Josiah Gilbert Holland

“ In my devotion to the Union, I hope I am behind no man in the nation. In the wisdom with which to conduct the affairs tending to the preservation of the Union, I fear that too great confidence may have been reposed in me; but I am sure that I bring a heart devoted to the work. There is nothing that could ever bring me to willingly consent to the destruction of this Union, under which not only the great commercial city of New York, but the whole country, acquired its greatness, except it be the purpose for which the Union itself was formed. ”

“ I did understand, however, that very oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government--that nation of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. ”

“ How much better for you and for your people, to take the step which at once shortens the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event! How much better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the war! How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it! How much better for you, as seller, and the nation, as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war never could have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's throats! ”

“ I thought that, in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. ”

“ Lincoln saw the gathering storm, and felt that upon him it would expend its wildest fury; yet he cherished no resentment against these men or their section for all the wrongs they heaped upon him, and the woes they were bringing upon the country. He was only an instrument in the hands of a higher power. It was only the natural exhibition of the spirit of a system of wrong which was making its last terrible struggle for life. The hatred aroused in him passed over the heads of his enemies and fastened itself upon the institution which could make such demons of men. ”

“ Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congressional slave-code for the territories; some for Congress forbidding the territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the territories through the Judiciary; some for the 'gur-reat pur-rinciple' that, 'if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,' fantastically called 'popular sovereignty;' but never a man among you in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of our fathers who framed the government under which we live. ”

“ We have seen a great popular government, poisoned in every department by the virus of treason, and blindly and feebly tottering to its death, restored to health and soundness through the beneficent ministry of this true man, who left it with vigor in its veins, irresistible strength in its arms, the fire of exultation and hope in its eyes, and with such power and majesty in its step, that the earth shook beneath its stately goings. ”

“ He had no force of self-esteem--no faith in himself that buoyed him up amid the contempt of the proud and prosperous. He was altogether a humble man--humble in condition, and humble in spirit. Yet, by the love of that which was good and great and true, and by the hunger and thirst of a noble nature, he was led to the acquisition of a practical education, and to the development of all those peculiar powers that were latent within him. ”

“ The man who shall write the story of the great rebellion on behalf of human slavery must go back to these masterly speeches of an Illinois lawyer to find the clearest and most complete statement of those differences between the power of slavery, and the spirit of freedom--the policy of slavery and the policy of freedom--which ended, after expenditures of uncounted treasure and unmeasured blood, in the final overthrow of the accursed institution. ”

“ To those, however, who really love the Union, may I not speak, before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes? Would it not be well to ascertain why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step, while any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from? ”

“ Not brilliant gifts, but a noble spirit had made the President a mighty man. Neither the courage of the brute nor the dash of the cavalier had made General Grant a great soldier; but a devoted purpose and a will of iron had crowned him with the name and enrobed him with the prestige of the greatest general living. ”

“ Charity, pity, mercy, sympathy--these were virtues which reigned in the White House during Mr. Lincoln's occupation of it.
Yet Mr. Lincoln could be severe. Toward crimes resulting from sudden anger, or untoward circumstances and sharp temptations,--the long catalogue of vices growing out of human weakness,--toward these, he was always lenient; but toward a cool, calculating crime against the race, or any member of it, from ambitious or mercenary motives, he was severe. The systematic, heartless oppression of one man by another man, always aroused his indignation to the highest pitch. ”

“ Let him remember he sits where Washington sat; and, so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the War was shed--that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas, or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown--then I am with him for his justification. ”

“ It is true that, while I hold myself, without mock-modesty, the humblest of all the individuals who have ever been elected President of the United States, I yet have a more difficult task to perform than any one of them has ever encountered. You have here generously tendered me the support, the united support, of the great Empire State. For this, in behalf of the nation--in behalf of the present and of the future of the nation--in behalf of the cause of civil liberty in all time to come--I most gratefully thank you. ”

“ Lincoln cannot deny the principle of universal suffrage, without denying both Mr. Lincoln and the everlasting principles of right upon which he based his action--upon which they have won all their successes. And if, for immediate advantage, in the strife for power, they so far turn their backs upon their record as to deny manhood to the African, and refuse to recognize his service in the salvation of the republic, they are sure to be defeated, as they will be certain to deserve defeat. ”

“ Oppressed with a deep melancholy at times, weighed down by the great problems of his own life and of humanity at large, assuming and carrying patiently the most important public burdens, he was as simple as a boy, took delight in the most trivial things, and with the subtlest and quickest sense of the ludicrous, laughed incontinently over incidents and stories that would hardly move any other man in his position to a smile. ”

“ On the day of the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Lincoln's first term of office expired. Four years of bloody war had passed away--four years marked by the most marvelous changes in the spirit, position, feelings, principles and institutions of the American people. The great system of wrong, out of which the rebellion had sprung, was in rapid process of dissolution, and already beyond the reach of resuscitation. The government had passed through the severest tests, and had emerged triumphant. ”

“ He was the people's instrument, the people's servant, the people's creation. He could put on none of the airs of eminence; he could place no bars between himself and those who had honored him. None of his old heartiness and simplicity left him. Men who entered his house impressed with a sense of his new dignities, found him the same honest, affectionate, true-hearted and simple-minded Abraham Lincoln that he had always been. ”

“ Lincoln at the estimate of his friends; and those friends thrust him before the country as a man whose grand achievement was the splitting of many rails. It took years for the country to learn that Mr. Lincoln was not a boor. It took years for them to unlearn what an unwise and boyish introduction of a great man to the public had taught them. It took years for them to comprehend the fact that in Mr. Lincoln the country had the wisest, truest, gentlest, noblest, most sagacious president who had occupied the chair of state since Washington retired from it. ”

“ If it would be uncharitable to say that they would have rejoiced in his death, it is certainly true that they were in perfect sympathy with those who were plotting his destruction. His coming and remaining would be death to the social dominance of slavery in the national capital. This they felt; and nothing would have pleased them better than a revolution which would send Mr. Lincoln back to Illinois, and install Jefferson Davis in the White House. There was probably not one man in five in Washington at the time Mr. Lincoln entered the city who, in his heart, gave him welcome. ”

“ The crowd slowly separated; the citizens moved back to their homes; those who had accompanied the precious remains--at last resting, and in safe and affectionate keeping--from Washington and points along the route, took their departure by the out-going trains; the guard paced their little round before the tomb, where through the grate the large and the little coffin lay in the dim light; and the people of Springfield were left to their grief and their glory. ”

“ Lincoln's indulgence in them. It was always the elements of wit and humor that captivated him. He was not an impure man in his life, or in his imaginations. For impurity's sake, he never uttered an impure word, or made an impure allusion, but, whenever he found anything humorous, ludicrous or witty, he could not resist the inclination to use it, whatever the incidents might be with which it was associated. Anything that was morally beautiful touched him to tears. He was equally sensitive to all that was heroic, beautiful, grand, sweet, ludicrous and grotesque in human life. ”

“ It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
"Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of states in the nature of a contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? ”

“ Why are the people of a territory and the people of a state therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a state, or the people of a state, to exclude it. ”

“ Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. ”

“ He admired the fighting man, and looked upon him as, in one sense, his superior. Although he did not plead guilty to the weakness of moral cowardice, he felt that the battle-field was a fearful place, from which, unaided by its special inspirations, he should run. Indeed, Mr. Lincoln did not give himself credit for the physical courage which he really possessed, though he had probably grown timid with his failing strength.
This sympathy with the soldiers he manifested in many ways, and in none more than in his treatment of their offenses against military law. ”

“ Douglas was looking for the presidency, and knew that if he should ever reach and grasp the prize before him, he must do it through the aid of the slaveholding states. He knew that he could only secure this support by a certain degree of friendliness, or an entire indifference, to slavery. He intended to ride into power on the back of popular sovereignty, giving at least nominal equality to slavery and freedom in the territories, while, at the same time, endorsing the decision of the Supreme Court as to what the exact rights of slavery were, under the Constitution. ”

“ After saying that we could not consistently deny the South in its most extreme demands, on any ground except the wrong of slavery, he put the case forcibly, as follows: "If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality--its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension, its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant if they thought slavery wrong. ”

“ Lincoln's name was on every tongue. The patient man who had suffered the pain of a thousand deaths during the war--who had been misconstrued, maligned, and condemned by personal and party enemies, and questioned and criticised by captious friends,--was the man above all others who stood in the full sunshine of the popular affection. ”

“ It is useless for Mr. Lincoln's biographers to ignore this habit, for it was notorious. The whole West, if not the whole country, is full of these stories; and there is no doubt at all that he indulged in them with the same freedom that he did in those of a less exceptionable character. Good people are at a loss to account for this apparent love of impurity, in a man of such exalted aims, such deep truthfulness, such high aspirations. ”

“ Is there such perfect identity of interests among the states to compose a new Union as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession? Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.
"A majority held in restraint by constitutional check and limitation, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible. ”

“ We have seen one of the humblest of American citizens struggling through personal trials and national turmoils, into the light of universal fame, and an assured immortality of renown. We have seen him become the object of warm and devoted affection to a whole nation. We have witnessed such manifestations of grief at his loss as the death of no ruler has called forth, within the memory of man. ”

“ The twelfth day of February was remarkably sunny and cheerful, and a large concourse of citizens had assembled to give Mr. Lincoln greeting and to catch a glimpse of his face. All the streets leading to the railroad depot were thronged with people; and the windows and roofs and every perch from which a lookout could be obtained were occupied. It took a large force of military and police to keep the way clear. A distant cannon announced the approach of the train, and then there went up from the multitude such a cheer as such a multitude alone can give. ”

“ Lincoln's history. It flashes a strong light upon the path he had already trod, and illuminates every page of his subsequent record. Men have wondered at his abounding charity, his love of men, his equanimity under the most distressing circumstances, his patience under insult and misrepresentation, his delicate consideration of the feelings of the humble, his apparent incapacity of resentment, his love of justice, his transparent simplicity, his truthfulness, his good will toward his enemies, his beautiful and unshaken faith in the triumph of the right. ”

“ Will you make war upon us and kill us all? Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various occasions; but man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us. ”

“ His duty is to administer the present government as it came to his hands, and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people. ”

“ Upon what principle, upon what rightful principle, may a state, being no more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionably larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district or country with its people, by merely calling it a state? Fellow-citizens, I am not asserting any thing. ”

“ Bateman, I am not a Christian--God knows I would be one--but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not so understand this book;" and he drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament. "These men well know," he continued, "that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. ”

“ He had accomplished the greatest work for his country and for mankind that had ever been committed to a mortal to perform. A great nation had been saved from wreck by his hands; a race had been disenthralled by his word and his policy; and a popular government had been established in the faith and affections of its subjects, and in the respect of the governments of the world. His enemies had been silenced, his friends had been reassured, his motives and his policy had been vindicated, and his person had come to be regarded with tender affection by tens of millions of men. ”

“ You have become, by the controversy with Mr. Douglas, one of our leaders in this great struggle with slavery, which is undoubtedly the struggle of the nation and the age. What I would like to say is this, and I say it with a full heart: Be true to your principles, and we will be true to you, and God will be true to us all." Mr. Lincoln, touched by the earnestness of his interlocutor, took his hand in both of his own, and, with his face full of sympathetic light, exclaimed: "I say amen to that! ”