BY HIS EXCELLENCY
CURTIS GUILD, Jr.
GOVERNOR
A PROC LAMATION
By a wise and patriotic act of the General Court it is at once the duty and the privilege of the
Governor annually to remind the people of the Commonwealth that the Twelfth Day of February, the
birthday of Abraham Lincoln, is in Massachusetts set apart for the celebration of the true spirit of
Americanism with the designation of
~.
Massachusetts claims his ancestry. Kentucky claims his birth. Illinois claims his home. The world
owns his life. ...’
He led the nation to fortune and en the strain of a crisis fell upon her in days of war.
His example may well be an inspiration to ... in a crisis that has come to us in days of peace.
We are passing through a quiet, a fairly peaceful, but a very real social revolution. Equal rights were
won by the generations that have gone before us. Equal opportunities are to be our gift to posterity. -
As always at a time of acute social excitement, the demagogue is a most conspicuous figure. The
demagogue by catering to extremists seeks first his own advantage, and finds it in turning rational revolution
into irrational anarchy. - f
Lincoln was neither mawkish nor sensational. He frankly sought public office. He never sought it by
unworthy means. His sustaining trust was in the honesty of the ordinary citizen, whose life is neither the com-
fortable indolence that shrinks from all change nor the broken career that leaps to embrace a gospel of despair.
“He knew to bide his time.” His weapons were endless patience, cheerful good nature, abounding
common sense and an abiding faith in his cause. -
He despised clap-trap. He embodied a cause, not a candidacy. He did not fight fire with fire. He
faced hot excitement with cold reasoning and mad vituperation with clear truth. - -
The adored chief of the people, he had time to earn the love of the friendless deserter and the little
children in the streets. The offspring of almost savage poverty, he died a dictator to kings.
He made the slave a freeman, he made the Federation a Nation.
Is law necessary that on the anniversary of the day that gave him to the world, the doors of the shops
and factories should for a time at least be closed and those of the churches opened ? Shall not the children
whom he loved be assembled in their schools in the morning hours only, that with the survivors of the Grand
Army of Lincoln's Boys they may renew the music and the memories of those days of conflict and of lofty
sacrifice 2 - -
Let cannon and bell at high noon call the people from sport or study, or toil, to reflection on that
great life so nobly lived. Let the universal display from tenement to State House of the flag of the United
States of America remind the people that our country is the United States because of Abraham Lincoln.
Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, this first day of February, in the year of our Lord one
thousand nine hundred and eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred
and thirty-second. CURTIS GUILD, JR.
BY HIS ExCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR,
WILLIAM M. OLIN,
Secretary of the Commonwealth.
(Suh adue the Qummulturalth af flaggarhusetts.



III.iii.
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