the government; I defy their whole phalanx: let them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shattered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House in defense of the liberties of my country.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,—you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies,-men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle.

Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army-out of what? Englishmen, the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle. class of Englishmen, the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen, their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred

thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed and, as you say, despicable mass, he forged a thunderbolt, and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now if Cromwell was a general, this man was a soldier.

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,-rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons,-anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.

Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro's sword.

I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Crom

well, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.

You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture.-(Reprinted by permission of the publishers and holders of copyright, Lee and Shepard, Boston.)

THE SECRET OF LINCOLN'S POWER

BY HENRY WATTERSON

What was Lincoln's mysterious power, and whence? His was the genius of common sense; of common sense in action; of common sense in thought; of common sense enriched by experience and unhindered by fear. Inspired, he was truly, as Shakespeare was inspired; as Mozart was inspired; as Burns was inspired; each, like him, sprung directly from the people.

I look into the crystal globe, that, slowly turning, reveals the story of his life, and I see a little broken-hearted boy, weeping by the outstretched form of a dead mother, then bravely, nobly trudging a hundred miles to obtain her

Christian burial. I see this motherless lad growing to manhood amid scenes that seem to lead to nothing but abasement: no teachers; no books; no chart, except his own untutored mind; no compass, except his own undisciplined will; no light, save light from Heaven; yet, like the caravel of Columbus, struggling on and on through the trough of the sea, always toward the destined land. I see the fullgrown man, stalwart and brave, an athlete in activity of movement and strength of limb, yet vexed by weird dreams and visions of life, of love, of religion, sometimes verging on despair. I see the mind, grown as robust as the body, throw off these phantoms of the imagination and give itself to the practical uses of this work-a-day world; the rearing of children; the earning of bread; the cumulous duties of the husband, the father, and the citizen. I see the party leader, self-confident in conscious rectitude; original, because it was not his nature to follow; potent, because he was fearless, pursuing his convictions with earnest zeal, and urging them upon his fellows with the resources of an oratory which was hardly more impressive than it was manysided. I see him, the preferred among his fellows, ascend to the eminence ordained for him, and him alone among the statesmen of the time, amid the derision of opponents and the distrust of supporters, yet unawed and unmoved, because thoroughly equipped to meet the emergency. The same being, from first to last: the little boy weeping over a dead mother; the great chief sobbing amid the cruel horrors of war, flinching not from duty, nor changing his lifelong ways of dealing with the stern realities which pressed upon him and hurried him forward. And, last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history, I see him lying dead there in the capitol of the nation, to which he had rendered

"the last, full measure of his devotion, "the flag of his country wrapped about him, and the world in mourning at his feet. Surely, he was one of God's elect; not in any sense a creature of circumstance, or accident, or chance.

The inspired are few. Whence their emanation, where and how they got their power, by what rule they lived, moved and had their being, we know not. There is no explanation to their lives. They rose from shadow and they went in mist. We see them, feel them, but we know them not. They came, God's word upon their lips; they did their office, God's mantle about them; and they vanished, God's holy light between the world and them, leaving behind a memory, half mortal and half myth. From first to last they were the creations of some special Providence.

Tried by this standard, where shall we find an illustration more impressive than Abraham Lincoln, whose career might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times?

Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where did Mozart get his music? God, God, and God alone; and as surely as these were raised up by God, inspired by God, was Abraham Lincoln; and a thousand years hence, no story, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled with greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper feeling, than that which tells of his life and death.