was like 1890, an off year for Republicans. After my election in 1862, I was invited by telegraph to come to Washington. When I called on the President, he congratulated me on my triumph, and said: "How did you do it?" I answered, "It was your emancipation proclamation, Mr. President, that did it." In a few moments he said, "Well, how do you like the proclamation?" I answered that I liked it as far as it went, and added, "but, Mr. President, if I had been Commander-in-Chief, I should not have given the enemy one hundred days' notice of my purpose to strike him, at the expiration of that time, in his most vulnerable point, nor would I have offered any apology for doing so great and noble an act." He laughed and enjoyed my hit, and after a moment's pause said, "Ashley, that's a centre shot."

MR. LINCOLN AT HAMPTON ROADS.

No one event during the entire War of the Rebellion alarmed us so much as the meeting at Hampton Roads, between Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter and Judge. Campbell, formerly of our United. States Supreme Court, and the President and Mr. Seward.

The night I learned that "Blair's scheme," as it was called, was about to be attempted, I went to the White House and protested against it. When it became known that Mr. Seward had actually gone down. to Hampton Roads alone, every loyal man in Washington was white with indigna

tion, and the demand was made that the President should go down at once unless Mr. Seward was recalled. Mr. Lincoln went down, and again nothing was done. Mr. Lincoln successfully handled the wily Confederate Commissioners at this meeting-put them thoroughly in the wrong, and so defeated their last desperate efforts to extricate themselves from the fate that all men of judgment then knew to be inevitable if the Union men of the nation but did their duty.

Before Mr. Lincoln started for Hampton Roads, he said to a friend of mine "that nothing would come of it," and when he returned to Washington we knew that the end of the Confederacy was near, and that the Union was to remain unbroken.

Constitutionally cautious, and by political training a conservative, Mr. Lincoln nevertheless kept abreast of public opinion, and in his last annual message to Congress announced with a clearness of statement which could not be misinterpreted, and with an impressiveness befitting the dignity of his great office, that

"In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to national authority on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Government, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclama

tion, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation or by any of the acts of Congress.

"If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be the instrument to perform it."

GREAT EVENTS DEVELOP GREAT MEN.

Seldom in the history of mankind have great men produced great events. It is great events which develop great men. But for the rebellion our matchless generals, Grant and Thomas, Sherman and Sheridan, would have been unknown in history as great soldiers, and not one nor all of them could have produced such a rebellion. But for that attempted revolution scores of men in civil life who will appear in history as among our leading statesmen, would in all probability have been unknown in the councils of the Republic; they would have passed their lives in domestic or business pursuits had not the opportunity been given them of service in the great conflict for saving the nation's life. And Mr. Lincoln himself had not that kind of leadership which could conspire and plot and surround himself with followers to inaugurate a revolution. He was pre-eminently fitted by nature to be the representative of law and order, to group and bind together all citizens of the Republic who were desirous of peace and union, and to preserve liberty and constitutional gov

ernment. As an historical figure he was, in fact, a product of the great anti-slavery revolution of which he became the recognized leader. But for the slave-baron's rebellion it might never have been his lot

"The applause of listning Senates to command;

The threats of pain and ruin to despise;
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read his history in a nation's eyes."
AS EXECUTIVE, DIPLO-

MR. LINCOLN
MAT AND MILITARY COMMANDER.

It was my privilege in boyhood and early manhood to meet and to know a number of the able statesmen of this country who were in power prior to the War of the Rebellion.

During my service in Congress I came to know more intimately the men who were in public life during the Presidency of Mr. Lincoln, and I often compared them with the idols of my boyhood. I need not tell you that I am better able now to judge character than I was then, and to compare them with Mr. Lincoln.

As an Executive, charged with the care and responsibility of a great government during the War of the Rebellion, and with the organization and direction of great armies, he was as I estimate men, an abler and safer President than Webster or Clay, or Chase or Seward would have been under like conditions and surrounded by like environments.

As a diplomat, he was the superior of Talleyrand, for without duplicity or falsehood [he moulded, and con

quered with truth as his weapon and candor for his defensive armor.

As a military strategist and commander, he was the equal, if not the superior, of his great generals.

As a man, he was merciful and just and absolutely without pride or arrogance; and to crown all, there was an atmosphere surrounding his daily life which made friendships that last beyond the grave.

"He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again." JACKSON ON HORSEBACK AND LINCOLN ON FOOT.

During the last half of the first century of the Republic two men filled the Presidential office whose personality stands out pre-eminently conspicuous above those who immediately preceded or followed them. in that office. Every one who hears me will know to whom I refer before I can pronounce the names of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.

Both Southern born, they were unquestionably the two most striking figures of their day and generation. And yet how unlike.

As I read history, Andrew Jackson was the first of our Presidents who appeared booted and spurred and on horseback; and though his term of office was in a time of profound peace, he ruled his country and his party with an iron hand and the autocratic will of a crowned king.

Abraham Lincoln came into the Presidency on the eve of the greatest rebellion in history, and though Com

mander-in-Chief of the mightiest army then in the world, and practically clothed with unlimited power, he did not magnify himself, nor attempt to rule with military rigor either his country or his party.

On the contrary, he sought to know the will of his countrymen with no thought of party or self. He sought to know their will so that he might administer the government as the general judgment of the nation should indicate, but, nevertheless, in accord with the promptings of his own great heart, which demanded that it should be administered in justice and mercy, "with charity for all and malice towards none."

The thought that dominated him was his earnst desire to conform his acts to the considerate judgment of all loyal men, and thus be able the better to discharge the duties of his great office, preserve the Government unimpaired and secure its perpetual unity and peace by enacting into constitutional law the legitimate results of the war.

For a moment let there pass in review before your mind's eye the picture of Andrew Jackson as President entering Richmond after the close of the great rebellion (especially if Calhoun had been at the head of the defeated Confederate Government), and then recall the manner in which every one knows that Abraham Lincoln entered it.

There can be no doubt that Jackson would have entered it duly heralded

and on horseback amid the booming of cannon, the waving of banners, and surrounded by his victorious army, marching to the music of fife and drum.

Those who have read of Jackson's imperious will and fiery temper know that the conquered would have been made to feel and remember the iron hand and iron will of the conqueror.

You all remember how Mr. Lincoln entered Richmond, on foot, unheralded and practically unattended. He thus entered the Capital of the late Confederate Government to teach the South and the nation a needed lesson -the lesson of mercy and forgive

ness.

If he could, he would have entered Richmond bearing aloft the nation's banner "unstained by human blood."

As he walked up the silent and deserted streets of Richmond the colored people were the only ones to meet him, and they gave their great deliverer a timid, quiet and undemonstrative welcome by standing on each side of the streets through which he passed with uncovered heads. During his walk of nearly two miles the colored children, after a time, drew nearer to him, and at last a little girl came so close that he took the child by the hand and spoke kindly to it, obeying the injunction of that simple and sublime utterance, which touches all human hearts: "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not."

As I look back and recall many of

the wonderful acts of this wonderful man, this was, to me, one among the most impressive and touching, and to-night presents to my mind a picture of moral grandeur, such as the world never before looked upon, a scene such as the future can only witness when like causes reproduce such an occasion-and such a man.

"Ah, if in coming times
Some giant evil arise,

And honor falter and pale,

His were a name to conjure with!
God send his like again!"

As the colossal figure of Lincoln casts its shadow down the centuries, it will be a guide to all coming generations, inspiring, as it did, with courage and hope all loyal men during the darkest hours of the great struggle for our national life, when

he

"Faithful stood with prophet finger
Pointing toward the blest to be,
When beneath the spread of Heaven
Every creature shall be free.

"Fearless when the lips of evil
Breathed their blackness on his name,
Trusting in a noble life time
For a spotless after fame."

And his contemporaries, while they live, and his countrymen for all time, will cherish the thought that neither time nor distance, nor things present, nor things to come, can dim the halo which surrounds and glorifies the unselfish and manly life of Abraham Lincoln.

JAMES W. ASHLEY.

THOSE who have followed the course of this narrative have probably said to themselves, "It strikes me that he (referring to the author), is inclined to make every year prior to 1840 either the commencement, or the ending, of some epoch in the life of Chicago."

It may be, however,

that my own thoughts have given birth to this suspicion; for I do believe that there were few years which were not really momentous, and which did not have a traceable bearing upon the fortunes of our great city. Particularly after the canal. commissioners surveyed their section, do the years seem to be packed, like the loam of the prairies, with all sorts of germs and seeds, awaiting various influences to bring them to the stature of metropolitan and cosmopolitan institutions.

Coming down to the years and months immediately preceding 1840, the fact should be made plain that these years and months formed preeminently, the crucial period of Chicago's business character. She had had her few years of speculative intoxication, followed by a reaction

-the panic of 1837-when she came to herself and perceived what insane acts she had been guilty of.

The panic of 1837 was bad enough; but there is a delirium of excitement which sustains men when they see the ruins falling all around them with their own. It is the death-like stillness which succeeds; the oppressive stagnation which follows, that try the business soul. Chicago had been riding in a balloon for several years; the balloon had been pricked, and Chicago had fallen to the ground from a great height. Would she sufficiently recover to do something on earth?

While an answer to this question was gradually evolved; while the sales at the land office fell from 200,000 or 300,000 acres per annum to almost nothing, and while the migration from the city was actually causing a decrease of its population, it was extremely fortunate that the building of the canal went on. The harbor improvements were virtually at a standstill; but work on the canal went on every enterprise had not deserted Chicago! The great Internal Im