a Harvard graduate, a master of the English language, a great orator, to give the oration. But there was one member of that committee from Illinois, Colonel Clark E. Carr, and he said, "Gentlemen, I am from Illinois; Illinois must have a speech there. You must have President Lincoln." The rest of the committee said, "He is not an orator; he cannot shine with Edward Everett." "But," said the persistent Colonel, "Illinois has got to be heard." And they finally decided to ask Lincoln to give the dedication address-although nobody knew just what that was; but it was something important. You know the story. They postponed the celebration for three months to allow the great orator, Edward Everett, to write his oration. Lincoln had three months' notice also; but think what tasks he had to do during those three months in the midst of the War! He had ten thousand things to distract his attention; a thousand griefs gnawing at his heart. Even when he started to Gettysburg he had written only a dozen lines; and on the road there, or after he reached there (the testimony varies), he added a few more lines. When the great day came, what a crowd was there! Colonel Carr sat on the platform, and testifies that Edward Everett held those people spellbound for three hours by his oratory. Beginning with a description of how the Greeks buried their dead, he proceeded to discuss secession, and the rights of the North, ending with a magnificent peroration. When Lincoln arose to give the dedication address, there was a great movement in the crowd. Every one wanted to see the President. There were cries of "Order, order, order!" "Down in front!" and before order was restored, Lincoln had finished reading his address and sat down, amidst universal disappointment, as Colonel Clark testifies. There was no applause at that time-the "tremendous applause" was inserted by the reporters, so Colonel Carr insists. Then Edward Everett walked across the stage to Mr. Lincoln, reached out his hand, and said: "Mr. Lincoln, if I could have come as near striking the keynote of this occasion in three hours as you did in three minutes, I should be better

satisfied with my performance." That was true. What had the way the Greeks buried their dead to do with the dedicating of that field? What had the rights of the secession to do with the consecration of the battleground? Nothing. Lincoln struck this keynote when he said: "We cannot dedicate -we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. . It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us;"-that was the point. The War was not half over "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." That was the very essence of the occasion. And yet, if I take this tablet containing that immortal address and look it over, I shall find only two hundred and seventy-two words in the whole address. Who reads Edward Everett's oration now? Nobody. But Lincoln's little speech of two hundred and seventy-two words has become a classic, recited in all the schools, and will probably endure as long as the English language endures. Why? Because Edward Everett's speech is lofty, high, full of classical allusions; and Abraham Lincoln's address is in the plain language of the people the plain language of the frontier. Of those two hundred and seventy-two words, only twenty-two are longer than two syllables, and the rest of the words are two syllables or under. To get simpler language than Lincoln used on that occasion, I am informed that you must go to the King James version of the Bible.

Simple language! The frontier taught him to use it. The result was that all through the Civil War the people trusted him, because they understood him. They knew just what he was trying to tell them; and no ruler, ancient or modern, was ever intrusted with the power that Abraham Lincoln used during those four years.

Do you realize what he did? Do you realize he had at one time five thousand editors imprisoned in the United States? The Constitution says that free speech and a free

press shall never be violated. Yet Lincoln did that. Why? In order to suppress insurrection in certain States of the Union.

Do you realize that when the Chief Justice of the United States, the highest judicial power in the land, issued a writ of habeas corpus to get Merryman out of jail at Baltimore, Lincoln refused to allow the writ? Why? In order to suppress the rebellion in the Southern States.

Do you realize that he confiscated hundreds and thousands of dollars' worth of Southern slave property, when he had no right under the Constitution to free the cheapest, meanest slave that ever breathed? Why did he do this? In order to suppress insurrection, and save the Union that our fathers had given to us. The people allowed him to do this-the people allowed him to use these extraneous powers, because they knew that at the end of the War, when it was all over, he would hand back the government to them. He would not usurp their power. They understood him; they knew him; they trusted him; and all because he used simple language within the public comprehension.

Lincoln was reared in the Mississippi Valley; he knew little about the Old World; he never visited Europe; he was purely an American. By contrast with him, George Washington was nothing more than an English gentleman living over here in America. I do not do injustice to the shade of George Washington if I say that by contrast with Lincoln, he simply reflected England. For instance, George Washington sent to England to get his coat of arms. He had the Washington arms in silver on the harness of his horses; he also had it on the coach which he used as President. You are sure to see that coach because it is preserved in three different places in the United States at the present time! Did Abraham Lincoln have any coat of arms? I never saw it. If he did, the device must have been two rails, a maul, and a wedge. George Washington sent to England to get his family tree. He traced the beginning of his family back to the Conquerors; it is just as good a family tree as you can buy now-a-days. Did Abraham Lincoln have any family tree traced out? No.

Over here on the frontier the settlers were too busy with the other kind of trees to pay much attention to family trees. Even when Lincoln went to Congress he wrote to a man named Lincoln, living in Virginia, trying to find out something more about his own grandfather.

George Washington had his clothes made in England up to the time of the Revolutionary War. Were Abraham Lincoln's clothes made in England? It makes you smile to think of it. As a young boy the wool for his clothes was grown in Kentucky and spun there, and was there dyed with the juice of the butternut tree.

The result was that Abraham Lincoln reflected the American environment, and George Washington reflected the Old World environment. They were nearly one hundred years apart. George Washington was President eight years and had one task, and that was a foreign problem-how to keep from going to war with England on the one side, or with France on the other. He set the pattern for neutrality for America, which, thank God, we have not departed from in all the years that have followed. He set the pattern that we should be free at Washington from entangling alliances with other nations. Abraham Lincoln was President a little over four years, and what was his task? To save the American Union; a task peculiarly American. And his American environment, in the Providence of God, had fitted him to meet that problem.

Lincoln was the most original American who ever reached the presidency, and was also the most misunderstood. We have never had a man in all American history who, in his life, was as much vituperated and blamed, and, in his death, as praised and deified as was Abraham Lincoln.

I wish I could show to you a collection of cartoons I possess showing how Lincoln was caricatured, how he was vilified during the Civil War; misunderstood always, both before and after he was elected President. Lincoln suffered such disadvantage as few men have suffered when coming into that high office. He lacked nearly half a million votes of having a majority for President-nearly half a million popular votes. Then how could he be elected? Only by means of our elect