keted. The West was made available for the defense of the flag by McCormick's mechanical substitute for human hands. The President from the West, when the first victories also were those won by the Western army corps under generals from the West, saw the dawn of peace light up the sky with new hope, but then-another Moses, vouchsafed merely a prophetic vision of the realization-he had to lay down his life that the new covenant of love might be firmly sealed by his blood. When he fell, the world wept. They that but yesterday had carried the musket for the defense of what they believed to be their rights, the men who wore the battle-tattered gray, felt that in him they lost their truest friend. Monarchs shed a tear at his bier. The noblest of rulers had ascended to glory. They knew none to the purple born who bore escutcheon more lustrous than was his, the great commoner's. But we at this hour must not forget that memory spells also monition. How do we measure up against him? He laid tribute on the graves of those that died that the government of the people, for the people, and by the people might not perish. No enemy from without, indeed, is threatening the permanence of our institutions, the independence of our State, the prosperity of our people. We have been garnering the harvest of the day of Appomattox. Ours is now a world empire. But is ours, for all this, a government of the people? Is it not a government of politicians, for politicians? Serious question this, inviting searching of the heart. Has increase in wealth tended to undemocratize our manners, our ambitions? Has it obscured our ideals, placed near the altar new, strange deities wrought of gold? Are these the Gods that have led us forth out of Egypt, out of the crucible of trial and distress? Has there been profounder reverence for law among us, the heirs of the men that were giants in those gigantic days? Great men are mountain peaks. As we look up toward the peak named the Martyr-Saviour-President, shall the lifted finger, tipped with the gold of glorious sunshine, not be for us sign and symbol that our way shall lead upwards? The mountain range of which he is the highest point embraces many crests. Grant, Seward, Stanton, Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, Schurz, Sumner, Morton, Yates, Curtis, and a host of other names tell their significance. Yet high as they are, their height is worthily crowned and completed in the one that stands out above all in superb majesty-Abraham Lincoln. THE GREATEST APOSTLE OF HUMAN LIBERTY (A Speech of Introduction)* COL. JOHN R. MARSHALL ONE of the many exercises held to commemorate the NONE one hundredth anniversary of the world's greatest citizen, is more significant and fitting than the one we are about to begin. I say this: No race of people within the borders of our common country can appreciate so much the greatest apostle of human liberty as can the negro race. The name of Abraham Lincoln will live always, wherever the cause of liberty and freedom is revered. His name was near and dear to the hearts of every negro in the darkest and most perilous hour of the nation. The time was when our faith in him was strained and taxed to the utmost; but it never failed, for he felt, in spite of the dark clouds that hovered around and about us, that the hour and the instrument of our redemption had met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. And so we are here to express our gratitude for the vast preeminent services rendered to our race and to the nation by that great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. On behalf of the Lincoln Memorial Centennial Committee appointed by the Mayor of our city, I take great pleasure in introducing as the chairman of the evening, Dr. A. J. Carey. * Delivered before the meeting of the Eighth Infantry (Colored), and the Colored Citizens' Committee. THE UNFINISHED TASK (A Speech of Introduction)* REV. A. J. CAREY NE hundred years ago to-day the wilds of Kentucky ONE gave to America an American, rugged as his surroundings in all save his kindliness of spirit, unprepossessing in all save his beauty of soul. The world saw him while he lived, as through a glass, darkly. To-day the vision becomes more distinct, although not altogether clear. The heroic effort made this week by old America in memory, by new America in prophecy, to find itself, to know itself, is worthy of so noble an occasion. From church, from schoolhouse, from college, and from public hall one and the same strain floats forth: "Lincoln, Liberty, and Love." The quiet of the private home, the noises of the busy mart, are lost in one great anthem, one mighty pæan of praise. That marvel of the twentieth century, the daily press, has labored overtime that none may be ignorant, that even the humblest may know and receive inspiration from Lincoln's life and times. The minor strain, the note of regret, is, that the life then just beginning should have been laid so untimely as a sacrifice on its country's altar, leaving its task unfinished. The unfinished task, who will assume it? The task of loving the nation-not the sections simply but the nationinto one; the task of throwing himself with God, and counting a majority on the side of the oppressed; the task of doing the right as God gives him to see the right. If the spirit world has interest in this material world, how depressed must be the spirit of Lincoln at the backward swinging of the pendulum, at the retreat of American senti * Delivered before the meeting of the Eighth Infantry (Colored), and the Colored Citizens' Committee. ment from the glory-crowned heights of freedom for all, to the valley of restriction and class legislation. The call of the sixties was for a man of heroic mould, a man who had been "driven many times to his knees by the overwhelming conviction that he had nowhere else to go." Such was the call and Lincoln was its answer. The call in this, the morning of the twentieth century, is for a character no less true, a soul no less courageous, a spirit no less reliant upon its God-another man who will rise up and say, "The nation cannot live on injustice." Whence next will come the answer? for come it will and come it must. The country still lives upon Lincoln's ideals; still grows because of his sacrifices; and still marches in his spirit to meet and master the problems of to-day, whether social, industrial, or racial. In him we have found the sources of abiding, conquering character. With him we have seen that to "allow all the governed an equal voice in the government-that, and that alone is self-government." With him we have seen that "in giving freedom to the slave"-physical freedom, intellectual freedom, political freedom-we assure freedom to the free. Nothing stamped with the Divine image was sent into the world to be trodden on, to be degraded and imbruted by his fellows, and he who denies to the weakest of mankind the right, the privilege, the opportunity of rising to his greatest possibilities, not only displays his own cowardice and weakness but robs posterity of a legacy which a life enriched and glorified might bequeath to coming generations. It is not Lincoln, the lawyer, nor Lincoln the politician, nor even Lincoln the statesman that will survive; but Abraham Lincoln, the friend of the oppressed, the champion of human rights, the great emancipator. Of him we speak and in his memory are we gathered, and with him we are dedicating ourselves to the great task remaining before us, the task remaining before this nation, the cherished hope of his life, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." |