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 By fredtrkk Boward Wlne$, CC. D. 
 
FORTY YEARS AFTER. 
 
 The Greatness of 
 Abraham Lincoln: 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered at the Lincoln Monument 
 
 On Decoration Day, 
 
 May 30, 1905, 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK HOWARD WINES, L,L,. D. 
 
 II 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS: 
 1905. 
 

 
gtncoin, 
 
 There is nothing new to be said about Abraham Lin 
 coln. On this day consecrated to the memory of our 
 heroic dead, of whom he is the most illustrious, it is 
 nevertheless a sad but pleasant duty to recall him to 
 mind and place our humble tribute of grateful appre 
 ciation upon his tomb. Especially is it appropriate 
 that this simple ceremonial be not neglected or unworth 
 ily performed in the town where he lived, from which 
 he went forth, a knight without fear and without re 
 proach, and to it he returned, crowned with the glory 
 of martyrdom. On this spot a nation plunged in grief 
 laid his beloved dust to rest in the grave. There are 
 those among us who knew him as no others had the 
 opportunity to know him. Around the head of every 
 departed hero a cloud gathers, large in proportion to 
 the height to which he towered above his fellows. It 
 takes the shape of a halo, it changes color with the 
 lapse of years, as the sky bursts into flame when the 
 sun s level rays gild the eastern or western horizon; 
 but, as the light of the noonday sun is white, so, in the 
 light of historical criticism, that which was mythical 
 fades away, and the true image of the man appears. 
 The difficult task that I have set myself, on this occa 
 sion, is to draw a truthful portrait of Lincoln, one 
 whose verisimilitude will be felt and acknowledged by 
 those of his townsmen and contemporaries still living, 
 whose mouthpiece for the moment I would fain make 
 myself; for my eyes never beheld him except in death. 
 
 M1S0973 
 
:*. *: N.atiiTfe *:nxade Lincoln great. That his greatness was 
 not always recognized by those who saw him in the 
 undress which was natural to him, is not surprising. 
 A mine does not reveal its hidden treasure until it is 
 opened. His ungainly figure was the casket in which 
 Nature had deposited a gem of priceless,, unsuspected 
 value, a new soul, and such a one as his neighbors, his 
 country and the world did not dream to exist upon 
 earth. 
 
 Because he was not understood, and is not yet under 
 stood, the imagination clothes with him mystery and 
 is prone to regard his career as a miracle. An appre 
 ciative, sympathetic biographer has even said of him 
 that "he was an enigma to all men." From this 
 view I venture to dissent. There is indeed a sense in 
 which every man is an enigma to every other. No 
 man can or will unveil himself to any other, except 
 in part. No two men touch at all points, therefore no 
 two can comprehend each other, except in part. We 
 are all many-sided; Lincoln was so to a degree far 
 beyond most men. He was reticent by nature, did his 
 own thinking, acted upon his own judgment, gave his 
 entire confidence to no one, rarely sought advice, and 
 said no more upon any occasion than he chose to say. 
 Genius is always inexplicable. 
 
 It has been truly said that "to understand a thing 
 is to perceive its relations." To understand Lincoln, we 
 must comprehend his relations. He was of pioneer 
 stock, and his early life was that of a pioneer. How 
 inadequate, if not how false, is the conception formed 
 of pioneer life by one who has not himself shared it, 
 who knows the backwoods and the frontier only by 
 hearsay and report, who has never stood where he 
 could see the tide of emigration flow past him over the 
 prairies and plains of the great west ! A portrait must 
 
have a background. Is it reasonable to suppose that 
 any but a frontiersman can so paint the reflected lights 
 and shadows as to bring into strong relief that gigantic 
 figure? As well might we expect a foreigner, with 
 European traditions and prejudices, who has never 
 crossed the Atlantic ocean, to picture to himself the 
 new world as it really is. A gulf as wide, as deep as 
 that ocean separates, too, che mere litterateur and 
 scholar from the able and successful man who has not 
 enjoyed the same advantages of a literary training. 
 Everything that books contain must have been known 
 by somebody, before a book about it could be written. 
 Book learning is knowledge at second hand on testi 
 mony, to be received by faith. Lincoln, like all great 
 men who are self-made, looked man and nature directly 
 in the face. 
 
 It was probably well for him, and for us, that he 
 did not receive an academic education. The men of 
 whom this can be said are not many, but he must be 
 numbered among them. The knowledge of books is 
 not the knowledge of men, and for one in public life 
 the knowledge of men is of greater consequence than 
 that of books. The farm, the flatboat, the country 
 store, the judicial circuit, brought him into touch with 
 the people as the university never could have done. 
 The university would have removed him to too great a 
 distance from them. The effort involved in acquiring 
 knowledge by his unaided exertions imparted additional 
 vigor to his mind. The sense of his ignorance of many 
 things taught within college walls developed within 
 him the grace of intellectual humility, that prime con 
 dition of intellectual greatness. And his powers were 
 not dissipated by diversion from the main subject upon 
 which his attention was concentrated law and politics, 
 or the science and art of government. So far from be- 
 
ing illiterate, however, he was an indefatigable student, 
 in his early youth, and later in life, for instance, at 
 Vandalia, where, it is said, while in the legislature, he 
 read everything in the state library bearing upon the 
 special theme which he sought to master. He took 
 nothing into his mind that he did not assimilate, he 
 had a retentive memory, all that he acquired was a per 
 manent possession, which became a part, so to speak, of 
 himself. 
 
 He was self-educated, but the remains of his personal 
 library attest the fact that, when he was a law student 
 in the office of John T. Stuart, he had studied with care 
 all the text-books on mathematics, physics and belles 
 lettres which were at that time included in the curri 
 culum of Yale College. He probably knew them better 
 than most Yale graduates. He never acquired a knowl 
 edge of any language but his mother-tongue; but his 
 mastery of English style, as shown in the Gettysburg 
 address and in his second inaugural, both of which are 
 numbered among the masterpieces of literature, was 
 due to his remarkable familiarity with Shakespeare and 
 the Bible. 
 
 It was only by slow degrees that his ability and at 
 tainments became apparent to the world. There is 
 still, perhaps, in certain circles, too strong a disposition 
 to measure him by inapplicable and artificial standards. 
 , The greatness of a man consists not in what he does, 
 but in what he is. What he does proves what he is. 
 He grows by doing, of course. He may be great, but 
 never have an opportunity to show to the world to his 
 real capacity. Nature has always in reserve an unlim 
 ited supply of great men, for whose services she has 
 no actual need. For the want of scope and exercise for 
 his talents a man essentially great may never bring his 
 powers to the point of full fruitage. Men are like 
 
trees. To produce a sequoia, such as we see in the val 
 ley of the Yosemite, there is needed first the seed of a 
 sequoia, and after that the conditions of soil and cli 
 mate favorable to its growth. That which was in the 
 seed comes out of it ; had it not been there, it would not 
 have come out. Apply this to Abraham Lincoln. Con 
 trast him with the men who had opportunities but little 
 inferior to his own, but who failed to profit by them, 
 because they were of inferior calibre. He did the great 
 things he did, because he was great. He would have 
 been great, had he never done them, being what God 
 made him, though we might never have found it out. 
 That is the central truth on which I beg you to fix 
 your attention, for all that I may say will be by way 
 of illustrating it and pressing it home. 
 
 Of his physique I shall say little. His size and his 
 strength are proverbial. As to his health, I observe that 
 none of his biographers refer to any serious illness 
 from which he ever suffered. He was subject to fits 
 of terrible nervous depression, especially in early man 
 hood, but they seem to have been temperamental, and 
 not the result of physical exhaustion. He is commonly 
 said to have been of homely features ; but I have heard 
 an artist, a sculptor, contend that this is a matter of 
 opinion. Beauty is not an objective fact, but a subjec 
 tive impression; and for his part, he saw in him the 
 beauty of rugged strength, of honesty and kindness, 
 and he declared his face to be a rare and perfect speci 
 men of the highest type of manly beauty, such as that 
 of Julius Caesar. 
 
 When we consider his intellectual qualities, there can 
 be no question that love of the truth was the master 
 passion of his soul. Had he lived in the days of coat 
 armor, the legend upon his shield might well have been 
 the saying of Solomon, or of some one as wise as Solo- 
 
mon, "Buy the truth and sell it not." He sought for 
 wisdom as for hid treasure. How he toiled, alone, 
 without a teacher, and in the face of difficulties which 
 in the case of most boys would have proved insurmount 
 able, to acquire the rudiments of knowledge! Truth 
 had such an affinity for his mind that he may almost 
 be said to have divined it by intuition. This love of 
 truth was like an inward light. It enabled him to see 
 all things in perspective. His mind was like a camera. 
 He believed in the truth. He identified his fortunes 
 with it, casting himself upon its bosom as he launched 
 his flatboat upon the current of the Mississippi, with 
 full assurance that its majestic flow would bear him to 
 his desired and destined haven. The larger the truth, 
 the greater his confidence in it. Without technical 
 scientific training, he grasped the basic conception of 
 science, that of the sequence of cause and effect in an 
 unbroken series, the uniformity, universality, and im 
 mutability of natural law. Unread in metaphysics, he 
 was a student of history, and felt that he and all men 
 and all events are controlled by that mysterious power 
 which the ignorant call fate, the wise law, and the re 
 ligious providence. A year before his death he wrote 
 to a friend, "I claim not to have controlled events but 
 confess plainly that events have controlled me." This 
 simple faith was the secret of his patient optimism, 
 his unsurpassed courage, his fidelity to every trust. 
 
 Closely allied to this supreme love of truth was his 
 exquisite sense of right. Eight is truth in action. 
 Truth and righteousness were the two poles of the axis 
 around which his entire being revolved with an un 
 varying steadiness resembling the regularity of the di- 
 uranl motion of the globe. 
 
 From a very early age he was dimly conscious of his 
 budding powers, and restlessly sought a vent for their 
 
exercise and display. Ambition is innate in every su 
 perior mind. His ambition was inseparably united to 
 the burning wish to be of service to mankind. In his 
 first address to his constituents he said, "I have no 
 other [ambition] so great as that of being truly es 
 teemed by my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy 
 of their esteem." At the moment of the most profound 
 gloom into which he ever fell,, he said, "I have an 
 irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the 
 world is a little better for my having lived in it." In 
 his address before the Springfield Lyceum he declared 
 that the ambition of many men aspires to nothing 
 higher than the holding of public office a seat in Con 
 gress, a gubernatorial or presidential chair, "but such 
 belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the 
 eagle." "Towering genius," he continued, "thirsts and 
 burns for distinction; and if possible it will have it, 
 whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or en 
 slaving freemen." The nature of the distinction which 
 he coveted, and which he ultimately achieved, is fore 
 shadowed in this youthful production. He obeyed the 
 injunction of Emerson, he "hitched his wagon to a 
 star." 
 
 He was but twenty-three years of age when, untried 
 and unknown, without backing of any description, he 
 announced himself as a candidate for the legislature, 
 quaintly remarking: "If elected, I shall be thankful; 
 if not, it will be all the same." He was but two years 
 older when his ambition was gratified. For four suc 
 cessive terms, covering a period of eight years, his con 
 stituents returned him to the lower house. Twice in 
 succession he was selected by his Whig colleagues as 
 their candidate for the speakership, and they went down 
 to defeat bearing a banner inscribed with his name. 
 Both in 1840 and in 1844 his name was on their elec- 
 
toral ticket. At the age of thirty-seven he was sent to 
 Washington as Congressman, the only Whig Congress 
 man from his state. From that time forward, he was 
 admittedly the foremost man of his party in Illinois; 
 three times its candidate for a seat in the United 
 States Senate in 1849, when he was defeated by 
 Shields, in 1855, when, in order to defeat Matteson, he 
 withdrew in favor of Trumbull, and in 1859, when he 
 was beaten by Douglas. 
 
 Such honors do not come by accident, nor to men un 
 worthy of them. His social qualities, his kindness of 
 heart, his affability, his sense of humor and skill as a 
 raconteur, all contributed to render him popular. He 
 had the tender sympathy for men, and even for ani 
 mals, which caused him to spend an hour in replacing 
 in their nest two half -fledged birds, and then apologize 
 for it in the words, "I could not have slept well to-night, 
 if I had not saved those birds; their cries would have 
 rung in my ears." It afterward impelled him to par 
 don deserters, and to say, when urged to retaliate the 
 cruelty of Anderson ville in kind, "I never can; I can 
 never starve men like that." He expressed the core of 
 his great heart, when he remarked of himself, "Die 
 when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew 
 me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a 
 flower when I thought a flower would grow." But pop 
 ularity does not insure permanent precedence; it is as 
 ephemeral as the ever veering wind. Leadership de 
 pends on the enduring qualities of head and heart of 
 him who retains through life his ascendancy over men. 
 
 Neither can we account for such continued ascendancy 
 by attributing it to skill in the arts of the political 
 manipulator. He knew those arts. Within the limits 
 of integrity and honor, he may be said to have prac 
 tised them. He was a politician. No man not a poli- 
 
 10 
 
tician is qualified to be governor of a state or president 
 of the republic. A more astute politician this country 
 has perhaps never known. Among his friends were 
 many politicians less scrupulous than himself, for 
 whose actions he cannot be held personally responsible. 
 But what is a politician? What is the distinction be 
 tween a politician and a statesman? 
 
 It is the difference between an end and the means to 
 that end. A statesman is one who has clearly in mind 
 some patriotic purpose ; a politician is one who perceives 
 the processes by which alone that purpose can be accom 
 plished. Political ends must be reached, and are ar 
 rived at, by political processes; they can be attained in 
 no other way. This Mr. Lincoln well knew, and his 
 conduct proves it. The difference between a statesman 
 and a politician may be illustrated by comparing the 
 former to the engineer who constructs a railway, but 
 the latter to the engineer who sits in the cab of the lo 
 comotive which he drives over the rails after they have 
 been laid. A road must run somewhere. The politi 
 cian who has no goal in sight other than an office for 
 himself will be apt to drive the car of state into the 
 ditch or into the river. The self-seeking political 
 schemer and wireworker is never a patriot, never a 
 statesman. This was not the type of man God gave to 
 this nation in the person of Abraham Lincoln. He 
 could say of himself in all candor and in truth, "I have 
 never done an official act with a view to promote my 
 personal aggrandizement." He subordinated his. per 
 sonal ambitions to the public good. His most intimate 
 friend says of him, "He never believed in political 
 combinations ," and again, "He was much more eager for 
 the second nomination than for the first, yet from the 
 beginning he discouraged all efforts on the part of his 
 friends to obtain it." To one of his appointees, speak- 
 
 11 
 
ing of his possible use of his position to influence the re 
 sult of a pending election, he wrote these memorable 
 words : "My wish is that you will do just as you think 
 fit with your own suffrage in the case, and not constrain 
 any of your subordinates to do other than he thinks fit 
 with his." No more need be said, in order to differen 
 tiate him from politicians of the baser sort, who seek 
 to shield themselves from condemnation by pleading his 
 example in justification of their course. 
 
 No, Lincoln had one great end in view throughout 
 his life, from its beginning to its close. It was the ex 
 tinction of slavery. Its gradual extinction, mark you, 
 not its sudden and violent abolition. He hated slavery 
 as intensely as did Love joy or Sumner or Seward or 
 Chase or Giddings. But he was like Henry Clay, a 
 gradual emancipationist, a colonizationist. He advoca 
 ted compensation to the slave-holder. This is one rea 
 son why he was misunderstood. Of the institution as 
 an institution, he said : "If slavery is not wrong, noth 
 ing is wrong." He quoted, as expressing his own 
 sentiment, the words of Jefferson, himself a slave-hold 
 er: "This momentous question, like a fire-bell in 
 the night, awakened and filled me with terror." Who 
 does not recall the language of his second inaugural 
 with reference to it? "Fondly do we hope, fervently 
 do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speed 
 ily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until 
 all the wealth piled by the bondman s two hundred 
 and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
 every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by 
 another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand 
 years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the 
 Lord are true and righteous altogether/ >: 
 
 Never for one moment did he doubt that freedom 
 would in the end triumph over slavery, because he had 
 
 12 
 
implicit faith in the ultimate victory of truth over error, 
 the ultimate triumph of right over wrong. It was his 
 fortune to live at an epoch when this was the precise 
 issue which absorbed the attention of the American peo 
 ple, to the exclusion of all minor issues which had pre 
 viously divided them. Behold the hour and the man! 
 
 Prom the day when his only term in Congress came 
 to an end in 1849, he was, as has already been said, the 
 recognized leader of his party in Illinois. His elevation 
 to the presidency was no sudden, miraculous event. The 
 steps that led to this happy consummation are easily 
 traced in history. They were simple, natural, and in a 
 sense inevitable. 
 
 In Congress, while he had voted the supplies needed 
 with which to carry on the Mexican war, he had openly 
 shown his dislike for it and disapproval of President 
 Polk s method of beginning it. He had voted for the 
 Wilmot proviso, forbidding the establishment of slavery 
 in any territory acquired from Mexico, which was agreed 
 to by the House, but rejected by the Senate. In the 
 Compromise of 1850, shaped by Henry Clay, (who in 
 his old age had been recalled from retirement for that 
 purpose), California was admitted as a free state, but 
 from the newly organized territories of Utah and New 
 Mexico slavery was not excluded. Lincoln would have 
 preferred to have had it otherwise, but he bowed to the 
 law and to the judgment of others, his political friends, 
 and accepted the situation. The next five years of his 
 life were for him years of comparative political quiesc 
 ence. The Compromise of 1850 had been endorsed in 
 the political platforms of both parties. The Whig 
 party was in a semi-moribund state. And the question 
 of the extension of slavery was generally held and be 
 lieved to have been adjusted for all time by the Missouri 
 Compromise of 1820, establishing the line of 36 30 , 
 
 13 
 
known as Mason and Dixon s line, north of which 
 slavery was never to be allowed. It was then that 
 Douglas struck a ponderous blow upon the fire-bell of 
 Jefferson, whose clangor resounded through the land, 
 arousing everybody, north and south alike. Douglas, 
 as chairman of the Senate committee on territories, re 
 ported with favorable recommendation the famous Kan 
 sas-Nebraska bill, annulling the Missouri Compromise, 
 which was declared to be inoperative and void. This was 
 in January, 1854. 
 
 Lincoln at once sprang into the ring as champion of 
 the opposition to this revolutionary measure. 
 
 No Illinoisan would detract in the smallest degree 
 from the well-earned, well-merited fame of Senator 
 Douglas. In this state at least, the names of Lincoln 
 and Douglas lead all the rest. These two were rivals at 
 all points. Their respective careers abound in parallels 
 and in contrasts, of which it is hard to say which were 
 the most wonderful. Douglas, like Lincoln, was both a 
 politician and a statesman ; but in Lincoln the politician 
 was subordinated to the statesman. This cannot be said 
 of Douglas with equal assurance. It would, however, 
 be unfair to him to question the sincerity of his con 
 victions or to insinuate that his motives, though they 
 may have been mixed, were not consistent with genuine 
 love of country. He made a mistake, a fatal mistake. 
 His ability no one denies. His soubriquet was "The 
 Little Giant." The Whigs were afraid of him. Make 
 him out to be never so great, the fact remains that Lin 
 coln was greater. No man but Lincoln was ever put 
 up to meet him in debate. Lincoln never feared to 
 measure swords with him, anywhere or at any time. 
 At the State Fair, which was held in Springfield in Oc 
 tober, 1854, Douglas defended his position and his con- 
 
 14 
 
duct as a senator from the free state of Illinois. The 
 clarion voice of Lincoln rang out in reply, with such 
 effect that his political friends requested him in writing 
 to follow Douglas up until the election. They clashed 
 again at Peoria, when Douglas asked him to desist, and 
 accordingly it was agreed that there should be no more 
 joint discussion between them during that campaign. 
 
 The Republican party was organized in 1856 in this 
 state at Bloomington, in the nation at Philadelphia, 
 where 110 votes (a little less than one- third) were reg 
 istered as in favor of Lincoln for vice-president on the 
 ticket with Fremont, His name was placed by the Re 
 publicans of Illinois that year on their electoral ticket. 
 He would have been the candidate of the party for gov 
 ernor, had he not declined the honor in advance. He 
 threw himself with ardor into the campaign as a private 
 serving in the ranks. None the less on that account 
 was he the real leader in the fray. 
 
 Those were the days of "bleeding Kansas" and of the 
 Dred Scott decision. The Nebraska Bill contained what 
 Benton characterized as "a stump speech within its 
 belly," declaring it to be "the true meaning and intent 
 of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or 
 state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
 thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their do 
 mestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the 
 Constitution." This was called popular sovereignty. 
 The Dred Scott decision went farther. The opinion, 
 in the nature of an obiter dictum, was expressed, that 
 Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the ter 
 ritories. This was a set-back to popular sovereignty, 
 from an unexpected source. Douglas cheerfully brushed 
 it to one side with the remark that without friendly leg 
 islation to protect the property in man, slavery might, 
 
 15 
 
under that decision, be lawful in a territory, but it 
 would be impossible. His unfortunate dilemma was 
 that, to become president, he had to persuade the south 
 that his political convictions were favorable to the exten 
 sion of slavery into the territories, and at the same time 
 to satisfy the north that they were not such as to result 
 in its extension. It was upon the horns of this dilemma 
 that Lincoln finally succeeded in impaling him. Twice 
 in succession the Democratic party had refused to name 
 Douglas as its candidate for the presidency. The Ne 
 braska Bill had availed him nought. He then turned 
 back from the south to the north, and when Kansas 
 knocked for admission to the Union with the Lecompton 
 Constitution in her hand, he broke with James Bu 
 chanan, and voted against it. He did right, and his 
 conduct in that regard needs no apology, no defense. 
 So great were his powers of persuasion, that he almost 
 succeeded in inducing the Eepublican party to adopt him 
 as its favorite son, deposing Lincoln from the place he 
 held in its councils and in its esteem, in order that his 
 lifelong rival a man who "cared not whether slavery 
 be voted down or voted up" might become the benefi 
 ciary of the change of leadership which even Horace 
 Greeley approved and advocated. Stephen A. Douglas 
 was indeed a wonderful man. 
 
 But in 1858 he was the candidate of the Democratic 
 party in Illinois for the senatorship, to succeed himself. 
 The Eepublican state convention, at Springfield, re 
 solved: "That Abraham Lincoln is our first and only 
 choice for United States Senator to fill the vacancy about 
 to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas term of 
 office/ The issue thus joined was personal, but it was 
 more than that : it was an issue of principle. From the 
 foundation of the Republic two opposite beliefs had 
 
 16 
 
been contending for political mastery. The destiny of 
 the nation was involved in the -choice to be made between 
 them. Lincoln knew it. He was no time-server, no 
 coward. A braver man never lived. He had faith in 
 himself, but he had still greater faith in the 
 rock of truth on which his feet were planted. His 
 moral judgments were his own. On an ethical question 
 he was never known to ask or accept advice. This was 
 an ethical question. Accordingly, in his speech of ac 
 ceptance, he made the bold assertion: " A house divided 
 against itself cannot stand/ I believe this government 
 cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I 
 do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not ex 
 pect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to 
 be divided. It will become all one thing or all the 
 other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the 
 further spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
 shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate 
 extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it 
 becomes alike lawful in all the states old as well as 
 new, north as well as south." 
 
 Then the storm broke. Few were the friends who 
 dared to say that he was right. The great majority 
 condemned this utterance. Your politician is a timor 
 ous creature, short-sighted, with eyes upon the ground, 
 not looking upward to the sky, who sees in his own 
 shadow a ghost with gory locks, but the sun that casts 
 that shadow is for him as if it were not. It was in 
 stinctively felt by every Republican that the senatorship 
 was lost, as indeed it proved to be. The vision of a 
 larger but delayed triumph was obscured by the appre 
 hension of present defeat. But Lincoln knew. He had 
 made his point. As a politician, to take no higher view 
 of the situation, he was greater than them all, greater 
 
 17 
 
tnan any man in these United States. Politics is a 
 game. It may be likened to a game of chess. A first- 
 rate player says to his opponent, "That move will beat 
 you/ 7 It only remains to play the game out. At the 
 right moment he places a piece where, at the crisis of 
 the game, it will block any combination his adversary 
 may then be able to make. Lincoln knew as well, when 
 he delivered that memorable speech, that on the main 
 issue, of which he never lost sight, Douglas and his 
 party were hopelessly beaten, as when, in the joint de 
 bate between them, he put the unanswerable interroga 
 tory, unanswerable by a northern candidate for the pres 
 idency, I mean : "Can the people of a territory, in any 
 lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United 
 States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the forma 
 tion of a state constitution?" Exception was taken to 
 that question also by his timid supporters. But what 
 could Douglas reply? If yes, he broke with the south; 
 if no, he cut loose from the north. His hand was 
 forced. If he should be elected to a seat in the senate, 
 he could never be president ; if he wanted the presidency, 
 he must relinquish the senatorship. He was bound to 
 lose, and Lincoln was sure of winning, one or the other, 
 while it was within the limits of possibility that Lincoln 
 might win both. But that was a small matter, even in 
 Lincoln s estimation, in comparison with the fact that 
 his election to either position signified the victory of 
 the principles for which he stood, the triumph of truth 
 and right, and the salvation of the country. 
 
 The hour is passing. I think I need say no more 
 about that debate, the greatest political debate in the 
 history of any nation, whose event was to decide the 
 destiny not only of this nation, but in time to come that 
 of the world, the fate of modern civilization. Let us 
 
 18 
 
hasten on to the meeting of the Chicago Convention. 
 Lincoln had disposed of Douglas, who was nominated 
 by a minority of his party, after a bolt, and received the 
 electoral vote of a single state, that of Missouri. There 
 remained between Lincoln and the goal of his ambition 
 but one man, William H. Seward of New York. Why 
 was Lincoln preferred to Seward as the standard-bearer 
 of his party, the commander-in-chief of the army and 
 navy in the coming conflict? It has been alleged that 
 a combination was effected between the friends of Lin 
 coln and those of Simon Cameron, by which the vote of 
 Pennsylvania was cast for Lincoln in the convention, in 
 return for a pledge that Cameron should be given a seat 
 in the cabinet. In what purports to be a memorandum 
 of this agreement, in four articles, the second reads, 
 "Lincoln s friends have no actual authority none but a 
 moral right." Lincoln had written to David Davis, 
 "Make no contracts that will bind me." He gave Cam 
 eron the war portfolio because he believed it wise so to 
 do, not because he admitted the binding obligation of 
 that pledge. It might be said that Seward put himself 
 out of the running, when he enunciated his belief in the 
 doctrine of the higher law, because, whatever truth there 
 may be in that dogma, in its application to individual 
 conduct, it is inapplicable in politics, for the reason that 
 no executive officer of the government may, consistently 
 with his oath of office, set himself and his conscience 
 above the constitution and the law of the land. Lincoln 
 did not make that mistake. In his letter to Davis he 
 said : "Lincoln agrees with Seward in the irrepressible 
 conflict idea, and in negro equality, but he is opposed 
 to Seward s higher law." The truth is that Lincoln 
 was preferred to Seward because he was the greater man 
 of the two, as he showed himself to be within thirty days 
 after his inauguration. 
 
 19 
 
The theme of Lincoln s greatness is inexhaustible. 
 This address is not a biographical sketch, still less does 
 it purport to be a history of his times. It would never 
 theless be incomplete, even as an estimate of the man in 
 his relation to the past and to the future, if no reference 
 were made in it to the conduct of the Civil War, and to 
 the act on which his fame principally rests, as the 
 Great Emancipator. It is the law of finite existence 
 that every man, however great, has his limitations. Lin 
 coln was not exempt from the operation of this law. 
 He could not sing; he failed to appreciate the beauty 
 of nature; he had no love for flowers; he never read a 
 novel through, his whole life long. Among the things he 
 did not claim to know was the art of war. He hated 
 war. He made mistakes, especially during the first two 
 years of the war, in the selection of generals. Some of 
 them were sad failures, and he bore with them, perhaps, 
 longer than he should have done. But it is a note 
 worthy fact, as the record shows, that there was scarcely 
 a serious military blunder committed by any of them 
 against which he did not protest in advance. He fol 
 lowed every move upon the field of battle, with minute 
 attention to every detail. Often discouraged, he never 
 despaired. His patience, his endurance, his courage, 
 his sagacity, his devotion, were sublime. 
 
 Never before, in the history of mankind, had any man 
 such a burden to carry, such a task to perform. The 
 plurality not the majority of voters to whom he owed 
 his election included the most incongruous and discord 
 ant elements, Whigs and Democrats, slaveholders and 
 abolitionists, held together in face of an impending 
 crisis by the shibboleth of anti-Nebraska. They had to 
 be fused into something like a homogeneous mass. There 
 were the jealous friends of rival candidates for the nomi- 
 
 20 
 
nation to be placated. To nine-tenths of the people he 
 was a stranger. Many believed him to be an accident, 
 many thought him incompetent, and some made faces 
 at him and cried at the top of their voices that he was 
 an ignoramus, a buffoon, an ape, a baboon. Scarcely 
 had he bidden farewell to his neighbors and asked their 
 prayers for himself and their country, than he was 
 forced to address himself to the thankless task of ex 
 plaining himself, making himself known to the public. 
 He was threatened even then with assassination. When 
 he took the oath of office, in a city so hostile to him, al 
 though the capital of the nation, that every military pre 
 caution had been taken in advance for his personal 
 safety, six states had already seceded, his arsenals had 
 been plundered, his troops scattered, many of his forts 
 seized or dismantled. Advisers buzzed in his ears, 
 thicker than the flies in Egypt ; and office-seekers dogged 
 his steps, more hungry than the devouring locusts, whom 
 he could not, like Moses, drive into the Red Sea. In 
 less than six weeks from his inauguration civil war had 
 broken out. He had to create an army, to equip it, to 
 organize it, to drill it and make it ready to take the field. 
 Without a navy, he had to establish a blockade, from 
 Norfolk to Galveston. The Confederate army advanced 
 to within ten miles of Washington. Then arose the 
 senseless cry, "On to Richmond!" followed by the dis 
 aster of Bull Run, and the interminable, fruitless cam 
 paign in the Peninsula, unrelieved by a single victory of 
 any moment. Neither McClellan in the east nor Fre 
 mont in the west met his expectations. Political gen 
 erals were the plague of his life ; they told him what his 
 civil duties were, and usurped his powers, issuing eman 
 cipation proclamations on their own responsibility, 
 which he had to modify or disavow. No foreign power 
 
 21 
 
was his friend, unless we except Russia. England was 
 his secret foe. From her ports Confederate cruisers 
 went forth to harry American commerce, and her bank 
 ers loaned money to the insurgent government. To pay 
 his soldiers and sailors he had to improvise a paper cur 
 rency, which he knew, in case of failure, might never be 
 redeemed. We won battles, and we lost them. We ad 
 vanced and we retreated. His patriotic soul was torn 
 with anxiety as to the outcome. And there were foes 
 in his rear, as well as in front of him detractors, proph 
 ets of evil, men openly or secretly disloyal, speculators in 
 calamity, vampires who gorged themselves to repletion 
 on human blood. Speaking to you, comrades, I, a sol 
 dier, thank God that through good report and through 
 evil report none of us ever faltered or flinched, but we 
 stood to our guns to the last. 
 
 We thank God, too, for Grant, who fought the battle 
 of Belmont, captured Forts Henry and Donelson, invest 
 ed and took Vicksburg, was in command at Chatta 
 nooga, accomplished in Virginia what no general before 
 him could do, and at last received the sword of Lee at 
 Appomattox and sent home our brave but misguided 
 brothers, our opponents on many a hard fought field, 
 with their horses, their side-arms and his blessing. 
 Others there were, whom it grieves me not to name, but 
 the time is too short, and Grant was the noblest Roman 
 of them all. Let him stand as a symbol of all the rest. 
 
 Some psychologist has said that will-power is the 
 power of resistance. Since it is easy to follow the sug 
 gestion of impulse and inclination, it requires no extra 
 ordinary exercise of volition to do that; but inhibition 
 is quite another matter. Lincoln revealed his strength 
 in what he did not do, quite as much as in what he did. 
 We have noted his intense feeling on the question of 
 
slavery; we have seen that his cardinal aim in life was 
 to confine it to its actual area, with a view to its ultimate 
 extinction. But the moment that he became responsible 
 to the nation for his official acts, he declared that it was 
 not his intention to interfere with it, where it was al 
 ready recognized and protected by law. With that ac 
 curate sense of proportion by which he was distin 
 guished, he proclaimed the primary purpose of the war 
 to be, not the destruction of slavery, but the preservation 
 of the Union. With or without slavery, he would save 
 the Union; without it if he could, with it if he must. 
 This simple but obvious analysis of the complex problem 
 before him, this insistence upon dealing first with the 
 most salient element in it, leaving the deeper question 
 for subsequent solution, though it was offensive to many 
 radical anti-slavery men, was wise and politic. By in 
 sisting upon it, he prevented the secession of Maryland, 
 Kentucky and Missouri. When the hour arrived at 
 which emancipation seemed to be indicated as a prudent 
 war measure, calculated to hasten the collapse of the 
 Confederacy, he issued it of his own motion, in his own 
 words, and at his own selected time; dividing it into 
 two movements, so to speak, two manifestos, the first 
 announcing his purpose of manumission, the second 
 carrying it out. It applied only to those portions of 
 the country in actual rebellion on the first day of Janu 
 ary, 1863. One year later, the thirteenth constitu 
 tional amendment was introduced in Congress, annihil 
 ating slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a 
 punishment for crime, wherever the jurisdiction of the 
 United States extends. Two years later, it was adopted. 
 Illinois was first of all the states to ratify it, greatly to 
 the President s joy. 
 
 Without detracting from the lustre attaching to the 
 
 23 
 
achievements of any man or of any state, Illinois can 
 point to her war record with peculiar pride. She gave to 
 the country Lincoln, Grant and Logan. It was a senator 
 from Illinois, Lyman Trumbull, who, as chairman of 
 the committee on judiciary, framed and reported the 
 thirteenth amendment, by which the bolt forged by 
 Lincoln in the emancipation proclamation was riveted 
 on the other side. Nor can it ever be forgotten, that 
 Douglas himself, when he beheld the conflagration which 
 his indiscretion had kindled, severed every tie that bound 
 him to the past and declared that, with an army march 
 ing upon the capital, there remained but one thing to do ; 
 the most direct road to peace was the most stupendous 
 preparation for war, there could be no neutrals in such 
 a struggle, and it was the duty of every lover of the 
 flag to rally to its support. 
 
 But what are leaders, without followers? What are 
 generals, without the rank and file? As the power 
 generated by a dynamo is discharged through a single 
 point, so a leader is impotent, unless the people are be 
 hind him and with him. The power itself is from God ; 
 it is drawn from the everlasting, inexhaustible reservoir 
 of nature. As sons of Illinois, by birth or by adoption, 
 we hold in eternal honor the memories of the men, 
 officers and privates alike, who with Grant ascended the 
 Tennessee, sailed or marched down the Mississippi, and 
 shared with him the glories of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, 
 the Wilderness, and Spottsylvania ; who with Sherman 
 were at Atlanta, and made with him that daring march 
 to the sea; who with Meade saw the crest of the rising 
 tide of rebellion break against the stone wall by the or 
 chard and the cemetery at Gettysburg; who with Sher 
 idan cleared the valley of the Shenandoah and fought 
 the battle of Five Forks. Wherever they were, there 
 
 24 
 
or elsewhere, on the land or on the sea, of the great 
 majority it can now be said, "Their swords are rust, 
 their bones are dust, their souls are with the saints, we 
 trust." A few of us still survive, to plant flowers upon 
 their graves and water them with our tears. 
 
 The story of the surrender and of the assassination, 
 both occurring within the space of one short week, is 
 too fresh in your minds to demand retelling. That of 
 Lincoln s death is too sad. It would cause you, even 
 now, forty years afterward, too much pain. He was the 
 man in the parable, whose ten talents had gained ten 
 other talents beside them, to whom the Master could 
 say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." He 
 gave the crowning proof of love; he laid down his life 
 for his friends. He was the enemy of no man. Of 
 those in arms against the government and of their sym 
 pathizers at the north he said, on the day of the sur 
 render: "Enemies! We must never speak of that! 
 The south felt Grant has said it, and we believe it that 
 in his death the south lost its best and truest friend. 
 He was the friend of every man. Had he lived, what 
 would have been the history of reconstruction? We 
 can only speculate; we can not tell. This at least we 
 know : that there was in his heart no bitterness, no mal 
 ice, no hatred, no revenge. No man living would have 
 so rejoiced at the sight which it is our privilege to be 
 hold, of a country reunited in fact as well as in name, 
 with the blue and the gray drinking out of the same 
 canteen. Having obtained a good report through faith, 
 he received not the promise; but like Moses, he saw the 
 promised land from the top of the mountains of Nebo. 
 And he was not, for God took him. 
 
 26 
 
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