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Burton, John S.
Abraham Lincoln; an oration.

i^OAc

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the Income
oj the
JOHN DAY JACKSON, '90
FUND

Abraham Lincoln

AN ORATION

By JOHN E. BURTON
Of LAKE GENEVA, WIS.

1 9 O 3

* * * * With other mett it was literary achievement ;
the triumphs of war ; the aggrandizement of conquest ; the
glory of new discovery, or the flight of imagination in the
kingdom of Art or Song; but with Lincoln it was character,
Character, CHARACTER. This is why his name grows
with each succeeding year. » * « »

Copyright 1903,
by
JOHN E. BURTON.

(Portrait ol Abraham Lincoln taken from an original daguerreo
type, owned and in possession of John E. Burton, Lake Geneva, Wis., 1903.)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

AN ORATION*— By John E. Burton
OF LAKE GENEVA, WISCONSIN

The character of Abraham Lincoln stands
so high above all possible wrong doing that hon
esty was never mentioned or thought of as a
virtue in him.
He was not only the best product of pure
American civilization which his century pro
duced, but he was, all in all, the best public man
and sincerest statesman who has ever flgured
in the destiny of this nation or in the history of
the world. To all right-minded Americans he is the ripe
and rounded product of what every man would
like to he, and he will therefore remain, through
all time, the symbol of perfected character.
The whole world loves Lincoln because he did
what the world knows was right, and he avoided
doing what the world knows to be wrong, and it
is therefore doubtful if any human being will
ever again hold a similar position of greatness
in a similar and transcendent epoch, or ever
fulfill the world's expectations so completely, as
did Lincoln. His fame grows so steadily, so perfectly, so

* The suhstanoe of this article was given in an address to the Poat
Graduate Chatauciua Circle in April, 1896, at the Ladies Seminary (Oak-
wood) Building, Lake Geneva, Wis., in their Puhlio Literary Entertainment
and Lecture Course.

naturally, and so mightily, and the very fiber
of his character comes out so brilliantly as the
searchlight of time reveals him from every pos
sible point of view that the fear among thought
ful men is, that, with the lapse of centuries, his
fame may pass the boundary line allotted to
flesh and blood and become obscured by enter
ing the realm of the mythical, where he may be
lost to the world of struggling men among the
gods and the myths which always inhabit the
past. He was the child of Love before he was the
child of Law. Born not only in poverty, but
surrounded by want and suffering ; favored in
nothing, wanting in everything which makes up
the joys of life, he trudged as a child the trail
of sorrow, and was the playmate of Grief, and
always above and around his mysterious young
life there hung the shadow of a dark and mystic
cloud. It was a literal truth that "he had not where
to l^y his head," and while he did not eat the
"locust and wild honey," and while his raiment
was not of "camel's hair," yet his clothing was,
almost exclusively, "the skin of wild beasts,"
from his buckskin pants to the ponderous coon
skin cap. A meaner or darker origin cannot
well be imagined. Not one ray of genuine hope
can be discovered to light his childhood. Nature
seems to have bruised and hurt him so that in
manhood he might gird himself to bind up the
wounds of a bleeding nation. She seems to have
handicapped and loaded his patient soul that he
might justly hate the oppressors of men in his
loftiest estate. She seems to have starved him
that he might the better feel the hunger and the
yearnings of a down-trodden race. His eyes

were allowed to look at the sunlight through the
greased paper windows of the primitive hut and
log school-house that he might, in his conquering
prime, appreciate the glory of the noonday sun
of Universal Freedom. Nature was his Mother,
his Teacher, his Playmate, his All, and with a
yearning that was never satiate he grew in stat
ure among the grand old trees of the forest, ever
surrounded by bird song, flower and fern, and
with unsandaled feet he walked the rough trail
of the pioneer boy, straight through over rock
and glen, to the mountain top of Perfect Sincer
ity, and as a man stood as natural as a child, yet
possessed all the powers and knowledge of his
sex and his race in their fullness and purity.
Almost without playmates, he was the compan
ion of unadorned Nature, and with the intuition
of the child of Nature, his heart expanded to the
influence of the flight of fowl, the basking fish,
the habits of the timid deer, the ways of the wild
turkey, and bounded with joy in the season of
bloom of the wild crab and the sumac ; and rest
ing lazily in the Autumn and Indian Summer
among the ripening nuts and the purpling grape,
he studied with a joy, strange and profound, the
wondrous movements of planet, moon and star.
With a growth exceeding six feet and four inches
he found himself almost like one awakening from
a dream, a giant in stature with muscles of iron
made memorable by felling the tree and splitting
the rail for sturdy use.
Thus he matured, like a prophet of old, and
kept ever close to the great heart of Nature.
As a matured man he could not sleep when the
storm had blown the nest and the nestlings from
the tree until he had restored them to the mother
bird, and could not rest in the prime of his

matchless manhood until a race of four millions
of fathers, mothers and children were restored
to their natural rights after the thunderstorm
of war had passed ; and if we do not anchor his
mortal memory to the ocean bed of solid fact
and history, I fear the day will yet come when
some wild burst in the ruffled flow of human tur
moil will claim him as a Christ. Scarcely an
attribute of the divine character is wanting in
this unique man, who, in all the loneliness of
his early life, was unconsciously schooled,
trained, perfected and graduated in all that was
honest, natural, capable and kind. As a flat-
boatman in the city of New Orleans he saw, for
the flrst time, negro boys and girls and young
women put up and sold as chattels upon the auc
tion block, and then and there the mordant sunk
deep into his very soul, and he said to his com
panion, '¦'¦ThaPs wrong, and if ever I get a chance
to hit it, by Ood, TU hit it ha/rd.'''' The "painted
lizard" of human slavery had been photographed
forever on his mind and memory and he bided
his time with the patience of a God until the day
should come and until the hour had struck when,
with a single blow, he could make good that
oath ; and so, later in life, we see him, amid the
billows and blood of war, as he calmly says,
"Wait and see the salvation of God." And so
it is that the human race is waitirig to see, as the
years go by, the salvation of eternal right for
ever triumphant over wrong and made possible
by his patience and perfect humanity.
His patience, however, did not weaken him
or class him as quiescent, for when imposed
upon and crowded toward insult or cowardice,
or if his cause, when justly stated, was assailed
by injustice or brutality the sleeping lion showed

his fangs and his giant wrath seldom found any
bully rash enough to stand in his way when he
accepted challenge. His powerful exhibition
when forced by taunt to twice throw the cham
pion Needham, at Wabash Point ; his righteous
rage at New Salem when the leader of the bullies
of Clary's Grove, Jack Armstrong, tried by foul
means to get the advantage over him, and again
when his excited men in the Black Hawk War
attempted to kill the friendly Indian, defying
practically the brawn and muscle of the whole
regiment, all prove his practical manliness, if
occasion demanded ; and sueh was his physical
prowess that few men in all that Western coun
try ever wished to dispute his standing.
The great dream of the centuries seems to
have blossomed in his eventful life, and the
more we learn of it the more we come to realize
and to know that in him was the Perfect Man in
the sane and soundest sense of the word, physi
cally, mentally and morally. Poverty made him
good ; suffering made him great ; circumstances
made him President ; fidelity made him beloved ;
courage made him heroic, and Martyrdom made
him Immortal.
You may search the minutest records of
recorded time and you cannot find another char
acter who made so few mistakes during the
chaos of such trying ordeals, or who possessed
on all great occasions that sublimity of faith and
courage of action, as mark and make the charac
ter of Abraham Lincoln; neither ean you flnd
another man who could control, and even guide
to glory, all his impetuous subordinates in the
heat of conflict and yet without offense compel
them to unconscious obedience in the f ulflUment

of a destiny which he alone could read in the
dusk of deathless performance.
The record of this world does not show an
other character who was schooled in almost con
tinuous failure in youth and early manhood, in
order that he might the better serve as the
successful and Great Commander in the most
momentous epoch of human progress.
Nowhere in the library of nations can you
flnd another character so varied in all experi
ences and yet where every experience was
clearly given for the perfect formation of a
character unique and matchless. Look back over
forty years and see a boy ever obedient, even
where obedience was not especially commenda
ble, yet always obedient ; as a son, wise, thought
ful and obliging; as a pupil, almost a prodigy,
and with a burning zeal for useful knowledge
beyond all precedent ; as a boatman, capable of
utilizing the rough experience of the Mississippi
River ; as a soldier in the Black Hawk War, lit
tle better than a failure because his heart was
too big to exercise the cruelties of Indian war
fare ; as a lover, sincere, poetic and ideal, almost
to the border line of insanity; as a debater,
candid, clear, original, truthful ; as a writer,
fair, witty, useful ; as a candidate, weak but
earnest and ever conscious of his superiority ;
as an antagonist, formidable, real, full of sur
prises and dangerous ; as a victor, modest, gra
cious and benevolent ; as a man, possibly crafty,
for a good purpose, but always natural, frank
and winning, and always commanding and con
scious of his higher qualifications ; as a leader,
slow, always preparing, always aware of the grav
ity of the situation, action well timed and always
sustained ; as a patriot, ambitious, but an ambi-

tion that never crowded or even approached the
limit of his patriotism, therefore absolutely safe
in all emergencies ; as a martyr, beautiful be
yond that of saint or scientist, and as a memory
his was and is the dearest, the gentlest and the
most Godlike.
I have seen Abraham Lincoln and heard his
voice. This is to me a happy recollection.
From my childhood to this hour I have always
kept every printed word which has fallen from
his lips. It is the literary pride of my life that
I have preserved with loving care all the books,
works, biographies and printed souvenirs of
this real man of men, until now I have passed
the 1,000- volume line and still know that the
future is growing with new works perenially.
With other men it was literary achievement;
the triumphs of war ; the aggrandizement of
conquest ; the glory of new discovery, or the
flight of imagination in the kingdom of Art or
Song ; but with Lincoln it was character, cha/r-
acter, character. This is why his name grows
with each succeeding year. This is why our
American schools, as well as the schools in for
eign lands, are making the 12th day of February
a green spot in the dusty road of school routine,
and are telling to the millions of boys and girls
the story of a true patriot, a pure man, a char
acter beyond reproach, the safest model of
citizenship, the Agamemnon of moral power
throughout the world.
It is the pride of millions of men and women
to be able to saj, "J have seen Abraham Lijicoln
a/nd heard his voice.'''' Time will enhance the
value of everything he ever touched and hallow
his every word. No other character is known
to the children of men who was more bashful or

10
tenderly sensitive or who more actually dreaded
direct compliment. No man ever possessed a
supremer contempt or indifference to unjust
criticism or slander, and no man ever lived who
was more conscious of his own actual worth and
his ability to use that worth for the good of
others. No man at his death was ever so uni
versally or so sincerely mourned as Lincoln.
The world wept as a young child at its father's
bier. His funeral train was fourteen hundred
miles long, and his mourners moistened with
sincerity's tears the soil of every civilized land ;
while offlcial history required 930 pages to print
the plain record of telegram, resolution and sor
row of the Nations.
He was not really an orator, as the world
goes, yet his speech on the battlefield of Gettys
burg and his Second Inaugural Address are
terse and treasured classics and rank with any
sayings that Time has preserved from the lips or
the pen of Cicero, Pericles, Philip or Phocian.
No orator ever touched the tender chords which
sweep the heartstrings in the soul of woman
hood more deftly than he, when he said, while
pleading the case of the widow of the old soldier
of 1812: "Time rolls on. The heroes of 1776
have passed away and are encamped on the other
shore. The old soldier has gone to his rest — crip
pled, blinded and broken his widow comes to me
and to you, gentlemen of the jury, to Hght her
wrongs. She was not always thus. She was once
beautiful as the morning. Her step was as light,
her face as fai/r and her voice as sweet as ever
rung in the lanes of old Virginia. Now she is
poor, defenceless. Shall we, too, cast her offf''
His courtroom was in tears. His suit was won.
No man ever held woman in higher esteem

11
than Abraham Lincoln, and woman to-day is his
loyal lover and defence, through ill and good
report, and through her there shall be engrav-
ened the ideal Lincoln in the minds of millions
yet unborn. If all men could be like Lincoln there would
be no need of Heaven. His pattern was formed
in the Foundry of Fate, and when the world's
greatest epoch had closed the mould was found
to fit "the head of the corners." See his tall
form sway under a sorrow almost infinite as he
stands at the coffln of his dead benefactor,
Bowlin Greene, and although a man of thirty-
three his heart breaks with uncontrolled emotion
as he tries to speak the words of gratitude and
tender eulogy which he longed to express, but
in the agony of his soul's despair he fails to
make a sound, and, in a burst of overwhelming
tears and groans, he leaves the scene. Never
did a human heart offer to the dead a truer trib
ute. Language can never tell the depth of his
feelings, and history will never record a wail
more tender or a lay more sweet and divine.
When the tender life of his flrst pure love
went out and Ann Rutledge was laid in her
grave, his was the pathetic voice which, in poig
nant grief, cried aloud as his vanishing reason
all but left him : '¦'¦ T cannot let the rains, the snow
and the storms beat upon her grave .^ " A deeper
anguish never pierced the heart of an honest
man, since Christ wept in Gethsemane.
Oh, what a legacy, what a heritage for us
and ours and our heirs forever after us, and for
the world, as Time the Saviour, reveals his
growing worth. Oh, the great, broad, patient,
courageous man, so calm in the tempest that
radicals could not rush him and the Trumpet

12
of War could not intimidate him. His was the
courage of the sublimest order ; absolutely per
fect in faith and that faith founded upon eternal
justice and upon his perfect trust in a God of
Justice, and in his own people and upon his own
true and righteous self. You have but to put
your ear to the welded rail of the past and the
echoes of forty years will come back to you,
and above the din and confusion of that awful
period you will hear the clear, patriotic voice
of a nation and that triumphant song,
"We are coming, Father Abraha-m,
Three hundred thousand nwre."
This mighty surge of song is not the wail of
despair nor the measured tone of deflance, but
the belated and mighty response of thirty mil
lions of patriots sounding the cry which comes
from the deep, welling passion of patriotism,
echoing across plain and river, and over hill and
mountain top, that a million defenders invinci
ble as an army with banners were coming in
response to his righteous call to save from disso
lution and death the one nation which was and is,
and is to be, the hope of the world.
How strange it all seems to us now. The
world will always see him, in the National storm
of passion and the flow of fraternal blood, a 'moral
hero, and in the blast that blinded, he held the
helm of State for four dark and terrible years,
and until Fate had become fulflUment, and then
in the Sunshine of Peace he appeared in the cap
ital of rebellion like a closing tableau, holding the
trusting hand of his innocent boy while the fren
zied negro bows in almost idolatrous worship at
his feet, and then he is suddenly lifted, as by
some design of fatality, to the realm of earthly
immortality. It verily seems as if Fate did play

13
with dates and events, for on the anniversary of
the very day when the starry flag of Fort Sum
ter bowed to the bellowing guns of Beauregard
four years before, Beecher and his compatriots
restored it, in the harbor of Charleston, to the
breeze of Heaven, and yet before its folds had
fairly caught the joyous inspiration, and while
darkness settled upon the land that night, his
life went out by the hand of the assassin.
No man is ever seen so tenderly as when
humanity beholds him through the mellow vail
of suffering and undeserved adversity. It is
then we realize the force of the sentiment that
' ' Chords that vibrate sweetest music
Sound the deepest notes of woe."
It can never be said that religious fanaticism
aided him essentially in the completion of his
world task ; neither that personal ambition ral
lied him to sudden success, and although success
was his ruling motive, and was, all in all, and
through it all, his guiding star, yet that success
was founded upon the solid rock of truth, and
through the darkness of that wildest and most
tempestuous night of sorrow and suffering he
stood, the central figure, looking over and above
the heads of his contemporaries, like the giant
he was, surveying the end and seeing the tri
umphant vision which was to mark the closing
of the most remarkable conflict which ever sanc
tifled the battle ground of nations.
It is true that there have been other patri
ots in other lands than ours, and it is true that
patriotism has lived as a principle in all the ages
of the past, and that there has existed the calm
of dignity and the consciousness of power all

14
through the centuries, but there has never been
but one Lincoln.
Other men have been earnest and other men
have been great, and even sincere, and what is
still more, have been kind and useful to their
fellow men and have helped to grace and crown
the ages, and yet, / say, there has never been but
one Lincoln. He did not believe in Christ, but he did be
lieve in a God of Justice, in a God that could not
tolerate human slavery or injustice among his
human kind. He had lived to learn and to know
that his own judgment of men was reliable and
right, and hence he gradually, but easily and
certainly, overshadowed all his associates and
contemporaries, and as a character stands alone
from his rough-hewn cradle to his marbled tomb.
In all that eventful journey he knew his own
ability rightly and neither overestimated it nor
underestimated it, and he dared to assume dan
gerous posts of duty, and yet never flinched or
doubted. He was therefore greater than the
greatest man of his time. He is the Agamemnon
of Ilistwy. No other man in history seems ever to have
centered and focused universal interest in his
every and minutest acts and personal character
istics like Lincoln. When standing he towered
above his famous opponent, Douglas, fourteen
inches, but when both were seated side by side
he was but four inches higher, so exceptional
were his legs and arms in length compared with
his body. In the Illinois Legislature he belonged to
the famous "Long Nine," the name applied to
the nine members from his section, of which he
was the tallest, and was called the "Sangamon

to

15
Chief," their combined height being flfty-flve
feet. To them and to him were due the success
of changing the State Capital from Vandalia to
Springfield, Sangamon Co., in 1837.
It is remarkable how many men afterward
famous were associated with Lincoln during his
early or active life, including Peter Cartright,
famous preacher, Col. Ellsworth, flrst to fall in
war. Col. Baker, hero who fell at Ball's Bluff,
Stephen A. Douglas, patriot and | opponent, Sen
ator Lyman Trumbull, Governor Bissell, Gen
eral John A. McClernand, Judge David Davis,
and others. He was born close to the famous Mason and
Dixon's Line, about 39° 33' north latitude, mark
ing the line limit of slavery and hence naturally
conservative as to Northern and Southern opin
ions. He was not wholly free from the local super
stitions of the Kentucky pioneer times, and the
quick and living secrets of Nature, while real
and understood, still carried a tinge of the mar
velous, for night winds, dark forests, swelling
streams, cries of wild beasts, sudden deaths,
moaning trees, and avenging storms, sometimes
suggest strange thoughts to the wisest minds.
The well-timed hit on the lightning rod of
the not over-consistent George Forquer, in his
legislative canvass, recalls his clear and forceful
side when his opponent assumed in public the
air of a superior and prodded young Lincoln in
his coarse dress of homespun clothes with lack
of experience and ability, and Lincoln in
thoughtful manner replied and, reviewing For-
quer's follies and gullible nature as the prey of
seductive agents, said that while he perhaps had
many or most of the faults ascribed to him he
was grateful that he '•''did not have to erect a

16
lightning rod over his home to loard off the ven
geance of an offended Ood''' as Forquer had.
As lightning rods were just then being intro
duced and were under ban with the majority of
the Illinois people Forquer was silenced.
The Shields incident, when Lincoln was
forced as he thought to accept the challenge to
fight a duel, after writing the anonymous letters
as a widow from the "Lost Townships," shows
his flnal faith and reliance in sound every day
mam sense. James Shields was State Auditor,
and a rather excitable Irish gentleman from
Tyrone, Ireland, and took mortal offense at the
letters, as he imagined as a Democrat that they
reflected upon his personal honesty in offlce,
and no amount of persuasion by friends could
satisfy him of Lincoln's intended good nature,
and so the challenge was forced upon Lincoln,
and having choice of weapons, he, on the same
principle which in later years actuated John F.
Potter in Congress with Pryor, chose cavalry
broadswords. The day came and the parties
met — Shields, a little, large-headed and firey
man, and Lincoln of giant stature. At the flnal
moment Shields gladly agreed to withdraw if
his antagonist would assert that he only meant
to make a political point as , a Whig against
a Democrat. Lincoln sensibly agreed. Asked
later what he intended to do had they fought, he
said, "/ should have used the advantage of my
a/rms and legs and simplg split him from head to
heeV It was nothing less than unique that upon
his election to the Presidency he should appoint
as his Cabinet and constant advisers the very
men who were his opponents in the Republican
National Convention for the nomination at Chi-

17
cago in 1860, and yet by that act he calmed and
pacified all wounded aspirations, and though
regarded as a dangerous move politically, it
showed Lincoln's just and benevolent heart, his
far-seeing judgment and his calm consciousness
in his own ability to remain absolutely President
and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy
of the United States.
The offense and as some felt the ungrateful
if not disloyal conduct of his Secretary of the
Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, in the treacherous
storm and excitement of his second campaign in
1864, when Chase publicly became a candidate
against his chief, again showed how truly great
Lincoln was, and his words on this occasion and
his subsequent act in appointing Secretary Chase
to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, proves him the towering polit
ical master and safe, unselfish patriot that he
was. The intense honesty shown in his settling
accounts with the Government when postmaster
at New Salem, when he months afterwards pro
duced the exact amount to a dollar and a cent in
the adjustment, and not only exact but identical
coins received by him in the office, all laid away
sacredly awaiting the official accounting, al
though he had been sorely pressed in the mean
time for money.
His stories have been retold, repeated and
revamped until much falsehood has been mixed
with originals, all of which were pointed and
practical and always prepared and thought out
for purpose and to convince forcibly. A Lincoln
story usually carries its own evidence of truth
and originality. Sometimes they carried not
only conviction but were calculated to cut or

18
even humiliate if necessary. When his early
antagonist at law, rather fresh and frothy, had
talked at a rapid rate until he had tired court
and jury, and for lack of facts sat down to the
relief of all, Lincoln in his thoughtful way said :
" Your honor has observed the misfortune of
the opposing counsel, as it is clear that he can
not work his mind and his voice at the same
time, for the instant his tongue starts it goes so
fast that the mind ceases to act ; in fact he re
minds me of the flrst steam vessel which ap
peared on the Sangamon river. It was noted
for its efforts to navigate with ease, but it had a
five-foot whistle and only a three-foot boiler, and
every time they blew the whistle the boat had
to stop still." This carries the true Lincoln
brand. The coarse jokes attributed to Lincoln never
existed, and his intimates give testimony to that
fact. In his associations with his Cabinet mem
bers he gave constant proof of his innate man
liness, and nothing pleased him more in business
meetings or official work than for all to call him
Lincoln. He disliked to be called Mr. President
or Your Exellency, but felt relief to be called
Lincoln, and always spoke to his Ministers as
Bates, Stanton, Chase and Seward, though he
never failed or missed seeing and appreciating
the ludicrous and funny side to all things.
He was a born reasoner, and when a mere
boy, after borrowing the Crawford copy of
Weem's Life of Washington, and having left it in
the log crevice in his Indiana home where it got
soaked by a shower during the night, he agreed
to workthree days pulling corn for the close-
jsted Crawford to settle the account; he flrst
asked if the three days' work was to pay for the
damage done the book or fm' the book itself, and as

19
Crawford thought the book of no use, he said it
would pay for the book, and so Lincoln became
the owner of his first actual book, and it proved
a good bargain too ; and many a reader to-day
would gladly pay three hundred dollars for this
same book could they secure it for posterity.
His check for $5.00, made out while Presi
dent, payable to "The one-legged colored man or
bearer," and which has been immortalized by
the Lincoln History Society of New York City ;
his letter to the little boy who met him on the
street after he was nominated for President,
spoke to him and shook hands with him, and who
was taunted by his playmates in Springfleld af
terwards for claiming Lincoln's acquaintance,
until the great-hearted man wrote in answer to
the boy's childish letter of appeal and stated
over his signature while President of the United
States, that he was glad to certify that he saw
and remembered the boy and shook hands with
him, and thus the boy became a hero.
This same sincerity and frankness was ever
his strength and safety, and served as faithfully
in the diplomacy of Nations and as easily and
verily changed the fate of the American Conti
nent, for while the trained and erudite Seward
battled nervously with the ponderous and lugu
brious ambiguities of Lord Palmerston, Lincoln
had written a plain letter in plain and touching
language to Queen Victoria direct, and ap
pealed to her as a pure and noble woman to
assure him in his trying ordeal against the sins
of a century, that his efforts as a man threatened
by rebellion yet seeking to maintain a friendly
government and in opposition to the spread of
human slavery, should not be injured and weight
ed by England's enmity. On a bright Sunday

20
morning he received her more than Queenly
answer by mail, saying she realized the burdens
and dangers to his Government, and that slavery
should not receive her aid or influence, and that
the American Government under his guidance
would never need to fear from her people while
she was acknowledged Queen of England. He
had won by a man''s sense what diplomacy never
secv/red, and it was long afterwards that Seward
learned this great historic fact.
Lincoln's was the Faith that never faltered,
and was built on truth and sense.
Lincoln was pure in heart. He not only
loved right but he was grand enough to do right.
He hated wrong and he did no wrong. He for
gave to the last and loved forgiveness itself, and
yet he needed little or none for himself. Hear
his tender fatherly voice as he whispers to little
"Blossom" the pardon for her erring brother.
See him as he dictates that immortal dispatch
saving the tired soldier and sleeping sentinel,
Scott, from an unmerited death. Think of his
transcendent attitude in his position of almost
unlimited power, as his acts of forgiveness fret,
and chafe the impatient generals who clamor for
discipline at the expense of life, as he says:
Gentlemen, I cannot take the lives of these boys
who love thei/r country but who have broken the
rules of wa/rfare in obedience to the demands of
exhausted nature. His mantle has fallen upon
no man. It is the heritage of America, the
crown jewel of the world, and the hand of sacri
lege alone shall ever touch it.
Let not the prude or the supercilious assume
to blush at his humble or even doubtful origin.
Let them brush their dormant intelligence and
remember who was WilUam the Conqueror of

21
England, and who was Charles Martel or
"Charles the Hammer," who 'saved Christian
civilization to Europe and who drove back in the
Vale of the Roncevalles the swelling tide of
Moslemism in the decisive battle of Poitiers.
Let them remember that Abraham Lincoln was
a man and as a man was the greatest compliment
that has ever been given or paid to the human
race, and likewise that he was never the cham
pion of the prude, the dude or the false ; and
aristocracy has no power to either harm or
heighten his glory now, and neither prudes,
puppets nor apologizers have any place in the
following of his mighty train.
Lincoln could scarcely sing a note, but music
was to his soul a thing divine, and Poetry and
Song may lay their garlands upon his tomb with
perfect confidence, for his character can absorb
all their beauties and will glorify every author.
His was the hand that wrote the request :
"Please ask Philip Phillips to sing again to
night ' Your Mission, ' but do not say I said so. ' '
Abraham Lincoln is the man who gave his
flrst biographer a kindly but knowing look when
he found that he had stated that Lincoln had
read Plutarch's Lives and had turned their
sterling virtues to his own good account and
character, who did not even correct the state
ment in the proof sheet ; but a week later, when
that same proof sheet had been revised and
was then ready for the printer, he with equal
kindness and with a twinkling eye informed his
biographer, Mr. John Locke Scripps, that in
the meantime he had read Plutarch from cover
to cover and had not skipped even a single word,
and that now the biography was correct and true
and might be printed.

22
Here is a man who, while he may have said
boyish things, and even followed the rougher
customs of rollicking youth in the sturdy land
of the pioneer, yet in all tlie years of the prime
of his manhood he was never known to say a fool
ish thing. A man who constantly believed in
himself and believed that he was being fitted
for a great purpose, and went on patiently and
not unconsciously, preparing to accept the high
est post when the hour should strike. A man
who was never surprised by the biggest events,
the patient, sad, and yet ever rippling humorist
who was great enough in the darkest hour to
to turn the serious incident into sunshine and
laughter, thus giving to his nature that natural
and joyous vent from the dangers of growing
and crushing responsibility.
The man who never received or paid out an
ill-earned or dishonest dollar in his whole life.
The man who never had any use for either to
bacco, gambling, dissipation or liquor ; and with
the gentle exception of poorly played billiards
with a selected friend, on rare occasions, wasted
no time upon idle pastime or artiflcial sports.
The man to whom criticism and discourage
ments served only as friction the better to pro
pel the great engine of his mind as it tugged on
the up grade of events. The man who stood
self -poised while he saw and realized that the
die was being cast and saw the molten metal of
his own wondrous history poured into the mold
of immortality. Surely Fate loved Lincjoln, and in her long
ings she gave him the deathless kiss that he
might never leave her.
While others quaked with fear at the gath
ering storm, he grasped the helm with giant

23
grip as the great ship of state rode into the roar
and crash of the hurricane and held it flrm and
safe until the lightnings had ceased to play and
until the vanishing clouds threw their lessening
shadows over her deck, and until the big waves
had done their worst, and until ripples only
patted her storm-beaten sides and the great
white harbor was once more in view with its
sunshine and its peace. Romance and miracle
blend in the heavens as the sun bursts upon the
scene, for as the last, long peal of thunder dies
away in the distance, and the Rainbow of Peace
appears, a sudden bolt from the clearing sky
struck him dumb and dead on the deck, and the
Oreat Lo-ving Captain had gone to his reward in
the flower of his faitii and in the full strength of
his giant manhood.
It has been said that "God buries His work
men but carries on His work," and this great
truth covers the life and martyrdom of Abra
ham Lincoln, the bravest, the most courageous,
the most useful, the kindest, the tenderest, the
sweetest memory that has thus far appeared, in
human form, tvithin the Vestibule of Time.

Edition, on special paper, hut i^o
nted, of which this is No.i^ ^

Of this Autj»gf9pfc Edition, on special paper, ^ut j^o
numbered copi^ were p|

Milwavrkee^^Wis., July 25, 1903,

We certify to the above as correct.

LAJLtr-tnjr^^i^ O C7~i'\j-'^L£^

Publisher.

02475 3577

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