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EULOGY

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE NEW ENGLAND HISTOEIC - GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY,

BOSTON, MAY 3, 186B,

KEY. ELIAS NASOJ^,

MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY.

1 He. that hath the vantage ground to do good is an honest man." — Bacon.

BOSTON:
"WILLIAM V. SPENCER.
134 Washington Street.
"18 6 5.

EULOGY

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE NEW ENGLAND HISTOEIC -GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY,

BOSTON, MAY 3, 1865,

EEY. ELIAS NASQN,

MEMBER OP THE SOCIETY.

'He that hath the vantage ground to do good is an honest man." — Bacon.

BOSTON:
"WILLIAM V. SPENCER.
134 Washington Street.
18 65.

(Eamfcrttige press.
Dakih a it d Metcalf.

EULOGY

MB. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:
We assemble again — and oh, how soon and sadly ! — to render our
mournful tribute of respect to the illustrious dead. Our hearts are
bowed and stricken at the judgment of Almighty God, who hath
stretched forth his hand from the folds of eternity and taken to him
self the Chief Magistrate of this nation.
Another great man has fallen, and the voice of lamentation and
wailing resounds through every loyal city, village, and hamlet of
this Union. The faces of the sons and daughters of Columbia are
bathed in tributary tears, as when George "Washington, father
of his country, was translated from the arms of his compatriots to
the skies.
The mournful dirge in memory of our departed President is
swelling as the sobbings of the melancholy ocean, and every
demonstration which weeping sorrow can devise attests the depth
and sincerity of the emotion which this bereaved nation now ex
periences. The long, slow-moving funereal trains, the sable robes and deco
rations, the flag depressed, private residences, public edifices and
sacred temples draped in the memorials of woe ; the tolling bell,
the organ's deep and solemn peal, the soldiers' arms reversed and
plaintive requiem ; the muffled drum-beats and the minute guns,

the coronach of the Caledonian ; the " langsame trauerlied " of
the tearful German ; the " Mourir pour la patrie " of the sympa
thetic Frenchman ; the simple-hearted lay of the Freedman,
weeping sad and lonely, do most touchingly proclaim, as once the
harps and voices of God's chosen people when they wept by " Ba
bel's willowy streams," the intensity of the nation's grief.
Yes ! God has suddenly struck the chords of the heart of this
vast nation, and they tremble as when the forest bends beneath the
blow of the dark autumnal tempest, or the ship quivers in every
beam beneath the sudden stroke of the Buroclydon.
Abraham Lincoln, the President of these United States, is dead !
Assassinated by the ruthless hand of a godless rebel ! Instantane
ously cut down, as the magnanimous Prince of Orange, in the
prime and vigor of his manhood, just at the moment when the frui
tion of his hopes was about to be experienced ; — in cold blood,
mercilessly murdered by the impitiable hand of a dastardly minion
of treason !
Assassination of the good and great in power ; assault upon the
chosen of the people, upon the supporter of the country's honor,
the standard-bearer ofthe flag of civil freedom; assassination of the
chieftain and the saviour of the Republic, around whom the hearts
of the millions clung as the tendrils of the vine around the tower
ing oak of the mountain ; assassination of the friend of the friend
less, of the oppressed, of you and of me ! Crime unheard-of in
America ; crime, whose " deep damnation " treason's tongue itself
must speak, its blood must seal.
What sudden grief, what load of sorrow bore us down as the
intelligence came flashing through the electric wire that our good
President had been shot ! How universal and how deep the gloom !
From hoary-headed sire, from prattling child ; matron and
maid, teacher and taught ; from judge and advocate, pastor and
physician ; from merchant, mechanic, husbandman, soldier, sailor,

freedman ; from all ranks, parties, states, and conditions of men ;
from your own hearts and from mine, went forth exclamations of
bitter grief, condolence, agony : — "gO miserable day ! 0 bleed
ing country, wounded cruelly in the head of thy beauty! 0
God, have mercy on thy suffering and afflicted people ! The star
of the nation's diadem is set in blood ; its lustre is extinguished ;
the gloaming of our burden of sorrow has come ; the face of the
mighty is shrouded, — and
" Who from the shades of gloomy night
When the last ray of hope is fled,
Can bid the soul return to light,
Or break the silent slumber ofthe dead? "
It is, gentlemen, a profound personal grief we feel, as when a
dear old father, a beloved mother, or a brother is torn relentlessly
from our breast.
It is not mourning for some great national loss only that veils
our faces in the shades of woe ; it is lamentation for one who has
been very near and very dear to us ; for one who seemed to be
of the immediate circle of our own familiar friends and acquaint
ances ; for one who had so identified himself with our own views and
feelings that he seemed to be an elementary part of our own being,
— bone of our bone, blood of our blood ; for one so entirely with
us in sympathy, in genius, in love, in action, in aspiration, that he
must ever bear the august appellation of the People's own be
loved President. Even the little children looked upon him as
their own kind-hearted ruler, and they now weep in the sweet simplic
ity of childhood over his sacred remains. Yes, gentlemen, as those
relics are now borne slowly, amid vast and imposing pageantries,
amid obsequies more sublime than ever honored mausoleum of king
or conqueror, the little child, true to the instincts of its loving na
ture, steals through the mighty throng and drops its simple flower

and sheds its simple tear of sweet affection beside this good man's
bier. But this flood of national grief is jnst as natural as the falling
of the dews of evening, or the tears of Niobe, when we consider
who and what Abraham Lincoln was, and what his head and heart
and hand achieved.
This remarkable man was the son of Mr. Thomas and Nancy
[Hanks] Lincoln, and was born the 12th day of February, 1809,
in a rude log cabin in Hardin [now Larue] County, in Kentucky,
on a small branch of the Boiling Fork, a tributary of the Salt
river, which empties into the Ohio.
His grandfather, Abraham, had removed from Rockingham, one
of the most beautiful counties of the Shenandoah Valley in
Virginia, to that place as early as 1780 ; he was one of the hardi
est and boldest of the frontier settlers, and four years later fell a
victim to the revenge or cupidity of the aborigines, — leaving a
widow and five children, — Mordecai, Joseph, Mary [who married
Ralph Crume], Nancy [who married William Brumfield], and
Thomas, who, being the youngest son, remained at home with his
mother. Thomas, who was but a mere child when his father removed to
Kentucky, grew up in the wilderness, a poor, hard-working, and
illiterate boy. He was, however, good-natured, kind-hearted, and
affectionate ; and, on arriving at the age of twenty-seven, he mar
ried [1806] Miss Nancy Hanks, a Virginian by birth, and lived
in a log cabin, furnished with a deal table, two or three wooden
stools, wooden plates apd spoons, and surrounded by the howling
wolves and savages of that unexplored and inhospitable region.
The issue of this marriage was a daughter, who grew up to
womanhood, was married, and is long since dead ; a son, who died
in infancy ; and another son, named from his grandfather, Abra
ham, who became President of the United States.

' So from tbe humble vale, fed by the secret springs,
The palm-tree rises towering toward the sun,
To hail its morning beam and spread it o'er tho land."

The line of Mr. Lincoln's ancestry has been followed with cer
tainty only to his grandfather, Abraham, who was born in Berks
County, Pennsylvania, early removed to Virginia, and thence to
Kentucky, where he was massacred by the Indians in 1784 ; but
I am most happy to state that there is a very high degree of prob
ability that it will be eventually traced to the strong-minded Lin
coln family of Massachusetts Bay. This New England stock
came from Hingham, England, to Hingham in this State, as early
as 1633-7, and, singular as it may appear, three of them who had
families bore the name of Thomas, and were designated respective
ly as Thomas, the miller, Thomas, the cooper, and Thomas, the
husbandman. The name of the fourth original settler was Samuel,
from whom Governor Levi Lincoln and the Honorable Solomon
Lincoln of this society are descended. The sons of Samuel were
Daniel, Mordecai, and Thomas. Mordecai Lincoln had a son
Mordecai, born April 24th, 1686, and another named Abraham,
born January 13th, 1689. In or about the year 1750, there
were two Mordecai Lincolns in the town of Taunton, and some of
the family removed thence into Connecticut.
Now, by the aid of my friend Mr. Trask, I find from Rupp's
History of Berks and Lebanon Counties, Pennsylvania, that among
the taxable inhabitants in Exeter, Berks County, soon after its
settlement in 1752, were Mordecai and Abraham Lincoln ; also
that Mr. Thomas Lincoln was living at Reading, Pennsylvania, as
early as 1757, and that Mr. Abraham Lincoln was one of the
Representatives from Berks County in 1782-5, and a member of
the Convention for the framing of the Pennsylvania State Consti
tution of 1789-90. Now, in comparing the names of Massachu-

setts and the Pennsylvania Lincoln family from which that of
the President sprung, we are struck with this remarkable coin
cidence, that Mordecai, a very unusual appellation, Abraham,
Thomas, etc., are constantly occurring in both branches, and we
can account for it only upon the theory that some members of
the Massachusetts stock wandered away — it might have been on
account of quakerism — into Berks County, Pennsylvania, where
the great-grandfather of our lamented President lived, and that his
family does thus proceed from the sturdy, brave, and liberty-loving
Hingham stock. In corroboration of this point, I would mention
that that section of Pennsylvania was in part settled by New Eng
enders ; that there is a tradition with the Virginia race that they
came through Berks County from New England, that some biog
raphers of the President assert, on what authority I know not,
that he is of the same blood as General Benjamin Lincoln, born
in Hingham 1733, and that but one family bearing the name of
Lincoln is known to have emigrated to this country anterior to the
revolution. The link, however, which connects the two families is still con
cealed in the obscurity of the past ; but I hope the piercing glance
of some genealogist wiU soon detect it ; for I hold it nobler to claim
parentage from the honest sons of toil wno fled from the insolent
edicts of the star-chamber to breathe the air of freedom on our
rock-bound|^coast, than from the proudest peerage England ever
saw. Born in the depths of the dreary wilderness, of poor but pious
parents, our distinguished President was rocked in the cradle of
adversity, and tried in the crucible of toil, from which he came
forth a gem, rough and angular to be sure, but shining with
" purest ray serene " and brighter and brighter unto the perfect
day. He was, I beg you to observe, preeminently a self-made man.

9
By the glimmer of the pitch-pine torch, a little assistance from his
noble mother and a backwoodsman by the name of Caleb Hazel,
he picked out from a dog-eared copy of Dilworth's spelling-book,
which had strayed away into those western wilds, the rudiments of
a very meagre education.
The volume which he mainly studied was what we call the Book
of Nature ; and for him its great words were full of eloquence and
beauty ; its royal illustrations beamed with inexpressible splendor.
He learned to love betimes the voice of the leaping streamlet, of
the thunder and the storm. As Daniel Webster, he was fond of
roaming through the lonely forest ; of driving through the drifting
snows of winter ; of breasting the tempest and the gale ; of stand
ing front to front with those majestic scenes which God spreads
out alike for the eye of peasant and of peer, but which the peasant
has the keener eye to see. His hands were early inured to honest
toil, and the woodman's axe was the wand of his power until he
attained the age of manhood.
This kind of training strengthened mightily his physical system,
so that in his youth he was, like Washington, the most agile
swimmer, runner, leaper, in his State. This style of training, also,
imparted life and freshness to his thought, so that his words were
always to the point, and marked with laconic power.
In 1817, the Lincoln family removed across the Ohio River into
Spencer county, Indiana ; and here young Abraham aided his
father in erecting a log cabin, in whose narrow loft he rested from
his daily toil, and read by night his slender stock of books, until
the age of twenty. The next year his beloved mother died, —
leaving him her benediction and her Bible ; yes, and that sweet
and genial temper, that reverence for Almighty God which held
him to the eternal rule of rectitude, in the solitudes of the wilder
ness, on the rough political arena, as amid the blandishments of
power, and made him a tower of strength, incorruptible, invincible,
for the salvation of the State.

10
So lonely and isolated was the situation of the Lincoln family,
that nearly a twelvemonth elapsed ere a minister could be found to
perform funereal rites over that beloved mother's grave ; and what
a day for that little mourning circle when the good pastor came !
The father, Thomas, holding Abraham and his sister by the hand ;
the Rev. Mr. Elkins standing with them there in the midst of the
primeval forest, performing solemn service, while the unbidden
tears are falling, over that solitary grave of Nancy Hanks ! How
strange the contrast between that evening scene of domestic sorrow
and the outpouring of a nation's wail as the corse of one of that
little group is borne to-day from city to city through demonstrations
of woe unparalleled in the annals of man !
What has caused the contrast ? Those mother's hallowed lips ;
the training she initiated ; the preparation I am now attempting to
delineate. It is a remark of Sir Walter Scott, in Waverley, that a paucity
of books is favorable to the development of mental power in boy
hood ; and I accept the statement. Mr. Lincoln had and read and
re-read, until every word was indelibly imprinted on the tablets of
his memory, iEsop's Fables, Weems's Life of Washington, and
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress ; and highly as I respect the ser
vices of the caterers for the victims of our modern juvenile lit
erature, I most heartily rejoice he had but these three books.
The incomparable iEsop, reducing the sublimest principles of
morality, political economy and esthetics, even, to the slender com
prehension of a little child ; the patriotic We^ms, by the vivacity
and glowing fervor of his style, inspiring, as no other man, a love
of country and of the father of his country in the breast of youth,
and the quaint, dramatic Bunyan, prince of allegory, painting
the golden road to glory just as clear and bright as Jacob saw it
shining underneath the footsteps of God's angels glancing over it !
And was it not some angel's hand that bore such golden bowls of

11
milk and honey into that log-cabin loft to nourish the mind of
Abraham Lincoln from the age of ten to twenty ; — and was it not
an angel's hand also that kept some other bowls, on which our chil
dren sometimes feed and grow up underlings, from reaching it ?
It is true that young Lincoln in his buckskin clothes and racoon-
skin cap did pick up a little of Dobell's arithmetic at a log-house
school, taught by Andrew Crawford, about the time of his father's
second marriage. It is true, also, that he read " Riley's Narrative,"
and a life of that great Western statesman, Henry Clay ; but the
literary companions of his daily life were iEsop, Weems, and Bun
yan, and could Macaulay himself, think you, have selected better
for a pioneer boy and a backwoodsman, forty years ago, or even
now ? It is inspiration that the human spirit needs, and that these
give. Thus feeding his soul with a kind of celestial fire, and ever
kindling it anew at the same creative shrine, he rose in mental
power above the heads of those who bend exclusively over ancient
classic lore, and are content to drink the cups which other lips
have tasted.
This nation bears down to the portals of the grave, to-morrow, a
glorious specimen of a self-made man ; and, say what we will in
praise of college hall and consecrated grove, such have proved to
be our best made men.
They are the working men, the practical, business men ; they
learn by keen experience how the rough board, how the flinty rock ,
the axe, the scythe, the sickle feel ; they know the sharp sensation
of a blistered hand, a burning tongue ; they come out of dream
land into actual contact with this matter of fact land, and they know
by their own quick perceptions the distinction between hot and cold,
sweet and sour, soft and solid ; — for them the objective world
stands out in points so clearly cut, so luminous, so palpable, that
the subjective seizes with unerring grasp the essential and the

12
true ; and such men are, therefore, in position to tell, not what
other men dimly conceive and guess at, but what they themselves do
actually know.
The teaching of history is that the alumnus of the alma mater
must tread his diploma underneath his feet and lay his hand to the
rugged oar of intellectual labor, if he mean to be of any essen
tial service to himself or country.
As the headlands stand boldly forth along our line of coast to
resist the dashing and encroachment of the surges of the ocean, so
the self-made men of America have stood in the fore-front to de
fend the nation, and to give it majestic outline, power, and dignity.
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and, I
dare add, Andrew Johnson, testify to the truth of what I say ; and
if the names of Webster and Everett seem to contravene it, I tell
you that to all intents and purposes they were self-made men,
cleaving their way to fame and fortune by reiterated blows of man
ly and unshrinking toil.
Through and through, our honored President was a self-made
man ; but the business to be transacted .in this country demands
self-made men ; the people love and honor self-made men, for they
are the efficient, self-relying, quick-thinking and quick-moving men,
and Mr. Lincoln being such, the people had a most profound re
gard and fellow-feeling for him, and hence with no ordinary sor
row they deplore his loss, and bitterly feel that a great man has
fallen. At the age of twenty-one, Mr. Lincoln removed with his father's
family, in an ox-team, to a new settlement in the frontier State of
Illinois. In company with another man, he cut and split the rails
for fencing in ten acres of land ; he built a flat-boat and run it
down to New Orleans, — an exploit in those early times demanding
enterprise and daring ; he served gallantly as a captain in the fa
mous Black Hawk war ; he espoused the protective policy of

13
Henry Clay ; set up a country store, and fortunately for his coun
try failed in business, and then took up his borrowed commentaries
for the study of the law. In 1834 he was elected to the State
legislature, and three years afterwards, removed to Springfield,
where he commenced the practice of the law in company with the
late John T. Stewart, Esq.
But it were quite impossible here to present the record of his
eventful and romantic life ; to follow him in his struggles against
poverty ; in his earnest pursuit of knowledge ; his stanch adher
ence to principle during his labors as an advocate ; his various
successes in political life, until he found himself the supreme leader
of the old Whig party in the State of Illinois, and a member of
Congress in 1847 ; to mark the first blow he struck against the
traffic in human blood, his manly course upon the tariff question,
the reception of the new territories and the disposition of the public
lands ; the prominent part he took in the great senatorial contest of
1858, when, by the force of his powerful argumentation and invec
tive, his ready wit, his shrewd and masterly management of the
whole question at issue % he rose to cope successfully with the lead
ing politician of the West, and left an impression of his mental power,
of his sterling honesty, of his lofty patriotism, never to be ef
faced, and which even at that period turned the eyes of the Repub
lican party to him as the fitting representative of its policy in the
presidential chair. It were not possible — and events are so fresh
in your memories, it is not needful — to follow him through the ex
citing scenes which immediately preceded his nomination as chief
magistrate of the Union ; to trace him in his perilous journey to the
city of Washington, when the nation was seething, as a vast cal
dron, with the elements of sedition ; or in his course during these
last four years of crime and bloodshed, — so calm, so fair, so dig
nified, so just and true, — moving on step by step, intrepidly, just

14
as fast as the country could move ; holding steadily the ground ob
tained; looking for the good of the gre'atest number ; hushing the
clamor of the contending factions at the capitol ; calling forth the
best talent within his reach to solve the mighty problem God had
given him, and under a storm of obloquy and reproach such as no
other man ever knew, guiding, with a strong arm, the nation through
the surges of secession, through the wilderness of doubt and danger ;
through the baptism of fire, till he himself, like Moses on the sum
mit of Mount Pisgah, came to die in the prospect of that promised
land which Heaven did not permit him, while on earth, to enter.
You know this mighty record well, for you have journeyed with
him ; you have drunk with him of the waters of Marah and of the
smitten rock ; you have seen the pillar of flame ; you have felt
with him the anguish of defeat, the exultation of victory ; and hence
you weep to-day as soldiers weep when a beloved companion in
arms sinks by the wayside, leaving them to move along, revolving,
in the silence of sorrow, sad memories of the departed.
But let us turn a moment from this outward life, and see what
Abraham Lincoln, in the structure of his mind and temper, really
was. Let us go down into the hold of the steamship that so majes
tically breasts the stormy floods, and look at the motive power that
impels it thus triumphantly over them, — bearing it proudly on
ward above wreck and disaster to the appointed haven. As every
man of mark, Mr. Lincoln had sharp, salient points of character,
standing prominently forth to be read and admired of all men, and
one of them was that sound and sterling common sense,
" which only is the gift of Heaven,"
and which led him ever, as by intuition, to the right conclusion.
He took enlarged and proper views of things ; and while some men
were looking into some dark corner of selfishness, his eye swept
over the whole extended field of action. He seemed to possess

15
that broad range and scope of vision which characterized Edmund
Burke, and yet with this remarkable breadth of mind, he saw with
astonishing clearness into the secret of things, grasped at once the
why and wherefore of any question, and struck the knot of any diffi
culty right upon the head. He saw intuitively just what men and
things were good for ; he had the skill to use them as he wanted
them, and this, I think, is one of the chief secrets of executive
power. I never knew a more close and shrewd observer of human life
than our lamented President. He had the New England knack of
guessing at the truth, — of guessing right ; and so his guess was a
prophetic omen.
It was by looking at things in the sunshine of this native, pre
scient, sterling common sense, that he came to lay his hand upon
the heart of this nation, as the skilful player upon the strings of his
instrument, and to make the discordant elements blend harmoniously
for the perpetuation of the Union. It was by this celestial ray
that he was able to hold fast to the " golden mean," curbing the
spirit of the ultras upon either side and drawing them in skilfully
to strengthen the current and bear away the obstructions which
they themselves had raised. It was by this God-given effulgence
that he saw the magnitude of the question at stake ; the cause and
the tendency of the tremendous national agitation, and issued, when
the right time came, and not till the right time came, that procla
mation of freedom which stamps his administration as the most illus
trious of them all ; and sets up a landmark in the progress of the
nations more magnificent than that of Magna Charta at old Runny-
mede. Mr. Lincoln was strictly honest in his dealings with his fellow-
men. I do not think he ever wronged a man of a single dollar in
his life. His word was as good as his bond ; you saw it in every
Hneament of his benignant features. He stood upright in the

16
integrity of an honest heart through the criminations and recrimina
tions of the sharpest political strife ; and never was any sobriquet
more fairly won than that of Honest Old Abe. —
" His was the celestial beauty
Of a soul that does its duty;"
and in an age of political and commercial huckstering and chican
ery, when we were swinging fast away into bankruptcy of national
and mercantile faith, it was of Heaven's high mercy thus to set
him up as a granite buttress of honesty to turn the tide.
Mr. Lincoln loved the truth, and lived it spotlessly ; his words,
his deeds are pure as virgin gold, and this in times like these is
loftiest virtue, far outshining any splendor of commanding intellect.
Through the darkest, gloomiest storm of this unnatural rebellion,
his honesty was — " Still an unmoved rock,
Washed whiter, but not shaken by the shock ;
His heart conceived no sinister device ;
Fearless he played with flam's and trod on ice;"
and this is why he was so profoundly loved by the American peo
ple, — et extinctus amabitur idem.
Our lamented chief magistrate was a man of great Republican
simplicity. In his mode of dress and address he was as unaffected
and as simple as the ancient Cincinnatus. In this he was a fitting
representative of what our nation was in the times of the sage
Franklin ; the plain and sensible John Adams ; of the other un
pretending fathers of the revolution, and of what it ought to be
to-day. He assumed no French airs ; he followed no foreign fashions ;
he did not forget, he did not wish to forget, his humble origin. He
went about his business at the White House just as one of the

17
people ; he shook you cordially by the hand as one of the people.
He conversed with you frankly, without any pretension or parade ;
he sympathized with you as a kind and generous friend ; and this
is another reason why your tears flow forth so freely over his re
mains, since the large-hearted forever stir, by some angelic power,
responsive chords in other noble hearts ; and this leads me to assert
that our beloved President was a man of the finest, tenderest sym
pathies. His head was a " fountain of tears " for those in dis
tress. His private, his public, life was luminous, all over, as the
starry firmament, with deeds of charity ; with touching instances
of kind consideration for the poor and the unfortunate.
One of the last acts of his life was to send a sum of money to
assist the patriot Petigru of Charleston, in the sad reverses he had
met in that hot-bed of secession for adhering steadily to the prin
ciples of the Union.
His sympathies extended to the little children, — to the bond
man, — to the misguided and the wounded rebel.
On one of his reception days, three little girls in plain attire,
the daughters of a mechanic, came in to look at him, but fearing
to approach him, were moving around him at a distance in the
crowd, when he, observing them, in his cordial way exclaimed :
" What, little girls, are you going to pass me without shaking
hands ? " and taking them up in his arms, as the Good Shepherd
of old, he tenderly bestowed on them his blessing, while many eyes
were moistening at the touching beauty of the scene.
At another time, some one saw him counting over a pile of
" greenbacks," when, looking up and smiling, he observed : " This
may seem rather out of place for me ; but the truth is, a poor old
negro, having the small-pox at the hospital, and not able to write
his name, has found it difficult to draw his pay, and I have
taken some little pains to get his money for him."
Will not that simple deed shine beautifully down through the un-

18
born generations ? Does it not send up a little radiance to the eye
of Him who said, " In as much as ye have done it unto one of
these, the least of my disciples, ye have done it unto me ? "
His heart, though mighty as a lion's, was full of the milk of
human kindness ; his golden charities, as the perfume of the
sandal wood, flowed out even upon the axe that was cutting his
life away ; and perhaps no man ever revealed more of the spirit of
that touchmg verse of a beloved poet of our own society, —
" A little word in kindness spoken,
A motion or a tear,
Has often healed the heart that's broken,
And made a friend sincere."
He had a great, loving, generous heart, and his actions come
to us as sunbeams through the cloud of war ; they enshrine him
eternally in the deepest chambers of the soul of his country.
The man whose honored relics are to be deposited in the tomb
to-morrow was, in the best and broadest sense of the word, tem
perate. He held command over his own spirit. He reverenced
the soul which God had given him, and the temple in which it
dwelt. He looked not upon the wine when it was red.
A wager once was laid that he could not lift a barrel of whiskey.
He bent his athletic frame and raised the cask containing forty
gallons to his lips, and filled his mouth with the intoxicating
draught, when some one standing by, cried out, " Well, that is
the first time, Abraham, I have ever seen you swallow a drop of whis
key." " And, you have not seen me swallow it now," rejoined
the sturdy son of temperance, at the same time throwing the
burning liquid from his mouth. " Nor," says the writer, many
years later, " have I known of Mr. Lincoln's drinking any spir
ituous liquor since."
Though exposed to the temptations of a great and dissolute cap-

19
ital, our Executive Head kept himself pure and unspotted from the
world ; so that his enemy, even, could say, " Mr. Lincoln has no
vices." Our Chief Magistrate was a man of indomitable industry. His
days and nights were consecrated to intense intellectual labor ;
whatever he undertook to do, he finished. His mind was a tem
pest till he understood the question he was studying, and could see
entirely round and through it. He learned to cut away intellect
ual difficulties as with axe he felled the forest in his boyhood.
" I remember," says Mr. Lincoln, " how, when a mere child, I used to get
irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I
don't think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. I can remember
going to my little bedroom after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening
with my father, and spending no small part of the night in walking up and
down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their,
to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got
on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it ; and when I thought I had
got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had
put it in language plain enough for anybody to comprehend. This was a
kind of passion with me, and it has since stuck by me, for I am never easy
now when I am handling a thought till I have bounded it north, and
bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded it west."
Here is a course of intellectual education superior to anything
set forth in the works of Milton, Locke, Fenelon, or Rousseau, —
giving the mind mastery of itself and its possessions, and the abil
ity to settle questions of the highest moment on the basis of
eternal truth. Mr. Lincoln say's, again : —
" In the course of my law-reading I constantly came upon the word dem
onstrate. I said to myself, ' What do I mean when I demonstrate, more than
when I reason or prove ? How does demonstration differ from any other
proof? ' I consulted Webster's Dictionary ; that told of ' certain proof; ' but
I could form no idea what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many

20

things were proved beyond a possibility of a doubt without recourse to any
such extraordinary process of reasoning as I thought demonstration to be.
You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said : ' Lin
coln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demon
strate means ; ' and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my
father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six
books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstration means, and
went back to my law studies."
What a severe and self-denying discipline ! What an admirable
preparation for meeting his political opponents and grasping log
ically the great partisan questions of the day ! So William Pitt
braced up his thought, by reading Euclid, for his gigantic efforts in
the British Parliament ; so Abraham Lincoln came to the success
ful demonstration of the mighty theorem of a nation saved and
strengthened by emancipation !
Thus, through the full development of the physical system, a na
tive good sense, unimpeachable integrity, the culture of the socia
affections, simplicity in living, the perusal of a few books of sterling
character,* and the constant collision with some of the strongest
minds of the West, Mr. Lincoln came at length to be a man of
commanding intellectual ability. I may not have your quick re
sponse to this ; but still I must maintain that we are now holding
obsequies over a man of transcendent mental power.
He was very plain and unpretending, to be sure ; but he was
keen, sagacious as Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton to
discern the real " status " of a case, and sound to the core in
logic and in argumentation. Some of his speeches, and especially
his last inaugural, are perfect masterpieces. Some of his sen
tences are Demosthenic ; they come like solid shot from the Colum-
* Mr. Lincoln's favorite author in later life was. Shakspeare. Macbeth and Hamlet
afforded him intense delight.

21
biad. His wit was keen and trenchant as a Damascus blade ; and
though he might not have possessed the graces, he had the power
of oratory ; and that is the main thing, after all. The ring of elo
quence was in him, and when you heard, you felt.
He stated his point with absolute precision ; he kept to it with
unflinching pertinacity ; and his excellent judgment, his apt illus
trations, his racy anecdotes, his downright honesty and invariable
good-humor, enchained the attention of the popular assembly and
produced conviction. His official papers have, I know, been keenly
criticised ; but to my mind they are among the very best that ever
emanated from the White House. They are the honest transcript
of his thought ; they tell in plainest language just exactly what
he means to tell, so that the public cannot fail to understand him.
They mark out with masterly hand just what is to be done ; and if
state papers are not written for this, then I ask what you would
have them written for ? I know the English have often sneer-
ingly spoken of Mr. Lincoln as a man of ordinary, if not inferior,
ability, and some men at home have echoed this opinion ; but to
express contempt is one thing, — to work out an immortal name is
quite another.
Could any man of common ability, think you, have raised him
self through the sharp struggles of the strong-minded politicians of
Illinois from a log hut to a seat in our national Congress ? Could
a man of ordinary talents have met and discomfited in seven intel
lectual battles in open field such a giant as Judge Douglas?
Could any man of low mental energy have penned such an inaugural
address as that of Mr. Lincoln when he took the helm of state ?
Could tany man of no marked intellectual power have grasped
that helm as he did in 1861 ; with treason, as the guns upon the
Light Brigade at Balaclava, in front of him, treason to the right
of him, treason to the left of him, and treason to the rear of him ;
with the military power in the hands of the rebellion ; with no

22
army or munitions of war ; with no well-trained generals ; with no
navy at his command ; with everything in tumult and disorder ;
with mutiny itself on the quarter-deck ; — could any man without
ability have taken the crazy old ship of state, at such a time, swung
out upon the breakers and the quicksands, and have piloted her
through the rocks of secession, — the Scylla and Charybdis of the
political parties, amid the clashing of ten thousand counter- currents
of opinion, along beneath the storm and thunder-bolts of such a war
as we have had ; holding the kings abroad and the rebels at home
at bay, and keeping such a bark in such a sea from foundering ?
Do you believe it ? Could a man of any inferior mental force
have so built up such an army ; so sustained the public confidence
and credit ; so cut up the roots of human slavery ; bringing on step
by step the dawn of freedom's glorious day ; silencing by masterly
strokes of policy the tongue of calumny ; breaking up the very den
of rebellion ; out-mastering the master of rebellion ; leading what
we called a " ruined country," as William the Silent led the
United States of Netherlands, out of the wilderness ; resisting
slave-power as that William resisted the Inquisition ; breaking up
slave-power as God broke up the pride of the Egyptians in the
ruby sea ; — could any man of second-rate ability have executed
that ? There is not another man, I do believe, upon the face of
this fair globe that could have done it ; and when you say that a
great man, a prince in Israel, has not fallen, I tell you that you do
not understand the magnitude of the work that has been achieved,
the peril from which this Union has been rescued, or what it is to
settle a question that has baffled the skilLof ablest statesmen for a
century, or to meet the expectations of the advocates of Freedom,
and demonstrate to the world that " still she lives."
Our deceased President was a true patriot. He loved his coun
try with intense affection ; he wept over it in its bleeding struggles ;
he bravely did his best to avert the bloodshed, and when it came

23
he would have sacrificed his life at any time to have stayed it. He
loved the honored names of the patriots of the revolution ; he loved
the soldier, — he shook his hand with thrilling interest, and when he
saw him sick or wounded, the fountain of his tears was opened and
he did what could be done for his relief. In view of the unceasing,
self-denying labors of woman to assuage the sorrows of war, he
once in the fulness of his heart observed : "If all that has been
said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise
of woman were applied to the women of America, it would not do
, them justice for their conduct during this war."
Yes, he was a true patriot, — your tears confess it. He loved the
Union ; tasked the whole energy of his noble soul to save it : he
has saved it. The flag floats low indeed, but proudly over it ; and
so we calmly and trustfully breathe above his grave ; — requiescat
in PACEM. " With conquerless will
He has climbed from the base to the top of the hill ;
Undaunted in peril, unwavering in strife,
He has fought a good fight in the battle of life;
He has been our warm friend in woe and in weal ;
Just as firm as the rock and as true as the steel;" —
and if to befriend the widow and the fatherless ; if to love judg
ment and follow mercy ; if to live soberly and honor the truth ; if
to devote our talents sacredly to the service of our fellow-men ; if
to cherish a forgiving temper, — to bless our enemies; if to save a
bleeding country and to let the oppressed go free ; if to take daily
counsel of God and to acknowledge his Son Jesus Christ to be our
Saviour, — entitle us to indulgence in the audit-chamber of the Al
mighty Sovereign, may we not hope that he, whom we deplore, has
joined the illustrious ones of the eternal city, and beholds the com
plete demonstration of that principle of love by which his course
below was guided ?
Thus, gentlemen, I have endeavored to touch upon the leading

24
characteristics of our beloved Ruler, over whom, pale, cold, speech
less as the monumental marble, this nation now is weeping, and for
whose loss it will indeed more bitterly weep as it comes more and
more to realize the immense debt of gratitude we owe to him.
What tongue, think you, can tell it ? We are indebted to him for
the worth of a consistent example in private and public life, — for
some of the noblest sentiments of humanity ever spoken ; we are
indebted to him for the rescue of our bleeding country from the
clutches of the most foul revolt this world has ever seen, and for
leading us through fire and blood to a high position as a people ;
we are under obligations to Abraham Lincoln for setting up our
shattered fortunes at home and abroad, — for uniting the bonds of
the broken Union, and for making them ten times mightier than
before, — for casting out the evil spirit of the nation, — for opening
the preliminaries for a permanent peace, because based on the prin
ciples of humanity, and for inaugurating a career of unexampled
civil strength and prosperity.
We are indebted to him for making that word " Yankee " ever
lastingly honorable.
Shall we not, then, drop a few garlands of praise ; shall we not,
then, shed a few drops of kindly sympathy ; shall we not chant a
few mournful dirges over his consecrated grave ?
Yes, thou noble scion of the tree of Liberty, — honored outgrowth
of our Republican institutions ; yes, thou representative man of
modern times, bright as the star of morning in thy genius, temper,
integrity, honor, patriotism; yes, thou peerless pioneer in the
cause of human freedom, — thou conqueror of thine enemies by
the power of goodness ; thy name shall be embalmed in the most
sacred cells of our grateful memories ; it shall glow serenely in the
constellation of the worthies of thy native land, unobscured by that
of the immortal Washington ! Yes, thou martyr, sealing thy love

25
of freedom by thy blood ; the rallying cry henceforth shall be, —
"Washington the Father, Lincoln the Saviour, of our country! "
" While kingdoms orumble, old and hoary,
In a world where all is transitory,
These names shall ever shine, twin stars of glory,
With undimmed splendor in our nation's story."
But let the martyr sleep. His mission is accomplished ; and,
because of his departure, there remains the more for us to do. As
he himself once said above the braves of Gettysburg : " It is for us
the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work thus far
so nobly carried on ; it is rather for us * * * that we here highly
resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain ; that the nation
shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the govern
ment ofthe people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish
from the earth." And could those silent lips still move again, the
words, I think, to us would be : " Maintain the heritage which the
God of your fathers has intrusted to your hands ; love justice,
show mercy, relieve the oppressed, march on manfully to possess
the land before you: I have led you to the borders, — have pointed
you to a Joshua, who will lead you in triumphantly. The deep
water-floods are murmuring still ; but the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth ; his bow is in the cloud ; the returning dove admonishes
you that the deluge of his wrath is subsiding ; the signs of your
manifest destiny are in the heavens ; and out of the deeps of his
providence God is calling you to fulfil his purposes of mercy.
Weep not for me, but, with undaunted front, move on to execute
the mandates of the Almighty, to build up the temple of freedom,
along whose massive walls shall be written, ' Salvation,' and over
its golden portals, ' Praise.' "
4

26

Arrangements were made with Hon. Henry Wilson to furnish the
exceedingly interesting eulogy delivered by him at the same meeting ;
but he was suddenly called to Washington, rendering it impossible for
him to provide a copy : it is therefore omitted. Below will be found
a short abstract from the Boston " Evening Transcript " of May 5th,
1865: —
" Hon. Henry Wilson followed in a brief eulogy. He corroborated, from
personal observation and intercourse with the late President, many of the
traits of character that Rev. Mr. Nason had dwelt upon. The nation, he
thought, had failed to comprehend fully the character of Abraham Lincoln in
all its proportions ; but now that he had suddenly fallen, in the moment of
crowning victory, the people were beginning to do justice to their lost leader.
He would pass into history as the foremost man of the age. Mr. Lincoln
was a genuine product of our Democratic institutions, and had a living faith
in their permanency. His sympathy for the poor and oppressed was hearty
and genuine. Of his mind, one characteristic was the power of stating an
argument clearly, and of quickly detecting a fallacy. He had also a felicity
of expression. There were many phases of power and beauty in his letters
and speeches. The speech at Gettysburg was instanced as containing some
of the noblest utterances of any age."

27

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READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY.

" I would save the Union, and I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution."
President Ijnooln.
Long and loud is the People's wail,
From city and village, hill and dale ;
The crowded street is draped in woe,
The half-mast flag is drooping low,
As the sad cortege winds afar
From State to State with funeral car,
Like an Eclipse which veils the sky,
So solemn is the obsequy.
Do tears like these, so freely shed,
Hallow some royal chieftain dead,
Or mourn we boundless wealth or power,
That lived the wonder of an hour ?
Ah ! no. His were no blazoned arms,
Nor dazzling, intellectual charms ;
But, who in Fame's proud path can find
Such moral"grandeur of the mind ?
Like Israel's king, by unseen Hand
Raised to restore a bleeding land,
In darkest hour he looked to God,
Alone the path of duty trod,
Saw the poor slave forever free,
Then, martyred, fell in victory.
Alas ! And do the avenging skies
Demand such noble sacrifice ?

28
Aloft the Stars on Sumter waved,
The Battle o'er — the Union saved,
And songs of Peace his bosom stirred,
Songs, such as Judah's hills once heard,
When, as he saw the end of strife,
He sealed his Mission with his life ;
His glory chose the better part,
His goodness won a Nation's heart. I. H. S.

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