contest, coming near to war and bloodshed very often, over which he triumphed only by reason of this available power of the sturdy, heroic Germans who so bravely and righteously sustained him.

William of Orange and his brave Netherlanders fought their way to victory against Philip II, the butcher Alva, and the devil, through long years of disaster and death, regardless of losses and the most merciless and bloody despotism ever known in Europe.

Oliver Cromwell hewed out and cut his way against all resistance, in one of the most successful campaigns in the world's progress, with his brave yeomanry of God-fearing men. He overthrew a merciless dynasty. He tried and executed a king who would have expeditiously and heartlessly slain all of them if he had been restored to power. He did this in an era not to be measured by the conditions of to-day, but when, to preserve the limited rights and liberties of the freest and most enlighted people, he could do no better.

Washington and his ragged and barefooted veterans founded this Nation on the well-defined basis of freedom, equality, and popular government-one that before their day had been no more than a dream of mankind.

Lincoln, as devoted a hero as any of these, with the help of millions of co-patriots, took up the mightier work of saving the people's liberties. He, in leadership that stands alone, overthrew the slaveholders' defined limitations of human rights. By the grace of God in repentance and the awakened conscience of the people, he enlarged these to include the black men, who, in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, were made, for all time, equals among the sons of men, bringing them under the benign power of Christ's Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do even so to them."

President Lincoln encountered force without cause in

beginning his work of saving the Nation. He preferred peace and the amicable settlements of disputes, and to save the Union he would have foregone the amelioration of slavery for the time, to avert civil war. But the conspirators and the enemies of free government everywhere were never more mistaken than when they believed him too weak or timid to use force in his line of duty when he had cause to do so. Although suddenly brought to the use of force, he took up the study of the subject in his usual diligent way, in all its bearings. He persevered until he became the master spirit and strategist in the art of war. When he saw that war was inevitable, actually upon us, he at once set about using the most potent and powerful forces available to keep the Nation from falling to pieces in the onset.

While it is an unexplained mystery, it is still true that our progress, like that of other peoples under great leaders, has always been, and apparently had to be, through struggle and conflict. Either through persevering adventure or war we have reached our high place among nations and our supremacy on the American Continent. Standing as we do to-day, without any hostile rival in the roll of nations, we can not realize the desperate condition our country was in at the time of President Lincoln's inauguration and for a few weeks following. He was so nearly alone in the work of uniting the loyal people that, if he had not succeeded beyond what any other man or leader had done, secession, with its continuing evils, would have been inevitable.

The war went on in campaigns and advancing movements that overcame every obstacle to complete success. It was carried on by leaders and men who had the strength, power, and equipment to win victory at twice its fearful cost, had duty required. They neither faltered nor hesitated, but pressed forward to the waste and bloody sacrifice, all the more brave and determined since they knew they must meet and utterly defeat Americans of our own kind and kindred. It

was a great struggle, as the world measures conflict, won on fields of carnage that staggered men in wonderment. In imagination we see our great leaders and our multitudes of God's herces on both sides pass before us in grand review. As they move along the Nation's highway, amid floods of imperishable light in harmonious fellowship and concord, there are no conquerors and no slaves, no servants and no foes. All are equal under the same laws, all bettered alike, the unshackled slaves, the freed masters, and the free citizens, because the sin that cursed and darkened the whole land has been purged away and forever obliterated.

President Lincoln was re-elected in 1864; inaugurated the second time, March 4, 1865. No change in the vigorous policy of conducting the war was made or thought of. It was continued to the end, in faith and fulfillment, that the integrity of the Nation and the liberties of the people should be maintained and strengthened, but never abridged nor diminished. There was little change in the Cabinet. The war was in furious progress. Grant was in front of Richmond, with cannon and belts of artillery, brigades and divisions of men overlapping in lines of bristling steel, steadily closing down on the fated Rebellion.

In his second Inaugural Address the President closed, saying: "With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to 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 a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

When the work was done, when Lee had surrendered on April 11th on Grant's generous terms, the great achievement of the prophet-leader was accomplished, and he, too, passed over, as he predicted. A darker hand than ever shadowed the sun on this continent, and a more vicious-tempered

heart than our civilization had produced before this deliberately slew the noble-minded, great-hearted man.

On April 11th, President Lincoln delivered an address counseling harmony and a forgiving spirit in the reconstruction of our war-wasted country.

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at eight o'clock P. M., he, with his family and some friends, attended the play of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington, where he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a player of less than ordinary repute. He shot the President with a pistol, holding it almost against his head. He fell forward unconscious almost at once. He was removed to a dwelling across the street, where he expired, without returning consciousness, the next morning, April 15th, at seven o'clock and twenty-two minutes. Booth was not in or connected with the Confederate cause, which he honored so much by being too cowardly as never to enter the ranks of the rebel army.

President Lincoln thus passed from us in the hour of his triumph, when "his spirit returned to God, who gave it." He left his tribute to the men who saved the Nation and the principles for which they served and died in uncounted thousands, that will endure in the hearts and hopes of mankind as long as they honor themselves.

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 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 battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as

a final resting-place for 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 can not dedicate-we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor 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 which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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 that 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 this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

November 19, 1863.