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 came. war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war 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. 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, 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 men 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 prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 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 up 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, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. LINCOLN THE ORATOR 89 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 care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. LINCOLN THE ORATOR JOSEPH H. CHOATE This extract is taken from an address on " Abraham Lincoln," delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1900. Printed by permission. It is now forty years since I first saw and heard Abraham Lincoln, but the impression which he left on my mind is ineffaceable. After his great successes in the West, he came to New York to make a political address. He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain people among whom he loved to be counted. At first sight, there was nothing impressive and imposing about him. His clothes hung auk wardly on his giant frame. His seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle. As he talked to me before the meeting, he seemed ill at ease, with that sort of apprehension which a young man might feel before presenting himself to a new and strange audience, whose critical disposition he dreaded. His fame as a powerful speaker had preceded him, and exaggerated rumors of his wit had reached the East. When Mr. Bryant presented him on the high platform of the Cooper Institute, a vast sea of eager, upturned faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to see what this rude child of the people was like. He was equal to the occasion. When he spoke, he was transformed; his eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly. For an hour and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his hand. His style of speech and his manner of delivery were severely simple. What Lowell called "the grand simplicities of the Bible," with which he was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or pretense, he spoke straight to the point. If any came expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier, they must have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his utterances. He closed with an appeal to his audience, spoken with all the fire of his aroused and kindling conscience, to maintain their political purpose on that lofty and unassailable issue of right and wrong which alone could justify it. He concluded with this telling sentence, which drove the whole argument home to all our hearts: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." That night the great hall, and the next day the whole city, rang with delighted applause and congratulations, and he who had come as a stranger departed with the laurels of a great triumph. THE MARTYR PRESIDENT 91 THE MARTYR PRESIDENT HENRY WARD BEECHER This extract is taken from the memorial discourse which Mr. Beecher preached from Plymouth pulpit, Brooklyn, N. Y., April 15, 1865. In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam, or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms swept through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, dishevelling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow-noon and midnight, without a space between. The The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs |