LINCOLN

O captain. My captain. Our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! Heart! Heart!
Leave you not the little spot,
Where on the deck my captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O captain. My captain. Rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
O captain. Dear father.
This arm I push beneath you;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor win:
But the ship, the ship is anchor'd safe, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring, O bells.
But I with silent tread,
Walk the spot the captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
--Walt Whitman.



LINCOLN

As Washington stands to the Revolution and the establishment of
the government, so Lincoln stands as the hero of the mightier
struggle by which our Union was saved. He was born in 1809, ten
years after Washington, his work done had been laid to rest at
Mount Vernon. No great man ever came from beginnings which seemed
to promise so little. Lincoln's family, for more than one
generation, had been sinking, instead of rising, in the social
scale. His father was one of those men who were found on the
frontier in the early days of the western movement, always
changing from one place to another, and dropping a little lower
at each remove. Abraham Lincoln was born into a family who were
not only poor, but shiftless, and his early days were days of
ignorance, and poverty, and hard work. Out of such inauspicious
surroundings, he slowly and painfully lifted himself. He gave
himself an education, he took part in an Indian war, he worked in
the fields, he kept a country store, he read and studied, and, at
last, he became a lawyer. Then he entered into the rough politics
of the newly-settled State. He grew to be a leader in his county,
and went to the legislature. The road was very rough, the
struggle was very hard and very bitter, but the movement was
always upward.

At last he was elected to Congress, and served one term in
Washington as a Whig with credit, but without distinction. Then
he went back to his law and his politics in Illinois. He had, at
last, made his position. All that was now needed was an opportunity,
and that came to him in the great anti-slavery struggle.

Lincoln was not an early Abolitionist. His training had been that
of a regular party man, and as a member of a great political
organization, but he was a lover of freedom and justice. Slavery,
in its essence, was hateful to him, and when the conflict between
slavery and freedom was fairly joined, his path was clear before
him. He took up the antislavery cause in his own State and made
himself its champion against Douglas, the great leader of the
Northern Democrats. He stumped Illinois in opposition to Douglas,
as a candidate for the Senate, debating the question which
divided the country in every part of the State. He was beaten at
the election, but, by the power and brilliancy of his speeches,
his own reputation was made. Fighting the anti-slavery battle
within constitutional lines, concentrating his whole force
against the single point of the extension of slavery to the
Territories, he had made it clear that a new leader had arisen in
the cause of freedom. From Illinois his reputation spread to the
East, and soon after his great debate he delivered a speech in
New York which attracted wide attention. At the Republican
convention of 1856, his name was one of those proposed for
vice-president.

When 1860 came, he was a candidate for the first place on the
national ticket. The leading candidate was William H. Seward, of
New York, the most conspicuous man of the country on the
Republican side, but the convention, after a sharp struggle,
selected Lincoln, and then the great political battle came at the
polls. The Republicans were victorious, and, as soon as the
result of the voting was known, the South set to work to dissolve
the Union. In February Lincoln made his way to Washington, at the
end coming secretly from Harrisburg to escape a threatened attempt
at assassination, and on March 4, 1861 assumed the presidency.

No public man, no great popular leader, ever faced a more
terrible situation. The Union was breaking, the Southern States
were seceding, treason was rampant in Washington, and the
Government was bankrupt. The country knew that Lincoln was a man
of great capacity in debate, devoted to the cause of antislavery
and to the maintenance of the Union. But what his ability was to
deal with the awful conditions by which he was surrounded, no one
knew. To follow him through the four years of civil war which
ensued is, of course, impossible here. Suffice it to say that no
greater, no more difficult, task has ever been faced by any man
in modern times, and no one ever met a fierce trial and conflict
more successfully.

Lincoln put to the front the question of the Union, and let the
question of slavery drop, at first, into the background. He used
every exertion to hold the border States by moderate measures,
and, in this way, prevented the spread of the rebellion. For this
moderation, the antislavery extremists in the North assailed him,
but nothing shows more his far-sighted wisdom and strength of
purpose than his action at this time. By his policy at the
beginning of his administration, he held the border States, and
united the people of the North in defense of the Union.

As the war went on, he went on, too. He had never faltered in his
feelings about slavery. He knew, better than any one, that the
successful dissolution of the Union by the slave power meant, not
only the destruction of an empire, but the victory of the forces
of barbarism. But he also saw, what very few others at the moment
could see, that, if he was to win, he must carry his people with
him, step by step. So when he had rallied them to the defense of
the Union, and checked the spread of secession in the border
States, in the autumn of 1862 he announced that he would issue a
proclamation freeing the slaves. The extremists had doubted him
in the beginning, the con servative and the timid doubted him
now, but when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, on
January 1, 1863, it was found that the people were with him in
that, as they had been with him when he staked everything upon
the maintenance of the Union. The war went on to victory, and in
1864 the people showed at the polls that they were with the
President, and reelected him by overwhelming majorities.
Victories in the field went hand in hand with success at the
ballot-box, and, in the spring of 1865, all was over. On April 9,
1865, Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and five days later, on
April 14, a miserable assassin crept into the box at the theater
where the President was listening to a play, and shot him. The
blow to the country was terrible beyond words, for then men saw,
in one bright flash, how great a man had fallen.

Lincoln died a martyr to the cause to which he had given his
life, and both life and death were heroic. The qualities which
enabled him to do his great work are very clear now to all men.
His courage and his wisdom, his keen perception and his almost
prophetic foresight, enabled him to deal with all the problems of
that distracted time as they arose around him. But he had some
qualities, apart from those of the intellect, which were of equal
importance to his people and to the work he had to do. His
character, at once strong and gentle, gave confidence to every
one, and dignity to his cause. He had an infinite patience, and a
humor that enabled him to turn aside many difficulties which
could have been met in no other way. But most important of all
was the fact that he personified a great sentiment, which
ennobled and uplifted his people, and made them capable of the
patriotism which fought the war and saved the Union. He carried
his people with him, because he knew instinctively, how they felt
and what they wanted. He embodied, in his own person, all their
highest ideals, and he never erred in his judgment.

He is not only a great and commanding figure among the great
statesmen and leaders of history, but he personifies, also, all
the sadness and the pathos of the war, as well as its triumphs
and its glories. No words that any one can use about Lincoln can,
however, do him such justice as his own, and I will close this
volume with two of Lincoln's speeches, which show what the war
and all the great deeds of that time meant to him, and through
which shines, the great soul of the man himself. On November 19,
1863, he spoke as follows at the dedication of the National
cemetery on the battle-field of 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 battle-field 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 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
poor power to add or detract. The world will little note or 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 have 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 the 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.


On March 4, 1865, when he was inaugurated the second time, he
made the following address:

Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of
presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended
address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat
in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed proper. Now, at the
expiration of four years, during which public declarations have
been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the
great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the
energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is
as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust,
reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope
for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving
the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking
to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union, and
divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but
one of them would make war rather than let it perish. And the war
came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the
southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do
more than to restrict the Territorial enlargement of it. Neither
party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it
has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result
less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and
pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's
faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers
of both could not be answeredthat of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of
offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to
that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that
American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offenses come, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him? 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 bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of
the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

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, a
lasting, peace among ourselves and with all nations.

****

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