^^

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J.&q£..

LINCOLNIANA.

Kn Stress,
To be published iti one volume, small quarto, of about yx) pages, printed
in the best stvle bv John Wilson & Son, on fine tinted
paper, with large margin,
A O O L L E O T I O IsT
OF
^niuott^, iuWgi^Si, %iix%m% '%tXXn% tXt.
OCCASIONED BY THE ASSASSINATION AND DKATH OP
ABRAHAB¥i LINCOLN,
By Clergymen and Friends of our country in the United States,
Great Britain, and the Provinces ; containing nothing heretofore
published in any permanent form.
Sold by subscription only. Price Five Dollaes per copy.
As only A LIMITED edition (2.50 copies) will be printed,
those wishing to subscribe for this memento of our late lamented
President should apply eariy,
WILLIAM V. SPENCER,
134, Washington Street, Boston,

NOW HEADY.

A:^r EXAMII^ATION^

jljilosopi]]) of Sir ^liHiam familton,
AND OF THE
PRIWCIPAIi PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS DISCUSSED
IBT HIS WEITIBrGS,
BY JOHN STUAET MILL,

The " London Spectator " says : —
"We hold this to be Mr, Mill's great book, requiring far greater
powers of both imagination and exposition than are required by his
' Political Economy,' and showing these powers in a higher degree than
his ' System of Logic' We say this without acquiescing in the foun
dations of Mr, Mill's philosophy, which, as receiving the sanction of so
wide and profound a mind, we view with simple amazement; but
heartily acquiescing in the justice, and admiring the accomplished ease,
of much of the destructive criticism directed , against Sir William
Hamilton's philosophic crotchets, and thoroughly impressed with the
Intensity of the love of truth which breathes through the whole."
Two vols, crown, tinted paper. Price $2,00 per vol.
Uniform with " Discussions and Dissertations,"
WILLIAM V. SPENCER, Publisher,
134, WASHIirGTOlf STKEET, BOSTOJiT,

LINCOLNIANA.

Boston:
WILLIAM V, SPENCER,
1865,

¦/

ONLY 250 COPIES PRINTED.

Cainbridge : Printed by Johyi Wilson and Sons.

PREFACE.

|HATEVER relates to our Martyr-President possesses
undying interest. In this work, the Publisher has
aimed to snatch from oblivion some of the best of the
many discourses and comments on Mr. Lincoln's life and charac
ter, by transferring them from the papers of the day to a worthy
place in our permanent literature. The volume contains nothing
heretofore published in a pamphlet or book form. The Table of
Contents shows the breadth of the field from which the present
sheaf has been gleaned; for, in forming the volume, the lines of
party, seft, and nation, have been completely ignored. In bind
ing these scattered leaves together into a memorial chaplet, the
Publisher would show his respeft for the memory of the Great
Emancipator.

Boston, Sept, 9, 1865,

CONTENTS.

SERMONS,

Abbott, Rev, F, E 
Brigham, Rev. C. H. . .
CORDNER, Rev. J 
Chadwick, Rev, J. W. . . .
CoRwiN, Rev. E, T 
Damon, Rev. S, C. ...
DuTTON, Rev. O. H.
Hartzell, Rev. J. H. . .
Hughes, Rev. D. L. ...
Hull, Rev. Moses . .
JuNKiN, Rev. Geo., D.D. . .
Marshall, Rev. W. R. , .
Potts, Rev. J. F., B.A. .
Rowland, Rev. L. S. . . .
Stratton, Rev. J. B., D.D. .
Silver, Rev, Abiel , . . .
Talbott, Rev. J. J 
Watson, Rev. B., D.D. .

Page I

Dover, N.H 
Taunton, Mass  8
Montreal, Canada  21
Brooklyn, N.Y  36
Millstone, N.J  53
Honolulu, Sandwich Is  63
Holyoke, Mass  76
Buffalo, N.Y  89
Des Moines, Iowa  100
Battle Creek, Mich  123
Philadelphia, Pa  134
Columbus, Ohio  148
London, Eng  167
Bangor, Me  177
Natchez, Miss  186
Wilmington, Del  204
Louisville, Ky  212
Philadelphia, Pa  218

EULOGIES, SPEECHES, AND LETTERS,
Banks, Gen. N. P  New Orleans, La  233
Carruthers, Rev. J. J., D.D. . . . Portland, Me  239
Gilbert, Surgeon R. H. ... Jefferson, Ind  248
b

VI

Contents.

TAGB
HuRLBUT, Maj.-Gen  New Orleans, La  253
Jones, A. T  Philadelphia, Pa  258
Stebbins, Rev. H  San Francisco, Cal  268
Thompson, Rev. J, P,, D.D  New York  274

Adams, Hon, C. F  London, England
Disraeli, Hon. Benj 
Grey, Sir George 
Morse, Hon, F, H 
Russell, Lord John 
Smith, Prof. Goldwin 
Da Silva, Sr, R  Lisbon, Portugal
D'AuBiGNE, Dr. Merle  Geneva, Switzerland  315
Democratic Association  Florence, Italy  317
Lawrence, T, B  ,, ,,  318
Laboulaye, Edouard  Paris, France  320
Mill, John Stuart  Avignon, France  293
Martin, Henri  Paris, France  327

281
286288296
298
303307

APPENDIX,

Letter from Rev, Elias Nason

333

List of Publications relating to the Assassination, Death, and Funeral
Obsequies of Abraham Lincoln  33.

SERMONS.

r

LINCOLNIANA.

THE MARTYR OF LIBERTY:
A SERMON PREACHED IN THE UNITARIAN CHURCH, DOVER, N,H,
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 1 6, 1 865 ;
BY THE pastor,
REV, FRANCIS E, ABBOT,

Gen. 1, 19 : " Fear not; for am I in the place of God.-"'
DEAR friends, we assemble this morning, in our house of
worship, in the shadow of a mighty affli6tion. The hearts
of a vast nation are throbbing with anguish, horror, and dismay.
The pistol of the assassin has done its hellish work; and he,
who, by the enthusiastic acclamations of a great people, was
declared, but five short months ago, our chosen leader in the
march to universal freedom, our foremost champion of liberty,
has now become its martyr. In his fall, the country bleeds at
every pore; the stoutest heart thrills with fear; and the voice of
universal wailing is our requiem for the great departed. Trea
son, which we thought lay buried beneath the yet warm ashes of
Richmond, has leaped over the heads of our vi6lorious armies,
and carried by storm the impregnable forts of Washington. To-
I

The Martyr of Liberty.

day, the enemies of God and man rejoice: to-day, friends, there
is jubilee in hell.
I had planned to congratulate you this morning on the down
fall of rebellion, and the inauguration of a new civilization. I
had planned to speak hopeful words of our own prospe6tive
agency in redeeming mankind from barbarism and sin; and to
urge you, with fresh courage and rekindled zeal, to do your part
in this great and noble work. But that theme must wait: God
has given me a different message to-day. One subjedt alone
occupies our hearts and minds; and I must hearken to the
imperative demand of the hour. Its lessons are weighty and
solemn; and woe to us if we heed them not!
In the very hour of viftory, vi^hile the welkin rang with shouts
of triumph and exultation; while we gloried in the prowess of
our armies and navies; while we rejoiced, and thanked God, that
our gigantic task was well-nigh ended, — the stroke has fallen like
a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. The Ship of State has
weathered the storms of mid-ocean, and now approaches the
region of sunken reefs and tortuous channels; the haven is in
sight: but the danger was never so great as now. And, behold!
in the very hour when our need of a skilled and trusty pilot is
most pressing, he is struck down at the helm. Who is so blind
as not to see the peril ,^ who so bold as not to fear it? Rebellion
will receive fresh life from this its greatest triumph; and, trusting
to gain by murder what it has failed to gain by war, will strain
every nerve to follow up this terrific blow at the nation by
others as terrific. Loyal men will be so maddened and dis
mayed by an outrage to which American history can furnish no
parallel, as perhaps to seek security from its repetition by dan
gerous means. The day has gone by when the Chief Magistrate
of the great Republic could trust himself among the people.
Henceforth, body-guards and household troops must attend his

Rev. Francis E. Abbot.

steps; and, in sight of a military pomp which has hitherto be
longed solely to the Old World, who, alas! can repeat our
boast of olden times, that the American President is a simple
citizen ,? And further, in their exasperation at this cowardly and
bloody deed, the people of the North will be tempted, nay, have
been tempted, to take unlawful vengeance on those whose guilty
sympathy and support are given to its perpetrators. Who does
not perceive that their fiendish crime has put liberty and law in
greater jeopardy, and struck a sharper blow at the cause of our
country and of humanity, than the murder of many thousands in
fair and open battle? If we have no place of refuge, if we can
find no better than human succor, our hearts inay well grow sick
with fear and anguish. What a friend we have lost! His ster
ling integrity, his high moral principle, his unselfish and unambi
tious spirit, his simplicity and tender-heartedness, his pure and
patriotic aims, and, above all, his humble and childlike faith in
God, — these gave him a hold on the popular heart, and an influ
ence, both at home and abroad, which have made him almost the
saviour of his country. Faults he doubtless had; mistakes he
doubtless made: but the country reposed so confidingly on his
honesty, firmness, and cautious judgment, that it now feels
stunned at its loss. Peace to thy ashes, tried and trusty friend!
Thou hast fought a good fight; thou hast earned a rich reward,: —
praise, honor, and everlasting love, from thy country; approba
tion, benediftion, and eternal life, from Almighty God. We
knew not how we loved thee, till we found thee passed away for
ever. For us hast thou toiled; yea, for us hast thou died. Our
hearts are full of sorrow, and our eyes of tears: when shall we
look upon thy like again? Peace, I say, — peace to thy ashes,
for evermore!
I fear, my friends, that we have leaned overmuch upon this
great-hearted and large-minded man. I find myself bewildered

4 The Martyr of Liberty.

by his death, and asking, almost faithlessly, "Who can fill his
place ? " And yet the whole life of Abraham Lincoln is a rebuke
to such doubts and fears. Perhaps his strongest trait was a
childlike faith in the guidance of Almighty wisdom. From that
bleeding corpse in the Presidential Mansion comes a voice more
solemn than any of its living words, a voice full of encourage
ment and reproof, "Fear not; for am I in the place of God?"
The nation has leaned upon him, it scarcely knew how much,
and looked to him to steer us safely among the perilous rocks of
reconstrudlion. And now that we have lost our faithful helms
man, we are warned afresh to put our trust where he put his, —
in a God of justice and mercy. The bullet of the assassin can
not reach to the Almighty's throne. The Lord God omnipotent
reigneth for ever. No: great and good as he was, honored,
trusted, and loved as he was, Abraham Lincoln is not " in the
place of God," Though our perils are imminent and manifold,
it is weakness to be dismayed, and treason to despair. The
cause of our country is the cause of God; for he loves justice,
mercy, and righteousness better than we, and will raise up men
to carry out his holy designs. Did he not summon him whom
we mourn, out of obscurity and humble station, to be the Moses
of our deliverance, and to guide his chosen people through a Red
Sea of blood ? And, though our leader has fallen before we have
reached the Promised Land of peace, shall we not trust God to
raise us up a Joshua? We dishonor our cause and our country,
our ow^n souls, and their Creator, if v\^e give way to the cowardly
fears which assail us. The very faft, that God has given us a
Lincoln in the past, and a Grant in the present, is a pledge that
the line of our heroes and saviours shall not fail in the future.
Our fear must pass away with the first shock of this tremendous
crime: we must "come to ourselves," and repossess our souls.
After the battle of Cannae, which cost Rome seventy thousand of

Rev. Francis E. Abbot. 5
her best troops, and brought her to the very brink of destruftion,
the Roman Senate voted public thanks to Emilius Paulus, the
commander of the defeated forces, " because he had not de
spaired of the Republic." To-day, dear friends, when a great
prop and support is stricken out from under us, and a danger
more terrible than the loss of an army overhangs us, America
calls upon her children not to " despair of the Republic," not to
lose faith in God. On him, and not on any human strength or
wisdom, depends' our ultimate salvation.
Abraham Lincoln was a providential man; and, because I
most thoroughly believe this, I believe, also, that he lived to fulfil
his mission. He lived to vindicate the insulted majesty of the
nation, and to redeem the promises of his first Inaugural Address.
He lived to enter Richmond in triumph, to behold the Stars and
Stripes waving over the rebel capital, and to witness the de
struftion of the grand army of the rebellion. By his moral
greatness, his patience, his forbearance, his praftical wisdom and
unselfish patriotism, he has earned a renown pure as that of Wash
ington, and will stand side by side v^^ith him, through all coming
time, on the same high pedestal. I would that his earthly re
mains might slumber in the same august tomb; and that Mount
Vernon, doubly consecrated by the ashes of Washington, and by
the ashes of him who alotie, in the annals of historic time, stands
forth his peer, might become the Mecca of the New World, —
the shrine where millions of pilgrims, through generations untold,
and from nations yet unborn, shall kneel and pray, and rise up
fired with the divinest inspirations of liberty. The toil of that
great soul is ended.
Perhaps the day had come when Abraham Lincoln could no
longer serve the Republic he so dearly loved; perhaps, by his
exceeding kindness and mercy towards undeserving men, he was
about to sacrifice the vital interests of his country; and perhaps

The Martyr of Liberty.

God suffered the long-threatened and long-averted blow to fall at
last on that beloved head, just in season to prevent dire calamity
to America, and a lasting eclipse to his own pure fame. Who
shall fathom the purposes of the Unsearchable One? The great
work of Abraham Lincoln is still incomplete; but his death by
horrid hands may be the only way to complete it. Of one thing
be sure, — God's plans are never balked. The souls of John
Brown and Abraham Lincoln in solemn fellowship are " march
ing on," God himself at their head, and millions of tramping feet
in their rear: the earth shakes with their mighty tread; and, be
neath the millstone of that stupendous march, slavery, treason,
and rebellion shall be ground into impalpable dust.
But, friends, the lesson of renewed faith in God is not the
only one forced in upon our minds by this heart-sickening crime.
We need, and now we see our need written out in letters of
blood, not only a passive faith in God, but an aftive obedience to
his will. Murder is a stern tutor, and sternness is the burden of '
his tuition. The fiend of secession has at last torn off his mask,
and, like the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, has revealed to the
outraged light of heaven a visage hideous with all the ugliness of
hell. Every misguided follower whose heart is honest, but
whose head is weak, must shrink back in horror and affright.
None but devils in human form will justify or palliate a deed
like this; and to such our reply must be short and sharp. Not
revenge, but self-defence ; not vengeance through an irresponsi
ble and lawless mob, but justice through courts of law. We
must make it dangerous to dabble in treason; for we see its
danger. The diabolism of secession is now patent to all; and, if
we show it either mercy or pity, our blood shall be upon our
own heads. In the exultation of viftory, the nation betrayed
marks of a good-natured weakness, of a criminal magnanimity;
and God may have suffered this appalling blow to strike us, to

Rev. Francis E. Abbot.

waken us to our duty, and startle us into obedience. Make sure
work with treason, exterminate rebellion from the land; give no
rebel the right to vote, until his contrition is transparent; and if
the great ringleaders fall into our hands, as a solemn aft of self-
proteftion, and as a warning to all futurity, mete out to them the
extreme penalty of the law. Brand treason for all coming time
with the infamy of the gallows. We have no right to trifle with
our great responsibilities : we are trustees for posterity, and must
transmit to them unimpaired the noble heritage of freedom.
" Heal not the wound of the daughter of my people slightly."
The blood of our martyr calls us afresh, in no ambiguous lan
guage, to renewed self-consecration, courage, and fidelity. Mild
and forgiving to repentant prodigals, we must be stern and un
compromising to conquered rebels. Leniency to traitors means
death to loyal men. Alas for us, if we leave smouldering embers
in our new temple of liberty !
These, then, are the lessons of the sad event which has filled
our hearts with gloom and apprehension, — greater faith in God,
greater faithfulness to freedom. Bitter as is our loss, that hal
lowed blood will not have flowed in vain, if we truly heed its
silent eloquence. The sombre drapery of woe, which here, in
the house of God, feebly typifies a grief too deep for words, is but
a pompous hypocrisy, if we follow not his example for whom we
grieve. He may not always have been the first to comprehend
the great duty of the hour; but, once comprehended, he was
always the first to do it. Pure and tender of heart, wise and
firm in aftion, devout and childlike in spirit, — O Abraham Lin
coln, thou hast died for us, and .our souls are heavy for thee this
day! Take the love which fills our hearts, and the tears which
fill our eyes, as our sole return for thy sacrifice of life. We take
up the task which drops from thy dying hand; and may a double
portion of thy spirit rest upon us! Dover, N. H., Enquirer, April 2^, 1865.

THE NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT:
A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,
TAUNTON, MASS,, ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL l6, 1865 ;
BY REV, CHARLES H, BRIGHAM,
pastor of the church.

Lam. ii. I : " How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger,
and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel ! "
IT is a sad and solemn time for our assembly to-day. We
should have remembered, -w'lth. anthem and rapture, the new
birth ofthe spirit on the day ofthe Saviour's rising. We should
have kept the double festival of the resurreftion of the great
Deliverer and the resurreftion of this Christian nation. But how
suddenly all our joy is changed into woe ! How terribly thick
darkness has come upon our exhilaration! How God has called
in this solemn day his terrors round about us ! In what bewilder
ment of soul, as men stunned and prostrate, we wait for the next
tidings ! So short an interval, and 5'et so great a change ! Where
are we now? and what shall become of us?
Our day of Fasting in the past week was changed to a day
of Thanksgiving : we could not mourn when such hope was
opened, when there was such brightness of promise, when the
agony was over, and the land seemed redeemed and saved.
Even the ancient Fast-time of the Christian Church, the memorial

Rev. Charles H. Brigham.

day of the Saviour's death, w^as made this year a holiday in the
land, as it was chosen for the restoration of the nation's banner to
the walls from which this banner had been lowered in shame four
years ago. But now, on this high holiday of the Church and of
the land, we keep our Fast, The whole loyal nation is in mourn
ing. The bells which rang out at the opening of the last week,
in every village and hamlet, from the farthest East to the farthest
West, their festal peal, at the close of the week tolled their most
mournful refrain for the beauty of the land, slain upon its high
places. It is a funeral service that invites us, more melancholy
than any that has ever called us together; and, with bowed heads,
and hearts refusing to be comforted, we wait in our places of
prayer, asking only help from the Lord, — asking only that the
Father above will show us the light of his countenance.
What to say now, — how from this chaos of emotions, this
mingling of wrath and fear, of sadness and doiabt, of trembling
anxiety and stern determination, of incredulous surprise and
mournful conviftion, this sense of the omnipotence of the all-
disposing God, who so strangely baffles our designs, and enforces
the folly and vanity of our mortal hopes, — how from this chaos
to draw so soon any wise or sober thought, who shall know?
Is it possible, is it decent, to make a homily to-day out of this
awful catastrophe ? Shall we venture to insult this great grief by
our cold moralizing, or to put it aside by any auguries of the
future? . Shall we forecast results, and arrange plans, and cry
in frivolous haste, "The king is dead: long live the king!" as
we turn from the ruler that was to the ruler that is ? Or shall we
forget all composure of soul, and summon up the spirit of rage,
and cry, " Vengeance, destruftion, and death ! " for the deed of
blood that has been done ? Shall the pulpit become this day the
instigator of violence, to rouse the bewildered souls of the peo
ple to fury ? Not so shall it be here. But we will wait humbly
2

I o The National Bereavement.
upon the Lord, and only ask that he will enable us to bear this
burden. A great crime has been committed in our land, — a bloodier
deed than the nation ever knew, though the land has in these last
years in more than metaphor been deluged with blood. It is a
crime against the nation, and for it there will be a fearful recom
pense. God grant that the forebodings of those who see in this
the beginning of a reign of terror may not be realized; that the
new ruler may have firmness to check all outbreaks, and to
enforce the laws even against popular fury! We need not sup
press oior horror at the crime. We need not disguise our sense
of the great danger which it brings upon the land, even in this
time when the triumph of our arms seems assured. It may inspirit
the leaders of the rebellion, and breathe life into the dying em
bers. It may encourage the fallen traitors to lift their heads, and
make one more struggle for their desperate cause. It may reverse
the order so successfully brought in, and restore the iniquities
which seemed to be ruined and dead. We may conjure up a
hundred evils which shall come from this crime. Yet it is better
to look upon the other side of the pifture, and see what we have
to depend upon, where we stand, even with this terror around us.
Our brave armies are still in the field, strong, resolute, hopeful;
not to be frightened by any deed of an assassin; ready to follow
their leaders, as ready now as ever, against foul treason. We have
generals in command, who have been proved competent, wise,
faithful, loyal, and who will surely see to it that the Republic
shall suffer no detriment. Of the new ruler, whatever may be
his defefts in habit and his lack in culture, no one can doubt the
ability or the patriotism. Unless he shall surround himself with
bad advisers, he cannot readily err; he cannot immediately alter
the course of things. The nation has force enough, union enough,
will enough, to proteft itself against any new outbreaks of trea-

Rev. Charles H. Brigham. 1 1
son. The murder of the ruler comes too late to destroy the
Government, too late to create anarchy and confusion, too late to
restore the broken power of slavery, too late to give traitors
success and credit. There is no rival Government that can be set
up against this Government. The assassin has killed but one
man: he has not slain the nation. If he had done his work in
those years when the traitors were encamped close to the gates
of the capital, or when their armies, flushed with viftory, had
invaded our Northern soil, or even when the rival ruler had his
cabinet and his court, his army and navy, it might have brought
disaster fearful to contemplate. But now it comes too late. It is
a crime useless against the life of the nation, though it may be
hideous in the passions it shall engender.
This crime will, nevertheless, teach us several things, which
have been often enough urged upon us, but which many of our
people are slow to learn. It will teach all classes the foolishness
of attempting to conciliate traitors by dealing gently with their
offences, and meeting them half-way when they have come into
our power. Our murdered President, in opposition to the advice
of many of his wisest friends, who knew these Southern traitors
and their spirit, who had been their associates, was disposed to
treat them kindly, to overlook their crimes, to grant them am
nesty, to believe that they might be won back to honor and loy
alty. In a few days, probably, his proclamation would have been
published, granting such easy terms as would have amazed even
these men. It is safe to say, that no document of that kind will
soon be issued. It is safe to say, that, for the present at least, there
will be no more compromise with traitors ; that there will be no
favor shown either to rebels in arms, or rebels who have been
forced to lay down, their arms. The traitors in our hands will
be fitly dealt with by justice and the law, even if they find no
quicker or sharper penalty. This aft of violence, coming just at

1 2 The National Bereavement.
the time when the leader of the rebel armies and his companions
had been permitted virtually to go free, and even allowed privi
leges and honors, — the man and the men who have done more to
sustain the rebellion than any others, and have upon them an
awful weight of guilt and stain of blood, — will go far to settle
the question, how to deal with traitors, and what shall be done
with them. The sentiment of the army, the sentiment of the
nation, will permit no more trifling. This reward for clemency
and favor, this answer to kind dealing and pardon, will hush, for
the time at least, all talk of amnesty, and will tell the leaders what
they have to expeft, if they fall into the hands of men who will
remember their crime instead of pitying their misfortune.
And this crime will teach the people by a terrible illustration
the spirit of slavery, the spirit of that form of social life which is
based upon the oppression of men and the disregard of human
rights. Four years ago, this crime was meditated, but not accom
plished. The spirit of the South then justified it; and the man
who had committed it would have been a hero, would have been
received and honored, as was the ruffian who struck down our
Senator in his seat in the Capitol. Even now, the assassin who
has done this deed of blood would be welcomed with triumph, if
he could find a place where they dared so to receive him. There
can be no doubt that this plan has all along been designed.
Think what rewards have been offered in the Southern journal's
for the zealot who should do this deed! This is the kind of work
that suits the base, cunning, cruel, and insolent spirit of slavery.
It belongs to the same class with the scourgings and the brand
ings of women and children ; with the wanton murders of the
duel; with the sending of emissaries to burn the hotels of great
cities, and destroy the lives of thousands of innocent men; with
the burning of cities behind them by the rebel leaders, leaving
thousands to wretchedness, exposure, and despair. All these

Rev. Charles H. Brigham. 13
things — this great crime, w^hich to-day startles the nation more
than any report of a battle lost or a city burned — are the na
tural, the necessary issue of the institution which blighted the
land so long, and ruled with such arrogance and tyranny. Shall
we not learn from it to hate more heartily this infamous thing?
Shall it not tell us to cast out for ever, root and branch, every
vestige of this curse ? So long as any tendril remains by which
this vine can cling to our national life, so long we may expeft
such crime as this. Nothing can change the nature of this abom
ination. It hesitates at no violence, no outrage, no insult to the
laws of God and man. Let us, on this new grave of the chief of
the nation, with an oath as solemn and as deep as that of the
young son of Hamilcar, vow eternal hostility to this source of all
evil, in every form and degree; that we will have no rest until it
is blotted out; that we will have no heed of any sign, promise, or
prayer that it may make! Reluftantly our honest ruler brought
himself to the conviftion that the existence of human slavery was
incompatible with the safety of the land. We see that clearly,
now, in the blow which has struck down his life, and made him a
martyr. God grant that this deed of blood may write the death
of slavery in letters red as of blood all over the land, -^ in the
purpose of every resolute and patriotic heart, in the conviftion
and in the determination of all men! We will have no more of
that social order which uses assassination, and is built upon vio
lence. We will have no more of that style of life, which whips
women, and starves prisoners, and deludes the people to ruin by
specious falsehoods. Not alone, " Down with the traitors ! " shall
be our cry, but " Down with the accursed thing which has
brought their treason ! down with the thing which has made trea-
.son possible in this free Republic!" We see now how perilous is
the peace that shall come while any life is left to this enemy of
our peace. Let us be fixed in this resolution, that no shape or

1 4 The National Bereavem,ent.
hold be left to this iniquity in all our land ! The spirits of our
martyrs, in the long array which the battles of these years have
gathered, wait to administer to the nation this vow. It is to you
and me, brethren, to all of us, to men and to children. This
blood will be upon our garments, if we do not wipe off the stain
from the nation. From every pulpit in the land this day should
echo the voice, "No peace with the wicked; no peace with that
which is the source of such wickedness; no peace with that which
destroys all honor; no peace with that which sends out midnight
murderers! "
And if any thing could complete that union of men of all par
ties in the North, which was begun by the assault four years ago
upon the beleaguered fort in the harbor of Charleston, it would be
such a crime as this. There can be only one opinion about this
aft, among all men of fair minds and patriotic hearts. There can
be only one voice in condemnation of such an aft, only one feel
ing of horror. The journals most hostile to the Government and
its policy will hasten to disavow this aft, and will join in the wish
that summary justice may be done upon these murderers, upon
all who have had any part in this infamy, whatever their rank or
station or motive. If there should be any heart base enough to
approve such a murder, it will not dare to find a voice. Through
the length and breadth ofthe land, there will be one utterance, as
there is substantially but one feeling. This aft will convert men
who were only half converted before, will silence cavillers, and
will bring men of all parties together in the cause of the nation.
Wranglings will cease before this opened grave: they ought to
cease here, in such a solemn hour. Men will vie with each other,
the most conservative with the most radical, in the promptness of
their devotion to the public welfare. The rejoicings of this last
week had seemed almost to obliterate party strife: the mournings
of the coming week will draw in the few that were still keeping

Rev. Charles H. Brigham. 15
themselves apart. As, around the private bier, relatives and
friends meet, forgetting their personal offences in the fellowship
of grief; so, around this public bier, all differences will be forgot
ten in the sense of a common calamity. No Ishmael will utter
his hatred in the household of mourning Isaac. Those who had
never praised before will take up the lament, and will claim part
in the burial. If such an occasion as this cannot silence strife,
and bring men to be of one voice and heart, certainly nothing
can. And now full justice will be done to that noble man, the chief
viftim of this outrage, who has been so long the mark for abuse,
detraftion, and falsehood, but in whom the heart of this nation
recognized a providential leader. Now that he is done to death
by wicked hands, with one heart and one voice all will rise up
to say, that here was a sincere, a w^ise, an honest, a just, a God
fearing man. They w^ill tell, that he loved mercy better than
power; that he loved his country better than his own fame or
interest; how beneath this careless manner there was a grave
and serious heart; how on this plain brow and ungainly frame
there sat the dignity of a true manhood. Every event in his life,
from its early struggles to its crowning martyrdom, will unveil its
significance. They will tell how this Caesar was assassinated, not
because he had destroyed, but because he had defended, the Re
public; not because he had suppressed, but because he had vindi
cated, liberty; not as he was gathering new armies to enlarge his
tyranny and triumph, but as he was about to disband and send
home the armies that had done their work of saving the State.
We shall now see that this plain man of the West, of unknown
lineage, with no gifts of birth or eloquence or fortune, coming to
the chair of State with no experience of its duties, has proved
himself the man of all men to save the State; a better man than
any scholar, orator, or martial leader would have been ; a second

1 6 The National Bereavement.
Washington, entitled as truly as the first to the name of " Father
of his Country," Violating no law, assuming hastily no preroga
tive of place, hesitating long before taking any decisive step, he
has yet brought this nation through the chasm of its fate, and
landed it on the hither shore of freedom, of union, and of peace.
No great crime dishonors his use of the trust which the people
gave to him, and which they repeated with such cheerful consent
after his work had been tried as by fire. His errors have been on
the side of kindness, of humanity; have come from his generous
heart and from his trust in men. The worst complaint of him
has been, that he had too much pity for the stern duties of com
mand; that he could forgive so readily, and was so prone to
compassion. Yet, with all this tender heart, he has taken no step
backward; has recalled no promise; has been driven neither by
threats, nor won by entreaties, to break any pledge to the people.
No ruler of any people ever had a harder task; harder in its mag
nitude, its obstacles, its complex variety, the momentous results
depending upon it, its infinite troubles and embarrassments, "fight
ings without and fears within," false friends, weak advisers, in
competent instruments. Who shall measure such a task? Yet
history will say he did the task faithfully and well, — history will
say that here was a successful as well as a faithful ruler. The
most glorious as well as the most crowded years in all our an
nals will be the four years in which the hand of this ruler guided"
the helm of the State.
That simple name. El Khalil, the Friend, by which the Arabs
designate the first of the Patriarchs, is a true designation for
this our ruler who bore that Hebrew name. He was indeed the
friend, — the friend of his companions, the friend of the people,
and the friend of God, as James says the first Abraham was
called. In all his administrations, in all his messages and letters,
in his declarations so often repeated, and in the steady tone of

Rev. Charles H. Brigham. 1 7
his discourse, there is the pious sense always appearing of depen
dence upon the heavenly Friend. How strangely prophetic now
appears that inaugural word, spoken only a few weeks ago, on that
lowering day, in front of the Capitol (sad augury of woe soon to
come), — no hint there of any course that he should pursue; no
policy marked out for the coming years: but only an expression
of trust in the Lord ; only a vision of the Great Head of all Com
monwealths, of the judgments of God, of God leading the peo
ple, — "Whatsoever He wills to do, let his will be done"! This
was a religious man, a religious ruler. That kindness of soul was
stayed upon a principle of faith. That seeming w^eakness of will
was supported by the invisible arm. The trembling magistrate
leaned upon God; and, w^hen others seemed to see an unsteady
purpose, he felt beneath him the divine succor, and was strong in
that uplifting. No place more proper to honor his name and to
tell his vi^orth than the house of God, to which his summons has
so often called the worshippers in these years of trial. Again
and again he has asked us to pray for the nation, and for the
rulers of the nation; and has been quickened in the blessing of
these united prayers. Perhaps the last work of his hand may
have been a call of the nation to thanksgiving and praise; to ren
der thanks in their sanftuaries to that Disposer of events, that
God of battles, who has guided the instruments of his will below,
and whose right hand and whose holy arm, more than any coun
sel or w^ork of men, have gotten us the viftory.
That so good and pure a man, so worthy of the love and honor
of the nation, should have been taken from us in such a way, im
mensely deepens the great lament in the land. We mourn not
chiefiy for the lost ruler, taken at so critical a time of public
affairs; but more for the upright, noble, and patriotic man, whose
large heart had endeared him to the people as no ruler since the
first has been endeared. This was the people's President, not by
3

The National Bereavement.

any qualities of high genius, of various gifts, of commanding w^ill;
not as the great philosopher who wrote the Declaration of our
Freedom, or as the inflexible general who called the Eternal One
to witness that the Constitution should not be nullified or im
paired, — but as the man whom the people believed in as one
who would not deceive them, who would not oppress them, who
would not betray them. He loved those even who hated him,
better than the ambitious leaders who drew them astray. He was
a truer friend to the men who fought against his rule, than the
haughty lords of the lash, who used these poor millions only as
the tools of their pride and their will. And he died really as the
Saviour died, — on the very anniversary, too, ofthe Saviour's death,
and by a crime hardly less revolting, — with a prayer in his heart
for his enemies. What have the last afts of this our ruler been,
but a comment upon that dying word of Jesus, " Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do "? Well may we borrow
the words of one of our eminent men, and call the ruler who has
so died, in a double sense, "the Saviour of his country,"
Nor may we omit to speak of the other eminent intended vic
tim of this horrid conspiracy, who has stood by the side of his
chief, in these four years of trying difficulty, to cheer by his hope
fulness, to advise from his knowledge of public affairs, and to
perform all the office of a ready friend. How well the former
rival gave up disappointment and vexation, to do his part in this
crisis of the nation ! With what moderation and what skill he
has managed those relations of the nation in foreign lands ! saving
us from added war; magnanimously confessing errors, and making
restitution, yet always upholding the country's dignity; daring to
oppose popular clamor, rather than risk the safety of the nation,
and the success of its efforts to quench the fires of rebellion !
That the land is saved, is owing in no small degree to the wisdom
and patriotism of this optimist, as we have believed him. His

Rev. Charles H. Brigham. 19
sanguine heart has only helped to keep up the faith of the people,
but has not driven him into any errors of folly or rashness. He,
too, whether he live or die, will have an honorable record, — hon
orable, not only in the story of long, various, and distinguished
services in so many public charges, for more than a generation;
not only in the ability of his statesmanship, and the success of his
diplomacy: but honorable as he has lived down calumnies, vindi
cated his prophecies, and won to himself the applause of enemies.
This man, too, the country cannot affoi'd to spare. Who shall
stand in his place?
A great sorrow indeed has come upon us in these outrages;
and it almost seems that these bright skies, this cheerful sunshine,
these songs of birds to-day, insult bur grief We would have the
heavens hung with black, as we have draped the doors of our
houses and the walls of our churches. But, after all, is it not bet
ter to take the omen of the sunshine than to brood upon our grief
and its emblems ? We may be glad, that, heavy as our loss is, it
is no worse; that, successful as this great crime has been, it was
not more successful. Other viftims were aimed at; and, if all the
work had been done, we should have been left without a head for
our arinies, and almost without a Government, The crime has
defeated its own ends. It will recoil upon those w^ho have ex-
pefted to profit by it. This cro"wning wickedness is only the last
of that series of follies by which Providence has blinded insane
men here to their destruftion. It cannot hinder the triumph of
the righteous cause. Not falsely was the vision given to our mar
tyr, — the vision of freedom established, and a country saved.
Not in vain has been his service. Not too early did the good man
die, for the fruition of his hopes and his labors. Our illumination
has been changed to cloud, our thanksgiving to lamenting; and
the voice of wailing is heard in the land. But there is no voice
of despair: the blackness is not that of a cavern or of night, but

20 The National Bereavement.
only of a cloud in the sky: the lament is not a wail, — not the thre
nody of those who see no future; but is rather a requiem for the
dead, the minor chord which goes in the funeral march before the
full note of triumph. The land is safe, for God is its ruler. He
leads us to deliverance. We will not trust in any arm of flesh,
which may be broken; but we will trust in the living God, who
hath led us hitherto. We will go on in the strength of this con
viftion, that, if we are constant in his righteousness, he will give
the answer to our prayer, — will give peace, prosperity, plenty,
a goodlier union, and a more glorious future.

THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN:

AN ADDRESS SPOKEN AT A MEMORIAL SERVICE IN THE CHURCH OF THE
MESSIAH, MONTREAL, ON SUNDAY EVENING, APRIL 23, 1865 ;

BY REV, JOHN CORDNER,

THE lessons we have read this evening- are those of the ser
vice for the burial of the dead, " Lord, make me to know
mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may
know how frail I am." — " Lord, thou hast been my dwelling-place
in all generations." The solemn strain of these grand old psalms
has swept the chord of human hearts throughout the Hebrew
and Christian ages. And they are fresh and strong to-day as
when Moses wrote and David sang, " Now is Christ risen from
the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept, . . . As
we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the
image of the heavenly. . . . Thanks be to God, who giveth us
the viftory through our Lord Jesus Christ." This is the jubilant
utterance of the great apostle, with mind illuminated by the new
light which Christ brought from on high. And when the darkest
shadows of death are projefted up"^ our path, this light gives
consolation, hope, joy.
Our present memorial service is but a single refrain of the
wide-spread expression of grief which the past week witnessed on

2 2 The Murder of President Lincoln.
this continent. On Wednesday last, a funeral took place in
Washington, which closed the law-courts, banks, and places of
business in this chief city of British America; invested our streets
with subdued silence; called out visible tokens of mourning; and
opened halls and churches, where words of sorrow and sympathy
might find utterance. All this was spontaneous. It was the
spontaneous " tribute of respeft (I quote here from our mayor's
proclamation) to the memory of the late President of the United
States, and of sympathy with the bereaved members of his family;
and an expression of the deep sorrow and horror felt by the citi
zens of Montreal, at the atrocious crime by which the President
came to an untimely death," A great crime had been committed,
which moved the common human heart of this continent to great
horror, and great sorrow and great sympathy for those more im
mediately afflifted.
On the evening of Good- Friday, — the anniversary of our
Lord's crucifixion, — Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States of America, was mortally shot by the hand of an assassin.
This deed will stand throughout historic time as one of the dark
and tragic events of history; signal and memorable as indicating
to what enormity of crime defeated hate and rage will drive men.
The mode of the murder was deliberate and charafteristic. All
in front of the private box where the President was seated with
his wife and friends, — all in front was light and publicity. A
large concourse of people was there, drawn by the expeftation of
seeing their beloved Chief Magistrate, who, on his part, went at
personal inconvenience, lest the people should be disappointed by
his absence. The flaming jets of gas shed the brilliancy of their
light upon the assemblage. In contrast with this, the passage in
rear of the box was all darkness • and secrecy. There prowled
the assassin marking his viftim. Lock and door had been pre
viously tampered with, to facilitate the horrid purpose on hand.

Rev, fohn Cordner, 23

And when the moment came for the dreadful deed to be done,
— standing in the darkness behind his viftim, — the murderer
fired the fatal shot. The bullet lodged in the President's brain,
and instantly deprived him of conscious existence. The physical
mechanism of the strong frame maintained its aftion some hours
longer; but, before eight o'clock next morning, heart and lungs
had ceased all funftion. The earthly life of Abraham Lincoln
had closed for ever.
This murder, in the method of its accomplishment, is some
what symbolic of the attempt made four years ago on the life of
the nation. That attempt broke the peace and disturbed the
order of this hitherto peaceful, industrious, and prosperous conti
nent. The same evil influence which moved to that attempt,
pulled the trigger behind President Lincoln's head, and lodged
the bullet in his brain. If the head of Queen Viftoria stood in the
way of the accomplishment of its purposes, it would share a like
fate, if a like opportunity offered. The spirit of the slave power
brooks no opposition. Habituated to the exercise of arbitrary
rule, it chafes at the moral and constitutional restraints of a free,
political, and social order. Hence its armed revolt against the
pre-existing peaceful political order four years ago, as soon as the
result of the eleftion declared that it should no longer dominate
the national affairs with a view to its own extension. The Con
stitution guaranteed its sway within existing limits, unmolested
by interference from without. Dissatisfied with this, it sought
extension into territories hitherto free, and untainted by slave-
holding institutions. The slave power, be it still borne in mind,
revolted against the result of an eleftion in which itself took
aftive part. In the prescribed constitutional way, the nation de
cided against the territorial extension of slavery by the eleftion of
Mr. Lincoln; and, from the hour this decision was first made
known, the slave power conspired against the national existence.

24 The Murder of President Lincoln.
After the manner of the assassin, it worked in secrecy and the
dark. Disregarding the sacred obligations involved in high na
tional trusts, it made use of its official opportunities to destroy
the nationality it had undertaken to serve. By stealthy distribu
tion of the military stores and naval resources of the nation, the
slaveholders then in offices of high trust crippled its pow^er for
self-proteftion. By various intrigue abroad, the slave power mis
represented the aftual issue at stake, and involved foreign opin
ion in one of the most stupendous political delusions of modern
times. After such manner did it work, in secrecy and the dark;
and by strategem and device sought to make sure the blow it was
preparing to strike at the national life.
Sic semper tyrannis — thus may it always be with tyrants —
were the words of the assassin of President Lincoln. Sic sem,per
tyrannis, — this is the motto of the State of Virginia. All honor
to Virginia, oldest of the States, mother of many Presidents and
illustrious men! All honor to Virginia, for the wisdom and ex
cellence she has given to the world in so many of her sons!
Within her borders, Virginia has the elements of enduring great
ness; but conjoined with these she had the one element of social
and political blight, — I mean the institution of slavery. Contaft
with this institution inevitably obscures the moral perceptions,
and induces a strange inversion of the moral order. Evil is put
for good, and good for evil; bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter;
slavery for liberty, and liberty for slavery. Only on this ground
can we account for the use of the motto in this case. If the irre
sponsible control of man over man is not ofthe nature of tyranny,
I know not what is. If the deprivation of man of his natural
rights, — his right is his own person, to the fruits of his skill and
toil, and to the sacred privileges of domestic life, — if the aftual
deprivation of these rights, through the irresponsible aft of
another, is not aftual tyranny, 1 know not what is. But the insti-

Rev. fohn Cordner. 25

tution of slavery legitimates all this, — so far as its code can legiti
mate any thing. This motto. Sic semper tyrannis, floating over
the Capitol at Richmond, and over the slave-breeding farms and
slave-auftion marts of Virginia, if understood in its true import,
ought to have struck awe to the heart of every slave-trader and
slave-owner. But its import was not discerned. Its significance
was obscured through the distorting moral influence of slavery.
Hence comes its utterance from the lips ofthe assassin who, from
the darkness behind, fired that deadly ball into the brain of Presi
dent Lincoln, the emancipator from bondage of four millions of
human beings.
The assassination of Mr. Lincoln was not a thought born of
last week or last month. It was plotted from the beginning of the
insurreftion, more than four years ago. It will be remembered,
that, after much persuasion, he was induced, by friends who had
taken pains in gathering undoubted information concerning the
plot, to change his plan and time for proceeding to Washington
for his first inauguration. His friends had obtained possession of
fafts relating to a plot for assassination, and they would be satis
fied with nothing short of a private night-journey in advance of
the public journey proposed. He yielded in this matter to the
most urgent solicitation of friends; and thus, in all probability,
prevented the conspirators from accomplishing their deadly pur
pose at that time. He yielded; but would on no account consent
to go, until he had fulfilled two public engagements on the next
day, — both of which he averred he would keep, though it should
cost him his life. It was on one of these occasions, — at the rais
ing of the national flag at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on
Washington's birthday, — that he uttered these memorable words:
" If this country cannot be saved without giving up the principle
involved in the Declaration of Independence, / would rather be
assassinated on the spot than surrender it.''^ Thus spake Abraham
4

26 The Murder of President L incoln.
Lincoln in the month of February of the year eighteen hundred
and sixty-one.
The statements made at the time, and preserved still as record
of history, inform us that the "charafter and pursuits of the con
spirators were various. Some of them were impelled by a fanati
cal zeal, which they term 'patriotism;' and they justified their afts
by the example of Brutus, in ridding his country of a tyrant.
One of them was accustomed to recite passages, put into the
mouth ofthe charafter of Brutus, in Shakspeare's play of 'Julius
Caesar;' others were stimulated by the hope of pecuniary reward,"
Again, it was stated that " the list of the names of the conspira
tors presented a most astonishing array of persons high in South
ern confidence, and some whose fame is not confined to this
country alone. Statesmen laid the plan, bankers indorsed it, and
adventurers were to carry it into effeft. They understood Mr.
Lincoln was to leave Harrisburg at nine o'clock by special train;
and the idea was, if possible, to throw the cars from the road at
some point where they would rush down a steep embankment,
and destroy in a moment the lives of all on board. In case of
the failure of this projeft, their plan was to surround the carriage
on the v\^ay from depot to depot in Baltimore, and assassinate him
with dagger or pistol-shot," *
Subsequently an advertisement appeared at the South, making
fervent appeal to slaveholding States to advance a large sum of
money to promote the "patriotic purpose" — this was the term
used — of "reaching" the President of the United States, the
Vice-President, and Secretary of State, and destroying their lives.
I do not say that all the men of the South sanftioned such plots,
or approved of such proposals. God forbid! I am confident
there are multitudes of men there who would recoil from them in
* See Rebellion Record, 1860-61, Doc. 38.

Rev, John Cordner. 27

horror. But the secret plot and the published appeal were both
the produft of a state of society familiarized with violence and
disregard of human life through familiarity with slave institutions.
The afts of Preston Brooks and Wilkes Booth were inspired by
the same social and political ideas.
The dreadful purpose, then, of assassinating Mr, Lincoln, has
borne more than a four years' waiting. And now, in its aftual
execution, it has horrified the world. Four years ago, Mr, Lin
coln was, comparatively, an untried man, — untried, I mean, in
the great responsibilities which devolved upon him as President
ofthe United States, during the most critical period in the history
of the country. The w^eight of those responsibilities we can but
dimly understand. How they pressed by night and by day, amid
the divided councils of friends and the constant obloquy of ene
mies, we can but poorly imagine. Amid the varying fortunes of
the four years' war, and the complications of foreign diplomacy,
this hitherto untried man met the daily exigencies ofthe occasion
in such manner as to strengthen general confidence in him from
day to day, and from year to year. The secret of his success lay
in the simplicity and sincerity of his purpose. The honesty of
his intention was so clear, that it could not be even suspefted.
And this honesty of purpose was sustained by a praftical sagacity
truly wonderful. His integrity and wisdom, rooted and grounded
as they "were in a generous nature, quickened and moved by re
ligious faith, supported and direfted Mr, Lincoln throughout his
whole administration of public affairs, and won for him that
always increasing confidence which resulted so decisively in his
second eleftion. His predominating qualities of charafter desig
nated him as the providentially appointed man for the time. He
was a self-made man, as the phrase goes. His name indicates
his English ancestry; and his great perseverance and praftical
qualities of charafter indicate fidelity to his Anglo-Saxon lineage.

The Murder of President Lincoln.

One of the most critical problems to be solved in his presidential
career related to the enslaved men at the South, and the treatment
thereof As Abraham Lincoln, his honest instinfts would strike
the fetters from the slave. As President of the United States, he
was restrained by constitutional limitations. For these limitations
he had a due regard, as he was bound to have; but as from time
to time they became clearly weakened and broken, in law and
faft, by insurgent aftion, then the honest instinfts of the man
found their justifiable expression in the afts of the President, who
was always ready to give the slave the benefit of the breach.
Step by step, with an honest and pure wisdom, he walked the
straight and trying path of emancipation. And one thing spe
cially noteworthy here is, that he never took a backward step on
this path. New circumstances might arise, out of which a cry
would come to reverse the order and withdraw the promise. In
such cases President Lincoln had only one answer, and that was
an emphatic refusal. His word was, that no slave set free in the
inevitable progress of events, by authority of the United States,
should ever be returned to bondage. His maxim was, " In giv
ing freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free." No
man deplored the war more than he. But the aftion of the slave-
holding States in challenging arbitrament by the sword left him
without choice in the matter. If defeat in a fair eleftion justifies
armed revolt by the defeated party, then there is clearly an end to
all political order on this continent. If any question of abstraft
right is raised, whether in relation to the individual or the State,
and if one party in the matter challenges the arbitrament of the
sword in advance of discussion in the constitutional assemblies
and tribunals of the land, then there is nothing left for the other
party but to accept the challenge, and allow the sword to settle
the question. President Lincoln's heart was for peace, — for
peace on a permanent basis. ' But, like all thoughtful observers.

Rev. John Cordner. 29

he saw that no permanent peace could be had while the institu
tion of slavery remained. His second inaugural address is a
faithful transcript of himself It contains no shadow of boasting,
no personal reference, no vanity of prediftion. It is the writing
of one who felt himself as in the hollow of God's hand, to be
used for God's purposes. It is eminently solemn and humane,
tender and trustful. Here are the two closing paragraphs :
" Both parties to the war read the same Bible and pray to the
same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may
seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assist
ance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both
could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes, ' Woe unto the world be
cause of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but
woe to that man by whom the offence cometh,' If we shall sup
pose that American slavery is one of these offences, which in the
providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woes due
to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fer
vently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass
away. Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth
piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, — as was
said three thousand years ago, — so, still it must be said, ' The
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
" With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to

30 The Murder of President Lincoln.
finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to
care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow
and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
This last paragraph ought to be engraven on his monument.
In the midst of life, brethren, we are in death. Death meets
man at every turn, — a surprise and a mystery. In the high
places of the nations men fall sometimes by violence, and some
times in peace; and the more private circle of the home is
visited by death's call, and our friends are borne away to the
tomb. That same morning which witnessed the departure of
the spirit of President Lincoln from the earth witnessed also the
departure from this life of a venerable life connected with this
congregation. No inan living could be in more ardent sympathy
with the cause of emancipation than he was. He had passed
tlirough a lengthened public life, honored with various high pub
lic trusts, and had reached an advanced age which demanded
repose. But with fourscore years upon him, he had a heart ten
der as a child for the wrongs of the slave. Any reference to
these wrongs stirred his whole nature with profound and visible
motion. You know I refer here to the late Mr. Justice Gale.
Yes; in the midst of life we are in death. Men fall at con
spicuous posts, and in the full bustle of aftive public life. While
the tidings of President Lincoln's death were yet fresh upon us,
ships from beyond the sea came with further tidings of sadness
and death. We heard that Richard Cobden, one of England's
foremost men, had suddenly ceased to be. He had come up to
London to take part in a debate concerning Canada; but sickness
seized him, and soon cut short his life. He, too, like President
Lincoln, was a self-made man, rising gradually from humble
birth and social obscurity, until, by dint of perseverance, attain
ments, and charafter, he became one of the most influential men

Rev. fohn Cordner. 31

of the nation. He was a representative man of the bone and
sinew of England, — her intelligent middle and industrial classes.
These are the classes who have built up Britain's material power
and greatness. These are the men who plant her colonies, car
ry her wide-stretching commerce, and her traditions of liberty, all
over the earth: here bearing fruit in one form; in another place,
bearing fruit in another form. Canada and the United States are
both the produfts of the energy and enterprise of the middle and
industrial classes of our common mother-country. Mr. Cobden,
like Mr. Lincoln, was a man of marked sincerity of purpose and
integrity of charafter. Like Mr, Lincoln, he had to bear his
share of obloquy from flippant and reckless partisan opponents;
but like Mr. Lincoln, too, he triumphed over these, and has
bequeathed a name to his country, which his country will not
willingly let die. His name is intimately identified with some of
the most important political and economic reforms of the present
century. He cheapened the food of the operative masses in
England, after a hard and tedious conflift with the ignorance and
selfishness of the agricultural interests and landed aristocracy.
He lived to see the nation a grateful convert to his enlightened
principles of commerce. He was invited to join Lord Pal
merston as Cabinet Minister; but he declined. He was offered
rank and title ; but he declined. He wanted neither office nor
title. His desire was that of a sincere and noble mind, to serve
his countrymen — the great mass of his toiling countrymen —
with an honest and disinterested service. And, when the calami
ty of civil war befel the United States, his intelligent acquaint
ance with American affairs, and his clear moral vision, preserved '
him from that lamentable delusion on this matter in which cer
tain classes of English society became almost hopelessly involved.
President Lincoln had in him an enlightened and faithful friend.
He was the' consistent supporter of the cause of free labor and of

3 2 The Murder of President Lincoln.
popular government in the free States, as against all faftitious
claim to sympathy and support made on behalf of an attempt to
establish an oligarchical Republic founded on slave labor. His
voice did as much as any other man's to keep the masses of the
English people right on this great subjeft. He was, beside, the
steady advocate of international peace. He had faith in Chris
tianity as a religion of peace. Sixteen years ago, it was my
privilege to meet him as a delegate to the Peace Congress then
held in Paris. Then and there, I listened to his calm, cogent,
and convincing speech on the main topic of the Congress. I do
not know in what form he would have writtefti his religious creed.
But his expressed maxim was, " You have no hold on any man
who has no religious faith." There was no narrowness about
his religion. It was broad in its sympathies, and praftical in its
aims. He said he liked the Unitarians, "because they did not
make their faith and works distinft," And, speaking as I do from
a Unitarian pulpit, I may be pardoned for alluding to the faft,
that Richard Cobden first tried his power as a public speaker in
the Cross-street Unitarian Chapel Room in Manchester. And
when he wanted help in any good cause, as he was heard to say
many years afterwards, he knew he could always rely on the
Unitarian young men of that city. When Richard Cobden, the
son of a Sussex farmer, died, one of England's genuine noblemen
passed away. When he died, the cause of human freedom and
progress lost one of its most enlightened friends and devoted
advocates. In the midst of life we are in death. On the seventh day of
this present month of April, the grave closed over the mortal
remains of this conspicuous representative Englishman, Just one
week afterwards, on the fourteenth day of this same month, an
assassin's hand brought death to a conspicuous representative
American. Abraham Lincoln and Richard Cobden, names fa-

Rev. John Cordner. 33

miliar in two continents, no longer represent living men. Both
have passed away from the scene. Yet, from a human point of
view, how needful to their two nations were these two men!
Both were lovers of freedom. Both were friends of peace.
Each in his own nation was a pledge of peace toward the other
nation. The removal of these two men about the same time is a
notable and. startling faft in the order of Divine Providence, — a
faft, solemn, inscrutable, admonitory.' How shall we interpret
this double dispensation of death ? And what use shall we make
thereof? Brethren, the times are critical. War exists on this
continent; and the spirit w^hich breeds war is unhappily too rife
here and elsewhere. What then? Are we not bound to look
soberly and devoutly at passing events? And, as we stand at
this hour by the freshly closed grave of Richard Cobden, and
behold the murdered body of Abraham Lincoln passing along,
amid a nation's wail, to its tomb, shall we not pray, and put our
prayer into effort, that the two great and kindred nations, of
which these two men were such conspicuous representatives,
shall remain in amity and at peace each with the other ? Every
true friend of either nation must desire this, and can desire
nothing but this. And all such persons should have a clear
understanding of their duty at this junfture. The governments
of the two countries are friendly and peacefully disposed. The
most recent intercourse between our Queen's representative at
Washington, and the new President of the United States, indicates
a spirit of mutual friendliness, which goes beyond the coldness of
mere formality. But, in contrast with this friendly temper of the
two governments, we cannot but notice the unfriendly temper of
certain classes of persons on both sides of the frontier line. By
whatever name they are called on this or the other side, how
different soever may be their origin on one side or the other, or
apparently opposite their present party conneftions, their temper,
5

34 The Murder of President Lincoln.
in this regard, is the same ; and by their fruits they are known.
Their purpose, jointly and severally, whether afting in concert or
in seeming conflift, is to foment international strife, and fan the
flame of ill-will. Their organs of expression abound with abuse
of the United States on the one side, and of Great Britain on the
other. Various motives prompt on the one side, and the other;
but the thoughtful and clear-seeing eye will generalize the whole
under one order of enemies to the true interests of both coun
tries. The day of peace was just dawning on this continent, when
the assassin's deed threw a cloud of darkness over the rising
dawn. But God rules. The rising day-spring of peace, I trust,
will not be permanently clouded. I look with hope for the
gradual restoration of order on this continent. But we must not
be impatient, but bide the time ofthe Supreme Disposer. Mean
time, as citizens of a Christian land, and still enjoying peace, let
us follow after the things which make for peace, and wisely cher
ish the temper thereof. The changed situation of the parties to
the present war will possibly lead before long to a changed atti
tude on the part of the maritime powers of Europe. Diplomatic
questions may possibly arise out of the past; but none ought to
lead to farther war. So far as Great Britain and the United
States are concerned, I will venture to say, that no question can
arise which ought not be settled amicably by commissioners
mutually chosen." If this cannot be done, then I must blush for
the Christianity and civilization of the English-speaking races of
men. The news of President Lincoln's assassination will cause
a shock of horror in Europe, as it has done in America. That
murder is a blow which tells not merely on one man or one
government, but on every man and every government. What
man's life is safe, what ruler's life is secure, if the assassin can
find his way behind him in the dark ? As we stand in the present

Rev. John Cordner.

35

shadow of this great calamity, may our hearts be moved to
deeper horror of that evil temper which urges to crime. And,
as death presents itself to our notice from time to time, — some
times in quiet, and sometimes in startling form, — may we be
moved to consider afresh the sanftity and significance of the life
which God has given us to live!
Christian Inquirer, May 27,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
A SERMON PREACHED TO HIS SOCIETY IN BROOKLYN, N,Y,
BY JOHN W, CHADWICK,

Eccl. iv. i : " Behold the tears of such as were oppressed."
A FORTNIGHT since I went away, and left you with a joy
upon your faces that was all too deep for words. To-day, I
come again, and find you smitten with a grief too sad for human
hearts to hold. I trust that God would have permitted me, in case
I had been with you when this terrible calamity came thundering
down into your common life, to speak, not altogether foolishly,
according to your sorrow and your need. I trust, beside, that
your own hearts have prophesied how hard it was for me not to
be with you. It may be that I could have helped you just a
little. But you would have given to me a great deal more than I
could have bestowed. And if, to-day, my words but faintly echo
that which your sad hearts keep on complaining, will you not try
to feel that they would have been better spoken, if, first, I could
have seen the meaning of this sorrow written upon your faces, or
felt it quiver through the trembling grasp of your right hands ?
" Behold the tears of such as were oppressed." Shall I tell
you why I took this sentence for my text ? It was because I felt,
that, when the news of Abraham Lincoln's death should find
its way into the streets of Charleston and Savannah, into the tents

Rev. John W. Chadwick, 37

of colored regiments, into the cabin of the planter, and the brain
of Robert Small, tears would arise, from hearts all bruised and
shattered, into eyes already dim with other tears, not sorrowful,
more hot and scalding than ever mother shed upon the death-bed
of her earliest born. Not forgetting any other sorrow whose
offerings will be wreathed about his memory, I could but feel
that the enfranchised negro of the South would twine for him the
darkest cypress and the brightest bay. I would not be unjust to
any of the countless multitude who mourn his swift departure.
One's brain needs not to be badgered ere he thinks how much he
was beloved. I take it that your shrouded streets but faintly
symbolize the utter darkness of your inward woe. And I respeft
all these attempts which men and women make to help and com
mune with each other. It is quite terrible to see your marts and
custom-houses draped so darkly and so heavily. It is altogether
sweet and tender and beautiful to see the bits of blackness that
the poor and starving and half-naked denizens of this and yonder
city put out from their windows, even in narrow courts and
crowded alleys, where only God, perhaps, can look upon them.
I doubt not that these bits of crape and muslin help these poor
wretches, from whose dingy homes they flit so drearily, to forget
themselves a little, and that they keep away the devil for a day
or for an hour. This is their recompense. Their loss, which
they do not begin to understand, is gain to them in some such
way as this. And what a change upon your splendid thorough
fares ! How bright they were with banners scarcely a week ago !
It was a feast of resurreftion; and now it is as if the risen Lord
had gone back into his tomb again. It made me shudder, when I
came upon them suddenly a day or two ago. But what was all
the crape, and what were all the drooping flags, and all the
reverent devices, to the sad faces of the listless throng? And
what were these to the sad hearts that tried in vain to symbolize

38 Abraham Lincoln.

their bitterness ? Is it too much to say, that never in the annals of
our modern life was there such deep and unaffefted sorrow?
The death of Everett, of Harrison, of Webster, furnished no
parallel. No more did that of the first Washington. To-day,
the second, snatched so suddenly away, eclipses him, and every
other, with the majestic sorrow that he leaves behind.
It happened that the love accorded to this man admitted of no
geographical distinftions. It came from every quarter of the
world, and from men of every nation and condition. I will not
speak for his own land; but I am certain that in other lands his
fame, ere long, will outrun that of Washington. I doubt not,
that, in every nation of Europe, there are men and women to-day
who pray God that they may live to see that face, which even we
shall see no more for ever. How sad the bravest of the French
will be, that he has not outlived the incubus which is upon their
bosoms ! Alas that Garibaldi could not have looked into those
deep eyes, that were so beautiful that they will haunt me with
their witching tenderness until my dying day! Pity, that the
grandchild of that chief, who bears our Chieftain's name, could
not have kissed his broad, pale forehead, though it had been but
for a single time ! And do you imagine that his name was never
whispered in German brotherhoods and Austrian homes, if homes
they can be called? The Swiss guide talks about him to the
traveller. I have heard the echoes of his fame from the Valley
of El Ghor, and from Jerusalem. It is marvellous, you say, that
this man should have been so greatly loved, while yet so little
known. No: it is not marvellous; for the whole man was of a
piece. And upon the least hint it was as easy to construft him,
as for the geologist to construft completed organisms from a
single bone. There was not a rotten thread, not a, bit of shoddy,
in the whole man. Was any thing good, it was all good. So
that to know him but a little was to love him well. But to know

Rev. John W. Chadwick. 39
him well was to love with an almost infinite affeftion. And to
have known him much or little is tp mourn his loss as if he were
indeed our father, and to curse the day that ever treason raised
its bloody hand against a life so fair.
And yet the tears which fall upon the dusky cheeks of the
enfranchised slave are better worth beholding than any tears
which stain your cheeks, or flow from fountains far away across
the sea. They shall be more to him in heaven than those which
strong men shed against their will ; more to him than even the
gentlest tears of womanhood. But they shall not fall and sting
as other tears which, must be shed sooner or later. For such
vvrill fall like hissing coals upon the cheeks that have not blushed
when the false tongue beneath shot out its base and wicked slan
ders, which went like poisoned arrows into a great, tender soul, —
and yet a soul that was so sweet, that it could quench their poi
son. And when they, who made these arrows out of hate, and
dipped them in the essence of obscenity,^ sha;ll know at whom
they shot them, and how perfeft his forgiveness was, theirs shall
be grief and misery indeed. There can be no sorrow like this
sorrow. Other than this, there is no sorrow like the black man's
own, — at once so rich and full and tender.
With what awful suddenness did this blow descend, even
upon us who thought that we had passed beyond the stage where
men can be surprised ! With what tenfold horror, then, it must
be fraught for those whose only life, as yet, Is that of sense and
feeling! On the morning of Saturday, the 15th April, I stood in
Zion Church, in Charleston, a larger church than Mr. Beecher's,
and from two to three thousand of these emancipated ones were
there assembled. And when the name of Lincoln was uttered in
that presence, it was greeted with such exhibitions of reverence
and love as I never saw before. The cheers that went up from
that multitude went up from the heart. I wish, my friends, that

40 Abraham Lincoln.

you could have been there. They prayed; they sung; they
danced for very joy. They hugged their dusky children to their
bosoms in the very ecstasy of pleasure and content. Their whole
frames trembled with emotion. And I said to myself, " Oh that
Lincoln might know of this ! " And he did know of it. " Oh
that he were here! " I said; and he was there. For, on that very
morning, his soul had put away the chains of fleshly limitation;
and the uncouth form was lying stiff and cold, where slavery had
stricken it. The genius of rebellion had done its worst upon the
nation's gentlest, bravest, best.
And now I keep on thinking how it would have been, if this
tale of godless murder had been told there in that cursed and bat
tered city to that waiting multitude. Surely it would have frozen
their poor hearts. It would have burdened them with a sense of
unutterable horror and despair. For they cannot rise to any thing
impersonal. They deal with individuals. Even their God is one.
They recognize no providential order, — only its instruments and
its effefts. They are free, and " Massa Lincoln " made them so.
He was their Christ and their deliverer. And their old enemies
have crucified him. God help them when they hear of this!
God grant it may not goad them to a swift and terrible revenge !
They have borne and forborne so long, may the kind Heavens
decree that they be still, as ever, merciful to them that have no
mercy ! But, oh ! how swift and strong and terrible will be the
flood of their emotion! How fierce will be their agony! how
cold and hard their disappointment! And again I say, God help
them ! And do you work with him.
I believe that this is the only providential way in which you
can be reconciled to this supreme aflliftion. If you stand silently
apart, and brood upon this aft of the assassin, and the dear life it
has destroyed, what shall keep your tired brain from distraftion,
your poor weak heart from fierce rebellion ? You must forget

Rev. John W, Chadwick, 41
yourself, and all the circumstances of this most foul and most un
natural murder. Compare the black man's sorrow with your
own: go and behold the tears of the oppressed. You must live
for them as did that martyred one whose memory you revere. If
need be, you must die for them as he did. You must go to these
poor wanderers, and wipe away the tears that shut them out as
with a blinding mist from all things heavenly. And it may come
to pass, that you shall know that this good man died for you also.
The consciousness of carrying out his lofty purposes shall take
up its abode in you. And this shall be your recompense. Your
loss shall be as gain to you, and your sad heart shall be comforted,
if to this end you look about you, and " behold the tears of such
as were oppressed."
But come and ponder lovingly with me the life and charafter
of this dear friend of God's eternal justice. There is something
very worshipful about him, when you consider merely his concrete
appearance, that which he manifested to the world. His steady
progress upward, through a thousand hindrances and bars and
terrible privations, to the highest point of influence and esteem.
One might talk for hours about the obstacles which he encoun
tered and as often overcame. It was his task, as it is every man's,
to hew from out a mass of shapeless stuff a name, a charafter, an
influence. But how many find their marble ready and their tools
at hand ! It was not so with him. He was obliged to quarry his
material, and to fashion his tools. But, working diligently, he
came at length to shape colossal forms, whose merit shall insure
him universal admiration. And this, I say, was very worshipful.
Yet it might not have been so. For other men have raised them
selves, by slow degrees, from deeper valleys to more lofty heights
of civil power and glory. And yet they are not admirable in any
way. And why? Because their end was self Because they
bent God's opportunities into a refuge for their own conceit.
6

42 Abraham Lincoln,

When they might have built these into his altars, they built them
into thrones, that they might sit upon them. And they marked
the stages of their journey upward with false beacons and with
lying monuments. Has not the progress of Napoleon III. been a
progressive masquerade? Has he not been a liar and a cheat
from its beginning until now? Our Chief Magistrate not only
raised himself to noble eminence, but he did this with the appli
ances of simple justice. Try him by the standard of success, and
he does not fall a whit below it. You cannot find in history a
more successful life. And yet it was so through no trick or sub
terfuge. He walked over every inch of the ground. He forded
every stream that crossed his way. He rode in no man's carriage.
He burdened no man's shoulders. And then, for crown and cul
mination, no sooner did he find himself on any height of honor,
than from that height he hurried back to seek for any who, per
chance, had been less fortunate, and point for them the way. No
sooner did he win a gift, through prayer and struggle, than he
fain would share it with some brother soldier in the ranks of
mortal weakness and temptation. So much for his outward life,
— a great success, — and as such consecrated to great purposes.
For this reason, come upon it where you will, it is significant.
At every point of his circumference, there were springs conneft-
ing with the central power and beauty of his soul. The least aft
had the flavor of the greatest; and it was as natural for him to
strike off four million fetters at a blow, as for him to leave his
Cabinet to talk with any soldier's wife, and answer her petition.
And his words were deeds also. He never wrote a letter or a
message, and he never made a speech, which did not contain
something that was fine and memorable. Some of his sentences
are like children's prayers, and some of them are as sturdy as the
blows he dealt in when he swung his axe upon the border. Some
of them soothe like ointment; but anon they pierce like a two-

Rev. John W. Chadwick. 43
edged sword. But he was very chary of them. And hence, no
doubt, the world will cherish them the more. For upon every
thing he said or did he stamped his inmost self, as with the signet
of a king. And the motto of that signet was the name of God.
The form and substance of this man were so related, that to
speak of oiie necessitated mention of the other. True, it were
easy to abstraft success from every thing beside. But the mo
ment that I spoke of his success as being beautiful, I had to tell
you why it was so, and speak of his sincerity. I had to say that
he was honest in the methods of his greatness, and that its end
was not himself, but human love and helpfulness, I think that
he would have preferred to work in a more humble sphere. He
hated din and bustle. He had no taste for pomp and circum
stance, and he dearly loved the quiet of his home. But he found
himself to be a providential man; and thereupon he put his hand
in that of the unseen fate and providence, and let it lead him as
it would. And it led him into toil more hard, into anxiety more
terrible, than any other man has wrought or suffered in these lat
ter days. But he did not grumble; he did not complain. He
made no doubt that God knew what was best for him. His hoa-
esty and his benevolence were equal to the largest application.
They widened with the greater need and opportunity, — the one
into justice, the other into universal sympathy.
But, anon, it came to pass that this deep-eyed and tender
hearted man, who had been schooled on wooded slopes and prairie
solitudes; whose teachers had been want and deprivation; still
somewhat rough and crude and angular, — became a potent, ener
gizing force. He compelled respeft from such as would not
grant it willingly. One by one the voices of detraftion ceased.
Lord Lyons goes away regretting that the President is not more
utterly respefted and admired. Wise men across the sea delib
erately write his name high up with Hampden's, Cromwell's,

44 Abraham Lincoln.

Washington's. He controls a Cabinet, every man of which sur
passes him in culture and experience. He thanks them for their
advice; he is anxious for their opinions: but he never substitutes
them for his own. Their discords do not trouble him; or, when
they do, he drops the offending member as quietly as the tree
drops down its ripest apple in the fall. He has ruled this people
as it has not been ruled since Andrew Jackson's time, yet not in
Andrew Jackson's arbitrary way. He ruled by force of charafter,
and not by force of will. He did it quite unconsciously. He
thought that he was looking up to Mr, Seward. But it was cer
tainly an illusion, and Mr. Seward did not think so. And, before
his death, the traitors of the South honored him with their hatred,
and acknowledged that he was not to be despised. There is no
doubt, but that he lived to be the vital head of civilization in
America, and freedom in the world.
Now, it is very plain that this fine potency did not come of
honesty nor of benevolence. They were its rich and beautiful
adorning. It was not in them to beget a child so strong. At
best, they were the conditions of its growth. They were not the
cause of it, and it is that which we are seeking. Honesty and
benevolence will commend a man to God; but we are more ex-
afting. We do not bow and kneel when these exist apart from
other qualities. What were the sources, then, of this man's con
stantly increasing power? I do not find them hidden in the
crannies of his brain. He did not prevail by dint of intelleftual
superiority. I know that he was sharp and keen. He was not
apt to be illogical. He had a passion for destroying sophistries.
But these were any thing but rare endowments; and as for fancy
and imagination, he had none; and for insight he was not remark
able. His throne was never built on intelleftual foundations. It
rested on his faith and resolution. His resolute determination
was only equalled by- his perfeft trust. These gave him that

Rev. John W. Chadwick. 45
magnetic force which we denominate charafter, and constituted
him a power.
But the operation of his will was as quiet and as irresistible as
that of any natural law. There was no fuss and deinonstration.
He made his soul a sacrifice for sin. He pledged himself to God
to make an end of this rebellion. He never doubted that he
should accomplish his desire. He never dreamed of being balked
in his intention. He felt the weight of all this struggle upon his
own heart; and, ifhe could have lifted it, he would not have done
so. So that, when he had carried it four years, the nation entered
into his thought, strange as it was, and allowed him, as a privilege,
to bear it still. And not until the special task which he accepted,
of crushing armed rebellion, had been fairly done, was heaven
thrown wide open to receive him. Beyond that point his spirit
seemed to halt. His theories of reconstruftion did not satisfy
himself. An awful prescience haunted him, that other hands would
have to manage that. God only knows how many daggers have
been blunted against the iron mail of his resolution. There is
nothing which can hedge a man about like a strong purpose; and
so he went everywhere, armed in this simple way, assured that
naught could harm him, if he did not harm himself. This sturdy
resolution was of itself enough to make him teem with power.
But to this he added faith.
I mean by this, that he was always open to the infinite; that
he was expeftant, and ready to be constantly correfted and re
vised. He never settled down into the ruts of dogmatism, refus
ing to be stirred. It is very strange, if that other which I said of
him was true, and this also. But so it happened. And it was a
thing which happens scarcely once a century. It was the means
of his salvation, this perfeft faith in God, united with a will to
carry out the diftates of his inspiration. For the Eternal Provi
dence does not give its talents unto those who bury them. No ,

46 Abraham Lincoln.

wonder, then, that he was always placid and serene. Resolved
upon his work, and confident that God would give him strength
according to his day, why should he not have been? But he
knew the price of wisdom, and he lived accordingly. He was
an optimist; but he knew well enough that it is God who worketh
in us, both to will and do. He did not think that God's work
would go on, if his own work, and yours and mine, stopped short,
or even flagged. • Therefore, he made the most of all the faculties
and means at his command. The mental movement of the man
was very slow; and yet it made good distances, what with the
sense he had of constant oversight and certain ultimate reward.
Before, the glorious future beckoned him. The Holy Spirit
pricked him from behind.
It was this grand and lofty fatalism which preserved him,
when the shafts of treasonable and partisan abuse fell thickest all
about him. He accepted these things, with no end of care and
pain and misconception, as necessary parts of his condition.
There was the task; and there was God who set it. Every thing
else was worse than vanity compared with these. But it is very
plain, that he was not indifferent to the cruel blows that were
levelled at him every day. Instead of this, he was as sensitive as
any child. But he had made up his mind what to expeft before
he started; and, in the silence of his own heart, he had prepared
himself for all contingencies : —

"As if the man had set his face,
In manj a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky,"

And when great men and small met him, at any time or place,
they found him perfeft in his poise and self-containment; they
felt his power; they knew that there was plenty of it in reserve;
and, though they did not stop to analyze, they were assured that

Rev. John W. Chadwick, 47
its beginning went clear down into the heart of nature, into the
life of God. And they bowed themselves before him; and, going
on their way, told all men everywhere how excellent he was.
And so, in time, he came to be the power which I assert, — the
living head of that great body which we call the Time,
But he was not only a centre of force : he was a centre of
attraftion. And, as yet, I have said nothing which accounts for
this. I have said why men honored and respefted him, not why
they loved him as, perhaps, no other man was ever loved, save
by a wife or mother. He might have been as faithful and deter
mined, as honest and as just, as I have said he was, yet not have
been beloved. For such qualities must be intelleftually appre
hended, seen ; and it is a proverb, that love is blind. Yet can we
turn to all the world, and say, " Behold, how we loved him ! "
It was because we felt his sympathy with us, and knew that, if
we went to see him, even the humblest of us, he would take us
by the hand as cordially as if we had a rightful claim upon his
time or his affeftion; it was because of his naturalness and free
dom; because he was so void of any thing like affeftation or
conceit. He was always himself; and it seemed never to occur
to him, that he might be something different: although, as such,
he was no carpet-knight, no drawing-room celebrity. He lived
so deeply, that he lived unconsciously. And, in his way, he was
as easy and as gracious as my lord. We loved him, too, because
he was so kind; because he would listen while the common
soldier told the story of his real or fancied wrongs, or while his
wife or mother .prayed for his furlough or discharge. And we
remember him upon the field of Gettysburg, and at Captain
Worden's bedside; and we never shall forget his agony, when
Hooker was discomfited. And then we loved him for his sweet
and happy disposition. Was ever any one burdened so heavily,
and yet so genial and so pleasant under all cares ? I doubt not

48 Abraham Lincoln.

that he bridged with laughter many a swelling stream. I am
glad that it was so. This quality in him has often been con
demned. But why? Was not his countenance weary and hag
gard enough to suit the most exafting fancy ? Easier than not,
he might have weeded out this quality of mirth. And then he
might have gone sheer mad, just for the lack of it. But no:
he had a work to do; and how was he straitened until it was ac
complished? Thank Heaven that he could sometimes shift the
burden just a little! He never laughed at misery. He never
thought that slavery was a joke. And it was a providential
blessing to us all, that there was this sunny exposure to redeem
his life from being altogether dark and troublesome.
And now this man, in whom were mixed so many elements of
strength and beauty; whose life was so successful, and so truly so;
whose martyr-death so fitly sealed his providential work; whose
faith and resolution made him such a force; whose genial warmth
and kindly glow endeared him to us all, — is vanished from the
earth for ever. His lifeless form still journeys slowly through the
country which he loved; but the truthful lips are silent, and
the kindly heart is still. And is he lost to us and to the world?
Shall we miss, for ever miss, the noble qualities that made him
what he was ? No, no ! If the sin-blackened and incrusted soul
of him that robbed us of his mortal presence thought that it would
be so, how vainly did he reckon ! He is ours in death, more than
he was in life! I know how pleasant and how sweet it would
have been, if he could have remained with us until brooding
peace and universal freedom had settled down to bless the weary
land. You should have carried your children and your chil
dren's children from afar, to see the face of him who broke the
bondman's fetter in the name of God. The joyful tears of such
as were oppressed should have bedewed the threshold of his
simple home. And now it cannot be. And yet it was expedient

Rev, John W. Chadwick. 49
for us that he should go away. He was caught up into the Eter
nal Presence just when he seemed to us more holy, pure, and
great, than ever in his life before. There is a moment when the
fever turns; there is a day when languages begin to lose their
purity of form; and there are times in life when great men stand
upon the topmost peaks of possible achievement, and to proceed
another step is to go downward on the other side. Better a
thousand times ascend from hence, at once, into the courts of
memory and fame. Better to crystallize, ere yet the subtile
processes have carried them one step beyond their highest point
of influence and power. And so the hand which murdered
Abraham Lincoln insured his earthly immortality. They tell,
that, on the eyeballs of the slain, the murderer leaves a pifture of
his face. It is a hard fancy. But it is beautiful to think that he
impresses on our hearts the memory of him at whom he strikes.
So it is with us now. Did you never think, when looking at the
sunset clouds, " Oh that they might linger there against the
west, just at their perfeftest, until the painter painted them for
you, and for his own perpetual joy " ? And see ! upon the back
ground of this crime, so terrible, the sundered life stands out in
all its red and purple glory, — stands fixed for ever at its best;
and all the world can seek to emulate the sweep and majesty of
its proportions. Indeed, we have not lost him!
Would you have me speak of the poor fool, who thought that
he should strike at freedom when he struck at freedom's tried
and faithful friend ? It would not profit you. Arrest him, if you
can. Punish him as you may. And what of that? You cannot
punish him according to the measure of his crime.
" There is a peak of guilt so high,
That those who reach it stand above
The sweep of dull humanity,
The trail of passion and of love.
7

50 Abraham Lincoln.

The clouds that dim the lower heaven
Touch not the mountain's hoary crown ;
And on tlie summit, thunder-riven,
God's lightning only strikes them down.''
You cannot visit him with deeper condemnation than that
which he adjudges to himself When you have done your worst
upon him, then God will deal with him. Such crimes would
have to go unpunished, were it not for Him. Our pains and
penalties are light indeed for such transgression. But there are
infinite resources. The bar of heaven is not a rhetorician's
fancy. It was no single man that murdered him whose loss we mourn
to-day. It was an institution, stained already with the life-blood
of a million saints. It was an institution; the same that mur
dered Lovejoy and John Brown ; the same that struck at Sumner
from behind his back; and lit the fires of this rebellion, that it
might burn up the hope of freedom and democracy. It was not
to be. The flying sparks kindled the North into a fiercer flame,
which has well-nigh destroyed the godless institution. I dare to
say, that it was God's intention, when he permitted this last aft
of damning infamy, that it should be as fuel to that flame which
burned so hot already. Its meaning is not vengeance upon any
man, or class of men. It is that, if heretofore we have been
hacking at the trunk of slavery, we shall now resolve that we will
tear the very roots of this vile cancer from the bosom of the land.
It is that, with your hands upon your hearts, you shall devote
yourselves with solemn vows to the utter and complete eradica
tion of this social curse. Let it breed no longer strife and mur
der and conspiracy.
So shall it come to pass, that he who died upon the day
when Christ himself was crucified afresh in tearful memory shall
rise again, as Christ himself arose in the new life of such as

Rev. John W. Chadwick.

loved him, and obeyed his word. We would not have him rise
in any other way. We could not find it in our hearts to tear him
from the rapt embraces of the everlasting peace.
" His voice is silent in your council hall
For ever ; and, whatever tempests lower.
For ever silent ; even if they broke
In thunder, silent : yet, remember all
He spoke among you, and the man who spoke ;
Who never sold the truth, to serve the hour.
Nor paltered with Eternal God for power;
Who let the turbid streams of rvimor flow
Through either babbling world of high and low ;
Whose life was work, whose language rife
With rugged maxims hewn from life ;
Who never spoke against a foe.
And he is gone, who seemed so great !
Gone : but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here ; and we believe him
Something far advanced in state.
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him."

Christian Inquirer, May 4,

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN:

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT MILLSTONE, N,J,, ON SUNDAY MORNING,
APRIL 1 6, 1865 ;
BY REV, E, T, CORWIN,

Prov, xxi. 30 ; " There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord."
THE astounding intelligence reached us yesterday, that the
President of the United States had been shot; and this
awful faft, with some hasty refleftions upon it, is the only theme
upon which we can fix our minds to-day.
The first thought is, that it cannot be that our nation has been
so disgraced. In the times of the old Roman emperors, it was a
rare thing indeed for one of them to die a natural death. ¦ And
the reason of this was to be found, not only in the ambition of
others, but in the judgment of God, and the just hatred of the
people whom they had enslaved and oppressed. They were
monsters of iniquity and despotism, and aptly described in pro
phecy as beasts, because they were the destroyers and enemies
of mankind, the despisers of the rights of men. In striking con
trast, our Chief Magistrate was not the enslaver, but the free
dom-giver to men. He was a man whose name will be linked, to
the end of time, with the great and glorious. Not theories, but
fafts, of accomplished emancipation; looked upon, and truly, as

Rev. E. T. Corwin. 53

the man raised up by Providence to conduft the nation to a
higher, a nobler, a truer position before the world. For we stood
as a Christian nation, the great representative of Freedom, though
portions of our land had long been disgraced with the sin of
slavery. But it was at length almost utterly, yea, virtually, abol
ished. But just at this time, the one whom we thought raised up
to carry on this glorious renovation, to consummate the great
truth contained in the first sentence of our Declaration of Inde
pendence, " that all men are born free and equal," — such a one,
not the tyrant, but the friend of the oppressed, and the freedom-
giver to the slave, has fallen by the hand of the base assassin.
The land may well go in mourning for the loss of such a one, and
for grief at such a disgraceful deed. Peace was just dawning
upon our desolated country. Only the day before, the orders had
gone forth, that no more men were needed for the war. The
bright bow of promise was seen spanning the skies, Thanksgiv-
• ings from innumerable hearts were ascending to God. The na
tion was saved from the blood-stained hand of the slaveholders'
rebellion. It was purged of its great crime. In the words of
the departed, "Perhaps for every drop of blood drawn by the
lash, another had been drawn by the sword." And he whose
heart was foremost in the great work which God was accom
plishing for man; he whose mind had been racked with many
a sleepless night because of a nation! s burdens laid upon tt, who
had a task of difficulty and responsibility and world-wide inter
est, such as perhaps no other man ever had, and who was at
length thanking God for a nation's triumph, yea, the triumph of
human liberty, and of slow justice through the land, — in the
very midst of his joy is stricken down by the hand of the foul
assassin. Oh, how mysterious are the ways of Providence !
" God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform,''

54 Death of President Lincoln.
His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our
thoughts. The good and noble and intelligent of the earth are
ever working with God, for the triumph of liberty and righteous
ness, according to the best of their ability. But suddenly, to
their utter amazement, instruments which seemed to be so neces
sary for the accomplishment of these ends are removed, and
others substituted to finish the work. Such sudden turns of
Providence bewilder our minds for a moment. At first, the
thought of irretrievable disaster flashes upon us. But a little re-
fleftion upon the ways of God, and the promises of his word, and
that the throne of the universe is occupied by the Lord Jesus
Christ, whose whole business is to raise the poor and the down
trodden, and to break the rod of the oppressor, as it exists, and is
wielded in the first place by the Devil himself, and then by his
countless agents of high and low degree on earth; as we refleft
upon the faft, that our Almighty and infinitely benevolent Saviour
is the Lord of all, and that no event, whether accomplished by
good or evil instruments, is independent of his wise and holy will,
— we begin to understand that He who doeth all things well, and
who sees the end from the beginning, is only accomplishing the
same grand and holy purpose, for which his people have been
laboring and praying so long, in a more thorough manner than
they had designed. For while every Christian and loyal heart
abhors the foul deed which has been committed, and while their
eyes help swell the river of tears which this day flows through
the land, yet, to the man of faith, the glorious cause of Christ
and humanity is not injured, — no, is not injured,, nor is delayed
for a single day, by the destruftion of even such a life as that of
Abraham Lincoln. For all things must work together for good
to the cause of God, to the cause of right, to the cause of justice;
and all these, as far as they were contained in national and politi
cal events in our land, and indeed throughout the world, were

Rev. E. T. Corwin. 55

chiefly centred in him. For these holy causes are greatly involved,
not only in the revolutions, but even in the politics, ofthe present
day. It has no doubt often been true, that politics, when con
cerned simply with questions of tariff and commerce and such
like things, were fairly open questions for honest Christian differ
ences; and often indeed it was no easy thing to decide striftly as
to duty. But every intelligent and unprejudiced man, (but, alas !
how much mischief has mere prejudice and partisanship wrought
in the world!) if he make himself sufficiently acquainted with
current events to understand them in their great moral signifi
cancy, could not fail to see, that, for several years past, a disunion
(not yet by any means perfeft, but progressing), that a division,
like that of the future sheep and goats, has been going on. Right
eousness or iniquity, which should prevail? has been the real
question, though not in just so bald a form. Truth or error, lib
erty or oppression, Christ or Satan, — these are the real and simple
issues in the great political, moral questions of the present day.
The lines are becoming each year more clearly marked. The
friends of Christ and of mankind are each year coming more
closely together. There are, indeed, many of the true friends of
Christ, by some sad mistake, by want of refleftion or understand
ing, by family conneftions sometimes, or by want of prayer for
divine direftion, who are yet, alas! mingled with the friends of
Satan. It seems impossible to understand, how, sometimes, men
of intelligence and unquestioned piety can take such a false or
even neutral position. And it is just as true, alas! that many,
w^ho, by unregeneracy of heart, are the friends of Satan, are
found in these great political divisions with the friends of Christ.
But these political divisions will each year become more clearly
defined. Babylon, in prophetic language, is a name which de
scribes the whole policy and organization ofthe cause of iniquity;
and to those who should find themselves inhabitants of that

56 Death of President Lincoln.
wicked place, that is, the unconscious or unwilling allies of evil,
to them God speaks in kindness and in love (Rev. xviii. 14),
" Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her
sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." It is addressed to
those especially who lived at the time of, and since, the Reforma
tion, and who might, by some perchance, find themselves in the
company of those beasts described in that book, or, in other
words, in league with ecclesiastical or civil oppression, and conse
quent error, in any of its plagues of development. And it is
because the Church of Christ in general understands these events,
that the Christian can lift up his head, under apparently the most
adverse circumstances, and rejoice ; believing, yea, knowing, that
the cause he loves so well, not for its own sake merely, but chiefly
because of its conneftion with the great and glorious work of
Christ, — hence it is, I say, that the Christian, when the standard-
bearers of liberty are for a moment stricken down, can yet ex
claim, " He doeth all things well." For what the prophet says
of Christ, and therefore of his people, must be fulfilled : " He
shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set justice in the
earth." For the cause of right, of liberty, of God, v^^hether con
sidered in its more striftly religious, or in its more external and
national aspeft, must conquer. It is not dependent upon the life
of one man. It is not dependent upon the lives of even a million
of the best and most virtuous men now alive. They might all be
destroyed, and such a cause would only take heart from their
destruftion, and go on with greater success. The blood of the
martyrs was the seed of the Church. How often did the despots
of Europe, civil and ecclesiastical, put to death the friends of
God, and the defenders of human liberty ! But did they kill the
cause? Oh, no! The cause of truth can never die. Disciples
arose in their places more numerous than the slain, until the
thoughts of those martyrs of God and of Liberty crystallized into

Rev. E. T. Corwin. 57

our glorious Constitution. And now that so great an effort as the
slaveholders' rebellion, entirely satanic in its origin and nature,
has been made at its very life, and which has been so greedily
seconded by the aristocrats and tyrants of Europe, yet could it
kill this noble life, containing as it does the cause of both God
and man ? Impossible ! We see already the rebellion in its death-
throes. We see the glorious dawn of peace. Hallelujahs are
ascending from our hearts. And now that the representative man
of freedom in the West (as the Czar of Russia has so unexpeft-
edly become in the East) has been foully murdered, does it
injure the noble old cause against which the dragon has already
launched so many blows ? Not in the least. It will prove, as the
end no doubt will show, a great blessing to the cause. Men may
die; Satan may let loose his agents upon them: but the cause
still lives. It is as immortal as our Elder Brother on the throne.
Universal freedom and brotherhood will only be the more
surely, and perhaps the more rapidly, accomplished. The gos
pel shall more speedily have free course, and be glorified. The
wrath of man shall praise Him; and the remainder He will
restrain. It is a sad event, indeed, which has happened, — a disgraceful
event; probably aftuated by nothing higher than the plotted
revenge of a few individuals, at the failure of their bad cause.
But it is the fool who says, that revenge is sweet, God has said,
that sin is a bitter thing. The deluded murderer, as well as his
instigators and accomplices, will, no doubt, soon be in the hands
of justice, and then in the hands of an angry God, David would
not kill Saul, when he had him in his power, though Saul was a
wicked man, and God had specially promised the throne to
David. But he in his piety declared, " I will not lift up my hand
again-st the Lord's anointed." Saul was God's vicegerent on
earth, as a king, to administer justice among men, though wicked

58 Death of President Lincoln.
and unworthy. But here was one, who was likewise God's vice
gerent to administer justice and truth, who was literally, what
every ruler ought to be, no respefter of persons; who had
stricken off the shackles from the slave ; and yet, alas ! by the
hands of a poor deluded man, who could not raise his mind to
grasp the glory of the great evolving problems of humanity,
because he himself was a slave of Satan, — by such a man is the
noble President, the Great Emancipator, basely murdered. Slan
ders and calumnies the good ever expeft to bear; and these,
though innumerable, he deemed never worthy a moment's atten
tion. But who would have believed (the good President could
not) that one who called himself an American citizen could
have been so fiendish as this? But Satan ever overshoots the
mark. Even the plans of -wicked men are under the control of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of the sinful and the captive.
Long have the friends of liberty prayed that he would turn the
counsel of the wicked into foolishness. We have seen how he
has done this, by permitting the slaveholders to rebel, and who
have thus destroyed their cherished institution, and put them
selves completely in the power of those whom they call their
enemies, but, in faft, who were only the enemies of their wicked
ness. And now, by this last most abominable of deeds, they
have only sunk their cause still lower, and injured it more irre
mediably. The departed President's fault, if such it might be
called, was his extreme leniency, his kindness of heart. For
look at the terms, which he no doubt approved of, if he did not
suggest, which General Grant has offered to General Lee. The
country was surprised at them. And this is but one illustration
of his whole career. Indeed, many good men feared that he
might yet endanger the Republic by excessive clemency; that
the great cause of liberty was in .peril from very kindness to its
foes. But they have murdered this kind-hearted and good man.

Rev. E. T. Corwin. 59

who had done them no wrong; who had fairly been elefted, by a
vast majority of the people, a second time; who, by his severe
labors to save the nation, and to maintain and extend the cause
of human liberty, was, in very faft, spending himself for their
benefit, and the benefit of their posterity, though, in their blind
ness and wickedness, they could not see it. They have murdered
this man, who would only have been too good to them with their
restoration to the Union. And now a man of iron sternness
succeeds him, whose mercy towards the leaders, at least, will
surely be far less; from whom they may expeft justice rather
than mercy. God saw this to be necessary in finishing up this
great rebellion. He saw that that ^ood and kind-hearted man
would not be the one for this work; and he has taken him away.
And, though the first sad news shocked every faithful heart, yet
it is only in order to secure the triumph, more utterly to destroy
the evil course. It is only to forward, by other and sterner
instrumentalities which he had at hand, the great struggle in
which Christ and his people are engaged. The gospel can never
have free course, until the tyrants and oppressors of men are
destroyed. Liberty is the forerunner ofthe gospel. The gospel,
after it had been planted by the apostles, begat liberty, as her
strong and sturdy son, — the man-child who, ultimately, should
go before her, to prepare her way. The gospel, pure and true,
after occasional great triumphs, yet could only, in general, live in
secret, till her own offspring grew to strength (especially exem
plified in our nation), and who, by his strong and herculean arms,
should strike down the opponents, and say to the heralds of the
gospel, " Enter in : the way is prepared : proclaim ye the accept
able year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God."
And now a man of iron sternness holds the reins which are to
secure the cause of liberty and God, and who is to draw the
rebels back to their proper place in the Union (which they shall

6o Death of President Lincoln.
not destroy), or who will mete out to them, if they persevere in
their wickedness, the just deserts of their crimes.
The part which Providence designed our lamented President
to play, he had completed. Little did he or any one think, that
his work was so near done. But he had fulfilled well his part.
His name will ever stand by the side of that of Washington. He
has completed virtually the work which Washington begun.
We have only, as yet, passed through the introduftory chapter of
our nation's history, during the last few years of which, the noble
cause has been purged of the dross which necessarily, and to
their mortification, adhered to it as it came from the hands of the
fathers. It has passed through the furnace heated seven-fold,
and must come out purified and refined. No longer will the
theories and the fafts of our government conflift; but, henceforth,
all who tread the soil of our country will be free men : and thus
only will our Republic be prepared to take part consistently in
the yet future conflift upon the remaining oppressors of mankind
in other lands. For God undoubtedly intends to use us in this
pouring-out of some of the latter vials of wrath upon his ene
mies. Not only has our war purged us of our chief sin, but has
drilled us for the greater, not only national but international,
conflift, and liberty's universal viftory.
And here it may not be amiss to allude to the religious char
after of our beloved and respefted Chief Magistrate. President
Lincoln is well known to have been a praying man. When he
left his village home to go to Washington, more than four years
ago, and his fellow-citizens bade him farewell, as he stood on the
rear platform of the train, his last words to them were, " Pray for
me." And did ever man need a nation's prayers more ? On the
morning of his first inauguration, he rose early, and retired to a
secret place, and prayed that God would enable him to do his
duty in the great task laid upon him. And yet, perhaps, all this

Rev. E. T. Corwin. 6i

time, he was not a Christian, All his proclamations, however,
seem to be redolent with piety, and far superior, in this respeft,
to most, if not all, his predecessors, till we come to Washington,
But, less than a year ago, a man from a Western State had busi
ness with the President, and, after it had been transafted, told
him that he had a question to ask him, at the solicitation of some
Christian friends. The question was, " Do you love Jesus ? "
The President burst into tears, and buried lais face in his hand
kerchief, and, for a time, could not speak. But, oh ! how precious
to us that we have this record of his religious experience ! He
at length said, " When I left Springfield, I said to my fellow-citi
zens, ' Pray for me ; ' but I was not then a Christian. When my
child died, soon after I entered upon my office, my heart was still
rebellious against God. I was not then a Christian. But, when
I walked the battle-field of Gettysburg, and saw the wounded and
the dying, and felt, that,Jby that viftory, our cause was saved, I
then and there resolved, and gave my heart to Jesus. / do love
Jesus!'' This is the testimony of his own lips upon his religious
life; and is it not sufficient? Millions of loyal hearts and of
freedmen have often prayed that God would bless that man with
his grace. Often have I prayed in private, and in my family, as
well as in public, that the faith of Christ might not be lacking to
him. And could it be, it might well be asked, that so many
prayers, especially from the thousands of slaves whose freedom
will ever be associated with his name, — could it be that all their
prayers could have been unanswered ? This testimony, from the
President's own lips, proves that they were answered : " On that
blood-sta'ined field, I gave my heart to God. I do love Jesus."
We mourn for the man. We hide our faces in shame at the
awful crime which deprived him of his life. But we will still
rejoice, as we remember that the cause of God and of liberty can
never die. Men may die; but it is said of Christ, "And He shall

62

Death of President Lincoln.

live " (Ps. Ixxii.) ; and this is necessarily true also of the cause
which he represents. The wrath of man shall only hasten in the
triumph of the cause of truth, and the complete destruftion of
the powers of iniquity. But, in view of this solemn providence,
the praftical question is, which let each man ask himself sin
cerely, as in the sight of God, and as he will answer it at the last
great day, — let each man ask himself, whether, hitherto, in his
politics on these great moral questions, he has been the servant
of Christ or of the Devil ? For there is no middle ground.
Somerset Unionist, Somervilte, N.J., May l8, 1865.

GOD PUTTETH DOWN ONE, AND SETTETH UP
ANOTHER:
A SERMON ON THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PREACHED IN THE SEA
MEN'S CHAPEL, HONOLULU, MAY 1 4, THE FIRST SABBATH AFTER RE
CEIVING THE SAD INTELLIGENCE OF HIS ASSASSINATION ;
BY REV, S, C. DAMON,

Psalm ixxv. 7 : "But God is the judge : he putteth down one, and setteth up another."
John xiii. 7 : " What I do, thou knowest not now ; but thou shalt know hereafter."
IN the administration of the affairs of this world, God is ever
doing and permitting things to be done, the reasons for which
cannot be seen by short-sighted mortals. Such is God's method
of proceeding, that we are continually compelled to take many
things on trust. Faith in him is the great lesson which he is
ever teaching mankind. He has drawn an impenetrable veil
before our eyes, shutting out the future from our view. "Ye
know not what shall be on the morrow," or " what a day may
bring forth." How impressively these scriptural declarations,
and those of my text, are illustrated by events which have
recently transpired on the other side of the globe ! All the loyal
people of that great country, stretching from the shores of the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to the Lakes, were
preparing for such a day of thanksgiving and jubilee, as never
had been witnessed on the Western Continent. The national

64 God putteth down One, and setteth up Another.
feeling, which during four years of civil war had been repressed,
was rising, and about to burst forth in such scenes and shouts of
rejoicing, as would have made the "welkin ring." The dove
of peace, which had, during those four long years, been confined
to the ark, rocked and tossed upon the troubled waters of civil
strife, political contentions, and cruel war, had now been re
leased, and, with the olive branch in her mouth, was winging her
flight over mountains and valleys, broad savannas and boundless
prairies. The good news was flashed with lightning speed over
the land and the world. The dark clouds were rolling away,
and the sun of the nation's glory was beginning to shine ; and the
rainbow of peace was distinftly seen spanning a continent, as in
days of yore, — when, lo ! from the receding black clouds of
secession, treachery, and slavery, there darted forth a fiendish
arm, holding in its hand an assassin's dagger. The whole scene
is instantly changed. For a moment, the pulse and heart of the
nation cease to beat; but, the next instant, there folio ws a sigh of
anguish and wail of sorrow, Abraham Lincoln, our beloved
President, is dead! I do not believe, since the creation of the
world, so many hearts, in so short a space of time, ever mourned
over the death of a singly human being. There is no disputing
or gainsaying the faft, Abraham Lincoln had gradually been
winning for himself a place in the hearts of the American people,
second only to that of Washington, the Father of his country.
But will not the people now call him the Saviour of the coun
try, when the life of the nation was threatened?
This most tragic event is not an accident; it is not the work
of chance. We do not live in a world ruled over by blind fate.
Never before did I realize there was so much force and intensity
of meaning in those words of our Saviour, " But the very hairs
of your head are all numbered," and even a sparrow " shall not
fall on the ground without your Father." I do not think there

Rev. S. C. Damon. 65

ever was a public man who recognized more clearly and fully this
doftrine of God's special providence, than did our lamented
President. Gathered as we now are in the house of God, on this
first sabbath morning after having received the news of his death,
how can I more appropriately employ the usual time allotted to a
discourse, than by direfting your minds to some of those moral
and spiritual lessons taught by this most sad and melancholy
event. The telegraphic intelligence which has reached the
Islands is quite sufficient to disclose the naked fafts, but insuffi
cient to portray the effefts upon the country at large. Under
these circumstances, perhaps I may be allowed to dwell upon the
religious features of Mr, Lincoln's charafter. He was a public
man, and had been called to occupy a most responsible and try
ing public position. He fully realized this faft, from the very
moment that he stepped forth from the sphere of a private
American citizen to occupy the highest position within the gift of
his countrymen. His brief address, on leaving his home at
Springfield, 111,, is inimitably beautiful : " My friends, no one
not in my position can appreciate the sadness I feel at this part
ing. To this people, I owe all that I' am. Here I have lived
more than a quarter of a century; here my children were born;
and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall
see you again. A duty devolves upon me, which is, perhaps,
greater than that which has devolved upon any other man since
the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded
except for the aid of divine Providence, upon which he at all
times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same
divine aid which sustained him; and, on the same Almighty
Being, I place my reliance for support. I hope you, my friends,
will pray that I may receive that divine assistance, without which
I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. I bid you
all an affeftionate farewell." 9

66 God putteth down One, aud setteth up Another.
During the delivery of this short address, the audience was
much affefted; and, when it closed, there was the hearty re
sponse, " We will pray for you." During his progress to
Washington, he uttered similar sentiments at Columbus and
Steubenville, in Ohio, ever expressing the hope that he should be
sustained by the prayers of the American people. In this ad
dress, we have the key-note to all his subsequent addresses, let
ters, proclamations, and public documents. I cannot recall a
single one in which he did not fully and frankly recognize God's
agency in the management of the affairs of this -world. His
allusions to an overruling Providence w^ere not in a half-apolo-
gistic and semi-infidel style, as if he wished to conciliate the
feelings of Christians, while, at the same time, he had no very
clear and definite idea of what he was saying or writing. Read
his second Inaugural, on the fourth of last March. The staunch-
est and most orthodox divine could not have given utterance to
more evangelical doftrines or religious sentiments. He quotes
and comments upon the very -words of our divine Saviour, in the
eighteenth chapter of Matthew: "Woe unto the world because
of offences." Then, too. With what masterly emphasis he quotes
the words of the Psalmist David, prefacing, " If God wills that
the war continue until all the wealth piled by the bondmen's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another
drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so
still it must be said, ^The judgments ofthe Lord are true- and
righteous altogether.' " Noble utterances and sublime language,
which will live as long as the English language shall be spoken!
Such truthful sayings will go forth from the Chief Magistrate of
a great people, to break asunder the fetters of slavery throughout
the world. His name through all coming time will be associated
with that most important of all his State documents, — his Eman-

Rev. S. C. Damon. 67

cipation Proclamation. It may well be compared with the Impe
rial Ukase of the Emperor Alexander, giving liberty to twenty
millions of Russian serfs. From the time and circumstances
under which it was issued, it must ever be viewed as marking
the transition point from slavery to freedom, in the history of the
Republic of America. I cannot stop to dwell upon Mr, Lincoln's
efforts and labors in behalf of the slaves and the colored people
of America. It was noble and philantHropic ; and it doubtless
afforded him unfeigned pleasure, during the latter months of his
eventful life, to learn, in so many ways, that they appreciated his
services. This was apparent when he received a copy of the
Holy Bible from the loyal colored people of Baltimore, as a token
of respeft and gratitude. They hailed him as the " friend of
universal freedom." It never will be known in time, how many
millions of earnest prayers went up for " Massa Linkum " from
the Uncle-Toni cabins scattered all over the Slave States, from the
Potomac to the Rio Grande. Those sincere but enslaved people
took hold of the Arm that sustained the universe. America
stands forth to-day .disinthralled and saved, not merely by the
achievements of our noble soldiers, and the masterly statesman
ship of our Cabinet Ministers, Senators, and Representatives, but
there was a power behind all these outward manifestations.
That power was prayer, — the prayers, too, ofthe poor. Says the
son of Sirach, " A prayer out of a poor man's mouth reacheth
to the ears of God, and his judgment cometh speedily." — "He
will hear the prayer of the oppressed." — "The prayer of the
humble pierceth the clouds; and, till it come nigh, he will not be
comforted, and will not depart till the Most High shall behold to
judge righteously, and execute judgment." Mr, Lincoln recog
nized that power of prayer, as I have already shown, when he left
his home for the White House at Washington.
How intensely interesting the faft, that, while he was thus

68 God putteth down One, and setteth up Another.
occupied with the great and momentous affairs of thirty millions
of people, — of whom four or five millions were in open rebel
lion, and a million more were girded as soldiers, — yet, even
amidst all these cares, he did not negleft the poor who were his
neighbors, as the following incident will show: —
A newspaper correspondent from Chicago one day dropped
in upon Mr, Lincoln, and found him busy counting greenbacks.
" This, sir," said the President, in his cheerful way, " is something
out of my usual line; but a President of the United States has a
multiplicity of duties not specified in the Constitution, or Afts of
Congress, This is one of them. This money belongs to a poor
negro, who is porter in one of the Departments (the Treasury),
who is at present ill with the small-pox. He is now in the hos
pital, and could not draw his pay because he could not sign his
name. I have been at considerable trouble to overcome the
difficulty, and get it for him, and have at length succeeded in
cutting red tape, as your newspaper men say. I am now dividing
the money, and putting by a portion labelled, in an envelope, with
my own hands, according to his wish," Such unostentatious afts
of kindness need no comment. Our Saviour said, when upon
earth, "And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little
ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I
say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." I doubt not
that the good man is now reaping his reward in glory for be
friending the poor colored porter who could not write his name, —
sick with the small-pox in the hospital. It is an interesting faft,
that the American citizen, at home and abroad, however humble
his lot, was not forgotten by him. When it was reported at
Washington, through the correspondence of our minister, to Mr.
Seward, that a sailor had been ill-treated at the Marquesas Is
lands, Mr. Lincoln immediately direfts, that five hundred dollars
in gold be devoted to the purchase of presents, to be distributed

Rev. S, C, Damon. 69

among Hawaiian missionaries, and others, who had rescued the
unfortunate man.
It is an interesting faft, that the very last public address which
Mr. Lincoln ever made, March 17, was in reference to colored
soldiers being employed by the rebels. He remarked, that he
hoped they would try the experiment. In all his efforts in behalf
of the colored people of America, he has endeavored to manage
the subjeft with an enlightened regard to the highest Christian
duty to his country and to God. Having shown that Mr. Lincoln
was aftuated, as a public officer, by Christian principle, I am fully
confident that he was truly an experimental Christian, one whose
Christianity did not begin and end in a mere formal acknowledg
ment of divine Providence. The following incident is reported
by the Rev, Mr. Adams, a Presbyterian minister of Philadelphia.
He was on a visit to Washington, and had made an appointment
to call upon the President at the White House, at five o'clock in ¦
the morning. Says Mr. Adams, " Morning came, and I hastened
my toilet, and found myself at a quarter to five in the waiting-
room of the President. I asked the usher if I could see Mr.
Lincoln, He said I could not, 'But I have an engagement to
meet him this morning,' — ' At what hour ? ' — '^ At five o'clock,'
'Well, sir, he will see you at five.' I then -walked to and fro
for a few minutes, and, hearing a voice, as if in grave conversa
tion, I asked the servant, 'Who is talking in the next room?'
'It is the President, sir.' — 'Is anybody with him?' — 'No, sir, he
is reading the Bible.' — 'Is that his habit so early in the morn
ing?' — 'Yes, sir, he spends every morning from four o'clock to
five in reading the Scriptures, and praying.' " How beautiful
an illustration this is of the injunftion of our Saviour, " But
thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and pray to thy
Father which is in secret " ! How beautiful an instance of
one who followed our Saviour's devotional habit, who, " in the

7o God putteth down One, and setteth up Another.
morning, rising up a great while before day," went out and
prayed ! " Prayer, ardent, opens heaven, lets down a stream
Of glory on the consecrated hour
Of man, in audience with the Deity,"
The following incident, however, sets forth Mr. Lincoln's
views upon the question of vital godliness, in the very strongest
light. Several months before his ever-to-be-lamented death, a
gentleman called upon him on business. After the business was
closed, and they were about to part, the gentleman said to the
President, " On leaving home, a friend requested me to ask Mr.
Lincoln whether he loved Jesus." The gentleman makes the
following report: "The President buried his face in his handker
chief, turned away, and wept. He then turned and said, 'When
I left home to take the Chair of State, I requested my country
men to pray for me. I was not then a Christian. When my son
died, — the severest trial of my life, — I was not a Christian,
But when I went to Gettysburg, and looked upon the graves of
our dead heroes, who had fallen in defence of their country, I
then and there consecrated myself to Christ. / do love Jesus! "
This simple and touching confession needs no comment. It
opens to the world the heart and religious experience ofthe good
man. The people felt that he was honest in all his dealings with
them, and so he was equally honest with himself and God,
These few simple utterances, welling up from the depths of his
heart, and accompanied with tears, will ever be cherished by
Christians of every name and seft as the most precious sayings
of his life. They touch the tenderest chord in the Christian's
heart. Christians of every name will ever regard him as a
brother beloved, but departed; and, when thinking of him as
departed, the language of the burial service will not be inap
propriate: "It hath pleased Almighty God, in his wise provi-

Rev, S. C. Damon, 71

dence, to take out of this world the soul of our deceased
brother: "
Think not, my hearers, that I have brought forward these
fafts and incidents in the life of our lamented President, because
I think it requires an argument in the style of special pleading to
prove his adherence to the principles of Christianity, and the
doftrines of the New Testament. No: his Christian, as well
as his public and political, charafter is known and read of all
men. With him, there was no reserve or concealment. His
charafter was perfeftly transparent. His faults, as well as his
virtues, were equally apparent; —
" And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side."
He went to the theatre on that fatal night, the telegraph in
forms us, because he wished to please his friends, and not disap
point the people, who were expefting the presence of General
Grant, " His life was gentle : and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up.
And say to all the world. This -was a man."
In turning our thoughts from a contemplation of his charafter
to our bleeding country, the question forces itself upon every
thoughtful mind. What will be the effeft of Abraham Lincoln's
assassination upon the nation? Our latest dates afford us, as yet,
no fafts by which we can satisfaftorily answer this question.
Time must determine. JOur minds must for the present find con
solation in dwelling upon the great truth, that God lives and
reigns ; and that he is able and " will make the wrath of man to
praise Him." We may also recall to mind some of those pages
of history, wherein somewhat similar events are recorded.
When Brutus and his fellow-assassins smote down Caesar in the
Senate at Rome, they supposed, that, with Caesar's death, Caesar's

72 God putteth down One, and setteth up Another.
influence would no longer be felt. They were disappointed.
Caesar disappeared ; but, exclaims Cicero, " All the afts of Caesar's
life, his writings, his words, his promise,^, his thoughts, are more
powerful after his death than if he were still alive." So, I trust,
and doubt not, it will be with the life, writings, words, promises,
thoughts, of Abraham Lincoln. His blood has stamped an im
press upon these, which will immeasurably increase their value
throughout all coming time.
When the hired assassin, Balthazar Gerard, brought to an
untimely end the eventful life of William the Silent, Prince of
Orange, on the loth of July, 1584, Philip II, , and all the enemies
of civil and religious liberty, imagined, that, with the death of
the Prince of Orange, would end his usefulness. But, oh, how
disappointed were these men! In the beautiful language of
Motley, " The prince was entombed amid the tears of a whole
nation. Never was a more extensive, unaffefted, and legitimate
sorrow felt at the death of any human being. As long as he
lived, he was the guiding-star ofa whole brave nation; and when
he died, the little children cried in the streets." The Common
wealth, which William had liberated for ever from Spanish
tyranny, continued to exist, as a great and flourishing Republic,
during more than t-wo centuries, under the successive stadthold-
erates of his sons and descendants. So, I doubt not, a similar
result will follow the assassination of the illustrious man, whose
most unexpefted death we now lament. He died the martyr to
liberty. He was assassinated by the hand of Booth; but it was
negro-chattel slavery which nerved that arm, and prompted that
basest of crimes in the annals of nations. This was the crown
ing aft of the slaveholders' rebellion. Sumter was fired upon on
the 1 2th of April, 1861, Booth shot President Lincoln on the
14th of April, 1865. The same bad animus that first struck
down the flag in '61, fired the assassin's bosom, when he smote

Rev. S. C. Damon. 73

down the President, — Commander-in-chief of all the military and
naval forces of the Republic. No powers of metaphysical analy
sis can separate the two. Perhaps it was needed that this crime
of crimes should be perpetrated to arouse the minds of the
American people to the awful enormity, of the crime of slavery
and treason. The deed has been accomplished; and, henceforth
and for ever, in the minds of all loyal Americans, and lovers of
liberty throughout the world, a stigma has been fastened upon
the crime of slavery and treason, which can never be wiped away.
However much we may pity the unfortunate dupes ofthe leaders
of that rebellion, the deeds of the instigators and leaders can
never be palliated; for their crimes all culminated in Booth's
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, How the perpetrator of that
crime shall be punished, remains to be seen; but woe be unto
those -who arouse the wrath of a nation of thirty millions of
people ! Solomon compares the wrath of a king to " the roaring
of a lion," and to " messengers of death ; " but to what shall be
compared the people's wrath? Mr, Lincoln could not execute
that wrath. He found it, from the overflowing kindness of his
nature, almost impossible to punish the guilty. Perhaps there
was no trait of his charafter to which his enemies took more
exception, and over which his friends more deeply mourned. It
sometimes seriously embarrassed the regular administration of
justice. The officers of the army and the Government said it
was useless to arrest offenders and traitors, for Mr, Lincoln would
pardon them. At the last meeting of the Cabinet, held only the
day before his death, Mr, Lincoln expressed his determination to
deal in the most liberal manner with the rebellious States. As
it has been -well remarked, " The great, capacious, manly heart of
Abraham Lincoln was generous enough to have embraced all
within the forgiveness of its loving nature ; and, in their madness,
they have killed him." The best friend ofthe rebels was assassi-
10

74 God putteth down One, and setteth up Another.
nated by one of themselves; and no doubt, ifhe could have again
spoken, he would have prayed, in the language of our Saviour qn
the cross, " Father, forgive them : they know not what they do."
The event to which our attention has now been called, will
not pass into oblivion, and be forgotten. It was not done in a
corner; but the crime was perpetrated, as it were, in the presence
of a gazing crowd of speftators, infinitely larger than that gath
ered in the theatre where it took place. Abraham Lincoln was
assassinated on the world's wide stage. There was a great
cloud of witnesses. What shall be its influence upon the
nation and the world, we know not now; but -we shall know
hereafter. It will be overruled for good. How unspeakably
thankful we all should be, that he was spared thus long to the
nation, even 'to see a virtual ending of the rebellion! God per
mitted this stunning blow to fall for the accomplishment of some
wise purpose, I do believe, that, in after years and ages, it
will be seen to have been necessary for bringing about the final
triumph of justice and truth, and the punishment of the guilty.
For a season, clouds and darkness may surround the throne of
God, and envelop his plans and purposes; but, ere long, he will
make all clear and plain. If we are watchful, and take the word
of God for our guide, we shall see the dark clouds revealing a
rainbow of glorious promise. I am confident that a bright and
glorious future is opening before our country. Let us be hope
ful. Great results must follow from these tragic events of war
and commotion. Surely we have witnessed enough to make us
trustful and confiding. It seems to be a law or principle which
God observes in his management of nations, as well as indi
viduals, that, when he would bestow some signal favor, he pre
pares the way by severe chastisements. Surely I think we may
hope that God has great good in store for that people, when he
shall have chastised them for, that great sin of slavery. That

Rev, S. C, Damon. 75

must be removed before the millennium come, and the gospel
shall everywhere triumph. In the appropriate language of Long
fellow, I would exhort you, "Look not mournfully upon the past:
it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present: it is
thine. Go forth and meet the shadowy future, without fear, and
with a manly heart." Let us not go forth, however, trusting in
an " arm of flesh," but in God, our Saviour and Deliverer, most
fully believing the sentiment ofthe text, "What I do, thou know
est not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." — ^^ God is the
judge!''

SERMON:
PREACHED IN THE SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, HOLYOKE, MASS,, ON
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1 9, 1 865 ;
BY REV, O, H, DUTTON,"

Psalms xc. 6: "In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is
cut down, dried up and withered,"
THE whirling swiftness of the events in the, midst of which
we live, takes us through strange scenes, and forces sudden
contrasts upon us. We stand bewildered and doubtful among
them. Man's importance dwindles. By a common instinft,
which puts aside with authority all the impious thoughts, all the
blasphemous words of the scoffer, men turn their eyes to God,
and pause in humble waiting on his will.
Among strange scenes, and amid sudden contrasts, indeed, we
move. Where are now the jubilant clang of bells, and the roar
of answering cannon; the cheerful countenance; the mutual con
gratulations of men; the flashing illumination, — all the demon
strations of joy and gratitude which but ten days ago gave a
bounding energy to every step, and caused us all to smile as we
looked from the smoky past toward the bright sunshine of the
future ? Given place to muffled sounds, to hearts bowed down,
to heads shaking in foreboding, to breasts surcharged with grief
for whose utterance even groans will not suffice.

Rev. O. H. Dutton. 77

The country has mourned before this day. A few here and
there live who dimly remember the lamentation for the death
of the first President. Many of us recall with ease the sorrow
upon the land when the ninth ended his briefest term of office.
And most of us distinftly recolleft the death of our twelfth Chief
Magistrate, with all the attending circumstances of the general
grief. The nation has mourned before; but never as now.
And where lies the pungency of our sorrow? Not chiefly in
the loss of a wise man of far-seeing vision and of firmest will.
That is a subjeft for calmer regret, but not for blinding, despair
ing affliftion of soul. No : the thought which smote all hearts as
the horrible tidings of last week's close swept over the land was,
that we had lost a friend ; a living, loving personality had been
snatched away: 'twas as if some one whom we knew, and with
whom we had taken sweet counsel together, had been laid low.
Therefore we wept. Thence arises this weary moaning, which
makes of the whole nation a grand ^olian harp, whose thou
sand strings vibrate in shivering unison, with tones of deepest
woe. And now, the people of the country everywhere assemble, as
we do here, to take part in the burial of this true fellow-citizen,
this wise counsellor, this noble-hearted friend. In the nation's
capital, the mortal remains are now passing amid tenderest care
toward the grave; and, in every village where stands a house
dedicated to God's worship, overflowing hearts are paying the
tribute due to one whose memory shall ever be accompanied with
blessing. While we need not to-day attempt to give what would neces
sarily be an imperfeft sketch of the late President's life; and
while we cannot hope to present any thing like a thorough resume
of his charafter; or to make any thing like an intelligent group
ing of his great official afts, — we yet may properly and- profita-

78 Sermon.

bly refer to some of his more marked qualities as statesman
and man.
You know that honesty of his, which has become proverbial.
It was not the mere honesty in pecuniary matters, but an upright
ness which pervaded all his relations with mankind; a desire to
know the absolute truth, and a fixed determination to aft upon
that knowledge when gained. It was the honesty of aftion as
well as of intention : some men, 3'ou know, are honest at the out
set in their purposes, but through an imperfeftly balanced charac
ter are twisted aside into a crooked line of aftion. This was by
no means the case with him. He sought first to know himself,
and all the dangers to which he was liable from his own personal
peculiarities; then he endeavored thoroughly to learn the real
bearings of every question offered to him : he would present it to
all lights; would take the opinions of the enemies as well as the
friends of any measure: he knew how to make allowances for
the prejudices of those in favor of, as well as of those against, any
line of aftion pressed upon him. He was not to be pushed hastily
into any step, nor was he to be restrained when the time seemed
to his honest, justice-loving mind to have fully come.
As a natural consequence, Mr. Lincoln was misunderstood for
a long time, — a very long time. Radical men from one important
State and another would post to Washington, have an interview
with the President, and urge their most violent plans upon him:
but then they would be chagrined to find, that, while they were
more than courteously listened to ; while every bit of valuable in
telligence or useful suggestion they had to offer was eagerly
seized by him, and honestly used, — their pet schemes were not
put in motion; and thereupon there would result dissatisfaftion.
But then appeared the shining qualities of Mr. Lincoln's na
ture. He could be patient in the midst of the censures of his
friends. Confident in his own integrity, and with a splendid trust

Rev. O. H. Dutton, 79

in his true eye, this steady pilot kept his hand on the helm, and
smiled amid all storms. He lived through several of these trying
times; and the men who had blamed his slowness, thanked God
that their impetuosity had not changed his course.
I said that they complained of his slowness. There was a
quality in Mr, Lincoln which was indeed remarkable in this head
long age, among such an irritable people. His honesty — another
name for his sense" of justice — made him seem slow. He wished
to hear, and he would hear, every particle of evidence before the
case was taken up for decision. Then he did what he felt to be
right; that is, he first gave long and careful deliberation to the
matter, and then moved with an absolutely inflexible purpose to
ward his end. He would not import the dash of the battle-field
into the deliberations of the council-chamber. He knew that all
important questions of State would gain by waiting. There he
felt secure in his own judgment, and there he held firm. In mat
ters which, as we may say, were not legitimately within his pro
vince except by name, — as military affairs, — he was modest, and,
though having opinions, allowed himself to be, perhaps not unfre
quently, overruled; when, even here, in most cases, I believe the
fafts would show that his ideas were more judicious than those
finally substituted. But, where questions of State were involved,
he would deliberate long, and aft with absolute independence.
We used often to hear, two years ago, remarks like this: That
hopes had been entertained that the President would take this or
that step, but that such a strong pressure had been brought upon
him on the other side, that the hope had been given up; but lately
we have not heard such remarks, simply because men had begun
to know that it was not an adverse influence which defeated their
projefts, but simply the resistance of a strong and just nature to
their own inordinate pressure. The honest}', sense of justice,
which seemed an inborn, and was an absolutely fixed, principle of

8o Sermon.

his being, was the sure moral foundation on which all his excel
lences rested.
In patriotism he was a bright exemplar. Absolute modesty,
utter self-abnegation, charafterized all his afts. He made no
verbal professions of patriotism, more than he did of honesty.
He seemed to think it as absurd for a public officer to advertise
his love of country, as it would be for a judge to boast of fairness.
In faft, he never thought of self. A simple, single desire to serve
the country, and to guide her safely through her sea of troubles,
was the motive power of all his afts.
With this unfailing honesty and this shining patriotism was
joined a far-seeing wisdom, which — under God — has brought
us again to the boundary of peace. Our late President was a
wiser man than most of those around him, than most of those
throughout the land. He could penetrate farther into the future
than most. His wisdom seemed — like his honesty and his pa
triotism — to be an instinft; and where other men, wise in their
generation, would have hastily taken a certain step, he waited and
looked about him, usually seeing a reason for different aftion.
Turn back along the history of the past four years, and see how
many afts there are, which, had they been otherwise done, would
most likely have brought us to-day into another and surely worse
condition than that which we now hold. The question of eman
cipation, upon which more pressure was brought to bear for and
against than on any other, — emancipation was the dear wish of
his heart. But not even to accomplish that would he take a step
which honesty and patriotism did not approve. His wisdom
showed him the diflSculties before him, and direfted him how to
avoid them all. And now grandly that wisdom stands forth this
day in conneftion with the great result of the war, — Universal
Liberty. There was a positive sublimity in Mr. Lincoln's calm stead-

Rev. O, H, Dutton. 8i

fastness and self-reliance, — qualities which never deserted him,
and of which he often had especial need. There have been many
dark days during this war, as you surely need not be told. There
have been months of what the people thought inaftion; times
when every thing seemed slipping into chaos ; moments when
political manipulations seemed to be paralyzing the military arm,
and making the Executive a merely nominal power. The opposi
tion presses throughout the countr}' were joining in one yell of
objurgation; the friendly journals were fault-finding, changeable,
lukewarm; the people fancied they saw imbecility in the Admin
istration. Amid all this uproar, with the awful responsibility of
the nation's weal on his shoulders, — under which, in such a mo
ment of anxiety, a timid man would have fled, and a nervous man
would have died, — he remained firm, quiet, unruffled, certain that
the future would justify the present, and willing to wait for the
coming verdift.
Try to place yourselves in imagination in the position he occu
pied, for instance, when some great military plan was coming to
its development, and there was impending one of those series of
bloody aftions which you all know so well. The fighting begins.
The moment for which the people have been clamoring has
come. If the result of the battles be favorable, well; if the result
be a defeat, then upon the head of the President is sure to de
scend a torrent of censure. Can you conceive any thing more
trying than such an interval of anxiety and suspense ? It would
have been hard enough to have endured it, if success should
come : but perchance we are beaten ; now what strength is like
that which can stand up, unmoved in its conscious integrity, and
outlive that overthrow? What courage like that which can pa
tiently clear away the ruins, and then sit down to construft
another edifice, still hopefully? Such unfailing strength, such
indomitable courage, charafterized the man for whom we mourn.
II

82 Sermon.

But — again disclaiming any pretence of having given more
than an imperfeft outline of Mr, Lincoln's charafteristics as a
statesman — let us turn to look at him in his personal traits. It
was my lot to be one of the number who accompanied the Presi
dent eleft on his circuitous journey from his Western home to
Washington, previous to his first inauguration. At night, when
we paused at some large town or city, there was, of course, con
fusion, and all the jargon of a public demonstration. But when,
the next morning, we were once more under way, freedom of
intercourse was again restored, and the inmates of the two cars
which composed the special train moved to and fro as they
chose. Thus, during the eight or nine days consumed before
reaching New- York City, all had the opportunity of seeing much
of the man upon whom the heart-hopes of the whole country
then rested with a prophetic instinft. Of course, political mat
ters were not discussed in any general way; and except for the
three or four brief speeches during the day, when at some -way-
station the people would have collefted to greet their President,
no one would have known that so noteworthy a personage was
there. But this very absence of official circumstance gave us all
the more opportunity of observing his personal charafteristics;
and these, as then developed to us, never changed, even in the
atmosphere of the capital.
Mr. Lincoln was essentially and thoroughly a kind man: his
was a homely kindness, too, which made no one feel as if sub-
jefted to a condescension. While speaking to those younger
than himself, he was apt to put his hand upon the other's shoulder,
and then would utter some bit of quaint wisdom, or make some
personal inquiry, through which a magnetism would steal into the
one with whom he conversed, drawing him along with gentle but
resistless force. One of the most charming recolleftions of the
trip is of the peculiar love existing between the President eleft

Rev. O. H. Dutton. 83

and Colonel Ellsworth, who was of the party. As they sat or
stood talking together, the former's arm would be thrown around
Ellsworth with the air of an older brother; and, as if in return for
this regard, the latter would constitute himself a special body
guard, and his vigorous strength would open a way through the
densest crowd which gathered at the terminus of the day's ride
to gaze at and hail with shouts the illustrious visitor.
To people generally, Mr, Lincoln was by no means a demon
strative person, and his courtesy had not the finish of the polished
man of society. But his genuine kindness was unfailing: it
-would show itself in the trip spoken of on seeing, at a station
where no stop was to be made, a waiting crowd. He could not
bear to disappoint the people, he said ; and it was the same feel
ing which sent him, reluftant, to the theatre, to meet his death.
He would gladly have avoided the conspicuous display; but the
cry, "We want to see President Lincoln," he could not resist.
" I think I must say 'how d'ye do ' to them," he would remark to
the manager of the excursion : and so he would step out upon the
rear platform, acknowledging the greeting, and beginning an ad
dress -which would most likely be quickly cut short by the moving
off of the train; when, with a last pleasant word, and one of his
peculiar smiles, which seemed to light up the whole assembly, he
would return to his place, making some apologetic remark to the
representatives of the press for the unfinished oration, and then
for an hour or two more would be the plain and happy father of
his children, of whose frolics he never grew weary.
This broad, genial kindness of heart never left him through
life. Those who were associated with him, — whether private
secretaries or house servants, socially or officially, — all join in
this, — that he was invariably a gentle man. He truly rejoiced
with the joyful, and wept with the mourner. Whether reviewing
the army, or visiting the bedside of the thousand inmates of a

84 Sermon.

military hospital, or listening to the supplication of some poor
woman who besought that the forfeited life of an erring son might
be spared, — he was ever the kind friend, the sympathetic com
forter, the merciful-hearted ruler.
His modesty was a most noticeable trait. An idea of display
never entered his mind. He was entirely destitute of what we
call " manner," There was no air of authority upon him. He
never did any thing for effeft, or with a dash. He was never
hurried, never heated; never wore the look of anxiety which is so
fatal to a nation's tranquillity, when seen upon a ruler's face in a
troublous time: he seemed to be cheerful from principle; and
cheerful because he had a genuine trust in God, — the High and
Mighty Ruler of the Universe.
And this brings us to say a word of Mr. Lincoln's Christian
charafter. The sources from which comes our present conviftion
of his really genuine religious experience are open before all
men. When a man so honest and so wise indicates, declares,
plainly as words can say it, that his trust is in God, we have but
to believe, and rejoice in believing, that he knows indeed the bles
sedness of such a hope, ever an anchor to the soul. I think that
you who have taken note, even without especial reference to this
point, of the late President's addresses and proclamations, will
say, that there has been a gradually increasing spirit of piety
manifested in those papers, a spirit which culminates in his last
Inaugural Address, — that strangely solemn word, so unexpefted,
so almost startling, which breathed a temper truly Christ-like, a
trust in God grand in its sublimity of expression.
But God, on whom he placed his hope, fulfilling his own
righteous purpose, mysterious though it be, willed that his work
on earth should cease. And so this honest man, patriot citizen,
wise statesman, kind friend, modest ruler, gentle Christian, — this
leader of our Israel, — died on the borders of the promised land.

Rev. O. H. Dutton, 85

whither he was not allowed to go fully over, though he might see
it from a distance. After, through much toil, and having borne
the heat and burden of the day, he had labored to bring his coun
try through her perils, he was cut down in the evening of the
strife, just as he was looking forward to rest under the vine and
fig-tree of lovely peace, A strange life! A death wondrous
strange! Think of that humble origin; that remarkable upward
course; that four years of dust and smoke and blood, of turmoil,
anger's writhing and disaffeftion's upheaving; that sudden suc
cession of flashing viftories won by his generals; the crowning
triumph of his simple entrance into the rebel capital, — neither
rebel nor capital longer; and then that swift destruftion, — the
quenching of a precious life in the murkiness and gloom ofa hor
rible crime. Wonderful life! More wonderful death! Who but
God can unlock its inscrutable meaning?
It is impossible to think and speak of this visitation of the
Almighty hand without going behind it, and looking for its cause.
If a thunderbolt had slain him, or if he had fallen by one of the
more common strokes which lay so many low, the loss would
have been still irreparable, men say; but the blow would not have
been so sickening in its effefts. Had even a ruffianly hand,
guided by an avaricious heart, stricken him, the same degree of
horror -would not have been aroused. But it is that this aft is the
final culmination in death of that sin which was brought forth of
the lust of gain and power, — the sin of human slavery. We
needed to have one truth forced upon us, — that the system which
has borne the terrible fruits of the past does of itself destroy the
moral fibre of humanity, and make any crime easy to him whose
passions are influenced from such a source. We needed, I say,
to have this truth forced upon us ; and it has made slow prog
ress, even in the events ofthe last four years, till within this week
which follows Friday last. We have been slow to be convinced

86 Sermon.

that slavery in the nation, like habitual drunkenness in the indi
vidual, would, as a rule, destroy honor, and make of man a raging
beast. We denied, and still denied, that the rules of ordinary
warfare were violated ; that wounded men were butchered ; that
captured men were subjefted to the terrible torture of a slow star
vation, which could end only in idiocy or death. We forced
ourselves to doubt these things, till the truth of the awful tale was
thrust upon us by concurrent, irrefragable testimony; by the tot
tering return to us of brothers and friends, ruined by no wound
of the battle-field; and by those sun-piftures which cannot lie,
and which are so dreadful that we hide them from our wives and
daughters in pure mercy. We tried not to believe that a Southern
prison had been deliberately mined, and that, in a certain emer
gency, it was to have been blown into fragments, with all its
famine-stricken inmates, — till we heard the aft defended by
Southern men. And yet, with all this accumulation of proof of
the rottenness produced by the system, we were not prepared —
I venture to say — for the dagger and the pistol, for conspiracy
and assassination.
God forbid that we, his ministers, standing here in the temple
where his mercy dwelleth, serving under the orders of the Prince
of Peace, and met together with you to commemorate the burial
of one whose every word was kindness, — God forbid that we
should seem to say any thing to inflame the passions of men, or
to excite desires for a carnal vengeance ! Rather would we bring
home to the consciences of all men the question. Am I guiltless
in this matter? We have temporized too much in our halls of
legislation, and in all the marts of trade. We have eaten, and
wiped our mouths, and said, " I have done no wickedness," Did
we think that the Almighty God would hide his face from sin, —
would wink at the wrong-doing, — would prevent as by a miracle
the natural outworking of the virulence within ? My brethren.

Rev. O. H, Dutton. 87

when shall we learn that there is in truth a God of perfeft justice ?
When know that he really governs this world? When be con
vinced that retribution must follow crime ? While Boards of Trade
have bridged over awkward gaps in the body politic with resolu
tions; while men have gone about with trowels and mortar
smoothing over the cracks which show the presence of the hidden
internal fire, — the volcano has been working still, and all human
contrivances have been but as tow before the fierceness of the
furnace. Let us not forget to-day, that we are under the mighty hand
of God. Do you not remember how ready we were but a week
ago to discard humiliation, and rush into resounding joy, almost
forgetful of the Lord, who is the only Giver of all viftory?
Thoughtful men trembled when wave after wave of triumph
rolled in upon us, and we seemed to have moved at a step from
out of thick darkness into broadest sunlight. Some of us still
feared that bitter trouble was coming; that we had not yet been
sufficiently punished: and we asked ourselves. Will the blow
take the form of financial disaster? Will perhaps a foreign war
crowd upon us ? What will it be ? For in the atmosphere there
is something telling of danger. But we did not think of this.
We did not dream that every loyal heart in the land would be
pierced with sharpest grief; that even the brightness of the lovely
spring would be changed into a light more saddening than an
autumn farewell.
God has his purposes, — and all are wise. Let us reverently
ask to be taught his will. While mourning over the affliftion
he has sent upon us, let us thank him from the depths of our
overflowing hearts, that he gave us this wise man and true-
hearted leader — this second Father of his country — so long;
that we are permitted to reap what he has sowed; that through
him — under God — we see, even in this sad moment, the virtual

88 Sermon.

end of that rebellion, which, four years ago to-day, shed the first.
blood of our citizens, — the virtual end of the war which was
begun by a mob, which has been ended by an assassin.
And now, while one simultaneous sound of wailing goes up
from the length and breadth of the land; while through the
sweet sunshine, and surrounded with all the fragrance of Na
ture's opening life, the mortal body of our ruler and friend is
carried to the burial, there to rest in the hope of a joyful resur
reftion, through Jesus Christ our Lord, — let us take for the guid
ance of our future steps, as private citizens, or members of the
great body, — the State, those concluding words of his last mes
sage, — words which will for ever shine as a halo around the
memory of him from whom we now for ever in this life take our
leave : —
" With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to
care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow
and his orphans; and to do all which may achieve and cherish a
just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

THE NATION'S BEREAVEMENT:
A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, BUFFALO, N,Y,,
SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 1 6, 1 865 ;
BY REV, J, HAZARD HARTZELL,

2 Samuel, xxii. 28 : "And the afflifted people thou wilt save."
THIS is the language of David in regard to the people of Is
rael. They had passed through a terrible conflift with the
Philistines. Israel had emerged from the shock and blood, the
commotion and destruftion, of war, mighty and viftorious. But
some of their great men had fallen, and bitter sorrow came upon
Israel. Their kingdom had been delivered by the hand of the
Almighty; and, whilst they rejoiced over this deliverance, they
-were called to mourn over the great men who had perished in
the struggle. David returned thanks to the Almighty for the
viftory over his enemies, and, with the voice of the sublimest
confidence,* declared that God would save his afflifted people.
Oh ! it is grand and inspiring to see this old king, amid the sorrow
and desolation of the people, with the light of viftory streaming
all over his kingdom, which had been shaken by the tumult of
war, looking up with a full heart, and thanking God for his timely
intercession. With these introduftory remarks, we pass, with indescribable
feelings, to speak this morning upon " The Nation's Bereavement."
12

90 The Nation! s Bereavement.
Stunned by the terrific blow, and appalled by the unspeakable
horror of a most wicked tragedy, we hardly know how to ap
proach the subjeft. The President of the Republic is struck
down by the red hand of the midnight assassin, in the hour of
our national triumph; and a loving people are in tears. The
Secretary of State lies in a critical condition, with blood oozing
from the wounds inflifted by the relentless murderer; and rejoic
ing freemen are shocked arid bewildered. The light of viftory
has given way to the darkness of death; and the angel of liber
ty hangs, with piteous look and sheltering wing, over the Repub
lic. We find our feelings expressed in the language of Macduff,
when he discovered Duncan lying bloody and dead in his cham
ber: -7- " Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord's anointed temple, and stole from thence
The Life of the building,"
A loyal people are wrenched with agony, and overshadowed
with desolation. Bells have tolled their melancholy music, and
every city in the country is draped in the deepest mourning.
Tears are the eloquent utterances of a mighty people, who have
conquered a rebellion, the most bloody and wicked that ever
darkened the earth, and redeemed a nation, the most free and
just upon which the sun ever poured its light. But, beneath
these tears, so profuse and bitter, there is a firm, deep, steady
purpose to punish treason and murder; to re-instate the Republic
upon the everlasting foundations of justice and righteousness ; to
advance with a giant tread, and meet the momentous issues of
the hour; to usher in the luminous period of law and order, and
let the nation travel, with triumphant banners, up the prophetic
highway of a glorious destiny.
First treason, and then murder: how they follow in rapid

Rev. J. Hazard Hartzell. 91
succession, shocking the heart, and bewildering the brain!
Wickedness finds culmination in the massacre of the President;
and in the fiendish attack upon the Secretary, when suffering
intense pain upon his narrow couch. It is the deep, dark, dam
ning stain upon the escutcheon of American civilization, which
will require the operation of centuries to obliterate. It will re
quire the attrition of a thousand reforms, and the polish of long
years of education and refinement, to give this escutcheon its
former brilliancy. Long will it be before the American people
will outgrow this foul, rank disgrace, which clings to them, at
this moment, like a cold, withering shadow upon their land, which
is richer to-day, thank God ! with its golden sheaves and loyal
hearts, than Europe is with its dusty thrones and burnished
crowns. Not only has a good man fallen, but every citizen of the
Republic has been struck. When the President fell by the cold
hand of the assassin, every freeman in the country received the
blotch of infamy upon his forehead. In the presence of law,
Abraham Lincoln was not the President of this party, nor of that
party, but of the people; and, as such, he fell. We say, with
Mark Antony, —
" Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen !
Then I and you and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us,"
And what a commentary it is upon the civilization of this coun
try, when we refleft that the truth of the present, so full of horror
and disgrace, is so forcibly expressed by the language of Mark
Antony over the dead body of Caesar, as it lay in the proud city
of Rome, speaking, with a terrible eloquence, to the frenzied
multitude, from many a wound. This shocking tragedy occurred
under the ruling civilization of heathenism; but it is not more
cruel, bloody, and wicked, than the one which has just been

92 The Nation! s Bereavement.
performed in Washington, amid the spiritual forces of Christiani
ty. Oh! respefted freemen, it is a terrible misfortune to be
thrown, by the puny arm of one man, back three thousand years
into the cold and chilling atmosphere of barbarism. Oh! my
afflifted countrymen, we have met with an awful calamity; and it
behooves us, in this hour of trial and sorrow, to rise above all the
prejudices of party and sectarianism, and awake to the important
duties of the hour. " Awake !
Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, •
And look on death itself! Up, up, and see
The great doom's image ! Malcolm ! Banquo !
As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites.
To countenance this horror ! "
This assassination of the President discloses a recklessness
and a depravity, that must be humiliating to every American. It
is the revealment of that contempt for law and order, which must
lower the Government in the minds of Europeans. It is the
development of that awful spirit of treason, which has been
nurtured, for years, in malignant bosoms, under the diabolus of
nullification. It is the same spirit which disgraced the halls
of American Congress by its passion, despotism, and brutal vio
lence; and that brought sorrow to the hearts, and pallor to the
lips, of millions of freemen, by firing into the honored flag on
Fort Sumter. It has now risen to the climax of perfidy; and the
blood of our Chief Magistrate is crying to us, in melting tones,
from the ground.
We hoped that we had passed from the period of violence and
destruftion, treason and murder. We had hoped that our great
est sorrow had been experienced, our heaviest calamities borne,
our deepest darkness passed. But we were mistaken; for a
shock of commotion, like a clap of thunder from a sky that
looked beautiful and serene, has shaken the nation. We stood in

Rev. J. Hazard Hartzell. 93
the morning light ofthe new era which had commenced ta break
over the country, with flags of triumph waving, and bells of
gladness ringing, when the President was stricken down. The
foot of the nation was upon the neck of the rebellion, and it
was passing through its last spasm, rolling and struggling in the
dust, when this awful calamity fell upon us. With the light of
peace and joy beaming upon the land, in consequence of the
glorious triumph of the invincible army of the Republic, we
should have rejoiced if the life of the President could have been
spared. But the Almighty, for some wise purpose beyond our
comprehension, has allowed him to be removed, from a sphere
of unwearied effort and intense anxiety, to a sphere, we trust, of
tranquil peace and heavenly rest, where dark clouds never lower,
and the fire-storms never come.
We scarcely know where to find a parallel to this crime,
which is at this moment weighing upon the heart of the nation.
William the First, Prince of Orange, who gave freedom to the
Dutch, and was venerated and honored for his humane disposi
tion and sterling charafter, and who won the affeftion of his
people by his kindness and uprightness, was murdered in the
sixteenth century. The assassin was a young man from Burgun
dy, who fired a pistol, containing three balls, at the Prince, when
he fell and died, with the words, Mon Dieuf Mon Dieul Ayez
pitie de moi et de ton pauvre peuple! But, taking both periods
into consideration, this crime does not equal the one before which
America stands appalled this morning. Since the assassination
of William the First, we have had three centuries in which to
advance government, civilization, and religion, with no little
monarchies quarrelling and contending around us. Contrasting
the periods and the countries, the assassination of the President
of the United States is a crime which has scarcely a parallel in
history.

94 The Nation! s Bereavement.
True, a few men, conspicuous in the affairs of Government in
various countries, have fallen by the hand of the assassin. The
great Duke of Buckingham, when about to embark at Portsmouth,
to put himself at the head of a new armament, fell by the dagger
of Felton. Percival, when Prime Minister of Great Britain, was
killed with a pistol-shot as he was approaching the door of the
House of Commons. Henry the Fourth, the best king of France,
was slain by the dagger of Ravaillac, when he was riding in his
coach through the streets of Paris. Many of the Czars of the old
Russian Empire were assassinated when their soldiers bristled in
their armor on many a field. But when before in the annals of
history was there a man at the head of a mighty Republic, who
had so much simplicity of nature and kindness of disposition,
who ruled to elevate and not * to enslave, who was venerated
and loved by millions of intelligent fi-eemen, removed from the
sphere of his earthly existence by an atrocious murder at the very
moment he was being hailed the Deliverer of his Country?
Now that Abraham Lincoln is gone, let us put away all pas
sion and prejudice, and recognize and honor the sublime virtues
of his charafter. We shall not look upon him as belonging to
this party or to that party, but as an American and a Christian,
who, rising from poverty and obscurity to a position more eminent
and glorious than that of a throne, by his own industry, talent, and
virtue, has demonstrated to us the worth of our institutions. We
shall call upon him, not as a Republican leader, but as an Ameri
can citizen of a lofty purpose, a noble charafter, and a great heart,
whose name will go down to unborn millions with an attraftive
splendor. Pure in every aim and aspiration, honest in every
principle and measure, cheerful and benignant in the darkest days
of the Republic, he carried himself forward in his work with a
sublime grandeur. Just as Aristides, humble as Cincinnatus,
humane and magnanimous as Constantine, he gained the confi-

Rev, J. Hazard Hartzell. 95
dence, the admiration, and the affeftion of the people. With his
heart wedded to the attraftive principles of justice and liberty;
shaking hands with the humblest soldier and poorest bondman;
having a word and a smile for all, even those in the lowest condi
tion, — he will pass into history as one of the greatest benefaftors
of the human race. With childlike trust in God, and with unwa
vering faith in the stability of democratic institutions, he toiled
with a cool brain and a warm heart for the restoration of the
Union, and the triumph of the Government. Oh! my afflifted
countrymen, remember in this sad hour, he was an American;
that he rose from among us to his eminent office, under the aegis
of the Constitution, and there venerated God. Take up his red
mantle this morning, and press it to your afflifted hearts, and weep
as you look upon the noble form of an honest man, cold in death,
-who served us all in this awakening period to the best of his
ability. God, it seems from the revealments of history, when he has
any great work to be accomplished for the good of the people,
often chooses the humblest instrument. He calls his servant,
stripped of all selfishness and arrogance, from the most obscure
fireside, and guides and upholds him in a work which procures
freedom, elevation, and happiness for the people. The simplicity
and meekness of Abraham Lincoln, combined with his integrity
and benevolence, gave an attraftion to his charafter which won
so many hearts. He will go down the dim aisles of the future
with the torches of rejoicing flaming all around him, carried by
four millions of a despised race from whose limbs he struck the
chains! And whilst this sorrow hangs upon every seft and party, upon
every class and condition in the land, let us not despair of the
Republic. The blood of the President will cement all sefts and
parties, and they will now stand like a tremendous barrier against

96 The Nation! s Bereavement.
the under-currents of treason. In the presence of the murdered
Chief, the entire North stands united this morning; and we be
lieve the nation is stronger this moment than it has ever been
since the commencement of the dire conflift. The rebellion is
now so crushed under the iron heel of war, that it can never rise
again and shake its gory locks at freemen.
The sparkling light of a new epoch is streaming upon us : the
golden doors of a new era are opening to receive us. With firm
ness of purpose and concert of aftion we can, as a people, now
rise to the loftiest summit of power and glory. Let us not be
discouraged, nor waver in our duty in this hour; for we believe
the present emergency will develop that knowledge of diplo
macy, that willingness to endure, that readiness to obey, which
shall make our people great in the eyes of all nations. But
let us resolve, by homes desolated; by families broken up; by
the heaped graves of a hundred battle-fields; by the pale forms
of sixty thousand unconquered soldiers, who have wasted away in
Southern prisons; by the precious blood of a million heroes; by
the shocking murder of the President, whose broken body lies
stiff and cold in the Capitol of our country to-day, — that the
Republic shall live, and that the flag shall wave in perfeft triumph
over every State in the Union!
Let us not be carried away by passion and feeling. This will
only increase the waves on the sea of commotion. This will only
swell these waves into billows of excitement, which will rock the
old Ship of State. There is no power nor effeftiveness in passion
or feeling, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. The stream of water
which makes the most noise in sweeping over the bed of its chan
nel is the shallowest and weakest. But the stream of water which
flows on calmly and serenely is deep and strong, and has power to
turn a million wheels. Let not blind passion, but enlightened
judgment, rule the hour, and then effeftive power will be wielded.

Rev. J. Hazard Hartzell. 97
Let reason and conscience be listened to in their appeals; for one
is the counsellor, and the other is the preacher, in every soul.
We need in such a period as this the calmest deliberation and the
highest judgment. Blind passion was a leading element in devel
oping the French Revolution with its train of bloody scenes and
frightful horrors. Enlightened reason, with a deep love of justice
and liberty, was the guiding power of our fathers when they
reared this Republic. Let their enlightened reason be ours, and
with deep, calm feeling; with a strong, unbending purpose; with
a firm, unwavering confidence in God, — we shall strengthen the
Government, and bring order out of chaos. With every faculty,
energy, and affeftion, consecrated in the cause of saving the
country; with our hearts wedded to our beneficent institutions;
with every aft and word baptized in the living spirit of an intel
ligent purpose, — the nation will rise with potency and grandeur.
Then the great car of progress will keep the track, and every
thing in the shape of treason or secession, that shall come in con
taft with it, shall be ground into powder.
Nature, yesterday, placed herself in harmony with the sorrow
ful condition of the people. The light of the sun was obscured
by the dark cloud which gathered over the face of the heavens.
The tears of nature mingled with the tears of the people, whilst
the Genius of Liberty stood bleeding in the Capitol of the coun
try. The sad face of Washington peered through the gloom
and darkness of the firmament, and looked down with pity'and
tenderness on his afflifted children. And just so sure as the
gloom and darkness of the firmament shall give way to light and
glory, — light washing the feet of stooping constellations, and glory
covering the mountains and the sea, — just so sure shall the gloom
and sorrow of the people give way to the light and glory which
the Almighty will bring to the nation in the birth of important
events. 13

98 The Nation! s Bereavement.
The telegraph ann6unced, that, after the Vice-President was
sworn into his office as Chief Magistrate yesterday, he said, " The
duties of the office are mine: I will discharge them, trusting in
God!'' This is a blast from the trumpet, which strikes the right
way, and sends a thrill through the heart of every American
freeman. The first is a recognition of duty, amid the evils and
dangers of the hour; the second is a reliance upon God, who
guides the storm and holds the sea. If Andrew Johnson will
only be faithful to duty, and rely upon* the direftion and power of
God, the nation will sweep from the valley of desolation and
darkness up to the mountain-top of eminence and glory. We
believe he will; for a nation of enlightened and patriotic freemen
will hold up his hands, encourage every noble effort, applaud
every sublime virtue, and surround him, as, it were, with a bulwark
of sympathy. Millions of true hearts will pray for him, and
millions of strong arms will assist him and his Cabinet, if neces
sary, to carry forward the Ark of Freedom. Performance of
duty, and reliance upon God, will insure success and inaugurate
a golden period of peace and prosperity.
The old Ship of State is on a troubled sea this dark morning.
The mast is draped in the emblems of mourning, because her
Commander lies dead in the cabin. The stars in the flasr are
obscured by the black crape, which speaks of the grief which
weighs upon the heart, and of the gloom that hangs over the
decks. She will outweather this storm of affliftion, and will come
into the harbor of safety and tranquillity with thundering wheels,
breaking the waves and dashing them into foam, and her minute-
guns firing their sad salute. May God, who commands the
tempest and controls the sea, pilot the Ship of State in her
tumultuous journey, causing the billows of commotion to sub
side! We do not believe that God is indifferent to the sublime

Rev. J. Hazard Hartzell. 99
triumphs of the month, nor to the momentous issues of the hour.
We believe with all the heart in his wisdom and goodness, and
that he will eventually bring good to the people out of this
national bereavement. He has a righteous purpose in the
removal of leading men as well as in the marshalling of thrilling
events. All may be dark with us, but all is light with him, who
lives in the future as he lives in the present. The time for the
removal of the President from this scene of aftion had come,
and he ascended to the bosom of the Infinite. The God who
protefted our fathers in the dark days of the Revolution, we
believe, will proteft their children in the present time. We know
that he is on the side of justice and humanity, and that nothing
can defeat his great plans, mock his righteous purposes, or strike
down his right arm. With David, we believe, as we look up
this morning from a land filled with mourning and desolation,
that the Almighty will save his afflifted people.
And here, at the close, we remember that many churches
are celebrating to-day with a startling significance the resurreftion
of Jesus. We rejoice in this sublime ceremonial, which tends to
keep alive in the heart the truth of immortality. And whilst we
stand at "the opened door of the empty sepulchre, rejoicing in the
resurreftion of Jesus, let us date from this very hour the resur
reftion of the nation to a higher life, a grander power, and a
more enduring glory.
The Universalist, Boston, May 4, 1865.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S DEATH:
A SERMON DELIVERED AT THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN DES MOINES,
lO-WA, ON SUNDAY EVENING, APRIL 23, 1865 ;
BY REV, D, L, HUGHES,

2 Samuel, i. 19 : " How are the mighty fallen ! "
THE text originally referred to Saul, He was the chosen
King of Israel. He was appointed and anointed of God
to his official power. He reigned forty years; and, although
guilty of many plain violations of duty, yet as the King of Israel
he was entitled to honor. He was also a mighty man of war.
He had often been viftorious over the enemies of Israel, and
" vexed them whithersoever he turned." His " sword returned
not empty," but was satiated with blood and spoil. As said
David in this funeral dirge, of which the text forms a part, " He
was swifter than an eagle, he was stronger than a lion." Yet
he was overcome by the Philistines, and fell upon' his own sword
" in the midst of battle." The finishing stroke to his life was
given, it seems, however, by a reckless Amalekite. This mur
derous aft, he thought, was sufficient ground for boasting, and
over' it he expefted King David, Saul's successor, to rejoice. But,
instead of this, David and all the men that were with him, when
they heard it, were filled with deep sorrow. They rent their
clothes, and mourned and wept and fasted until even. They

Rev. D. L. Hughes. loi

thus manifested great propriety, as well as sound wisdom and
true noble-heartedness, in refusing to rejoice over even an enemy
that was slain, and especially, as one high in authority having
fallen by violent hands. Solomon says, " Rejoice not when thine
enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth,
lest the Lord see it, and it displease him." And again, " He
that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished." Public losses
are most laid to heart by men of public spirit. But this strange
Amalekite was sorely disappointed, not only in that neither did
David nor his people rejoice in his murderous conduft, but also
that in the end it afforded no ground to himself for boasting.
"And David said unto him, 'How wast thou not afraid to stretch
forth thine hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?' And David
called one ofthe young men, and said, 'Go near, and fall upon him.'
And he smote him that he died. And David said unto him, ' Thy
blood be upon thy head; for thy mouth hath testified against thee,
saying, I have slain the Lord's anointed.'" This was a suitable
punishment to the murderer of his prince ; and let just such pun
ishment fall unerringly upon every such murderer.
One greater than Saul in all the elements that constitute a
wise and noble ruler was lately the Chief Executive of this nation;
but now his lamentable death, at the hands of a fiendish assassin,
has filled our land with gloom and sorrow. We exclaim, " How
are the mighty fallen ! "
It is wise and proper to observe God's dealings with us, and
then to improve them by suitable meditations.
" God's purposes are ripening fast,
Unfolding every hour :
The bud may have a bitter taste.
But sweet will be the flower.
" Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain :
God is his own interpreter.
And he will make it plain."

I02 President Lincoln! s Death.
We live in times of great national agitation — of rapid changes
— of stirring scenes — and of terrible events. Nor do we yet
see the end. The future is big with awful realities — with great
demands upon men, and means, and efforts — and with grand re
sults. The year 1866, according to the expounders of prophecy,
is to be a remarkable period; and already do we see something
of the confiift and trial, as well as the triumph and glory, that
shall follow. The saying is often found true, — " Coming events
cast their shadows before." But " The name of the Lord is a
strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.. Jehovah
shall hide his people in his pavilion, until these calamities be
overpast." The first refleftion I offer from the text is. How is the Rebellion
fallen I This rebellion against the Government of the United
States was inaugurated in i860, and ripened early the next year
into full maturity. It has been well called " The Great Rebel
lion." Although President Lincoln was the choice ofthe people,
and was constitutionally elefted and indufted into office, yet a
multitude rebelliously declared, " We will not have this man to
reign over us." It was an unnatural, unnecessary, and unjustifia
ble rebellion. It was " mighty," therefore, in 'its. folly and madness,
in attempting with limited resources to cope with a more formid
able enemy. " What king going to make war with another king
sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten
thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thou
sand?" Solomon's wisdom was certainly disregarded: he said,
" With good advice make war." I remarked at the beginning of
this rebellion, to a native of Kentucky, then residing in Nevada
Territory, that the South might bring into this contest every man,
woman, and child she had, if she wished, and every dollar she
possessed, and then it would only be a work of time, — she must,
under ordinary providences, yield. She had undertaken a contest

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 103

which she was unable to carry through. The odds were fearfully
against her. The rebellion was mighty, too, in its wickedness. Its
secret springs were the lust of gain and the lust of power. It
violated both civil and divine law. Its leaders had sworn alle
giance to the Constitution and Government of the United States,
and yet they trampled upon both with impunity. They rejefted,
too, the counsels of the Most High. " Let every soul be subjeft
unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The
powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore,
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. Wherefore
ye must needs be subjeft, not only for wrath, but also for con
science' sake." It was awfully wicked to plot the entire destruc
tion, if possible, of the wisest and best Government under the
sun; to resist a mild, good, and firm Magistrate in the execution
of the high trusts imposed upon him; and to entail upon mil
lions of their fellow-citizens poverty, sickhess, wounds, death, and
a multitude of sorrows. The results of this rebellion also have
been mighty; for millions of treasures have been expended, as
well as thousands of precious lives sacrificed, to this insatiate
¦ demon of war. But it has not all been in vain. God has made
the wrath of man to praise him, and he is restraining the re
mainder thereof He is accomplishing thereby his own glorious
purposes, in behalf of suffering humanity, and of the advancement
of his own kingdom in all the earth.
But this mighty rebellion is fallen : and how great is the fall of
it! It is utterly broken, and "dashed to pieces like a potter's
vessel." The so-called Southern Confederacy, which was so
rapid in its growth, spreading like wildfire, and in a few months
embraced in its mazy folds eleven States; which was mighty in
its united strength, in its military skill, bravery and efficiency,
and in its varied resources and self-sacrificing delusion, — has all
gone to decay. Its great lights have been extinguished; its

I04 President LincoMs Death.
boasted armies are vanquished; its most powerful generals have
surrendered; its principal cities are captured; its stolen property
is recovered; and its chief officers are escaping, or humbly beg
ging for their lives. " Ichabod " is written upon her; for her glory
has departed. The prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in her case:
"Associate yourselves, O ye people! and ye shall be broken in
pieces: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces, — gird
yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel to
gether, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall
not stand: for God is with us. For the Lord spake thus to me
with a strong hand, and instrufted me that I should not walk in
the way of this people; saying. Say ye not, a confederacy, to all
them to whom this people shall say, a confederacy; neither fear
ye their fear, nor be afraid. They shall look unto the earth, and
behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and shall be
driven to darkness." Destruftion awaits the disobedient and
rebellious. " But those mine enemies, which would not that I
should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me,"
" They that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For
rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. If thou do
that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain:
for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon
him that doeth evil,"
While rebellion and the Confederacy are thus broken and
fallen, the loyal part of the land — true patriots everywhere —
have shouted their hallelujahs, and rejoiced with joy unspeakable
and full of glory.
2d. How is American Slavery fallen! This was once mighty,
and was the principal cause of involving a nation of twenty-four
millions of people in deadly confiift, — in a civil war of unprece
dented magnitude and ruin. It had long existed among us. It
had made great progress ; and it was mighty in its oppression of

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 105
four millions of human beings. It has been upheld by the artifice
of Satan and his ministers. Talent, wealth, and power have all
been arrayed in its favor. Its influence has been felt on the floor
of Congress, in the halls of our State Legislatures, and in many of
our church courts. Public opinion has not only winked at, but
often strenuously advocated, the iniquitous system. Both reason
and the Bible have been tortured for proofs of a divine warrant
for its establishment, necessity, and utility.
But the institution itself is an essential evil in human society.
It is at variance with all the benign and redeeming principles of
Christianity; and the only remedy for such an evil is its entire
extirpation. This, we believe, God has purposed, and will finally
and fully execute. The sentiment I uttered in your hearing
nearly a year ago was true, and has been literally fulfilled thus
far, ¦ — that the wail of woe throughout our land was not likely to
cease until we suitably humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord
for all our sins; nay, it will be but extended and deepened, until
"we break* every yoke, and let the oppressed go free." Just in
proportion as this grand consummation has been reached, has
prosperity attended us, have light and hope and peace dawned
upon us. The South themselves seem to have finally come to the
conclusion, that the system of slavery can no longer be perpe
tuated among them; while those in the North who have long
sympathized with it already exclaim, " It is gone ! " This is a
remarkable attainment, and a wonderful concession for those
parties to make. But all the solemn providences of God have
tended more and more to its extirpation. His judgments have
fallen heavily upon us for the last four years, to this end. "Be
cause sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do
evil." But " lift not up your horn on high ; speak not with a stiff
neck: for promotion cometh neither from the East, nor from the
H

io6 President Lincoln! s Death. •
West, nor from the South; but God is the judge. He putteth
down one, and setteth up another. For in the hand of the Lord
there is a cup, and the wine is red : it is full of mixture, and he
poureth out of the same ; but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of
the earth shall wring them out, and drink them." Retributive
justice will not always sleep. Those that oppress, whether they
be individuals,, companies, or nations, shall sooner or later suffer
vengeance. The history of all the past is sufficient proof of it.
Pharaoh and Herod, Sennacherib and Judas, as specimens of
individual oppressors, came to untimely and dishonored graves.
And where are Babylon and Nineveh and Tyre and Sidon and
Egypt and Rome? Their former glory is in the dust. And
where is the chivalrous and slaveholding South? Scattered
and peeled, humbled and desolate. " He that, being often
reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and
that -without remedy." — "Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou
w^ast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not
treacherously with thee! When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou
shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal
treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee." The
Saviour's rule was, " With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged; and with -what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to
you again." The judgment of the wicked, says the Apostle Peter,
" lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not." This is in
accordance with an unalterable law of the divine Administration.
A day of divine reckoning for sinners of every description will
surely come. And it has already come, and may yet still more
fearfully come, upon our own land, for its many crimes, and espe
cially for its unnatural, unscriptural, and oppressive violence.
American slavery is evidently doomed. Every vestige of it shall,
in due time, be rooted out. Its charafter, conduft, and ruin are
vividly portrayed by the beloved disciple, in the eighteenth chap-

Rev. D. L, Hughes. 107

ter of Revelation, under the title of Babylon, which symbolizes
a gross form, or system, of iniquity: "And I heard another voice
from heaven, saying. Come out of her, my people, that ye may be
not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remem
bered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and
double unto her double according to her works : in the cup which
she hath filled, fill to her double. How much she hath glorified
herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give
her ; for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow,
and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in
one day, — death and mourning and famine ; and she shall be
utterly burned with fire : for strong is the Lord God who judgeth
her " (vs. 4-8) . " And a mighty angel took up a stone like a
great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying. Thus with vio
lence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be
found no more at all" (v. 21; also vs. 22 and 23, and chap. xix.
6). To President Lincoln, more than to any other human being,
is the high honor due of the speedy abolition of the iniquitous
system of American slavery.
3d. How is aristocracy fallen in both the Old World and the
New! How is it fallen in its opinions, in its expeftations, in its
wealth and influence! When the rebellion first broke out, and
the Southern Confederacy was formed, and civil war became a
necessity, there were those, in both England and France, who
stood high in official circles, who, through wealth and position,
exerted a wide-spread influence, or who wielded the powerful
" pen of a ready writer." In all our struggles, they sympathized
with the rebellion. They spoke words of encouragement to the
South, and did much, by their ships and stores, and munitions of
war, to aid her in her nefarious work of destroying our republi
can institutions, of the most careful growth, and of the very

io8 President Lincoln! s Death.
highest order; while, at the same time, they applied to the North
coarse and opprobrious epithets, rejoiced over our adversities, and
declared, time and again, that we could never succeed in our
endeavors to conquer the South, and that there was no hope for
us. And their desire evidently was to recognize the independ
ence ofthe South, if they could only have seen it most in the line
of policy so to do, and had not the masses ofthe common people
prevented it. No thanks to them for the kind Providence that
frustrated their plans, and protefted and blessed us in the hour of
our peril. They expefted our failure, and the success of the
armies of the South. Hence, they indulged liberally in Confede
rate loans : they built steamers, and loaded them with all manner
of provisions and arms; and then, in the face of all international
law, would run our blockades, and traffic freely with our sworn
enemies as with our true friends. But they sowed to the wind,
and they have reaped the whirlwind. They are sunk down in
the pit that they made : in the net which they hid, is their own
foot taken. " They are snared in the work of their own hands."
Their expeftations are cut off, and their wealth will perish by
evil travail. They are wofully disappointed in God's marvellous
doings in our behalf, and in the divine judgments that have been
executed against them. In America, the boasted chivalry of the
South, and the moneyed interests ofthe North that were in league
with slavery, and that were afting in opposition to the well-being
of a Government that was struggling with a. giant's power to pre
serve its very existence in the hour of fearful conflift, are alike
brought low. "And the kings of the earth, who have commit
ted fornication, and lived deliciously with this mystic Babylon,
shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the
smoke of her burning. Standing afar off for the fear of her tor
ment, saying, Alas, alas! that great city Babylon, that mighty
city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 109

of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth
their merchandise any more. The merchandise of gold and
silver and precious stones, and of pearls and fine linen, and
purple and silk and scarlet, apd all thyine-wood, and all manner
vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood,
and of iron and brass and marble, and cinnamon and odors and
ointments and frankincense, and wine and oil, and fine flour
and wheat, and beasts and sheep and horses and chariots and
slaves, and souls of men, and the fruits that thy soul lusted after,
are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and
goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more
at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by
her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and
wailing, and saying, Alas, alas ! that great city, that was clothed
in fine linen, and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and
precious stones, and pearls! for in one hour so great riches is
come to naught."
The harp and the viol of all those who have dealt treacher
ously, or who have engaged in unlawful traffic, are gone. They
may now be hung upon the weeping willows, as mementoes of
their owner's folly and wickedness, tb be played upon only bythe
mournful requiems of the passing winds.
4th. President Lincoln has fallen. And he was mighty. He
was mighty in intellect, — mighty in soul, — mighty in great plans
and in noble deeds, — and mighty in the affeftions, confidence,
and honors of a great nation. And, for one, I am not, ashamed
nor unwilling to stand in my lot, and testify before men, angels, or
devils, that I love and respeft the name and charafter of Abraham
Lincoln. He possessed, in a remarkable degree, strong common
sense. He was eminently a praftical man. With the clearest
logic, the nicest skill, and the fewest words, he brought all his
ideas down to living realities. He was mild, lenient, merciful, to

no President Lincoln! s Death.
his enemies, even to a fault. He was condescending to all that
either approached him, or wrote to him ; and he was full of good
nature and good-humor, without compromising either his principles
or his dignity. He scattered his judicious opinions in every direc
tion, and bestowed his generous sympathies upon all classes,
the poor, as well as the rich, — upon those at home in anxiety
and sorrow, and upon those abroad in the tented field, or at the
hospital. And he was, I believe, a God-fearing and a God-
honoring man, — in other words, a conscientious Christian. He
said to those who inquired his state of mind, after the battle of
Gettysburg, " I do love Jesus." And he ever strove, honestly and
faithfully, to do his whole duty, whether he received the smiles
or the frowns of his fellow-men. The Presbyterian "Banner" of
Pittsburg, Penn., says of him, " No man in this land had a kinder
heart. He was not afraid to acknowledge God, or to confess his
dependence upon him. He was a firm believer in our holy reli
gion, and in the blessed Bible. He had great confidence in
prayer, and asked the prayers of all good men in behalf of the
nation, and also in behalf of himself. His second Inaugural
Address is a most remarkable paper. No other State paper on
record, not found in the Bible, save, possibly, one or two from
Oliver Cromwell, has so much of the Bible and the gospel in it."
I have been told that the Rev, Dr. R. J. Breckenridge said, when
he first visited President Lincoln, he thought him but a moderate
man; but afterwards, when he became better acquainted with
him, he considered him the greatest man in America. Accord
ing to my humble opinion, there has been no President, since this
nation became a Republic, that took the Presidential chair under
so many difficulties as did President Lincoln, or that assumed
such mighty responsibilities as were laid upon him, or that exe
cuted them with more straightforward wisdom, firmness, and
success, than he did. No monarch in Europe will compare with

Rev. D. L. Hughes. in

him in the mighty trusts assumed, and in the vast amount of
labor so well done in such a short space of time. He will be
placed, notwithstanding all the calumnies of his enemies, not
second to, but by the side of the Father of his Country, as his
equal, if not his superior. And future generations shall do him
justice. And yet, this great and good man, and most justly
honored and patriotic ruler, in the midst of all his noble plans
and herculean labors for the welfare of coming generations, has
fallen, in an hour of unwonted national joy, by the hands of an
unprincipled assassin. The calamity is felt to be a personal loss
in every loyal household. Never has grief over the death of a
faithful public servant been so heartfelt and so universal. I may
here appropriately introduce a part of Governor Stone's procla
mation to the people of Iowa, calling them to humiliation and
prayer, in consequence of this sad event, on Thursday the 27th
inst. He says, " In the midst of joy and triumph, the nation is
suddenly called on to deplore the loss of its greatest and truest
friend, — foully murdered by a traitorous hand,' — stricken down
in the fulness of life, and when strongest in the hearts of the
people. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, — an
honest man, an exalted patriot, — the friend of the poor and op
pressed, — the deliverer of his country, has been gathered to a
martyr's grave." To this I wish to add an extraft from an excel
lent address delivered at the Court House of this city on the i6th
inst., in my absence, by the worthy editor of our " Daily State
Register," and upon which my eye has just rested since writing the
above : " Men have sometimes said, in their enthusiastic admira
tion of Abraham Lincoln, that they believed him equal, in most
qualities, to Washington. I believe, even beyond this, that in
the discharge of the new, multiform, and weighty trusts com
mitted to him since he took the oath of office in 1 861, he has
developed a wiser and more comprehensive grasp of praftical

112 President Lincoln! s Death.
statesmanship than any other man ever invested with governmen
tal power." And again: "God only knows what might have
become of the nation had Mr, Lincoln fallen a viftim to the plots
of traitors and murderers at an earlier period of the war. A
contest far more prolonged, more sanguinary, and more devastat
ing, might have been the result, and ending, may be, in anarchy
and ruin. But it was ordered, in the good providence of Heaven,
that his strong arm and wise counsels should lead the nation
through all its darkness and its dangers, and see its flag replant
ed on nearly every rampart from which it had been wrenched by
treason. His mission was a high and holy one, and nobly has it
been fulfilled."
It becomes us to render thanksgiving unto God, that the life
of our valuable President was spared to his country so long.
For more than four years, he toiled nobly, wisely, and efficient
ly, to deliver her from worse than Egyptian bondage. It was
marvellous to witness his power of endurance amidst his varied
anxieties and labors by night and by day, at home and abroad.
Neither his physical nor mental vigor seemed to fiag; and, when
he died, it may justly be said of him, as of Moses, the deliverer
and leader of ancient Israel, " His eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated." He lived just long enough to accomplish
the work the Almighty had assigned him. With a steady, skil
ful hand, he managed the helm in the threatening storm, and
condufted the sinking State in which all our interests were em
barked, within sight of the harbor of peace, safety, and glory,
before he resigned the charge. He lived to see a vile rebel
lion broken to pieces, a powerful Confederacy irrevocably over
thrown, their boasted capital taken, their most skilful general
humbled, his enemies put to shame, the rights of a faithful
government vindicated, and — through his own official afts,
and well-laid and executed plans, forced upon him by its very

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 113

friends, — the death-knell given to American slavery. He fell
on the very evening of that glorious, memorable day, — the
14th of April, 1865, — when was re-hoisted our country's flag at
Fort Sumter, where, just four years previous, it had been, by
traitorous hands, madly torn down, and trailed in the dust. He
fell thus in triumph. As Moses, after successfully leading the
children of Israel forty years through the wilderness, amidst a
burden of care, and much opposition and rebellion, was not per
mitted to enter the promised land, but had the joy of seeing it
from the top of Pisgah; so President Lincoln, after successfully
guiding and controlling the affairs of this great nation amidst
peculiarly troublous times, was not permitted to see the full re
sults of all his plans and efforts. But he was brought so near
the promised land of peace and safety, that, from the hill-top of
prosperity upon which he sat, he beheld it; and the sight of it
doubtless filled his heart with joy.
But, although dead, Abraham Lincoln yet speaketh. He lived
and died a great and good man. His works will long follo-w him,
for the well-being of both this land and other lands. The mighty
changes in public sentiment, and in our social and national posi
tion, that, in the providence of God, he has effefted; and the
wonderful deliverance of four millions of slaves that he has almost
wrought out, — in conneftion with his quiet, steady, masterly
statesmanship, — are events that will stamp their impress upon
both the present and future generations; are events that will
make the period of his administration one ever memorable in the
hearts of all loyal Americans.
But where did he fall ? In a theatre. Alas ! for the place of
his death. It is to me the only thing that tarnishes his martyr-
glory. And, it is said, he was so interested in the play, and so
amused too at it, that he did not even notice the approach of his
cowardly assassin. What a preparation for the solemn realities
15

114 President Lincoln! s Death.
of the future state! What miserable places are theatres to fit the
soul for death and judgment and eternity ! How little restraining
and hallowed infiuences, too, are thrown around even human life
in these places of revelry and mirth! Their tendency is to im
morality in all its forms. Had J. Wilkes Booth been trained
under other and higher associations, and lived in a nobler sphere
of effort, who doubts that the useful life of our late President
might still have been spared? Had he fallen, however, by the
hands of violence along the highway; or in the house of God;
or in his closet; or in his bed; or in the discharge of his public
duties; or at his desk, penning an outline of the settlement of
our national difficulties, — I could have had some just and noble
satisfaftion in the contemplation of it, such as a death in the the
atre can never inspire. Two reasons are offered for the Presi
dent's visiting this place of amusement. The first is, that he
needed relaxation from the severe studies and close application
of his official position; and that, had he not possessed the
happy faculty of readily laying aside occasionally his burden of
care, his life and health would not have been preserved to us so
long as they were. The second reason is a benevolent one, — that
the public papers had stated that day, that General Grant would
be present at the theatre that evening; and, as the President knew
that he would be absent, he went himself, although with re-
luftance, so that the audience should not be entirely disap
pointed. Religious decision, however, might have prevailed
against all such reasoning, and additional safety and honor been
secured. But Abraham Lincoln has fallen. The work that was given
him to do, he finished. We deeply mourn for him, and justly
mourn; and we shall long mourn his early and lamentable death.
Yet we mourn as those who have hope. Although President
Lincoln was not without his imperfeftions, — was not without

Rev. D. L. Hughes. iii

shade mingled with his light, yet we have some comforting evi
dence that our loss is his unspeakable, eternal gain, — that he has
gone to that " better country " where " the wicked cease from
troubling, and where the weary are at rest."
And now, what shall we say of his m.urderer? I need only
say, that such a wretch should not be permitted to live ; that his
aft was cowardly and awfully wicked, and was aimed not only
at the head of the President, but at the very existence of our en
tire Government. It is the first assassination of one whom the *
people delighted to honor thus, that has ever occurred in our
country. And, if Cain deserved to be punished sevenfold, surely
this man deserves to be punished seventy and seven fold. He
perhaps thought his murderous aft would be a ground of rejoicing
and boasting, both for himself and others. Few, however, out of
the mass have rejoiced at it. The aft was so contrary to reason
and civilization, and so shocks the most common sensibilities of
our nature, that it essentially forbids even the semblance of de
light in any well-regulated mind. Such an aft could not have
been approved, even if the President had been a tyrant, as his
assassin so falsely declared him to be; much less when he was a
man of such sterling qualities of mind and heart, and stood so high
in the affeftions, confidence, and honors ofa grateful .people, as was
evidenced by his re-eleftion to the highest office in our nation's
gift. And the murderer will doubtless learn, before his case is
finally settled, that it affords him no room either for rejoicing or
boasting. Condign punishment -will certainly, sooner or later, be
visited upon his guilty head, and upon all his accomplices. But
from the expressions that have fallen from the lips of a few per
sons, both male and female, we see the animus that lurks in some
souls. All such have been the abettors of the foul deed. And,
while I would be merciful, I cannot restrain my intense indigna
tion at those who, when the most atrocious murder of the age has

1 16 President Lincoln! s Death.
been committed, not only utter the most unfeeling epithets against
the viftim, but openly approve of the horrible massacre. All
such persons are " treasuring up to themselves wrath against the day
of wrath." — " O my soul! come not thou into their secret: unto
their assembly, mine honor! be not thou united." I would only
add, that it would seem eminently wise and just for Andrew John
son, the successor of President Lincoln, and for civil officers
everywhere, to treat all such persons as are found guilty of such
* gross violations of principle in speech and behavior, as Solomon,
the successor of King David, treated Shimei, w^ho shamefully re
viled his prince during his son's Absalom's wicked revolt. They
should be known and marked; and, if not held really as prisoners
at large, they should, at least, be forewarned of the certain conse
quences of their evil conduft; while their names should be
handed down, like that of Shimei, in perpetual infamy to the
latest posterity.
Let us now turn our eye to Vice-President Johnson. Sud
denly, and by " terrible things in righteousness," hath the Most
High, who " ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whom
soever he will," paved the way for his promotion to the Presi
dency of these United States. He has now assumed the mighty
responsibilities of his predecessor in guiding this Ship of State,
and settling the great issues of the day. May the mantle of
Elijah fall upon Elisha! Let our affeftions, and our prayers, and
our support be now extended to our new president. We regret
his fall, and the reproach — deserved or not — brought upon him
in his previous inaugural solemnities. But God no doubt permit
ted it all for wise and useful ends. Mr. Johnson was thus hum
bled, that he might be prepared for his exaltation, and for his wise
and better administration. It will thus be overruled to his and
his country's greater good. It will make him more watchful over
himself; will secure to him more the prayers of God's people, —

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 117

and will thus fit him the better for discharging aright his import
ant duties. We have rejoiced, however, in the testimony given
by several eminent men, who knew Mr, Johnson well, of his
almost universally correft principles, habits, and expressions; and
that the fall to which we have referred was an exception to his
established course of conduft, caused by sickness, and a combi
nation of depressing circumstances. We deeply regret President
Lincoln's death, and especially the manner of it. But his work
is done, and it was well done. And now we rejoice that Andrew
Johnson is at the head of our national affairs ; for we believe
that God has a special work for him to do, and he will be enabled
to execute it well also. We believe he is " come to the kingdom
for such a time as this," and that he will not be a terror to good
works, but will be to the evil. Hence all that have done evil,
and shall continue to do evil, may -well .be afraid; for he will not
bear the sword in vain : for he is the minister of God, a revenger
to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
It is a remarkable providence, that the almost universal senti
ment is, that President Lincoln fell at the most auspicious time
both for himself and for his country, — that although slain by the
mad spirit of secession, yet in his death the South, and all who
sympathize with it, lost their best friend; for, in the overflowing
kindness and magnanimity of his heart, he would likely have ex
tended an amnesty to all the guilty, which would have satisfied
neither law nor justice, and which would have secured to our
land neither an honorable nor a permanent peace. While the
same common sentiment is, that God hath raised up and empow
ered Andrew Johnson to do what President Lincoln could not, or
perhaps would not, do. The stern administration of justice is
now demanded to meet the exigencies ofthe times; and, if Presi
dent Johnson should become, under existing circumstances,
almost an extremist in the severity of his punishment (which we

1 18 President Lincoln! s Death.
hope he will not) of evil doers, there would be many in the North
who would uphold him in it.
I here quote, as appropriate, the last of a series of excellent
resolutions that were adopted by the Supreme Court of Iowa,
during its late term at Davenport, on receipt of the news of Presi
dent Lincoln's death : —
" Resolved, That humanity, law, and religion unite in demanding, that there
be visited upon the heads of the wicked leaders of this most wanton and inex
cusable rebellion, which has filled up the measure of its iniquity by the murder
of our President, as soon as the arm of the Government can lay hold of them,
the swift and terrible punishment justly due to their enormous crimes,"
President Johnson is, I believe, the very man to execute this
punishment. He is described by one who has long known him
as " a man of full medium stature, compaft, and strongly built, of
dark complexion, and deep-set black eyes. He is of bilious tem
perament, strong intelleft, indomitable energy, and iron will. In
his charafter, I should say the strongest feature of all is that of
stern justice, and a general hatred of all forms of aristocracy and
oppression, and a patriotism so ardent that it amounts to a passion,
— almost a religion. In Congress, on March 2d, 1861, speaking
of traitors, he uttered this strong, and I may say prophetic, lan
guage, which in substance has been lately repeated: "Were I
President of the United States, I would do as Thomas Jefferson
did, in 1806, with Aaron Burr. I would have them arrested; and,
if convifted within the meaning of and scope of the Constitution,
by the Eternal God! I would execute them." These are solemn
declarations, but eminently wise, just, and safe. Such a man is
needed just now at the helm of State, and God has given him to
us. Let no sickly sentimentality, no mistaken clemency, pre
vail. Let it be written upon our inmost heart, as with " the point
of a diamond," that mercy to the ringleaders of this awfully
wicked rebellion is cruelty to two hundred thousand of our brave

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 119

officers and soldiers, -who have fought, bled, and died to win our
battles; cruelty to the thousands of weeping widows and helpless
orphans, who have sacrificed their all to their country's cause;
cruelty to loyal Americans everywhere, who have poured out
their treasures, if not their blood, like water, to preserve our
national existence, to preserve the honor of our national flag, and
to hand down to our children, and to our children's children,
all of our free institutions ; and cruelty to all nations in destroy
ing the last hope of any noble example in successfully main
taining civil and religious liberty for the welfare of enslaved
millions. When President Johnson says, " To the honest boy, to the
deluded man, who has been deceived into the rebel ranks, I would
extend leniency; I would say, renew your support to the Govern
ment, and become good citizens, — and the leaders I would hang; "
I say, his sentence is just, — his decision is right. The honor of
violated law, human and divine, must be vindicated; merited
punishment must be inflifted as an example to deter others from
similar crimes: the public sense of justice demands it; and it is
essential to the permanent peace and prosperity of our nation.
" Righteousness and peace " must embrace each other. And with
this decided,' certain punishment staring the rebels full in the face,
I would demand of them an unconditional surrender and submis
sion to " the powers that be." Nor do I think that any other
terms of settlement of our national difficulties should be offered
by our Government to any rebel civilian, rebel officer, or rebel
private, or be accepted by our military authorities, but that of an
unconditional surrender. No property reserved, no diftation per
mitted, no arms granted, no paroles and escorts promised. They
must yield unconditionally; their proud and rebellious spirit, as
well as their military power, must be broken; the fataldoftrine
of State Rights being superior to Federal authority must be anni-

1 20 President Lincoln! s Death.
hilated, — otherwise, peace is a delusion. Otherwise, a multitude
of rebels — like Judge Campbell, of Richmond, Va., and General
Robert E. Lee, ofthe late rebel army — will still insolently attack
our Government; will arrogantly claim exemption from all pun
ishment for the most ambitious and causeless arch - traitors
who have deluged our land with blood and tears, and will still
strive to rule the destinies of our country. But we cannot bear
to lose all the treasure that has been expended, and all the tears
that have been shed, and all the blood that has been spilled for
the last four years in this wicked war, to perpetuate our national
life, for nothing. No, no! Never! Far better will it be to pro-
traft the war, if necessary, four years longer, until our work is
fully done; to subjugate the South entirely, if necessary to crush
the wicked spirit of rebellion; better waste the inhabitants thereof
almost totally, as Benjamin of old -was wasted for first winking at
a grievous crime, and then proudly defying their brethren, the
children of Israel, who justly warred against it; yea, better, as
a last resort, arm every slave, and give them not only their free
dom for fighting for their own and our country's deliverance from
every species of bondage, but also the lands upon which they
fight, many of which are justly their own, as they have been pur
chased by the toil and the blood and the sale of their forefathers
and of themselves, as their future homes, and let them rule them
as they please, always, of course, under the control of the national
Government, with which Government they would cheerfully co
operate, and to which they would prove also a strong bulwark.
All this is a sad alternative. But, if the rebel South drive us to
it, the whole work is feasible. It will certainly be easier to do all
this, than it was to do what has already been done. Let there
be, then, no wavering. Then will this nation have safety and
peace ; and we fear that she never will until her kingdom thus
comes.

Rev. D. L. Hughes. 121

Human governments are wisest and safest in their principles
and aftions in proportion as they pattern after the divine govern
ment. But God carries on, by varied and adapted agencies, a
relentless and perpetual war against every rebel sinner, just in
proportion to his guilt of violated light and law, until he jdelds an
unconditional submission. To be saved, he must give up every
thing, and yield to God's own terms, before the contest ceases.
Just so with our Government. It should continue its war against
every rebel. North or South, without wavering and without ces
sation, until they yield an unconditional submission to the right
fully constituted authorities of the nation. And if any difference
is to be made in the degree of punishment inflifted, or in the favor
shown, it should be in behalf of the deluded privates, rather than
of the guilty leaders who have taught rebellion and ruin, and who
deserve as justly to be certainly punished as did J, Wilkes Booth
deserve it for his villanous murder.
And, as Jehovah makes rebel sinners "willing in the day of
his power " to submit to his commands, just so will this Govern
ment, aided by that same Almighty Power, effeftually subdue the
spirit and the strength of that people who have so madly and
so wickedly dared to rebel against its wise and just authority.
Then will our triumphant and final song be, " Not unto us, O
Lord ! not unto us, but unto thy name, give glory, for thy mercy
and for thy truth's sake." — "This is the Lord's doing: it is mar
vellous in our eyes."
I will close with three praftical remarks : —
ist. National existence, national law, national order, must be
preserved at all hazards, — at the risk and expense of life, limb,
and treasure. Those who violate or trample upon either will
sooner or later be surely and sorely punished, the abettors as well
as the perpetrators of deeds of enormous wickedness. Let all
rebels, then, and murderers, and lawless and disobedient persons,
16

122 President Lincoln! s Death.
beware ; for the Chief Magistrate and civil officers everywhere do
not bear the sword in vain.
2d. Let every man be a loyal man, — loyal to his country
and loyal to his God. Let him feel his personal responsibility
to man, and also his personal responsibility to God, — his duty to
submit to and obey both human and divine governments. Let
him "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto
God the things that are God's." Let him be a true patriot, and
also a true Christian. They are not inconsistent. And he who
loves God supremely, and his neighbor as himself, will love his
country 'and government also. Wherefore " let every soul be
subjeft unto the higher powers, — not only for wrath, but also for
conscience' sake."
3d. \i \!a.& mighty fall ^N\\at shall become ofthe weak? If
Princes lie in the dust, and go down to the dark grave, where
shall the lowly be found ? The lesson taught each of us from
these sad refleftions is, " Prepare to meet thy God," whenever
and however he comes. "Be ye also ready; for, in such an hour
as ye think not, the Son of man cometh."
Des Moines, loisia, Daily State Register, May 11, 1865,

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN:
A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE " FRIENDS OF PROGRESS," IN STUARt's
HALL, BATTLE CREEK, MICH,, APRIL I9, 1865 ;
BY REV, MOSES HULL,

SUCH deep and universal mourning as there is to-day, the
history of the world has never recorded. Every loyal heart
beats heavily; every voice speaks in a subdued tone; every pulpit
in the land is draped in deepest mourning. The crape on the
door of the house of every loyal American fails to illustrate
the grief of the American people. We mourn not only the loss
of one who filled the highest office in the power of the American
people to bestow, but the greatest man, absolutely the greatest, of
the nineteenth century has fallen. Such mental wails, such grief
and indignation, as come to us from all portions of the United
States and Canada, show the warmth of the attachment of the
people for their martyred statesman. No event within our
nation's history has excited such deep and heartfelt emotions of
sorrow. Language fails to exhibit our loss, or depift the true charafter
of him for whom we mourn. An adequate idea of the magna
nimity and unselfish patriotism of our lamented President cannot
be given, nor can any eulogy place him in a higher position in
the hearts of the American people.

1 24 Death of President Lincoln.
The following, from the Chicago "Tribune," so perfeftly ex
presses our feelings, that we cannot resist the temptation to
quote it: —
" Lincoln has been indeed a mild, loving father of his country ; and
whether in the future it be possible to produce his equal, most certainly not in
the past or in the present has a ruler ever lived who has adled with one-hun
dredth part of the magnanimity displayed uniformly by our late President,
Well may the rebels expedt to hear from the lips of Johnson the reply made by
Rehoboam to the old men, ' My father did beat you with whips ; but I will
chastise you with scorpions.' Subsequent events will show that they have
jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. The deed was altogether without
excuse, — equalled only in enormity by the intent of Satan to pluck the Almighty
from his throne,
"Well may the nation weep, — fountains of tears. In Abraham Lincoln, we
have lost one whose place can never be filled, either in the Executive chair or in
our affedtions. Who but he could have brought us safely through this fiery
trial, landing us on terra Jirma, yet so gently that we scarcely feel the shock?
Our kind father and -wise counsellor is gone. Our grief at his loss to ourselves
is so great, that we can scarce spare a thought to his bereaved family. We
were all his children. All loved and guarded equally by him. In his loss, we
mourn a parent. His own family scarce loved him more dearly than the great
heart of the American people,''
Yes, the greatest and best of men has been taken from us.
He has fallen while in the zenith of his glory. Indeed, we only
express the opinion we have for years entertained, when we say,
that a glory belongs to Lincoln, compared with which, that of
all other statesmen fades like the lustre of the stars before the
rising sun.
Washington, the Father of this Republic, was no more true,
noble, and patriotic, than was Lincoln, its Saviour and Redeemer.
" How are the mighty fallen ! " Lincoln is gone. It remains
for us to trace his history, that we may realize the extent of our
loss. Loss, did I say? I take it back. Lincoln is neither dead
nor asleep. He is alive to-day, and as earnestly and patriotically

Rev. Moses Hull. 125

working for the cause of human freedom as when he was here in
the flesh. He has only ceased to preside over a Congress of
mortals, to join the band of immortal statesmen. He has entered
the heavenly Congress, and works as untiringly in behalf of the
stars and stripes, as during the days of his earthly tabernacle.
HIS HISTORY.
I have only time to give a synopsis of his life, which I have
condensed from the daily journals.
He was born of poor parents, in La Rue County, Kentucky,
in the year 1809. In 18 16, when he was eight years old, his father
moved to Indiana. He perhaps received in all near one year's
educating. In 1830, he removed to Illinois. After a trip to New
Orleans, on a flat-boat, he became a clerk in a store at New Salem,
Menard ( then Sangamon ) County. On the breaking-out of the
Black-Hawk war, in 1832, he joined a volunteer company, and was
elefted its captain. He served for three months in the campaign,
and on his return was nominated as a Whig candidate for the
legislature; but, the county being Democratic, he was defeated,
though his own eleftion-distrift gave him two hundred and
seventy-seven votes, with only seven against him. He was after
wards appointed postmaster at New Salem, and then began to
study law. During the same time, he praftised surveying,
although without any instruftion beyond what he had obtained by
reading a single treatise on that subjeft. In 1834, he was elefted
to the legislature, by the highest vote ever cast for any candidate ;
and was re-elefted in 1836, '38, '40. In 1836, he obtained a
license to praftise law; and in April, 1837, removed to Spring
field, and went into partnership with Hon. T. Stuart. He rose
rapidly in distinftion in his profession, and was especially eminent
as an advocate. In 1844, he was presidential eleftor in favor
of Henry Clay, and canvassed the entire State, and the State of

126 Death of President Lincoln.
Indiana, in his behalf, addressing large audiences with marked
success. In 1846, he was elefted a Representative to Congress, from
the Central Distrift of Illinois. In Congress, he voted for the
reception of antislavery memorials and petitions; for the motions
of Mr. Giddings for committees to inquire into the constitution
ality of slavery in the Distrift of Columbia, and the expediency
of abolishing the slave trade in the Distrift, and other like propo
sitions. He voted for the Wilmot Proviso, every time it was
presented to the House. In January, 1840, he offered to the
House a scheme for abolishing slavery in the Distrift, by com
pensating the slaveholders from the Treasury of the United
States, provided a majority of the people of the Distrift should
vote to accept the proposal. He opposed the annexation of
Texas, but voted for the Loan Bill to enable the Government to
defray the expenses of the Mexican war. Mr. Lincoln was a
member of the Whig National Convention of 1848, and urged
the re-nomination of General Taylor. In 1849, he was a candidate
for the United-States Senate ; but the legislature was Democratic,
and elefted General Shields. After the expiration of his congres
sional term, Mr. Lincoln applied himself to his profession, until
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise called him again into the
political arena. He entered with energy into the work which
was to decide the choice of a senator in place of General Shields;
and it was mainly due to his exertions, that the triumph of the
Republican party, and the eleftion of Judge Trumbull to the Sen
ate, was attributed. At the Republican National Convention in
1856, which nominated General Fremont for the Presidency, the
Illinois delegation unanimously urged the nomination of Mr. Lin
coln for the Vice Presidency. The contest between Mr. Lincoln
and Judge Douglas, in 1858, is familiar to all, and need not be
recapitulated. It is only necessary to say, that, notwithstanding

Rev. Moses Hull. 127

the friends of Judge Douglas secured a majority of the legisla
ture, the popular vote was in favor of Mr. Lincoln by over four
thousand majority.
On the eighteenth day of May, i860, the Republican National
Convention, which assembled in Chicago, nominated Mr. Lincoln
for President of the United States, and that nomination was rati
fied by the people at the following November eleftion. The
history of the dead patriot and statesman from that period to
the hour when he fell a martyr to the cause of human liberty is
as familiar to the world as household words.
It might not be amiss here to say a word with regard to the
CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH HE TOOK THE CHAIR. .
For years, the antislavery sentiment had been gaining ground,
insomuch that the South had fully decided to use the first oppor
tunity to secede from the Government. This decision was made
more than thirty years ago, long before Lincoln was ever thought
of for President. His eleftion, of course, gave them the desired
pretext. When he took the chair, some of the States had already
rebelled, and prepared for open hostilities. Three-fourths, yea,
nine-tenths of the military strength of this nation was in the
South. He enters upon his duties with a gigantic rebellion on his
hands, without an army, without a navy, in short, without any
resource whatever to extinguish the fires of the greatest rebellion
since the fabled " Lucifer," " the son of the morning," rebelled in
heaven. With all this on his hands, Lincoln undertakes to pilot
the Ship of State through the storm. Has he succeeded ? Let the
history of the nation tell.
Our lamented President entered upon his duties with an
unflinching determination to put the rebellion down, and yet with
a leniency such as human history never before recorded. To the
South he said in his Inaugural Address, —

128 Death of President L incoln.
" In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you,
" You can have no conflidt without being yourselves the aggressors. You
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government ; while I shall have
the most solemn one to ' preserve, proteft, and defend it,' "
What more could they ask? With the positive pledge that
the Government would not assail them, who could but think
that they would ground their weapons? But the old proverb,
" The gods first make mad those whom they would destroy," was
good in their case. How pleadingly our President besought them
to desist from their hellish designs! Hear him once more: —
" I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of
affeftion, " The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot
grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by
the better angels of our nature,"
Let copperheads, who have howled so long and vociferously
about Lincoln and " Lincoln's war," " Nigger war," &c,, read and
and r,?-read this, and hide their faces for very shame. Let them
know that their misrepresentations of the patriotic Abraham have
spilled his blood; their j ournals and speeches have stimulated such
men as Booth to deeds they never would dared to have done under
other circumstances. Let them know that they are responsible
for the death of our President. Their misrepresentations df
Lincoln and his administration are enough to make " e'en a devil
blush." Mr. Lincoln's history, for the past five years, is known and
read by all men. I need not repeat it: only let me show that he
has fairly earned the title of the Emancipator.
ist. In March, 1862, he sent a message to Congress recom
mending ^'^ gradual emancipation!''

Rev. Moses Hull. 1 29

2d. In April following, he consummated an aft which had
been on his mind for many years ; viz., abolished slavery in the
Distrift of Columbia: thus permitting thousands, who had never
before drawn a free breath, to say, " We are free ;'''' "for the first
time in our lives, we own ourselves."
3d. Follow him but six months further, to Sept., 1862,
and he makes known his determination to issue an order, on the
first of January following, freeing every slave in the rebel States.
"Will he do it? " was in everybody's mouth. "He won't dare,"
said some of the Copperheads ; " there will be a bigger rebellion in
the .North than there is in the South," — " It's unconstitutional,"
said others; while many of us, -who had for years been praying
that slavery's chains might be broken, feared he would shrink
from the task. But when the first of January arrived, true to his
proclamation, he "breaks every yoke," looses "the heavy bur
dens," and says to the oppressed, " Go free!'' Truly, future gene
rations will call him blessed ; and those who have hitherto been
manacled by the galling chains of slavery can regard him as no
less than their Redeemer.
Here permit us to take our leave of the life of the President,
and for a few moments speak of his death. What shall we say
of his murderer, — the fiend, who in cold blood robbed him ofthe
remainder of his earthly existence, and our country of its Chief
Magistrate and best man ? Oh the blackness of his crime ! One
before which all others sink into insignificance. Even the crucify
ing of Jesus whitens into innocence, compared with the assassina
tion of Mr. Lincoln. Christ had denounced wrath upon his cru
cifiers, and there was reason to fear that he would overturn their
kingdom. Not so in this case ; for, sustaining and even purifying
the best government in the world, our President lays down his life.
We feel justified in saying, that Judas, who betrayed his Lord,
was an an^d of light compared with — shall I say it ? I will ! —

«^p

17

130 Death of President Lincoln.
the demon damned who robbed us of -our more than immortal
President. Are there tears, or is there blood enough, in all the Southern
Confederacy to make atonement ? No ! As well speak of the
viper expiating the crime of stinging an angel to death. The
Chicago " Tribune " well says, " There can be no palliation, no
mitigation, of the terrible deed. It was premeditated, cold
blooded, devilish ; without the shadow of excuse, and perpetrated
without the incentive of offence. History, ancient or modern,
whether in the days of Csesar, or in the days of Borgia, furnishes
no parallel to his bloody deed. He has damned himself to eter
nal infamy, and will live in history linked with 'the fool who
fired the Ephesian fane,' — a name to be shuddered at, to be
mentioned only with horror. His death will be no compensation
for our loss, but will carry with it one consolation, — that the
world has one less monster."
But our President has passed on. Gone to his angel home.
How I should like to have stood by his bedside, and mingled
my tears with those of statesmen who sobbed aloud to know that
he must leave them !
Yea; rather how much greater the privilege to be clairvoyant
and claraudient, and see him pass from wife, children, states
men, and friends below to join the holy hosts of martyrs, and hear
their glad greeting and welcomings! Oh, think of the happy
meeting, as the spirits of '76 gather around him! As the " gates "
open, and the " everlasting doors " to the eternal world swing back,
I seem to see Washington clasp his hand, and welcome him to
that better " country " where all anxiety is gone, and he is for ever
beyond the gunshot of the traitor, or sabre of the assassin.
Adams, Monroe, Hancock, Jefferson, Jackson, Clay, Webster,
and Douglas, all bid him join their Congress, and work in a sphere
where his labors will be crowned with tenfold the success ever

Rev. Moses Hull. 131

known upon earth. Is that all ? No ! I see " Old John Brown,"
— who went before Lincoln, as John the Baptist went before Jesus
the Nazarene, — whose soul has been marching on for six years,
welcome Lincoln as slavery's last martyr. But this is not all : see
the tens of thousands of soldiers, whose blood has stained every
battle-field in the South, who died to save their country from the
traitorous hands of those who would trample the Stars and Stripes
under their feet, give him the right hand of fellowship, and wel
come him to their celestial land. But a more affefting sight is
yet before us : the poor slave, whose bitter experience tells better
than all things else the horrors and degradation of slavery, ap
proaches the Emancipator, — the last to drink the bitter cup of
death in consequence ofthe institution; and, as he throws his arms
around his neck, I hear him cry out, ^^Bress de Lord!'''' and thous
ands freed by his proclamations, join him in bidding him welcome
to the " land of the free." The happy greeting of one freed slave
is more than enough to repay for all blood that has been shed to
get slavery out of the way. RESULTS.
In the massacre of our President, the South have dashed the
chalice containing the healing balm of mercy to atoms. Justice
takes its place ; and to-day the olive branch, which was yesterday
kindly vouchsafed, is withdrawn: the only cord of mercy has
been severed by their own hands. Now that we have learned that
mercy means nothing less than nursing a viper to sting us to
death, the North is ready to say, in language backed up by every
drop of Northern blood, if need be, "Let justice, stern and harsh,
have its way." In the language of another, we say. Yesterday we
were, with the late President, for lenity; he had been so often
right and wise ; he had so won upon our confidence that we were
preparing to follow and support him in a policy of conciliatory

132 Death of President Lincoln.
kindness : to-day we are with the people for justice. Henceforth,
let us treat this hell-born outbreak of slaveholding fiends as a
rebellion. We ask not vengeance, but the justice which Abra
ham Lincoln's clemency would have withheld.
They have slain their mediators, their best friends; now let
them feel the force of righteous, retributive justice. They have
been barbarous before, — at Fort Pillow, at Andersonville, and at
Libby Prison. They have massacred our troops after surrender,
starved our prisoners, broken their paroles, and fought us without
exchange; they have laid plots to burn and massacre in our
Northern cities; they have sunk to every depth of meanness.
There is no manliness, no chivalry, no honor in them. From
the fugitive Jeff. Davis, the royal Bengal tiger of this " den of
uncaged beasts," down to the meanest Copperhead whelp that
yelps about " tyrant Lincoln " and the " nigger war," they are all
inspired by the same accursed spirit of murderous hatred for
every thing that conflifts with human slavery, and for everybody
who thinks the Lord Christ better than Legree. Booth, who
committed this murder, is but the representative of the class
which made up the American Knights, Sons of Liberty, and
other similar organizations. He was no more a Southerner than
most of them. Born and bred in Baltimore, living among pro-
slavery Democrats before the war, and among Copperheads since,
he is just enough of a rebel to be a good sample of Copperhead-
ism, — no more, no less. All he knows of politics is " to curse
the nigger, and curse the Lincoln Government." This is the
whole rebel and Copperhead creed. Whoever has this creed is
fitted, in all except courage, to do as Booth did. He hates lib
erty, and loves despotism. So far from hating the negro, this very
class like slavery, mainly because it gives them a black mistress,
and black servants at each elbow. The negro enslaved, they
love, and will die rather than give him up. The negro free.

Rev. Moses Hull. 133

they hate; and would exterminate not only him, but every white
man who believes he ought to be free. So, then, it is not the
negro, but his freedom, that they hate; not the black man, but
slavery, that they love. This proslavery creed is a crime against
human nature, — an index of depravity in the heart. Whoever
entertains it is an enemy of mankind, and lacks only Booth's
courage to commit his crime.CONCLUSION.
Lincoln still works. Think you he could be happy shut up
in a heaven, " bej^ond the bounds of time and space," where there
is nothing for him to do ? No ! His voice will ring more melo
diously for freedom in the future than it ever has in the past. He
will still blaze out the way for patriots : let us only follow in his
footsteps, and soon our country will arise in a splendor hitherto
unknown. As the blood of our martyred soldiers enriches the
fields of the South, so will the lives lost enrich us in true Repub
licanism; and when our country shall have been redeemed,
without the stain of slavery upon it, and we shall have learned
the worth of a redeemed Republic by its cost, then will we be
prepared as never before to appreciate the beauties of a Republi
can Government. Then, and not till then, will a halo of glory
settle upon our country, with which the glory of the past will
compare as the dim, flickering taper upon the hearthstone com
pares with the splendor of the noonday sun.
" His toils are past, his work is done,
His spirit fully blest;
He fought the fight, the viftory won,
And entered into rest.
Then let our sorrows cease to flow,
God has recalled his own ;
But let our hearts in every woe
Still say, ' Thy will be done,' "
The Progressive Age, Battle Creek, Mick.

NATIONAL JOY AND SORROW COMMINGLED:
A SERMON DELIVERED IN THE SIXTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,
PENN,, JUNE I, 1865;
BY REV, GEORGE JUNKIN, D,D,,
LATE PRESIDENT OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE, VA,

Jer, ix. i : " Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might
weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people ! "
A NATION'S calamities, like an individual's, spring not up out
of the dust. They are not a spontaneity in any infidel sense
of the word ; not accidents, as the world of unthinking men talk.
There are none such in the Government as God. They have their
root in sin, and hence they spring up. Hath there been evil in
the city, and the Lord hath not done it? Physical evils are effefts
of moral delinquency. By the former, the Governor ofthe world
expresses his abhorrence of the latter; and here we have the
elementary idea of moral government. Destroy the conneftion
between sin and suffering, and you shake the very foundations of
social order; and, if these be destroyed, what can ever the right
eous do? Where are there any guarantees for government?
Hence the divine declaration, " Though hand join in hand, the
wicked shall not go unpunished." Social bodies, even those most
in favor with God, cannot be exempt from this law. " You only
have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 135
punish you for all your iniquities." Sooner or later, yet in this
world, national sins must be punished. The Lord, who is the
Governor among the nations, must and will vindicate in manifest
ing his justice. We have greatly offended, or we would not be as
we are this day.
April 14, A.D,, 1865, — what a day of joy and exultation!
Twenty millions of people send forth the glad sounds of thanks
giving to the Lord; for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse
and his rider hath he cagt into the sea.
April 15, A.D., 1865, — what a day of wailing, lamentation, and
woe ! Twenty-five millions of people fall down in the dust before
the offended Majesty of heaven, and send forth the agonizing
shriek, " How long. Lord ? Wilt thou be angry for ever ? Why
doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture ? "
Oh, what a change was that! How sudden! how unexpefted!
how appalling! From the effulgent noon of a nation's glory and
exultation, in view of union and peace, into a dark midnight of
worse than Egyptian gloom and sorrow and wailing!
Now, whence comes all this, under the government of a kind
and gracious sovereign ? " Behold, the Lord's hand is not short
ened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot
hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your
God; and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not
hear." (Isa. lix. i, 2.) And the prophet proceeds to point out
a variety of grievous offences against the divine la-w. Some of
these are chargeable upon our people and nation.
1st. Our tendency to idolize our public men, or rather the offices
which they hold, and to glory in their wisdom and prowess, and
thus to forget Him who assures us, " The wicked shall be .turned
into hell, and all the nations that forget God." (Ps. ix.) We have
not kept it before our mind, that our fathers " got not the land in

136 National Joy and Sorrow commingled.
possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save
them ; but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy
countenance, because thou hadst a favor unto them. Thpu art
my king, O God!" (Ps. xliv. 3, 4.) Beyond doubt, we have
sinned in this our confident boasting.
2d. We=.have insulted the Son of God, " by whom kings reign
and princes decree justice; by whom princes rule, and nobles,
even all the judges ofthe earth." (Prov. viii. 15, 16.) We have
said, "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast their cord from
us." (Ps. ii. 3.) Virtually denying, that "unto us a child is
born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon
his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no
end upon the throne of David." (Isa. ix. 6, 7.) This divine
Mediator and King we have offended in various ways.
ist. In the grand bond of our National Union. The Constitu
tion of the United States contains no distinft acknowledgment of
the being of a God. It is simply atheistical in the generic sense
of the word. There ig no God at all in it. And among the most
aggravating points of this atheism is the faft, that many of the
sovereign people, and not a few men professing piety, glory in
this faft, and defend it. Under the delusion ofthe Devil's political
maxim, " Religion has nothing to do with politics," they profess to
justify this atheism. Nor is this a simple ignoring of God. On
this ground, many attempt to apologize for the omission. It is,
say they, an inadvertence.* It does not amount to a denial or
rejeftion of God. After all, the Convention meant no offence.

* This was the case with the date, " in the year of our Lord; " a mere inadvertence,
although the most like a recognition of any thing in it.

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 137
To this we reply. What they did must interpret their intention.
They ejefted God. He had been recognized four several times in
the Declaration : viz., in the first paragraph ; in the second para
graph; and twice in the last, the Declaration proper, — "appealing
to the Supreme Judge of the world," " with a firm reliance on
the proteftion of divine Providence." So the Xlllth Article of
Confederation expressly recognizes "the great Governor of the
world," and refers to his influence upon the hearts of the legisla
tors, in their inclination to adopt the Articles. Moreover, the
fathers in the Continental Congress provided for, and attended to,
prayers at their daily deliberations. Not so the men who framed
the Constitution : they had no prayers mixed up with their assem
bly. The contrary has been asserted, but erroneously. Franklin
made a motion — rather a suggestion — to invite the clergy, and
open the sessions with prayer, as the fathers had done. General
Hamilton could not see its use; made some difficulty: an
adjournment soon took place, and Madison tells us the matter was
never again called up. Yes, God was not ignored all through the
doings of the Continental Congress, and in the Declaration and
Articles. But " Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked; " the nation for
got God, and ejefted him. This was undoubtedly — though we
cannot here stop to prove it — the effeft of French infidelity,
which was eating into the vitals of the body politic.
3d. Another and quite a recent insult has been offered to the
Son of God, — the appointment to a chaplaincy in Congress of a
person of a seft who, but week before last, in New York,
declared their denial of Christ as Mediator, and in offensive terms
deny that "this is the true God and eternal life." Thus the
nation, by its representatives, voted to pull down Messiah's
throne, and rejeft him as Governor among the nations. This
offence is aggravated by the consideration that this more than
semi-infidel seft is one of the smallest in the nation.
18

138 National Joy and Sorrow commingled.
3d. Our theatrical exhibitions are a stench in the nostrils of
high Heaven. These dens of pollution, these synagogues of Satan,
colleft in and around them the concentrated abomination of all
immorality and crime. Into these vestibules of the abyss, thou
sands and tens of thousands of our youth of both sexes are
enticed and inveigled by all the arts and wiles ofthe Adversary of
souls, aided by all the embellishments of art and even of science.
Places of amusement are planned and operated to occupy a mid
dle region between the house of God, and the hold of demons, —
between the church and the theatre. The same building accom
modates a religious meeting or a musical exhibition to-night, and
the genuine orgies of the Evil One to-morrow night. Thus, the
revulsion of the Christian heart, with which less than half a cen
tury ago all pious people turned away, is abated; and the public
conscience, even of church-goers, is often kept in an equipoise
between the church itself and the opera; between the choir with
David's harp, and the full swell of the orchestra; between Jesus
Christ and Shakspeare. Are there no professors of religion in
this City of Love who prefer Romeo and Juliet to John's Gospel ?
or Booth and Forrest to Paul and Peter ?
Now, a great aggravation of these sins is found in the general
faft, that the theatres are liberally supported, and all places of
amusement are crowded with fascinated listeners; and that, too,
while half the people of the land are draped in the habiliments
of mourning. How unseemly all this! If Nero must fiddle
while Rome was burning, must we Christians dance while the
nation bleeds?
4th. Profanity, drunkenness, gambling, sabbath-breaking, and
debauchery prevail over all the land; but, above all, in the army
and navy. Many hundreds, indeed, have been dismissed the ser
vice for these crimes alone; but the expurgation has been only
partial, and this by reason of the humiliating faft that some very

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 139
distinguished officers indulge in some of these criminal praftices,
and thus seem to be above law. Indeed, the sentiment, that
swearing and intemperance are military necessities, is not unfre
quently hinted at, if not distinftly avowed. There is too much
reason to believe that alcohol has destroyed more lives in this
war than gunpowder.
5th. A fifth class of grievous sins against high Heaven is found
connefted with the avaricious spirit, engendering frauds against
the Government. Sharpers, thieves, and plunderers of public
'property have taken advantage of irregularities in trade, and com
mitted depredations that would make a Hottentot blush.
All kinds of rascality, if perpetrated against the public trea
sury, have been almost vindicated as smart and praiseworthy.
Such evils are nevertheless hateful: "For among my people are
found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they
set a trap; they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are
their houses full of deceit; therefore, they are become great, and
waxen rich. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord;
shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this ? " (Jer. v.
26-29.) Such are the moral but adequate procuring causes of our
nation's calamities; such delinquencies must bring down the
wrath of God. Accordingly, what amazing commingling of
emotions result: —
1st. High joy.
2d. Deep sorrow.
3d. Burning indignation.
4th. Subdued humility.
Analagous cases are suggested. Let us note a few: —
ist. Henry of Navarre, the fourth Henry, and the noblest king

140 National Joy and Sorrow commingled.
that ever sat upon the French throne. From principle, he was a
Huguenot; but from policy, after the St. Bartholomew's massacre,
he threw himself into the arms of the Popish party, secretly
however assuring the Huguenots that he was their friend, and
would proteft them. He had been solemnly warned by the
Huguenot captain, that, if with his mouth he renounced the Pro
testant religion, God would smite him on the mouth, and destroy
his life. Accordingly, whilst all things seemed settling down
into a prosperous condition, he -was smittten in the mouth, and
killed, by a dagger in the hand of a madman named Ravaillac,
whilst riding in the royal coach in the streets of Paris. Thus he
was snatched away from the highest glories of what appeared to
promise a long and illustrious reign, — a sovereign of the rarest
qualities, and of most hopeful promise.
2d. General James Wolfe, in like manner, closed a short and
brilliant career on that illustrious day, when, on the Plains of
Abraham, he sold his life for deathless renown. In the ebbing
of life, his dying ear caught the exclamation, " They fly, they fly ! "
He asked, "Who fly?" — "The French, the French !" — " Then
I die happy!" and he breathed out his mighty soul in the very
arms of a viftory which swept away French power from a conti
nent, and secured North America for ever to free government
and the Protestant religion. Oh, how difficult to bring our feel
ings into quiet subjeftion to the ways of Providence in such
mysterious dispensations! Why not spare Wolfe and Lincoln
to enjoy their triumph? But peace! be still, and know that I
am God.
3d. In the days of Charles Stuart, the second profligate prince
of that name who disgraced the British throne, the Duke of
Ormond was the King's viceroy for Ireland, where he had man
aged the trust with great wisdom and success. Nevertheless, an
active and bold party, led by the Earl of Shaftsbury, assailed the

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 141
venerable duke in Parliament, intending, if possible, to bring his
life in peril. The Earl of Ossory, son of the duke, was a member
of the Commons' House, and threw his young life into his father's
defence, and with such vigor and skill as to confuse and utterly
discomfit the party, and triumphantly vindicate his father's admin
istration. Not long after this the earl died, and left the noble and
venerable duke in the deepest sorrow and anguish. Certain
friends approached the bereaved parent with words of consola
tion. Whereupon, rising under his load of sorrows, and his
heart swelling with a noble pride easily to be excused, the venera
ble father exclaimed, "I would not give my dead son for any
living son in Christendom I " So a whole nation to-day exclaims,
" We would not give our dead President for any living sovereign
in Christendom or the world ! " Why then, ah ! why did God
permit the assassin's hand to touch a life so precious? This I
have already, in part at least, answered. Why did God permit
wicked men to stone Stephen ? to crucify Peter ? to behead
Paul? to burn John Huss and John Rogers and Patrick Ham
ilton ?
These, an-d millions more, heroic martyrs to the cause of
truth and freedom, hath God removed just when their work was
finished. Abraham Lincoln, like young Hamilton, and Rogers
and Huss and Peter and Paul, the aged, had finished his work.
He had, in the simplicity of his heart, and the honesty of his con
science, unconsciously written his rustic name higher than the
loftiest heretofore known to history and to fame. He had filled
up his share — and what a share ! — in his country's glory. He
had knocked the manacles off four millions of degraded bonds
men. He had called into the field the most powerful armies on
which the sun ever shone; he had placed at their heads generals,
called from obscurity, who may well look down with scorn on
the Petit Corporal, the glory and boast heretofore of all the sons

142 National Joy and Sorrow commingled.
of Mars. He had created a navy of prowess superior to any that
ever floated in water, fresh and salt. He had crushed a rebellion
organized against the freedom of the world ; and with such talent
and power as was never before known in human history. He
had added this last and indispensable demonstration of the grand
truth, that man is capable of self-government. Glory enough,
this, for one mortal! And God called him away to higher and
holier service, we most fondly and reasonably hope.
We may, indeed we ought, and we do, regret the place from
which he was called. We regret that so great a man and so
good should have given the force of his example to encourage
dens of pollution. But even here, it is obvious his failings on
the side of virtue, his kindly temperament, and unwillingness
to occasion disappointment to an audience, rather than deliber
ate choice, occasioned his presence. We may even go further
consistently with our high admiration, and accommodate David's
lament over Abner: "Died Abner as a fool dieth? Thy hands
were not bound, nor thy feet put in fetters : as a man falleth before
wicked men, so fellest thou. And the king lifted up his voice,
and wept at the grave of Abner; and all the people wept."
(2 Sam. iii. 32,) Whatever reasons may lie aback of this
mournful mystery, it stands out a fearful faft in the movements
of that divine Providence who doeth all things well, and that
assured us that he will make all things work together for good to
those who put their trust in him.
Perhaps Mr. Lincoln would have been excessive in his lenity.
His large-hearted benevolence had already led to many afts of
clemency in the exercise of the pardoning power, which were, in
the opinion of many of his best and most influential friends, of
doubtful expediency. The opinion very extensively prevails, that,
impelled by his noble sympathies for poor suffering humanity, he
had enfeebled the nerve of discipline even in the army, by

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 143
extending pardon or reprieve to deserters and bounty-jumpers.
Perhaps this amiable weakness in a strong mind might have led
to more serious evils when criminals of the highest charafter
should stand condemned at the bar of justice. It required more
nerve, and of a higher order, to sign the death-warrant of Dr.
Dodd than to storm Fort Fisher. Pardon to a man justly con
demned is a judgment against Justice herself, and a bribe to
future criminality. The right and duty to pardon a murderer has
never been placed in the hands of the civil magistrate by divine
statute. "Ye shall take no satisfaftion for the life of a murderer,
which is guilty of death; but he shall be surely put to death."
(Num. xxxv. 31.) Providentially, indeed, and in faft, this
power is in the magistrate's hands, but not by express divine leg
islation. But the theory has grown out of the imperfeftion of all
human tribunals. It being possible that an innocent man might
be condemned, prudence has suggested the propriety of a last
resort, to prevent the execution of an unjust sentence. Wherever,
therefore, a reasonable doubt arises as to the justice of the sen
tence that decrees a man to death, the pardoning power should
interfere; otherwise, never. I say, a reasonable doubt, not a
doubt created by our sympathetic emotions. "Justice and judg
ment are the habitation of Jehovah's throne : mercy and truth
go before his face." (Ps. Ixxxix. 14.) Governments are estab
lished for the administration of justice, not for the dispensing of
mercy; and for this God has put the sword into the magistrate's
hand, and he may not bear it in vain. Now, it is our duty always
to scan the movements of Providence, that we may, if possible,
discover what he would have us to do. Watchman ! what of the
night? But we shall press the inquiry no further. This is very
probably the main reason of the mournful removal of our admired
and beloved Chief Magistrate, — that the executive power may fall
into the hands of a man made of sterner stuff, and whose experi-

144 National Joy and Sorrow commingled.
ences better fit him for hearkening to the high and fearful behests
of immutable and incorruptible Justice.
We have felt the high joys of gratitude to God for the success
he has bestowed on our arms.
We have plunged from these heights into an almost abyss of
sorrow. Our head dissolves in tears, and our eyes have become
fountains of anguish.
Our indignation at the horrible rebellion, and its more horri
ble resort to the pistol, the dagger, the torch, and the poison of
the assassin, flames up into an unquenchable fire. And the
very cause of our burning indignation suggests and prompts and
urges on to the sure and efficient remedy, the simple administra
tion of justice.
All these powerful emotions subside, at least, into a subdued
humility. It is the Lord: let him do as seemeth to him good.
But acquiescence in the divine Will by no means implies appro
bation of the agency by which it is accomplished. Joseph's
brethren meant their cruelty for evil to him; but God meant all
for good, that he might save Egypt itself, and Israel too, from
most fearful calamity. So we humbly submit, in the confident
expeftation that the nation's felicity and glory will spring up, a
luminous and grand Shechinah, over the grave of Abraham Lin
coln. And, with this buoyant hope in our hearts, let us re
mark, —
I St. We are not fighting for our own hearthstones, for our own
wives and our children. If this were all, however praiseworthy
some may feel it to be, it is narrow, selfish, mean, and bespeaks
a soul devoid of the higher and nobler sentiments of a broad
philanthropy. 2d. Nor are we fighting for the broad acres of old Pennsylva
nia, baptized with the blood of a heroic ancestry, shed in support

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 145
of the immortal Declaration issued from yonder Hall, in obedi
ence to a nation's will, on the 4th of July, 1776. Freedom here,
indeed, and republican government, we claim and herald for all
the people of this broad land. But even this were a conception
too diminutive for the mustering of such forces, the authorizing
of such vast treasuries. Oh, no ! The Lord deliver us • from
these thoughts, suited only to the man of the little soul ! for —
3d. We are fighting for freedom and republican government
over all this nation, over all this northern continent and the
world. Here is progressing the gigantic experiment upon human
nature, for the solution of the stupendous problem of man's capa
bility of self-government. If our experiment fails; if this nation
cannot govern itself; if it is to be divided, dissolved, and plunged
into the gulf, the Charybdis of interminable anarchy, or shivered to
atoms against the Scylla of military despotism, — then is the hope
of freedom and republicanism for the world for ever ingulfed.
The aflSrmative of this problenl, God is writing out, may we not
say, has written out, in the blood of three or four hundred thou
sand men. Can any man believe that these vast armies, and these
hundred battles, in comparison with which Agincourt and Blen
heim and Austerlitz and Wagram and Waterloo and Sebasto-
pol and Solferino are but the skirmishings of pickets on the
outposts, — can it be believed that all this is merely to determine
whether or not a few thousand slave-owners ghall drive their
human stock, and locate them, upon new lands on our Western
borders? Is it for such a purpose as this, God has marshalled
these terrible hosts of earnest and courageous men, to fling them
upon each other in such awful and undistinguishable courage?
Surely not. Surely he is completing the grand demonstration in
the eyes of all the nations, that they may read and learn from the
blood and fire of a hundred battle-fields, that freemen can put
down rebellion and govern themselves. 19

146 National Joy and Sorrow commingled.
Yes, my friends, amid this awful scene the true Christian phi
losopher recognizes the Lord of Hosts as levying and drilling and
training the armies ; as building the navies, as educating the gen
erals and the admirals, the soldiers and the seamen, for the last
and greatest battles of freedom. Despotism, from her iron throne,
the world over, looks on in amazement, and trembles in the
paralysis of approaching death, at the might that slumbers in a
peasant's arm. Probably, — we say it with an eye upon the pro
phecies of Holy Scripture, — probably -within five years from this
time will be fought, on the field of Megiddo, the most fearful,
terrific, and decisive of all the bloody battles, for freedom and
for God. And I cannot believe that the Lord of Hosts will order
the general charge on that great and terrible day, until his own
American contingent shall have formed its line on the left bank
of that ancient river, — the river of Kishon. I cannot exclude
from my mind the pleasing, dreadful thought, that the Stars and
the Stripes will float in grandeur and in glory amid the dust
and smoke of that terrific contest. The fond fancy — it maybe
no more — still clings to my soul, that American blood will share
largely in the glorious work of consecrating to religion, to free
dom, and to God, the great plain of Jezreel.
But then, obviously, for this we must bring God upon the
battle-field. We must honor him, or he will not honor us. Thus
did Deborah and. Barak on this same field, and he gave them the
victory, whilst they ascribe their triumph to him.
Not inconsistently with what I have said of our national sins
and army corruptions, I now remark, that there never was a time
when more prayer was offered up, more religious effort put forth,
more of a liberal, giving, charitable spirit displayed in the
churches of our land, than during this war. Whilst, it is true, we
have some of the very worst men of the land in our army and
navy, it is equally true, we have some of the best also. Our

Rev. George Junkin, D.D. 147
praying generals and admirals, soldiers and seamen, have wrestled
mightily with God, and have prevailed. Books, trafts, religious
newspapers have been read more than ever was done in any
army under the sun. And these have been blessed, as means for
the conversion of thousands. Assuredly hundreds of these army
conversions will enter the service of the Captain of our salvation,
in aggressive wars against the powers of darkness. Moreover, it
is an encouraging faft, that the popular voice of thanksgiving
ascended to God from parts and places new and strange. Who
ever before heard the Christian doxology, —
" Praise God from whom all blessings flow," —
thundering out from ten thousand voices in Wall Street, in Chest
nut Street, and other places ?
Yes, this is the right spirit. Let us bring God into every
thing, — the army, the navy, the sea, and the land; the White
House, the halls of Congress, the Courts of Justice, and the elec
tion polls. God has placed the sovereignty in the people, and
therefore the sovereign cannot ever be assassinated.
Let every freeman walk with God. Let him learn submission
to Jesus, by whom kings reign and princes decree justice. With
the Son of God as its king, the nation must ever be safe, must
ever triumph. Amen. Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2, 1865,

MEMORIAL SERMON:
DELIVERED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, COLUMBUS, OHIO,
THURSDAY, JUNE I, 1 865 ;
BY REV, W, R. MARSHALL,
PASTOR OP THE CHURCH, t

Rom. ix. 17 : " Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my
power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth ! "
THE great Dr. John M. Mason began an oration on the death
of George Washington, in language as follows, — "The
oflfices of this day belong less to eloquence than to grief. An
assembled nation, lamenting a father in their departed chief; ab
sorbing every inferior consideration in the sentiments of their
common loss ; mingling their recolleftions and their anticipations,
their wishes, their regrets, their sympathies and their tears, — is a
speftacle not more tender than awful, and excites emotions too
mighty for utterance. I should have no right to complain, Amer
icans, if, instead of indulging me with your attention, you should
command me to retire, and leave you to weep in the silence of
woe. ¦ I should deserve the reprimand were I to appear before you
with the pretentions of eulogy. No ! Eulogy has mistaken her
province and her powers, when she assumes for her theme the
glory of Washington. His deeds and his virtues are his high
eulogium, — his deeds most familiar to your memories, his vir-

Rev. W. R. Marshall. 149
tues most dear to your affeftions. To me, therefore, nothing is
permitted but to borrow from yourselves. And, though a pencil
more daring than mine would languish in attempting to retrace
the living lines which the finger of Truth has drawn upon your
hearts, you will bear with me while, on a subjeft which dignifies
every thing related to it, ' I tell you that which yourselves do
know.' "
Could I in more befitting spirit, or with more appropriate lan
guage, appear before you to-day, to speak of the man whom you
bewail, with that same unison of unutterable feeling with which
your fathers, sixty-five years ago, mourned for Washington, —
the man who is enshrined to-day in. the weeping heart of this
great Republic, side by side with its first, its noblest, its matchless
patriot ?
The life of Abraham Lincoln was too closely related to the
interests of us all, and bore too effeftively upon the experience
and prospefts of the generation, to be barren of theme for pulpit
discourse, or of important lessons for the study of the Christian
and the patriot.
But I should utterly fail in the duty of this hour, imposed both
by the peculiar nature of my oflGce, and a consideration of the
true interests of the public, if I were to represent that charafter
only in its proximate reference to human society, and discon-
nefted from its higher and farther-reaching relations to that divine
government which comprehends all the human, and whose prog
ress develops the history, and solves the destiny, of all men and
nations. "The history of the world," remarks the historian of
the Reformation, " should be set as the annals of the government
of the Sovereign of the universe. God is ever present on that
vast theatre, where successive generations of men and nations
struggle. Shall we not recognize his hand in those grand mani
festations, those great men, those mighty nations, which arise and

150 Memorial Sermon.

start, as it were, from the dust of the earth, and communicate a
new form and destiny to the human race ? Shall we not acknowl
edge him in those great heroes who spring from society at ap
pointed epochs, — who display a strength and an aftivity beyond
the ordinary limits of humanity, and around whom, as around a
superior and mysterious power, nations and individuals gladly
gather ? " And our own Bancroft says, " Providence is the light
of history, and the soul of the world."
Then, through all that is unique, and all that is great, in his
life; through all that is remarkable in his progress, and all that
is important in the aftion of Mr. Lincoln; and through all the
scenes, stormy, confused, and chaotic, in which he mingled, — we
look up to that omnipotent God, who sits enthroned above, and
ruleth over all, and regard the man as a servant of the divine, the
earthly ruler as a delegated agent of the supreme and universal
government which has its throne in heaven. And as such I will
speak of Mr. Lincoln's relation to the present and the future.
As among the thousand stately spires that surmount a great
and proud city, one towers highest in air; or, among alpine moun
tains, one lifts its bold summit nearest the skies, and reflefts upon
all below the earlier and purer rays of light: so among the thou
sands, who, by positions of infiuence and deeds of importance,
have lately risen above the common level, and stand in the light
of fame as towers of human greatness, Abraham Lincoln mounts
to the loftiest altitude, and surrounds himself with the brightest
and most imperishable halo of earthly glory.
Amid the noise and confusion of these unparalleled times; in
the hurried succession of transpiring events, that, like a train of
supernal prodigies, has passed before us; amid scenes, in their
thrilling, terrible aspefts similar to, if not identical with, apoca
lyptic visions, our patriot President was the most prominent
figure and most efficient agent. If, over all this drama of human

Rev. W. R. Marshall. 151
affairs, there is a universal Providence and a divine Sovereign,
whose wisdom, power, and will control the confusion, and order
the progress, — selefting the agents, and limiting the competition
of ambition and power; balancing the collisions and combina
tions of interests and principles, so as to work out results of per
manent good and substantial advancement to the race of man, —
as at creation he developed a world of beauty, order, and life, out
ofthe formless void of dark chaos, — then Abraham Lincoln was,
by that Supreme Ruler, appointed to his position and his work,
created for and adapted to the exigencies of the times. What
the man -was as an apparent result of visible influences, God made
him, by that infallible decree that not only ordains the end, but
selefts and energizes all the second causes of its accomplishment.
And as much as the times were eventful, and their occur
rences important, so in proportion is the importance of Abraham
Lincoln's relation to the present experience and future prospefts
of this nation and the world.
The crisis through which our country has just passed, though
not the first, was incomparably the most critical and threatening
in our experience, and has, perhaps, no precedent or parallel in
the history of any surviving government.
The causes which produced it were at least connate, if they
had not an existence anterior to the origin of our nationality.
Like a slow poison they gradually spread through the body poli
tic, and long preyed upon its organs of health with only an occa
sional symptom of the coming terrible paroxysms.
In the natural world, the elements of storm often colleft
quietly, slowly, and invisibly. The light, unseen vapors of water
are lifted silently from the face of the ocean, and wafted far away
into the upper atmosphere by breezes so gentle that they stir not
an aspen near the earth's surface; and for days and weeks, while
the sun, unobscured by a single cloud, shines gloriously on a

152 Memorial Sermon .

serene continent and a calm sea, those watery vapors assemble in
secret rendezvous, still gathering proportion and force, until a
certain condition is attained; and then suddenly the storm-clouds
are marshalled in the heavens, and irresistibly the flooding tor
rents, the sweeping winds, and the riving lightnings rush down
to the assault of sea and land. Thus also, through many quiet
years, the elements of strife, that lately issued in a storm of deso
lating war, were gathering far up in our national atmosphere.
For many years together we rejoiced securely in the halcyon sun
light of unbroken prosperity and unhalting progress.
Occasionally some difficulty would arise producing temporary
excitement; and, while a few thought they heard afar off the mut
tering thunders of an approaching storm, there was generally no
apprehension of danger. Grandfathers still related the thrilling
traditions of revolutionary times, and youthful hearts almost en
vied an experience which they supposed was passed for ever.
But a few years ago, our national prospefts began to change
rapidly, and, in the judgment of all, to assume a threatening as
peft. Questions, upon which sentiment and praftice divided,
began to be regarded as of vital importance, and to be discussed
with moving ardor. Grave statesmen and patriot legislators
trembled under the weight of their responsibilities, as on all sides
they apprehended the fearful consequences. Compromises were
resorted to, and served quite well for temporary relief But as
anodynes conceal the symptoms while the disease strikes deeper
into the vitals, so in the lull of excitement, produced by concili
atory measures, seftional differences extended themselves more
widely, and settled down into more determined antagonism.
At length, the fiery elements of strife refused to be longer re
pressed. The storm-cloud was completely charged with fury,
and hung dark and imminent over a quaking nation.
It was at such a time, and in such a critical condition of na-

Rev. W, R. Marshall 153
tional affairs, that Mr. Lincoln was called to the chief magistracy,
from a position of comparative privacy, in which he had rarely or
never indulged an ambitious anticipation of Presidential honors
and responsibilities. That position, always important, indeed,
had heretofore been chiefly regarded as a source of party advan
tage; and never till now had it been aftually looked upon as the
source of national life or death.
But then the eyes of all the thoughtful and the patriotic were
eagerly turned to-wards that seat of civil and military power, as to
the only possible source of national preservation.
Their anxiety, too, was increased by its great embarrassments,
— some manifest, many only inferential. The disaffefted seftion
had swayed the chief official influence for many years, and had
deliberately weakened the powers of the Government, until that
seat of authority was left to the new incumbent literally unsup
ported. And, looking forward into the unwonted darkness of the
future, even minds of ordinary sagacity could foresee the rise of
enfeebling divisions among the loyal, and of questions- that were
likely to involve and complicate our relations to other countries.
Well might the lovers of their country, though they were even
friends of Mr. Lincoln, and had joined in his elevation, tremble
with anxiety as they saw him assume that all-important seat.
But with immeasurably more intentness did He who occupies the
throne of universal empire regard our presidential chair. The
interests of His great kingdom, of nations, and of worlds, were in
some degree involved in our national crisis. And he too under
stood, far better than men, the proportions of that crisis. We
were greatly mistaken about the probable magnitude and duration
of the coming storm. But Ommiscience surveyed and computed
all correftly, — saw each wasting campaign, and reviewed in ad
vance each bloody battle-ground; estimated the full effeft of
every defeat, disaster, and disappointment; beheld all the un-
20

154 Memorial Sermon.

sightly scenes of every Fort-Pillow massacre, and of every prison
famine. He heard the lament of every mother, the wail of every
widow, and the cry of every orphan. And he knew perfeftly
every exasperation of feeling, every conflift of views and theories,
and every gale of popular excitement which would be aroused by
the horrid phenomena of the rebellion, and in mighty fury vie
together in adverse, complicating pressure upon the President.
And intending, by humane instrumentality, to bring the nation
through all its troubles, chastened indeed, but unsevered, he knew
just the sort of man needed for the, all-important presidency.
And, from among all the great and the good, the wise and the pa
triotic, he chose Abraham Lincoln, and thus placed him in the
indescribably responsible relation to the present and the future of
Conservator and Reformer.
And now, that the oflSce is accomplished, and the history
made, a grateful but mourning people gladly consider how faith
fully and successfully he performed his mission.
If, from a review of the embarrassments that sought to tram
mel him, and the mighty exigencies which pressed upon him, it
be inquired whether he really succeeded in both aspefts of his
work, let the rejoicings of a regenerated nation, and the acclama
tions of liberated millions, nay, rather let the wailings of a whole
people, who to-day mourn his loss, answer. Men of all shades
of political opinion and party, of all classes and conditions in
social life, throughout the loyal North, sincerely grieve for the
fallen great. And even from the charred and crimson fields upon
which Southern treason played its cruel drama, we hear the re
sponsive echo of our mourning. One whose position enabled
him to speak intelligently, and who had himself gone heartily and
persistently with the rebellion, writing from his home in Rich
mond to a friend in Washington, a few days after the President's
death, says, " Our city is gloom. You can form no conception of

Rev. W. R. Marshall. 155
the extent and depth of our sorrow. I verily believe that the as
sassination of Jefferson Davis, at any time within the last two
years, would not have produced a tithe of the sadness which the
unwelcome intelligence from Washington has created,"
Within the whole limits of our national territory there is, I
apprehend, not a heart in which abides a single feeling of patriot
ism which has not been pierced by the assassin who murdered
the President.
Yea: from far over the sea, we receive greetings of tender
sympathy, the tribute of other peoples to the memory of our de
parted Chieftain, and tokens of their regard for his charafter and
his -work.
But, aside from all this, as a sufficient testimony of his success,
and, I trust, perpetual monument to his worth, our nationality
survives, after all the demons of insurgent war have spent their
unparalleled fury, and is purer and stronger to-da}^ than it was
when he seized the helm of its government. And its full history,
glorious as I trust it shall be, will be the continued life of his
character; and its prosperity, great and perpetual as I hope, will
be the produft of his undying influence.
And it is wise and profitable to study the elements of a char
after so worthy, and by the combined operation of which results
of such importance are effefted.
ist. The first among his powers we recognize his mental char
afteristics. If the varying opinions which have so often been
expressed, have not already harmonized, I doubt not they will ere
long settle down into the unanimous conclusion, that he possessed
a mind of extraordinary capacity. His perceptive faculties wei-e
peculiarly penetrating and far reaching; his reasoning powers,
unusually strong and accurate : and these, associated with a mem
ory of rare excellence, constituted a very superior mind, and made
him within the sphere of his study an almost matchless logician.

156 Memorial Sermon .

Events, I think, have already proved, that no other man has
more thoroughly comprehended the great questions which in
these days confront the statesman, and none ever more triumph
antly mastered the great problems of social life and civil power
which their times developed. There was a time when his genius
was greatly doubted, and very many supposed that Mr. Lincoln
was little more than the ignorant mouthpiece of the wise men
around him. But I think it is now generally believed, by those
possessing the best means of information, that, throughout his ad
ministration, his -was the controlling mind in the Cabinet; and all
the most important doftrines maintained, and measures instituted,
were peculiarly his own.
The well-known circumstances of his earlier life may have
contributed some advantages to the foundation of his mental and
moral charafter; but doubtless the disadvantages they imposed
greatly preponderated. However much some are attributing his
later greatness to his earlier experience, I do not suppose that
any really regard such an education as his the best training for
presidential duties, or would intentionally turn the ambition of
youthful aspirants into such a channel. The common experience
of the past will be the common experience of the future, —
namely, "that the disciple is as his master." Generally, influ
ences will raise charafter to their own level. A rare mind will,
by force of native genius, overleap its barriers, and lift itself far
above the elevation to which its surrounding influences could
carry it ; but even it under favoring circumstances would have
mounted to a vastly nobler eminence. From what we know he
was, we might reasonably indulge, what would otherwise seem
to be very extravagant speculations, about what Mr. Lincoln
would have been, had he enjoyed the best advantages for educa
tion. But it is better that we simply claim for him genius; while
we admire the persevering industry and sterling morality which

Rev. W. R. Marshall 157
raised him far above the apparent ordination of circumstances,
and conquered every obstacle that lay between his humble ori
gin and his glorious destiny.
It is, I believe, universally conceded, that, while he did come
short somewhat in the rhetorical elaboration, he was always re
markably clear in the enunciation of his premises, and the state
ment of his conclusions. And that may be in part due to his
education. He knew little, and cared less, for those refinements
of language, which the mere disputant often uses as the specious
disguise of fallacy. Great facility in the use of language is often
an element of weakness rather than power. Quality is often sac
rificed to quantity. But that feature of mental charafter was
chiefly due to his po-wer of discussive thinking. Language is but
the form or articulation of thought; and a man's mental strength
should be measured by his ability to express meaning, rather
than by his facility in pronouncing sonorous "words : for, although
there must be exceptional cases, the general rule is, that, when a
man understands a subject thoroughly, he will be able to express
it clearly. Obscurity of language is a sure indication of insuffi
ciency of thought, or want of candor. Hence, from the charafter
istics of his style, we argue his intelleftual greatness.
But, to present his mental capacity in its true light, we must
for a little anticipate the view of his moral charafter. Civil and
social questions al-ways have their distinft ethical features, which
must also be correftly regarded^ in order to their adequate com
prehensions, A man may have great intelleftual powers, and
yet, in the sphere of politics and sociology, he will fall short of
the achievements of true greatness, unless he have correft and
strong moral sentiments. And for this reason many a flashing
genius has faded into obscurity, or gone out in the darkness of
everlasting disgrace. As the eye that is color-blind may be
keenly perceptive of some rays of the solar speftrum, or some

158 Memorial Sermon.

of nature's beauties, and totally insensible to others: so some un
fortunate minds are keenly perceptive of some aspefts of truth,
and totally blind to others. It was, however, manifestly not so
with Mr, Lincoln, The principles of true. Christian morality
pervaded his mind, and impressed their features upon all his
thoughts. He looked carefully at all sides, until he understood
the whole subjeft in its various bearings. And hence, as the
sequel has proved, he always excelled the champions of more
partisan policy, or of one-idead fanaticism, who confine their con
sideration to favorite points in great questions.
2d, Another element of his power, and condition of his suc
cesses, was his very decided religious conviftions, I am forbidden,
alike by my own inclination, and by the order of the Master
whom I serve, to consider the question whether or not his reli
gious conviftions amounted to genuine Christian faith; whether or
not he was a regenerated and sanftified child of God. I may
only say, that the eminently pious and judicious gentleman who,
during his administration, sustained to him the relation of reli
gious pastor, and enjoyed his intimacy, is fully persuaded that he
was a man of prayer, and has strong and comforting hopes that
he was a true disciple of Jesus Christ; while he deeply regrets
that he never proved his allegiance to the Saviour by a public
avowal of his religion. But it is certain, that his conviftions of
the whole truth of Bible doftrines were profound and livel5^ A
knowledge of his relations, and a sense of his obligations and ac
countabilities, to the living God, were never absent from him;
and to this faft was due the constant manifestation of some of his
brightest virtues, — honesty, for instance, the proverbial charafter
istic of his life. I suppose a man may be honest and truthful
without any Christian conviftions ; but the fafts of experience are
rather against the supposition. It is said, that these qualities, as
permanent traits of charafter, are never exhibited among those

Rev. W. R. Marshall, 159
families of mankind which have not enjoyed the revelation of
Bible truth. And while Mr, Lincoln's natural impulses were
honest, I doubt not it was his religious sentiment that developed
in him a principle which no motive of terror or attraftion availed
to swerve from strift moral reftitude.
Another of his charafteristic virtues was an unfaltering cour
age to do and to endure. At times, when terrible defeat dis
heartened our armies and emboldened our foes; when envious
monarchs threatened alliance -with the mighty insurreftion, or
gazed on in breathless expeftation of seeing, under the rising
battle-smoke, the ruins of our proud Republic, and friends quaked
with despondent apprehension, — the President remained unshaken
in his confidence of success, and in his determination to enforce
the nation's authority, and maintain her integrity. When the
clouds were blackest, the storm fiercest, and the sea roughest, as
the old ship lurched and groaned until most faces around him
were blanched with fear, the brave-hearted helmsman stood to his
post, firm, calm, and strong to guide, order, and do. Doubtless,
courage was native to him. But it was now fortified and rendered
immovable by his profound religious conviftions. He fully be
lieved, that the living Almighty God has a kingdom that ruleth
over all, and that he is doing his pleasure in the armies of heaven,
and among the inhabitants of the earth; present in all places;
governing all his creatures, and ordering all events, so as to bring
out the issues of his own divine purposes. Fully, enthusiastically
embracing that doftrine of Almighty Providence; confiding in the
justice of the nation's cause, and persuaded of her grand, heaven-
decreed destiny, — he could not by any temporary reverses of for
tune, or by any combination of difficulties, be driven to despair
of success. The courage which bases itself in patriotism will accomplish
wonders of daring and enduring; but that which is rooted in
religious conviftion is unconquerable and immortal.

1 60 Memorial Sermon.

Nor do I claim such a basis for the courageous manifestations
of Mr. Lincoln's charafter without ample warrant from his own
public declarations.
In that affefting valediftory to the people of Springfield, he
says, " I go to assume a task more difficult than that which de
volved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted
him shall be with and aid me, I must fail. But if the same
Omniscient mind, and the same Almighty arm, that direfted and
protefted him, shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I shall
succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not
forsake us now. To him I commend you all. Permit me to ask,
that, with equal sincerity and faith, you all will invoke his
wisdom and guidance for me." In his first Inaugural, while
marshalled soldiery and shotted cannon restrained present hun
dreds who thirsted for his blood, he said, " Intelligence, patriotism,
Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet for
saken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best
way, all our present difficulties." On the dark Fourth of July,
1 86 1, he closed his first Message to Congress, with this language:
" Having thus chosen our cause without guile, and with pure
purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without
fear, and with manly hearts!'' His second Inaugural is little else
than a reverent review of God's providence; a grateful recogni
tion of his infinite wisdom, power, and goodness; and an earnest
exhortation to the people to trust in him, and abide his will. As
the British " Standard " said, it is " the most remarkable thing
ofthe sort ever pronounced by any President of the United States
from the first day until now. Its Alpha and its Omega is Almighty
God, the God of justice, and the Father of mercies, who is work
ing out the purposes of his love. It is invested with a dignity and
pathos which lift it high above every thing of the kind, whether
in the Old World or the New." I question much if Mr. Lincoln's

Rev. W. R. Marshall i6i
whole charafter, the elements of his power, and sources of his
eminent success, can ever be better described than it is done by
his own pen in the closing sentence of that address: "With
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his
orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." He did not,
as some of our officers have seemed to do, speak the language of
religion only in proclamations of national fasts and thanksgiving,
when such acknowledgments of God could not be avoided; but
frankly and unhesitatingly embraced every suitable occasion to
give distinft utterance to his conviftions, and by the confidence
and courage which these conviftions inspired, and by the aftion
they prompted, conserved our imperilled nationality, and the
mighty interests of the times committed to him. Furthermore,
in this phase of his charafter, he perhaps presents to the world
its most distinft and complete realization of a truly Christian
government, in its two cardinal principles of human liberty and
divine sovereignty; and future^ generations on this and other
continents, may we not hope, will experience the blessings of his
illustration of new ideas in civil affairs; and future historians
date his administration as the dawning era of a Christian Theo
cracy. And hence, in his relations to present and future history,
I call him him a Reformer as well as Conservator.
And, in support of my view, it gives me pleasure to quote
from the funeral oration pronounced by his pastor. After enumer
ating his virtuous principles, and their noble exhibition. Dr. Gurley
says, " All these things commanded and fixed our admiration, and
the admiration of the world, and stamped upon his charafter
and life the unmistakable impress of greatness. But more sub-
21

1 62 Memorial Sermon.

lime than any or all of these, more holy and influential, more
beautiful, strong, and sustaining, was his abiding confidence in
God, and in the final triumph of truth and righteousness through
him and for his sake. This, it seems to me, after being near him
steadily, and with him often, for more than four years, is the
principle, more than by any other, he being dead yet speaketh.
Yes, by his steady, enduring confidence in God, and in the com
plete ultimate success of the cause of God, which is the cause
of humanity, more than in any other way, does he now speak to
us, and to the nation he loved and served so well. By this he
speaks to his successor in office, and charges him to have faith in
God. By this he speaks to all who occupy positions of influence
and authority in these sad and troublous times, and he charges
them all to have faith in God. By this he speaks to this great
people, as they sit in sackcloth to-day, and weep for him with a
bitter wailing, and refuse to be comforted; and he charges them
to have faith in God; and by this he will speak through the ages,
and to all rulers and peoples in every land, and his message to
them will be, 'Cling to liberty and right; battle for them; bleed
for them; die for them, if need be; and have confidence in
God.' "
3d. Another element of Mr. Lincoln's greatness, which, in
. its manifestation in his public life, arrays him with the charafter
now attributed to him, was his strong emotional nature.
I at least assert no more than the truth, when I say his heart-
power was as great as his brain-power. The purer and better
emotions of our nature, which tend to aftual and universal
brotherhood among men; which sink personal anibitions into
fraternal sympathies, subordinate self-interests to common enjoy
ments, restore to the race some features of the divine image, and
recover for it some of the happiness and dignity of its pristine
state, — manifest their presence and unusual strength, while they

Rev. W. R. Marshall 163

shed an enchanting lustre of beauty and loveliness over the whole
private and public life of the great man. He was proverbially
good-natured and affeftionate, benevolent and forgiving. True
to the worthy, grateful to the friendly, charitable to the needy,
forbearing to the erring, impartial as a father, patient as a mother,
tender as a child. Deep as it may be, the public impression of
his emotional charafteristics is not equal to the faft. Incidents
are related by those who saw the inner and more private side
of his life, showing that he could not bear the consciousness of
having unnecessarily hurt the feelings of a human being, or
of having failed to alleviate when he might. It cannot be dis
puted, that, by the exercise of these noble affeftions, he multiplied
friends and diminished foes, and thus greatly strengthened his
own arm of official power, and promoted the cause of his country.
Nor can. it be that his benevolent dispositions were excessive;
unless we have* entirely mistaken his charafter in other respefts.
Kindness never can be too great unless it displace wisdom and
justice. If charity errs at all, it must be either through ignorance
or disregard of the right. And, while I do not suppose our late
President was in all instances correft in his judgment, I do main
tain that he was generally so, and perhaps always sincere in his
intentions to do right. I have no sympathy with the morbid
sentimentalism that in any case opposes the infliftion of the
righteous penalty of crime. I believe there is a principle of
retributive justice, as immutable as an attribute of divinity, which
demand a satisfaftion for guilt; and a principle of reftorial justice,
which guards the dignity and safety of Government. Nor do I
indicate any opinion concerning the policy that should now be
adopted as suited to the present or future condition of things;
but I do affirm my belief that the principles which controlled Mr.
Lincoln's treatment of his country's foes were wise and Christian
in the main. Providence assigned to. him the work of suppres-

164 Memorial Sermon.

sing the rebellion, and saving the nation; and reserved for another
the responsibility of prosecuting and punishing the captured
offenders by due process of law.
The history of revolutions will never change until human
nature itself changes. And the analogy of all recorded experi
ence certainly establishes the faft, that the re-aftion of sentiment
among the common people after failure, particularly of a cause
less rebellion, is general, rapid, and extreme; and I doubt not that
there will be, ere long, in the hearts of many who have served in
the insurgent ranks, a veneration for the old flag, and a loyalty
to the old Government, as intense as the emotions which impelled
the nation's defenders. And hence I have never believed, that
our union of States, union of hearts, and union of hands was, or
would now be, permanently severed. And I maintain, that the
effeft of Mr. Lincoln's benevolent policy will be to promote
greatly the rapidity and completeness of that re-aftion. He has
prepared the people of the South, so soon as their leaders are
disposed of, and the base falsehoods which deluded them are dis
sipated, to hurry back into happy re-union and hearty allegiance,
as a prodigal son, allured by a father's kindness, hastens back to
the shelter of his home, and to the blessings of his beneficent
authority; while it is at least probable that a different policy
would have aggravated the struggle, given excuse for the inter
ference of envious power abroad, and have crushed thousands
more of the innocent, if not also the nation's life, under the cruel
tread of bloody vengeance.
And not only did he thus conserve the nation's life, but thus
also he reformed the charafter of her civilization, illustrating
doftrines heretofore comparatively inoperative in civil ethics, and
aftualizing before the world the great social laws of the Christian
religion. While with traitorous intrigue and blackest malice, the
rebels sought our nation's life; and while with a savage cruelty.

Rev. W. R. Marshall 165
more fiendish than human, they massacred and starved our
soldiers when helpless captives in their hands, — the President's
kindness and the people's forbearance, nay, their charitable minis
tration of temporal comforts and spiritual privileges to all the
wounded and the captive, the sick and the dying enemies who
could be reached by the hundreds of Christian and Sanitary
delegates who were always in the field, furnish the brightest, aye,
the first such copy of the Saviour's charafter, the first instance of
a great nation obeying the divine precept: "Love your enemies,
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."
And, if we still prove ourselves just as well as merciful, no human
foresight can predift the blessing which our example may confer
upon mankind by subduing the ferocity of war, — nor predift the
influence in behalf of Christianity which it may enable the Church
of this land to exert over the heathen mind.
The missionary of Christ will now leave our shores with an
indorsement such as the citizen of no other country can bear;
and as, with the benighted and wretched, he maintains the truth
and excellence of the gospel, he can refer to the history of his
own country as an exhibition of gospel fruits in a form that will
command the admiration of every human heart. Yea, he may
quote that history as a living and unanswerable argument in favor
ofthe Christian religion and republican liberty. Nor will he find
that testimony any longer rebutted by the black record of Amer
ican slavery, or the gospel impeded in its progress by any thing
in our political and social institutions so opposed to its spirit as
human bondage; since under God, and at the proper junfture
of providential events, our lamented President, in the justice,
benevolence, and courage of his heart, by the immediate power
and mediate consequence of his emancipation order, broke " every
yoke, and let the oppressed go free." And now as a purified and

1 66 Memorial Sermon.

Christianized nationality invites the contemplation, challenges
the admiration, and entreats the imitation, of all people, hastening
on the disinthralment of the race, Abraham Lincoln — at once
the model and the architeft of the new charafter — will stand
out in all future history as a world reformer ; and succeeding
generations will still continue the strain of honor to his memory,
and thanksgiving to Heaven for the gift of such a man, to such a
nation, at sucli a time.
Thrice happy America! blessed with a Washington and
a Lincoln! unparalleled patriots! unexampled leaders! What
incredulous mind will now doubt her grand destiny? What trai
torous arm ever again attempt to arrest her progress? Let all
her sons read, in the history of the glorious past, the prophecy
of her more glorious future, and still revive their patriotism and
their religion by memories of the fallen great! Let their spirit
inspire all her sons, and their mantle rest on all her rulers! And
let her ever cherish, defend, and disseminate the noble, heaven-
born principles for which Washington lived, for which Lincoln
died; and, with unwavering earnestness, and unswerving devotion
to the cause of God and man, bear onward to all the world that
charming banner upon which the honored dead emblazoned the
inscription, — a pure Christianity and universal Liberty.
Ohio State Journal, Columbus, June lo, 1865.

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN:
A SERMON ;
BY REV, J, F, POTTS, B,A,,
LONDON, ENGLAND,

Judges, xvi. 30 : " So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he
slew in his life."
THAT which is good never dies. In proportion as it is good,
it partakes of the nature of God; and hence in the same
proportion is eternal. Sometimes it seems to die, but in truth it
is only removed to some higher position of life and power. It is
on this account that in the Word, to die, when spoken of good
ness, denotes to rise again; and when man reads of death, the
angels think of resurreftion. What is true of principles is also
true of persons, for persons are principles embodied. A good
man, therefore, never dies. He seems to die, — we miss him
from his accustomed and familiar position amongst us; we say
he is dead. It is a mistake: he lives more really than ever; for
his thoughts are far more clear, his judgment is far more cor
reft, his perceptions are far more vivid, and his affeftions far
more intense and absorbing, than before. And thought and
affeftion are the two constituents of our conscious life. On the
other hand, that -which is evil never lives. It seems to live, it
" has the name to live ; " but, just in proportion as it is evil, " it is

1 68 Death of President Lincoln.
dead," because in the same proportion it is separate from the only
source of life. Hence, in the Word, by the dead, are meant the
evil, whether persons or principles; and to slay the dead is to
drive away the evil, to disperse the inventions of falsehood, and
to subjugate the dark, impure passions of selfishness in all its
various forms. These are " the dead," which it is our duty to
slay, — errors, impure ideas, selfish machinations, desires which
render us regardless of the welfare and happiness of others, bad
habits, — all principles of death and self-destruftion; and, when
personified, evil spirits, dead souls, who will slay us, unless we
overcome them, and drive them far away. These are the dead
which the good man slays in his life; but, when he rises above
this earthly battle-ground, he at once, by the aft which we call
death, disperses them for ever, and thus enters into a state of
perpetual peace, where he is free from the suggestions of false
hood, and untempted by the influences of evil. True, therefore,
it is, of every good man who has departed from amongst us
below, as of the mighty Danite, that " the dead which he slew at
his death were more than they which he slew in his life."
The reason why these divine words apply to every good man
is, that they apply to the Lord, who is the divine pattern and
forerunner of us all; for Samson represents the Lord in his
charafter of a Divine Natural Man. It was by means of the
natural degree into which the Lord descended when born into
the world, that he engaged in personal conflift with the powers
of darkness. It was in that degree that he fought his life-long
battle with the spiritual Philistines who had enslaved his people,
gradually driving them back, and releasing the human race from
their tyranny, until the work was so far accomplished, and the
viftory so nearly achieved, that it wanted but one signal effort to
finish the one, and secure the other. That effort was made when
the Lord underwent his last direful temptation on the cross.

Rev. J. F, Potts, B.A. 169

When that was over, and his innocent earthly life had been
yielded up, hell was not merely conquered, it was subjugated;
it was not merely shut up, it was sealed: for that final aft fully
completed the Lord's glorification, and thus caused him to arise
a Divine Man for ever, and to stand as the eternal Samson in his
Divine Natural degree, — the eternal vanquisher of the hells, to
"keep them in subjeftion for ever." It is therefore true, yea,
infinitely true, of him, that the " dead which he slew at his death
were more than they which he slew in his life,"
The conclusion to be drawn from these considerations is, that
what we call death is, to goodness, its viftory and completion;
that it is more to its advantage than all its previous progressions,
because it is their final finishing and ultimation, the fixing process
of them all, and thus stands superior in the proportion that eter
nity is superior to time. Bearing this conclusion in mind, it will
enable us to see why the great and good man who lately stood at
the head of the great American Republic has been suddenly
stricken down in his distinguished place, and removed from the
position he had filled so -well and with such signal success, at
the very time when it seemed to- us he was about to exercise its
funftions with more success and usefulness than ever. And, in
doing this, it is not my objeft to pass any panegyric upon Presi
dent Lincoln; for a man's deeds, and the work he leaves behind
him done, are his true panegyric, and one which is based upon a
secure foundation, because it will stand or fall, will fail or con
tinue, according to the charafter of that foundation. I shall,
therefore, merely quote well-established fafts, and endeavor to
draw from them sound and instruftive inferences, calculated
to throw light upon the apparently mysterious aftion of the
divine Providence in this and similar events, and to heal over
the cruel wound which has been stabbed in all our hearts by this
aflflifting blow and this seemingly irreparable loss.
22

170 Death of President Lincoln.
President Lincoln was the abolisher of slavery. It is true
that only the will of a nation can abolish a national evil; never
theless, if that will has not its exponent and instrument in its
administrative officers, it is not carried out. But he was not only
the willing instrument, — he was the leader: he was not only the
servant of that will, — he was, as far as a single man could be,
the creator of it. At the commencement of his political career,
— when to do so was unpopular, if not dangerous, — he raised his
voice against that truly infernal institution, as the serpent that
would destroy the children of his country. And, when he came
into a position where he could show by his afts the sincerity of
his words, he never failed to exert his influence against its exten
sion, until at last, when he stood in a position which gave him
supreme authority over slavery, he published the edift which
declared its end, and finally secured its destruftion by drawing
all his countrymen after him, and thus made his individual decree
a national principle. But just at the moment that the dark and
cruel system was overthrown, and, crouching at his feet, was
awaiting its final extirpation, the great, guiding hand which had
conferred freedom, and thereby humanity, upon millions, was in
an instant- powerless, and the voice which had uttered the noble
and inspiring call of liberty was silent. Is, then, the work to
remain unfinished ? and are the millions to slide back into what
is worse than death, because the giver of freedom died? No!
7'/^«/ finished the work; that made the millions secure. There
is not a man in all that vast country, who has learned to love Mr.
Lincoln's principles, and whose heart has been made to writhe in
anguish and inconsolable woe under the sense of so cruel a loss,
but will swear himself in, from that moment of grief, to the
complete and final accomplishment of all those objefts, and
the steady maintenance of all those principles, which filled the
life, and constituted the charafter, of that great and good, — that

Rev. J. F. Potts, B.A. 171
loved and lamented ruler. If, then, the influence of this truly
illustrious man upon his fellow-countrymen was great whilst he
lived, how much greater wll it be now that he has sealed his
devotion to his country with his life; and, if slavery received its
death-blow from his living hand, how surely must that hand,
though now unseen, crush out into non-existence its last misera
ble and dying remnants! May we not, therefore, say of President
Lincoln, as it was said of the conqueror of the Philistines, that
" the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which
he slew in his life " ?
After a man's death, his principles are more respefted, and his
words have more weight, than during his life. This is a remark
which applies equally to the boy who has lost his parent, and the
nation which has been deprived of its head and leading counsel
lor. Therefore, the same result which -we have seen to be likely
to follow in the case of slavery is, by the same rule, likely to
follow in the case of every other noble and useful principle of
-which the late President was the advocate. Where, then, is the
loss that our sister .nation has sustained in his removal? It must be
admitted, that, in regard to the principles which President Lincoln
maintained during his life, there is no loss. It must be admitted
that there is great gain, arising from that exaltation of feeling
with which we have before seen the words and aftions of the
departed are regarded, especially when, as in this case, those
feelings are of the most tender and the deepest charafter, —
written indelibly on every heart by the grief and horror caused
by such treatment, and such a death, of so innocent, so kind, and
so gentle a man. But with regard to the future. It may be still
feared that the great guiding-hand will be missed in those emer
gencies not covered by the principles which that hand had im
planted. And this brings us to consider briefly, the second reason
why great men are removed in the midst of their useful career.

172 Death of President Lincoln.
No man contains in himself all perfeftion. It is therefore
quite possible that he who is the best man to commence a great
work may not be the best to complete it. The Lord alone can
judge of a man's fitness to aft in the future, because to him alone
is the future known. We cannot, therefore, doubt for a moment,
that, when the divine Providence removes a man from a useful
post, it is because another can thereby fill it better, — that is to
say, in the new circumstances which are about to be developed.
We need, therefore, have no fear for the future. And we shall
be still less disposed to harbor any such fear, when we come to
consider the third reason why great men are removed from the
scene of their useful labors here.
It is that they may occupy a higher sphere of usefulness. A
man's faculties are in no way impaired by death; on the contrary,
they are greatly exalted. The mind remains the same; and all
its operations are in the highest degree facilitated by being
divested of the material body. Surely, then, we are not to think
of President Lincoln as dead; but rather, indeed, of his being
more truly alive. He has doubtless already joined many of his
compatriots who had before laid down their lives on the field of
battle. It cannot be doubted that, for a considerable period at
least, his thoughts and conversation will be about his country;
nay, there is every reason to suppose that his occupation will for
the present be connefted in some intimate manner with her
affairs. We know that spiritual beings are not distant from us,
but exercise a constant influence upon our thoughts and affec
tions; and this not only in a general manner, but also by aftual
personal attendance upon us. Who, then, can say that the direft
influence of their late President will not be far more powerful
upon our American brethren, yea, upon all the world, than ever
it could be before ? Who knows but that he may be permitted
to infuse into his successors a double measure of all the great

Rev. J. F. Potts, B.A. 173
principles which aftuated himself, — the spirit of freedom, of
order, of peace, of gentleness, and of justice not alien to mercy?
If, then, his influence upon the minds of his countrymen -was
great when it reached them through their bodies, how much
greater must it be when it afts immediately upon their spirits!
It has been truly said by a distinguished statesman of our own
country, that great men never die. How true this is, is at once
evident to us, when we elevate our thoughts for a moment into
the spiritual world, and see the great departed still busily occu
pied in works of even greater and wider importance than while
visibly living amongst us.
These, therefore, are some of the reasons which, I think, may
fairly be assigned in explanation of such apparently great national
calamities as sometimes befall nations in the death of their emi
nent statesmen. But, in the case of President Lincoln, I think
we may see a fourth and crowning reason for his sudden removal,
which, if possible, surpasses all the others in the importance of
its consequences. It is the union of good men. And surely
there is need enough of such a union at the present time. If
ever there was a period when some powerful agency was called
for to spread abroad over a devastated and divided country the
spirit of concord, surely it is now, when the thunder-clouds of
war are just about to roll away from the horizon of a great, and
hitherto a peaceful, nation. And, in the event which is the sub
jeft of this discourse, I think we may see the creation of that
agency. There is no good man anywhere, — no man whom we
can recognize as worthy of the name, — no man whose charafter
has not become utterly debased, by constant contaft with infernal
influences, — but will regard that cruel and dreadful assassination
with unmitigated and inexpressible horror. The consequence
will be that there will simultaneously exist in the breasts of all
such men, whether in North or South, one common, one intense

174 Death of President Lincoln.
and lasting, feeling. Thus there will be a true and general sym
pathy amongst them; and the ground will thereby be formed for
a union of all right-minded men throughout the country, and a
general forgetfulness of all feelings either of triumph or disap
pointment. Let us all hope and pray that it may be so ! And, if
events justify the prediftion, will not the divine and prophetic
words once more be verified, and will not a demon of death and
disunion be slain by the death of him whose life would not have
availed so effeftually to destroy it?
But we may take a wider view of the aftion of this apparently
calamitous event, in promoting the union of good men. And here
we have to deal not so much with probabilities as with fafts.
Here we have to view a most instruftive, as well as a most de
lightful, phenomenon. It is the effeft which has been wrought
by that event upon the entire body of our nation. Surely, if two
nations ever had reason to be united in bonds of sympathy and
love, or to be mutually desirous to stand by and assist each other,
the two Atlantic nations have that reason. Nursed in the same
cradle, speaking the same language, living under praftically par
allel institutions, working for the same objefts, and engaged in
the same pursuits, — surely, two such countries should ever
consider each other as brethren, linked together by the most
tender ties of relationship and mutual interest. And we, New-
Churchmen, have a still dearer reason to desire the strift union
of America and England; for these are the true lands of the
New Church, and we feel ourselves shared out between the two.
If, therefore, we are aftuated by that lofty charity which tran
scends even the love of our country ( I mean the love of our
Church), we shall be disposed to hail with the deepest thank
fulness and joy every manifestation of sympathy, and every
strengthening of the natural union which exists between our
respeftive countries. And probably no possible event could so

Rev. J. F. Potts, B.A. 175
have called forth that sympathy, and thereby strengthened that
union, as that which the divine Providence has now permitted to
take place. One universal feeling of grief and horror pierced
our national heart; and every man, whatever side in the late war
he may have espoused, was at once united with every other man
in that grief and consternation. The consequence has been such
a national message from us, sent across the Atlantic, as will
deeply touch the heart of our sister country, and no doubt greatly
soften the bitterness of her grief; for there is no time like the
period of afiliftion for the power of heavenly sympathy to be felt,
and hearts that have before been utterly estranged are often united
in the presence of some common calamity.
" Sweet are the uses of adversity." It is good for nations, as
well as for individual men, that they should sometimes "be
afflifted." Have we not, therefore, every reason to hope that
•from this time a new leaf will be turned over in our national
relationship; and the two nations, which both have in them, the
capacity for such noble progress and momentous achievements,
will henceforth stand side by side, willing to assist as well as to
be assisted by each other, each willing to learn from the other,
as well as each willing to teach, — willing to see that the progress
and welfare of the one involves the progress and welfare of the
other, and each willing, therefore, to dread and to avert disaster
from the other, because its own disaster would thereby be
insured? If this sad but memorable event, then, be the starting-
point of so glorious a result, have we not reason to acknowledge
in this dispensation, as in all others, — to acknowledge even with
gratitude and joy, — the aftion of that divine Hand of love and
wisdom which is ever operating, with infinite solicitude, for the
welfare ofthe creatures it has formed? And can we not all truly
say of the great and good man who knew how to wield power
with gentleness; who could detest and destroy principles ot

176

Death of President Lincoln.

death, at the same time that he could treat the men who main
tained them with mercy; who gained the respeft and love of
all men, and who knew how to speak kindly of his enemies, —
can we not say of him that " the dead which he slew at his death
were more than they which he slew in his life " ? — the dead and
death-dealing principles of slavery, of disunion, and of discord
among nations.
The Intellecltial Repository ,¦ London, June 1, 1865,

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN:

A SERMON DELIVERED AT THE FIRST PARISH CHURCH, BANGOR, MAINE,
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 1 6, 1 865 ;
BY REV, L, S. ROWLAND.

2 Sam, iii. 38 : " There is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel ! "
HOW soon is our joy turned into sorrow, and our shouts of
exultation into tears of mourning! Your hearts are full
of the great sorrow, and so is mine ; and you do not wish to have
any foreign thoughts, however sacred in themselves, brought be
fore your minds this morning. Our President, the great and
good man, is gone, struck down by the assassin's hand, in the
flush of the nation's triumph and of his own, with the prospeft
before him of a speedy and triumphant termination of the great
conflift in which he as the nation's head had been engaged so
long: on the anniversary of the day in which the struggle began,
and with the hemisphere resounding with the acclamations of
four millions of bondmen, transformed by his aft from chattels
into men, his career is suddenly cut short by the hand of vio
lence. Perhaps it was fitting that he should die thus. For the fixing
and perpetuation of his viftim's fame, the assassin could not have
chosen a more opportune moment for the deed. With no stain
upon his charafter, as a patriot and a man; when the nation was
23

178 Death of President Lincoln.
ready to acknowledge his wisdom as a statesman, as well as his
honesty of purpose; when his policy in the conduft ofthe nation
had been proved by its brilliant success to be the wisest and the
best; when he had received the highest of proofs, by his re-elec
tion to his responsible office, that he possessed the fullest confi
dence of the nation; and when even foreign and covertly hostile
powers had been forced to acknowledge his skill as a ruler and
diplomatist, — at such a time, if fame, imperishable through all
generations, had been the objeft of his ambition, he might have
chosen to die, and to die as he did. In a longer career he might
have committed mistakes that would have cast some shadow on
the brightness of his fame. If he had died in his bed by the
power of disease, — though even then the nation would have
mourned him as a father, — his departure would not have so im
pressed his memory into the heart of the nation and the world.
But now, his name will be enshrined for ever among those who
have sealed by their blood their fidelity to the rights of mankind.
The martyr's crown is now added to his other claims upon the
remembrance and the gratitude of posterity; and, in all the noble
army of martyrs, no name will shine with a purer and brighter
lustre in the pages of future history, than that of Abraham Lin
coln. We weep, therefore, not for him, but for ourselves and for our
children. His fame is established for ever; but what is to be
come of the Ship of State, now left upon the stormy sea, without
his wise guidance? He seemed to have been raised up by Pro
vidence for the purpose of guiding the nation through its present
peril. His qualities of mind and heart were just what were
needed for the direftion of affairs in such stormy times as these.
Without his cool judgment, his moderation, to temper the excited
counsels of the other branches of the Government; without his
kindness and conciliation in dealing with both friends and foes,

Rev. L, S, Rowland. 179

— the nation would probably have been irretrievably ruined long
ere this. We thought him, at the beginning of the conflift, slow
and vacillating. We longed for the will and boldness of a Jack
son at the head of affairs. But subsequent events have shown,
that his moderation was the highest wisdom; that his slowness
was the most speed}^ method of accomplishing the great work in
hand. We had confidence in his honesty from the beginning;
but we had learned to call him great as well as good, and to view
him as the centre of the nation's hopes for the future. His career
as a ruler is one of the most remarkable in history. His success
in uniting the people in his support, and in so condufting the
delicate and important duties of his trust as to escape all asper
sion upon his fidelity to his country, is almost without parallel.
No public man in the history of the country, — not even Wash
ington himself, — in his own time, ever gained so deep a hold
upon the affeftions ofthe people; and this was accomplished, not
by any of the tricks of a demagogue, but solely by his complete
devotion to the highest interests of the nation, and his eminent
fitness for his post. Can the loss be supplied? We needed him
in the future as much as we needed him in the past, perhaps
more. In the great questions of reconstruftion that are now
coming before the Government, that same cool judgment and
clear sagacity are needed quite as much as in the conduft of the
war. The great fear resting on the hearts of thoughtful men,
after our military triumph over the rebels -was felt to be assured,
was, that mistakes might be made in the final settlement of our
national difficulties, which would lose us all that we had gained,
and sow the seeds of strife for years to come. Our great reli
ance, under God, was in the honesty and sagacity of our Chief
Magistrate, whose past success we felt to be a guarantee for the
future. No man can take his place at the head ofthe government,
and inspire such confidence in the hearts ofthe people. We fear

i8o Death of President Lincoln.
now, as we look forward, lest in some way, through official in
competency or unfaithfulness, our recent triumphs over the
enemy shall prove barren of their expefted fruit of blessing for
the nation and the world. Our trusty pilot is stricken down just
as we are among the rocks and shoals that line the shores of
peace, and there is now danger that we may go down within sight
of the desired haven. God in Heaven avert so dire a calamity!
For the sake of humanity, and for thy kingdom's sake, save us
from the evils of confusion and anarchy! As thou hast taken
away our Moses, raise us up a Joshua to lead us unto the Land of
Promise! It was no part of my purpose to dwell at length on the char
after of the President, or to prophesy the consequences that may
follow his removal. It will be more fitting to consider for a mo
ment some of the lessons which this terrible event is adapted to
teach. May we not believe, that one part of God's purpose ia permit
ting this atrocious crime was to teach us still more impressively,
even than by the events of the past four years, our. entire depen
dence upon him, and to lead us to place all our hopes for the fu
ture in Heaven alone. We had learned this lesson partially, but
perhaps not suflficiently. Perhaps we were trusting too much in
the wisdom of the Government. Perhaps there was danger, that
our military triumphs might turn away our thoughts from God,
and that we might, without some further discipline, return to our
idolatry of men and human agency. Perhaps, in the public re
joicings of the last week, there had been too much thought of
the human agents by whom our viftories were gained, and too
little recognition of the hand of God. Perhaps our reliance for
the future was too much on human wisdom, and not enough on
the God of Israel.
It has been one of our greatest temptations to forget the ruler-

Rev. L. S. Rowland. i8i

ship of God in our national affairs. It has been our great sin as
a people, through all the years of our history. Our trials during
the last four years had done something in teaching us the fragility
of reliance upon human wisdom and power; but perhaps this
new stroke v^^as needed to impress the lesson ineradicably upon
us. If our President had been spared to us, he might have taken
that place in our hopes for the future which belongs only to God.
This support is now taken from us, and we must now put our
trust in Heaven alone. God is a jealous God. He will not give
his glory to another. Every idol that interposes itself between
him and his creatures, he will destroy. How sad the thought,
that it may have been our excessive love and reverence for the
President, that made it necessary for God to suffer wicked men
to execute their deed of blood upon him!
May we not believe, also, that it was God's purpose in this
event, to bring out more clearly to the view of the w^orld the
atrocious .nature of that system of iniquity in whose interest the
crime was committed.
The fafts of the case, as thus far developed, will not warrant
us in charging this deed of blood direftly upon the rebel Govern
ment. Perhaps they knew nothing of it, and would have dis
countenanced such a desperate deed if the plan had been revealed
to them. But that the crime is a legitimate result of the cause
for which they are contending, and that it is in harmony with
their conduft through the whole war, is manifest. We ought not
to have been surprised that a system, that could originate a rebel
lion against the best government on earth, should resort to any
means to secure success, or to revenge defeat. The system of
slavery itself was " the sum of all villanies ; " and why should its
abettors hesitate to assassinate any one whom they feared or
hated as an enemy of their cause ? It was in its very nature a
system of violence, the nurse of every deed of outrage and shame.

1 82 Death of President Lincoln.
It seems to have been a part of God's purpose, from the beginning
of this conflift, to exhibit to the gaze of the world -all the foul
enormities of the system. It is wonderful how slow we have
been, to heed the teachings of Providence in this respeft; how
blind the eyes even of the people of the North have been, to this
monstrous iniquity. At the beginning of the war, we looked
upon its radical opponents as fanatics and madmen. The very
principles of the institution ought to have fixed us in deadly hos
tility against it; but we refused to look at it in the light of princi
ple, and were willing to temporize and compromise with the
infernal systein. God determined, therefore, to use measures of
instruftion that would be heeded. He permitted the upholders
of the system to rend the Union asunder, and to deluge the land
with blood. He gave our sons and brothers into their hands to
be tortured and starved in their prisons. He suffered them to
send their piratical ships out upon the ocean to burn our shipping,
and transform the mariner's signals of distress into signs of warn
ing. He permitted them to send incendiaries to burn our cities;
and now, to impress the lesson still more deeply, he permits the
assassin to take the life of the first officer of the Government.
No stroke could have been more impressive. Nothing could
have struck more deeply. If this crime does not awaken us to a
sense of the atrocity of the rebellion, and of the system which
originated it, nothing can. It was perhaps needed to fix the na
tional heart more unchangeably in its purpose; to root out the
evil, utterly and for ever; and to lead even us of the North to a
deeper penitence before God for our past complicity with the
great crime against humanity and Heaven. If there is now in the
loyal North a man who can longer apologize for slavery, let him
be declared a reprobate, lost to all the feelings of humanity, blind
to all the teachings of God's providence. If there is a man who
can think of this deed of blood, and find it in his heart to utter

Rev. L. S, Rowland. 183

one word of sympathy for the rebellion, let him receive the name
of traitor, and suffer a traitor's doom.
This atrocious crime will also, I trust, lead us to see the need
of greater sternness in dealing with traitors. It should awaken
the Government and the people to the necessity of visiting upon
the originators of the rebellion, to which this deed of assassina
tion is but a fitting accompaniment, the severest penalty of the
law, if they shall fall into our hands. An ill-timed demand for
clemency on the part of the Government towards the rebels had
begun to pervade the public mind. Let no blood be shed; let us
deal with the rebels as with erring brethren, — has been the exhor
tation to the Government,- of would-be philanthropists. In the
generous exultation of viftory, there was danger that the claims
of war and justice might be utterly forgotten, and that posterity
might be left to the inference that treason against a righteous
government law was not a crime deserving of punishment. We
needed some further manifestation of the awful guilt of this
rebellion. We needed some stroke of crime that should, by its
atrocity, startle us from our gentle mood. We needed some devel
opment of the diabolical spirit of the rebels, that should force the
conviftion upon us of the necessity of the sternest exercise of
retributive justice, — positive in our dealing with the responsible
authors of the rebellion. " Now let justice be done," was the
suppressed utterance of all loyal men yesterday, as, with tearful
eyes, they spoke together of our beloved Lincoln lying in his
blood. That utterance was inspired by a principle implanted
within us by the Creator, and its mandate should be heeded as
the voice of God.
We read in the Bible of a sin against God, which can never
have forgiveness, either in this world or in the world to come.
If there be a crime on earth that stands in a like relation to human
law, of that crime have the leaders of this rebellion been guilty;

184 Death of President Lincoln.
and they should find no place for mercy, though they seek it care
fully and with tears. The blood of our murdered President is
upon them.
Even if they were not cognizant of the plan of assassination,
they should be held accountable for the crime as the legitimate
issue of the wicked cause for which they are contending. The
guilt of a hundred thousand murders is upon them. They are
guilty of all the blood that has been shed in the course of this
war, and of all the evil which. it has brought upon the land; and
it would be a sin against humanity, and against high Heaven, to
remit one jot or tittle of the penalty they deserve. The blood of
our murdered President, and of tens of thousands of our sons and
brothers who have fallen on the field of battle, cries to Heaven
for justice upon the guilty. We cannot disregard the cry, with
out making ourselves guilty before God. I encourage no spirit
of revenge, no feeling of hatred toward our enemies. I simply
urge the claims of justice. I believe it is one of the lessons
which this event should impress upon us, that they should have
justice without mercy who have shown no mercy.
We look to the future, my friends, with anxiety. Our trusted
leader is gone, and we are not sure that his successor possesses
the qualities required for the discharge of such responsible du
ties. Let us put our trust in God. He will not suffer the cause
of righteousness and truth to fail. He will give the needed guid
ance to our rulers, if we humbly ask it for them. His hand will
guide us through the perils that are now before us, and yet bless
our bleeding land with prosperity and peace. In the midst of
our sorrow for the murdered President, let us not forget to pray
for him upon whom the duties of the Government now devolve.
He takes his great responsibility, he says, trusting in God. May
the mantle of the departed Lincoln fall upon him ! May he have
the wisdom, firmness, and moderation, which are needed to guide

Rev. L. S. How land.

i8s

the Ship of State through its dangers into the haven of peace!
And may the whole nation, taught by this awful event the frailty
of human hopes, put its trust in the God of Israel, and look to
him as the source of national strength and prosperity!
Bangor Weekly Courier, April 25, 1865,

24

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S DEATH:

A SERMON DELIVERED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NATCHEZ, MISS,,
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 1 865 ;
BY REV, JOS, B, STRATTON, D,D,,
pastor of the CHURCH.

Psalms, xi. 3 : "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do.'"

A GLANCE at the strufture of the Psalm will show that
David in this passage is quoting the language of some
party, supposed to be in conference with him, — a tempter, we may
call him, who is seeking by his suggestions to shake his fortitude,
and corrupt his fidelity, as a servant of God. His opening
remark, " In the Lord put I my trust," is his answer to these
suggestions. " Why try to overthrow my faith," he seems to
say, " by revealing to me the perils and calamities by which I am
menaced ? Why try to drive me into unbelieving despondency
by arraying before me the machinations or the triumphs of
human and satanic malice? Why tell me that the wicked are
bending their bows, and making ready their arrows upon the
string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart ? Why
remind me, that the foundations are destroyed; that lawlessness
and iniquity abound; that social order is broken up; that justice
is driven from her tribunals, and even the majesty of Govern-

Rev. Jos, B. Stratton, D.D. 187
ment profaned in its sanftuary, and then ask me, what can the
righteous do, and counsel me as a helpless and abandoned thing
to flee like a bird to the mountain ? My answer to all this is. In
the Lord put I my trust ! "
The drift of the query in the text, by taking it thus in connec
tion with the preceding part of the Psalm, may easily be discov
ered. It is, in faft, no query at all, but rather a statement, — an
allegation. It means to declare, that, in the case proposed, — in
such a conjefture of alarming and depressing circumstances as
had been set forth, ¦ — there was absolutely nothing for the right
eous man to do. And with his interlocutor in this conclusion, the
Psalmist joins issue. He maintains that there is something for
the righteous man to do, even when the foundations are des
troyed; and he assumes that flight, retreat, a resort to silence
and seclusion, are criminal dereliftions from his duty, — an inex
cusable failure to bear his testimony, and aft his part, as a right
eous man. The idea which seems to be enunciated in this answer
is, that the righteous man or Christian, as such, has a special -work
to do, or funftion to exercise, at every period and in every posi
tion in which he may find himself placed. The idea is an
important one, and I wish to set it before you this morning, with
all the emphasis that I can give to it. The righteous man or
Christian has that character to exemplify under all possible cir
cumstances. He can never drop it, or suspend it, or compromise
. it. It must appear in his thinking, his judging, his feeling, his
speaking, and his doing. As the Lord's servant, his work is
simply and exclusively to fulfil his Lord's will ; to be the man
whom his Lord would have him be. Should " the foundations
be destroyed ; " should his own mind be driven from its balance
by the onset of natural passion; should the community with
which he is identified, like a ship torn from its moorings by
the rush of the hurricane, be swept wildly hither and thither

1 88 President Lincoln^ s Death.
by convulsive excitements, — he must maintain his principle, hold
fast by his rule, and, like the compass on that ship's deck,
tranquilly fulfilling its office amidst the tumult of the storm,
remain true to himself and God, though every thing else seems
surrendered to turbulence and disorganizatioji. He must show
himself the righteous man, the Christian, though a thousand
impetuous forces within him and around him are impelling him
to the assumption of a different charafter. The religion, as I
have a hundred times taught you, which does not keep you
abiding in Christ, and Christ abiding in you, is no religion in the
judgment of the gospel. The religion which does not keep the
spiritual branch steadily and permanently united to its stock;
which does not evidence itself, steadily and permanently, by phe
nomena in the life of the soul, identical with those which appear in
the life of its divine Head, — is not the religion which the Saviour
gave to his disciples. That religion contemplates difficulties in
the praftice of it; nay, is required to establish its genuineness
in any case, by its readiness and ability to sustain itself under
difficulties. What else do those two great features in it, so
broadly delineated in the Scriptures, — the obligation to self-
denial, and the obligation to unlikeness to the world, — mean? If
you are not prepared and accustomed to deny self, to repress
the passions and mortify the affeftions ofthe flesh, when these are
at variance -with the law of Christ; if you are not prepared and
accustomed to differ from the world, when, through sympathy and
complicity with it, you are liable to be wrought into tempers
and urged into afts in conflift with the law of Christ, — you cannot,
and do not, possess the true spirit of his followers. That allows
no deviation, and no lapses in its loyalty. It acknowledges him
as absolute and as perpetual master. It makes him master, just
as truly when it is hard to do so, as when it is easy to do so. It
demands that the individual who possesses it, should be uniformly

Rev. Jos. B. Stratton, D.D. 189
and consistently the charafter which the law of Christ indicates ;
that in the face of all opposition, originating in his own nature,
and all springing from the example or authority of the world, and
even all embodied in the wiles and assaults of the Devil, he
should prove himself the righteous man. We may say, there
fore, as the Psalmist has said, that, always and everywhere, there
is something for the righteous man to do. And we may say
farther, what perhaps is implied in his saying, that especially in
those exigencies when the powers of evil have reached such a
height and compass in their operations that the very foundations
of society and government are destroyed; when, it might seem,
there was nothing for Christian faith to do, but bow before the
storm, and hide itself, impotent and unheeded, in obscurity, — it is
the duty of the righteous man to kindle anew the flame of his
faith, and strive by bolder efforts than ever to throw the light of
its influence upon the gloom and confusion which are weltering
around him.
This principle I have taken the pains to state at this length,
because it is under the authority of it, that I shall press upon your
consideration the remarks I am about to make. These remarks,
you will probably have anticipated, will have reference to the
extraordinary position in which we have been placed by the
awful and astounding tragedy at the seat of the Federal Govern
ment, which has been announced to us during the last week. It
has seemed to me, that sacred as it has been my habit to keep
this pulpit to the promulgation of the strift themes of the gospel,
and to the exercise of the proper funftion of Christ's ambassadors,
" the beseeching men to be reconciled to God," I was called upon
to-day, in view of such an occurrence, to let the voice of Provi
dence propose my subjeft, while the aid of Scripture should be
invoked to give the light under which to view it.
The shock occasioned by the death of the Chief Magistrate

190 President Lincoln! s Death.
of the nation, under which the public mind is yet reeling in
bewilderment and dismay, has left, I doubt not, wherever it has
spread, just that impression which the Psalmist's words, "the
foundations are destroyed," describe. An earthquake rending
the soil beneath our feet could not have struck a deeper sensation
of horror into our hearts, or prostrated them with a more pro
found feeling of calamity. The words which reported to us the
crime and its mournful issue broke upon us with the stunning
effeft of a thunder-clap. Their import was too startling, too
appalling, to be credited. The " foundations," the things familiar
and established, the ideas, sentiments, instinfts, usages, and tradi
tions, in which we had been accustomed to confide, and which
we thought were as stable as our civilization, and as sacred as
our religion, wer6 indeed overturned by it. The ground upon
which we had been wont to stand seemed dissolving under us.
Time and place grew unreal. Centuries seemed to have been
expunged from the calendar of the world's history, and we were
rolled back into the grim scenery of barbaric lands. A vision of
ferocious hate and bloody violence, such as imagination had
sometimes looked at in its piftures of brutal and savage anti
quity, stood revealed in our midst, as a present and palpable faft.
Our minds revolted at it. Our eyes turned in terror from it.
Involuntarily we closed them with our clasped hands, and sought
thus to escape seeing the truth of that which we were forced to
confess we could not make untrue. Alas, no! With all our
shuddering aversion to see its truth, we could not, we cannot,
make it untrue. We never can. , To the end of time, it will
remain recorded in our national annals, that the man who filled
the seat, and wore the honors of the representative of the sover
eignty of this great American Republic, perished under the hand
of an assassin. We could not have believed that such a record
would ever darken and sadden those annals. We could not have

Rev, Jos. B. Stratton, D.D. 191

believed that, beneath these skies and on this soil, the creature
could have breathed, who could have perpetrated such a deed.
And yet, in bitter sorrow and shame we make the confession, it
has been done. Others, my friends, will tell you how, in their
judgment, you ought to feel and aft in view of such an event. It
will be my endeavor, standing on the platform, and trying to
express the spirit of the gospel of Christ, to point out to you in a
few particulars, what, in my judgment, is the Christian way of
feeling and afting in view of it. Always and everywhere, we
have seen, the righteous man has his post to fill, and his work to
do. He has them here and now. The wide lament which is
going up from the nation's palpitating heart — " The foundations
are destroyed, the foundations are destroyed!" — calls upon him,
amidst all the tumultuous excitement of the occasion, to main
tain his charafter, and to refleft, resolve, and express himself
distinftly as a righteous man.
Speaking, then, from the stand-point occupied by such a man
(it may seem almost superfluous for me to say it, and yet I deem
it highl}^ expedient to do so), I would say, in the first place, that
this aft of assassination must be adjudged an unmitigated and
gigantic sin against God, and as such is to be regarded with
utter abhorrence and reprobation. In this light, pre-eminently, it
must present itself to every Christian mind. Its bearings upon
ourselves, under the relations in which we may have stood per
sonally to the objeft affefted by it, must not be suffered to divert
our attention from those, which attach to it in this particular
aspeft. Here is a crime, an atrocious, a diabolical crime, — an
outrage upon the majesty of God. It was an exhibition of malig
nity on the part of the doer of it, not merely against his human
viftim, but against God. He was a hater of God; and the
righteous man, with a holy indignation which the Scriptures have
taught him how to express, can only say of him, " Do not I hate

192 President LincoMs Death.
them, O Lord! that hate thee? And am I not grieved with
those that rise up against thee ? I hate them with perfeft hatred :
I count them mine enemies ! " There is reason to fear, that our
hearts have grown callous under the teachings of war, or may be
so pre-occupied by personal feeling of one kind or another, that
we may fail to be affefted adequately with the enormous turpi
tude of even a deed of violence like this. I beg you to look at it,
therefore, with me in a few of its features.
First, then, it was murder, — murder conceived, and, in part,
executed, upon a scale which makes it a massacre. It was man
shedding man's blood, deliberately, maliciously, and illegally.
Viewed merely under this aspeft, it was an enormous sin, — a
sin which God has branded with special tokens of his detestation,
and consigned to the heaviest penalty which human justice can
inflift. But, more than this, it was an impious invasion of the domain
of divine Providence. Every human life is a sphere under the
administration of that Providence. But the life ofthe magistrate,
the sovereign, from the vaster scope of the interests which
are comprehended in it, in a peculiar sense, may be said to be
such a sphere. The life of the magistrate, the sovereign, is
an essential element in that apparatus by which God mediately
governs the world, — an instrument upon whose agency is sus
pended the execution of his policy concerning the world. It is
one of those " foundations " or pillars, upon which he has been
pleased to rest the vast and complex scheme of his purposes.
To destroy such a life is to contraft the guilt of a hardihood
which dares to cross the path of Jehovah, — to snatch the sceptre
from his hand, and violently reverse or confound his counsels.
Again, it is an aft which desecrates, in the most flagrant form,
the divine ordinance of government. I say the divine ordinance
of government, for with the Bible in my hand I can give no lower

Rev. Jos. B. Stratton, D.D. 193
charafter to government. It is a creature of God as truly, and
almost in the same sense, as man is. For the attainment of all
worthy ends for which man can be supposed to have been
created is conditioned upon the existence of government. Now,
government as the creature or ordinance of God is a most sacred
thing. It is to be regarded with religious reverence, and ap
proached and transafted with with religious respeft. I know this
idea has been perverted, has been made the basis of a " divine
right of kings," and has been carried among the despotisms of the
Old World to the length of denuding the people of all political
rights, and making them the mere property and prey of their
sovereigns. This abuse has received, or is receiving, its correc
tion, and may now be considered obsolete. But it may well be
questioned, whether we in this country, under our better philoso
phy, have not been falling into an abuse in the opposite quarter,
and fabricating a " divine right of the people," by which Govern
ment, as a positive creature of God, has been shorn of its rights,
as much as the people were of theirs, under the prevalence ofthe
old heresy of the "divine right of kings." Government, as an
independent, substantial faft; a sacred thing, placed by God
amongst us and over us; something different from the people,
and the citizen and voter ; a priestly institution, " called of
God, as was Aaron," to minister to our national tribes, and
bearing like him the inscription, " Holiness to the Lord," upon
its venerable brow, — has it not come to -w^ear a common look,
to lose credit and sanftity in our eyes ? Have not the arts of the
politician and demagogue, like the scissors of Delilah, robbed it
of its native prerogative, and forced it, with its eyes put out, to
employ its powers in making sport for the Philistines of faftion
and party ? And may not this oversight, this deterioration of its
charafter as a divine ordinance, have helped to bring on the fear
ful convulsion through which we have been passing? And may
25

194 President Lincoln! s Death.
it not have had something to do, in preparing the assassin's heart
to entertain the sacrilegious purpose, which we have just seen
consummated? However this may be, the deed has been done.
God's ordinance of Government has been violated in the person
of its representative; and, as he has taught us that his own name
stands identified with all his ordinances, a fearful intensity of guilt
must attach to the aft.
Again : apart from the evil inherent in the nature of it, such an
aft draws after it a train of appalling consequences, for all of
which the aft itself must be responsible. The jar given to the
political system by the sudden destruftion of the party in whose
hands the administration of it is placed, always threatens the
occurrence, or an approach to the occurrence, of general anarchy.
A crisis, pregnant quite possibly with issues fatal to the Govern
ment, is at once created by it. How far the ruin which shall fol
low the blow which strikes down the sovereign shall spread into
the organism of the nation, no mind can predift. The madman
who resolves to give the blow, does not know, — does not care.
His malice is a torch, which, in order to achieve its particular
aim, would recklessly light the fires which should wrap a king
dom or a continent in flames. As another result: his aft is
adapted to start and give fierceness to a spirit of revenge and a
process of retaliation, by which a whole trail of crimes of the
same nature with his own may be entailed upon the land. God,
in his great mercy, has thus far restrained this very natural conse
quence of the recent atrocity; and every Christian man and
woman ought to pray, that, of his great mercy, he will continue to
do so. But it is not the fault of the author of it, that his devilish
deed has not evoked ten thousand of those devils which are truly
said to lurk in every human heart, to rush out upon a mission of
vengeance. And for this possible consequence of his aft, he is
responsible. And once more : the perpetrator of such an aft im-

Rev. Jos. B. Stratton, D.D. 195
plicates the innocent in the suspicion, and exposes them, more or
less, to the infamy, of being concerned with him in his wicked
enterprise. Into the gulf, in which he drowns himself, he draws
down thousands of unsuspefting and guiltless neighbors. The
secrecy in which he wraps his plot gives room for this result. A
bewildered and excited public judge quickly, and, sometimes,
wildly; and, like people in the dark when an enemy has been
discovered among them, may charge every companion with being
that enemy. The assassin's motive may have been a private one,
his deed striftly his own (I devoutly believe, in the case be
fore us, such was the faft) ; but others, almost necessarily, will
be burdened with the reproach of his crime, if they do not have
to suffer its literal penalty.
Now, revolving this sad deed, whose charafter we are con
sidering, in these various lights, how tremendously its guilt grows
upon us! It is all that I have called it, — an unmitigated and
gigantic sin against God. So the righteous man will regard it.
So every individual who looks at it with the eye, the mind, the
heart, which the religion of Christ gives him, will regard it. He
must do so, or he belies his charafter and his principle; and
hence, he must and will condemn it, and abhor it, and feel that
the wrath of a just God ought to pursue and punish it.
But the duty of such a man will, I think, lead him a step fur
ther. He will find in this horrible outbreak of human wicked
ness an occasion that will move him to profound sorrow and
humiliation. He will admit a feeling of mortification to his
heart, that will abase it to the dust. Deploring the crime, he will
also deplore the faft, that, in this age and in this land, such a
crime had become possible; and that the nature of man, any
where, is capable of such corruption as to make the commission
of such a crime possible. You and I, my friends, have turned
from it with sickening horror. Like the patriarch, at the thought

196 President LincoMs Death.
of the conspirator and the assassin, we exclaim, " O my soul !
come not thou into their secret : unto their assembly, mine
honor! be not thou united." But, alas! the author of this deed
was a man ; and one who, we have reason to believe, called him
self an American. And if it be true, as seems probable, that this
man and this American was but the agent of a banded crew of
like spirits, the faft, with an indefinitely augmented force, meets
us, that, in our very bosom, men — Americans — of this fiendish
type are to be found. Amidst our churches and schoolhouses
and missionary institutions, ministers of Satan, of the tallest stat
ure, have been growing up. It is a faft which one might weep
over, — a faft which may well make the head of the righteous
man hang down, and his heart sink. What an infernal thing is
human nature, when the evil that is in it has opportunity and en-^
couragement to mature ! And how faint has been the zeal, and
how feeble the efforts, after all, of the servants of God, in the
attempt to check the development of this evil amongst our people !
The material still exists amongst us, it would seem from these
indications, which would, if the occasion offered, convert our fair
land intp a volcano of crime and butchery, like France in her
revolution of 1789. Hellish passions are working amongst us, it
would seem, which might, under due stimulus, so demonize the
mass, that assassination should become the business of each hour,
and even women, young and fair as Charlotte Corday, be found
ready to plant the dagger in the heart of a personal or political
foe. Oh! this " destroying ofthe foundations" is a symptom which
calls solemnly upon the righteous man, not only to ask what he
has to do, but to refleft soberly upon what he has done, — or,
rather, what he has not done ; to take a more profound and affeft
ing view of the magnitude of the task of rescuing men from the
domination of sin; and to resolve, with an humbling admission of
past unfaithfulness, that the battle with Satan shall be waged

Rev. Jos. B. Stratton, D.D. 197
hereafter with an energy and heartiness akin to the ardor of
primitive apostolic consecration. It is time, my friends, that we
were all learning that the salvation of our country depends,
chiefly, and ultimately, upon the goodness of the people. State
craft, with all its medicines and its surgery, cannot keep it alive.
We projeft our different theories and policies, and then advocate
them, and argue for them, and perhaps fight over them, as if the
existence of the nation depended upon the adoption of just those
which we favor; while the truth is, with good habits and good
principles in the people, the nation would thrive under any one
of these theories and policies, in nearly or quite the same degree.
Positive institutions, governmental mechanism, and political plat
form-building, will never keep a Republic ereft and prosperous,
unless there is, underlying all, the element of sound, right char
after in the people; and all righteous men as they stand and look
over the precipice, to the verge of which we seem to have been
dragged, will confess that it is just in this direftion the work of
piety and patriotism which they are to do in the future lies. The
sorrow and humiliation of this hour point to this work; and point
too to the necessity of doing it, in that conviftion of human
weakness, which couples, with every stroke of the laborer's hand,
a prayer from his heart to the God of grace, that he may " give
the increase."
But something beyond sorrow and humiliation even, it seems
to me, is included in the emotions becoming the position in which
we stand. The serious mind, I am persuaded, will see in it
cause for the greatest alarm. An enginery which is the very
climax and embodiment of all lawlessness has reared itself upon
our national platform. A President of the United States, — one
of that august succession of Republican Rulers, which, com
mencing with Washington, had run on in auspicious continuity
till it had reached its sixteenth link, has fallen under the hand of

198 President LincoMs Death.
an assassin! Such an event has in it something of the charafter
of a portent. It fills the heart with consternation. It strikes the
ear like the " Woe, woe, woe ! " of the Apocalyptic angel, and
the eye, like the handwriting on Belshazzar's walls. There is
a significance in it, which good men ought to ponder with fear
and trembling. It is the inauguration of a spirit and a procedure
which, in the fell sweep of their operations, strike down every
bulwark of the Commonwealth's safety and life. The death-blow
that the ruffian deals his viftim stabs to the heart Constitution,
law, morals, liberty, — every thing, in faft, which is vital to the
body-politic, to society, and to man. And yet this fiend of disor
ganization, which we thought, under our advanced civilization,
and our wise political philosophy, had been bound these many
years in his infernal cave, has suddenly appeared amongst us, in
undiminished audacity and malignity. This type of national de
generacy — this precursor of national ruin — has emerged from
the abyss, and confronted the people of this land. And what
should the righteous man do, in view of such a phenomenon, but
confess and realize fairly its meaning; admit the crisis that it indi
cates; and, under a solemn sense ofthe imminency ofthe danger
involved in it, rally the powers of public virtue and good citizen
ship everywhere, to aid him in arresting the country in its prog
ress towards licentiousness and dissolution ?
And then, in the next place, is there not a call addressed to
the righteous man, by this national calamity, to apply to himself
the rebuke — apparently contained in it — for the popular dispo
sition to conneft the expeftation of success with, and ascribe the
glory of success to, the wisdom of man, rather than God? The
principle which the Bible teaches us to recognize in the affairs of
nations, as well as of men, is (to use the Psalmist's beautiful
words) this : " Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain
that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh

Rev. Jos. B. Stratton, D.D. 199
but in vain." It is possible, clearly, to have a confidence in our
selves or others, which does amount to a repudiation of all de
pendence upon God. We see, or we make exemplifications of it
every day. And, whenever this is the case, the Bible principle,
just stated, warns us that our spirit is construed by God, as an
expression of hostility to himself. Now, shall I err in the con
jefture, that this strange, this appalling " destroying of the foun
dations," wrought though it has been by wicked hands, has been
suffered to befall us, in part at least, to remind us as a people,
that our spirit has reached this interdifted point? The man, who
from his position, more remarkably perhaps than any one who
has lived within our day, had come to verify the figure of " a pil
lar of the State; " upon whom, at the moment the whole people,
with one hearty consent, were resting the entire weight of their
interests and their hopes; who, in a long and arduous struggle,
had achieved such results as seemed to prove him competent to
achieve all else that needed to be done, with infallible success, —
is suddenly cut down, and his earthly work closed. Oh, does it
not seem as if there were a voice in such a providence, saying in
tones of thunder, " Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his
nostrils! I am the Lord, and my glory will I not give to an
other"? Does it not seem as if such a rebuke indicated such a
fault, as the precise mark at which it had been levelled ? As if it
were meant, beyond a doubt, to startle the nation into a sense of
its undutiful and offensive bearing towards God, in its habitual
adulation of itself; its magnifying of its own resources; its chart
ing out its own future, as if its destiny were in its own hands ;
and its almost deifying its own institutions and men? The right
eous man, as he sits awe-struck and subdued to-day, I am sure,
will feel that there is serious ground to think so; and, over the
shattered column of his country's — perhaps — idolatrous trust, will
try to accept for himself and others the admonition to maintain

200 President LincoMs Death,
henceforth, between the Creator and his creature, that just rela
tion and proportion which cannot be denied, without affront to
the majesty of the former.
And then, following upon this, is there not a ground, which
the righteous man with his scriptural perceptions may discover,
for hope for a better and a healthier day for the country, by rea
son of the very faft of its present affliftions ? When the founda
tions were destroyed, and the tempter would urge the Psalmist to
despondency, and a desertion of his faith in government and soci
ety, he makes his answer, " In the Lord put I my trust." If faith
in human means and dependencies has been checked by this
great national exigency, faith in the Lord has been challenged
and encouraged by it. " Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth,"
may be applied, I presume, as well to communities as to individ
uals. The Father's stroke that has wrath in the manner of it has
mercy in the design of it; and the smartings which the -wrath
occasions, are intended to prepare the way for the oflfices of
mercy. The Christian, at least, will so reason, and will look
through and beyond this dark day, and cheer himself with the
prospeft of sunshine and repose again. The Lord reigneth, and
can make the wrath of man and of devils to praise him, and to
work out his benevolent designs towards those who fear him. A
harsh school we have been passing through, and a strange pro
cess of trial has been allotted to us at the end; but is it not all
meant to make us a wiser and a better people ? Is it not all
proof, that God has a ministry for us to fulfil yet in the world,
and would educate us for it? Are not the very pains he takes
to keep us from forsaking him, to bring us to an humbler and
deeper acknowledgment of him, evidence that he has not for
saken us?
And once more : in confirmation of this hope, may I not re
mark, that, to the righteous man, God, through the instrumentality

Rev. Jos, B, Stratton, D.D. 201
of this fearful catastrophe -which we are deploring, is holding out
inducements and persuasives -to aid in the restoration of that unity
o'f heart and feeling, which is so sorely needed in the land?
Where is the righteous man who does not find his state of heart
and feeling, in view of this catastrophe, reflected in every one of
his class ? Righteous men — if -we m£an by this term no more
than right-thinking and right-judging men -^ must be alike in
their sentiments here; and alike too in the depth and vehemence
of their sentiments. However much divided they may have
been on other points; however hard they may have found it to
come together on other grounds, — they are at one here. Sympathy
has fused their minds into harmony here. Bending together over
the bleeding body of the Head of the nation, — a body made
sacred, I may say, without irreverence^ by the sacredness of the
symbols it wore, and the oflfice it represented, — there can be no
more discord bet-ween righteous men. Heart must beat with
heart, and feeling must melt into^feeling, here. In the crucible of
a common sorrow, a common indignation, a common prostration
of soul under the mighty hand of God, animosities must dissolve
and disappear. Righteous men, everywhere, will say it ought
to be so, — it must be so. And righteous men will thus'begin to
knit again the dissevered threads of national concord and frater
nal amity, and unite on the spot where the sanftity and dignity
of the Government received the stain of the assassin's desecrating
blo-w, to build up, in a new fabric of popular virtue and religion,
the true monument of the country's glory. Such shocks, sending
such wide-spread and such accordant emotions throughout the
land, cannot be meant fqr nothing. They are meant to leaven,
to impregnate, the whole mass, with a common influence and a
common inspiration. They are meant to throw thought, feeling,
temper, — life itself, I may say, in one word, — into a new and
common channel. 26

202 President LincoMs Death.
Oh! surely, on this solemn occasion, my friends, I may ask you
all, if the time. has not come, when Ephraim should no longer
vex Jlidah, nor Judah Ephraim? Behold to what we have come!
Behold the horrid apparition which has suddenly started forth
upon the canvas of our country's history! behold a blood
stained monster, reeking with the ferocious passions of the dark
ages, striding across this Christian, American soil! behold the
sad chapter which these last few days have added to those public
annals -whose opening pages our fathers' glorious deeds had made
so bright, ^ and see to what vfe. have come! And whither, "by
these tokens, are -w^e likely to go, if we give ourselves up to
blindness and infatuation? God has shown us what prodigies
of wickedness, what enormities in crime, may be generated in
the heated air of civil strife; and he has shown it to us, — I would
persuade myself, — that he may constrain us to stop, and yield
ourselves to his healing monitions. And is it not time? Oh! my
countryinen — my fellow-Christians — is it not time ? Is it not
time for the minister of God to rush in, with the censor of gospel
love in his hand, and, standing between the living and the dead,
plead for the staying of the plague ? Is it not time for all contests
among rfs to cease, but those of peaceful enterprise and honorable
ambition ? Is it not time for all strife to be suspended, but that
holy form of it in which we shall provoke one another only " to
love and good works " ? Is it not time that our war- wasted and
war-shattered land should at last have her sabbath's rest? Is it
not time that those illustrious shades, — the fathers and sages of
our country, whose fame is the heritage of us all, — who, during
these years of fraternal discord, have hovered about the halls of
the Capitol, with their heads drooped, and their pale hands veil
ing the eyes which would not look out into the atmosphere, dark
ened by the smoke of battle-fields, where their children were
shedding one another's blood, — is it nof time, that the tidings

Rev. Jos. B. Stratton, D.D, 203
of peace and reconciliation should come to throw radiance upon
those clouded faces, and lift again those drooping heads, and kin
dle again the light of hope and joy in those veiled eyes ? Is it
not time, that we, their degenerate offspring, should come to
gether, with softened and penitent hearts, to receive the benedic
tion which their shadowy arms are stretching out to give us?
Oh! it seems to me, the righteous man, the righteous woman,
everywhere, will cry out, " Yes, yes ! as God whom we serve,
and in whom we trust, and to whom we have been taught to say,
in every matter, ' Thy will, not ours, be done,' — as he shall offer
us peace, we will accept it! His terms shall be our terms! His
way shall be that which we will choose ! and, in humble depend
ence upon his blessing to come with the peace he gives us, we
will henceforth drop the instruments of war from our hands, and
drive the spirit of war from our hearts!"
Oh ! for a viftory — a surrender — like this, all over the land !
May the Spirit of God achieve it! and follow it with other vic
tories and surrenders, until iniquity, in all its forms, and wherever
it lurks in the corruptions of Government, Church, or people, shall
disappear before the power of the religion of Jesus; and, on our
broad territories, shall break the dawning splendor of that long
day of righteousness, beneath the dome of whose benignant sky
the regenerated earth shall enter into its millennial rest!
• Courier, Natchez, Miss., May 6, 1865,

THE DEATH OF TH:E PRESIDENT:
«
A SERMON DELIVERED IN -WILMINGTON, DELA-WARE, APRIL l6, 1865 ;
BY REV, ABIEL SILVER,

John xi, 35: "Jesus wept.''
JESUS wept; and well may man weep, Jesus, who had never
sinned, wept at the tomb of goor Lazarus. Yes, a human
nature like ours, moved to compassion by the merciful Spirit of
God, could weep. The sympathies of the assumed humanity, in
their conneftion with the divine love of our heavenly Father,
could feel for the distresses of mankind. That assumed finite na
ture was so filled with the Father's tender mercies as to -weep
with the sorrowing sister of Lazarus, and the weeping Jews who
were present.
This aft of the Lord is a high and holy example for us to fol
low in tender emotions for the afflifted. And what heart that is
worthy a home in our beloved country cannot join with the mul
titude in mingling his sorrows and tears with the general flood on
the present mournful occasion?
This day a nation weeps. This day has been set apart by our
Government, in order that all the people of the United States
who love the country and its free institutions, — all who are loyal
to the Government, and rejoice at the downfall ofthe rebellion, —
all who appreciate the noble, self-sacrificing, and patriotic ser-

Rev. Abiel Silver. 205

vices of our late beloved President, may meet to express their
united sorrow for his departure ; their sympathy with the bereaved
family, with the Government, and with one another; and to mingle
their prayers in a united offering to our heavenly Father, for the
continuance of his merciful providence over us as a nation, and
for the final restoration of order and peace to our bleeding coun
try, in accordance with tlie divine will and wisdom, and for the
best good of the people.
About eighteen hundred and thirty-two years ago last Friday,
the body of our Lord, which he assumed in this world, was cru
cified by the very people whom he had come to bless and save.
It was put to death by wicked hands, which were cruelly raised
against their best friend. And the anniversary of that appalling .
event has since been kept by the Christian Church as a day of
humiliation, fasting, and prayer. On last Friday, April 14, 1865,
the body of Abraham Lincoln, the kind and forgiving President
of the United States, was put to death by the vile hands of a foul
assassin, who took the life of the best friend which such traitors
to our country had, or could reasonably expeft to have, in this
world. And long will that day be remembered, and its anniver
sary be noted, as the day when the good President died a martyr
to the pure principles of justice, and the best rights of humanity.
Last Saturday, which is called Holy Saturday, because it is
the anniversary of the day when the Lord was in the sepulchre,
was also the day when Mr. Lincoln lay entombed in the appar
ently dead body before his resurreftion. And a most gloomy
day it was. Who that witnessed it in this country can forget
the morning of April 15, 1865, as the startling intelligence passed
from mind to mind. How the hearts of men sank within them,
as the faltering voice and tearful eye declared the sad event!
And how soon the trembling hands and sorrowing hearts spon
taneously expressed their grief, by draping their residences and

2o6 The Death of the President.
the flag of their "country in the deepest mourning! And, to add
to the gloom, the sun himself seemed to withhold his shining.
Clouds overshadowed the earth; and Nature herself wept, ming
ling her tears with those of the people.
Thus passed last Saturday. But, on Sunday morning, the
natural scenery was changed. The sun rose clear and bright,
removing some of the gloom from material things, and casting
his hopeful beams upon the habiliments of mourning. This
bright Sunday -was the anniversary of the day w^hen our Lord
arose from the sepulchre, surprising and making glad the hearts
of his disciples. And last Sunday was, no doubt, the day when
Mr, Lincoln rose from the tomb of the body into the spiritual
world. Thus he has passed through the valley of the- shadow of
death unhurt. He experienced no pain in the exchange of worlds.
It is not probable that he was conscious of being hurt, or that he
knew that his body was destroyed until after he had left it.
Shocking, therefore, as the event was, it is a consolation to know
that he had non^ of the pains and struggles of a lingering or con
vulsive death; and that he is now in the bright and cheerful
world, in a substantial spiritual body, with all his kind affeftions,
mernory, and knowledge; that all who have loved him for his
good, honest, patriotic, and benevolent qualities can love him
still; that he is not lost to us: our hearts and minds can follow
him home. Those of good hearts, who familiarly knew him and
loved him, are not separated from him by means of his putting
off the body.
All minds imbued with good and true principles are, to the
extent of those principles, united to one another, particularly if
they are acquainted, and love the good qualities of one another.
And, when one of them puts off the natural body, it does not de
stroy that spiritual union, nor the influence which they may have
upon each other. The nation, therefore, has not lost Mr. Lincoln,

Rev. Abiel Silver. ' 207

nor all his salutary influence in the matters of justice and right
eousness. Mind can flow into and affeft mind. But his influence
will now be a silent one; and those affefted by him will probably
not be at all conscious that their thoughts are any other than en
tirely their own, though they may be conscious that they are
changing their views and feelings somewhat.
But the great powers and responsibilities of the Chief Magis
trate of the nation are now removed from Mr, Lincoln, and are
placed upon Mr, Johnson, And, so far as their peculiarities of
mind differ as to measures and policy, so far their administrations
will be unlike. But, in view of the operations of the divine Pro
vidence, we cannot suppose that this change of presidents will
prove detrimental to the people or the country. Nobly has Mr.
Lincoln managed the Ship of State upon the stormy billows of
rebellion's raging sea for the last four years ; and joyously did he
see the fury of the storm subsiding, and the way opening for
peace. Steadily has the hand of Providence led him, step by
step, in a way to break the shackles of slavery, and subdue the
rebellion. This having, with great prudence and kind forbear
ance, been accomplished, a wise Providence has permitted him to
be removed, and another man to take the helm. For, as the
winds and waves of rebellion subside, other storms will arise as
the ship enters upon the sea of reconstruftion, — storms which
may require a very different captain, in order to bring her safely
into the sure haven of permanent union and peace.
The direft providence of God has not removed Mr. Lincoln.
The assassination was a direft violation of God's law. God,
therefore, did not order it, nor require it at the hands of the
wretch. But as murder was in the heart of the villain, God per
mitted him to execute it against the divine law, because he saw
through all the events of the future, whether Mr. Lincoln should
remain or depart. It is, therefore, undoubtedly for the best, that

2o8 The Death of the President.
there be a change of chief magistrates. For, had it not been so,
the murder would not have been permitted by the Lord,
For though it was in the heart of the assassin to kill the Presi
dent, yet the Lord could have prevented it. Not by changing
the heart ofthe assassin, — for that could be done only by repent
ance, in which the assassin must exercise his own freedom; and
that repentance he was not in a state to exercise. But the Lord
could have withheld from him the power or strength to pommit
the deed; for our life, and power to aft, either right or wrong, are
constantly given us, and we are free to do which we please. So
that God's withholding the physical ability to commit the deed
would not have changed the disposition of the murderer.
While, therefore, the assassin must suffer the penalty due to
his crime, for he was free to do it or not, yet we must remember,
that the merciful Lord permitted no injury whatever to be done
to Mr. Lincoln. He had finished his work on earth, and has
gone home. He is better off than he would be here. He cannot
desire to come back. It is indeed a gain to him. The assassin.
is the only real sufferer. The family of Mr, Lincoln, in their
natural feelings, suffer; but it may prove a real blessing even to
them, by uniting them more closely with the spiritual world, and
enabling and disposing them the better to prepare for it. It may
be the very thing they most need. God knows what is best for
us, and he always has eternal ends in view.
In all this view, how conspicuous is the mercy and goodness
of our heavenly Father, who can thus bring good out of evil, and
make the wrath of man to praise him!
Yet the murderer should be arrested, and put to death, be
cause he is not fit to live among men in this world. He is an
injury to all minds with whom he comes in contaft. And it
would be good for him to be removed into the other world, where
he will be governed by the divine law, and suffer no more than

Rev. Abiel Silver. 209

the just penalty due to his sins. And that he must suffer, not by
arbitrary infliftion, but by a universal law of God. For all suffer
ing in the spiritual world is the just consequence of the state of
the sufferers' hearts; and their sufferings restrain them from de
scending into deeper evils, and are therefore mercies.
While, therefore, it is no injury to those who are guilty of
crimes deserving capital punishment to inflift it, yet it greatly
promotes the order, peace, and safety of society on earth to re
move such persons to the spiritual world.
The work of these assassins has opened a new view of the
rebellion's charafter, and brought it before us in a new aspeft.
It has aroused the people to new aftion, and prompted a new
spirit of investigation; and all this was, no doubt, necessary, in
order to know more of the qualities of men, that we might be the
better prepared to properly settle the difficulties which are before
us, so as to avoid future troubles.
The real weeping, then, -which our text calls for, is for the
depravity of the nation, and the dreadful crimes which many are
committing, and have committed, and the awful consequences
which follow.
True, we weep for the loss of Mr. Lincoln from among us in
the flesh. His kind voice is heard no more, and there is appar
ently a great blank in the nation, and we weep with the afflifted
family. All this is natural ; and it is good for us to give vent to
our natural sympathies, and " weep with those who weep," But
when, in the spiritual light of the Word, we rise above the sen
sational sphere of the natural man, into the sphere of the angels,
we weep only over the depravity, the evils, and the consequent
suffering, of fallen humanity; and we pray for a better state of
things^ It is for these evils that the angels weep and pray. And
while we pity the ha'rdened culprit, and would be glad to see him
returning penitent to his God, yet for such conscience-seared
27

2IO The Death of the President!
wretches there is but little hope of improvement; and it is our
duty to bring them to justice, and put an end to their infernal
career on earth.
Seeing, then, the condition of our country, and the work that is
before -us under the new state of things ; feeling assured that the
heavenly Father has not permitted our late beloved Chief Magis
trate to be thus suddenly removed frqm this world but for some
great end, — let us all look well to it that we may know and do
our duty to our country, by leaning upon and following the lead
ings of divine Providence in detefting criminals, and punishing
offenders who cannot be brought to repentance.
Thus let us labor and pray for the restoration of the Union, by
a union of minds upon the great principles of justice and right
eousness, universally extended to the proteftion and improvement
of all the people ; that the sentiments expressed in the glorious
flag of our country may fill the heart of every citizen, and go forth
in praises from every mouth.
It is meet and proper, on this occasion, thus to inquire what
the event means, and why it has been permitted. And to this
subjeft the vast mind ofthe nation is this day emphatically called.
And may God in his infinite justice and mercy enable us as a peo
ple calmly to contemplate, and clearly to see, the duties that are
before us, that we may be neither too severe nor too lax in the
execution ofthe law; that justice and mercy may blend together,
and righteousness and peace may become the eternal fruits of the
tree of liberty!
Such are the thoughts which the occasion naturally suggests;
and though we are in the solemnities of a funeral, at which the
nation weeps, draped in the habiliments of sorrow, yet it is right
to seek wisdom even in the midst of tears.
We can do the departed no good. His merciful and generous
soul has gone behind the curtain of time, to the enjoyments and

Rev. Abiel Silver. 211

uses of a higher life; while we are left behind, with solemn and
important duties yet to do in this world. And the event calls
upon us loudly to do them.
In him we have the example of noble patriotism, of self-sacri
ficing devotion to the Union, of tender sympathy for suffering
humanity everywhere, and of impartial regard for the just rights
of every individual. Yes, in him we have these heavenly quali
ties, worthy of all imitation. May we so follow them as to be
able to meet him in the world to come!

Ne-w -Jerusalem Messenger, N.T., April 2^, 1865,

EASTER SUNDAY:

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN ST, JOHn'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, LOUISVILLE, KY,,
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 1 6, 1 865 ;
BY REV. J. J, TALBOTT, RECTOR,

IT was matter of the deepest regret, that the most solemn Fast
ofthe Church should have been a day of public rejoicing; and
it is equally matter of regret, that now the most joyous Feast of
the Church should be a day of public mourning.
The unvarying custom of the Church, the suggestions of the
lessons, and, indeed, the entire spirit of the service for this day,
require that the subjeft of our Lord's resurreftion shall be the
topic of discourse, and the subjeft of our meditations. But while
the Church stands forth in her highest festival, sings her most
exultant songs, and wears the badge of her highest rejoicing, an
event transpires which seems to hush the paean on her lips, and
change her jubilate to her miserere.
A terrible calamity has befallen the nation; and the strongest
heart stands still, appalled and stricken in the presence of this
overwhelming visitation. The ordinary course of things will not
satisfy. The theme, which else had possessed for your ears a
charming interest, is now utterly powerless to excite your atten
tion, or call off your thoughts from the all-engrossing subjeft.
There is a weight on the public heart. There is that undefined

Rev. J. J. Talbott. 213

feeling, which is half dread of the future, half regret for the past.
Every man feels as if some terrible storm was gathering, some
calamity impending; and no man knows what to do, or where to
look for refuge and safety.
The telegraph brings the startling intelligence that the Presi
dent is dead, dead ! and by the hands of an assassin; and the first
officer of the Government lies stricken in his bed, weak and
helpless from his recent wounds. Had they died, or had thrice
the number of our great men died, by some visitation of God, it
had not cast such a gloom over the land ; but that the very Head
of the nation, the man upon whom all eyes were turned, should
perish as he has, at the time that he has, is something so awful to
contemplate, that it is no marvel that men stand aghast in very
impotence, stunned and shocked as if smitten by a thunderbolt
from heaven. Just at this auspicious hour, when a vision of
peace was haunting our troubled dreams; when, on war's horrid
front, a white-winged angel uplifted his banner between contend
ing hosts, and waved back with either wing the tide of death and
slaughter, — ph, it is sad, that an assassin's arm should mar it, that
all this blessed prospeft should be dimmed and soiled with blood!
— just when all eyes were turned to him, and the nation held its
breath, waiting to hear from his lips, words which would be
equivalent to all end of war and the dawn of peace; just when.
North and South, all over the land, the cry of a devoted, stricken
people, scourged, chastened and afflifted, came pouring into his
ears; just when he was bending to listen, — just then, alas!
his ear can hear no more, his lips are mute, and can give no
cheering answer.
In the presence of this fearful faft; with this stupor, chaining
our thoughts and aftions, upon us; overwhelmed with ultimate
hope and fear and dread, — what are we to do ? One thing we
are to do, if nothing else: we are to lay our hands upon our

214 Easter Sunday.

mouths, and our mouths in the dust, and for the nation, and for
ourselves, we are to cry. Unclean, unclean!
Never before in the history of the nation was there a time
when, more than now, the spirit of moderation should rule in our
hearts, diftate the words of our lips, and guide and conduft
our aftions.
In the first tidings of such an event as this, if -we do not lay a
heavy hand upon our hearts, and crush back whatever wrong
emotion may swell within us, just so surely will we, by the ter
rible influence of uncontrolled passion, rush into sin. Hasty,
impetuous, inconsiderate words will burn upon our lips, and
feuds will be started which generations may not heal. Crimina
tion will do no good. It will not benefit the dead, and will only
harm the living. Let us learn from his pale lips, dead, what they
would have taught us living, — calmness and moderation. The
bitterest accusation cannot restore the dead. He is gone, and
nothing is left but the deathless memory of his deeds. He can
not hear our flatteries : he is unmindful, if we traduce him. He
is beyond the reach of human praise, outside the pale of human
censure. His high destiny is ended, his mission accomplished;
and, whether for weal or woe, his name and influence will abide
with this nation for ever.
I am here speaking of this great man, not to praise or to
blame; to lay neither eulogy nor obloquy, neither flowers nor
thorns, upon his coflfin. This is neither the time nor the place for
this. But, while you gather around his grave, I would have you
still the storm within you, and bid all bitterness, and ever)^ thought
of vengeance, go hide in his grave. I tell you, the highest,
noblest tribute you can pay to his memory is to forget how he
died, in the faft that he is dead. For, if he be the man we have
been told he was; if he was aftuated by the simple purpose of
his country's good, — then he would have died, willingly died, if,

Rev. J. J. Talbott. 215

as he went to his grave, he could have taken from the hearts of
the American people the malice and anger and bitterness and
vengeance which are there, and left, in their place, calmness and
the spirit of brotherly love and forbearance, the spirit of modera
tion and forgiveness.
Do not, then, let his death increase this evil. Rather let it
sound a truce to the long, dark reign of these evil passions ; and
let the form of the dead President be the commanding presence
which shall banish them for ever. While you give your tears to
the dead, do not learn the more to hate the living. Remember
your country. I appeal from the murdered President to the
bleeding land; and, while you pay your duteous honors to the one,
do not forget your duty to the other. Be calm; dispassionately
consider all things; and, whatever conclusion you may reach,
strengthen it by moderation. Do not discuss this sorrowful
theme in hasty, angry sentences. Be silent, until reason resumes
her sway, and you are free from the excitement and bias of this
first intelligence.
I should not depart from my unvarying custom to introduce
this matter here, but that I love you, and would save you from the
violence of your own feelings. I am here unimpassioned, what
ever I may be elsewhere, without feeling or purpose, save to try
and keep out of your hearts the bitterness which this event is so
calculated to excite. Only refleft that it can do no good, and it
must do much harm. And, no matter how your execrations may
follow the assassin into the dens and caves of the earth, do not
let them go beyond him. Let this be their limit. Let human
justice be done, and then leave him with his God. " Vengeance
is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
When the Saviour of sinners, from the sacred Olivet, ascended
to heaven, he spread forth his hands, and this is his benison upon
us: "Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you!" The

2i6 Easter Sunday.

last words, and doubtless the last thoughts, of the President were
of peace. God Almighty grant that the blessing he shall leave
behind him, as his enduring monument, as his deathless glory,
shall be peace to this war-worn nation ! If this shall be the fruit
of his labors, the priceless value of his life, then o'er his grave
will shine a light more glorious than the grandeur of empire,
or the pomp of power, — the splendor of his country's power
reflefted upon his tomb.
Brethren, if you loved the dead; if you still love the living; if
you love our country, the land of your birth ; if you love and long
for the time when Peace shall spread her white wings over us,
and under them a united people shall sing the songs of a better
day, and mingle in fellowship and brotherly love, — then let the
thoughts of your hearts be buried with the dead, and the spirit of
calm moderation and kindness guide and control you in this try
ing hour. Let the memory of your own dead come from the
waste of years, and soften your roused hearts, and subdue your
complaining spirits. Go, ask of the dark day which marked the
committal of your kindred dust unto dust, and ashes to ashes,
what was the lesson of death! When we stand by the open
grave, it is no time to stir up the resentment of your hearts.
I bid you remember, that through the grave lies the journey
to that God who claims vengeance as his own, and bids you
avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. Let
this impress you. I bid you remember, that through the grave
lies the journey to that bar at which you and I must stand, beg
ging that vengeance may be stayed, and that mercy may uplift
her aegis, and shield us from justice. Oh ! then, standing by the
grave of the great and noble dead, remember that coming hour,
and be taught its lesson.
Come to the table of the blessed Lamb. In the high agony
of the cross, he prayed a blessing upon his murderers! His

Rev. J. J. Talbott. 217

blood is the reconciliation. Here is the emblem of the greatest
suffering and the greatest wrongs, borne with the highest possi
ble patience, and best conceivable meekness and spirit. Come,
then, eat this food, drink this blood. It will strengthen you to
put under your feet this temptation to sin, and make you more
than conquerors in th©. sublime viftory of faith over self.
Daily Union Press, Louisville, Ky., April 19, 1865.

28

NATIONAL HUMILIATION:
A SERMON PREACHED ON THE LATE FAST DAY, JUNE I, 1865, AT THE
CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT, PHILADELPHIA, PA, ;
BY REV, BENJAMIN WATSON, D,D,, RECTOR,

2 Sam. xxiii. 3, 4: "The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me. He that
ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light
of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds ; as the tender
grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.''
IT is befitting that we should meet together this day. Amidst
the sublime and terrible events of the day, — events terrible
in their sublimity, and sublime in their terribleness, — it is meet
that we should stand with uncovered heads, and look up to that
heaven where He dwells who sits upon the throne, and judges
righteously. It is meet that, turning from all the accidents and
phenomena of events, we should recognize and contemplate that
Hand which shapeth all things according to its will, and holds in
its control the destinies of nations and of men. It is meet that
there should be a day consecrated for us — and which will be
memorable through all coming time — to the outpouring of a na
tion's sorrow; to the commemoration of the virtues of him for
whom we mourn, and to lay to heart the lessons which Supreme
Wisdom and Righteousness is teaching us by his dealings.
Ours are no affefted tears of grief The stroke that fell upon
, us only a few weeks ago is still too fresh in its smart to allow

Rev. Benjamin Watson, D.D, 219
this day of public mourning to be either formal or heartless. If,
for a moment, it subsides amidst the busy and crowding scenes
of the present, we have but to touch the chords of our hearts with
that sacred and venerable name — the name of Abraham Lincoln
— to make them vibrate through all our frames, and awaken anew
the sorrow and terror which crushed us all, when the sad intelli
gence flashed upon us, that he who bore it, our high and illustri
ous Chief, was dead.
Gather we then again to-day, as it were, around his bier. We
surround ourselves afresh with the signs of woe which then over
spread the land. We hear once more the voice of wailing and
lamentation; and behold the mourners as they go about the
streets, and bear his body to its burial.
The grave has indeed closed upon him; but he is buried, not
alone in the bosom of the earth, but in the bosoms of the people
that he ruled; and there they will ever bring fresh flowers to
adorn his tomb, — the flowers of affeftion, and of loving sorro-w
that he is no more. He is gone from among us; the judgment of
the Lord, which is " true and righteous altogether," has removed
him from our sight: but he still lives in the virtues that adorned
his life; in the works that he has wrought; in the memorial that
will be raised up (ever, we trust, to remain) ; in the regeneration,
in part at least, by that life and those deeds, of the nation's char
after, and in the higher exaltation of its destiny.
Many heroes have fallen, many great ones have been taken
from us, but -we have never seen — the world has never seen —
such a day as this; when, in all the homes of a great land, there
will be felt a mourning "as if for an only son;" when in all its
temples one voice will go up, of heartfelt bewailing for the sins
which made such a judgment necessary, of tearful remembrance
for the dead, and of grateful thanksgiving that such a life was lent
us, to do its work, and to shed forth its light.

2 20 National Humiliation.
Is it for the departure of a great statesman that we mourn, and
make our solemn confessions to Almighty God? Is it that a
Chief Magistrate of our Republic was cut off in the midst of his
honors and his work? For these, indeed; but not for these alone.
Rather, because the friend and father of his people has been slain,
and left them as bereaved children around his tomb. It was not
pride in lofty genius that was humbled in that stroke. It was
not confidence in eminent leadership that was tried by it. But it
was affeftion, evoked by all that was generous and wise and pa
tient in a life that a nation called its own, and which was conse
crated to its welfare. Nothing but wounded affeftion could have
drawn forth such tears from eyes all unused to weep. A voice
which comes to us from a foreign land is but the echo of a uni
versal one at home, "That man has lived himself wonderfully into
my heart." The mourning of America for her Chief is only such
as could be called out by that sublime devotion to his country,
which we know as patriotism, — a word of whose true use we
had almost lost sight till he arose; who, casting away all selfish
ness, embarked himself, with all the powers of head and heart
that God had given him, in his country's cause, for the redemp
tion of that high pledge of duty which, before God and men, he
had pronounced.
Born in lowliness, and reared amidst the rude blasts of adver
sity, this man had just such a training as fitted him for the place
and the crisis he was to fill. A more refined life, or one more
absorbed in intelleftual pursuits, might have enervated too much
a frame upon which such gigantic labors were to be imposed. A
gentler birth and rearing might have equally unfitted him for that
peculiar position which he assumed as the peoples representative.
A previous condition more elevated and commanding might have
unfitted him for becoming, as he was, the popular mouth-piece ;
following, rather than leading, senfiment; himself taking shape

Rev. Benjamin Watson, D.D. 221
from, rather than giving shape to, the popular mind and will: but,
when he had received it, giving it that expression in words which
is ever the mark of genius ; saying that which all felt, when said,
they might have said as well as he, but which a common mind
never could: for his was an intelleft, if not of the highest order,
yet, as we now look back upon it, truly great. See how his
utterances stand out, stamped with his own pure individuality.
In all of them, there was nothing re-echoed of other men; nothing
commonplace; no mere platitudes, conveyed in pompous terms,
such as too often form the staple of our public deliverances. His
words went right to the mark, as winged arrows. With him,
logic was almost an intuition; his thoughts naturally arranging
themselves -with the clearness and compaftness of a syllogism.
Just such a mind he had, as, with strong native powers, had grown
through its own unaided efforts, by self-revolving thought, and by
the massing within itself of its o-wn strong conviftions. We can
fancy this mind ever educating itself; bringing into form and
order, and strengthening, what God had given it, or when he plied
the oar, or swung the axe, or, admitted to the councils of his fel
lows, labored for the truth, and by patient effort sought after it till
he found it. By such training, not so much in books, as through
patient thought, and deeply wrought conviftion, he reached that
culture which, through four long years, gave us so much senten
tious wisdom and praftical truth, and which flowered at length in
that second Inaugural, which men abroad have styled the finest
State-paper that was ever written, and some of whose sentences
are worthy to be copied in gold, and emblazoned on every temple
of liberty, and every house of justice, throughout the world.
But such a mind as his could never be separated from his
moral qualities. They helped to make the intelleft. One may
be a great poet, though a bad man. He may be an acute and
profound philosopher. But he whose intelleftual greatness lies

222 National Humiliation,
mainly in his judgment, in his praftical wisdom, and in his per
sonal power with men, must have moral qualities of the highest
order. And so, in the charafter of this man, we find the calmest
integrity, the most transparent sincerity, temperance, and right
eousness, patience unbounded, the fortitude and gentleness of
woman. From first to last, in that career which came so con
spicuously before the world, there was nothing in which even his
enemies could say that he was mean or crooked or unjust or
hard or selfish. And, as these were religion praHised, so, in all
the documents issuing from his pen, we find it expressed ; there
being hardly one of them in which we do not discern the declara
tion of his dependence upon God, and the recognition of his ob
ligation to him. We are not surprised, therefore, to learn that he
was a man of daily prayer and perusal of God's Word; we are
not surprised to be informed that such conviftions had found their
true centre in the cross of Christ. For four years he stood the
foremost man in all the nation before the public eye, before the
eye ofthe world; yet in all that time nothing could be found that
would arraign the conclusion, that he was what " the Rock of
Israel " so long ago declared a ruler should be, — "just, and ruling
in the fear of God," Is this the language of mere eulogy? It
seems like it. But you know that it is not. Whatever might
have been his policy, in which some may have differed from him,
and even in that the logic of events has brought us to see that
what we might have thought error was the highest truth, in the
spirit with which he ruled, we cannot deteft the slightest flaw; so
that to him is justly applicable the praise of Divine Wisdom:
" He shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth,
even a morning without clouds ; as the tender grass springing out
ofthe earth by clear shining after, rain," — a pure, unbroken light;
a verdure bright and fresh. If this were the judgment of America
alone, we might think it partial and overdrawn. But when, even

Rev, Benjamin Watson, D.D. 223
in the 'great cities of the Old World, men stopped their business,
and held their breath at his cruel assassination, — and then only
relieved themselves by the utterance and re-utterance of his dis
tinguished merits, asserting that no event in history had called
forth such deep and genuine feeling, — we may well believe
that it was so ; that in the man that we have lost there was an as
semblage of virtues which rarely falls to the lot of rulers, and in
whose possession immortality is secured. And when Americans
venture to name him with Washington, — that hitherto unap
proachable name to us, — we see the height to which their estima
tion of him has reached, a height from which we cannot perceive
that he will ever descend. Washington, the first in his country
born ; Lincoln, the first in his country new-born, regenerated in a
purer life, and for a nobler destiny. All that I would say is so
well, though at times roughly, expressed by one who was afore
time his detraftor, whose wit and sarcasm are world-wide in their
reputation, that I cannot forbear repeating it here : —
" My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue.
Noting how to occasion's height he rose ;
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true ;
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows ;
How humble, yet how hopeful he could be ;
How in good fortune and in ill the same :
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful, he,
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.
He went about his work — such work as few
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand —
As one who knows where there's a task to do,
Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command ;
Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow ;
That God makes instruments to work his will,
If but that will we can arrive to know,
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.
So he went forth to battle, on the side
That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's ;
As in his pleasant boyhood he had plied
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights, —

2 24 National Humiliation.
The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, •
The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe,
The rapid tliat o'erbears the boatman's toil,
The prairie, hiding the marked wanderer's tracks.
The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear, —
Such were the deeds that lielped his youth to train.
Rough culture : but such trees large fruit may bear.
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.
So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it : four long, suff'ering years'
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through ;
And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers,
The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise.
And took both with the same unwavering mood ;
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, .
A felon hand, between the goal and him,
Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, —
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim.
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest.
The words of mercy were upon his lips,
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen.
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.
The Old World and the New, from sea to sea.
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame !
Sore heart, so stopped, when it at last beat high !
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came !
A deed accursed ! Strokes have been struck before
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt
If more of honor or disgrace they bore ;
But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out."
Such a man did God give us in these last days of the Repub
lic, reviving in him all the virtues of its earliest. And for what?
Ay, for what? Only that he might accomplish that great work
to which he was called, and which he so successfully finished?
Was his mission fulfilled, when, his designs for his country all
secured, he laid down his life, a martyr to truth, to liberty, to
duty? Great and enduring as were his services; glorious as is

Rev. Benjamin Watson, D.D. 225
the fame which he earned thereby; entitled, as he is, to the high
est homage and deepest affeftion of the nation, on their account,
— the record of his high commission runs out still farther, and is
even now in force and at -work.
There are some men who seem so to stand out from others, in
the dignity of their charafter, that they become almost unap
proachable, and, to that extent, lose their power over us, as
models and examples. Such an one was St. Paul, in most of the
features of his charafter. Such an one was Washington, who,
whether in his own proper life, or in that halo which distance and
history have thrown around it, seems raised upon a pedestal,
rather for the veneration and admiration of his countrymen, than
for their imitation. His is a hallowed name, placed high — the
highest for us, and perhaps for the world — on the list of heroes,
there ever to remain as the impersonation of all that was pure
and great and good in the patriot and the ruler. But not so with
this latest of departed heroes. No majestic form or dignified
mien removed him from familiar intercourse with his fellows.
To the humblest citizen, even to the child, he was approachable.
And so with his virtues and his greatness. They were so set
round with the common traits of man, so intermingled with
homely speech and proverb, that all felt he was a man like them
selves, not one whit removed from or above them, save as his
office and his charafter lifted him up perforce. There seemed to
be nothing about him in all those merits which were his pecu
liarly, that all could not imitate, and follow in his steps. Almost
alone of distinguished men, this was his. Not grave and re
served, as were Washington and Washington's great prototype,
William of Orange, who, like our martyred President, fell the
viftim of an assassin's rage; not lordly and commanding in his
bearing, as was Wellington, — but a simple man among men, telling
them his thoughts in familiar speech; mingling freely with them;
29

2 26 ¦ National Humiliation.
trusting them, and knowing them as the source of power, and not
deeming himself the objeft of regard, other than that to which
his high oflfice entitled him. Such a man, and such a ruler, there
fore, was eminently fitted for a pattern, at once an example and
an encouragement for others. And this, apart from the great
services which he rendered his country, is, I take it, the mission
of his life for all coming time. And for this, God allowed that
tragic end to be his fate; by it sealing up in one moment his
career, shining then in its full meridian glory, and in it embalming
his memory beyond the reach of corruption or decay. And so
he stands, crowned with that glorious apotheosis, a simple man,
but adorned with every grace that could render a ruler profitable
to men and approved of God. And he, for generations to come,
will be America's type ruler. They that fall short of him will
so far fall short of her ideal ; they that reach him, or resemble
him, will become the inheritors, in their degree, of his high
praise. Lordly airs, courtly assumption, royal aping, will be dis
gusting, — as they aught to be, in this land of freedom and equal
ity, the rising star now more than ever of liberty to the world;
but faith, truth, justice, meekness, gentleness, generosit}', patience,
integrity, fortituHe, — these will be the points that men will look
for, and, finding, appreciate and applaud. To do the right, for the
righfs sake, this was Lincoln's principle; and this will and must
be the principle of his successors, if the}' would entitle them
selves to the meed of the people's favor, and of an imperishable
name. Thanks be to God for those inimitable virtues of that
name which he has inscribed so high on the scroll of renown!
virtues, we trust, that from him will descend, in greater or less
degree, upon all the office-bearers of the land, whether they be
high or low. And shame to the man, who, clothed with author
ity by his country, will hereafter dare to step aside from the
straight path of uprightness, to follow the crooked devices of a

Rev. Benjamin Watson, D.D. 227
selfish and sordid policy! And you, to whom this great legacy
has been committed, the people of the land, see that you honor
it, in elevating none to office who do not bear the broad impress
of a high-minded integrity. Whatever other qualifications they
may possess, let the want of this eclipse them all, and render
their possessor ineligible in your eyes. As the arrow, moulded
upon the arms of Britain, is the mark of her ownership, so let
this virtue be the necessary stamp entitling any man to public
consideration in free, republican America.
The experiment has been tried, and has succeeded, of taking
one fresh from the people to be the ruler of the people. It is not
altogether new in the history of the world. There was one,
more than three thousand years ago, of whom it is written, that
" God took him from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob, his people,
and Israel, his inheritance;" and of -whom it is added, " So he
fed them with a faithful and true heart; and ruled them prudently,
with all his power." The experiment succeeded then as now;
and the choice was no less divine in the one case than in the
other, though the manner of it was different. King-craft has
grown old, and royal lines are running out. Here, in this ne-w
land, a new type of government is being set up, — in the provi
dence of God, as near an approach to self-government as could
well be tried. The nations of the Old World shook their heads
in doubt when the foundations of it were laid ; and, though it had
marvellous success, there were still signs of weakness in it that
gave them hope that it would fail at length. And, as the awful
notes of disunion went thundering across the ocean, they clapped
their hands in glee, and cried, " There, there ! so would we have
it: the great Republic is falling to pieces; self-government is a
failure." And in this thought, and the wish that was father to .it,
we see the secret reason of their sympathy with rebellion, and
their hearty desire that it should succeed. But God has thwarted

228 National Humiliation.
their wishes. He has thrown his Omnipotence on the side of
right and of human freedom, and the rebellion lies dead at our
feet. He has said, therefore, to this people, "Your cause is mine;
go on prospering and to prosper," He has said to all the king
doms of the earth, " Regard that type, and learn from it. It is
the necessary outgrowth of that religion which I gave the world
eighte'en hundred years ago, when I made Redemption a common
heritage for men, and sent forth my Spirit to constitute them all
my sons."
But for this new type of government there was needed a new
type of governor. Hitherto, in our chief magistrates, the people
have not been represented. They have been mainly from what
ever aristocracy we may have had, — of birth, of position, of
wealth. In this respeft, we have continued under our Old-World
origin and education. And I must confess to a feeling of distrust
when the new regime was to be introduced. But in the grand
success of Abraham Lincoln, the first President of the Republic,
elevated from the people, without affluence, without position,
either social or political, with nothing to commend him but his
own honest heart and sagacious mind, God has set his seal on the
experiment; and, though we cannot divine the future, we think
that it is an experiment which the nation will not fail to repeat,
and which will not be without its influence upon the minds of
men through all the Christian nations of the globe. For so it is,
my brethren, that what we have hitherto dreamed of, and perhaps
vauntingly predifted, must come true, that this American Republic
is to exercise a mighty influence upon the destiny of the world.
We cannot help it. None of those great things which have lately
transpired were done in a corner. While they were transpiring,
all. eyes were fixed upon us. And now that our great task is ac
complished, now that the nation has proved itself equal to its
most formidable necessity, that gaze will not be withdrawn, but

Rev. Benjamin Watson, D.D. 229
will remain to observe and learn whatever we shall teach them of
the mystery of human elevation, and of the progress of the race.
Can' you weigh, then, the responsibility which rests upon this and
all coming generations in this favored land? Let every man
among us resolve that he will aft worthy of his high place as a
citizen of this Republic, in his ow^n individual charafter, and in
the blessing that he may be to those around him. To spread in
telligence and religion, — this has now become the duty of every
one of us, to that extent which God in his providence has given
us in trust. Now, more than ever, we should learn that no man
liveth unto himself, but that we are all our brother's keeper.
But let us not forget in our meditations, that this is a day of
fasting and humiliation. And this implies that we have sins to
mourn over, in judgment upon which God has taken away him
-whom the people delighted to honor. Humble yourselves, there
fore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may lift you up. Let
each man repent of his own individual offences, and deplore
the wickedness that, alas ! abounds in our midst. Let him, in the
spirit of deep humiliation, pray for our rulers, that they may be
men after God's own heart; for our people, that they may be es
tablished in righteousness ; for the noble army that has fought our
battles, and won our viftories, that, now that they are disbanding
and returning to their homes, they may still be citizens in whom
we will delight, and, by their civic virtues, as by their martial
prowess, become the bulwark of the nation. Let us pray that
the benevolence of the nation may flow forth to those who return
stricken and wounded; that they may not suffer through those
misfortunes which, in our cause, they have incurred. In the
words with which that noble paper, to which we have already
referred, concludes, " Let us strive to bind up the nation's
wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and

230 National Humiliation.
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all
nations." The thoughts of this day and this hour will inevitably fade
away. It is the fate of all things earthy. But let it not be so
with the truths that it teaches, anS the impressions that it has
made. Let them remain, to be the guiding stars of our national
course, and the inward forces by which it is impelled on to its
highest destiny!
And, resting our thoughts once more on him who has gone,
we may well say, —
" O God ! we thank thee that, when needed most.
Thou raisedst this priest, this leader, for our aid, —
This model statesman, patriot, martyr, man.
The sum of all we honor and revere.
God-given ! God-recalled ! Go to thy grave
Hallowed by tears, the purest ever shed ;
A nation's sobs and tears thy funeral hymn ;
A nation's heart thy mausoleum grand ;
A nation's gratitude thy deathless fame ;
A nation saved thy labor's vast reward."
Daily Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia, Pa., June 7, 1865.

EULOGIES, SPEECHES, AND LETTERS.

SPEECH OF MAJOR-GENERAL N. P. BANKS:
AT NEW ORLEANS, LA,, APRIL 21, 1865,

MR, President and Fellow -citizens, — It is only since
my arrival upon this platform that I have been informed
of the part I am expefted to take in the ceremonies of this
occasion, and could wish for longer preparation, with the view
of doing more perfeft justice to the subjeft of the hour; but, in
accordance with the wishes of your committee, I -will proceed.
God knows why it is, or how it is, or for what purpose it is, that
-we have been summoned here; but now, indeed, can we feel the
nothingness of man, and that it is best for us to bow in sup
plication to God for his counsel and support. The language of
the hour is that, not of comment, not of condolence, not of con
solation, but of supplication; and we should stand before the
throne of God to-day, in sackcloth and in ashes, in silent petition
to him for that counsel and support.
Human plans are failures: the ideas and purposes of God
alone are successful. This very week wag spontaneously and
unanimously set apart by the American people as a season for
thanksgiving and joy, for the great relief which the people had
experienced from a terrible war, which had bereft nearly every
family in the North and South of its dearest, and draped nearly
every family altar as is now draped the national altar. Suddenly
30

234 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
the skies were brightened, and universal peace was accepted by
the nation as the reward of the terrible struggle in which we had
been engaged. The opening of the Mississippi; the brilliant
viftories of the Army of the Cumberland in 1863; the fall of the
rebel cities upon the Atlantic coast before the triumphant march of
Sherman; the surrender of Lee to Grant; and the occupation
of Mobile by the gallant chieftain who is here in our presence
to-day, not waiting for the intelligence that the last army of the
rebellion had surrendered to the glorious Sherman, — all justified
the assumption that God had given this nation permanent, lasting,
honorable, and glorious peace ! But while we were preparing for
the announcement by the officers of the Government, — always
behind, in instinfts and purposes of power, the people of the gov
ernment, — unexpeftedly, in the twinkling of an eye, as if with
the suddenness, strength, and power of God, — all of us lay low
in sorrow, mourning and despair. I believe that never before in
human history were a people so horrified as by the announce
ment of the death of the President, and the fall of his great
assistant in council and aftion, — the Secretary of State. We
know not why it is, but -we have the great consolation to say that
we believe it is for good to our nation. Ay, for good to the
man that has fallen as our representative. He had committed
no crimes. There is not a man on the continent or globe that
will or can say that Abraham Lincoln was his enemy, or that he
deserved punishment or death for his individual afts. No, Mr.
President, it was because he represented us that he died ; and it
is for our good, and the glory of our nation, that God, in his
inscrutable providence, has been pleased to do this, while, for the
late President, it is the great crowning aft and security of his
career. To die is " to go home," — to go to our Father, and be
relieved from sorrow, care, suffering, labor, and from danger; but
to live, — ay, sir, to live is the great punishment inflifted upon

Major-General N. P. Banks. 235
man. All that we can ask is to go when all things are ready, —
when duty is discharged, strength exhausted, and the triumph
effefted, — then it is our joy to go home to " Our Father." As
has been beautifully said, sir, —
" When faith is strong, and conscience clear.
And words of peace the spirit cheer.
And visioned glories then appear,
'Tis joy — 'tis triumph, then, to die! "
God has given our great leader the privilege to go, under cir
cumstances like this. He had lived his time, fought his fight,
and, God be thanked ! had kept the faith. Let me say it reverently,
that for Abraham Lincoln to live was for Abraham Lincoln to
fall ! He had ascended to the highest point, — the highest culmi
nation of human destiny; to be better and greater and purer,
he must leave us, and go to the bosom of God. He is enjoying
the highest culmination of glory that God has given, in his wise
and mysterious dispensation for the human family.
Sir, I had seen him but little, but that which I had seen,
stamped upon my heart the indelible feeling that he was a rare
man, — not a' great or a successful man : many of both kinds have I
seen; but he was a rare man, who believed in the power of ideas,
and knew that human agencies were unable to control or direft
them. In the dispensation of what men call "power," I have
seen Mr. Lincoln give it to the right and left as if of no conse
quence at all ; and, when reproached for so doing, I have heard
him say, "What harm did this generous confidence in men do
me ? " I have seen, amidst the hours of trial, his manifestations
of patience and confidence, more almost than human; until I had
come to believe that that which is designed to be done would be
accomplished, if not by human power, at least by the concurrent
aftion and support and will of God.
Though taken from us, his influence is still here; and there is

236 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
 '.  « 
not a man in this assembly to-day, who is not more impressed
with his spirit and purpose than he would be if Abraham Lincoln
were living at this hour; nor is there a man here to-day, who is
not a disciple of him, and the agent of his works for evermore.
We may, indeed, be assured that his great purpose — the Union,
first of all — will be carried out. We might as well expeft the
Mississippi to turn back at its mouth, and seek again the moun
tain rivulets and springs, as to believe that human power is to
sunder the States of the Union. Abraham Lincoln's w^isdom and
patriotism has led us as far as human effort can bring us ; and now
his blood cements for ever the holy Union of the States.
You know, fellow-citizens, how deeply he was interested in
the destinies of Louisiana. No friend in your midst ever thought
so much about or wished so much for your good as the late Pres
ident of the United States; and it was among the first wishes of
his heart, that the prosperity of its people, the liberty of all its
races, and their elevation, should be perfefted during his adminis
tration : or, as he said in one of his letters to me, " My word is
oiit for these things, and I don't intend to turn back from it." It
is not for me to aft or speak in the spirit of prophecy, but I can
say to you, that I believe his wish will be consummated by the
return of Louisiana to the Union, by the honor, freedom, and
elevation of all classes of its people.
To the colored people of this assembly and State, as well as
the Union, I can say, that the work in which he was engaged -will
go on, and that the. day is not far distant when they will enjoy
the freedom that God and the people have given them, and also be
advanced to all the privileges that, under the Constitution of our
country, or that of any other, God has deigned to bestow upon any
class of people. But they must remember, that they have a work
to do, and that while God is just to all his people, he requires that
they shall be just to him. You shall be free, and invested with

Major-General N. P. Banks, 237
all the privileges of which men are capable of wise and proper
exercise, for Abraham Lincoln's word is out.
It is not my right to suggest a word of counsel or advice for
the future ; but I have the right to say, that there is one man who
seeks your prayers and desires your counsel. It is he who has
been recently inaugurated — unexpeftedly and distrustfully, as
we are told — President of these United State.s. Though a
President has gone, we must sustain the President that remains.
I look upon the State of Tennessee, from which he comes, as
being the centre of the great arch of the Union : midway between
the South and North, with the climate of the one and the other,
its soil susceptible of producing the produfts of both seftions, it
calls for all the consideration that either seftion of the country can
demand for its people. Its political charafter and strufture have
the same variety and conneftion with the destinies of our country,
and for thirty years have been more closely contested in political
struggles than any other State of the Union. Its vote has decided
many issues, and great men have represented its interests and
destinies; and it has given us two Presidents, whose administra
tions have been identified closely, not only -with the existence,
but with the extension and interest, of our country. Jackson, with
his mailed arm, struck disunion down at its first appearance, and
adapted the policy of the country to its need. Polk confirmed
the policy of Jackson, and extended the. boundaries of our happy
land until it reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.
Among the great men of place, we have had Benton, Houston,
Bell, Foster, and hundreds of others whose names are known,
and who have been and are connefted indissolubly with the hap
piness and liberty of our people. From amid these men, the new
President has been called. Among them he has grown, and
from their teachings has he been instrufted. His life has been
one of aftivity, energy, and integrity. Charafter is not made in

238 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
a day; it will never be forfeited in an hour. Our lamented Pres
ident, if he could advise us, would counsel us to sustain the
Government, and those left to take his place; and we are assured
that the two great officers then at the head of the nation — a few
days before the departure of the first and greatest — upon full
consultation, found that they had perfeftly concurrent views, and
separated with the confidence that each wished the prosperity
and success of the other. Let us then accept this day, its grief,
and the lesson which it imparts, and be more than ever deter
mined, in the presence of God, with the ability and power he
has given us, to do our duty to our country, by maintaining' its
institutions and perpetuating its principles and liberties.
New-Orleans Times, April 2-^, 1865,

FUNERAL ORATION ON THE DEATH OF
PRESIDENT LINCOLN:

DELIVERED BEFORE THE MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL, AND CITIZENS OF PORTLAND,
APRIL 19, 1865 ;
BY REV, J, J, CARRUTHERS, D,D,

MR. Mayor and Fellow-citizens, — The memorable days
of our Republic are multiplying with marvellous rapidity;
and amongst the most memorable of them all will be the four
teenth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, when the hand
of violence fell fatally on all that was mortal of Abraham Lin
coln. The dreadful tragedy — more dreadful than any ever
represented in the mimicry of the dramatic stage — has sent a
thrill of unmitigated horror through the land; and anguish, par
alleled only by the sorest domestic grief, has filled the hearts
and households of our nation. The second Father of his country
— second, only because he was not the first — has fallen; and, in
common with many millions of afflifted mourners, we are met to
pay the last tribute of respeft to the memory of one whose death
is felt by each of all these millions as a personal bereavement.
The stroke has fallen unexpeftedly and suddenly upon us; but
suddenly and unexpeftedly only because it is not given to us to
foresee the events and issues even of a single day. Divine benev
olence and wisdom have thrown over even the nearest future, a
curtain so impenetrable, that human sagacity, however trained

240 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
and tutored by experience, can but conjefture as to what lies
behind it. To God himself, nothing is unknown. He " seeth the
end from the beginning, and from ancient times the thing that is
not yet done." Nor must we withhold the closing part of this
inspired declaration, in which he says, " My counsel shall stand,
and I will do all my pleasure." Without impairing in the least
the free agency of man, without mitigating in the least the guilt
or just desert of human crime, the Sovereign Ruler of the uni
verse is ever working out to their designed issues his purposes of
judgment and of mercy. Abraham Lincoln was " immortal till
his work was done;" and though his purposes were broken off,
even the thoughts of his heart, by the hand of the assassin, those
of the All-wise and the Almighty are undisturbed and undiverted
even by a catastrophe like this. It was in subserviency to his
designs, that Abraham Lincoln first saw the light, and was born
with qualities, physical and mental, which, when matured by
exercise, observation, and experience, fitted him for the high
position he ultimately reached, and for the solemn responsibilities
that ever invest the chief magistracy of this great Republic. He
who drew the deliverer of Israel from the bulrushes of the Nile,
and trained him for his destiny in the wilderness of Midian, took
Abraham Lincoln, in his seventh year, from his birthplace in
Kentucky, and, till his twentieth, kept him in salutary seclusion
amidst the then dense forests of Indiana. Here his naturally strong
and stalwart frame gained daily vigor from the work to which
penury impelled and honest industry inclined him. Here too
his mental faculties were developed and disciplined by the study
of men rather than of books; although of books, he had the best
in that volume which, beyond all others, yields the most nutritious
intelleftual aliment, and has, in all ages, given instrumentally the
greatest moral heroes to the world. Of these, the Pioneer of
Indiana was pre-eminently one; and the keen acumen, the unaf-

Rev. J. J. Carruthers, D.D. 241
fefted earnestness, the filial fidelity, the untiring industry, the
ever unslacked thirst of knowledge, the unimpeached and unim
peachable truthfulness of Abraham Lincoln, were, in no small
degree, the natural results of early conversance with the lives and
afts and utterances of patriarchs and prophets and apostles. No
College claims him as its alumnus. His Alma Mater was fixed
by Providence amidst the woods and waters ofthe then far-West.
His days were spent in hard and ill-remunerating toil, and few
indeed were the hours that could be spared for what is called
intelleftual improvement. But what was -wanting in classical
learning, in philosophical research, in scientific acquisitions, was
more than counterbalanced by the reflex aftion of his own
mind, by the close study of his country's history, by the stern
necessities of a life admitting of no idleness, and by the diftates
of a moral dignity that would not stoop to dissipation. In
another and a higher sense than is usually attached to such an
epithet, Abraham Lincoln was a learned man. When he moved
from Indiana to his adopted State of Illinois, he largely knew
himself. He knew, by close and careful study, the charafter of
Washington. He knew the constitutional history of his own
country, and — best of all — he knew and revered those high
and holy principles of right and justice which had come to him
in his forest home, with the seal and stamp of divine authority.
These principles were incorporated with his mental being, inter
woven and blended with his daily thoughts, giving steadiness
and direftion to the noble arnbition that sought eagerly to honor
and to serve his country.
True greatness is never unallied with modesty; but modesty
in him was something else, and something vastly better, than that
mawkish, mopish shamefacedness, which affefts a sense of inferi
ority that is not felt, and creeps and cringes for compliments that
are not deserved. When summoned by the citizens of Illinois
31

242 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
to represent them in their legislature, he accepted the office as
one to which he was consciously equal, and the responsibilities
of which he assumed as entirely coincident with his ability and
inclination. He yielded, with graceful dignity, and just confidence
in his capacities of counsel and of aftion, to the appointment of
his fellow-citizens as a member of the convention that nominated
Zachary Taylor as a candidate for the presidential chair. When
those citizens accorded him the higher honor of afting as their
representative in Congress, he went as naturally and gracefully
to his work, as in his boyhood he did his mother's bidding, and
in his early manhood followed his father to the forest. He took
his congressional seat as a workman not needing to be ashamed.
He had no aspirations towards mere oratorical display. For this
he was not fitted, and he knew it; but, in a way not less if not
more effeftive, by afting on important committees, he served the
interests of his constituents, and of the country, and justified to
the full the confidence reposed in him. He did not in mock
modesty shrink subsequently from contesting with an able senator
a seat in the higher branch of our national legislature ; although,
in the well-fought field of friendly emulation, he failed, as any
man, with even more ability than he as a debater, would, in like
circumstances, certainly have done. " The battle," in such cases,
"is not always to the strong;" and even Illinois was not yet
prepared for the position he then boldly assumed, and ever after
resolutely maintained, as the advocate of human rights, and the
earnest friend of the oppressed. But that memorable and pro
longed debate did something towards facilitating the education of
the people in the science of right doing; and it had the effeft,
besides, of teaching them that, if they should ever want a man of
courage, resolution, unswerving honesty, and untiring zeal, to
navigate the Ship of State through narrow straits and over
tempestuous seas, the required helmsman might be found in
Springfield, Illinois.

Rev. J. J. Carruthers, D.D. 243
He was found there. He was intrusted with the mighty
enterprise, and nobly has he done his duty. Even he, indeed,
with all his natural sagacity, and acquired knowledge of measures
and men, hut partially imderstood the magnitude of the task he
undertook; and yet, when this was fully seen, when the whole
danger and the whole duty opened to his view, this noble man
shrunk not, quailed not, nor ever once betrayed the slightest
distrust in the successful issue of the fearful struggle. With a
depleted treasury; with a fleet insignificantly small, and scattered
systematically to the ends of the earth; with the army scarcely
more than nominally such ; with treason stalking at mid-day even
in the capital; with half the States in armed insurreftion;
with disloyal officers, by scores, transferring their allegiance to
the rebel flag; and with volunteer forces wholly inadequate in
numbers to meet the domestic foe, — this man of moral might
stood firm at his post with undiverted eye, with steady hand, and
with a heart ever confident in God and in the right.
It would be doing great injustice, however, to his memory,
did we not record it to his honor, that, from first to last of his
official career, he never momentarily forgot that he was president
of a Republic. The one-man power found in him neither advo
cacy nor illustration. He rose from amongst the people, and
ruled by the people's will, and for the people's benefit. He
skilfully surrounded himself with men of tried and tested patriot
ism; and if any one of them, however personally esteemed, proved
untrue to his prestige or unequal to his post, he was forthwith and
unceremoniously set aside. He had no petty jealousy of obtru
sion, by his chosen and trusted associates, on his prerogatives of
office, but cheerfully shared with each and all of them the honors
as well as the duties of the Government. Though, at first, sup
posed by some to have too little independence of thought and
aftion, and too easily induced to adopt opinions and measures

244 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
not wholly accordant with personal conviftions, experience effec
tually correfted this erroneous estimate of the noble man, and
taught all other men that Abraham Lincoln had his own indi
vidual conscience, and was guided by it. By slow- degrees of
popular enlightenment, and the surest proofs of adminstrative
wisdom, it became apparent to the most obtuse observer, that,
though he was neither the commander nor the creature of his
Cabinet, he had a will of his own, and would yield it only to
conviftion, or to the force of circumstances not to be controlled.
The plastic ease with which he met the exigencies of each
occasion as it rose, the bland and genial courtesy which made
every man approaching him feel perfeftly at home, the winning
smile that came like the sparkling ebullition of a natural fountain
from the deep recesses of a loving heart, were found by manifold
experiments to be combined with a courage that no danger could
intimidate, a constancy which no vicissitude could shake, a confi
dence that rested on no precarious or problematic basis, but on
the solid and immutable principles of truth and justice. From
these principles, no force of adverse reasoning could remove him,
and no fulsome adulation could seduce him. Even the wisest of
his counsellors knew full well from the beginning, and the ene
mies of equity learnt to their hearts' content, that Abraham
Lincoln, in his panoply of honesty, was proof against all attempts
to gain him over even to a seeming recognition of construftive
falsehood, or the praftical adoption of a treacherous expedi
ency. The Constitution of our country, as expounded by the great
est jurist of modern times, and as understood by many of the most
intelligent lovers of their country and mankind, seemed at least to
admit of such construftion as was favorable to a sj'stem of ini
quitous oppression. By guarding jealously the rights of States,
it appeared to place this system, as such, beyond the jurisdiftion

Rev. J. J. Carruthers, D.D. 245
of the Union, and leave to this, as its only legitimate sphere in
that direftion, the power of confining within or extending beyond
aftual State organizations, the great crime and grievous curse of
human bondage. There can be no doubt that Abraham Lincoln
so interpreted his oath of oflfice, as to feel himself bound, in
honor and justice, to abstain from influencing by any aft of
power the legislation or executive aftion of any of the States
when seen to be, or seeming to be, striftly constitutional. Then
conscience and Constitution were at variance; but, as he had
sworn to maintain the latter, conscience demanded a rigid adhe
rence to his oath. He did adhere to it; and it was in perfeft
accordance with the spirit and terms of that oath, that, when a
military necessity arose for his intervention, as Commander-in-
chief, in the way of liberating a portion of the colored people of
the land, he embraced the providential opportunity, and sent forth
that glorious proclamation of emancipation which alone would
have immortalized his name.
A military necessity was the immediate occasion of that meas
ure ; but there are other necessities, higher, holier, and still more
imperative, — necessities to which the demon-power of slavery
must succumb, — necessities involved in the principles of God's
word, admonitions interwoven with the instinfts of humanity, and
demanding with an authority that calls heaven and earth to wit
ness, in these days of civil commotion and convulsion, the
expulsion of the slaveholding demon from the body politic, and
an interdift strong, enduring, and irrevocable, against its return.
That interdift will soon be pronounced by the American people;
and the imperishable record of the amended Constitution be
embodied in the epitaph of our late noble President.
We have said that Abraham Lincoln could not die before his
work was done. Beautifully .symmetrical as were the intelleftual
and moral qualities by which he was distinguished, it is no dis-

246 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
paragement of the man or of the ruler to say that he could not
have met, as another may, the solemn responsibilities of the crisis
at which, as a nation, we have now arrived. That heart of love
was not to be trusted with the work of dealing with the authors
and abettors of gigantic treason. Himself so absolutely free from
guile, he was but ill qualified to look through those disguises by
which wicked men conceal their deep designs, and, when these
designs are thwarted, put on an air of ingenious regret, and
even of injured innocence. That recent visit of our noble Chief
to Richmond, which many lamented, and not a few feared might
lead to a catastrophe like that which has filled the land with
mourning, — that visit, with its immediate and possible results,
may reconcile us to an event in itself most deplorable and sad,
but, in its issues, not incompatible with the honor, safety, and
well-being of the nation. We sympathize most deeply and sin
cerely in their affliftion with the widow and the orphan sons of
our great and good Chief Magistrate. We estimate, at its highest
worth, the homage paid this day, through the whole land, to his
distinguished virtues; but we will not, even at the tomb of
Abraham Lincoln, "despair ofthe Republic." Despair! The
very whisper of despair might re-animate that corpse which has
this day been carried to the tomb, might re-open those meek and
lustrous eyes, dispart those lips of mildness and decision, and draw
forth a withering rebuke of the godless unbelief and craven cow
ardice that could despair of a Republic such as ours. No man,
however great, however good, is essential to the welfare of our
country. He who gave us this great chief can give us, has
already given us, another, who will meet the responsibilities of a
trust so suddenly and solemnly imposed upon him. He cannot
yet divide with his lamented predecessor the love and homage of
his fellow-citizens; but he is sure .to gain them, if the praftical
pledges of his past life shall be redeei-ned, and if the incipient

Rev. J. J. Carruthers, D.D. 247
promise of his administration shall be verified by its progressive
development and prospeftive issues. Let us not, then, dishonor the
memory of him whom we so sincerely mourn, by questioning
the future stability of our institutions ; the progress of civilization
through the entire undivided land ; the moral greatness of a nation
emerging, in athletic vigor, from a furnace that would have con
sumed any other; the glorious moral destiny of a people set for
the defence and the diffusion, through the world, of rational
liberty, secured by the unfailing guarantees of high intelligence,
mutual forbearance, and unaffefted piety. We bid a long
farewell to the man whom we this day honor; we follow, in
imagination, his remains with the retinue of domestic and public
mourners to its temporary depository, and thence again to the
place of final sepulture; but we will not forget, amidst our per
sonal sorrow and sympathetic grief, that our nation holds its life
by a higher tenure than that of frail mortality, and that, whatever
rulers rise or fall, " In God we trust."
Maine State Press, Portland, April 27, 1865.

EULOGY OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN:
DELIVERED AT JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA, APRIL I9, 1865 ;
BY SURGEON R, H, GILBERT, U,S, VOLS,,
SUPERINTENDENT AND MEDICAL DIRECTOR UNITED-STATES ARMY GENERAL HOSPITALS,

HOW solemn and how eloquent is this occasion! The purest
man, the noblest patriot, the foremost man of the nation,
Abraham Lincoln, is dead!
He in whom were centred the hopes of thirty millions of
people has been stricken down, and is no more. The nation
mourns his loss ! From the rocks of the Atlantic to the sands of
the Pacific, from the great lakes to the gulf, on every sea
wherever the flag floats, in every land wherever the spirit of
liberty breathes, grief weighs down the heart, and sorrow fills the
air. How imperfeftly can words express a grief so deep, a sor
row so profound!
Hearts that beat with joyous pride a few days since, for the
viftories which our arms have achieved, now beat heavily with
grief Eyes that beamed with joy at the prospeft of returning
peace are now dimmed with tear^.
A good and a great man, ripe in wisdom, in the meridian of his
glory, when he was contemplating how he could best be mag
nanimous to those who for four years have been — until compelled
by our viftories to lay them down — in arms against liberty and

Surgeon R. H. Gilbert. 249
against union; how he could be magnanimous, and yet be true
to the great trust confided to him by the people, — true to the best
interests ofthe nation, — has been summoned, without a moment's
warning, to appear before his God, the Ruler ofthe nations!
How few there are of his servants who were better prepared
to receive that summons, which it pleased God in his unfathom
able wisdom to send by the hands of an assassin!
In the contemplation of this awful and tragic event, it seems as
if we were rolled back two thousand years to the barbarous ages;
as if the Star of Bethlehem, the golden fruits of the gospel, the
civilization and progress of twenty centuries, have been annihi
lated. We seem no longer Americans ; but to stand again in the
forum of Rome, with dead Csesar at our feet.
While our hearts are saddened with this great sorrow; while
every feeling of kindness and charity has been outraged by this
most infamous of wicked deeds, and blackest of human crimes, —
we have need of all our virtues and calm self-possession to keep
the feelings of revenge against the perpetrators and sympathizers
of this horrid tragedy from becoming uppermost in our hearts.
We have need of all our faith and religion to see beyond the
black evil, which, like a dark cloud, shrouds the present, and read
aright the lessons which God intends it shall teach us.
We have, as a nation, reason, in the midst of our mourning, to
be devoutly thankful that God in his goodness has withheld the
assassin's hand so long. As we stand now we can only see
hydra-headed treason rearing his head in the capital. We can
only see in this damnable deed, the Devil's black hand. But wait
a little, we shall see God's back of it.
Marching along with the armies ofthe Union, with your pros
peft and view shut out by the dust of the march, you have found
it difficult, if not impossible, to discern the point of your depar
ture, or to correftl}^ discover your future destination.
32

250 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
It is only when you have gained the height of some command
ing eminence that you can review the region over which you
have journeyed, and see the destination of the long lines of your
fellow-soldiers, which were wending their way along the valleys
and through the mountain passes; and so now, walking wearily
and sorrowfully in the shadow of the great mountain of grief
which rises before us, with our eyes dimmed with tears for the
nation's loss, we cannot see what lies beyond. When, through
toil and suffering, we shall have climbed to the summit of the
mountain, with wondering eyes, we shall then see stretched out
before us the valleys of peace; and, far beyond, in the blue sky,
above the purple hills, the cloud which seems so dark to us now,
turning to silver beneath the rays of God's transcendent love.
I have said that in our great sorrow we have, as a nation, rea
son to be devoutly thankful to God, that in his goodness he has
been pleased to -withhold the assassin's hand until so much of the
great work of annihilating this fiendish rebellion has been accom
plished. It is too late now for treason's bullet or the assassin's
dagger to stop the wheels of liberty's engine, to arrest the nation
in its onward march towards the accomplishment of its glorious
destiny. Nay: the assassin's dagger will rather hasten it onward
in the accomplishment of its purpose. It may be the age of
bullets, but it is also the age of ideas. It will open the eyes
of those who have been crying " Peace, peace ! when there is no
peace," to the realization that we are fighting to save the life of
the nation against a barbarism — the child of slavery — which is
not less, but more to be dreaded that it finds its home in educated
and cultivated minds. It will strengthen the knees that have
knocked together or kneeled down at the mention of slavery. It
will give vigor to hands and arms that have hung paratyzed in its
presence, and bid them lay hold of the roots of the stump of
the tree of slavery, that has fallen beneath the giant blows of the ,

• Surgeon R. H. Gilbert. 251
great man whose loss we deplore, and tear them for ever from
American soil.
When in the history of nations has one so illustrious been
stricken down from so exalted a position ? When has so true and
honest a patriot — one so enshrined in the hearts of the people —
been torn from a nation's heart by a murderous hand ? Looking
back through the ages, to revolutions that have swept over the
earth, and < changed the destinies of the world; searching the his
tories of empires that have risen to power and greatness, and
crumbled to dust, — we shall find none of all the great names of
those whose lives have been handed down for the admiration
of posterity, stamped more indelibly upon the age in which they
lived, or that will live longer in the grateful remembrance of
future generations.
His colossal proportions will best be seen in after times by the
light of history. It is not the dwellers upon the mountain sides
that fully realize their magnitude; but to those -who are farther
removed from them, they appear in all their sublimity and gran
deur. But we, to-day, remembering all his greatness in the past;
his voice of -wisdom, from which all men their omens drew; his
firm will, true to the times in which he lived; his great goodness
of heart, his broad humanity, his noble honesty, and integrity of
purpose, — can weave no wreath of words to crown his brow, or
express the universal woe.
America's leader has fallen! The wail of mourning of a
mighty nation fills the land. It comes to us from the prairies that
stretch in airy undulations far away to the North-west, from the
pioneer's rude hut on the frontier, from the crowded mart of
every city, from Maine way round to the gulf, from the golden
gates of California to where Oregon rolls its waters to the sea,
from every ship that unfurls its white sails and starry flag to the
breeze. It rises in solemn, sorrowing anthem from the hearts

25 2 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
of four millions of freedmen, whose chains have fallen by his
hand, and from the oppressed of every clime. Everywhere the
friends of liberty weep.
" Lead out the pageant, sad and slow.
As fits an universal woe.
Let the long, long procession go.
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow.
And let the mournful martial music blow, —
The great American lies low.
Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great,
But as he saves or serves the State.
Such was he : his work is done ;
But, while the races of mankind endure, '
Let his great example stand
Colossal, seen of every land.
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure.
Till in all lands, and through all human story,
The path to duty be the path to glory,"
Daily Union Press, Louisville, Ky., April 2i, 1865,

SPEECH OF MAJOR-GENERAL HURLBUT:
AT NE-W ORLEANS, LA,, APRIL 21, 1865,

FELLOW-CITIZENS, — With all these outward demonstra
tions surrounding me; with those flags — the flags of our
common country — at half-mast; the habiliments of woe, and dra
peries that surround the balconies and porches of our fair city;
the still, steady countenances of this vast assemblage, with the
burden that every man feels at his heart, — we are assembled here
this day to express our sorrow for the greatest calamity that has
ever befallen human progress since the world was. It is well
that here, in this city of New Orleans, from the banks of this
magnificent river, the child of the Union, the creature of that vast
commerce that sweeps back to the Rocky Mountains on the one
side, and the Alleghanies on the other, — it is well that you, citizens
of this city and this Statej the spoiled and petted child of this
Union, should recognize here to-day the obligation and duties
that fall upon you as citizens of this great Republic, whose head
and front has been stricken down by the hand of the assassin. It
is well, too, — as the remarks that have fallen from my friend who
led us in prayer on this solemn occasion have indicated, — it is
well for us all to peer deeply down into our hearts; for, since
the day when unholy men crucified the very Lord of grace, no
such crime has been perpetrated, or known in the pages of his
tory, as this which has brought us here to-day. The parallel

254 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
holds good, be it spoken with due reverence; for the truest and
best, most thorough and most powerful, friend to the madmen
who, in their frenzy and fanaticism, have laid him low, was Abra
ham Lincoln, late President of these United States.
Let me then, here, to-day, in the first place, recognize the
deep detestation and horror which should fill every heart, wher
ever it is, under whatever sun, at the atrocity and enormity of the
horror which has darkened this countr}^ with grief. We meet
here for the purpose of paying some fit and feeble tribute to the
memory of the great man who has led our country through these
last four years of agony and sorrow. We meet here as citizens
of a common Union, as children of the same soil, by birth or by
voluntary adoption. And it may be there are those here who
come under neither of these descriptions, but are the denizens of
these United States, remaining under their national flag, while
quietly dwelling under the broad proteftion of our banner; and
to all of these classes of men this day is momentous.
I do not propose to speak at length here, and on this occasion,
of the life and public services of Abraham Lincoln. I dare not
trust myself with the task. I but little thought, years ago, before
he was elevated to the presidency of the United States, — be
fore war had spread her blood-stained wing over our country, —
when I used to meet him in the ordinary course of civil life in my
own adopted State, — I little thought, that, after four years of ser
vice under our flag in suppressing a rebellion, I should stand
in this central park of New Orleans, in the service of my country,
to speak words of eulogy upon the death of him, the President of
these United States. But of the past we are secure. Glory,
honor, the praise of all good men, have crowned his eventful
career; and when in the providence of Almighty God, to whose
inscrutable decrees we must all bow, — just as the ruby dawn of
peace was breaking upon our distrafted country; just as the

Major-General Hur Ibut. 255
arms of the Confederacy, fairly beaten, were being laid down;
just when that gentle heart, that true, 'affeftionate, honest man,
seemed most required to throw the impulse and pressure of his
power upon the question of reconstruftion, — just then it pleased
God that a cowardly and brutal murderer should strike down this
great man by a blow, dastard-like, from behind, and in the very
presence of his wife.
These things make it my duty, fellow-citizens, to say frankly
and broadly to you here to-day, that however the investigation
of this matter may turn out, it is written in the destinies of all
men, that no man can commence upon a career of crime, and
know at what enormity he will stop; and this is, whether the
result of a wide-spread conspiracy or not, the natural and inevi
table result of the great crime attempted four years ago against
the nation. From being traitors, it is the easiest gradation down
wards to be murderers and assassins. And let me say to you
another thing: I trust in God, that the investigations that are
now going on may not fix the guilt of this enormous offence upon
an)^ persons who may be considered as representatives of the
Southern people; for, if that thing does come, no power but the
Almighty can stay the just vengeance of an outraged nation. I
hope, as a man anxious to see bloodshed, ruin, and devastation
cease, I hope that this great crime may be proven to have been
the offshoot of some individual baseness, — some single criminal.
Yes, I hope it.
Fellow-citizens, — The record of President Lincoln is before
the nation and the world. I afl!irm, that in the whole history of
the world, not excluding him who, by common consent, is known
as the Father of his Country, was there ever presented so spot
less, so pure, so generous, so simple, so truthful, so energetic a
charafter. Politics have ceased: there are no politics in these
United States; there are no parties in these United States.

256 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
Elefted originally as the representative of a party, this great man
became the representative of every loyal heart in the nation! No
one, but some old hack, whose back is like that of an old horse
in a bark-mill, adheres to politics now. There is nothing now
but a nation; nothing that divides us but the national quarrel.
How widely and how entirely did he spread his inviting arms to
call in all these wanderers ! What has he not done for this place
and this people ? It is to him that you owe your existence as a
State and a city; and thus it is that this occasion is so moment
ous. Whatever you have of civil order, of civil law, is the free gift
of Abraham Lincoln, the tendernesses and charities of whom
were as inevitable to his nature as light to the sun. They came
from him as water boils from a spring; the deep fountains of his
nature yielded uncounted supplies of all kindness and benevo
lence: such a man, so clothed in graceful form; such a man, so
surrounded by all pleasant influences; such a man, in the very
pride and dignity of his great office, — has fallen by the hand ofa
cut-throat and a bravo; and the American nation, which has held
its head high for its civilization and its courage, is disgraced by
the knowledge that the crimes of all the old worn-out barbarism
of Europe are to be repeated and renewed among us.
We, the officers of the army, and the soldiers here, revered
him as our comrade. A man wholly unused to military affairs,
he has yet taken so deep an interest that probably no man in the
Cabinet at Washington could more closely follow, and more thor
oughly understand, the movements and combinations of our great
leaders. A man who never had mingled much in the craft of
statesmanship, he yet, having assumed those duties, recognized at
once that the true policy for a bold and brave people was to fol
low the righteous instinfts of a just heart and an enlightened in
telleft. He has educated this people up to the position they now

Major- General Hur Ibut. 257

hold; and, at last, crowned with honor, having reached the very
topmost round of the ladder of human ambition, he has stepped
from that to heaven, there to receive that which will be his re
ward, — the plaudits of "Well done, good and faithful servant;
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
Let me remind you of one thing more, and I am done. The
President may die; the nation* lives ! Individuals perish; the su-
perstrufture of our Government stands ! Stands, and will stand ;
and the gates of Death and Hell shall not prevail against it.
We are now rebuilding the shattered portions of that glorious
fabric, and it stands based upon the throbbing, pulsating joy of
the brave hearts of millions upon millions of freemen; and while
God's mercy continues, and while God's law continues, this
American Republic, founded on universal right and universal
freedom, will challenge the admiration, the applause, and if need
be the fear, of the world.
Thus, then, we are led to the faft that our duties are still as
incumbent upon us as ever. The great gap that has been made
in the ostensible leaders of Government will be filled. The glo
rious memory ofthe President will remain to us; but the solemn,
assured, onward, determined, inevitable march of this great peo
ple to the consummation of her destiny shall not and will not be
stopped. While, then, we mourn the lost man, brother, and ruler,
we know that the blow that struck him cannot strike the vitals of
the nation. Here we are, here we are ready to be, each man in
his place, — officers,, soldiers, citizens, workmen, — all, every
where, of all complexions and castes, working for the one
straightforward object, — the perpetuation of human freedom, the
progress of human destiny, through God's great agent, the Amer
ican Union.
Ne-w- Orleans Times, April 2-^,, 1865.

ADDRESS BY ALFRED T. JONES, ESQ^*

FRIENDS, — The President of the United States has recom
mended this day to be set apart throughout the land as one
of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, commemorative of the mourn
ful death of our late Chief Magistrate, Abraham Lincoln, on the
fifteenth day of April last; and at this moment its millions of
people are assembled around the altar of their God, with sad
dened spirits and chastened hearts, uniting in solemn supplication
and prayer, — a mournful, a noble, and imposing speftacle.
Although on this holy festival of Pentecost the scattered fol
lowers of Israel's faith are commanded by their holy law to
repair to the house of prayer to rejoice before the Lord, and
to lay upon his altar the offerings of grateful hearts for number
less blessings enjoyed; although they are not permitted to make
it a day of fasting or public mourning, — yet it cannot be improper
or inappropriate to recall and refleft upon the great event which
sits so heavily upon the nation, thereby evincing to the world that
our hearts beat in unison with our fellow-citizens of other denom
inations; that, although a peculiar people in many respefts, we
feel ourselves a component part of this great community of States,
exulting in their triumphs, deploring their defeats, rejoicing in
their joys, and partaking of their sorrows.

* Mr, Jones is of the Jewish persuasion, and has always been an aiSive political opponent
of Mr, Lincoln.

Alfred T. Jones, Esq. 259

By commenting on the death of Mr. Lincoln, the people are
called upon this day to yield the homage due to his exalted sta
tion and to his humble virtues; to confess the common debt due
to him by mankind, as well as by ourselves; and to pronounce to
millions yet unborn that eulogium which will re-echo through all
time to come.
But can one who has warmly and earnestly opposed the policy
and measures of Abraham Lincoln speak kindly of him, or eulo
gize his memory? I answer, yes: when such opposition has been
promptly solely by patriotic considerations, then will the man rise
superior to the partisan. It is one of the beautiful traits in our
national charafter, that, after the rancor of partisan contests has
passed away, men readily and frankly recognize the ennobling
qualities of political opponents.
Like all who have attained prominent stations, and assumed
the responsibility of daring enterprises and independent measures,
it was Mr. Lincoln's lot to see many of his afts condemned, and
himself reviled, by a portion of his fellow-citizens. The fire of
party resentment raged around him with unprecedented violence,
yet he remained calm and unmoved amid the uncontrolled fury of
the flames, steadily adhering to, and pursuing, the measures he
deemed best adapted to the true interests of the nation. The
grand objeft of his administration, and which has encountered
the fiercest opposition, has been achieved. Human bondage has
been virtually banished, from the land. The inexorable will of
the majority, and the exigences of the times, had decreed it; and
now that the work has been accomplished, all good citizens
should gracefully submit. It is not the part of sensible men to
reproach and cavil at the past, but to aid in reconstrufting and
strengthening, not alone the national Union, but also that unity
of feeling among our countrymen which has been weakened, but
not destroyed.

26o Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
Prior to Mr. Lincoln's death, a change had come over the
feelings of his opponents. It seemed as if He whose all-seeing
eye pervades all space, penetrates the innermost recesses of man's
heart, and views his aftions before they are conceived, foreseeing
the awful tragedy about to be enafted, was in reality prepar
ing the hearts of the people to love and venerate the one so soon
to meet a martyr's doom. Many weeks before that fatal day, truly
patriotic men of all shades of opinion, in all parts ofthe land, had
begun to regard Mr. Lincoln with confidence and esteem.
So kind and conciliatory an attitude had he assumed towards
our enemies; so determined and honest a purpose to preserve the
integrity of the nation was daily exhibited; so firm and unwaver
ing a resistance to the radical measures and aims of political
adherents was indisputably manifested, — that the very men who
had resisted his eleftion during the intense excitements of two
political campaigns were constrained, first, to place implicit faith
in his patriotism, and integrity of purpose ; and, next, to yield a
(perhaps unwilling) tribute to his sound judgment and ability.
His noble qualities inspired their confidence, and commanded
their respeft.
Nowhere was grief more unaffefted and sincere than in the
hearts of his political opponents. No more unselfish and pro
found mourners witnessed the sad funeral rites, than those who
had honestly opposed his measures; and, indeed, the entire nation,
as with a single heart bursting with one universal sense of over
whelming grief, with one wide-spread voice of sorrow, gave vent
to a united wail of horror and lament.
Mr. Lincoln's public career is well known, and has been of
late continually referred to. I need not speak of it. With but
limited education, through indomitable perseverance and self-
reliance, he rose gradually on the ladder of life, from the humblest
round to the topmost pinnacle. Strong and clear in intelleft, he

Alfred T. Jones, Esq. 261
grasped at the questions of the day with surprising vigor. No
fatigue was too great for his iron frame; no labor too much for
his indomitable will. Though he may not have possessed the
dazzling talents of some of his predecessors, or the courtly man
ners and stately dignity of others, yet he was one of " God's
noblest works."
What he said, he meant, and on that all could rely. Plain and
unassuming in his manner, he was kind, courteous, and affable to
all, and full of generous impulses. It was this latter trait in his
charafter of which his enemies took advantage, and which his
friends most feared.
No one so humble but that he gave him audience ; accessible
to all, he seemed indeed to feel that he was in the stead of father
to his people. If he had no higher claims upon us, certainly as
Israelites we should entertain a high regard for his memory.
While many occupying high positions have either ignored our
existence, or turned a deaf ear to our claims for proteftion or
redress, his just, kind, and generous nature was never appealed to
by us in vain. On every occasion (and he has been several times
appealed to) he promptly recognized our claims as a religious
body to national proteftion, and acceded unhesitatingly to all our
just demands. So strong and noble a contrast to others did he
exhibit in this respeft, that we should be guilty of gross ingrati
tude not to acknowledge it.
On his accession to power, he found the country involved in a
formidable and unjustifiable rebellion. Of the cause or conduft
of the war, it is not my purpose to speak. There have been wide
differences of opinion agitating the public mind, inseparable from
contests of that nature, where those of kindred birth have been
arrayed against each other. Bitter words have been uttered and
written. While many are disposed to censure him for errors com
mitted, for harsh measures pursued, or extraordinary proceedings

262 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
instituted, they should refleft on the trying diflSculties continually
encountered, the existence of unknown and deadly foes in the
very heart of the capital; untried men necessarily placed in
responsible commands, and, proving incompetent, replaced by
others; continued pressure by radical extremists among his poli
tical adherents, and other innumerable perplexities.
As events progressed, however, he became better appreciated,
because better understood. Gigantic as was his task, he shrank
not from it; but, with a firm self-reliance, with determination to
pursue the course he deemed a correft and righteous one, " with
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right," he
overcame difficulties apparently insurmountable, and, with un
wavering confidence in the justice of his cause, pursued it
unfalteringly to its final triumphant issue.
Most great men owe their great renown to opportunity, and
times of greatest calamity often serve to develop the greatest
minds. It was opportunity which framed and created Abraham
Lincoln. Prior to the four eventful years of his presidential term
he was comparatively unknown; but, in that short epoch of his
existence, he earned an imperishable fame. Truly do " we live
in deeds," not years," for centuries of life could not more indelibly
have written his name among the illustrious ones of history.
What tongue can explain the mysterious fate which reigns on
earth; or why the great Ruler of all, in his inscrutable providence
and infinite wisdom, has permitted the accomplishment of the
appalling crime which our country deplores ? " He doeth all
things well." No mortal eye can penetrate the tortuous paths of
joy and woe through which man's feet must wander, nor fathom
the incomprehensible decrees of heaven; so, while we see in our
affliftion nought but dire calamity, we know not what great
purpose it is intended to subserve, and which the future -may
develop.

Alfred T. Jones, Esq. 262,
Thus far, it has chastened our joy in the hour of triumph. It
has caused all loyal men to cease political strife, and devote them
selves to strengthening the hands of Government, and to yielding
a firm and united support to his successor; and certainly the time
and manner of his death has immortalized the memory of Mr.
Lincoln, and on the pages of our history he stands recorded as a
patriot and a martyr. Had he died but a few months earlier, after
a brief space of mourning the memory of his loss would have
passed away to be simply placed on record among the annals of
the times.
But the crowning aft of his life had been completed; a war
unprecedented in magnitude and withering desolation had been
brought to a successful issue : the entire nation stood in admiring
gaze at the noble magnanimity of his course towards a defeated
and unscrupulous foe, when, on that ever memorable night, the
assassin's bullet sped with unerring aim upon its fatal mission.
The fourteenth day of April ! Terrible day in the annals of
our country. How pregnant with important events to the Ameri
can people is that memorable month! On April 19, 1775, on the
fields of Lexington and Concord, the first blood was shed in the
War of Independence. On the nineteenth day of April, 1783,
just eight years afterwards, peace was proclaimed in the
American army. On the 14th of April, 1861, Fort Sumter was
surrendered to the rebel forces ; and five days afterwards the Mas
sachusetts soldiers were inhumanly murdered in the streets of
Baltimore. How brightly opened the early days of that eventful month in
1865. Four years of bloody warfare, with its attendant vicissi
tudes and horrors, had passed, when came the joyful tidings of
the evacuation of Petersburg; then quickly followed the flight
of our enemies from Richmond; next, the unconditional surren
der of the rebel army and its greatest general.

264 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
What a universal jubilee prevailed throughout the loyal
States! Joy sat enthroned on every countenance; each glance
shone with expeftation bright; friend greeted friend with heart
felt warmth ; political opponents, with united hands, joined in the
universal exultation; women wept for joy, and children shouted
in exuberant delight. Where'er the eye could reach, the beloved
banner of the free floated gaily in the breeze; the bells chimed
forth their merry peals, and the blaze of joyous lights, enlivening
night's darkened shades, attested a grateful people's joy. Viftory,
bloodless and complete, bright harbinger of sweet and gentle
Peace, announced her welcome coming.
Thus was it when the sun sank to rest on the eve of the four
teenth day of April; but on the advent ofthe following morn how
changed the scene! What rumors, gathering sound, fall on the
ear! O'er the eleftric wire, from shore to shore, sped the dread
tidings, — our ruler slain! Hushed were the sounds of revelry and
mirth; mute was each voice, and tearful every eye; mournfully
waved the gay flags in the bright light of day, decked in the
sombre emblems of grief; stilled were the pealing chimes, while
in their stead the solemn requiem knell fell heavily on the heart.
Fell messenger of death! could no presaging sign, no warn
ing voice, announce thy coming? Swift and unforeseen, like the
lightning's flash, thou camest when least expefted, and threw thy
lengthened shade over years to come. Doubtless you all can
recolleft your own sensation at hearing the sad intelligence; but
never, while memory retains her seat, can I forgot my own.
Little beings that I love ran into my room, their eyes beaming
with consternation and concern, exclaiming, " Mr. Lincoln has
been killed ! " I grasped the paper that they bore, glanced at the
fatal words, and, opponent as I was, the unbidden tear would
start. I wept to think of the kind-hearted ruler so inhumanly
murdered ; wept, that beneath the sacred banner of our country

Alfred T. Jones, Esq. 265
wretches so vile as these assassins had been born and nurtured;
wept when I reflefted on the unparalleled crime, and the inefface
able stain inflifted on our nation's fair escutcheon.
And, as the day sped on, the multitudes, with awe-struck hearts,
thronged the busy streets with saddened mien, as if within each
home the destroying angel had set his stamp of woe. Why was
his loss thus mourned? Other precious lives have fallen viftims
to insatiate war: he was but one of the people, temporarily
intrusted with power and authority. True. Many a bright exist
ence has been quenched in the glow and fulness of its prime.
We have lost heroes upon the field of battle ; we have mourned
w^hen soaring genius died in mid career: but, in the humble spirit
that had fled, the hopes of millions were centred.
The destinies of the nation were in his keeping: powers
never before conferred had been invested in him; and, at the
moment of his death, he held within his grasp the mightiest desti
nies man ever controlled. Upon the utterance of his thoughts
and will the Republic's future rested. On him was riveted the
nation's gaze as on a radiant and worshipped shrine, watching
with fearful anxiety the close of the great work of pacification so
auspiciously commenced.
He was the typical Father of the Republic, the great head of
the nation; and for him, as such, we mourned.
No event of this nature that ever occurred on earth has
created such intense and wide-spread regret. While our own
great nation mourned its illustrious Chief, and ere his remains had
reached the sepulchre, all Europe was eleftrified with the sad
intelligence. Wonderful and unaffefted were the evidences of
sympathy and grief wherever Civilization has her home. The
masses, the nobles, the monarchs of the world, paid homage to
the memory of that honest, humble man, Americans may well
be gratified, and feel an honest pride in this great tribute to his
34

266 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
sterling worth and unpretending virtues, as well as to the impor
tant position our Republic holds among the powers of the earth.
No funeral pageant that the world has ever witnessed ap
proached in grandeur that which attended the coflSned body ofthe
illustrious dead. Never were such heartfelt honors paid to any
potentate. Slowly and sadly was he borne through the heart of
this great nation to his final resting-place in the mighty West,
amid the silent, tearful homage of millions of his fellow-citizens.
Marbled monuments, with grateful inscriptions, may arise;
statues of bronze may attest the love of his people to future ages :
but the memory of his afts, the triumph of his policy, and his cruel
death, will raise a monument within the hearts of the present
generation that will endure while life or memory shall last.
Springing from the people, and raised by his exertions from
the humblest station to the proudest rank on earth, he was a
noble representative of true American charafter. To his career
every American youth should point with admiration. It is our
duty to extol the virtues of our great men, and strive to emulate
their good deeds.
The clamors of war have ceased: that fell destroying power,
to which the lives of thousands have been sacrificed, which has
raged over many a verdant plain, and desolated many a happy
hearth, has been at length allayed.
And now, hail, blessed Peace! Once more unclouded will she
shine upon us, as bright and cheering in her rays as the fair orb
of day: man will no longer seek to destroy his brother man; nor
shall the tender eye of Pity shrink from Viftory's crimsoned ban
ners. No longer shall the streets of beleagured cities echo with
the cries of pursuers and pursued, nor the azure vault of heaven
be illuminated with the glare of peaceful homes fired by the relent
less torch. No longer shall rich harvests. Heaven's noble bounty
to ungrateful man, be trampled and destroyed by invading hosts.

Alfred T. Jones, Esq. 267
while gaunt famine and pale distress follow their desolating steps.
Hail, blessed Peace ! Again will the busy hum of industry be
heard over our wide domain; again will the plough ofthe husband
man glide tranquilly over fields now blasted with the fires of war,
while a bright and glorious future dawns upon us.
Doubtless within the breast of our martyred President arose
many a bright anticipation of tranquil and happy times approach
ing. Guided in all his afts "with malice toward none, with
charity to all," no undue exultation over vanquished foes pervaded
his kind and noble heart; but it glowed with a quiet joy and
Heaven-direfted gratitude that his work had nearly ended, and
that, beneath his guidance, quiet and happiness was once more
about to bless his country.
In my address to you, I have confined myself solely to eulo
gizing the memory of Mr. Lincoln. The moral and religious
instruftion to be gleaned from the various circumstances attend
ing his cruel death have been eloquently dwelt upon on former
occasions by our respefted minister, far more ably, and by fitter
lips than mine.
According to the will of the everlasting King, our President
has been taken from this earth. May the great God of Israel
have mercy on his soul ! may he pardon his iniquities, and keep
his good deeds ever in his sight! In the language of our beauti
ful ritual, " May his soul enter the resting-place of the patriarchs !
may our God guide him to the cherubim; and may he be decreed
the happiness of paradise! May the repose established in the
celestial abode, a forgiveness of trespasses, favor from Him that
throneth on high, and a goodly portion in the life to come, be
the resting-place and the reward " of Abraham Lincoln !
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2, 1865,

ORATION BY REV. HORATIO STEBBINS:
DELIVERED AT SAN FRANCISCO, CAL,, APRIL I9, 1865,

AFFLICTED PEOPLE I — In pathetic imagination we have
taken up our march, following the dead corpse of our great
leader, till at length we are come beneath this protefting canopy,
reared like a sky above the arts and industries of a great people.
Little did we think, when from the vigor of abundant life we
extemporized this edifice, and in very play of childhood lifted
this dome toward the sky, that it was to give us such shelter,
and receive such consecration. Sweeter than the odor of all
pleasant fruits, more precious than the wine of the vintage,
more beautiful than the work of the cunning artificer, this tender
and reverent respeft, this aroma of a people's tears. Oh temple
of peace, in a land of war! open wide thy gates, that the
men of the city may weep at thine altars for the sorrow of
the land!
Our great leader still leads us well; for we keep time, in our
march, with the throbs of that precious heart which, though it has
ceased to beat in the breast which bore it, still sways the tides
within us as the sea sways beneath the stars. It is the quality of
all lofty virtue, and distinguished excellence of public administra
tion, to be embodied in principles, sentiments, and conviftions,
which appeal to all men on the broad ground of reason and truth.

Rev. Horatio Stebbins. 269
All great and good rulers are the representatives of ideas and
principles which lie very near the common heart. The wise
and beneficent ruler of a State enters into that humanit}^ over
whose life he is called to preside. Men call him theirs by kin
dred tie of universal justice. They say they love him because by
happy instinft. They know that the fountains of his soul are in
the mountain summits of the same truth with theirs. His life is
in some sense the life of mankind, — the personification of the
best hopes and the best beliefs of men.
When such an one is brought from great elevation, meekly
borne for the good of men, to join the great equality of death, he
seems greater to our minds in that equality than in his exaltation ;
for the powers that made him dear to us then are set free in us,
and through our tears we see. the setting glories of our love.
Among all imposing scenes and events of which the earth is the
theatre, the most sublime is a nation in tears, — in tears for a man
who represented its principles, and to' whom it had confided its
noblest trusts. It testifies that there is such a thing as public
faith; that there is such a thing as the public good; that there are
principles of justice, honor, and truth, which sway all hearts, which
are worth living for, and which are worth dying for. It testifies
that while good men die, wept and honored, principles have an
unending life, pervading humanity, and passing from man to man,
from generation to generation, and from age to age; and, while
we join to-day the vast procession of a nation's sorrow, we find
comfort and consolation in the thought that we stand also in that
other procession, whose ever-onward motion is the progress of
mankind. We have been obliged to reconcile our minds as best we
could to the relentless faft that the President is dead, and that he
died by the hand of an assassin. At first, the shock was too great
to bear. The mind could not admit the faft, with all its attendant

270 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
appalling circumstances, as a part of its intelligence ; but we are
so constituted, that whatever is we must confess, and no success
ful defence can be made against the patient persuasions of reason.
The death of the President, had it come by divine appointment
unmixed with human instrumentality; had he died in his own
house, upon his own bed, surrounded by all the charities which
bless the last moments of earthly existence, — it could have been
received and borne with a certain patience, and equanimity of
mortal anguish. We could have said, " Death has all privilege,
and the freedom of the earthly realm."
But when the shock of this dark wickedness is over, and the
mind assumes its serenity once more ; looks out upon the world of
thought and life; thinks, compares, reasons, and judges, — the first
intelligent impression it receives from refleftion is a sudden sur
prise at its own former shock and wonder. Why should the
assassination of the President fill us with astonishment and dis
may? If I am told that it is the appalling crime at which the
blood congeals, I reply, that it is of the same nature with that
power against which we contend, every throb of whose life is a
crime against mankind. The assassin is the finest, the intensest
expression of organized barbaric passions. Defeated in princi
ples, and compelled to retreat before the smallest ray of truth, he
lets loose his insane rage upon persons. Never did assassin's
blow strike so noble a head; yet never did assassin's blow fall
so helpless. What crime has not the rebel power committed?
It would seem, from the shock to our sensibilities, that we were
not aroused to the enormity of that wickedness until we had
seen it displayed in all its infernal intensity of malignant passions.
The plot to murder the President — whether it be intrigue and
conspiracy of individuals, or whether it be the design ofthe rebel
powers — is of the same quality as the rebellion itself, and has
its roots there. The assassin carried the same fire that first flashed

Rev. Horatio Stebbins. 271
the lurid glare of war upon the sky at Sumter, and the same
perfidy in his breast, with Davis and Floyd and Breckinridge.
The import and meaning of the assassination are not any qualifi
cation of the death of the President, — not any new element of
embarrassment in the funftions of government; but it is the strong
flash of light which it throws into the sunless caverns of perfidy
and wrong in the powers against which we contend. Did we
need such an admonition? I will not forestall Providence by
saying that we did not. Of one thing I am sure: the philosophic
historian will record with pungent moral satire the insensibility
of the American people to the deep wrongs of human slavery.
He will record too, that, after years of devastating war, there were
still some of moral dulness so great, and political sagacity so
short-sighted, that it required the blood of the President, drawn
by the hand of a hired assassin, hired by the power with which
they would strike hands, to rouse them to the awful realities of .
outraged laws, and to feel the presence of events such as inaugu
rate new eras.
Men are mightier in their death than in their life when they
die exponents of principles that live for ever. If it is true that
nations have no immortality, it is for the same reason that the
human body has none. Its forms are too gross to sustain that
exalted intelleftual and moral life. But they are the theatre for
the display of all that is human; and nothing human ever dies.
They are a part of an almighty and benignant purpose for the
education of man ; and whatever mingles in that stream is perpet
ual. Our intelligence refers this universe to the government of a
Power all-mighty, all- wise, and all-good. Our religious faith
rests in that, by moral instinfts as natural as those which lead a
child to cling to its mother; and we are not permitted to believe
that any wild and random power of evil is let loose upon the
earth. The assassin is the most malignant and hideous form of

272 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
human passions; and, as he selefts his viftim by the caprice
of bad powers, it seems that his success is the triumph of unmiti
gated evil. But that dagger may point in the dark to principles
that men have imperfeftly comprehended, and bring out clearer
still the latent meaning of ideas and events, as night reveals the
upper deep of stars and space.
The President, for himself, indeed, is not unfortunate in his
death; though we cannot in imagination look on that dear heart,
drooping and heavy under the blow of the assassin, without
a shock to our sensibilities. If we contemplate him in that event
which comes alike to all, we must indeed feel that his was a
singular felicity, by which he was enabled to win a place as
preserver of States, and benefaftor of mankind, not less than to
make himself secure in the hearts of his countrymen. We should
indeed have wished that he might have lived to see the Republic
once more united and happy; and at . length, returning as an
American citizen to the place from whence the people called
him, he might have passed the mellow autumn days in the ripen
ing glory of the people's love. But since, in the inscrutable
providence of God, he was to be taken from our sight on swift
chariot of fire and blood, let us lift up our minds to him as he
sits among the immortals, viftorious over the pains of death, and
powers of hell; and from that throne, exceeding high and lifted
up, let him still sway the empire of our loyal hearts.
Concerning our country, let us be as strong men, who beneath
their tears can hide the thunders of an unconquered will, and the
consecrated powers of justice and truth. We have new cause of
gratitude in the principles of our Government, that they are not an
arbitrary enaftment, but live in the people's love. Let us gird
on our armor, and, following the lead of our immortal President,
" if God wills that the war continue until all the wealth piled by
the bondsmen in two hundred and fifty j^ears of unrequited toil

Rev. Horatio Stebbins,

273

shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago," — so let us say, that " the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Steamer Bulletin, San Francisco, Cal., April 22, 1865.

35

SPEECH OF REV. JOSEPH P, THOMPSON, D.D,:
AT THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB, UNION SQUARE, NE-^V YORK, APRIL 15, 1865,

I HAD thought that we had already derived from this war all
the lessons that it was designed to teach, whether by its dis
cipline of suffering and sacrifice, or its fruits of triumph and
rejoicing, — lessons of humiliation, lessons of patience, lessons
of endurance, lessons of courage, lessons of faith, of hope, of
beneficence, and lessons of ever-growing confidence in our Gov
ernment and in Almighty God. But it seems that that voice
and holy Providence which has guided us at every step of the war
had yet other lessons for the nation, the necessity and the fitness
of which -we recognize to-day. First, amid the rejoicings of vic
tory, and the feelings of magnanimity and forbearance called forth
by the humiliation of the enemy, there was needed one final reve
lation of the atrocity of this treason, at which the nation and the
civilized world should stand aghast. From first to last this conspi
racy has been one stupendous crime, without plea of ignorance or
of provocation, and without a shadow of justifying motive; but it
was left for its expiring hours to unveil to us the horrible depths
of its atrocity. For, whatever the motive or impulse of the assas
sins, they represent the spirit of the conspiracy. Vanquished in
the field, its pretence of a government overthrown, its military
power broken, its political leaders fugitive, its finances scattered
to the winds, it comes with stealthy tread into the scenes of socia

Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D. 275
festivity, and from behind drives the bullet ofthe assassin through
the head of the mildest, gentlest of men, as he sits beside his wife
in a circle of friends; and then, with an infamy yet more horrible,
it invades the sacred chamber of sickness, the awful sanftity of
impending death, and there butchers a feeble, maimed old man,'
upon his bed. It is the monster crime of history. Yet it was
needful that this conspiracy should thus reveal itself for the final,
righteous condemnation of the civilized world. Henceforth all
nations will know with what we have have been dealing in these
four weary and terrible years.
The nation needed another lesson of unity, which could be
learned only through a great sympathetic sorrow. We bo-w
to-day before the majesty of sorro-w, and feel that -we are one.
We have felt the spontaneous thrill of patriotism, when the vast
area in front of this building was thronged with citizens outraged
at the fall of Sumter. We have felt the sympathetic throb of
common dangers, and have been pressed together by our perils
and our fears. And we have felt also the thrill of exultation, and
the community of joy. But nothing so fuses and welds human
souls together as participation in some great sorrow. Henceforth
our souls are one. Even the tone of opposition journals has' been
melted to-day into the pathos of this mighty grief. Henceforth
this nation is fused into one, in the crucible of calamity, and is
cemented by the blood of its Head,
A third lesson impressed upon us to-day is the imperishable
vitality of Government, and the grandeur of our Constitution
under all emergencies. We have seen it tested in conflift with
foreign powers; we have seen it tested bythe fearful strain of
civil war, and by the scarce less anxious trial of a presidential
eleftion in the midst of war, — and it has stood. And now, under
this severest shock, — a shock that might shatter a kingdom or an
empire into chaos, — it still stands.

276 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
That mysterious, invisible, impalpable entity, we call the
State, — that intangible something, that we call Government,
stands forth to-day in awful reality.
The sovereignty of the people lifts its next representative into
the just-vacant chair.
The State moves on, without pause at the nation's grief, —
without concussion from the blow that struck down the nation's
Head. The bullet and knife of the assassin did not touch its vitality.
The life of the Constitution was not endangered. The State
moves calmly, steadily onward, with no jar in any of its funftions.
It seems to me that the statue of Liberty which crowns the dome
of the Capitol, — that worthy and typical memorial of Abraham
Lincoln's administration, — looking calmly down upon the august
presence of death, beckoned to the State beyond, saying, " Let
the dead bury their dead: follow thou me." And the State
moved on, and will move on, in the line of freedom and of
justice, unshaken for ever.
Such are the direft teachings of this providence. The time,
the men, the manner, all conspired to make these lessons most
impressive. The time: just when the power of the conspiracy was
broken; just when Abraham Lincoln's policy and fame had
rounded into fulness; just when there was no furthur hope from
organized resistance to the Government, — came this wanton
cruelty of revenge. The men: the two men in all this nation
whose personal tone and spirit were least obnoxious to the rebels,
whose forbearance and mildness were stretched to the utmost
limits of our charity, ¦ — these are the men thus butchered for
sustaining Government and law. The manner: had the President
fallen by the bullet of a marksman when he was at the front, or
by the dagger of an assassin at Richmond, our grief at his loss

Rev, Joseph P. Thompson, D,D, 277
would have been mingled with regret for the needless exposure.
But this crime, perpetrated in a place presumed to be safe from
violence, and at an hour devoted to festivit}', and repeated at the
bed of death, makes these lessons stand out before us in charafters
of blood. This is not the time for eulogy of the illustrious men whose
names are blended in this sorrow. For Mr. Seward, I shall not
anticipate the tribute of history. He himself has anticipated its
verdift in his speeches in the great debates on slavery, in the
Senate. In one of these he gives this as the rule adopted for
the government of this conduft: —
" Let thy scope
Be one fixed mind for all : thy rights approve
To thy own conscience, gradually renewed :
Learn to make Time the father of wise Hope ;
Then trust thy cause to the arm of Fortitude,
The light of Knowledge, and the warmth of Love."
And, in a speech against the iniquity of fastening slavery upon
Kansas, you remember that, forecasting a period of fifty, of one
hundred, of two hundred years, he summoned before him the
millions who would be affefted by the aftion of that hour, " I
shall not meet them," he said, "here on the earth; but I shall meet
them all on that day when I shall give up the final account of that
stewardship which my country has confided to me." Then, enu
merating the various considerations arising from his early patri
otic and Christian training, his study of history, his political
observation and experience, he added, " If I were now to consent
to such an aft, I should be obliged, when that last day shall come
to me, to call upon the rocks and the mountains to fall upon me,
and crush me and my name, detested then by myself, into endless
oblivion." Then, in the name of the Constitution, of justice, and
of humanity, protesting against the crime, he took his solemn

278 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
appeal to the great Searcher of hearts; and there we may safely
leave him as he hangs trembling on the verge of eternity.
Of the charafter and virtues of the President, it is not necessary
that I should speak. We had learned to lean upon h'is judgment
as we had always leaned upon his integrity; to confide in his
sagacity as a statesman, no less than in his honesty as a patriot.
His kindliness and gentleness of heart, his candor and magna
nimity, had commanded the respeft even of his enemies, and all
had come to confess him wise and prudent, where once they had
thought him slow and timid. Firmness he had when firmness
was needed; and it may be said of him, as Motley has so finely
said of his great prototype, William of Orange, " whether origin
ally' of a timid temperament or not, he was certainly possessed of
perfeft courage at last: he went through life, bearing the load ofa
people's sorrows upon his shoulders, with a smiling face,"
That cheerful heart sustained him under burdens and trials
hitherto unknown in our history; and we can add no higher
eulogy than the story of the good Prince of the Netherlands, that
repeats itself to-day: "As long as he lived he was the guiding-
star of a whole brave nation; and, when he died, the little children
cried in the streets."
Above all, his was the strength of religious faith. Abraham
Lincoln read the word of God for his daily guidance, and was
not ashamed to have it known that he was a man of prayer.
That solemn, almost prophetic, utterance of his at his inaugura
tion, so puzzling to mere politicians, will stand in history as the
grand testimony of a true, human soul. There was but one thing
more that Abraham Lincoln could do, — not for himself but for
us, — that he should lay down his life for the country whose Union
and freedom had become the very essence of that life. By that
sacrifice the redemption of the nation is hallowed, is perfefted, is
sure.

Rev. Joseph P. Thompson. D.D. 279
I return for a moment to the historic parallel just cited. Wil
liam of Orange was assassinated in the quietude of his own home,
and just as he " had established the emancipated Commonwealth
upon a secure foundation. But here the parallel fails : the death
of William frustrated the just-approaching union of all the Neth
erlands; but the restored unity of these United States, which
Abraham Lincoln had almost accomplished, is made, if possible,
more certain by his death. Through the gloom of this morning,
there flashed upon me an almost instantaneous ray of light, reveal
ing the possible purpose of divine Providence in this event.
We had reached a moment more critical even, more thickly set
with perils, than were the doubtful issues of the battle-field. The
political aspeft of Virginia foreshadowed serious complications;
and there was danger that the very virtues of the President would
be so circumvented and abused that the authors of this conspi
racy would go " unwhipped of justice." God meant not so; and,
therefore, when he had led Abraham Lincoln up to the full height
of his sublime, immortal mission, he took him to himself. And
now, from the thick cloud that drapes his body, there reaches
forth the red right arm, not of vengeance, but of justice. For
justice there must be, if the nation is to live in peace. This
rebellion drew its life from these two roots, — pride of social caste,
and lust of political domination, — both springing from the great
tap-root, slavery. We must exterminate these, every fibre of
them, from our soil. The perpetual alienation of the estates of the
conspirators, the perpetual disfranchisement of the conspirators
themselves, cutting them up root and branch, is indispensable to
the peace, yes, to the life, of the nation. And for that work of
inexorable justice we have a man who hates the rebellion and
hates slavery with a perfeft hatred; who has had that hatred
burnt into his soul; who himself has been hunted by assassins;
who knows the rebel leaders, their crime, and their cunning, and

28o Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
who will not be balked of justice by their devices. At Nashville
I was shown the estates of two rebels, one of whom offered the
Confederacy a site for its Capitol, the other gave '\t fifty thousand
dollars, and offered to mortgage his property for its support; and
both these had sneaked back under the amnesty proclamation.
Andrew Johnson knows such men, and their perjury. With
nothing vindiftive in our spirit, we must save the masses of the
South itself by annihilating the slave oligarchy.
I am happy to say here, that, on careful inquiry at competent
sources, I believe that the infirmity which so distressed us a few
weeks ago was not the indication of a habit, but the fault of an
hour. Let us rally with a generous confidence about the new
President, strengthening him, not only against his enemies and
ours, but, if need be, against himself Less than a year ago, I
expressed to Andrew Johnson, in his own home, the gratitude of
a Northern man for the sacrifices he had made for the country.
" Sir," said he, " there have been hours in this dark and terrible
struggle when nothing sustained me but faith. I had seen my
property seized, my friends scattered, my life in jeopardy, my
State in chaos; reason failed me, experience failed me, and I
should have given over in despair had I not believed that some
where in the universe there is a right, and that behind it there is
a God who will maintain it." That God, I doubt not, will main
tain Andrew Johnson in the path of reftitude. Let none of us
be wanting in fidelity.
Friends, it is night, — a dark and dreary night; a fit close of such
a day of gloom. The clouds drop sympathetic tears. But to-mor
row comes the morning of the resurreftion; and, even now, I see
Him who is the resurreftion and the life summoning this nation
to a higher and a holier life, for our salvation and to his glory.

SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS:

AT A MEETING OF AMERICANS HELD IN LONDON, MAY I,

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — I have been desired to
call you together, for the sake of giving some common form
of expression to our emotions, stirred up as they have been by the
late fearful calamity. In presence of such an awful event, we are
forcibfy impressed, not merely with the commonplace idea of
mortal vicissitude, but with the more solemn duty of keeping
ourselves wholly free from the indulgence of any unworthy pas
sion. The ordinary jars of human life are hushed before such a
catastrophe. A great Virginian statesman once said, that "he
trembled for his country when he reflefted that God is just." The
dreaded visitation appears to have come upon us in the third and
fourth generation. Let us endeavor to bear ourselves with pa
tience and humility. But, whilst acknowledging our shortcom
ings, let us draw closer and closer together, whilst we unite in
one earnest wail of sorrow for our loss ; for I may be permitted
to observe that, in this loss, the bereavement is wholly our own.
We are entirely to bear the responsibility of it. The man who
has fallen was immolated for no aft of his own. It may well be
doubted whether, during his whole career^ he ever made a single
personal enemy. In this peculiarity he shone prominent among
statesmen. No: he who perpetrated the crime had no narrow

282 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters,
purpose. It was because Abraham Lincoln was a faithful expo
nent of the sentiments of a whole people that he was stricken
down. The blow that was aimed at him was meant to fall on
them. The ball that penetrated his brain was addressed to the
heart of each and every one of us. It was a fancied short way
of paralyzing the Government which we have striven so hard to
maintain. It was, then, for our cause that Abraham Lincoln
died, and not his own. If he was called a tyrant, who was ele
vated to his high post by the spontaneous voices of a greater
number of men than had ever been given in any republic before,
it was only because he was obeying the wishes of those who
elefted him. It is we who must stand responsible for his deeds.
It is he who has paid the penalty for executing our will. Surely,
then, this is the strongest of reasons why all of us should join, as
with one voice, in a chorus of lamentation for his fall. It was
one of the peculiar merits of Mr, Lincoln, that he knew how to
give shape in aftion to the popular feelings as they developed
themselves under his observation. He never sought to lead, but
rather to follow; and thus he succeeded in the diflScult task of
successfully combining conservatism with progress. This, surely,
-was not like tyranny. His labor was always to improve. Hence
it was that he condufted a war of unexampled magnitude, always
bearing in mind the primary purpose for which it had been com
menced, at the same time that he associated with it broader ones
as the opportunity came. He had pledged himself, at the outset,
to accomplish certain objefts ; and he never forgot that pledge.
The time had at last arrived when he might honestly claim that it
would be fulfilled. It was in that very moment he was taken
away. On the very same day of the year when the national flag,
which just four years before had been lowered to triumphant ene
mies at Fort Surriter, was once more lifted to its original position
by the hand of the same officer who had suffered the indignity

Hon. Charles Francis Adams. 283
that commenced the war, Abraham Lincoln fell. His euthanasia
is complete. For him we ought not to mourn. His work was
done; he had fought the good fight; he had finished his course.
The grief is all for ourselves alone. And now, we who stand
around his body may well cry, " Go up, go up, with your gory
temples twined with the evergreen symbols of a patriot's wreath,
and bearing the double glory of a martyr's crown. Go up,
whilst for us here remaining on earth your memory shall be
garnered in the hearts of us and our latest posterity, in common
with the priceless treasures heaped up by the great fathers of the
Republic, and close by that of the matchless Washington." But
although we profoundly lament this loss, it must not be presumed
that we do so as having no hope. We have parted with a most
faithful servant. But the nation has not lost with him one atom
of the will which animated others of its servants as fully as it
did him. It is one of the notable features of this great struggle,
that it is not particular men who have attempted to lead on the
people, but rather that the people have first given the tone, to
the level of which their servants must come up, or else sink out
of sight and be forgotten. They have uniformly designated to
them their wishes. To one man they have said, " Come up," and
to another, " Give way," and in either case they have been as
implicitly obeyed. Whoever it be that is employed, the spirit
that must animate him comes from a higher source. The cause
of the country, then, does not depend on any man or aay set of
men. It has now called to the front the individual whom it had
already elevated to the second post in the Government. He had
been pointed out for that place by a sense of his approved fidelity
to the Union, at the moment when all around him were faltering
or falling away. In the national Senate he stood, Abdiel like, firm
and determined, in encountering with truth and force the fatal
sophistry of Jefferson Davis and his associates, and in denouncing

284 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
the course of aftion which was leading, them to their ruin. Four
years of intense and continued , trials within the borders of his
own State have been passed in the effort to reconstruft the edifice
of civil government, which they had overthrown. No one has
braved greater dangers to his person, and to all that was held
most prepious to a man in this world, than he. Those four years
have not been passed without at once proving the firmness of
his faith, and the progressive nature of his ideas. He, too, has
been susceptible to the influence of the national opinion. He,
too, has gradually been brought to the conviftion, that slavery,
which he once defended, has been our bane, and the cause of all
our woe. And he, too, will follow his predecessor in making the
recognition of the principle of human liberty the chief pathway
to restoration. Maybe, that he will color his policy with a little
more of the sternness gathered from the severity of his own trials.
He may give a greater prominence to the image of Justice than
to that of Mercy, in dealing with notorious offenders. But, if he
do, to whom is this change to be imputed? Lincoln leaned to
mercy, — and he was- taken off. Johnson has not promoted him
self The magician who worked this change is the enemy him
self It would seem almost as if it were the will of Heaven,
which has interposed the possibility of this marvellous retribution.
Yet, even if we make proper allowances for this difference, the
great faft remains clear, that Andrew Johnson, like his predeces
sor, will exert himself to the utmost of his power fully to re
establish in peace and harmony the beneficent system of govern
ment which he has already hazarded so much to sustain. And
should it happen that he too — which Heaven avert! — should by
some evil design be removed from the post now assigned to him,
the effeft would only be that the next man in the succession pre
scribed by the public law, and inspired from the same common
source, will be summoned to take his place. And so it would go

Hon. Charles Francis Adams,

285

on, if need be, in a line, like that in Macbeth's vision, " stretching
out to the crack of doom." The Republic has but to command
the services of any of her children, and, whether to meet open
danger in the field, or the perils of the more crafty and desperate
assassin, experience shows them equally ready to obey her call.
So long as the heroic spirit animates her frame, the requisite
agents will not fail to execute her will. Any attempt to paralyze
her by striking down more or less of them will only end, as every
preceding design to injure her has ended, in disappointment and
bitter despair. Let us, then, casting aside, all needless apprehen
sions for the policy of our land, now concentrate our thoughts
for the moment upon the magnitude of the offence which has de
prived us of our beloved Chief in the very moment of most inter
est to our cause ; and let us draw together as one man in the
tribute of our admiration of one of the purest, the most single-
minded and noble-hearted, patriots that ever ruled over the people
of any land.
London Daily Neivs, May 2, 1865,

SPEECH OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON, MAY I, ibbi;.

SIR, — There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation
approaches those tenderer feelings that, generally speaking,
are supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to form the
happy privilege of private life; and I think this is one of them.
Under all circumstances, we should have bewailed the catastrophe
at Washington; under all circumstances, we should have shud
dered at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the
charafter of the viftim, and in the very accessories of his almost
latest moments, there is something so homely and so innocent
that it takes the subjeft, as it were, out of the pomp of history,
and out of the ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the heart of
nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind.
Sir, — Whatever may be the various and varying opinions of
this House, and the country generally, of the policy of the late
President of the United States, of this, I think, all must be agreed,
that in a trial which, perhaps more than any other, tested the
moral quality of the man, he performed his duty with simplicity
and strength. Nor is it possible for the people of England to
forget at this moment, that he sprang from the same fatherland,
and spoke the same mother-tongue. When crimes of this char
after are perpetrated, the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and
perplexity; and that has arisen because it is as ignorant of the

Benjamin Disraeli, 287

causes as it is of the consequences of such an aft. But it is our
part, I think, to re-assure them under any unreasoning panic or
despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of
the world. I will not refer to instances of remote antiquity,
although an accident has made the most memorable example of
those times familiar at this moment to the mind and memory
of most gentlemen present. Even the costly sacrifice of a Csesar
did not propitiate the inevitable destiny of his country. But in
more modern times, with whose feelings we are more familiar,
men were animated and influenced by the same interests as our
selves. The violent deaths of two heroic men, Henry IV. of
France, and the Prince of Orange, are conspicuous illustrations
of this great truth. Therefore, at this moment, while I second
the address to the Crown, and express upon my own part, and, I
hope, on the part of every member of the House, feelings of un
affefted and profound sympathy with the citizens of the United
States at the untimely end of their elefted Chief, I would not sanc
tion any sentiment of depression, I would rather take this oppor
tunity of expressing my fervent hope, that from these awful years
of trial the various populations of North America may come out
elevated, chastened, rich in that accumulative wisdom, and strong
in that disciplined energy, which a young nation can only acquire
in a protrafted and perilous struggle. Then will be open to them
again, not merely the same course of power and prosperity which
they have heretofore pursued, but they will pursue that course of
power and prosperity for the general happiness of mankind. It is
with these feelings. Sir, that I now second the address to the
Crown.
London Daily Neivs, May 2, 1865,

SPEECPI OF SIR GEORGE GREY:

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON, MAY I, 1865,

I VERY much regret that in the unavoidable absence of my
noble friend at the head of the Government, in whose name
notice was given of a motion for an address to the Crown, to
express the sorrow and indignation of this House at the assassina
tion of the President of the United States, and to pray Her Ma
jesty to communicate their sentiments on the part ofthe House of
Commons to the Government ofthe United States,^ I very much
regret that it has devolved upon me to move this address. I feel,
however, that it is comparatively unimportant by whom the mo
tion is made, because I am confident that this address to the
Crown, to which I am about to ask the House to agree, is one that
will meet with its cordial and unanimous assent. When the
news, a few days ago, ofthe assassination of the President of the
United States, and, I hope, I may now say, of the unsuccessful
attempt to assassinate Mr. Seward, reached this country, the first
impression was that the intelligence could not be true. It was
hoped by every one, that no one could be found capable of com
mitting a crime of so atrocious a nature; but when the truth was
forced upon us, when we could no longer entertain any doubt of
the fafts of the case, the feeling that succeeded was one of deep
and universal sorrow, horror, and indignation. We felt as if some
great calamity had befallen ourselves. In the civil war, the ex-

Sir George Grey.

istence and long continuance of which we so sincerely deplore, it
is well known that the Government of this country, afting, as I
believe, in accordance with the almost unanimous — or I may say
the unanimous — feeling of the country, has maintained a strift
and impartial neutrality. But, Sir, it was notorious, — and it
could not in a great community like this be otherwise, — that dif
ferent opinions have been entertained by different persons with
regard to the question at issue between the Northern and the
Southern States of America. And, while I believe that the sym
pathy of the majority of this country has been with the North, I
wish to avoid anything likely to excite dissent; therefore, while I
say that different opinions have been entertained, and different
sympathies felt, and in this free country the freest expression has
been, as it ought to be, given to those sympathies and opinions, I
am sure I shall not excite any difference of opinion when I add,
that, in the presence of the great crime which has sent a thrill of
horror through all who heard of it, those differences of opin
ion and those conflifting sentiments have been suppressed. I
entertain the strongest confidence, that it will be regarded by
every man of position in the Southern States with the same de
gree 'of horror as it has been in other parts of the world. What
ever our opinions may be with respeft to the past, whatever may
have been our sympathies, we should all cordially unite in ex
pressing our abhorrence of this crime, and in tendering our sym-
path}? to the nation which is now mourning the loss of its chosen
and trusted Chief, struck down by the hand of an assassin at a
most critical period of its history. While deploring the war,
while lamenting the loss of life which has been its inevitable con
sequence, it is impossible, whatever our sympathies may have
been, to withhold our admiration ofthe many gallant deeds which
have been performed, — those afts of heroism which have been
displayed by both parties in that contest. And it is a matter of
37

290 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters,
bitter refleftion, that the page of history which will record those
gallant achievements — the deeds of men who have shed their
blood and laid down their lives — should be stained by the record
of a crime such as we are now deploring. A new era seemed at
hand; the time had come when there was reason to hope that the
war might speedily be brought to a close. Viftory had crowned
the efforts of the statesmen and of the armies of the Federals ;
and all of us entertained a feeling of relief on being able to turn
from the records of so sanguinary a contest to the correspondence
which had recently passed between the generals commanding the
hostile armiesr I know that Mr. Lincoln, as President of the
United States, warranted the hope, I may say expeftation, — and I
have reason to believe, that that expeftation would not have been
disappointed, — that in the hour of viftory, and in the triumph of
viftory, he would have shown that wise forbearance, and that
generous considerationy which would have added tenfold lustre to
the fame that he had already acquired, amidst the varying fortunes
of the war. Unhappily we have not had the opportunity of real
izing those expeftations. But let us hope that the good sense
and right feeling of those upon whom the discharge of those ardu
ous and difficult duties in this conjunfture of affairs has devolved
will, in addition to their sense of respeft and veneration, lead
them to aft in the same spirit, and follow the same counsels
which, we have good reason to believe, would have guided the
conduft of Mr, Lincoln, had he been left to complete the work
which he had begun.
Sir, — I believe I am expressing the general opinion when I
say, that nothing could give greater satisfaftion to this country
than to see, by firmness mixed with conciliation, the union of the
North and the South again accomplished; especially if it can
be accomplished by common consent, and free from that which
has been the weakness of all nations, — the curse and disgrace
of slavery.

Sir George Grey. 291

Sir, — I wish it were possible for us to convey to the people
of the United States an adequate idea of the depth and univer
sality of the feeling which this sad event has occasioned in this
country. From the highest to the lowest there has been but one
feeling entertained. Her Majesty's Minister at Washington will,
in obedience to the Queen's commands, convey to the Govern
ment of the United States an expression of the feelings of Her
Majesty, and of Her Majesty's Government, on this deplorable
event. And Her Majesty, with that tender consideration which
she has always evinced for the sorrows and sufferings of others,
in -whatever rank and station, has, with her own hand, written a
letter to Mrs. Lincoln, conveying the heartfelt sympathy of a
widow to a widow, suffering from an overwhelming calamity that
has so suddenly come upon her. From every part of this coun
try, and from every class of the community, one voice is now
raised, — a voice of abhorrence at the crime, and of sympathy
and interest in that country which has this great loss to mourn.
The British residents in the United States have met, as may have
been expefted, to express their feelings against the crime commit
ted; and we read that our British North-American Colonies are
vicing with each other to give expression to the same sentiments
of sympathy. And not only is it from men of that race which is
connefted with the, inhabitants of the United States by the tie of
origin, language, and blood, that a feeling of this kind arises; but
I believe that every country in Europe is giving expression to
the same sentiments, and sending them to the Government of the
United States. But I am sure, therefore, I am not wrong in an
ticipating, that this House, in the name ofthe people of England,
of the people of Scotland, and of the people of Ireland, will be '
anxious to record its expression of the same sentiments and feel
ings to the Government of the United States. Of this I am con
fident, that this House could never more fully and never more

292 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
adequately represent the feelings of the people of this United
Kingdom than by agreeing to the address which it is now. Sir, my
duty to move, expressing to Her Majesty our sorrow and indigna
tion at the assassination of the President of the United States,
and praying Her Majesty, in conveying her o-wn sentiments to the
Government of that country upon this deplorable event, that she
will express at the same time upon the part of this House their
abhorrence of the crime, and their sympathy with the Govern
ment and the people of the United States, in the deep affliftion
into which they have been plunged.
London Daily Ne-ws, May 2, 1865,

LETTER FROM JOHN STUART MILL;

TO A FRIEND IN PHILADELPHIA, PA,

Avignon, May 13, 1865,
DEAR SIR, — I had scarcely received your note of April 8,
so full of calm joy in the splendid prospeft now opening to
your country, and through it to the world, when the news came
that an atrocious crime had struck down the great citizen who had
afforded so noble an example of the qualities befitting the first
magistrate of a free people, and who, in the most trying circum
stances, had gradually won, not only the admiration, but almost
the personal affeftion of all who love freedom or appreciate
simplicity and uprightness. But the loss is ours, not his. It was
impossible to have wished him a better end, than to add the crown
of martyrdom to his other honors, and to live in the memory ofa
great nation as those only live who have not only labored for their
country, but died for it. And he did live to see the cause tri
umphant, and the contest virtually over. How different would
our feelings now be if this fate had overtaken him, as it might so
easily have done, a month sooner!
In England, horror ofthe crime, and sympathy with your loss,
seem to be almost universal, even among those who have dis
graced their country by wishing success to the slaveholders. I
hope the manifestations which were instantaneously made there

294 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
in almost every quarter may be received in America as some kind
of atonement, or peace offering. I have never believed .that there
was any real danger of a quarrel between the two countries; but
it is of immense importance that we should be firm friends: and
this is our natural state ; for, though there is a portion of the higher
and middle classes of Great Britain who so dread and hate
democracy that they cannot wish prosperity and power to a
democratic people, I sincerely believe that this feeling is not
general, even in our privileged classes. Most of the dislike and
suspicion which have existed towards the United States were the
effeft of pure ignorance, — ignorance of your history, and igno
rance of your feeling and disposition as a people. It is difficult
for you to believe that this ignorance could be as dense as it
really was. But the late events have begun to dissipate it; and,
if your Government and people aft as I fully believe they will
in regard to the important questions which now await them, there
will be no fear of their being ever again so grossly misunderstood,
at least in the lives of the present generation.
As to the mode of dealing with these great questions, it does
not become a foreigner to advise those who know the exigencies
of the case so much better than he does. But as so many of my
countrymen are volunteering advice to you at this crisis, perhaps
I may be forgiven if I offer mine the contrary way. Every one
is eagerly inculcating gentleness, and only gentleness, as if you
had shown any signs of a disposition to take a savage revenge. I
have always been afraid of one thing only, — that you would be too
gentle. I should be sorry to see any life taken after the war is over
(except those of the assassins), or any evil inflifted in mere
vengeance; but one thing I hope will be considered absolutely ne
cessary, — to break altogether the power ofthe slaveholding caste.
Unless this is done, the abolition of slavery will be merely nominal.
If an aristocracy of ex-slaveholders remain masters of the State

John Stuart Mill. 295

Legislatures, they -will be able effeftually to nullify a great part
of the result which has been so dearly bought b}' the blood of the
Free States. They and their dependants must be effeftually out
numbered at the polling places; which can only be effefted by
the concession of full equality of political rights to negroes, and
by a large immigration of settlers from the North: both of them
being made independent by the ownership of land. With these
things, in addition to the Constitutional Amendment (which will
enable the Supreme Court to set aside any State legislation tend
ing to bring back slavery in disguise), the cause of freedom is
safe, and the opening words of the Declaration of Independence
will cease to be a reproach to the nation founded by its authors.
I am, dear sir, yours very truly, J, S. MILL.

RESOLUTION OF HON, F, H, MORSE,
UNITED-STATES CONSUL FOR LONDON :
AT A MEETING OF AMERICANS, HELD IN THAT CITY, MAY I, 1865,

'T^HAT we have heard with the greatest indignation, and
-¦- the most profound sorrow, of the assassination which has
deprived our country of its beloved Chief Magistrate, as well
as of the murderous assault which has greatly perilled the lives
of the Secretary and Assistant-Secretary of State; and that we
regard the taking of the life of our chief executive officer, while
our country is passing through unparalleled trials, after all loyal
Americans had learned to love him, and all good men the
world over to confide in him, and when so much of national
and individual welfare and happiness depended on his exist
ence, as the great crime of the nineteenth century, memorable
in its atrocity, and entailing on its perpetrators the execration
of mankind," He denounced the assassination in terms of ap
propriate indignation, and paid a warm tribute to the memory of
President Lincoln, who, he said, had fought not only for the
maintenance ofthe Union, but had struggled wisely and success
fully to wipe out the one black stain from his countr3'-'s banner,
slavery. He worked the point little by little, until he had brought
the country up to a state of feeling which had resulted in the pro
hibition of slavery throughout the length and breadth of the
American land. And it was after the war was virtually over,
when Richmond had capitulated, and the surrender of the gener
alissimo of the South, with the elite of the rebel army, and when

Hon. F. H. Morse. 297

Abraham Lincoln was engaged in the work of reconstruftion, —
the first step in which he had so successfully carried, — that he
was stricken down by the hands of the assassin. But the princi
ples of Mr. Lincoln as the successful champion had not died with
him. They would be carried out by his successor. He (Mr,
Morse) had long been intimately acquainted with Andrew John
son, and could, from personal knowledge, refute the calumnies
which had gone forth against his charafter. Twenty years ago,
he entered the Congress of the United States, a young man, with
Andrew Johnson, then a representative for Tennessee. That was
in 1844. He sat upon a committee with Andrew Johnson for
two years, meeting three or four times a week; and subsequently,
during three or four years, he had afted with him up to the year
1 86 1, and all that time he never heard one word whispered
against his fair fame. He had seen him day by day, and knew
him well, and could safely assert, that the charge of habitual in
temperance against him was one ofthe vilest and most unfounded
slanders that had ever been cast on man. There was no need of
the slightest mistrust in that noble-minded man, who had thus,
by the force of his charafter and of his talents, raised himself
from the lowest ranks of the people up to the highest position in
the nation. His antecedents were a suflScient guarantee for his
future conduft. If ever the hand of Providence had been seen in
guiding a nation in its great trials, it was in the events which had
marked the history of America during the last four years; and
they might rest assured that that divine Hand would not fail them
now, — that it would not place at the head of the Government a
man to undo all that had been done. It was the will of Heaven
to deprive them of their beloved and well-tried chief magistrate,
and to appoint another to carry out the good work which he had
so successfully commenced; it was their duty to bow to that will
in all humility and in all confidence, 38

SPEECH OF LORD JOHN RUSSELL:

IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, LONDON, MAY I, 1865,

MY LORDS, — I rise to ask Your Lordships to address Her
Majesty, praying Her Majesty, that, in any communication
she may be pleased to make, expressing her abhorrence of the
great crime which has been committed in America by the assas
sination of President Lincoln, Her Majesty may at the same time
be pleased to express the sorrow and indignation felt by us at the
great crime which has recently been committed. My Lords, — Her
Majesty has already direfted me to express to the Government of
the United States the shock which she felt when the intelligence
reached this country of this great crime, and also of her sympathy
with the Government and people of the United States. Her
Majesty also has been pleased to write a private letter to Mrs.
Lincoln, expressing her sympathy with her on her great and sud
den bereavement. I think Your Lordships will agree with me in
saying, that in modern times there has hardly been any crime of
so horrible a charafter committed. President Lincoln had been
legally elefted President of that great Republic; and, after the
secession of a part of the States, he was re-elefted President by
the large majority of those States which remained faithful. He
bore his honors meekly; and he was in the discharge of his func
tions at the very moment when the assassin attacked him in the
theatre, — where he had gone, in order to please the people of

Lord John Russell. 299

Washington. There he was foully murdered. There are cir
cumstances connefted with this crime which, I think, aggravate
its guilt. President Lincoln was a man who, although he had
not been distinguished before his eleftion, had from that time dis
played a charafter of so much integrity, sincerity, and straight
forwardness, and, at the same time, of so much kindness, that, if
any one could have been able to alleviate the pain and animosity
which have prevailed during the civil war, I believe President
Lincoln was the man to have done so. It was remarked of him,
that he always felt indisposed to resort to any harsh or severe
measures ; and I am told that the commanders of the army often
complained, that, when they passed a sentence which they con
ceived to be no more than just, the President was always sure to
temper its severity. Such was the man required for this particu
lar moment. The conduft ofthe armies ofthe United States was
intrusted to other hands; and upon these commanders fell chiefly
the responsibility of condufting those armies in the field, and
making them successful against those with whom they contended.
But the moment had come when those armies were viftorious;
and no doubt the reputation of President Lincoln was greatly
increased by the success of those armies. But, though it was not
for him to lead those armies, it would have been his to temper
the pride of viftory, to assuage the misfortunes which had been
felt, and especially to show, which he was well qualified to show,
that respeft for valor on the opposite side which had been so
conspicuously displayed ; and President Lincoln, I think, showed
by the orders he gave to the commanders, that he was well quali
fied for that office. It was by such qualities, it was to be hoped,
that when the conflift of arms was over, that task of concilia
tion might have been begun; and President Lincoln had an au
thority which no one else had, to temper that exasperation which
always happens in civil strife. Upon another question, the United

300 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
States, and those against whom they had lately been in arms, will
have a most difficult task to perform, — I allude to the question of
slavery, which, according to many, had been the cause ofthe civil
war in America. At the beginning of this war, the House will
remember. President Lincoln declared that he had no right by
the Constitution to interfere with slavery. At a later period, he
made a kind of decree as Commander-in-chief, in which he pro
posed, that, in certain States, the slaves should be entirely freed.
But, at a later period, he proposed that which he was constitution
ally qualified to propose, — that there should be an alteration of
the Constitution of the United States, by which the holding of
persons to labor by compulsory means was to be for ever hereafter
forbidden. Many persons were eager for the immediate abolition
of slavery. But I remember Lord Macaulay once observing, that
although it would have been a great blessing if the penal laws
against Roman Catholics had been abolished in Sir R. Walpole's
time, yet he would have been mad to have proposed such a mea
sure. So with regard to President Lincoln. Whatever might
have been the horrors of slavery, I believe he was perfeftly justi
fied in delaying the time when that great alteration in the law
should be proposed. But, whatever we may think on this subjeft,
we must all feel that there again the death of President Lincoln
deprives the United States ofthe man who was the leader on this
subjeft, and the man who, by his temper, would have been dis
posed to propose such measures as might make this great change
acceptable to those by whom he had been elefted, and who might
have preserved the peace of that great Republic under an entirely
new Constitution.
My Lords, — I think we must all feel sympathy -with the
United States on this deprivation, and also hope that he who
succeeds, according to the American Constitution, to the powers
of the late President, may be able, both in respeft of mercy and

Lord John Russell. 301

lenity to those -who have been conquered, and also in respeft to
those measures to be adopted for that new organization, that the
abolition of slavery requires, — we must all hope that the new
president may succeed in overcoming those difficulties, and in
restoring the Republic to its pristine prosperity. I had, at the
commencement of this contest, occasion to say, that I did not be
lieve that that great Republic would perish in the contest; and
my noble friend at the head of the Government had lately occa
sion to disclaim any feeling of animosity or envy at the greatness
and prosperity of the United States. The course which Her Maj-
jesty's Government pursued during this civil war has been one of
neutrality. There have been difficulties which have occurred to
us, there have been difficulties which have occurred to the Gov
ernment of the United States, in maintaining the peaceful rela
tions ofthe two countries; but these difficulties have always been
treated with temper and moderation on both sides ofthe Atlantic.
I trust that temper and moderation will continue : and I can as
sure this House, that, as we have always been aftuated by the
wish that the American Government and the American people .
should settle their differences without any interference of ours in
the conflift of arms, so, likewise, during the attempt that will be
made to restore peace and tranquillity to that country, we must
equally refrain from any kind of interference or intervention; and
we shall trust that the efforts to be made for that purpose will be
successful, and that that great Republic will continue to enjoy its
career of freedom. I have nothing, of course, to say of the suc
cessor of President Lincoln. Time must show how far he is able
to conduft those difficult matters which the wisdom of his prede
cessor was so well calculated to bring to a satisfaftory result.
All I can say is, that, in sight of this great calamity, in sight of this
great crime, the Crown, the Parliament, and the people of this
country, feel not only the deepest sympathy with the Government

302 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
and people of the United States, but that our relations of kindred
with them induce us to feel the misfortunes of the United States
more than we should the misfortunes of any country on the face
ofthe globe. The noble lord concluded by moving that an hum
ble address be presented to Her Majesty, expressing the sorrow
and indignation of that House at the assassination ofthe President
of the United States; and praying Her Majesty to communicate
these sentiments on the part of that House to the Government of
the United States.

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH:

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LONDON DAILY NEWS.

SIR, — It is diflScult to measure the calamity which the United
States and the world have sustained by the murder of Presi
dent Lincoln, The assassin has done his best to strike down
'mercy and moderation, of both of which this good and noble life
was the main stay. It is impossible not to feel great misgivings
as to the turn which this murder may give, politically and morally,
to the course of events. No doubt the powers of evil of all
kinds will see their advantage in it. But I have the greatest
and most unfeigned confidence in the good sense, the humanity,
the self-control, the law-loving and constitutional charafter of the
American people.
The loss of Mr. Seward also, if he is killed, is much to be
lamented, strange as the assertion may seem to those who, with
out knowing any thing of the man, or candidly watching his course,
have gone on from day to day repeating the accustomed scoffs
and denunciations. Under trying circumstances, and notwith
standing great provocation, he has honorably labored to keep
the peace. The world will be fortunate if his successor does the
same. My objeft in writing to you, however, is not to deplore what
is irreparable, but to second you in deprecating exaggerated
assumptions and extravagant language as to the charafter and

304 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
probable conduft of Mr. Lincoln's constitutional successor. The
accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency will be received
with almost as much misgiving in America as here ; and the mind
of the American people is no doubt by this time at work as to the
best means of obviating the danger to the State which this event
may entail. Should necessity arise, means of securing the public
interest will be found; though, in a nation so attached to constitu
tional forms, no unconstitutional expedient will be resorted to till
the resources of the Constitution have been exhausted.
Even if it were clear that Andrew Johnson were no better
than a Marat or a Masaniello, the Americans are not a Parisian
or a Neapolitan mob: they are an educated nation, trained to
political aftion, and capable, by their united intelligence and
praftical resources, of meeting almost axvy emergency, as the
events of the war have shown. But it is quite premature to
assume that Johnson when in power will turn out a Marat or a
Masaniello. An American politician (and the same thing may
be said of the politicians in our colonies) may be very rough,
even coarse; and yet he may have in him sterling stuff, which
power and responsibility may bring to light. Lincoln himself
was originally a rough man ; and if we had looked only to certain
parts of his early writings and speeches, we might have despaired
of his becoming the worthy ruler of a great nation.
At his inauguration, Andrew Johnson, under the joint influ
ence, it appears, of great excitement and drink, behaved in a way
which shocked his countrymen as much as it did us. But we
ought not to forget that Pitt was once, at. least, seen the worse for
liquor in the House of Commons; and that, if current tradition
does not deceive us, a speech was mqde by a very eminent mem
ber of the House of Lords, in the debate on the Reform Bill,
which showed that the speaker was not under the influence of
political excitement alone. This incident seems to nie less seri-

Professor Goldwin Smith. 305
ous than the arbitrary proceedings of which Johnson has more
than once been guilty in Tennessee, and whiph appear to betray
a charafter prone to violence, — the thing most of all to be depre
cated and dreaded at the present junfture.
But Tennessee, where a desperate conflift has been going on
between the secessionists and Union parties, and where Union men,
Johnson himself among the number, have undergone every kind
of outrage at the hands of their opponents, is the land of violence;
and it is not to be assumed that a man would behave everywhere
as he would behave there. High position and heavy responsi
bilities have sometimes a great effeft in moderating and elevating
the charafter, especially among the class of rough, strong men
to whom I think it very probable the ne-w President belongs, I
shall not despair, till fafts compel me, of seeing him, in his new
dignity, mend h'is manners, throw off his Tennessean animosities,
behave as becomes his station, and tread, to the best of his ability,
both at home and abroad, in the steps of the truly great man (for
so, though in an unimposing form, Lincoln was), into whose
place he has been unexpeftedly called.
His first speech seems to promise well. I do not mean to
underrate the gravity of the accident, which, at this crisis, substi
tutes, for a representative of the shrewd and kindly West, a man
chosen to what seemed an office of little importance by way of
tribute to the Unionist martyrs of the violent and stabbing South.
I only wish to avoid aggravating evil (as we well may) by antici
pation; and, at any rate, to aid in arresting, if possible, the flood
of dangerous vituperation which is ready to flow from the pens of
a portion of our press. These journalists have just had as tre-.
mendous a lesson on their own fallibility as the severity of destiny
could read them; and they could scarcely seleft a more danger
ous moment than the present for another exhibition of theii
temperance and discretion. 39

3o6 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
The Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme
Court, all have in their hands powers of restraining the aftion of
the Executive; which, especially in the case of the Senate and
House of Representatives, increase in effeftiveness in proportion
as the personal influence of the President over the nation dimin
ishes. The army is in the hands of Grant, who has been styled
by journalistic omniscience a "butcher," as Lincoln was styled a
" Robespierre," but who is in faft an American Duke of Welling
ton, as straightforward and simple in charafter, as modest, as
devoid of irregular ambition, as little likely to swerve from the
strift path of military or civil duty; while his recent treatment of
Lee and the captured army shows that he knows well how to
behave to a vanquished enemy, I am, &c.,
APRIL 27, GOLDWIN SMITH,
P,S, — " Now that Mr, Lincoln is dead," says a virulent Tory
journal, " his good qualities seem to come to the foreground."
And why, let me ask in the name of common honesty and verac
ity, did they not " come to the foreground " at the time when they
were being displayed? In the same article, I find the new Presi
dent belabored with all the aristocratic epithets bestowed till
yesterday on his predecessor, with an unthinking repetition ofthe
impudent falsehood originated by the "Times," that he proposed
"to hang the Southern leaders as high as Haman." Thus slander
leaves the dead, with a hypocritical tribute to the virtues it has
maligned, only to fix upon the living.
London Daily Ne-ivs, April 26, 1865.

SPEECH OF SR, REBELLO DA SILVA:

DELIVERED IN THE CHAMBER OF PEERS, LISBON, PORTUGAL,

MR. PRESIDENT, — I desire to offer to the Chamber some
observations on a subjeft I deem most grave, for the
purpose of introducing a motion which I intend to lay upon
the table.
The Chamber has been made aware, by the official documents
in the foreign journals, that a flagrant outrage has recently
covered with mourning a great nation beyond the Atlantic, — the
powerful Republic of the United States.
President Lincoln has been assassinated in the theatre, almost
in the arms of his wife !
The perpetration of so foul a deed has caused the deepest
grief in America, and throughout all the courts of Europe, Cab
inets and parliaments have evinced the most universal sorrow at
an event so grievous.
It belongs to civilized communities, it becomes almost a duty
with all constituted political bodies, to accompany their manifes
tations with the sincere expression of horror at afts and crimes
so infamous. Through a fatality, or a sublime disposition or unfathomable
mystery of Providence, — which is the more Christian interpre
tation of history, — it often happens, not only in the life of nations,

3o8 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
but in that of individuals, when the loftiest heights have been
reached, the boldest destinies fulfilled, even the last degrees of
human greatness attained; when the way is suddenly made smooth,
and the horizon casts off its clouds and shadows, and smiles
flooded with light, — that then an unseen hand is lifted in the
darkness, that a power, secret and inexorable, is armed in silence,
and, waving the dagger of Brutus, pointing the cannon of Wel
lington, or offering the poisoned cup of Asiatic herbs, hurls the
conqueror, crowned -with laurels, from his height, at the feet ot
Pompey's statue, like Csesar; at the feet of fortune, weary with
following him, like Napoleon; at the feet of the Colossus of
irritated Rome, like Hannibal.
The mission of great men and heroes makes them seem to us
almost like demigods; for they receive for a moment from on
High the omnipotence which revolutionizes societies and trans
figures nations: they pass, like tempests, in their car of fire, to
see themselves dashed at last in an instant against the eternal
barriers of the impossible, — barriers which no one can remove,
where they all find the pride of theii: ephemeral power reduced
to nought, and humbled to the dust, — for immutable and great
alone is God. Death overtakes them, or ruin reaches them, in
their apogee, to show to princes, to conquerors, and to people,
that their hour is one only and short; that their work is fragile, as
the work of man, so soon as the pillar of fire which guided them
is extinguished, and night falls upon their way: the new paths
they had opened for themselves, and through which they thought
to pass boldly and secure, become gulfs which open and swallow
them, when, as instruments of the designs of the Most High, the
days of their empire and their enterprise shall have been counted
and finished.
Thus is seen a terrible example, a memorable lesson, in the
catastrophe of the most noted charafters of history. So come to

Sr. Rebello da Silva. 309

us to-day, stained with the illustrious blood of one of its most
honored citizens, the recent pages of the annals of the powerful
Republic of the United States. Its President, when the first
quadrennium was closed of a government in which strife was his
heritage, falls suddenly, struck down before his own triumph ; and
from his cold and powerless hands escape loosely the reins of an
administration, which the perseverance and energy of his will,
the co-operation of his fellow-citizens, and the loftiness and pres
tige of the great idea he symbolized and defended, have made
immortal with a name proclaimed by millions of voices and
votes, on the fields of battle and in the assemblies of the people.
Recondufted, elevated a second time on the shields of popular
favor, to the supreme direftion of affairs, at the moment when the
heat of civil strife was appeased, when the union of that vast,
dilacerated body gave promise, in its restoration, to bind up the
wounds through which, for so many months, flowed in torrents
the generous blood of the free, almost in the arms of viftory,
surrounded by those who most loved him, in the bosom of his
popular court, he suddenly encounters death; and the ball of an
obscure fanatic closes and seals the golden book of his destinies,
at the moment, too, when every prosperity seemed to welcome
him to length of days and festive favor.
It is not a king who disappears in the obscurity of the tomb,
burying with him, like Henry IV,, the future of vast plans; it is
the Chief of a glorious people, who leaves behind him as many
successors as there are abettors of his idea, co-operators in his
noble and well-aimed aspirations. The purple of a throne is not
covered with mourning, the heart of a great empire is shrouded
in grief The cause, of which he was the strenuous champion,
did not die with him; but all wept for his loss, through their hor
ror of the deed and the occasion, and through the hopes founded
on his pure and benevolent motives.

3IO Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
Lincoln, martyr to the broad principle which he represented
in power and struggle, belongs now to history and to posterity.
Like Washington, -whose idea he continued, his name will be
inseparable from the memorable epochs to which he is bound,
and which he expresses. If the Defender of Independence freed
America, Lincoln unsheathed, without hesitation, the sword of
the Republic; and with its point erased and tore out, from the
statutes of a free people, the anti-social stigma, the anti-humani
tarian blasphemy, the sad, shameful, infamous codicil of old
societies, — the dark, repugnant abuse of slavery, which Jesus
Christ first condemned from the top of the cross, proclaiming the
equality of man before God; which nineteen centuries of civiliza
tion, reared in the gospel, have proscribed and rejefted as the
opprobrium of our times.
At the moment when he was breaking the chains of a luck
less race; when he was seeing in millions of rehabilitated slaves
millions of future citizens; when the bronze voice of Grant's
viftorious cannon was proclaiming the emancipation of the soul,
of the conscience, and of toil; when the scourge was about to
fall from the hands of the scourgers; when the ancient slave-
pen was about to be transformed, for the captive, into a domestic
altar; at the moment when the stars of the Union, sparkling and
resplendent with the golden fires of liberty, were waving over
the subdued walls of Petersburg and Richmond, — the sepulchre
opens, and the strong, the powerful, enters it. In the midst of
triumphs and acclamations, there appeared to him a speftre, like
that of Csesar, in the Ides of March, saying to him, " You have
lived." Far be it from me to approve or condemn the civil strife which
divides and covers with blood two brother seftions of the Amer
ican people. I am neither their judge nor their censor. I honor
the principle of liberty, wherever cherished and maintained; but

Sr, Rebello da Silva. 311

I can also honor and admire another principle, not less sacred and
glorious, — that of independence. May the progressive virtue of
our age re-unite those whom discord has divided, and reconcile
ideas which are in the hearts and aspirations of all generous
souls. In this struggle, which in magnitude exceeds all we have seen
or heard of in Europe, the vanquished of to-day are worthy of
the great race from which they sprang. Lee and Grant are two
giants, whom history will keep inseparable. But the hour of
peace is perchance about to strike. Lincoln desired it as the
crown of his labors, the glorious result of so many sacrifices.
After force, let there be forbearance; after the brave fury of bat
tles, the fraternal embrace of citizens.
These were the motives which governed him, these the last
virtuous desires he entertained; and it is at this moment (per
chance a rare one), when a great soul is so potent for good,
when a single mind is worth whole legions, as a pacificator, that
the hand of an assassin is raised in treachery, and cuts the thread
of plans and purposes so lofty and so noble.
If the American nation w^ere not a people tried in the experi
ences and strifes of government, could any one perchance calculate
the fatal consequences of this sudden blow? Who knows if the
conflagration of civil war would not have spread to the remotest
confines of these Federal States, in all the pomp of its horrors ?
Happily, it will not be so. While public opinion and the journals
condemn the deed severely and justly, and their horror is excited
against* the fatal crime, — sentiments which are those of all civil
ized Europe, — they give honorable heed to ideas of peace and
forbearance, as though the great man who advocated these ideas
had not disappeared from the arena of the world. And I use the
term advisedly, ^^ great man^^ for he is truly great who rises to
the loftiest heights from profound obscurity, relying solely on his

312 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
own merits, — as did Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln. For these
arose to power and greatness, not through any favor or grace of
a chance-cradle, or genealogy, but through the prestige of their
own deeds, through the nobility which begins and ends with
themselves, — the sole offspring of their own works. He is more
to be envied who makes himself great and famous through his
genius and deeds, than he who is born with hereditary titles.
Lincoln was of this privileged class: he belonged to this
aristocracy. In infancy, his energetic soul was nourished by
poverty. In youth, he learned through toil the love of liberty,
and respeft for the rights of man. Even to the age of twenty-
two, educated in adversity, his hands made callous by honorable
labor, he rested from the fatigues of the field, spelling out, in the
pages of the Bible, in the lessons of the gospel, in the fugitive
leaves ofthe daily journal, — which the Aurora opens, and the night
disperses, — the first rudiments of instruftion, which his solitary
meditations ripened. Little by little, light was infused into that
spirit, the wings put forth and grew strong with which he flew.
The chrysalis felt one day the ray of the sun, which called it to
life, broke its involucrum, and it launched forth fearlessly from the
darkness of its humble cloister into the luminous spaces of its
destiny. The farmer, day-laborer, shepherd, like Cincinnatus,
left the ploughshare in the half-broken furrow, and, legislator of
his own State, and afterwards of the Great Republic, saw himself
proclaimed in the tribunal the popular chief of many millions of
people, the maintainer of the holy principle inaugurated by Wil
berforce. What strife, what scenes of agitation, what a series of
herculean labors and incalculable sacrifices, were not involved
and represented in the glory of their results, during these four
years of war and government! Armies in the field, such as, since
the remotest periods, there has been no example! Huge bat
tles, which saw the sun rise and set, twice or thrice, without

Sr, Rebello da Silva, 313

viftory inclining to the one or the other side: marches, in which
thousands of viftims, whole legions, piled with the dead each
fragment of the conquered earth: assaults which, in audacity and
slaughter, reduce to insignificance the exploits of Attila and the
Huns! What stupendous obsequies for the scourge of slavery!
What a lesson, terrible and salutary, from a great people, still
rich and vigorous with youth, to the timid vacillations of old
Europe, before a destiny contested by principles so sacred!
These were the monuments, the million marks, of his career.
If the sword was in his hands the instrument, and liberty the
inspiration and strength, of his efforts, he was not unfaithful to
them. Above the thorns in his path, through the tears and blood
of so many holocausts, he was able at last to see the promised
land. It was not vouchsafed to him to plant therein, in expiation,
the auspicious olive-tree of concord. When he was about to
re-unite the broken bond ofthe Union; when he was about to in
fuse anew the life-giving spirit of free institutions into the body
of the country, its scattered and bloody members rejoined and
re-cemented; when the standard of the Republic, the funereal
clamors silenced, and the agonies of pride and defeat consoled,
was about to be again raised, covering with its glorious folds all
the children of the same common soil, purified from the indelible
stain of slavery, — the athlete reels, and falls in the arena, show
ing that he, too, was but a mortal.
I deem this sketch sufficient. The Chamber, through inclina
tion, through a sense of duty, through its institution, not only
conservative, but as the faithful guardian of traditions and princi
ples, will not be, surely will not desire to be, backward in joining
in the manifestations which the eleftive House has just voted,
co-operating with the enlightened cabinets and parliaments of
Europe. Silence in the presence of such outrages belongs only
40

314 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
to senates dumb and disinherited of all high sentiments and aspi
rations. Voting this motion, the Chamber of Peers associates itself in
the grief of all civilized nations. The crime which shortened the
days of President Lincoln, martyr to the great principles in
which our age most glories, is almost, is in essence, a regicide;
and a monarchical country cannot refrain from detesting and
condemning it.
The descendants of those who first revealed to the Europe of
the sixteenth century the new way, which, through the barriers
of stormy and unknown seas, opened the gates of the kingdom of
the Aurora, will not be the last to bend over the gravestone of a
great magistrate, who was likewise the guide of his people through
fearful tempests, and who succeeded in condufting them triumph
antly to the overthrow ofthe last vestige ofthe citadel of slavery.
To each epoch and its people, its task and its meed of glory; to
each illustrious hero, his crown of laurel, or his civic crown.
Translated for the Christian Register, Boston, August 12, 1865,

LETTER FROM DR, MERLE D'AUBIGNE

AUTHOR OF THE " HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION,"

THE New- York Evening " Post " reports that Mr, Henry A.
Smythe, President of the Central National Bank of that
city, has received from George G. Fogg, American Minister to
Switzerland, a letter of condolence addressed to Mr, Fogg by the
author of the " History of the Reformation," Mr. Fogg says, —
" Of the many letters sent to me from the most eminent men in
letters and science, I have thought that you, and other of our
friends in America, would be interested in one from the great
historian of the Reformation,"
Geneva, April 27, 1865,
Monsieur le Ministre, — At the moment when our hearts
were excited at the great deliverance which God has accorded
for your people ; at the moment when we were rendering thanks
giving to him, for putting an end in your noble country to the two
greatest evils with which humanity can be aflflifted, — war and
slavery, — a terrible news comes to change our joy into deepest
mourning. The blow which has struck Mr, Lincoln strikes all
the friends of justice, order, liberty, and religion. He has been
the instrument of God for the accomplishment of one of the
greatest afts, perhaps the very greatest, which will illustrate our

3 1 6 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters,
century, — the definitive abolition of slavery throughout Christen
dom, He is not only the instrument, but the viftim. While not
venturing to compare him with the great sacrifice of Golgotha,
which gave liberty to the captives, is it not just, in this hour, to
recall the word of an apostle (i John, iii. i6): "In this we have
known love, in that Christ has laid down his life for us; and
therefore ought we also to lay down our lives for our brethren,"
Who can say that the President did not lay down his life by the
firmness of his devotion to a great duty? The name of Lincoln
will remain one of the greatest that history has to inscribe on its
annals. Parricidal hands, in striking down the Chief of your people,
have thou,ght to be able thereby to arrest the great work he had
commenced. But if men pass away, God remains, God, whose
minister Lincoln was, will crown the work of peace, order, and
liberty, which has cost this generous man a life so precious. We
weep with you, my dear sir: but we hope also with you; and our
hope shall not be deceived. May God himself assuage the
wounds of your people. May the ^gis of his gospel restore to
them union, harmony, peace, and prosperity. Among the lega
cies which Lincoln leaves to us, we shall all regard, as the most
precious, his spirit of equity, of moderation, and of peace, accord
ing to which he will still preside, if I may so speak, over the
restoration of your great nation.
Excuse me, if I dare avail myself of the liberty you have
given me on other occasions to correspond with you, in order to
pray you to receive, in these painful circumstances, the expression
of my condolence and of my profound respeft. MERLE D'AUBIGNE,
To the Hon. George G. Fogg, Minister Resident
ofthe United States of America in Switzerland.

LETTER FROM THE DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION
OF FLORENCE.

To tlie Free People of the United States of America, May i8, 1865.
BROTHERS OF THE AMERICAN UNION, — A few
days have passed since your people prepared themselves to
celebrate, in the decisive viftory of Richmond, the proximate, in
fallible triumph of liberty and of the Union over servitude and
division, when sad intelligence troubled the sincere joy of all the
friends of liberty, and stopped on our lips the festive expressions
of triumph, and our glad wishes for the future.
Lincoln, the honest, the magnanimous, citizen, the most wor
thy chief magistrate of your glorious Federation, a viftim of an
execrable treason, is no more.
The furies of despotism and of servitude, deceived in their
infamous hopes, incapable of sustaining any longer their combat
against liberty, before falling into the abyss which threatened
them, strengthened the arm of a murderer; and as they opened
the fratricidal war with the gibbet of the martyr of the cause of
abolition, John Brown, so they ended it, worthy of themselves, in
the most ferocious and stupid of all crimes, — the murder of a
great citizen.
Now, liberty, in stigmatizing the cause of her enemies, will
have only to point out this deed, and the masses of the people
everywhere cannot fail to remember that European despots have

3 1 8 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters,
had a share in it; that in some courts of Europe, Mason, Slidell,
and the infamous pirates of the " Alabama," found proteftion and
encouragement, and the wicked instigator of the civil war, Jeffer
son Davis, obtained praises and applause.
Brothers of the American Union, — Courage ! The great
cause for which you have supported four years of titanic com
bat is the cause of humanity; its triumph can never more be
doubted, and has been delayed only for a moment by the worst of
aftions, committed by an abjeft murderer.
Tyranny, it is true, could sometimes be destroyed by the mur
der of the tyrant, because it has life only in him; but liberty,
which lives in the people, has, like the people, an immortal origin
and destiny. For the Committee.
(Signed) P, D, ANNIBALE, President,
A, CORTI, Secretary.

To' the Democratic Association of Florence.
United Consulate-General for the Kingdom of Italy,
Florence, May 23, 1865.
Gentlemen, — I have had the gratification of transmitting to
my Government the address to the people of the United States,
presented to me last week by your Association; and I have re
quested that this gratifying evidence of your sympathy and good
feeling may be made known to my countrymen through the pub
lic journals. In the profound sorrow which the American nation has been
called upon to endure through the death of our beloved Presi
dent, it is a source of the greatest consolation to know how highly
his public afts were appreciated by the liberal citizens of all na
tions, and especially by those of Italy, whose people have done

T- B. Lawrence. 319

so much to prove their devotion to the great principles of free
dom. Italy, beyond any other nation, knows how to fraternize
with the United States; for "Liberty and Union" have been
alike the watchwords of the people of both countries.
The history of your own renowned land proves that in a di
vided country liberty exists but in name. Your ancient republics
were rivals to each other; and, while city took up arms against
city, and family against family, the people were enslaved.
Six centuries ago, your glorious poet, the immortal Dante (to
whose fame j^ou have just rendered a tribute and an homage
worthy of his countrymen), with a divine inspiration, foresaw
that in the union of Italy could real liberty only be found; and
while his descendants of the nineteenth century are proving his
dream to be a reality, the lesson conveyed by the past experience
of Italy has not been lost upon the American nation.
For the union of the States and the liberty of the people, the
American war has' been waged ; and although in its prosecution
blood has been shed like water, and treasure lavished without
stint, yet -we deem its vast cost as trifling in comparison with the
grand result obtained in the preservation of our Union, and the
enfranchising of four millions of slaves.
Well, as in Italy you justly idolize the noble Garibaldi, as the
paladin and hero of Italian emancipation; so we in America
honor the martyr, Abraham Lincoln, as the Saviour of his Coun
try. Alike in their entire freedom from private or political sel
fishness; alike in their pure and spotless patriotism; alike in
holding the first place in the hearts of their countrymen, — pos
terity will regard them as apostles of liberty, second to none that
the annals of history record.
I have the honor to be, gentlemen,
Your obedient servant,
(Signed) T, B, LAWRENCE, Consul- General,

SPEECH OF EDOUARD LABOULAYE:

ON THE DEATH OF MR, LINCOLN,

THE murder of Mr. Lincoln has excited a profound emotion
through all Europe. The atrocity of such a cold-blooded
murder; the honesty and innocence of the viftim; the death
which arrested, in the very midst of victory, the man who seemed
to have conquered the right of finishing the work of pacification
which he had so nobly begun, — explain but too well the universal
sympathy in the presence of this cruel and unexpefted end.
Friends, enemies, and indifferent persons, all to-day render full
justice to the prudence, firmness, and moderation of Mr. Lincoln;
all execrate the wretch who cut off so beautiful a life. Far from
me be the thought of casting on the South the weight of such a
crime. A people of soldiers is not a people of assassins; and I
am not astonished that at the news of the assassination Lee was
unable to resist his grief, and the brave Ewell wept like a child.
War teaches us to respeft, and often even to love an enemy.
But if I do not accuse the South, I accuse slavery, and the pas
sions which it lets loose. All those afts of violence, which, for
forty years past, have disturbed America, and rejoiced those who
hate liberty, — street duels, negroes burned alive, the beating of
Mr. Sumner, the plots against Mr, Lincoln, — all these misdeeds
ha-ve come from the same poisoned source; they have been
brought forth by the pride of dominion.

Edouard Laboulaye. 321

Slavery ends as it began, by a crime. May this crime be the
last! May this abominable institution, once more dishonored,
disappear at last before the contempt and abhorrence of the hu
man race ! It would be the noblest homage that could be ren
dered to the memory of Lincoln.
I shall not make the eulogy of the President: I have neither
the time nor the strength; but I would like to recall some of his
words and aftions, and to show what was the unity and simplicity
of his life. Death sets each one in his place : it plunges into for
getfulness those minions of fortune who have lived only to achieve
their ambition, or to satisfy their wretched vanity; but it elevates
the truly great men, and casts over these noble figures an inde
scribable splendor and serenity. Disdained and insulted yester
day, they are respefted and admired on the morrow: they are
more powerful in their tomb than in their palace. Mr. Lincoln
was one of these heroes, who are ignorant of themselves; his
thoughts will reign after him. The name of Washington has
already been pronounced, and I think with reason. Doubtless
Mr. Lincoln resembled Franklin more than Washington. By his
origin, his arch good nature, his ironical good sense, and his love
of anecdote and jesting, he was of the same blood as the printer of
Philadelphia. But it is nevertheless true, that, in less than a cen
tury, America has passed through two crises in which its liberty
might have been lost, if it had not had honest men at its head;
and that each time it has had the happiness to meet the man
best fitted to serve it. If Washington founded the Union, Lincoln
has saved it. History will draw together and unite those two
names. A single word explains Mr. Lincoln's whole life; it was duty.
Never did he put himself forward; never did he think of himself;
never did he seek one of those ingenious combinations which
puts the head of a State in bold relief, and enhances his import-
41

322 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
ance at the expense of the country: his only ambition, his only
thought, was faithfully to fulfil the mission which his fellow-citi
zens had intrusted to him. He wished to be the first magistrate
of a Republic, neither more or less : always ready to hold cheap
what affefted only himself; but always resolved to exaft of each
one that he should respeft the Constitution, and bow before the
sovereignty of the laws.
Hence arose in Mr. Lincoln that mixture of gentleness and
firmness which is already found in his first speech, — his adieu to
the little city of Springfield, where, as a lawyer, he had deserved
the esteem and love of his fellow-citizens, and which he addressed
to his friends who had followed him to the cars, February ii,
1 86 1, as he was about to set out for Washington.
Having reached Washington, — by foiling a plot laid by the
partisans of slavery, — he addressed to Congress, March 4, 1861,
a speech of finished wisdom. The Southerners, carried away by
passion, and the wits of Europe, could not at that time find dis
dain or insults enough for this peasant, this wood-chopper, this
mechanic, with ugly figure, rough hair, and large hands, who
dared take his place in the Capitol; but, now that events have
opened the blindest eyes, how just and sensible does this speech
of a true patriot appear! How much blood and how many tears
would have been spared, if men had listened to the voice of this
good man!
The President declared that he would insure respeft to the
Constitution. He was not charged with abolishing slavery; he
was charged with maintaining the sovereignty of the Union, and
the rights of the State. This mission he would fulfil to the end.
Moreover, why separate? If a minority could secede from the
majority, to-morrow a nucleus of malcontents might be formed in
this minority which had become independent, and the conclusion
of secession would be perpetual and incurable anarchy.

Edouard L aboulaye. 323

" No, my fellow-citizens," he added, " we cannot separate.
We cannot remove our respeftive seftions from each other, nor
build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife
may be divorced, and go out ofthe presence and beyond the reach
of each other; but the different parts of the country cannot do
this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either
amicable or hostile, m-ust continue between them. Is it possible,
then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satis
faftory after separation than before ? Can aliens make treaties
easier than friends can make laws ? Suppose you go to war, you
cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides,
and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical question as
to terms of intercourse are again before you. In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow-citizens, and not in mine, is the momentous
question of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You
can have no conflift without being yourselves the aggressors.
You have no oath registered in heaven to oblige you to destroy
the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one ' to pre
serve, proteft, and defend it.' We are not enemies, but friends.
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affeftion."
We know how the South responded to this touching appeal.
I will not write the history of the war. I will only say, that as
long as Mr. Lincoln hoped to save the Union without touching
slavery, he did not proclaim emancipation. In Europe, this mod
eration has been imperfeftly understood: the President has been
often reproached for what was to him a claim of honor. What
ever were Mr. Lincoln's personal sentiments, however opposed
he was to slavery, he set the duty of the magistrate before every
thing. He had found slavery in the Constitution that he had
sworn to maintain ; as president, he had not the right, therefore,
to touch it.

324 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
But this same Constitution gave the President the right to
seize the property of the enemy, and to take all measures neces
sary for the suppression of the rebellion. After waiting more
than a year, therefore, Mr. Lincoln issued a proclamation, Sep
tember 22, 1862, declaring that, from the first of January, 1863,
all slaves belonging to the States at war with the Union should
be for ever free. From this epoch, liberty legally took a place on
the soil of America: it remains now to establish it there in faft, —
a great measure, which would have demanded all the prudence of
Mr. Lincoln.
In the four years of a presidency sustained amidst the hazards
of civil war, this obscure Illinois lawyer, elevated to the Chief
Magistracy by the caprice of a popular vote, succeeded in win
ning public esteem to such a degree, by his firmness and good
sense, that a unanimous vote called for the second time to a seat
in the White House him whom public opinion had so justly
named " Honest Abraham." This time it was not only the parti
sans of the first eleftion that united to secure the success of their
candidate and to profit by his success ; but his former adversaries,
with one of the most important men in America, Edward Everett,
at their head, hastened in crowds to rally round the President,
and energetically to oppose the unlucky eleftion of General Mc
Clellan. By his patriotic devotion, Lincoln had identified himself
with his country: without seeking it, he had become the man of
the situation. His triumph was the triumph, of the Union, and the
end of the civil war. His viftory was the viftory itself of the
Constitution and the laws.
To him, still as simple and as modest, — I should say stjll
more modest and more deeply penetrated with the sentiment of
his responsibility, — this honor only seemed a new means of serv
ing his country. His Inaugural Address to Congress, March 4,
1865, shows us what progress had been made in his soul. This

Edouard Laboulaye. 325

piece of familiar eloquence is a masterpiece: it is the testament
of a patriot. I do not believe that any eulogy of the President
would equal this page on which he has depifted himself in all his
greatness and all his simplicity.
I know not whether I am mistaken ; but it seems to me, that,
in these words, so different from the ordinary language of the pol
itician, in this appeal to humility and resignation, in this religious
submission, we feel an indescribable self-abnegation, and a pre
sentiment, as it were, of a speedy end, which makes us shudder.
Mr. Lincoln, however, did not fear death. To all the threats that
-were addressed to him, as to all the anxiety with which it was
sought to inspire him, he had an answer ready at the bottom of
his heart, — that of our old knights, whose soul was not more
noble than that of the Springfield lawyer, — Do thy devoir, happen
what may.
In the present situation, the loss of Mr, Lincoln is a great one
to America. I know that in a country which rules itself a man
is less necessary than elsewhere; and there is reason to have con
fidence in the new president, who also has elevated himself by
persistent labor, and who has long shown courage and energy.
But, whatever may be the merit of Mr. Johnson, he has not be
hind him four years of moderation which gives confidence tp all,
and which might disarm the hatred in the North as in the South.
We may hope, however, that Mr. Lincoln's policy will be fol
lowed by his successor: he will find around him statesmen like
Mr. Seward, generals like Grant, a whole tradition which cannot
be too carefully preserved, if it is wished to complete the work of
Mr. Lincoln. To pacify minds after four years of civil war is an
undertaking even more difficult than to pacify the country: it
needs as much goodness as energy..
America will not be the only one that will honor Mr. Lincoln.
It is not to his country alone that Mr, Lincoln has rendered a

326 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
service: it is to all humanity. History, it must be admitted, is
too often only a school of immorality. It shows us the viftory of
force or stratagem, much more than the success of justice, mod
eration, and probity. It is too often only the apotheosis of tri
umphant selfishness. There are noble and great exceptions:
happy those who can increase the number, and thus bequeath a
noble and beneficent example to posterity! Mr. Lincoln is among
these. He would willingly have repeated, after Franklin, that
" falsehood and artifice are the praftice of fools, who have not wit
enough to be honest: " all his private life, and all his political life,
was inspired and direfted by this profound faith in the omnipo
tence of virtue. It is through this again that he deserves to be
compared to Washington: it is through this that he will remain
in history with the most glorious name that can be merited by the
head ofa free people, — a name given him by his contemporaries,
and which will be preserved to him by posterity, — that of Hon
est Abraham Lincoln.

LETTER FROM HENRI MARTIN:

TRANSLATED FROM THE PARIS " SIECLE,

SLAVERY, before expiring, has gathered up the remnants of
its strength and rage to strike a coward blow at its con-
querer. The satanic pride of that perverted society could not resign
itself to defeat: it did not care to fall with honor, as all causes fall
which are destined to rise again: it dies as it has lived, violating
all laws, divine and human.
In this we have the spirit, and perhaps the work, of that
famous secret association, " The Golden Circle," which, after
preparing the great rebellion for twenty years, and spreading its
accomplices throughout the West and North, around the seat of
the presidency, gave the signal for this impious war on the day
when the public conscience finally snatched from the slaveholders
the Government of the United States.
The day on which the excellent man whom they have just
made a martyr was raised to power, they appealed to force, to
realize what treason had prepared.
They have failed. They did not succeed in overthrowing
Lincoln from power by war: they have done so by assassination.
The plot appears to have been well arranged. By striking
down with the President his two principal ministers, one of whom
they reached, and the General-in-chief, who was saved by an

328 Eulogies, Speeches, and Letters.
accidental occurrence, the murderers expefted to disorganize the
Government of the Republic, and give fresh life to the re
bellion. Their hopes will be frustrated. These sanguinary fanatics,
whose cause has fallen not so much by the material superiority as
the moral power of democracy, have become incapable of under
standing the effefts of the free institutions which their fathers
gloriously aided in establishing. A fresh illustration will be seen
of what those institutions can produce.
The indignation of the people will not exhaust itself in a mo
mentary outburst; it will concentrate and embody itself in the
unanimous, persevering, invincible aftion of the universal will:
whoever may be the agents, the instruments of the work, that
work, we may rest assured, will be finished. The event will
show that it did not depend upon the life of one man, or of sev
eral men.
The work will be completed after Lincoln, as if finished by
him; but Lincoln will remain the austere and sacred personifica
tion of a great epoch, the most faithful expression of democracy.
This simple and upright man, prudent and strong, elevated
step by step from the artisan's bench to the command of a great
nation, and always, without parade and without effort, at the height
of his position; executing without precipitation, without flourish,
and with invincible good sense, the most colossal afts; giving to
the world this decisive example ofthe civil power in a republic;
direfting a gigantic war, without free institutions being for an
instant compromised or threatened by military usurpation; dying,
finally, at the moment in which, after conquering, he was intent
on pacification, — and may God grant, that the atrocious madmen
who killed him have not killed clemency with him, and deter
mined, instead of the peace he wished, pacification by force! —
this man will stand out, in the traditions of his country and the

Henri Martin.

329

world, as an incarnation ofthe people, and of modern democracy
itself The great work of emancipation had to be sealed, therefore,
with the blood of the just, even as it was inaugurated with the
blood of the just. The tragic history of the abolition of slaver)^,
which opened with the gibbet of John Brown, will close with the
assassination of Lincoln.
And now let him rest by the side of Washington, as the second
founder of the great Republic. European democracy is present
in spirit at his funeral, as it voted in its heart for his re-eleftion,
and applauded the viftory in the midst of which he passes away.
It will wish with one accord to associate itself with the monument
that America will raise to him upon the capital of prostrate sla
very. HENRI MARTIN,

42

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

NOTE FROM THE REV, ELIAS NASON,
QUITE a serious error has crept into the biographies of Mr, Lincoln, in
respecft to his parentage. His mother's name is said to be Nancy Hanks,
•while in reality it w^as Nancy Sparrow. Our late illustrious Chief Magistrate
was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, on the twelfth day of February, 1809,
and was the son of Mr, Thomas and Nancy [Sparrow] Lincoln, The other
children were Sarah, who married Mr, Grigsby, and died in Indiana ; and a
son, who died in infancy,
Thomas Lincoln was the son of Abraham, who was shot by an Indian in
1784, His children were Mordecai, who avenged the death of his father;
Joseph, Mary, Nancy, and Thomas, The family is very probably from the
New-England stock, which settled at Hingham previous to 1640, Thomas
Lincoln was a man of integrity, but could neither read nor write. He married
Miss Nancy Sparrow in 1806, She was the daughter of Henry and Lucy
[Hanks] Sparrow ; was born in Mercer County, Kentucky, and grew up in the
family of her uncle, William Hanks, She was tall and commanding in person,
could read and write, was a good singer, and a member of the Baptist Church,
Her name was mentioned by her neighbors only to be praised. She had a
sister Mary, who married Thomas Whitehouse ; another sister, Sarah, and two
brothers, Thomas and Henry, She died in 1818, Mr, Thomas Lincoln mar
ried, for his second wife, Mrs, Sarah [Bush] Johnson, of Hardin County, Ken
tucky, who still lives with her daughter Matilda, on the farm which Mr, Lincoln
bought for his father, Thomas, in Cole's County, Illinois,

North Billerica, Mass., Aug, 28, 1865.

ISitUograpijical iLigt €f li3oi3S;s atiir ^ampijl^ts;
CONTAINING
SERMONS, ORATIONS, EULOGIES, POEMS,
OR OTHER PAPERS RELATING TO
THE assassination, DEATH, AND FUNERAL OBSEQUIES
OF- ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The following is not ofl'ered as a complete Catalogue upon the subjeft to which it
relates : it embraces only such works as are in the possession of the compiler of this vol
ume, and is printed simply to aid whoever may contemplate a more elaborate publication
of the same character.
Allen, Rev, Ethan, Sermon delivered at St, Thomas Church, Homestead,
Baltimore Co,, Md,, June i, 1865, Baltimore, i2mo, pp, 12,
Andrew, Hon, John A, Message to Massachusetts Legislature, July 17,
1865, Boston, 8vo, pp. 8,
Atwood, Rev, E, S, Two Sermons delivered in Salem, Mass,, April 17, and
June I, 1865, Salem, 8vo. pp, 31,
Babcock, Rev, S, D, Sermon delivered at Dedham, Mass,, April 19, 1865,
Dedham, 8vo, pp, 16,
Badger, Rev, H, C, Sermon preached at Cambridgeport, April 23, 1861,
Boston, Svo, pp, 18,
Bancroft, Hon, Geo, Article " Atlantic Monthly," June, 1865. (¦
Barnes, Rev, A, Sermon preached in Philadelphia, Pa,, June i, 1865, Phil
adelphia, Svo, pp, 74,
Bartol, Rev, C, A,, D.D, Sermon preached in West Church, Boston,
June I, 1865, Boston, " Monthly Religious Magazine," for July, pp, 8,
Benjamin, S, W, G, Ode on the Death of Abraham Lincoln, Boston, i2mo,
PP- 15-
Bingham, Rev, Joel F, Sermon preached in Buffalo, N,Y,, May 7, 1865,
Buffalo, N,Y, Svo, pp, 36,

Bibliographical List of Books and Pamphlets. 335
Binney, Hon. Wm, Oration delivered in Providence, R.I,, June i, 1865,
Providence, R,I, Svo, pp, 56,
BiNNS, Rev, W, Sermon preached in Birkenhead, England, April, 30, 1865,
Birkenhead, i6mo, pp, 13,
Blackburn, Rev, W, M, Sermon preached at Trenton, New Jersey, April
16, 1865, Trenton, N,J, Svo, pp, 24,
Bliss, Rev, T, E, Sermon preached at Memphis, Tenn,, April 23, 1865,
Memphis, Tenn, Svo, pp, 16,
Boardman, Rev, G, D, Two Sermons preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April
16 and 19, 1865, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 64,
Boardman, Rev, H, A,, D,D, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, June i,
1S65, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 32, .li-C .; /¦ t: -^ -' ¦ '
Booth, Rev, R,, D,D, Sermon preached at New York, April 23, 1865, New
York, Svo, pp,-23,
Boutwell, Hon, G, S, Eulogy delivered at Lowell, Mass,, April 19, 1865,
Lowell, Mass, Svo, pp, 67, // ' "¦- 'vitat.i, "t ,.v/^i.i. i.i<-i/oi //i
Brakeman, Rev, N, L, Sermon preached at Baton Rouge, La,, April 23,
1865, New Orleans, La, Svo, pp, 32,
Briggs, Rev, G, W,, D,D, Eulogy delivered at Salem, Mass,, with the Pro
ceedings of the City Council, June i, 1S65, Salem, Mass, Svo, pp, 48,
Brooks, Rev, P, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 23, 1S65,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp', 24,
Broome, W, W, Abraham Lincoln's Charafter sketched by English Travel
lers, Svo, pp, 4, t?
BuLKLEY, Rev, E, A, Sermon preached at Plattsburgh, N,Y,, April 19, 1S65,
Plattsburgh, N,Y, Svo, pp, 16,
Bullock, Hon, A, H, Eulogy delivered at Worcester, Mass,, June i, 1S65,
Worcester, Svo, pp, 49,
Burns, Rev. ,R, F, Address delivered at St, Catherine's, C,W,, April, pp,
23, See " Maple Leaves,"
Burrows, Rev, J, L,, D,D, Sermon preached at Richmond, Va,, April 23,
1S65, Richmond, Va, Svo, pp, 12,
Butler, Rev, C, M,, D.D, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 19,
1S65, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 32,
Butler, Rev, H, E, Sermon preached at Keeseville, N,Y,, April 23, 1865,
Burlington, Vt, Svo, pp, 23,'" '' '¦ ^ ¦ - ,> ;>¦ "^.i.. ,.
Butler, Rev, J, G, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, April 16, 1S65,
Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 14,

;^Ti6 Appendix.

Carey, Rev, I, C, Sermon delivered at Freeport, 111,, April 19, 1S65. Free-
port, 111, Svo, pp, S,
Carey, Rev, I, C, Sermon delivered at Freeport 111,, June i, 1865, Free-
port, 111, Svo, pp, S,
Carnahan, Rev, D, T, Sermon preached at Gettysburg, Pa,, June i, 1865,
Gettysburg, Pa, Svo, pp, 24,
Chaffin, Rev, W, L, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 23, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 18,
Chamberlain, Rev, N, H, Sermon preached at Birmingham, Conn,, April 19,
1865, New York, i2mo, pp, 22,
Chase, Prof, Thomas, Address delivered at Haverford College, West Haver-
ford, Pa,, on fifth-day evening, seventh month, 6th, 1S65,
Chester, Rev, John, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, April 16, 1S65,
Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 16,
Clark, Rev, A, Sermon preached at Cincinnati, Ohio, April 19, 1865, Cin
cinnati, Ohio, Svo, pp, 16,
Clark, Hon, Dan'l, Eulogy delivered at Manchester, N,H,, June i, 1S65,
Manchester, N,H, Svo, pp, 36,
Clarke, Rev, J, F,, D,D, * Sermon preached in Indiana-Place Chapel, Boston,
Janijary 16, 1S65, Boston, i6mo, pp, 24,
Colfax, Hon, S,v Address delivered at South Bend, Ind,, April 24, 1S65,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 29, -^'- - - 'vi, ffcr£/ . ¦
Colman, Rev, G, W, Sermon preached at Adlon, Mass,, April 16, 1S65.
Boston, Mass, Svo, pp, 15,
Commemorative Proceedings of the Athenaeum Club, New York, on the Death
of Abraham Lincoln, New York, Svo, pp, 37,
Cooper, Rev, Jas, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 16, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 24,
Craig, Rev, W, Sermon preached at New Bedford, Mass,, April 23, 1865,
New Bedford, Svo, pp, 14,
Crane, Rev, C, B, Sermon preached at Hartford, Conn,, April 16, 1865,
Hartford, Conn, Svo, pp, 29, *
Crocker, S, L,, Jun,, Esq, Eulogy delivered at Taunton, Mass,, June i, 1865,
Boston, Svo, pp, 28,
Crozier, Rev, H, P, Sermon preached at Huntington, N,Y,, April 19, 1865,
Huntington, N,Y, Svo, pp, 16, t/ i^ ",,' ,1/ c'o'' ' v y _ "' 'f^^tu
Cudworth, Rev, W, H, Eulogy delivered at East Boston, May 8, 1S65,
Boston, Svo, pp, 27,

Bibliographical List of Books and Pamphlets. 337
Cushman, Rev, R, S, Sermon preached at Manchester, Vt,, April 19, 1S65,
Manchester, Vt, Svo, pp, 20,
Cutler, Rev, E, T, Sermon preached at Rockland, Me,, April 19, 1865,
Boston, Svo, pp, 16,
Daggett, Rev, O, E, Sermon preached at Canandaigua, N,Y,, April 16,
1865, Canandaigua, N,Y, Svo, pp, 16,
Darling, Rev, H,, D,D, Sermon preached at Albany, N,Y,, April 19, 1865,
Albany, N,Y, Svo, pp, 24,
Dascomb, Rev, A, B, Sermon preached at Waitsfield, Vt,, April 23, Svo, 7
PP- 23-
' Davidson, Rev, R,, D,D, Sermon preached at Huntington, N,Y,, April 19,
1S65, Huntington, N,Y, Svo, pp, 12.
' Day, Rev, P, B, Sermon preached at Hollis, N,H,, June i, 1865, Concord,
N,H, , Svo, pp, 20,
Dean, Hea, S, Eulogy delivered at Providence, R,I,, April 19, 1865, Provi
dence, R,I, Svo, pp, 23,
Deming, Hon, H, C, Eulogy delivered at Hartford, Conn,, June i, 1S65,
Hartford, Conn, Cloth, Svo, pp, 58,
' De Normandie, Rev, James, Sermon preached at Portsmouth, N,H,, April
16, 1865, Portsmouth, N,H, i6mo, pp, 8,
Dix, Rev, M, Sermon preached at New York', April 19, 1S65, Cambridge,
Mass, Svo, pp, 16,
Drumm, Rev, J, H,, M,D, Sermon preached at Bristol, Pa,, Aprilj6, 1S65,
Bristol, Pa, i2mo, pp, 2i,ac'- <>'¦'-> I o%~ ¦¦ . / 1"';- ' ^_i'" ,.>._ -
c DuANE, Rev, R, B, Sermon preached at Providence, R.I,, April 19, 1S65,
Providence, R,I, Svo, pp, 15,
' Dudley, Rev, J, L, Sermon preached at Middletown, April 16, 1865, Mid-
dletown, Conn, Svo, pp, 28,
Duffield, Rev, G, Sermon preached at Detroit, Mich,, April 16, 1S65,
Detroit, Svo, pp, iS,
Dunning, Rev, H, Address delivered at Baltimore, Md,, April 19, 1865,-
Baltimore, Md,* Svo, pp, 12,
Dunning, Rev, H, Sermon preached at Baltimore, Md,, April 23, 1865,
Baltimore, Md, Svo, pp, 12,
Dunning, Rev, H, Sermon preached at Baltimore, Md,, May 7, 1S65, Svo,
Baltimore, Md, pp, 12,
Dyer, Rev, D, Sermon preached at Albany, April 19, 1865, Albany, N,Y,
Svo, pp. 20,
43

338 Appendix.

Eddy, Rev, D, C, D,D, Sermon preached at Boston, April 16, 1865, Bos
ton, 32mo, pp, 23,
Eddy, Rev, R, Three Sermons preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 16 and
19, and June i, 1865, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 27, 2, t^Aj^/j,
Edgar, Rev, C, H,, D,D, Three Sermons preached at Easton, Pa,, April 16
and 19, and May 3, Svo, pp, 20.
Edgar, Rev, C, H,, D,D, Sermon preached at Easton, Pa,, June i, Easton,
Pa, Svo, pp, 12,
Edwards, Rev, H, L, Sermon preached at South Abington, June i, 1865,
Boston, Svo, pp, 16,
Egar, Rev, J, H,, D,D, Sermon preached at Leavenworth, Kansas, June i,
1S65, Leavenworth, Kan, Svo, pp, 16,
EutHOEN, Rev, D,, D,D, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa, Printed in
German, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 8,
Ellis, C, M,, Esq,"^ Address delivered at St, John, N,B,, June i, 1865, St,
John, N,B, i6mo, pp, 31,
Ellis, Rev, R, Sermon preached in Boston, June 16, " Monthly Religious
Magazine," May, 1865, i!Ttt\- '3%<^C?*CLie'i'-ii- ¦¦
Ellis, Rev, R, Address delivered in Boston, June 19, " Monthly Religious
Magazine," May, 1865,
f Everett, Rev, C, C. Two Sermons preached at Bangor, April 16 and 19,
Bangor, Me, Svo, pp, 25,
' Everett, Rev, C, C, Eulogy delivered at Bangor, Me,, June i, 1865, Ban
gor, Svo, pp, 30,
Farquhar, Rev, J, Sermon preached in Lower Chanceford, York Co,, Pa,,
June I, 1865, Lancaster, Pa, Svo, pp, 23,
Field, Rev, T, P,, D,D, See Wilcox,
Fowler, Rev, H, Sermon preached at Auburn, N,Y,, April 23, 1865,
Auburn, N,Y, Svo, pp, 16, ^
Fowler, J,, Jun, Eulogy delivered at New Rochelle, N,Y,, April 23, 1865,
New York, Svo, pp, 28,
Frothingham, Rev, O, B, Article, " Friend of Progress," New York, June,
1S65,
Gaddis, Rev, M, P, Sermon preached at Cincinnati, Ohio, April 16, 1865,
Cincinnati, Ohio, Svo, pp, 15,
Garrison, Rev, J, F,, M,D, Sermon preached at Camden, N,J,, April 19,
1S65, Camden, N,J, Svo, pp, 20,
Gear, Rev, D, L, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 23, Phila
delphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 8,

Bibliographical List of Books and Pamphlets. 339
Gillette, Rev, A, G,, D,D, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, April
23, 1865, Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 15,
Glover, Rev, L, M,, D,D, Sermon preached at Jacksonville, 111,, April 23,
1865, Jacksonville, 111, Svo, pp, 21,
Gordon, Rev, W, R,, D,D, Sermon preached at Schraalenberg, N,J,, May 7,
1865, New York, Svo, pp, 24,
Gurley, Rev, P, D,, D-D, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, June i,
1S65, Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 16,
Guthrie, Dr, W, E, Oration addressed to the American People, Philadel
phia, Pa, 32mo, pp, 9,
^Hale, Rev, E, E, "The President's Words," Boston, 1865, i vol,, cloth,
i6mo, pp, 1S6,
Hall, Rev, C, H, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, April 16, 1865,
Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 15,
Hall, Rev, G,, D.D, Sermon preached at Northampton, Mass,, April 19,
1S65, Northampton, Mass, Svo, pp, 16,
' Hall, Rev, N, Sermon preached at Surrey Chapel, London, May 14, Bos
ton, Mass, Svo, pp, 16,
Hammond, Rev, C, Sermon preached at Monson, Mass,, June i, 1865,
Springfield, Mass, Svo, pp, 21,
Hannaford, Mrs, P, A, " The Martyred President," Poem, Boston, Svo,
pp, 24,
Hardinge, Miss E, Oration delivered at New York, April 16, 1865, New
York, Svo, pp, 28,
Hathaway, Rev, W, Sermon preached at Coxsackie, April 19, 1865,
Albany, N,Y, Svo, pp, 24, o'J-xv ."-tt (^ : '{r ^
Haven, Rev, G, Sermon preached at Boston, Mass,, April 23, 1865, Bos
ton, Mass, Svo, pp, 32,
Hawley, Rev, B,, D,D, Sermon preached at Albany, N,Y,, April 20, 1S65,
Albany, N,Y, Svo, pp, 20,
Hayden, Mrs, C, A, " A Tribute to Abraham Lincoln," Poem, Boston,
l2mo, pp, 23,
Hepworth, Rev, G, H, Two Sermons preached at Boston, April 23, 1S65.
Boston, i2mo, pp, 27,
Hepworth, Rev, G, H, Sermon preached at Boston, Boston, Mass, i2mo,
PP- 31-
HiBBARD, Rev, A, G, Sermon preached at Detroit, Mich,, April 16, 1S65,
Detroit, Mich, Svo, pp, 12,

34° Appendix,

Hitchcock, Rev, H, L, Sermon preached at Hudson, Ohio, April 19, 1S65,
Cleveland, Ohio, Svo, pp, 23,
Hodge, Rev, C, D,D, Article from " Princeton Review," New York, Svo,
pp, 24,
Hoffman, Rev, E, A, Sermon preached at Brooklyn, N,Y,, April 26, 1865,
New York, Svo, pp, 16, ^ ¦"/':¦; ¦ ¦ - -^.i-Uih:^ -^ ¦e •'-'H.u-Jtt :l
Holland, Dr, J, G, Eulogy delivered at Springfield, Mass,, April 19, 1865,
with Observances of the City Authorities, Springfield, Mass, Svo,
pp, 32,
Howlett, Rev, T, R, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, June i, 1S65,
Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 7,
" In Memoriam," Abraham Lincoln, New York, Svo, pp, 32, With
portrait,
Ives, Rev, A, E, Sermon preached at Castine, Me, Bangor, Svo, pp, 14,
Jeffrey, Rev, R, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, June i, 1865, Phil
adelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 28,
Johnston, Rev, E, H, Sermon preached at Harrisburg, Pa., June i, 1865,
Harrisburg, Pa, Svo, pp, 11,
' Johnston, Rev, H, Sermon preached at Pittsburgh, Pa,, April 23, 1S65,
Pittsburgh, Pa, Syo, pp, 11,
Johnson, Rev, Sam'l, Discourse preached at Lynn, Mass,, April 19, 1865,
Printed, not published, Svo, pp, 10,
Keeling, Rev, R, J, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C, April 23, 1S65,
Washington, D,C, 8vo, pp, 16,
Krauth, Rev, C, P,, D,D, Sermon preached at Pittsburgh, Pa,, June i, 1865,
Pittsburgh, Pa, Svo, pp, 23,
Krebs, Rev, Hugo, D,D, Sermon preached at St, Louis, Mo,, April 19,
1865, Printed in German, St, Louis, Mo, Svo, pp, 8,
' Krebs, Rev, Hugo, D,D, The same translated into English, Svo, pp, S,
Krummacher, Dr, See Sturz,
Laurie, Rev, Thomas, Two Sermons preached at West Roxbury, Mass,,
April 19 and 23, 1865, Dedham, Mass, Svo, pp, 40,
" LINCOLNIANA," containing Forty Sermons, Orations, Eulogies, Addresses,
Speeches, and Letters, Boston, 1865, i vol. Small 4to, pp, viii, 346,
LiEBER, Francis, " The Martyr's Monument," New York, i vol, i2mo,
PP- 297-
" Lincoln Memorial," City of Boston, i vol,, cloth, Svo,, large pap.er,
PP- 15,3-

Bibliographical List of Books and Pamphlets. 341
" Lincoln Memorial," A Record ofthe Life, Assassination, and Obsequies of
the Martyred President, New York, i vol, Svo, pp, 288,
Lowe, Rev, Charles, Sermon preached in Charleston, S,C,, April 23, 1S65,
Boston, i2mo, pp, 24,
LowRiE, Rev, J, M, Sermon preached at Fort Wayne, Ind,, April 16, 1865,
Fort Wayne, Ind, Svo, pp, 16,
Ludlow, Rev, J, M, Sermon preached at Albany, N,Y,, April 23, 1S65,
Albanj', N,Y, Svo, '^^. ^'^. ^ y'j.'t"-^- <^^i^ - td^ilu 'Ei^nct «:,t<l
MacEl'Rey, Rev. J, H,, M,D, Sermon preached at Wooster, Ohio, April 16,
1865, Wooster, Ohio, i2mo, pp, 24,
McCauley, Rev, James, Sermon preached at Baltimore, Md,, June i, 1S65,
Baltimore, Md, Svo, pp, 16,
McClintock, Rev, J, H,, D, D, Sermon preached at New York, April 19,
1865, New York, Svo, pp, 35,
" Maple Leaves from Canada for the Grave of Abraham Lincoln,"
being a Discourse by Rev, Robert Norton, and an Address by Rev, Robert
F, Burns, together with Proceedings of Public Meeting at St, Catherine's,
C,W,, April 23, 1865, &c, St, Catherine's, C,W, Svo, pp, 40,
Marshall, Rev, J, Sermon preached near Fortress Monroe, April 29, 1865,
Syracuse, N,Y, Svo, pp, 40,
Mayo, Rev, A, D, Two Sermons preached at Cincinnati, Ohio, April 16 and
19, 1865, Cincinnati, Ohio, Svo, pp, 28,
Miller, Hon, S, F, Eulogy delivered at Franklin, N,Y,, June i, 1865,
Delhi, N,Y, Svo, pp, 16,
Mitchell, Rev, S, S, Address delivered at Harrisburg, Pa,, April 19, 1865,
Harrisburg, Pa, pp, 15,
Morais, Rev, S. Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, June i, 1S65, Phila
delphia, Pa, Svo, pp, S,
Morehouse, Rev, H, L, Sermon preached at East Saginaw, Mich, East
Saginaw, Mich, i2mo, pp, 16,
Morris, B, F,, Esq, " The Nation's Tribute to Abraham Lincoln," Wash
ington, D,C,, 1S65, I vol,, cloth, Svo, pp, 272,
Myers, Hon, L, Address delivered at Philadelphia, Pa,, June 15, 1S65,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 15,
Nadals, Rev, B, H,, D,D, Sermon preached at Washington, D,C,, June i,
1S65, Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 15,
Nason, Rev, Elias, Eulogy delivered at Boston, May 3, 1865, Boston,
Svo, pp. 28.

342 Appendix.

I
" National Preacher," New York, Double number. May and June.
Contains six Sermons,
Nelson, Rev, H, A, Sermon preached at Springfield, 111,, May 7, 1865,
Springfield, 111, Svo, pp, 39,
Newell, Robert, Poem: "The Martyr-President," New York, 1S65,
i6mo, pp, 43,
Nicholls, Rev, S, Sermon preached at St, Louis, April 23, 1S65, St, Louis,
Mo, Svo, pp, 16,
NiLES, Rev, H, E, Address delivered at York, Pa,, April 19, 1S65, York,
Pa, Svo, pp, 8,
Noble, Rev, M, Sermon preached at Newport, R,I,, April 19, 1S65, New
port, R,I, Svo, pp, 16,
Norton, Rev, R, See Maple Leaves,
" Our Martyr-President, Abraham Lincoln," Voices from the Pulpits
of New York and Brooklyn, New York, 1S65, i2mo,, cloth, pp, 420,
Paddock, Rev, W, F, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 23, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 24,
Parke, Rev, N, G, Sermon preached at Pittston, Pa,, June i, 1865, Pittston,
Pa, Svo, pp, 20,
Parker, Rev, H, C, Sermon preached at Concord, N,H,, April 16, 1865,
Concord, N,H, Svo, pp, 15,
Patterson, Rev, A, J, Eulogy delivered at Portsmouth, N,H,, with an
Account of the Obsequies observed by the City, April 19, 1S65, Ports
mouth, N,H, Svo, pp, 30,
Patterson, Hon, J, W, Eulogy delivered at Concord, N,H,, June i, 1S65,
Concord, N,H, Svo, pp, 24,
Patterson, Rev, R, M, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 44,
Pettee, Rev, J, Sermon preached at Abington, Mass,, April 19, 1S65, Bos
ton, " New-Jerusalem Magazine," May, 1865,
" Poetical Tributes to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln," Philadel
phia, Pa,, 1865, I vol,, cloth. i2mo, pp, 306,
Potter, Rev, W, J, Four Sermons preached at New Bedford, Mass,, April
16, 19, and June I and 4, New Bedford, Mass, Svo, pp, 67,
Prime, Rev, G, W, Sermon preached at Detroit, Mich,, April 16, 1865,
Detroit, Mich, Svo, pp, 16,
Proceedings of the City Council of Balitmore, Md,, April 15, 1865, Balti
more, Svo, pp, 24,
Proceedings of the City Council of Boston, Mass,, April 17, 1865, Boston,
Svo. pp, 35,

Bibliographical List of Books and Pamphlets. 343
' TT
Proceedings of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, Published in the
Annual Report of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, June 17, 1865,
Boston, Svo,
Proceedings of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, April 24, 1865, Phila
delphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 4,
Proceedings of a called Meeting of Ministers of all Denominations in the
Distridt of Columbia, April 17, 1S65, Washington, D,C, Svo, pp, 14,
Proceedings of the Union League of Philadelphia, April 15, 1S65, Philadel
phia, Pa, Svo, pp, 22,
Putnam, Rev, Geo,, D,D, Address delivered at Roxbury, Mass,, with Order
of Exercises, April 19, 1865, Roxbury, Mass, Svo, pp, 15,
Quint, Rev, A, H, Two Sermons preached at New Bedford, Mass,, a,m, and
p,m,, April 16, 1865, New Bedford, Mass, Svo, pp, 45, 1 ..././
Rankin, Rev, J, H, Sermon preached at Charlestown, Mass,, April 19, 1865,
Boston, Svo, pp, 16,
Reed, Rev, S, Sermon preached at Edgartown, Mass,, April 19, 1S65, Bos
ton, Svo, pp, 24,
Rice, Rev, Daniel, Sermon preached at Lafayette, Ind,, April 19, 1865,
Lafayette, Ind, Svo, pp, 7,
Rice, Rev, N, L,, D,D, Sermon preached at New- York city, April 19, 1865,
New York, Svo, pp, 16,
Robbins, Rev, F, L, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa., April 23, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 21, <{-; '^ > ,?. ,, r ,'
Robinson, Rev, C, S, Sermon preached at Brookl3'n, N,Y,, April 16, 1865,
New Yoi'k, Svo, pp, 31, 1- "' ' 1.
Russell, Rev, P, Two Sermons preached at Eckley, Pa,, April 19, and
June I, 1S65, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 30,
Sample, Rev, R, F, Sermon preached at Bedford, Pa,, April 23, 1S65,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 32,
Saunders, R, S,, Esq, Oration delivered on Island No, 40, April 25, 1865,
Memphis, Tenn, Svo, pp, 16,
Searing, Rev, E,, A,M, Sermon preached at Milton, Wis,, June i, 1865,
Janesville, Wis, Svo, pp, 20,
Sedgewick, Hon, C, B, Eulogy delivered at Syracuse, N,Y,, April 19, 1S65,
Syracuse, N,Y, Svo, pp, 16,
Seiss, Rev, J, A,, D,D, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, June i, 1865,
Svo, pp, 45,
" Sermons preached in Boston on the Death of Abraham Lincoln," Boston,
i2mo, pp, 379-

344 Appendix.

Simpson, Rev, M,, D,D, Funeral Address delivered at the Burial of President
Lincoln, at Springfield, 111,, May 4, 1S65, New York, i2mo, pp, 21,
Slater, Rev, E. C, D,D., Sermon preached at Paducah, Ky,, April 19,
1S65, Paducah, Ky, Svo, pp, 20,
Smith, Rev, H,, D,D, Sermon preached at Buffalo, N,Y,, April 23, 1S65,
Buffalo, N,Y, Svo, pp, 32,
Sniveley, Rev, W, A, Sermon and Address delivered at Pittsburgh, Pa,,
April 16 and 19, 1S65, Pittsburgh,. Pa, Svo, pp.. 38, ^
Spati-i, Rev, a, (German)/ Sermon preached at PMlad'elphia, Pa,, April 19,
1865, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp. 15,
Spear, Rev, S, T,, D.D, Sermon preached at Brooklyn, N,Y,, April 23,
1S65, Brooklyn, N,Y, Svo, pp, 38,
Sprague, Rev, W, B,, D,D, Sermon preached at Albany, N,Y,, April 16,
1S65, Albany, N,Y, l2mo, pp, iS,
Starr, Rev, F,, Jun, Sermon preached at St, Louis, Mo,, April 16, 1865,
St, Louis, Mo, Svo, pp, 19,
Steiner, L, H, Address delivered at the Glades, Frederick Co,, Md,, April
23, 1865, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 15,
Stewart, Rev, D,, D,D, Discourse containing Substance of two Sermons
preached at Johnstown, N, Y,, April 16 and 19, 1865, Johnstown, N,Y,
Svo, pp. 20,
Stoddard, R, H, An Horatian Ode, New York, Svo, pp, 12,
Stone, Rev, A, L,, D,D, Sermon preached in Boston, Mass,, April 16, 1865,
Boston, Mass, i2mo,, large paper, pp, 21,
Storrs, Rev, R, S,, Jun,, D,D, Oration delivered at Brooklyn, N,Y,, June i,
1865, Brooklyn, N,Y, Svo, pp, 65,
Strong, Rev, J, D, Sermon preached at San Francisco, Cal,, April 16, 1865,
San Francisco, Cal, Svo, pp, 14,
Sturz, J, F, Speeches at the Funeral Observances at Berlin, Prussia, in
Honor of President Lincoln, by German, English, and American Ministers,
An Expression ofthe Church respediing Slavery and Free Labor, Berlin,
Prussia, Svo, pp, 39,
Swain, Rev, L, Sermon preached at Providence, R,I,, April 16, 1S65, Prov
idence, R,I, Svo, pp, 10,
SwEETSER, Rev, S, Sermon preached at. Worcester, Mass,, April 23, 1S65,
Worcester, Mass, Svo, pp, 29, .' i-' ' / "i ' .'~
Sumner, Hon, Charles, Eulogy delivered at Boston, Mass,, June i, 1S65,
Boston, Svo, pp, 61, , il i .¦."("¦

Bibliographical List of Books and Pamphlets. 345
SuTPHEN, Rev, M, C, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 19,
Tapley, R, P,, Esq, Eulogy delivered at Saco, Me,, with Report of the Pro
ceedings of the Town, April 19, 1865, Biddeford, Me, Svo, pp, 27,
Tappan, Rev, H, P,, D,D, See Sturz,
Taylor, Rev, A, A, E, Sermon preached at Georgetown, D,C,, June i, 1S65,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 20,
Thomas, Rev, A, G, Seftnon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 19, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 16,
Timlow, Rev, H, R, Sermon preached at Rhinebeck, N,Y,., April 19, 1865,
Rhinebeck, N,Y, i6mo, pp, 42,
Thompson, Rev, J, C, Sermon preached at Philadelphia, Pa,, June i, 1865,
Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 20,
Thompson, Rev, J, P,, D,D, Sermon preached at New York, April 30, 1S65,
New York, Svo, pp, 38,
Twombly, Rev, A, S, Sermon preached at Albany, N,Y,, April 16, 1S65,
Albany, N,Y, 8vo,, large paper, pp, 18,
Tucker, Rev, J, T, Sermon preached at Holliston, June i, 1S65, Holliston,
Mass, Svo, pp, 21.
Vincent, Rev, M, R, Sermon preached at Troy, N,Y,, April 23, 1865,
-Troy, N,Y. Svo, pp, 47,
Walden, Rev, T, Two Addresses delivered at Philadelphia, Pa,, April 16
and 19, 1865, Philadelphia, Pa, Svo, pp, 41,
Wallace, Rev, C, C, Sermon preached at Placerville, Cal,, April 19, 1S65,
Placerville, Svo, pp, 9,
Wayman, Rev, James. Sermon preached at Liverpool, Eng,, May 7, 1865,
Liverpool, Eng, Svo, pp, 8,
Webb, Rev, E, B. Sermon preached at Boston, Mass., April 16, 1865, Bos
ton, Svo, pp. 61,
Weiss, Rev, J, Article in " Friend of Progress," New York, June, 1S65,
Westall, John, " In Memoriam," Poem : privately printed. Fall River,
Mass, Svo, pp, 8,
White, Rev, E, N, Sermon preached at New Rochelle, N,Y,, June i, 1865,
New York, Svo, pp, 25,
White, Rev, P, H, Sermon preached at Coventry, Vt,, April 23, 1865, Brat-
tleboro', Vt, Svo, pp, 20, ' \b j.) u ¦ ft-'-' - -IfV •, nu^
WiLLCOX, Rev, G, B, Address delivered at New London, Conn,, April 19,
1865, together with an Address of Rev, T. P, Field, D,D,, and Funeral
Observances in that City, April 19, 1865, New London. Svo, pp. 34.
44

346 Appendix.

Williams, Rev, R, H, Sermon preached at Frederick, Md,, April 19, 1865,
Frederick, Md, Svo, pp, 11,
Williams, Rev, R, H, Sermon preached at Frederick, Md,, June i, 1S65,
Svo, pp, 14,
Williams, Hon, Thomas, Eulogy delivered at Pittsburgh, Pa,, June i, 1S65,
Svo, pp, 36,
I Wilson, Rev, W, T, M, A, Sermon preached at Albany, N,Y,, April 19,
1865, Albany, Svo, pp, 25,
'Woodbury, Rev, A, Sermon preached at Providence, R, I,, April 16, 1865,
Providence, i2mo, pp, 27,
' Woodbury, Rev, A, Sermon preached at Providence, R,I,, June i, 1S65.
Providence, lamo. pp, 28,
Worcester, Rev, T,, D,D, Sermon preached at Boston, June i, 1S65, Bos
ton, Svo, pp, 14,
Yard, Rev, R, B, Sermon preached at Newark, N,J,, June i, 1865, Newark,
NJ, Svo, pp, 23,
Young, Rev, E, J, Article in " Monthly Religious Magazine," Boston, May,
1S65,
/YouRTEE, Rev, S, L, A, M, Sermon delivered at Springfield, Ohio, April 19,
1865, Springfield, Ohio, Svo, pp, 16,

.^^