Henry Ketcham

“ He arraigned the iniquity of slavery as an offense against God. He made the phrase "all men" of the Declaration of Independence include the black as well as the white. Said he: "There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence—the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.... In the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." ”

“ I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me—and I think He has—I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care ”

“ Like the letter to Hooker, it was just such a letter as a father might write a son. It was the production of a high grade of manliness.
Prominence always brings envy, fault-finding, hostility. From this Grant did not escape. The more brilliant and uniform his successes, the more clamorous a certain class of people became. The more strictly he attended to his soldierly duties, the more busily certain people tried to interfere,—to tell him how to do, or how not to do. In their self- appointed censorship they even besieged the President and made life a burden to him. ”

“ If we make generous allowance for the fears which had their root in Lamon's devoted love for his chief, and for that natural desire to magnify his office—for his special charge was to guard the President from bodily harm—which would incline him to estimate trifles seriously, we are still compelled to believe that the life was in frequent, if not continual, danger. There are, and always have been, men whose ambition is in the direction of a startling crime. There were not less than three known attempts on the life of Lincoln between Springfield and Washington. ”

“ You say your husband is a religious man; tell him when you meet him that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their government because, as they think, that government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread in the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven."
As the dreadful summer of 1862 advanced, Lincoln noted surely that the time was at hand when emancipation would be the master stroke. ”

“ Let every one who really believes, and is resolved, that free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he has done only what he thought best, let every such one have charity to believe that every other one can say as much. Let bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the real issue, let us re-inaugurate the good old 'central ideas' of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us; God is with us. ”

“ Napoleon was eager to sacrifice the whole of Europe to satisfy the claims of his personal ambition; Lincoln was always ready to stand aside and sacrifice himself for the country. The one was selfishness incarnate; the other was a noble example of a man who never hesitated to subordinate his own welfare to the general good, and whose career came to its climax in his martyrdom. Whether the presidency was or was not, Lincoln's destiny, it was certainly his destination. ”

“ President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union Cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile—that the Rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigor—that the army of officers who remain to this day devoted to Slavery can at best be but half way loyal to the Union—and that every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union.... ”

“ The oldest of her soldiers of legal age were fifty-five years of age when the war closed. The youngest were twelve years of age when the war opened. Older men and younger boys were in the war, ay, and were killed on the field of battle. As the scourge of war passed over that state from south to north, from north to south, for four years, many an ancient and proud family was simply exterminated, root and branch. Of some of the noblest and best families, there is to-day not a trace and scarcely a memory. ”

“ We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic cords 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."
The address was listened to closely throughout. Immediately upon its conclusion the speaker was sworn into office by Chief Justice Taney whose name is connected with the famous Dred Scott decision. ”

“ The effect of the battle of Bull Run on the South was greatly to encourage them and add to their enthusiasm. The effect on the North was to deepen their determination to save the flag, to open their eyes to the fact that the southern power was strong, and with renewed zeal and determination they girded themselves for the conflict. But the great burden fell on Lincoln. He was disappointed that the insurrection was not and could not be crushed by one decisive blow. There was need of more time, more men, more money, more blood. ”

“ Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of defeat to the depths of despondency, he held on with immovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution, that it might not yield to dread and danger. ”

“ Lincoln had now served eight years in the legislature and one term in congress. He had a good understanding of politics. He was never a time- server, and he had done nothing unwise. He knew how to win votes and he knew what to do with himself when the votes were won. He held the confidence of his constituency. His was a constantly growing popularity. He could do everything but one,—he could not dishonor his conscience. His belief that "slavery was founded on injustice" was the only reason for his protest. He never hesitated to protest against injustice. ”

“ To-day he is general-in-chief, not of the largest army, but probably of the most intelligent army, the world has ever seen. He would be almost more than human if such a sudden turn of the wheel of fortune did not also turn his head.
It was Lincoln's habit to let his generals do their work in their own ways, only insisting that they should accomplish visible and tangible results. This method he followed with McClellan, developing it with great patience under trying circumstances. On this point there is no better witness than McClellan himself. ”

“ No hasty act of his administration can be traced to his impatience. He had a tender, brotherly regard for every human being; and the thought of oppression was torment to him.... A statesman without a statesman's craftiness, a politician without a politician's meannesses, a great man without a great man's vices, a philanthropist without a philanthropist's impracticable dreams, a Christian without pretensions, a ruler without the pride of place and power, an ambitious man without selfishness, and a successful man without vanity. ”

“ 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 government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ”

“ He usually did run ahead of his ticket excepting when running for the presidency, and then it was from the nature of the case impossible. Though Lincoln probably did not realize it, this, his first election, put an end forever to his drifting, desultory, frontier life. Up to this point he was always looking for a job. From this time on he was not passing from one thing to another. In this country politics and law are closely allied. This two-fold pursuit, politics, for the sake of law, and law for the sake of politics, constituted Lincoln's vocation for the rest of his life. ”

“ It surely makes one army quite as tired to suffer defeat as it makes the other to achieve victory. It was again a golden opportunity to destroy Lee's army and end the war.
Perhaps Meade had achieved enough for one man in winning Gettysburg. It would not be strange if the three days' battle had left him with nerves unstrung. The fact remains that he did not pursue and annihilate the defeated army. They were permitted to recross the Potomac without molestation, to reenter what may be called their own territory, to reorganize, rest, reequip, and in due time to reappear as formidable as ever. ”

“ Much has been written, and perhaps justly, of Lincoln's presentiments. It is not exceptional, it is common in all rural communities to multiply and magnify signs. The commonest occurrences are invested with an occult meaning. Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder or over the left shoulder, the howling of a dog at night, the chance assemblage of thirteen persons, the spilling of salt,—these and a thousand other things are taken to be signs of something. ”

“ From childhood to maturity Clay had been his idol, and Clay's party, the whig, nearly synonymous with all that was desirable in American politics. It was therefore no easy matter for Lincoln to leave the whig party. Nothing could accomplish this but the overmastering power of a noble emotion.
From childhood Lincoln had hated slavery. The fact that Kentucky was a slave state had its influence in his father's removal to Indiana. His personal observations upon his journeys down the Mississippi River had given him a keener feeling on the subject. ”

“ One characteristic which distinguished Lincoln all through his life was thoroughness. When he was President a man called on him for a certain favor, and, when asked to state his case, made a great mess of it, for he had not sufficiently prepared himself. Then the President gave him some free advice. "What you need is to be thorough," and he brought his hand down on the table with the crash of a maul,—"to be thorough." It was his own method. After a successful practise of twenty years he advised a young law student: "Work, work, work is the main thing." ”

“ With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have home the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. ”

“ But when one is compelled to see the working of a vast amount of mischief, powerless to prevent it, and knowing one's self to be the chief victim of it all, the time is long. Such was the fate of Lincoln. ”