Marching down on his way to the sea Through the Georgia swamps to victory. Faster and faster the great news came, Flashing along like tongues of flame,—

McAllister ours! And then, ah! then, To that patientest, tenderest, noblest of men, This message from Sherman came flying swift,— "I send you Savannah for a Christmas gift!"

[8] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.



V

DEATH OF LINCOLN

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN![9]

BY WALT WHITMAN

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

[9] By permission of David McKay.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEATH—A DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE AT FORD'S THEATRE[10]

WALT WHITMAN

The day (April 14, 1865) seems to have been a pleasant one throughout the whole land—the moral atmosphere pleasant, too—the long storm, so dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended at last by the sunrise of such an absolute National victory, and utter breaking down of secessionism—we almost doubted our senses! Lee had capitulated beneath the apple tree at Appomattox. The other armies, the flanges of the revolt, swiftly followed.

And could it really be, then? Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and passion, of failure and disorder and dismay, was there really come the confirmed, unerring sign of peace, like a shaft of pure light—of rightful rule—of God?

But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular afternoon paper, the little Evening Star, had scattered all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a sensational manner in a hundred different places: "The President and his lady will be at the theatre this evening." Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the greatest and stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested in those human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text.

So the day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. I remembered where I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.

On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes—and over all, and saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the Nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all perfumes.

The President came betimes and, with his wife, witnessed the play, from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the National flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual nature—a piece ("Our American Cousin") in which, among other characters so called, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never seen, or at least ever seen in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama—had progressed through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, come interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)—and yet partially to be described as I now proceed to give it:

There is a scene in the play representing the modern parlor, in which two unprecedented English ladies are informed by the unprecedented and impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage catching purposes; after which, the comments being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. There was a pause, a hush, as it were. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Great as that was, with all its manifold train circling around it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, etc., of the New World, in point of fact, the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence—the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance.

Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, etc., came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time—and yet a moment's hush—somehow, surely a vague, startled thrill—and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starred, and striped space-way of the President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage (a distance of perhaps 14 or 15 feet), falls out of position, catching his boot heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happened (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)—and the figure, Booth, the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bare-headed, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back of the foot-lights—turns fully towards the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words Sic Semper Tyrannis—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene—making the mimic ones preposterous—had it not all been rehearsed, in blank, by Booth, beforehand?)

A moment's hush, incredulous—a scream—the cry of murder—Mrs. Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, "He has killed the President." And still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense—and then the deluge!—then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty—(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed) the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up—that noise adds to the queerness of the scene—there is extricable confusion and terror—women faint—quite feeble persons fall, and are trampled on—many cries of agony are heard—the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival—the audience rush generally upon it—at least the strong men do—the actors and actresses are there in their play costumes and painted faces, with moral fright showing through the rouge—some trembling, some in tears, the screams and calls, confused talk—redoubled, trebled—two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President's box—others try to clamber up—etc., etc.

In the midst of all this the soldiers of the President's Guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in—some 200 altogether—they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones—inflamed with fury, literally charging the audience with fixed bayonets, muskets and pistols, shouting "Clear out! clear out!..." Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it, rather, inside the play house that night.

Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people filled with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, came near committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to hang him on a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frightened people trying in vain to extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse, the silent, resolute half dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms—made indeed a fitting side scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gained the station house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night and discharged in the morning.

And in the midst of that night pandemonium of senseless hate, infuriated soldiers, the audience and the crowd—the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its paint pots, spangles and gaslight—the life blood from those veins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down....

Such, hurriedly sketched, were the accompaniments of the death of President Lincoln. So suddenly, and in murder and horror unsurpassed, he was taken from us. But his death was painless.

[10] By permission of David McKay.

HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY[11]

(May 4, 1865)

BY WALT WHITMAN

Hush'd be the camps to-day, And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons, And each with musing soul retire to celebrate Our dear commander's death.

No more for him life's stormy conflicts, Nor victory, nor defeat—no more time's dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing, poet, in our name. Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there, Sing—as they close the doors of earth upon him—one verse, For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

[11] By permission of David McKay.

TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(1865)

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

O, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword of power—a nation's trust.

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that hushes all, And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done—the bond are free; We bear thee to an honored grave, Whose noblest monument shall be The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close Hath placed thee with the sons of light, Among the noble host of those cause of right.

CROWN HIS BLOODSTAINED PILLOW

BY JULIA WARD HOWE

Crown his blood-stained pillow With a victor's palm; Life's receding billow Leaves eternal calm.

At the feet Almighty Lay this gift sincere; Of a purpose weighty, And a record clear.

With deliverance freighted Was this passive hand, And this heart, high-fated, Would with love command.

Let him rest serenely In a Nation's care, Where her waters queenly Make the West more fair.

In the greenest meadow That the prairies show, Let his marble's shadow Give all men to know:

"Our First Hero, living, Made his country free; Heed the Second's giving, Death for Liberty."

THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN[12]

BY WALT WHITMAN

Thus ended the attempted secession of these States; thus the four years' war. But the main things come subtly and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward—neither military, political, nor (great as those are), historical. I say, certain secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of this death, are, in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murder itself. Not that Mr. Lincoln strings the principal points and personages of the period, like beads, upon the single string of his career. Not that his idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance and disappearance, stamps this Republic with a stamp more mark'd and enduring than any yet given by any one man—(more even than Washington's)—but, join'd with these, the immeasurable value and meaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me, in senses finally dearest to a nation (and here all our own)—the imaginative and artistic senses—the literary and dramatic ones. Not in any common or low meaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the race, and to every age. A long and varied series of contradictory events arrives at last at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the secession period comes to a head, and is gather'd in one brief flash of lightning-illumination—one simple, fierce deed. Its sharp culmination, and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angry problems, illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other, suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than fiction. Fit radiation—fit close! How the imagination—how the student loves these things! America, too, is to have them. For not in all great deaths, nor far or near—not Caesar in the Roman senate-house, nor Napoleon passing away in the wild night-storm at St. Helena—not Paleologus, falling, desperately fighting, piled over dozens deep with Grecian corpses—not calm old Socrates, drinking the hemlock—outvies that terminus of the secession war, in one man's life, here in our midst, in our own time—that seal of the emancipation of three million slaves—that parturition and delivery of our at last really free Republic, born again, henceforth to commence its career of genuine homogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself.

[12] By permission of David McKay.

OUR SUN HATH GONE DOWN[13]

BY PHOEBE CARY

Our sun hath gone down at the noonday, The heavens are black; And over the morning the shadows Of night-time are back.

Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon, Hush the mirth and the shout;— God is God! and the ways of Jehovah Are past finding out.

Lo! the beautiful feet on the mountains, That yesterday stood; The white feet that came with glad tidings, Are dabbled in blood.

The Nation that firmly was settling The crown on her head, Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, And watches her dead.

Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing, Is lying so low? O, my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish, Do you feel, do you know,

That the hand which reached out of the darkness Hath taken the whole? Yea, the arm and the head of the people— The heart and the soul!

And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence A nation has wept; Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest, A man ever kept!

Once this good man, we mourn, overwearied, Worn, anxious, oppressed, Was going out from his audience chamber For a season to rest;

Unheeding the thousands who waited To honor and greet, When the cry of a child smote upon him, And turned back his feet.

"Three days hath a woman been waiting," Said they, "patient and meek." And he answered, "Whatever her errand, Let me hear; let her speak!"

So she came, and stood trembling before him, And pleaded her cause; Told him all; how her child's erring father Had broken the laws.

Humbly spake she: "I mourn for his folly, His weakness, his fall"; Proudly spake she: "he is not a TRAITOR, And I love him through all!"

Then the great man, whose heart had been shaken By a little babe's cry; Answered soft, taking counsel of mercy, "This man shall not die!"

Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields, The dark holds of ships; Every faint, feeble cry which oppression Smothered down on men's lips.

In her furnace, the centuries had welded Their fetter and chain; And like withes, in the hands of his purpose, He snapped them in twain.

Who can be what he was to the people; What he was to the State? Shall the ages bring to us another As good, and as great?

Our hearts with their anguish are broken, Our wet eyes are dim; For us is the loss and the sorrow, The triumph for him!

For, ere this, face to face with his Father Our Martyr hath stood; Giving unto his hand the white record, With its great seal of blood!

[13] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

TOLLING[14]

(April 15, 1865)

BY LUCY LARCOM

Tolling, tolling, tolling! All the bells of the land! Lo, the patriot martyr Taketh his journey grand! Travels into the ages, Bearing a hope how dear! Into life's unknown vistas, Liberty's great pioneer.

Tolling, tolling, tolling! See, they come as a cloud, Hearts of a mighty people, Bearing his pall and shroud; Lifting up, like a banner, Signals of loss and woe; Wonder of breathless nations, Moveth the solemn show.

Tolling, tolling, tolling! Was it, O man beloved, Was it thy funeral only Over the land that moved? Veiled by that hour of anguish, Borne with the rebel rout, Forth into utter darkness, Slavery's curse went out.

[14] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[15]

"Strangulatus Pro Republica"

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE

Hundreds there have been, loftier than their kind, Heroes and victors in the world's great wars: Hundreds, exalted as the eternal stars, By the great heart, or keen and mighty mind; There have been sufferers, maimed and halt and blind, Who bore their woes in such triumphant calm That God hath crowned them with the martyr's palm; And there were those who fought through fire to find Their Master's face, and were by fire refined. But who like thee, oh Sire! hath ever stood Steadfast for truth and right, when lies and wrong Rolled their dark waters, turbulent and strong; Who bore reviling, baseness, tears and blood Poured out like water, till thine own was spent, Then reaped Earth's sole reward—a grave and monument!

[15] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow, battle and war, and come near to the promised land of peace into which he might not pass over. Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people? Since the November of 1860, his horizon has been black with storms.

By day and by night, he trod a way of danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a government dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity millions of men were striking at home. Upon this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of storms, and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial, in hours of defeat, to the depths of despondency, he held on with immovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution that it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of His people as by fire.

At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness and the East came rushing toward us with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceedingly that had sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy and rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone from among us. Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul. Thou hast, indeed, entered the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou art sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice exceedingly,—thou that hast enough suffered! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. Around thee are the royal men that have ennobled human life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore. Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, an everlasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity and goodness.

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness.

That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth—these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days—all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe.

In one hour, joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow—noon and midnight, without a space between.

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get strength to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels, but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish.

This Nation has dissolved—but in tears only. It stands four-square, more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than ever before. The government is not weakened; it is made stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks closed! Another steps forward, in the hour that one fell, to take his place and his mantle; and I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of liberty; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him; vigilant of the Constitution; careful of the laws; wise for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has known what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from bitter personal experiences.

Where could the head of government of any monarchy be smitten down by the hand of an assassin, and the funds not quiver or fall one-half of one per cent? After a long period of national disturbance, after four years of drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of the country, in the height and top of our burdens, the heart of this people is such that now, when the head of government is stricken down, the public funds do not waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our mountains.

Republican institutions have been vindicated in this experience as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems in the providence of God, to have been clothed now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to all nations of the earth: "Republican liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe."

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington, and your children and your children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery, with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right, and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of his country shake out of place. I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.

You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of God? There will be wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them? O, thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort Thy people of old, to Thy care we commit the helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved.

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The Nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be.

Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and bands and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on.

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man, and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the Nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty.

HYMN[16]

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

O Thou of soul and sense and breath, The ever-present Giver, Unto Thy mighty angel, death, All flesh thou didst deliver; What most we cherish, we resign, For life and death alike are Thine, Who reignest Lord forever!

Our hearts lie buried in the dust With him, so true and tender, The patriot's stay, the people's trust, The shield of the offender; Yet every murmuring voice is still, As, bowing to Thy sovereign will, Our best loved we surrender.

Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold This martyr generation, Which Thou, through trials manifold, Art showing Thy salvation! O let the blood by murder split Wash out Thy stricken children's guilt, And sanctify our nation!

Be Thou Thy orphaned Israel's friend, Forsake Thy people never, In One our broken Many blend, That none again may sever! Hear us, O Father, while we raise With trembling lips our song of praise, And bless Thy name forever!

[16] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Foully Assassinated April 14, 1865

BY TOM TAYLOR (MARK LEMON) IN LONDON PUNCH.

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please;

You whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain:

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?

Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen:— To make me own this man of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose; How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true; How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be: How in good fortune and in ill, the same: Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work,—such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,— As one who knows, where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command;

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes instruments to work His will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights,—

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid, that o'erbears the boatsman's toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear;— Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: Rough culture,—but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it: four long suffering years, Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers.

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood: Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seem to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,— And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips, Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of sympathy and shame! Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high; Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt If more of horror or disgrace they bore; But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out.

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; And with the martyr's crown crownest a life With much to praise, little to be forgiven.



VI

TRIBUTES

THE MARTYR CHIEF[17]

From the Harvard Commemoration Ode,

BY JAMES RUSSEL LOWELL

Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So generous is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms, and not to yield— This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed, like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs. Such was he, our Martyr Chief, Whom late the nation he had led, With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A seamark now, now lost in vapors blind, Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of serf and peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he; He knew to bide him time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes: These are all gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil the first American.

[17] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[18]

Remarks at the funeral services held in Concord, April 19, 1865

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down over the minds of good men in all civil society, as the fearful tidings travel over sea, over land, from country to country, like the shadow of an uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and this, not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and fears which, in the present day, are connected with the name and institutions of America.

In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and saw at first only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow. And perhaps, at this hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of the President sets forward on its long march through mourning States, on its way to his home in Illinois, we might well be silent and suffer the awful voices of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first despair was brief: the man was not so to be mourned. He was the most active and hopeful of men; and his work has not perished: but acclamations of praise for the task he has accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep down.

The President stood before us as a man of the people. He was thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled by English insularity or French dissipation; a quiet native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboat-man, a captain in the Black Hawk war, a country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature of Illinois;—on such modest foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place. All of us remember—it is only a history of five or six years—the surprise and the disappointment of the country at his first nomination by the convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his good fame, was the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the new and comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced (notwithstanding the report of the acclamations of that convention), we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times; and men naturally talked of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it turned out not to be chance. The profound good opinion which the people of Illinois and of the West had conceived of him, and which they had imparted to their colleagues, that they also might justify themselves to their constituents at home, was not rash, though they did not begin to know the riches of his worth.

A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him. He offered no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not offend by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty, which it was very easy for him to obey. Then he had what farmers call a long head; was excellent in working out the sum for himself; in arguing his case and convincing you fairly and firmly. Then it turned out that he was a great worker; had prodigious faculty of performance; worked easily. A good worker is so rare; everybody has some disabling quality. In a host of young men that start together and promise so many brilliant leaders for the next age, each fails on trial; one by bad health, one by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly temper,—each has some disqualifying fault that throws him out of the career. But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persistent, all right for labor, and liked nothing so well.

Then he had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and accessible to all; fair minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner; affable, and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits paid to him when President would have brought to any one else. And how this good nature became a noble humanity, in many a tragic case which the events of the war brought to him, every one will remember; and with what increasing tenderness he dealt when a whole race was thrown on his compassion. The poor negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, "Massa Linkum am ebery-where." Then his broad good humor, running easily into jocular talk, in which he delighted and in which he excelled, was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret; to meet every kind of man and every rank in society; to take off the edge of the severest decisions; to mask his own purpose and sound his companion; and to catch with true instinct the temper of every company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain against rancor and insanity.

He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised as pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first but as jests; and only later, by the very acceptance and adoption they find in the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become mythological in a very few years, like AEsop or Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs. But the weight and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their application to the moment, are destined hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant definitions; what unerring common sense; what foresight; and, on great occasion, what lofty, and more than national, what humane tone! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded occasion. This, and one other American speech, that of John Brown to the court that tried him, and a part of Kossuth's speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with each other, and with no fourth.

His occupying the chair of State was a triumph of the good sense of mankind, and of the public conscience. This middle-class country had got a middle-class President, at last. Yes, in manners and sympathies, but not in powers, for his powers were superior. This man grew according to the need. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears and jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man wrought incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, laboring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain that. It cannot be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed no state secrets; the nation has been in such ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that no secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and we know all that befell.

Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war. Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years,—four years of battle-days,—his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent; an entirely public man; father of his country, the pulse of twenty-millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue.

Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in Houbraken's portraits of British kings and worthies is engraved under those who have suffered at the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And who does not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim? Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen—perhaps even be—the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow men,—the practicable abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond surrendered; had seen the main army of the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion of Canada, England, and France. Only Washington can compare with him in fortune.

And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that he had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve us; that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands,—a new spirit born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to show the world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his country even more by his death than by his life? Nations, like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. "The kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy good nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in the next ages.

The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which ruled in the affairs of nations; which, with a slow but stern justice, carried forward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out single offenders or offending families, and securing at last the firm prosperity of the favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the Eternal Nemesis. There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations, which makes little account of time, little of one generation or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstruction, crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of everything which resists the moral laws of the world. It makes its own instruments, creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his task. It has given every race its own talent, and ordains that only that race which combines perfectly with the virtues of all shall endure.

[18] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN

BY WILLIAM MCKINLEY

The greatest names in American history are Washington and Lincoln. One is forever associated with the independence of the States and the formation of the Federal Union; the other with universal freedom and the preservation of the Union.

Washington enforced the Declaration of Independence as against England. Lincoln proclaimed the fulfilment not only to a down-trodden race in America, but to all people for all time who may seek the protection of our flag. These illustrious men achieved grander results for mankind within a single century than any other men ever accomplished in all the years since the first flight of time began.

Washington drew his sword not for a change of rulers upon an established throne, but to establish a new government which should acknowledge no throne but the tribute of the people.

Lincoln accepted war to save the Union, the safeguard of our liberties, and re-established it on indestructible foundations as forever "one and indivisible." To quote his own words: "Now we are contending that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

LINCOLN

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Abraham Lincoln—the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War—was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men. A man who embodied the qualities of his fellow-men, but who embodied them to the highest and most unusual degree of perfection, who embodied all that there was in the nation of courage, of wisdom, of gentle, patient kindliness, and of common sense.

LINCOLN'S GRAVE

BY MAURICE THOMPSON

May one who fought in honor for the South Uncovered stand and sing by Lincoln's grave? Why, if I shrunk not at the cannon's mouth, Nor swerved one inch for any battle-wave, Should I now tremble in this quiet close Hearing the prairie wind go lightly by From billowy plains of grass and miles of corn, While out of deep repose The great sweet spirit lifts itself on high And broods above our land this summer morn?

Meseems I feel his presence. Is he dead? Death is a word. He lives and grander grows. At Gettysburg he bows his bleeding head; He spreads his arms where Chickamauga flows, As if to clasp old soldiers to his breast, Of South or North no matter which they be, Not thinking of what uniform they wore, His heart a palimpsest, Record on record of humanity, Where love is first and last forevermore.

He was the Southern mother leaning forth, At dead of night to hear the cannon roar, Beseeching God to turn the cruel North And break it that her son might come once more; He was New England's maiden pale and pure, Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain; He was the mangled body of the dead; He writhing did endure Wounds and disfigurement and racking pain, Gangrene and amputation, all things dread.

He was the North, the South, the East, the West, The thrall, the master, all of us in one; There was no section that he held the best; His love shone as impartial as the sun; And so revenge appealed to him in vain; He smiled at it, as at a thing forlorn, And gently put it from him, rose and stood A moment's space in pain, Remembering the prairies and the corn And the glad voices of the field and wood.

And then when Peace set wing upon the wind And northward flying fanned the clouds away, He passed as martyrs pass. Ah, who shall find The chord to sound the pathos of that day! Mid-April blowing sweet across the land, New bloom of freedom opening to the world, Loud paeans of the homeward-looking host, The salutations grand From grimy guns, the tattered flags unfurled; And he must sleep to all the glory lost!

Sleep! loss! But there is neither sleep nor loss, And all the glory mantles him about; Above his breast the precious banners cross, Does he not hear his armies tramp and shout? Oh, every kiss of mother, wife or maid Dashed on the grizzly lip of veteran, Comes forthright to that calm and quiet mouth, And will not be delayed, And every slave, no longer slave but man, Sends up a blessing from the broken South.

He is not dead, France knows he is not dead; He stirs strong hearts in Spain and Germany, In far Siberian mines his words are said, He tells the English Ireland shall be free, He calls poor serfs about him in the night, And whispers of a power that laughs at kings, And of a force that breaks the strongest chain; Old tyranny feels his might Tearing away its deepest fastenings, And jewelled sceptres threaten him in vain.

Years pass away, but freedom does not pass, Thrones crumble, but man's birthright crumbles not, And, like the wind across the prairie grass, A whole world's aspirations fan this spot With ceaseless panting after liberty, One breath of which would make dark Russia fair, And blow sweet summer through the exile's cave And set the exile free; For which I pray, here in the open air Of Freedom's morning-tide, by Lincoln's grave.

TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN

A man of great ability, pure patriotism, unselfish nature, full of forgiveness to his enemies, bearing malice toward none, he proved to be the man above all others for the struggle through which the nation had to pass to place itself among the greatest in the family of nations. His fame will grow brighter as time passes and his great great work is better understood.

U. S. Grant.

At the moment when the stars of the Union, sparkling and resplendent with the golden fires of liberty, are waving over the subdued walls of Richmond the sepulchre opens, and the strong, the powerful enters it.

Sr. Rebello Da Silva.

He ascended the mount where he could see the fair fields and the smiling vineyards of the promised land. But, like the great leader of Israel, he was not permitted to come to the possession.

Seth Sweetser.

In his freedom from passion and bitterness; in his acute sense of justice; in his courageous faith in the right, and his inextinguishable hatred of wrong; in his warm and heartfelt sympathy and mercy; in his coolness of judgment; in his unquestioned rectitude of intention—in a word, in his ability to lift himself for his country's sake above all mere partisanship, in all the marked traits of his character combined, he has had no parallel since Washington, and while our republic endures he will live with him in the grateful hearts of his grateful countrymen.

Schuyler Colfax.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL

Dead is the roll of the drums, And the distant thunders die, They fade in the far-off sky; And a lovely summer comes, Like the smile of Him on high.

Lulled, the storm and the onset. Earth lies in a sunny swoon; Stiller splendor of noon, Softer glory of sunset, Milder starlight and moon!

For the kindly Seasons love us; They smile over trench and clod (Where we left the bravest of us)— There's a brighter green of the sod, And a holier calm above us In the blessed Blue of God.

The roar and ravage were vain; And Nature, that never yields, Is busy with sun and rain At her old sweet work again On the lonely battle-fields.

How the tall white daisies grow, Where the grim artillery rolled! (Was it only a moon ago? It seems a century old)—

And the bee hums in the clover, As the pleasant June comes on; Aye, the wars are all over,— But our good Father is gone.

There was tumbling of traitor fort, Flaming of traitor fleet— Lighting of city and port, Clasping in square and street.

There was thunder of mine and gun, Cheering by mast and tent,— When—his dread work all done, And his high fame full won— Died the Good President.

In his quiet chair he sate, Pure of malice or guile, Stainless of fear or hate,— And there played a pleasant smile On the rough and careworn face; For his heart was all the while On means of mercy and grace.

The brave old Flag drooped o'er him, (A fold in the hard hand lay)— He looked, perchance, on the play— But the scene was a shadow before him, For his thoughts were far away.

'Twas but the morn (yon fearful Death-shade, gloomy and vast, Lifting slowly at last), His household heard him say, "'Tis long since I've been so cheerful, So light of heart as to-day."

'Twas dying, the long dread clang— But, or ever the blessed ray Of peace could brighten to-day, Murder stood by the way— Treason struck home his fang! One throb—and, without a pang, That pure soul passed away.

Kindly Spirit!—Ah, when did treason Bid such a generous nature cease, Mild by temper and strong by reason, But ever leaning to love and peace?

A head how sober; a heart how spacious; A manner equal with high or low; Rough but gentle, uncouth but gracious, And still inclining to lips of woe.

Patient when saddest, calm when sternest, Grieved when rigid for justice' sake; Given to jest, yet ever in earnest If aught of right or truth were at stake.

Simple of heart, yet shrewd therewith, Slow to resolve, but firm to hold; Still with parable and with myth Seasoning truth, like Them of old; Aptest humor and quaintest pith! (Still we smile o'er the tales he told.)

Yet whoso might pierce the guise Of mirth in the man we mourn, Would mark, and with grieved surprise, All the great soul had borne, In the piteous lines, and the kind, sad eyes So dreadfully wearied and worn.

And we trusted (the last dread page Once turned, of our Dooms-day Scroll), To have seen him, sunny of soul, In a cheery, grand old age.

But, Father, 'tis well with thee! And since ever, when God draws nigh, Some grief for the good must be, 'Twas well, even so to die,—

'Mid the thunder of Treason's fall, The yielding of haughty town, The crashing of cruel wall, The trembling of tyrant crown!

The ringing of hearth and pavement To the clash of falling chains,— The centuries of enslavement Dead, with their blood-bought gains!

And through trouble weary and long, Well hadst thou seen the way, Leaving the State so strong It did not reel for a day.

And even in death couldst give A token for Freedom's strife— A proof how republics live, And not by a single life,

But the Right Divine of man, And the many, trained to be free,— And none, since the world began, Ever was mourned like thee.

Dost thou feel it, O noble Heart! (So grieved and so wronged below), From the rest wherein thou art? Do they see it, those patient eyes? Is there heed in the happy skies For tokens of world-wide woe?

The Land's great lamentations, The mighty mourning of cannon The myriad flags half-mast— The late remorse of the nations, Grief from Volga to Shannon! (Now they know thee at last.)

How, from gray Niagara's shore To Canaveral's surfy shoal— From the rough Atlantic roar To the long Pacific roll— For bereavement and for dole, Every cottage wears its weed, White as thine own pure soul, And black as the traitor deed.

How, under a nation's pall, The dust so dear in our sight To its home on the prairie passed,— The leagues of funeral, The myriads, morn and night, Pressing to look their last.

Nor alone the State's Eclipse; But tears in hard eyes gather— And on rough and bearded lips, Of the regiments and the ships— "Oh, our dear Father!"

And methinks of all the million That looked on the dark dead face, 'Neath its sable-plumed pavilion, The crone of a humbler race Is saddest of all to think on, And the old swart lips that said, Sobbing, "Abraham Lincoln! Oh, he is dead, he is dead!"

Hush! let our heavy souls To-day be glad; for again The stormy music swells and rolls, Stirring the hearts of men.

And under the Nation's Dome, They've guarded so well and long, Our boys come marching home, Two hundred thousand strong.

All in the pleasant month of May, With war-worn colors and drums, Still through the livelong summer's day, Regiment, regiment comes.

Like the tide, yesty and barmy, That sets on a wild lee-shore, Surge the ranks of an army Never reviewed before!

Who shall look on the like again, Or see such host of the brave? A mighty River of marching men Rolls the Capital through— Rank on rank, and wave on wave, Of bayonet-crested blue!

How the chargers neigh and champ, (Their riders weary of camp), With curvet and with caracole!— The cavalry comes with thunderous tramp, And the cannons heavily roll.

And ever, flowery and gay, The Staff sweeps on in a spray Of tossing forelocks and manes; But each bridle-arm has a weed Of funeral, black as the steed That fiery Sheridan reins.

Grandest of mortal sights The sun-browned ranks to view— The Colors ragg'd in a hundred fights, And the dusty Frocks of Blue!

And all day, mile on mile, With cheer, and waving, and smile, The war-worn legions defile Where the nation's noblest stand; And the Great Lieutenant looks on, With the Flower of a rescued Land,— For the terrible work is done, And the Good Fight is won For God and for Fatherland.

So, from the fields they win, Our men are marching home, A million are marching home! To the cannon's thundering din, And banners on mast and dome,— And the ships come sailing in With all their ensigns dight, As erst for a great sea-fight.

Let every color fly, Every pennon flaunt in pride; Wave, Starry Flag, on high! Float in the sunny sky, Stream o'er the stormy tide! For every stripe of stainless hue, And every star in the field of blue, Ten thousand of the brave and true Have laid them down and died.

And in all our pride to-day We think, with a tender pain, Of those so far away They will not come home again.

And our boys had fondly thought, To-day, in marching by, From the ground so dearly bought, And the fields so bravely fought, To have met their Father's eye.

But they may not see him in place, Nor their ranks be seen of him; We look for the well-known face, And the splendor is strangely dim.

Perish?—who was it said Our Leader had passed away? Dead? Our President dead? He has not died for a day!

We mourn for a little breath Such as, late or soon, dust yields; But the Dark Flower of Death Blooms in the fadeless fields.

We looked on a cold, still brow, But Lincoln could yet survive; He never was more alive, Never nearer than now.

For the pleasant season found him, Guarded by faithful hands, In the fairest of Summer Lands; With his own brave Staff around him, There our President stands.

There they are all at his side, The noble hearts and true, That did all men might do— Then slept, with their swords and died.

And around—(for there can cease This earthly trouble)—they throng, The friends that have passed in peace, The foes that have seen their wrong.

(But, a little from the rest, With sad eyes looking down, And brows of softened frown, With stern arms on the chest, Are two, standing abreast— Stonewall and Old John Brown.)

But the stainless and the true, These by their President stand, To look on his last review, Or march with the old command.

And lo! from a thousand fields, From all the old battle-haunts, A greater Army than Sherman wields, A grander Review than Grant's!

Gathered home from the grave, Risen from sun and rain— Rescued from wind and wave Out of the stormy main— The Legions of our Brave Are all in their lines again!

Many a stout Corps that went, Full-ranked, from camp and tent, And brought back a brigade; Many a brave regiment, That mustered only a squad.

The lost battalions, That, when the fight went wrong, Stood and died at their guns,— The stormers steady and strong,

With their best blood that bought Scrap, and ravelin, and wall,— The companies that fought Till a corporal's guard was all.

Many a valiant crew, That passed in battle and wreck,— Ah, so faithful and true! They died on the bloody deck, They sank in the soundless blue.

All the loyal and bold That lay on a soldier's bier,— The stretchers borne to the rear, The hammocks lowered to the hold.

The shattered wreck we hurried, In death-fight, from deck and port,— The Blacks that Wagner buried— That died in the Bloody Fort!

Comrades of camp and mess, Left, as they lay, to die, In the battle's sorest stress, When the storm of fight swept by,— They lay in the Wilderness, Ah, where did they not lie?

In the tangled swamp they lay, They lay so still on the sward!— They rolled in the sick-bay, Moaning their lives away— They flushed in the fevered ward.

They rotted in Libby yonder, They starved in the foul stockade— Hearing afar the thunder Of the Union cannonade!

But the old wounds all are healed, And the dungeoned limbs are free,— The Blue Frocks rise from the field, The Blue Jackets out of the sea.

They've 'scaped from the torture-den, They've broken the bloody sod, They're all come to life again!— The Third of a Million men That died for Thee and for God!

A tenderer green than May The Eternal Season wears,— The blue of our summer's day Is dim and pallid to theirs,— The Horror faded away, And 'twas heaven all unawares!

Tents on the Infinite Shore! Flags in the azuline sky, Sails on the seas once more! To-day, in the heaven on high, All under arms once more!

The troops are all in their lines, The guidons flutter and play; But every bayonet shines, For all must march to-day.

What lofty pennons flaunt? What mighty echoes haunt, As of great guns, o'er the main? Hark to the sound again— The Congress is all a-taunt! The Cumberland's manned again!

All the ships and their men Are in line of battle to-day,— All at quarters, as when Their last roll thundered away,— All at their guns, as then, For the Fleet salutes to-day.

The armies have broken camp On the vast and sunny plain, The drums are rolling again; With steady, measured tramp, They're marching all again.

With alignment firm and solemn, Once again they form In mighty square and column,— But never for charge and storm.

The Old Flag they died under Floats above them on the shore, And on the great ships yonder The ensigns dip once more— And once again the thunder Of the thirty guns and four!

In solid platoons of steel, Under heaven's triumphal arch, The long lines break and wheel— And the word is, "Forward, march!"

The Colors ripple o'erhead, The drums roll up to the sky, And with martial time and tread The regiments all pass by— The ranks of our faithful Dead, Meeting their President's eye.

With a soldier's quiet pride They smile o'er the perished pain, For their anguish was not vain— For thee, O Father, we died! And we did not die in vain.

March on, your last brave mile! Salute him, Star and Lace, Form round him, rank and file, And look on the kind, rough face;

But the quaint and homely smile Has a glory and a grace It never had known erewhile— Never, in time and space.

Close round him, hearts of pride! Press near him, side by side,— Our Father is not alone! For the Holy Right ye died, And Christ, the Crucified, Waits to welcome His own.

TRIBUTES

A statesman of the school of sound common sense, and a philanthropist of the most practical type, a patriot without a superior—his monument is a country preserved.

C. S. Harrington.

Now all men begin to see that the plain people, who at last came to love him and to lean upon his wisdom, and trust him absolutely, were altogether right, and that in deed and purpose he was earnestly devoted to the welfare of the whole country, and of all its inhabitants.

R. B. Hayes.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[19]

BY JOEL BENTON

Some opulent force of genius, soul, and race, Some deep life-current from far centuries Flowed to his mind, and lighted his sad eyes, And gave his name, among great names, high place.

But these are miracles we may not trace— Nor say why from a source and lineage mean He rose to grandeur never dreamt or seen, Or told on the long scroll of history's space.

The tragic fate of one broad hemisphere Fell on stern days to his supreme control, All that the world and liberty held dear Pressed like a nightmare on his patient soul. Martyr beloved, on whom, when life was done, Fame looked, and saw another Washington!

[19] By permission of the author.

ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN[20]

BY RICHARD WATSON GILDER

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he: That brow all wisdom, all benignity; That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold; That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea For storms to beat on; the lone agony Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men As might some prophet of the elder day— Brooding above the tempest and the fray With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. A power was his beyond the touch of art Or armed strength—his pure and mighty heart.

[20] By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

TRIBUTES

To him belongs the credit of having worked his way up from the humblest position an American freeman can occupy to the highest and most powerful, without losing, in the least, the simplicity and sincerity of nature which endeared him alike to the plantation slave and the metropolitan millionaire.

The most malignant party opposition has never been able to call in question the patriotism of his motives, or tarnish with the breath of suspicion the brightness of his spotless fidelity. Ambition did not warp, power corrupt, nor glory dazzle him.

Warren H. Cudworth.

By his steady, enduring confidence in God, and in the complete ultimate success of the cause of God which is the cause of humanity, more than in any other way does he now speak to us, and to the nation he loved and served so well.

P. D. Gurley.

Chieftain, farewell! The nation mourns thee. Mothers shall teach thy name to their lisping children. The youth of our land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen shall study thy record, and learn lessons of wisdom. Mute though thy lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is thy voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the world, and the sons of bondage listen with joy.

Matthew Simpson.

LINCOLN

BY GEORGE HENRY BOKER.

Crown we our heroes with a holier wreath Than man e'er wore upon this side of death; Mix with their laurels deathless asphodels, And chime their paeans from the sacred bells! Nor in your prayers forget the martyred Chief, Fallen for the gospel of your own belief, Who, ere he mounted to the people's throne, Asked for your prayers, and joined in them his own. I knew the man. I see him, as he stands With gifts of mercy in his outstretched hands; A kindly light within his gentle eyes, Sad as the toil in which his heart grew wise; His lips half-parted with the constant smile That kindled truth, but foiled the deepest guile; His head bent forward, and his willing ear Divinely patient right and wrong to hear: Great in his goodness, humble in his state, Firm in his purpose, yet not passionate, He led his people with a tender hand, And won by love a sway beyond command, Summoned by lot to mitigate a time Frenzied with rage, unscrupulous with crime, He bore his mission with so meek a heart That Heaven itself took up his people's part; And when he faltered, helped him ere he fell, Eking his efforts out by miracle. No king this man, by grace of God's intent; No, something better, freeman,—President! A nature, modeled on a higher plan, Lord of himself, an inborn gentleman!

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

JAMES A. GARFIELD

In the great drama of the rebellion there were two acts. The first was the war, with its battles and sieges, its victories and defeats, its sufferings and tears. Just as the curtain was lifting on the second and final act, the restoration of peace and liberty, the evil spirit of the rebellion, in the fury of despair, nerved and directed the hand of an assassin to strike down the chief character in both. It was no one man who killed Abraham Lincoln; it was the embodied spirit of treason and slavery, inspired with fearful and despairing hate, that struck him down in the moment of the nation's supremest joy.

Sir, there are times in the history of men and nations when they stand so near the veil that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from God that they can almost hear the beatings and pulsations of the heart of the Infinite. Through such a time has this nation passed.

When two hundred and fifty thousand brave spirits passed from the field of honor, through that thin veil, to the presence of God, and when at last its parting folds admitted the martyr President to the company of those dead heroes of the Republic, the nation stood so near the veil that the whispers of God were heard by the children of men. Awe-stricken by his voice, the American people knelt in tearful reverence and made a solemn covenant with him and with each other that this nation should be saved from its enemies, that all its glories should be restored, and, on the ruins of slavery and treason, the temples of freedom and justice should be built, and should survive forever.

It remains for us, consecrated by that great event and under a covenant with God, to keep that faith, to go forward in the great work until it shall be completed. Following the lead of that great man, and obeying the high behests of God, let us remember that:

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.

AN HORATIAN ODE[21]

BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

Not as when some great captain falls In battle, where his country calls, Beyond the struggling lines That push his dread designs

To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: Or in the last charge, at the head Of his determined men, Who must be victors then!

Nor as when sink the civic great, The safer pillars of the State, Whose calm, mature, wise words Suppress the need of swords!—

With no such tears as e'er were shed Above the noblest of our dead Do we to-day deplore The man that is no more!

Our sorrow hath a wider scope, Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,— A wonder, blind and dumb, That waits—what is to come!

Not more astonished had we been If madness, that dark night, unseen, Had in our chambers crept, And murdered while we slept!

We woke to find a mourning earth— Our Lares shivered on the hearth,— To roof-tree fallen,—all That could affright, appall!

Such thunderbolts, in other lands, Have smitten the rod from royal hands, But spared, with us, till now, Each laurelled Caesar's brow!

No Caesar he, whom we lament, A man without a precedent, Sent it would seem, to do His work—and perish too!

Not by the weary cares of state, The endless tasks, which will not wait, Which, often done in vain, Must yet be done again:

Not in the dark, wild tide of war, Which rose so high, and rolled so far, Sweeping from sea to sea In awful anarchy:—

Four fateful years of mortal strife, Which slowly drained the nation's life, (Yet, for each drop that ran There sprang an armed man!)

Not then;—but when by measures meet,— By victory, and by defeat,— By courage, patience, skill, The people's fixed "We will!"

Had pierced, had crushed rebellion dead,— Without a hand, without a head:— At last, when all was well, He fell—O, how he fell!

The time,—the place,—the stealing shape,— The coward shot,—the swift escape,— The wife,—the widow's scream,— It is a hideous dream!

A dream?—what means this pageant, then? These multitudes of solemn men, Who speak not when they meet, But throng the silent street?

The flags half-mast, that late so high Flaunted at each new victory? (The stars no brightness shed, But bloody looks the red!)

The black festoons that stretch for miles, And turn the streets to funeral aisles? (No house too poor to show The nation's badge of woe!)

The cannon's sudden, sullen boom,— The bells that toll of death and doom,— The rolling of the drums,— The dreadful car that comes?

Cursed be the hand that fired the shot! The frenzied brain that hatched the plot! Thy country's father slain By thee, thou worse than Cain!

Tyrants have fallen by such as thou, And good hath followed—may it now! (God lets bad instruments Produce the best events.)

But he, the man we mourn to-day, No tyrant was: so mild a sway In one such weight who bore Was never known before!

Cool should be he, of balanced powers. The ruler of a race like ours, Impatient, headstrong, wild,— The man to guide the child!

And this he was, who most unfit (So hard the sense of God to hit!) Did seem to fill his place. With such a homely face,—

Such rustic manners,—speech uncouth,— (That somehow blundered out the truth!) Untried, untrained to bear The more than kingly care!

Ay! And his genius put to scorn The proudest in the purple born, Whose wisdom never grew To what, untaught, he knew—

The people, of whom he was one. No gentleman like Washington,— (Whose bones, methinks, make room, To have him in their tomb!)

A laboring man, with horny hands, Who swung the axe, who tilled his lands, Who shrank from nothing new, But did as poor men do!

One of the people! Born to be Their curious epitome; To share, yet rise above Their shifting hate and love.

Common his mind (it seemed so then), His thought the thoughts of other men: Plain were his words, and poor— But now they will endure!

No hasty fool, of stubborn will, But prudent, cautious, pliant, still; Who, since his work was good, Would do it, as he could.

Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt, And, lacking prescience, went without: Often appeared to halt, And was, of course, at fault:

Heard all opinions, nothing loth, And loving both sides, angered both: Was—not like justice, blind, But watchful, clement, kind.

No hero, this, of Roman mould; Nor like our stately sires of old: Perhaps he was not great— But he preserved that State!

O honest face, which all men knew! O tender heart, but known to few! O wonder of the age, Cut off by tragic rage!

Peace! Let the long procession come, For hark!—the mournful, muffled drum— The trumpet's wail afar,— And see! the awful car!

Peace! Let the sad procession go, While cannon boom, and bells toll slow: And go, thou sacred car, Bearing our woe afar!

Go, darkly borne, from State to State, Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait To honor all they can The dust of that good man!

Go, grandly borne, with such a train As greatest kings might die to gain: The just, the wise, the brave Attend thee to the grave!

And you, the soldiers of our wars, Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars, Salute him once again, Your late commander—slain!

Yes, let your tears, indignant, fall, But leave your muskets on the wall: Your country needs you now Beside the forge, the plough!

(When justice shall unsheathe her brand,— If mercy may not stay her hand, Nor would we have it so— She must direct the blow!)

And you, amid the master-race, Who seem so strangely out of place, Know ye who cometh? He Who hath declared ye free!

Bow while the body passes—nay, Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray! Weep, weep—I would ye might— Your poor, black faces white!

And children, you must come in bands, With garlands in your little hands, Of blue, and white, and red, To strew before the dead!

So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes The fallen to his last repose: Beneath no mighty dome. But in his modest home;

The churchyard where his children rest, The quiet spot that suits him best: There shall his grave be made, And there his bones be laid!

And there his countrymen shall come, With memory proud, with pity dumb, And strangers far and near, For many and many a year!

For many a year, and many an age, While history on her ample page The virtues shall enroll Of that paternal soul!

[21] By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

SOME FOREIGN TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN

From "The Lives and Deeds of Our Self-made Men"[22]

BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

(1889)

On the first of May, 1865, Sir George Grey, in the English House of Commons, moved an address to the Crown, to express the feelings of the House upon the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. In this address he said that he was convinced that Mr. Lincoln "in the hour of victory, and in the triumph of victory, would have shown that wise forbearance, and that generous consideration, which would have added tenfold lustre to the fame that he had already acquired, amidst the varying fortunes of the war."

In seconding the second address, at the same time and place, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli said: "But in the character of the victim, and in the very accessories of his almost latest moments, there is something so homely and so innocent that it takes the subject, as it were, out of the pomp of history, and out of the ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind."

In the House of Lords, Lord John Russell, in moving a similar address, observed: "President Lincoln was a man who, although he had not been distinguished before his election, had from that time displayed a character of so much integrity, sincerity and straightforwardness, and at the same time of so much kindness, that if any one could have been able to alleviate the pain and animosity which have prevailed during the civil war, I believe President Lincoln was the man to have done so." And again, in speaking of the question of amending the Constitution so as to prohibit slavery, he said: "We must all feel that there again the death of President Lincoln deprives the United States of the man who was the leader on this subject."

Mr. John Stuart Mill, the distinguished philosopher, in a letter to an American friend, used far stronger expressions than these guarded phrases of high officials. He termed Mr. Lincoln "the great citizen who had afforded so noble an example of the qualities befitting the first magistrate of a free people, and who, in the most trying circumstances, had gradually won not only the admiration, but almost the personal affection of all who love freedom or appreciate simplicity or uprightness."

Professor Goldwin Smith writing to the London Daily News, began by saying, "It is difficult to measure the calamity which the United States and the world have sustained by the murder of President Lincoln. The assassin has done his best to strike down mercy and moderation, of both of which this good and noble life was the mainstay."

Senhor Rebello da Silva, a member of the Portuguese Chamber of Peers, in moving a resolution on the death of Mr. Lincoln, thus outlined his character: "He is truly great who rises to the loftiest heights from profound obscurity, relying solely on his own merits as did Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln. For these arose to power and greatness, not through any favor or grace, by a chance cradle, or genealogy, but through the prestige of their own deeds, through the nobility which begins and ends with themselves—the sole offspring of their own works.... Lincoln was of this privileged class; he belonged to this aristocracy. In infancy, his energetic soul was nourished by poverty. In youth, he learned through toil the love of liberty, and respect for the rights of man. Even to the age of twenty-two, educated in adversity, his hands made callous by honorable labor, he rested from the fatigues of the field, spelling out, in the pages of the Bible, in the lessons of the gospel, in the fugitive leaves of the daily journal—which the aurora opens, and the night disperses—the first rudiments of instruction, which his solitary meditations ripened. The chrysalis felt one day the ray of the sun, which called it to life, broke its involucrum, and it launched forth fearlessly from the darkness of its humble cloister into the luminous spaces of its destiny. The farmer, day-laborer, shepherd, like Cincinnatus, left the ploughshare in the half-broken furrow, and, legislator of his own State, and afterwards of the Great Republic, saw himself proclaimed in the tribunal the popular chief of several millions of people, the maintainer of the holy principle inaugurated by Wilberforce."

There are some vague and some only partially correct statements in this diffuse passage; but it shows plainly enough how enthusiastically the Portuguese nobleman had admired the antique simplicity and strength of Mr. Lincoln's character.

Dr. Merle d'Aubigne, the historian of the Reformation, writing to Mr. Fogg, U. S. Minister to Switzerland, said: "While not venturing to compare him to the great sacrifice of Golgotha, which gave liberty to the captives, is it not just, in this hour, to recall the word of an apostle (I John iii, 16): 'Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren?' Who can say that the President did not lay down his life by the firmness of his devotion to a great duty? The name of Lincoln will remain one of the greatest that history has to inscribe on its annals.... Among the legacies which Lincoln leaves to us, we shall all regard as the most precious, his spirit of equity, of moderation, and of peace, according to which he will still preside, if I may so speak, over the restoration of your great nation."

The "Democratic Association" of Florence, addressed "to the Free People of the United States," a letter, in which they term Mr. Lincoln "the honest, the magnanimous citizen, the most worthy chief magistrate of your glorious Federation."

The eminent French liberal, M. Edouard Laboulaye, in a speech showing a remarkably just understanding and extremely broad views with respect to the affairs and the men of the United States, said: "Mr. Lincoln was one of those heroes who are ignorant of themselves; his thoughts will reign after him. The name of Washington has already been pronounced, and I think with reason. Doubtless Mr. Lincoln resembled Franklin more than Washington. By his origin, his arch good nature, his ironical good sense, and his love of anecdotes and jesting, he was of the same blood as the printer of Philadelphia. But it is nevertheless true that in less than a century, America has passed through two crises in which its liberty might have been lost, if it had not had honest men at its head; and that each time it has had the happiness to meet the man best fitted to serve it. If Washington founded the Union, Lincoln has saved it. History will draw together and unite those two names. A single word explains Mr. Lincoln's whole life: it was Duty. Never did he put himself forward; never did he think of himself; never did he seek one of those ingenious combinations which puts the head of a state in bold relief, and enhances his importance at the expense of the country; his only ambition, his only thought was faithfully to fulfil the mission which his fellow-citizens had entrusted to him.... His inaugural address, March 4, 1865, shows us what progress had been made in his soul. This piece of familiar eloquence is a master-piece; it is the testament of a patriot. I do not believe that any eulogy of the President would equal this page on which he had depicted himself in all his greatness and all his simplicity.... History is too often only a school of immorality. It shows us the victory of force or stratagem much more than the success of justice, moderation, and probity. It is too often only the apotheosis of triumphant selfishness. There are noble and great exceptions; happy those who can increase the number, and thus bequeath a noble and beneficent example to posterity! Mr. Lincoln is among these. He would willingly have repeated, after Franklin, that 'falsehood and artifice are the practice of fools who have not wit enough to be honest.' All his private life, and all his political life, were inspired and directed by this profound faith in the omnipotence of virtue. It is through this, again, that he deserves to be compared with Washington; it is through this that he will remain in history with the most glorious name that can be merited by the head of a free people—a name given him by his cotemporaries, and which will be preserved to him by posterity—that of Honest Abraham Lincoln."

A letter from the well-known French historian, Henri Martin, to the Paris Siecle, contained the following passages: "Lincoln will remain the austere and sacred personification of a great epoch, the most faithful expression of democracy. This simple and upright man, prudent and strong, elevated step by step from the artisan's bench to the command of a great nation, and always without parade and without effort, at the height of his position; executing without precipitation, without flourish, and with invincible good sense, the most colossal acts; giving to the world this decisive example of the civil power in a republic; directing a gigantic war, without free institutions being for an instant compromised or threatened by military usurpation; dying, finally, at the moment when, after conquering, he was intent on pacification, ... this man will stand out, in the traditions of his country and the world, as an incarnation of the people, and of modern democracy itself. The great work of emancipation had to be sealed, therefore, with the blood of the just, even as it was inaugurated with the blood of the just. The tragic history of the abolition of slavery, which opened with the gibbet of John Brown, will close with the assassination of Lincoln.

"And now let him rest by the side of Washington, as the second founder of the great Republic. European democracy is present in spirit at his funeral, as it voted in its heart for his re-election, and applauded the victory in the midst of which he passed away. It will wish with one accord to associate itself with the monument that America will raise to him upon the capitol of prostrate slavery."

The London Globe, in commenting on Mr. Lincoln's assassination, said that he "had come nobly through a great ordeal. He had extorted the admiration even of his opponents, at least on this side of the water. They had come to admire, reluctantly, his firmness, honesty, fairness and sagacity. He tried to do, and had done, what he considered his duty, with magnanimity."

The London Express said, "He had tried to show the world how great, how moderate, and how true he could be, in the moment of his great triumph."

The Liverpool Post said, "If ever there was a man who in trying times avoided offenses, it was Mr. Lincoln. If there ever was a leader in a civil contest who shunned acrimony and eschewed passion, it was he. In a time of much cant and affectation he was simple, unaffected, true, transparent. In a season of many mistakes he was never known to be wrong.... By a happy tact, not often so felicitously blended with pure evidence of soul, Abraham Lincoln knew when to speak, and never spoke too early or too late.... The memory of his statesmanship, translucent in the highest degree, and above the average, and openly faithful, more than almost any of this age has witnessed, to fact and right, will live in the hearts and minds of the whole Anglo-Saxon race, as one of the noblest examples of that race's highest qualities. Add to all this that Abraham Lincoln was the humblest and pleasantest of men, that he had raised himself from nothing, and that to the last no grain of conceit or ostentation was found in him, and there stands before the world a man whose like we shall not soon look upon again."

In the remarks of M. Rouher, the French Minister, in the Legislative Assembly, on submitting to that Assembly the official despatch of the French Foreign Minister of the Charge at Washington, M. Rouher remarked, of Mr. Lincoln's personal character, that he had exhibited "that calm firmness and indomitable energy which belong to strong minds, and are the necessary conditions of the accomplishment of great duties. In the hour of victory he exhibited generosity, moderation and conciliation."

And in the despatch, which was signed by Mr. Drouyn de L'Huys, were the following expressions: "Abraham Lincoln exhibited, in the exercise of the power placed in his hands, the most substantial qualities. In him, firmness of character was allied to elevation of principle.... In reviewing these last testimonies to his exalted wisdom, as well as the examples of good sense, of courage, and of patriotism, which he has given, history will not hesitate to place him in the rank of citizens who have the most honored their country."

In the Prussian Lower House, Herr Loewes, in speaking of the news of the assassination, said that Mr. Lincoln "performed his duties without pomp or ceremony, and relied on that dignity of his inner self alone, which is far above rank, orders and titles. He was a faithful servant, not less of his own commonwealth than of civilization, freedom and humanity."

[22] By permission of Dana Estes Company.

FROM 'THE GETTYSBURG ODE'

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake Here, from the shadows of impending death, Those words of solemn breath, What voice may fitly break The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him? We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim, And as a Nation's litany, repeat The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete, Noble as then, but now more sadly sweet: "Let us, the Living, rather dedicate Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they Thus far advanced so nobly on its way, And saved the perilled State! Let us, upon this field where they, the brave, Their last full measure of devotion gave, Highly resolve they have not died in vain!— That, under God, the Nation's later birth Of Freedom, and the people's gain Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane And perish from the circle of the earth!" From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire To light her faded fire, And into wandering music turn Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern? His voice all elegies anticipated; For, whatsoe'er the strain, We hear that one refrain: "We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!"

[Transcriber's Note: Some of the poem omitted in original.]

TRIBUTES

Thank God for Abraham Lincoln! However lightly the words may sometimes pass your lips, let us speak them now and always of this man sincerely, solemnly, reverently, as so often dying soldiers and bereaved women and little children spoke them. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln—for the Lincoln who died and whose ashes rest at Springfield—for the Lincoln who lives in the hearts of the American people—in their widened sympathies and uplifted ideals. Thank God for the work he did, is doing, and is to do. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln.

James Willis Gleed.

Let us not then try to compare and to measure him with others, and let us not quarrel as to whether he was greater or less than Washington, as to whether either of them set to perform the other's task would have succeeded in it, or, perchance would have failed. Not only is the competition itself an ungracious one, but to make Lincoln a competitor is foolish and useless. He was the most individual man who ever lived; let us be content with this fact. Let us take him simply as Abraham Lincoln, singular and solitary, as we all see that he was; let us be thankful if we can make a niche big enough for him among the world's heroes, without worrying ourselves about the proportion which it may bear to other niches; and there let him remain forever, lonely, as in his strange lifetime, impressive, mysterious, unmeasured, and unsolved.

John T. Morse, Jr.

Those who are raised high enough to be able to look over the stone walls, those who are intelligent enough to take a broader view of things than that which is bounded by the lines of any one State or section, understand that the unity of the nation is of the first importance, and are prepared to make those sacrifices and concessions, within the bounds of loyalty, which are necessary for its maintenance, and to cherish that temper of fraternal affection which alone can fill the form of national existence with the warm blood of life. The first man after the Civil War, to recognize this great principle and to act upon it was the head of the nation,—that large and generous soul whose worth was not fully felt until he was taken from his people by the stroke of the assassin, in the very hour when his presence was most needed for the completion of the work of reunion.