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Abraham Lincoln

Edited by

JOHN G. NICOLAY and JOHN HAY

With a General Introduction by
RICHARD WATSON GILDER, and Special Articles
by OTHER EMINENT PERSONS

New and Enlarged Edition

VOLUME II

New York

FRANCIS D. TANDY COMPANY

U.S.6300.18.5 A

HARVARD COLLEGE

NOV 7 1907

LIBRARY
Gift of
The Saturday

Club

Copyright, 1894, by

JOHN G. NICOLAY and JOHN HAY

Copyright, 1905, by

FRANCIS D. TANDY

Lincoln and the Race Problem

IN

N HIS second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long as the memory of this Nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by 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 do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

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Immediately after his re-election he had already spoken thus:

"The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great National trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the inci

1 From an address delivered before the Republican Club of New York City, February 13, 1905.

dents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

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May not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to (serve) our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result.

"May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have ?"

This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up the Nation's wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful passions provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all Americans should show now, when there is so little excuse for malice or rancor or hatred, when there is so little of vital consequence to divide brother from brother.

Lincoln, himself a man of Southern birth, did not hesitate to appeal to the sword when he became satisfied that in no other way could the

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