CONTENTS. General Introduction by the Editor.... ....... ...... PAGE 1 1837 (Jan. 27) The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions : 1848 (Jan. 12) 1852 (July 16) House, Springfield, Ill.... 1854 (Oct. 16) Speech in Reply to Judge S. A. Douglas, at Peoria, Ill.. 1858 (June 16) Speech at Springfield, Ill., at the close of the 24 34 (Aug. 21) Speech at Ottawa, Ill., in Debate with Judge Douglas.... 94 (Aug. 27) Speech at Freeport, Ill., in Douglas Debate, 110 with Lincoln's Rejoinder...... (Sep. 15) Speech at Jonesboro, Ill., in Douglas Debate.. 129 (Sep. 17) Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio. 224 228 1860 (Feb. 27) Address at Cooper Institute, New York.. 259 283 296 (Feb. 18) Address to Legislature of New York, at 301 PAGE (Feb. 22) Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia.. 303 burg... (Mar. 4) First Inaugural at Washington, D. C. (Aug. 12) Proclamation of a National Fast-Day 1862 (Mar. 6) Message to Congress recommending Compen- (April 10) Proclamation recommending Thanksgiving for Victories (Sep. 22) Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.. 1863 (Jan. 1) Emancipation Proclamation. (July 15) Proclamation for Thanksgiving.. (Nov. 19) Gettysburg Cemetery Address. ... 305 308 320 339 341 348 350 351 354 363 366 368 (Dec. 8) Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. 369 373 1864 (April 18) Address at Sanitary Fair, at Baltimore, Md. 393 Penn..... (Aug. 22) Address to 166th Ohio Regiment... (Nov. 10) Response to a Serenade.. 396 398 399 400 402 404 409 412 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE EMANCIPATOR PRESIDENT. INTRODUCTION BY G. MERCER ADAM. FULLY two-score years have passed since the assas sination, at Ford's Theatre, Washington, of Abraham Lincoln, "the great Emancipator" President, whose martyr death has consecrated his name to all coming generations of freemen and enshrined it indelibly in the hearts of every lover of Humanity. The tragic death of this "first of Americans," though it whelmed the nation he loved in sorrow when news of it fell upon the appalled ear, was yet a glorious and triumphal one, since it was the crowning sacrifice of a life spent in Freedom's cause and in the loved service at once of his kind and of his country. His lamented death and the hideous manner of his taking off were but the sad sequel of a period of calamitous strife in the nation's annals, when the South, seeking to preserve its cherished institution of slaverya vile traffic which Lincoln ever held in dire abhorrence -and defying the moral sense of the North against the hideous wrong, plunged the nation into one of the most terrible wars in history. The conflict, as all know, entailed a loss of nearly a million lives and the expenditure of about thirty-five hundred million dollars; but it had at length its happy consummation, not only in reuniting and cementing the riven Union, but by the great edict of Emancipation, the work we might almost say alone of the kindly, humane President, in abolishing slavery forever from the country and elevating the slave to the rights and privileges of freemen. What the conse 66 quences of the edict were in the issues of the war there is little need to relate. As an act of astute and nobleminded statesmanship, "" war measure though it was deemed, it achieved its high and memorable purpose, of putting an end to the mighty conflict, restoring peace to the blood-sodden nation, and reëstablishing it in its entire integrity, with undivided authority. The far-seeing device of Lincoln and his administration, with its beneficent results in banning slavery for all time from the country and relieving the oppressed black man from his shackles, was naturally hailed by the plaudits of the world. Careful personally not to go beyond the Constitution in seeking to liberate the slave in whatever State or Territory he was in bondage, Lincoln had heretofore bided his time to put his Emancipation measure in force, which was to end the hitherto "irrepressible conflict" and restore the dissevered Union. But when the fit occasion came, at a favorable turn in the protracted and harrowing conflict, he, "the providential man raised up for his era," obeyed the behests of his own conscience and heart and launched with confident hand and will the tactful yet merciful edict. How potent and instant were its effects, we all know; though we also know how, in certain quarters at the time, it was fought against and discredited, and what wrath was loosed to descend upon the great chieftain's head who was alone responsible for its issuance and promulgation. This biding his time to abolish slavery has almost inexplicably raised the question whether Lincoln really cared to put an end to the vile traffic, or whether he merely used the Emancipation edict as a war measure tactically directed against the South in rebellion. We need hardly argue the point with those who have raised it, since nothing, we hold, is plainer in the entire history of Lincoln's career than his sympathy for the slave and his abhorrence of an institution that kept him in a hated and cruel bondage. He was not, it is true, a negrophilist; but nothing, on the other hand, is more self-evident than that he was ever an abolitionist and opposed in his heart of hearts to the giant evil of slavery, which not only shocked his moral sense, but was emphatically alien to his kindly, humane nature. In proof of this, we need but mention his early threat against the institution at the period of his flat-boat trip down the Mississippi, when he saw slaves bought and sold like dumb cattle in the slave marts of New Orleans, or when he witnessed, with strained heart, the poor blacks manacled and cruelly flogged at whipping-posts by their tyrannous masters. That threat, that some day "he would hit the institution hard," he long kept in his heart, while he knew that it never could be compromised with, and therefore sought by all means within his power to keep the infamous traffic within bounds and to hinder its extension wherever it was not law. Hardly less indicative of the great Emancipator's early attitude in opposition to the slave traffic is the stand he took in regard to the Dred Scott case, that slavery deprived the black man of the rights and privileges of citizenship, or that memorable assertion he made in 1858, at the Springfield (Ill.) Convention that nominated Lincoln for the United States Senate, when he told its members, in his appeal for unity, that "the Government of the country cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free,” adding that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Still more emphatic were his words in 1864, when war was devastating the land, and when all knew that Secession had mainly been brought about by the imperious wish to perpetuate slavery in the South. Lincoln's words then were the once familiar dictum of Abolition orators, that "if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong "-a dictum of unmistakable cogency and truth. It took, as we know, a great crisis in the affairs of the nation to get rid of the "hated thing; " but this does not detract from the credit due to Lincoln for abolishing it, and thus striking down, by an |