The more generous and forbearing we have been, the more thoroughly sure were they that it was because we dared not fight.

With the North is the strength, the population, the courage. There is not elsewhere on this continent that breadth of courage—the courage of a man in distinction from the courage of a brute beast-which there is in the free states of the North. It was General Scott who said that the New Englanders were the hardest to get into a fight, and the most terrible to meet in a conflict, of any men on the globe.

We have no braggart courage; we have no courage that rushes into an affray for the love of fighting. We have that courage which comes from calm intelligence. We have that courage which comes from broad moral sentiment. We have no anger, but we have indignation. We have no irritable passion, but we have fixed will. We regard war and contest as terrible evils; but when we are roused to enter into them, our courage will be of the measure of our detestation. You may be sure that the cause which can stir up the feelings of the North sufficiently to bring them into such a conflict will develop in them a courage that will be terrific to the men who have to meet it.

RECOGNITION OF SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY 81

SPEECH AGAINST THE RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

JOHN BRIGHT

From a speech delivered at Rochdale, Lancashire, England, August 1, 1861. John Bright was a staunch and fearless supporter of the Union cause when many Englishmen were disposed to recognize the Confederate States.

I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never apply to our own case. At any rate, the Americans have never fought "for the balance of power" in Europe. They have never fought to keep up a decaying empire. They have never squandered the money of their people in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And now, at this moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by their vast expenditure,—why, the sum that they are going to raise in the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than what we raise every year during a time of peace.

They say that they are not going to liberate the slaves. No; the object of the Washington government is to maintain their own Constitution and to act legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in favor of peace than I am; probably no man in this country has denounced war more than I have; few men in public life have suffered more obloquy-I had almost said, more indignity--in consequence of it. But I cannot for the life of me see, upon any of those

principles upon which states are governed now,—I say nothing of the literal word of the New Testament, — I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with regard to the United States government, could have been different from what it is at this moment.

We had a Heptarchy in this country, and it was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the thirty-three or thirty-four states of the American Union can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and confusion. throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the government and to sustain the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history, and to their own great act of 1834, will have no sympathy with those who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their fellow-men.

LINCOLN

CHARLES H. FOWLER

Taken by permission from Bishop Fowler's popular lecture on Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln was the representative character of his age. No man ever so fully embodied the purposes, the affections, and the power of the people. He came up among us. He was one of us. His birth, his education, his habits, his motives, his feelings, his

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 liberty to one race and freedom to another. A moralist, he bowed from the summit of human power to the foot of the cross and became a Christian. A mediator, he exercised mercy under the most absolute abeyance to law. A leader, he was no partisan. A commander in a war of the utmost carnage, he was unstained with blood. A ruler in desperate times, he was untainted with crime. As a man, he has left no word of passion, no thought of malice, no trick of craft, no act of jealousy, no purpose of selfish ambition. He has adorned and embellished all that is good and all that is great in our humanity, and has presented to all coming generations the representative of the divine idea of free government.

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. e are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We