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Trusting in Him who can go with me and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well." These sentiments were his parting benediction to his neighbors among whom he had "lived for a quarter of a century, passing from a young to an old man." No prophet ever consecrated himself to his duty more reverently than did he in the sad moment of leavetaking, when the shadow of the premonition that he was never to return was, as his words show, even then upon him.

But we revere in him also the American statesman. This term has cheapened by misapplication in these times. Were it not that in recent years some men of light and leading have taken their seat in the council of the nation, the plaint of the Biblical writer would be in place, "In those days the giants were on earth." Liberty-baptized, the American people is withal conservative and cautious. In this it is of other fibre than the Gallic devotees of liberty, equality, and fraternity on the banks of the Seine. The strong strain of Teutonic Anglo-Saxon in our blood, and the Puritan-almost Hebraic-reverence for law as the proclamation of Divine Will, accounts for this bent of ours. We are not mercurial. We do not boil over. Our revolutions have not been cradled

in the cavern of the hurricane and tornado.

Our institutions do not encourage Titanic uprisings under the discontent of an evil hour. They take away all pretence of justification for indulgence in violent methods. Freedom of speech and press afford outlet for pent-up indignation, and offer a forum for just criticism. Our political institutions correspond to the temperament of this nation, freedom's elect. They are preventive of revolution because they are adaptable to the growing needs and deepening wisdom which evolution brings in its quiet course. Our Constitution is a conservative document. Discriminating and keeping distinct, but interdependent, the various functions of organized government, it is as justly balanced as the rock which takes from it its name, and which may be swayed by a child, yet has all the elements of strength and endurance. In creating the Supreme Court, this instrument provided an agency

through which the growing life of the nation could be incorporated into this bill of rights. It may be said that the Convention which framed the charter of American liberty and devised the means for legislation, adjudication, and administration to make liberty effective as law, merely modelled the dead material. It was the Supreme Court that breathed into it the spirit of life. That instrument, like all that comes from the hand of man, was not perfect. It was the child of compromise and concession. It left unsettled a very important issue. Was the United States a mere federation of sovereign States or did the States derive their sovereignty from that of the Nation?

This perplexity would not have been fraught with grave peril, had not, at the same time, the legacy of slavery been left to the young Republic. Soon after the birth of the United States, the harvest of this original sin began to ripen. Forty years of wandering in the wilderness, compromise, and temporizing retarded the entrance into the Promised Land of peace. Passions and distrusts, not the cloud of God nor the pillar of divine light by night, decided the route. In New England first, the old Puritan found its voice of protest. It woke a ready echo in the young West. When Lincoln made his bow on the stage of public and political life, slavery and its extension into new territory was dividing the people, and keeping the public mind at fever heat. His elevation to the presidency sent the nation into the valley of decision, a valley which at times took on the terrible aspect of the "valley of the shadow of death." Statesman Lincoln had defined his position clearly in the historic debates with Douglas. Not a politician of the modern cast, but one of the old mould, knowing that party is a means to an end and patriotism must sanctify partisanship, he spoke out when silence and ambiguity might have been personally more profitable for him. A house divided against itself cannot stand"-this prediction cost him the senatorship, but won him the presidency. And yet when the responsibility of the high trust was laid on him, to many he seemed, all of a sudden, to be struck with hesitating indecision. The Abolitionists were not

slow to utter their bitter impatience. In his biding his time he displayed his mastership as a statesman. The deliberateness of his executive action reflects the sterling conservatism of his Americanism.

No other man ever ascended throne, or assumed the pilot's charge of the Ship of State, under more disheartening circumstances the nation cleft into two-the North, not a united band, to support him—the enemy prepared, the Union unequipped! Armies had to be created, navies had to be built, the treasury had to be filled, the finances put on a workable basis, the jealousy of the European nations to be disarmed and thwarted. Lincoln had loyal helpers, men of genius and of eminent power of organization. Yet his was the supreme responsibility. He, the man of tender, sympathetic heart, had to give the word that sent thousands to their death, millions into the furnace of fire. No wonder that his face assumed an expression of deep sadness. It seemed as though in the lines of his brow, in the look of his eyes, were symbolized all the pathos of those four years of doubt and daring, of suffering and striving. Republics are never so well armored for the bloody business of war as are autocracies. Where the king's will is the supreme law, the petty bickerings among the chieftains are soon hushed. Not so in a Republic. Coöperation among the various commanders is much more difficult to secure. With all this and worse, Lincoln had to contend. He bore his cross cheerfully, for he had an abiding faith in the destiny of his nation, a wonderful confidence in the loyalty of the common people. What share he had in directing to final and glorious victory the engine of war, what his part in the financing of the gigantic combat, what inspiration came from him in the work of keeping the European detractors of our liberty at bay, we know better than they that lived through those terrible years of suspense and darkness. Latest memoirs of the chief actors in this stupendous drama have thrown onto the screen the astounding certainty that this country-bred, lank, lean lawyer proved to be a strategist of no mean calibre, a financier of high resourcefulness, a diplomat of wide outlook. He was a statesman who has had,

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