Beecher urged three arguments,—first, that the national prosperity is dependent upon the production of wealth, and this meant independence for the producer; second, that prosperity depends upon manufacturing and that means a high quality of educated workman; third, that prosperity is dependent upon commerce and the exchange of commodities between nations, and that means brotherhood. He urged that the more intelligent and prosperous the workman, the higher his wage, and, therefore, the better he supports as a buyer. A slave uses his feet and hands, and produces a few cents a day. A poor white labourer uses his hands and his lower head, and earns fifty cents a day. An intelligent Northern working man uses his hands and his creative intellect, and he produces a dollar a day. A highly educated worker becomes an inventor as well as a freeman, and earns five dollars a day. With this wage he buys comforts, tools, products of the loom, builds up manufactures, and promotes prosperity. For that reason a few patricians only in the South buy in the English market, while the millions of slaves demand from Sheffield only whips and manacles. Therefore slavery starves English trade.—And at last Liverpool heard him.

In Exeter Hall in London, Beecher closed his argument: "Shall we let the South go, and carry slavery with her? If a Northern working man has a mad dog by the throat shall he let that animal go to spread death? Letting the South go as a free nation is one thing, but letting her go to spread slavery over Mexico and Central America is another thing. When we kill the mad dog we will talk about letting the South go."

Beecher returned home to find himself the hero of the hour. In Plymouth Church, on Sunday morning, the audience stood for five minutes, and with their tears and silence told him of their gratitude and love. From that hour Stanton asked for his friendship, and was weekly and even daily in correspondence. He promised Beecher that immediately upon the receipt of any news from the battle-field he would send him a telegram. Indeed, the first news that the country had from Stanton of one of the great victories came to Beecher's pulpit and was read over his desk. Other great men, the President, secretaries, the generals, the statesmen, editors, lecturers, preachers, did their part, but high among co-workers ranks Henry Ward Beecher. God gave him a great task, and armed him for the battle. He loved the poor, he broke the shackles from the slave, he discovered to the world the love of God, and dying he flung his helmet into the thick of the enemy. It is for us and our children to fight our way forward to that helmet, and fling our own at last into some new fight for the emancipation of the mind and heart of earth's troubled millions.

It must be confessed that the aristocracy of England and her upper middle class, in the main, still sympathized with the South, while the English cabinet tried to maintain neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American, and most of the House of Commons voted in sympathy with the South."

But the attitude of the "classes" of England was only the reflection of her scholars. Carlyle, whose early books had no sale in England, and who wrote Emerson that he had received his first money to keep him from starvation from Boston and New York, "when not a penny had been realized in England," had no sympathy with liberty and the North. As soon as his own physical wants were supplied by the American check which Emerson sent him, Carlyle began to call the war "a smoky chimney that had taken fire." "No war ever waged in my time was to me more profoundly foolish looking." (Slovenly English, contradictory thinking, and poor morals!) "Neutral I am to a degree." Then Carlyle tried to sum up his view of the situation: "Now speaks the Northern Peter to the Southern Paul: 'Paul, you unaccountable scoundrel! I find you hire your servants for life, not by the month or year as I do. You are going straight to hell.' Paul: 'Good words, Peter; the risk is my own. Hire you your servants by the month or day, and go straight to heaven. Leave me to my own method.' Peter: 'No, I won't. I will beat your brains out.' And he's trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot quite manage it."

No one knew better than Carlyle that there is a world diameter between the South hiring a man for life, and by force holding him in slavery. But Carlyle for three years poured out such vapid humbug, cant and hypocrisy as this, and never once was sound in his thinking or fair in his view-point during the entire war.

Even Charles Dickens, who had written denouncing slavery in his "American Notes," returned to England in the spring of 1863 to predict the overwhelming victory of the South, and to characterize the hopes of Lincoln as "a harmless hallucination." But little by little, English sentiment began to change. Goldwin Smith, of Oxford University, consented to speak at a meeting in Manchester to protest against the building and sending out of piratical ships in support of the Southern Confederacy. He affirmed boldly that "no nation ever inflicted upon another more flagrant or more maddening wrong" [in permitting the Alabama to escape]. No nation with English blood in its veins had ever borne such a wrong without resentment.

Richard Cobden wrote to Mr. Beecher as to the feeling in England: "In every other instance ... the popular sympathy of this country has always leaped to the side of the insurgents the moment a rebellion has broken out. In the present case, our masses have an instinctive feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of the United States. It is true that they have not much power in the direct form of a vote; but when the millions of this country are led by the religious middle class they can together prevent the government from pursuing a policy hostile to their sympathies."

When Beecher appeared and spoke, he aroused, intensified, unified, and made effective this great underlying force of English popular feeling, and the unfriendly purposes of the governmental and "upper-class" element were paralyzed.

Beecher himself was very modest about his achievement. Said he: "When in October you go to a tree and give it a jar, and the fruit rains down all about you, it is not you that ripened and sent down the fruit; the whole summer has been doing that. It was my good fortune to be there when it was needed that some one should jar the tree; the fruit was not of my ripening."

Beecher returned home in November of 1863, conscious that he had risked everything in the service of his imperilled country. He found the entire North had constituted itself a Committee of Reception to welcome him home. A great public meeting was arranged in the Academy of Music in New York, and the Music Hall was crowded from pit to dome with the leaders of the city and of the North. Mr. Beecher entered the room at eight o'clock, and the whole audience rose to its feet to greet him, but not until many minutes had passed in tumultuous cheering did he have an opportunity to speak. From that hour his influence in the country was second only to that of the President, two or three members of his cabinet, and General Grant. Abraham Lincoln wrote to Mr. Beecher words of warmest gratitude and invited him to the White House. "Often and often," wrote Secretary Stanton, "in the dark hours you have come to me, and I have longed to hear your voice, feeling that above all other men you could cheer, strengthen, quiet and uplift me in this great battle, where by God's providence it has fallen upon me to hold a part, and perform a duty beyond my own strength." When therefore Lee surrendered, and the war came to a close, President Lincoln and the cabinet felt that Beecher's service to the cause of liberty had earned for him the most unique distinction granted to any man during the war. And so it came about that four years after Beauregard fired upon Fort Sumter, and the flag of the Union was lowered to give place to the flag of Secession, that not a general nor an admiral, but that a minister, Henry Ward Beecher, was selected to lift into its place again the old flag, that proclaimed to all the nations of the earth that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.



X

HEROES OF BATTLE: AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND SAILORS

One of the wariest and most capable of the Confederate commanders was General Joseph E. Johnston. In his report of the battle of Kenesaw Mountain in Northwestern Georgia, in June, 1864, when Sherman had at last driven him to bay, he thus describes the attack and the repulse: "The Federal troops pressed forward with the resolution always displayed by the American soldier when properly led. After maintaining the contest for three-quarters of an hour, they retired unsuccessful, because they had encountered entrenched infantry, unsurpassed by that of Napoleon's Old Guard, or that which followed Wellington into France, out of Spain."

It would be difficult to find a more soldierly appreciation of both officers and men of those two American armies. And in a recent interesting book on Grant and Lee[2] is cited a remark of Charles Francis Adams when American Minister to Great Britain in the early years of our Civil War. Some one sarcastically asked him his opinion of the Confederate victories of that time. He quietly replied, "I think they have been won by my countrymen." In all those four strenuous years, heroic qualities—enterprise, resolution, valour, self-control, exercise of judgment amid dangers, endurance and fidelity in disaster—were plentifully developed throughout both parties of the then divided American people. The lonely picket-duty, the toilsome march, the endless duties of the soldier, were a constant drain upon enduring faithfulness, harder to bear, often, than the crashing excitement of the battle, while the deadly suffering of camp and hospital were at times easily worse than all.

Most fascinating the story of the leaders of the two armies. The career of two preeminent military leaders of the South, Lee and Jackson, has already been reviewed—cursorily, as must be the case in all the references to example—and we have noted them especially as to character. But it should be said further that in the opinion of military critics and soldiers, both American and foreign, Robert E. Lee was one of the most masterly strategists in warlike annals. In his defense of Richmond as the vital point of the Confederacy he did have the advantage of operating on interior lines; but when that is said all is said, for in numbers of men, equipment and military resources, he was always more meagrely supplied than his Federal opponents. His available means were mostly in his fertile brain, his prompt judgment, and his dauntless heart, together with the spirited support of his officers and the indomitable marching and fighting energy of his soldiers. The intense and tireless Jackson was indeed the chief's "right arm," and more than that, a keen intelligence, instant to see and seize the right way, and to follow it so swiftly that his rarely defeated infantry earned the proud nickname of "foot-cavalry."

Out of the many gallant officers of the Southern armies were some others whose names became familiar throughout the North. Among them were: Generals Pierre G. T. Beauregard, prominent in service from Bull Run to the end; the brilliant Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at Pittsburg Landing in 1862; J. E. B. Stuart, renowned as a fearless cavalry officer; James Longstreet, a leader of great distinction; the two Hills—Daniel H. and Ambrose P., both renowned fighters, the latter immortalized by Stonewall Jackson's last words, "A. P. Hill, prepare for action!" Another was Richard S. Ewell—not, like all the foregoing, a West Point graduate, with training and notable service in United States armies and wars, but, like many Federal generals, a volunteer, who achieved high rank by efficient activity.

In naval affairs, naturally, the South had little chance to show her mettle, having neither navy-yards nor navy, and all her ports being blockaded. The chief attempts on the water were the iron-plated ram Merrimac, commanded by Commodore Franklin Buchanan, which after sinking several wooden men-of-war in Hampton Roads was defeated by the new iron-turreted Monitor under Lieutenant (later Admiral) John L. Worden; the iron-clad ram Albemarle, which damaged Northern shipping until blown up by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. Navy, in a daring personal adventure; and the British built, equipped and manned Alabama, under Commodore Raphael Semmes of the Confederacy, which destroyed millions of dollars in Northern ships on the high seas in 1862-1864, until sunk by the war-steamer Kearsarge under Captain (later Admiral) John A. Winslow, off Cherbourg, in June, 1864.

The principal naval activities of the Federals during the war were in the reduction of fortified places on land in cooperation with the armies, and in blockading ports of the South to keep in their cotton and to keep out foreign supplies. One of the earliest feats was the effective use by Captain Andrew H. Foote in February, 1862, of the gunboats built in 1861 by Fremont for river warfare, when Foote daringly shelled Forts Donelson and Henry on the Cumberland River, enabling Grant to attack and summon them to "unconditional surrender." And on the long seaboard, the North soon had a line of battle-ships stretching from Cape Hatteras around to Florida, New Orleans and the further coast of Texas. Besides its few original war-ships, out of coasters, steamers and old junk the Navy Department constructed a fleet. But it was the man behind the gun who maintained the blockade, starved the Confederacy, and cleared the Mississippi River.

The story of men like Farragut and his boys is like a chapter out of a wonder book. In April, 1862, with a fleet of wooden frigates, mortar-schooners, and half-protected boats he entered the mouth of the Mississippi below New Orleans. The bottom of the river bristled with torpedoes—kegs filled with powder, and surrounded with long prongs that rested upon percussion caps. When a ship struck a prong it exploded the cap and the powder, and again and again a boat went to the bottom. The forts that protected the Mississippi thirty miles below the city were sheathed with sand bags, and mounted a hundred guns; while a boom of logs and chains crossed the river, and a fleet of fifteen vessels including an armed ram and a floating battery were there to dispute further progress. But Farragut lashed himself into the rigging of his flag-ship, and his fleet stormed the passage, raked with chains and shell. From the 18th to the 25th of April, a battle royal was waged with splendid valour on both sides; but the forts were passed, the boom was broken, the defensive fleet defeated, and Farragut had won New Orleans. Farragut, David D. Porter and other heroes had their full share of war and of glory not only here but later in Mobile Bay, and in 1863 with Grant and Sherman at Vicksburg, and at Port Hudson on the Mississippi, and Porter at Fort Fisher in December, 1864-January, 1865. Of absolute maritime warfare there was none, except Winslow's sinking of the Alabama, but in all the river and harbour fighting, against both fleets and forts, there was endless demand for intrepidity, ingenuity, large intelligence, and heroism—demands never failing of response.

The greatest soldiers of the North were McClellan, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan, and, towering above all, Grant. We may not linger in detail upon them all, and can but mention George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," stern as war, firm as granite, the bravest of knights; William T. Sherman, audacious, fertile, perhaps the most brilliant of them all; and Philip H. Sheridan, an organized thunder-storm, with the swiftness of the war eagle, impetuous, loving adventure, the idol of his men.

If at last Grant was the brain of the army, Sherman was, like Jackson to Lee, its "right arm." From the beginning of his military career, Sherman won the admiration and confidence of the government and the people of the North. He achieved honours at Vicksburg, and from that hour on to his victory at Atlanta and his march to the sea, his name and fame steadily increased. His victories were won, not only by enthusiasm and brilliancy, but by a mastery in advance of all the facts in the case. His knowledge was microscopic, to the last degree, as to the roads, bridges, and resources of the country through which he was marching. On approaching Atlanta he came to a region through which he had ridden on horseback twenty years before. That night in his tent, his guides, spies and advance scouts spread out their maps before Sherman, and to the astonishment of all, the soldier corrected and amplified them. It seemed that a score of years before he had formed the habit of making a detailed study of each region through which he travelled, and of working out campaigns of attack and defense. His old notes were so accurate as to prove the basis of an actual campaign for a great army. His contest with Johnston represented what has been called an inch by inch struggle, and although Sherman was victorious, when he passed away, the aged Southern soldier, Johnston, made the long journey to New York to act as pall-bearer and to testify to the splendid qualities of his great opponent.

It was Grant himself who called Sheridan "the left arm of the Union." By universal consent "little Phil" was the most brilliant campaigner of the group of soldiers of the first class. The story of his victory at Winchester captured the imagination of the North. The poem describing that achievement became the most popular poem of the year, and was recited by all the schoolboys on Friday afternoons, and quoted by all the politicians on the platform. The North had suffered so many defeats in the Shenandoah Valley that Sheridan's victory put new heart into the Union forces, and helped unite the Republican party, making certain the election of Lincoln.

Indeed, a great German soldier once expressed the judgment that Sheridan ranked not only with Grant, but with the greatest soldiers of all time.

The work of George H. McClellan was the work of the pioneer and pathfinder. It is one thing to take a sword, a Damascus blade, and use it in leadership, and quite another thing to take raw metal and on the anvil hammer out the blade for a hero's hand. McClellan made the sword; Grant used it. There is a pathetic passage in Dante's "Vita Nuova": "It is easier to sing a song than to create a harp." Dante meant that he had to create the Italian language before he could write the "Paradiso." Now McClellan's task was to create an army. He took a body of raw recruits and drilled them; he organized a system of supplies and built up a purchasing, transporting and storing department; he tested out all the guns, the cannons, powder and explosives; he compacted a body of engineers, weeding out poor ones and educating good ones; he took officers who at the beginning had their appointments through political influence and trained them until he had a body of men well knit together.

But McClellan had to contend with jealousy and insubordination. He was a commander early in the war, and he had competitors and detractors. It was charged against him that he was more anxious to make than to use a splendid army, and possibly his ideals of efficiency were too high for those early days. Yet "Little Mac" was idolized by his soldiers, with whom he fought and won bloody battles, and even the indeterminate ones are held in doubt as to his responsibility. Had Hooker obeyed his command, and crossed the bridge at Antietam and occupied the heights beyond, soldiers think to-day that Lee would have been crushed. Another fact was against him. The North was not ready to behold nor strong enough to endure the slaughter to which later on they became accustomed. After one of McClellan's first campaigns, Burnside wrote home that McClellan could have fought his way to Richmond, but it would have cost ten thousand men, and that would have been butchery. Later on, Grant, in a single brief campaign, lost twenty-five thousand men! But if Grant had suffered such losses in 1861 or 1862, he would have been dropped by Washington as unfitted for a military campaign.

History will rank Grant as the foremost soldier of the Republic. His story is full of romance. He was of Scotch Covenanter stock that settled in New England, and made its way to Ohio and Illinois. Like all the most successful generals on both sides in our Civil War, he was a graduate of West Point, showed talent in mathematics and engineering, and made an honourable name in the Mexican War. Scott praised him for his work as quartermaster and officer. The two maps that Grant made by questioning ranchmen and farmers as he went through Texas, and the information he collected from men who had been in and knew the roads and resources of Mexico, were later on invaluable. Grant was in every Mexican battle save one.

Fort Sumter fell on April 14, 1861. On the 15th Lincoln called for 75,000 troops. On the 19th Grant organized a little company in Springfield, Illinois. Two days later Governor Yates made him colonel. On the 31st of July he was in command at Mexico, Missouri. On the 7th of August his victory at Columbus won him the rank of brigadier-general. On the 10th of February, 1862, he was made major-general; on the 23d of March, 1864, he was made lieutenant-general of the armies of the United States. It was one long uninterrupted series of victories, for it has been said that it will never be known if Grant could conduct a retreat, because he never was defeated. From the beginning his supreme qualities as a military commander were fully evidenced.

Columbus was called the Gibraltar of the Mississippi. Halleck had ordered Grant to feel the strength of the enemy. But Grant was resourceful, fertile in expedients, a believer in offensive tactics. Hurling his forces upon Columbus, he won a signal victory. At Fort Donelson, Grant showed his iron endurance and untiring patience. When it came to the critical hour of the assault, a cold sleet-storm fell upon his army; the ground was a sheet of glass, the trees encased in ice. Grant himself spent half the night under a tree, standing upright, receiving reports and working out his plans. When a spy brought word that the Confederates had packed their knapsacks with three days' rations, Grant said: "They are preparing to retreat; we must assault the works," and, despite the storm, made an immediate attack. When Halleck received the news of the fall of Fort Donelson, in announcing the victory to Washington he did not even mention the name of Grant, but asked Lincoln to promote Smith, a subordinate commander.

Later, in 1863, after months of siege by river and by land, came the capture of Vicksburg, coincident with the Battle of Gettysburg, that was the high-water mark of the war. The announcement of these two victories, on July 4, 1863, intoxicated the North with joy.

By this time Grant's name was upon all lips, and he stood forth the one general fitted for command of all the armies—in the West, in the South, and on the Potomac. Just as some men have the gift of inventing, the gift of singing, the gift of carving, so Grant had the gift of strategy. One glance, and Grant had the whole situation in hand—the weak points to be attacked, the weak points of his own position to be safeguarded, the danger point for the enemy. Obedient himself, he expected instant obedience from others. Willing to risk his own life, he expected the same self-sacrifice on the part of his fellow officers. One biographer calls him "a master quartermaster," telling us that he knew how to feed and supply an army. Another calls Grant a great drillmaster, exhibiting him as the teacher of his own generals. Another terms Grant a natural engineer, with great gifts, but without detailed training. Another speaks of him as the greatest soldier in history in the way of attack. But when all these statements are combined, they tell us that Grant is the great, all-round soldier of the war, who by natural gifts and long experience could do many things, and all equally well. It is this that explains the tributes to his military genius by foreign soldiers, and the great masters of war in every land.

Grant's last campaign was against the capital of the Southern Confederacy, as the key to the Atlantic coast, for until Richmond should be taken and the Confederate government put to flight, the war would not be broken. Therefore Grant concentrated all his forces upon that:—"I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." In those awful campaigns Grant came to be called "the butcher," for he was as pitiless as fate, as unyielding as death. One outpost after another fell; one Southern regiment after another surrendered. Battles became mere slaughter-pits. Men went down like forest leaves; the army surgeons, at the spectacle, grew sick; it seemed more like murder than war. The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Chickahominy, Petersburg, were names to make one shudder. But Lee would not yield, and Grant had one watchword, "Unconditional surrender."

At last, without food, without equipment, without arms, Southern soldiers began to desert by thousands. Lee's army was reduced, his supplies were cut off, his retreat to the mountains and any chance of joining with Johnston from the Carolinas were blocked. Grant demanded surrender to save further bloodshed.

On the morning of April 9, 1865, Grant and Lee met in peace conference. Grant had on an old suit splashed with mud, and was without his sword; Lee wore a splendid new uniform that had just been sent by admirers in Baltimore. Lee asked upon what terms Grant would receive the surrender. Grant answered that officers and men "Shall not hereafter serve in the armies of the Confederate States or in any military capacity against the United States of America, or render aid to the enemies of the latter, until properly exchanged,"—all being then freed on parole. The horses of the cavalry were the property of the men. And Grant said: "I know that men—and indeed the whole South—are impoverished; I will instruct my officers to allow the men to retain their horses and take them home to work their little farms." Lee's final request was for rations for his starving men. Grant and Lee shook hands, after which the Virginian mounted his horse and rode off to his army. The Confederates met their beloved general with tumultuous shouts. With eyes swimming in tears, Lee said, in substance: "I have done what I thought to be best and what I thought was right; go back to your homes, conduct yourselves like good citizens and you will not be molested."

When certain Northern soldiers were preparing to fire salutes to celebrate the victory, Grant stopped the demonstration. "The best sign of rejoicing after victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field." All men in the North felt that the fall of Lee's army meant the fall of the Confederacy. Indeed, it did practically end the war. The final sheaf of victory is reaped when the commander, at the head of his troops, marches into the enemy's capital and makes the palace of his foe to shelter his own horses. The whole South expected Grant to lead his Army of the Potomac into Richmond. But Grant remembered Lee's sorrow, and had no desire for a dramatic triumph. He sent a subordinate to occupy Richmond, and quietly began the work of disbanding the army. Sending his regiments back to the fields and factories, he said, "Let us have peace." From that sentiment issued the new South and the new North.

But the man who had fought the war through to a successful issue became the most beloved man in the North, and soon the people bore him to the White House. The task was one for a giant. Four million slaves, newly emancipated, had to be cared for. Their fidelity to the families of their absent masters during the war was beautiful; while, towards the end of the strife, the enrollment and gallant fighting of 150,000 coloured men (Northern and Southern) in the Federal armies showed their manfulness. And now their Southern millions were free. They had the suffrage, but could not read the names of the men for whom they were voting. They were free men, but they had no land, no plough, no cabin, no anything. Pitiful their plight! In retrospect, no race has ever made such wonderful progress in fifty years. With President Eliot we may say that "their industrial achievements are the wonder of the world."

The second task that confronted President Grant was the reconstruction of the South. It was the era of the carpet-bagger. Northern regiments dwelt in Southern cities. Men were talking about hanging Jefferson Davis, and trying to decide whether or not the Confederate soldiers and officers should receive again the suffrage. Designing whites and ignorant coloured men gained control of legislatures. Corruption was rife. The whole South was prostrated. Ten thousand questions arose in Congress, bewildering, intricate, and the whole land was divided in opinion as to the proper courses. Finally, all the Confederate officers, saving perhaps Jefferson Davis alone, and some who refused to accept, received again their political rights at the hands of the magnanimous North. Slowly chaos became cosmos.

Scarcely less heavy were the financial troubles of Grant's administration. An era of war is an era of extravagance. When hard times came, men were tempted by the dreams of cheap money, and the greenback craze was abroad. But Grant stood for honest money, and attacked lying measures with the zeal of a Hebrew prophet.

After two presidential terms came two years of foreign travel (1877-79), and wherever the great soldier went he exhibited his confidence in democracy, his interest in the working people and the poor. He returned home to receive such an ovation as no American citizen has ever had. Six years of private life were followed by a financial disaster that threatened to destroy his good name itself. Grant was one who made ill-advised haste to become rich. Scandalized by the deceit and impoverished by the failure of men he had trusted as partners, the great soldier was now assaulted by worry and fear. Our best physicians believe that fear, whether related to property or the loss of name, or grievous disappointment, is in some way related to cancer. And within a few months after that awful wreckage, Grant knew that his life was coming to an end.

The soldier became an author. Stricken with death, in the hope of safeguarding his family against poverty Grant decided to write his memoirs. It was an astonishing literary achievement. His style is simple as sunshine. Grant knew what he wanted to say, said it, and had done. Yet all the time a shadow was falling upon the page,—the shadow made by the messenger of death, who stood by Grant's shoulder, ready to claim his own. Slowly the soldier wrote the story of his youth, his campaigns in the West, his battles in the Wilderness, while every day the hand grew feebler.

Reared in a religious atmosphere, Grant's nature was essentially moral and religious. He possessed all the big essential virtues—honesty, justice, truth, honour, good will. He loved the truth. He felt that he had done what he could. Southern soldiers and generals as well as Northern comrades and friends brought to his bedside messages of affection and good cheer. At length he fell asleep. His tomb on the height above the Hudson has become a Mecca for innumerable multitudes.

To the end of time, perhaps, Lincoln will be remembered as the Martyr President, the best loved of all our leaders, the great Emancipator, the gentlest memory of our world; but side by side with Lincoln will stand Grant, the man of oak and rock, the man of iron will, who fought the war to a successful issue, and will be known in history as the greatest soldier of the Republic.



XI

THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE AT HOME WHO SUPPORTED THE SOLDIERS AT THE FRONT

It is a proverb that nothing moves men like tales of eloquence and heroism. Historians and poets alike believe that stories of bravery and anecdotes of heroes exert a profound influence upon young hearts. Here is Socrates. His judges condemn him to the jail and poison. Socrates quails not, and says: "At what price would one not estimate one night of noble conference with Homer and Hesiod? You, my judges, go home to your banquets—I to hemlock and death; but whether it is better for you than for me, God knoweth." It is a moving story. Here is the early missionary martyr, fettered and brought before a cruel tyrant, to be condemned to death. The missionary lifts his chains, calls the roll of the king's crimes, flashes the sword of justice, coerces the monarch from his throne, makes him crawl, beg, plead, and beseech the missionary's pity and prayers, for speech has made a prisoner king, and turned a monarch into a captive. It is a moving tale. And here are the stories of war: Xenophon's ten thousand young Greeks, lost in the heart of the great nation, a thousand miles from home, without maps, without food, outnumbered daily ten to one, living off the country, fighting all day, surrounded by a fresh army each night, steadily pursuing their famous retreat. See, too, the handful at Thermopylae, defending the Pass, and every one of them giving his life. And here are the Dutch, driven by the Bloody Alva into the North Sea, clinging to the dykes by their finger-tips, and fighting their way back to their homes and altars. And here are the American boys confined to the prison ship, the Jersey, starved victims of scurvy and fever, without food, without medicine, with the corpses of their brothers floating in the water just outside, boys whose monument stands yonder in Fort Greene. What a tale of martyrdom is theirs!

Yet the history of heroism holds no more thrilling story than that of the soldiers of our Civil War. Every other passage, every other incident, that we have passed in review can be more than duplicated by soldier boys who have lent new meaning to patriotism and martyrdom. As many men died in Southern prisons as fell on both sides at the battle of Gettysburg. This is their story—they counted life not dear unto themselves; they struggled unto blood, striving against oppression, and the world itself, with all its beauty, was not worthy of them.

Our prosperous generation, threatened with effeminacy and softness, needs to re-open the pages of history and to linger long upon the portraits of our heroic leaders. Theirs was the greatest war that ever shook the earth. A million Northern men, and over against them a million Southern men, and a battle line a thousand miles in length! Including the long-term men and the short-term service, 3,000,000 men engaged in the conflict! Two thousand two hundred and sixty-one battles fought—if we mention conflicts in which there were more than five hundred engaged on each side. When Lee surrendered, his land was desolate. Armies upon armies of cripples came home to suffer! There were a million widows and over three million orphan children! Men who at Lincoln's call for troops left the college and the university discovered, when it was all over, that it was too late to take up their studies, and lived on like unfulfilled prophecies. Others, who during those four years poured out all the vital nerve forces, brought so little strength out of the long, bitter struggle that they might better have died, and for years have been in the invalid's chair, looking with wistful eyes on the great procession of society moving on to industrial victories! The war all over? The war has been continued in its influences throughout the entire generation! It never will be over until the last cripple has dropped his maimed body, until the last child, robbed of a dead father's care, has recovered his losses, and the last woman who has lived alone through the years has found her beloved!

The courage and endurance of the Southern women, who took full charge of the cotton plantations and helped support Lee's army, stirs the sense of wonder. There were many Northern women who had no relatives at the front, but there was scarcely a Southern home where the father, husband or sons were not on the battle line. For that reason the Southern women were always in a state of suspense. Homes were entirely broken up during the four years. The men were at the front, and all the women were either at work at home or were in the hospitals as nurses. During 1862 and 1863 practically every church in Richmond was a hospital, and there were twenty-five other buildings used by surgeons. Physicians had no morphine and no quinine. For coffee they used parched corn. Tea rose to $500 a pound. For sugar they steeped watermelon rind. For soda these women burned corncobs and mixed the ashes with their corn-meal. They had neither ice nor salt. They tore up their ingrain carpets to make trousers for the soldiers. Women wore coarse hemp and calico. Having no leather, one little factory turned out five hundred pairs of wooden shoes a month in Richmond.

When Lee needed bullets, a minister tore the lead pipe out of his house in Richmond to send the lead to Lee. Flour rose to $400 a barrel. In one little town iron became so scarce that tenpenny nails were used for money. No tale more pitiful than that of the women who took charge of the slaves on the plantation, comforted their little children, buried their dead, smiled, wept, prayed, worked, compelled their lips to silence, staggered on, groaned inly while they taught men peace, and died while others were smiling. Whether or not men are made in the image of God, these women certainly were. And it was because they believed with all their mind and soul that independence for the State was the sovereign gift of God; and they died for independence, just as the boys in blue lived and died for the Union.

It was this moral earnestness and intensity of conviction that made the war so terrible. When England hired Hessians to fight Washington's troops, and they fought for so much a week, the hired soldiers were slow to begin attack and quick to retreat. Mercenaries have to be scourged into battle. Stonewall Jackson's men believed in their cause and thirsted for the excitement of the attack and onslaught. And yet all the time the two opposing armies maintained mutual respect and even developed a new sense of brotherhood as the desperate struggle went on. Never was there a war carried on with such intensity by day and such a sense of mutual respect at night. Once when the Rappahannock separated the two armies, and it was evident that there was no campaign beyond, a revival broke out in one of Stonewall Jackson's regiments and there were prayer-meetings in almost every tent every night. Becoming acquainted, a number of boys in blue by previous arrangement crossed the river, and knelt in the prayer service. One night the sound of the regiments singing, "Nearer My God to Thee," rolled through the air across the river, and finally the boys in the Northern army joined in, until at the last verse, the two regiments, opposed in arms, were one in voice and heart, as they poured out their souls to God in the old hymn they had learned at their mother's knee. For the soldier knew that any moment a shot might bring the end.

The sufferings of men in prisons touch the note of horror. The national government is planning a monument for those who died in Andersonville. Gettysburg slew 26,000, Andersonville 32,000. The stockade included twenty-six acres, but three acres were marsh. Incredible as it may seem, there was no shelter, no beds, no cook-house, no hospital, no nothing. Just the cold rain in winter chilling men to death, just the pitiless glare of the August sun scorching them to death. There was no sanitation, and when it rained the little stream backed up the sewage, and after each shower men died by scores. Wirtz wrote Jefferson Davis that one-fifth of the meal was bran, and that he had no meat, no medicine, no clothing. Men burrowed in the ground, dug caves like rats, and not infrequently fifty bodies were carried out in a single day. Wirtz destroyed men faster than did General Lee. The men imprisoned in Andersonville urge that there were thousands of cords of wood just outside the stockade, miles upon miles of forests all about, that the prisoners could have built their own shanties and hospitals, and cookhouses. To which Wirtz's friends answer that he did not have weapons or Confederate soldiers enough to guard the prisoners on parole. While they also answer that the prisoners in Andersonville had as much food and the same kind as Lee's army was then enjoying. The plain fact is that the South was out of medicine, clothing and food, and was itself on the edge of starvation.

The wonderful thing is that these Union boys, 32,000 of them, who died at Andersonville, could at any moment have obtained release by taking the oath not to renew arms against the South. Some few did escape by digging under the stockade—but what perils they endured to escape from the enemy's country! They slept in leaves by day, and travelled by night. They were pursued by bloodhounds, lay in water and swamps, with only their lips above the filth until the peril had passed by. They wore rags, ate roots, shivered in the rains, sweltered in the heat, grew more emaciated, until more dead than alive they reached the Northern lines.

Now that it is all over, Confederate soldiers like General John B. Gordon have said on a hundred lecture platforms in Northern cities that, having done what he could for States' rights and to destroy the Union, he thanked God above all things else that he was not successful. In the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, that great Southern soldier wrote the last words of his life, in the hope that they would help cement the Union between the North and the South:—"The issues that divided the sections were born when the Republic was born, and were forever buried in an ocean of fraternal blood. We shall then see that, under God's providence, every sheet of flame from the blazing rifles of the contending armies, every whizzing shell that tore through the forests at Shiloh and Chancellorsville, every cannon shot that shook Chickamauga's hills or thundered around the heights of Gettysburg, and all the blood and the tears that were shed are yet to become contributions for the upbuilding of American manhood and for the future defense of American freedom. The Christian Church received its baptism of pentecostal power as it emerged from the shadows of Calvary, and went forth to its world-wide work with greater unity and a diviner purpose. So the Republic, rising from its baptism of blood with a national life more robust, a national union more complete, and a national influence ever widening, shall go forever forward in its benign mission to humanity."

Nor must we forget the work of nurses, the members of the Sanitary Commission, and the Christian Commission Movement. The events of the Russian-Japanese war show what is a wonderful progress of science. Japan sent along with her army experts on the water, the food, and the placing of tents, that made typhoid, cholera and the usual diseases impossible. Her surgeons used antiseptic methods, and gangrene was practically unknown in the Japanese hospitals. But the situation was different in 1861. Modern sanitation, surgery, antiseptic methods, chloroform and ether are comparatively recent discoveries. Such anesthetics as the surgeons had were poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. In the camps fever was prevalent. Smallpox, measles and lesser diseases became malignant and wrought terrible ravages. Tents became more dangerous than battle-fields. What the bullet began, the hospitals completed. More men died through disease than through leaden hail. But the noble army of physicians and nurses wrought wonders. Think of it! Twenty-six thousand men dead or dying on the field of Gettysburg!

Here is a page torn from the journal of one of the nurses there: "We begin the day with the wounded and sick by washing and freshening them. Then the surgeons and dressers make their rounds, open the wounds, apply the remedies and replace the bandages. This is the awful hour. I put my fingers in my ears this morning. When it is over we go back to the men and put the ward in order once more, remaking the beds and giving clean handkerchiefs with a little cologne or bay water upon them, so prized in the sickening atmosphere of wounds. Then we keep going round and round, wetting the bandages, going from cot to cot almost without stopping, giving medicine and brandy according to orders. I am astonished at the whole-souled and whole-bodied devotion of the surgeons. Men in every condition of horror, shattered and shrieking, are brought in on stretchers and dumped down anywhere." Men shattered in the thigh, and even cases of amputation were shovelled into berths without blanket, without thought or mercy. It could not have been otherwise. Other hundreds and thousands were out on the field of Gettysburg bleeding to death, and every minute was precious.

No page can ever describe the service of nurses, sisters of mercy, chaplains, brave men and kind women, who took train and went to the front upon news of the battle and remained there for weeks.

But while the soldier boys were striving unto blood for their convictions, what about the people at home who loved them? How did they carry their burdens and fulfill their task that was not less important? Fortunately, during the war, the North was blessed with four bountiful harvests that were rich enough, not only to support the people at home, and the soldiers at the front, but also to furnish an excess of food that could be sold abroad to obtain money with which to help support the war. It seemed as if the sun, the rain, and the soil had entered into a conspiracy to support the North and liberty. The largest crop of wheat and corn ever garnered before the war was in 1859. At that time, men thought the harvest would never be surpassed. But strangely enough, that bumper crop of 1859 was surpassed four times in succession during the Civil War. Meanwhile the herds of cattle and the flocks of sheep more than doubled during the conflict, and all of the land that was not yellow with grain became a rich pasture and meadow, covered with cattle, sheep and horses.

Even the losses of sugar and cotton usually purchased from the South were made up to the North. Threatened with the loss of the Southern sugar, sorghum cane was imported from China, and the people scarcely missed the Southern sugar. When the cotton failed, the unwonted increase of the flocks furnished wool for raiment. It stirs wonder to reflect that one poor crop of wheat and corn might have changed the issue, and defeated the North. Singularly enough also, the failure of crops in Europe not only offered a market for the unexpected Northern surplus, but yielded the highest price ever known, thus bringing in a golden river to enrich the Northern people. Jefferson Davis had said at the beginning of the war that "grass would soon be growing not simply in the streets of the villages of the North, but in Broadway and Wall Street." Davis believed that the withdrawal of every fourth man would make our problem of food and clothing impossible of solution. But at that moment the invention of the reaper enabled one harvester to do the work of ten men, and the new tools actually more than took the place of the Northern soldiers who were at the front.

Furthermore, the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice descended upon the Northern women. On the little farms where the farmer's wife was too poor to buy a reaper, the mother and the daughters went into the field to plough the corn and thrash the wheat and milk the cows. In many counties in Iowa and Kansas one-half of the men were at the front, and in harvest time it is said that there were more women working in the wheat and corn fields than men.

One other element fought for liberty and the North. A strange unrest fell upon Europe. Foreign peoples became discontented and began to migrate. In the summer of 1862 a vast multitude landed upon the shores in New York, at the very time when there was a scarcity of labour in the shops and factories. At the very hour when Lincoln was afraid that it might become impossible to clothe the army and equip it, the providence of God raised up foreigners who stepped into the place made vacant by the newly enlisted soldier; thereafter the North throughout the war actually increased in population, in wealth, in manufacturing interests. The Civil War ended with the North richer and more prosperous than when it began; while in 1861 slavery had impoverished the South, and war left the Confederacy crushed to the very earth, peeled and stripped, famished and utterly broken. For the South never yielded until she had cast in the last earthly possession, and knew that only life and breath were left.

Despite the abundant harvests, during the early part of the war the Northern people passed through gloom, anxiety and bitter disappointment. At first the colleges and universities were empty, because the students had all gone to the front, but the common schools were as full as usual. The churches were better attended than formerly, while the newspapers were more widely read than ever before. The crisis sobered the people. The serious note was manifest. One by one luxuries were given up, amusements seemed paltry, and people forgot their usual diversions. After Bull Run came a succession of calamities. Longfellow writes: "Sumner came to dine last night, but the evening was most gloomy, and all went away in tears." Governor Morton of Indiana wrote Lincoln, "Another three months like the last six, and we are lost." Robert Winthrop of Boston came down to New York, and spoke of three scenes that he had witnessed. The first was a group of soldiers on their way home, in charge of friends, some crippled, some emaciated, gaunt and broken, and the rest carried on stretchers. At another station he saw a group of young soldiers, intelligent, athletic and sturdy, climbing on the car to start to the front, but on the platform was a group of pale-cheeked and weeping women, wives, mothers and sweethearts. "Oh, it was terrible! It is all black, black, black!" said Winthrop.

But after the battle of Gettysburg, the high-water mark of the war, men's spirits began to rise. The North became inured to excitement. The emotion was converted into hard work and endurance, and that dogged determination to produce the raiment, the weapons and the food to support the army, or die in the attempt. Depositors took risks and loaned their money to the banks. Bankers took their courage in their hands and loaned the money to the manufacturers; manufacturers advertised for labour in Europe and started up their factories by night as well as by day. Wages rose, the balance of trade was largely in favour of the North, the oil regions began to prosper, and industry, commerce and finance all waxed mighty. In 1864 the whole land was in the full sweep of industrial prosperity. The debts incident to the panic of 1857 were fully liquidated. Iron is the barometer, and the country doubled its consumption of iron. An editor writing of his city says, "Old Hartford seems fat and rich and cozy, and everything is as tranquil as if there were no war."

But the industrial conditions of life in the South were very different. Be it remembered that the North was a self-supporting region, both as to foods and manufactured articles, while the South, under slavery, produced raw material, and used that raw stuff to build up factories in England. When the war came the South found herself without the means of supplying her own wants. Within six months the South discovered that every axe and saw and steam-engine and iron rail and bolt and nail had come from the North. Davis sent out men to scurry the country for old stoves and every iron scrap was picked up to be melted into weapons. At the close of the war tenpenny nails were used as five-cent pieces and currency in North Carolina. To crown all other disasters came the debasement of the currency. Macaulay says that the world has suffered less from bad kings than from bad shillings and sixpences. The Confederacy issued one billion dollars of paper money, States issued another flood of promises to pay, cities put out municipal currency, fire and life insurances their shin-plasters, and they kept pouring out paper money until finally all the printing presses broke down. A month before the collapse, a Confederate soldier, returning to his little cabin, paid $10,000 for a fifteen-year-old mule, knee sprung in front and spavined behind, and $7,500 for the shoes for shoeing the mule.

Lee's army would have collapsed but for the marvellous heroism, resourcefulness and courage of the Southern women. They took charge of the fields, planted the crops, gathered the harvests, and staggered on to the end. Not one Northern home in five was death-stricken through the war, but practically every Southern home had lost one or two members of the family, through father, son or brother.

Nor must we forget what Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had become a wilderness, the plantation a desolation, and where there had been prosperity and even luxury, famine and want and disease had set up their abiding places. Verily secession sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind of destruction.

That the war influenced some people for good and influenced others for evil is beyond all doubt. During the first two years it was a distinct tonic to the intellect and conscience of the people. The sense of national peril quickened the dull and lethargic, steadied the weak drifters, furnished ballast to all the people, made the strong stronger, made the brave more heroic. The first sign of national decay is the note of frivolity. The sure sign of greatness in a generation is the note of seriousness. In the middle of 1863 James Russell Lowell wrote Bancroft that the war had been a great, a divine and a wholly unmixed blessing, and that all of the people were exalted to new levels. Had the war ceased with the battle of Gettysburg, probably Lowell's statement would have held true, but later came the reaction towards graft and corruption, intemperance, profligacy and gambling. Within four years the representatives of the government expended from seven to eight billions of dollars. Government contractors bought at a single time 50,000 suits of clothes, 100,000 rifles, 200,000 blankets. The temptation to graft was strong for all and irresistible to a few. The government records speak of one horse-trader in St. Louis who bought his horses and mules at $75 and sold them to the government for $150, and made enough to buy Mississippi steamboats for $65,000. He then rented these boats to the government for one year for $295,000, and at the end of the year still owned the boats. To what extent charges of graft were made is indicated by the fact that one claim was reduced from fifty millions to thirty-three millions. A cartoon of that time with strange exaggeration represents one man saying to his friend, "So-and-so has obtained a third contract from the government." To which his friend answers, "Well, well! A couple of more contracts and he will die worth a million." For any manufacturer to obtain a government contract was for that man to be on the highroad to wealth.

Yet the historians who analyze these reports find a large amount of exaggeration in the statements. Some waste there was, but the authorities seem to think that it was the waste of inexperience for the most part. When the war opened the Navy Department was spending $1,000,000 a year. By 1862 it was spending $145,000,000, and with no organization to handle such enormous interests. In general, in view of the sudden emergency thrust upon the people, the marvel is not that there was so much corruption among government contractors, but that there were so many honest contractors, and that there was so little waste through inexperience.

In general it may be said that the moral and religious sentiment of both North and South alike steadily strengthened during the conflict. After Gettysburg, the Southern people and army, always deeply religious, in their distress turned to their fathers' God for support. Jackson and Lee's men fought by day, and held prayer-meetings by night. In the North, during 1861 and '62 and '63, religious meetings were held all over the land. When the winter twilight fell, the candles began to burn in the little schoolhouses, where the farmers assembled and prayed to God. In the small towns and tiny villages the little churches were packed with worshippers, not simply on Sundays but during the evenings of the week. During this interval the layman became as influential as the ordained preachers. At this time, the Young Men's Christian Association took its rise, all of the old men saw visions, and all of the young men dreamed dreams, and many a Saul was found among the prophets. Poets like Lowell were moved by deeply religious inspirations. During the war Whittier wrote his loftiest songs and his noblest and most exalted prayers. The influence of the great conflict upon philosophers like Emerson is easily traced. American literature lost its note of unreality. Preaching became practical. There was a revival of ethics in politics. The war cleared the atmosphere of the country by sweeping away slavery with all its foundation of lies.

Wendell Phillips once said the French Revolution was the greatest and most unmixed blessing of the last one thousand years. Now that it is all over, and the slain soldiers and the brave women who went down in the conflict have had all their hard questions asked before the throne of God, perhaps these heroes and heroines who now live unto God look back upon this era as an era of sorrow overruled for justice and liberty. The conclusion of the whole matter is this: a good house must be founded upon a rock, and no government or civilization can be permanent that is not based on the freedom, property and intelligence of the working classes.

To-day the leaders of thought in the South believe that Lee and Gordon were right in the statement that they "thanked God that they failed to establish States' rights, and that Northern men had succeeded in maintaining the Union." Time has cleared the air of misunderstandings. At last the North and South understand Lincoln's last words regarding the Civil War: "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 prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the Providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? 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 by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drop of blood drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice towards 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 bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."



XII

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT

Among the heroes who helped save the Republic, the last, best hope of earth, in that it gives liberty to the slaves, that it might assure freedom to the free, stands Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator and martyr. Take him all in all, Abraham Lincoln is the greatest thing the Republic has achieved. History tells of no child who passed from a cradle so humble to a grave so illustrious. The institutions of the Republic were founded for the manufacture of a good quality of soul. In the presence of the greatest men of history we can point with pride to Lincoln, saying, "This is the kind of man the institutions of the Republic can produce." For Lincoln's most striking characteristic was his Americanism. At best, Washington was a patrician, the fine product of aristocratic institutions, so that England claimed him. Washington was the richest man of his era, his home an old manor house, his estate wide inherited acres, his relative an English baronet, his brother the child of Oxford University. The books he read were English books, the teachers he had were English tutors. The root was planted in English soil, though it fruited under American skies. But Americanism is the very essence of Lincoln's thoughts, Lincoln's enthusiasm, Lincoln's utterances, and Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving an old red cow to the barn lot, but we bring McKinley to the White House.

Yonder stands the Temple of Fame. The door is open by day and by night, and a tall, thin, sallow boy turns his back upon a log cabin in Illinois and seeks entrance. But the angel at the threshold asks hard questions: "Can you eat crusts? Can you wear rags? Can you sleep in a garret? Can you endure sleepless nights and days of toil? Can you bear up against every wind that assails your bark? Can you live for liberty and God's truth, and can you die for them?" And that boy bowed his assent. Washington climbed hand over hand up the golden rounds of the ladder of success; Lincoln built the ladder up which he climbed out of the fence rails which his own hands had split. Like his Divine Master, he touched two or three crusts and turned them into bread for the hungry multitudes.

His little log cabin shames our palaces. His three books, the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress" and "AEsop's Fables" eclipse our libraries. His six months in a log schoolhouse were more than equal to our eight years in lecture hall and university. His fidelity to the great convictions shames our shifting politicians. For fifty years he walked forward under clouded skies. Like Dante, he held heart-break at bay. During one brief epoch only did his sun clear itself of clouds. He died without full recognition or reward. In retrospect he stands forth the saddest and sweetest, the strongest and gentlest, the most picturesque and the most pathetic figure in our history. The Saviour of the world was born in a stable and cradled in a manger, and went by the Via Dolorosa towards the world's throne. Not otherwise Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin, more suited for herds and flocks than for a young mother and a little child; and by the way of poverty and adversity the great emancipator travelled towards his throne of influence and world supremacy.

History holds a few deeds so great that they can be done but once. There are some laws, some reforms and some liberties that once achieved are always achieved. Thus, Columbus discovered this new world, but his achievement reduced all the other explorers to the level of imitators. Thus Isaac Newton discovered gravity, and in a moment every other astronomer became a pupil and a disciple. There never can be but one James Watt, for, though a thousand inventors improve his engine, their names are little tapers, shining over against the sun. The last century offered men of genius two signal opportunities, and there were a thousand eager aspirants for the honour. Charles Darwin discovered the golden key that unlocked the kingdom of nature and life, and carried off the honours of science. Abraham Lincoln, in an hour when some would meanly lose it, planned to nobly save the Union, emancipated three million slaves, and carried off the honours in the realm of reform and liberty.

How great was the work done by this man and how supreme was the man himself, we can best understand by comparison and contrast. Among small men it is easy to be great. In Patagonia, where everybody eats blubber, a boy in the first reader is a prodigy of learning.

Anybody can be a giant in heroism and reform among Hottentots and South Sea savages. But the era of the Civil War was an era of heroes. Great men walked in regiments up and down the land. It was the age of Daniel Webster, whose genius is so wonderful that he achieved the four supreme things of four realms,—the greatest legal argument we have, the Dartmouth College case; the greatest plea before a judge and jury, the Knapp murder case; our finest outburst of inspirational eloquence, the oration at Bunker Hill; the greatest argument in defense of the Constitution, his reply to Hayne. It was the age of John C. Calhoun, a statesman whose political theories led half a continent to deeds of daring war. It was the era of Seward, the all-round scholar, of Chase the greatest secretary of treasury since Alexander Hamilton, a man who struck the rock with the rod of his genius, and made the waters of finance flow forth from the desert. It was the age of our greatest orators, for then Wendell Phillips and Beecher were at their best. It was the era of Emerson, the philosopher; of Theodore Parker, the reformer; of Garrison, the abolitionist; of Lovejoy, the martyr; of Lowell and Whittier, the poets of freedom; of Greeley, the editor; it was also the age of the greatest soldiers, Grant and Sherman, and Sheridan and Lee. The great man is a form of fruit ripened in an atmosphere made warm and genial, and the climate that nurtured Lincoln unfolded the talents that represented also other forms of mental fruit. Among these men Lincoln lived and wrote and spoke, and suffered and died;—but he stands forth a master among men, an indisputable genius, one of the five supreme statesmen of all history.

Now if we are to understand the unique place of Abraham Lincoln in our history we must recall again for a moment the men who set the battle lines in array. Unfortunately, most of our histories tell our children and youth that the Civil War raged about the slave. As a matter of fact, slavery was the occasion of the war, but not the cause. Slavery was the sulphur match that exploded the powder magazine, though the powder magazine could have been set off by a spark from the flint and steel, or a hundred other methods.

The Civil War was really fought over the question whether a constitutionally formed nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could permanently endure. The whole period from 1789 to 1865 was a critical period, during which the Constitution was being tested and tried out.

During this testing many forms of secession were planned, and several actual rebellions took place. In 1787 there was a Massachusetts rebellion under Shays, over the question of taxation. In 1794 there was what was known as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. In 1830 to 1835 there was a secession movement on in South Carolina, and President Jackson put down that rebellion over the tariff. Then Daniel Webster marked out the final lines of battle, entrenching the Constitution against rebellious attempts. Webster fired the first shot of the war, whose last shot was fired at Appomattox. Webster carried the flag that Grant followed at Vicksburg, and shook out the folds of the banner that was crimsoned with blood at Gettysburg. It was Webster's banner that Anderson pulled down at Fort Sumter, under the stress of fire, and it was Webster's banner that, four years later to an hour, the same General Anderson pulled up on the same flagstaff at the same Fort Sumter.

During the period of the thirties and the forties, the conflict was a conflict of words and arguments between men like Webster and Calhoun and Garrison and Phillips. Later, the strife took on the form of a guerrilla warfare, and here and there leaders like Lovejoy were martyred. At last the strife entered into politics, when Douglas and Lincoln struggled for the supremacy of their principles,—but always it was a question of Constitutional interpretation, against whatever interest attacked the "supreme law."

Soon the conflict entered the Church, and the American Tract Society, to hold the gifts of slave owners, forbade the distributions of Testaments to slaves, while the Bishop of New Jersey destroyed an edition of the Prayer Book because it contained a picture of Ary Scheffer's picture of "Christ the Emancipator," who was engaged in striking the shackles from slaves. The bishop was quite willing that Christ should open the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to hear and the lame to walk, but as for Jesus freeing the slaves—well, that was too much. Over the question of the Constitutional power of Congress to resist the further extension of slavery in newly opened territories, the whole land rocked with excitement. Liberty and Slavery, like two giants, grappled for the death struggle. In such an era God raised up Abraham Lincoln, to lead the people out of the wilderness, and into the Promised Land of Union, of Liberty, and of Peace.

Never was a candidate for universal fame born under so unfriendly a sky. His annals are "the short and simple annals of the poor." His home was a log cabin that had but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When the biting wind of poverty became unbearable in Kentucky, the scant possessions were loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, and the child walked barefooted through the forests of Indiana, where a new shack was built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's "angel mother" sickened and died—that mother to whom Lincoln said he owed all that he was or hoped to be. Then when the winter of poverty and discontent settled down blacker than ever, the father removed to another State, where the mud was deeper, and the winters colder, where nature was less propitious. Lying on his face, before blazing logs, the boy committed to memory the four Gospels, "AEsop's Fables," and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." At nineteen he went to New Orleans, and standing in the slave market saw a young girl sold at public auction, and told his brother, Dennis Hanks, that if he ever had a chance he would hit slavery the hardest blow he could. At twenty he split 1,200 rails for a farmer, whose wife wove for him three yards of cloth, dyed in walnut juice, with which he had a new suit of clothes. He started a little store, failed in business, became a surveyor, bought a copy of the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence; was made postmaster; several years later returned to the government agent the exact silver quarters and copper cents that he had kept tied up in a bag, because honesty meant that the identical coins must be returned to the government; entered upon the study and the practice of the law; was elected to the legislature, and reflected; was sent to Congress, and on a second campaign for the United States senatorship from Illinois met his competitor, Stephen A. Douglas, in the great debate. Beginning this contest, he delivered the "house divided against itself cannot stand" speech; and in the course of his marvellous debate made the issue between liberty and slavery so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, could not misunderstand; declared that if slavery was not wrong, there was nothing that was wrong. Soon he came to be looked upon as one who each year would coin the happy phrase and the rhythmical watchword that would be taken upon the lips of 30,000,000 of people; was made the leader of the new "party of freedom," and President.

Now, with infinite skill and patience, he entered upon the task of proving that he was the strongest man in his Cabinet, the strongest man in the North, the strongest man in the country, and the only man who had the last fact in the case, and therefore had the right to rule. Seward, experienced politician and statesman that he was, began by delicately hinting to Lincoln that if he felt himself unequal to emergencies, he could rely upon his Secretary of State for guidance, and that he, Seward, would not evade the responsibility. Lincoln answered by reading Seward's statement of a possible measure, and then placing beside it a statement of his own that reduced Seward to the level of a schoolboy standing up beside a giant. Then Stanton entered the lists as competitor, and quietly Lincoln asserted himself until Stanton's attitude became one of almost reverent worship, as he said of Lincoln, "Henceforth he belongs with the immortals." Then Greeley put in his claim for supremacy, and after Lincoln had published his answer to Horace Greeley, in lines as clear as crystal, and in words as gentle as sunbeams, not a man in the land but saw that Lincoln was intellectually head and shoulders above Horace Greeley. One by one and step by step he ascended the hills of difficulty. Round by round he climbed the ladder of fame. Naturally, therefore, his centennial was observed by a week's celebration, when all the wheels were still, and all the stores and factories were silent, when ninety millions of people were gathered into one vast audience chamber, when one name was upon all lips—the name of Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, the acknowledged master of men, who gave liberty to the slaves that he might assure freedom to the free.

Thoughtless writers have talked Lincoln's ancestry down, and careless biographers have defamed him. Superficial students speak of him as a miracle, and say that his genius is surrounded with silence and mystery. But all that Abraham Lincoln was he had at the hands of his fathers and his mothers. Although their greatness was latent, his parents had as much ability in their way as their distinguished son had in his way. How do we know? Because when God wants to call a strong man He begins by calling his father and mother. There never was a great man who did not have a great ancestry, even though the greatness may have been latent and unconscious.

Every strong man stands upon the shoulders of his ancestors. When you start for the top of Pike's Peak you start at Omaha. When you reach Denver you are six thousand feet in the air, and Pike's Peak is shouldered up on the foot-hills. Socrates is a great teacher, but look at Sphroniscus, the sculptor, his father. Paganini is a great musician, but Paganini was born of musicians whose wrists had muscles that stood out like whip-cords. Bach is a great musician, but there were forty people of the name of Bach mentioned in musical dictionaries. Charles Darwin is the great scientist, but there were four generations of scientists who had made ready for Darwin, just as there were seven generations of scholars that culminated in Emerson. And standing in the shadow behind Abraham Lincoln are half a dozen generations of men and women who handed forward to him a perfect logic engine, a sound mind, in a sound body; a mental instrument that worked without fever and without friction and without flaw. At the hands of Stradivarius one piece of apple wood is fashioned into a violin. If Stradivarius passes by the other board because he has not time, let no man say the board that was undeveloped was not full of latent music. The Divine Artist and Architect shaped Abraham Lincoln's nature into a world instrument, but the same quality and the stuff were in his father and mother, who lived and died a bundle of roots that were never planted, a handful of blossoms that never fruited.

Lincoln's father and mother were like the crystal caves in their own Kentucky. There the traveller is led through a cave of crystals, newly discovered. One day a farmer ploughing thought the ground sounded hollow under his feet. Going to the barn, he brought a spade and opened up an aperture. Flinging down a rope, his friends let the explorer down, and when the torches were lighted, lo, a cave as of amethysts, sapphires and diamonds! For generations the cave had been undiscovered and the jewels unknown. Wild beasts had wandered above these flashing gems, and still more savage men had lived and fought and died there. And yet just beneath was this cave of splendid beauty. Oh, pathetic illustration of men who are big with talent, of women full of latent gifts, of fathers and mothers like Thomas Lincoln and his young wife, who struggle on without opportunity, who are denied their chance, who are imprisoned by poverty, and fettered by circumstance, who are like birds beating bloody wings against the bars of an iron cage, who die unfulfilled prophecies, and dying, transfer their ambitions to their gifted children, believing that their son shall behold what the father and mother must die without seeing. God worked no miracle in Abraham Lincoln.

There is a photograph of the signature of the grandfather upon a title deed in Culpeper County in Virginia. Now, place that signature side by side with the signature of Abraham Lincoln on the emancipation proclamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in the signature of the grandfather comes down and repeats itself in the strong, steady clearness of the grandson. And perhaps the strong, sinewy sentence came down and repeated itself also, for all fine thinking stands with one foot on fine brain fibre. The time has come for men with a sharp knife and a hot iron to expunge from two or three of the otherwise best biographies of Abraham Lincoln these false, superficial and ignorant statements about his ancestry. Science, observation, experience, history and sifted facts all unite to tell us that whatever was great in its unfolding in the talent of Abraham Lincoln was great in the seed form in his father and mother.

Where were the hidings of his power? Why is Lincoln revered above his fellows, the orators, the soldiers, and the statesmen and editors and secretaries of his time? A line of contrast with the other great men who were his competitors for fame will make Lincoln's supremacy to stand forth as clear in outline as the mountains, and as bright as the stars. For example, Wendell Phillips was the agitator and orator of the abolitionists. Phillips said, "Emancipation is the essential thing. The Union secondary. If the Southern States will not emancipate the slaves, force them out of the Union." Horace Greeley was the editor of the war epoch. Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms of Lincoln in the New York Independent during April and May of 1862 led Lincoln to exclaim after reading one of them, "Is Thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" If these great men did not appreciate the national crisis, Lincoln understood it perfectly. Now, over against the editorials of Beecher and Horace Greeley and the lectures of Phillips, stands Lincoln, and to these three men he sent words addressed only to Horace Greeley, explaining to them why the time had not come for the Emancipation Proclamation. And although a part of this we have quoted in defense of Webster's position in 1850, that and yet more of the famous letter may well be repeated here:—

"I would save the Union.

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.

"If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.

"And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

"What I do about slavery and the coloured race I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

"I shall do less whenever I believe that what I am doing hurts the cause.

"And I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the Union."

How wonderfully does this publish the supremacy of Abraham Lincoln! Lincoln saw clearly, where others had an indistinct vision. As to gravity, Isaac Newton's vote outweighs all the other millions of men, and from the hour that Lincoln published this letter to Horace Greeley the people saw that Abraham Lincoln had the last fact in the case, saw the whole truth, saw it through and through. By sheer power, clarity of thought, strength of statement and fairness, Abraham Lincoln finally won over not only a lukewarm North, but a bitter South, until to-day he belongs to the ninety millions. If every Northerner should die, the brave and patriotic men of the South living now would defend everything for which Abraham Lincoln lived and died. For at last it is true of both North and South, in Lincoln's own pathetic words, that the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.