TRIBUTE TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The guiding spirit of the Civil War was honest Abe Lincoln of the West. In that trying contest the greatest of all was he. Around the ever-radiating center of his wise decisions and great acts gathered brave generals, heroic armies, and noble men, constituting a brilliant historical constellation. I shall not undertake to account for this great man. His birth and education afford no explanation. The greatness of some men is found in their ancestry, but this man's good name rests upon a brief and eventful career. Some great men stand upon the mountain of their greatness, with an ancestral valley behind and a depression of posterity ahead; but Lincoln stands alone in the time of his country's greatest peril, the time that tried its noblest souls, on all things done at the right time and in the right way. This is indeed a proud pedestal, always progressively lifting the occupant to higher and more enduring renown.

Abraham Lincoln from humble source, unaided by wealth or influence, educated himself, overcame all early embarrassments, rose to public view, entered the storm of an angry national disturbance, moved serenely from horizon to horizon of a great life, athwart the sky of criticism, prejudice and passion; disappeared in a tragic death; reappears, mirrored in

the love of a great people and enshrined forever with growing honor in the heart of the republic. Account for him if you can. Able in law, eloquent in speech, skilled in diplomacy, wise in statesmanship, just in administration, pure in logic, sweet and tender in expression, admired in life, adored and loved in death. At Gettysburg he rises in dignified splendor above all the ceremonies of that impressive occasion, giving the world a beautiful classic that will live as long as the English language and be recalled as often as men die for liberty. It is a charming little gem of rare literary merit. It hangs an unfading dedicatory star of hallowing consecration, in the liberty-loving sky that bends over that monumental city of the heroic dead.

His last inaugural, pronounced just before his untimely death, is most sacredly worthy. No speech of emperor, king or ruler compares with it. It is the finest state paper in history. By coming generations it will be ranked among the grandest utterances of Its sublime pathos touches the loftiest tenderness of the heart. Hear the closing words:

man.

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by

the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are righteous altogether. With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

In his first inaugural he argues with great force and convincing clearness the impossibilities of secession, admonishes without threat, patiently entreats the wayward states to look before they leap, and finally closes that great appeal with the following solemn utterance:

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

In his second annual message he asks Congress to excuse any undue earnestness on his part and then says:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is

piled high with difficulties and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save the country. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We, even here, hold the power and bear the responsibility."

What an earnestness in all these stirring words; but you must remember it was a voice from the distress, danger, and darkness in which the country was at that time. Suffice it to say that his speeches, letters, orders, addresses, messages, and conversation were all in language, sentiment, thought and expression of the highest order of taste, propriety, statesmanship and ability.

Account, then, for this vast man if you can. Cradled in the wilderness of the West, his cradle rocked by the wild hand of nature, schooled in the practical experiences of life in a new country, suddenly emerging from obscurity into the world's full observation, doing things better than the past had done them, doing things to the entire satisfaction of the present and doing things so as to command the growing admiration of the future. Such was the tall, six-feet-four, great-faced, loving-eyed man who walked upon the national arena in 1860 from the savannas of the Sangamon, with the clearest brain, the largest