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BOOK III.

Orators of the Civil War Period

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OLLOWING the period which was so largely dominated by the slavery controversy, and was distinguished by a brilliant galaxy of Congressional and popular orators, came four years of war, the logical result of the slavery contest and the fiercest and most destructive conflict of recent times. This was followed by a decade of reconstruction, during which the warfare of opinion was as virulent in its way as had been that of the combat in the field. all this was plentiful food for oratory. In the few years preceding the war, when the coming conflict impended over the land like a dark thunder cloud whose lightnings were for a while withheld, the voice of the orator was heard in the land, dealing strenuously with the threatening issues which were soon to burst out in devastating storm, and after the war had ended and the thunder of the cannon was hushed, new and momentous questions arose. The States which had voted themselves out of the Union, and had failed to win independence by the sword, were left in an anomalous situation. That they must eventually be restored to the Union was, in the sentiment of the American people, a foregone conclusion, but the conditions of their restoration, the principles upon which reconstruction would be based, remained to be determined. The halls of Congress again became the arena of verbal tournaments, and stirring orations upon vital subjects of political expediency were once more the order of the day. The finest orations of the period under review, however, belong to the period preceding the shock of arms rather than to that which succeeded it.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865)

THE MARTYR OF THE CIVIL WAR

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HE two vital periods of American history, that in which the people were struggling for independence and the formation of a stable Union, and that in which they were fighting for the preservation of this Union, were marked by two men of sublime altitude, as compared with their fellows,-Washington, the hero of the Revolution, and Lincoln, the presiding genius of the Civil War. These two men, whom future history is likely to place on pedestals equally high, and to regard with equal veneration, were men of different aspect and character. Washington was stately, dignified, a man sufficient unto himself, commanding the respect and admiration rather than the personal affection, of the people. Lincoln was simple and approachable, a man full of "the milk of human kindness," one who, while he also was respected and admired, was loved as well. In truth, no other man ever reached the topmost summit of our political structure while remaining so near to the hearts of the people as the simple-minded, great-souled, gentle-natured Abraham Lincoln, the earnest, honest, genial Father Abraham of slave and freemen alike. Lincoln in the fullest sense began life at the bottom and climbed to the top. Where he got his genius it is not easy to say, but genius of a high and original type he possessed. He was one of those men whom the conditions of life, however adverse, could not keep down. Step by step his course was upward, until he rose from the ablest man of a neighborhood to the Republican leadership of his State, and from that to the highest position in the gift of the people of the United States.

In 1858 took place that memorable contest for the Senatorship with Douglas to which he owed the national reputation which two

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years later brought him the Republican nomination for President. The versatility, the depth, the comprehensiveness of Lincoln's mind. were first fully revealed in this oratorical contest, and his position as the natural leader of the anti-slavery hosts became assured. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said. "I believe this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other." The march of events soon made his words good. The country went to war to make it "all the one thing or all the other," and Abraham Lincoln was selected as the bannerbearer in the great struggle. He lived to see the country all free, a consummation he did more than any other man to bring about; and then he died, a martyr in the great cause to which he devoted his life.

Abraham Lincoln had the mind of a great statesman and the powers of a great orator. His gift of expression was equalled by the lucidity of his thoughts and the majesty to which he could rise upon a fitting occasion. His Gettysburg speech is a sublime effort which will never be forgotten by his countrymen; and of his second inaugural speech it has been said: "This was like a sacred poem. No American President had ever spoken words like these to the American people. America never had a President who found such words in the depth of his heart."

JOHN BROWN AND REPUBLICANISM

[Lincoln's first visit to the East was in the early months of 1860, and on the 27th of February he made a speech at Cooper's Institute, New York, which struck with surprise and filled with admiration his fellow-Republicans of that city. It may be said that but for this oratorical journey in the East he probably would never have been made President of the United States. We give a brief selection from this notable address.]

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable to not designate the man and prove the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable to assert it, and especially to persist in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply a malicious slander.

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Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declarations, which were not held to and made by our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live. You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame on us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt.

True, we do, in common with our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare this. For anything we say or do the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism, and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves..

And how much would it avail you if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helpe's book, and the like, break up the Republican organization. Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and that feeling-that sentiment-by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballotbox into some other channel! What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation ?

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

[Never did eloquence reach a more sublime level, and never was more deep and significant thought compressed within a few sentences, than in Lincoln's worldfamous remarks at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, on November 9, 1863.]

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Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon 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 are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of 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 large 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 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on. 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 here 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 and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

[On the 4th of March, 1865, Abraham Lincoln spoke his last words to the American nation. These words will remain for centuries to come a classic of American oratory, their closing words inscribed upon the hearts of our people as the true motto of the great Western Republic.]

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than at the first. Then, a statement somewhat in detail of the course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper; now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have constantly been called forth concerning every point and place of the great contest which still absorbs 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. It is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With a high hope for the future, no prediction in that regard 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 avoid it. While the Inaugural Address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, the

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