John Hay

“ Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 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. ”

“ The profound agitation of the question of slavery, which in 1854 followed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, awakened all the energies of Lincoln's nature. He regarded this act, in which Senator Douglas was the most prominent agent of the reactionary party, as a gross breach of faith, and began at once a series of earnest political discussions which immediately placed him at the head of the party that, not only in Illinois but throughout the west, was speedily formed to protest against and oppose the throwing open of the territories to the encroachments of slavery. ”

“ His powerful grasp of details, his analytic capacity, his unerring logic, his perception of human nature would have made him unusual in any age of the world, while the quality that, in the opinion of many, made him the specially fitted agent of Providence in the salvation of the country, his absolute freedom from prejudice or passion in weighing the motives of his contemporaries and the deepest problems of state, gives him pre-eminence even among the illustrious men that have preceded and followed him in his great office. ”

“ At Freeport, Lincoln, taking his turn, inquired of Douglas whether the people of a territory could in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. By his reply, intimating that slavery might be excluded by unfriendly territorial legislation, Douglas gained a momentary advantage in the anti-slavery region in which he spoke, but dealt a fatal blow to his popularity in the south, the result of which was seen two years afterward at the Charleston convention. ”

“ The death of President Lincoln, in the moment of the great national victory that he had done more than any other to gain, caused a movement of sympathy throughout the world. The expressions of grief and condolence that were sent to the government at Washington, from national, provincial, and municipal bodies all over the globe, were afterward published by the state department in a quarto volume of nearly a thousand pages, called “The Tribute of the Nations to Abraham Lincoln.” ”

“ The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have a most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. ”

“ The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. ”

“ In his inaugural address President Lincoln treated the acts of secession as a nullity. He declared the Union perpetual and inviolate, and announced with perfect firmness, though with the greatest moderation of speech and feeling, the intention of the government to maintain its authority and to hold the places under its jurisdiction. He made an elaborate and unanswerable argument against the legality as well as the justice of secession, and further showed, with convincing clearness, that peaceful secession was impossible. “Can aliens make treaties,” he said, “easier than friends can make laws? ”

“ The death of her son, William Wallace, in 1862, was an enduring sorrow to her. One of her principal occupations was visiting the hospitals and camps of the soldiers about Washington. She never recovered from the shock of seeing her husband shot down before her eyes; her youngest son, Thomas, died a few years later, and her reason suffered from these repeated blows. She lived in strict retirement during her later years, spending part of her time with her son in Chicago, a portion in Europe, and the rest with her sister, Mrs. Edwards, in Springfield, Illinois, where she died of paralysis. ”

“ We, in effect, say to the white men, ‘You are worthless or worse, we will neither help you, nor be helped by you.’ To the blacks we say, ‘This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips we will dash from you and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how.’ . ”

“ If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.” This time congress acted with alacrity, and on January 31, 1865, proposed to the states the 13th amendment to the constitution, providing that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, where the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ”

“ The retreat of Lee from Maryland after his defeat at Antietam seemed to the president to afford a proper occasion for the execution of his long-matured resolve, and on September 22 he issued his preliminary proclamation, giving notice to the states in rebellion that, on January 1, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof should then be in rebellion against the United States, should be then, thenceforward, and forever free. ”

“ Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, one of the most eloquent and influential orators of the Democratic party, was arrested in Ohio by Gen. Burnside for his violent public utterances in opposition to the war, tried by a military court, and sentenced to imprisonment during the continuance of the war. The president changed his sentence to that of transportation within the lines of the rebellion. These proceedings caused a great ferment among his party in Ohio, who, by way of challenge to the government, nominated him for governor of that state. ”

“ Lincoln's administration had their full share of complicated and difficult questions of domestic and foreign concern. The interior and post-office departments made great progress in developing the means of communication throughout the country. Mr. Chase, as secretary of the treasury, performed, with prodigious ability and remarkable success, the enormous duties devolving upon him of providing funds to supply the army at an expense amounting at certain periods to $3,000,000 a day; and Mr. Seward, in charge of the state department, held at bay the suppressed hostility of European nations. ”

“ During the summer, while Grant was engaged in the desperate and indecisive series of battles that marked his southward progress in Virginia, and Sherman had not yet set out upon his march to the sea, one of the most ardent political canvasses the country had ever seen was in progress at the north. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though the loss in killed and wounded was not great, and was about the same on both sides, the victory was still one of the utmost importance for the Confederates, and gave them a great increase of prestige on both sides of the Atlantic. They were not, however, able to pursue their advantage. The summer was passed in enlisting, drilling, and equipping a formidable National army on the banks of the Potomac, which was given in charge of Gen. George B. McClellan, a young officer who had distinguished himself by a successful campaign in western Virginia. ”

“ There were four members of Democratic antecedents who, while they were ardently opposed to the extension of slavery, were not willing to cast their votes for a Whig candidate, and adhered tenaciously through several ballots to Lyman Trumbull, a Democrat of their own way of thinking. Lincoln, fearing that this dissension among the anti-slavery men might result in the election of a supporter of Douglas, urged his friends to go over in a body to the support of Trumbull, and his influence was sufficient to accomplish this result. ”

“ Thomas Lincoln remained in Kentucky until 1816, when he resolved to remove to the still newer country of Indiana, and settled in a rich and fertile forest country near Little Pigeon creek, not far distant from the Ohio river. The family suffered from diseases incident to pioneer life, and Mrs. Lincoln died in 1818 at the age of thirty-five. Thomas Lincoln, while on a visit to Kentucky, married a worthy, industrious, and intelligent widow named Sarah Bush Johnston. ”

“ Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war; you cannot fight always, and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you. ”

“ Douglas defended his thesis of non-intervention with slavery in the territories (the doctrine known as “popular sovereignty,” and derided as “squatter sovereignty”) with remarkable adroitness and energy. The ground that Mr. Lincoln took was higher and bolder than had yet been assumed by any American statesman of his time. In the brief and sententious speech in which he accepted the championship of his party, before the Republican convention of June 16, 1858, he uttered the following pregnant and prophetic words: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. ”

“ Gen. Sherman, a few days afterward, received the surrender of Johnston, and the last Confederate army, under Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, west of the Mississippi, laid down its arms. President Lincoln had himself accompanied the army in its last triumphant campaign, and had entered Richmond immediately after its surrender, receiving the cheers and benedictions not only of the negroes whom he had set free, but of a great number of white people, who were weary of the war and welcomed the advent of peace. ”

“ They never seemed to perceive that to withstand an angry congress in Washington required more vigor of character than to launch a threatening decree against the Confederate government in Richmond. Mr. Lincoln was as unusual in personal appearance as in character. His stature was almost gigantic, six feet and four inches; he was muscular but spare of frame, weighing about 180 pounds. His hair was strong and luxuriant in growth, and stood out straight from his head ”

“ As his second inaugural was the greatest of all his rhetorical compositions, so this brief political address, which closed his public career, is unsurpassed among his speeches for clearness and wisdom, and for a certain tone of gentle but unmistakable authority, which shows to what a mastery of statecraft he had attained. ”

“ Grant was transferred to Chattanooga, where, in November, with the troops of Thomas, Hooker, and Sherman, he won the important victory of Missionary Ridge; and then, being appointed lieutenant-general and general-in-chief of the armies of the United States, he went to Washington and entered upon the memorable campaign of 1864. This campaign began with revived hopes on the part of the government, the people, and the army. ”

“ The Confederate agents reported at Richmond the failure of their embassy, and Mr. Davis denounced the conduct of President Lincoln in a public address full of desperate defiance. Nevertheless, it was evident even to the most prejudiced observers that the war could not continue much longer. Sherman's march had demonstrated the essential weakness of the Confederate cause; the soldiers of the Confederacy who for four years, with the most stubborn gallantry, had maintained a losing fight began to show signs of dangerous discouragement and insubordination ”

“ Sheridan's victory over Early in the Shenandoah valley gave an added impulse to the general enthusiasm, and in the October elections it was shown that the name of Mr. Lincoln was more popular, and his influence more powerful, than any one had anticipated. In the election that took place on November 8, 1864, he received 2,216,000 votes, and Gen. McClellan, 1,800,000. The difference in the electoral vote was still greater, Mr. Lincoln being supported by 212 of the presidential electors, while only 21 voted for McClellan. ”

“ After the lapse of thirty years, the high estimate of him that the world appears instinctively to have formed at the moment of his death seems to have been increased rather than diminished, as his participation in the great events of his time has been more thoroughly studied and understood. ”

“ Mr. Lincoln, on June 8, had been unanimously renominated for the presidency by the Republican convention at Baltimore. The Democratic leaders had postponed their convention to a date unusually late, in the hope that some advantage might be reaped from the events of the summer. The convention came together on August 29 in Chicago. Mr. Vallandigham, who had returned from his banishment, and whom the government had sagaciously declined to rearrest, led the extreme peace party in the convention. Prominent politicians of New York were present in the interest of Gen. McClellan. ”