"ABRAHAM LINCOLN❞

February 12, 1898

AT THE LINCOLN DAY BANQUET OF THE MARQUETTE CLUB, CHICAGO

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN-A few weeks ago, when the pressure of other engagements made it apparent that it would be impossible for me to make any preparation suitable to the dignity of this occasion, I withdrew a previous acceptance of the invitation of the club. But the committee, with quite an undue sense of the importance of my presence, arranged to facilitate my coming and going, and promised for themselves, and for you, so far as they were able, if I would come, to be content with but a few words from me to-night.

The observance of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, which has become now so widely estab lished, either by public law or by general custom, will more and more force the orators of these occasions to depart from the line of biography and incident and eulogy and to assume the duties of applying to pending public questions the principles illus

trated in the life and taught in the public utterances of the man whose birth we commemorate.

And, after all, we may be sure that that great simple-hearted patriot would have wished it so. Flattery did not soothe the living ear of Lincoln. He was not unappreciative of friendship, not without ambition to be esteemed, but the overmastering and dominant thought of his life was to be useful to his country and to his countrymen.

On his way to take up the already stupendous work of the presidency, he spent a night at Indianapolis. The arrival of his train was greeted by many thousands of those who had supported his candidacy. They welcomed him with huzzas, as if they would give him token of their purpose to stand by the results declared at the polls. Yet it seemed to me hardly to be a glad crowd, and he not to be a glad man. There was no sense of culpability either in their hearts or in his; no faltering; no disposition to turn back, but the hour was shadowed with forebodings.

Men did not shrink, but there was that vague sense of apprehension, that unlocated expectancy of evil, which fills the air and disturbs the beasts of the field when the unclouded sun is eclipsed. When the column is once started in the charge there are cheers, but there is a moment when, standing at attention, silence is king.

Before us stood our chosen leader, the man who was to be our pilot through seas more stormy and

through channels more perilous than ever the old ship went before. He had piloted the lumbering flatboat on our western streams, but he was now to take the helm of the great ship. His experience in public office had been brief, and not conspicuous. He had no general acquaintance with the people of the whole country. His large angular frame and face, his broad humor, his homely illustrations and simple ways, seemed to very many of his fellow-countrymen to portray a man and a mind that, while acute and powerful, had not that nice balance and touch of statecraft that the perilous way before us demanded. No college of arts had opened to his struggling youth; he had been born in a cabin and reared among the unlettered. He was a rail-splitter, a flatboatman, a country lawyer.

Yet in all these conditions and associations he was a leader at the railsplitting, in the rapids, at the bar, in story-telling. He had a comparatively small body of admiring and attached friends. He had revealed himself in his debate with Douglas and in his New York speech as a man most familiar with American politics and a profound student of our institutions, but above all as a man of conscience-most kind in speech, and most placid in demeanor, yet disturbing the public peace by his insistence that those theories of human rights which we had all so much applauded in theory should be made practical.

In the broad common-sense way in which he did

small things he was larger than any situation in which life had placed him. Europe did not know him. To the South and to many in the Northern states he was an uncouth jester, an ambitious upstart, a reckless disturber. He was hated by the South, not only for his principles, but for himself. The son of the cavalier, the man who felt toil to be a stain, despised this son of the people, this child of toil. He was going to Washington to meet misgivings in his own party, and to confront the fiercest, most implacable and powerful rebellion of which history gives us an example. Personal dangers attended his journey. The course before him was lighted only by the lamp of duty; outside its radiance all was dark.

He seemed to me to be conscious of all this, to be weighted by it, but so strong was his sense of duty, so courageous his heart, so sure was he of his own high purposes and motives and of the favor of God for himself and his people, that he moved forward calmly to his appointed work; not with show and brag, neither with shrinking. He was yet in a large measure to win the confidence of men in his capacity, when the occasion was so exigent as to seem to call for one who had already won it.

As I have said at another time, the selection of Mr. Seward for secretary of state was a brave act, because Mr. Lincoln could not fail to know that for a time Mr. Seward would overshadow him in the

popular estimation, and a wise one, because Mr. Seward was in the highest degree qualified for the great and delicate duties of the office. A man who is endowed for the presidency will know how to be president in fact as well as in name, without any fussy self-assertion.

He was distinguished from the abolition leaders by the fairness and kindliness with which he judged the South and the slaveholder. He was opposed to human slavery, not because some some masters were cruel, but upon reasons that kindness to the slave did not answer. "All men" included the black man. Liberty is the law of nature. The human enactment can not pass the limits of the state; God's law embraces creation.

Mr. Lincoln had faith in time, and time has justified his faith. If the panorama of the years from '61 to '65 could have been unrolled before the eyes of his countrymen would they have said, would he have said, that he was adequate for the great occasion? And yet as we look back over the story of the civil war he is revealed to us standing above all men of that epoch in his capacity and adaptation to the duties of the presidency.

It does not seem to be God's way to give men preparation and fitness and to reveal them until the hour strikes. Men must rise to the situation. The storage batteries that are to furnish the energy for