Manual of Patriotism
THE FLAG BLESSES THE BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
(Feb. 12, 1809.)
QUOTATIONS... ... . . In Prose and Poetry.
SELECTIONS. Song, The Man for Me.
SELECTIONS. Song, Laus Dea.
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It is indeed necessary that children, in so far as they are capable, should know the theory of our government, and the great events that, like milestones, have marked its course. But, after all, theories and abstract facts never can take such hold upon the minds of children— upon memory and imagination—nor stir them to such a sense of their country's worth—as can the history, the life, of a great man. It will be difficult to make the little folks understand the causes, direct or indirect, which led to the Civil War of '61. Indeed, who of us who are older and trained to teach are competent to tell all the influences that ended in that terrible struggle? But what child can fail to know and feel the real greatness of the personality and life of Abraham Lincoln? He was what we may call a bo,y's man-having that sense of humor, that spirit of fun which appeals so irresistibly to boys,yes, even to “boys of larger growth.” Let much be made, therefore, in any celebration of Lincoln's birthday, of those incidents, so strange, so fascinating, which marked his early boyhood in his cabin home—of the trials which beset his youth-time, his wonderful skill in political debate—his perilous journey to the city of Washington, there to be inaugurated President of the United States—his care for the soldiers in the field and the poor black men in slavery in the South,—and, at length, his martyr death. (Just here might come in a study of “The Negro" in our history.) Fear not to blend with all, the stories which made him as well known as his statesmanship—indeed, which were, many of them, illustrations of the very spirit and philosophy of statesmanship.
A man born for his time.—Morrison R. Waite.
Abraham Lincoln was the genius of common sense.—Charles Dudley Warner.
His constant thought was his country and how to serve it.—Charles Sumner.
A name that shall live through all coming time, Unbounded by country, by language, or clime.— C. P. Corliss.
Washington was the father, and Lincoln the savior of his country.—Henry L. Dawes.
The typical American, pure and simple.—Asa Gray.
The plain, honest, prudent man,—safe in council, wise m action, pure in purpose.—John C. New.
Patriot, who made the pageantries of kings
Like shadows seem, and unsubstantial things.—R. W. Dale.
Lincoln was the purest, the most generous, the most magnanimous of men.
Gen. W. T. Sherman.
His career closed at a moment when its dramatic unity was complete.—Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts.
Abraham Lincoln was worthy to be trusted and to be loved by all his countrymen.—Gen. Howard.
He lives in endless fame, All honor to his patriot name.
— H. C. Ballard.
He stands before us and will so stand in history as the Moses of this Israel of ours.—Charles Lowe.
A man of great ability, pure patriotism, unselfish nature, full of forgiveness for his enemies.—Ulysses Simpson Grant.
Kind, unpretending, patient, laborious, brave, wise, great and good, such was Abraham Lincoln.—Theodore Frelinghuysen.
Long centuries hence thy name shall shine as one
No blame can cloud—our second Washington.
— Henry Peterson.
Freedom's great high-priest, who set apart his life, while others sought but gold or bread.—T. C. Pease.
His career teaches young men that every position of emmence 1s open before the diligent and worthy.—Bishop Matthew Simpson.
The purity of his patriotism inspired him with the wisdom of a statesman and ) the courage of a martyr.—Stanley Matthews.
* * * so true and tender,
The patriot's stay, the people's trust, The shield of the offender.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Such a life and character will be treasured forever as the sacred possession of the American people and of mankind.—James A. Garfield.
A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, of boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.—Frederick Douglass.
The purest of men, the wisest of statesmen, the most sincere and devoted patriot, the loveliest character of American statesmen.—Hon. Charles Foster.
Under the providence of God, he was, next to Washington, the greatest instrument for the preservation of the Union and the integrity of our country.—Peter Cooper.
Of all the men I eyer met he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness combined with goodness than any other.—Gen. W. T. Sherman.
Lincoln, the honest man, who, without personal ambition, always supported by a strong perception of his duties, deserved to be called emphatically a great citizen.—Louis Phillipe, Due D'Orleans.
The past century has not, the century to come will not have, a figure so grand as that of Abraham Lincoln.—Emilio Castelar (Spain).
The life of Abraham Lincoln is written in imperishable characters in the history of the great American Republic.—John Bright (England):
By his fidelity to the True, the Right, the Good, he gained not only favor and applause, but what is better than all, love.—W. D. Howells.
He was a true believer in the divinity of the rights of man as man, the civil as well as the religious hope of the race—Sidney Dyer.
In Lincoln there was alway& some quality that fastened him to the people and taught them to keep time to the music of his heart.—David Swing.
“You will find the whole of my early life,” &aid Lincoln to a friend, “in a single line of Gray's Elegy"
"The short and simple annals of the poor."·
-Anon.
He was one whom responsibility educated, and he showed himself more and more nearly equal to duty as year after year laid on him ever fresh burdens. Godgiven and God-led and sustained we must ever believe him.—Wendell Phillips.
He was warm-hearted; he was generous; he was magnanimous; he was truly, as he afterward said on a memorable occasion, “with malice toward with charity for all.”—Alexander H. Stephens.
It is the great boon of such characters as Mr. Lincoln's that they reunite what God has joined together and man has put asunder. In him was vindicated the g-reatness of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
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SELECTIONS.
Let me endeavor to give those in this audience who never saw Mr. Lincoln some idea of his personal appearance. He was a very tall man—6 feet 4 inches. His complexion was dark, his eyes and hair black; and though he was of lean, spare habit, I should suppose he must have weighed about 180 pounds. He was a man of fine fibre, and thus a brain of superior power was contained in a small, but rather elongated, skull. * * * His movements were rather angular, but never awkward; and he was never burdened with that frequent curse of unfortunate genius, the dreadful oppression of petty self-consciousness. It was a most remarkable character, that of Abraham Lincoln. He had the most comprehensive, the most judicial mind; he was the least faulty in his conclusions of any man that I have ever known.Charles A. Dana, Lecture on “Lincoln and His Cabinet,” at New Haven, March IO, 1896.
Mr. Lincoln was not what you would call an educated man. The college that he had attended was that which a man attends who gets up at daylight to hoe the corn, and sits up at night to read the best book he can find, by the side of a burning pine knot. What education he had, he picked up in that way. He had read a great many books; and all the books that he had read, he knew. He had a tenacious memory, just as he had the ability to see the essential thing. He never took an unimportant point and went off upon that; but he always laid hold of the real thing, of the real question, and attended to that without attending to the others any more than was indispensably necessary.
— Charles A. Dana, Lecture, “Lincoln and His Cabinet.”
There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity (Abraham Lincoln) 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.—Ralph Waldo Emerson.
We can still count as one of ourselves, with his honor and his sadness, with his greatness and his everyday homeliness, with his wit and his logic, with his gentle chivalry that made him equal to the best born knight, and his awkward and ungainly way that made him one of the plain people, our martyred President, our leader of the plain people, Abraham Lincoln. * * * Beyond the rulers of every age, Lincoln was the leader of the people,—of what he called the plain people. * * * He knew, as no other man did, as cabinets and congresses did not know, the sentiments and feelings of the plain people of the Northern States. He knew that they loved, beyond everything else, the Union, and he would move only so fast as, over the electric currents which connected his heart and hrain with every fireside in the land, came the tidings to him that they were ready for another advance along the lines of revolutionary action which would preserve the Union.—Chauncey M. Depew, Speech at Lincoln Dinner.
I have often contemplated and described (Lincoln's) life. Born in a cabin of Kentucky, of parents who could hardly read; born a new Moses in the solitude of the desert, where are forged all great and obstinate thoughts, monotonous, like the desert, and, like the desert, sublime; growing up among those primeval forests, which, with their fragrance, send a cloud of incense, and, with their murmurs, a cloud of prayers, to heaven; a boatman at eight years, in the impetuous current of the Ohio, and at seventeen in the vast and tranquil waters of the Mississippi; later, a woodman, with axe and arm felling the immemorial trees, to open a way to unexplored regions for his tribe of wandering workers; reading no other book than the Bible, the book of great sorrows and great hopes, dictated often by prophets to the sound of fetters they dragged through Nineveh and Babylon; a child of nature, in a word, by one of those miracles only comprehensible among free peoples, he fought for the country, and was raised by his fellow-citizens to the Congress at Washington, and by the nation to the presidency of the Republic; and, after emancipating three million slaves, that nothing might be wanting, he dies in the very moment of victory,—like Christ, like Socrates, like all redeemers, at the foot of his work. His work! Sublime achievement! over which humanity shall eternally shed its tears, and God His benedictions.—Emilio Castelar ( Spanish orator).
From the union of the colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the
strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic—Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his honest form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government—charging it with such a tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering, that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us build with reverent hands to the type of this simple, but sublime life, in which all types are honored.—Henry W. Grady, of Georgia, from the speech at the New England Club, in New York city, December 21, 1886.
If ever the face of a man writing solemn words glowed with holy joy, it must have been the face of Abraham Lincoln as he bent over the Emancipation Proclamation. Here was an act in which his whole soul could rejoice, an act that crowned his life. All the past, the free boyhood in the woods, the free youth upon the farm, the free manhood in the honorable citizen's employment—all his freedom gathered and completed in this. And is it any wonder that among the swarthy multitudes, ragged, and tired, and hungry, and ignorant, but free forever from anything but the memorial scars of the fetters and the whips,—is it any wonder there grew up in camps and hovels a superstition, which saw in Lincoln the image of one who was more than man, and whom with one voice they loved to call “Father Abraham? “
Phillips Brooks.
The nation's debt to these men (Washington and Lincoln) is not confined to what it owes them for its material well-being, incalculable though this debt is. Beyond the fact that we are an independent and united people, with half a continent as our heritage, lies the fact that every American is richer by the noble deeds and noble words of Washington and of Lincoln. Each of us who reads the Gettysburg speech or the second inaugural address of the greatest American of the nineteenth century, or who studies the long campaigns and lofty statesmanship of that other American who was even greater, cannot but feel within him that lift toward things higher and nobler which can never be bestowed by the enjoyment of mere material prosperity.From “American Ideals,” Theodore Roosevelt.
On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who, according to one party, was a vulgar joker, and whom some of his own supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship, was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity had laid on the hearts and understandings of his countrymen. Nor was this all, for it appeared that he had drawn f the great majority, not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind f also, to his side. So strong and persuasive is honest manliness, without a single quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it! A civilian during times of the most captivating military achievements, awkward, with no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he left behind him a fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher than that of outward person, and of gentlemanliness deeper than mere breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken away from their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which strangers exchanged when they met on that day. Their common manhood had lost a kinsman.—James Russell Lowell.
To Horace Greeley, the greatest of American editors, his party associate and a stinging thorn in his flesh, Lincoln wrote: “If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.'' “If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.”
"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.” “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it—if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it— and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” “What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
From the hour of that touching farewell speech to his neighbors in the Springfield depot, down to the fatal night in Ford's Theatre, his life was consecrated to the restoration of a dissevered country.
Walking in the busy streets of the city of Atlanta, not long since, I came upon a fine statue of Henry W. Grady. Beneath the bronze figure of the young orator, whose early death has been so widely regretted, was the legend: “He died while literally loving a nation into peace.”
Even more suggestive than his cheering words was the act of the Southern masses, which placed this monument in their busiest thoroughfare, a witness of their satisfaction at the sentiments which
had distinguished him. No traveler in the South can doubt that there is a “New South.” The industries are growing and the schools are multiplying. There is a healthier sentiment upon sociological and economic questions, because the slave system is no longer there to throttle it. * * * The South has a new feeling towards the North. As we understand each other better, we love each other more. The roads are being broken out. Beaten paths are being made. Commercial intercourse has commenced and fraternal regard is grmvmg. The Ohio river no longer separates two opposing peoples, who merely sustain diplomatic relations with each other; there is a chemical affinity in progress; we are amalgamating. The bitterness of a century of controversy is well-nigh gone. The wounds torn by the rough hoof of war have almost healed. The soldiers of the two armies, and the young men and women of the new generation, who “look forward and not back,” have attained this magnificent result. The Union is stronger, safer, because it stood the shock of battle. The people are more homogeneous because more free. A hundred millions of united, industrious, frugal, educated Christian people, under a free flag, stand in a place so high among the nations that they can command anything that is right by the force and dignity of their position, and without resort to war. And the work of Abraham Lincoln is accomplished.President Andrew S. Draper, University of Illinois, Lincoln's Birthday, 1896.
While we say that Mr. Lincoln was an uneducated man, uneducated in the sense that we recognize in any college town, he yet had a singularly perfect education in regard to everything that concern the practical affairs of life. His judgment was excellent, and his information was always accurate. He knew what the thing was. He was a man of genius, and, contrasted with men of education, genius will always carry the day. I remember very well going into Mr. Stanton's room in the War Department on the clay of the Gettysburg celebration, and he said: “Have you seen these Gettysburg speeches?" “No,” said I, “I didn't know you had them.” He said: “Yes; and the people will be delighted with them. Edward Everett has made a speech that will make three columns in the newspapers, and Mr. Lincoln
THE FLAG BLESSES THE BIRTHDAY OF LINCOLN. 279
has made a speech of perhaps forty or fifty lines. Everett's is the speech of a scholar, polished to the last possibility. It is eloquent aricl it is learned; but Lincoln's speech will be read by a thousand men where one reads Everett's, and will be remembered as long as anybody's speeches are remembered who speaks in the English language.” That was the truth. If you will take those two speeches now,
you will get an idea how superior genius is to education; how superior that intellectual faculty is which sees the vitality of a question and knows how to state it; how superior that intellectual faculty is which regards everything with the fire of earnestness in the soul, with the relentless purpose of a heart devoted to objects beyond literature. Charles A. Dana, Lecture on “Lincoln and His Cabinet.”
Another interesting fact about Abraham Lincoln was that he developed into a great military man, that is to say, a man of supreme military judgment. I do not risk anything in saying that if you will study the records of the war and study the writings relating to it, you will agree with me that the greatest general we had, greater than Grant or Thomas, was Abraham Lincoln. It was not so at the beginning; but after three or four years of constant practice in the science and art of war, he arrived at this extraordinary knowledge of it, so that Von Moltke was not a better general or an abler planner or expounder of a campaign than President Lincoln was. He was, to sum it up, a born leader of men. He knew human nature; he knew what chord to strike, and he was never afraid to strike it when he believed that the time had arrived.—Charles A. Dana, Lecture on “Lincoln and His Cabinet.”
Another remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's was that he seemed to have no illusions. He had no freakish notions that things were so or might be so, when they were not so. All his thinking and all his reasoning, all his mind, in short, was based continually on actual facts, and upon facts of which, as I said, he saw the essence. I never heard him say anything that was not so. I never heard him foretell things. He told what they were. But I never heard him intimate that such and such consequences were likely to happen, without the
280 MANUAL OF PATRIOTISM.
consequences following. I should say, perhaps, that his greatest quality was wisdom. And that is something superior to talent, superior to education. I do not think it can be acquired. He had it. He was wise; he was not mistaken; he saw things as they were. All the advice that he gave was wise; it was judicious; and it was always timely. This wisdom, it is scarcely necessary to add, had its animating philosophy in his own famous words: “With charity toward all; with malice toward none."—Charles A. Dana, Lecture on “Lincoln and His Cabinet.”
Not long since, as I sat in a crowded courtroom, there came to the witness stand a venerable, white-haired negro. Born a slave, he had stood upon the auction block and been sold to the highest biader. Now, he came into a court of Justice to settle, by the testimony of his black lips, a controversy between white men. When asked his age, he drew himself proudly up, and said: “For fifty years I was a chattel. On the first day of January, 1863, Uncle Abe Lincoln made me a man.” The act which set that old man free was the crowning glory of Lincoln's life, for by it he not only saved his country, but emancipated a race. We of the Anglo-Saxon tongue are justly proud of the Magna Charta. We are justly proud of the Declaration of Independence, of the right of government by the people. True it is that the genesis of American Liberty was in the Declaration of Independence, but the gospel of its new testament was written by Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation.—John M. Thurston, New York, Lincoln's Birthday, 1895.
Mr. Lincoln had many amiable and lovable personal qualities, but the great thing was the fact that he succeeded; that. the Civil War was ended under his rule. He succeeded, with the forces of the antislavery states, in putting down a rebellion in which twelve millions of people were concerned, determined people, educated people, fighting for their ideas and their property, fighting to the last, fighting to the death. I don't think there is anything else in history to compare with that achievement. How did he do it?
In the first place, he never was in haste. As I said, he never took a step too soon, and also he never took a step, too late. When the whole northern country seemed to be clamoring for him to issue a proclamation abolishing slavery, he didn't do it. Deputation after deputation went to Washington. I remember once, a hundred gentlemen came, dressed in black coats, mostly clergymen, from Massachusetts. They appealed to him to proclaim the abolition of slavery. But he didn't do it. He allowed Mr. Cameron and General Butler to execute their great idea of treating slaves as contraband of war, and of protecting those who had got into our lines against being recaptured by their Southern owners. But he would not prematurely make the proclamation that was so much desired. Finally the time came; and of that he was the judge. Nobody else decided it; nobody commanded it; the proclamation was issued as he thought best; and it was efficacious. The people of the North, who during the long contest over slavery had always stood strenuously by the compromises of the Constitution, might themselves have become half rebels if this proclamation had been issued too soon. They at last were tired of waiting, tired of endeavoring to preserve even a show of regard for what were called the compromises of the Constitution, when they believed that the Constitution itself was in danger. Thus public opinion was ripe when the proclamation came, and that was the beginning of the end. This unerring judgment, this patience which waited and which knew when the right time ad arrived—those were intellectual qualities, which I do not find exercised upon any such scale by any other man in history, and with such unerring precision. This proves Abraham Lincoln to have been intellectually one of the greatest of rulers.—Charles
A. Dana, Lecture on “Lincoln and His Cabinet.”
Abraham Lincoln was the grandest figure of the nineteenth century. With a giant intellect, a boundless love of his kind, and an irrevocable determination that right should triumph, he stood before the people of the world, and so conducted himself that all criticism was disarmed, and all oppressors put to shame. Sensitive as a child, firm as a rock, he lifted up the lowly, restrained the arrogant, and, with a foresight that was almost inspiration, made possible and certain the union of the states. He was neither appalled by disaster nor elated by the grandest successes. Devoid of self-esteem, unconscious of his mighty ability, he aimed at and attained results because he believed eternal justice demanded them. With the growth of centuries, tlie name of Abraham Lincoln will be more highly honored, and the value of his work more fully appreciated.—George W. Ray.
Abraham Lincoln cannot be compared with any man. He stands alone. More and more, as time goes on, does his work impress itself upon the world. His genius was fitted exactly to the circumstances under which he lived and labored. He is the conspicuous example of the truth that an all-wise Providence provides the man for the emergency. And then what an inspiration he has become to every ambitious, struggling young American! By his sterling integrity to thought and conviction, by untiring industry, and by his large common sense, he rose from obscurity to the first place in the nation, and has become the priceless heritage of every American.—James S. Sherman.
The chief characteristics of Lincoln were his integrity and common sense. Many of his contemporaries excelled him in eloquence, in learning, and in culture, but in the quality that is stronger and higher than either, the quality that inspires confidence and courage in times of crisis, he surpassed them all. He was fortunate in his career while living, and fortunate in his sad and tragic death. Hardly in the history of the human race has a ruler died whose loss seemed to the people so near a personal grief, and the power of his name increases steadily. He was neither orator, soldier nor scholar, but a leader, trusted and loved as few had ever been. In the historic struggle in which his is the great name, his countrymen felt that other leaders might be right, but he was sure to be right.—Frank S. Black.
The glory of Abraham Lincoln is a masterful mind forever loyal to the majesty and power of a great thought. That great thought was the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States, loyalty to which is the first and last duty of an American citizen, higher than all personal considerations, and superior to all sectional interests. Like a heavenly enchantment it allured him to duty, and like a perennial
inspiration it was his courage in danger, faith in the certainty of the future.
* * * * * *
fortitude in adversity, and
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From earliest manhood, he had been the patient student of this great instrument of our political economy (the Constitution), and to maintain the supreme authority thereof over every citizen and over every inch of our national domain was the larger purpose of all his state papers, of every act of his administration, and of the war measures he approved. Himself the gentlest of souls and the sincerest of men, he loved peace but he loved the Union more, and called upon his countrymen to die with him for the right. He hated slavery, but he hated rebellion more, and he would suppress rebellion with slavery or without slavery; and, when the time came to suppress the one by the destruction of the other, the sword of Grant and the pen of Lincoln were the chosen instruments of Providence to scatter the rebels and emancipate the slaves.—John P. Newman.
It is not difficult to place a correct estimate upon. the character of Lincoln. He was the greatest man of his time, especially approved of God for the work He gave him to do. History abundantly approves his superiority as a leader, and establishes his constant reliance upon a higher power for guidance and support. The tendency of this age is to exaggeration, but of Lincoln, certainly none have spoken more highly than those who knew him best.
A distinguished orator of to-day has said: “Lincoln surpassed all orators in eloquence; all diplomatists in wisdom; all statesmen in foresight; and the most ambitious in fame.”
This is in accord with the estimate of Stanton, who pronounced him “the most perfect ruler of men the world had ever seen.”
Seward, too, declared Lincoln “a man of destiny, with character made and moulded by Divine power to save a nation from perdition.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized him as “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.”
Bancroft wisely observed: “Lincoln thought always of mankind as well as of his own country, and served human nature itself; he finished a work which all time cannot overthrow.”
Sumner said that in Lincoln" the West spoke to the East, pleading for human rights as declared by our fathers.”
Horace Greeley, in speaking of the events which led up to and embraced the Rebellion, declared: “Other men were helpful and nobly did their part; yet, looking back through the lifting mists of those seven eventful, tragic, trying, glorious years, I clearly discern the one providential leader, the indispensable hero of the great drama, Abraham Lincoln.”
James Russell Lowell was quick to perceive and proclaim Lincoln's greatness. In December, 1863, in a review of the “President's Policy,” in the Atlantic Monthly, he said: “Perhaps none of our presidents since Washington has stood so firm in the confidence of the people as Lincoln, after three years' stormy administration. * * * A pro found common sense is the best genius for statesmanship. Hitherto the wisdom of the President's measures have been justified by the fact that they have always resulted in more firmly uniting public opinion.”
— William McKinley, at Albany, N. Y., Lincoln's Birthday, 1895.
What were the traits of character that made him leader and master, without a rival in the greatest crisis in our history? What gave him such mighty power? Lincoln had sublime faith in the people. He walked with and among them. He recognized the importance and power of an enlightened public sentiment and was guided by it. Even amid the vicissitudes of war, he concealed little from public inspection.
In all that he did, he invited rather than evaded public examination and criticism. He submitted his plans and purposes, as far as practicable, to public consideration with perfect frankness and sincerity. There was such homely simplicity in his character, that it could not be hedged in by the pomp of place, nor the ceremonials of high official station. He was so accessible to the public that he seemed to take the whole people into his confidence. Here, perhaps, was one secret of his power. Bancroft, the historian, alluding to this characteristic, which was never so conspicuously manifested as during the darkest hours of the war, beautifully illustrated it in these memorable words: “As a child in a dark night, on a rugged way, catches hold of the hand of its father for guidance and support, Lincoln clung fast to the hand of the people, and moved calmly through the gloom."—William McKinley, at Albany, N. Y., Lincoln's Birthday, 1895.
Lincoln was an orator. We hear in these days that the power of the orator has passed; that the spoken word will soon be a thing of the past. The people can read all that the orator can tell them, and that soon the orator will be among the things that are the history of a cot.mtry. Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States, not because he served in the legislature—he was a nobody there; not because he served in Congress—for he was unknown there; not because he was a lawyer, for he had only a state reputation. He became President because of the stump and the platform. He never left them without leaving the impression that a great soul, a great mind, had made itself known, and that a man who ought to be a leader of the people had spoken to them—a man who it was intended should carry the torch.—Chauncey M. Depew, Albany, N. Y., Lincoln's Birthday, 1893.
During the whole of the struggle, he was a tower of strength to the Union. Whether in defeat or victory, he kept right on, dismayed at nothing, and never to be diverted from the pathway of duty. Always cool and determined, all learned to gain renewed courage, calmness, and wisdom from him, and to lean upon his strong arm for support. The proud designation of “Father of his Country” was not more appropriately bestowed upon Washington than the affectionate title, “Father Abraham,” was given to Lincoln by the soldiers and loyal people of the North.
The crowning glory of Lincoln's administration, and the greatest executive act in American history, was his immortal Proclamation of Emancipation. Perhaps more clearly than any one else, Lincoln had realized, year before he was called to the Presidency, that the country could not continue half slave and half free. He declared it before Seward declared the “Irrepressible conflict.” The contest between freedom and slavery was inevitable; it was written in the stars. The nation must either be all slave or all free. Lincoln, with almost supernatural prescience, foresaw it. His prophetic vision is manifested through all his utterances, notably in the great debate between himself and Douglass. To him was given the duty and responsibility of making that great classic of liberty, the Declaration of Independence, no longer an empty promise, but a glorious fulfillment.—William McKinley, at Albany, N. Y., Lincoln's Birthday, 1895.
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 work is better understood.—U. S. Grant.
Lincoln was a man of moderation. He was neither an autocrat nor a tyrant. If he moved slowly sometimes, it was because it was better to move slowly, and he was only waiting for his reserves to come up. Possessing almost unlimited power, he yet carried himself like one of the humblest of men. He weighed every subject. He considered and reflected upon every phase of public duty. He got the average judgment of the plain people. He had a high sense of justice, a clear understanding of the rights of others, and never heedlessly inflicted an injury upon any man. He always taught and enforced the doctrine of mercy and charity on every occasion. Even in the excess of rejoicing, he said to a party who came to serenade him a few nights after the Presidential election in November, 1864: “Now that the election is over, may not all having a common interest re-unite in common effort to save our country? So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God, for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result.”— William McKinley, at Albany, N. Y., Lincoln's Birthday, 1895.
The South was shocked inexpressibly by the foul assassination of Mr. Lincoln. The world has never held the South responsible for the act of the madman. Yet, horrified as they were, and stirred as were their generous sympathies at the cruel fate of their greatest antagonist, the Southern people knew not how much of hope for them, how much of love, how much of helpfulness in their hour of sorest need, lay buried in the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. As he had been the mainstay of the Union, he could have gone further than any other man in the North would have dared to do in the way of kindness and forgiveness to his foes. As he was truly great, he knew the constraining power of such magnanimity. As he was truly good, its exercise would have Deen to him the sweetest guerdon of his great endeavors and triumph. Yet fate decreed otherwise. The curse of his assassination was added to the calamity of defeat in the full cup of bitterness which was commended to the lips of the South during the long and humiliating years of reconstruction. Year by year she is learning to know Lincoln as he was, and not as she has pictured him. She is learning to realize that his devotion to the Union and his advocacy of emancipation were as natural to him as the contrary views entertained by her own people. S-he is learning, above all, to realize that, strong and true to his convictions as he was, he was struck down at the very hour when he would have proved himself her friend, and that, whether viewed as a friend or as a foe, candor must class him among the wisest, truest, simplest and greatest men that America ever produced.—Governor George D. Wise, of Virginia.
Lincoln was an immense personality—firm but not obstinate. Obstinacy is egotism—firmness, heroism. He influenced others without effort—unconsciously; and they submitted to him as men submit to nature—unconsciously. He was severe with himself, and for that reason lenient with others.
He appeared to apologize for being kinder than his fellows.
He did merciful things as stealthily as others committed crimes.
Almost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with that charming confusion, that awkwardness, that is the perfect grace of modesty.
He wore no official robes either on his body or his soul. He never pretended to be more or less, or other, or different, from what he really was.
He was neither tyrant nor slave. He neither knelt nor scorned.
With him men were neither great nor small—they were right or wrong.
Through manners, clothes, titles, rags and race he saw the real—that which is. Beyond accident, policy, compromise and war he saw the end.
He was patient as Destiny, whose undecipherable hieroglyphs were so deeply graven on his sad and tragic face.—Robert G. Inger oll, at Dinner on Lincoln's Birthday.
It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except on the side of mercy.
Wealth could not purchase, power could not awe, this divine, this loving man.
He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong. Hating slavery, pitying the master—seeking to conquer, not.persons, but prejudices—he was the embodiment of self-denial, the courage, the hope, and the nobility of a Nation.
He spoke not to inflame, not to upbraid, but to convince. He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction.
He loved to see the pearls of joy on the cheeks of a wife whose husband he had rescued from death.
Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest Civil War. He is
the gentlest memory of our world.—Robert G. Ingersoll, at Dinner on Lincoln's Birthday.
THE MAN FOR ME.
Air, “The Rose that All are Praising.”
he whose noble heart beats warm For all men's life he whose faithful words of might Ring through the land
mightiest of the noble band Who prays and toils
and liberty Who from shore to sea, For the world to free, With
THE FLAG BLESSES THE BIRTHDAY OF LINCOLN.
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
* * * * * * *
O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered 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 ribboned 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 anchored 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.
— Walt Whitman.
This man whose homely face you look upon, Was one of Nature's masterful, great men;
Born with strong arms that unfought victories won, Direct of speech and cunning with the pen,
Chosen for large designs, he had the art
Of winning with his humor, and he went Straight to his mark, which was the human heart;
Wise, too, for what he could not break, he bent.
Upon his back, a more than Atlas' load,
The burden of the Commonwealth was laid: He stooped, and rose up with it, though the road
Shot suddenly downwards, not a whit dismayed.
Hold, warriors, councilors, kings! All no,w give place To this dead Benefactor of the Race!
-Richard Henry Stoddard.
MANUAL OF PATRIOTISM.
Here was a type of the true elder race,
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 his 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.
-James Russell Lowell.
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 smile:di 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; But he must sleep, to all the glory lost!
-Maurice Thompson.
THE FLAG BLESSES THE BIRTHDAY OF LINCOLN. 293
All days which are notable should be remembered. The world does well to mark its sense of the importance of such days, for one of the most fatal diseases of the mind is indifference, and hence everything which tends to rouse men out of their indifference is beneficial. The life of Lincoln should never be passed by in silence by young or old. He touched the log cabin and it became the palace in which greatness was nurtured. He touched the forest and it became to him a church in which the purest and noblest worship of God was observed.
His occupation has become associated in our minds with the integrity of the life he lived. In Lincoln there was always some quality that fastened him to the people, and taught them to keep time to the music of his heart. Instances are given of his honesty, but there are tens of thousands of men as honest as he. The difference is that they are not able to concentrate the ideal of honor as he did. He reveals to us the beauty of plain backwoods honesty. He grew up away from the ethics of the colleges, but he acquired a sense of honesty as higlr and noble as the most refined of the teachers of ethics could comprehend.—David Swing.
Of Mr. Lincoln's general character I need not speak. He was warm-hearted; he was generous; he was magnanimous; he was most truly, as he afterwards said on a memorable occasion, “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” He had a native genius far above his fellows. Every fountain of his heart was overflowing with the “milk of human kindness.” From my attachment to him, so much deeper was the pang in my own breast, as well as of millions, at the horrible manner of his “taking off.” This was the climax of our troubles, and the spring from which came unnumbered woes. But o.f those events, no more, now. Let not history confuse events. Emancipation was not the chief object of Mr. Lincoln in issuing the Proclamation. His chief object, the ideal to which his whole soul was devoted, was the preservation of the Union. Pregnant as it was with coming events, initiative as it was of ultimate emancipation, it still originated, in point of fact, more from what was deemed the necessities of war, than from any purely humanitarian view of the matter. Life is all a mist, and in the dark our fortunes meet us! This was evidently the case
294 MANUAL OF PATRIOTISM.
with Mr. Lincoln. He, in my opinion, was, like all the rest of us, an instrument in the hands of that Providence above us, that “Divinity which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”—Ale:rander Hamilton Stephens, of Georgia.
The month of February contains two great days,—days that commemorate the two most thrilling and imperial figures in our American history. There could not possibly be two more opposite and dissimihr types; the one with all the advantages of high station, culture and fine breeding, refinement and gracious surroundings; unspoiled, as gracious as the humblest among us all.
And, then, that other; that singular and incomparable character, of whom, when anybody tells something more about his young life, you get a sense of how fine and high, amid all his poverty and hardship, it was; how truly noble that other was— our own Lincoln.
What was it that made these two men great; one with inheritances to make greatness of an external kind; the other with only the simple ruggedness of a great character? What but this: That each one held himself, first of all, as a servant of the Power above him, and, sitting in the high chair of state, sat there remembering always that he was a servant of the people, and only that because he was the servant of God.—Right Rev. Henry C. Potter.
An anecdote, showing Lincoln's merciful nature in a touching light, and related by Mr. L. E. Chittenden in his “Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration,” from authentic sources, is the one of the sleeping sentinel, William Scott, the Vermont boy, whose life Lincoln saved after he had been condemned to be shot. Lincoln personally saw Scott and talked with him a long time. Scott would not talk to his comrades of the interview afterward until one niglit, when he had received a letter from home, he finally opened his heart to a friend in this wise:
"The President was the kindest man I had ever seen. I was scared at first, for I had never before talked with a great man. But Mr. Lincoln was so easy with me, so gentle, that I soon forgot my fright.
* * * He stood up, and he says to me, 'My boy, stand up here and
THE FLAG BLESSES THE BIRTHDAY OF LINCOLN. 295
look me in the face.' I did as he bade me. ' My boy,' he said, ' you are not going to be shot to-morrow. I am going to trust you and send you back to your regiment. I have come up here from Washington, where I have a great deal to do, and what I want to know is how you are going to pay my bill.' There was a big lump in my throat. I could scarcely speak. But I got it crowded down and managed to say: 'There is some way to pay you, and I will find it after a little. There is the bounty in the savings bank. I guess we could borrow some money on a mortgage on the farm.' I was sure the boys would help, so I thought we could raise it, if it wasn't more than $500 or $600. ' But it is a great deal more than $500 or $600,' he said. Then I said I didn't see how, but I was sure I would find some way—if I lived. Then Mr. Lincoln put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face as if he were sorry, and said: 'My boy, my bill is a very large one. Your friends cannot pay it, nor your bounty, nor your farm, nor all your comrades. There is only one man in all the world who can pay it, and his name is William Scott. If from this day William Scott does his duty, so that if I was there when he comes to die he can look me in the face as he does now, and can say: “I have kept my promise and I have done my duty as a soldier!" then my debt will be paid. Will you make that promise and try to keep it?' I said I would make the promise and with God's help I would keep it. He went away out of my sight forever. I know I shall never see him again, but may God forget me if I ever forget his kind words or my promise."—Washington Star.
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 pantings after liberty,
One breath of which would make even Russia fair, And blow sweet summer through the exile's care
And set the exile free;
For which I pray, here, in the open air
Of Freedom's morning-tide, by Lincoln's grave.
— Maurice Thomj;son.
MANUAL OF·PATRIOTISM.
We all recognize two characters in the annals of American history that will ever be inseparably associated with the great War of the Rebellion, with the heroic age of the country—Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. One the Commander-in-Chief, the other the General-in-Chief of that immortal Union Army, baptized in blood, consecrated in tears, hallowed in prayers, an army whose memory will remain green in the hearts of a grateful people as long as manly courage is talked of or heroic deeds are honored. Both possessed in a remarkable degree that most uncommon of all virtues, common sense. With them there was no posing for effect; no indulgence in mock heroics; no mawkish sentimentality—possessions of the heart of the demagogue. Each was possessed of as brilliant an intellect as ever wore the mantle of mortality. The mind of each was one great storehouse of useful information. Neither laid any claim to knowledge he did not possess. Each seemed to feel that vaunted learning is, like hypocrisy, a form of knowledge without the power of it. Even where their characteristics were unlike, they only served to supplement each other, but added to that united power wielded for the welfare and safety of a republic. Both entered public life from the same great state; both were elected for a second time to the highest office in the gift of the people. One fell a victim to an assassin's bullet, the other to the most dreaded form of fell disease, so that both may be crowned with the sublimity of martyrdom.—General Horace Porter, Albany, N. Y., Lincoln's Birthday, 1895.
. LINCOLN .
His towering figure, sharp and spare, Was with such nervous tension strung,
1. As if on each strained sinew swung
\\ The burden of a people's care.
His changing face what pen can draw? Pathetic, kindly, droll, or stern;
And with a glance so quick to learn The inmost truth of all he saw.
—Charles G. Ha/pine.
LAUS DEO!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER,
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Arranged from JONATHAN BATTISHILL.
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Of the buri al hour of crime;
Shall the sound there of go forth;
Send the song of praise a broad!
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Loud and long that all may hear,
It shall bid the sad re joice,
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How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town! Ring for every listening ear of e ter ni ty —and time!
It shall give the dumb a voice, It shall belt with joy . the earth!
Tell the nations that He reigns, Who a—lone is Lord and God!
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By special arrangement with HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co.