973.7L63 
 
 Hertz, Emanuel 
 
 Abraham Lincoln at the 
 climax of the great Lincoln. 
 Douglas jo» nt debate in 
 Gajesburg, I II i nois 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 AT 
 
 THE CLIMAX OF THE GREAT 
 LINCOLN-DOUGLAS JOINT DEBATE 
 
 IN GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 
 
 By 
 EMANUEL HERTZ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnatOOhert 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 AT 
 
 THE CLIMAX OF THE GREAT 
 LINCOLN-DOUGLAS JOINT DEBATE 
 
 IN GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 
 
 Delivered at Galesburg, Illinois, on the 6th day 
 
 of October, 1928, on the 70th Anniversary 
 
 of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, from a 
 
 platform erected on the spot where 
 
 the original debate was held — 
 
 upon the Campus of . . . Knox College. 
 
 By 
 
 EMANUEL HERTZ 
 
 of New York City 
 
Dedicated to the President, Trustees, Professors, Teachers and 
 Students of Knox College, who are carrying the burning torch 
 which jell from the lifeless hands of Abraham Lincoln — steady 
 and high — and who will see to it that this torch remains lighted — 
 when the race is won — ivhen the final goal shall have been reached 
 — the final victorious battle fought — and the great consummation 
 attained — ivhen justice will flow like water over the land — with 
 education for all, the world at peace, universal brotherhood no 
 longer a dream but a reality, and poverty and disease banished 
 from the land — when all men ivill devoutly acknowledge that the 
 Lord is 07ie and His name, one. The Author. 
 
C4- H44-*.lr 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 THE CLIMAX OF THE GREAT LINCOLN - DOUGLAS 
 JOINT DEBATE 
 
 GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 
 
 Delivered by 
 
 Emanuel Hertz 
 
 TTISTORIANS have been unkind to Abraham Lincoln in more than 
 -*■ •* one respect, particularly as to his part in the famous joint debates 
 with Douglas. He who was the embodiment of truth, who hated 
 exaggeration, who never suppressed facts, — he who never spoke unless 
 he had all the facts, and when he had them, spoke in a matter that an 
 entire country could hear and read and understand — now suffers and 
 is still misunderstood by reason of the absence of material facts which 
 would throw light on his career and on his epoch-making acts and 
 statements. The facts are in existence, but are being hidden by men 
 and women, who want these data for themselves ; or by others who for 
 purely commercial reasons, conceal priceless letters and documents 
 which rightfully belong to the world. The Lincoln of the joint debates 
 has never been thoroughly written up by anyone, nor has he received 
 full justice for his great contribution to the Constitutional discussions 
 which went far to settle the most important problem since 1789. The 
 one great historian who attempted it passed to his eternal reward while 
 writing of the Quincy debate and before the text in reference to the 
 Alton debate was properly prepared — and before the great summary 
 which Beveridge would have written of all the seven debates was even 
 thought of — when the pen fell from his lifeless hands. The adequate 
 and definitive treatment of Lincoln's great adventure, the Presidency, 
 is still awaiting the great historian whc will give a lifetime to the task. 
 
 In the meanwhile precious time is fleeting, irreplaceable material 
 is disappearing, newspaper files are falling apart — those not destroyed 
 by fire — and a fire seems ever to be pursuing this priceless Lincoln 
 material — and successive complacent Congresses seem to be satisfied 
 with the pile of stone on the Potomac — as the last word of a Lincoln 
 monument. Let us again go to the South and copy the manner of 
 
 5 
 
making safe the historical facts surrounding that God-sent messenger 
 to preserve our nation even as they have done for his opponent — who 
 comes as near vindication as he ever can be vindicated — in a final and 
 definitive edition of his complete works — from which nothing is with- 
 held. The entire Southland helped to make the compilation complete. 
 
 Here at Galesburg seventy years ago tomorrow, Lincoln began on 
 his victorious march, which was as certain as the progress of the suns. 
 At Ottowa, at Freeport, at Charleston, at Jonesboro — he had but 
 measured his opponent ; he who had read every word which Douglas had 
 spoken on the stump, in the House of Representatives, while on the 
 Illinois Supreme Court bench — and knew what the Judge would say, 
 and how he would say it — during these four preliminary debates 
 Lincoln simply drove Douglas into position. After the opening state- 
 ment, Douglas never again spoke as he intended to speak. Lincoln, 
 who followed with an hour and a half's address, and on every other 
 occasion, said something which irritated and angered the Judge, and 
 made him forget what he intended and planned to say — in thus attempt- 
 ing to attend to Lincoln's last irritating and provoking statement. 
 Douglas had evidently carefully prepared a continuous oration to be 
 delivered in the style of the period, which he intended to deliver in 
 certain sections at the different debates. He had taken four opening 
 addresses and four closing addresses, thus leaving Lincoln four one- 
 hour and a half addresses, which Lincoln, used relentlessly and inex- 
 orably. Here at Galesburg his first highly sustained address showed 
 not only that he had taken Douglas' full measure, but that his cause 
 had nothing to fear from that quarter. Never after that day at Gales- 
 burg does he condescend to follow or pay but passing attention to the 
 irritated and angered Douglas. Here he reached the high water mark 
 of his career up to that time, and never really spoke in the same manner 
 during the entire debate, either before or after, excepting only at 
 Alton, where he spoke his final message as one inspired. He mildly 
 reminds Douglas at Ouincy : Does he not know, does he not appre- 
 ciate, the great drama that was even then being enacted? Will he 
 persist in petty quarrelling and quibbling, he, the great Douglas, the 
 undisputed leader of the Democracy? Will he not rise to the great 
 occasion? Will he persist in the childish repetition of futile charges 
 and insinuations in practically the same words as he began, as he used 
 in the speeches in Chicago and on the stump during the times between 
 the several debates? Has he but one piece to declaim? Will he not 
 cease threatening Lincoln — Lincoln, who could not be threatened, 
 Lincoln, who knew no fear? Will he not stop calling this one or that 
 
one — "liar" after he had demonstrated a proposition, even as Euclid 
 did, that the three angles of a triangle equalled two right angles? 
 Would he call Euclid a liar by way of refuting that self-evident 
 proposition ? 
 
 Examine that marvelous record and you see that Lincoln never 
 overlooked anything Judge Douglas said or asked or charged. He had 
 the text as reported, compared it with his opponent's statement, which 
 was ever the same, and in passing replied to every statement he con- 
 sidered deserving of reply. "Could not Lincoln make the same speech 
 and stick to the same speech, as he did — using the same phraseology?" 
 He (Douglas) talked the same way, said the same things in Ottowa and 
 in Galesburg, in Freeport and in Quincy, in Charleston and in Alton. 
 Lincoln ever said some other thing except the one wanted by Judge 
 Douglas. Lincoln never answered his questions at the time the Judge 
 wanted them answered. Lincoln persisted in writing down questions 
 and writing down answers, and read them when thus in juxtaposition. 
 Lincoln persisted in having printed statements, extracts, decisions with 
 him in his pockets all the time, and ever asked "Put your finger on the 
 spot," when a quotation was inaccurate or false or only partly quoted 
 — or misquoted. Douglas had a great deal of satisfaction in sneering 
 at Lincoln's "spot" resolutions and raised many a laugh from his de- 
 voted followers. But Lincoln's mastery of his argument against slavery 
 from the day the first slavery legislation was enacted until the moment 
 he opened his mouth in Galesburg, had never been equalled by any 
 other man on the continent. He knew every phase of his subject. 
 He knew every idea promulgated by the friends of slavery and by the 
 friends of freedom, and had the quotation or the legislation or the 
 speech under discussion with him. He knew what the fathers and 
 founders had said, and quoted from them in confounding Douglas when 
 he attempted to distort or misquote them. 
 
 "You say Jefferson favored slavery, Judge Douglas? He did 
 not," he said, in speaking of slavery, "he trembled for his country when 
 he remembered that God was just." 
 
 "Do you say, Judge Douglas, that the negroes are not included 
 in the Declaration of Independence?" 
 
 "I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the 
 Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be 
 searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, who 
 said that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independ- 
 
ence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, 
 that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any 
 living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of 
 the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had 
 to invent that affirmation." 
 
 "Are you relying upon that great Commoner, Henry Clay — are 
 you actually affirming that Henry Clay has inspired you — and that you 
 are but carrying out Henry Clay's beliefs and policies as to Slavery? 
 Hear what Mr. Clay had to say when he was once answering an objec- 
 tion to the Colonization Society, that it had a tendency to the ultimate 
 emancipation of the slaves — Clay said that 'those who would repress 
 all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation must do more than 
 put down the benevolent efforts of the Colonization Society, — they 
 must go back to the era of our liberty and independence, and muzzle 
 the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; they must blot out 
 the moral lights around us ; they must penetrate the human soul, and 
 eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty.' And I do think," 
 says Lincoln, "I repeat — that Judge Douglas, and whoever, like him, 
 teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the 
 Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty 
 and independence, and, so far as in him lies, is muzzling the cannon 
 that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the 
 moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves 
 has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his 
 power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love 
 of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, 
 by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual 
 and national." 
 
 He knew all the legislation beginning with the ordinance of '87, 
 when and where the whole trouble began. He followed the evolution 
 of the whole dismal national tragedy until he brought it down to the 
 date of the debates. And when the two champions appeared at Ottowa 
 for the first time, we witness upon that great stage upon which were 
 riveted the eyes of the whole country, the champion of slavery, and the 
 champion of freedom. Douglas unquestionably represented the side 
 of slavery, Lincoln unquestionably represented the side of freedom — 
 Douglas, fresh from his triumphs in the United States Senate where 
 he gradually but inevitably took the place of Webster, of Clay, of 
 Benton, yea, even of Calhoun. In that same United States Senate 
 which had witnessed some of the greatest of our national gladiators 
 
 8 
 
constructing, reinforcing and strengthening the beams of the Union, 
 Stephen A. Douglas appeared as the most remarkable and fearless 
 debater and legislator of that day and generation. Fearless he was, 
 like Randolph of Virginia, and Clay of Kentucky; eloquent he was, 
 like Corwin and Yancey; learned he was, like some of the greatest 
 scholars who preceded him in that forum which in that era had wit- 
 nessed the appearance of practically all the great constitutional scholars 
 of their day. With all that prestige, fresh from defeating the then 
 president of the United States on the Kansas legislation, the undisputed 
 orator and spokesman of the Democracy, the inevitable nominee of 
 his party for the Presidency in the forthcoming National election, 
 travelling in state in a manner never equalled by any other candidate, 
 he reached Ottowa, the locality where the first joint debate was 
 launched. Opposed to him was he who was commonly known as the 
 most often-defeated and disappointed candidate for office, a man who 
 had surmounted troubles innumerable from the days of his childhood, 
 a man upon whom the burdens of life had fallen so heavily that he 
 never reached the calm, the sunshine, the conviviality, the proud posi- 
 tion of his more successful and fortunate opponent. By some strange 
 irony of fate, humble Abe Lincoln was picked out to oppose the con- 
 quering Douglas, who up to that day practically knew no defeat. No 
 poorer choice could have been made, was the opinion of almost every- 
 one who watched the two gladiators upon that memorable stage. How 
 could Abraham Lincoln hope to defeat Douglas, or even to cope with 
 Douglas ? How could the man with the single term in Congress, driven 
 from public life — as he was often reminded by Douglas for taking the 
 unpopular side of the Mexican war, and looking with disfavor upon 
 the Administration which plunged us into it, and practically forgotten, 
 how could he cope with the State Legislator, the nationally known 
 advocate, the Supreme Court Judge, the Congressman, the United 
 States Senator, the inevitable Democratic nominee for the Presidency? 
 But fortune had played the young Republican party many a trick, and 
 this was evidently but another; to be actually represented in the great 
 State of Illinois, opposing the greatest speaker of his day and gen- 
 eration, by poor Abe Lincoln, the man of yarns, the plodding country 
 lawyer, the ill-clad, ill-dressed, ill-appearing farm hand and rail 
 splitter ! Will the new Republican party ever come into its own — after 
 Fremont — Lincoln? Still, the time for retracing their steps was gone. 
 There they were, confronting each other and as usual, with the hard 
 luck of the Republican party, Douglas had to begin — to deliver the 
 first blow. Douglas would also close the seventh and last joint debate, 
 and so would first hem in Lincoln on every side and finally deliver the 
 
coup-de-grace. Douglas was the beginning and Douglas was to be the 
 end of the epoch-making and fatal performance. He had the first as 
 well as the last word — what hope was there then for Lincoln? 
 
 But under that crude exterior, behind that care worn, sombre, 
 sad-featured visage, underneath his homely clothes, under that high, 
 out-of-date hat, was the most original human being who was born in 
 America since that first day upon which that Genoese dreamer-sailor 
 first saw land. Here was a man who was born and brought up in the 
 great open spaces, in the great deserts of the young Republic, even as 
 was his prototype in Egypt, four thousand years ago. Here was the 
 gnarled, rugged oak, weatherbeaten and scarred, subjected to snow 
 and storm and sleet, to heat, to thunder and to hurricane. There he 
 stood, like the monarch of the forest, defying the inclemencies of the 
 weather and of the seasons, and still remaining supreme — calm, serene, 
 confident, right — eternally right. 
 
 Douglas spoke his piece as it had been prepared, as it had been 
 spoken from a score of other platforms, and consequently with but 
 little conviction; always the same platitudes, the same simple story of 
 how the conspiracy was hatched between Trumbull and Lincoln, the 
 one to steal renegade Democrats and baptize them into Abolitionism, 
 and the other to steal Whigs and baptize them into Abolitionism, and 
 thus re-enforce the Republican party and hostile Buchanan office 
 holders, all for the purpose of defeating him — Douglas — who had 
 brought forward the only real constructive legislation, who had invented 
 the only nostrum which would answer all questions and solve all prob- 
 lems, including the never heretofore solved slavery problem — popular 
 sovereignty. 
 
 And the Judge concluded his statement by asking Lincoln seven 
 questions, which he insisted that he answer forthwith in order to rivet 
 Lincoln to his chariot — he, Douglas, was going to conduct this joint 
 debate. Lincoln delivered his first hour and a half address without 
 paying much attention to the fact that Douglas existed. Douglas' 
 remaining half hour was, therefore, full of irritation and anger and 
 disappointment that Lincoln did not refer to his questions, that he was 
 evidently afraid to answer his questions, because Lincoln knew that 
 he, Judge Douglas, would trot him down to Egypt, or to some other 
 place, where he would not dare to make the same speech that he made 
 at Ottowa. 
 
 And so the irritable, angered and excited Douglas kept it up until 
 
 10 
 
they came to Galesburg, and here Lincoln delivered his hour and a 
 half talk, carefully prepared and thought out during practically an 
 entire lifetime, and from that moment on, until his second inaugural, 
 six years later, Lincoln kept steadily climbing and growing, until his 
 entire life work blossomed out like a great constellation, and became 
 visible to all men from the altitude he had attained on the day he 
 delivered his immortal Second Inaugural. 
 
 Galesburg marked the turning point of Lincoln's career ; the Gales- 
 burg, Quincy, and Alton addresses were but three portions of a great 
 oration, of a great argument, before the greatest assizes that ever 
 were assembled at any time, where he pleaded and argued for the 
 life of the nation, for the liberty of a race, for the triumph of eternal 
 principles. 
 
 Douglas kept repeating charges of conspiracy between Trumbull 
 and Lincoln, imaginary inaccuracies between different statements of 
 Lincoln and Trumbull — kept on harping on the fact that Lincoln would 
 not dare to talk in Egypt as he talked in Chicago. He became suffi- 
 ciently petty to refer to the appearance of Fred Douglas with one of 
 Lincoln's friends in the outskirts of the crowd of one of the joint 
 debates — thus emphasizing his charge that Lincoln was for absolute 
 equality between the races. Hear what Lincoln said in a hitherto 
 unpublished memorandum — which he carried with him during the joint 
 debates : 
 
 "Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government 
 of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, 
 shall there continue' knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low 
 a piece of demagoguism as this?" 
 
 If you compare the eleven addresses of Douglas delivered from 
 the opening at Ottowa to the closing at Alton, and boil them down, you 
 will find practically the same words and phrases and similies. If you 
 will do the same thing to the ten addresses of Lincoln, you will find 
 one connected, finely woven, argument, consistent, continuous, logical, 
 irresistible in its force, which represented the entire political creed and 
 philosophy of Abraham Lincoln with reference to the fundamental 
 principles upon which rested the American Union. In it you will find 
 everything that constitutes the cardinal principles upon which our Con- 
 stitution rests, which the Declaration of Independence stands for, and 
 which every good man and true throughout the history of the Union 
 who ever stood for Union, for Liberty, for Justice and for Right has 
 
 11 
 
uttered in one form or another. In it you will find the great heart 
 and soul of Lincoln, throbbing and beating for the love of his country, 
 for the love of his fellowmen. In it you will find the ripest wisdom, 
 the soundest philosophy, which is as true today as it was on the day 
 it was uttered, and which will remain true for all time to come. He 
 demonstrated with the exactness and definiteness and lucidity of a 
 geometrical proposition, that the Dred Scott decision was the result of 
 political considerations and conferences by conspirators he chose to 
 designate under transparent names such as Stephen, Roger, Franklin 
 and James — and he further demonstrated by a chain of historical events 
 absolutely incontrovertible, that the fathers and founders had acted 
 and legislated in reference to the hateful institution with the sole 
 object of looking to its ultimate extinction. Just listen to what he says 
 in a hitherto unpublished memorandum and which he had with him 
 during the joint debates : 
 
 'The effort to prove that our fathers who framed the 
 government under which we live, understood that a proper 
 division of local from federal authority, and sound provision 
 of the Constitution, both forbid the federal government to 
 control slavery in the federal territory, is as if, when a man 
 stands before you, so that you see him, and lay your hand 
 upon him, you should go about examining his tracks, and 
 insisting therefore, that he is not present, but somewhere else 
 — They did, through the federal government, control slavery 
 in the federal territory — They did the identical thing which 
 Douglas insists they understood they ought not to do." 
 
 Against these two propositions Douglas made no headway — history 
 was against him — the new world order was against him — the very 
 stars in their courses fought against him. 
 
 One cannot help feeling, in view of Judge Douglas' great abilities 
 and demonstrated capacity for legal argument for joint debate, for 
 political discussion and acumen — one cannot help thinking that he 
 began to suspect, after he listened to Lincoln, that he might be on the 
 wrong side of that great question, because Lincoln demonstrated be- 
 yond the peradventure of a doubt that his own nostrum of popular 
 sovereignty was not sound, could not be sound, and unless Euclid was 
 a liar, Judge Douglas knew that his argument was false and was a 
 mere gossamer of sand, to fall apart upon the slightest collision with 
 justice and with right and with sound reasoning. Upon no other 
 theory can one explain the ever-growing weakness of Judge Douglas' 
 
 12 
 
attack. He who had successfully fought with the leaders of his party, 
 he who had successfully fought to a standstill men like Seward, and 
 Sumner, and Chase, and Wade, in the United States Senate, a man 
 who could tell an unruly and a fault finding and defiant audience of 
 twenty thousand Chicagoans — which declined to hear his justification 
 for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise — a few minutes before 
 twelve o'clock on the Saturday night when he returned to Chicago 
 two years before : "Fellow citizens of Chicago : It is now twelve 
 o'clock Saturday night. I am going to church tomorrow, and you can 
 go to Hell," — that man certainly was not afraid of Lincoln nor the 
 audiences which he faced; but he was beginning to fear that he was 
 not standing upon firm ground, and that the earth, so to speak, was 
 breaking under him — there seems to be no doubt that he was himself 
 convinced by Lincoln's inexorable logic. But as Lincoln says in still 
 another hitherto unpublished memorandum — "He (Douglas) never lets 
 the logic of principle displace the logic of success." 
 
 All honour to Galesburg, where this great work began ! At Gales- 
 burg it was where Lincoln began his career of leadership triumphant. 
 At Galesburg it was where he definitely and clearly convinced even 
 Douglas that his cause, Lincoln's cause, was just, and that there was 
 only one answer to the question which they were debating. Douglas 
 was happy, as happy as he could be, that the contest closed, he was 
 beaten to a standstill — tired and exhausted, and Lincoln stood pre- 
 pared to continue — he could not be tired out in this fight. At the 
 beginning he had a premonition that Lincoln was a dangerous opponent. 
 His premonition turned out to be true. His fears were more than 
 justified, his expectations realized. Lincoln spoke from the first 
 moment like a man who knew of no opponent, like a man who spoke to 
 an entire people, like an inspired prophet of an inspired cause. It was 
 not the same Lincoln whom Douglas had met in Congress, whom 
 Douglas had met in their trips through the Eighth Circuit, or at the 
 various functions in Springfield and in other parts of Illinois. It was 
 the God-inspired, the God-intoxicated soul, picked by an inscrutable 
 Providence to perform a task under which had stumbled and fallen 
 the leaders of a quarter of a century. A new man had arisen on the 
 plains of Illinois who, when he spoke up, had an entire nation listening, 
 contemplating, meditating, reasoning, and finally, when Father Abraham 
 called, an entire nation responded : "We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 five hundred thousand strong." 
 
 From day to day the number of those who were privileged to see 
 that form, to hear that voice of this 19th century prophet, is getting 
 
 13 
 
smaller. Nay even the number of those who followed his remains to 
 his last resting place are passing to the Beyond and joining him among 
 the heavenly hosts where abide all good men and true. We cannot see 
 the glory that they saw, we cannot hear the voice they heard, but the 
 message which he brought to them has become our heritage and our 
 paramount duty to transmit unsullied even as it has been transmitted 
 to us. Why then cannot we here resolve — seventy years later — that 
 he shall not have lived and labored and died in vain ? Why cannot we 
 here determine — under God — to battle against the modern misguided 
 enemies of our union — the Douglas of today and of tomorrow — for in 
 one guise or another he appears and reappears in each generation — 
 ever falsely proclaiming that his mission is their mission in his frantic 
 desire to attain leadership in our National Councils. Why can we not, 
 why do we not, decide and determine to drive them from political life 
 even as did Lincoln drive out Douglas and his associates? To his 
 glory be it said^ Douglas at last saw the light — saw that his whole life 
 had been barren, wasted, and returned. But others never see the light 
 and never return. There then is the enemy. Let us not be blinded by 
 minor matters magnified for the purpose of blinding the people and 
 diverting their attention from the frightful possibilities and calamitous 
 results if and when our government is taken out of the hands of the 
 followers of Lincoln and entrusted into the hands of his enemies and 
 detractors. This country must continue in the spirit and under the 
 guidance of the eternal principles laid down in Lincoln's charter of 
 liberties committed to our care; and like the Holy of Holies, it must 
 be guarded with our very lives. That much we of our generation can 
 do, and with God's help will do. This is our paramount daily task. 
 No strange fires must be permitted on our national altar — death was 
 the penalty for Aaron's disobedient sons, who sought to introduce it — 
 in defiance of Moses and Aaron whom they sought to displace. 
 
 Death of Lincoln's government of the people will be our penalty 
 should we permit the undermining, the desecration, the uprooting of 
 our form of government at the hands of the vandal, the communist, 
 the unholy alliances of evil, of disloyalty, of hypocrisy, and of all those 
 hosts who have no truth in them, who falsify issues even as they 
 falsify their intentions. May He, in whose eyes a thousand years are 
 but a moment, and who brought us through the successive ordeals of 
 Revolution and Civil War, save us and keep us in all these succeeding 
 trials and tests. The omnipresent spirit of Lincoln will guard us, 
 intervene for us, plead for us and protect us — Our Heavenly Guardian 
 slumbereth not and sleepeth not ! 
 
 14 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 973 7L63C4H44AB C 001 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT THE CLIMAX OF THE GRE 
 
 3 0112 031805™^