy of the erring South, and to the conscience of 
 the civilized world. The sublimity of its thought, the 
 depth of its feeling, its infinite mercy and charity, will 
 thrill humanity as long as memory endures. 
 
 In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in 
 mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will 
 not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves 
 the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy 
 the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "pre- 
 serve, jjrotect, and defend it." 
 
 I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We 
 must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must 
 not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, 
 stretching from every battlefield and patriot 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. 
 
 But its appeal was in vain. Secession flew to arms and 
 the curse of war was loose upon the land. 
 
18 Samuel W. Belpord 
 
 ». England, France, and Spain Avere merely waiting for 
 
 an opportunity to inject themselves into our affairs. Inter- 
 national friendship is a myth and a delusion, the product 
 of the dreams of doctrinaires. Selfish interest wrote the 
 policy of the Powers, all of whom sought, so far as they 
 could, the overthrow of the Republic. England was more 
 keenly alive to the cotton fields than to human rights. 
 When I speak of England, I mean the government, not 
 the people, of England; for they, even at the time when 
 our war was closing their factories and bringing idleness 
 . and want upon them, urged us to persevere in the struggle 
 in the interest of human liberty. A Tory government, 
 headed by Palmerston and Russell, was in full and com- 
 plete control, representing the landed interests of the 
 kingdom and its aristocracy. It was a doubtful boast 
 to say that every blade of grass had its representative in 
 Parliament, where millions of people were unrepresented. 
 Through the cabinets of Europe, Russell sent the message 
 that the Union was dead, and it was he who notified Lin- 
 coln that Great Britain and France would act in concert 
 with reference to our affairs. When we were struggling 
 in the very slough of despond, English privateers were 
 preying upon our commerce ; when we were fighting for 
 the right to exist as a nation, England was lending aid 
 and comfort to the enemy; when we were seeking to 
 abolish slavery, England was scheming to force it upon 
 us — and this from the government of a eountry which 
 has given the world Milton and Hampden, Chatham, Burke 
 and Fox. There w^ere but two nations who extended to 
 the Republic their sympathy and support, Russia, whose 
 Emperor had liberated twenty million serfs, and China, 
 whose Prince Regent, in the interests of mankind, closed 
 the ports of his country "to the seditious". 
 ^ Putting down rebellion, while holding off a foreign 
 
 war, were greater tasks than ever confronted an American 
 
Abraham Lincoln 19 
 
 statesman. Singly, they would stagger Courage itself, 
 when combined, only the heroic soul could rise to the 
 emergency. 
 
 Throughout the terrible years of the war, Lincoln held 
 Europe at bay by a policy so wise and magnanimous that 
 it finally won the admiration of his antagonists. The 
 South was rash enough to strike the first blow, and for 
 two years Europe witnessed the struggles of the Federal 
 government to re-establish an authority disputed by 
 armed insurrection. In such a contest it could not inter- 
 vene without inviting a deluge upon itself. When the 
 war had dragged itself through defeat and disaster, until 
 the patience of the North was becoming exhausted and 
 the hopes of European intervention, "to stop a seemingly 
 useless slaughter," were about to be realized, Lincoln 
 struck the blow of Emancipation. 
 
 Its ob.ject vv^as twofold, first, as a decisive war measure, 
 to rally the North and to take the slaves from the South- 
 ern fields, and, secondly, to checkmate foreign activities 
 toward interference with the prosecution of the war. Noth- 
 ing better was ever conceived to produce far reaching re- 
 sults at a critical time. Its effect was spontaneous and 
 world-wide — it immediately realized the freedom of a 
 race and the applause of mankind. 
 
 From the time of the issuance of the famous proclama- 
 tion, when Lincoln Avrote "Liberty" on the .banners of 
 his army, the character of the war became ennobled; it 
 was being waged, not alone to establish the supremacy of 
 the Constitution and the authority of the Nation, but to 
 give freedom to millions of men. History may be searched 
 in vain to find where such a chance was ever given to 
 one man to confer liberty upon an alien race. It is idle 
 to believe that freedom can long be maintained by one 
 people who deny the same blessings to another people. In 
 the final analysis, the measure of the good we enjoy Avill 
 
20 SAMrjEL W. Belford 
 
 be the amount of good we do to others. The law of com- 
 pensation, under whatever guise it appears, proclaims 
 that what we do to others, we, in reality, do to ourselves, 
 whether it be good or evil, right or wrong. And the law 
 is eternal. The greatest sufferer from injustice is he who 
 works it, the greatest injury from hate is to him who 
 indulges it. We have only what we give — love or malice — 
 and it is reflected back upon our own hearts. As it is 
 with men, so it must be with nations of men. So it was 
 with Lincoln. 
 
 By giving freedom to the slaves, he won the moral 
 support of civilization. It strengthened our armies, for- 
 tified our cause, sustained the weak and timid, banished 
 doubts and misgivings, and turned defeat into victory. 
 The slave had, in fact, brought to the Emancipator the 
 strength and courage that he needed to fight his way to 
 the light. 
 
 They were four terrible years ; a conflict, the greatest 
 in all the annals of time, had rent and split us asunder. 
 Untold millions of treasure, thousands of precious lives, 
 a wreek-streAvn country were but a part of its awful cost. 
 Yet throngh it all w^as the guidance of the burdened, sad- 
 dened man who took the helm when the ship was sinking. 
 It was his benevolence, his wisdom and patience which 
 outrode the storm and stilled the contending hosts. A 
 field of battle is the supreme expression of human effort — 
 crowded with suffering, pulsating with despair, its misery 
 infinite, its courage sublime. The whole Nation was 'battle- 
 stricken, rising from one blow to sink under another. 
 The strife of brothers is not God's work, but it is His 
 work to hush the tumult. 
 
 It is said that Lincoln cannot be explained. But he 
 is explained in the knowledge we have of the righteous 
 purposes of Providence. "We do not know from whence 
 there came to him the genius for statecraft, the lofty 
 
Abraham Lincoln 21 
 
 eloquence at Gettysburg that made him the peer of 
 Pericles, the luminous gift of military skill, the clear 
 vision that could read the souls of men and foresee their 
 actions, but we do know that, somehow, in that day of 
 sternest trial, we had the things which we needed most, 
 and knowing this is knowing God. 
 
 When his work was finished the great soul took its 
 flight. The love which Lincoln gave to humanity has 
 made humanity love Lincoln. I have seen the inscription 
 on the marble tablet marking the spot where Lincoln died. 
 A simple thing, that "President Lincoln died in this 
 house''. It was not death for him, but a greater life, and 
 who will dare to mark the limits of a great life well lived? 
 The influence of Lincoln's career will never cease to 
 quicken the aspirations of mankind Avhile the search for 
 better things animates its heart. He was above the temp- 
 tations of ambition, beyond the lust for power, untoached 
 by the lure of personal glory, unless it came from the 
 discharge of jjublic duty. 
 
 Clinging to his belief in the right, and its ultimate 
 triumph, he regarded himself as ,but an instrument of 
 Providence, through which it was making clear its will. 
 Whatever may have been in store for him lost its signifi- 
 cance in his eyes, as he felt himself overshadowed by the 
 greatness of the work he was called to do. 
 
 There was no taint of Caesar in his nature; nothing 
 there that Avas patterned after Cromwell. Commander of 
 the greatest army that has ever marched and of the great- 
 est navy that has ever sailed the seas, invested with 
 authority that knew no limits, Lincoln devoted his power 
 to the service of freedom, to the redemption of the slave, 
 to the good of m.ankind. Great power with Lincoln meant 
 a prayer that his solemn opportunity might be met aright, 
 that from his life's work there might come a new era of 
 hope for humanity. 
 
22 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 Do we wonder now that with his death the clouds 
 of prejudice and injustice should have been lifted from 
 the eyes of nations and that, at last, they were able to 
 discern the sublimity of a character which they had re- 
 viled and scorned ? Even from England there came a plea 
 for forgiveness for the thorns she had placed upon his 
 brow, an acknowledgment of her error in crowding his 
 way with trouble. When the news of his death reached 
 London, the press^ hastened to make amends, and this 
 tribute was paid to Lincoln's worth: 
 
 You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier! 
 
 You who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
 Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
 
 His length of shambling- limb, his furrowed face, 
 
 His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair. 
 His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
 
 His lack of ail we prize as debonair. 
 
 Of power or will to shine, of art to please! 
 
 Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
 The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew. 
 
 Between the mourners at his head and feet. 
 
 Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? 
 
 How humble, yet how hopeful he could be! 
 
 How in good fortune and in ill the same! 
 Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 
 [ ^ Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 
 
 Was it not fitting that in his final triumph, when peace 
 had returned to the land, when slavery had forever been 
 banished, not from this country alone, but from the entire 
 civilized world, when the grandees, who had spoken of 
 him with contempt, were the first to lay their tributes 
 of admiration at his feet, when war itself had ceased, and 
 the Republic, which he loved, stood forth cleansed and 
 regenerated, when the affection of all mankind was lav- 
 
Abraham Lincoln 23 
 
 ished upon him. and when ho was first in the hearts of 
 men, that the cares of this life should pass away, and that 
 his example should become as a light to the world! 
 
 How rare has been the fortune of the Republic to have 
 produced within a century two such men as Washington 
 and Lincoln! What an acknowledgment of the capacity 
 of man to attain perfection! We think great events and 
 great men are the fixed points and the peaks of history; 
 and it is from them that we observe it in its totality and 
 follow it along its highways. As the mariner, without a 
 compass, may steer by the stars, so can this Nation, if it 
 loses all else, guide itself aright by their example. 
 
 Both lived to teach mankind that order and liberty 
 were the fruits of democracy, that government could 
 safely rest in the hands of the people, that the divine 
 right of kings was a deceptive philosophy, outworn and 
 outgrown b}^ the march of progress. Their careers, so 
 alike and yet so different, attested the truth of the belief, 
 now so potent, that ideas must govern this universe, that 
 above and beyond the ambition and plans of men are the 
 fixed purposes of God, slowly, but certainly and inexora- 
 bly moving toward their fulfillment. 
 
 The greatest figure of the greatest war that history has 
 ever known emerged from the struggle with an influence 
 which is wholly spiritual. The thought of Lincoln is in 
 itself a benediction. The utterance of his name is an 
 expression of charity and compassion. He has made rich 
 the life of his people and has taught them the nearness of 
 God. As Lincoln's example is to us, so must our example 
 be to the world. I hope the day may speedily come when 
 peace will brood over the earth, when men will accept 
 as the law of nations the simple tests of right and wrong, 
 when force will be displaced by reason and justice, when 
 power gives way to conscience. May the people of every 
 clime strive together in perfect concord and harmony for 
 
24 Samuel W. Belford 
 
 the universal betterment of mankind, and to bring to pass 
 a world-wide patriotism in the acceptance of a world-wide 
 brotherhood. We are all His children. Differences of 
 tongue or race, of country or condition, are but the prod- 
 ucts of environment. Beneath them all is the imperish- 
 able unity of humanity. 
 
 It is upon this that we must ultimately rely ; it is from 
 this that the salvation of the human race must come. 
 
 How feeble against His purposes and laws are the 
 mightiest armies and the strongest fleets. How idle to 
 misuse material power to accomplish injustice, to wreak 
 our will by force, to conquer through fear. 
 
 We may rise or fall ; we may travel again the highway 
 of error, where other nations have gone before, to find 
 that God's laws await us at the end, as they existed at the 
 beginning. If w^ealth and power ever lead us to arrogant 
 conquest, or turn into false channels the energies and 
 strength of our people; if, having them, we forget from 
 whence they come, may the memory of Lincoln's gentle 
 life recall our wandering steps. 
 
 "i'or heathen heart that puts her trust, 
 
 In reeking tube and iron shard, 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust. 
 
 And, guarding-, calls not Thee to guard, 
 For frantic boast and foolish word, 
 
 Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord." 
 
THE PROGRESSIVE STATE FROM THE UNI- 
 VERSITY POINT OF VIEW.* 
 By Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 The Duty of Service 
 
 University education is a training for service. The 
 education received from books, from the laboratory, from 
 the library, from friendship, has in view service — public 
 and private service. The aim of the university, ideally 
 expressed, is service. The fundamental purpose of the 
 student's college life should be intelligently directed to 
 the best training for the highest ends of service. If this 
 be not the ultimate aim of the work in universities, 
 colleges, and public schools, then these institutions have 
 no reason for their existence. If this be not their lofty 
 aim and purpose, then the money that is paid out freely 
 and gladly for the support of these institutions is wasted, 
 utterly wasted. If our schools, our colleges, our universi- 
 ties do not result in the formation of strong and beautiful 
 characters, fitted by training to bear the burdens, the 
 duties, and the privileges of citizenship, then the taxation 
 of the people for their support is not justified, and the 
 money that is poured out so freely from private sources 
 is a mistake. But the money is not wasted. Benefactions 
 are appreciated. Universities and colleges feel the re- 
 sponsibility which these gifts place upon their adminis- 
 trators and their faculties. 
 
 Every university has an exalted ideal of the good that 
 it is doing, of the blessings that it is conferring, of the 
 citizenship that it is cultivating, of the life of public and 
 private service which is its dominating principle. The 
 
 *An address delivered at the Baptist Church, Reno, Nevada, March 12, 1911. 
 
 25 
 
26 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 university keeps its eye fixed upon the stars. It takes 
 its bearing from the stars, which represent the divinity of 
 light. Bat, while it may sweep the heavens with the 
 glass of the astronomer, its work is upon the earth, and 
 its purpose is to make better the life of man by service, 
 and to spread the knoAvledge of the brotherhood of man 
 wherever its influence can reach. 
 
 Keep in your thought, therefore, this fundamental and 
 paramount principle — that human life within the bound- 
 aries of this great CommouAvealth ; human life that finds 
 its finest expression in the family relation, the unit, the 
 center, of all social v/ell-being; or in the larger life of 
 the communit}^, the school district, seeking both by law 
 and association the culture of all common schools and 
 the opportunity for every one to make the best of him- 
 self; or in the larger and more complex relations that 
 grow out of county organization; or in its highest form, 
 in the state administration, the Governorship, the Su- 
 preme Court, the Legislature — that all life is service. If 
 in this simple organization for human welfare this vital 
 principle of human brotherhood prevails ; if the family is 
 kept secure by law and by public opinion; if the entire 
 Commonwealth is ruled and controlled by the principle 
 of service, service for others, service for one's self — this 
 State is a fine example of a Progressive State. 
 
 Morally considered, this State is making progress 
 when there is developed in its individual, family, social, 
 political, educational, and religious life the working out, 
 under practical forms, of the ideal of public service ; when 
 the purpose of every man in business and in social life is 
 governed by the welfare of others, as well as of himself; 
 when he will receive no gain, he will achieve no success, 
 he will be a party to no policy that invades or destroys 
 the prosperity and happiness of the other fellow. A Pro- 
 gressive State is progressive only in an ethical or moral 
 
The Progressive State 27 
 
 sense. There is no permanent gain to the citizens of this 
 Commonwealth unless that gain is accomplished, that end 
 achieved, by strictly moral considerations, bj^ a life that 
 is governed by the ideal of service to others as well as 
 service to one's self. I know that there are some philoso- 
 phers and men of practical mind Avho say that everything 
 that is done by man is done from a selfish motive, through 
 selfish interest, having in mind self and selfish gain. This 
 is not so. There are those whose lives are governed by 
 the principle of the Sermon on the Mount, who, if a man 
 ask them to go with him one mile, will go with him twain ; 
 who follow devotedly, even passionately, the law of 
 Christ, which says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." Who is 
 this neighbor — mine and thine? Read the story of the 
 Good Samaritan and find the answer. There are those 
 who meet the high requirements of this law, and go forth 
 to meet them as sweetly, as cheerfully, as heroically as 
 they respond to the wooing of a beautiful summer's morn. 
 The rule of David Harum would, be called practical, but 
 it would hardly be designated as "golden". Says David, 
 "Do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you, but 
 see that you do it fust". The Golden Rule, as set forth 
 in the Sermon on the Mount, breathes the true spirit of 
 brotherhood and helpfulness, is everlastingly true, and 
 to be practiced ought to rest firmly upon the conscience 
 of every human being. The University seeks to train its 
 students to the fulfillment of this divine precept. 
 
 Money from the State is usually given to the Uni- 
 versity with an ungrudging hand. Private wealth has in 
 late years found its way in abundance to the universities 
 of the country. Men have found no better way to do 
 good and be helpful than by the bestowment of their 
 w^ealth upon educational institutions. Within the past 
 few years the University of Nevada has received a share 
 
23 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 of these gracious benefactions. Without this aid the Uni- 
 versity would now be lagging behind in its efforts to carry 
 out its principle of public and private service in Universi- 
 ty life ; but as it is, the University has made great steps 
 in advance and is keeping pace with many older colleges 
 in thickly settled communities. It is doing work unsur- 
 passed by any other institution. It keeps before the 
 minds of its Regents, its Faculty, and its students the help- 
 ful ideal of being of the utmost service to this State and 
 to the Nation. Young men and women, when they enter 
 the university, do not always consciously have in mind 
 the distinct aim of service, the distinct aim of citizenship. 
 Sometimes young men enter college for the sake of the 
 friendships they form, of the fellowships they establish, 
 of the social life they enjoy. Sometimes they enter col- 
 lege with the distinct aim of gaining knowledge because 
 it is often said that ''Knowledge is power", but without 
 the enlarging and illuminating influence of seeking 
 knowledge that they may be trained and fitted the better 
 for service. Mr. Stokes says that "Often a false sense 
 of proportion acquired during college days sticks to a 
 man through life, and has caused many a man to leave 
 the path of usefulness for a life of vice and laziness". 
 Knowledge alone, secured for its own sake, is of little 
 value, and there is no adequate gain of power from knowl- 
 edge acquired and stimulated by marks or rank in classes. 
 The only way of insuring the education which will result 
 in friendship, in knowledge, in breadth of view, and in 
 power is for the student to keep in mind constantly the 
 ideal of public and private service. 
 
 No state should be called progressive unless its progress 
 is based upon moral or ethical considerations. There is 
 no distinction between private and public morality. I am 
 aware that there are some schools of thought in which 
 this distinction is held. "The Stoic formula is, 'To live 
 
The Progressive State 29 
 
 according to reason' — and the world is not likely to get 
 beyond this — to let reason, not passion, rule our lives. 
 Civilization is first and before all things ethical. Not 
 literature, not art, not science, not commerce and manu- 
 factures, not the soldier and the policeman, but morality 
 is its foundation. Truth and right are the very breath 
 of life to states, as to individual men. It is to follow that 
 which reason, speaking through conscience, dictates as 
 right. This is the only true rule of public as of private 
 life." 
 
 The true end of civil society, whether this applies to 
 the civil society of the Nation, or of the state, or to the 
 counties and the communities of the state, is a noble exist- 
 ence, a worthy life, in which the ideal of service and 
 brotherhood prevails. "The sacred distinction between 
 person and thing", as Coleridge well observes, "is the 
 light and life of all laAv, human and divine." The dis- 
 tinction between right and wrong remains eternally, ever- 
 lastingly true. 
 
 It is the aim of the university thoroughl}' to teach this 
 fundamental doctrine of morality and to instill the teach- 
 ing of public service and human brotherhood as founded 
 upon the eternal distinction between right and wrong. I 
 know that this is ofttimes regarded as the teaching of an 
 ideal that has no place in the practical affairs of life. I 
 know that there are some who will teach that what one 
 ought to do as an individual does not hold true in public 
 life. Yet this was the teaching that gave courage and 
 justice and ultimately far reaching influence to the public 
 life of the gentleman who gave that epigrammatic ad- 
 dress before the Young Men's Christian Association on 
 "Soldiers of Peace."* It applies to the judgment and 
 conscience and sense of fair play of every right-minded 
 citizen. 
 
 *Former Governor Joseph W. Folk of Missouri. 
 
30 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 It is the duty of the State University to train every 
 one of its students to a life of public service. Our democ- 
 racy is founded upon the theory that we each and every 
 one take a strong and impartial interest in seeing that 
 our legislature, our commerce, our schools, our every- 
 thing, is conducted in such a way as to give every man 
 an equal chance, so far as conditions permit, to make a 
 living, to educate and to rear his children well and with 
 the best educational advantages, to secure for his house- 
 hold many of the things which contribute to the ease and 
 culture and welfare of those within the home. The ex- 
 periment of democracy in the United States will only 
 fail, if it ever fails, because the citizens have not done 
 their duty and have left their resources and their privi- 
 leges as a prey to those who do not observe the Golden 
 Rule. 
 
 The privileges and the advantages that the university 
 gives are past reckoning, and in their social and scholastic 
 relations the students should aim to be lifters and not 
 leaners, so that when they take their place as members 
 of society they will exemplify in their lives and practice 
 the doctrine of public service ; that their hands and their 
 heads and their hearts will be at the service of their com- 
 munities in all public affairs, not that they may win per- 
 sonal glory, or esteem, or wealth, but that they may 
 simply and honestly be helpful to others as they wish to 
 be helped by others; that they may seek to lift up, not 
 to cast down ; that they may be willing to serve at a loss 
 to themselves, if necessary, always lifting, never leaning. 
 
 There are two kinds of people on earth today, 
 
 Just two kinds of people, no more, I say. 
 
 Not the saint and the sinner, for 'tis well understood 
 
 The good are half bad, and the bad are half good; 
 
 Not the rich and the poor, for to count a man's wealth 
 
 You must first know the state of his con.science and health; 
 
The Progressive State 31 
 
 Not the humble and proud, for in life's little span 
 
 Who puts on vain airs is not counted a man; 
 
 Not the happy and sad, for the swift-flying years 
 
 Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears. 
 
 No! The two kinds of people on earth I mean 
 
 Are the people who lift and the people who lean. 
 
 Where'er you go you will find the world's masses 
 
 Are always divided in just these two classes; 
 
 And, oddly enough, you will find too, I ween, 
 
 There is only one lifter to twenty who lean. 
 
 In what class are you? Are you easing the load 
 
 Of over-taxed lifters wlio toil down the road? 
 
 Or are you a leaner, who lets others bear 
 
 Your portion of labor and worry and care?* 
 
 The university seeks to develop a sentiment that every 
 student stand erect, square with the world, his face ever 
 towards the rising sun of improvement of the people, of 
 the civil society of which he is a member, that he stand 
 with an eye that looks into every other eye and is not 
 ashamed because he has done nothing to be ashamed of, — 
 one who fulfills the teaching of the psalm which ought 
 to be the chart of every citizen in this democracy. If I 
 did not tell you that this psalm was sung into the hearts 
 of all the people thousands of years ago, you would say 
 that its teachings are thoroughly modern and apply to 
 the present condition of society: 
 
 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in 
 thy holy hill? 
 
 He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and 
 speaketh the truth in his heart. 
 
 He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his 
 neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor. 
 
 In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoreth 
 them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and 
 changeth not. 
 
 He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh re- 
 ward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall 
 never be moved. 
 
 *Ella Wheeler Wilcox 
 
32 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 Civilization Is Ethical 
 
 Now you will see that the main thought of this dis- 
 course is this: that all civilization or society is founded 
 upon an ethical basis ; that its roots are in the distinction 
 between right and wrong; that public morality, public 
 justice, public honesty, public courage, is just the same 
 as private morality, justice, honesty, and courage; and 
 that the term "Progressive State", as applied to the 
 Nation, or to the several states of the Union, or to a 
 great commonwealth, refers to its progress according to 
 the true standards of morality, whether in private or in 
 public life; that the thinking and feeling and acting of 
 our citizens, whether acting as individuals or in solidarity 
 for the public good, are governed and controlled in prac- 
 tice by the principles of morality ; that equal and exact 
 justice to every man shall be done, even though some 
 part of society will suffer thereby; that business is con- 
 ducted according to Christ's Golden Rule; that politics 
 are managed by the same rule ; that the education of our 
 children is founded — deeply founded — in the same rule ; 
 that a man would rather be right than hold any office of 
 honor or pride ; that a man would rather remain poor all 
 his days than take advantage of his neighbor; that the 
 proverbial horse-trader would tell the bad, as well as 
 the good points of the horse that he proposes to trade ; 
 that the sun of publicity shall shine upon all transactions 
 of public corporations and private industry. 
 
 I have sought long and earnestly to find out what 
 voice should be commanding in the affairs of this great 
 Commonwealth, whose interests and whose good name are 
 yours and mine. There are many and divergent opinions, 
 as there will always be, as to what laws will contribute 
 helpfully and directly to the welfare of this State. Some 
 will say it should be the vox populi, or "voice of the 
 
The Progressive State 33 
 
 people". But we know that sometimes this voice is 
 neither reasonable nor sane; that it is moved by passion 
 and by self interest, which for a time seems to carry all 
 before it. Yet if in this democracy the voice of the people 
 does not control, where shall we go for the last and final 
 word? Our fathers made and ordained the Constitution 
 of 1787 as a chart for this great people, whose boundaries 
 now are limited only by the oceans east and west. They 
 provided for amendments to this Constitution, so that as 
 the Nation grew and gained experience it might amend 
 this great instrument to meet the necessary conditions. 
 The country gave a great jurist to interpret the pro- 
 visions of this Constitution, and it gave great thinkers, 
 great statesmen, both in the Senate and in the House, to 
 teach broadly its principles and provisions to the people. 
 Forty-six states answer to the roll call, and these forty- 
 six states are united by the invisible bonds of this power- 
 ful instrument into one mighty, commanding, rich, and 
 spiritual people. One thing is clear— that it was intended 
 and was so stated in our charter that there should be 
 certain rights and privileges restricted to the states, and 
 certain other privileges left to the National Government 
 that should be supreme in the federal group of this 
 Nation. It seems clear, further, that this restriction of 
 the powers of the state and of the general government 
 should remain so, that each may work out well its own 
 problems and its own destiny. No theory of state's rights 
 should be accepted that will interfere with Federal con- 
 trol of those things which make for the common good. 
 On the other hand, no theory of Federal control should 
 be permitted to interfere with the rights reserved to the 
 states, enabling them to work out the best interest of 
 the people of the state. 
 
34 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 Progressive Nevada 
 
 The Commonwealth of Nevada is the fourth in amount 
 of territory in the Union, embracing 110,690 square miles. 
 Numerically it has the smallest population in the Union, 
 about 82,000 people. It is a state of vast deserts, of 
 towering mountains, of rich mines of gold, and silver, 
 and copper; of hundreds of thousands of acres of irriga- 
 ble land that only needs to be tickled with the hoe to 
 give back an abundant harvest. Upon its vast stretches 
 of upland are pastured unnumbered cattle and sheep, and 
 soon many more acres for the husbandman will be re- 
 claimed by the State by the conservation of the flood 
 waters. Now, within the confines of this State are 82,000 
 men, women, and children, moved by the common impulse 
 of humanity tow^ard the making of homes and gaining 
 of wealth. This State has the same problems, equal if not 
 greater difticulties, with every other state in the Union. 
 In the University, in provision for our common schools, 
 in charitable institutions, as in the Hospital for Mental 
 Diseases, and the Orphans' Home, in the penitentiary 
 for criminals, in caring for the youth by means of a 
 Juvenile Court, who can say that this State is not striv- 
 ing to do its duty and has not made the amplest pro- 
 vision consistent with its ability? In the ultimate analysis 
 we must rely on an INTELLIGENT PUBLIC OPINION 
 to govern in the making of laws, in the conduct of 
 officials, and in the creating of a public conscience. I 
 do not know where else we can go, or on what else 
 we can rely, except on an opinion which is enlightened 
 by reason and put in force by the common conscience of 
 our people. 
 
 This State in its development politically ought to pro- 
 ceed along lines which were established by the Constitu- 
 tion of the State. Then as the years go by, after careful 
 
The Progressive State 35 
 
 discussion and consideration by the people, such changes 
 may be made in the conduct of the State as seem best. 
 This order of development is historical and progressive. 
 The change of the law in favor of direct primaries is a 
 case in point, and the operation of that law has, on the 
 whole, been good, although there are some defects in it 
 which the present Legislature is seeking to remedy. I 
 am inclined to think that some of the proposed legislation 
 in our neighboring states is really not progressive at all, 
 and in time these states will change them. The Com- 
 mission Plan of cities seems to be really progressive legis- 
 lation and will doubtless work out great good to the 
 cities which are thus governed. Gambling is repugnant 
 to the moral sense of the people in every state in the 
 Union, and gambling was removed by law from within 
 the boundaries of the State of Nevada because the moral 
 sentiment of our people compelled its abolition. The law 
 against gambling has behind it and in support of it an 
 intelligent public opinion and an aroused public con- 
 science. I think that open gambling in this State is dead 
 forever, and the attempts made at the present session of 
 the Legislature to modify the law so as to make a viola- 
 tion of it a misdemeanor instead of a felony have failed 
 because the public sentiment of this State will not allow 
 this law to be tampered with. 
 
 Some people think that the onh^ kind of legislation 
 adequate to prevent the wrongs done by the liquor traffic 
 is entire prohibition of that traffic in this State. Others 
 consider that the saloon business should be guarded and 
 taxed so as to eliminate the disreputable saloons and 
 dives and to make the legitimate business pay an adequate 
 revenue to the State and to the county, and, by law, to 
 compel the liquor dealer not to sell to habitual drunkards, 
 to Indians, or to minors. A bill to this effect has been 
 introduced in the House by a member from Humboldt, 
 
36 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 and I think it is a good bill, and one that ought to be 
 passed. But the point I wish to make is that any required 
 legislation in this State must have the sanction, the sup- 
 port of Sane Public Opinion to make it effeetive. 
 
 The question of proper divorce legislation will have 
 little or no effect until an aroused and educated public 
 opinion demands that there shall be certain restrictions. 
 The University stands for the sanctity of the home; it 
 wants to see homes dotting every hillside and valley in 
 this State. It values the good name of the State as some- 
 thing above the price of rubies, but the only way that 
 it can restrict the divorce evil by law is by an aroused 
 public sentiment, a quickened public conscience. The Uni- 
 versity regards as detrimental to the State the practice 
 which teaches our young people that marriage bonds are 
 lightly held, that marriage is but an affair which young 
 people can enter into heedlessly and abandon when they 
 are repentant. The dissolution of the marriage bond 
 ruins the home, robs children of their rightful inherit- 
 ance to home and education. Surely this is a menace to 
 our civilization. 
 
 Public opinion, carefully and soundly cultivated, will 
 in the end arise as a flood and sweep away the evils that 
 beset our civic life. We may for a time look upon these 
 evils calmly, and not feel the movement of the mighty 
 force impelling us to action. But let the sentiment, the 
 idea, take firm grasp upon the State that a certain course 
 of action is wrong and is robbing our society of its truest 
 birthright, and taking away from us the holiest ties — 
 then we can be assured that in time public opinion will 
 compel legal action that will make these evils no longer 
 possible. Public sentiment is akin to public opinion, but 
 the word gives emphasis to the fact that in social affairs 
 the rational emotions of the heart are a tremendous im- 
 pelling and compelling power. 
 
The Progressive State 37 
 
 Is it not possible to sa^' that equal suffrage for women 
 is one of the marks of a progressive state, and that the 
 legislation leading to it may be justly characterized as 
 progressive legislation ? The claim of the right of women 
 to vote has certainly a moral basis. The women of this 
 country are large owners of property in their own right. 
 No class of people is more deeply interested in the public 
 schools and the universities than the intelligent and edu- 
 cated women of the country; there is no danger of its in- 
 terfering with the duties of maternity or motherhood, 
 and it will put into our body politic a large and growing 
 influence of a healthful kind. Some of the states have 
 tried it or are trying it with success. In Wyoming, in 
 Colorado, in Utah, in Idaho, in Washington, the women 
 all have the ballot. None of the ills of which we heard 
 have followed women's voting in these states; so, when 
 the.v ask that our State Legislature submit an amend- 
 ment to the Constitution permitting Avomen to vote, should 
 not this request be granted, and so allow a full and fair 
 and free discussion of the question to take place through- 
 out the State? 
 
 Public Sentiment 
 
 You know that President McKinley was averse to be- 
 ginning a war with Spain. But the blowing up of the 
 Maine in Havana harbor set the country on fire with in- 
 dignation, and public sentiment gained such force that 
 the President was compelled by this aroused public senti- 
 ment to declare war against Spain. 
 
 Sentiment is of the heart and throws beauty and 
 grace and power over a man's life. It leads him to do some 
 things which his intellect cannot approve. A wise public 
 sentiment is the salvation of the state and society. I be- 
 lieve that a sound public sentiment is the desire of all 
 good people, and in the end it is strong enough to lead 
 
38 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 men to adopt those sound principles of government which 
 we all want to see. 
 
 As the story runs, a committee, consisting of George 
 Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel George Ross, 
 called upon Mrs. Betsy Ross and asked her if she could 
 make a flag. She said she could try. Whereupon they 
 produced a design roughly drawn of thirteen stripes and 
 thirteen stars. 
 
 The authentic history of our flag begins on June 14, 
 1777, when in pursuance of the report of a committee, the 
 American Congress adopt the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thir- 
 teen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen 
 stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation. 
 
 Whatever may have been the actual origin of this flag, 
 the sentiment which it has conveyed for 134 years was 
 appropriately expressed by W^ashington: 
 
 We take the star from Heaven, the red from our mother 
 country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we 
 have separated from her, and the white .stripes shall so down to 
 posterity representing liberty. 
 
 So Betsy Ross sat sewing the red and white bars, the 
 blue field, and white stars into the symbol of American 
 nationality — the Stars and Stripes. And today that flag 
 with its forty-six stars floats from the top of every public 
 building and from every school house. It spreads its 
 folds to the breeze on every American ship, and, wher- 
 ever that flag floats, it is a symbol of the power, and the 
 wealth, and the integrity, and the nobility of a great 
 people. Every American citizen can invoke the power 
 of the great Nation, which the flag represents, if he is in 
 the line of his duty; and yet it represents only a senti- 
 ment, but a sentiment so strong, so vital, as to arouse 
 the passion and the judgment of this great Nation in de- 
 fense of a wrong done to its humblest citizen. 
 
The Progressive State 39 
 
 You know the incident, how an American citizen was 
 condemned to death for some alleged crime in Spanish 
 Cuba. The American Consul was persuaded that he was 
 unjustly condemned. In the morning he was led out to 
 his execution, and stood in front of the grave already dug 
 for him, facing six armed soldiers who were to be his exe- 
 cutioners, when the American Consul suddenly threw 
 over him the American flag, and said, "I invoke the power 
 of the great nation which this flag represents to protect 
 this man in this hour of his great need". And the Span- 
 iards did not dare give the order to fire. 
 
 Friends, I have a vision of this Commonwealth of Ne- 
 vada clothing herself with honor and power, taking a 
 noble place among the states of this great Nation, making 
 our laws according to the ideals of public morality, and 
 our Legislature doing equal and exact justice to all men. 
 I see a State where every man and woman will have an 
 interest in public affairs as in private affairs, and will 
 sanction by their votes the election to office of only those 
 who love God and do their duty according to the lofty 
 ideals which shall govern this State. We may trudge the 
 highways and byways of our life in this State, dusty, 
 tired, worn, but then we shall carry within our breasts 
 a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man, 
 and a desire to give every man what we claim for our- 
 selves — equal rights, equal privileges, 
 
 I see as in a vision the University of Nevada — our 
 University — through the years and decades and centuries 
 to come : she is standing, as always, for those things which 
 make for the character of the young people, and the pros- 
 perity and welfare of this State ; she represents in herself 
 and in her students service for others, good citizens in 
 the State. 
 
 The University comes to the people to minister, not 
 to be ministered unto. I see the University supplied with 
 
40 Joseph Edward Stubbs 
 
 ample means, provided by this State and by private gifts, 
 to do the great work which is placed upon her to do. I 
 see her grounds and buildings clothed with beauty and 
 fitted in the best way for usefulness. Her library, her 
 laboratories, her classrooms are all of the best, so that the 
 young people who come out of her halls shall know the 
 best, and shall seek to work out in other places the beauty, 
 the excellence, the good taste, the worthy character which 
 has come to them during their university life. 
 
 Through her doors three thousand students, under- 
 graduates and graduates, have passed out into life, pre- 
 pared for the duties and the responsibilities and privileges 
 of manhood and womanhood. The record of these young 
 men and young women is a record of v/hich &ny institu- 
 tion may be proud. Yet this is only the advance guard 
 of the number of young people who are to go through 
 this University year after year, century after century. 
 
 What a glorious army they will be, and what a sense 
 of responsibility they will place upon this State, under 
 whose guardian care this University is placed ! 
 
 The University, beautiful for situation, the joy of the 
 whole earth, this University is our University for ever and 
 for ever, and she — our Alma Mater — shall be our guide 
 even unto death. 
 
LB S '12