new hope, carried victory and freedom together and made them one. History has given Abraham Lincoln a unique place. He had power greater than any King or Emperor, and he used it as modestly as a village pastor might wield his influence over a rural congregation. It has sometimes been said that he did not have in the highest sense what is known as executive ability. I am glad that he did not. Very small men have had that. But he had what is better. He was granite for the right, but yielding as water when common sorrows touched his own sad heart. "The better angels of our nature," of which he spoke in that first sublime appeal to his countrymen, were living realities to him; and many a time, when some soldier boy had made a slip from the rules of military duty and discipline, those "better angels" pleaded for him, and pleaded not in vain. How true it is that "spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues. Abraham Lincoln's nature was not that which is commonly, but mistakenly, supposed to dwell in the backwoodsman and the rustic. God sets his seal on the brow which is worthy to receive it. You cannot tell what subtle law it was that made a Warwickshire village flash Shakespeare upon the world's great canvas, nor why Burns came from an Ayrshire cottage to be the universal singer of humanity. Equally, it is beyond our ken to guess why Abraham Lincoln, plain and homespun, was called from an Illinois prairie to the first place in the world. He was above all things a man; strong, resolute, modest, too great to be proud, too deeply introspective not to see his own limitations and his own possibilities. No ruler by divine right ever had more true dignity; no laborer driving his team afield, more true humility. As Abraham Lincoln, he never forgot that he was President; as President, he never forgot that he was Abraham Lincoln. He was more than conqueror. The armies triumphed at last; but greater than Atlanta or Richmond or Appomattox was the conquest he made of the world's opinions and the world's heart. Four years had lifted him into the secure region where neither malice nor envy nor uncharitableness can ever come again. And what years they were! Years of broken hopes, of pride crushed under chariot wheels, years of disappointment and years of agony. Armies had gone down in ruin, and generals had ridden to defeat; but still the nation waited, patiently trusting the leader who never spoke a doubting word. We lived on hope -"the medicine of the unhappy." But the currents came right at last. Victories began to crowd upon each other, giving assurance that fortune had repented and would make atonement for the past. Those of us who are old remember how the Fourth of July gained a new lustre at Gettysburg, and was given a deeper meaning when Vicksburg opened its gates and the river flowed unvexed to the sea. And then the months went on, crowded with thrilling scenes, as if a new Homer were chanting another story for the ages. Every day some shackle was broken; every hour some slave stood up and thanked God that he was free. In that last triumphal year there was a Wilderness to be crossed, but there was a Grant to cross it. There was a sea kissing the beach by Savannah, but there was a Sherman eager to plant the flag on its shore. And so the end came in glory and with a joy that never would find words. And with the end came death and immortality "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed, And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, Nature has griefs that claim kinship with humanity. The story is told that farmers in central Illinois insisted, with quaint but touching gravity, that the brown thrush did not sing for a year after he died. When he ceased to breathe, Edwin M. Stanton turned to the group of mourners standing by his bedside and said, "Now he belongs to the ages." It is true; and the times in which we live, the events which we have witnessed, or that have come to us from those who saw and heard and felt, make us hostages to his memory, and pledge us to that universal truth whose voice pleads for every good cause. It is an inspiring thing to follow one whose leadership is always toward what is best in American citizenship. Viewing that greatest figure in all our history, we cannot fail to see that he was absolutely free from cant and affectation, doing bravely and openly the things he conceived to be his duty. He lived in plain view of his neighbors and friends, sharing their joys and sorrows, doing his duty after the fashion of a brave and honest man. Until the time when the nation called him to his great office, he might have been counted-and, I suppose, was counted, in some sense-a politician, but I have never heard that he was ashamed of the fact, or had cause to be ashamed. Undoubtedly he recognized, and it is one proof of his greatness, that in every constitutional government, parties, notwithstanding their blemishes and imperfections, are the forces upon which statesmen and patriots and the people themselves must rely. If you would make steam work, you must harness it into the mechanism of an engine. If you would make principles effective, you must organize them into moral batteries which will break down the forces that stand in their path. The large, well-rounded nature of Abraham Lincoln always reached out for high essentials, but never wasted time on small abstractions. Slavery in all its forms was hideous to him, and he opposed its extension with all the strength of his rugged nature, but, recognizing its constitutional sanctions, he never thought of disturbing it in the States where it was protected by law until, to save the Union and to crush the Rebellion, he sentenced it to death. Abraham Lincoln was the apostle of opportunity. Doing always the duty that lay nearest, he worked with the tools that were at hand. He knew-and we must learn-that majorities and minorities may be right or wrong; but whatever is best will some day come if only patience stands on guard. How paltry seem the little contentions of little men! More than any other of our statesmen, Abraham Lincoln stands for that largeness of view, that serene balance of mind, which is the true evidence of genius. And that is our highest lesson to-day and the lesson for the centuries to come. Above all else, Abraham Lincoln leads us away from things which are petty and ignoble to the heights-always to the heights. Comrades of the Grand Army, more than any others in this great assemblage, you are the sure and concrete proof of American patriotism. You have worn the blue, you have carried the flag, and you have stood in rank when the air was filled with scream of shot and shell. But to-day the peace for which you fought rests upon you as a blessing and a benediction. Let me salute you in soldier fashion and give you heart and hand in memory of the old days and the old cause. It must needs be that time and frost and the years that never stop have stiffened our joints and given us the stoop of age, but shall the currents of our hearts be slackened? Comrades, we are old; but there are infinite memories which invoke us to be true to the cause which was the love of our youth. When fife and drum were sounding it was easy to keep step to every call, and now, when our lives have almost reached the end, and our walk is slow and heavy, let us proudly remember that it was Abraham Lincoln who summoned us to defend a government "of the people, by the people, for the people." AN EX-SLAVE'S TRIBUTE TO THE EMANCIPATOR. DR. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON HEN I look back it seems to me that almost the first name I learned, aside from those of the people who lived on or near the Virginia plantation where I was born, was that of Abraham Lincoln, who, forty-six years ago last month, signed the Proclamation which set my people free. The circumstances under which I first heard the name of the great emancipator were these: When the war broke out I was a small boy on a plantation in Franklin County, in the southwestern corner of Virginia. We were living in a remote part of the country and, although the war was going on all around us, we saw little of it, except when we saw them brought back again—as we did sometimes-dead. My mother was the cook on our plantation and as I grew up and was able to make myself useful, my work was to attend my master's table at meal time. In the dining-room there was an arrangement by which a number of fans that hung to the rafters over the table could be moved slowly back and forth by pulling a string. It was my business to work these fans at meal time, and that, as I remember, was the first work I ever did. As a result, however, I was present at all the meals and heard all the conversation that went on there. Incidentally I heard a great deal about the causes and the progress of the War, and though I understood very little of what I heard, there was one name that stuck fast in my memory and that was the name of Abraham Lincoln. The reason that I remembered this name more than the others, was because it was the one name that I encountered at the "big house," which I heard repeated in different tones and with different significance in the cabins of the slaves. * Copyright, 1909, by The Chicago Tribune. |