YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 07223 8752

Eiilogy...on Abraham Lincoln*
Rev » Sidney Dean.
Providence, 1865.

Ce22

EULOGY

OCCASION OF THE BURIAL

Abraham Lincoln,

DELIVERED IN THE

CITY HALL, PROVIDENCE,

APRIL 19, 1S66,

BY REV. SIDNEY DEAN.

PBOVIDENCE:
II. n. THOMAS .fe CO., PRINTERS, EVENING PRESS OFFICE.
1865. \

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EU L o a Y

PRONOUNCED IN THE

CITY HALL, PEOVIDENCE, APEIL 19, 1865,

ON THE

^umm 0l tlii^ gmmt Mmmtk^

OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

BEFORE HIS EXCELLENCY, JAMBS Y. SMITH, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE
OF RHODE ISLAND; MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY; CITY
AUTHORITIES ; THE MILITARY ; CIVIC SOCIETIES, AND OTHERS.

BY REV. SIDNEY DEAN.

PROVIDENCE:
H. H. THOMAS & CO., OFFICE OF THE DAILT FREE
1865.

EXJLOaY

The awful events of the past few days ; the place
and circumstances of our assembling ; the mourning
drapery by which we are surrounded ; the sadness
which fills all of our hearts, would make silence itself
eloquent. I feel that it would be more becoming in
me to weep with you, oh, my poor, smitten country
men. Words, always weak to express the passions
when stirred to their profoundest depths, are doubly
weak to-day.
A common sorrow rests upon all of our hearts.
None can look his sorrowing brother in the face and
say : " I am exempt from the heaviness of your
burden ; I am released from the tasting of your
bitter cup." An agony of grief cements us, nay,
melts us into one. The crucible is the country ; the
lurid fire is lit by treason and fed by the hand of
assassination and murder most foul. With a veil
over our eyes we have trusted perfidy itself, and
the dead body of the hope and love of the nation is
our reward. We have looked for the sceptre of
honor to be held in bloody hands, and our answer is
the bullet from the black throat of the pistol of the
parricide, and the dagger's thrust from the red hand

_

of the murderer. Both have struck the nation's
heart. Sorrow has overwhelmed the great soul of our
people. Doubt, distress, forebodings, the deepest
anxiety, have in an hour taken possession of the
public mind. We have been hurled from the high
meridian of hope into the even tide of darkness and
distress. The springs of our joy have suddenly
rolled backward upon themselves, or have been
drowned in the depths of this our great woe. We
looked out upon the golden sheen which tinged the
clouds, and saw their dark banks breaking and
scattering before the rising of the sun of our nation's
peace, and in a moment, the gloaming of the morning
was quenched in the pitchy darkness of the new
night of woe into which the nation was plunged.
May God forgive us, if in our hour of trial and
despondency, or in our dawning of gladness at the
prospects of peace, we made an arm of flesh our hope.
God gave Abraham Lincoln to the nation, and he
won our love and kept it. Through all the awful
hours, the bloody sweat of our nation's Getbsemane,
we have turned our eyes to him. He has not faltered.
Calm in the midst of the hurricane, he has stood as
the pilot accustomed to the storm, and when brave
hearts have been appalled at the nearness of the
breakers, whose mad fury was with hoarse voice
chanting the dirge of a nation's death, the cool, brave
heart was always shining through the honest face of
our true pilot ever at his post. We were brought
by him past point after point of our danger. The

last dangerous headland seemed to be passed; the
storm was subsiding ; the welcome haven of peace
was just before us, when — how shall I speak it ? — an
assassin shot the pilot at the wheel! May God
forgive the utterance, if wrong, when we curse the
¦ moment which suffered this fiend to be born of the
loins of woman, and made him a kinsman of our race
and nationality.
Judas covenanted with high officials, himself a
hireling, for his Master's life. This second Judas,
worse than his namesake, went out from the presence
of the chief priests and counsellors of treason and
himself committed the murder. The first Judas,
under the keen pangs of remorse, cast the price of
blood, — of which he was only the accessory before
the act, — at the feet of his employers and hanged him
self The second Judas we trust will be hanged in the
sight of the world whose air he poisons in inhaling, by
the hands of a pure justice, and we trust that all his
blood-stained employers will be hanged with him.
Do not accuse me of forgetting the great doctrine
of charity and forgiveness, inculcated by the Master
whom I profess to serve. Neither outrage the
government of God by demanding charity and for
giveness for murderers so base as these. There are
some crimes, to condone which, under the plea of
Christian charity, is to make ourselves criminals. And
if this foul murder, the culmination of a hell-born
treason is not of them, then the instincts of nature
and the educational effects of our Christianity have
grievously misled us.

Grant you, that the feeling of revenge should never
possess a Christian heart. But the claims oi justice
should always have weight before the tribunal of a
Christian mind. I ask for justice, in the name of my
country ; I ask for justice, in the name of humanity;
I ask for justice upon these murderers in the name
of order, good government, faith in man, honor, and
everything which distinguishes man from a brute, a
devil from a man, and a Christian civilization from
barbarism. And that justice would hang these infar
mous outlaws, employers and assassins, as high as the
fifty cubits of Haman's gallows.
To worldly vision, the nation's earthly Saviour has
left us in an important hour. We are not gifted with
the prescience of the Great Euler. We must reason
from human and imperfect vision and data. He had
guided us so safely ; the nation's honor and safety
had been so unreservedly placed in his hand by the
nation's confidence and love, that a loyal people
"trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed
our Israel." Like the sorrowing disciples, . who,
journeying towards Emmaus from Jerusalem, after
the tragedy of Calvary, talked of the crucified Saviour
of the world, extolled his virtues and discussed his
character while he was supposed to lie sleeping
in the rocky sarcophagus in the garden of Joseph
of Arimathea, so we, so the nation, will talk
of the virtues, of the pure and noble character
of him whom they trusted had been given of God
for the utter redemption and restoration of the
Republic.

He was a man like us. He came to us stamped
with the imperfections of humanity. He should not
have been enthroned in the popular heart as its idol,
but we fear that he was. Men die, the nation passes
on if God, the great and good Governor, wills it. He
was evidently born, educated, called, fitted and
annointed for the hour and the position. The great
Governor of nations makes no mistakes. If He gave
us a Washington for the hour of our birth into national
life ; for the bloody pangs of a seven years' parturition
into governmental existence, so He gave us this
second Washington ; this man-child of the turning
point of our destiny. Death and life struggled at
the very gates of our manhood. God gave us
Abraham Lincoln, as the defender of our nation's life,
our guide through the awful wilderness of civil war.
He had prepared and educated him as a second
Washington, — better than that, and of a more ancient
type, a second Moses to the Lord's people. But
" The tyrannous and bloody act is done ;
The most arch deed of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of."
Other tongues than mine must delineate his
character, other pens will transcribe his deeds. He
is interwoven into our nation's history, as no man
living or dead can be, with the exception of George
Washington. He was the first Saviour of his country ;
Abraham Lincoln was the second and his equal. When
this awful scourge shall have passed away, and
impartial history shall have perfected the record of
the first and second revolutions, these two great

8
struggles for life or death to personal liberty, to the
rights of man, to the equality of heavenly endow
ment, then the names of George Washington, of
Virginia, and Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, will be
written side by side. God made and called both of
them. He fitted them for the task assigned to each.
The first died peacefully in his bed, and his noble
heart had already tasted the fruition of his earthly
labors. His dying eye rested upon a country, a
nation happy in its young life, and giving great hopes
of its early and strong manhood.
The second died by the hand of an assassin ere the
work to which he had set himself was accomplished.
True, the great points of his mission had been
evolved from the clouds which have hovered around
his administration. For four years he had guided
the State, while bloody treason was striking its insane
blows at the nation's life. The beginning of the end
had come. He had been vigilant, untiring, zealous
only for his country and the rights and liberties of his
countrymen and their children and children's children
to latest generations. He had stood in the front and
by his presence and councils had stirred the bravery
of our soldiers to heroic deeds. His telegrams to the
people were full of words of cheer. He entered the
rebel capital with our brave legions, to smile upon
and receive the blessings of the loyal, both bond and
free, before the bugles of retreat for Lee's army had
hardly ceased their sounding. His great, kind, for
giving, generous, loving heart manifests itself in the
conditions of tlie surrender of Lee's army, dictated

by the heroic Grant, with whom the lamented patriot
had been in council.
He returned to his home in the national capital to
enter upon the work of retrenchment in our expendi
tures, and to gather up the broken and fragmentary
States, to bring them out from the chaos of rebellion and
set them as stars in their proper orbit in the great
American constellation. His first, his last, his only
thought was for the welfare and glory of his country.
In the first hours of his joy at the prospect of peace,
having escaped the perils of death in the domain
where treason held its court, he returned to die a
martyr's death for the country which he had so
faithfully served.
In brief, this is the personal record of the country's
second Saviour. He was born in Hardin county,
Kentucky, February 12th, 1809, and removed with
his father to Indiana in 1816. He spent two years
at school in Stafibrd county, Virginia ; taught school
and studied law for a time in Culpepper county, of
that State ; remov.ed to Illinois in 1830, and turned
his attention to agricultural pursuits.
He served as a Captain of Volunteers in the cele
brated Black Hawk war, and was at one time a
humble Postmaster in a village. He served four
years in the legislature of the State of his adoption,
during which time he again turned his attention to
the study of law, finally settling at Springfield in
that State to practice his profession.
He was a member of the National Convention
which nominated General Taylor for the Presidency

10
in 1848. He was a representative in Congress from
Illinois from 1847 to 1849, serving upon important
committees. He became better known to the Ameri
can public, acquiring distinction, by his series of
debates with the honorable and lamented Stephen A.
Douglas, when a seat in the United States Senate
was contingent upon the result.
He was nominated and elected to the Presidency
of the Republic for the term commencing the 4th of
March, 1861 ; and having faithfully served the country
for four years, he was again most triumphantly
re-elected for another term, carrying with him, not
the ballots only, but the hearts of the people. He
was inaugurated the second time on the 4th of
March, 1865, and was assassinated at the instigation
of the treason which he had so successfully frustrated
in its purposes, on the 14th of April, 1865, his great
life going out at twenty-two minutes past seven
o'clock on the following morning. The treacherous
and cowardly murderer was too sure in his aim. The
blotting out of his intelligence was instantaneous.
The noble brain, torn and mangled its entire length,
refused to act, even to indicate the intelligence or
the love which filled his noble soul. On the altar of
his country he lies to-day, the last and noblest martyr
to liberty. The gaping wound through which his
life went out to its pilgrimage in the great future, is
an attestation of his devotion to his country. Had
he have been less firm, less honest, less noble, he
would have been alive to-day.

11
He is dead. A nation buries him with sorrowful
hearts and tearful eyes. From the bustling city,
whose industry and commerce are hushed and silent
to-day ; from the quiet town ; from the distant farm
house home ; from the palace of wealth, and moving
with heavy hearts across the threshold of honest
poverty's door, the mourners come. A nation of
reverent pall-bearers wait around his bier, and every
man is a kinsman, a friend and a lover. The solemn
bell ; the minute gun ; the low dirge of the martial
band ; the solemn prayer of the minister ; the deep,
sad chant of the choir ; the bowed, uncovered heads
of twenty millions of people, all conspire to make
his burial such as America seldom, if ever, grants to
one of her sons.
How shall I epitomize his character ? He was so
perfectly transparent in his nature that the merest lad,
in the most retired hamlet of our free North and West,
could give you the details of honest Abraham Lincoln's
character. He was a kind and indulgent husband
and father ; a genial companion and noble friend ; a
clear headed and comprehensive statesman ; an
unbiased and firm judge ; firm also in what he con
scientiously believed to be right, and fearless of soul
because he was utterly honest. He was a true
believer in the divinity of the rights of man as man,
the great democratic touchstone of the age, and the
civil, as well as religious hope of the race. He was
as a consequence, a profound hater of oppression,
tyranny and tyrants. In that great and wonderful
combination, — a massive heart containing a living

12
fountain of pure love and tenderest sympathy, a
child's soul in its simplicity and purity, joined to a
clear, discriminating, strong mind and inflexible will
when following the right, God shows to the world
how He creates and develops men, rocking them in
the cradle, and moulding their manhood under the
sunshine of American, democratic institutions.
It was the hand of tyranny which put out the
light of such a noble life ! In the words of another,
I ask, in view of this murder :
" Is there a crime
Beneath the roof of Heaven, that stains the soul
Of man with more infernal hue than damned
Assassination V
Who assassinated him ? Who called the whole
nation to sit in the sack-cloth and ashes of woe, and
to surround his martyr bier with tears of unfeigned
sorrow ? — Slavery ! What serpent crept into our
American Eden, to hiss its foul lie into credulous ears
and proclaim that the nation should not die if it ate
the forbidden fruit of despotism? The Serpent of
Slavery ! Who partook of this fruit, and showed the
nakedness of their professions of liberty and democ
racy to God and the whole universe ? A Southern
aristocracy, founded upon the chattelization of
humanity. Who quarrelled at their altar side, and
because their brother's free gift was accepted, arose to
the commission of murder, and drenched our Eden with
the blood of tens of thousands of our young and
noble American Abels ? Slavery, the second Cain in
principle and practice. And, as God lives, who

13
fastened the brand of infamy and curse upon Cain's
brow, and drove him from His presence, so shall
Slavery, this sum of all human villanies, branded,
despised, accursed by heaven and earth, a loathsome
leper from the tomb of a dead barbarism, be exiled
from the soil of our American Eden, and be driven
back into the darkness of that barbarism, depravity
and lust from whence it emanated.
It has lived too long already. It has lived to
thoroughly debauch nearly one-half of the States of
the Union. It has lived to traffic in the bodies and
souls of men as a drover speculates in his stock. It
has lived to outrage and violate every command of
Jehovah's decalogue, given for man's government,
and to abrogate them in the name of law. It has
lived to make virtue in woman a thing of public
traffic ; to sunder all ties of consanguinity, to wring
toil out of the muscles of youth and age, with
bloody welts. It has lived to drive its coffled gangs
of humanity to an early grave, and has made the
Stars and , Stripes, — the symbols of democratic
liberty, — to cover their foul crimes, from the theft at
birth to the finished murder at the grave's mouth. It
has lived to control a government of nearly thirty
millions of people ; dictate its policy ; shape its
legislation ; mould its judiciary and laws ; control its
Executive ; form its foreign policy ; demand its entire
domain, and annihilate that bulwark of freedom, the
freedom of speech and the press.
It has inaugurated mob rule as law.; its instru
ments were canes, bowie knives, and derringer pistols.

14 ^
It has sunk its advocates and defenders to the level
of the low assassins and lazzaroni of Italy ; filled
them with haughtiness and contempt of honest toil
and the hard-handed laborer. Finally, upon the body
of its hate it begat perjury, theft and treason. It has
for four years rolled the garments of the nation in
blood, bringing sorrow and woe to a million of house
hold altars, and uncounted millions of hearts. It has
gnawed at the crust of poverty, rather than to
acknowledge liberty and equality in man as of
heavenly origin. It has beggared its friends, murdered
its own children, and filled the long unmarked
trenches with their dead forms. It has outraged all
rules of civilized warfare — if war can be civilized. It
has starved innocent prisoners to death, after abusing
them so that they courted it as a welcome release
from cruelty.
They were our own fresh, young brothers and
sons, citizens ! We saw them when, with firm tread
and martial bearing, they turned their brave hearts
and noble faces towards their country's foe. Falling
into the hands of this insatiate demon, Slavery, its
agents starved them into skeletons, jeered at their
sufferings, penned and fed them like beasts, and
with a maliciousness of cruelty which a savage can
hardly imitate for want of an education suitable,
murdered them slowly, that the noble lads might die
a thousand deaths before their feet touched the cold
waters whose full baptism they so much coveted as a
release. Slavery, the mad fiend, baptized with that

15
name, the embodiment of all the foul refuse of sin,
has done all this.
It has gone one step farther, and because of it we
are here to-day surrounded by these emblems of our
woe. Beaten on the field ; dying by the blows which
a stalwart democracy of the people was administering
to it ; it now seeks the role of the assassin, stealthily
creeps in the darkness and shadows, and when the
defenceless victim is utterly unconscious, strikes its
death blow and hies away. With the seductive lie
upon its lips, it presses itself into the chamber of
suffering, and under the plea of carrying relief, it
leaps upon the bed and plies the dagger with the
vindictiveness of a fiend and the rapidity of a
maniac's hand.
In the name of the lowest virtue which distin
guishes a man from a brute, I ask if it is not time
that this fiend was dead ? Has it a single advocate
here to-day ?
Abraham Lincoln, the President, has made himself
immortal by one single act which stands out pre
eminent in his Executive career. Not that all of his
official acts have not been consistent and true. But
this one links his name to an immortality of fame.
Wherever, in coming ages, liberty is known and
honored, the Emancipation Proclamation of President
Lincoln will be cited in proof of his heroic devotion
to the rights of man. If the murderer had given him
the crown and seal of his martyrdom while the ink
of the official signature upon that immortal instru
ment of liberty to down^trodden millions, was yet

16
undried, he could not have robbed the illustrious
dead of the green laurel of fame which would have
kept his memory fresh and fragrant among all coming
generations. At a stroke of his pen, humanity, bound and
crouching in its long, dusky lines, rose up, stood
erect, freemen. The fetters breaking, fell from
millions of limbs. Dusky faces smiled their first
great joy as freemen. The accoucher of Slavery,
who had so long stood at the portals of life to rob
Jehovah of his homage and man of his rights, fell
dead at his bloody work, and from henceforth God's
free children were born free.
The slave pen yawned wide to let the sunlight of
liberty in, and it dispersed the darkness of that foul
pit forever. The auction block with its stalwart man;
its tearful mother ; its dusky vil-gin and its prattling
child ; — the auction block where virtue, stolen by
theft, sold by avarice, and bought by lust, was placed
in front of a gibbering fiend, with his eternal cry of
" going," a man ; " going," a woman ; " gone," a
soul ; fell at that pen stroke which wrote Abraham
Lincoln, as falls a tyrant's head when the people will
it. Then tyranny fell down foaming in its death,
and fi-eedom, liberty, democracy, arose to assert its
rights over the last American born soul. The
Declaration of Independence and the Proclamation
of Emancipation are henceforth blended in our
national history.
But there are some useful lessons to be inclucated
and derived from the mournful events of the hour.

17
We may notice one or two. We should learn
the necessity of unity among ourselves. Brothers,
we must come closer to each other. That cruel
blow teaches us that no man is safe while the
pistol and knife in the assassin's hand, and the
flaming torch of the incendiary, are to be the weapons
through which this child of Slavery, called Treason,
hopes to maintain its existence. Let us unite
hearts ; let us strike hands. Perish all party
animosities, all party ties, in one fraternal brother
hood which looks to the eradication of Treason, and
the spirit of despotism which has begotten it. We
are Americans ! We are Unionists ! We are loyal
to the Constitution and country ! Do not let us in
this, our awful hour of distress, drift away from each
other's sympathies upon any subordinate question of
governmental policy. Let us vindicate our loyalty
by the strongest and most heartfelt unity.
But again. The exercise of justice is taught us in
this event as we have never been taught it before.
It is no time to talk of leniency and kindness to
these inhuman fiends. The quality of mercy has
been stretched to its utmost by the illustrious martyr
whose mutilated body is now receiving its burial in
the nation's capital. He was the best friend these
rebels ever had, outside or inside their infernal lines,
because his great heart was full of mercy and forgive
ness. Basely have they repaid that mercy ; foully
have they requited that forbearance. Give us
justice, simple and unadorned — except with a hempen
halter — ^now ! Omnipotence can deal with such dark

18
spirits better in the prison house of the other life,
than we can here. The peace of the world requires
their exit.
We do not countenance revenge ; far be it from
us to possess it. May the good God keep our bosoms
free from its presence. But we do, soberly, calmly,
earnestly, for the good of our country, for the sake
of humanity, for the rights and interests of men,
demand justice. A halter for all these leading con
spirators, from Jeff" Davis to his chief executioner,
Lee, and downward to his hireling assassin. Booth.
The mourners in all their cases would be few.
We demand in the name of an outraged people, in
the name of justice, that public sentiment shall call for
the trial for Treason of these leading conspirators, as fast
as the fortunes of war shall place them in our hands,
and that upon their conviction they shall suffer the
death they deserve. We demand for the assassins
and incendiaries a speedy trial for murder, and as
speedy an execution as is consistent with allowing
them to seek a pardon for their guilty souls at the
hands of Him whose laws they have so foully
trampled under their feet.
The nation would unite in a free pardon to the
blinded, the conscripted, the men who have been
led, or forced, into striking a blow against the life of
the nation ; but for their leaders — ignominious
death. God's justice stands out clear and distinct in the
retributions of Providence, as they mark the ages of
the past. It would be a fruitful theme could we

19

spend an hour in its examination. The lamented
President Lincoln is not the first illustrious example
of martyrdom in high places. I remember that the
great Caesar was assassinated in the very Senate
chamber of republican Kome. Brutus caused his
death by the knives of assassins, himself the foulest
murderer of them all. For that act, the Eoman
people through their representatives, ordered the
Senate house in which Caesar was slain to be kept
shut; and a decree was made that the "Ides of
March " should be called " the Parricide," and the
Senate should never more assemble on that day.
Thus stood public opinion in the Roman Empire at
that age. Should we be less just than they ?
Now for the retributive judgments of God con
nected with the act and actors as developed in history.
Scarcely any of those who were accessory to his
(Caesar's) murder, survived him more than three
years or died a natural death. They were all con
demned by the Senate. Some were taken off by
one accident, some by another. Part of them per
ished at sea, others fell in battle ; and some slew
themselves with the same poinard with which they
had stabbed Caesar. Brutus himself was taken
prisoner through the defection and treachery of his
own troops, by Antony ; being betrayed in his
attempted flight by a Gaulish Chief upon whom he
had formerly conferred favors, and was put to death
one year subsequent to Caesar's assassination.
In our own country, and fresh within our memories,
Slavery, in the person of Preston S. Brooks, of South

20
Carolina, came near bringing an illustrious Senator
from New England, Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts,
to his death. You know the speedy and terrible end
to which he came by the apparent act of God.
But why multiply cases? We are not infidels.
God deals in justice with criminals, and in mercy
with penitents. Let the nation put away its sympathy
for such criminals as now blot our history with their
dark deeds. The mangled body of our dead President
calls for the exercise of this attribute of our nation.
But again. Keliance upon God and His merciful
overrulings, is taught us in this sad event. Have
we drifted away from our old moorings , of trust in
God? Have we become skeptics upon the subject
of empire belonging to the Infinite and Eternal
Ruler ? In the birth of our nation, a Christian
statesman arose in his place in its first councils, and
proposing an invocation to the Universal Ruler, said :
" If, as we are taught in the Bible, a sparrow fall
not without His notice, how can an empire rise with
out His aid ?" His hand of overruling will be in this
event for good,if a Christain people seek His presence.
Our hero martyr may have finished all his effective
work for the nation's safety. We know not. Whether
it requires a longer expiation for our sins, or whether
we are by a still firmer policy, directed by a more
inflexible and iron hand, to be led to the inauguration
of peace founded upon justice. Omniscience alone
knows. We are only safe when we humble our
selves before Him, trust His care and obey His
commands.

21
Moses, the deliverer of his countrymen, did not
enter the land of his rest to possess it with his
brothers, after all the perils of the wilderness.
Abraham Lincoln, leading our people through the
four years' wilderness of war, at the very banks of
the Jordan beyond which was peace, like Moses, died
without the possession of that which his heart so
greatly coveted for his countrymen.
Four years' of fratricidal war ! Begun at Sumter,
in the harbor of Charleston ! On the anniversary
of that memorable 14th of April, when our gallant
Anderson lowered the flag of our country at the
bidding of traitors, amid the broken walls and burn
ing barracks, the red hot shells, the suffocating smoke,
and the sufferings of his heroic, patriot band, — on
that anniversary, just after the same brave Anderson
had stood upon the crumbling ramparts and reverently
looking up to God, had thrown again the same sacred
emblem to the breeze ; when the iron throats of our
cannon on every fort and deck had given it the royal
salute of honor and mastery of all the territory
which had witnessed its humiliation ; when the
eloquent orator of Brooklyn had pronounced an
address worthy of so important and auspicious an
event, then, at the nightfall of that anniversary
day, the assassin prepared his instruments, and
death held held high carnival in the nation's
capital. " O 1 what a fall was there, my countrymen ;
Then I and you and all of us fell down.
Whilst bloody Treason flourished over us."

22
Mark you, brothers ! Officials, citizens, soldiers of
our gallant State, which has its dead heroes on
every battle-field which has been ploughed and
trenched by this war, behold to-day the deep damna
tion of this Treason ! Statesmen, judges, legislators,
citizens, soldiers of Rhode Island, come to the last
vision of your loved President, and then reverently
bury him. " Look you here,
Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors."
That noble form is mutilated, that shining light is
quenched. He sleeps with the soldiers he loved ; he
perishes a martyr to liberty and the rights of man.
Weave the cypress wreath, crown the nation, for
all should be mourners ! Lay upon his heart the
sprig of acassia, the emblem which most fittingly
speaks his immortality. Gather to the burial of
your best and truest friend, and come in the vast
procession of States ! Living we loved him, in
death, honor and reverence mingle with our love.
Bear away the mortal with reverent hands.
Soft be your repose, sweet your sleep, 0 patriot,
hero and friend ! The seal of your martyrdom was
your crown of earthly glory ! Millions of pilgrims
will weep over your grave. A long dusky line of
emancipated brothers and sisters will pause to kiss
the sod which covers your form from their tearful
gaze. " Servant of God ! Well done !
Thy glorious warfare's past.
The battle's fought ; the victory won,
And thou art crowned at last."

23
Abraham Lincoln, the honest, the noble, the man-
child, — nay, the pure child-man of the age ; the
statesman ; the kind judge ; the second Washington ;
illustrious martyr to the liberty of man, farewell !
" Hail and farewell !" A nation utters it.