that even then he hoped and expected to be the Liberator of the slaves. He did not yet clearly perceive the manner in which it was to be done, but he believed it would be done, and that God would guide him.

In four years, this man crushed the most stupendous rebellion, supported by armies more vast, and resources greater than ever before undertook to overthrow any Government. He held together against warring factions, his own great party; and strengthened it by securing the confidence, and bringing to his aid a large proportion of all other parties. He was reelected almost by acclamation, and he led the people, step by step, up to emancipation, and saw his work crowned by the Constitutional amendment, eradicating slavery forever from the Republic. Did this man lack firmness? Study the boldness of the act of emancipation. See with what fidelity he stood by his proclamation.

In his Message of 1863, he said, "I will never retract the proclamation, nor return to slavery any person made free by it." In 1864, he said, "if it should ever be made a duty of the Executive to return to slavery any person made free by the proclamation or the acts of Congress, some other person, not I, must execute the law."

When hints of peace were suggested, as obtainable by giving over the negro race again to bondage, he repelled it with indignation. When the rebel Vice President Stephens, at Fortress Monroe, tempted him to give up the freedmen, and seek the glory of a foreign war, in which the Union and Confederate soldiers might join, neither party sacrificing its honor, he was inflexible; he would die, sooner than break the faith pledged to the negro.

Mr. Lincoln did not enter with reluctance upon the plan of emancipation, and in this statement I am corroborated by Lovejoy, and Sumner, and many others. If he did not act more promptly, it was because he knew he must not go faster than the people. Men have questioned the firmness, boldness, and will of Mr. Lincoln. He had no vanity in the exhibition of power, but he quietly acted, when he felt it his duty so to do, with a boldness and firmness never surpassed.

What bolder act than the surrender of Mason and Slidell, against the resolution of Congress, and almost universal popular clamor, without consulting the Senate, or taking advice from his Cabinet? The removal of McClellan, and Butler; the modification of the orders of Fremont, and Hunter, were acts of a bold, decided character. Mr. Lincoln acted for himself, taking personally the responsibility of deciding the great questions of his administration.

He was the most democratic of all the Presidents. Personally, he was homely, plain, without pretension, and without ostentation. He believed in the people, and had faith in their good impulses. He ever addressed himself to their reason, and not to their prejudices. His language was simple, sometimes quaint, never sacrificing expression to elegance. When he spoke to the people, it was as though he said to them, "come, let us reason together." There cannot be found in all his speeches, or writings, a single vulgar expression, nor an appeal to any low sentiment or prejudice. He had nothing of the demagogue. He never himself alluded to his humble origin except to express regret for the deficiencies of his education. He always treated the people in such a way, that they knew that he respected them, believed them honest, capable of judging correctly and disposed to do right.

The following incident, related by Mr. Deming, Member of Congress from Connecticut, illustrates the religion which governed his daily life: On one occasion, Mr. Lincoln said, "I have never united myself to any church, because I found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long and complicated statements of Christian doctrine, which characterize their articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church shall I join with all my heart and soul."

One day, when one of his friends was denouncing his political enemies, "Hold on," said Mr. Lincoln, "Remember

* See Deming's Eulogy on Lincoln, p. 42.

what St. Paul says, 'and now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.""

From the day of his leaving Springfield to assume the duties of the Presidency, when he so impressively asked his friends and neighbors to invoke for him the guidance and wisdom of God, to the evening of his death, he seemed ever to live and act in the consciousness of his responsibility to that God, and with the trusting faith of a child, he leaned confidingly upon His Almighty Arm. He was visited during his administration by many Christian delegations, representing the various religious denominations of the Republic, and it is known that he was relieved and comforted in his great work by the knowledge that the Christian world were praying for his success. Some one said to him, one day, “no man was ever so remembered in the prayers of the people, especially those who pray 'not to be heard of men,' as you are." He replied, "I have been a good deal helped by just that thought."

The support which Mr. Lincoln received during his administration from the religious organizations, and the sympathy and confidence between the great body of Christians and the President, was a source of immense strength and power to him.

I know of nothing revealing more of the true character of Mr. Lincoln, his conscientiousness, his views of the slavery question, his sagacity and his full appreciation of the awful trial through which the country and he had to pass, than the following incident stated by Mr. Bateman, Superintendent of Public Instruction for Illinois.

On one occasion, in the Autumn of 1860, after conversing with Mr. Bateman at some length, on the, to him, strange conduct of Christian men and ministers of the Gospel supporting slavery, he said:

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I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me—and I think He has-I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but Truth is everything. I know I am right, because I know that Liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I

have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand; and Christ and Reason say the same; and they will find it so.

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'Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles right.'

"Much of this was uttered as if he was speaking to himself, and with a sad, earnest solemnity of manner impossible to be described. After a pause, he resumed: Does n't it appear strange that men can ignore the moral aspect of this contest? A revelation could not make it plainer to me that slavery or the Government must be destroyed. The future would be something awful, as I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand, (alluding to the Testament which he still held in his hand,) especially with the knowledge of how these ministers are going to vote. It seems as if God had borne with this thing (slavery) until the very teachers of religion had come to defend it from the Bible, and to claim for it a divine character and sanction; and now the cup of iniquity is full, and the vials of wrath will be poured out.' After this the conversation was continued for a long time. Everything he said was of a peculiarly deep, tender and religious tone, and all was tinged with a touching melancholy. He repeatedly referred to his conviction that the day of wrath was at hand, and that he was to be an actor in the terrible struggle which would issue in the overthrow of slavery, though he might not live to see the end."

The place Mr. Lincoln will occupy in history, will be higher than any which he held while living. His Emancipation Proclamation is the most important historical event of the nineteenth century. Its influence will not be limited by time, nor bounded by locality. It will ever be treated by the historian as one of the great land-marks of human progress.

He has been compared and contrasted with three great personages in history, who were assassinated,-with Caesar, with William of Orange, and with Henry the IV. of France. He was a nobler type of man than either, as he was the product of a higher and more Christian civilization.

The two men, whose preeminence in American history will not hereafter be questioned, are Washington and Lincoln. Lincoln was as pure as Washington, as modest, as just, as

patriotic; less passionate by nature, more of a democrat, with more faith in the people, and more hopeful of the future. Washington will be the representative man of the era of Independence; and Lincoln, that of universal liberty. The cardinal ideas of Lincoln's poliey, were national Unity and Liberty. That the portion of the earth called the United States should continue the home of one national family, recognizing the brotherhood of man, was his grand aim. This great family, with a continent for a homestead, universal liberty, restrained and guided by intelligence and Christianity, was his sublime ideal of the future. For this he lived, and for this he died.