The punishment of the conspirators, under due form of law, was ordinary justice and not mere vengeance. These were all captured and received varying sentences, according to their several adjudged degrees of crime.

After Mr. Lincoln's death, his body was removed to the White House and embalmed. A gathering of Congressmen and other public men, at the Capitol, on Monday, made arrangements for funeral services on Wednesday. Pall-bearers were named, and also a Congressional Committee, representing the several States, to accompany the remains to their resting-place in Illinois.

The funeral services, on Wednesday, were held in the East Room of the Executive Mansion, and from this the coffined body was borne in solemn procession to the catafalque prepared for it in the rotunda of the Capitol. Endless crowds had poured through the East Room, while the body remained there, each passer bending to take a last look at the silent face the nation had loved so well. The same sad stream poured on through the corridors of the Capitol, for none was willing to fail of that final opportunity, and they came from all the region round about.

On the 21st of the month the funeral-train left Washington; and, through all the fifteen hundred miles of its route to Illinois, the mournful pageant of its reception by the people surpasses all power of words for its description. Slowly the train proceeded, from city to city, between almost continuous lines of sorrowing multitudes doing last honors to their beloved Chief Magistrate, whose hold upon their hearts they had not known till they had lost him.

With the remains of Mr. Lincoln were carried those of his beloved son Willie. Father and child had gone Home, forever, and their earthly bodies were borne homeward side by side.

Springfield, Illinois, was reached on the morning of the 3d of May. The grief of Mr. Lincoln's oldest friends and near neigh

bors could hardly exceed that of many who had never heard him utter a word nor at any time had looked upon his living face. A day later, in the presence of a great multitude, the coffin was placed in a tomb prepared for it in Oak Ridge Cemetery, near the city, with appropriate ceremonials and oratory.

A sort of echo of the National sorrow came back from almost every corner of the world, and many of the tones and expressions were only less surprising than were their sources. America was at once on better terms with Europe, especially, all in a day, when the voices of the trans-Atlantic press were printed in our own newspapers, side by side with the official condolences of foreign potentates. The public uses of the life of Mr. Lincoln did not terminate until this last service had been effected by his death, and the value of it was by no means insignificant.

This is all. The lessons of such a life are very plainly to be read. They should be made familiar to the heart and brain of every American. Every soul born in the United States, or coming to dwell here, should study them well and so learn to understand and love the country wherein alone on earth such a life is possible. It is a land which has been rich in noble men and well-spent lives, both of men and women; but there has been no other just like this. Among all there is not one recorded which is so well adapted to teach and enforce these things: that the lowliest may hopefully strive for the highest elevation; that the most ignorant, under every imaginable disadvantage, may successfully seek for knowledge and its uses; that the most skeptical, broken-hearted, hopeless, despairing of all men, may go on to do his duty to himself and others, turning his eyes and lifting his hands to God and drawing surely nearer to Him.

Whatever were his failings, faults, and flaws, this was the unselfish, truth-seeking and truth-serving life of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

LIBRARY

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APPENDIX.

A FEW PIVOTAL SPEECHES AND LETTERS OF MR. LINCOLN ALLUDED TO IN THIS VOLUME.

I.

SPEECH,

Delivered at Springfield, Ill., June 17, 1858.

THE FIRST AFTER MR. LINCOLN'S NOMINATION FOR THE UNITED STATES SENATORSHIP FROM ILLINOIS. (See Ch. XXIII.)

MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:-If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost

complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speakcompounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace, the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief architects from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But so far Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise called " sacred right of self-government;" which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a lawcase, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and

then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law-case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital, indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained.

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and