Yet perhaps the most wonderful thing of all, and, from the standpoint of the America of to-day and of the future, the most vitally important, was the extraordinary way in which Lincoln could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong, and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from whom he differed. In the hour of a triumph that would have turned any weaker man's head, in the heat of a struggle which spurred many a good man to dreadful vindictiveness, he said truthfully that so long as he had been in his office he had never willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom, and besought his supporters to study the incidents of the trial through which they were passing, as philosophy from which to learn wisdom, and not as wrongs to be avenged; ending with the solemn exhortation that, as the strife was over, all should reunite in a common effort to save their common country.

He lived in days that were great and terrible, when brother fought against brother for what each sincerely deemed to be the right. In a contest so grim, the strong men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they grapple in mortal strife. At such times men see through a glass darkly; to only the rarest and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes to all, even to the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds are forgotten, and peace creeps back to the hearts that were hurt. But to Lincoln was given this supreme vision. He did not hate the man from whom he differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness to his strong, gentle nature; but his courage was of a quality so high that it needed no bolstering of dark passion. He saw clearly that the same high qualities, the same courage, and willingness for self-sacrifice and devotion to the right, as it was given them to see the right, belonged both to the men of the North and to the men of the South. As the years roll by, and as all of us, wherever we dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and self-devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will

grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the mightiest of the mighty men who mastered the mighty days; the lover of his country and of all mankind; the man whose blood was shed for the union of his people and for the freedom of a race— Abraham Lincoln.

LINCOLN AND THE LOST CAUSE

HON. LUKE E. WRIGHT

WE are assembled to, ty celebrate the hundredth anni

E are assembled to-day upon the spot where Abraham

Lincoln was born, to

versary of his birth. When we look about us and behold a great and prosperous State, teeming with population and all the evidences of a highly developed and complex civilization, it requires an effort of the memory to recall how crude and primitive were his surroundings when his eyes first saw the light, and during his boyhood.

He was born of humble parentage, in a rude cabin of logs. His entry into the world was accompanied by no omens, and no seer prognosticated his future fame. Apparently his only heritage was to be a life of ignorance and poverty.

Still, it would be misleading to infer that the future could hold no prize for him. The hardy adventurers who swarmed out from the older States and crossed the Alleghenies were the offshoot of that older stock of English, Scotch, and Irish which had crossed the seas and had founded the first colonies upon American soil. They were a simple, God-fearing people, who lived their lives in field and forest, uncorrupted by wealth, strengthened in body and mind by hardships and dangers endured and overcome, with imaginations quickened by the thought that a continent was theirs.

Whilst there were instances among them of men of gentle birth and comparative fortune, yet all stood upon terms of perfect equality, and opportunity for all was practically the same. Any substantial distinction between the greatest and the humblest man, under such circumstances, could only be one created by individual prowess or worth.

There is perhaps in all the world no fairer land, no territory combining more natural advantages, and none more favorable

to the development of a virile race, than that vast area which gradually falls away from the western side of the Allegheny Mountains.

It is a curious fact that Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born in the same State, that their parents were almost neighbors, and equally curious that in after life, in a great civil war, they should have been leaders on opposite sides. They began under the same environment, and yet how widely separated were they in their subsequent lives and fortunes!

In the Two-Ocean Pass, in the Yellowstone Park, is found a level spot hemmed in by surrounding hills, into which flows a stream which there divides, one part flowing into the Pacific and the other into the Atlantic; and this stream is typical of the careers of the two men. Davis in early manhood found himself living in a community in which slavery was a recognized institution, and himself became a slave-holder, as were his neighbors and friends; whilst Lincoln found himself in a free-soil State, where slavery was regarded as a crime.

From the foundation of the federal government, the right of a State to withdraw from the federal compact was more or less discussed. It is not too much to say that the founders purposely pretermitted any explicit declaration on the subject, and thereafter it was regarded as an open question, as to which intelligent and patriotic men might and did differ. This difference was for many years not sectional, but gradually became so after slavery became distinctly a Southern institution, and the agitation in favor of its limitation or abolition became a burning issue.

Yet it would be unfair to say that there was a complete unanimity of sentiment upon this subject on either side of Mason and Dixon's line. In the border States of the South especially, the majority of the people were opposed to the dogma of secession, as was demonstrated by the overwhelming majority against the Ordinances of Secession submitted to the people in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee a few months before the outbreak of hostilities.

Moreover, in these same border States there was a class

sentiment that slavery was morally indefensible, and that some means should be adopted looking to gradual emancipation. But the practical difficulty confronting those thus thinking was, what would be the status of the slave when freed? coupled with the feeling that to make him a free man dependent upon his own resources would, in a vast majority of instances, be inhumane and decree his ultimate extinction. Even in the North there was a large element of intelligent and conservative men who deprecated the agitation against slavery and who had not brought themselves to consent to the thought of coercion in the event of secession.

But the continued propaganda preached against slavery, and the extreme utterances of partisans on either side, unquestionably by degrees had the effect of drawing a clear line of demarcation between the North and the South, both as to slavery and secession.

I do not refer to this ancient history for the purpose of reviving discussions long since dead and buried, but merely to call attention to facts which have perhaps been obscured by the overwhelming events which followed. It can only be a matter of surmise and profitless speculation as to what would have happened had the Southern people been left to deal with this perplexing question in their own way. Perhaps slavery was too strongly rooted to be eradicated save by fire and sword, and it may be that in the mysterious movings of a Divine Providence the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children, and that the South paid the penalty for the violation of a great moral law.

But it ought to be remembered, and I believe is now being remembered more and more, that it was not alone the sin of the South, although its expiation fell heaviest upon her people.

In reading the public utterances of Lincoln during this period of bitter dissension, nothing has impressed me more than the singular clearness of his perception that the responsibility for slavery rested upon all our people and was a burden which should be borne by all alike. There was a temperance of statement, a respect for the opposite point of view,