THE JANESVILLE COMMEMORATION

ON. GEORGE R. PECK, of Chicago, former President of the American Bar Association, has rendered many beautiful tributes to Lincoln; on the occasion of the Centenary he spoke at his old home at Janesville, Wisconsin.

IT

THE APOSTLE OF OPPORTUNITY

HON. GEORGE R. PECK

T is very fitting and appropriate that this association of lawyers should render homage to one of their calling, who, after winning high professional distinction, took to himself a glory and a fame that cannot die. You do well to remember that Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. If you will recall his last great years-the years by which the world knows him— you will feel a certain pride in belonging to that profession which he chose in youth and whose principles and traditions were his guide and monitors to the end. In all that majestic on-marching career we may see-nay, we cannot fail to seethat he followed with almost religious devotion the approving voice and sanction of the law. Mark the solemn language which was the real keynote of the First Inaugural: "I hold," he said, "that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual." In that sentence it was the lawyer who spoke, giving to the statesmen who surrounded him, the fundamental idea upon which it was his purpose to stand. It was a brave pronouncement. Certainly it was also political wisdom and political truth, but above these the clear vision of Abraham Lincoln saw the organic law of a nation consecrated and enthroned. I bid you,

gentlemen of the bar, take mindful heed of that great ideal which lifted Abraham Lincoln to such lofty heights.

This much I have thought to say of him, because he belonged to our guild. He knew, as we do, the rigor of a lawsuit; he had felt the joy of victory and the smart of defeat; and, I do not doubt, the memory of the days when he travelled the circuit, and of forensic contests in which he had taken part, nerved and strengthened him in the weary years when nerve and strength were sorely needed. But Abraham Lincoln was not a mere lawyer, and history has given him a fame so universal that the world hardly remembers he belonged to our profession. But, if we cannot claim him simply because we are lawyers, we may yet rejoice that, as citizens of the Republic, we participate with all that bear the American name in his unfading renown.

In very truth he belongs alike to all who have shared the precious heritage which he left to his countrymen. He belongs to them as the lighthouse does to the mariner who steers his bark by its steadfast ray. He belongs to all who cherish the ideas, the hope, and the faith that were in him. Whatever sad and heroic memories cluster around his great career, something of their glory, some breath of their fragrance, rests upon every man who strives to make the United States of America such a nation as Abraham Lincoln strove to make it.

When we think of the name that is in every heart and upon every lip, how like a dream seems the century that is past! In a rude Kentucky cabin a hundred years ago this very day, the curtain was rising upon a drama which was destined to be of epic grandeur. Recalling the hour and the event, we almost seem to hear the rhythmic beat of the years as they speed to their eternal goal.

It is sometimes said, and said with truth, that the American character, considered as a type, has not yet been formed and moulded into shape. Undoubtedly it is still plastic and mutable; but we must remember that the processes of time are slow. The entire period since the western continent dawned upon Europe is but a brief span in comparison with the centuries which have been fusing Norman and Saxon and Dane

inflexible, - because he inoderstore men, because he sacrificed homself,

1

because

he loved much. Through good report and

though eird report he walked

way,

in

Bumpire in his heart. He jasted at fullins in wide that he might not always weep over the heavy weight of his country's wor. It's humour was like trode grotesque vings with which the Gothic sculptors wlieard the sombre immensity of

an

car

cathedral, -not

of finality, but a momentary

evidence Escape from an

overwhelming

the seriousness of life. Consecrated to a double

Tack, he preservation of the throne, and

1

out his arms to hold the two duters together; and the boud heat mited them in

into the English race; and yet we have something to show when great names are counted, something to remember when great deeds are told. Abraham Lincoln outshines the Plantagenets, and ennobles common blood forevermore.

The laws of descent are mysterious, if not altogether fathomless. Science, indeed, tells us that men are, in their essential qualities, the result and product of all their ancestors. But how and why it is-who can tell? The lineage of Abraham Lincoln was so humble, his environment and that of his family so narrow and so steeped in poverty, it seems like a miracle that he should ever have burst such bonds. Nicolay and Hay, in their great work, after describing his wretched birthplace, say: "And there, in the midst of the most unpromising circumstances that ever witnessed the advent of a hero into the world, Abraham Lincoln was born on the twelfth day of February, 1809." In this event there was nothing to attract attention-absolutely no prophecy of the future latently slumbering in the new born child. Least of all was there any hint of the solemn pageantry with which a great nation this day commemorates that lowly birth. Birthdays are rests and pauses in the symphony of time, and in observing the great and notable ones we set history to music.

Abraham Lincoln's parents were Virginians, but the ancestral strain flowed from Old England through New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before it reached Virginia. The first of his race to settle in America was Samuel Lincoln, who came from Norwich, England, in 1638, and cast his lot with the God-fearing settlers who had located in the forest solitudes of Hingham, Massachusetts. Later, his son Mordecai pushed on to New Jersey, and thence to Pennsylvania. John, who was Mordecai's son, returned from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, but soon sought another home in Rockingham County, Virginia, and through him the blood of the Hingham Puritan flowed uninterruptedly to Abraham Lincoln. They were a family of frequent migrations, ever hungering for the wilderness and the frontier. If you follow their footsteps, you will be led from Massachusetts to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, and, after the birth of Abra