their posterity, as well as to their country, to present in its true light the life-history and achievements of that true friend of all the people, Abraham Lincoln, whose kindly nature never permitted him to do aught in a spirit of revenge, but who, throughout four long years of civil war, pleaded with the Confederate States to return to their allegiance to the Union under the Constitution which he had taken a solemn oath to " preserve, protect, and defend." The preservation of that Union was his sole purpose in all that he did and in all that he said. He made this known so often and in so many ways that the Southern statesmen were fully advised that to end the war and bring about "domestic tranquillity" the Confederates had but to renew their allegiance to the Constitution and the Union. The war was not fought to liberate the slaves. Their liberation was a mere incident of that war. It was resorted to only after nearly two years had been devoted to an effort to end the war by other means.

Mr. Lincoln recognized the fact that millions of dollars were invested in slave property, and gave the slaveholders every opportunity to save that property from confiscation. No man saw better than he the poverty which such confiscation would bring upon the people whose fortunes were represented by such property. He sought to assist them to avert that

misfortune by providing a method for gradual compensated emancipation, a plan both just and economically sound, and which would have proved advantageous to the freed people as well as to their masters. That his efforts proved unavailing detracts nothing from the statesmanship of him who endeavored to bring it about. He entertained no feeling of enmity toward the people of the Confederate States. He never relaxed his efforts to win them by appeals to their reason and by showing them that they were better off in the Union than out of it. "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?" "Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends?" he asked in his first inaugural address. In the same address he said:

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. . . . Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better hope in the world?

Throughout the entire address there breathed that spirit of kindness and justice which was character

istic of Mr. Lincoln in both his public and private life. Yet, after the lapse of nearly fifty years, there are many among the descendants of the brave men who for four years fought in the cause of secession who have not learned the true worth of that broadminded, generous friend of all the people, whose great mind was constantly occupied in the solution of the most difficult problems ever presented to any statesman in ancient or modern times; whose heartbeats were ever quickened by thoughts of the misery inflicted upon both sections of his beloved country by years of fraternal strife.

He knew that he had been grievously misunderstood by a majority of the people of the South. He pleaded for a better understanding of his purposes toward them even as the lowly Nazarene pleaded with the people who surrounded him as he trod the byways and highways of Palestine reviled and rejected. As the Saviour of mankind cried out in the agony of his soul:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

so, in his last great appeal to all the people of his country, Abraham Lincoln implored them:

With malice toward none; with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds. . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

Should not the people, North as well as South, pause amid their many cares, meditate upon these noble sentiments, and consider whether we have done "all which may achieve a lasting peace among ourselves"? May not we of the North as well as of the South inquire whether we have always acted "with malice toward none," and "with charity for all," in the consideration of the grave questions which grew out of the Civil War? Had the people of the whole country approached the consideration of these problems in that spirit of fraternity which was always uppermost in the mind of President Lincoln, the bitterness engendered by the terrible conflict between the sections would soon have passed away, leaving in its wake, not a Union which, after fifty years, is still sectional, but in its stead a Union in sentiment as well as in form, in which the people of each state would have looked upon the states composing the nation as the common heritage of all.

L

CHAPTER IV

CRITICISM OF THE JUDICIARY

INCOLN'S criticism of the decision of the Su

preme Court of the United States in the famous case of Dred Scott vs. Sanford has been frequently referred to in recent years as an indication that he did not have a high regard for judicial authority in cases where it ran counter to the popular will. In support of this contention reference has been made to a speech made by Mr. Lincoln at Cincinnati, September 17, 1859. In that speech he said: "The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts"; and it has been contended that the words quoted indicate a belief on the part of Lincoln that the popular will should be held superior to the decrees and judgments of judicial tribunals. This view is not, however, supported by the evidence. No man entertains a higher regard for judicial authority than did Mr. Lincoln. It is beyond dispute that he severely criticized the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States who concurred in the majority opinion in the Dred Scott Case. He believed it to be the result of the proslavery views of Chief Justice Taney and the associate