HON. S. A. DOUGLAS.

Chicago, July 24, 1858.

My Dear Sir: Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement to divide time, and address the same audience, during the present canvass, etc.? Mr. Judd is authorized to receive your answer; and if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of such agreement, etc.

A. LINCOLN.

THEO. L. CUYLER.

103

EXTRACT FROM MY SERMON.

HE

E lived to see the rebellion in its last agonies; he lived to enter Richmond amid the acclamations of the liberated slave; he lived until Sumter's flag rose again, like a star of Bethlehem, in the southern sky; and then, with the martyr's crown upon his brow, and with four million broken fetters in his hand, he went up to meet his God. In a moment his life crystallizes into the pure, white fame that belongs only to the martyr for truth and liberty! Terrible as seems the method of his death to us, it was, after all, the most fitting and glorious. In God's sight, Lincoln was no more precious than the humblest drummer-boy, who has bled his young away life on the sod of Gettysburgh or Chattanooga. He had called on two hundred thousand heroes to lay down their lives for their country; and now he, too, has gone to make grave beside them.

his

"So sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest."

When that grave, on yonder western prairie, shall finally yield up its dead, glorious will be his resurrection! Methinks that I behold the spirit of the great Liberator, in that judgment scene, before the assembled hosts of heaven. Around him are the tens of thousands from whom he struck the oppressor's chain. Methinks I hear their grateful voices exclaim, "We were an hungered, and

thou gavest us the bread of truth; we were thirsty for liberty, and thou gavest us drink; we were strangers, and thou didst take us in; we were sick with two centuries of sorrow, and thou didst visit us; we were in the prisonhouse of bondage, and thou camest unto us." And the King shall say unto him: "In as much as thou done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me. Well done, good and faithful servant;

enter into the joy of the Lord."

H. S. BENNETT.

105

HAVE been working for thirteen years in Fisk University, an institution which is devoted to the elevation of the colored race in the United States. And I am more and more convinced, from year to year, that no one can fully comprehend the magnitude and grandeur of the work achieved by Abraham Lincoln, until he has learned to look upon him as the colored people regard him. To the white Northerner he is preserver of the Union and the martyred President, to the colored people he is their deliverer, their savior. The name of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever as sacred in the hearts of a grateful people, whom he has redeemed.

FISK UNIVERSITY,

H. S. Bennett.

1880.

EXTRACT FROM MR. LINCOLN'S SPEECH,

AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 17, 1858.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave, and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own doubted friends-those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work,-who do care for the result. Two years ago, the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all, then, to

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