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A DISCOURSE OX THE DEATH OF
PRESIDENT LINCOLN,
gmwlifil to tin ©riimtlox ©oapipttomtl €>%\m%
IN DEDHAM,

THE REV. SAMUEL B. BABCOCK,
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUEST OF A COMMITTEE OF
CITIZENS.

Wednesday, April 19, lti6-r>.

DEDHAM, MASS.:
PRljSTTJffir) BY JOHN COX, Jr.
18 6 5."

A DISCOURSE

ON THE

<1

PREACHED IN THE ORTHODOX CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,
IN DEDHAM,

THE REV. SAMUEL B. BABCOCK,
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUEST OF A COMMITTEE OF
CITIZENS.

Wednesday, April 19, 1865.

DEDHAM, MASS.:
PRINTED BY JOHN" COX, Jr.
18 65.

OJcmispnflftttt.

To the Kev. Samuel B. Babcock :
At a meeting of the Committee of Arrangements of the citizens of Dedham,
held April 22, 1865—
Voted, — That the thanks of the Committee be presented to the Kev. Samuel
B. Babcock, for his able, appropriate and patriotic Discourse, on the occasion
of the funeral solemnities in honor of the late President of the United States ;
and that he be solicited to furnish a copy thereof for publication.
(Signed) I. Cleveland, 1
Eliphalet Stone, j
A. B. Galucia, y Committee.
Wm. Bullard,
L. H. Kingsbury, J

[Reply.]
Chestnut Street, April 25, 1865.
To I. Cleveland, Eliphalet Stone, A. B. Galucia, and others, Esqrs. :
Gentlemen, — Your kind note, expressing approval of my poor labors on the
19th inst., (a historical day in the annals of our land, as the anniversary of
the blood shed at Lexington in 1775, at Baltimore in 1861, and of the burial
of Abraham Lincoln,) is received, and in reply to your courteous request, I
place the manuscript in your hands. Yours, very truly, Samuel B. Babcock.

DISCOURSE.

2 Sam. 19th, 2d: "The victory that day was turned
into mourning."
This was the day anticipated for a great rejoicing in the
land. Every thing pointed towards it. The nation's struggle
was well nigh ended. The soil had been fully saturated
with human blood. The earth had been upturned enough
for human graves. The costly sacrifice of life was nearly
finished. Widowed wives and orphaned children were to
be multiplied no more. The thunders of artillery were no
longer to shake the land. The weary marchings, the assaults
and charges, the fearful carnage of the battle-field, the groans
of the wounded, the convulsions of the dying, the anxious
fears of those whose loved ones were in the strife of battle,
the funereal gloom that lay like a pall over the land — these
were all so nearly overpast, that men began to breathe
freely, in the long-deferred hope that Peace was not a great
ways off.
But a few days ago we spread forth our banners to the
breeze, that the sun might smile on the stars; we poured
forth salvos of artillery ; our night we turned into day, by
making our dwellings radiant with other light than that the

gun gave ; music and speech were heard in our public places ;
friends grasped the hands of friends, — and all were friends,
though they had never met before ; — never was there a
better augury for a day of Thanksgiving and Praise than
this was to have been, so far as man could judge. But man
is as short-sighted as the mole that burrows beneath the
earth. " He knows not what a day may bring forth." But
last Friday night we all went to our rest in peace, looking
for a happy dawn to renew our joy and prepare for the
jubilee so near at hand. But while we calmly slept, there
were messages on the wire of hot woe, that well might melt
the iron strands — that the tidings should never reach the
ears of the people. But come they did ; and when the next
day's sun arose, and our citizens were again rejoicing in
hope, it was like an electric bolt from Heaven — the tidings
that had travelled through the night — that the Head of this
great Nation was stricken down into the ceaseless silence of
death, — stricken down just as his heart was most elate with
joy ; — stricken down just as he was ' ' devising those liberal
things" which his great and loving heart exulted in; —
stricken down just at the moment when he was ready for
his crowning work of readjusting all the disturbed elements
of the land, so that all parts thereof, North and South, East
and West, might be reconsolidated into an Union that could
never again be severed, and upon principles so generous, so
pure, so righteous, that every patriot would be glad, and
all the land should shout for joy ; — stricken down just as
he had conquered all prejudices, secured all confidence, and
stood, as he deserved to stand, the foremost man before all
the nation — the foremost man by the verdict of foreign

powers, who were forced into the confession, against every
wish of their heart, that for judgment, for sagacity, for
comprehensiveness, the State-writings of Abraham Lincoln
were models for any government, and of which any states
man might be proud.
But how did he fall ? Ah ! there comes the bitterness of
the woe. Had he been laid upon a bed of sickness, with
fever raging through his veins ; had his great intellect been
stilled by that fearful malady which overtakes a brain
o'ertasked ; had all the skill of the medical art been used
and failed ; had the storms of Heaven made the boisterous
sea swallow down the ship as he went out to confer with his
Generals on the matter of the war, just as the rival capital
of the rebellious States was to be reduced to allegiance to
the laws, or be destroyed from among the cities of the earth
— then, though we should have said: "The ways of God
are inscrutable, past finding out," yet we should have bowed
the head in sorrow, and said, reverently : " It is the Lord,
and though He slay, we will trust in Him." We were not
permitted, in the hidden mystery of the wisdom of God, to
enjoy even this poor consolation.
The good Washington breathed out his life calmly
in an honored retirement from the pressing cares of public
duty, after he had conducted the nation safely through
(amid appalling discouragements) the great war of our
Revolution. The elder Adams died in a good old age, just fifty years
after he had signed our Magna Charta, the Declaration that
" these United States are free, sovereign and independent ;"
died peacefully in the quiet of his home.

Jefferson departed peacefully in the land for which he
had penned that noble instrument, which we have sealed a
second time with the nation's blood.
Madison died " as serene, philosophical, calm, in the last
moments of his existence, as he had been in all the trying
occasions of his life."
James Monroe had no violence in his death.
Harrison occupied the Presidential chair but a single
month, and then passed away amid the consolations of
Religion; — said a passing word for Iris country, and laid
down to die, contentedly.
Jackson, the brave, the undaunted, " exjjired at his home
with calmness, and expressed the highest confidence in a
happy immortality, through the Redeemer."
John Quincy Adams died suddenly but composedly in
the very capitol, passing away, as many deem it a blessing
to die, without the pains of sickness or the infirmities
of age.
James K. Polk died in his home after he had laid aside
the responsibilities of office.
Taylor said kind parting words to soothe the anguish
of his friends.
All other Presidents that departed this life died without
violence ; but it was reserved for one whose name must
necessarily outrank all but that of Washington ; it was
reserved for Abraham Lincoln — loved not less than any,
honored not less, confided in not less, — to die by the
accursed hand of assassination, with a suddenness so fearful
that he could give no parting look, speak no parting word,
hear not the wails of sorrow, feel not the hand of affection

on his brow, hear not the prayer at his bedside, know not
the friends that bended over him, and send upwards no
prayer like that of the first Christian martyr : " Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit." For he, we mourn to-day, was a martyr
as much as ever Latimer and Ridley, Wickliff and Huss, were
martyrs — a martyr in the cause of high-minded patriotism ;
in the cause of human freedom ; a man, a magistrate as
true to his country as is the needle to the pole. But still
we say, " Thy will be done;" for the Lord has His own
thoughts, His own ways, which are not as our ways, nor as
our thoughts.
Was it meant to nerve the Nation's heart to greater
fortitude? Was it needed to show us how viruknt the
poison mixed in Rebellion's Circean cup ? Alas ! alas ! it
savors but too much of that foul spirit which has kept the
land in tumult for long and painful years.
It goes back to the day when one who had once occupied
the Presidential chair, and afterwards was known as " the
old man eloquent," received from the South this graceful
communication, " a lithograph portrait of himself, with the
picturesque annotation of a rifle ball on the forehead, and
a promise that such a remedy ' would stop his music' "
It goes back to the days when an honorable Judge of
your own State was driven from the streets of a Southern
city that had not chivalry enough to defend the weak, and
in which it was averred — ' ' they dared not be responsible
for the protection of his life."
It goes back to the day when a Massachusetts Senator,
sitting at his desk in the chamber of the capitol, was felled
to the floor, like an ox by a butcher's hand.

8
It reminds us of Kansas, filled with New England's men
and women honoring that Border State, but ransacked and
burned, and her brave citizens murdered, with a malignity
and low grovelling cruelty such as we once supposed could
be found only in the Pacific Isles when this century began.
It reminds us of the glee with which a brave and fearless
man, excited to unlawful acts by the manifold wrongs he
suffered, was hunted down and captured like a wild beast,
and then sacrificed with all the pomp and circumstance of
war, as if in that execution of one poor freeman, they had
destroyed the very life of freedom.
It reminds us of the low stratagem of sending forth our
diminutive fleet to every coast except our own, that the
cunning and crafty ones might the more safely pillage cities
and mints, forts and arsenals, and all the public property
that lay within the reach of their pilfering hands.
It reminds us of the gnashing of teeth when a brave
officer, four years ago, transported his command from an
insecure fort on the land to a safer one built up out of the
depths of the sea, and named for one of the honored men in
the war of the Revolution.
It reminds us of four years of barbaric cruelty to captured
prisoners of war, compelling them to herd in pens, without
shelter from the sun at noon, or frost at night ; compelled
to eat and to drink what the very swine in our streets would
reject ; allowing them to die uncared for, as if they were
brute beasts and not men ; bayoneting the wounded, and
carving the very bones of our brave dead soldiers into rings
and charms, and boasting of all these things as if they were
right and proper.

9
It reminds us of base incendiarism of public hotels, where
a conflagration would destroy the lives of thousands of help
less women and children, mingling the ashes of mortality
with the ashes and debris of wood and stone.
It reminds us of large rewards offered to such as would
bring, dead or alive, into their own possession, distinguished
civilians and warriors, who were the more prominent sup
porters of the laws of the land they had so wickedly
abjured. And more, surely, we need not say, to show how the
spirit of foul rebellion will incite to deeds of such black
atrocity as ally men to demons, making them infuriate with
rage. And with all these facts, would it pass the bounds
of Christian charity to suspect that behind the assassins
who designed a wholesale murder of the most prominent
and most important men of the land — President and Vice-
President ; the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War ;
the General of all our forces in the field or in the camp —
does it pass the bounds of Christian charity to fear, at least,
that behind the assassins were sustainers leagued together,
perhaps by a vow, to wreak their hatred by the lowest
meanness of which depravity is capable?
While we bend over the grave waiting to receive all that
is mortal of Abraham Lincoln, we cannot easily force these
thoughts back from our mind. The question will come —
how came the noble victim, the noblest victim of the land,
so basely stricken down? Mere private revenge would
hardly risk the danger of such a daring deed. Besides,
what means that strange meeting of strange men, who deport
themselves not as ordinary carousers, but who have mys-

10
terious whisperings, and join hands at parting, as if there
were a secret plot, and a secret pledge, to do that which
none besides themselves might know the secret of? With
my hand upon my heart, I fear me much that, failing in
resort to arms, failing in attempts to burn our cities to the
ground, failing in all things, and desperate in defeat, the
last resort is to murder, as best they can, all the leaders of
the nation, to prepare the way for a new uprising of such as
have been trained in a school where human life is little
worth. If it be so — if they are given over to a mind so
reprobate — we can only say, in this hour of the nation's
sadness, that the conspirators, few or many, have slain their
best friend ; and, moreover, that they have waked up a
determination, that will never sleep, that our country's
honor shall be sustained if it cost ten lives where we have
given one, and all the treasure that the land can furnish.
Over the now sacred remains of the dead, tens of thousands
of hesitating patriots resolve that, under God, they will, not
revenge the fall, but will purify the land, maintain the
supremacy of its laws, vindicate its honor, and make it what
it can be made and will be made, the chiefest among the
nations of the earth. That humbled flag ou Sumter "stooped
to conquer." It has risen again with a meaning and a glory
and a moral power it never had before , and all its stars
shall burn in brighter splendor, and new stars shall multiply,
and it shall wave over us, the nation's emblem, as the
Banner of the Cross waves over us, the emblem of the king
dom that is over all the kingdoms of the world.
But it will not be by man's might or poAver. Have you
not seen how God has taken the cause into His own hands ?

11

Has He not led us, by a way we knew not, through all the
eventful struggle by which the nation is to have its new
birth ? Nearly every great plan of our devising has failed ;
nearly every great man we trusted in has fallen or retired.
Our successive hopes, one after another, have perished.
Our intended pacifications have never been effected. All
things have disappointed us, even to the taking away our
strong staff, that is now broken and lost ; and yet to-day
the land is stronger, the resources are more ample, the
finances are actually sounder, than when the war began. So
that in our great sorrow — with this our severest blow of all
— with the loss that almost seems irreparable, we may
still believe that the Lord hath a favor unto us — that He
will be gracious unto our land — that when the Lord chastens
it is in love ; that He will, in his own good time, turn
our mourning into joy, as He has turned our joy into
mourning ; and that after the grief of this calamity is over
past, we shall send forth the shout of victory, " of a people
saved by the Lord, the shield of our help, and the sword of
our excellency."
But with all this glad hope and sure confidence for the
future, we will not forget to weep with those who weep
to-day, with an agony that no human sympathy can relieve.
A widow mourns for one dearer than the apple of her eye.
Children mourn for a fond and honored father, who had a
child's heart for gentleness and simplicity, for one whose
spirit was as playful as their own. Men grave in council,
men of high trusts and weighty responsibilities are in tears,
at this passing moment, while they stand around the bier of
the great departed.

12
The solemn sound of prayer ascends to call a blessing
down upon that stricken wife — upon the fatherless — upon
the associates of the illustrious dead, who had taken counsel
together these many years ; to call a blessing down upon all
the people of the land — a prayer that God will sanctify the
nation's great sorrow to the nation's great good ; and that
it may be established in true holiness and righteousness —
such righteousness that war can never again prevail, as long
as the two great oceans that bound it shall ebb and flow
upon its coasts. That house of mourning is a solemn place,
while we are gathered here. Beside the voice of supplica
tion, the low dirge reminds that Death is there ; and beside
the dirge and prayer, and heavy sobs, and raining eyes,
there is all the drapery of woe, the sable curtaining, the ivy
wreaths, that show and teach that what is appointed unto
all men " once to die," has come to pass for one loved and
honored, and it is he who fell by foul murder's hand,
raised at fouler Treason's instigation. Weep we then with
those who weep. It is no shame that tears run to-day. It
were a greater shame if the fountains were sealed, so that
the streams could not flow, till the very eyes were dim.
"These are gracious drops;" these our tears the best
tribute Ave can pay to-day to the memory of the great, the
good, the wise, the honest, the true, the tender-hearted, the
forgiving, and the Christian magistrate that honored God,
and sought his guidance for his life's control.
My friends and neighbors, some of us have spanned o'er
many years, and have known something of this nation's
history,, and have seen days of gloom, when fear prevailed
more than hope, but none of us have ever seen a day of

13
deeper sadness than this. We shall not learn its lesson well
unless the nation is humbled under the mighty hand of God.
We must bow before the majesty of God, Avho casts down
the high looks of the proud, that out of the dust of humility
He may lift up the fallen into a new and stronger life. He
disciplines nations as He disciplines men. If man must
enter Heaven, through much tribulation, so must ^people also.
God scourgeth every one whom he receiveth. He smites
that He may heal. He hath smitten us sorely, but He has
not given us, as a people, over unto death, nor will He so
long as we put our trust in Him.
Blessed be the name of God, that he hath given us so
much, and favored us so long before He took away the staff
on which we, perhaps, leaned too confidingly.
Turn we a moment from the dead to the living, glancing,
as we turn our eyes, into that darkened room, where a
sufferer lies, at whom Treason struck so audaciously. How
nearly did the second man in power, of this great nation,
fall under the same traitorous Moav that laid the first in
death. One could not suffice. Nay ! every day Avill reveal,
we dare to prophesy, that scarcely one was to be spared, of
all the heads of the Departments of State — in civil, judicial,
or military life. God heal those gaping wounds, that were
meant to be as fatal as the lead that struck the Leader down.
But there is another living, or, we may trust is living, who
needs all the sympathies and all the prayers that heart and
soul can give — the successor of him who is now being borne
to the house appointed for all the living — one Avho, in the
present crisis, succeeds as much to danger as to toil and
honor ; — a man solemnly resolved to do his duty to his

14

country as faithfully as he has done it, and as fearlessly,
too ; — a man who stands in his place to-day by the provi
dence of God, and not of his own seeking. God grant that
" as his day is, so his strength may be."
Be it ours less as patriots than as Christians to hold his
arms up by our prayers, till the remembrance of Amalek be
utterly put out from under Heaven — till Rebellion, which is
as the sin of witchcraft — till Treason, which springs up from
beneath — till Sedition and privy Conspiracy shall cease
to exist, from the Lake to the Gulf, from the great sea
eastward to the great sea westward, and this whole country
be established in righteousness, a people fearing the Lopd.
A land in sable, and a land in tears ! The air rocked,
over the whole country, with the mournful sound of tolling
bells ! A land pale with indignation at the most atrocious
crime that has ever yet been perpetrated within its bound
aries ! A land stirred to its soul's inmost centre, that it
shall be free !
' ' The A'ictory to-day turned into mourning ;" but so we
are true to God, and listen to his instructive AToice, echoed
back from the grave of the great departed, ere long our
mourning shall be turned back again into a subdued and
holy joy ; tears Aviped from every eye ; symbols of victory
on every high hill, and every mast and every steeple.
Thanksgiving and melody in every consecrated Temple, at
every street corner, in every palace and every cabin of the
land ; a land Avith none but free and frecdmen ; a land that
God shall greatly bless, if Ave put our trust in Him.

15

gSy HOP!*.

O, most mighty God, terrible in thy judgments, and Avon-
derful in thy doings towards the children of men; who, in
thy heavy displeasure, didst suffer the life of the President
of these United States to be taken away by the hands of
cruel and bloody men ; we, Thy sinful creatures here assem
bled before Thee, do, in behalf of all the people of this land,
humbly confess that they Avere the crying sins of this nation
which brought down this heavy judgment upon us.
But, O gracious God, when thou makest inquisition for
blood, lay not the guilt of this innocent blood, lay it not to
the charge of the people of this land ; nor let it eArer be
required of us or our posterity. Be merciful, O Lord ; be
merciful to Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed ; and be
not angry with us forever, but pardon us for Thy mercies'
sake, through the merits of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, our
Lord. Amen.

16

NOTES TO PAGES SEVEN AND EIGHT.

John Quincy Adams, while defending " the right of petition," and expos
ing the preponderance of the Slave interests over those of the North, frequently
received threatening letters, the effect of which was to nerve him to a higher
bravery. His lightning scathed remorselessly the vaunting pride of those who
hoped to still the potency of his voice.
Judge Hoar visited Charleston to defend a colored sailor who had been
thrust into prison, with the prospect of being sold into irretrievable bondage.
The judge was exposed to the danger of losing his life, and was rather hustled
than conducted out of the city.
Charles Sumner was writing at his desk, when but few were in the Senate
Chamber, and Brooks, of the House of Kepresentatives, from South Carolina,
stole behind him stealthily and struck a murderous blow, the effects of which
were so serious as to threaten life, or a deprivation of intellect worse than
death. Happily, Sumner lives. Brooks died long ago.
John Brown made an unwise but bold incursion into Harper's Ferry, creat
ing an alarm that was wholly unwarranted by the facts, and was hunted
down by the Virginians with an earnestness far exceeding the importance of
the case, and provoking the ill-feeling of many not by any means in sympathy
with the raider.
The seizure of mints, forts and arsenals, the Floyd diplomacy, the designed
assassination of President liincoln in 1861, and the subsequent acts of cruelty
at Anderson, Belle Isle, and the Libby Prison, are familiar to all who have
watched the progress of the war.

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