CPC Report; An unabashedly
liberal perspective
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
DELIVERED, AT THE REQUEST OF BOTH HOUSES OF THE
CONGRESS OF AMERICA, BEFORE THEM,
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AT WASHINGTON,
ON THE 12TH OF FEBRUARY, 1866.
ORATION BY GEORGE BANCROFT.
Senators,
Representatives op America:
That God rides in the affairs of men is as certain as
any truth of physical science. On the great moving
power which is from the beginning hangs the world of
the senses and the world of thought and action. Eter-
nal wisdom marshals the great procession of the na-
tions, working in patient continuity through the ages,
never halting and never abrupt, encompassing all events
in its oversight, and ever effecting its will, though
mortals may slumber in apathy or oppose with mad-
ness. Kings are lifted up or thrown down, nations
come and go, republics flourish and wither, dynasties
pass away like a tale that is told ; but nothing is by
chance, though men, in their ignorance of causes, may
think so. The deeds of time are governed, as well as
judged, by the decrees of eternity. The caprice of
fleeting existences bends to the immovable omnipotence,
which plants its foot on all the centuries and has
neither change of purpose nor repose. Sometimes,
like a messenger through the thick darkness of night,
it steps along mysterious ways; but when the hour
strikes for a people, or for mankind, to pass into a new
form of being, unseen hands draw the bolts from the
gates of futurity ; an all-subduing influence prepares
the minds of men for the coming revolution; those who
plan resistance find themselves in conflict with the will
of Providence rather than with human devices; and
all hearts and all understandings, most of all the opin-
ions and influences of the unwilling, are wonderfully
attracted and compelled to bear forward the change,
which becomes more an obedience to the law of uni-
versal nature than submission to the arbitrament of
man.
In the fulness of time a republic rose up in the wil-
derness of America. Thousands of years had passed
away before this child of the ages could be born.
From whatever there was of good in the systems of
former centuries she drew her nourishment; the wrecks
of the past were her warnings. With the deepest sen-
timent of faith fixed in her inmost nature, she disen-
thralled religion from bondage to temporal poWer, that
her worship might be worship only in spirit and in
truth. The wisdoin which had passed from India
through Greece, with what Greece had added of her
own; the jurisprudence of Rome; the mediaeval munici-
palities ; the Teutonic method of representation ; the
political experience of England ; the benignant wisdom
of the expositors of the law of nature and of nations in
France and Holland, all shed on her their selectest
influence. She washed the gold of political wisdom
from the sands wherever it was found ; she cleft it from
the rocks ; she gleaned it among ruins. Out of all the
discoveries of statesmen and sages, out of all the expe-
rience of past human life, she compiled a perennial
political philosophy, the primordial principles of national
ethics. The wise men of Europe sought the best gov-
ernment in a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy ; America went behind these names to ex-
tract from them the vital elements of social forms, and
blend them harmoniously in the free commonwealth,
which comes nearest to the illustration of the natural
equality of all men. She intrusted the guardianship of
established rights to law, the movements of reform to
the spirit of the people, and drew her force from the
happy reconciliation of both.
Republics had heretofore been limited to small can-
tons, or cities and their dependencies ; America, doing
that of which the like had not before been known upon
the earth, or believed by kings and statesmen to be pos-
sible, extended her republic across a continent. Under
her auspices the vine of liberty took deep root and
filled the land ; the hills were covered with its shadow,
its boughs were like the goodly cedars, and reached
unto both oceans. The fame of this only daughter of
freedom went out into all the lands of the earth ; from
her the human race drew hope.
Neither hereditary monarchy nor hereditary aristoc-
racy planted itself on our soil; the only hereditary
condition that fastened itself upon us was servitude.
Nature works in sincerity, and is ever true to its law.
The bee hives honey; the viper distils poison; the vine
stores its juices, and so do the poppy and the upas. In
like manner every thought and every action ripens its
seed, each according to its kind. In the individual man,
and still more in a nation, a just idea gives life, and pro-
gress, and glory; a false conception portends disaster,
shame, and death. A hundred and twenty years ago a
West Jersey Quaker wrote: "This trade of importing
slaves is dark gloominess hanging over the land; the
consequences will be grievous to posterity." At the
north the growth of slavery was arrested by natural
causes; in the region nearest the tropics it throve rankly,
and worked itself into the organism of the rising States.
Virginia stood between the two, with soil, and climate,
and resources demanding free labor, yet capable of the
profitable employment of the slave. She was the land
of great statesmen, and they saw the danger of her
being whelmed under the rising flood in time to struggle
against the delusions of avarice and pride. Ninety-four
years ago the legislature of Virginia addressed the
British king, saying that the trade in slaves was "of
great inhumanity," was opposed to the "security and
happiness" of their constituents, "would in time have
the most destructive influence," and "endanger their
very existence." And the king answered them that,
"upon pain of his highest displeasure, the importa-
tion of slaves should not be in any respect obstructed."
"Pharisaical Britain," wrote Franklin in behalf of Vir-
ginia, "to pride thyself in setting free a single slave that
happened to land on thy coasts, while thy laws continue
a traffic whereby so many hundreds of thousands are
dragged into a slavery that is entailed on their posterity."
"A serious view of this subject," said Patrick Henry in
1773, "gives a gloomy prospect to future times." In
the same year George Mason wrote to the legislature
of Virginia: "The laws of impartial Providence may
avenge our injustice upon our posterity." Conforming
his conduct to his convictions, Jefferson, in Virginia,
and in the Continental Congress, with the approval of
Edmund Pendleton, branded the slave-trade as piracy;
and he fixed in the Declaration of Independence, as the
corner-stone of America: "All men are created equal,
with an unalienable right to liberty." On the first
organization of temporary governments for the conti-
nental domain, Jefferson, but for the default of New-
Jersey, would, in 1784, have consecrated every part of
that territory to freedom. In the formation of the
national Constitution, Virginia, opposed by a part of
New England, vainly struggled to abolish the slave-
trade at once and forever; and when the ordinance of
1787 was introduced by Nathan Dane without the
clause prohibiting slavery, it was through the favorable
disposition of Virginia and the South that the clause of
Jefferson was restored, and the whole northwestern
territory — all the territory that then belonged to the
nation — was reserved for the labor of freemen.
The hope prevailed in Virginia that the abolition of
the slave-trade w r ould bring with it the gradual aboli-
tion of slavery; but the expectation was doomed to
disappointment. In supporting incipient measures for
emancipation, Jefferson encountered difficulties greater
than he could overcome, and, after vain wrestlings, the
words that broke from him, "I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just, that His justice can-
not sleep forever," were words of despair. It was the
desire of Washington's heart that Virginia should re-
move slavery by a public act; and as the prospects of
a general emancipation grew more and more dim, he, in
utter hopelessness of the action of the State, did all
that he could by bequeathing freedom to his own slaves.
Good and true men had, from the days of 1776, sug-
gested the colonizing of the negro in the home of his
ancestors; but the idea of colonization was thought to
increase the difficulty of emancipation, and, in spite of
strong support, while it accomplished much good for
Africa, it proved impracticable as a remedy at home.
Madison, who in early life disliked slavery so much that
he wished "to depend as little as possible on the labor
of slaves;" Madison, who held that where slavery ex-
ists "the republican theory becomes fallacious;" Madison,
who in the last years of his life would not consent to
the annexation of Texas, lest his countrymen should fill
it with slaves; Madison, who said, "slavery is the
greatest evil under which the nation labors — a porten-
tous evil — an evil, moral, political, and economical — a
sad blot on our free country" — went mournfully into
old age with the cheerless words: "No satisfactory
plan has yet been devised for taking out the stain."
The men of the Revolution passed away; a new
generation sprang up, impatient that an institution to
which they clung should be condemned as inhuman,
unwise, and unjust. In the throes of discontent at the
self-reproach of their fathers, and blinded by the lustre
of wealth to be acquired by the culture of a new
staple, they devised the theory that slavery, which they
would not abolish, was not evil, but good. They turned
on the friends of colonization, and confidently de-
manded: "Why take black men from a civilized and
Christian country, where their labor is a source of im-
mense gain, and a power to control the markets of the
world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry,
and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers,
but not theirs ? Slavery is a blessing. Were they not
in their ancestral land naked, scarcely lifted above
brutes, ignorant of the course of the sun, controlled by
nature? And in their new abode have they not been
taught to know the difference of the seasons, to plough,
and plant, and reap, to drive oxen, to tame the horse,
to exchange their scanty dialect for the richest of all
the languages among men, and the stupid adoration of
follies for the purest religion? And since slavery is
good for the blacks, it is good for their masters, bringing
opulence and the opportunity of educating a race. The
slavery of the black is good in itself; he shall serve the
white man forever." And nature, which better under-
stood the quality of fleeting interest and passion, laughed
as it caught the echo, "man" and "forever!"
A regular development of pretensions followed the
new declaration with logical consistency. Under the
old declaration every one of the States had retained,
each for itself, the right of manumitting all slaves by
an ordinary act of legislation; now the power of the
people over servitude through their legislatures was
curtailed, and the privileged class was swift in imposing
legal and constitutional obstructions on the people
themselves. The power of emancipation was narrowed
or taken away. The slave might not be disquieted by
education. There remained an unconfessed conscious-
ness that the system of bondage was wrong, and a rest-
less memory that it was at variance with the true
American tradition ; its safety was therefore to be se-
cured by political organization. The generation that
made the Constitution took care for the predominance
of freedom in Congress by the ordinance of Jefferson;
the new school aspired to secure for slavery an equality
of votes in the Senate, and, while it hinted at an or-
ganic act that should concede to the collective South a
veto power on national legislation, it assumed that
each State separately had the right to revise and nullify
laws of the United States, according to the discretion
of its judgment.
The new theory hung as a bias on the foreign rela-
tions of the country; there could be no recognition of
Hayti, nor even of the American colony of Liberia ;
and the world was given to understand that the estab-
lishment of free labor in Cuba would be a reason for
wresting that island from Spain. Territories were an-
nexed — Louisiana, Florida, Texas, half of Mexico;
slavery must have its share in them all, and it accepted
for a time a dividing line between the unquestioned
domain of free labor and that in which involuntary
labor was to be tolerated. A few years passed away,
and the new school, strong and arrogant, demanded
and received an apology for applying the Jefferson
proviso to Oregon.
The application of that proviso was interrupted for
three administrations, but justice moved steadily on-
ward. In the news that the men of California had
chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting
slavery, and on his death-bed he counselled secession.
Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died
despairing of the abolition of slavery ; Calhoun died in
despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed
irresistibly to its natural development The death-
struggle for California was followed by a short truce ;
but the new school of politicians, who said that slavery
was not evil, but good, soon sought to recover the
ground they had lost, and, confident of securing Kansas,
they demanded that the established line in the Territo-
ries between freedom and slavery should be blotted out.
The country, believing in the strength and enterprise
and expansive energy of freedom, made answer, though
reluctantly : " Be it so ; let there be no strife between
brethren; let freedom and slavery compete for the Ter-
ritories on equal terms, in a fair field, under an impar-
tial administration ;" and on this theory, if on any, the
contest might have been left to the decision of time.
The South started back in appalment from its victory,
for it knew that a fair competition foreboded its defeat.
But where could it now find an ally to save it from its
own mistake 1 What I have next to say is spoken with
no emotion but regret. Our meeting to-day is, as it
were, at the grave, in the presence of eternity, and the
truth must be uttered in soberness and sincerity. In a
great republic, as was observed more than two thousand
years ago, any attempt to overturn the state owes its
strength to aid from some branch of the government.
The Chief Justice of the United States, without any
necessity or occasion, volunteered to come to the rescue
of the theory of slavery ; and from his court there lay
no appeal but to the bar of humanity and history.
Against the Constitution, against the memory of the
nation, against a previous decision, against a series of
enactments, he decided that the slave is property ; that
slave property is entitled to no less protection than any
other property; that the Constitution upholds it in every
Territory against any act of a local legislature, and even
against Congress itself; or, as the President for that
term tersely promulgated the saying, "Kansas is as
much a slave State as South Carolina or Georgia;
slavery, by virtue of the Constitution, exists in every
Territory." The municipal character of slavery being
thus taken away, and slave property decreed to be
" sacred," the authority of the courts was invoked to
introduce it by the comity of law into States where
slavery had been abolished, and in one of the courts of
the United States a judge pronounced the African
slave-trade legitimate, and numerous and powerful
advocates demanded its restoration.
Moreover, the Chief Justice, in his elaborate opinion,
announced what had never been heard from any magis-
trate of Greece or Rome; what was unknown to civil
law, and canon law, and feudal law, and common law,
and constitutional law; unknown to Jay, to Rutledge,
Ellsworth, and Marshall — that there are "slave races."
The spirit of evil is intensely logical. Having the
authority of this decision, five States swiftly followed
the earlier example of a sixth, and opened the way for
reducing the free negro to bondage; the migrating free
negro became a slave if he but entered within the juris-
diction of a seventh; and an eighth, from its extent, and
soil, and mineral resources, destined to incalculable
greatness, closed its eyes on its coming prosperity, and
enacted, as by Taney's dictum it had the right to do,
that every free black man who would live within its
limits must accept the condition of slavery for himself
and his posterity.
Only one step more remained to be taken. Jefferson
and the leading statesmen of his day held fast to the
idea that the enslavement of the African was socially,
morally, and politically wrong. The new school was
founded exactly upon the opposite idea; and they re-
solved, first, to distract the democratic party, for which
the Supreme Court had now furnished the means, and
then to establish a new government, with negro slavery
for its corner-stone, as socially, morally, and politically
right.
As the Presidential election drew on, one of the great
traditional parties did not make its appearance; the
other reeled as it sought to preserve its old position,
and the candidate who most nearly represented its best
opinion, driven by patriotic zeal, roamed the country
from end to end to speak for union, eager, at least, to
confront its enemies, yet not having hope that it would
find its deliverance through him. The storm rose to a
whirlwind; who should allay its wrath? The most
experienced statesmen of the country had failed; there
was no hope from those who were great after the flesh:
could relief come from one whose wisdom was like the
wisdom of little children 1
The choice of America fell on a man born west of
the Alleghanies, in the cabin of poor people of Hardin
county, Kentucky — Abraham Lincoln.
His mother could read, but not write; his father
could do neither; but his parents sent him, with an old
spelling-book, to school, and he learned in his childhood
to do both.
When eight years old he floated down the Ohio with
his father on a raft, which bore the family and all their
possessions to the shore of Indiana; and, child as he
was, he gave help as they toiled through dense forests
to the interior of Spencer county. There, in the land
of free labor, he grew up in a log-cabin, with the
solemn solitude for his teacher in his meditative hours.
Of Asiatic literature he knew only the Bible; of Greek,
Latin, and medieeval, no more than the translation of
iEsop's Fables; of English, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. The traditions of George Fox and William
Perm passed to him dimly along the lines of two cen-
turies through his ancestors, who were Quakers.
Otherwise his education was altogether American.
The Declaration of Independence was his compendium
of political wisdom, the Life of Washington his con-
stant study, and something of Jefferson and Madison
reached him through Henry Clay, whom he honored
from boyhood. For the rest, from day to day, he lived
the life of the American people, walked in its light,
reasoned with its reason, thought with its power of
thought, felt the beatings of its mighty heart, and so
was in every way a child of nature, a child of the West,
a child of America.
At nineteen, feeling impulses of ambition to get on
in the world, he engaged himself to go down the Mis-
sissippi in a flatboat, receiving ten dollars a month for
his wages, and afterwards he made the trip once more.
At twenty-one he drove his father's cattle, as the family
migrated to Illinois, and split rails to fence in the new
homestead in the wild. At twenty-three he was a
captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war. He
kept a store. He learned something of surveying, but
of English literature he added to Bunyan nothing but
Shakspeare's plays. At twenty-five he was elected to
the legislature of Illinois, where he served eight years.
At twenty-seven he was admitted to the bar. In 1837
he chose his home at Springfield, the beautiful centre
of the richest land in the State. In 1847 he was a
member of the national Congress, where he voted
about forty times in favor of the principle of the Jef-
ferson proviso. In 1849 he sought, eagerly but unsuc-
cessfully, the place of Commissioner of the Land Office,
and he refused an appointment that would have trans-
ferred his residence to Oregon. In 1854 he gave his
influence to elect from Illinois, to the American Senate,
a Democrat, who would certainly do justice to Kansas.
In 1858, as the rival of Douglas, he went before the
people of the mighty Prairie State, saying, "This Union
cannot permanently endure half slave and half free; the
Union will not be dissolved, but the house will cease to
be divided;" and now, in 1861, with no experience
whatever as an executive officer, while States were
madly flying from their orbit, and wise men knew not
where to find counsel, this descendant of Quakers, this
pupil of Bunyan, this offspring of the great West, was
elected President of America.
He measured the difficulty of the duty that devolved
upon him, and was resolved to fulfil it. As on the
eleventh of February, 1861, he left Springfield, which
for a quarter of a century had been his happy home, to
the crowd of his friends and neighbors, whom he was
never more to meet, he spoke a solemn farewell : " I
know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty has
devolved upon me, greater than that which has devolved
upon any other man since Washington. He never
would have succeeded, except for the aid of Divine
Providence, upon which he at all times relied. On the
same Almighty Being I place my reliance. Pray that
I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I
cannot succeed, but with which success is certain.'*
To the men of Indiana he said: "I am but an acci-
dental, temporary instrument ; it is your business to
rise up and preserve the Union and liberty." At the
capital of Ohio he said : " Without a name, without a
reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon
me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of
his country." At various places in New York, espe-
cially at Albany, before the legislature, which tendered
him the united support of the great Empire State, he
said: "While I hold myself the humblest of all the
individuals who have ever been elevated to the Presi-
dency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any
of them. I bring a true heart to the work. I must
rely upon the people of the whole country for support,
and with their sustaining aid even I, humble as I am,
cannot fail to carry the ship of state safely through the
storm." To the assembly of New Jersey, at Trenton,
he explained : " I shall take the ground I deem most
just to the North, the East, the West, the South, and the
whole country, in good temper, certainly with no
malice to any section. I am devoted to peace, but it
may be necessary to put the foot down firmly." In the
old Independence Hall, of Philadelphia, he said : " I
have never had a feeling politically that did not spring
from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of
Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to the
people of this country, but to the world in all future
time. If the country cannot be saved without giving
up that principle, I would rather be assassinated on the
spot than surrender it. I have said nothing but what
I am willing to live and die by."
Travelling in the dead of night to escape assas-
sination, Lincoln arrived at Washington nine days
before his inauguration. The outgoing President, at
the opening of the session of Congress, had still kept as
the majority of his advisers men engaged in treason;
had declared that in case of even an "imaginary" appre-
hension of danger from notions of freedom among the
slaves, "disunion would become inevitable." Lincoln
and others had questioned the opinion of Taney; such
impugning he ascribed to the "factious temper of the
times." The favorite doctrine of the majority of the
Democratic party on the power of a territorial legisla-
ture over slavery he condemned as an attack on "the
sacred rights of property." The State legislatures, he
insisted, must repeal what he called " their unconstitu-
tional and obnoxious enactments," and which, if such,
were "null and void," or "it would be impossible for
any human power to save the Union." Nay! if these
unimportant acts were not repealed, "the injured States
would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the
government of the Union." He maintained that no
State might secede at its sovereign will and pleasure;
that the Union was meant for perpetuity, and that Con-
gress might attempt to preserve it, but only by concilia-
tion ; that "the sword was not placed in their hands to
preserve it by force;" that "the last desperate remedy
of a despairing people" would be "an explanatory
amendment recognising the decision of the Supreme
Court of the United States." The American Uniou
he called "a confederacy" of States, and he thought it
a duty to make the appeal for the amendment "before
any of these States should separate themselves from
the Union." The views of the Lieutenant General,
containing some patriotic advice, "conceded the right
of secession," pronounced a quadruple rupture of the
Union "a smaller evil than the reuniting of the frag-
ments by the sword," and "eschewed the idea of in-
vading a seceded State." After changes in the Cabinet,
the President informed Congress that "matters were
still worse;" that "the South suffered serious grievances,"
which should be redressed "in peace." The day after
this message the flag of the Union was fired upon from
Fort Morris, and the insult was not revenged or noticed.
Senators in Congress telegraphed to their constituents
to seize the national forts, and they were not arrested.
The finances of the country were grievously embar-
rassed. Its little army was not within reach; the part
of it in Texas, with all its stores, was made over by its
commander to rebels. One State after another voted
in convention to secede. A peace congress, so called,
met at the request of Virginia, to concert the terms of
a capitulation which should secure permission for the
continuance of the Union. Congress, in both branches,
sought to devise conciliatory expedients; the Territories
of the country were organized in a manner not to con-
flict with any pretensions of the South, or any decision
of the Supreme Court; and, nevertheless, the repre-
sentatives of the rebellion formed at Montgomery a
provisional government, and pursued their relentless
purpose with such success that the Lieutenant General
feared the city of Washington might find itself "in-
cluded in a foreign country," and proposed, among the
options for the consideration of Lincoln, to bid the
wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic
appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished
Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone
and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places,
seemingly the monument of high but delusive aspira-
tions, the confused wreck of inchoate magnificence,
sadder than any ruin of Egyptian Thebes or Athens.
The fourth of March came. With instinctive wis-
dom the new President, speaking to the people on
taking the oath of office, put aside every question that
divided the country, and gained a right to universal
support by planting himself on the single idea of
Union. The Union he declared to be unbroken and
perpetual, and he announced his determination to fulfil
" the simple duty of taking care that the laws be faith-
fully executed in all the States." Seven days later, the
convention of Confederate States unanimously adopted
a constitution of their own, and the new government
was authoritatively announced to be founded on the
idea that the negro race is a slave race; that slavery is
its natural and normal condition. The issue was made
up, whether the great republic was to maintain its
providential place in the history of mankind, or a rebel-
lion founded on negro slavery gain a recognition of its
principle throughout the civilized world. To the dis-
affected Lincoln had said, " You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors." To fire the
passions of the southern portion of the people, the con-
federate government chose to become aggressors, and,
on the morning of the twelfth of April, began the bom-
bardment of Fort Sumter, and compelled its evacuation.
It is the glory of the late President that he had per-
fect faith in the perpetuity of the Union. Supported
in advance by Douglas, who spoke as with the voice of
a million, he instantly called a meeting of Congress,
and summoned the people to come up and repossess the
forts, places, and property which had been seized from
the Union. The men of the north were trained in
schools; industrious and frugal; many of them delicately
bred, their minds teeming with ideas and fertile in
plans of enterprise ; given to the culture of the arts ;
eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet employing wealth
less for ostentation than for developing the resources of
their country; seeking happiness in the calm of domestic
life ; and such lovers of peace, that for generations they
had been reputed unwarlike. Now, at the cry of their
country in its distress, they rose up with unappeasable
patriotism; not hirelings — the purest and of the best
blood in the land. Sons of a pious ancestry, with a
clear perception of duty, unclouded faith and fixed
resolve to succeed, they thronged around the President,
to support the wronged, the beautiful flag of the nation.
The halls of theological seminaries sent forth their
young men, whose lips were touched with eloquence,
whose hearts kindled with devotion, to serve in the
ranks, and make their way to command only as they
learned the art of war. Striplings in the colleges, as
well the most gentle and the most studious, those of
sweetest temper and loveliest character and brightest
genius, passed from their classes to the camp. The
lumbermen from the forests, the mechanics from their
benches, where they had been trained, by the exercise
of political rights, to share the life and hope of the
republic, to feel their responsibility to their forefathers,
their posterity and mankind, went to the front, resolved
that their dignity, as a constituent part of this republic,
should not be impaired. Farmers and sons of farmers
left the land but half ploughed, the grain but half
planted, and, taking up the musket, learned to face
without fear the presence of peril and the coining of
death in the shocks of war, while their hearts were
still attracted to their herds and fields, and all the
tender affections of home. Whatever there was of
truth and faith and public love in the common heart,
broke out with one expression. The mighty winds
blew from every quarter, to fan the flame of the sacred
and unquenchable fire.
For a time the war was thought to be confined to
our own domestic affairs, but it was soon seen that it
involved the destinies of mankind; its principles and
causes shook the politics of Europe to the centre, and
from Lisbon to Pekin divided the governments of the
world.
There was a kingdom whose people had in an emi-
nent degree attained to freedom of industry and the
security of person and property. Its middle class rose
to greatness. Out of that class sprung the noblest
poets and philosophers, whose words built up the
intellect of its people; skilful navigators, to find out for
its merchants the many paths of the oceans; discoverers
in natural science, whose inventions guided its industry
to wealth, till it equalled any nation of the world in
letters, and excelled all in trade and commerce. But its
government was become a government of land, and not
of men; every blade of grass was represented, but only
a small minority of the people. In the transition from
the feudal forms the heads of the social organization
freed themselves from the military services which
were the conditions of their tenure, and, throwing the
burden on the industrial classes, kept all the soil to
themselves. Vast estates that had been managed by
monasteries as endowments for religion and charity
were impropriated to swell the wealth of courtiers and
favorites; and the commons, where the poor man once
had his right of pasture, were taken away, and, under
forms of law, enclosed distributively within the domains
of the adjacent landholders. Although no law forbade
any inhabitant from purchasing land, the costliness of
the transfer constituted a prohibition; so that it was the
rule of the country that the plough should not be in the
hands of its owner. The church was rested on a con-
tradiction; claiming to be an embodiment of absolute
truth, it was a creature of the statute-book.
The progress of time increased the terrible contrast
between wealth and poverty. In their years of strength
the laboring people, cut off from all share in governing
the state, derived a scant support from the severest toil,
and had no hope for old age but in public charity or
death. A grasping ambition had dotted the world with
military posts, kept watch over our borders on the north-
east, at the Bermudas, in the West Indies, appropriated
the gates of the Pacific, of the Southern and of the
Indian ocean, hovered on our northwest at Vancouver,
held the whole of the newest continent, and the en-
trances to the old Mediterranean and Red Sea, and
garrisoned forts all the way from Madras to China.
That aristocracy had gazed with terror on the growth
of a commonwealth where freeholders existed by the
million, and religion was not in bondage to the state,
and now they could not repress their joy at its perils,
They had not one word of sympathy for the kind-
hearted poor man's son whom America had chosen for
her chief; they jeered at his large hands, and long
feet, and ungainly stature; and the British secretary of
state for foreign affairs made haste to send word through
the palaces of Europe that the great republic was in
its agony; that the republic was no more; that a head-
stone was all that remained due by the law of nations
to "the late Union." But it is written, "Let the dead
bury their dead;" they may not bury the living. Let
the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove
the worn-out government of a class, and infuse new life
into the British constitution by confiding rightful power
to the people.
But while the vitality of America is indestructible,
the British government hurried to do what never before
had been done by Christian powers; what was in direct
conflict with its own exposition of public law in the
time of our struggle for independence. Though the
insurgent States had not a ship in an open harbor, it
invested them with all the rights of a belligerent, even
on the ocean; and this, too, when the rebellion was
not only directed against the gentlest and most bene-
ficent government on earth, without a shadow of justi-
fiable cause, but when the rebellion was directed
against human nature itself for the perpetual enslave-
ment of a race. And the effect of this recognition was,
that acts in themselves piratical found shelter in British
courts of law. The resources of British capitalists,
their workshops, their armories, their private arsenals,
their ship-yards, were in league with the insurgents, and
every British harbor in the wide world became a safe
port for British ships, manned by British sailors, and
armed with British guns, to prey on our peaceful com-
merce; even on our ships coming from British ports,
freighted with British products, or that had carried
gifts of grain to the English poor. The prime minis-
ter, in the House of Commons, sustained by cheers,
scoffed at the thought that their laws could be amended
at our request, so as to preserve real neutrality ; and to
remonstrances, now owned to have been just, their sec-
retary of state answered that they could not change
their laws ad infinitum:
The people of America then wished, as they always
have wished, as they still wish, friendly relations with
England, and no man in England or America can desire
it more strongly than I. This country has always
yearned for good relations with England. Thrice only
in all its history has that yearning been fairly met : in
the days of Hampden and Cromwell, again in the first
ministry of the elder Pitt, and once again in the min-
istry of Shclburne. Not that there have not at all
times been just men among the peers of Britain — like
Halifax in the days of James the Second, or a Gran-
ville, an Argyll, or a Houghton in ours; and we cannot
be indifferent to a country that produces statesmen like
Cobden and Bright; but the best bower anchor of
peace was the working class of England, who suffered
most from our civil war, but who, while they broke
their diminished bread in sorrow, always encouraged us
to persevere.
The act of recognising the rebel belligerents was con-
certed with France — France, so beloved in America, on
which she had conferred the greatest benefits that one
people ever conferred on another; France, which stands
foremost on the continent of Europe for the solidity of
her culture, as well as for the bravery and generous
impulses of her sons ; France, which for centuries had
been moving steadily in her own way towards intellec-
tual and political freedom. The policy regarding fur-
ther colonization of America by European powers,
known commonly as the doctrine of Monroe, had its
origin in France, and if it takes any man's name,
should bear the name of Turgot. It was adopted by
Louis the Sixteenth, in the cabinet of which Vergennes
was the most important member. It is emphatically
the policy of France, to which, with transient devia-
tions, the Bourbons, the First Napoleon, the House of
Orleans have adhered.
The late President was perpetually harassed by ru-
mors that the Emperor Napoleon the Third desired
formally to recognise the States in rebellion as an inde-
pendent power, and that England held him back by
her reluctance, or France by her traditions of freedom,
or he himself by his own better judgment and clear
perception of events. But the republic of Mexico, on
our borders, was, like ourselves, distracted by a rebel-
lion, and from a similar cause. The monarchy of
England had fastened upon us slavery which did not
disappear with independence; in like manner, the
ecclesiastical policy established by the Spanish council
of the Indies, in the days of Charles the Fifth and
Philip the Second, retained its vigor in the Mexican
republic. The fifty years of civil war under which she
had languished was due to the bigoted system which
was the legacy of monarchy, just as here the inherit-
ance of slavery kept alive political strife, and culminated
in civil war. As with us there could be no quiet but
through the end of slavery, so in Mexico there could be
no prosperity until the crushing tyranny of intolerance
should cease. The party of slavery in the United
States sent their emissaries to Europe to solicit aid ;
and so did the party of the church in Mexico, as
organized by the old Spanish council of the Indies, but
with a different result. Just as the Republican party
had made an end of the rebellion, and was establishing
the best government ever known in that region, and
giving promise to the nation of order, peace, and pros-
perity, word was brought us, in the moment of our
deepest affliction, that the French Emperor, moved by
a desire to erect in North America a buttress for im-
perialism, would transform the republic of Mexico into
a secundo-geniture for the house of Hapsburg. America
might complain; she could not then interpose, and de-
lay seemed justifiable. It was seen that Mexico could
not, with all its wealth of land, compete in cereal pro-
ducts with our northwest, nor in tropical products with
Cuba, nor could it, under a disputed dynasty, attract
capital, or create public works, or develop mines, or
borrow money; so that the imperial system of Mexico,
which was forced at once to recognise the wisdom of
the policy of the republic by adopting it, could prove
only an unr enumerating drain on the French treasury
for the support of an Austrian adventurer.
Meantime a new series of momentous questions
grows up, and forces itself on the consideration of
the thoughtful. Republicanism has learned how to in-
troduce into its constitution every element of order, as
well as every element of freedom; but thus far the
continuity of its government has seemed to depend on
the continuity of elections. It is now to be considered
how perpetuity is to be secured against foreign occupa-
tion. The successor of Charles the First of England
dated his reign from the death of his father; the Bour-
bons, coming back after a long series of revolutions,
claimed that the Louis who became king was the eigh-
teenth of that name. The present Emperor of the
French, disdaining a title from election alone, calls him-
self Napoleon the Third. Shall a republic have less
power of continuance when invading armies prevent a
peaceful resort to the ballot-box ? What force shall it
attach to intervening legislation 1 What validity to
debts contracted for its overthrow 1 These momentous
questions are, by the invasion of Mexico, thrown up for
solution. A free state once truly constituted should be
as undying as its people: the republic of Mexico must
rise again.
It was the condition of affairs in Mexico that in-
volved the Pope of Rome in our difficulties so far that
he alone among sovereigns recognised the chief of the
Confederate States as a president, and his supporters
as a people ; and in letters to two great prelates of the
Catholic church in the United States gave counsels for
peace at a time when peace meant the victory of se-
cession. Yet events move as they are ordered. The
blessing of the Pope at Rome on the head of Duke
Maximilian could not revive in the nineteenth century
the ecclesiastical policy of the sixteenth, and the result
is only a new proof that there can be no prosperity in
the state without religious freedom.
When it came home to the consciousness of the
Americans that the war which they were waging was
a war for the liberty of all the nations of the world,
for freedom itself, they thanked God for giving them
strength to endure the severity of the trial to which
He put their sincerity, and nerved themselves for their
duty with an inexorable will. The President was led
along by the greatness of their self-sacrificing example ;
and as a child, in a dark night, on a rugged way, catches
hold of the hand of its father for guidance and sup-
port, he clung fast to the hand of the people, and
moved calmly through the gloom. While the states-
manship of Europe was mocking at the hopeless
vanity of their efforts, they put forth such miracles of
energy as the history of the world had never known.
The contributions to the popular loans amounted in
four years to twenty-seven and a half hundred millions
of dollars; the revenue of the country from taxation
was increased seven-fold. The navy of the United
States, drawing into the public service the willing mili-
tia of the seas, doubled its tonnage in eight months, and
established an actual blockade from Cape Hatteras to
the Rio Grande ; in the course of the war it was in-
creased five-fold in men and in tonnage, while the
inventive genius of the country devised more effective
kinds of ordnance, and new forms of naval architecture
in wood and iron. There went into the field, for various
terms of enlistment, about two million men, and in
March last the men in the army exceeded a million :
that is to say, nine of every twenty able-bodied men in
the free Territories and States took some part in the
war ; and at one time every fifth of their able-bodied
men was in service. In one single month one hundred
and sixty -five thousand men were recruited into service.
Once, within four weeks, Ohio organized and placed in
the field forty-two regiments of infantry — nearly thirty-
six thousand men ; and Ohio was like other States in
the east and in the west. The well-mounted cavalry
numbered eighty-four thousand; of horses and mules
there were bought, from first to last, two-thirds of a
million. In the movements of troops science came in
aid of patriotism, so that, to choose a single instance
out of many, an army twenty -three thousand strong,
with its artillery, trains, baggage, and animals, were
moved by rail from the Potomac to the Tennessee,
twelve hundred miles, in seven days. On the long
marches, wonders of military construction bridged the
rivers, and wherever an army halted, ample supplies
awaited them at their ever-changing base. The vile
thought that life is the greatest of blessings did not
rise up. In six hundred and twenty-five battles and
severe skirmishes blood flowed like water. It streamed
over the grassy plains ; it stained the rocks ; the under-
growth of the forests was red with it ; and the armies
marched on with majestic courage from one conflict to
another, knowing that they were fighting for God and
liberty. The organization of the medical department
met its infinitely multiplied duties with exactness and
despatch. At the news of a battle, the best surgeons
of our cities hastened to the field, to offer the untiring
aid of the greatest experience and skill. The gentlest
and most refined of women left homes of luxury and
ease to build hospital tents near the armies, and serve
as nurses to the sick and dying. Beside the large
supply of religious teachers by the public, the congrega-
tions spared to their brothers in the field the ablest
ministers. The Christian Commission, which expended
more than six and a quarter millions, sent nearly five
thousand clergymen, chosen out of the best, to keep
unsoiled the religious character of the men, and made
gifts of clothes and food and medicine. The organiza-
tion of private charity assumed unheard-of dimensions.
The Sanitary Commission, which had seven thousand
societies, distributed, under the direction of an unpaid
board, spontaneous contributions to the amount of fif-
teen millions in supplies or money — a million and a
half in money from California alone — and dotted the
scene of war, from Paducah to Port Royal, from Belle
Plain, Virginia, to Brownsville, Texas, with homes and
lodges.
The country had for its . allies the river Mississippi,
which would not be divided, and the range of moun-
tains which carried the stronghold of the free through
Western Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee to the
highlands of Alabama. But it invoked the still higher
power of immortal justice. In ancient Greece, where
servitude was the universal custom, it was held that if
a child were to strike its parent, the slave should defend
the parent, and by that act recover his freedom. After
vain resistance, Lincoln, who had tried to solve the
question by gradual emancipation, by colonization, and
by compensation, at last saw that slavery must be abol-
ished, or the republic must die ; and on the first day of
January, 1863, lie wrote liberty on the banners of the
armies. When this proclamation, which struck the
fetters from three millions of slaves, reached Europe,
Lord Russell, a countryman of Milton and Wilberforce,
eagerly put himself forward to speak of it in the name
of mankind, saying : " It is of a very strange nature ;"
" a measure of war of a very questionable kind ;" an
act " of vengeance on the slave owner," that does no
more than "profess to emancipate slaves where the
United States authorities cannot make emancipation a
reality." Now there was no part of the country em-
braced in the proclamation where the United States
could not and did not make emancipation a reality.
Those who saw Lincoln most frequently had never
before heard him speak with bitterness of any human
being, but he did not conceal how keenly he felt
that he had been wronged by Lord Russell. And
he wrote, in reply to other cavils : " The emancipa-
tion policy and the use of colored troops were the
greatest blows yet dealt to the rebellion; the job was a
great national one, and let none be slighted who bore
an honorable part in it. I hope peace will come soon,
and come to stay ; then will there be some black men
who can remember that they have helped mankind to
this great consummation."
The proclamation accomplished its end, for, during
the war, our armies came into military possession of
every State in rebellion. Then, too, was called forth
the new power that comes from the simultaneous diffu-
sion of thought and feeling among the nations of
mankind. The mysterious sympathy of the millions
throughout the world was given spontaneously. The
best writers of Europe waked the conscience of the
thoughtful, till the intelligent moral sentiment of the
Old World was drawn to the side of the unlettered
statesman of the West. Russia, whose emperor had
just accomplished one of the grandest acts in the course
of time, by raising twenty millions of bondmen into
freeholders, and thus assuring the growth and culture
of a Russian people, remained our unwavering friend.
From the oldest abode of civilization, which gave the
first example of an imperial government with equality
among the people, Prince Kung, the secretary of state
for foreign affairs, remembered the saying of Confucius,
that we should not do to others what we would not
that others should do to us, and, in the name of his
emperor, read a lesson to European diplomatists by
closing the ports of China against the war-ships and
privateers of " the seditious."
The war continued, with all the peoples of the world
for anxious spectators. Its cares weighed heavily on
Lincoln, and his face was ploughed with the furrows
of thought and sadness. With malice towards none,
free from the spirit of revenge, victory made him
importunate for peace, and his enemies never doubted
his word, or despaired of his abounding clemency. He
longed to utter pardon as the word for all, but not
unless the freedom of the negro should be assured.
The grand battles of Fort Donelson, Chattanooga,
Malvern Hill, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness of
Virginia, Winchester, Nashville, the capture of New
Orleans, Vicksburg, Mobile, Fort Fisher, the march
from Atlanta, and the capture of Savannah and Charles-
ton, all foretold the issue. Still more, the self-regen-
eration of Missouri, the heart of the continent; of
Maryland, whose sons never heard the midnight bells
chime so sweetly as when they rang out to earth and
heaven that, by the voice of her own people, she took
her place among the free ; of Tennessee, which passed
through fire and blood, through sorrows and the
shadow of death, to work out her own deliverance, and
by the faithfulness of her own sons to renew her youth
like the eagle — proved that victory was deserved, and
would be worth all that it cost. If words of mercy,
uttered as they were by Lincoln on the waters of
Virginia, were defiantly repelled, the armies of the
country, moving with one will, went as the arrow to its
mark, and, without a feeling of revenge, struck a death-
blow at rebellion.
Where, in the history of nations, had a Chief Magis-
trate possessed more sources of consolation and joy
than Lincoln 1 His countrymen had shown their love
by choosing him to a second term of service. The
raging war that had divided the country had lulled, and
private grief was hushed by the grandeur of the result.
The nation had its new birth of freedom, soon to be
secured forever by an amendment of the Constitution.
His persistent gentleness had concpiered for him a kind-
lier feeling on the part of the South. His scoffers
among the grandees of Europe began to do him honor.
The laboring classes everywhere saw in his advance-
ment their own. All peoples sent him their benedic-
tions. And at this moment of the height of his fame,
to which his humility and modesty added charms, he
fell by the hand of the assassin,, and the only triumph
awarded him was the march to the grave.
This is no time to say that human glory is but dust
and ashes; that we mortals are no more than shadows
in pursuit of shadows. How mean a thing were man
if there were not that within him which is higher than
himself; if he could not master the illusions of sense,
and discern the connexions of events by a superior
light which comes from God! He so shares the divine
impulses that he has power to subject interested passions
to love of country, and personal ambition to the ennoble-
ment of his kind. Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for
he has helped to make this republic an example of
justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity. The
heroes who led our armies and ships into battle and fell
in the service — Lyon, McPherson, Reynolds, Sedgwick,
Wadsworth, Foote, Ward, with their compeers — did
not die in vain; they and the myriads of nameless
martyrs, and he, the chief martyr, gave up their lives
willingly "that government of the people, by the people,
and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The assassination of Lincoln, who was so free from
malice, has, by some mysterious influence, struck the
country with solemn awe, and hushed, instead of excit-
ing, the passion for revenge. It seems as if the just
had died for the unjust. When I think of the friends
I have lost in this war — and every one who hears me
has, like myself, lost some of those whom he most
loved — there is no consolation to be derived from
victims on the scaffold, or from anything but the estab-
lished union of the regenerated nation.
In his character Lincoln was through and through
an American. He is the first native of the region west
of the Alleghanies to attain to the highest station; and
how happy it is that the man who was brought forward
as the natural outgrowth and first fruits of that region
should have been of unblemished purity in private life,
a good son, a kind husband, a most affectionate father,
and, as a man, so gentle to all. As to integrity, Douglas,
his rival, said of him: "Lincoln is the honestest man I
ever knew."
The habits of his mind were those of meditation and
inward thought, rather than of action. He delighted
to express his opinions by an apothegm, illustrate them
by a parable, or drive them home by a story. He was
skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central
idea on which a question turned, and knew how to
disengage it and present it by itself in a few homely,
strong old English words that would be intelligible to
all. He excelled in logical statement more than in
executive ability. He reasoned clearly, his reflective
judgment was good, and his purposes were fixed; but,
like the Hamlet of his only poet, his will was tardy in
action, and, for this reason, and not from humility or
tenderness of feeling, he sometimes deplored that the
duty which devolved on him had not fallen to the lot of
another.
Lincoln gained a name by discussing questions which,
of all others, most easily lead to fanaticism ; but he
was never carried away by enthusiastic zeal, never
indulged in extravagant language, never hurried to
support extreme measures, never allowed himself to be
controlled by sudden impulses. During the progress
of the election at which he was chosen President he
expressed no opinion that went beyond the Jefferson
proviso of 1784. Like Jefferson and Lafayette, he had
faith in the intuitions of the people, and read those
intuitions with rare sagacity. He knew how to bide
time, and was less apt to run ahead of public thought
than to lag behind. He never sought to electrify the
community by taking an advanced position with a ban-
ner of opinion, but rather studied to move forward
compactly, exposing no detachment in front or rear;
so that the course of his administration might have
been explained as the calculating policy of a shrewd
and watchful politician, had there not been seen behind
it a fixedness of principle which from the first deter-
mined his purpose, and grew more intense with every
year, consuming his life by its energy. Yet his sensi-
bilities were not acute ; he had no vividness of
imagination to picture to his mind the horrors of the
battle-field or the sufferings in hospitals; his conscience
was more tender than his feelings.
Lincoln was one of the most unassuming of men.
In time of success, he gave credit for it to those whom
he employed, to the people, and to the Providence of
God. He did not know what ostentation is; when he
became President he was rather saddened than elated,
and his conduct and manners showed more than ever
his belief that all men are born ecpial. He was no
respecter of persons, and neither rank, nor reputation,
nor services overawed him. In judging of character
he failed in discrimination, and his appointments were
sometimes bad ; but he readily deferred to public
opinion, and in appointing the head of the armies he
followed the manifest preference of Congress.
A good President will secure unity to his administra-
tion by his own supervision of the various departments.
Lincoln, who accepted advice readily, was never gov-
erned by any member of his cabinet, and could not be
moved from a purpose deliberately formed; but his
supervision of affairs was unsteady and incomplete, and
sometimes, by a sudden interference transcending the
usual forms, he rather confused than advanced the public
business. If he ever failed in the scrupulous regard
due to the relative rights of Congress, it was so evidently
without design that no conflict could ensue, or evil
precedent be established. Truth he would receive from
any one, but when impressed by others, he did not use
their opinions till, by reflection, he had made them
thoroughly his own.
It was the nature of Lincoln to forgive. When
hostilities ceased, he, who had always sent forth the flag
with every one of its stars in the field, was eager to
receive back his returning countrymen, and meditated
"some new announcement to the South." The amend-
ment of the Constitution abolishing slavery had his
most earnest and unwearied support. During the rage
of war we get a glimpse into his soul from his privately
suggesting to Louisiana, that " in defining the franchise
some of the colored people might be let in," saying :
" They would probably help, in some trying time to
come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of free-
dom." In 1857 he avowed himself "not in favor of"
what he improperly called " negro citizenship," for the
Constitution discriminates between citizens and electors.
Three days before his death he declared his preference
that " the elective franchise were now conferred on the
very intelligent of the colored men, and on those of
them who served our cause as soldiers ;" but he wished
•it done by the States themselves, and he never harbored
the thought of exacting it from a new government, as a
condition of its recognition.
The last day of his life beamed with sunshine, as he
sent, by the Speaker of this House, his friendly greet-
ings to the men of the Rocky mountains and the Pacific
slope; as he contemplated the return of hundreds of
thousands of soldiers to fruitful industry; as he wel-
comed in advance hundreds of thousands of emigrants
from Europe; as his eye kindled with enthusiasm at
the coming wealth of the nation. And so, with these
thoughts for his country, he was removed from the toils
and temptations of this life, and was at peace.
Hardly had the late President been consigned to the
grave when the prime minister of England died, full
of years and honors. Palmerston traced his lineage to
the time of the conqueror; Lincoln went back only to
his grandfather. Palmerston received his education
from the best scholars of Harrow, Edinburg, and Cam-
bridge; Lincoln's early teachers were the silent forest,
the prairie, the river, and the stars. Palmerston was in
public life for sixty years; Lincoln for but a tenth of
that time. Palmerston was a skilful guide of an estab-
lished aristocracy; Lincoln a leader, or rather a com-
panion, of the people. Palmerston was exclusively an
Englishman, and made his boast in the House of Com-,
mons that the interest of England was his Shibboleth;
Lincoln thought always of mankind, as well as his own
country, and served human nature itself. Palmerston,
from his narrowness as an Englishman, did not endear
his country to any one court or to any one nation, but
rather caused general uneasiness and dislike; Lincoln
left America more beloved than ever by all the peoples
of Europe. Palmerston was self-possessed and adroit
in reconciling the conflicting factions of the aristocracy;
Lincoln, frank and ingenuous, knew how to poise
himself on the ever-moving opinions of the masses.
Palmerston was capable of insolence towards the weak,
quick to the sense of honor, not heedful of right;
Lincoln rejected counsel given only as a matter of
policy, and was not capable of being wilfully unjust.
Palmerston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter,
and knew how to divert grave opposition by playful
levity; Lincoln was a man of infinite jest on his lips,
with saddest earnestness at his heart. Palmerston was
a fair representative of the aristocratic liberality of the
day, choosing for his tribunal, not the conscience of
humanity, but the House of Commons; Lincoln took
to heart the eternal truths of liberty, obeyed them as
the commands of Providence, and accepted the human
race as the judge of his fidelity. Palmerston did
nothing that will endure; Lincoln finished a work
which all time cannot overthrow. Palmerston is a
shining example of the ablest of a cultivated aristocracy;
Lincoln is the genuine fruit of institutions where the
laboring man shares and assists to form the great ideas
and designs of his country. Palmerston was buried in
Westminister Abbey by the order of his Queen, and
was attended by the British aristocracy to his grave,
which, after a few years, will hardly be noticed by the
side of the graves of Fox and Chatham; Lincoln
was followed by the sorrow of his country across
the continent to his resting-place in the heart of the
Mississippi valley, to be remembered through all
time by his countrymen, and by all the peoples of
the world.
As the sum of all, the hand of Lincoln raised the
flag ; the American people was the hero of the war ;
and, therefore, the result is a new era of republicanism.
The disturbances in the country grew not out of any-
thing republican, but out of slavery, which is a part of
the system of hereditary wrong ; and the expulsion of
this domestic anomaly opens to the renovated nation a
career of unthought-of dignity and glory. Henceforth
our country has a moral unity as the land of free labor.
The party for slavery and the party against slavery are
no more, and are merged in the party of Union and
freedom. The States which would have left us are not
brought back as subjugated States, for then we should
hold them only so long as that conquest could be main-
tained; they come to their rightful place under the Con-
stitution as original, necessary, and inseparable members
of the Union.
We build monuments to the dead, but no monuments
of victory. We respect the example of the Romans,
who never, even in conquered lands, raised emblems of
triumph. And our generals are not to be classed in
the herd of vulgar warriors, but are of the school of
Timolcon, and William of Nassau, and Washington.
They have used the sword only to give peace to their
country and restore her to her place in the great
assembly of the nations.
Senators and Representatives of America : as I
bid you farewell, my last words shall be words of hope
and confidence ; for now slavery is no more, the Union
is restored, a people begins to live according to the
laws of reason, and republicanism is intrenched in a
continent.
Rev. Dr. Boynton, Chaplain of the House, offered the following
prayer :
Almighty God, who dost inhabit eternity, while we appear but
for a little moment and then vanish away, we adore The Eternal
Name. Infinite in power and majesty, and greatly to be feared art
Thou. All earthly distinctions disappear in Thy presence, and we
come before Thy throne simply as men, fallen men, condemned
alike by Thy law, and justly cut off through sin from communion
with Thee. But through Thy infinite mercy, a new way of access
has been opened through Thy Sou, and consecrated by His blood.
We come, in that all-worthy Name, and plead the promise of par-
don and acceptance through Him. By the imposing solemnities of
this scene we are carried back to the hour when the nation heard,
and shuddered at the hearing, that Abraham Lincoln was dead — was
murdered. We would bow ourselves submissively to Him by whom
that awful hour was appointed. We Low to the stroke that fell on
the country in the very hour of its triumph, and hushed all its shouts
of victory to one voiceless sorrow. " The Lord gave and the Lord
hath taken away. Blessed he the name of the Lord." The shadow
of that death has not yet passed from the heart of the nation, as this
national testimonial bears witness to-day. The gloom thrown from
these surrounding emblems of death is fringed, we know, with the
glory of a great triumph, and the light of a great and good man's
memory. Still, O Lord, may this hour bring to us the proper warn-
ing! "Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the
Son of Man conieth." Any one of us may be called as suddenly as
he whom we mourn.
We worship Thee as the God of our fathers. Thou didst trace
for them a path over the trackless sea, and bring them to these shores,
bearing with them the seed of a great dominion. We thank Thee
that the life-power of the young nation they planted, received
from Thee such energy, guidance, and protection, that it, spread
rapidly over the breadth of the continent, carrying with it Christian
liberty, churches, schools, and all the blessings of a Christian civili-
zation. We thank Thee that the progress of the true American life
has been irresistible, because sustained by Thy eternal counsels and
Thy almighty power, and because the might of God was in this
national life. We have seen it sweeping all opposition away, grind-
ing great systems and parties to powder, and breaking in pieces the
devices of men ; and Thou hast raised up for it heroic defenders in
every hour of peril. We thank Thee, Strong Defender ! And
when treason was hatching its plot and massing its armies, then,
God of Israel, who didst bring David from the sheepfold, Thou
gavest one reared in the humble cabin to become the hope and stay
of this great people in their most perilous hour, to shield them in
disaster and lead them to final victory.
We thank Thee that Thou gavest us an honest man, simple-
hearted and loving as a child, but with a rugged strength that needed
only culture and discipline. Thanks be to God that this discipline
was granted him through stern public trial, domestic sorrow, and
Thy solemn providences, till the mere politician was overshadowed
by the nobler growth of his moral and spiritual nature, till he came,
as we believe, into sympathy with Christ, and saw that we could
succeed only by doing justice. Then, inspired by Thee, he uttered
those words of power which changed three millions of slaves into
men — the great act which has rendered his name forever illustrious
and secured the triumph of our cause. "We think of him almost as
the prophet of his era. Thou didst make that honest, great-hearted
man the central figure of his age, setting upon goodness, upon moral
grandeur, the seal of Thine approval and the crown of victory. We
bless Thee that he did not die until assured of victory, until he knew
that his great work was done, and he had received all the honor that
earth could bestow, and then we believe Thou didst give him a
martyr's crown. We thank Thee that we have this hope for the
illustrious dead.
Great reason have we also to thank Thee that such was the enduring
strength of our institutions that they received no perceptible shock
from the death of even such a man and in such an hour, and that
Thou didst provide for that perilous moment one whose strength
was sufficient to receive and bear the weight of government, and
who, we trust, will work out the great problem of Christian freedom
to its final solution, and by equal law and equal rights bind this
great people into one inseparable whole.
We thank Thee that the representatives of the nation have come
to sit to-day in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln's tomb, to express
once more their now chastened sorrow. May they all reconsecrate
themselves to those principles which made him worthy to be remem-
bered thus, and then a redeemed and transfigured land will be a fit-
ting monument for him and for them.
Endow the President with wisdom equal to his great responsibili-
ties, that the blessings of a whole nation may also be given to him.
May his advisers, our judges, and our legislators, be constantly
instructed by Thee.
May Thy blessing rest on the officers of the army and navy, by
whose skill and courage our triumph was won ; upon our soldiers and
sailors; upon our people, and on those who are struggling on toward
a perfect manhood.
Bless these eminent men the honored representatives of Foreign
Powers. Remember the sovereigns and people they represent.
We thank Thee that peace reigns with them as with us. May it
continue until the nations shall learn war no more.
Remember Abraham Lincoln's widow and family. Comfort them
in their sore bereavement. May they be consoled to know how
much the father and husband is loved and honored still.
Give Divine support to the distinguished orator of the day. May
he so speak as to impress the whole nation's nvnd. Prepare us to
live as men in this age should, that we may be received into Thy
Heavenly Kingdom, aud to Thy name shall be the praise and the
glory forevermore. Amen.
Hon. Lafayette S. Foster, President pro tempore of the Senate,
in introducing the orator of the day, said :
No ordinary occasion could have convened this august assemblage.
For four weary years the storm of war, of civil war, raged fiercely
over our country. The blood of the best and bravest of her sons
was freely shed to preserve her name and place among the nations
of the earth. In April last, the dark clouds which had so long hung
heavily and gloomily over our heads, were all dispersed, and the
light of peace, more welcome even than the vernal sunshine, glad-
dened the eyes and the hearts of our people. Shouts of joy aud
songs of triumph echoed through the land. The hearts of the devout
poured themselves in orisons and thanksgivings to the God of battles
and of nations that the most wicked and most formidable rebellion
ever known in human history had been effectually crushed, and our
country saved.
In the midst of all this abounding joy, suddenly and swiftly as
the lightning's flash came the fearful tidings that the Chief Magis-
trate of the Republic — our President — loved and honored as few men
ever were — so honest, so faithful, so true to his duty and his country,
had been foully murdered — had fallen by the bullet of an assassin.
All hearts were stricken with horror. The transition from extreme
joy to profound sorrow was never more sudden and universal. Had
it been possible for a stranger, ignorant of the truth, to look over
our land, he would have supposed that there had come upon us
some visitation of the Almighty not less dreadful than that which
once fell on ancient Egypt on that fearful night when there was
not a house where there was not one dead.
The nation wept for him.
After being gazed upon by myriads of loving eyes, under the dome
of this magnificent Capitol, the remains of our President were borne
in solemn procession through our cities, towns, and villages, all
draped in the habilaments of sorrow, the symbols and tokens of pro-
found and heartfelt grief, to their final resting-place in the capital
of his own State. There he sleeps, peacefully, embalmed in his
country's tears.
The Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
have deemed it proper to commemorate this tragic event by appro-
priate services. This day, the birth-day of him whom we mourn,
has properly been selected. An eminent citizen, distinguished by
his labors and services in high and responsible public positions at
home and abroad — whose pen has instructed the present age in the
history of his country, and done much to transmit the fame and re-
nown of that country to future ages — Hon. George Bancroft — will
now deliver a discourse.
Hon. George Bancroft (who on coming forward to the Clerk's
desk was greeted with warm demonstrations of applause) then pro-
ceeded to deliver the M( morial Address.
The exercises of the day were closed by the following prayer and
benediction by the Rev. Dr. Gray, Chaplain of the Senate :
God of a bereaved nation, from Thy high and holy Habitation
look down upon us and suitably impress us to-day, with a sense that
God only is great. Kings and Presidents die; but Thou, the Uni-
versal Ruler, livest to roll on thine undisturbed affairs forever, from
Thy Throne. A wail has gone up from the heart of the nation to
heaven — 0, hear, and pity, and assuage, and save. We pray that
Thou wilt command thy blessing now, which is life forevermore,
upon the family of the President dead; upon the President living
upon the Ministers of state; upon the united Houses of Congress;
upon the Judges of our Courts ; upon the officers of the Army and
the Navy ; upon the broken families and desolated homes all over the
land; and especially upon the nation. And grant that grace and
peace and mercy from the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God
the Father, and the fellowship of God the Spirit, may rest upon and
abide with us all, forever and ever. Amen.
