effect. It is the natural product of the spirit and principles they have constantly manifested. It is the full and perfect out-flowering of that ignorance and passion, that rancor and hate towards the North which they have studiously endeavored to cherish in the southern heart. It is the last, culminating, decisive testimony to the debasing, morally bewildering, and unhumanizing influence of that institution of slavery which they would have made the corner stone of the political edifice they proposed to rear. The judgment of the world, therefore, the verdict of history, I apprehend, will hold them largely responsible for a deed which secures to its perpetrator an unenviable immortality in the records of crime, gives his name a conspicuous place on the dark list of those around whose memories gather more and more, as the years roll on, the execrations of mankind. But let us turn from these thoughts. They would come up in my heart; I could not prevent it. But I did not wish to keep them there; I preferred to let them out, and so have given them utterance. We have been stunned by a sudden calamity, and stand aghast at the awful mode of its coming. In the midst of our cheerfulness, under the smiles of a brighter day than we had known for four years, and whose to-morrow promised to be brighter still, we have been suddenly thrown into utter darkness, by the foul murder of the President of the republic. Without warning or preparation, we have been visited by what to our short-sighted wisdom seems an irreparable loss, and in a moment all our joy in "the victory of that day is turned into mourning unto all the people"; and again I urge that our first duty is to turn unto God and be calm, our only strength to have the thought of our hearts and the prayer of our lips, "the Lord's will be done." God is still with us, —here is the great consolation and help of the soul. "Human watch from harm can't ward us: God will keep, and God will guard us.” Human wisdom, the prophet, the counsellor, the mighty man, may depart; but the wisdom of God abides to illumine a new generation, and to guide his children in the way. From the beginning until now, and especially in the great struggle, which, notwithstanding this sore bereavement, we may still devoutly hope is approaching its conclusion, our land has received so many tokens of the divine favor, that to doubt the guardian care of God, and the merciful purposes of his providence towards this nation and the interests of liberty and humanity, so bound up with its preservation, would be a sin. We may still trust, it is our duty to trust, that behind this dark cloud there is wisely hid some great mercy, which shall one day be revealed amid the adoring acknowledgments of ourselves or our children. After this trust in God, our next duty is to cherish in grateful reverence the memory of the man and the magistrate whose, to us untimely, fate we mourn, and gather up the lessons which his example teaches and his death enforces. I am not adequate, had I time, for the presentation of the prominent points in his life, or a sharp analysis and delineation of his character. I remember, in the only interview I ever had with him, in the autumn of 1861, at Washington, in company with twenty or thirty other persons, each of whom had his special purpose in the visit, and went up in his turn to present it, that I was at first amused, not to say offended, at what seemed an undignified levity, and a marvellous facility in conveying or enforcing his answers to the various requests presented, by telling some story, the logic of whose application to the case in point was unmistakably clear. During this part of the interview I was led to wonder where was the power? how had this man so impressed himself upon the people of the country, as to be elevated to the position he occupied? That wonder ceased, that inquiry was answered, before I left the presence. A lady made application for the release of her brother, who had been arrested for disloyalty by the major-general commanding in the vicinity of Frederick, Maryland. The President declined to interfere, on the ground that he knew nothing of the circumstances but what she had told him, and that the arrest and detention were, necessarily, within the discretionary power of the major-general commanding in the district. Considerable conversation ensued, and some tears were shed; and, at length, the President consented to indorse upon her petition, which was to be forwarded to the majorgeneral, that he had no objection to the release, provided the general thought it compatible with the public safety. As he gave her back the petition, with this indorsement, he said, and I think I remember very nearly his exact words: " Madam, I desire to say that there is no man who feels a deeper or more tender sympathy than I do, with all cases of individual sorrow, anxiety, and grief like yours, which these unhappy troubles occasion; but I see not how I can prevent or relieve them. I am here to administer this Government, to uphold the Constitution, to maintain the Union of the United States. That is my oath; before God and man, I must, I mean to the best of my ability, to keep that oath; and, however much my personal feelings may sympathize with individual sorrows and anxieties, I must not yield to them. They must all give way before the great public exigencies of the country!" I shall never forget the simple majesty, the grandeur and force with which these few sentences were uttered, or their effect. In a moment the room was as still as death. The little audience that had, just before, been laughing at his stories, were awed and impressed, thrilled through and through by these few solemn and earnest words. They were a revelation of the man. They made me feel that there was a power in him that gave him a right to be where he was. That right he has vindicated more and more every hour since his first inauguration. That he has made no mistakes, that he was at all times superior to the weaknesses of our nature, or the faults of humanity, it would be neither wise nor truthful to maintain. I look for light and explanation to be thrown upon some acts and incidents of his administration; but I have confidence that that light will reveal reasons which will show them to have been wise and right, and establish a patriotic integrity of purpose that will do him honor. In general, the exhibition of himself, made these last four years, is proof to us, and to the world, that he was largely endowed with many large and noble qualities; and for his fidelity in his high office, for his wisdom, firmness, and moderation, for his genuine simplicity and homely ways, for his tenderness and compassion, his watchful guardianship of the great interests of liberty, and all his incalculable services to the country, which he has done as much as any man to save, I hold him in grateful reverence and honor; and now that he has fallen, a noble martyr to a noble cause, coming generations will rise up, and bless his name, which will grow grander and brighter through all coming time, and stand highest among the names of those whom the world cannot afford to forget. In some lines from Tennyson's Ode on the Duke of Wellington, I find the most fitting description of his character and our duty to his memory: "O, friends! our chief State oracle is mute; Our greatest, yet with least pretence, And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity, sublime. O voice, from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve, to true occasion true, O fallen at length that tower of strength, Which stood four square to all the winds that blew. His life was work, his language rife He spoke among you, and the man who spoke." |