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XCVI.

ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE CEMETRY AT

GETTYSBURG.

A. LINCOLN NOV. 1864.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in. a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense 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. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

XCVII.

NATIONAL LINCOLN MONUMENT.

NEWTON BATEMAN.

The elements of character which most exalted Abraham Lincoln -which earned for him among his friends and neighbors a soubriquet more honorable than that awarded to Aristides-which bound him

to the good, who knew him, by indissoluble ties of love and confidence-which made him President - which kept him inflexible of purpose and unfailing in faith in the darkest days of the Republic

-which caused him in the fullness of time to smite the Pharaohs of Slavery with the flaming breath of his immortal Proclamation, calling a whole race from despair and death up to life and hopethe qualities of head and heart which did these things, and which at last added his name to the Martyrs of Liberty, and shrined his memory in the heart of the nation with a love more tender and reverent than has been given to any other son of the Republic since the death of Washington; are his simple, unswerving truthfulness; his humble trust in God; his inflexible fidelity to his convictions of truth and duty; his unsuspecting frankness and generosity; his quenchless love of liberty, and the unsullied rectitude and purity of

his life.

Did not the world seem less bright and beautiful when we heard that Abraham Lincoln was dead? Did not a loving presence seem to have passed from the very atmosphere, leaving a shadow of a vague distress upon our hearts? Was not something wanting to the day-something to the night-when we knew that his loving heart had cease to beat? Did the sun ever look down on such a spectacle as this stricken nation presented, in its voiceless anguish, on the morning of April 15th? Was any man ever borne to the grave so triumphant in death-with a funeral procession fifteen days in duration and over two thousand miles in length, while the air was ever tremulous, day and night, with dirge, and requiem, and minute gun? No dead President alone could evoke such woe. It was dead Abraham Lincoln, the good and true man, more than the Chief Magistrate of the nation, that subdued and melted the national heart, and bathed the millions in tears.

Is it not meet that we build a monument to such a man-a monument that shall not only be worthy the immortal dead, but one that shall essay to express the homage of a Christian and educated people for an exalted character whose greatness is made complete by goodness? Will not such a monument teach all future generations, that

"He is not but half great who is not good;" inspiring the young and ardent with a worthy ambition, and that lofty courage which dares to do right for right's sake, while it rebukes and shames the selfish, groveling, politic compromiser? Do we not well, as educators, to build a monument to which every parent may point his child and say, "So let it be done to him whom the people delight to honor?" Will not a new era in our national life be marked by such a monument—will it not still seem grand and worthy, when, in the coming centuries, the nation having consummated the policy for which he died, and become strong and glorious in a Union without a slave, shall appreciate, honor, love and revere, as it cannot now, the sublime character, life and work of her martyred President?

Living as he lived, dying as, and for what, he died, the lapse of time will but render more and more sacred every offering of love which this generation shall lay upon his tomb. Sage and seer, the good and great of every land and clime will come to muse and pray beneath its solemn shade. Let art and genius rear the mighty shaft, and more than classic grace and beauty breathe their inspiration upon it and make it glorious-for while it marks the dust of Lincoln, its nobler mission will be to tell our children and the world, from age to age, HOW WE LOVE THE MARTYRS OF LIBERTY.

XCVIII.

DUTY OF AMERICAN CITIZENS.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS MAY, 1861.

If war must come-if the bayonet must be used to maintain the Constitution-I can say, before God, my conscience is clear. I have struggled long for a peaceful solution of the difficulty. I have not only tendered those States what was theirs of right, but I have gone to the very extreme of magnanimity. The return is Wararmies marching upon our Capital; obstructions and dangers to our

navigation; letters of marque to invite pirates to prey upon our commerce; a concerted movement to blot out the United States of America from the map of the globe. The question is, are we to maintain the country of our fathers, or allow it to be stricken down by those who, when they can no longer govern, threaten to destroy?

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But this is no time for a detail of causes. The conspiracy is now known. Armies have been raised. War is levied to accomplish it. There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this ONLY PATRIOTS AND TRAITORS!

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We cannot close our eyes to the sad and solemn fact that war does exist. The Government must be maintained; its enemies overthrown; and the more stupendous the preparations, the less the bloodshed, and the shorter the struggle.

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The Constitution and its guarantees are our birthright; and I am ready to enforce that inalienable right to the last extent. We cannot recognize Secession. Recognize it once, and you have not only dissolved the Government, but you have destroyed civil order, and ruptured the foundations of society; you will have inaugurated anarchy in its worst form, and will shortly experience all the horrors of the French Revolution.

Then we have a solemn duty-to maintain the Government. The greater our unanamity, the speedier the day of peace. We have prejudices to overcome, from the few short months since, of a fierce party contest. These must be allayed. Let us lay aside all criminations and recriminations, as to the origin of these difficulties. When we shall have again a country, with the United States flag floating over it, and respected on every inch of American soil, it will then be time enough to ask who and what brought all this upon us.

It is a sad task to discuss questions so fearful as civil war; but sad as it is, bloody and disastrous as I expect it will be, I express it as my conviction, before God, that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally around the flag of his country.

XCIX.

SOCRATES SNOOKS.

FROM KIDD'S ELOCUTION.

Mister Socrates Snooks, a lord of creation,
A second time entered the marriage relation;
Xantippe Caloric accepted his hand,

And thought him the happiest man in the land.
But scarce had the honeymoon passed o'er his head,
When, one morning, to Xantippe, Socrates said,

"I think, for a man of my standing in life,
This house is too small, as I now have a wife;

So, as early as possible, carpenter Carey

Shall be sent for to widen my house and my dairy."

"Now, Socrates, dearest," Xantippe replied,

"I hate to hear everything vulgarly my'd;
Now, whenever you speak of your chattels again,
Say, our cow-house, our barn-yard, our pig-pen."

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By your leave, Mrs. Snooks, I will say what I please

Of my houses, my lands, my gardens, my trees."

Say Our," Xantippe exclaimed in a rage.

"I won't, Mrs. Snooks, though you ask it an age!"

Oh, woman! though only a part of man's rib,

If the story in Genesis don't tell a fib,

Should your naughty companion e'er quarrel with you,
You are certain to prove the best man of the two.

In the following case it was certainly true;
For the lovely Xantippe just pulled off her shoe,
And laying about her, all sides at random,
The adage was verified-"Nil desperandum."

Mister Socrates Snooks, after trying in vain,
To ward off the blows which descended like rain,-
Concluding that valor's best part was discretion,—
Crept under the bed like a terrified Hessian.
But the dauntless Xantippe, not one whit afraid,
Converted the siege into a blockade.

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