Part 12

On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who according to one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the doctrinaires among 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 the great majority, not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind, also, to his side. So strong and so 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 achievement, 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.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

January First, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Three

BY FRANK MOORE

Stand like an anvil, when 'tis beaten With the full vigor of the smith's right arm! Stand like the noble oak-tree, when 'tis eaten By the Saperda and his ravenous swarm! For many smiths will strike the ringing blows Ere the red drama now enacting close; And human insects, gnawing at thy fame, Conspire to bring thy honored head to shame.

Stand like the firmament, upholden By an invisible but Almighty hand! He whomsoever JUSTICE doth embolden, Unshaken, unseduced, unawed shall stand. Invisible support is mightier far, With noble aims, than walls of granite are; And simple consciousness of justice gives Strength to a purpose while that purpose lives.

Stand like the rock that looks defiant Far o'er the surging seas that lash its form! Composed, determined, watchful, self-reliant, Be master of thyself, and rule the storm! And thou shalt soon behold the bow of peace Span the broad heavens, and the wild tumult cease; And see the billows, with the clouds that meet, Subdued and calm, come crouching to thy feet.

THE PROCLAMATION

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds Of Ballymena, sleeping, heard these words: "Arise, and flee Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven The angels singing of his sins forgiven, And, wondering, sees His prison opening to their golden keys, He rose a Man who laid him down a Slave, Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave, And onward trod Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away; And passing where the sleeping Milcho lay, Though back and limb Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon him!"

So went he forth: but in God's time he came To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame; And, dying, gave The land a Saint that lost him as a Slave.

O, dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb Waiting for God, your hour, at last, has come, And Freedom's song Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

Arise, and flee! shake off the vile restraint Of ages! but, like Ballymena's saint, The oppressor spare, Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.

Go forth, like him! like him return again, To bless the land whereon, in bitter pain, Ye toiled at first, And heal with Freedom what your Slavery cursed.

By special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

From the address delivered before Congress on February 12, 1878, presenting to the re-United States, on behalf of Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, Carpenter's painting--The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet.

BY JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD

Let us pause to consider the actors in that scene. In force of character, in thoroughness and breadth of culture, in experience of public affairs, and in national reputation, the Cabinet that sat around that council-board has had no superior, perhaps no equal in our history. Seward, the finished scholar, the consummate orator, the great leader of the Senate, had come to crown his career with those achievements which placed him in the first rank of modern diplomatists. Chase, with a culture and a fame of massive grandeur, stood as the rock and pillar of the public credit, the noble embodiment of the public faith. Stanton was there, a very Titan of strength, the great organizer of victory. Eminent lawyers, men of business, leaders of states and leaders of men, completed the group.

But the man who presided over that council, who inspired and guided its deliberations, was a character so unique that he stood alone, without a model in history or a parallel among men. Born on this day, sixty-nine years ago, to an inheritance of extremest poverty; surrounded by the rude forces of the wilderness; wholly unaided by parents; only one year in any school; never, for a day, master of his own time until he reached his majority; making his way to the profession of the law by the hardest and roughest road;--yet by force of unconquerable will and persistent, patient work he attained a foremost place in his profession,

"And, moving up from high to higher, Became on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a world's desire."

At first, it was the prevailing belief that he would be only the nominal head of his administration,--that its policy would be directed by the eminent statesmen he had called to his council. How erroneous this opinion was may be seen from a single incident.

Among the earliest, most difficult, and most delicate duties of his administration was the adjustment of our relations with Great Britain. Serious complications, even hostilities, were apprehended. On the 21st of May, 1861, the Secretary of State presented to the President his draught of a letter of instructions to Minister Adams, in which the position of the United States and the attitude of Great Britain were set forth with the clearness and force which long experience and great ability had placed at the command of the Secretary. Upon almost every page of that original draught are erasures, additions, and marginal notes in the handwriting of Abraham Lincoln, which exhibit a sagacity, a breadth of wisdom, and a comprehension of the whole subject, impossible to be found except in a man of the very first order. And these modifications of a great state paper were made by a man who but three months before had entered for the first time the wide theatre of Executive action.

Gifted with an insight and a foresight which the ancients would have called divination, he saw, in the midst of darkness and obscurity, the logic of events, and forecast the result. From the first, in his own quaint, original way, without ostentation or offense to his associates, he was pilot and commander of his administration. He was one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power, and whose spirit grew gentler and tenderer as his triumphs were multiplied.

This was the man, and these his associates, who look down upon us from the canvas.

The present is not a fitting occasion to examine, with any completeness, the causes that led to the Proclamation of Emancipation; but the peculiar relation of that act to the character of Abraham Lincoln cannot be understood, without considering one remarkable fact in his history. His earlier years were passed in a region remote from the centers of political thought, and without access to the great world of books. But the few books that came within his reach he devoured with the divine hunger of genius. One paper, above all others, led him captive, and filled his spirit with the majesty of its truth and the sublimity of its eloquence. It was the Declaration of American Independence. The author and the signers of that instrument became, in his early youth, the heroes of his political worship. I doubt if history affords any example of a life so early, so deeply, and so permanently influenced by a single political truth, as was Abraham Lincoln's by the central doctrine of the Declaration,--the liberty and equality of all men. Long before his fame had become national he said, "That is the electric cord in the Declaration, that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, and that will link such hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."