we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Although each portion of the American people still look at Abraham Lincoln from a different angle and with widely different sentiments and feelings, it is still true, I believe, that the whole country has learned to honor and revere his memory. To the South he appears, as I have said, no longer as an enemy, but a wise and sincere friend. To the people who have inherited the traditions of the North he is the preserver of the Union, the second founder of the nation, but to the negro people he will remain for all time the liberator of their race. In the eyes of the excited and ecstatic freedmen at the close of the War Lincoln appeared not merely as a great man, but as a personal friend; not merely an emancipator, but a saviour. I confess that the more I learn of Lincoln's life, the more I am disposed to look at him much as my mother and those early freedmen did, not merely as a great man, not merely as a statesman, but as one to whom I can certainly turn for help and inspiration-as a great moral leader, in whose patience, tolerance, and broad human sympathy there is salvation for my race, and for all those who are down, but struggling to rise.

LINCOLN AND HIS RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS*

HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM

ONGRESS, in the days of Lincoln, was a conservative, hard-working body, jealous of its prerogatives, just as it has always been; but there was far more intense excitement, bitter feeling, and general interest in Congress than there is to-day. President Lincoln was freely criticised; he had bitter opponents in Congress, as he had outside; but there were others who, with the great majority of the people, placed implicit faith in him and felt certain that he would carry the country through the awful crises and eventually save the Union. This was especially true among those who knew him best. With the War dragging its bloody trail the entire length of his administration, the national credit poor, taxes mounting upward, problems innumerable only to be solved by Congress, it can be readily seen that it was exceedingly important that the President should know intimately and judge correctly the men whose support he must seek in nearly every project he was called upon to undertake. Lincoln did know his men. There was never a President of the United States who could so well and so correctly judge men as Abraham Lincoln, and he was seldom, if ever, mistaken in his judgment.

I called upon him at the White House a few months before he was assassinated and a short time after my election as a member of the House of Representatives. I had been visiting in Washington, and spent considerable time around Congress, talking with members and senators, and it seemed to me that scarcely any of the strong men were in favor of the President. I was greatly impressed and concerned on account of the number of adverse criticisms I had heard. Before leaving Washington I called upon the President, and

* Copyright, 1909, by The Chicago Tribune.

I asked him, "Mr. Lincoln, do you allow anybody to talk to you about yourself?" He said, "Certainly; sit down." I told him that I wanted to talk with him a little about what I had seen and heard around Congress since coming here, and said that it seemed to me that most of the strong men were against him. He replied, with a smile, "It is not quite so bad as that," and with that he took up a copy of the "Congressional Directory," with the remark that there were many congressmen on his side, and turning to the list of senators and representatives he went over it for my benefit. I saw that nearly every name was marked, and as he went down the list he commented on each, as, for instance: "This man is for me"; "The best friend I have"; "He's not for me now, but I can win him over, " and so on. I found that he knew almost positively how every man stood, and the great majority of them were for him.

It was an interesting catalogue of personal characteristics, and I knew then that Abraham Lincoln's habit of studying men had not lapsed when he went to Washington; and I saw, too, that he had a perfect knowledge of Congress and its personnel.

I well recall a comment I heard him make concerning James G. Blaine, who was then in the House. Blaine had made a speech that day that had attracted attention. Lincoln said of him, "Blaine is one of the rising young men of our country," an assertion which succeeding years proved to be true.

I well recall the morning when the message came from Washington that the President had been killed, and it so happened that I was called upon to announce the terrible news to the great crowd assembled in the old State House Square in Springfield.

Five years previous he had departed from Springfield for Washington, never to return. I clasped hands with him at parting, and there passed between us a conversation which strengthened my determination to go to Congress. I was the newly elected Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and Lincoln had just attained his title "Mr. President," which I took delight in using.

"Good-by, Mr. President," said I, "I will be down in Washington with you one of these days." "Come on, Mr. Speaker," he replied, "I hope you will appear there soon."

After a few years I kept my promise, and immediately following my election to the House I took a trip to Washington to look over the field of my coming labors, as the successor to Congressman John T. Stewart. I boldly entered the room of Secretary Nicolay at the White House, as I had been accustomed to do during my visits to Washington, and found, much to my surprise, that I had broken in on a conference between the President and Secretary Seward. President Lincoln, seeing me, as I was about to withdraw, said, "Come in, Cullom," and, turning to his Cabinet officer, "Seward, you remember my old friend Stewart, who was here last term! Well, he was beaten for reëlection, and this is the young man who beat him."

There were many great and interesting men in both the House and Senate in those terrible days during the Civil War, and many of them continued leading figures during the days of reconstruction immediately following. With many of those I was personally, and later became more or less intimately, acquainted. There was Fessenden of Maine, who succeeded as Secretary of the Treasury the dignified Salmon P. Chase, whom many people, including myself, thought indispensable, and succeeded him in the office so well that the country never felt the change. There was John Sherman in the Senate, even then one of the leaders, later to become one of our greatest Secretaries of the Treasury; Thaddeus Stevens in the House, who wielded an influence second to none: Charles Sumner, one of the great men of his day, who filled a peculiarly important place in the history of his time, then serving as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Trumbull of Illinois was one of the leaders of the upper House and was recognized as one of the great lawyers of the nation. Hendricks of Indiana, Wilson of Massachusetts, Howe of Wisconsin, Henderson of Missouri, Chandler of Michigan, were then in their prime. John A. Logan was, during the early part of Lincoln's administration, a member

of the House; resigning in 1861, he became the foremost volunteer officer of the Civil War.

I regarded Thaddeus Stevens as the dominating figure in the House during the War and the days of reconstruction, but there were others who became famous in American political life later. There was Voorhees of Indiana, William B. Allison of Iowa, James G. Blaine of Maine, Conkling of New York, next to whom I occupied a seat and was practically at his elbow during his fierce struggle in debate with Blaine some years later. Owen Lovejoy represented one of the Illinois districts previous to my term in the House. I was at the White House when the news of his death was brought to Lincoln, and I recall the kindly manner in which he spoke of him. Lovejoy had been something of a radical in the House, and, although his radicalism had in a way aided Lincoln, there were times when it grew too strong for the good of the cause in hand. Speaking of Lovejoy on this occasion, Lincoln said, "He was one of the best men in Congress. If he became too radical I always knew that I could send for him and talk it over and he would go back to the floor and do about as I wanted.'

Shortly before Lincoln was nominated as a candidate for a second term, Salmon P. Chase, a member of the Cabinet, had quietly undertaken to secure the nomination for himself. I was in Washington when the secret letter written by Senator Pomeroy, urging politicians to support the Chase candidacy, came out, and I was among those who urged that Chase be turned out of the Cabinet, and I so expressed myself to the President. He replied: "Let him alone; he can do no more harm where he is than on the outside."

That was his way of looking at things. He was of too kindly a disposition, too great a man to punish any one for being against him, but at the same time he was more farseeing than others. He knew that to remove Chase would only make a martyr of him; to send him back to Ohio would only place him in a position to make trouble for the administration, and so he simply let him alone, which was by far the wisest thing to do, until Mr. Chase resigned once too