J. E. Gallaher

“ I am to speak to-night of Abraham Lincoln, the simplest, serenest, sublimist character of the age. Seventy millions of people join in commemorating his greatness. It is not my purpose to review his life; that is too much a part of history. That history should be taught in every American public school and preached from every Christian pulpit. The story of Abraham Lincoln, citizen, President, liberator and martyr, should be in the heart of every American child. ”

“ Lincoln was the man whom Providence placed at the head of the nation in the supreme hour of its destiny. When he assumed the reins of government he was surrounded by traitors. The government was without army, without navy, without credit. He spoke, and two millions of men sprang, as from the ground. He breathed, and the bosom of the ocean was covered with ships of war. ”

“ Lincoln’s English was like himself, simple, forcible, direct, natural, eloquent, full of heart-throbs. As his unadorned language still stirs the heart of every American like the roll of a drum, and as beside it the tinsels, and flowers, and gewgaws of polished speech are but as pulseless marble, so the rugged nature of America’s greatest man looms above all lesser public men, the spotless, genius-crowned Shasta of our National history. ”

“ The act which set that old man free was the crowning glory of Lincoln’s life, for by it he not only saved his country, but emancipated a race. When Abraham Lincoln took his pen to sign the Emancipation Proclamation he knew that the supreme moment had come. He had known it years before, when he said: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot exist permanently, half slave and half free, but I do not expect this house to fall, this government to be dissolved.’
“God has always raised up a great leader for a great crisis. ”

“ Who can doubt that Providence designed Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant each for his own mission? The Declaration of Independence was the Genesis of American liberty, but the gospel of its New Testament was the Emancipation Proclamation. Until the Emancipation Proclamation the tide of success set strongly against the Union shore. ”

“ What we need in this country is the Emancipation Proclamation and the Stars and Stripes at every polling place. We need a revival of the American flag. Let it float over every American battlefield, be taught in every public school. Set the Stars of the Union in the hearts of our children and the glory of the Republic will remain forever. ”

“ It is right that it should be. It is a crime against justice and humanity. We have tolerated it too long. It brought war upon us. I believe that Providence is not unmindful of the struggle in which this nation is engaged. If we do not do right I believe God will let us go our own way to our ruin. But, if we do right, I believe He will lead us safely out of this wilderness, crown our arms with victory, and restore our now dissevered Union.”
I observed President Lincoln closely while this earnest opinion and expression of religious faith was being uttered. ”

“ With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us 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 his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all Nations. ”

“ It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. ”

“ And yet millionaire, slaveholder and aristocrat, in its best sense, that he was, as he lived, so at any time he would have died for the immortal principle put by the Puritans in their charter, adopted in the cabin of the Mayflower, reënacted in the Declaration of Independence, of the equality of all men before the law and of the equal opportunity for all to rise. Lincoln, on the other hand, was born in a cabin, among that class known as poor whites in slaveholding times, who held no position and whose condition was so helpless as to paralyze ambition and effort. ”

“ At New Orleans he saw for the first time the auction and whipping of slaves, which made so deep an impression on him that it may be said to be the birth of his anti-slavery sentiment.
The choice of Mr. Lincoln for President was not a strained one. He was the logical selection. Lincoln’s qualities, that sympathy with the common people, that homely sincerity, have given him a place in the people’s hearts a little closer, a little dearer, than is held by any other public man. ”

“ How American history would dwindle if that name were taken out of it! Washington was great. Grant was great. Lee was great. Many others have been and are great in all the walks of life. But Lincoln, who came out of the lowly heart of the people, will come back nearer to that heart than any other man probably that the nation has known. There have been men of war and there have been men of peace, but there has been no such man of peace in war as Lincoln. ”

“ What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it helps to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe that what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause. ”

“ It was not until 1854 when the slavery question had been thrust into politics as the paramount issue, that Lincoln’s powers were aroused to their fullest capacity. He plunged into arduous study of the question, in its legal, historical and moral aspects, until his mind became a complete arsenal of argument.
Now he was able to cope with any political antagonist. The time had come when the Republican party required a man to put forward as their standard bearer one who would be equal for the coming election. ”

“ I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like an “old woman’s dance.” I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the international improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I will be thankful. If defeated, it will be all the same.’”
HOW LINCOLN BECAME KNOWN AS “HONEST ABE.”
As a grocery clerk at New Salem Lincoln was scrupulously honest. ”

“ Lincoln said to him:
“Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message from me to the miners whom you visit. I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. I believe it is practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western country, from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific, and its development has scarcely commenced. During the war, when we were adding a couple of million dollars every day to our national debt, I did not care about encouraging the increase in the volume of our precious metals; we had the country to save first. ”

“ As the richest man in America, a large slave-holder, the possessor of an enormous landed estate, and the leader and representative of the property, the culture, and the colleges of the colonial period, Washington stood for the conservation and preservation of law and order. ”

“ But there were certain elements in her character that prepared her for grand motherhood. When Nancy Hanks, at the age of twenty-three, gave her heart and hand to Thomas Lincoln, she was a young woman of large trustfulness, of loving, unselfish disposition, of profound faith in Divine Providence, of unswerving Christian profession.
On the day of their marriage Thomas Lincoln took this young wife to his unfinished cabin, which had as yet neither door, floor, nor window. The young man was a shiftless Kentucky hunter, who could not read a word. ”

“ Lincoln once remarked to a fellow-passenger on the old-time mud-wagon coach, on the corduroy road which antedated railroads, that all men were prompted by selfishness in doing good or evil. His fellow-passenger was antagonizing his position when they were passing over a corduroy bridge that spanned a slough. As they crossed this bridge, and the mud-wagon was shaking like a sucker with chills, they espied an old, razor-back sow on the bank of the slough, making a terrible noise because her pigs had got into the slough and were unable to get out and in danger of drowning. ”

“ Lincoln was an orator as well as a statesman and many of his speeches will go down in history through all time. In his second inaugural address he made use of the following striking expressions:
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ”

“ It is the student of a century hence who shall properly place the civil war in American history. But, whatever that place be, there can be no doubt of the position in it of the war President. Like William the Silent, his domination of all about him was a matter not of personal desire, but of [111] absolute and constant growth. There are few more interesting characters in history than Lincoln. There is none who in quite the same manner fits himself so absolutely into his circumstances. ”

“ It is the highest form of genius that so produces as to make production seem effortless, and it is perhaps the greatest of all tributes to Lincoln that what he did seems sometimes only what the average man would have done in his place. ”

“ At this time, as was the case till Lincoln was elected to the presidency, his one special rival in Illinois was Stephen A. Douglas. Mr. Douglas had more of the social graces than Mr. Lincoln, and it appeared to him that nothing would be more interesting than to cut out his political rival in the affections of the entertaining and lively Miss Todd, and so he paid her court.
A spirited young lady from Kentucky at that time in Illinois would have been almost less than human if she had refused to accept the attentions of the two leading men of the locality. ”

“ We are apt to say that of our great men. Lincoln knew how to speak, read and write. What more do we teach our boys to-day? He knew the Bible, which cannot be said of everybody in Boston. He read Burns, and this with the Bible gave him his inspiration and sentiment. Æsop and “Pilgrim’s Progress” taught him aptness and pregnant illustration.
The incidents of his life were few but notable. He was a resident of three states before he was 21, and made a river trip to New Orleans, longer than Thomas Jefferson had taken at his age. ”

“ Arnold made an argument in which he criticized the demurrer in a manner that increased the young lawyer’s confusion. However, Blackburn knew that he had to make some kind of an effort. He proceeded with a few remarks, weak and bewildering, and was about to sit down when a tall, homely, loose-jointed man sitting in the bar arose and addressed the court in behalf of the position the young Kentuckian had assumed in a feeble and tangled argument, making the points so clear that the court sustained the demurrer. ”

“ Sweeping the barber away he leaned forward, and placing one hand on my knee said:
“‘Neither would I. But it was a time when a man with a policy would have been fatal to the country. I have never had a policy. I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came.’
“Lincoln was not an eloquent man. He was a strong lawyer, and an ingenious one. His stronghold was his ability to reason logically and clearly. He was a very self-contained man, and not easily excited. I remember the night when the news of his election was received at Springfield. ”

“ The late Joseph Holt, who recently died at Washington, was judge advocate general of the army during the whole period of the war and it became his duty to report many cases of alleged cowardice of soldiers as well as other offenses. President Lincoln carefully read every line of the charges against such men, and as soon as he saw the slightest chance to excuse the poor fellow, a gleam of satisfaction would pass over his serious face. ”

“ Philosophy interested him particularly, and after we had talked about some of the men then in vogue he remarked how much he felt the need of reading and what a loss it was to a man not to have grown up among books.
“Men of force,” I answered, “can get on pretty well without books. They do their own thinking instead of adopting what other men think.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lincoln, “but books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new, after all.”
I met Mr. Lincoln several times later, the next time a long while after in another place. ”