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"R. S. STORES, Jr., D.D.

-AN ORATION

COMMEMORATIVB OF

PRESIDENT

ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

DELIVERED AT

BEOOKLYN, N. Y.,
JUNE! 1, 1865,
^ By KICHARD S. STOEES, Je., D. D., ^
AT THE BEQUEST OP
THE WAR FUND COMMITTEE.

PUBLISHED BT THE COMMITTEE.

BEOOKLYN:

'the union" STEAM PRESSES, NO. 10 PKONT STREET.
^ 1865. /

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ORATION

Ladies, and Gentlemen :
In February, 1861, — amid the chills and sleet of the
unfinished winter, and while the gloom of a prescient
fear, more oppressive than of any physical season, over
shadowed the hearts of the thoughtful and troubled
American people, — a number of persons, with one
quaint, homely figure in the midst of them, took their
departure ft'om Springfield, Illinois, to proceed by grad
ual stages to Washington. Neighbors and friends were
hurriedly assembled to witness the departure; and a
few simple and touching words of greeting and farewell
were addressed to them by him who was central in the
group, and whose kindly face and earnest voice had
there, for twenty -four years, been familiar.
Other assemblages, hastily convened, of personal ac
quaintances and political friends — with here and there
some generous or curious political opponents — were
afterward encountered, as the company proceeded

from city to city, along the railways which then as now
overlay and defined their winding route. At Buifalo,
Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and at other points,
men came together to see and hear, some to welcome,
and some as well to criticise or to warn, the man to
whom, by the voice of a plurality of his fellow-country
men, the conduct of the government for four years to
come had been committed. There was much curiosity
to be satisfied concerning him. There was a natural
eagerness to hear what he might say, that involved any
pithy or pregnant suggestion as to what his course was
likely to be. But those who remembered the great
convocations which in other years had greeted the
chieftains in statesmanship as they made their progress
through the country, could not but contrast, with the
numbers and enthusiasm of such previous assemblages,
the meagreness and the dullness of those now convened.
And when at last the tall, uncouth, but dominant fig
ure which had been central in these assemblages, disap
peared from sight at the capital of Pennsylvania, to
reappear suddenly in a hotel at Washington — there was
with a few a feeling of relief that suspense was over,
and he was safely housed at the Capital ; there was
with many a feeling of shame that any such precau
tionary privacy should have been deemed to be need
ful, and that the small degree of state till then main
tained should have been so wholly and abruptly
relinquished before he had reached his final goal.

Four crowded and fateful years have passed, — during
which the nation for the first time in its history has
breasted the shock and tasted the bitterness of a fierce
civil war ; during which a half-million of men have fallen,
dead or maimed, in skirmish and in battle ; during
which a hundred and fifty thousand households have
been shrouded in the gloom that rises only from the
grave of the beloved ; during which arbitrary measures
and policies, unknown to our previous history, have been
authorized and enforced ; and during which seasons of
clamorous expectation, and unjustified hope, have befen
followed by others of utter despondency, and the pas
sionate reproaches of which this is the parent, — four
years have passed, and another company starts from
Washington, to bear back to the quiet and distant
Springfield all that remains of that form now prostrate,
that face and eye now sealed and sightless.
Amid the shining April days, while springing grass
and greening boughs proclaim that summer draweth
nigh, they leave the Capital — which never before has
.been so shaken with pain, and grief, and righteous rage — •
they take the same route which he had traversed when
coming in life to his high place, and bear him forever
from the scene of his eventful sway. And as they go,
the great capitals of the land welcome with such dem
onstrations of honor as no preceding experience has
witnessed, the shrunken, discolored, and pulseless frame.
The city through which he passed before in a sheltering

privacy, now crowds tumultuous, in tearfril affection,
around his bier. The great metropolis, — whose mob
then hated him, the leaders of whose fashion turned from
him with contempt, and whose authorities sought to
insult him — now pours from every street and lane the
intent and sad procession of his mourners. Its whole
business is suspended ; its houses are hung, from base
to roof, with funeral weeds ; its pavements are thronged
with silent, patient, unmoving crowds ; its windows
gleam with pallid faces ; as through the hushed ex
pectant avenues winds, hour by hour, while bells are
tolling, and minute-guns with measured boom are
counting the instants, that vast, unreckoned, unparal
leled procession.
Not capitals only, but States themselves, become
his mourners. Churches put off their Easter emblems,
to hide pillar, and wall, and arch, in sable woe. Each
railway is made a via Dolorosa. The spontaneous
homage of millions is offered, through the uncovered head,
the crape, the wreath, through all the sombre insignia of
grief, as the train with its precious burden speeds.
The country shrouds its weeping face; and all the
blooms of Spring around can bring no flush to its
changed countenance ; the song and sparkle, and the
sweet impulse of which the very air is full, can stir no
pulse of gladness or of hope, while still that spectacle
haunts its gaze. For over every loyal heart there broods
a sorrow as if the most revered had fallen ; as if the

shock of personal bereavement had smitten separately
every household.
It is to give the reason of this change that we are
gathered here to-day. It is to tell why this amazing
contrast appears ; which would be yet incredible to us,
if our eyes had not seen it, if freshest memories did
not to-day remind us of it.
Nay, not of this only must we give explanation.
When Abraham Lincoln left his home for that still re
cent journey to Washington, his name was only known
to his countrymen through its association with late and
local political discussions. It was utterly unknown,
except as it appeared on the ballots of those who had
chosen him President, to the other civilized peoples of
the world. And when their eyes were unexpectedly
turned to him, they saw in him only a village attorney,
who had hardly before been responsibly associated with
great affairs, whom his friends believed to be honest
and sagacious, but whom his opponents described as a
rough rail-splitter, of humble origin, of no early advan
tages, without experience, without signal capacity, and
more remarkable than for anything else for his fondness
for coarse and pungent jokes. It was therefore with
a natural and utter indifference that the multitudes
heard his unmusical name. It was with a smug
self-satisfaction that the aristocratic leaders of opinion,
in England and on the Continent, pointed to the elec
tion of such a man, to administer the government at a

critical time, as the final condemnation of Democratic
institutions. And it was with a quick and rational
anxiety that even educated liberals in Great Britain and
France rehearsed what they heard that was favorable
to him, and awaited the first indications of his policy.
This was only four years ago. And now, from the
entire civilized world arises the chorus of respect for
his powers, of admiration for his character, of horror
and grief at his untimely end. No other American
name since Washington's has become so familiar, or has
won such esteem, among the progressive peoples of
Europe. It is henceforth a name to charm with, in
Italy and in England, on the boulevards of Paris, in
the studies of Germany, and among the precipitous
passes of the Alps. The presses and the men that
once made shifty apologies for him, have honored him
for years as one of the leading statesmen of the world.
Even the papers which month after month insulted
him without stint, now eagerly applaud his prudence,
his fortitude, his commanding ability. The English
Punch, whose ridicule was so bitter that it seemed to
have in it a personal malice, confesses its error, and
atones for its jeers in lofty and pathetic lines. And
with the voices of eulogy and homage rising from his
still sorrowing countrymen, — rising not only from the
millions he has ruled, and the other millions whom he
has emancipated, but even from the impoverished
States over whose acres his armies swept, and whose

most practised and crafty commanders his patient
wisdom utterly defeated, — with these rise also, in
kindred homage, the voices of all the intelligent lead
ers of opinions and affairs throughout Christendom. Par
liaments, as well as peoples, bring their tribute to his
memory. The halls of National Assemblies are
draped, in sad commemoration of his worth and of
his death. And debates are suspended, and diplomacy
waits, while Emperors and Queens clasj) hands with
us before his bier.
It is one of the strangest contrasts in history ; and it
is of this contrast, as well as of the other, that we to
day are to give explanation. The phenomenon is
astonishing. It demands at our hands an adequate so
lution. But that solution it is not difficult to find.
A singularly critical and eminent position, singularly
improved ; immense, and almost unparalleled responsi
bilities, modestly assumed, and with rare- capacity, and
a rarer patience and magnanimity fulfilled : — here is the
key to this strangest sequence. The only eulogy that
need be pronounced on him is that which sets just this
before us.
Observe first his Position.
Nations are more and more plainly every year the
grand, organized, almost personal Powers, to whom is
committed the Future ofthe World. With the steady
advances of civilization, individuals are comparatively
less influential over the opinion and action of mankind,

10
except as they affect the Nation they are part of. But
the Nation itself becomes every year a mightier pres
ence, a more distinct, efficient actor, amid the system of
allied peoples. And to those which fill with their in
stitutions, and outline with their boundaries, the map
of Christendom, is the moulding of the destinies of
Mankind entrusted.
Their origin is explained, and shown to be not acci
dental, but providential, as we look at them from this
point. Slowly emerging, like the heads of continents,
from the waste chaos of the earlier- centuries, each one
has been unfolded, all have been arranged, on an orderly
plan ; a plan that contemplates results so vast that we
even yet can scarcely predict them. It is not topo
graphy, climate, soil, it is not altogether the kinship
of blood, it is God, in His eternal wisdom, who has set
these Nations in their places, and with Divine pres
cience and patience of skill has nursed and nurtured
their tiny germs, has succored their growth, and has
built them to their majestic strength, that through
their final combined might. His plans may be realized.
The same thought interprets the permanence of these
Nations ; the constantly increasing unity of each with
in itself, the sharper lines that discriminate each from
every other. The tendency of our times, with all the
advance of individual liberty which has prominently
marked them, is not toward the disintegration of em
pires, but toward their more thorough organization.

11
their more profound internal oneness. And while
forms of government, throughout Europe for example,
have been subject to sudden and violent mutations
during the two-thirds now elapsed of the present cen
tury, it' is a fact full of significance that none of its
great national organisms has been destroyed; that
none of tTiem has been seriously changed in its boun
daries, or impaired in its strength. The most import
ant changes among them have been the increased
strength of Prussia, and the emerging into substantive
existence of the kingdom of Italy. The progress of
free thought within their boundaries has not dissolved,
but has only developed them. The progress of inven
tion, overleaping those boundaries, and making neigh
bors of distant peoples, has not obliterated or even ob
scured the historic lines that stand between them. The
centripetal force within each has the mastery ; and in
its more intimate self-centred coherence each stands
more clearly apart from the rest. The public life in
corporated in it, — from whatsoever ancestry derived, by
whatsoever influences trained, through whatsoever ex
perience developed, and in whatsoever legislations, let
ters, or arts revealed^ — maintains its identity, and
only perfects its force, and is prepared always for a
larger impression upon the progress and culture of the
world. Yet while this development within each is going on,
the equilibrium of all is only thereby more flrmly es-
2

12

tablished, and the relations between them become vital
and constant. Diplomatic alliances only tardily and
partly represent the progress of their moral sympathies.
Because it is separate, each acts on the others with
which it is allied, with more freedom, directness,
and positive force. Its acts, and reacts. It gives,
and it gathers. It makes its own peculiar contri
butions, of art, thought, commercial exchange,
moral power ; and it receives those which are brought
to it in return. And through this continual recipro
city, more vital than treaties, more effective than inter
national congresses, each assists the progress of every
other, and all work together, whether consciously or
not, toward general results.
Into the ultimate power of Christendom goes
therefore a force derived in part from every people.
The influence of each is made cosmopolitan. And it be
comes more evident constantly that not by individuals,
but by these Nations, — so separate yet associated, al
ways more unlike, but always also more intimately al-
lied,^ — is gradually to be reared the world-wide structure
of a Universal Civilization ; that as the great Persons of
the continents and the ages, they are to elaborate the
welfare of Mankind, and accomplish His plans who is
the ruler and the architect of all.
There is nothing that more clearly sets God
before us in the scope of His designs, that more
vividly unfolds the significance of History, that

13
more sublimely impresses on our thoughts the gi-andeui
of the times in which we live, than this view of Na
tions, as the ever-renewed and co-operative workers,
whose power and patience are to build up the Future.
The earth is illustrious, throiigh their presence upon it.
The Future is secure, through the mighty concurrence
with which they march toward it. And the brain that
swings yonder suns into systems is not so unsearchable
as that which orders this mighty plan.
And now among these vast, historic, almost personal
Powers, it is not presumptuous or idle to feel that this of
which we ourselves are part, is to have a special and an
eminent place. We feel it instinctively. An audible un
dertone in European society shows the world aware of it.
Placed on a continent where it stands by itself, and
from which its influence passes continually, across both
oceans, to affect all peoples whom commerce reaches, all
tr.ibes indeed whose languages are known ; founded at
the beginning, as Chatham said. ' upon ideas of Liberty,'
and prepared by the very blood that went into it, as
well as by its subsequent training, to illustrate the
capacity of Christianized men to organize and maintain
a democratic autonomy ; with a vast force of thought,
will, feeling, faith, of all that makes the intensest moral
life of a Nation, inherited by it, and continually nourish
ed by schools, presses, churches, homes, by all the
labors it has had to perform, and all the hopes that have
strengthened its heart, — it cannot be but that this Nation

14
shall affect with still increasing power the other civilized
peoples ofthe Earth. In a degree it does this already ;
and when its energies shall cease to be concentrated, as
they hitherto have been, on the preparation of the
country itself for its habitation, and the swift and
mighty mastery of its riches, and on the fashioning and
the upbuilding of its own institutions, — when the edu
cational influences that mould it shall have come to
their fruition, and the spirit of the Nation shall be
finally formed and declared, — it must pour abroad,
through constant channels, an infinite influence.
Either with distrust, then, anxiety, fear, or with
confidence, affection, expectation, the thoughtful minds
throughout the world must look upon the people here
established : whose existence is so recent, its develop
ment so rapid, its history so remarkable, and whose
future hitherto has seemed so uncertain. It is not one
fact, or another, by itself, that secures this interest of the
civilized world in our Republic. The whole drift of civ
ilization makes it inevitable. For good or for evil there
is here a power that must a,ffect the entire system of as
sociated Nations, to make or mar the Future they are
building. And yonder ocean may as easily be with
drawn from the sight of our eyes, the continent itself may
as easily be obliterated from the map of the world, as the
sense of the connection of the development of this peo
ple with the destinies of the Eace be stricken from our
minds, or from the general judgment of Christendom.

]5
When then a terrific crisis suddenly appeared in
our public experience — when a wide-sweeping and
passionate rebellion threatened to become a complete
revolution, to split the Nation into fragments, and to
change the course of its development forever — it was
not wonderful, it was only inevitable, that more than
by any other event of modern times the thoughts of
Mankind should be occupied with it; that here not
only but all abroad it should be felt that the palpable
leaves of destiny were turning; that forces were
evolved than which none others more portentous had
broken upon the world since the modern Nations of
Europe were born. It was inevitable that with di
verse hopes and opposite predictions not Americans
only but the peoples of Christendom should look to
see what the issue was to be.
No man on this continent, therefore, since Washing
ton's day, has had such room as was given to him
whose death we mourn to manifest all of power and
character which he possessed ; to manifest this to the
eyes of the Nation, to the eyes of Mankind. No other
man has had the chance to so utterly wreck himself,
and bury his name in an absolute ignominy, amid the
sinking fortunes of his country. And, on the other
hand, to no other man has been given the opportunity
to rriake for himself a place forever in the inmost heart
of the Nation which he saved ; to make for himself a

16
world-wide fame ; to touch the centuries still to come,
and gild their skies with higher splendor. And it is
because he proved himself equal to the critical, provi
dential, unparalleled position, — because he so bore him
self in his grand office that all men saw him a man to
be loved, a statesman to be trusted, a patriot to be fol
lowed through darkest perils without dismay, — there
fore it is that eulogies now make the continents vocal ;
that those eulogies take the poetic form which only
intensity of feeling produces ; and that one of the
grandest names ofthe World is to be henceforth, while
history continues, the plain, untitled, and recent name
of Abraham Lincoln.
So much for his Position. Observe now the personal
Character and Power which he brought to his office and
the Work which he wrought in it. — Of course the full
exhibition of these would take volumes, not paragraphs,
and be the occupation of months of leisure instead of
a few hurrying hours. Yet we may notice the leading
traits, and recognize briefly the more prominent pow
ers of mind and will, by which he became so apt for
his work ; and may glance, at least, at the principal
features of the great work itself
. It is an impulse of the heart with every one who
speaks of him to delineate first his moral properties ;
and though these may be dwelt upon so exclusively
as to seem to involve an injurious forgetfulness of the
great intellectual abilities he possessed, yet the course

17
of discussion thus suggested is the one which every
one still must take if he would not violently constrain
and divert his own mental processes ; if he would not
repulse the public heart. The moral, which should be
supreme in every man, was so, to a degree almost un
exampled, in President' Lincoln. It made the prime
impression of the man on those who approached him. It
shines most prominently before us to-day, throughout
that crowded and turbulent history along whose dizzy
paths he has led us. It will be spoken of first and
most fondly wherever future American parents repeat
his sayings, rehearse his traits, and tell to their chil
dren the story of his career. Of this then, first, we
may, and we must, with propriety speak.
And yet it is impossible to speak of it as we would,
because it is impossible to comprise in words that sub
tile, essential spirit of Character, which was paramount
in him ; and because — ^when we analyze, as we say,
such a Character, and distribute its single though com
plex beauty, into the traits which made it up^ — it is like
fracturing the diamond to exhibit it ; it is like un-
braiding the strand of light, to show the sunbeam's
inmost splendor. So far, however, as any formula can
express what must, by virtue of its spiritual nature,
elude the grasp and surpass the compass of verbal
propositions, it may be said that a deep, unselfish Sym
pathy with Men, a profound Conviction of the validity
and authority of certain great principles of Equity

and Liberty, and an abiding personal Faith in the over
ruling Providence of God, were the principal and per
manent constituent forces in the Character which he
showed. The genesis of this, the influences by which it was
rooted and formed in him, it ' must be left to the bio
grapher to unfold. The Character itself, which these
elements composed, is as distinct as it is also great ; and
the memory of it will live forever.
Wholly individual, utterly genuine, — so independent
of outward circumstances that obscurity had not at
all embittered it, and investiture with the vast prero
gatives of office only gave it new development,
through immenser opportunities, — it was the essential
moral force on which the Nation for four years hung,
as on a very power of nature ; from which, more than
from any thing else, it has drawn its present stability
and hope ; and by reason of which the death of him
in whom it was revealed has thrilled with new and
strange emotion the civilized world.
His Sympathy with Men was shown not only in his
singularly warm personal attachments, to his family
and his friends, to all who for any considerable time
were confidentially associated Avith him ; it was shown
as well in that kindness to the poor, the sorrowful, the
imperilled, with instances of which the journals of
the country, for four years past, have been running
over. The wearied, sick, or wounded soldier found

19
always a friend in him as solicitous for his welfare as
if he had been his kinsman by birth. The little chil
dren in the Home for the Destitute were touched by
the tearful tenderness and dignity, the instructive
clearness, and the quickening playfulness, with which
he addressed them. The poor freed people — who had
escaped from the slavery through which his armies
crushed their way, but had escaped to communities that
seemed less friendly than those they had left, and had
passed from a bondage which at least had given them
shelter and food, to a liberty that threatened to doom
them to idleness, and to overwhelm them in an absolute
want — it was not with ostentatious charity, it was with
no splendid philanthropical theory, it was with a ten
der welcoming respect, that he heard their stoiy, ex
amined their condition, and opened the way for escape
from their fears.
After four years of incessant, bloody, desperate
struggle, he entered Richmond, with characteristic un-
ostentation, — not at the head of ' marshalled armies,
with banners advanced and trumpets sounding, but as
a private gentleman, on foot, with an officer on one
side, holding the hand of his boy. on the other. An
aged negro met him on the street, and said — with the
tears streaming down his face, as he bowed low his un
covered head — "God bress you, Massa Lincoln !" The
President paused, raised his hat on the instant, and
with a hearty "I thank you, Sir," acknowledged with

20
a bow the greeting. Instinctively he recognized the
poorest as his peer, and the black man as his brother.
On each of two days, in all his brief and burdened
weeks, he gave some hours to receiving the petitions
of those who sought from him any personal favor. He
took upon himself, with glad alacrity, the labor of in
vestigating claims for relief "which had been always
under other administrations, which should have been un
der his, referred at once to subordinate officers. He
did it because he could not help it. His nature de
manded it ; and that nature could not be expelled with
a pitch-fork. No trophies won by legislators or gen
erals ever disturbed, for the tenth of a minute, his
healthful slumbers. But the mere recollection of a
case of suffering which he had not relieved, of an in
stance of anxiety which he had not soothed as quickly
as he might, would keep him tossing for many hours
on an unrestful bed. And it was not a burden, but
always a relief to him, to turn from eminent public af
fairs to talk with the poor who sought his aid, and to
bind up with assiduous skill the wounds of the sor
rowful. The same spirit was revealed, in a more unique exhi
bition, in his sympathetic regard for his opponents. He
laughed at the jokes which were made about himself ;
was tolerant, to a degree before unexampled, of attacks
on his policy ; and never took a particle of venom into
his nature from all the virulent assaults that were

21
made on him. While holding tenaciously to his own
views and plans, he never failed to do generous justice
to the reasons and the motives of those who combated
them ; to recognize in them wherever he could, and
sometimes where none of his colleagues could, a patri
otism as genuine as his own, and a purpose as true to
secure and promote the general welfare. He talked
with, reasoned with, wrote to them, in this spirit ; was
not moved from his position of friendliness toward
them by their misconceptions or their abuse ; and
never could belive them traitorous in their hearts till
the overt act had compelled him to see it.
Toward even those who had dangerously offended
against the laws, he hardly could bring himself to adopt
any course save one of the utmost clemency and gentle
ness. He pardoned with so much eagerness that one
of his own cabinet officers declared that the power of
pardoning should be taken from him. The military
discipline of the army itself was more than once in dan
ger of decay, through his inability to order the final
penalties inflicted on those who had incurred them ;
and spies and traitors within the Capital were shielded,
more than was easily reconciled with the safety of the
Government, by his unwillingness to have them sub
jected to any harsh measures.
Of course his sensibilities came gradually to be under .
the control of his judgment, while the counsels of others
constrained him sometimes to a severity which he

22
hated ; so that at length the order for the merited
restraint or punishment of public offenders was fi'e-
quently, though always reluctantly, ratified by him.
But his sympathy with men, in whatever condition, of
whatever opinions, in whatsoever wrongs involved, was
so native and constant, and so controlling, that he was
always not so much inclined as pre-determined to the
mildest and most generous theory possible. And some
thing of peril, as well as of promise, was involved to the
public in this element of his nature.
He would not admit that he was in danger of the
very assassination by which at last his life was taken,
and only yielded with a protest to the precautions
which others felt bound to take for him ; because his
own sympathy with men was so strong that he could
not l)elieve that any would meditate serious harm to
him. The public policy of his administration was con
stantly in danger of being too tardy, lenient, pacific,
toward those who were combined for deadly battle
against the Government, because he was so solicitous
to win, so anxious to bless, and so reluctant sharply to
strike. Sic semper tyrannis., shouted his wild, theatric
assassin, as he leaped upon the stage : — making the
ancient motto of Virginia a legend of shame forever-
more. But no magistrate ever lived who had less of
the tyi'ant in his natural or his habitual temper. In
all the veins of all his frame no drop of unsympathetic
blood found a channel. When retaliation seemed the

23
only just policy for the Government to adopt, to save
its soldiers from being shot in cold blood, or being
starved into idiocy, it was simply impossible for him to
accept it. And if he had met the arch conspirators face
to face, — those who had racked and really enlarged the
English vocabulary to get terms to express their hatred
and disgust toward him individually, those who were
striking with desperate blows at the National existence
— it would have been hard for him not to greet them
with open hand and a kindly welcome.
The very element of sadness, which was so in
wrought with his mirthfulness and humor, and which
will look out on coming generations through the pen
sive lines upon his face, and the light of his pathetic
eyes, came into his spirit, or was constantly renewed
there, through his sympathy with men, especially with
the oppressed and the poor. He took upon himself
the sorrows of others. He bent in extremest personal
suffering under the blows that fell on his countrymen.
And when the bloody rain of battle was sprinkling
the trees and the sod of Virginia, during successive
dreary campaigns, his inmost soul felt the baptism of
it, and was sickened with grief. ' I cannot bear it ' —
'I cannot bear it,' — he said more than once, as the
story was told him of the sacrifice required to secure
some result. No glow, even of triumph, could expel
from his eyes the tears occasioned by the suffering that
had bought it.

24
And yet through this native sympathy with men he
gained a large part of his immense power over his
country and his times. From it in part came, no doubt,
the sublime temperateness of his spirit. He lived in
times when a man without this must now and then
have flamed into passion, at the arrogant ferocity that
taunted and smote him. But no man remembers an
hour in his life when passion made his accents tremble.
He hated slavery with a life-long abhorrence, and
wrestled with it for four fierce years in deadly grapple ;
and many men, not hating it more, not feeling it so
much, had come not unnaturally to transfer to persons
their wrath against the system, and had been embit
tered through their just indignation. He kept the
utter sweetness of his spirit, as if he had been a child
by the fire-side. His blood was not heated in the des
perate struggle; and even conscience offended could
not make him acrimonious.
He gained another power through this sympathy
with men. Not only by it did he come to be endeared,
so as no President preceding him had been, to the
universal heart of the Nation, to its women and chil
dren, as well as its men ; not only did its rare vital
force surpass our boundaries, and make the humble
abroad his friends ; — he came, by virtue of it in
great measure, to be the Representative Man of the peo-
jjle. It brought him into spontaneous correspondence
with the average thought and feeling of the country.

25
He did not depend on witnesses and counsellors. He
'knew in himself what the "plain people" wanted,
whom he honored and believed in, to whose ranks he
expected soon to return, and who, as he said, were will
ing and able to save the government, if the government
would do its part indifferently well.
Through a process imperceptible to himself, no doubt,
in its methods and modes, but natural to his sympa
thetic constitution, he came to dwell in such accord with
the public — not with any one party, or any one set of
leaders and thinkers, but with the collective spirit of
the Nation — that when he spoke it felt its thought
articulated through him ; and his ultimate decision, on
almost any question, announced and sealed the public
judgment. The independence of his policy^ had its origin here.
He was always ready to hear and. consider any opinion.
The most conservative, the most violently radical, were
equally at home with him. Yet the eloquent or in
genious advocates of a theory often found, to their sur
prise, that they had less influence over his counsels than
over those of men whom they thought his superiors.
The truth is, the entire public was his teacher. His
nature drew, through secret ducts, the wisdom of the
Nation into itself; and the roots of his matured opinions
were as wide as the country.
His policy was plastic, too, and legitimately pro
gressive, as well as independent ; because it represented.

26
in successive stages, the popular mind. And where any
man with a fixed and inflexible personal theory, which
he must carry out, would inevitably have found it too
narrow and rigid to encompass the crisis, and would
have seen it hopelessly shattered in the progress of
events, his policy was modified and expanded with time,
because he kept abreast with the people he ruled. He
carried their purpose and thought in himself. He grew
with their growth, and shared in their advancing wis
dom ; and so, to the end, his plans were elastic, and the
Nation gave, to realize those plans — which did but in
corporate its wisest opinions — its whole tremendous
and unreserved power.
But with this element of Sympathy with Men we
must combine, in inseparable union, the others I have
named, to get an adequate impression of his Character :
He had a profound and enduring Conviction of the
value and authority of certain great principles of
Equity and of Liberty ; while nothing was more vital
or positive in him than his Faith in the rule and the
providence of God. — From these elements his Charac
ter took firmness, greatness, an individual force and
majesty. He was kei>t from becoming a mere sensi
tive exponent of the popular feeling, and became in
stead a noble Chief Magistrate, instructed by all, yet
more instructing them in return.
They who thought him only a shrewd politician
were singularly mistaken. He was that, no doubt;

21
but history will certainly rank him also among our
most philosophical statesmen. The great ethical prin
ciples which, though invisible, are primitive, organific,
in our National development, by which our history has
been vitally moulded, and through which that history
becomes important to the world — these had to him es
sential reality, and an incomparable value. His love for
the very system of Government of which he became.
the grand defender, had its origin in its relation to
these principles; its actual approximate correspon
dence with them ; its capacity to be shaped to express
them more perfectly ; its fitness and power to extend
them. Without rhythm in his sentences, or any taste
for esthetic art, the ideal in the State moved him more
than the material, and was always an educating pre
sence to his mind.
Sprung from the soil, a child of the teeming and
wealthy West, it might have been expected that the
mere physical greatness of the country would have al
lured and toned his thought ; that its vast expanse,
with its prodigal progress in wealth, population, and all
resources, would have been to him, as they had been to
many others of our statesmen, both from the East and
from the West, the occasion of his grateful and
proud admiration. But, on the other hand, he seems
hardly to have thought of them. He took them for
granted ; only casually referred to them ; and was
scarcely sustained or moved in his work by any con-

28
siderations derived from them. The effort of the con
spirators in league against the Government to wrench
apart what God had bolted together with mountains,
and had laced inextricably into one by the marvellous
system of Western rivers, — their effort to sever the
National domain, and to build two empires where
climate, race, topography, language, combined to de
mand that there should be but one, — this does not
seem to have roused him against it. So far as appears
he never was stirred by the natural and not unlaudable
ambition to have the country remain as of old, surpass
ing others in its physical extent, and outshining them
with its more splendid treasures.
But the Principles involved in the National institu
tions were to him inexpressibly sacred and dear ; and
against the warfare made upon these, on behalf of an
ambition which instinctively hated them, he set his
kindly face like a flint. Even the historic recollections
of the Nation were chiefly important or significant to
him as connected with these principles ; and the moral
unity derived from these was that which in his thought
knit the present to the past, and made our diverse
peoples one. So he said at the West, in 1858, of the
Germans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, who
have come here since the war of Independence : " If
they look back through our history to trace their con
nection with those days of blood, they find they have
none; they cannot carry themselves back into that

29
glorious epoch, and make themselves feel that they are
part of us. But when they look through the Declara
tion of Independence, they find that these old men say
that ' we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal ;' and then they feel that that
moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their
relation to these men ; that it is the Father of all moral
principle in them ; and that they have a right to claim
it, as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh
of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration.
And so they have. That is the electric cord that links
the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together ;
that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love
of freedom exists in the minds of men."
So he said afterward, in 1861, substantially at Tren
ton, and more fully at Philadelphia : " It was not' the
mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the
Mother-Land, but it was that sentiment in the Declara-
,tion of Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to
the people of this country, but I hope to the world, for
all future time. It was that which promised that in
due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders
of all men ;" — adding, with what now looks like
prescience, "If this country cannot be saved without
giving up that principle, I was about to say, I would
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it."
From this conviction of the essential authority and
value, and the enduring cosmical importance, of the

30
principles he maintained, came in part, no doubt, his
singular freedom from personal assumption, from all
personal greed for pleasure or gain. He was called, by
one who knew him well, ' the honestest man he had ever
known ;' and certainly no man's pecuniary honesty has
been tested more thoroughly — with uncounted millions
at his command, and a secret service, responsible to him,
which swallowed gold as thirsty sands soak up the
rain. Bux his honesty was not a separate trait, set
mechanically into his nature, and governing what was
alien to it. It was a part, living and inseparable, of his
conscientious and ingenuous mind. He believed in the
Right, for himself and for others. Its rules were clear to
him, its authority perfect ; and it governed him in small
tilings as well as in the greatest.
From this came also his singular patience, and his un
wearied courage, in regard to the issue of the terrible
contest. Sadly as he felt the sacrifice it involved, in
clined as he was to distrust himself, and knowing as
none beside could know with what manifold perils the
cause was beset, he seems never to have doubted the
final result. The mind ofthe public, fixed chiefly on the
visible forces engaged, wavered often, sometimes vio
lently oscillated, between the utmost confidence of suc
cess and the most extreme depression and fear. He
held with marvellous steadiness on his way; never exas
perated, never over-elated, yet always expecting sure vic
tory in the end, if it took a life- time to attain it ; because

31
his hold on the principles involved was utterly infrangi
ble, and their ultimate victory he believed to be certain.
He saw the Divine forces which, all unheard by mor
tal ear, were ¦still contending on our side ; and he knew
that till Christianity went down, Slavery could not
succeed against Liberty. The ' rapture of battle' he
never felt. The 'courage of conscience' he always knew ;
and the key to all his policy is found in one sentence
of one of his speeches, before he was President : " Let
us have faith that Right makes Might; and in that
faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we un
derstand it."
The same element in his Character, the same unswerv
ing confidence in principles, gave a true moral unity to
his administration. It imparted a certain philosophical
tone, almost a religious^ to much of his statesmanship ;
a tone most emphatic in his latest Address. A latent
enthusiasm was bred in him by it ; an enthusiasm that
rarely was wrought into utterance, but that kept all
his powers in most complete exercise, while it some
times made his sentences throb with its inward fervor.
He became, in some sense, to his own consciousness, a
consecrated man ; consecrated to the championship of
principles of Government, 'by which,' as he said, 'the
Republic lives and keeps alive,' and in which the whole
human race has a stake. Hence came the undertone
that thrilled through his short address at Gettysburgh,
which is more henceforth to the American people than

32
the stateliest oration preserved in its archives. Hence
came, in part, the tranquility and the scope of his high-
leveled policy. It was to himself an inspiration ; while
it gave him a power over the enlightened' reason of the
people which no other President since Washington has
had. With this came also, in intimate agreement, that sense
of the presence and providence of God, which seems never
to have wavered, from the time when he went forth from
Springfield for Washington, asking the friends whom
he left to pray for him, till the time when he said, in
his latest Address, "As was said three thousand years
ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether." Without the least
taint of fanaticism, his belief in God's regard for the
principles which he was defending, was so earnest and
constant, and at last so devout, that the whole long
war became to him a sacred war. He recognized the
guidance of Providence throughout it, in our reverses
as well as our successes, and saw the forecast that had
shaped it. Reverently, practically, he felt himself but
an instrument in God's hand ; and knew that when the
Divine consummation had been attained, the mystic and
awful tragedy would be over. " Let us be quite sober,"
he said ; " let us diligently apply the means, never
doubting that a just God, in His own good time, will
give us the rightful result."
Hence came the crown of dignity on the character in

33
which sympathy with men, and conscientious fidelity to
principles, had been before so intimately blended. No
man can be morally great whose soul does not rest on
God as its centre, and does not draw from communion
with Him its inmost life. Especially when the leader
in great affairs stands face to face with the possible
speedy wreck of his country, — when he treads a path all
hidden and perilous, without precedent to govern, or
parallel to direct him, and sees the contracting horizon
around shot through with blood, and all a-flame,^the
only thing to keep him staunch, serene, clear-visioned,
is trust in the Highest. It was the life within his life
to him whom we mourn. Not uttering itself in any set
phrase, not prompting much to religious ceremonial, it
gave him a steadiness almost invincible. It made him
expectant of a Future as' grand as the way that led to
it was bloody and dark. It united his soul with all
that was highest in the heart and conscience of the
People which he ruled.
It was this alone which enabled him to say, in
closing his second Inaugural Address, in words that illus
trate the whole Character of the man, and that will live
while the language in which they were uttered endures :
"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 ;

34
to do all which we may to achieve and cherish a just
and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all Nations.'
Combine now, with all these loftier elements, a
natural mirthfulness that was constant, exuberant, that
sparkled into jest and story, and kept his faculties al
ways fresh ; — remember that these so various traits were
melted together into a Character utterly simple, utterly
personal, in which was nothing copied from antique
models, and nothing imported from foreign examples,
which was wholly an American product, born of the
influences that had moulded his youth, and nourished
by the woods, the river, and the prairie, as modern as
the West, and as native as its oaks ; — remember that
through the whole atmosphere of the times this Charac
ter daily radiated influence, in some quaint word or
comic story, so that all saw the identity of it, and felt
that, as was said of him once, ' if he were passed through
all hoppers in the universe, and ground into dust a
million times, when put together again at the end he
would come out simply Abraham Lincoln ;' — and then
remember that what the country needed and craved, a
thousand times more than splendid talents, was such
thorough and permanent goodness in its Head, honesty,
fidelity, patience, magnanimity, and an unsuspicioned
integrity of purpose, — and you have in part the explana
tion of that prodigious hold which he gained on the
country which he ruled, and on the world which watch
ed that country.

35
The maguetism that held the Nation steadfastly to
him had here its vital source and seat. He made mis
takes ; men did not defend, did not feel it very necessary
to apologize for them. He was not omniscient, and his
judgment might sometimes be in error. But his
character was what the people wanted ; too lenient,
sometimes, but kindly, tolerant, patient, always ; with
out a trace of arrogance or of passion ; as little imperi
ous as the air or the sunshine ; as little likely to be
crazed with ambition as the clouds, from which drop
the showers of Spring, to distil their kindly dews into
venom. And a character like this was incomparably
more to the imperilled and anxious people than the ut
most ability without it would have been.
There is such a thing as moral genius ; — a temper so
wholly individual and original, so vitally compact
of various excellencies, and so alive with personal
force, that it sustains and attracts more than do sjalen-
did intellectual powers. And it was this moral genius
which America wanted, which he supplied. By virtue
of it, he seemed to fill the land with his example. He
incarnated not only, but instructed and inspired, the
temper of the People ; till it had more confidence in
him than it had in itself Amid arbitrary arrests, and
damaging defeats, its trust in his temper never yielded.
' His very mistakes ' as one has said, ' became omnipo
tent.' For, through the whole of his strange term of
office — after the Nation had come to know him — it was

36
a source to it of central joy that one so faithful, sym
pathetic, conscientious, was supreme in the goverment ;
that a will so earnestly trustful in Providence was
guiding the forces which Providence had evolved ; that
hands so pure had heeii found to bear, across the stony
wilderness of fear, and through the mounting seas of
blood, the civil Constitution, which is to the Republic
its consecrated ark.
But Character alone, even one so original and so
eminent as his, could never explain the singular place
attained by Mr. Lincoln in the respect of the Country
and the World ; could never wholly account for the
work which he accomplished. Intellectual power, ex
ecutive faculty, a large capacity for skilful and labor
ious administration, are also implied in such mastership
as his ; and aside from these, amid such times as ours
have been, he must have proved a simple drift-log on
the current, unable to govern it, only rushing with it
toward the abyss. As we turn, then, to consider his
nature in this view, we shall find, I think, that a re
markable faculty for exact and discriminating Thought
was combined in him with immense Common Sense, and
great practical Sagacity ; while his executive force was
imparted by a Will yielding in small things, but tena
cious in great, and capable of long-continued exertion.
These were the instruments through which his patient
spirit wrought to its great issues. They made the force,
not splendid, but practical and effective, which took

37
from his Character ' the consecration and the gleam,'
and of which that which we have derived from him is
the permanent fruit.
The exact and incisive habit of his mind was con
stantly shown in his papers and speeches, and even in
his unstudied utterances. His jests were always more
remarkable than for anything else for their absolute
fitnesss to the point illustrated. The fun that was in
them, even Avhen it was coarse, was weighted with
meaning, and edged with sharp thought. They were,
what Lord Bacon says proverbs are — 'the edge-tools of
speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of affairs.'
His discriminations were always accurate; and no
sophistry could stand before the fire of his analysis.
Where has the essential unwisdom of Secession, even
supposing it wholly successful, ever been more succinct
ly exposed than it was by him in his first Inaugural:
"Physically speaking, we cannot sejDarate. We cannot
remove our respective sections from each other, nor
build an impassable wall between them. * * Is it
possible then to make our ijitercourse more advanta
geous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before ?
Can aliens make treaties, easier than friends can make
laws ? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between
aliens, than laws can among friends ?"
Where has the argument against the Constitutional
right of Secession been more tersely, yet more complete
ly set forth, than in these words : " Perpetuity is im-

38
plied if not expressed in the fundamental law of all
National Governments. * "' Continue to execute all
the express provisions of our National Constitution,
and the Union will endure forever ; it being impossible
to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in
the instrument itself" And where has ever the ab
surdity of the argument for the right of Secession,
derived from the general doctrine of State Rights, been
more sharply exhibited than in a sentence or two of
his first Message : " If all the States save one should as
sert their ri^ht to drive that one out of the Union, it
is presumed the whole class of Seceder politicians
would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as
the grossest outrage upon State Rights. But suppose
that precisely the same act, instead of being called
driving the one out, should be called the seceding of
the others from it, — it would be exactly what the
Seceders claim to do ; unless, indeed, they make the
poiut," he adds with an irony not less cutting because
it is gentle, " unless they make the point, that the one,
because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the
others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully
do." In his entire treatment of the right of Secession, the
same sharp and destructive analysis is shown. Thus :
"A part ofthe present National debt was contracted to
pay the old debt of Texas. Is it just that she shall
leave, and pay no part of this herself? If one State

39

may secede, so may another ; and when all shall have
seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just
to creditors?" — how his lips must have smiled as he
.Avrote the question ! "Did we notify them of this sage
viewof ours when we borrowed their money?" Again :
" The Constitution provides, and all the States have ac
cepted the provision, that the United States shall
• guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican
form of Government. But if a State may lawfully go
out of the Union, having done so it may also discard
the Republican form of Government. So that to pre
vent its going out, is an indispensable means to the end
of maintaining the guarantee mentioned ; and where an
end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means
to it are also lawful and obligatory."
As further illustrative of the same property and
tendency of his mind, remember a sentence or two from
his letter to those in Kentucky who though loyal to
the Government objected to the Emancipation Procla
mation, and wished it recalled : " It shows a gain of a
hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and
laborers [for the Union cause.] Now let any Union
man who complains of the measure test himself, by
writing clown in one line, that 'he is for subduing the
Rebellion by force of arms;' and, in the next, that 'he
is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men
from the Union side, and placing them where they
would be but for the measure which he condemns.' If

40
he cannot face his cause so stated, it is because he can
not face the truth."
So, in a letter written much earlier, to those at the
West who objected to his policy: "You say that you
will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem to
be willing to fight for you, but no matter, Fight you
then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the pro
clamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union.
Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to
the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it
will be an apt time for you to declare that you will not
fight to free negroes. I thought that in your struggle
for the Union to whatever extent the negroes should
cease helping the enemy, to that extent it Weakened
that enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think
differently ? I thought that whatever negroes can be
got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white
soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear
otherwise to you ? But negroes, like other people, act
ujaon motives. Why should they do anything for us,
if we will do nothing for them ? If they stake their
lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest
motive, even the promise of Freedom. And the promise,
being made, must be kept."
It is evident that before a mind so careful, so per
spicuous, so analytic as this, there was but little chance
for sophisms to stand ; and that whatever secured the
assent of one so accustomed to logical processes, and to

41
clear discriminations, was likely at least to have much
in its favor, if not to be finally accepted and ratified by
the public judgment. But the faculty of careful ra
tiocination is not synonymous with practical sagacity ;
and a mind addicted to the logical exercise may be
even fatally narrowed thereby — losing in general per
ceptive sensibility, in administrative skill, and in
breadth of reason, while it gains in particular dialecti
cal force. In attempting to explain, then, the unri
valled personal position attained by Mr. Lincoln, the sin
gular power exercised by him, not only over public af
fairs, but over the sentiments and convictions of the peo
ple, and over the general mind of Mankind, it is of cardinal
consequence to observe, that with this careful precision
of Thought he combined a really supreme Common
Sense; a practical Sagacity, so intuitive and enlightening
that, though it did not keep him from committing mis
takes, it kept him from any fatal erroi', and justified al
ways that confidence in his plans which at first it
inspired. His mind possessed scope, as well as sharpness.
He looked on the right hand, and on the left, before he
smote. His reason saw before and after ; and in the
clear comprehension of results, and of the methods by
which to attain them, his judgment showed itself as dis
cursive and prescient, as his power of analysis was
trenchant and fine. — Here was really the centre of his
strength ; the fruitful source of his success as a States-

42
man. And when associated, as it was, with the Charac
ter we have sketched, and with a tenacious and patient
Will, it goes very far toward explaining his power, and
inteipreting his work.
There is a showy but dangerous kind of mind some
times employed in the offices of statesmanship, whose
poAver lies, and also its peril, in what may be called
intellectual constructiveness. It deals largely with the
abstract. It is mighty in making paper governments.
Its schemes express ideal conceptions; and it counts it
almost a degradation to stoop to consider jDractical ne
cessities. It theorizes splendidly on Avhat ought to be,
and insists that the facts shall correspond with the
theory ; or, if either must give way, that the facts shall
be displaced to make room for the theory. The vast,
intricate, gradual administration of public affairs, which
contemplates many interests, and has to deal with
great masses of men, it would mould relentlessly by
preconceived metaphysical plans ; and it is always un
satisfied, until the two distinctly correspond.
There is much that is striking in this style of mind.
It is apt to win a large share of admiration, especially
among the studious and refined. It is an important
element, no doubt, in public counsels : because, Avhen
arrayed, as it usually is, in a speculative opposition to
the actual governing forces in a Nation, its criticisms are
helpful. They tend to expand the horizon of rulers,
and to lift toward the austere levels of reason what

43
might otherwise sink to the plane of expediency and
political tactics. If its shining air-palaces do not be
come solid terrestrial successes, they yet hold before
men the ideal forms of public development ; and the
workers beneath may build better and higher for
having surveyed them.
But when such a mind is placed itself at the head of
affairs, — unless it has that reach of vision, with that
vividness of perception, which belong only to the high
est genius, and unless possessed of a knowledge of facts
that is well nigh omniscient, — it is sure to be found in
competent to its task. Especially in difficult and
critical times, when great elemental forces are evolved
beneath and overhead, when the whirlwinds of passion
are loosed from their chambers, and sudden currents,
which no chart shows, are hurled to and fro with fierce
velocity, while the Nation drifts and drives before
them in unexpected directions, — such a mind as this is
the poorest of pilots. Its beautiful schemes no more
match the emergency than ingenious theorems arrest
the typhoon. It wants tact, invention, insight, hardi
hood. Losing sight of the headlands, it fails to make
allowance for variations of the compass. It does not
hear the boom of the surf on the rocks to leeward.
The awful volume and onset of the storm are too much
for its theoretic navigation ; and the crew must mutiny,
and put a more practical man at the head, or crew and
ship will go to the bottom.

44

Not such, certainly, was the mind of Mr. Lincoln.
Men quarelled with him sometimes, because he had not
more of this wholly intellectual and ethical tendency.
But if he had had more, the Nation and the World
might not to-day have been his mourners.
There is, on the other hand, a cheap and sterile
species of shrewdness, which often calls itself Common
Sense, — which sometimes even passes for such, Avhen it is
installed in positions of influence, — which makes nothing
of principles, but everything of what it conceives to be
' facts.' It has no idea] ; but takes its suggestions ft'om
the newspapers, from the caucuses, from the last man
who speaks. Its plans are moulded by no ethical har
monies, by no fitness even to serve great ends, but by
immediate personal influences. It prides itself on being
exclusively practical ; on aiming to conserve what al
ready exists, to hold parties together, to smooth away
differences, and to reconcile by a dexterous nianipu^
lation antagonist interests. It discredits the higher
nature of the People, and thinks anything can be
carried by a skilful and timely handling of Conven
tions. It has faith in one thing : — political management.
It knows one rule : — to do what is popular. It is con
stant to one purpose : — to keep things quiet. It some
times achieves in peaceful days ^ transient success, and
Avins, perhaps, from the more unthinking, a superficial
appla,use. But its end, even then, is generally failm-e ;
since it never awakens a generous impulse, and never

4.5
inspires any general confidence. And in times of immi
nent public peril, it is not insufficient only, but essen
tially dangerous. Trivial by nature, when the pressure
comes upon it, it first becomes trickish, and then becomes
treacherous. Losing head altogether, in the final crisis,
it is likely to carry everything that depends on it into
sudden and uttermost wreck.
Such has been the style of mind too often exhibited
among those Avho have ranked as political leaders, on
one side or the other, in our country and time. Such
Avas, perhaps, the style of mind men feared avouIcI appear
in President Lincoln, before they had had experience
of him. But such, thank God ! was as far as possible
from being the type or the parallel of the mind, which
by degrees was brought out in him.
Not addicted to theorizing, and dogmatic speculation,
in no sense a doctrinaire., he was not either a man of ex
pedients ; a simply shreAA^l, unfruitful manager of politi
cal affairs. Clear-sighted by nature, he had kept his
judgment healthy and strong, by intercourse with men,
and by a pure and manly life ; and so he was ready
without being rash, wary and cool, Avithout the slight
est timidity. Quick to perceive, he was slow to de
cide, offering liberal hospitality to all discreet counsels,
and determined to discover AA^hat was best on the whole,
whether it agreed with any theory or not. And when
immense exigencies suddenly confronted him, he ke])t
his balance; he was not bewildered in the crisis; and

46
if he did not show that marvellous genius which illum
inates all things with one broad flash, he showed an in
tuitive and large Common Sense; a calm, persistent,
wide-sighted Sagacity; that quality of mind which en
ables its possessor to see principles clearly, but to see
also the governing practical necessities amid which
tho^e principles must be unfolded; which makes him
wise in selecting his methods, and sure, if not swift, in
accomplishing his ends. He showed, in other words,
not indeed in an absolute degree, but in a very high and
remarkable degree, precisely that species of mental
ability which an intelligent democracy craves in its
Ruler ; precisely that which was needed for the times ;
precisely that Avithout which a showy faculty for theo
rizing, or a mere trained political shrewdness, would
infallibly have brought us to speedy destruction.
Through this he did his unequalled work for the Land
and the World. And this will always shine paramount
in him, while his history is read.
Observe what illustration it found in his action ; how
continual, and how manifold.
When he came into power the Nation was as a
company lost in .the woods ; with sudden gulfs sink
ing before it ; with stealthy robbers lurking near ;
Avith utter darkness overhead ; the sun gone down, the
light of all the constellations quenched. No man knew
certainly what to do, which way to turn, on whom to
rely. There was danger in advancing, perhaps greater

47
in delay ; danger that everything precious might be
lost ; danger, even, that the travelers themselves, in their
dark fear and furious haste, might turn on each other
with deadly blows. You remember what an infinite
jargon of counsels, from all presses, forums, individual
speakers, rent and vexed the gloomy air ; with what
passionate eagerness the public sought on every side for
some avenue of escape — urging the adoption of one
course to day, and of another, its opposite, to-morrow.
All voices sounded strange in the darkness ; all paths
were obliterated ; all bearings lost. There was a pro
digious power in the Nation ; but it was feverish, head
strong, chaotic. There was a terrific onset to be met.
The Past showed no instances by which to instruct ;
the Future no outlet, toward which to invite. It
seemed impossible that any one man should be able to
hold and lead the Country ; especially that one with
out wide fame, without large experience, without the
prestige of previous leadership, should be able to guide
it into safety.
Measure then the results to which we have come,
against the conditions in which we stood, and say if any
thing short of a Sagacity that seems providential could
have brought us out of darkness into day ; along
precipice and pitfall, and through the valleys of strife
and woe, to the sunlighted summits on which we rest.
There is nothing accidental in this result. No happy
chances secured it for us. The unusual wisdom of him

48
who led us is demonstrated by it ; — a Avisdom more re
markable, because more rare, than any specific mental
faculty ; more lofty than eloquence, more illustrious
than song.
And Avhen Ave examine the path which he trod, how
ever at the time we criticized his steps, our imj)ression
of this great property in him becomes more vivid.
You can hardly touch a point in his policy where it
does not appear.
The tentative nature of his earl}- administration, — his
delays to act, by which men were irritated, and at
which they sneered, as showing his want of a 2:>ositive
purpose, — yet proved in the end to have been indispen
sable to make the action, when it was taken, uniAJ-er-
aally acceptable. In the particular form of his measures,
as much as in the measures themseh^es, in the very
times at Avhich they were initiated, this Sagacity is dis
covered. His radicalism showed it ; for it was ahvays
conservative and rational, not startling the timid. His
conservatism showed it ; for it Avas always intelligent,
not blind, liberal and persuasive, and never imperious.
Reviewing at a glance the AAiiole series of his policy
in these swift-Avhiiiing and perilous years, Ave may say
that in these five points especially, his Sagacity was
revealed. First : in his early perception of the fact that
compromise Avas impossible, and that, Avith the existing
views and temper of the rebel leaders and the disloyal
people, the issues at stake betAA-eeji them and the Gov-

49
ernment had got to be settled by the stern and fearful
arbitrament of Battle. Second : in his immediate deter
mination that the war should commence through some
unjustified act of aggression on the part of the Revolt,
and not through any offensive display of purpose and
power on the part of the Governm(?nt. Third : in his
tenacious adherence, from first to last, to the one great
end to be secured by the war, — the maintenance of the
Government in all its prerogatives, the maintenance of
the Republic in its territorial and legal integrity; and
in his strict subordination to this of all that he did, of
all his refusals to take any action. Fourth * in the
constant flexibility of his methods, his readiness to try
one thing or another, to see which instrument would be
most effective for accomplishing the work in which
there was neither rule to guide nor example to instruct
him; and in his constant recognition of the fact that the
march of events Avas governing him, Avhile he in turn
was influencing it, and that his highest wisdom was to
discern what Providence meant to accomplish, and to
move in the line of its battalions. And, Finally : in the
absolute fixedness of purpose Avith which he avoided
foreign complications, and, postponing everything else,
held the Nation to its one work of subduing rebellion,
and making the Government everywhere supreme.
Take all these related facts into vicAV, — observe how
early they began to appear, and how consistent, stead
fast, deliberate, was that administration of public af-

50
fairs which they represent ; how largely this was origi
nal with himself, how freely at any rate he accepted it,
and how persistently he carried it out, — and surely his
immense Sagacity can need no other demonstration. It
was his policy. The symmetry of it shows the single
ness of the brain by which it was moulded. He sur
rounded himself with eminent counsellors. It was one
fruit of his wisdom that he did so. And they no doubt
often influenced him, while in turn instructed or cor
rected .by him. But he was always the head of the
Cabinet ; so that it sometimes was matter of complaint
that he did not yield, as others would have done, to the
different preferences or the adverse decisions of those
combined in it. The truth is, his policy had to be his
own. He took light gladly, but he could not take law,
from other minds. And while his counsellors must al
ways have a share, and that a large one, in the credit and
renown which belong to his policy, his name must
be always first and supremely identified with it. He
adopted it because he saw it the best; and whatever
opposition or whatever applause it afterward encounter
ed, when his mind was made up it never seems to have
subsequently wavered. He knew his plan, what the
issue proved it, the wisest thing.
His Sagacity was shown, almost as much as in his
policy itself, in the modes and means, in the very forms
of. statement and illustration, by which he presented
it to the public. He could be eloquent, if he would.

51
Remember the close of his Ohio Letter : " Peace does
not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come
soon, and come to stay ; and so come as to be worth
the keeping. It will then have been proved, that
among freemen there can be no successful appeal from
the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such ap
peal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then
there will be some black men who can remember that
with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye,
and well-poised bayonet, they have helped Mankind on
to this great consummation; while I fear that there
will be some white men unable to forget that with
malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have striven
to hinder it."
But generally the most marked feature of his style
was its utter simplicity.
The usual plethoric platitudes, of State-papers were
curiously contrasted by his simple and sinewy sentences.
If an editor wrote to him, he wrote back to the editor,
and published his answer. And when the people
had got over their astonishment at his audacity, they
believed all the more in his utter sincerity. No man
ever lived who spoke more directly to the heart of the
people. Critics might quarrel with his rhetoric some
times; but critics themselves could not gainsay the
fact that his homely and pithy words had a power be
yond all ornate paragraphs. With what absolute com
pleteness and precision was the origin of the war ex-

52
plained by him, and the course of the People concerning
it justified, in this one sentence: " Both parties depre
cated war. But one of them would make war, rather
than let the Nation survive ; and the other would accept
war, rather than let it perish ; — and the war came !"
His very colloquialisms were mighty for his service.
'We must keep still pegging aAvay,' he said, in the
gloomiest period of the war ; and every plain man saw
his duty, and was nerved to perform it. ' One Avar at a
time :' — all the orators could not answer it ; a unanimous
press could not have overborne the impression it made.
' The United States Government must not undertake
to run the churches :' — the dictum is worth a half-dozen
duodecimos on the complex relations of Church and
State. ' You needn't cross a bridge until you have got
to it:' — if men's minds were not relieved of their fears
concerning the effect of a general Emancipation, they
were at least widely persuaded to postpone these, by
the pithy advice. 'The central idea of Secession,' he
said in one of his Messages, ' is the essence of Anarchy :'
and elaborate pages could not have said more than that
one apothegm. It is a head-line for copy-books, for all
time to come.
Always, the Sagacity which had selected his policy,
and AAiiich usually chose Avith great final correctness
the men aud the times for putting it in practice, was
shown as well in the homely phrase, or proverb, or
anecdote, which made it familiar throughout the land.

53
More than his opponents knew at the time, more than
the people themselves were aware, he argued the
questions of his administration, he carried the public
judgment to his conclusions, by those quaint Avolrds
which all remembered, and which were repeated with
laughing satisfaction at thousands of firesides. His
maxims were more effective than his messages ; and a
score of presses could not have rivaled the service of
some of his stories.
With intuitive skill he selected his policy. With a
skill almost equal he made the people aware what it
was. And when it had been adopted by him he car
ried it out, as I said before, with a power of Will per
haps as remarkable as was the Sagacity which had
planned it.
He had not certainly what is called ' an iron will.'
Well for him that he had not ! It might have involved
the destruction of his influence, and the sacrifice of the
interests he was set to conserve. For iron breaks when
it is bent; and no man lives, or ever lived, who could
have kept his will unbent; amid such times as we have
passed. Accumulated defeats, disheartening opposi
tions, complaints without reason, intolerable delays, — •
the resolution that boasts itself inflexible might have
been fractured beneath the burden, and the very pil
lars of the Government have been unsettled. But
President Lincoln had what was better ; a will like
strands of tempered steel ; flexible in small things, elas-

54
tic, pliant, and always sheathed in a playful gentleness,
but not liable to be snapped, however it was bent, and
springing back from every pressure in its primitive
toughness. Men called him undecided, vacillating,
uncertain ; and so he was in minor matters, — in great
things, even, till the argument was closed and his mind
was made up. But when it was, the same men called
him obstinate, headstrong; for nothing could change
him. He dismissed more than once his most promi
nent generals; and all the pressure of persons or par
ties could no more change his purpose afterAvard than
it could shake the base of the Alleghanies. He re
tained his Cabinet, against the threat of serious divis
ions in the party which had chosen him. He Avould
not go to war AAith England, in the case of the Trent,
he would not get involved in a controversy with
France, on the question of the French occupation of
Mexico, though friends insisted on his taking high
ground,- and enemies sneered without stay or stint
because he did not. He launched the bolt of his
Proclamation, against the Slavery which had nourished
Rebellion, though a thousand voices prophesied dis
aster. Deliberate, till at times he almost seemed dilatory, —
unwilling to commit himself till all sides of a question
had been thoroughly canvassed, and ready, to the very
verge of a fault, to hear to the last the humblest repre
sentative of any interest or any opinion, — he was yet

55
as staunch as the ribs of the Ironsides when his course
was decided; and it Avas like pulling against gravita
tion, to try thenceforth to detain or deflect him. The
tenacity of his will was like that of his muscle, which
could hold out an axe at arm's length without a quiver
when others drooped. Its influence reminded one of the
suck of the under-drift on a sea beach : which does not
appear upon the surface, and makes no visible wrestle
with the waves, but which carries everything into its
current, and compels the strongest and skillfulest
swimmer to yield himself vanquished.
Let one other fact, then, be brought to view, and the
secret of his Power is perhaps all before us. It is
that his powers Avere so simple, native, and unostenta
tious, that they hardly impressed men while he was
living as so great as they were; they excited no jeal
ousies ; they startled no fears ; and the popular trust
in them was unapprehensive. At the same time they
were so original, constitutional, so independent even
of training, much more of adventitious aids, that they
always were ready for instant use, and only grew
more adequate to their work, as its pressure upon them
became more tremendous. So, again, he had a power
which more brilliant men, or more literary men, would
certainly have wanted ; and all his force became most
effective. If genius had taken the place of his sagacity, men
might have been afraid of him, as they are of the light-

56
ning. It is splendid, but fitful ; and its bolts may drop
where they were not expected. But his force was so
quiet, patient, pervasive, that it wrought like the vital
force in nature, which is not exhibited in any flash, but
which streams unheard through the breasts of the
earth, and comes to its expression with certainty though
with silence, in bud and fruit, and an infinite verdure.
If it had been the result of education, and political prac
tice, or of special accomplishments, there would have
been something precarious in it. It would have de
pended somewhat on circumstances. It Avould have
been liable to be shaken, if not shattered, when new
and great emergencies were met. But being so native
and intrinsic as it AA^as, so wholly the result of his
special constitution, it not only gave no sign of yielding,
it became ever more thorough and masterly, as it was
summoned by grander cares to new exhibition. His
nature grew only larger, and more capable, as time went
on. His faculties were not wearied by the work they
were put to, and remained to the end unworn and fresh.
This essential naturalness, this silentness and con
stancy, marking his powers, Avere not favorable perhaps
to his instant hold on the public admiration. Men
were not surprised by him into bursts of applause.
They nowhere saw one mighty figure, cloud-enveloped,
iris-crowned, riding with splendid supremacy on the
storm, or heard a voice as of Jove himself commanding
Peace ; and for the time they felt disappointed. But his

57
power was more universal in its reach because it was
quiet ; and now that it is gone we honor it the more, be
cause it was essential, not artificial, serene and patient,
not impulsive and scenic.
As the sunshine draws less admiration than the pic
ture, but is recognized still as a far grander good ; as
the river is not so much praised as the fountain, but
with its inexhaustible current is a million-fold more
mighty and precious ; as the stars do not interest our
fancy so much as the glittering fire-works which cor- ¦
ruscate beneath, while yet they hold the earth itself on
its calm poise, — so other statesmen have won more ap
plause than was given to him. In times of paroxysmal
excitement they have seemed to show a more supreme
and sudden power. But now that he is gone, we miss
the Sagacity which lighted up intricate paths like the
sunshine. We miss the deep and constant currents of
Thought and Will which bore great burdens without a
ripple. We feel how grandly secure we were while
the star, now hidden in higher splendors, held up with
its unfailing influence the very structure and frame of
the Government.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — Such was the Man for
whom we mourn ; and such the Position in which
Providence had placed him. Think then a moment of
the Work which he wrought in it, and all our reasons
for gladness and for grief, on this day set apart to com
memorate him, will be before us.

58
With the character I have sketched, to give him at
once impulse and law, with such effective powers for
its instruments, with so many trained and skillful minds
eager to help him, and amid the unparalleled opportu
nities which by his times were opened to him, it might
have been expected that his Work should be a great
one. It could not even be matter of surprise that it
should have a colossal character; — -like the reach of
the river, along which he had guided his flat-boat in
his youth ; like the stretch of the prairies, on which
he had builded his home as a man. And yet how far,
in its actual development, it transcended even such
expectations ! How singular it is among the recorded
achievements of Man ! How plainly is revealed in it a
higher than any human Will, laying out and ar
ranging the mighty scheme !
When he took in hand the reins of the Government,
the finances ofthe country seemed hopelessly deranged;
and after many years of peace it was difficult to raise
money, at unprecedented interest, for its daily use.
And when he died — after such expenditures as no man
had dreamed of, through four long years of devastating
war — the credit of the Republic was so firmly estab
lished that foreign markets were clamorous for its bonds,
and the very worst thing which could have happened,
his own destruction, did not depress by one hair's
breadth the absolute confidence of our own people in
them. When he came to Washington, the naA^y at the

59
command of the Government was scattered, almost be
yond recall, to the ends of the earth, and was even
ludicrously insufficient for instant needs. He left it
framed of iron instead of oak, with wholly new princi
ples expressed in its structure, and large enough to
bind the continent in blockade, while it made the Na
tional flag familiar on every sea which commerce crosses.
He found an army remotely dispersed, almost hopelessly
disorganized, by the treachery of its officers ; with hardly
enough of it left at hand to furnish a body-guard for
his march to the Capital. He left a half-million of
men in arms, after the losses of fifty campaigns, — with
valor, discipline, arms, and generalship, unsurpassed in
the world, and admonitory to it. He found our diplo
macy a by-word and a hissing in most of the principal
foreign courts. He made it intelligent, influential,
respected, wherever a civilized language is spoken.
In his moral and political achievements at home, he
was still more successful. He found the arts of indus
try prostrated, almost paralyzed indeed, by the arrest
of commerce, the repudiation of debts, the universal
distrust. He left them so trained, quickened, and de
veloped, that henceforth they are secure amid the
world's competition. He came to Washington, through
a people morally rent and disorganized ; — of whom it
was known that a part at least were in full accord with
the disloyal plans ; and concerning whom it was pre
dicted by some, and feared by many, that the slightest

60
pressure from the Government upon them would re
solve them at once into fighting factions. He laid heavy
taxes, he drafted them into armies, he made no effort
to excite their admiration, he seemed to throw down
even the ancient muniments of their personal liberty ;
and he went back to his graA^e through the very same
people so knit into one, by their love for each other
and their reverence for him, that the cracking of the
continent hardly could part them.
At his entrance on his office he found the leaders
of the largest, fiercest, and most confident rebellion
known to history, apparently in all things superior to
himself: — in capacity, in culture, in political experi
ence, in control over men, in general weight with the
country itself And when he was assassinated, he left
them so utterly overthrown and discomfited that they
fled over sea, or hid themselves in women's clothes. A
power it had taken thirty years to mature, a power
that put every thing into the contest — money, men,
harbors, homes, churches, cities, states themselves-^and
that fought with a fury never surpassed, he not only
crushed but extinguished in four years. A court that
had been the chief bulwark of Slavery, he so re-organ
ized as to make it a citadel of liberty and light for all
time to come. He found a race immeshed in a bondage
which had lasted already two hundred years, and had
been only compacted and confirmed by invention and
commerce, by arts, legislations, by social usage, by

61
ethnic theories, and even by what was called religion ;
he pretended to no special fondness for the race ; he
refused to make war on its behalf; but he took it up
cheerfully in the sweep of his plans, and left it a race
of free workers and soldiers.
He came to the Capital of an empire severed, by
what seemed to the world eternal lines; with sec
tional interests, with antithetic ideas, with irremovable
hatreds, forbidding reconstruction. He left it the Capi
tal of an empire so restored, that the thought of its
diAdsion is henceforth an absurdity; with its unity
more complete than that of Great Britain; with its
ancient flag, and its unchallenged rule, supreme again
from the Lakes to the Gulf. Nay : he found a Nation
that had lost in a measure its primitive faith in the
grand ideas of its own Constitution ; and he left that
Nation so instructed and renewed, so aware of the
supremacy of principles over forces, so committed to the
Justice and the Liberty which its founders had valued,
that the era of his power has been the era of its new
birth ; that its history will be nobler and more lumin
ous forever for his inspfrations.
Not public achievements are his only memorial. His
influence has come, like the ' clear shining after rain,'
on the lesser interests, on the private career, on the per
sonal character of the people whom he ruled. He
educated a Nation, Avith the Berserkers' blood in it, into
a gentleness more strange than its skill, and more glori-

62
OUS than its valor ; a gentleness Avhich even the sight of
starved men could not sting into ferocity. Through
his personal spirit he restrained and exalted the temper
of a continent ; and our letters are to be nobler, our art
more spiritual, our philanthropy more generous, our very
churches more earnest and free, because of what w,^
have learned from him. The public estimation of
Honesty is brighter. The sense of the power and
grandeur of Character is more intimate in men's minds.
We know henceforth what style of manhood America
needs, and in her progress tends to produce. We have
a new courage concerning the Future. We have a fresh
and deeper sense of that eternal Providence which he
recognized. Not to our country has his work been confined.
Across the sea extends his influence. It vibrates this
hour around the world; and despotic institutions are
less secure, the progress of liberty throughout Europe,
throughout Christendom, is more rapid and sure, by
reason of that Avhich he has wrought. The peoples are
more hopeful, and the bayonets are more thoughtful. The
millennium of Nations is nearer than it was. The
Race itself is lifted forward, toAvard the gates of mingled
gold and pearl that wait to svving, on silent hinges, into
the age of Freedom and of Peace.
All this is his Work. Of course he has had immense
forces to work with; great counsellors to suggest, great
captains and admirals to accomplish ; a million brains

63
to be his helpers ; a people full of thought and zeal to
inspire his plans, and push them on. Of course God's
power, in which he trusted, has gone before and wrought
beside him ; and he himself, aided by it, has ' builded
better than he knew.' But still the Work continues
his : since he has accomplished it, while another man,
with different powers and a different temper, in the
same position, could not have performed it. Without
signal genius, or learning, or accomplishments, but Avith
patience, kindness, a faithful will, a masterly sagacity, —
planted in times filled full of peril, yet opulent also
in immense opportunities, working with instruments
so manifold and mighty as have been hardly before
entrusted to man, and never before so nobly used, — it
has been his to do this Work : to make his Country
one and grand ; to make the Principles, in which it has
its highest glory, supreme forever ; to make the World
more hopeful, and more free !
In this, then, is the final vindication of his fame ; the
grandest memorial of his Character and Power which it
has yet been given to any man to build on earth. He
did it so naturally, that hardly at any point does it
give us the impression of extraordinary exertion. He
did it so silently, that the world was startled with ex
tremest surprise when it found it accomplished. He
did it so thoroughly, that even his death could not in
terrupt it, could only complete and crown the whole.
He might Avell leave a work so grand when the cap-

64
stone had been placed upon it. The flag just lifted
anew on Fort Sumter, — symbolic as it was of the War
concluded, of the Nation restored, — -might well be the
signal for his departure. More than almost any other
man, he could say with the Lord, looking back on his
ministry, " It is finished !"
Reviewing this Work, so vast, so enduring, and so
sublime, and looking up unto that which is now for
him its consummation, all eulogy is inadequate, if it
be not in vain. The. monuments we may build — and
which it is our instinct and our privilege to build, in all
our cities as well as at the Capital, in this city by the
sea, as well as in that where his dust sleeps — ^are not
needful to him, but only to the hearts from Avhich they
arise, and the future generations which they shall in
struct. From the topmost achievement yet realized by
man, he has stepped to the skies. He leads henceforth,
the hosts whom he marshalled, and who at his word
went forth to battle, on plains invisible to our short
sight. He stands side by side once more with the
orator, so cultured and renowned, Avith whom he stood
on the heights of Gettysburgh ; but now on hills where
rise no graves, and over which march, in shining ranks,
with trumpet-swells and palms of triumph, immortal
hosts. He is with the fathers and founders of the
Republic ; whose cherished plans he carried out, whose
faith and hope had in his work their great fruition.
He is with all builders of Christian States, who, AVork-

65
ing with prescient skill and will, and AAith true conse
cration, have laid the foundations of human progress,
and made Mankind their constant debtor.
The Heavens are his home. But the Earth and its
records will take care of his fame. For of all whom he
meets and dwells Avith there, no one has held a higher
trust ; no one has been more loyal to it ; no one has
left a work behind more grand and vast. And so long as
the Government which he re-established shall continue
to endure ; so long as the Country which he made again
the home of one Nation shall hold that Nation within
its compass, and shall continue to attract to its bosom
the liberty-loving from every land ; so long as the People
which he emancipated shall make the palmetto and the
orange-tree quiver with the hymns of its jubilee; so
long as the Race which he has set forward shall con
tinue to advance, through brightening paths, to the
Future that waits for its swift steps, — a fame as familiar
as any among men, a character as distinguished, and an
influence as wide, will be the fame, the character, and
the influence, of him who came four years ago an un
known man from his home in the West, but who has
now written in letters of light, on pages as grand and
as splendid as any in the history of the World, the
illustrious name of

^i^*S^

-- ^ ^'