against slavery were no longer openly expressed in the South, but the opposition to slavery did not cease. Thousands of people who submitted to the censorship that was at that time imposed upon the open expression of opinion, silently evaded the laws, and upon some plea or other emancipated their slaves or sent them into free States, where their freedom was assured. This is shown by the fact of the constantly increasing number of "free negroes," both in the Northern and Southern States, and this, too, in spite of the efforts that were made to colonize this class of citizens abroad.

No one knew these facts better than Lincoln. He mentions them in his debates with Douglas. In this connection it should not be forgotten that Lincoln was a Southerner by birth. If he did not share the prejudices of the Southern people, he at least understood and sympathized with them. In his debate with Douglas he spoke as a Southerner rather than a Northern Abolitionist.

The extreme Abolitionists of the Eastern States were frequently violently opposed to him. Because of his attitude on the fugitive slave law, Wendell Phillips wrote an article entitled "Abraham Lincoln, the Slave Hound of Illinois."

The Northwest Territory, of which Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were formed, was largely settled by Southerners who were opposed to slavery. These men remained Southerners in sentiment and tradition. They did not cease to love the South because they had gone into voluntary exile from it. In a certain sense it is true, therefore, that the abolition movement of the Middle West, which Lincoln represented, was the moral sentiment of the South turned against its own peculiar institutions. It was not the opposition of strangers nor of aliens in tradition and sentiment that the South met in Lincoln and in the antislavery people of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois, from whom he sprang. It was, to a large degree, the opposition of Southerners to that institution of the South that not only endangered the Union of the States, but was slowly and insidiously destroying the South.

I think it is important to point out this connection of

Lincoln with the South, and with Southern anti-slavery sentiment, because there are men in the South to-day who are working, silently and earnestly, still in the spirit of that elder generation of anti-slavery men, in order to complete the work that Lincoln began. In a certain way I may say that these men are the direct inheritors of that moral sentiment of the South, which, as I have sought to suggest, was represented by Abraham Lincoln and the Southern antislavery men of the Middle West.

As the years have passed, all sections of the country have learned to look with altered views upon the men and the issues of the Civil War. Many things that seemed of over- . shadowing importance forty or fifty years ago, now look small and insignificant.

Many persons who were in the foreground then, have now moved into the background. Looking at these persons and events from a distance, as usually happens, they look smaller and less significant. There is only one figure that seems to grow constantly bigger and more impressive as the years go by. It is with a really great man as it is with a lofty tower standing in the midst of a crowded city. As long as you are near it, there are a multitude of smaller and more animated scenes and objects that distract your attention, and you get only the most distorted idea of the lofty structure near you. But as you move farther and farther away, other objects sink into insignificance, and it looms large and serene above them. For the first time you see the mighty edifice in its true proportions.

As it is with the tower in the city, so it has been with Abraham Lincoln. Year by year he looms larger above the horizon of our national life-a great, serene, beneficent figure which seems to stretch its arms out to us, saying to us of that War as he did at Gettysburg:

"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."

Although each portion of the American people still look at Abraham Lincoln from a different angle and with widely different sentiments and feelings, it is still true, I believe, that the whole country has learned to honor and revere his memory. To the South he appears, as I have said, no longer as an enemy, but a wise and sincere friend. To the people who have inherited the traditions of the North he is the preserver of the Union, the second founder of the nation, but to the negro people he will remain for all time the liberator of their race. In the eyes of the excited and ecstatic freedmen at the close of the War Lincoln appeared not merely as a great man, but as a personal friend; not merely an emancipator, but a saviour. I confess that the more I learn of Lincoln's life, the more I am disposed to look at him much as my mother and those early freedmen did, not merely as a great man, not merely as a statesman, but as one to whom I can certainly turn for help and inspiration-as a great moral leader, in whose patience, tolerance, and broad human sympathy there is salvation for my race, and for all those who are down, but struggling to rise.

LINCOLN AND HIS RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS*

HON. SHELBY M. CULLOM

ONGRESS, in the days of Lincoln, was a conservative,

hard-working body, jealous of its prerogatives, just as it has always been; but there was far more intense excitement, bitter feeling, and general interest in Congress than there is to-day. President Lincoln was freely criticised; he had bitter opponents in Congress, as he had outside; but there were others who, with the great majority of the people, placed implicit faith in him and felt certain that he would carry the country through the awful crises and eventually save the Union. This was especially true among those who knew him best. With the War dragging its bloody trail the entire length of his administration, the national credit poor, taxes mounting upward, problems innumerable only to be solved by Congress, it can be readily seen that it was exceedingly important that the President should know intimately and judge correctly the men whose support he must seek in nearly every project he was called upon to undertake. Lincoln did know his men. There was never a President of the United States who could so well and so correctly judge men as Abraham Lincoln, and he was seldom, if ever, mistaken in his judgment.

I called upon him at the White House a few months before he was assassinated and a short time after my election as a member of the House of Representatives. I had been visiting in Washington, and spent considerable time around Congress, talking with members and senators, and it seemed to me that scarcely any of the strong men were in favor of the President. I was greatly impressed and concerned on account of the number of adverse criticisms I had heard. Before leaving Washington I called upon the President, and

Copyright, 1909, by The Chicago Tribune.

I asked him, "Mr. Lincoln, do you allow anybody to talk to you about yourself?" He said, "Certainly; sit down." I told him that I wanted to talk with him a little about what I had seen and heard around Congress since coming here, and said that it seemed to me that most of the strong men were against him. He replied, with a smile, "It is not quite so bad as that," and with that he took up a copy of the "Congressional Directory," with the remark that there were many congressmen on his side, and turning to the list of senators and representatives he went over it for my benefit. I saw that nearly every name was marked, and as he went down the list he commented on each, as, for instance: "This man is for me"; "The best friend I have"; "He's not for me now, but I can win him over," and so on. I found that he knew almost positively how every man stood, and the great majority of them were for him.

It was an interesting catalogue of personal characteristics, and I knew then that Abraham Lincoln's habit of studying men had not lapsed when he went to Washington; and I saw, too, that he had a perfect knowledge of Congress and its personnel.

I well recall a comment I heard him make concerning James G. Blaine, who was then in the House. Blaine had made a speech that day that had attracted attention. Lincoln said of him, “Blaine is one of the rising young men of our country," an assertion which succeeding years proved to be true.

I well recall the morning when the message came from Washington that the President had been killed, and it so happened that I was called upon to announce the terrible news to the great crowd assembled in the old State House Square in Springfield.

Five years previous he had departed from Springfield for Washington, never to return. I clasped hands with him at parting, and there passed between us a conversation which strengthened my determination to go to Congress. I was the newly elected Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and Lincoln had just attained his title "Mr. President," which I took delight in using.