LINCOLN ambitions, were all our own. 83 Had he been born among hereditary aristocrats, he would not have been our President. But born in the cabin and reared in the field and in the forest, he became the Great Commoner. The classics of the schools might have polished him, but they would have separated him from us. But trained in the common school of adversity, his calloused palms never slipped from the poor man's hand. A child of the people, he was as accessible in the White House as he had been in the cabin. His practical wisdom made him the wonder of all lands. With such certainty did Lincoln follow causes to their ultimate effects that his foresight of contingencies seemed almost prophetic. While we in turn were calling him weak and stubborn and blind, Europe was amazed at his statesmanship and awed into silence by the grandeur of his plans. Measured by what he did, Lincoln is a statesman without a peer. He stands alone in the world. He came to the government by a minority vote, without an army, without a navy, without money, without munitions. He stepped into the midst of the most stupendous, most wide-spread, most thoroughly equipped and appointed, most deeply planned rebellion of all history. He stamped upon the earth, and two millions of armed men leaped forward to defend their country. He spoke to the sea, and the mightiest navy the world had ever seen crowned every wave. He is radiant with all the great virtues, and his memory shall shed a glory upon this age that shall fill the eyes of men as they look into history. An administrator, he saved the nation in the perils of unparalleled civil war. A statesman, he justified his measures by their success. A philanthropist, he gave A mor liberty to one race and freedom to another. GETTYSBURG ADDRESS ABRAHAM LINCOLN Speech at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa., November 15, 1863. 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. 53 We are met on a great battle-field of that war. THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 85 We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as the 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 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. 160 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 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. THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION JOSEPH H. CHOATE Taken from an address on "Abraham Lincoln" which our Minister to England delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1900. Printed by permission. At last, when in his judgment the indispensable necessity had come, Lincoln struck the fatal blow, and signed the Proclamation which has made his name immortal. By it, the President, as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing the rebellion, proclaimed all persons held as slaves in the States to be thenceforward free. This great act was absolutely his own. conception and execution were exclusively his. He chose the time and the circumstances under which the Emancipation should be proclaimed and when it should take effect. The It came not an hour too soon; but public opinion in the North would not have sustained it earlier. Heard through the land like the blast of a bugle, the Proclamation rallied the patriotism of the country to fresh sacrifices and renewed ardor. It was a step that could not be revoked. It relieved the conscience of the nation from an incubus that had oppressed it from its birth. The United States were rescued from the false predicament in which they had been from the beginning, and the great popular heart leaped with new enthusiasm for "Liberty and Union, henceforth and forever one and inseparable." It brought not only moral but material support to the cause of the government, for within two years 120,000 colored troops were enlisted in the military service and following the national flag, supported by all the loyalty of the North and led by its choicest spirits. When Lincoln issued his Proclamation, he knew that the national resources were inexhaustible, that the government could and would win, and that if slavery were once disposed of, the only cause of difference being out of the way, the North and the South would come SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 87 together again and, by-and-by, be as good friends as ever. In many quarters abroad the Proclamation was welcomed with enthusiasm by the friends of America; but I think that the demonstrations in its favor that brought more gladness to Lincoln's heart than any other, were the meetings held in the manufacturing centers by the very operatives upon whom the war bore the hardest, expressing the most enthusiastic sympathy with the Proclamation, while they bore with fortitude the privations which the war entailed upon them. Lincoln's expectation, when he announced to the world that all slaves in all the states then in rebellion were set free, must have been that the avowed position of his government, that the continuance of the war now meant the annihilation of slavery, would make intervention impossible for any foreign nation whose people were lovers of liberty. SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS ABRAHAM LINCOLN Delivered March 4, 1865. This address has been considerably abridged in order to bring it within the space limit. At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. 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. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make |