Sj 
 PERSONAL 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS AND 
 
 IMPRESSIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Sy Francis Durbin Blakeslee 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 
 AND IMPRESSIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 *By Francis Durbin Blakeslee, D.D., Litt. D. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED WITH ABBRE- 
 VIATIONS AT LOS ANGELES BEFORE 
 THE RETIRED METHODIST PREACHERS' 
 ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFOR- 
 NIA, AT THE MEMORIAL DAY SERVICE 
 IN HONOR OF THE VETERANS OF THE 
 GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC TEN- 
 DERED BY THE SHAKESPEARE CLUB 
 OF PASADENA, AND ON MANY 
 OTHER OCCASIONS 
 
 GARDENA, CALIFORNIA 
 
 SPANISH AMERICAN INSTITUTE PRESS 
 
 19 2 7 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/personalrecollecOOblak 
 
>T A RECENT school examination in England 
 the question was asked, "If King John were 
 alive, what would be his attitude on Home 
 Rule?" One boy replied, "If King John were 
 alive to-day, he would be too old to be in- 
 terested in politics." 
 Although I am what the old woman called 
 an "octogeranium," I am not too old to be interested with you 
 in one of the greatest characters that ever appeared upon the 
 stage of human history — Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Someone has said, "That nation is death-stricken that ceases 
 to reverence the memory of her great men." And so we in 
 America are raising memorials to our Washingtons, our Lincolns, 
 our Grants, our Roosevelts, and are commemorating their birth- 
 days. The British are doing the same for their great heroes. 
 There is a good deal in common between our British cousins 
 and ourselves. John Wesley was a Britisher but there are millions 
 in our land to-day who also claim him as theirs. No man could 
 possibly be more of an American than was Abraham Lincoln, 
 but to-day he belongs to the world. 
 
 There is a greater demand for information concerning Abra- 
 ham Lincoln than concerning any other of the world's immortals. 
 It has been figured that, were he to return to earth and live out 
 his fourteen years to threescore and ten, — he died at fifty-six, — 
 it would take him every available minute simply to read what has 
 been written about him. 
 
 In the estimation of some of the critics, the best biography of 
 Lincoln and the best dramatic presentation of his life were both 
 written by Englishmen: Lord Charnwood's "Life of Lincoln," 
 and John Drinkwater's play, "Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 In the palmy days of ancient Greece, at one of their Olympic 
 Games, the multitude recognizing their great historian, 
 Herodotus, seized him and bore him on their shoulders about 
 the great Arena, shouting, "Let us honor the man who has 
 written our history!" To-day, as an American, I say: "Let us 
 honor the man who has made our history!" 
 
 James Russell Lowell once said, "It is a benediction to have 
 lived in the same country and at the same time with Abraham 
 Lincoln." I am now speaking to none, probably, who are not 
 
 [5] 
 
of the country of Abraham Lincoln ; but there are very few here 
 who lived at the time of Lincoln. That was my privilege! 
 
 I hold in my hand a letter written to a member of my family 
 by a woman on the tenth day before she was a hundred years old. 
 I recall having heard her tell of her interview, when a girl, 
 with George Washington. There is but one link then between 
 me and the Father of his Country, who died the last month of 
 the year 1799! 
 
 As I tell you this, I am wondering if some of you are not 
 looking upon me very much as the little girl looked upon her 
 grand-daddy. He had a long white beard; his face was gnarled 
 and seamed, and he wore a crown of silver. The little darling, 
 sitting in his lap, looked up and said, "Grandpa, were you in 
 the ark?" "Oh, no, my dear; I wasn't in the ark!" "Then why 
 weren't you drowned?" . . . Well, I escaped the drowning 
 anyway, and am happy to be here with you to-day. 
 
 I have no oration on Abraham Lincoln. I am not competent 
 for that high theme. But, although I am well known in some 
 sections as an ardent prohibitionist, I have a confession to make: 
 I do sometimes indulge — in what the old woman called "rum 
 and essences," — reminiscences, — of those far-off days of the 
 Civil War. 
 
 I was a clerk in the Quartermaster General's Office at 
 Washington for a year and a half, including the close of that 
 great struggle. In consequence I had frequent opportunities of 
 seeing the great President. Not often on the street — he was 
 too busy to be there — but in great assemblies and elsewhere. 
 
 It was a custom in those days to hold services on Sunday after- 
 noons in the House of Representatives. The most prominent 
 preachers were secured. On one occasion, Bishop Simpson of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church, — one of the greatest orators 
 that this country ever produced, — then a guest at the White 
 House, was the preacher. I remember, as if it were yesterday, 
 seeing there the President and all his family. On another occasion 
 Murdock, the great elocutionist, also a guest at the White 
 House, gave a reading. Again Lincoln was present. 
 
 I attended, in the same place, a meeting held in the interest 
 of the Christian Commission. Secretary Seward presided. General 
 Fiske was one of the speakers. Admiral Farragut was there and 
 
 [6] 
 
jther prominent actors in that great drama of the Civil War. 
 It was impossible to proceed because of the continued applause, 
 until the great President unlimbered himself and bowed right 
 and left to the waiting multitude. 
 
 In the summer the Marine Band gave free concerts on the 
 White House grounds on pleasant Saturday afternoons. One day 
 I stood so near the White House that I was within ten feet of 
 the President as he came out to mount his horse to ride to the 
 Soldiers' Home. I could have stepped three paces and touched 
 him. He could have no vacation in war time, but he could go 
 for the night some four miles out to the Soldiers' Home, em- 
 bowered in a grove, and get that much of country air. At 
 another time I saw him riding in a carriage to the Soldiers' Home 
 with a squad of cavalry as his escort. 
 
 I called on the President on Monday, January 2, 1865. My 
 diary reads: "Accompanied by Miss Fannie and Miss Laura," 
 (young women at my boarding-place,) "called upon the Pres- 
 ident." Then, with boyish irreverence, I continue: "Shook his 
 paw with a gusto." With the increasing wisdom of maturer years, 
 I now see that I should have done it with my right hand! 
 
 I heard Lincoln's last public address, which he delivered from 
 a second-story window of the White House, three days before 
 his assassination. He had just returned from Richmond. The 
 cruel war was over. There was intense rejoicing, not exceeded 
 on Armistice Day after the World War. Cabinet members and 
 other prominent officials were serenaded and made speeches. 
 Flags, bands and bunting were much in evidence. The President 
 had been asked for a speech the previous evening. He replied 
 that he was so busy that evening that he could not possibly 
 give us any time, but that if we cared enough about it to come 
 the following evening he would arrange to receive us. Of course 
 we cared, and I was one of the hundreds that stood on the 
 White House grounds and heard Abraham Lincoln's last speech. 
 It was about twenty minutes long and related to the problems 
 confronting the nation at that crisis of its history, and may be 
 found to-day among his published addresses. 
 
 On two different occasions, five years apart, I have spoken 
 at patriotic services in Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles. On Lincoln's 
 birthday a year ago, the presiding officer, Mr. M. T. Salida, 
 
 [7] 
 
who has been blind ever since a Confederate bullet went through 
 his temple, said, in introducing me: "Dr. Blakeslee is the only 
 person who, after all the intervening years, I know stood with me 
 on the White House grounds and heard Abraham Lincoln's 
 last public address." When I arose, I said: "After all these years, 
 and I have met many who were connected with those times, 
 Mr. Salida is the only person who I know stood with me on the 
 White House grounds and heard Abraham Lincoln's last public 
 utterance." I have been saying that in my addresses ever since. 
 I spoke at the Mission Inn, Riverside, on Sunday evening, the 
 thirteenth of last February, the second time in successive years. 
 After the lecture, a Mrs. Russell came to me and said, "I want 
 you to know that as a little girl I stood with you on the White 
 House grounds and heard Abraham Lincoln's last public utter- 
 ance." So now there are two that I know, who stood there with 
 me that evening. 
 
 On April 3, 1865, upon receipt of news of the fall of Rich- 
 mond, I heard Stanton, "Andy" Johnson, Seward, General' 
 Butler, and Senators Nye, Sherman, Preston King, and M. C. 
 Smith. The next evening there was a great mass meeting in 
 front of the Patent Office. Vice-President Johnson said in his 
 speech referring to the "Rebels," "If I had my way, I'd hang 
 them higher than Haman!" We know his subsequent record in 
 dealing with the "Rebels." 
 
 I saluted Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln at the Navy Yard, the after- 
 noon of the very day that he was assassinated. Some fellow 
 clerks and I had gone there to see the monitors, damaged in 
 the Fort Fisher engagement, which had come to the Navy Yard 
 for repairs. They were "rare birds" to landsmen. As fast as 
 builded, they were rushed into service. All Washington, as it 
 were, turned out to see the ironclads which marked such a 
 revolution in naval warfare. We went all over three of them. 
 The autopsy on the body of the assassin, Booth, was later held 
 in the gun-room of one of these, the "Montauk." 
 
 The President and his wife drove up and halted at the end 
 of a platform, similar to a railway platform, upon which my 
 friends and I were standing. We saluted, and the salute was 
 returned. Many years later, I had an interview with Schuyler 
 
 [8] 
 
 
Colfax in Providence, Rhode Island, following his lecture on 
 Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Colfax then told me that he knew for a 
 fact that I saw the great man later than did any of his Cabinet. 
 He said to me, "I know where they all were that day and 
 evening, and not one of them saw Mr. Lincoln as late as you 
 did." No credit to me; only one of the accidents or incidents of 
 my early manhood. "But I am ahead of you," he continued; 
 "I was talking with him at the White House when he entered 
 the carriage to go to the theatre." 
 
 I am surprised that, after all these years, the disputed question 
 of where the President's last drive was taken seems to hinge, 
 in the minds of some historians, upon my testimony. Mr. John 
 W. Starr, Jr., of Millersburg, Pennsylvania, is author of two 
 books, "Lincoln's Last Day" and "New Light on Lincoln's 
 Last Day." In his second book he quotes my diary and extracts 
 from letters that I had written him. 
 
 I stood beside the casket in the White House. My diary of 
 that day reads: "Thousands were unable to enter." There was no 
 business at the office that day. I was foot-free, and with a boy's 
 enthusiasm I went early and waited long — and finally got in, 
 and stood by the casket and looked into the cold face of him 
 whom I had saluted in life a few hours previously. 
 
 Not only that, but I took part in the funeral procession. I 
 doubt if there is now another on earth who can truthfully say 
 that. I was a youngster. The others were older. They are probably 
 all gone. 
 
 The Quartermaster General's Office was a bureau of the War 
 Department, and the clerks were drilled periodically during 
 office hours. In a recent reading of my diary, I find this entry: 
 "We drill now every day." We had some humble part in de- 
 fending Washington when it was attacked by the Confederate 
 General, Early, in the summer of 1864. When the officials in 
 charge came to make up the military part of the funeral pageant, 
 they put our company in line. My diary of April 19, 1865, 
 reads: "At 8 o'clock we all repaired to the office where we put 
 on our uniforms and equipment, and from that time till half 
 past two had to stand in the sun. We then fell in with the 
 funeral procession, and marched up around the Capitol and 
 back. We were just as near dead when we got back as could be." 
 
 [9] 
 
I could almost have thrown a stone from the house where I 
 was rooming to Ford's Theatre. I overslept the night of the 
 assassination; and although Washington was seething with an 
 excitement never before known in its history, I was utterly 
 oblivious of it all. I went late to my breakfast the following 
 morning and, as I entered the restaurant, noted the unusual quiet 
 which prevailed. While the waitress was filling my order, 
 the only other man at my table turned his daily paper — and I 
 then read the black head-lines telling me of the awful event of the 
 night before! My father, living hundreds of miles away, and the 
 great centres of the country knew of the tragedy before I did. 
 
 I met Boston Corbett at a Methodist classmeeting on the 
 second of May, six days after he had shot the assassin, Booth, 
 in the Garrett barn in Virginia. I obtained his autograph and 
 had a short chat with him. He told me that the pistol with 
 which he shot Booth, and for which he had been offered over 
 $1,000, had been stolen. He had promised the loan of it to a 
 great fair at Chicago in the interest of the Sanitary Commission. 
 When he went to get it, it was gone. 
 
 I saw the Grand Review for two days; attended for two days 
 the trial of the assassins at the Arsenal, and obtained the auto- 
 graph of every member of the Military Commission constitut- 
 ing the court. Of course I had excellent opportunity of seeing 
 the conspirators, Mrs. Surratt among them. She was one of the 
 four who were executed. 
 
 On February 12, 1865, I heard Chief Justice Chase and 
 Senator James W. Patterson from New Hampshire. On the 
 evening of February 26, 1 865, I was present in the House of 
 Representatives when Chief Justice Chase presided at a meeting 
 celebrating the third anniversary of the Freedmen's Relief As- 
 sociation. Theodore Tilton was one of the speakers and greatly 
 impressed me with his eloquence. I saw and heard General Ben 
 Butler more than once. 
 
 I was President of Iowa Wesleyan University, Mt. Pleasant, 
 Iowa, when Senator James Harlan, the first president of that 
 institution, and later President of the Board of Trustees that 
 elected me, died; and I spoke at his funeral in the college 
 chapel. He was elected to the United States Senate while Pres- 
 ident of the University. Senator Harlan was father-in-law to 
 
 [ 10 1 
 
 _ 
 
the late Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of Abraham 
 Lincoln. I first met Robert at the funeral of Senator Harlan. 
 Later Bishop McCabe and I had an interview with him in his 
 office in Chicago, when he was President of the Pullman Com- 
 pany. I saw Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln more frequently, for 
 she spent a good deal of time at her father's home at Mt. Pleasant. 
 I first met Senator Harlan in Washington when I was a boy, 
 and at that time obtained his autograph. 
 
 I hold in my hand an autograph of Abraham Lincoln! He 
 wrote every line of what I read you: "For G. H. Blakeslee — A. 
 Lincoln — Nov. 2, 1864." 
 
 G. H. Blakeslee was my father. He was a Methodist pastor 
 at Binghamton, New York. At the call of the Christian Com- 
 mission, which antedated the Red Cross, he, with other pastors, 
 went to the front to serve on battlefields and in hospitals and to 
 hold religious services with the troops. Upon returning from the 
 front, he stayed a night with me in Washington. At the break- 
 fast table he said: "We are going to call upon the President this 
 morning," referring to a brother minister who was stopping 
 elsewhere in the city. At night he showed me the autograph, 
 which I have treasured these many years. 
 
 A few years ago, to my utter surprise, I found in my attic 
 two cheap little blank-books which proved to be my father's 
 diary of all those days, from October 4 to November 4, 1864. 
 I turned with greatest interest to November 2, and there was the 
 following entry: 
 
 "At 2 p. m. accompanied by Rev. E. W. Breckinridge visited 
 the Presidential Mansion. Four young men approached the 
 President who were anxious to get his aid relative to a matter 
 which I did not understand. But Mr. Lincoln, who was seated 
 in his chair, replied to them kindly but firmly, 'I can do nothing 
 for you.' When they urged that their papers should be read, 
 he replied, 'I should not remember it if I did. The papers can be 
 put in their proper places and go through their proper channels.' 
 A lady next appeared and presented a paper. He took it and read 
 it and replied: 'This will not do. I can do nothing for your 
 husband.' 'Why not?' said the lady. 'Because,' said Mr. Lincoln, 
 'he is not loyal.' 'But he intends to be; he wants to take the oath 
 
 [11] 
 
of allegiance.' 'That is the way with all who get into prison,' re- 
 plied the President. 'I can do nothing for you.' 'But you would,' 
 said the lady, 'if you knew my circumstances.' 'No, I would 
 not. I am under no obligation to provide for the wives of dis- 
 loyal husbands. Hasn't your husband the consumption?' 'No,' 
 replied the lady. 'Well,' said the President, 'it is the only 
 case. Nearly all have the consumption.' 
 
 "Another lady presented her case which was a similar one 
 and met a similar result. Next Rev. E. W. Breckinridge pre- 
 sented himself and handed him his card. 'What is your name?' 
 asked Mr. Lincoln. 'Breckinridge,' replied Brother B. 'Rather a 
 suspicious name, but I am loyal.' " (Breckinridge was the name of 
 one of the candidates representing the disloyal element of the 
 South, opposing Lincoln for the Presidency in the campaign of 
 i860.) " 'I have long desired to see you and take you by the 
 hand. I am glad to see you bearing your labors so well. You have 
 the prayers of the people, and I pray for the speedy and peaceful 
 termination of the war on the principles of your proclamation.' 
 Meanwhile I shook the hand of the President and asked him for 
 his autograph. He took the book which I presented and cheerfully 
 gave his name. Brother B. presented his book and received Mr. 
 Lincoln's signature. We then bade him goodbye and took our 
 leave, thankful for the privilege of seeing and shaking hands 
 with the President. 
 
 "As we passed out of the Presidential Mansion we met on the 
 veranda the President's son, some nine years of age." (He was 
 really eleven.) "He was handling some boards that lay there for 
 the purpose of building a scaffold. We shook hands with him and 
 Brother B. inquired his name. He replied, 'Tom.'" (He was 
 the one called "Tad.") "We went from there to the Quarter- 
 master General's Office and found Durbin. We repaired to the 
 rooms of the Commission on 10th Street, and spent the evening 
 very pleasantly with a number of the delegates." 
 
 This book, in which is the autograph of Abraham Lincoln, 
 is a record book like that which was given to all delegates, as 
 they were called, serving in the Christian Commission. On the 
 three pages preceding that on which Lincoln's autograph appears 
 are the autographs of Grant and every member of his staff, 
 obtained by my father at the headquarters of the Army in the 
 
 [12] 
 
Field. On the back of Lincoln's page is the autograph of 
 Theodore Roosevelt, obtained for me by a friend a few months 
 before Roosevelt's death. 
 
 Under celluloid, inside the cover of this book, I have a 
 light green silk lapel badge of the Wide-Awake Clubs, worn 
 in the first campaign for the election of Lincoln in i860. It 
 has the youngest-looking portrait of Lincoln that I ever saw, 
 with a fac-simile of his signature. I found this in the same 
 attic where, a year or two later, I found my father's diary. I 
 never have seen another. Roosevelt was more interested in this 
 badge than in anything else in the book. I believe that he had 
 never seen one like it. 
 
 Years ago I spoke for a few minutes to a Sunday School at 
 the Methodist Church of Geneva, New York. I had said a 
 few things about Lincoln's temperance principles. An official 
 of the church then told me that the widow of the man who sold 
 Booth the glass of brandy which he took in the saloon adjoining 
 Ford's Theatre, just before the assassination, was sitting in the 
 audience. The story in brief was that the bartender years before 
 had become a Christian, had moved to Geneva, where he had 
 been for years a member of the Methodist Church, and had 
 died about three years before. 
 
 The very next Sunday, the Presbyterian pastor at Marathon, 
 New York, told me of an interesting character whose funeral 
 he had conducted at his former charge. This man was in the 
 saloon when Booth came in, and he saw Booth drink the brandy. 
 He asked the bartender who the man was. "Don't you know? 
 That is Booth the actor." "No, I have never seen him before 
 to know him," the man replied. This man went into the theatre 
 to witness the play, and after a little saw Booth edging along 
 the gallery toward Lincoln's box. Having just learned that he 
 was an attache of the theatre, he thought nothing of it. Soon 
 the awful tragedy! This man passing out through the vestibule 
 was met by those coming down the opposite stairway carrying 
 Lincoln. They said to him: "Here, give us a lift; we haven't 
 quite help enough." He then helped carry Lincoln's prostrate 
 form over to the room across the street, where Lincoln died the 
 next morning. These two interesting experiences came to me on 
 two successive Sundays. 
 
 [13] 
 
I am sometimes asked concerning the personal appearance 
 of Abraham Lincoln. When in repose his countenance was sad. 
 His face was rugged and seamed. The late Rev. Dr. Ervin S. 
 Chapman, an acquaintance of Lincoln, who, when in his eightieth 
 year, published a life of the great President, suggests in his book 
 that Lincoln's reputation for ill looks is largely due to a pro- 
 truding lip. He prints a portrait of Lincoln from his mouth up, 
 and challenges anyone to produce a nobler countenance. A pro- 
 minent woman in Washington once said: "When Lincoln's face 
 is lighted up with the animation of public speech, he is the 
 handsomest man I ever saw." 
 
 In his young manhood, while following a trail in the wilder- 
 ness of Kentucky, Lincoln was met by a native, who, when he 
 was near enough, took the rifle from his shoulder — nearly 
 everybody carried a rifle in that section, in those days — and 
 pointed it at Lincoln. "Hold on there, stranger," cried Lincoln; 
 "what do you think you are doing?" "I took a vow on the grave 
 of my mother that if I ever met a homelier man than I, Pd 
 shoot him!" Lincoln looked him over a second or two and then 
 said: "Well, stranger, if I am any uglier looking than you, I think 
 you'd better shoot me." 
 
 WE ought not to limit our consideration of Abraham Lincoln 
 to my personal recollections of him. His character and 
 career have many important lessons for this generation. 
 
 Among other things, his career teaches the importance often 
 
 OF A MOTHER'S INFLUENCE. 
 
 In the great majority of cases, character is fixed in the earliest 
 years. 
 
 "A pebble in the streamlet scant 
 
 Has turned the course of many a river; 
 
 A dew-drop on the baby plant 
 
 Has warped the giant oak forever." 
 
 When nine years of age, standing by the bedside of his 
 dying mother, the boy Lincoln promised her that he never would 
 use intoxicating liquors. He kept that vow. And this at a 
 
 [14] 
 
time and in a region where nearly everyone drank liquor at 
 least occasionally. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a prohibitionist a generation ahead of 
 his time. The oration which he delivered on Washington's 
 Birthday, 1842, in the Presbyterian Church at Springfield, 
 Illinois, I regard as the great English temperance classic. The 
 exigencies of the Civil War pushed out of sight Lincoln's 
 attitude on the liquor question. In recent years, however, this has 
 been receiving the attention which it deserves. A few years ago 
 there appeared a book entitled "Lincoln and Prohibition," by 
 Charles T. White, which gives valuable information regarding 
 this subject. 
 
 During the war, Lincoln was once on a revenue cutter in 
 Hampton Roads and was awfully seasick. There was a good 
 deal of him to be seasick, for he was six feet four ! The Captain, 
 thinking to do him a favor, brought him a glass of champagne, 
 saying, "I think this will help you." "No, no!" said Lincoln; 
 "I have seen too many people seasick on land from drinking 
 that stuff," — and he would have none of it. 
 
 He was always interested in meeting anyone taller than him- 
 self. He once met a man who was two or three inches taller. 
 Looking him over a minute, he said: "Will you please tell me 
 how you ever know when your feet are cold? " 
 
 The total abstinence pledge which Lincoln in his young 
 manhood wrote out for himself, and which he induced others 
 to sign, was adopted by the Lincoln-Lee Legion: 
 
 "Whereas, the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage is 
 productive of pauperism, degradation and crime; and believing 
 it is our duty to discourage that which produces more evil than 
 good, we therefore pledge ourselves to abstain from the use of 
 intoxicating liquors as a beverage." 
 
 To this pledge have been obtained the signatures of over six 
 million of the Sunday-school children of the Nation. 
 
 Napoleon when asked, "What is the greatest need of France?" 
 instantly replied, "Mothers!" "All that I am, or ever hope to 
 be, I owe to my angel mother," said Lincoln. It is more than 
 possible that had it not been for that godly mother we never 
 would have heard of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 [15] 
 
Another lesson, especially important to the youth of to-day, 
 is that Lincoln when a boy improved to the full all of 
 
 HIS ADVANTAGES. 
 
 And how meagre were those advantages! His home was a 
 home of abject poverty. The Lincoln family one winter in 
 Indiana lived in a three-sided shack, the front all open to the 
 weather, with the thermometer at times down to zero. As a 
 boy Lincoln never had so much as a sheet of paper or a lead 
 pencil, a slate or a slate pencil. So poor was the family that 
 they had no candles; and the boy Lincoln used to lie face 
 down before a large open fire for light, and with a dead coal 
 from that fire, work out his arithmetic on the back of a wooden 
 shovel. When he had filled it, he would plane it off and begin 
 again. 
 
 At first the boy had almost no books except the Bible. Later 
 he had Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Aesop's Fables, Robinson 
 Crusoe, Weems's Life of Washington, and a History of the 
 United States. "Beware the man of one book!" This does not 
 necessarily mean that we should confine our reading to one 
 volume. The sentiment is, that he who masters one book often 
 has more mental power and equipment than he who superficially 
 reads a hundred books. Lincoln mastered those books, and they 
 were to him "the well of purest English undefiled." This 
 mastery of everything that he studied, which characterized 
 him through life, resulted in the fact that few if any of the 
 English race have been so masterful in logic, so forceful and 
 felicitous in the use of the English tongue. In his writings, 
 speeches, and official documents eighty-five per cent of the 
 words are monosyllables. They went like bullets to the mark. 
 Leaning back in his chair during an interim in a cabinet meet- 
 ing, Lincoln repeated page after page of Shakespeare. Finally 
 Secretary of State Seward said: "Mr. President, we do not under- 
 stand this. You never had the advantages of the schools, and 
 here you are quoting Shakespeare as I could not possibly do; and I 
 have some little reputation as a Shakespearian scholar." 
 
 Go to Oxford University where, we are told, the purest 
 English is written and spoken, and being an American, you may 
 be invited to enter a certain corridor to see a copy of Lincoln's 
 
 [16] 
 
letter to Mrs. Bixby of Boston, who, the President had been told, 
 laid her all — five sons — upon Freedom's altar. They will tell 
 you that it is the finest letter of condolence in the English 
 language. You may go to the British Museum, where the books 
 if placed on one shelf would reach fifty miles, and ask for the 
 finest short speech in the English tongue, and immediately they 
 will hand you Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. 
 
 The Battle of Gettysburg was the Waterloo of the Confederacy. 
 Later the battlefield was to be dedicated as a National Cemetery 
 for our heroic dead. Edward Everett, then considered America's 
 greatest orator, was engaged to give the oration. Six weeks later 
 the President was asked if he would attend and make "a few 
 remarks." Edward Everett delivered his great oration, — and it 
 was a great oration, comparable to the great orations of history. 
 Lincoln then made his "few remarks." We are told that after 
 Lincoln had finished speaking and had taken his seat, Edward 
 Everett arose and went to him, extending his hand and saying: 
 "Mr. President, if I could feel that I had as clearly presented the 
 issue in my two and a quarter hours as you have in your two and 
 a quarter minutes, I should be a happy man." I doubt if there 
 can be found in all the land to-day a single person who can quote 
 three consecutive sentences from Edward Everett's great oration. 
 But we are emblazoning on bronze tablets Lincoln's Gettysburg 
 Address, and affixing them to our schoolhouse walls; and there are 
 untold thousands of the school children of to-day who can repeat 
 every word of it. Emerson, Lowell, and Victor Hugo place it 
 among the three masterpieces of all literature. Gladstone said 
 of it: "The ideas it contains are loftier than any ever before 
 uttered in the annals of the world." And I well remember that 
 an English review at the time characterized it as the "grandest 
 speech that ever fell from human lips." 
 
 Lincoln when a boy improved to the full his opportunities. 
 
 Lincoln's career again teaches us that moral character is 
 
 AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF REAL GREATNESS. 
 
 All the world's real heroes were God's men. Christian or non- 
 Christian, they all recognized a Supreme Power that makes for 
 righteousness, and to that Power they gave allegiance. Near the 
 close of his great career, Gladstone said: "I have been brought 
 into contact with sixty master minds of earth, and all but five of 
 
 [17] 
 
them were lowly followers of the Nazarene." Abraham Lincoln's 
 career emphasizes, as do few others, that character is greatness. 
 
 He was a Christlike man. 
 
 (i) He was Christlike in his sympathy and tenderness of 
 heart. You doubtless remember those martinets among the army 
 officers who complained that Lincoln by his frequent pardons 
 was ruining military discipline. There are many cases such as the 
 fellow who, on a hot, dusty, all-day march, carried, in addition 
 to his own heavy load, his sick comrade's equipment. By lot he 
 had to serve on picket duty that night. Of course he fell 
 asleep and by military law should be shot. Lincoln would not 
 have it so. He said, "Those boys are worth more to the Republic 
 above ground than under it." 
 
 One evening Joshua Speed, an intimate friend, was calling at 
 the White House. After a time he took out his watch and 
 said: "Mr. President, I must be going. You are an over-worked 
 man and need your rest." "Don't go, Joshua, don't go. This is 
 Thursday night. I never sleep any Thursday night. Tomorrow 
 is execution day in the army. I never sleep Thursday night. 
 Stay with me, Joshua, stay with me." Such was the heart of 
 Lincoln. 
 
 The Confederate General Pickett, of Gettysburg fame, when 
 a young man, received his appointment to West Point at the 
 hands of Congressman Abraham Lincoln. The day after the 
 Confederate forces evacuated Richmond, President Lincoln en- 
 tered it. Among other things he sought out the home of General 
 Pickett. The General and all his servants had fled. Mrs. Pickett 
 answered the rap at the door. "Is this General Pickett's place?" 
 "Yes, Sir," she replied; "but he is not here." "I know that, 
 Ma'am; but I just wanted to see the place. I'm Abraham Lin- 
 coln." "The President?" she gasped. "No, Ma'am; no, Ma'am; 
 just Abraham Lincoln, George's old friend." 
 
 "I am George Pickett's wife, and this is his baby." After- 
 ward, relating the incident, Mrs. Pickett said: "My baby pushed 
 away from me and reached out his hand to Mr. Lincoln, who 
 took him in his arms. As he did so, an expression of rapt, almost 
 divine, tenderness and love lighted up the sad face. It was a 
 look that I have never seen on any other face. My baby opened 
 his mouth wide and gave his father's friend a dewy, infantile 
 
 [18] 
 
 — 
 
kiss. As Mr. Lincoln gave the little one back to me, shaking his 
 finger at him playfully, he said, 'Tell your father, the rascal, 
 that I forgive him for the sake of that kiss and those bright 
 eyes."' He came not as a conquering Caesar, but as a friend. He 
 visited the so-called "rebel" general, not to upbraid him but to 
 assure him of his love. History has no parallel to that. 
 
 When Lincoln was a little boy the mother said to Thomas, the 
 father, "I think Abe looks more like me than he does like you." 
 "Well, that may be," said Thomas; "but, Nancy, he can't sing 
 like you." "Well," said the mother, "maybe he will make others 
 sing." And no man since Calvary has made so many broken hearts 
 sing for joy as has Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 (2) Again, his was a forgiving spirit, like his Master's. When 
 reviled, he reviled not again. It is well-nigh impossible for us 
 of to-day to realize the abuse, the malignity, which at one time 
 was heaped upon Lincoln by his enemies. Scarcely any man in 
 public life has ever suffered so. No language was too vile, no 
 epithets too abusive. He was called an ape, a chimpanzee, an 
 orang-outang, a gorilla, a baboon. 
 
 Lincoln once sent Judge Holt, who was a subordinate of 
 Stanton, Secretary of War, to release a family imprisoned in 
 Fort Henry, Baltimore. Baltimore had probably more disloyal 
 citizens than loyal. This family had been guilty of carrying on 
 a contraband trade with some of their friends who had gone 
 South. This was not murder, but it was contrary to military law 
 and discipline. Knowing all the circumstances, Lincoln felt 
 that they had been punished enough. Stanton learned of Judge 
 Holt's action, and upon his return to Washington strenuously 
 called him to account. The Judge replied, "Why, Mr. Stanton, 
 you do not suppose that I went down there upon my own 
 initiative!" "Did Lincoln tell you to do that?" stormed Stanton. 
 "He certainly did or I should not have done it," was Judge 
 Holt's answer. "Well, all I have to say is, we've got to get rid 
 of that baboon at the White House!" Stanton said that of his 
 great Chief! This was repeated to Lincoln by one who added, 
 "Mr. President, I would not endure such an insult." "Insult? 
 insult?" said Lincoln; "that is no insult; it is an expression 
 of opinion; and what troubles me most about it is that Stanton 
 said it, and Stanton is usually right." 
 
 [19] 
 
But I cannot leave this Stanton story here. In the room to which 
 Lincoln was carried, across the street from Ford's Theatre, were 
 gathered the Cabinet, members of his family, and a few pro- 
 minent officials. All night long they watched the flame of life 
 flickering lower and lower and lower. As the morning dawned 
 there was a period of silence — and at last the feeble flame went 
 out. Stanton broke the silence: "Now he belongs to the ages." 
 The next morning, as the body of Lincoln lay in the casket, the 
 Cabinet was invited in. Stanton was again the spokesman: "There 
 lies the mightiest man that ever ruled a nation!" He was a 
 baboon no longer. 
 
 We had been so long without war that we had few experienced 
 army officers. George B. McClellan had acquired a reputation 
 at West Point and in civil life as a superior tactician, organizer, 
 and executive. Lincoln appointed him Commander of the Army. 
 A large force was assembled near Washington. But McClellan 
 did not move. He never was quite ready. He asked for more men, 
 more supplies. Lincoln did everything possible to meet his de- 
 mands. Still he did not move. The nation became impatient. 
 The people were demanding action, and the papers carried head- 
 lines, "On to Richmond!" Lincoln, always patient and deliberate, 
 was forced to recognize the situation. He went one evening to 
 see McClellan at his headquarters. The General was out, attend- 
 ing the wedding of one of his officers. Lincoln patiently sat 
 the long evening through. McClellan returned very late and went 
 up a back way to his apartments. An orderly, seeing the situation, 
 rushed up and told him that the President had been there a 
 long time, waiting to see him. "You tell Lincoln that General 
 McClellan has gone to bed!" Does it seem possible! Lincoln 
 meekly went back to the White House. With one stroke of his 
 pen he could have cut off, figuratively speaking, McClellan's 
 head. An official, talking with Lincoln about McClellan's 
 behavior said: "I wouldn't endure such an insult. You ought 
 to dismiss him." "O, I would gladly hold McClellan's horse 
 for him, if he would only do something, — if he would only do 
 something!" Finally McClellan had to be removed. 
 
 Lincoln's heart, as big as the world, had in it no place for the 
 memory of a wrong. In the closing words of that immortal Second 
 
 [20] 
 
 — 
 
Inaugural, — "With malice toward none, with charity for all," — 
 he expressed the mind that was in Christ. 
 
 (3) Like Christ, he "bore our griefs and carried our sorrows." 
 It is impossible for us fully to appreciate the crushing weight 
 that rested upon Lincoln's heart, as disaster after disaster befell 
 the Northern forces in the earlier years of the war. It nearly 
 crushed him to earth. And like Christ, he trod the winepress 
 alone. There was none to help. 
 
 Carpenter, while painting the famous picture of the "First 
 Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation" which hangs in 
 the Capitol, was for six months a guest at the White House. He and 
 Lincoln became quite intimate. Lincoln came into Carpenter's 
 room one midnight, and with his hands uplifted exclaimed: 
 "O Carp, Carp, I can't stand this much longer! I must have 
 relief! How gladly would I exchange this wearisome hospital of 
 pain and woe, called the White House, for the place of some 
 poor boy that sleeps tonight beneath the sod in a Southern battle- 
 field! I can't stand this much longer. I must have relief!" He 
 bore our griefs; he carried our sorrows. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln studied and reverenced the Bible. 
 
 It is said that he knew the Bible better than did the average 
 clergyman of his day. The speeches, the writings, the messages 
 and public documents of no public man in American history 
 are so redolent of Scripture quotations and allusions as are those 
 of Lincoln. The Bible is the source, the standard, of the highest 
 morality. Lincoln's moral character was founded upon the Bible. 
 
 He believed in the over-ruling -providence of God, and was a 
 man of prayer. 
 
 When leaving Springfield for Washington to be inaugurated, 
 in his farewell speech to his friends and neighbors, delivered 
 from the platform of the train, Lincoln said: 
 
 "I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may re- 
 turn, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon 
 Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who 
 ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I can- 
 not fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain 
 
 [21] 
 
with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope 
 that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I 
 hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affec- 
 tionate farewell." 
 
 For lack of time, I cannot dwell upon the many irrefutable 
 and often thrilling proofs that Lincoln was a man of prayer; 
 such as his asking Bishop Simpson to pray for him; of James 
 Murdock's overhearing Lincoln in the dead hours of the night 
 pleading mightily with the God of Nations for help in the 
 Nation's extremity; of his telling General Sickles, who was 
 in the hospital at Washington, after having lost a leg at Gettys- 
 burg, how he had pleaded with God, before the battle of 
 Gettysburg, and of his having received the assurance that the 
 North would win. When Washington was threatened by Stone- 
 wall Jackson and the Cabinet was very much alarmed, Lincoln 
 said: "The thing I fear about Stonewall Jackson is that he is a 
 praying General ; he prays before he goes into battle." 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Abraham Lincoln 
 as the nearest perfect moral character of modern times. As 
 we go from them, the hills sink; the mountains rise. In moral 
 sublimity and grandeur Abraham Lincoln towers like Mont 
 Blanc and the Himalayas above the lesser peaks of human great- 
 ness. Had he been a time-serving politician instead of a Christian 
 statesman, he never would have been the emancipator of a race, 
 the savior of a nation. His moral character was an essential 
 element of his greatness. 
 
 Again, Lincoln's career teaches the importance of high 
 
 IDEALS IN EARLY LIFE. 
 
 You will recall that, when a young man, Lincoln took his 
 first trip on a flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Or- 
 leans. He there saw for the first time a slave auction. A 
 beautiful mulatto girl on the auction block was struck off to 
 a bestial-looking villain, who went up and took her by the arm 
 and led her off, his property. The soul of the young Lincoln 
 was hot within him. Raising his hands toward heaven, he ex- 
 exclaimed: "By the Eternal, if I ever get a chance to hit that 
 thing, I'll hit it hard!" And when in after years God gave him 
 
 [22] 
 
his chance, he hit it so hard that those blows, and the sound of 
 shackles falling from the dusky limbs of four million bondmen, 
 roll echoing forever down the corridors of time. He hit it so 
 hard that the impact set ringing the bells of Paradise and struck 
 the keynote of an eternal Te Deum Laudamus amid the choris- 
 ters of Heaven. He hit it so hard that he shattered in fragments 
 forever an institution which boasted that it was impregnably 
 fortified in the foundation rock of the new world's life, and he 
 changed a continent's civilization. He hit it so hard that he 
 unsettled thrones, and the tyranny of despots can never again be 
 as before Abraham Lincoln was. In that hour there was written 
 a new magna charta of human rights. 
 
 And when he had finished his task, a work befitting a god, 
 the Eternal, in whose name and for whose sake he had done it 
 all, sent a convoy of His angels to bear him from the earth, 
 which was no longer worthy to hold him, to his place amid the 
 crowned immortals. This man it was, this martyr to the cause 
 of human freedom, this Moses of a nineteenth century slave 
 race, this St. George who slew the dragon of American slavery, — 
 he it was who said: "The slavery of the rum power is a greater 
 tyranny to depose than African Slavery." He it was who, with 
 a prophet's vision, like Moses on the top of Nebo, catching a 
 glimpse of the Promised Land which he should never be per- 
 mitted to enter, exclaimed: "And when the victory shall be 
 complete — when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard 
 on the earth, how proud the title of that land which may truly 
 claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolu- 
 tions, that shall have ended in that victory." 
 
 We have waited long for the fulfillment of that prophecy. What 
 Abraham Lincoln, considerably over three quarters of a century 
 ago, saw as the gray dawning of the morning, we now see 
 approaching the effulgence of high noon. I myself heard more 
 than half a century ago, at the Nation's capital, the booming of 
 the cannon which announced to the city, and by wire to the 
 world, that the American Congress had that minute voted to 
 submit the Thirteenth Amendment, forever prohibiting African 
 slavery. And I thank God that I have lived to see, and have 
 had a little part in, the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, 
 forever prohibiting a far greater curse (upon the testimony of 
 
 [23] 
 
the Great Emancipator himself) than African slavery: the 
 atrocious liquor traffic! How Lincoln's great soul would have 
 rejoiced could he have lived to see our day! All this, may we 
 not believe, was due to those high ideals of right and duty 
 which he formed in early life and from which he never swerved 
 in all his great career. 
 
 I hold in my hand a Lincoln cent. Whenever a Methodist 
 preacher has all his debts paid and has a cent left, he is pretty 
 well off, as Methodist preachers go. But, seriously, did you 
 ever think how appropriate it is that the head of the Great 
 Commoner should be upon our commonest coin? 
 
 "Not upon the eagle golden 
 Will we behold his face, 
 Nor yet on gleaming silver 
 The honest features trace; 
 But to the lowly copper, 
 The common coin, instead, 
 Has fallen the distinction 
 Of bearing Lincoln's head. 
 
 "The millionaire will seldom 
 Those noble outlines grasp, 
 But childhood's chubby fingers 
 The image oft will clasp. 
 The poor man will esteem it, 
 And mothers hold it dear, — 
 The plain and common people 
 He loved when he was here." 
 
 And it is because he loved them so, because he had so much 
 of the Christ spirit, that he was such an uncompromising foe of 
 everything hostile to the welfare of the common people. That 
 is why he broke the galling yoke from the neck of the poor, 
 despised, common black man. That is why he was a prohibitionist; 
 for nothing in human history has been so inimical to the common 
 people as strong drink. That is why he was Abraham Lincoln! 
 
 [24] 
 
He used to visit the hospitals. His great, sympathizing heart 
 impelled him to seek to comfort the sick, the wounded and 
 often dying boys of the army. He had been at one hospital 
 nearly all day with a company of friends. Just as they were 
 entering their carriages to leave, an attendant rushed out and 
 said to one of the party: "There is a Confederate prisoner 
 in one of the wards that the President did not visit, and he 
 wants to see the President." When Lincoln was told, he said, 
 "I'll go back." As he approached the cot and extended his hand, 
 the young fellow exclaimed: "I knew they were mistaken! I 
 knew they were mistaken!" He had heard all that talk about the 
 ape, the baboon, the gorilla; but one glance at the kindly face 
 dispelled it all, and he said: "I knew they were mistaken!" 
 
 "What can I do for you, young man?" inquired Lincoln. 
 "O, I don't know anybody up here, and the surgeon tells me 
 I can't live; and I wanted to see you before I die." The Presi- 
 dent asked him about his home in the Southland; about his father 
 and his mother, his brothers and his sisters. The young fellow's 
 confidence was won, and he told about his family and hi s home; 
 about his keepsakes and what he wanted done with them. Lincoln 
 listened sympathetically and promised to see that a letter was 
 written. He still tarried, trying to prepare the young man for 
 "the great adventure." Presently he said: "Now, my boy, I 
 have been here nearly all day. I am a very busy man and I 
 ought to be going; but is there anything more that I can do for 
 you?" "I was hoping you would stay and see me through." And 
 the great tears rolled down on Lincoln's coat-sleeve as he con- 
 tinued to minister to the dying boy. 
 
 If I had the ability and were asked to put on canvas one scene 
 which above all others would come somewhere near portraying 
 the character of this great man, it would be that scene in the 
 hospital, where the President of one of the greatest nations 
 of earth was helping to prepare for death a prisoner boy from 
 the ranks of his country's foes. His moral character was an 
 essential element of his greatness. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln — good in his greatness, and great in his 
 goodness! 
 
 [25] 
 
We are filling the world with material memorials to his 
 greatness, but he needs them not. Efface every tablet, destroy 
 every effigy, break in pieces every statue, level every monument, 
 raze to the ground his mausoleum, cast to the winds his sacred 
 dust; and it would not diminish one iota, the profound rever- 
 ence and affection with which he will evermore be regarded by 
 all mankind, wherever civilization shall make known the name of 
 Lincoln. 
 
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