took his in the Senate. Looking through the debates, we find Lincoln among the most modest of members. His utterances were forcible and few. It is easy to detect the quaint humor that figured so prominently in his after actions, but there was no frequency or ostentation of speech. In the same body sat Andrew Johnson, the Democratic head of the delegation from Tennessee. Less than two years older than Lincoln, his motions, measures, and spoken opinions would cover a hundred times the space allotted to his Illinois contemporary. Six years in the State Legislature, ten years in Congress, four years Governor, five years United States Senator, with several intermediate positions, he was constantly aspiring to a higher station. How significantly the huge library of Andrew Johnson's talk compares with the little casket of Lincoln's ideas! The loudness and length of the one, the brevity and silence of the other. These two men were alike in one thing only: in the obscurity of their origin and in the hard toil of their early lives. In every other respect they were opposites. I will not imitate the sad business of impugning or doubting motives. Let us hope that both were honest, as indeed the just judgment of all classes and writers now concedes Abraham Lincoln to have been. But how differently they used their weapons! Lincoln, without seeming to aspire, reached the highest station in the world; while Johnson, always reaching forth for the golden fruit, got it, and lost it in a fit of inconceivable madness. Abraham Lin coln died at the best moment for himself; Andrew Johnson lives to prove how great opportunities may be wasted.

In many respects Abraham Lincoln had few parallels. He was most considerate of the feelings and deservings of others. I have related how, before I ever saw or knew him, he wrote me a letter, directly after his election in 1860, thanking me for what he was pleased to call my services in resisting the proscriptions of the Buchanan Administration, and proffering a friendship which never abated. When the Baltimore Conven

tion, which renominated him for President, was about to meet, and Mr. Hamlin declined being a candidate for Vice-President in order that the Democratic element might be represented, Mr. Lincoln personally advocated Andrew Johnson, and was backed by Mr. Seward, who was, however, interested in the defeat of Daniel S. Dickinson, pressed for the same post by his opponents in New York. Although Douglas defeated Lincoln for Senator in 1858, he gave him his confidence immediately after his inauguration, and never failed in generosity to his widow and children. When I was defeated for Clerk of the House in March, 1861, he called in person upon a number of Senators and asked them to vote for me for Secretary of that body. When Stonewall Jackson was killed, and one of my assistant editors spoke kindly of the better part of his character, Abraham Lincoln wrote me commending the tribute to a brave adversary. If you visited Lincoln he never wearied you with dreary politics or heavy theories, or glorified himself or his doings. In every crisis he sought the advice, not of his enemies, but of his friends. To his convictions he was ever true, but his opinions were always subject to revision. He delighted in parables, and especially in the rude jokes of the South and the West. He hailed Artemus Ward and Petroleum Nasby as benefactors of the human race, and no witticism, whether delicate or broad, escaped his keen appreciation. He was, withal, a man of sentiment, reading Shakespeare like a philosopher, and remembering the best passages. A little poem written by Francis De Haes Janvier, of Philadelphia, called "The Sleeping Sentinel," was an especial favorite; and "The Patriot's Oath" and "Sheridan's Ride," by Thomas Buchanan Read, were always recited at his request by Mr. Murdoch, whenever that loyal actor visited the metropolis. He was neither boisterous nor profane. He cared little for the pleasures of the table; and, al though reared among a frontier people largely addicted to intoxicating drinks, he preferred water as a beverage. He liked

the theatre, especially when Edwin Forrest, Joseph Jefferson, John Brougham, or John S. Clarke was the star. Though he frequently accompanied Mrs. Lincoln to the opera, it was rather in obedience to a social demand or an eagerness for rest in the corner of his box than a taste for scientific music. He was a capital peacemaker, and was especially resolute in refusing to adopt the enemies of his friends. He had a horror of making speeches, although a fine colloquial orator, and when he did address the people it was in short sentences, and only for a few moments at a time. In these addresses, as well as in his messages and letters, he said things that will survive for many generations. I give a few at random:

From his first annual message, March 9, 1861: "There are already among us those who, if the Union be preserved, will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions. The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day—it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us."

From his remarks at a Union meeting in Washington, D. C., August 6, 1863:

"There has been a very widespread attempt to have a quarrel between General McClellan and the Secretary of War. Now I occupy a position that enables me to observe that these two gentlemen are not nearly so deep in the quarrel as some pretending to be their friends. General McClellan's attitude is such that, in the very selfishness of his nature, he can not but wish to be successful, and I hope he will; and the Secretary of War is in precisely the same situation. If the military commanders in the field can not be successful, not only the Secretary of War, but myself, for the time being the master of them both, can not but be failures."

From his letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862:

"The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be-the Union as it was.

LINCOLN'S TERSENESS.

169

"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; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save 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.

"I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause.

"I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

From his letter to the Illinois Convention, August 26, 1863:

"Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation, while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that, with malignant heart and deceitful speech, they have striven to hinder it." From his letter to Colonel Hodges, of Kentucky, April 4, 1864: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess that H

events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

From his speech at the Philadelphia Fair, June 16, 1864:

"It is a pertinent question, often asked in the mind privately, and from one to the other, When is the war to end? Surely, I feel as deep an interest in this question as any other can, but I do not wish to name a day, a month, or a year when it is to end. I do not wish to run any risk of seeing the time come without our being ready for the end, for fear of disappointment because the time had come and not the end. We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will end until that time. Speaking of the present campaign, General Grant is reported to have said, 'I am going through on this line if it takes all summer.' This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon the line of restoring the national authority over the whole national domain; and for the American people, so far as my knowledge enables me to speak, I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more." From his second annual message:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthral ourselves, and

then we shall save our country.

"Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We, of this Congress and this Administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can