Lincoln centennial; addresses delivered at the memorial exercises held at Springfield, Illinois, February 12, 1909

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Lincoln Centennial

ADDRESSES

DELIVERED AT THE MEMORIAL EXERCISES

HELD AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

FEBRUARY 12, 1909

Commemorating

The One Hundredth Birthday of

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Published by

THE ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION

1909

.I'7

JOURNAL CO.. PRINTERS, SPRINOntLD. ILL.

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CONTENTS

Page

Frontispiece ; Lincoln 4

Joint Resolution of the Illinois General Assembly ... 4

Illinois Centennial Commission; members 5

Lincoln Centennial Association; incorporators 6

Summary of Memorial Exercises 7

At the Armory ; mention 10

Judge Humphrey, introducing Mr. Jusserand 11

Ambassador Jusserand's address 16

Judge Humphrey, introducing Mr. Bryce 27

Ambassador Bryce's address 29

Judge Humphrey, introducing Mr. Bryan 36

Hon. William J. Bryan's address 37

Judge Humphrey, introducing Senator Dolliver. ... 52

Senator Dolliver's address 53

Senator Cullom's letter 60

Hon. Booker T. Washington's letter 63

Mr. Charles Henry Butler's poem 67

At the Tabernacle ; mention 75

Governor Deneen, introducing Mr. Jusserand 76

Ambassador Jusserand's address 78

Governor Deneen, introducing Mr. Bryce 82

Ambassador Bryce's address 83

Governor Deneen, introducing Senator Dolliver ... 88

Senator Dolliver's address 89

Governor Deneen, introducing Mr. Bryan 113

Hon. William J. Bryan's address 114

At St. John's Church; mention 132

Dr. Thomas D. Logan's address 133

At the Court House; mention 159

The Memorial Tablet _ 160

Colonel Mills, introducing Judge Cartwright 164

Judge Cartwright's address 166

Colonel Mills, introducing Judge Creighton 174

Judge Creighton's address 175

At the High School; mention 182

General John W. Noble's address 183

At the Lincoln Home; mention 208

At the Historical Library; mention 209

At the Executive Mansion; mention 210

At the Lincoln Tomb; mention 211

At the Country Club; mention 213

The Veteran Guard of Honor; list 214

The Illinois Centennial Commission; list 216

The Lincoln Centennial Association; list 217

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 22

Whereas, The one hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Abraham Lincoln will occur on the 12th
day of February, 1909; and,

Whereas, It is fitting and proper that the State
of Illinois should celebrate the anniversary of the
birth of this greatest of all American statesmen;
therefore, be it

Resolved, by the Senate of the State of Illinois, the
House of Representatives concurring therein, That
the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of
Abraham Lincoln be celebrated in the city of
Springfield on the 12th day of February, 1909; and,
be it further

Resolved, That the Governor is hereby authorized
and empowered to appoint a commission of fifteen
representative citizens of this State to have charge
of all arrangements tor such celebration.

Adopted by the Senate, October S, 1907.
Concurred in by the House. October 9, 1907.

STATE CENTENNIAL COMMISSION

John W. Bunn
Ben F. Caldwell
Edwin L. Chapin
James A. Connolly
James A. Creighton
Shelby M. Cullom
J Otis Humphrey
William Jayne
Edward D. Keys
Alfred Orendorff
Nicholas Roberts
James A. Rose
Edgar S. Scott
Lawrence Y. Sherman
Philip Barton Warren

LINCOLN CENTENNIAL ASSOCIATION

[INCORPORATORS]

Hon. Melville W. Fuller, Chief Justice U. S.

Supreme Court
Hon. Shelby M. Cullom, U. S. S.
Hon. Albert J. Hopkins, U. S. S.
Hon. Joseph G. Cannon, M. C.
Hon. Adlai E. Stevenson
Hon. Charles S. Deneen, Governor
Hon. John P. Hand, Chief Justice Sup. Court
Hon. J Otis Humphrey, Judge U. S. Dist. Court
Hon. James A. Rose, Secretary of State
Hon. Ben F. Caldwell, M. C.
Hon. Richard Yates
Melville E. Stone, Esq., New York
Horace White, Esq., New York
John W. Bunn, Esq.
Dr. William Jayne

SUMMARY

The memorial exercises, celebrating the one
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham
Lincoln, were held under the general direction of
the State Centennial commission, working in con-
junction with the Lincoln Centennial association,
(incorporated) and consisted of a number of dis-
tinct events so arranged as not to conflict with
each other as to date or purpose. Each separate
event was a distinct success and the numbers in
attendance were limited in every instance by the
capacity of the buildings in which the exercises
were held. The more important events included
in these memorial exercises were as follows:

The Armory meeting, at which addresses were
made by Ambassadors Jusserand and Bryce and
by Senator Dolliver and Mr. Bryan, and a banquet
served to 800 guests;

The Tabernacle meeting, earlier in the day, at
which an audience of 10,000 was addressed by the
same distinguished speakers;

Page eight

The religious services held at St. John's Evan-
gelical Lutheran church (formerly the First Pres-
byterian church where Mr. Lincoln worshiped
while living in Springfield) at which Rev. Dr.
Thomas D. Logan delivered the principal address;

The Grand Army meeting at which a Lincoln
tree was planted in the Court House square by
the veterans, after which ceremony they marched
to the Lincoln tomb, served as a Guard of Honor
during the day and, in a body, attended the ban-
quet at night;

The Sons of the American Revolution meeting,
at which addresses were delivered by Judges
Cartwright and Creighton and a memorial tablet,
marking the site of the old Lincoln law office, was
unveiled at 109 North Fifth street;

The Daughters of the American Revolution meet-
ting, consisting of a reception at the old Lincoln
home and a luncheon served at the rooms of the
Young Men's Christian association;

The State Historical society mooting in the
library at the State Capitol including a reception
and addresses;

Page nine

The High School meeting, the principal feature
of which was the address of Gen. John W. Noble
of St. Louis;

An informal reception at the Executive Mansion
at which the guests of the commission together
with State officials, Justices of the Supreme Court
and others paid their respects to Governor and
Mrs. Deneen;

A visit to the Lincoln tomb participated in by
the guests of the commission, as well as by State
and city officials and many citizens of Springfield;

An informal luncheon served at the home of the
Illini Country Club in honor of the city's guests.

Page ten

AT THE ARMORY

The principal event of the celebration was the
banquet in the evening at the Armory. Here
eight hundred and fifty members of the Centennial
association with their guests were seated at
seventy-one tables, and the galleries were filled
with spectators and auditors. The hall of the
armory was brilliantly illuminated and conspicu-
ous among the decorations were the national
colors of France and of England mingled with
those of the United States. Judge J Otis Hum-
phrey presided as toastmaster. Addresses were
delivered by the French Ambassador, the British
Ambassador, Senator Dolliver and Mr. Bryan.
Letters of regret from Senator Cullom and Booker
T. Washington were read and a poem by Charles
Henry Butler. The letters, poem and addresses
with the introductory remarks of the toastmaster
are given on the following pages.

Page eleven

JUDGE HUMPHREY

Introducing the French Ambassador

Perhaps never again in any presence will so
many of his old associates be assembled together
to do honor to that immortal character given to
the world by the great republic. We are in the
midst of a universal celebration of which Spring-
field is recognized as the center, and to know
what is said and done here today the world is
standing at attention. Many men in all ages have
taught lessons of patriotism: Mr. Lincoln taught
patriotism plus humanity. He knew as few others
have known the lesson that, more than wealth,
more than fame, more than any other thing, is
the power of the human heart.

The notion has long been prevalent in the east
and to some extent among historians of the period
that Mr. Lincoln's greatness was all attained after
he became President. Let that fallacy be forever
set at rest. True it is that the general recog-
nition of his greatness came with his broadened

Page twelve

opportunities, but his old friends in Illinois had
for years known his power and recognized his
strength.

Those who had worked with him or who had
opposed him in the arena of justice; those who
were factors in his combinations who associated
with him or took orders from him in his various
political campaigns, knew his subtle diplomacy
and his easy mastery of men. Some of those men
still remain to us, some of them are here tonight.
They had seen him convince courts, control juries
and sway the masses; they heard the Bloomington
speech and the spell of it is still over them. They
knew his powers of expression, his moderation of
statement; his willingness to yield nonessentials,
his immovable adherence to what he regarded as
important. They saw in him then what the world
sees now, a rare combination of gentleness, genius
and strength. So, when at Washington they saw
his apparent yielding to his great secretaries, going
Seward's way yesterday, and Chase's way today,
and Stanton's way tomorrow, these men knew
as the country did not know, that Mr. Lincoln was
all tlic time going his own way and that he would
carry the secretaries with him.

Page thirteen

From that rugged poet, Edwin Markham, paint-
ing him in colors so rich that I could never hope to
equal them, we learn that:

When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour,

Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,

She bent the strenuous Heavens and came down

To make a man to meet the mortal need.

She took the tried clay of the common road —

Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,

Dashed through it all a strain of prophesy;

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.

It was a stuff to wear for centuries,

A man that matched the mountains and compelled

The stars to look our way and honor us.

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;

The tang and odor of the primal things —

The rectitude and patience of the rocks;

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;

The courage of the bird that dares the sea;

The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;

The pity of the snow that hides all scars;

The loving kindness of the wayside well;

The tolerance and equity of light that gives as freely to

The shrinking weed as to the great oak flaring to the wind —

The grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn

That shoulders out the sky.

And so he came.

From prairie cabin to the Capital,
One fair Ideal led our chieftain on.
Forevermore he burned to do his deed

Page fourteen

With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.
He built the rail pile as he built the state,
Pouring his splended strength through every blow,
The conscience of him testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.

So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the step of Earthquake shook the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold,
He held the ridge pole up, and spiked again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place-
Held the long purpose like a growing tree-
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in Whirlwind, he went down
As when a kingly cedar green with boughs
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Since colonial days France has been the con-
stant friend of America; in the recent generations
when the peoples of the earth, caught up in the
mighty sweep of God's purposes, have been tend-
ing more and more toward representative govern-
ment, these two nations have been marching in
the front rank; each has taught her citizens to
speak plain, the great sweet word, Liberty; each
has experienced the difficulty of teaching that
the sovereignty of self over self is the highest
liberty; each has taught that as liberty is the
summit of society, so equality before the law is

Page fifteen

the basis of organized government; each has stood
to the other, sometimes as an example and some-
times a warning, and these lessons of history have
been profitable to both.

The greatest republic of the old world greets
us tonight in the person of one of her most dis-
tinguished citizens. Gentlemen, I have pleasure
in presenting the scholar, the author, the diplo-
matist, His Excellency, Mr. J. J. Jusserand, the
French Ambassador.

Page sixteen

THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR

Abraham Lincoln as France Regarded Him

On two tragic occasions, at a century's distance,
the fate of this country has trembled in the bal-
ance: Would it be a free nation? Would it
continue to be one nation? A leader was wanted
on both occasions, a very different one in each
case. This boon from above was granted to the
American people who had a Washington when
a Washington was needed and a Lincoln when
a Lincoln could save them.

Both had enemies, both had doubters, but both
were recognized by all open-minded people and,
above all, by the nation at large, as the men to
shape the nation's destinies. When the Marquis
de Chastellux came to America as chief of staff
in the army of Rochambeau, his first thought was
to go and see his friend Lafayette and, at the
same time, Washington. He has noted in his
memoirs what were, on first sight, his impressions
of the not yet victorious, not yet triumphant, not
yet universally admired American patriot:

Page teventeen

"I saw," he said, "M. de Lafayette talking
in the yard with a tall man of 5 feet 9 inches, of
noble mien and sweet face. It was the general
himself. I dismounted and soon felt myself at
my ease by the side of the greatest and best of
all men. All who meet him trust him, but no
one is familiar with him, because the sentiment
he inspires to all has ever the same cause; a pro-
found esteem for his virtues and the highest
opinion of his talents. " So wrote a foreigner who
was not Lafayette, who suddenly found himself
face to face with the great man. Any chance
comer, any passer-by would have been similarly
impressed. He inspired confidence and those
who saw him felt that the fate of the country was
safe in his hands.

A century of almost unbroken prosperity had
nearly elapsed when came the hour of the nation's
second trial. Though it may seem to us a small
matter compared with what we have seen since,
the development had been considerable; the scat-
tered colonies of yore had become a great nation,
and now it seemed as if all was in doubt again;
the nation was young, wealthy, powerful, pros-

— 2 L C

Page eighteen

perous; it had immense domains and resources;
yet it seemed as if her fate would parallel those
of old empires described by Tacitus, which, with-
out foes, crumble to pieces under their own weight.
Within her own frontiers elements of destruction
or disruption had been growing; hatreds were em-
bittered among people equally brave, bold and
sure of their rights. The edifice raised by Wash-
ington was trembling on its base; a catastrophe
was at hand. Then it was that in the middle-
sized, not yet world-famous town, Chicago by
name, the republican convention called there for
the first time, met to choose a candidate for the
presidency. It has met there again since, and has
made, each time, a remarkable choice.

In 1860 it chose a man whom my predecessor
of those days, announcing the news to his govern-
ment, described as "a man almost unknown, Mr.
Abraham Lincoln." Almost unknown was he, in-
deed, at home as well as abroad, and the news
of his selection was received with anxiety. My
country, France, was then governed by Napoleon
III; all liberals had their eyes fixed on America.
Your example was the great example which gave
heart to our most progressive men. You had

Page nineteen

proved that republican government was possible,
by having one. If it broke to pieces, so would
the hopes of all those among us who expected
that one day we would have the same. And the
partisans of autocracy were loud in their assertion
that a republic was well and good for a country
without enemies or neighbors but that, if a storm
arose, it would be shattered. A storm arose and
the helm had been placed in the hands of that
man almost unknown, Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
" We still remember, " wrote, years later, the illus-
trious French writer, Prevost-Paradol, "the un-
easiness with which we awaited the first words
of that President then unknown, upon whom a
heavy task had fallen and from whose advent
to power might be dated the ruin or regeneration
of his country. All we knew was that he had
sprung up from the humblest walks of life, that
his youth had been spent in manual labor; that
he had then risen by degrees in his town, in his
county and in his state. What was this favorite
of the people? Democratic societies are liable to
errors which are fatal to them. But as soon as
Mr. Lincoln arrived in Washington, as soon as
he spoke, all our doubts and fears were dissipated ;

Page twenty

and it seemed to us that fate itself had pronounced
in favor of the good cause, since, in such an emer-
gency, it had given to the country an honest

man. "

The first words (the now famous inaugural
address) had been, for Prevost-Paradol and for
millions of others, what a first glance at Wash-
ington had been for Chastellux, a revelation that
the man was a man, a great and honest one, and
that, once more, the fate of the country, at an
awful period, had been placed in safe hands.

Well indeed might people have wondered and
felt anxious when they remembered how little
training in great affairs the new ruler had had
and the incredible difficulties of the problems he
would have to solve; his heart bleeding at the
very thought, for he had to fight "not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies." No
romance of adventure reads more like a romance
than the true story of Lincoln's youth and of the
wanderings of his family from Virginia to Ken-
tucky, from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indiana
to the newly-formed state of Illinois, having first
to clear a part of the forest to build a doorlcss,
windowlcss cabin, with one room for all the uses

Page twenty-one

of them all; Lincoln, the grandson of a man killed
by the Indians, the son of a father who never
succeeded in anything, and whose utmost literary
accomplishment consisted in signing with great
difficulty, his own name — an accomplishment he
had in common with the father of Shakespeare;
the whole family leading a sort of life in compari-
son with which that of Robinson Crusoe was one
of sybaritic enjoyment. That in those trackless,
neighborless, bookless parts of the country he
could learn and educate himself was the first great
wonder of his life; it showed, once more, that
learning does not so much depend upon the mas-
ter's teaching as upon the pupil's desire.

But no book, no school, no talk with refined
men, would have taught him what his rough
life did. Confronted every day and every hour
of the day with problems which had to be solved,
he got the habit of seeing, deciding and acting
by himself. Accustomed from childhood to live
surrounded by the unknown and meet the unex-
pected, his soul learnt to be astonished at nothing
and, instead of losing any time in wondering, to
seek at once the way out of the difficulty. What
the forest, what the swamp, what the river taught

Page twenty-two

Lincoln cannot be over-estimated. After long
years of it, and shorter years at long-vanished
New Salem, here at Springfield, at Vandalia, the
former capital, where he met some descendants
of his precursors in the forest, the French "Cour-
eurs de bois, " almost suddenly he found himself
transferred to the post of greatest honor and
greatest danger. And what then would say the
"man almost unknown," the backwoodsman of
yesterday? What would he say? What did he
say? THE RIGHT THING.

He was accustomed not to be surprised, but
to decide and act. And so, confronted with cir-
cumstances which were so extraordinary as to be
new to all, he was the man least astonished in
the government. His rough and shrewd instinct
proved of better avail than the clever minds of
his more refined and better instructed seconds.
It was Lincoln's instinct which checked Seward's
complicated schemes and dangerous calculations.
Lincoln could not calculate so cleverly but he
could guess better.

His instinct, his good sense, his personal dis-
interestedness, his warmth of heart for friend and
foe, his high aims, led him through the awful

Page twenty-three

years of anguish and bloodshed during which
ceaselessly increased the number of fields decked
with tombs and no one knew whether there would
be one powerful nation or two weaker ones, the
odds were so great. They led him through the
worst and through the best hours, and that of
triumph found him none other than what he had
ever been before, a man of duty, the devoted ser-
vant of his country, with deeper furrows on his face
and more melancholy in his heart. And so, after
having saved the nation, he went to his doom
and fell, as he had long foreseen, a victim to the
cause for which he had fought.

The emotion caused by the event was immense.
Among my compatriots, part were for the south,
part for the north; they should not be blamed;
it was the same in America. But the whole of
those who had liberal ideas, the bulk of the nation,
considered neither north nor south and thought
only whether the republic would survive and con-
tinue a great republic or be shattered to pieces.
The efforts of Lincoln to preserve the Union were
followed with keen anxiety and the fervent hope
that he would succeed.

Page twtnty-four

When the catastrophe happened there were no
more differences and the whole French nation
was united in feeling. From the emperor and
empress, who telegraphed to Mrs. Lincoln, to the
humblest workman, the emotion was the same; a
wave of sympathy covered the country, such a
one as was never seen before. A subscription
was opened to have a medal struck and a copy
in gold presented to Mrs. Lincoln. In order that
it might be a truly national offering, it was decided
that no one would be permitted to subscribe more
than 2 cents. The necessary money was collected
in an instant and the medal was struck, bearing
these memorable words: "Dedicated by French
democracy to Lincoln, honest man, who abolished
slavery, re-established the Union, saved the re-
public without veiling the statue of Liberty."

The French press was unanimous; from the
royalist Gazette de France to the liberal Journal
des Debats came forth the same expression of
admiration and sorrow. "A christian," said the
Gazette de France, " has just ascended before the
throne of the Final Judge, accompanied by the
souls of four millions of slaves created like ours
in the image of God, and who have been endowed

Page twenty-five

with freedom by a word from him." Prevost-
Paradol, a member of the French academy and a
prominent liberal, wrote: "The political instinct
which made enlightened Frenchmen interested in
the maintenance of the American power, more
and more necessary to the equilibrium of the
world; the desire to see a great democratic state
surmount terrible trials and continue to give an
example of the most perfect liberty united with
the most absolute equality, assured the cause of
the north a number of friends among us. * * *
Lincoln was indeed an honest man, giving to the
word its full meaning, or rather the sublime sense
which belongs to it, when honesty was to contend
with the severest trials which can agitate states,
and with events which have influence on the fate
of the world. Mr. Lincoln had but one object
in view from the day of his election to that of his
death, namely, the fulfillment of his duty, and
his imagination never carried him beyond it. He
has fallen at the very foot of the altar, covering
it with his blood. But his work was done, and
the spectacle of a rescued republic was what he
could look upon with consolation when his eyes
were closing in death. Moreover, he has not

Page twenty-sit

lived for his country alone, since he leaves to
everyone in the world to whom liberty and justice
are dear, a great remembrance and a pure ex-
ample. "

When, in a log cabin in Kentucky, a hundred
years ago this day, that child was born who was
named after his grandfather killed by the Indians,
Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon I swayed Europe,
Jefferson was President of the United States, and
the second war of independence had not yet come
to pass. It seems all very remote. But the
memory of the great man whom we try to honor
today is as fresh in everybody's mind as if he had
only just left us. "It is," says Plutarch, "the
fortune of all good men that their virtue rises in
glory after their death, and that the envy which
any evil man may have conceived against them
never survives the envious. " Such was the fate
of Abraham Lincoln.

Page twenty-seven

JUDGE HUMPHREY

Introducing the British Ambassador

There is a nation which governs one acre in
five of the territory of the earth and one person
in five of the population of the world. It is
developed out of Briton and Phoenician and Roman
and Saxon and Dane and Norman. Amid the
shifting sands of government it stands as a rock
of empire. A people governed not by a written
constitution but by a working, worldly wisdom;
where efficient results of government are accom-
panied with the least machinery of government;
where there is order without despotism and liberty
without license; where lynch law is unknown;
where justice is certain and as prompt as certain.

One of the most gifted sons of Great Britain
honors us with his presence tonight. So surely
has he a fixed place in the intellectual world,
that students of modern political systems look
to him as master and guide. So wisely has he
written of our own political institutions that

Page txenty-eiglU

American scholars sit at his feet and drink in the
learning of his noble mind. He is the ripened
fruit of centuries of Anglo-Saxon progress.

I have the pleasure of presenting His Excellency,
The Right Honorable James Bryce, The British
Ambassador.

Page twenty-nine

THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR

Some Reflections on the Character and Career of

Lincoln

You are met to commemorate a great man, one
of your greatest, great in what he did, even greater
in what he was. One hundred years have passed
since in a lowly hut in the bordering state of Ken-
tucky this child of obscure and unlettered parents
was born into a country then still wild and thinly
peopled. Three other famous men were born in
that same year in England: Alfred Tennyson,
the most gifted poet who has used our language
since Wordsworth died; William Gladstone, the
most powerful, versatile and high-minded states-
man of the last two generations in Britain, and
Charles Darwin, the greatest naturalist since Lin-
naeus, and chief among the famous scientific dis-
coverers of the nineteenth century. It was a
wonderful year, and one who knew these three
illustrious Englishmen whom I have named is
tempted to speak of them and compare and con-

Page thirty

trast each one of them with that illustrious con-
temporary of theirs whose memory we are met to
honor. He quitted this world long before them
but with a record to which a long life could scarcely
have added any further lustre.

Of the personal impression he made on those who
knew him, you will hear from some of the few yet
living who can recollect him. All I can contribute
is a reminiscence of what reached us in England.
T was an undergraduate student in the University
of Oxford when the civil war broke out. Well do
I remember the surprise when the Republican
national convention nominated him as candidate
for the Presidency, for it had been expected that
the choice would fall upon William H. Seward. I
recollect how it slowly dawned upon Europeans in
1862 and 1863 that the President could be no or-
dinary man, because he never seemed cast down
by the reverses which befell his armies; because he
never let himself be hurried into premature action
nor feared to take so bold a step as the Emancipa-
tion Proclamation was when he saw that the time
had arrived. And above all I remember the shock
of awe and grief which thrilled all Britain when
the news came that he had perished by the bullet

Page thirty-one

of an assassin. There have been not a few murders
of the heads of states in our time, but none smote
us with such horror and such pity as the death of
this great, strong and merciful man in the moment
when his long and patient efforts had been crowned
with victory and peace had just begun to shed her
rays over a land laid waste by the march of armies.

We in England already felt then that a great as
well as a good man had departed, though it re-
mained for later years to enable us all (both you
here and we in the other hemisphere) fully to appre-
ciate his greatness. Both among you and with us
his fame has continued to rise till he has now be-
come one of the grandest figures whom America
has given to world history to be a glory first of
this country, then also of mankind.

A man may be great by intellect or by character
or by both. The highest men are great by both;
and of these was Abraham Lincoln. Endowed
with powers that were solid rather than shining,
he was not what is called a brilliant man. Perhaps
the want of instruction and stimulation during his
early life prevented his naturally vigorous mind
from learning how to work nimbly. The disad-
vantages of his boyhood, the want of books and

Page thirty-two

teachers, were so met and overcome by his love of
knowledge and his strenuous will that he drew
strength from them. Thoughtfulness and inten-
sity, the capacity to reflect steadily and patiently
on a problem till it has been solved is one of the two
most distinct impressions which one gets from that
strong, rugged face with its furrowed brow and
deep-set eyes.

The other impression is that of unshaken and
unshakable resolution. Slow in reaching a decision
he held fearlessly to it when he had reached it. He
had not merely physical courage and that in ample
measure, but the rarer quality of being willing to
face misconception and unpopularity. It was his
dauntless courage and his clear thinking that fitted
Lincoln to be the pilot who brought your ship
through the wildest tempest that ever broke upon
her.

Three points should not be forgotten which, if
they do not add to Lincoln's greatness, make it
more attractive. One is the fact that he rose all
unaided to the pinnacle of power and responsibility.
Rarely indeed has it happened in history, hardly at
all could it have happened in the last century out-
side America, that one born in poverty, with no

Page thirty-three

help throughout his youth from intercourse with
educated people, with no friend to back him except
those whom the impression of his own personality
brought round him, should so rise. A second is
the gentleness of his heart. He who has to refuse
every hour requests from those whom a private
person would have been glad to indulge, he who
has to punish those whom a private person would
pity and pardon, can seldom retain either tender-
ness or patience. But Lincoln's tenderness and
patience were inexhaustible.

It is often said that every great man is unscrup-
ulous, and doubtless most of those to whom usage
has attached the title have been so. To preserve
truthfulness and conscientiousness appears scarcely
possible in the stress of life where immense issues
seem to make it necessary and therefore make it
right to toss aside the ordinary rules of conduct in
order to secure the end desired. To Abraham
Lincoln, however, truthfulness and conscientious-
ness remained the rule of life. He felt and owned
his responsibility not only to the people but to a
higher power. Few men have so stainless a record.

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Page thirty-four

To you, men of Illinois, Lincoln is the most fa-
mous and worthy of all those who have adorned your
commonwealth. To you, citizens of the United
States, he is the president who carried you through
a terrible conflict and saved the Union. To us in
England he is one of the heroes of the race whence
you and we spring. We honor his memory as you
do, and it is fitting that one who is privileged here
to represent the land from which his forefathers
came should bring on behalf of England a tribute
of admiration for him and of thankfulness to the
Providence which gave him to you in your hour of
need.

Great men are the noblest possession of a nation
and are potent forces in the moulding of national
character. Their influence lives after them and, if
they be good as well as great, they remain as bea-
cons lighting the course of all who follow them.
They set for succeeding generations the standards
of the youth who seek to emulate their virtues in
the sendee of the country. Thus did the memory
of George Washington stir and rouse Lincoln him-
self. Thus will the memory of Lincoln live and
endure among you, gathering reverence from age
to age, the memory of one who saved your republic

Page thirty-five

by his wisdom, his constancy, his faith in the people
and in freedom; the memory of a plain and simple
man, yet crowned with the knightly virtues of
truthfulness, honor and courage.

Page thirty-six

JUDGE HUMPHREY

Introducing Mr. Bryan

An eminent American, whose words have repeat-
edly touched the hearts and moved the minds of
the people of the land, should need no introduction
at my hands. Primarily he belongs to Illinois;
sister states or the nation may adopt him, but to
us he will ever be hailed as a son of Illinois. With
a generous pride in the achievements he has
wrought ; with a full recognition of the purity of his
private life which makes him an example for the
youth of the land; with a love which the zeal of
party politics can never destroy, let us say to him
tonight, welcome home, Mr. Bryan!

Page thirty-ieven

HON. WILLIAM J. BRYAN

The Art of Government

I appreciate this cordial welcome to the State
of my birth. I am glad that there is an interim
between campaigns when we can forget the an-
imosities aroused by party strife and come face
to face with the fact that the things that we hold
in common are more numerous and more impor-
tant than our political differences.

In a country where parties govern and where
people act through parties, we are apt to over-
estimate the importance of the questions upon
which we divide and under-estimate the enduring
qualities that underlie all parties and unite us in a
common citizenship.

I appreciate the more than generous words that
have been spoken in presenting me to you and I
appreciate the splendid opportunity that this oc-
casion has given us to hear from the representa-
tives of foreign lands. I think Great Britain and
France have paid our country a high compliment

Page thirty-eight

in sending as their representatives two such men
as those to whom we have listened. A compli-
ment, I say, those nations have paid us in sending
us representatives who stand upon their own merits
and accomplishments and need no high titles to
command universal respect and admiration.

I am glad we live in a day when nations can be
friendly to each other, and each bid all others
God speed, for we have reached the day when we
understand that as the citizen can wish well to
every other citizen, that as the citizen can recognize
that his own good is best promoted by the highest
development of all about him, so each nation can
recognize that its welfare is not impeded but ad-
vanced by the advancement of all the other
nations.

I am glad we have reached the day when nations
do not look upon each other with envious eye or
begrudge each other any great success; when the
rivalry is not to see which can do the other harm
but to see which can hold highest the light that
guides all to higher ground.

The subject that I have selected for this evening
is really too large a subject for an occasion of this
kind, and you must not expect my speech to have

Page thirty-nine

a length commensurate with the magnitude of the
theme; for, coming as I do, after the speech of the
toastmaster, after the speeches of the ambassadors
from Great Britain and France, coming as I do
before one to whom you will listen with delight, I
cannot violate the proprieties of the occasion by a
speech of any considerable length; but it seems to
me that at this time it is fitting to submit just a few
words on The Royal Art of Government, for it has
been so described and fitly described.

The art of government is not only the art in
which kings have sought to manifest their ability,
but it is the art that comes into closest and most
constant contact with the citizen, and I might give
you two reasons for selecting that subject for to-
night; first, because Lincoln illustrates, as few men
in history have illustrated, the possibilities of our
government and the stimulus to greatness that a
republic can give; and the second is that Lincoln
was an artist in the art of government, and pos-
sessed as few men in high position have ever pos-
sessed, all of the qualities that tend to fit one for
the exalted work of a chief executive.

Let me briefly enumerate some of these qualities.
He had a sense of responsibility — no man more so.

Page forty

The relation between himself and his God was one
clearly defined in his own mind. He recognized
that to that Supreme Being he was responsible for
every thought and word and act.

There is a world of difference between the man
who is trying to conform to an opinion about him,
and the man who is trying to approximate his liv-
ing to a high standard — a world of difference be-
tween the man who is trying to do right when he
thinks the people are looking at him, and the man
who tries to do right because he believes the eye of
God is ever upon him.

The man who is trying to do right when he
thinks people are watching, will find a time, some-
times, when he thinks the people are not looking,
and then he takes a vacation and falls. I believe
that one of the reasons why Lincoln lived his life
without a fall was that he was not watching the
people around him, but acted in the belief that he
was watched by One who never sleeps.

Another quality — Lincoln used self-control. The
man who would govern others must first govern
himself; and when he has learned to govern himself,
he has taken the next step toward meeting the re-
sponsibilities of high positions. "He that ruleth

Page forty-one

his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a
city ; " and Lincoln was the undisputed ruler of him-
self and of his own spirit.

He had humility. Few men so great have been
so humble as he. Humility is a hard virtue to
cultivate. If a man has great wealth, he is apt to
be proud of his wealth. If he has great learning,
he is likely to be proud of his learning. If he has
distinguished ancestry, he is quite sure to be proud
of his pedigree, and someone has said that humility
is so difficult a virtue to cultivate that, if one really
becomes humble, he is soon proud of his humility!
But Lincoln's favorite poem was " Why Should the
Spirit of Mortal be Proud?"

Lincoln understood how little of any man's great-
ness is really a self-made greatness. Lincoln un-
derstood, as few have understood, how much we
owe to those who have gone before us, and to
those about us.

Who will measure our obligation to those who
laid foundations for our Republic ! Who will meas-
ure our obligation to those who surrounded us with
the privileges that we enjoy! When we come to
analyze our accomplishments, we find that that
which can be properly traced to ourselves is infin-

Page forty -two

itesimal, while that which is traceable to the influ-
ence that others have exerted upon us is immeasur-
able.

Lincoln had courage. As has been well said by
the distinguished ambassador from Great Britain,
Lincoln had moral courage. The world recognizes
the courage of the man who walks up to the mouth
of the cannon and without wavering gives his life
on his country's altar. I say to you, my friends,
that man shares physical courage with the beast,
but he shares moral courage with Him in whose
image he was made.

Lincoln had the courage to face any kind of op-
position, to meet any kind of criticism, to disregard
any kind of ridicule. And why? Because he had
another virtue. He had faith. If you tell me that
" works are more important than faith, " I tell you
that there are no works until there is first a faith to
inspire the works.

Only those who believe do great things; and
Lincoln believed. Lincoln had patience, and only
those who have faith have patience ; only those who
can see that there is a triumph coming have
the patience to wait until it comes. Aye, Lincoln
needed patience, as everyone in such a position as

Page forty-three

he occupied needs patience. There were around
him men who could not wait, men who wanted to
see today the thing for which they longed and
worked ; but Lincoln knew that it took time to ac-
complish great things. He had patience, the pa-
tience that the parent has who watches the growing
child, knowing that no anxiety or solicitude can
hasten that child 's development ; the patience of one
who plants a tree and knows that, if it is to be a
sturdy tree, it must take years in its growth and
development.

Lincoln had fidelity. He was faithful. The
people knew they could trust him, because his
fidelity stood out and shone out, and embraced all
who came into contact with him; and then Lincoln
had an understanding of the development of gov-
ernments and civilization. In that immortal ut-
terance at Gettysburg he spoke of the unfinished
work to which those present should consecrate
themselves. He knew that every generation leaves
an unfinished work, that every generation finds the
work incomplete when it comes, and, labor as it
will, leaves it still unfinished when it departs.

I might have justified my description of the art
of government by reference to these qualities that

Page forty-four

Lincoln possessed, but my purpose was a different
one. I desired, rather, briefly to trace the growth
and development of this royal art. When Solomon
found the responsibilities of government resting
upon him, he gave utterance to that prayer that
has come down through the ages, " Give me wisdom
that I may govern my people aright. " My friends,
there have been changes since then, and the prayer
today would be a little different from the prayer in
Solomon's day ; for, with the growth of intelligence,
with the rise of the spirit of democracy, the defini-
tion of leadership has undergone a change.

The aristocratic definition of leadership is that
the leader thinks for the people. The democratic
definition of leadership is that the leader thinks
with the people, and Lincoln illustrated the new
definition of leadership. As the representative of
the people, he acted for them, doing, as their repre-
sentative, what they would have him to do; but
Lincoln's hold upon the people was due to the fact
that he never assumed to think for them. He was
content to think with them on the questions that
affected the government and their welfare.

In college I learned that there were three kinds
of government, the monarchy, the aristocracy and

Page forty-five

the democracy. I learned that the monarchy was
the strongest, the aristocracy the wisest, and the
democracy the most just. I have had some time
to think upon this subject since I received my
diploma but I still adhere to a part of that. I
believe that the democracy is the most just but I
do not believe that the aristocracy is the wisest or
that the monarchy is the strongest. A govern-
ment that draws upon the wisdom of all the people
is wiser than the government that rests upon the
wisdom of a few of the people, and a monarchy,
while it may act more quickly upon a given point or
subject, is not the strongest. I prefer to believe
with the great historian Bancroft that the republic
is in truth the strongest of governments because,
disregarding the implements of terror, it dares to
build its citadel in the hearts of men. The heart
after all is the most secure foundation upon which
a nation's strength can be built. Pericles, in his
great funeral oration, described the greatness of his
country and then he said : " It was for these, then,
rather than to have that taken from them, to die
fighting in its behalf, and that their survivors may
well be willing to suffer for our country. "

Page forty-six

When a government is just and the people love
it, they will die that its blessings may be transmit-
ted to their children and their children's children.
This idea of government, this democratic idea of
government, is the growing idea.

My friends, if anyone has ever doubted that the
ideas of government which characterize our country
are the growing ideas, let him but examine recent
history. Within five years China, the sleeping
giant of the Orient, has sent envoys throughout
the world to secure information for the formation of
a constitution.

Within five years Russia, the synonym for des-
potism, has been compelled to recognize the right
of the people to a voice in their government, and
you have seen a douma established there. It is
not what we would like or what we would have in
this country, but it is a long step in advance; and,
my friends, no one can watch the struggles through
which those people have passed, without believing
that it is only a question of time when they are
going to have constitutional government and free-
dom of speech and freedom of the press and free-
dom of conscience and universal education; and
when this time comes, as come it will, Russia will

Page forty-seven

take her place among the great nations of the
world ; for people who are willing to die for lib-
erty as her people have died, have in them the
material of which great nations are made.

You may go through the nations of the world,
and you will find that in every one there are issues
upon which depend the further progress of demo-
cratic institutions.

Go into France, the democracy represented by
our distinguished guest tonight, and you will find
that while in their suffrage they have already
reached their limit, while their government is al-
ready responsive to the will of the people, they are
practically working out their problems. They are
increasing the intelligence of their people, adding
to the number of schools, increasing the attendance
at the schools, and what is also important they are
seeking to increase the number of home owners and
are doing it, believing that when a man owns his
home he is a better citizen than if he is merely a
tenant and can be thrown out at will by someone
else.

In Great Britain, where they have already solved
so many problems, and where, in spite of their
monarchial form, they recognize so large a power

Page forty-eight

in the people to direct their government, there is a
growing sentiment against the exercise by the
House of Lords of any power to thwart, finally, the
will of the people expressed at the polls.

And so you can take up every nation, and you
will find the sentiment in favor of democracy
spreading. You will find, everywhere, govern-
ments becoming more popular. You will find,
everywhere, the people getting a larger control of
their own government; and, if it would not take me
into partisan politics, I might easily show that in
our own country we have no exception to the rule,
but that back of all parties in this country there is
a democratic spirit that is forcing, step by step,
more complete control of the government by the
people who live under the government.

My friends, just one other thought in the devel-
opment of this subject. There was a time when
might meant right and when physical strength was
the controlling factor in government. With in-
creasing intelligence, the power of the muscle and
the influence of the strong arm decreased and the
influence of the brain increased. It was a step in
advance, a great step in advance; but the brain is
not the largest element in man, and following close

Page forty-nine

upon the supremacy of the mind above the arm,
has come the supremacy of the heart over the
brain.

Carlyle, in his closing chapters on the French
Revolution, presents the relation of these three fac-
tors. He said that thought is stronger than artil-
lery park, and moulds the world like soft clay and
that back of thought is love; that there never was
a great mind that did not have back of it a generous
heart.

And so, my friends, I believe that we are making
progress in the direction of a larger heart control,
and that the greatness of Lincoln, like the greatness
of his prototype, Jefferson, was due more to his
heart than to his head. His heart was large enough
to take in all mankind, and he was one of the earlier
apostles of the doctrine of human liberty that is
spreading throughout the world.

About fourteen years ago a great Frenchman,
Dumas, wrote a letter in which he said that we
were on the eve of a new era, when mankind was to
be seized with a passion of love, and when men were
to understand their relations to each other. Two
years afterwards Tolstoi, in his secluded home in

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Page fifty

the heart of Russia, Tolstoi who has never been
outside of the confines of his own country for more
than fifty years, Tolstoi clad in the garb of the
peasant, and living the life of the peasant and
preaching out to all the world the philosophy that
rests upon the doctrine, " Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as
thyself, " Tolstoi read the letter of Dumas and
gave it his endorsement.

We see signs of it in this country and everywhere,
and with that great doctrine of liberty we shall find
the nations knit more closely together. We shall
find our own people working more harmoniously
together, and we shall find people asking, not
" What can we do? " but " What ought we to do? "
and giving to ethics a paramount place in the cal-
culations of individuals and nations.

My friends, Lincoln was a representative of the
latest development of the art of government, for
Lincoln rested his'hope and built his faith upon the
hearts of men.

I am glad that we live in this latter day when
the might of the brute is disappearing, when the
cunning of the brain is no longer commanding the
highest praise, when the characteristics of the

Page fifty-one

heart are demanding a consideration that they have
never demanded before ; and on this occasion, when
we meet to speak the name of Lincoln, it is a fitting
time to raise our hearts in gratitude, that he was
one of the first and one of the greatest of those
artists in the "Royal Art of Government " to
recognize the heart's place in shaping the destiny
of man and the history of a nation.

Page fifty-two

JUDGE HUMPHREY

Introducing Senator Dolliver

A score of years ago a new star appeared in the
firmament of the Mississippi valley. The people of
Iowa saw this man adorning the public forum and
the sanctuaries of justice and they bade him go and
grace somewhat the rougher walks of political life.
They found him worthy to be the colleague of the
late Senator Allison. Since that time his star has
been ever in the ascendant and the nation recog-
nizes the added strength and wisdom which he
brings to that great deliberative body, the Senate
of the United States. Always a welcome visitor to
Illinois, where his voice on other occasions has been
frequently heard, we give him special welcome to-
night as one worthy to voice an estimate of the
greatest American the country has ever produced.

I have pleasure in presenting the distinguished
orator and statesman, the Honorable, aye, the
Honorable Jonathan P. Dolliver, senator from
Iowa.

Page fifty-three

SENATOR DOLLIVER

Our Heroic Age

I find a very great pleasure in sitting down
with you at these tables, spread with the lux-
uries and the necessities of life. I thank my
friend, the toastmaster, for the very kind ex-
pression with which he has introduced me, al-
though I am bound to say that I have a distinct
impression that, without intending it, he has given
me an advertisement that is likely to do me more
harm than good, for I make no pretense whatever
either as an orator or as a statesman. I am a plain
country politician, of a kind very numerous here in
Illinois, although I think I agree with you in believ-
ing that there is mighty little difference between a
politician and a statesman.

I have had a little trouble to find out what I am
expected to speak about in order to beguile the
midnight dispositions of the patriots who remain
around these banquet tables. While I have had a
little difficulty to find out what I am expected to

Page fifty-four

talk about, I have had several intimations that
there are some subjects that might be irritating if I
introduced them on an occasion like this. It has been
delicately suggested to me that the campaign in
Illinois, (I do not mean the primary campaign, but
the ordinary political campaign) is over, and that
these tables are dedicated to an atmosphere of pure
patriotism without any partisan bias; and I am
mighty glad of it, because I have lived in the atmo-
sphere of party politics so long, I have been com-
pelled to talk politics so much myself, and what is
even worse I have been compelled to listen to so
many other people talking, that I have reached,
so far as those matters are concerned, a point of
saturation, resembling somewhat the case of the
young lady who had spent the summer at Narra-
gansett Pier. She said that she had eaten so many
clams that she rose and fell with the tide.

It is not that I have anything against it, but
simply that, like everybody else, I have had enough
of it for the time being.

I have listened with an unalloyed pleasure to the
magnificent speeches with which this banquet has
been made famous and memorable in Illinois and,
I believe, throughout the United States. I was

Page fifty-five

especially interested in the profound observations
of the philosophy of government and of life which
have been given to us by the distinguished states-
man and orator who has just taken his seat, and I
was glad to hear him. I regard him as an institu-
tion in the United States. He has chosen the bet-
ter part, and has given over his life to meditation
upon the administration of the government of the
United States and no man, in my judgment, has
rendered a larger or a better service in the forma-
tion of a public opinion in the interest of our in-
stitutions than our distinguished orator and friend
and guest.

There are two little groups of people whose com-
ing into this chamber have touched my heart. One
of them sits yonder in the balcony, the Daughters
of the American Revolution. There is one thing
about them that the public ought to understand.
We are here in our little way trying to preserve
and helping to perpetuate the memory of Abraham
Lincoln; but Abraham Lincoln needs none of our
help to make his memory immortal in the ages of
the world. These young women are doing a finer
thing, even, than that. They are perpetuating the
unknown heroism, the unrecorded service, of the

Page fifty-tiz

men who, in the foundation of our institutions gave
their lives, with willing hearts, to the defense of
public liberty. They do not ask, even, that a man
should be regarded as a hero. If only he was wil-
ling for the sacrifice, it is their business to hand his
name, however lowly, to other generations.

And yonder in the gallery sits a little group of
veterans who, after all, made the services of Abra-
ham Lincoln possible in the dark days of the civil
war.

We have heard from the lips of the English
Ambassador that a great name, a great man, is the
chief possession of a people; but there can be no
great name, no great man, unless there is behind
him a great cause and a great people.

Abraham Lincoln illustrates the life of sixty
years ago. We do well to hang up his picture. I
have seen it in every city that I have passed
through, in Washington in every window, in Pitts-
burgh in every window, in Cincinnati and here at
the old homestead in Springfield. We do well to
teach our children what the life means, and to let
that kindly benignant face shine from our walls,

Page fifty-seven

that the young people of the United States, coming
to responsibility, may be educated in all the alle-
giance of patriotism and of liberty.

We have, in the United States, within the life-
time of many who sit around these tables, a national
experience which elevated the republic to a level
never before known in the history of our institu-
tions. There had been a dark period behind it
when nobody knew whether the government of the
United States was going to last another ten years
or not.

It is a curious thing that this government was
eighty years old before it produced a statesman
who could stand up, at the dinner table or anywhere
else, and tell his countrymen that the institutions
of America would last out their lifetime. Even
our greatest statesmen were in the dark. Daniel
Webster said, in his greatest speech, "God grant
that upon my vision that curtain may not rise. "
"Finally," said Henry Clay, " I implore, as the best
blessing that Heaven can bestow upon me on earth,
that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution
of the nation shall happen, I may not be spared to
behold the heart-rending spectacle. "

Page fifty-eight

These men, great as they were, in their day and
time did not dare to trust themselves to look into
the future. It remained for a later and, in my
judgment, a better generation to view without
despair the chaos of civil strife, to walk into it, to
fight the way of the nation through it, to lift up a
spotless flag above it and, in the midst of the flame
and the smoke of battle, to create the nation of
America. That was our heroic age, and out of it
came forth our ideal heroes, Lincoln and the states-
men who stood by his side; Grant and the great
soldiers who obeyed his orders; and behind them
both the countless hosts of that Grand Army of the
Republic through whose illustrious sacrifice of
blood our weary and heavy-laden centuries have
been redeemed.

You have built here a monument, strong and
beautiful, which is to bear the name and perpetuate
the service of Abraham Lincoln. We are about to
build, at our capital yonder at Washington, a na-
tional monument that will in some dim kind of way
illustrate our opinion of the service of this man;
and when we get it built we will not put upon it
any image of his person. It will not need any such
memorial for it will be, as Victor Hugo said of the

Page fifty-nine

column of Waterloo to be dedicated to the memory
of the Duke of Wellington — it will bear up not the
figure of a man, for it will be the statue of a people,
the memorial of a great nation.

And so his centennial has put into the hearts and
into the minds of unnumbered millions this fame
which has grown in this half century until it has
become the chiefest possession of the American
people, and the most precious heritage that will
be passed on to the generations that are to come.

Page sixty

SENATOR CULLOM

A Letter of Regret

United States Senate,

Washington, D. C, Feb. 6, 1909.
Hon. J Otis Humphrey, President Lincoln Centen-
nial Association, Springfield, III.:
My Dear Judge — It is a matter of sincere regret
to me that I am unable to be present at your great
anniversary celebration of the birth of the immortal
Lincoln and to welcome to my home city the am-
bassadors of Great Britain and France and the
distinguished guests who are to be with you.

Abraham Lincoln, greatest of Americans, great-
est of men, emancipator, martyr, his service to his
country has not been equaled by any American
citizen, not even by Washington. His name and
life have been an inspiration to me from my earliest
recollection.

On this one hundredth anniversary of his birth
the people, without regard to creed, color, condition
or section, in all parts of this union which he saved,

Page sixty-one

are striving to do honor to his memory. No Amer-
ican has ever before received such deserved uni-
versal praise. Not only in his own country, but
throughout the civilized world, Abraham Lincoln
is regarded as one of the few, the very few, truly
great men in history. His memory is as fresh
today in the minds and hearts of the people as it
was forty years ago, and the passing years only add
to his fame and serve to give us a truer conception
of his noble character. The events of his life, his
words of wisdom, have been gathered together in
countless volumes, to be treasured up and handed
down to generations yet to come.

I knew him intimately in Springfield ; I heard him
utter his simple farewell to his friends and neigh-
bors when he departed to assume a task greater
than any President had been called upon to assume
in our history; it was my sad duty to accompany
his mortal remains from the capital of the nation
to the capital of Illinois, and as I gazed upon his
face the last time, I thanked God that it had been
my privilege to know him as a friend, and I felt
then, as I more fully realize now, that the good he
had done would live through all the ages to bless
the world.

Page sizty-ttro

Springfield, his only real home, the scene of his
great political triumphs, was his fitting resting
place. In the midst of this great continent his
dust shall rest a sacred treasure to myriads who
shall pilgrim to his shrine to kindle anew their zeal
and patriotism.

Again expressing regret that I cannot be with
you to take part in honoring the memory of our
greatest President on the one hundredth anniver-
sary of his birth, and feeling sure that the Spring-
field celebration will be the most notable of all, as
it should be, I remain

Sincerely yours,

S. M. Cullom.

Page sizly-three

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

A Letter of Regret

Tuskegee Institute, Alabama,

February 9, 1909.
Mr. James R. B. Van Cleave, Secretary Publicity

Committee, Lincoln Centennial Association

Springfield, III.:

My Dear Sir — It is a matter of keen regret to me
that, owing to a long standing promise to speak in
New York on the occasion of the one hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, I
find myself unable to accept your generous invita-
tion to speak in his home city on that day. There
is no spot in America where it would have given
me greater satisfaction to have spoken my word
than in Springfield — the city that he loved and the
city where his body rests.

There are many lessons which can and will be
drawn from the life of our great hero, but there is
one above all others at this moment that I deem

Page sixty-four

fitting to call attention to on this occasion. Among
other reasons, I do so because of recent occurrences
in the city of Lincoln's adoption.

When Lincoln freed my race there were four
millions. Now there are ten millions. Naturally
more and more this increase means that they will
scatter themselves through the country, north as
well as south. A large element already is in the
north. If my race would honor the memory of
Lincoln and exhibit their gratitude for what he did,
it can do so in no more fitting manner than by put-
ting into daily practice the lessons of his own life.
Mr. Lincoln was a simple, humble man, yet a great
man. Great men are always simple. No matter
where members of my race reside, we should resolve
from this day forward that we will lead sober, in-
dustrious, frugal, moral lives, and that while being
ambitious we shall at the same time be patient^
law-abiding and self-controlled as Lincoln was.
These are the elements that will win success and
respect, no matter where we live. Every member
of my race who does not work, who leads an im-
moral life, dishonors the memory and the name of

Page sixty-five

Lincoln. Every one, on the other hand, who leads
a law-abiding, sober life is justifying the faith which
the sainted Lincoln placed in us.

In every part of this country I want to see my
race live such high and useful lives that they will
not be merely tolerated, but that they shall actu-
ally be needed and wanted because of their use-
fulness in the community. The loafer, the man
who tries to live by his wits, is never wanted any-
where.

Many white people in the north who are now
honoring the memory of Lincoln are coming into
contact with the race Lincoln freed for the first
time. I have spoken of the patience and self con-
trol needed on the part of my race. With equal
emphasis I wish to add that no man who hallows
the name of Lincoln will inflict injustice upon the
negro because he is a negro or because he is weak.
Every act of injustice, of law-breaking, growing out
of the presence of the negro, seeks to pull down the
great temple of justice and law and order which he
gave his life to make secure. Lawlessness that
begins when a weak race is the victim grows by
what it feeds upon and spreads until it includes all

— 5 L C

Page sizty-siz

races. It is easy for a strong man or a strong race
to kick down a weak man or a weak race. It is
ignoble to kick down ; it is noble to lift up as Lincoln
sought to do all through his life. Just in the degree
that both races, while we are passing through this
crucial period, exhibit the high qualities of self-
control and liberality which Lincoln exhibited in
his own life, will we show that in reality we love and
honor his name, and both races will be lifted into
a high atmosphere of service to each other.
Yours truly,

Booker T. Washington.

Page sixty-seven

CHARLES HENRY BUTLER

Our Leader; a Poem

Fair stretched the land, East, West, from sea to sea;

North, South from Lakes to Gulf; we called it free.

And, proudly in our ballads, oft had sung

Of how our freedom we had bravely wrung

From tyrant King; fair were its prospects too

And bright; nor could the wealth the Indies knew,

Even when fabled Kublai Khan was there,

Nor yet Pactolus' golden tide, compare

With boundless stream that, ever constant, poured

Into the lap of industry its hoard

Of treasure; as though forest, mine and field

Each with the other vied the greatest wealth to yield.

God-fearing too, the people of this land
Their churches grandly reared on every hand
And worshipped Him who taught us when we pray,
"Thy Kingdom come upon this earth," to say.

To its fair shores there came, across the sea,

The weary peasant, yearning to be free

From serfdom's toil; and there he sought, and found,

The right to till, and call his own, the ground

And fruit it yielded to his care. There came,

Beside, the patriot burning with the shame

Page siity-tight

Of thought, in his own land not merit told
But only rank, and noble birth, and gold;
"While in the young republic of the West,
He hoped, and found, true merit was the test.

Surely than this no land more blessed could be,
Surely in land like this all must be free !
Not so; in market place men bought and sold
Their fellow-men, and bartered souls for gold;
It matters not how blessed, how good, how fair
Be land or people, if the curse is there
Of slavery, it will cast its blight
O'er all that elsewhere would be bright.

Not over all the land this curse had spread,

Not yet throughout the land was conscience dead;

But still to blame is every one who tries

Not to strike evil dead, but compromise

With it; so, not upon a few, but all,

The blame and burden of that curse must fall.

Too late 'tis now to try to cast the blame

On either side; no longer fan that flame

Or further fuel feed; but let it die,

And with it all the animosity

That once so hotly burned. Is not this true —

One did but what the other let it do;

Till, past all bounds, the evil grew so much

It held the country in its death-like clutch?

How loose that clutch? How could the tide be stemmed,
By which, not stemmed, the land were overwhelmed?
All! many men weir brave to death, and tried

To Loose those bonds and check that rising tide.

Page sixty-nine

Honor to all our brave we gladly pay,

But more than all to him, who on this day

Was born a century ago, and who,

As leader unsurpassed, his people through

The darksome valley of the shades of death

Led back to light and life; and then, himself,

Fell at the foot of the altar he had reared

To Freedom's God, dead — but his name revered,

And loved forever, as the most sublime

Of patriot martyrs on the roll of time.

Dark were the clouds that o'er the country hung,
Wild were the threats that 'cross the line were flung,
Men trembled, women wept, all were dismayed;
And Peace, in our time, oh, Lord, some prayed,
Hoping, in compromise, to find a way
To limit, not to end, the plague; to stay
Its further progress; as though slaves could be
In part of land, while elsewhere all were free.

Oh, for a leader! others prayed. God heard

And answered ; from the West a voice that stirred

The hearts of all was heard throughout the length

And breadth of this whole land. Its tones of strength

Proclaimed the voice of leader when he bade

Them heed these words that could not be gainsaid :

Not half for slave, and other half for free,

Can this, nor yet another, country be;

No house divided 'gainst itself can stand,

And what is true of house is true of land.

In withering tones he spoke of slaving toil

That tilled, while others ate, the fruit of soil;

Not by the sweat of other's brow shalt earn thy bread

Page teventy

But by thine own, the Holy Writ hath said.

Truth ! And the people — sick of lies — replied

"Our Leader!" — and he led them till he died.

And still he leads us, for the truth ne'er dies,

"Our Leader still!" Each honest heart replies.

Behold his portrait, gaze upon his face,

Seek not therein to find soft shades of grace;

In rugged lines which in that face appear

Sorrow there is and care, but not one trace of fear;

And back of all — and in that eye, indeed —

What wealth and depth of character we read !

Look where we will, not elsewhere shall we find

Such courage, strength and truth with tenderness combined.

His was the vision that so plainly saw

Not only what all others saw — the flaw —

But also that the flaw would surely spread

Until the whole fabric would be dead,

Unless the fearful, ugly thing were cut;

— Nor cared how deep in flesh the knife were put,

Tho' even close to heart of that which he most loved,

If but the wicked spot could be removed —

But oh, to him how deep the pain, that he

The one to wield that almost fatal knife must be.

His was the genius that knew how to act
And when — yet so combined with skill and tact,
And nameless charm of humor he was known
To use so well in manner all his own —
That through a crisis, such as ne'er before
Had ever threatened State in peace or war,
He guided it, and shaped its course so well,
That it was saved at last; and, when he fell

Page seventy-one

Pierced by a bullet from assassin hand,
Not one part only, but the whole wide land,
Cursed the foul deed, and grieved that it had lost
Him who to heal its wounds had done the most;
His was the patience, that with faith combined,
Enabled him in darkest hour to find
Hope for the future, and that all would see
At last the country — reunited — free.

His faith was that which bade him call upon
The Being most Divine — the God of Washington.
He knew with that aid he would not fail
And that without it he could not prevail.

Yes, when nearly all was nearly o'er,

And looking back on four long years of war,

Could calmly say, with charity toward all

And malice none, in words we all recall;

That still the everlasting judgments of the Lord

Through all the long resounding ages of the world,

Whether three thousand years ago, or whether

Rendered today, are true and righteous altogether.

He came to earth and here his task fulfilled;

He nobly did the work his Master willed

Him here to do; and when he died 'twas known

Earth's noblest spirit back to Heaven had flown.

Though storied urn, nor animated bust

The fleeting breath has ne'er recalled; though dust,

When silent, honor's voice cannot provoke,

Nor yet can soothing flattery invoke

The dull, cold ear of death; still can we not

Erect some monument upon some spot

Page seventy-two

That ever in the hearts of all, Our Leader great

Will honor, and his fame perpetuate;

Once on a field that red with patriot blood

A year before that time had run, he stood

And uttered to the throng assembled there

Those words, with which no other words compare

Not uttered by a voice divine. He said,

While dedicating to the noble dead

The spot whereon they died: "It is too late

For us to hallow, or to consecrate

This field; that has been done; it is for us —

The living — to be dedicated here, and thus

To make the high resolve that those who gave

Devotion's fullest measure here to save

The Nation's life shall not in vain have died."

Cannot that thought to him be now applied?

If to Our Leader we would now erect

A fitting monument, let each select

In his own heart, some high resolve to make,

And then fulfill it for that leader's sake;

And, if in such a monument, each one

Of us, today, would set a single stone,

'Twould higher be, more stately and more grand

Than any ever built in any land

To any hero; it would nobly rise

Until its lofty apex reached the skies,

And to Our Leader would the message bring,

That while within our hearts his words still ring,

This Nation under God shall have new birth

Of freedom; nor shall perish from the earth

This Government that of the people, by

And for the people is; Thus let us try

Page seventy-three

To prove — nor count the cost of time or pain —
The noblest dead shall not have died in vain.
Ask ye what that resolve shall be? Look right
Or left, for all the fields are harvest white.

Are there no slaves to be set free today?
No great remaining tasks to which we may
Now dedicate ourselves? may we not help to free
This country from those forms of slavery
That know no color line — the greed of wealth
And lust for power — aggrandizement of self —
That hold in thraldom many of our best
And steep in envy nearly all the rest?

Fairer and brighter is this land today
Than it has ever been before ; and may
It ever fairer, better, brighter grow.
Surely no land more blest than this, below
Heaven's high dome can ever be. And so
As would Our Leader let us bravely strike
These shackles off; and strike them not alone
From others' limbs; but strike them from our own.

Are there no other slaves who sorely need

Some one to loose their bonds? There are, indeed.

Do ye not hear the children's bitter cry

As in the mills and mines their tasks they ply?

They, who should cheer the household through the day

Are taught to work before they learn to play.

Shame on the land of which it may be said

That parents eat, while children earn, the bread.

Page seventy-four

If he were here would not Our Leader be

In foremost rank to set the children free,

And onward lead us in the great crusade

Of right 'gainst wrong which ever should be made?

Then let us make them for Our Leader's sake.

What nobler tasks can our devotion claim

Than these? Then let us do them in his name.

Page seventy-five

AT THE TABERNACLE

At 2:30 in the afternoon an audience of 10,000
people were assembled at the Tabernacle where
addresses were delivered by Messrs. Jusserand,
Bryce, Dolliver and Bryan. Governor Deneen
presided at the meeting. The addresses together
with the introductory remarks of the Governor
are given on the following pages.

Page $eventy-six

GOVERNOR DENEEN

Introducing the French Ambassador

We are met to celebrate the one hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
Throughout our own land and in many parts of the
world men are gathered together at this moment
to pay a tribute to his memory. Wherever they
have gathered, their thoughts will turn to our
state and this spot, which have been glorified by
his life and death.

We are exceedingly fortunate, in this his home,
to have with us today distinguished representa-
tives from far European countries, and two dis-
tinguished sons of our native land. The Com-
mittee had arranged for the ambassadors from
France and from Great Britain to speak at the
banquet tonight but our people were so anxious
to have the opportunity to meet them and hear
them, and to show the high respect and great
love which is had here for their countries, that
they have consented to speak briefly this afternoon ;

Page seventy-seven

and it is indeed a great pleasure to me to have
the honor to introduce to you a diplomat, author
and statesman, His Excellency, the Ambassador
from France to the United States, the Honorable
J. J. Jusserand.

Page seventy-tight

THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR

France's Esteem For Lincoln

Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen —
It is not only a great but unexpected honor to
address you today. I am very proud to be asked,
and very happy to address the citizens of this
city of Springfield, where the mind of the great
man whose memory we delight to honor today,
took its definite shape.

It was in Springfield that Lincoln received his
first lessons in statesmanship, with what results all
the world knows. In this city, which owes much
to Lincoln, as it owes to him the honor of being
the capital of this great state, that the backwoods-
man of years before became the citizen who was
to be the leader of men, and who was to be the
second grandest President of the United States,
the one who holds in the heart of his compatriots
the same place as George Washington.

These two great men were related in their life-
work. One created the United States and the

Page seventy-nine

other prevented their disruption. When Wash-
ington fought for his great task, France stood
by him as a friend. When Lincoln fought, you
may recall that if France did not send an army,
there was at least, under the United States flag,
one regiment that was French, that was led by
French officers. That was the 55th New York,
which wore the red trousers of the French army,
and went to Washington singing the Marseillaise.
They went to camp and received the flag they
were to carry through the battles and through
the war, from Mr. Lincoln, himself. Lincoln came,
himself, to present the flag and he had asked the
regiment to select their date. They selected a
date that was dear to them, and Lincoln came,
and to the song of Marseillaise he presented the
flag. A man who had been a general in the French
army and who was a French citizen, proposed a
toast to the nation. He drank to the nation and
said, "To the Union to be maintained and to be
re-established, but not so soon but that the 55th
may have time to show how much they care for
it. " Lincoln himself replied, " I drink to the 55th

Page eighty

and to the Union, and since the Union cannot,
apparently, be re-established until the 55th has
had its battle, I drink a speedy battle to the 55th. "

That flag was carried through the war and ended
gloriously with the regiment, itself, in that awful
day at Fredericksburg. At Fredericksburg only
the stem was left. When the battle was over
the regiment was reduced to two hundred and ten
men. It was melted into the very sod, itself!
That was the end of the regiment, not of the war.
What the end of the war was you know. Lincoln
too, met his fate, the fate of a hero such as he;
and now his glory fills the world, and everywhere
there is only one feeling for him.

In France that feeling was peculiarly keen and
great because, in those days, all the liberal French-
men were anxious about what took place in Amer-
ica. They all felt that if the American Republic
split into two, we had very little chance, in France,
ever to have a republic, ourselves. So we followed
with beating hearts what happened to Lincoln
.•md prayed with all our earnestness of soul for
the re-establishment of that Union which we had
loved from its first days.

Page eighty-one

In Lincoln's day, it was long before he took
his rightful place, among the great men of the
United States. He had many doubters. There
were many scoffers, but now not one is left. Why
that great difference? That great difference has
been explained admirably by another great Amer-
ican, by Emerson, who said, "You cannot see
the mountain near."

— 6 L C

Page eighty-two

GOVERNOR DENEEN

Introducing the English Ambassador

Again it is my pleasure to introduce to you a
scholar, author, diplomat, statesman, expounder
of the American Constitution, and interpreter of
the spirit of the American commonwealth, His
Excellency, the Ambassador from Great Britain
to the United States.

Page eighty-three

THE ENGLISH AMBASSADOR

Lincoln as One of the People

Mr. Governor, Ladies and Gentlemen, Cit-
izens of Abraham Lincoln's Own City — I am
come to say a very few words to you, in order
that I may bear to you the greetings of England,
her sympathy with you on this day, and ex-
pression of the reverence and honor in which
she holds, as you hold, the memory of your im-
mortal President.

Four days ago I had the privilege of delivering
to the President of the United States a message
of sympathy and a tribute of admiration from
King Edward the Seventh and now I want to
renew and repeat the substance of that message
to you, the people of Springfield.

Ladies and gentlemen, my friend and colleague,
the French Ambassador, has just, with perfect
truth, compared the position which Abraham
Lincoln holds in your history with that which
was held by George Washington.

Page eighty-four

At two great crises of the fate of this republic,
Providence gave you two men specially fitted to
be leaders and inspirers of the nation. George
Washington was not only a great leader in war,
but was a wise guide in peace, and it was the
impression of his upright and lofty character that
held your people together in their hour of need.

When the second great struggle in which the
fortunes of your republic were involved came upon
you, and the conflict between slavery and its ex-
tension, and freedom and its preservation, broke
like a storm upon you, you found in Abraham
Lincoln the one man who was fitted to meet and
to grapple with that awful crisis. I remember
how in England those of us who sympathized with
the cause of the north, as did the great majority
of the English people, did so because we felt it
was the cause of humanity and freedom.

I remember how we thought and felt more and
more as months and years passed, that Abraham
Lincoln was the man whom you needed, because
he possessed what was the supreme and essential
gift that the country required. He was a man
whom tin' people could trust, because he was the

Page eighty-five

man who sprung, himself, from the people and
understood the people as perhaps no one had ever
so thoroughly done before.

It very soon became certain to us who were
watching that struggle from the shores of Europe
that it could only end in the preservation of the
Union; for the people of the north and the west
were themselves united and determined to main-
tain the Union, and that the only chance for those
who were trying to divide the Union would have
been if there had been faltering and wavering in
the minds of the northern and western people.
For a time it seemed uncertain whether there
might not be that faltering and that wavering,
but we saw that there was in your President a
man of steadfast will and lofty character, a man
whom no reverses could affect and no charges
or accusations could turn from his path; and we
saw that more and more the heart of the people
went out to him, because they felt that he was the
true interpreter of their minds.

Ladies and gentlemen, the one essential thing
at that moment was that the people should have

Page eighty-six

someone to hold them together. Lincoln held
them together. He held them together because
he understood how they felt.

He was a man sprung from among themselves
who had come to know the minds and thoughts
of the people by living among them as no President
had ever done before; and when this crisis came
he was the true interpreter to himself of the will
and thoughts and hopes of the whole nation, and
the people trusted him. They trusted him be-
cause they knew that he understood them. They
trusted him because they knew that he was one
of themselves, who was not apart from them, who
was not looking down on them, who was not
trying to study them like distant objects, but
who was one of themselves and felt as each of
them felt, himself. That was his greatness. That
was what fitted him to be the man for the moment.
He embodied all that was best and highest in
people's minds. His life is far more eloquent than
any words. Nothing that we can say or do can
add to his glory. One of our own poets has said,
In an ode which I read the other day, speaking
of him:

Page eighty-seven

" For there are lives too large in simple truth,
For aught to limit, or knowledge to gauge,

And there are men so near to God's own roof
They are the better angels of their age. "

Lincoln's true memorial is to be found in the
legacy of greatness he has given us. You have
erected a monument to him here, but the whole
United States are his monument, because it is
owing to him that the United States still remain
one and indivisible.

He was one of those who are a perpetual glory,
not merely to the state which sent him to the
presidential chair, not merely to the nation which
owned him as its wise guide and leader, but also
to humanity, because he was one of those in whom
the love of humanity, the love of justice and the
love of freedom burn with an unquenchable flame.

Ladies and gentlemen, be thankful that in your
hour of need Providence gave you such a man,
and hold his memory in honor forever.

Page eighty-eight

GOVERNOR DENEEN

Introducing Senator Dolliver

It is my pleasure to present to you next the
gifted and eloquent son of our neighboring state,
the Honorable Jonathan P. Dolliver, United States
Senator of Iowa.

Page eighty-nine

SENATOR DOLLIVER

Lincoln, the Champion of Equal Rights

Ladies and Gentlemen — It is a very great
pleasure to me to have the chance of partici-
pating with you in this celebration, and I share with
you the gratification that the occasion is given
more than a national significance by the presence
and words here of the ambassador of that nation
which befriended our national infancy, and has
been our friend ever since the foundation of this
republic; and by the presence here and helpful
word of that man who has interpreted our insti-
tutions to the English speaking world — "Pro-
fessor Bryce, "aswe love to call him, Ambassador
not alone of the English king and the English
government but of the English people to the people
of the United States.

The memory which we are trying to celebrate
today is too great for any political party, too
great to be the heritage of a single nation, too
great to be absorbed in the renown of any one

Page ninety

century. The ministry of his life was to all par-
ties, to all nations and to all generations of men.

Yet there is a sense in which it belongs to the
American people and a sense still more sacred
in which it belongs to you of Illinois and to the
city of Springfield, where his life was lived and
where his body lies buried. It is for you and
your children to care for his fame and to keep
his faith.

Within the last half century, this old neighbor
of yours, once derided, once despised, once mis-
understood and maligned, has been lifted up into
the light of universal history where all men and
all generations of men may see him and make
out, if they can, what manner of man he was.

His life in this world was a very short one, less
than three score years, only ten of them visible
above the level of these prairies, yet into that
brief space were crowded events so stupendous
in their ultimate significance that we cannot read
the volume which records them without a strange
feeling coming over us that maybe, after all, we
are not reading about a man, but about some

Page ninety-one

sublime automatic figure in the hands of the infin-
ite powers, being used to help and to bless the
human race.

If we are troubled because we do not under-
stand his life we ought to be encouraged because
no previous generation of our people, not even
that among which he lived, was able to understand
him.

While he lived the air was full of speculation
about his purposes and the plans for their execution
and until this day men are still guessing about his
education, his religion, his faculties, and the in-
tellectual account from which he drew the re-
sources which always seemed equal to his task.

There are some who claim that he was a great
lawyer. I do not believe that he was anything
of the kind. It is true that he mastered, though
not without difficulty, the principles of the common
law, and it is also certain that his mind was so
normal and complete that he did not require a
commentary nor a copy of the "Madison papers,"
thumb-marked by the doubts and fears of three
generations, to understand that the men who made
the constitution of the United States were build-
ing for eternity. But he practiced law without

Page ninety-two

a library, and those who practiced with him have
said that he was of no account in a lawsuit unless
he knew the right was on his side.

It went against his intellectual as well as his
moral grain to adopt the epigram of Lord Bacon
that it is impossible to tell whether a case be good
or bad until a jury has brought in its verdict.

The old judicial circuit about Springfield where
he practiced law, where he knew everybody by
their first name, and everybody liked to hear him
talk as they sat together in the village tavern after
the day's work was done, undoubtedly did much
for him in many ways.

But the great lawyers who are present in this
assembly today will bear me witness that a man
who habitually gives his advice away for nothing,
who has not the foresight to ask for a retainer,
nor the energy to collect a fee after he has earned
it, whatever other gifts and graces he may have,
is not by nature cut out for a lawyer.

I have talked with a good many of the older
men who used to practice with him, and from
what they have said to me, I think that the notion
was even then slowly forming in his mind that he
held a brief, with power of attorney from on High,

Page ninety-three

for the un-numbered millions of his fellowmen,
and was only loitering about the county seats of
Illinois until the case came on for trial.

You are to hear in a few moments one of the
most eloquent orators who ever spoke the English
tongue talk of "Lincoln as an orator;" but if he
was such, the standards of the schools, ancient
and modern, will have to be thrown away. Per-
haps they ought to be, and when they are, this
curious circuit-rider of the law, refreshing his com-
panions with wit and wisdom from the well of
English undefiled; this champion of civil liberty,
confuting Douglas with a remorseless logic cast
in phrases rich with the proverbial homely litera-
ture of our language; this advocate of the people
standing head and shoulders above his brethren,
stating their cause at the bar of history in sen-
tences so simple that a child can follow them,
such a one, surely, will not be denied a place in
the company of the masters who have added some-
thing to the triumphs of our mother tongue.

He was dissatisfied with his modest address at
Gettysburg, read awkwardly from poorly written
manuscript. He turned to Edward Everett and
told him that his masterly oration was the best

Page ninety-jour

thing he had ever heard; but Mr. Everett did not
need a minute for reflection to make him discern
that that little piece of crumpled paper which
the President held in his unsteady hand that day
would be preserved from generation to generation,
after his own laborious utterances had been for-
gotten. The old school of oratory and the new
met that day on the rude platform under the trees
among the graves, and congratulated each other.
They haven't met very often since, for both of
them have been pushed aside to make room for the
declaimer, the essayist, the statisticians and the
other peddlers of intellectual wares who have de-
scended like a swarm upon all human deliberations.
There are some who claim that Lincoln was a
great statesman. If by that they mean that he
was better informed than his contemporaries in
the administrative technicalities of our govern-
ment, or that he was wiser than his day in the
creed of the party in whose fellowship he passed
his earlier years, there is very little evidence of
that at all. The most that can be said is that he
clung to the fortunes of the old Whig leadership
through evil as well as good report and that he
stumped the county and afterward the state; but

Page ninety-five

the speeches which he made neither he nor any-
body else thought it important to preserve. He
had a very simple political faith, short and to the
point. "I am in favor/' said he, "of a national
bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement
system and a high protective tariff." But while
he followed Henry Clay nearly all his lifetime,
more like a lover than a disciple, yet when that
great popular hero died and Mr. Lincoln was
called upon to make an address upon the occasion
of his funeral in your old State House, he passed
over without a word the whole creed of the party
faith, and gave his entire time to that love of liberty
and that devotion to the Union which shone even
to the end in the superb career of Henry Clay.

Of course he was a statesman; but when you
have described him as a statesman, whatever
adjectives you use, you have opened no secret
of his biography. You have rather marred, it
seems to me, the epic grandeur of the drama in
which he moved. Of course he was a great states-
man. Exactly so, Saul of Tarsus, setting out from
Damascus, became a great man. Exactly so,
Columbus, inheriting a taste for the sea, devel-
oped gradually into a mariner of high repute.

Page ninety-sit

There are some who have made a study more
or less profound, of the archives of the rebellion,
who have made out of Mr. Lincoln a great military
genius, better able than his generals to order the
movement of the armies under his command. In
my humble opinion there is hardly any evidence
of that. He was driven into the war department
by the exigency of the times, and if he towered
above the ill-fitting uniforms which made their
way through one influence and another to posi-
tions of brief command during the first campaigns
of the civil war, there is no very high praise in
that after all.

But there is one thing about him that I have
always been interested in. He comprehended the
size of the undertaking which the nation had on
hand and he kept looking until his eyes were
weary for somebody who could master the whole
situation and get out of the army what he knew
was in it. It broke his heart to see its efforts
scattered and thrown away by quarrels among its
officers, endless in number, and unintelligible for
the most part to the outside world. When he
passed the command of the army of the Potomac
over to General Hooker, he did it in terms of

Page ninety-seven

reprimand and admonition which read like a father's
last warning to a wayward son. He told him
that he had wronged his country and wronged
his fellow officers, and recalled General Hooker's
insubordinate suggestion that the army and the
country both needed a dictator. Mr. Lincoln re-
minded him that only generals who won victories
have ever been known to set up dictatorships;
and then with a humor grim as death he told him
to go on and win military success and he would
take all the chances of the dictatorship, himself.

If General Hooker did not tear up his commission
when he got that letter, it only shows that he was
brave enough to stand upon his naked back the
lash of the simple truth.

All this time the President had his eye on a
man from the West who appeared to be doing
a fairly good military business down in Tennessee,
a copious worker and a copious thinker, but a
very meager writer, as Mr. Lincoln afterward de-
scribed him in a telegram to Burnside. He liked
this man. Especially he liked the fact that in
his plan the advertisement and the event seemed
to have some relation to each other. He liked

— 7 L C

Page ninety-eight

him also because he never "regretted to report;"
and so after Vicksburg had fallen, after the tide
of the rebellion had been swept back from the
borders of Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Presi-
dent wrote two letters, one to General Meade,
holding him to a stern account for his failure to
follow up the victory at Gettysburg, and the other
to Ulysses S. Grant, ordering him to report at
Washington for duty. The letter to General Meade
was never sent. You will find it resting quietly
in the collection of the writings of Lincoln by Mr.
Nicolay, all the fires of its mighty wrath long
since gone out, but General Grant managed to get
his; and from that hour no more military orders
from the White House ; no more suggestions about
the movement of the army; no more orders to
advance. He left it all to him. He did not ask
the general to tell him what his plans were. He left
it all to him; and as the plan of the great captain
began to unfold, gradually, Mr. Lincoln dispatched
from the White House a telegram to the head-
quarters in Virginia in these words, "I begin to
see it. You will succeed. God bless you all. A.
Lincoln."

Page ninety-nine

And so these two, each adding something to
the other's fame, go down in history together,
God's blessing falling like a benediction upon the
memory of both.

While Mr. Lincoln lived, even the great men
that were nearest to him did not seem to enjoy
the pleasure of his acquaintance. His lonely iso-
lation, even among the advisors whom he chose
to sit in council with him in the administration
of the government, has always seemed pathetic;
but the letters and papers which have come to
light as one by one the actors in those great scenes
have passed from the stage, reveal a situation
which throws the light of comedy upon the sorrow-
ful experience through which he passed. I reckon
that among the greatest intellects our institutions
have nurtured was William H. Seward, of New
York, the great Secretary of State; and yet the
record recently dug up shows that he spent nearly
all his time pestering Mr. Lincoln with contradic-
tory pieces of advice, and that he finally prepared
a memorandum in his own handwriting, telling
what he thought ought to be done, and ending by
an accommodating proposal to take the responsi-
bility of the administration off Mr. Lincoln's hands.

Page one hundred

I suppose that Salmon P. Chase was one of the
greatest men we have ever had in the United
States ; but if you will pick up the current number
of the Scribner's Magazine, you will find there
some very curious letters from Mr. Chase, letters
that I would be the last man to use for the purpose
of belittling him; but I rather like to see them,
because it enables us to interpret the size of the
man who was standing by his side. "He never
consults me. He holds no cabinet meetings, "
said this full grown minister of finance, prattling
like a child.

After the Battle of Bull Run, even so incor-
ruptible a patriot as Edwin M. Stanton, known
in after years as the organizer of victory, wrote
a letter which you will find in the life of James
Buchanan, to the ex-President then quietly resid-
ing at his country estate near Washington, at
Wheatland, in Pennsylvania, a letter filled with
obloquy and contempt for Mr. Lincoln. He said,
speaking of the defeat at Bull Run, that it was
an unnecessary catastrophe.

"The imbecility of the administration, " he said,
"culminated in that catastrophe; and irretrievable
misfortune and national disgrace never to be for-

Page one hundred one

gotten are to be added to the ruin of peaceful
pursuits and national bankruptcy as the result
of Lincoln's 'running the machine' for five full
months. "

From the sanctum of the old Tribune, where
for a generation Horace Greeley had dominated
the intellectual life of the people as no American
editor has done before or since his day, there
came to the White House a curious letter, a maud-
lin mixture of enterprise and despair; a despair
which after seven sleepless nights had given up
the fight; an enterprise characteristic of modern
journalism, asking for inside information of the
hour of the surrender that was obviously near at
hand. "You are not considered a very great
man," said Mr. Greeley, in that letter, for the
president's eye alone.

Who is this, sitting on an old sofa in the public
offices of the White House after the battle of Bull
Run, talking, with quaint anecdotes and humor-
ous commentaries, with officers and soldiers and
civilians and scattered congressmen, who poured
across the Long Bridge from the first battlefield
of the rebellion to tell their tale of woe to the only
man in Washington who had sense enough left

Page one hundred two

to appreciate it or patience enough left to listen
to it? Is it the log cabin student, learning to
read and write by the light of the kitchen fire in
the woods of Indiana? It is he. Can it be the
adventurous voyager of the Mississippi, inventing
ideas for lifting flat boats over the riffles which
impeded his journey, and at the same time medi-
tating ideas broad as the free skies, for lifting
nations out of barbarism, as he traced the divine
image in the faces of men and women chained
together in the auction block of the slave market
at New Orleans? It is he.

Can it be the awkward farm hand of the Sanga-
mon, who covered his bare feet in the fresh dirt
which his plow had turned up to keep them from
getting sunburned, while he sat down at the end of
the furrow to rest his team and to regale himself
with a few more pages of worn volumes borrowed
from the neighbors? It is he. Can it be the country
lawyer who rode on horseback from county seat
to county seat, with nothing in his saddlebags
except a clean shirt and the code of Illinois, to
try his cases and to air his views in the cheerful
company that always gathered around the stove
in the tavern at the county seat? It is he.

Page one hundred three

Is it the daring debater, blazing out for a moment
with the momentous warning, "A house divided
against itself cannot stand," then falling back
within the defenses of the Constitution, in order
that the cause of liberty, already hindered by the
folly of its friends, might not become an outlaw
in the land? It is he.

Is it the weary traveller, setting out from Spring-
field on his last journey from home, asking anxious
neighbors who came to the depot to see him off,
to remember him in their prayers, and talking to
them in sad and mystical language about One who
could go with him and remain with them, and be
everywhere for good; It is he.

They said that he jested, and laughed in a weird
way, and told objectionable anecdotes that night,
sitting on the old sofa in the public offices of the
White House. They started ugly reports about
him, and the comic newspapers of London and
New York made cruel pictures of him, pictures
of his big, handsome hands that were about to be
stretched out to save the civilization of the world,
and his overgrown feet, feet that for four torn and
bleeding years were not too weary in the service
of mankind. They said that his clothes did not

Page one hundred four

fit him, that when he sat down he tangled up his
long legs in an ungainly fashion, that he was
awkward and uncouth in his appearance.

They began to wonder whether this being a
backwoodsman was really a recommendation for
President of the United States, and some of them
began to talk about the grace of courtly manners
which had been brought home from St. James.

Little did they dream that the rude cabin where
his father lived the night he was born, yonder on
the edge of the hill country in Kentucky, would
be transfigured in the tender imagination of the
people until it became a mansion more stately
than the White House, a palace more royal than
all the palaces of the earth. It did not shelter
the childhood of a king, but there is in this world
one thing at least more royal than a king — it
is a man.

They said that he jested and acted unconcerned
as he looked at people through eyes that moved
slowly from one to another in the crowd. They
did not know him. If they had known him they
might have seen that he was not looking at the
crowd at all — that his immortal spirit was girding
for its ordeal. And if he laughed, how could they

Page one hundred five

be sure that he did not hear cheerful voices from
above? For had he not read in an old book that
He who sitteth in the Heavens sometimes looks
down with laughter and derision upon the impotent
plans of men to turn aside the everlasting pur-
poses of God?

It took his countrymen the full four years to
find out Abraham Lincoln. By the light of the
camp fires of victorious armies they learned to
see the outline of his gigantic figure, to comprehend
in part at least the dignity of his character, and
to assess at its full value the integrity of his con-
science; and when at length they followed his
body back to Springfield and looked for the last
time upon his worn and wrinkled face, through
their tears they saw him exalted above all thrones
in the gratitude and the affection of the world.

We have been accustomed to think of the civil
war in the United States as an affair of armies,
for we come of a fighting race, and our military
instinct needs very little encouragement — some
think none at all — but it requires no very deep
insight into the hidden things of history, to see
that this conflict was not waged altogether on
fields of battle nor under the walls of besieged

Page one hundred six

cities; and that fact makes Abraham Lincoln
greater than all his generals, greater than all his
admirals, greater than all the armies and all the
navies that responded to his proclamation.

He stands apart because he bore the ark of the
covenant of our institutions. He was not making
his own fight, nor even the fight of his own country
or of the passing generation. The stars in their
courses had enlisted with him. He had a treaty
never submitted to the Senate, which made him
the ally of the Lord of Hosts, with infinite rein-
forcements at his call; and so the battle he was in
was not in the woods around the old church at
Shiloh nor in the wilderness of Virginia. He was
hand in hand with an insurrection older than the
slave power in America, a rebellion old as human
voracity and human greed, that age after age
had filled this earth with oppression and wrong,
denied the rights of man and made the history
of the world, in the language of the historian
Gibbon, a dull recital of the crimes and follies and
misfortunes of the human race. And so he was
caught up like Hczekiah, prophet of Israel, and
brought to the east gate of the Lord's house, and
when he heard it said unto him, "Son of man,

Page one hundred, seven

these are the men who devise mischief/' he under-
stood what the vision meant, for he had touched
human life in such lowly fashion, living a humbler
life than any man ever lived in this world, except
our incarnate Lord who had not even where to lay
his head, he had lived such a life that he knew
instinctively what this great, endless struggle of
our poor, fallen humanity is and how far the
nation had fallen away from its duty and its
opportunity.

All his life there had dwelt in his recollection
a little sentence from an historic document which
had been carelessly passed along from one Fourth
of July celebration to another, for nearly eighty
years, "All men are created equal." To Abra-
ham Lincoln that sounded strangely like an answer
to a question propounded by the oldest of the
Hebrew sages, " If I despise the cause of my man
servant or my maid servant when he contendeth
with me, what shall I do when God riseth up?
Did not He that made me make him?" A stra-
tegic question that had to be answered aright be-
fore democracy or any other form of civil liberty
could make any headway in the world.

Page one hundred eight

He knew that that sentence had not been in-
spired on the front porch of a slave plantation in
Virginia. He understood that when brave men
take their lives in their hands they forget time
and place and are likely, when they are laying
the foundation of their nations, to tell the truth lest
the heavens fall. With a sublime faith, shared
within the limits of their light by millions, he
believed that sentence. He had tested the depth
of it till his plummet touched the foundation of
the earth. From his youth that simple saying
had been ringing in his ears : " All men are created
equal." It was the answer of the eighteenth
century of Christ to all the dim milleniums that
were before Him; yet he had heard it ridiculed,
narrowed down to nothing and explained away.
And with those millions sharing his faith within
the limits of their light, he understood that sen-
tence and came to its defense.

With one stroke he brushed away all the wretched
sophistry of partisan expediency in American poli-
tics and rescued the handwriting of Thomas Jef-
ferson from obloquy and neglect.

"I think," he said, "that the authors of that
notable instrument intended to include all men.

Page one hundred nine

But they did not intend to declare all men equal
in all respects. They did not mean to say that
all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral de-
velopment, or social capacity. They defined,
with tolerable distinctness, in which respects they
did consider all men created equal — equal with
certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This they
said and this they meant. They did not mean
to assert the obvious untruth that all men were
then actually enjoying that equality, nor that
they were about to confer it immediately upon
them, because they knew that they had no power
to confer such a boon. They meant simply to
declare the right, so that the enforcement of it
should follow as fast as circumstances would
permit.

"They meant simply to set up a standard maxim
of free society, which should be everywhere famil-
iarized by the people, always reverenced, constantly
looked to, constantly labored for, and even
though never perfectly attained, constantly ap-
proximated; thereby constantly spreading and

Page on* hundred ten

deepening its influence and augmenting the value
and happiness of life to all people, of all colors,
every where. "

That was the message of Abraham Lincoln to
the nations of the world and to the ages of the
world's history; and for fear somebody in the future
might say that that was a mere flourish of a joint
debate with Mr. Douglas, when he went to the
capital for his inauguration, he asked them to
stop the train at Philadelphia, and so it is said
that he went alone, a few friends only following
him up the narrow street, until he came to the
old Hall of Independence, where our fathers put
their names down to the sublime documents which
underlie our institutions, and standing there, by
the very desk where their names were signed, he
lifted his big hand up, and added his pledge to
theirs that he would defend these propositions
with his life.

Here is the summit from which your old neigh-
bor looked down on the whole world! Here is
the spiritual height from which he was able to
forecast the doom, not only of African slavery in
the United States, but of all slaveries, all despot-

Page one hundred eleven

isms, all conspiracies with avarice and greed to
oppress and wrong the children of God, living in
God's world!

Here is the mountain top from which he sent
down his great message to mankind:

"This is essentially a people's contest; on the
side of the Union, a struggle to maintain in the
world that form and substance of government
the leading object of which is to elevate the con-
dition of men, to lift artificial weights from
shoulders; to clear the path of laudable pursuit
for all and to afford all an unfettered start and a
fair chance in the race of life."

Thanks be unto God the war for the Union
ended as it did — that we are not enemies but
friends, with one nation, one flag, one destiny
in the midst of the ages. Thanks be unto God
also that at the foundation there is no division
of parties about our institutions. We share in
the heritage of a common faith in those institu-
tions as founded by our fathers. As Democrats
we repeat the words of Thomas Jefferson, " Equal
rights to all, special privileges to none." As
Republicans, we echo in the words of Abraham
Lincoln, "An unfettered start and a fair chance

Page one hundred twelve

in the race of life. ^ The doctrine is the same.
Nor is the time as far off as some may think who
breathe the atmosphere of the great centers of
American business and speculation, when the peo-
ple of the United States, without regard to party
affiliations will cherish in grateful hearts the bold
and fearless platform which made the last seven
years at our capitol famous in the language of
the American people, "A square deal for every
man." No more, no less. The doctrine is the
same, and if it be not true, then there is no founda-
tion either for the religion or for the institutions
which we have inherited from our fathers and
our mothers.

But the doctrine is forever true, and standing
this day by the grave of Abraham Lincoln, our
hearts filled with the heroic memories of other
generations, we swear for us and for our children,
by his blood, to make the doctrine true for all
nations and for all generations and for all the ages
that are to come.

Page one hundred thirteen

GOVERNOR DENEEN

Introducing Mr. Bryan

I cannot " introduce " you to the next speaker,
because he is known to all of you; but it is indeed
a great pleasure to extend the greetings of this
vast audience to a native son of Illinois, and to
an adopted son, only, of Nebraska, who has re-
turned to his native state to pay his tribute to
the memory of Abraham Lincoln, the Honorable
William Jennings Bryan, of Illinois and Nebraska.

— 8 L C

Page one hundred fourteen

HON. WILLIAM J. BRYAN

Lincoln as an Orator

Ladies and Gentlemen — I esteem myself for-
tunate to have received an invitation to take even
a minor part in this great celebration. I thank
the committee for the honor that it has done me
and for the pleasure it has given me. The occasion,
the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of
one whom the world owns, has justified the coming
of these distinguished guests, representing two of
the greatest of the nations of the world, one which
we remember because of the help received at a
critical time, and the other which we remember
because the relations between the two nations
illustrate how, among intelligent people, differences
may be forgotten and ties of friendship strength-
ened, in spite of war.

I have been delighted with the splendid oration
which has been delivered by the Senator from
Iowa. I knew him too well to expect less; and
knowing thai to him was assigned the important

Page one hundred fifteen

part of presenting a well-rounded eulogy of Lin-
coln, I chose to speak for a moment upon a par-
ticular feature in Lincoln's life. I knew that Mr.
Dolliver would illustrate what I want to say, but
I felt sure that he would devote so much of his
time to the other characteristics brought out by
Lincoln's life, that he might leave me just a little
to say of Lincoln as an orator.

This part of his life and of his qualities has, I
think, been overshadowed by his great career as
a statesman.

Lincoln's fame as a statesman and as the nation's
chief executive during its most crucial period has
so overshadowed his fame as an orator that his
merits as a public speaker have not been suffi-
ciently emphasized.

You will pardon me, therefore, if I pass over
the things that are most mentioned in his life,
and the virtues that have been so eloquently por-
trayed today, and speak of the part which Lin-
coln's ability as a public speaker played in his
career and, through him, in this part of our
nation's history.

Lincoln more than any other President we have
ever had, owes his eminence to his power as a

Page one hundred sixteen

public speaker. Without that power he would
have been unknown among the members of his
party.

When it is remembered that his nomination was
directly due to the prominence which he won
upon the stump; that in a remarkable series of
debates he held his own against one of the most
brilliant orators America has produced; and that
to his speeches, more than to the arguments of
any other one man, or in fact, of all other public
men combined was due the success of his party —
when all these facts are borne in mind, it will
appear plain, even to the casual observer, that too
little attention has been given to the extraordin-
ary power which he exercised as a speaker. That
his nomination was due to the effect that his
speeches produced, can not be disputed. When
he began his fight against slavery in 1854 he was
but little known outside of the counties in which
he attended court. It is true that he had been a
member of Congress some years before, but at
that time he was not stirred by any great emotion
or connected with the discussion of any important
theme, and he made but little impression upon
national politics. No subject had then stirred

Page one hundred seventeen

his latent energies into life. He was a lawyer of
distinction in the communities which he visited,
but he was not known beyond a limited area.
It was when, in 1S54, he found a cause worthy of
his championship, that he came from obscurity
into great prominence. It was when the question
of the extension of slavery became a real issue,
that he stepped forth and became the representa-
tive of the anti-slavery sentiment.

It so happened that there lived in Illinois the
man who represented the other side of that ques-
tion, a great orator, one of the greatest that this
nation has known, skilled in all the arts of debate,
polished and having had experience at the nation's
capitol among the nation's foremost men, and
when this issue began to take form, Lincoln ap-
peared as the antagonist of Douglas.

Beginning in 1854, he counteracted as he could
the influence of the speeches of Douglas. When
Douglas appeared in 1858 as a candidate for the
Senate, to succeed himself, Lincoln presented him-
self as his opponent. Then began the most re-
markable series of debates that this world has
ever known. History records no such series of
public speeches.

Page one hundred eighteen

In order to have a great debate, you must have
a great subject. You must have great debaters,
and you must have a people read}7 for the subject.
Here were the people ready for the issue. Here
was an issue as great as ever stirred a human
heart. Here were the representatives on either
side.

In engaging in this contest with Douglas he
met a foeman worthy of his steel, for Douglas had
gained a deserved reputation as a great debater,
and recognized that his future depended upon the
success with which he met the attacks of Lincoln.
On one side an institution supported by history
and tradition and on the other a growing sentiment
against the holding of a human being in bondage
— these presented a supreme issue.

Lincoln was defeated in the debates so far as
the immediate result was concerned. Douglas
won the senatorial seat for which the two at that
time contested but Lincoln won the presidency
in the same contest.

Lincoln won the larger victory in that he helped
to mould the sentiment that was dividing parties
and re-arranging the political map of the country.
That series of debates focused public attention

Page one hundred nineteen

upon Lincoln, and because of the masterly man-
ner in which he presented his side of that great
issue, he became the leader of the forces against
extension.

It was because of that leadership, won in the
forum and on the stump, and by his power of
speech that, coming from the west, the far west,
with nothing to command him but the zeal and
the earnestness and the force with which he pre-
sented the cause, he triumphed in his convention.
He was not only a western man, but a man lacking
in book learning and the polish of the schools.

He laid the foundations for his party more than
any other one man, aye, more than all the rest
combined. He won that fight by his argument.
His leadership rests upon his superb talent as a
speaker. No other American president has ever
so clearly owed his elevation to his oratory.
Washington, Jefferson and Jackson, the presidents
usually mentioned in connection with him, were
all poor speakers. I insist that, when the history
of this nation's orators is written, Lincoln will
stand at the top, for this nation has never pro-
duced a greater orator than Abraham Lincoln.

Page one hundred twenty

In analyzing Lincoln's characteristics as a speaker,
one is impressed with the completeness of his
equipment. He possessed the two things that are
absolutely essential to effective speaking — namely,
information and earnestness.

I agree with Mr. Dolliver that there are dif-
ferences of definition and that some will describe
oratory by one set of phrases, and another by an-
other. If I were going to describe Mr. Lincoln's,
I would describe it as the speech of one who knows
what he is talking about and believes what he
says. These are the two essentials in oratory.
You cannot convey information to another unless
you have it, and you cannot touch others' hearts
unless your own heart has been touched. Elo-
quence is the speech that goes, not from head to
head, but from heart to heart, and just as long as
there are great causes to be discussed, just as long
as there are great hearts that throb in harmony
with the heart of mankind, just as long as there
are men with a message to deliver, there will be
orator}', there will be eloquence, in this world.

Lincoln knew his subject. He was prepared
to meet his opponent upon the general proposi-
tion discussed, and upon any deductions which

Page one hundred twenty-one

could be drawn from it. There was no unsur-
veyed field into which he feared his enemy might
lead him. He had carefully examined every foot
of the ground upon which the battle was to be
fought and he feared neither pitfall nor ambush.
He spoke from his own heart to the hearts of those
who listened. Not only was he completely filled,
saturated, with his subject, but he felt that that
subject transcended the petty ambitions of man.
I wish I might have lived early enough to have
listened to one of those debates. We know how
feebly the printed page conveys the thrill that
comes from the heart of one who speaks with
earnestness ; but I can imagine how his face glowed
with enthusiasm and I can imagine how his voice
trembled with emotion, when he said, " It matters
little whether they vote Judge Douglas or me up
or down, but it does matter whether this question
is settled right or wrong."

Lincoln understood a bible passage at which
some have stumbled, "He that saveth his life
shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My
sake shall find it." He knew that that phrase
has a larger interpretation than is sometimes given
to it. It is the very epitome of history. The

Page one hundred twenty-two

man who has no higher ambition than to save
his own life, leads a little life; while those who
stand ready to give themselves for things greater
than themselves, find a larger life than the life
that they surrender. Wendell Phillips has ex-
pressed the same thought that will live when he
says, "How prudently most men sink into name-
less graves, while now and then a few forget them-
selves into immortality. "

It is not by remembering ourselves, but by
forgetting ourselves in devotion to things larger
than ourselves that we win immortality, and
Lincoln felt that the subject with which he dealt
was larger than any human being, larger than any
party, larger than any country, as large as human-
ity itself ; and with those two essentials, knowledge
of the subject and intense earnestness, he could
not be otherwise than eloquent.

Lincoln had also the subordinate characteristics,
if I may so describe them, that aid the public
speaker.

He was a master of the power of statement.
Few have equalled him in the ability to strip a
truth of surplus verbiage and present it in its

Page one hundred twenty-three

naked strength. He could state a question so
clearly that one could hardly misunderstand it
when he wanted to.

In the Declaration of Independence we read
that there are certain self-evident truths, which
are therein enumerated. I endorse the statement.
I could go even farther. If I were going to amend
the proposition, I would say that all truth is
self-evident. Not that any truth will be uni-
versally accepted, for not all are in a position
or in an attitude to accept any given truth. In
the interpretation of the parable of the sower,
we are told that "the cares of this world and the
deceitfulness of riches choke the truth," and it
must be acknowledged that every truth has these
or other difficulties to contend with.

The best service that anyone can render a truth
is to speak it so clearly that it can be understood,
and Lincoln possessed the power of stating a truth
so clearly that it could be understood.

I do not mean to say that any truth can be
stated so clearly that no one will dispute it. I
think it was Macaulay who said that if any money
was to be made by it, eloquent and learned men
could be found to dispute the law of gravitation;

Page one hundred twenty-four

but what I mean to say is this — that a truth may
be so clearly stated that no one will dispute it
unless he has some special reason for not seeing
it, or for disputing it; and when you find one who
does not want to see the truth, there is no use
to reason with him or argue with him. It is a
waste of time. For instance, if you say to a man,
"It is wrong to steal" and he said "0, I don't
know about that," it speaks a self-evident truth.
Don't argue with him. Just search him and you
may find the reason in his pocket.

No one has more clearly stated the fundamental
objections to slavery than Lincoln stated them,
and he had a great advantage over his opponents
in being able to state those objections frankly;
for Judge Douglas neither denounced nor defended
slavery as an institution — his plan embodied a
compromise and he could not discuss slavery upon
its merits without alienating either the slave-
owner or the abolitionist.

Lincoln was not only a master of statement,
but he understood the power of condensation.
The epigram is valuable because it contains so
much in a small compass.

Page one hundred twenty-five

We speak of moulders of thought. A moulder
of thought is not necessarily a creator of thought.
Just as the bullet moulder will put lead into a
form in which it can be used effectively, so a moul-
der of thought puts thought into a form that
makes it easy to take hold of and easy to remem-
ber, and Lincoln was a moulder of thought.
He did not create the anti-slavery sentiment. He
gave expression to it. He was the spokesman of
his party, and he framed into words and into
sentences and into phrases the ideas of those who
followed him. Just as Jefferson was the moulder
of the thought of his day, Lincoln was the moulder
of the thought of his time, and people who agreed
with him found themselves quoting what he said.
Why? Because he said it better than they could
say it and better than anyone else had said it.

He was apt in illustration — no one more so.
It is a powerful form of argument. His illustra-
tions were drawn from everyday life. They were
simple. A child could understand them and they
made his arguments irresistible. His language
was simple. Many have discussed whether Lin-
coln would have been as great a man as he was
if he had had larger educational advantages. It

Page one hundred twenty-six

is not worth while to discuss that question now.
It is sufficient to say that a man may know big
words without using them at inappropriate times.
Lincoln used no big words. He never spoke over
the heads of his audiences, and yet his language
was never commonplace. His language was simple
and his speech had the strength that simplicity
gives it. Lincoln may rest his fame as an orator
on the one speech delivered on the battlefield of
Gettysburg. He condensed into that speech more
than can be found in any similar speech that was
ever uttered by lips that were not inspired. He
illustrated the knowledge of the people, he dis-
closed the earnestness of the heart that was
back of the tongue ; and the language was so simple
that anyone could fully understand it, and it was
so short that any memory can hold it and carry it.
He understood the power of the interrogatory,
for some of his most powerful arguments were
condensed into questions. Of all those who dis-
cussed the evils of separation and the advantages
to be derived from the preservation of the Union,
no one ever put the matter more forcibly than
Lincoln did when, referring to the possibility of
war and the certainty of peace some time, even

Page one hundred twenty-seven

if the Union was divided; he called attention to
the fact that the same question would have to
be dealt with, and then asked, " Can enemies make
treaties easier than friends can make laws?"

Lincoln, I say had the essentials of the orator,
and he added to those the things that aid the
orator, and his oratory is as much a part of his
life and his career, as is the oratory of Demosthenes
and Cicero a part of their careers; and he deserves
to have his name written with theirs among the
world's great orators. Someone has described the
difference between Demosthenes and Cicero by
saying that "when Cicero spoke, people said,
' How well Cicero speaks, ' but when Demosthenes
spoke they said 'Let us go against Philip.' " The
one impressed his subject on the audience, and
the other impressed himself. In proportion as
one can forget himself and become wholly absorbed
in the cause which he is presenting does he measure
up to the requirements of oratory.

Lincoln so impressed his subject on an audience
that the audience seemed to forget him, and they
have not remembered him as an orator because
they were so intensely interested in what he said;
and yet what higher tribute could be paid to a

Page one hundred twenty-eight

man's speaking than to say that you forgot the
speaker because you were aroused by what he said
to consider the thing of which he spoke.

He made frequent use of bible language and
fortified himself by illustrations from Holy Writ.
It is said that when he was preparing his Spring-
field speech of 1858 he spent hours trying to find
language that would express the idea that domin-
ated his entire career, namely, that a republic
could not permanently endure half free and half
slave, and that finally a bible passage flashed
through his mind, and he exclaimed, "I have
found it!" "The American people are a bible-
reading people. They will understand a quotation
from scripture," and then he used those words,
"A house divided against itself cannot stand;"
and I think I risk no fear of contradiction when I
say that there has never been any other bible
quotation that has had as much influence in the
settlement of a great question as that bible quo-
tation that Lincoln uttered in his humble way.

I have enumerated some, not all, but the more
important, of his characteristics as an orator. On
this day I venture for the moment to turn the
thoughts of this audience away from the great

Page one hundred twenty-nine

work that he accomplished as a patriot, away
from his achievements in the life of statecraft, to
the means employed by him to bring before the
public the ideas which attracted attention to him.
It cannot be entirely overlooked as the returning
anniversary of his birth calls increasing attention
to the widening influence of his work. With no
military career to dazzle the eye or excite the
imagination, with no public service to make his
name familiar to the reading public, his elevation
to the Presidency would have been impossible
without his oratory. The eloquence of Demos-
thenes and Cicero were no more necessary to their
work, and Lincoln deserves to have his name
written on the scroll with theirs.

But, my friends, while I believe that Lincoln's
oratory is responsible, primarily, for his promi-
nence, and that it was the foundation of all the
superstructure of statesmanship that was built
afterward, still there was something back of his
oratory, as there must be something back of all
effective oratory. He planted himself upon prin-
ciples that are eternal. He saw the relation be-
tween man and money, and expressed his belief

— 9 L C

Page one hundred thirty

in a letter addressed to the Boston club, who had
invited him to celebrate with them the birthday
of Jefferson. He could not go, but in his letter
he commended Jefferson's teaching and praised
him. His eulogy of Jefferson was not surpassed
by any other eulogy that has been pronounced
on Jefferson. In his letter he said that his party
believed in the man and the dollar, but in case
of conflict, it believed in the man before the dollar.

My friends, that was not a transient sentiment.
That was not a truth applicable to a particular
time. You may go back in history as far as you
will. You may look forward into the future as far
as you will, and you will find that there never was
a great abuse and never will be a great abuse,
that did not grow or will not grow, out of the
inversion of the proper relation between man and
money.

Lincoln saw that man came first and money
afterwards. He planted himself on that doctrine.
That doctrine is the solid rock, and because he
knew that he could not be mistaken, he was not
afraid to stand there and face anybody who
opposed him.

Page one hundred thirty-one

And to my mind, Lincoln illustrates the power
of truth speaking through human lips. He illus-
trates the power of truth as it inspires courage, for
his moral courage was as superb as the world has
ever known. He dared to do what he thought
he ought to do. He dared to say what he thought
ought to be said, and he asked not how many or
how few were ready to stand and take their share
with him.

Why has his fame grown? Because the truth
for which he stood has grown; and I cannot better
conclude my brief speech to you than to. say that
Lincoln, in his speech, and in his career, and in his
fame, illustrates again that humble bible truth
that "One with God shall chase a thousand and
two shall put ten thousand to flight. "

Page one hundred thirty-two

AT ST. JOHNS CHURCH

At 10:30 a. m. religious services were held at
St. John's Evangelical Lutheran church, formerly
the First Presbyterian church, which was Mr.
Lincoln's place of worship from 184 9 to 1861.
Mr. Lincoln's old pew, marked by an appropriate
bronze tablet, is still in use. The following address
by Dr. T. D. Logan, was the principal feature of
this meeting.

Page one hundred thirty-three

REV. THOMAS D. LOGAN, D. D.

Lincoln as a Worshiper

It was a cruel tyrant, a heartless slave-driver,
who said to Israel in bondage: "Ye are idle,
ye are idle; therefore ye say, Let us go and do
sacrifice to the Lord." To those who know not
God, and love not their fellowmen, the worship of
God seems idleness. Yet it is as natural for man
to worship as to breathe. Conscious of his limi-
tations, and recognizing his dependence upon an
Infinite Being, the soul of man craves fellowship
with that Being, and reaches out longingly towards
Him. Thomas Carlyle says : " It is well said, in
every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact
with regard to him. Of a man or of a nation we
inquire, therefore, first of all, what religion they
had? Answering of this question is giving us the
soul of the history of the man or nation. The
thoughts they had were the parents of the actions
they did; their feelings were parents of their

Page one hundred thirty-four

thoughts; it was the unseen and spiritual in them
that determined the outward and actual — their
religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. "
Worship is worthship — an acknowledgment of
worth. Religious worship is the acknowledgment
of Supreme Worth. It is a reverential upward
look, the pouring out of the soul to God, and if
sincere it commands respect, even when one knows
that the worshiper has very imperfect ideas of the
Being whom he addresses. The Puritan may be
unimpressed with the grandeur of the vast cathe-
dral, and to one who has been trained in the
simpler forms of worship, the more elaborate
ritual may be a hindrance rather than a help in
his devotion; but when he sees the humble peasant
kneel before the altar, he recognizes at once a
fellow-worshiper. One is ready to bare not only
his head but his feet, as he enters the Mohammedan
mosque, because it is the place where his fellowman
bows before the Infinite. Even the heathen, who
in his blindness bows down to wood and stone, is
entitled to our sympathetic regard, because accord-
ing to his light and knowledge, he worships as
well as he knows how; and the wise missionary
builds his instruction upon this reverence for the

Page one hundred thirty-five

Supreme. Paul addressed his Athenian audience
as "very religious, " and in the inscription on their
altar to the unknown God, he found a text from
which to proclaim Him whom they ignorantly
worshiped. The time is past, if it ever existed,
when worship could be confined to any particular
locality. Neither in Jerusalem alone, nor in the
mountain of Samaria, ye shall worship the Father.
The true worshipers shall worship the Father in
Spirit and in Truth; for the Father seeketh such
to worship Him. Sincere worship always com-
mands respect, while the pretense of worship is
beneath contempt.

The place where we have assembled on this the
centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln is,
therefore, hallowed ground; and it is fitting that
one of the first exercises of the day should be of a
religious character. For twelve years prior to his
election to the Presidency, Abraham Lincoln sat
in yonder pew, more regular in his attendance at
the services of the sanctuary than the average
communicant, a reverent and devout worshiper of
Almighty God in a Christian congregation. That
fact in itself is sufficient to make this old church
one of the sacred spots to be visited by every resi-

Page one hundred thirty-six

dent of Springfield, and by every one who makes
the pilgrimage to this city to view the places so
closely associated with the career of him whose life
was sacrificed on the altar of union and liberty.

But did Lincoln really worship? Was he sincere,
or was it all a pretense? Strange questions to ask
concerning one to whom honesty was ascribed as a
ruling characteristic. Can it be that Lincoln was
honest in his business dealings and in his political
relations, and dishonest towards God? Yet such
is the charge that has been made against him by a
biographer, whose intimate business relationship
has led some to accept his statements as authentic
in other relations of which he had but slight per-
sonal knowledge. Listen to the accusation as it
appears in Lamon's Life of Lincoln, the material
for which was supplied by Mr. W. H. Herndon:

" While it is very clear that Mr. Lincoln was at
all times an infidel, in the orthodox meaning of the
term, it is also very clear that he was not at all
times equally willing that everybody should know
it. He never offered to purge or recant; but he
was a wily politician and did not disdain to regu-
late his religious manifestations with some regard
to his political interests. As he grew older he grew

Page one hundred thirty-seven

more cautious * * * He saw the immense and
augmenting power of the churches and in times
past had practically felt it. The imputation of
infidelity had seriously injured him in several of
his earlier political contests; and, sobered by age
and experience, he was resolved that the same
imputation should injure him no more. Aspiring
to lead religious communities, he foresaw that he
must not appear as an enemy within the gates;
aspiring to public honors under the auspices of a
political party which persistently summoned relig-
ious people to assist in the extirpation of that which
is denounced as the ' Nation's sin, ' he foresaw that
he could not ask their suffrages whilst aspersing
their faith. He perceived no reasons for changing
his convictions, but he did perceive many good and
cogent reasons for not making them public * * *
At any rate Mr. Lincoln permitted himself to be
misunderstood and misrepresented by some enthu-
siastic ministers and exhorters with whom he came
in contact. "

If the above charge can be sustained, Mr. Lincoln
was neither a sincere worshiper nor an honest man.
He might have been an infidel or even an atheist
and still have been a good man. He might have

Page one hundred thirty-eight

worshiped here without approving every sentiment
expressed from the pulpit. The Presbyterian
church requires no such surrender of individual
opinion on the part of worshipers, or even on the
part of its members. Since the adoption of its
doctrinal standards in 1729, it has welcomed to
fellowship in sacred ordinances all such as there is
ground to believe Christ will at last admit to the
Kingdom of Heaven. In matters of individual
opinion or interpretation there was room for much
latitude ; but there was not room for the hypocriti-
cal pretense of holding views which in his heart he
spurned. " God is a Spirit; and they that worship
Him must worship Him in Spirit and in TRUTH. "
I am therefore called to the defense of the sin-
cerity of Abraham Lincoln before I can establish
the claim that he was a true worshiper. This re-
quires that we shall make some examination into
his religious views as well as his religious practices.
In doing this I shall endeavor to set forth the facts
as they are contained in the records and traditions
of this church and of this community, not reading
my own faith into his, but giving the testimony of
those who were in a position to know, and allowing
an intelligent public opinion to decide the case.

Page one "hundred thirty-nine

Abraham Lincoln's parents were godly people,
Baptists in their denominational preferences, and
his early knowledge of the Bible was derived from
this source. That he was familiar with this Book,
and that his literary style was to a great extent
moulded by it, are facts well known to every careful
reader of his letters and speeches. The straggling
settlement at New Salem had neither church nor
school house, and was visited seldom, if at all, by
the circuit preachers of that day. There was a
strong skeptical influence there, and among the
few books that were passed around were the writ-
ings of Volney and Paine. It is pretty well estab-
lished that Lincoln imbibed some of these views,
and that he wrote an essay on the subject which
his employer burned in the stove, leaving the world
in ignorance of the extent of his unbelief. After
coming to Springfield in 1837, he was not a regular
attendant at any church, and probably very seldom
went to any place of worship prior to his marriage.
The family of Mr. Ninian Edwards, with whom
Mary Todd made her home, were Episcopalians,
and the officiating minister was the Rev. Charles
Dresser, Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal church.
{The records of that church show that it was the

Page one hundred forty

fifteenth wedding since the organization of the
parish in 1835. One of the elders of the First
Presbyterian church, at the time when Mrs. Lin-
coln was received into its membership in 1852,
recollects that, in her examination, she said that
she had been confirmed in the Episcopal church
in Kentucky at the age of twelve years, but that
she had not been identified with the Episcopal
church in Springfield, and preferred to make a new
profession of her faith.) Older members of St.
Paul's Episcopal church have a recollection of an
occasional attendance of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln at
their services, but there is no record of her as a
communicant, nor were any of the children bap-
tized in that church.

The connection with the First Presbyterian
church began shortly after the opening of the pas-
torate of Dr. James Smith in 1849, and the intimacy
between Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and the pastor was
cemented by his ministrations at the time of their
first bereavement when their son Edward died Feb-
ruary 1, 1850. The universal testimony concern-
ing Dr. Smith by those who remember him is that
he was a man of commanding ability. A few who
sat under his ministry are still in the membership

Page one hundred forty-one

of the church, and they say that he spoke of the
deep things of God in a manner which made the
truth plain to their understanding. Several of his
descendants are members of the church at the pres-
ent time. He was the author of a book on the
Evidences of Christianity which was instrumental
in clearing away many of the difficulties which had
lodged in the mind of Mr. Lincoln, and in leading
to the avowal of his belief in the scriptures as a
supernatural revelation from God, in a public ad-
dress at the anniversary of the Sangamon County
Bible society. The local biographer speaks of this
book as a little tract which Dr. Smith prepared for
the express purpose of converting Mr. Lincoln, but
that the effort failed as the tract lay on his desk
for weeks and was not even read. A copy of the
book has recently come into my hands. It is en-
titled, "The Christian's Defense, " a volume of
nearly 700 pages, stereotyped and published by J.
A. James in Cincinnati, in 1843, and is the out-
growth of a debate with a Mr. Olmsted conducted
at Columbus, Mississippi, in 1841. It is fully
abreast of the scholarship of that day.

The circumstances connected with the attend-
ance of Mr. Lincoln at the First Presbyterian

Page one hundred forty -two

church were given in a letter from Mr. Thomas
Lewis to my predecessor in the pastorate, Rev.
James A. Reed, D.D., under date of January 6,
1873. "Not long after Dr. Smith came to Spring-
field, and I think very near the time of his son's
death, Mr. Lincoln said to me that, when on a visit
somewhere, he had seen and partially read a work
of Dr. Smith on the Evidences of Christianity which
had led him to change his views about the Christian
religion; that he would like to get that work to fin-
ish the reading of it, and also to make the acquain-
tance of Dr. Smith. I was an elder in Dr. Smith's
church, and took Dr. Smith to Mr. Lincoln's office
and introduced him, and Dr. Smith gave Mr. Lin-
coln a copy of his book, as I know, at his own re-
quest. " Mr. Lewis made a fuller statement on
this subject in an address to the Y. M. C. A. of
Kansas City in December, 1898. The address was
printed in the Kansas City papers of that date,
and copied into the Illinois State Journal of Decem-
ber 16, 1908.

This statement is corroborated by an open letter
from Dr. Smith to W. H. Herndon, copied from the
Dundee Advertiser by the State Journal on March
12, 1SG7, as shown in its file in the Slate Historical

Page one hundred forty-three

Library. Dr. Smith had been appointed Consul at
Dundee, Scotland, by President Lincoln, and was
living there at the time of the assassination. Under
date of December 22, 1866, Herndon wrote an im-
pertinent letter to Dr. Smith, demanding that he
answer him as a gentleman, if he could, and if not,
to answer him as a Christian, stating whether he
had any written documents proving that Mr. Lin-
coln had been converted to the belief that the
Bible was God's special miraculous revelation; or,
in the absence of written documents, to give the
exact words with which he professed his change of
belief. He also demanded to know whether Dr.
Smith believed Lincoln to be an honest man if he
had changed his views and still declined to unite
with his church. Dr. Smith had just read an article
of Herndon 's, which appeared in the Scottish news-
papers, making statements concerning the domestic
life of Mr. Lincoln which, from his intimate ac-
quaintance with the family, he knew to be false.
Much of the letter is devoted to the expression of
his opinion of one who had been an intimate friend
and partner of the murdered President, and yet
could do the reputation of that great and good man

Page one hundred forty-four

an incalculable injury. Omitting this part of the
letter, I give that which bears upon the religious
views of Mr. Lincoln:

"Sir — Your letter of the 20th December was
duly received. In it you ask me to answer several
questions in relation to the illustrious President,
Abraham Lincoln. With regard to your second
question, I beg leave to say that it is a very easy
matter to prove that while I was pastor of the First
Presbyterian church of Springfield, Mr. Lincoln did
avow his belief in the Divine authority and in-
spiration of the scriptures, and I hold that it is a
matter of the last importance not only to the pres-
ent, but all future generations of the great Republic
and to all advocates of civil and religious liberty
throughout the world, that this avowal on his part,
and the circumstances attending it, together with
very interesting incidents illustrative of his char-
acter, in my possession, should be made known to
the public. I am constrained, however, most re-
spectfully to decline choosing you as the medium
through which such a communication shall be made
by me. (The part of the letter referring to Mr.
Hcrndon is omitted.) My intercourse with Mr.
Lincoln convinced me that he was not only an

Page one hundred forty-five

honest man, but preeminently an upright man —
ever ready, so far as in his power, to render unto all
their dues.

"It was my honor to place before Mr. Lincoln
arguments to prove the Divine authority and in-
spiration of the Scriptures, accompanied by the argu-
ments of infidel objectors in their own language.
To the arguments on both sides Mr. Lincoln gave
a most patient, impartial and searching investiga-
tion. To use his own language, he examined the
arguments as a lawyer, anxious to reach the truth,
investigates testimony. The result was the an-
nouncement by himself that the argument in favor
of the Divine authority and inspiration of the
Scriptures was unanswerable. I could say much
more on this subject, but as you are the person
addressed, for the present I decline. The assassin
Booth, by his diabolical act, unwittingly sent the
illustrious martyr to glory, honor and immortality;
but his false friend, has attempted to send him
down to posterity with infamy branded on his fore-
head, as a man who, notwithstanding all he suf-
fered for his country's good, was destitute of those
feelings and affections, without which there can be
no real excellence of character. "

—10 L C

Page one "hundred forty-six

"N. B. It will no doubt be gratifying to the
friends of Christianity to learn that very shortly
after Mr. Lincoln became a member of my congre-
gation, at my request, in the presence of a large
assembly, at the annual meeting of the Bible soci-
ety of Springfield, he delivered an address the
object of which was to inculcate the importance of
having the Bible placed in possession of every fam-
ily in the state. In the course of this he drew a
striking contrast between the Decalogue and the
moral codes of the most eminent law-givers of an-
tiquity, and closed (as near as I can recollect) in
the following language: 'It seems to me that
nothing short of infinite wisdom could by any pos-
sibility have devised and given to man this excel-
lent and perfect moral code. It is suited to men
in all conditions of life, and includes all the duties
they owe to their Creator, to themselves, and to
their fellow-men. ' "

In disclaiming the statements purporting to have
been made by him as set forth in Lamon's Life of
Lincoln, Hon. John T. Stuart wrote, under date of
December 17, 1872: "The language of that state-
ment is not mine; it was not written by me, and I
did not see it till it was in print. I was once inter-

Page one hundred forty-seven

viewed on the subject of Mr. Lincoln's religious
opinions, and doubtless said that Mr. Lincoln was,
in the earlier part of his life, an infidel. I could not
have said that ' Dr. Smith tried to convert Lincoln
from infidelity so late as 1858, and couldn't do it. '
In relation to that point, I stated, in the same con-
versation, some facts which are omitted in that
statement, and which I will briefly repeat: That
Eddie, a child of Mr. Lincoln, died in 1848 or 1849,
and that he and his wife were in deep grief on that
account; that Dr. Smith, then pastor of the First
Presbyterian church in Springfield, at the sug-
gestion of a lady friend of theirs, called upon Mr.
and Mrs. Lincoln, and that first visit resulted in
great intimacy and friendship between them, last-
ing till the death of Mr. Lincoln, and continuing
with Mrs. Lincoln till the death of Dr. Smith.
(July 3, 1871.) I stated that I had heard, at the
time, that Dr. Smith and Mr. Lincoln, had much
discussion in relation to the truth of the Christian
religion, and that Dr. Smith had furnished Mr.
Lincoln with books to read on that subject, and
among others, one which had been written by him-
self sometime previously, on infidelity; and that
Dr. Smith claimed that after this investigation Mr.

Page one hundred forty-eight

Lincoln had changed his opinion, and became a
believer in the truth of the Christian religion; that
Mr. Lincoln and myself had never conversed on the
subject, and I had no personal knowledge as to his
alleged change of opinion. I stated, however, that
it was certainly true, that up to that time Mr. Lin-
coln had never regularly attended any place of re-
ligious worship, but that after that time he rented
a pew in the First Presbyterian church, and with
his family constantly attended worship in that
church until he went to Washington as President* *
I would further say that Dr. Smith was a man of
very great ability, and on theological and meta-
physical subjects had few superiors and not many
equals. Truthfulness was a prominent trait in Mr.
Lincoln's character, and it would be impossible for
any intimate friend of his to believe that he ever
aimed to deceive, either by his words or his con-
duct."

Mr. Ninian Edwards' statement on the subject
is as follows: "A short time after the Rev. Dr.
Smith became pastor of the First Presbyterian
church in this city, Mr. Lincoln said to me, ' I have
been reading a work of Dr. Smith on the Evidences
of Christianity, and have heard him preach and

Page one hundred forty-nine

converse on the subject, and I am now convinced
of the truth of the Christian religion. '" Mr.
James H. Matheny wrote: "The language attri-
buted to me in Lamon's book is not from my pen.
I did not write it, and it does not express my senti-
ments of Mr. Lincoln's entire life and character.
It is a mere collection of sayings gathered from pri-
vate conversations that were only true of Mr. Lin-
coln's earlier life. I would not have allowed such
an article to be printed over my signature as cover-
ing my opinion of Mr. Lincoln's life and religious
sentiments. While I do believe Mr. Lincoln to
have been an infidel in his former life, when his
mind was as yet unformed, and his associations
principally with rough and skeptical men, yet I
believe he was a very different man in later life;
and that after associating with a different class of
men, and investigating the subject, he was a firm
believer in the Christian religion. "

The testimony of these well-known citizens ought
to be a sufficient answer to the charge that Mr.
Lincoln held infidel sentiments which he studiously
concealed from those with whom he held his relig-
ious associations, and it confirms the opinion that
he was a believer in the truths of Christianity. It

Page one hundred fifty

is not claimed that, while in Springfield, he had
passed through those religious experiences which
would have warranted a profession of his faith ; but
as the time approached when he was to undertake
the great task of preserving the Union, there is
evidence of a depth of religious sentiment which
had not been known before. During the campaign
of 1860, he said to Dr. Newton Bateman, Superin-
tendent of Public Instruction, and afterwards Pres-
ident of Knox College, " I know that 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 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." The night after the vote was taken,
when sufficient returns had been received to insure
his election, he laid his hand on the knee of Goyn
A. Sutton, mayor of Springfield, as they sat in a
room near the telegraph office, and said : " Sutton,
it is an awful responsibility; God help me! God
help me!" When the Rev. Albert Hale, pastor of
the Second Presbyterian church, asked whether he
thought he could carry out his purposes when he

Page one hundred fifty-one

reached Washington, Mr. Lincoln replied: "I
know what I mean to do, but even St. Peter denied
his Lord and Master." And when at length, on
February 11, 1861, he stood on the platform of the
car at the Wabash station at Monroe and Tenth
streets, and bade farewell to Springfield, none
questioned the sincerity of his Christian belief
when he said:

" My Friends — No one not in my situation can
appreciate my feelings of sadness at this parting.
To this place, and the kindness of this people, I owe
everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a cen-
tury, and have passed from a young to an old man.
Here my children were born, and one lies buried.
I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever
I may return, with a task greater than that which
rested on the shoulders of Washington. Without
the aid of that Divine Being who ever aided him,
who controls mine and all destinies, I cannot suc-
ceed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trust-
ing in Him who can go with me and remain with
you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently
hope that all will be well. To His care commend-

Page one hundred fifty-two

ing you, as I hope in your prayers you will com-
mend me, I bid you, friends and neighbors, an
affectionate farewell. "

Here I might close with the confident assurance
that I had established the fact that, while a resi-
dent of Springfield, for ten or twelve years preced-
ing his departure, Abraham Lincoln had been a
sincere worshiper. It may be well, however, to
add a few statements concerning his religious views
and practices while in Washington. Arriving in
that city, he became a regular attendant of the
New York Avenue Presbyterian church, under the
Rev. Dr. Phineas D. Gurley. There were two
strong characteristics of Mr. Lincoln's religious
belief to which he gave frequent expression.

He was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer.
This is attested by his remarks to many ministers,
and to the representatives of many religious bodies.
An interesting and somewhat amusing incident,
which I am sure we shall all enjoy as much as our
Lutheran brethren, is related by the Rev. Dr. H.
M. Pohlman, of Albany, N. Y. He was one of a
delegation of Lutheran ministers who visited Mr.
Lincoln in the White House, in May 1S62, to pre-
sent the resolutions of loyalty adopted by their

Page one hundred fifty-three

General Synod ; and in addressing the President he
stated that, at their recent meeting, one of the Ger-
man ministers from Nashville, in a patriotic speech,
declared that he was the only minister in that city,
while it was within the Confederate lines, who
dared to pray for the President of the United
States, and the reason he dared to do so was be-
cause "he prayed in German, and the rebels
couldn't understand German, but the Lord could."
This evidently pleased Mr. Lincoln greatly, and was
treasured in his memory. Eighteen months after-
ward, at the dedication of the National Cemetery
at Gettysburg, Dr. Pohlman again met the Presi-
dent, and supposed he would need to be again
introduced, but Mr. Lincoln at once recognized
him, and coming forward took him by the hand
exclaiming, "The Lord understands German."

The statement made by General Rusling, con-
cerning what President Lincoln said to General
Sickles after the Battle of Gettysburg, has been
challenged as improbable, and even impossible.
General Rusling says that the President declared
that he had no doubt as to the issue of that battle,
because, just before it began, he had retired to his
room, and getting down on his knees, had prayed

Paje one hundred fifty-four

to Almighty God for victory, promising that if God
would stand by the Nation now, he would stand
by Him the rest of his life. The late Roland W.
Diller, a neighbor and intimate friend of Mr. Lin-
coln, wrote to General Sickles, under date of June
15, 1891, inquiring as to the accuracy of the state-
ments, and he received the following reply : " Gen-
eral Rusling is a thoroughly trustworthy gentleman
of the highest standing in Trenton. He was an
officer of my staff, and was no doubt present on
the occasion mentioned, but I could not after so
many years verify all the details of his narrative,
but it is substantially confirmed by my recollection
of the conversation. "

The other characteristic of Mr. Lincoln's religious
belief was a recognition of Divine Providence which
he stated frequently in terms strong enough to suit
the firmest believer in the sovereignty of God.
Herndon accuses him of "holding most firmly to
the doctrine of fatalism all his life." This he
denied. In an interview with a number of Wash-
ington ministers, reported by Rev. Dr. Byron
Sunderland, Mr. Lincoln said: "I hold myself in
my present position, and with the authority vested
in me, as an instrument of Providence. I have my

Page one hundred fifty-five

own views and purposes. I have my convictions
of duty, and my notions of what is right to be
done. But I am conscious every moment that all
I am and all I have is subject to the control of a
Higher Power, and that Power can use me or not
use me in any manner, and at any time, as in His
wisdom and might may be pleasing to Him. Never-
theless I am not a fatalist. I believe in the suprem-
acy of the human conscience, and that men are
responsible beings; that God has a right to hold
them, and will hold them, to a strict personal
account for the deeds done in the body. "

His pastor, Dr. Gurley, said that the reports as
to the infidelity of Mr. Lincoln could not have been
true of him while at Washington, because he had
frequent conversations with the President on these
subjects, and knew him to be in accord with the
fundamental principles of the Christian religion.
He further declared that, in the latter days of his
chastened life, after the death of his son Willie, and
his visit to the battle field of Gettysburg, he said,
with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence
in everything but God, that he believed his heart

Page one hundred fifty-six

was changed, that he loved the Saviour, and that
if he was not deceived in himself, it was his inten-
tion soon to make a profession of religion.

I cannot more fittingly close this address than
by quoting a portion of the remarks made by the
late Secretary of State, Hon. John Hay, as he
stood beside President Roosevelt in the Lincoln pew
in the New York Avenue Presbyterian church at
Washington, on the one hundredth anniversary of
that church, November 16, 1903:

"Whatever is remembered or whatever lost, we
ought never to forget that Abraham Lincoln, one
of the mightiest masters of statecraft that history
has known, was also one of the most devoted and
faithful servants of Almighty God who has ever
sat in the high places of the world. From that
dim and chilly dawn, when, standing on a railway
platform in Springfield, half veiled by falling snow-
flakes, from the crowd of friends and neighbors who
had gathered to wish him Godspeed on his momen-
tous journey, he acknowledged his dependence on
God, and asked for their prayers, to that sorrowful
yet triumphant hour when he went to his account,
he repeated over and over in every form of speech,
his faith and trust in that Almighty Power who

Page one hundred fifty-seven

rules the fate of men and nations * * * I
will ask you to listen to a few sentences in which
Mr. Lincoln admits us into the most secret recesses
of his soul. It is a meditation written in September
1862. Perplexed and afflicted beyond the power
of human help, by the disasters of war, the wrang-
ling of parties, and the inexorable and constraining
logic of his own mind, he shut out the world one
day, and tried to put into form his double sense of
responsibility to human duty and Divine power;
and this was the result. It shows awful sincerity
of a perfectly honest soul trying to bring itself into
closer communion with his Maker.

"The will of God prevails. In great contests
each party claims to act in accordance with the
will of God. Both may be and one must be wrong.
God cannot be for and against the same thing at the
same time. In the present civil war it is quite
possible that God's purpose is something different
from the purpose of either party; and yet the hu-
man instrumentalities, working just as they do, are
of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am
almost ready to say that this is probably true; that
God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not
end yet. By His mere great power on the minds

Page one hundred fifty-eight

of the now contestants, He could have either saved
or destroyed the Union without a human contest.
Yet the contest began, and having begun, He could
give the final victory to either side any day. Yet
the contest proceeds. "

Page one hundred fifty-nine

AT THE COURT HOUSE

Early in the morning the veterans of the Grand
Army of the Republic, Stephenson Post No. 30,
planted an elm tree in the court house square dedi-
cated to the memory of Lincoln which they named,
"The Lincoln Grand Army Elm.,,

At 9 a. m. exercises under the auspices of the
Society of the Sons of the American Revolution
were held, at the court house, for the dedication of
a bronze tablet to mark the site of Mr. Lincoln's
first law office in Springfield. The leading features
of this meeting were the addresses of Judges Cart-
wright and Creighton, which follow, together with
introductory remarks of Col. Charles F. Mills, who
presided at the meeting. The tablet referred to is
inscribed as follows:

Page one hundred sixty

Site of

First

Law Office

of

A. Lincoln

1837—1839

Springfield Chapter

Sons of the

American Revolution,

Page one hundred sixty-one

MAJOR JOHN W. BLACK

Report of Memorial Tablet Committee

The undersigned committee of the Springfield
chapter of the Illinois society of the Sons of the
American Revolution, to whom was assigned the
duty of providing and placing a memorial tablet
for marking the site of the first law office of Abra-
ham Lincoln, desire to report that a suitable bronze
tablet has been secured and placed in position at
109 North Fifth street, Springfield, 111.

The committee beg leave to present in this con-
nection some information concerning the location
of the three law offices occupied by Mr. Lincoln in
Springfield.

Mr. Lincoln's first law partnership was with
Major John T. Stuart, under the firm name of
Stuart & Lincoln, and their office was in Hoffman's
row on the west side of Fifth street, between
Washington and Jefferson streets, and the site
of this building is now 109 North Fifth street,
where the tablet has been placed.

—11 L C

Page one hundred sixty-two

The building was erected in 1835 by Herman L.
Hoffman and was one of a row of four brick build-
ings of two stories, and when built was the most
imposing structure in the city.

The second floor was used by Stuart and Lincoln
as a law office in 1837, 1838 and 1839.

When the state capital was removed from Van-
dalia to Springfield in the winter of 1836, the old
county court house that stood in the public square
was torn down to make room for the new capitol
building, now known as the Sangamon county
building. The ground floor of the Hoffman row
was used for the Sangamon county court for a
term of four years.

After the election of Major John T. Stuart to
Congress, in 1838, Mr. Lincoln formed a partner-
ship with Stephen T. Logan, under the firm name
of Logan & Lincoln, and occupied an office on the
third floor of the old Farmers' National bank
building on the southwest corner of Sixth and
Adams streets.

The United States court over which Judge
Nathaniel Pope then presided as district judge
occupied the second floor of said building.

Page one hundred sixty-three

The firm of Logan & Lincoln was dissolved in
1843 and Mr. Lincoln then formed a partnership
with William F. Herndon, under the firm name of
Lincoln & Herndon, and occupied offices on the
second floor over the store of John Irwin, 103
South Fifth street, which is now the south half of
the Myers Brothers' clothing store.

The partnership of Lincoln & Herndon continued
during Mr. Lincoln's term of office as President and
was only dissolved by the death of Mr. Lincoln
April 15, 1865.

Page one hundred sixty-four

COL. CHARLES F. MILLS

Introducing Judge Cartwright

The Springfield chapter of the Illinois society of
the Sons of the American Revolution has the honor
of having been the first to be organized in this state.

It seems fitting that the opening exercises of the
Centennial Memorial Day should be held by this
patriotic organization in the building where our
citizens and the nation paid its final respect to the
remains of our beloved townsman.

We are assembled this morning as friends and
associates to renew and perpetuate the memories
of Mr. Lincoln as he was best known in Springfield
as a lawyer and as a citizen.

A distinguished representative of the Supreme
Court will present the character of Lincoln as a
lawyer, and a most worthy judge and our fellow
townsman will speak of Mr. Lincoln as a citizen.

It is a great privilege for the Springfield Chapter
of the Sons of the American Revolution to present

Page one hundred sixty-five

Hon. James H. Cartwright, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court of Illinois, who will speak of Lincoln
the Lawyer.

Page one hundred sixty-six

JUDGE CARTWRIGHT

Lincoln, the Lawyer

At the memorial services held in the Supreme
Court of this state soon after the death of Abraham
Lincoln, resolutions of the bar expressive of the
great loss to the profession, were presented by John
D. Caton, a former Chief Justice of the court; and
in adding his words of appreciation he said that
the pleasing task of speaking of Mr. Lincoln as the
chosen ruler of the nation must be left to others;
and while peers sang his praises and orators pro-
claimed his greatness as a public man, it was be-
coming that his professional brethren should speak
of him as a lawyer. Mr. Justice Breese in respond-
ing for the court echoed the sentiment. The years
that have passed since that time have not dimmed
the fame of the great President, but have added
the love, respect and admiration of the southern
people, then embittered by the war which had
destroyed their industrial system, set aside their
social order, and wrought devastation among them.

Page one hundred sixty-seven

That people have long since recognized that he was
their best and truest friend ; and today North and
South hold in the same high esteem the man of
humble birth, noble life and tragic death. The
people today are listening to orators who recount
the events of his life, extol his virtues and proclaim
his greatness in the high office which he filled; and
again it may be said that it becomes us who are
members of the profession which he practiced dur-
ing nearly all the years of his manhood to speak of
him as Lincoln the lawyer.

For nearly thirty years he was a member of the
bar of the Supreme Court and for about a quarter
of a century he was engaged in the active practice
of his profession in that court and the trial court.
He had a natural love of justice and it was his
early ambition to be a lawyer. That ambition was
realized by perseverance in the face of poverty and
many difficulties. His devotion to the law and
reverence for its principles, at that time, were illus-
trated by an address delivered at Springfield, in
1837, in which he exhorted his hearers never to
violate, in the least particular, the laws of the
country and never to tolerate their violation by
others. He believed that respe ct for the law should

Page one hundred sixty-eight

be inculcated among the people, and said "Let
reverence for the law be breathed by every Amer-
ican mother to the lisping babe that prattles on
her lap. Let it be written in primers, spelling
books and almanacs. Let it be preached from the
pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced
in courts of justice. In short, let it become the
political religion of the United States. "

Law books were then few in number but they
contained the fundamental rules under which jus-
tice has been and is administered. Practically his
whole education derived from books was acquired
in the study of the law and that study moulded his
intellect and character and gave color to all his
thoughts. He learned the principles of the law and
his great common sense enabled him to apply them
to different conditions. His ability, integrity and
devotion to law and justice soon won for him an
exalted position at the bar. To have succeeded in
an unworthy cause would have given him neither
pleasure nor pride, and his success was founded,
not upon tricks and devices to defeat the law, but
in truth and honesty in upholding the law as he
understood it.

Page one hundred sixty-nine

He was lured from the practice of law to political
life for a short time, but left Congress in much dis-
satisfaction to resume the profession which he
loved. In the friendly contests of the bar he met
men of great ability and learning who called forth
his greatest efforts; and it was these contests that
developed his growing powers. When he was again
summoned to the political field by what he believed
to be a great wrong, he stepped into the arena fully
equipped by experience at the bar to meet and
overthrow his great antagonist. Victor in that
contest, although lacking the rewards of victory,
he returned to the law office in Springfield and to
the practice of the law. From that office he went
directly to the highest position in the nation and
assumed the greatest burdens ever laid upon the
shoulders of an American citizen. He had then
received an education at the bar such as no uni-
versity could have given him.

He looked upon the crisis which confronted the
nation with the eye and from the standpoint of the
lawyer. His first inaugural address which closed
with the oft-quoted and touching appeal to his
dissatisfied fellow-countrymen was, in its sub-
stance, a legal argument. He said that he had no

Page one hundred seventy

lawful right to interfere with slavery in the states
where it existed, and having no such right he had
no inclination to do so. He recalled the resolution
of the platform on which he had been a candidate
denouncing lawless invasion of state or territory
and declared for the maintenance of the rights of
the states. He quoted the provisions of the con-
stitution as to the delivery of persons held to ser-
vice or labor in one state and escaping to another,
and applied the maxim of the law : " The intention
of the law-giver is the law. " He did not give his
approval to those who refused obedience to laws
enacted in pursuance of the Constitution whether
animated by hatred of what he regarded as a great
wrong and injustice or not.

He argued the indissoluble nature of the compact
between the states both in contemplation of uni-
versal law and the law of contract. It was the
unanswerable argument of a lawyer. He believed
in the justice of the people and asked, " Why should
there not be confidence in the ultimate justice of
the people? Is there any other or equal hope in
the world?"

With the warmest and kindliest human sympa-
thy he combined an unyielding adherence to right

Page one hundred seventy-one

and justice; and in his habit of thought, remained
a lawyer to the end. After four years when he
realized that the decision of the issue might rest
with the Judge of all the Earth and that the judg-
ment might be that all the wealth piled by the
bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil should be
sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash
should be paid with' another drawn with the sword,
yet he could humbly say: " The judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether. "

You have determined to commemorate the life
and character of Mr. Lincoln as a lawyer and have
designed this tablet to be placed at the site of his
first law office. It will be a perpetual memorial
and belongs to a class which the law regards as
public benefactions on account of their tendencies
and the lessons which they teach. Like the build-
ing of churches which inclines the hearts of the
people to morality and religion, the founding of
seats of learning for education, and the establish-
ment of public hospitals, so the statue, the monu-
ment and the memorial to commemorate a great
and worthy life and example serve the highest pub-
lic good by the inspiration which they give to
emulate the life and imitate the example.

Page one hundred seventy-two

This tablet will be a constant reminder of the
great lawyer and President and of the qualities
which endeared him to the people and have made
his name immortal. It will deliver its voiceless but
potent message to the mind and heart, not alone
on this day set apart for celebrating the goodness
and greatness of Mr. Lincoln, but from hour to
hour and day to day in the coming years. The
message and the lesson will not be alone for the
student of history, the philosopher, the statesman
or for those who gather today to listen to their
wisdom, but also to every passer-by. It will in-
spire the boy as his mind and character unfold and
develop from day to day, and inspire him with
higher ideals of life and of the responsibilities of a
citizen. It will teach its lesson to the laboring man
who toils for the support of himself and family and
to all common people into whose rank Mr. Lincoln
was born and from whom he never permitted him-
self to be separated by place or power. It will
stimulate patriotism in all and teach the lesson that
those things which truly exalt an individual are the
old fashioned and homely virtues of honesty, truth
and integrity. By its silent influence it will lead to
emulation of the character, the simple virtues, the

Page one hundred seventy-three

kind heart, obedience to the spirit of the law of the
great lawyer and the great President whom it com-
memorates.

Page one hundred seventy-four

COLONEL MILLS

Introducing Judge Creighton

This occasion is graced with the presence of and
participation of a gentleman who succeeded to the
law business of Mr. Lincoln whose associates and
successors were as follows: Stuart and Lincoln;
Logan and Lincoln ; Herndon and Lincoln ; Herndon
and Zane; Herndon and Orendorff; Orendorff and
Creighton.

I have now the honor of presenting our most
worthy townsman, who has graced the bench of
our county and circuit courts longer than any of
his predecessors, Judge James A. Creighton.

Page one hundred seventy-five

JUDGE CREIGHTON

Lincoln, the Citizen

Mr. President — I thank you and, through you
and the committee, I thank all the Sons and
Daughters of the American Revolution, for the
honor conferred upon me by placing my name on
the program for this occasion.

The announcement made by your president sug-
gests to my mind that but for the fact that the
venerable Judge Zane, so respected and so loved
by all, is unable by reason of the weight of years
to make the long journey from his present home
in Salt Lake City, the place assigned to me would
have been assigned to him; and after Judge Zane
our distinguished fellow-citizen, General Orendorff,
would have received this honor but for the fact
that he is confined to his home by severe illness.

Concerning the subject assigned I want to make
this statement : " Lincoln, the Citizen, " comprises
all there was of Lincoln — all his life, all his labors,
all his achievements. It is apparent that no dis-

Page one hundred seventy-six

cussion in detail within the time here allotted to
this subject could greatly enlighten or entertain an
audience composed almost wholly of Springfield
citizens at so early an hour upon a day so filled
with world-wide interesting exercises as our pro-
gram for this day discloses. No one can recognize
this more than I . I shall detain you but a short
time and hope to keep within the limit of time
allotted me.

This occasion is an epoch-marking occasion —
the celebration of the centennial of the birth of
Lincoln in the city where he spent substantially,
all of his mature life and in the very shadow of the
monument that marks his resting place. More
than a year ago a number of patriotic Lincoln-
loving Springfield citizens begun to plan a Lincoln
centennial celebration that should be something
more than local — a celebration that should be
State-wide, Nation-wide, World-wide in its scope.
They procured the Congress to make Lincoln's
birthday a national holiday; they procured the
General Assembly to create a commission to make
arrangements for the celebration and they organ-
ized and incorporated the Lincoln Centennial as-
sociation. This association is a perpetual associa-

Page one hundred seventy-seven

tion and now consists of five hundred and ten life
members. Its purpose is to be an immortal guard
of honor to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. To-
day in every state of this Union of States, in every
country upon which the sun shines, the centennial
anniversary of the birth of Lincoln is being cele-
brated and in every language that has a literature.

I remember when I was a boy at school I was
assigned to compose and deliver an oration on
Abraham Lincoln. While Judge Cartwright was
speaking the opening sentence of that oration re-
curred to my mind: "If the question were to be
asked 'What one man has engrossed the attention
of the civilized world above all others for the last
seven years?' the answer must be Abraham Lin-
coln. " And today if the question were to be asked,
" What one character is engrossing the attention of
the civilized world above that of all others?" the
answer still must be that of Abraham Lincoln.

I never personally knew Mr. Lincoln. The trag-
edy of his death occurred when I was yet a boy.
But the name of Lincoln was a household word in
my father's home from my earliest recollection.
I shall not go into all the interesting history of why

—12 L C

Page one hundred seteniy-eigU

that was so. I shall simply state a few conclusions
and take it for granted that a Springfield audience
knows all the evidentiary facts.

Soon after I came to full manhood I became a
citizen of Springfield. I came here with a mind
and heart hungry for every scrap of truth that I
could glean concerning any feature of his life. It
was my good fortune to know Major Stuart, his
preceptor and first law-partner; Judge Stephen T.
Logan, his second law-partner and, in a sense, a
preceptor after the lines of whose mind Lincoln
trained his own to think; William H. Herndon, his
partner for the seventeen years that preceded his
election to the Presidency and his nominal partner
during all the years he held that office; Hon. Ninian
Edwards, in whose house Lincoln wooed and won
and wedded ; Captain Kidd, the crier of the court,
who remembered more of the stories that Lincoln
actually did tell than any other man; Judge Ben-
jamin F. Edwards, James C. Conkling, Judge James
H. Matheny, Judge S. H. Treat, Milton Hay, Gov-
ernor Palmer, General McClernand, Col. John
Williams, George Black and many more who have
since gone home — whose names will readily occur
to all of you as personal friends of Mr. Lincoln. All

Page one "hundred seventy-nine

these and many others throughout the city and
country were my personal friends with whom I was
on social terms and, with respect to all that per-
tained to Lincoln, I think on intimate and confi-
dential terms. And of the men who knew Lincoln
— these still living in this community — I have had
the good fortune to know such men as Dr. William
Jayne, John W. Bunn, Senator Cullom, Dr. Pas-
field, Dr. Converse, Clinton L. Conkling, Charles
Ridgley, and many others. I believe I have come
in personal contact with almost every man that has
lived in this city or this county since my coming
here who really ever had any personal acquaintance
with Mr. Lincoln and have talked with them about
him by the hour, by the day — in the aggregate I
believe I might say — by the year. I have gathered
every scrap of available information bearing upon
every feature and act of his life ; and the consensus
of it all is that Abraham Lincoln was in very truth,
in all the petty details of private life as well as in
his public career, a Model Citizen. He was in every
respect and in every true sense of the word a moral
man; he was diligent and painstaking in business;
he was honest; he was kind; he was loyal to his
friends without taint of selfishness; he was just,

Page one hundred eighty

I was about to say, to his enemies — I will say, to
his adversaries — Lincoln had no personal enemies
and he was absolutely devoid of malice. I have
never heard a syllable from any person evidencing
a single instance in the life of Lincoln where he
harbored the least malice. He, a few times, was
observed to become intensely angry when his mo-
tives were impugned and he was not always able
to restrain himself from all exhibition of anger; but
when the heat of passion had subsided, as it always
soon did, there remained no trace of malice. He had
provocation. He was slighted by men who ought
to have been too just to slight him; he was snubbed
by men who ought to have been too great to snub
him; he was betrayed by men who ought to have
been too loyal to betray him; he had provocation
that would have caused the iron to enter the soul
of almost any less perfect than the Son of Man.
You all recall some of these instances and you know
how free from malice his subsequent conduct
proved him to be.

He believed in the Great Jehovah and in the
eternal principles of truth and justice and he acted
up to the full measure of his belief, every day of
his life — in the smallest and most trivial transaction

Page one hundred eigUy-one

as well as in the greatest. I wish to repeat that
he was, in every sense of the term, at every stage
of his life, in very truth a Model Citizen. I know
how impotent and empty mere adjective eulogy is
— how little it really means to say of a man that
he was honest, good, great, wise, unselfish, devoid
of malice and the like to this end — mere adjective
laudation. But in this case, the case of Abraham
Lincoln, the evidence which I have not recounted
in detail is known to you all; and to say these
things (and many more that might be said of him)
does mean something to you. The people of
Springfield, his neighbors in the country villages,
knew Lincoln's worth and valued it before he was
discovered to the Nation and the world.

Page one hundred eighty-two

AT THE HIGH SCHOOL

The High School meeting held on the afternoon
of the 11th was attended by the faculty and stu-
dents of the Springfield High School, Principal L.
M. Castle presiding. The leading feature of this
event was the address of General John W. Noble,
of St. Louis, who served with distinction as a gen-
eral of the Civil War and later served as Secretary
of the Interior under President Harrison. His ad-
dress follows.

Page one hundred eighty-three

GENERAL NOBLE

The Relation of Springfield to Lincoln and the

Character of the United States as

Impersonated in Lincoln

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Pupils of the High
School — I have but little claim to come here on
the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, to speak
regarding him. His praise has been spoken for
almost a half a century, by the most eminent men,
not only in our own country but others, and his
deeds have become a part of the history, not only
of the United States, but of the best chapters of
all history that relates to mankind.

I have put on my breast today, not through any
egotism, the only claim I have to be here, the badge
of the Grand Army of the Republic. I was a soldier
for four years — one of Abraham Lincoln's Union
soldiers. I served in my own regiment, for those
four years, with men who knew him. I knew him.
I served with men that knew that whatever might
happen, in death, in carnage, in victory or defeat,

Page one hundred eighty-four

in advance or retreat, whether this or that general
was good or bad, or that movement was successful
or unsuccessful, there was above us all one heart,
one man, that was the friend of us all, that wanted
our success as he wanted to live, himself, that that
success might be for the benefit of his country and
the world, that loved the soldiers and whom the
soldiers loved, Abraham Lincoln!

And in that sympathy of feeling, born of those
four years, I, when asked by your superintendent
to come here, felt that I might come. I might
speak a word in Springfield, not in addition of
praise — Lincoln needs no praise from me; not to
add anything to history — it has all been written;
but before you young men and women (some of
whom are almost as old as the boys that went with
me into the army in '61, and girls like those we
left behind us when we went into the army, daugh-
ters yourselves, and sons, of the very soldiers, or
the grandchildren of the very soldiers of whom I
have spoken) I might say a word here at Springfield
that would be worth your while to hear.

Springfield ! The center, the capital, of this great
State of Illinois! The song that has just been sung
has touched my heart deeply. " Illinois! Illinois! "

Page one hundred eighty-five

The refrain bears with it memories of mine from
old. I have almost always lived, not in Illinois,
but on the border of Illinois, and coming here to
speak of this great man, Abraham Lincoln, I am
touched when I reflect how sweet those words
would be, were he today to hear them. For if a
man ever lived who appreciated and was grateful
for the support, the kindness, the aid of a people,
Abraham Lincoln was towards the people of Illi-
nois, and of the people of Illinois, most, those of
Springfield.

How did he come to Springfield? You remem-
ber. On a borrowed horse, with a pair of saddle
bags that contained all his earthly goods, how he
left his father on the farm where he had hewed the
rails to inclose a few acres, and arriving at the
store of Mr. Speed, dismounted and talked to him,
and said, "I have come to Springfield to live, "
and Speed says, "What are you going to do?"
" Well, " he said, " I want you to go over with me to
the boarding house, and if this experiment of being
a lawyer is successful, I can pay my board, and if
it is not they will have to wait until I can earn it
some other way, I think. " And Speed said, "Well,
Lincoln, I have a double bed up stairs, go up and

Page one hundred eighty-six

stay with me, and I will go over with you and we
will arrange about your boarding there. It is a
double bed and we can both sleep in the same bed.' '
Lincoln said no more. He took the saddle bags
upstairs and then he came down and said, "Well,
Speed, I've moved!" He had come to Springfield.

Now, who was this man? What had he done?
What attainments had he acquired? A poor boy,
whose bare feet had trod the earth from Kentucky
to Indiana, and who, as he had grown up, con-
ducted his own family and helped move to Illinois,
and had learned the rudiments of an education
hard and more or less imperfectly but had attained
at least to a sufficient acquaintance with the Eng-
lish law and English literature to have read the
Life of Washington, and the Bible, the statutes
of Indiana, and some law books, enough to claim
to be a lawyer!

What and how did he leave Springfield, and
when? He left Springfield the best equipped,
mentally, morally and as a statesman, of any man
that has ever lived in the State of Illinois, or I may
say in the United States.

How did he acquire it? You know it is a fact
that things that last long grow slowly. The great

Page one hundred eighty-seven

productions of the world are those that mature in
long periods of time. He grew slowly. Abraham
Lincoln was no great genius. He did not spring
up and startle the world any more than you would
do. There is nothing in your condition today, my
young friends, that is not superior in all that you
have, in the way of intellectual equipment, to what
Abraham Lincoln had, and you have before you
the same opportunities that he had. There is not
a boy nor a girl within the sound of my voice that
has not all that goes to illuminate the mind, and
more than he had; but there is something else.
There is character.

What is character? Tell me that. It is the
combination of qualities that goes to make a man —
a good man, or a bad man. It is the combination,
and what is the quality? You say, "A combina-
tion of qualities, " what is the quality? A quality
is that which distinguishes one subject from
another. Wood has a quality. Iron has another
quality. A man has a quality of integrity. Another
man has a quality of malice.

Where the character is involved, everything is
at stake, either for good or bad, and this man that
came thus poorly equipped to Springfield had a

Page one hundred eighty-eight

character; and that character was born of the study
at his mother's knee with the Bible, a study of the
Life of Washington and his Farewell Address, a
study of the Declaration of Independence, a knowl-
edge of the men who had navigated the great ship
of state from the days when Washington was Presi-
dent down to the time he came to Springfield.

It was not an exhaustive study, nor need j^ours
be. If you have the character in which you will
imbed that knowledge, then you will so far be like
Lincoln, because there was imbedded there that
patriotism, that knowledge of the institutions of
his country and its history, that led him on to
study, to debate, to take up the questions of inter-
est to the people of this community in which he
lived, to the state, to his county. Not simply to
orate, to talk! He went up and down these streets
we walk today. He stood in that public square.
He had his office at the corner of it. He met his
fellows in every direction. He knew the children
of Springfield. There never was a time when Lin-
coln passed along the street, and a boy or girl spoke
to him that he did not at once stop and speak, to
ask the name, and if he knew father or mother to
speak of them, with a smile that every little girl

Page one hundred eighty-nine

and boy knew was the index of a kind heart, he
either took them in his arms, or walked with them
until they found it necessary to go and leave him.
He took the boys of this town out to the Sangamon
to fish, and lay upon the bank while they enjoyed
a day of recreation. That man who had a family
of his own, whose children were the companions of
the children of his neighbors, was thinking great
thoughts. He was studying to perfect himself.
When he had become a member of Congress,
through the favor and votes of this community, he
had studied and mastered, as he says himself, the
first six books of Euclid — geometry! because this
man was seeking, not for general expansion of
knowledge, not something to talk with, something
to make himself illustrious or noted, but acquiring
those intellectual instruments and tools whereby
he could demonstrate the truth that he believed ex-
isted, just as in Euclid you know you have to dem-
onstrate by accurate and successive problems and
factors the center of truth. Those were years of
study. Those were years of development, not only
of the man but of the soul. Attachment to his
country was growing within him. The Union!
Illinois! Illinois was far away from Washington.

Page one hundred ninety

The Louisiana Purchase, across the Mississippi, and
ranging off to the Pacific, had been acquired. This
great republic was expanding in domain, and its
interests were increasing in magnitude from year
to year, and no man in all the multitudes of its
people saw more clearly than did Abraham Lincoln
the fact that we were coming to be a great people ;
and he had read in the Farewell Address of Wash-
ington that the Union was the Palladium of our
liberty. He had read in that address of Washing-
ton that it was essential to the public safety and
happiness that that Union should be preserved.

Abraham Lincoln never forgot those lessons, and
as he grew, and these questions were more or less
discussed in the legislature, the first thing that he
did at Vandalia, when the State had a tendency to
go in favor of slavery, which was then authorized
by law, was to file a dissenting protest against the
vote. He and Mr. Story, the only two men, said:
" In our judgment slavery is both an act of injustice
and bad policy. M

How did he acquire that concientiousncss, that
audacity, that courage? He had that from con-
tact with these people whom he met, day after day,
on the broad wind-swept prairies where freedom

Page one "hundred ninety-one

was in the air; and he had seen slavery in the south.
He had seen a yellow girl pinched and moved about
as a chattel, whether she would bring more or less,
and he had said to himself, "I hate that thing!"
"I hate that thing!" And when Illinois was
speaking on that subject, he said " It is unjust and
it is impolitic." He was studying Euclid. He
was studying the history of his country. He was
studying the politics of the day. He was talking
with his neighbors here in Springfield, and there
was a law, you know, whereby slavery had been
excluded from any state that might be formed
north of the line 36°30", which is the southern
boundary of Missouri almost, and Missouri is my
state now.

I speak not invidiously. I am not raising up
old fires. I am talking about the growth of a great
man; and unless I say what was done, and why it
was done, it is useless to say it. That line having
been acted upon, and Missouri induced into the
Union, in course of time another of your citizens,
a great man intellectually, Stephen A. Douglas,
whom your fathers and grandfathers, many of them,
admired very much and stood by, was instrumental
in having that line removed by an act of Congress,

rage one hundred ninety-two

and that limitation, which was the term of the
treaty by which the state of Missouri had come into
the Union, having got Missouri in, on the question
of Kansas and Nebraska was removed, so that
slavery might not be confined to the south but
could come north.

There followed on that the Dred Scott Decision
which held substantially — I will not go into that
in its refinement — as it was then interpreted, that
the institution of slavery could go into any terri-
tory, and, indeed, if carried to its limit, any state.

Now this man, here in Springfield, who had been
to Congress and had come back, who had offered
in Congress a bill declaring for the emancipation
of the slaves in the District of Columbia, which did
not receive the consideration of Congress, who had
inscribed that early paper with his own signature
against that institution, saw his country, our coun-
try, about to be invaded with this thing that he had
called unjust and impolitic. He put on his intel-
lectual armor. He stood up for the right, and he
challenged Mr. Douglas at your town. He de-
bated with him from city to city. Twice he fol-
lowed him when there was no appointment, and
seven times he followed him when there was an

Page one hundred ninety-three

appointment, and met him in debate upon the
right of slavery to be national, claiming that free-
dom was national and not slavery, and that it
must be so decided, ultimately.

He did not resist the decision that had been made.
He did not endeavor to raise any insurrection, but
he simply demonstrated to his fellow citizens,
when he was in the forum, that the right thing to
do was to support freedom. And so far from being
led to anything like revolt, he seized the idea of
the Union as he had studied it and learned it from
Washington, as the central fact, that the Union
must be preserved. Even if he were elected Pres-
ident, no matter what might occur, the Union of
these states was the Palladium, as Washington had
said.

"What! Can slavery go on?" "Yes," he an-
swered. " Shall slavery perish? " " Yes " he said,
"if necessary," and as President of the United
States, he went forth with but one declaration
before the people of our country, and that was the
supremacy of the Constitution and the necessity of
the Union.

What did he owe to Springfield when he went
there? I will not undertake, myself, to repeat what

—13 L c

Page one hundred ninety-four

he said. I will read it to you. He had come with
Mr. Speed and stayed with him, and grown to be
this man, and when he left Springfield to be Presi-
dent of the United States he said:

"To this place (that is, Springfield,) and the
kindness of this people I owe everything. Here I
have lived a quarter of a century and have passed
from a young to an old man. Here my children
were born and one lies buried. I leave now, not
knowing when or whether ever I may return. With
a task before me greater than that which rested
on the shoulders of Washington, without the aid
of that Divine Being who ever aided him, who
controls mine and our destinies, I cannot succeed.
With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in
Him who can go with me and remain with you, and
be every where for good, let us confidently hope
that all will yet be well. To His care commending
you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend
me, I bid you, friends and neighbors, an affection-
ate farewell."

Every heart, on this day, this Centennial of the
birth of Abraham Lincoln, should be warm towards

Page one hundred ninety-five

him whose name should be exalted, both for the
judgment of his counsels and for the glory of his
name to Springfield.

If Lincoln were to look down this day upon this
whole bright realm, our country, could his eye see,
or his immortal spirit be touched by our sympathy,
or heart be moved by mortal affection, it would be
upon Springfield, he would look with eyes filled
with tears. " Illinois ! " " Illinois ! "

Here had the man come, from rail splitting, with
bare feet on the ground, bringing his humble equip-
ment, on the borrowed horse. Here he had dwelt
for 25 years — "a quarter of a century" as he said.
Here the "something" had been done, in the devel-
opment of character.

The demand that slavery should be national and
that freedom should be confined to a particular
section, did not end when he was elected President.
He had advocated freedom for the nation. He had
submitted it to the jury of his countrymen and
the verdict had been in his favor. The judgment
was entered, when he took the oath of office as
President of the United States, that this Union
should not be dissolved. But it is one thing to
render judgment. It is another to enforce it. Then

Page one hundred ninety-six

came the execution of that judgment. "Shall it
be so or shall a portion of those that ought to obey
the law resist it successfully?"

I don't know how familiar you are with the bat-
tles of the war. I don't know whether you recog-
nize how many men died to make that verdict
final and that judgment obeyed.

Vicksburg, Antietam, Gettysburg, The Wilder-
ness, Cold Harbor, Spottsylvania! Each one of
them mounted up in death losses to tens and twen-
ties of thousands killed and wounded. That had
to be done and the character that had to do it was
the character of Abraham Lincoln.

He did not cease in his war for the Union. He
never hesitated. Judge Usher, who was his Sec-
retary of the Interior a portion of the time, says
that from the beginning to the end of the war there
never was a moment that Abraham Lincoln had
the least doubt about the successful result for our
country. He never allowed a compromise of prin-
ciple.

When, after his election, there were conferences
whereby they could accomodate matters so that
there would be no war, lie wrote, and he declared
and advised, that there be no compromise. "What

Page one hundred ninety-seven

we have gained for freedom, we will maintain.
The Union must be preserved. No separation, no
disintegration, of this great government of ours.
No man is my friend who wants, now, to quit, and
give up what we have gained, for the reason that
it will all have to be done over again. We have
won for the Union. If we give up it will have to
be done again. Don't do it ! We may as well meet
the issue now, as ever. "

The hosts of the south were, at the beginning,
successful. I have no hostility in my heart against
the southern man, now, although I was a soldier,
and he tried to kill me and I tried to put him out of
the fight.

Henry Ward Beecher was in England, trying to
get some sympathy for the United States, in its
great fight, and told them we were going to be
successful that they better land on our side, and
it would be better just on those principles, whether
they were in favor of freedom or slavery. They
hooted and cried out against him, and would not
listen. Hoots and cat-calls mingled with fife and
horn. Finally, a man called, out of a box, "If
you can whip them, why haven't you done it be-
fore? "

Page one hundred ninety-eight

Dr. Beecher said, "Now, then, Englishmen,
since fair play is a jewel, I claim the right to answer
that man. "

It was in Exeter Hall, at a great meeting there.
The English nation always voices a sentiment for
"fair play, " you know.

He said, "You asked me why if we can whip
them, we haven't whipped them before," He
went on "I will tell you why, my friend. It is
because we are fighting Americans, and not Brit-
ish."

He had that fight to make and he made it. Here
is slavery; here is the independence of the United
States, its character of independence, its character
for justice, its Declaration of Independence in the
Constitution, that every man is entitled to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and here is
the man who has come to the foremost place, to
assert these concrete propositions!

There was slavery, yes. There was slavery when
Washington was President, and had the Constitu-
tion made as it was made. There was slavery
through all the years down to the time of Lincoln.
The character of Washington, of Hamilton, of
John Marshal] the Chief Justice, had interpreted

Page one hundred ninety-nine

the Constitution of the United States so as to make
it effective, with Daniel Webster, who demon-
strated the great proposition that ended in these
glorious words, " Liberty and Union, now and for-
ever, one and inseparable." They had all done
that in the presence of a Constitution that, as Mr.
Lincoln said, in his debate with Douglas, gave the
power to one man, under the law, to eat the bread
that another man had earned.

Now, Mr. Lincoln did not want to raise that
question. He wanted the Union, and he knew
that if the Union of these states was preserved,
as he said, "A house divided against itself cannot
stand." "It cannot be half free and half slave.
It will be ultimately all one or all the other. " He
knew and he believed that if the Union was pre-
served and grew as it was growing, it would make
freedom ultimately. He did not say that; he held
that. Battle after battle was lost, the people
were almost dismayed, but men kept coming, with
the old song, "We're coming Father Abraham,
three hundred thousand more, " swelling the ranks
of the army until, before the war was over, and this
great struggle for liberty concluded, there had
been three million mustered on the Union side.

Page two hundred

There was the difficulty. He said, "I do not
want to destroy this thing of slavery without
compensation. Let me pay you four hundred
million dollars. It is costing millions of dollars
a day to carry on the war. Take this money
that would be spent in war, and stand with the
Union, and let your slaves go free. A house
divided against itself cannot stand. I want it
to stand; it must stand. Give up your peculiar
institution." No. The vote in the House of
Representatives was against it. No more eloquent
passages were ever written by Abraham Lincoln,
than in his message recommending compensated
emancipation.

I often wonder, when we read the Gettysburg
address, and the second inaugural address, and
the conclusion of the first inaugural address and
the letter to Mrs. Bixby, with which you are all
familiar — I often wonder that there is not read
with them the conclusion of that message to Con-
gress on the first of December, 1862, after the
first emancipation proclamation had been issued
on September 22d — I often wonder that the pas-
sage commencing "We cannot escape from this

Page two hundred one

thing, " is not put alongside of them as one of the
most expressive and eloquent expressions that Mr.
Lincoln ever used.

The battle of Antietam occured after Mr. Lin-
coln had written the Emancipation Proclamation.
He had it put away. He was afraid that if he
sent forth that proclamation when we were in
defeat the world would say, "Oh, that is a des-
perate ruse of a man that has no other resources.
You are striking blindly. " He would not do that.
The son of the old pioneer, the grandson of one
who had fallen in the wilderness with the shot
of an Indian, the boy who was born in Kentucky
and had lived in this great state, was a man of
infinite courage. He would not do an act of any
kind, even an act setting free the slave, from an
idea of weakness. He said to the ministers that
came to him from Chicago, and wanted to issue
the proclamation before it was ready, "I do not
want to issue a bull, like the Pope against a comet.
I cannot stop that. I can scarcely enforce the
Constitution. I am trying to do that. Why do
you want me to do this other? " He waited until
after the battle of Antietam, when General Lee
came north and invaded the state of Maryland.

Page two hundred two

Then there was victory for the United States.
What did the victory cost? Fourteen thousand
men on their side and twelve thousand men on
our side killed and wounded. It was fought on
Friday. On Saturday it was uncertain for a while
whether we had gained the victory or lost the
battle. On Sunday Mr. Lincoln knew that it was
a victory; and as he said, "I brushed up my
proclamation and on Monday I let them have it. "

At last the thunderbolt was thrown! That
which was to destroy the institution and make
perfect the character of the United States! Jus-
tice! Freedom! Not only for the slave, but for
all the world, because that thought, thus expressed
and thus embodied, became a part of our Con-
stitution, that slavery or involuntary servitude,
except for crime, whereof the party has been duly
convicted, shall not exist in the United States or
any place within their jurisdiction.

Now thus this Illinois man, that had borne
this mighty weight of battle, even of defeat in the
field, of strenuous days, for four years rounded
out and perfected the character of the United

Page two hundred three

States, as truly just and truly statesmanlike and
politic, and embodied it in the Constitution of
the United States.

So I say, the character of these United States,
being of these lineaments and qualities which I
have endeavored to portray, were impersonated
in this man.

What has been done for us? I bore my little
part in that Grand Army, with your father, and
your grandfather. I helped a little, but I received,
and have received, from that day to this, untold
blessings, in my country's career. What is our
country now? Is it dissevered? Is it disorgan-
ized? Is it weak? Look to that fleet now coming
home across the broad sea, in three columns, like
the tines in Neptune's trident. It has been around
the world with our country's flag. Would we
have had that, had not Lincoln stood up for the
Union, had the man not been for the Union, had
the Union not been preserved? I think not.

Listen to that tall shaft that on the Republic,
in danger, sent out the summons of peril, to harbor
and town and vacant ocean, to vessels that has-
tened to the rescue. You can see Lincoln standing
there for the Union like that great electric shaft,

Page two hundred four

and you can hear the throb in distant household
and park and altar and field, and the tapping of
that mysterious sympathy that united a great
people in a great struggle. They hastened to the
support of his great effort to save our Union, as
the vessels went to the rescue of the Republic.
Bless you! I think so. And I think that as
mankind is in sympathy everywhere with those
who rescue from death and the grave in the ocean,
so our people are in sympathy with the spirit of
our great republic, and realize that there was a
redemption, a life-saving act of this great man,
and that we owe him what he gave us, — integrity.
My young friends, integrity, honesty, in all of the
relations of life. Abraham Lincoln paid a debt
of a few dollars years after it was due because
he could not pay it when it was due. He walked
miles to return to a woman the change she had
given him over the amount she ought to have paid
him, in his store. He went to his store one morn-
ing, and found he had sold a parcel of tea to a
young woman and had put a weight in the scales,
so it measured lighter than he had supposed. He
took that much tea, that she had paid for and
not received, and carried it to her.

Page two hundred five

He carried the dollars due from him as post-
master of New Salem, for years, until the govern-
ment sent a balance sheet to him, and then he
said (he was then a lawyer, I believe) "Yes, I
have put it here on the shelf somewhere." He
had taken the money due the government and
put it in an old sack, and kept it for years, until
the government called for it, then handed it over.
He had integrity, not alone in great things, that
all the world knows about, but in the little things
that we encounter when no one is looking.

It has been said that a man of true courage
will perform an act of valor when he is alone
just as readily as when he is in the eye of millions
of people. A man of integrity will do acts of
honesty when no man knows it, when it is in the
smallest of matters, because it is not the praise
of the act that makes the man. It is that charac-
ter that is within him.

Self reliance! You will need that, my young
friends. There is nothing you will find more irk-
some at times than to make up your minds.
Lincoln was a man that never asked advice as
to what he should do, after he had determined
upon it. He listened. He was a man that

Page two hundred six

touched life, as I have endeavored to express,
as a wireless telegraph, to every corner about him.
He knew more about the political situation of a
state, or a city, or community, than anybody,
because he was in tune with it. When he had
made up his purpose he was as immutable and
immovable as a rock.

When disasters were falling upon the army,
when this battle and that was being lost, when
men discontented were almost shrieking out, when
Horace Greeley, his old friend, was criticising him,
he would have been moved if he ever was.

Independence! He earned his living. Every
dollar that he ever spent, he earned.

Truthfulness ! He had a scorn for anything but
the absolute truth in regard to every matter.

I could go on and enumerate and illustrate his
qualities. You know them. You have read them.
My thought is to you today, " Be like him. " Our
public schools have given you great advantages.

It was my privilege, while I was in the govern-
ment employ, to have the public schools in charge,
and it has always been a matter of great consola-
tion and gratitude to me that you have twenty
per cent of our pupils in the high schools.

Page two hundred seven

Now then, a word about the future and I will
close. You have the future in your control. If
you will exercise the qualities that he developed t
and give to your country the character that it
now has, and keep it so, you need not fear any
sudden shock. You will carry with you the
weapons to meet the emergencies of the future.
If the call of battle summons, you girls will see
your brothers and husbands go, as you men your-
selves will go, at the call of duty; and you will
have the same courageous determination to per-
form the daily task that is before you that Lincoln
had; and with that will be achieved that morality
which Lincoln in his first inaugural address dem-
onstrated we must preserve.

I thank you for your kind attention. I have a
deep sympathy with you. I am proud that I have
been given the opportunity by your instructors
to be here; and if in this feeble address I have
been able to aid you to a single thought that will
better your lives and help our country, I shall
be most grateful.

Page two hundred eight

AT THE LINCOLN HOME

In the afternoon a reception was held at the
Lincoln Home by the Daughters of the American
Revolution, at which addresses were made by Mrs.
Donald McLean of New York and Mrs. E. S.
Walker of Springfield, and by Ambassadors Jus-
serand and Bryce. From the Lincoln Home the
assemblage repaired to the rooms of the Young
Men's Christian association where a banquet was
spread under the management of the Daughters
of the Revolution at which addresses were made
by Mrs. E. S. Walker, Mrs. William J. Bryan,
Mrs. Matthew T. Scott, Mrs. Jessie Palmer Weber,
Mrs. Chas. V. Hickox, Mrs. Donald McLean and
others.

This reception and banquet were largely attended
by ladies from neighboring cities and states and
both met the highest hopes of the managers.

Page two hundred nine

AT THE HISTORICAL LIBRARY

On the evening of the 11th a reception was
held at the rooms of the State Historical Library
at the Capitol. Among the guests that thronged
the rooms were a number of persons who knew
Mr. Lincoln well before his election to the Presi-
dency. The meeting was quite informal, the ad-
dresses extemporaneous and largely reminiscent
in character. Hon. Reddick Ridgely presided
and brief talks were made by J. McCan Davis;
B. F. Shaw, Dixon; Paul Selby, Chicago; W. T.
Norton, Alton; W. M. T. Baker, Bolivia; H. W.
Clendenin and T. J. Crowder.

—14 L C

Page two hundred ten

AT THE EXECUTIVE MANSION

At 10 a. m., before their visit to the monument,
the guests of the Commission called at the Execu-
tive Mansion where they were received by
Governor and Mrs. Deneen. Among the number
were Hon. Robert T. Lincoln; Ambassadors
Jusserand and Bryce; Senator Dolliver; Hon.
Wm. J. Bryan; Judge Seaman, Milwaukee; Judge
Anderson, Indianapolis; Judges Landis and
Grosscup, Chicago; Judges Klein and Robinson,
St. Louis; General Noble, St. Louis; Honorables
James S. Harlan, William Phillips, C. H. But-
ler, andW. B. Ridgely, Washington; Dr. Edmund
J. James, Champaign ; Messrs. E. A. Briggs, J. W.
Harm and Paul Selby, Chicago; and Hon. B. F.
Shaw, Dixon.

Page two hundred eleven

AT THE TOMB

Early in the day the veterans of the Grand
Army of the Republic, whose names appear in
another part of this volume, marched to the Lin-
coln Monument at Oak Ridge, accompanied by
a military band, pitched their tents, built a camp-
fire, and served as a Guard of Honor during the
day. Many visitors, singly and in groups, found
their way to the Monument in the course of the
day.

Just before noon the guests of the Commission
together with the State and city officials, Justices
of the Supreme Court, members of the State Com-
mission and of the Centennial association and
many citizens of Springfield, visited the tomb of
Lincoln. There were no ceremonies of any kind
during this visit. With bowed heads, uncovered
the visitors approached the tomb, paid their silent
tribute to the memory of the honored dead and
returned to their carriages.

Page two hundred twelve

A section of artillery of the State National
Guard fired the Presidential Salute of twenty-one
guns as the visitors left the cemetery.

Page two hundred thirteen

AT THE ILLINI COUNTRY CLUB

An informal luncheon was served the guests
of the Commission on their return from the Monu-
ment at 12:30, by the Illini Country club. No
addresses were made and the guests immediately
after the conclusion of the luncheon, repaired to
the Tabernacle for the afternoon exercises.

Page two hundred fourteen

THE VETERAN GUARD OF HONOR

Stephenson Post No. 30, G. A. R.

James A. Connolly, Post Commander
H. A. Saunders, Post Adjutant

D. C. Brinkerhoff
Jacob Smith

A. E. Saunders
Albert Brown

B. R. Hieronymus
J. O. Sims

H. Rahman
John Underfanger
A. S. Steelman
J. W. McCune
Charles Elkin

D. F. Brewer
Robert Elliott
Joseph DeFrietas
T. N. Deerweester
G. K. Greening

J. M. Stephenson
William Nodine
M. H. Cotton
Chas. Schuppel

E. P. Bartlett
W. B. Hankins
N. W. Dobbins
R. E. Strode
J. D. Eifert
John Young

F. J I. Bruce

p. b. womack
Phillip Hoffman
C C Cruser
N. A. Van Nattan
R. W. Ewing
T. J. Corwine
Herman Hofferkamp
John R. Campbell
James H. Fields
R. H. Easley
H. B. Davidson
W. H. Newlin
Wm. E. Edwards
Fred Smith
Jacob Reeves
Edward Broecker
Joseph Birt
John F. Fagan
J. F. Pogue
Z. T. Starkey
Thos. Solomon
W. H. Sammons
A. L. Browne
Edward S. Johnson
J. S. Thompson
H. W. Rokker

Page two hundred fifteen

The Veteran Guard of Honor — Concluded
Mendell Post No. 450 G. A. R.

John C. Bell, Post Commander
Samuel D. Scholes, Post Adjutant

J. M. Rippey
John G. Roberts
M. O'Connor
Alfred Titus

J. L. Wilcox
Bryan W. Nicholl
W. H. Hayden
Wilson Duggan

Other Posts, G. A. R.

J. W. Wood
J. E. Green
s. p. mooney
August Hacke
Robert Woods
Nicholas Kaslick
Geo. Ludlam
H. T. Richardson
T. A. Stewart
S. Hollingsworth
H. F. Burton
J. S. Piatt
A. B. Leeper
Daniel Van Nattan
W. M. Haines

M. Matthews
J. P. Sarver
Jacob Milslagle
Joseph W. King
N. N. Coons
D. C. Avery
A. Wyant
George Westbrook
A. F. Weaver
Charles Waters
A. S. Capps
J. M. Sutton
C. Cushman
T. D. Shepard
John N. Nichols

Page two hundred sixteen

THE LLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMIS-
SION

James A. Connolly, Chairman

John W. Bunn, Vice Chairman

Edward D. Keys, Secretary

Ben F. Caldwell Shelby M. Cullom

Edwin L. Chapin James A. Creighton

William Jayne J Otis Humphrey

Alfred Orendorff Nicholas Roberts

James A. Rose Edgar S. Scott

Lawrence Y. Sherman Philip Barton Warren

Page two hundred seventeen

LINCOLN CENTENNIAL ASSOCIATION

J Otis Humphrey, President

John W. Bunn, Vice President

Philip Barton Warren, Secretary

J. H. Holbrook, Treasurer

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

John W. Bunn
Ben F. Caldwell
E. L. Chapin
James A. Connolly
James A. Creighton
Shelby M. Cullom
J Otis Humphrey
Charles S. Deneen
E. A. Hall
J. H. Holbrook
Wm. B. Jess
Jno. M. Kimble

Lewis H. Miner
Roy R. Reece
Loren E. Wheeler
William Jayne
Edward D. Keys
Alfred Orendorff
Nicholas Roberts
James A. Rose
Edgar S. Scott
L. Y. Sherman
Philip Barton Warren

FINANCE AND MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE

John W. Bunn, Chairman
Latham T. Souther, Secretary

Nicholas Roberts
John C. Pierik
James H. Paddock

W. F. Workman
James A. Easley

Page two hundred eighteen

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued

PUBLICITY COMMITTEE

James A. Rose, Chairman
J. R. B. Van Cleave, Secretary

Henry M. Merriam A. L. Bowen

Thomas Rees John W. Scott

TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE

William B. Ridgely, Chairman
Edgar S. Scott, Secretary

Logan Hay John D. Marney

BANQUET COMMITTEE

Phillip Barton Warren, Chairman
Geo. B. Stadden, Secretary

John McCreery Walter McClellan Allen

COMMITTEE ON MUSIC

E. L. Chapin, Chairman

Albert Guest Clark B. Shipp

R. C. Brown

ARMORY DECORATION COMMITTEE

Geo. B. Helmle, Chairman

Henry Abels H. D. Swirles

Tiios. W. Scott

Page two hundred nineteen

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued

STREET DECORATION COMMITTEE

Henry Dirksen, Chairman

Edward W. Payne H. T. Willet

Louis H. Myers Walter Van Duyn

R. E. Hatcher H. L. Ide

Charles Bressmer Charles H. Robinson

Fred Buck

LOCAL TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE

Emil G. Schmidt Emanuel Salzenstein

B. R. Stephens G. J. Little

COMMITTEE ON SPEAKERS

J Otis Humphrey Charles S. Deneen

Shelby M. Cullom

COMMITTEE ON PRINTING AND SOUVENIRS

J. R. B. Van Cleave James W. Jefferson

James H. Paddock

COMMITTEE ON CEREMONIES

James A. Rose J. H. Collins

Francis G. Blair

Page two hundred twenty

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued
Out-of-Town Life Members

Armour, J. Ogden, Chicago
Armsby, Geo. N., San Fran-
cisco
Arthurs, W. C, Mt. Vernon
Aymar, Jno. W., New York
Ball, John, Farmersville
Bartlett, A. C, Chicago
Baxter, Ed. A., Pawnee
Beall, Wm. G., Chicago
Beggs, Edwin C, Ashland
Bennett, Wm. W., Rockford
Bethea, S. H., DLxon
Blodgett, W. H., St. Louis
Bogardus, Charles, Paxton
Briggs, Asa G., St. Paul
Brown, W. B., New Berlin
Brown, Everett J., Decatur
Brown, W. L., Chicago
Brown, Charles G., Divernon
Bullard, W. S., Mechanics-
burg
Burgett, Scott, Newman
Caldwell, Ben F., Chatham
Carriel, H. B., Jacksonville
Cheney, J. H., Bloomington
Chytraus, Axel, Chicago
Crafts, C. E., Chicago
Craig, Jas. W., Mattoon
Curry, J. Seymour, Chicago
Crea, H., Decatur
Deal, John, Hiverton
Denton, E. P., Hamilton
Dunn, Frank K., Charleston
Farmer, W. M., Vandalia
Ferns, Thos. F., Jersey ville
Fetzcr, Win., Middletown, O.
Francis, D. R., St. Louis
Freeland, Jno. A., Bethany
J ■iml:, LaFayette, Blooming-
ton

Garische, F. A., Madison
Garvey, Henry C, Buffalo
Gibson, Jas. F., Carthage
Gill, Jas. A., Vinita, Okla.
Gorin, O. B., Decatur
Grant, Walter J., Danville
Grosscup, P. S., Chicago
Halbert, W. U., Belleville
Hamill, E. A., Chicago
Hand, Jno. P., Cambridge
Harahan, J. T., Chicago
Harris, Geo. B., Chicago
Henry, Edward U., Peoria
Higbee, Harry, Pittsfield
Hitt, J. Brown, New Berlin
Holdom, Jesse, Chicago
Hough,Warwick M., St. Louis
Hurt, John S., Buffalo Hart
James, Edmund J., Cham-
paign
Jewell, W. R., Danville
Johnston, Milton, Decatur
Kent, P. J., Lanesville
Kerrick, Thos. C, Blooming-
ton
Leonard, E. F., Amherst,

Mass.
Lillard, Jno. T., Bloomington
Lindley, Frank, Danville
Little, Jno. S., Rushville
Lovett, Robert H., Peoria
Lowden, Frank O., Chicago
Lowry, W. W., Auburn
Lucas, J. A., Lincoln
Lyon, J. M., Pontiac
Maguiro, J. B., E. St. Louis
Matthirsscn, F. W., LaSalle
McDaniel, Oliver, Buffalo
McDonald, E. S., Decatur
McEwen, Willard M., Chicago

Page two hundred twenty-one

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued
Out-of-Town Life Members — Concluded

McNeil, J. F., Oskaloosa, la.
Mills, R. W., Virginia
Mitchell, Wm. H., Chicago
Moloney, M. T., Ottawa
Morris, Edward, Chicago
Morris, Edward H., Chicago
Musser, Charles, Pearl City
Nash, O. S., Sharpsburg
Neidringhaus, R. E., Granite

City
Nelson, John, Donovan
Oglesby, J. D. G., Elkhart
Orear, T. B., Jacksonville
Parker, Edward J., Quincy
Parsons, George, Cairo
Pinckney, I. C, Peoria
Prather, J. F., Williamsville
Prather, Jno. W., Williams-
ville
Ramsey, F. E., Morrison
Rankin, Geo. C, Washing-
ton, D. C.
Regan, J. F., Mt. Sterling
Rew, Robert, Rockford
Ridgely, Wm. Barrett, Wash-
ington, D. C.

Rinaker, John L, Carlinville
Roberts, James, Chicago
Scott, A. R., Bethany
Seipp, W. C, Chicago
Shepherd, Thos. A., Pawnee
Shirley, Robert B., Carlin-
ville
Shriver, J. H., Virden
Simonson, S. E., Luxora,

Ark.
Small, Len, Kankakee
Smith, Bryon L., Chicago
Smith, Geo. W., Carbondale
Smith, Orson, Chicago
Smith, W. W., Joliet
Tuttle, I. R., Harrisburg
Twist, Ira F., Taylorville
Warfield, W. S., Quincy
Watts, John L., Danville
Weir, Miller, Jacksonville
Whitcomb, H. F., Milwaukee
Wilms, Fred, Quincy
Willson, Howard T., Virden
Winston, B. C, St. Louis
Yantis, J. W., Shelby ville
Zoline, Elijah N., Chicago

Springfield Life Members

Abels, Henry
Adams, Alfred
Addleman, O. G.
Allen, Walter McC.
Anderson, Jas. H.
Ansell, Oscar
Appel, Jacob M.
Armstrong, W. P.
Babcock, O. B.
Bacchus. L. L.

Bahr, Raymond V.
Ball, Richard
Barber, John A.
Barker, H. E.
Barker, S. A.
Barkley, James H.
Barnes, A. J.
Barnes, Edgar S.
Barry, W. B.
Bates, Geo. A.

Page two hundred txcenty-two

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued
Springfield Life Members — Continued

Becker, Geo. H.
Berry, R. L.
Bisch, Chas. T.
Bisch, Harold P.
Black, John W.
Blackstock, Ira B.
Blair, F. G.
Blankemeyer, H. C.
Bode, Frank H.
Booth, Alfred
Bowcock, C. M.
Bowen A. L.
Bradford, Wm. A.
Brainerd, Jas. L.
Bressmer, Charles
Bressmer, John
Bretz, John E.
Bretz, John F.
Brinkerhoff, Geo. M., Sr.
Brinkerhoff, Geo. M., Jr.
Brinkerhoff, John H.
Broadwell, Stuart
Brown, Milton Hay
Brown, Owsley
Brown, R. C.
Brown, Stuart
Bruce, W. H.
Buck, Fred
Bunker, Wm. A. M.
Bunn, Geo. W.
Bunn, Henry
Bunn, Jacob
Bunn, John W.
Bunn, Joseph F.
Bunn, Willard
Burke, Edmund
Burnett, B. T.
Burns, Win. G.
Butler. W. J.
Cadwallader, J. F.

Carroll, C. C.
Castle, Stanley
Chapin, E. L.
Chatterton, G. W., Sr.
Child, Henry L.
Coe, George E.
Coe, Louis J.
Cole, Nathan
Coleman, L. H.
Coleman, Logan
Coleman, Louis G.
Collins, J. H.
Conkling, Clinton L.
Conkling, Wm. H.
Connelly, Geo. S.
Connolly, James A.
Converse, A. L.
Converse, H. A.
Converse, W. O.
Condell, Thomas
Condon, T. J.
Conway, W. H.
Cook, J. L.
Cook, John C.
Creighton, James A.
Crook, A. N. J.
Cullom, Shelby M.
Danner, L. A.
Davidson, Gaylord
Davis, Henry
Davis, J. McCan
Day, Geo. Edward
Deal, Don
Deneen, Charles S.
DeRosset, F. A.
Dcsnoyers, V. E.
Desnoyers, W. L.
DeVares, D. A.
Dillcr, Isaac R.
Diller, J. W.

Page two hundred twenty-three

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued
Springfield Life Members — Continued

Dirksen, Henry A.
Dodds, J. C.
Dodds, R. N.
Dorwin, H. F.
Dorwin, Shelby C.
Dowling, James E.
Drennan, B. F.
Dubois, Lincoln
Dunlop, Geo. C.
Dunn, E. J.
Easley, James A.
Easley, R. H.
Edward, A. W.
Edwards, A. S.
Egan, Richard
Elshoff, Anton
Farris, Joseph
Feaster, C. W.
Fisher, Frank R.
Fiske, C. A.
Fitzgerald, A. M.
Fogarty, J. G.
Fortado, Jno. L.
Franz, John B.
Frazee, C. A.
Frederick, D. C.
Furlong, James.
Garber, M. B.
George, G. J.
Giblin, C. J.
Gillespie, George B.
Godley, Frank
Graham, Hugh J.
Graham, James M.
Guest, R. A.
Haas, R.
Hagler, A. Lee
Hagler, Elmer E.
Halderman, Nathan
Hail, E. A.

Hall, James A.
Hamilton, Wathen
Hanes, S. J.
Hankins, W. B.
Hartman, Edw. F.
Hatch, F. L.
Hatch, Pascal E.
Hatcher, R. E.
Hay, Charles E.
Hay, Logan
Hazell, E. F.
Helmle, Ernest H.
Helmle, George B.
Helper, J. C.
Hemmick, J. E.
Herndon, R. F.
Hickey, Rev. T.
Hickox, G. C.
Hicks, Howard T.
Hieronymus, B. R.
Hoff, Alonzo
Holbrook, J. H.
Howard, W. M.
Hudson, J. L.
Hudson, Ridgely
Hughes, Arthur F.
Humphrey, J Otis
Humphrey, Otis S.
Hunn, R. G.
Hurst, Charles H.
Ide, H. L.
Ide, Roy
Irwin, Edwin F.
Irwin, Horace C.
James, A. C.
Jamison, F. R.
Jayne, William .
Jefferson, James W.
Jefferson, Roy T.
Jess, Wm. B.

Page two hundred twenty-four

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued
Springfield Life Members — Continued

Johnson, Edward S.
Jones, James A.
Jones, James T.
Jones, M. A.
Jones, Nicholas R.
Jones, S. T.
Kane, Charles P.
Keys, Alvin S.
Keys, Edward D.
Keys, Edward L.
Keys, George E.
Kimble, John M.
Kinsella, R. F.
Kirlin, Ben M.
Klaholt, Carl
Knudson, Benjamin
Kreider, Geo. N.
Lange, B. A.
Latham, Geo. C.
Latham, Henry C.
Legg, F. M.
Leland, J. A.
Lewis, Warren E.
Little, G. J.
Lloyd, G. L.
Lloyd, John H.
Logan, Rev. T. D.
Lomelino, E. F.
Long, Fred W.
Loper, Harry T.
Lord, J. S.
Lubbe, Henry B.
Luby, T. P.
Lutz, John.
Lyon, T. E.
Mackie, A. D.
Macphenon, A. B.
Macphenon, J. F.
Rfalaaner, John
Margrave, James M.

Marlowe, William
Marney, J. D.
Masters, H. W.
Matheny, Robert
Matheny, J. H.
Maurer, A. F.
Maxon, O. F.
McAnulty, R. H.
McCreery, John
McCullough, J. S.
McGowan, Frank M.
McGrue, H. O.
McLennan, J. F.
McVeigh, Henry B.
Melick, John E.
Merriam, H. M.
Miller, J. F.
Miller, L. S.
Mills, Charles F.
Miner, Lewis H.
Mockler, John P.
Mortimer, C. F.
Munson, S. E.
Murphy, P. F.
Murray, G. W.
Murray, T. J.
Myers, Albert
Myers, Lewis M.
Xickcy, Harry W.
Northcott, W. A.
Orendorff, Alfred
Orr, James R.
Paddock, James H.
Page, H. c.
Palmer, Geo. Thomas
Pasfield, George, Sr.
Pasfield, George, Jr.
Patton, Charles L.
Pattern, James \\ .
Patton, William L.

Page two hundrei twenty-five

Lincoln Centennial Association — Continued
Springfield Life Members — Continued

Pavey, W. A.
Payne, E. W.
Payton, J. K.
Phillips, D. L.
Pierik, Herman
Pierik, John C.
Pope, John
Potter, Fred W.
Potts, Rufus M.
Power, C. A.
Pride, H. T.
Prince, A. E.
Pruitt, Edgar C.
Pyle, Henry C.
Quackenbush, G. W.
Quinlan, John
Rankin, Albert H.
Ransom, Isaac N.
Ray, Verne
Rearden, Horace
Reece, Roy R.
Rees, Thomas
Reisch, Frank
Reisch, George
Reisch, Leonard
Remann, Henry C.
Rich, Benjamin
Ridgley, William
Roberts, C. D.
Roberts, Nicholas
Robinson, Chas. H.
Robinson, E. S.
Rogers, Rev. E. B.
Rogers, Roy F.
Roper, J. D.
Rose, James A.
Rottger, C. H.
Salzenstein, Albert
Salzenstein, Emanuel
Samuels, L. J.

Schaff, M. D.
Schanbacher, C. H.
Schlierbach, F. L.
Schmidt, Emil G.
Schnepp, John S.
Scholes, J. B.
Scholes, S. D.
Schuck, Charles
Scott, Edgar S.
Scott, John W.
Scott, Thomas W.
Seeley, Roy M.
Shand, Richings J.
Sheehan, Joseph J.
Sheehan, William
Shelton, Law
Sherman, L. Y
Shepherd, Chas. M.
Shepherd, Wm. B.
Shipp, Clark B.
Sikes, John H.
Sikking, A. W.
Simmons, Frank
Skelly, Geo. M.
Smith, D. W.
Smith, E. S.
Smith, Hal M.
Smith, Wm. W.
Snively, E. A.
Solenberger, H. M.
Sommer, W. C.
Souther, Latham T.
Southwick, J. W.
Spaulding, W. J.
Stadden, E. A.
Stadden, Geo. B
Starck, W. C.
Stead, W. H.
Stephens, B. R.
Stericker, Geo. F.

—15 l c

Page two hundred twenty-siz

Lincoln Centennial Association— Concluded
Springfield Life Members — Concluded

Stevens, Henry A.
Story, J. H.
Stout, Sam'l J.
Strongman, R. H.
Stuart, J. W.
Sudduth, Thos. W.
Sullivan, Wm. H.
Swett, W. W., Jr.
Swirles, H. G.
Taylor, L. C.
Taylor, Will
Terry, W. E.
Thayer, E. R.
Townsend, W. A.
Tuttle, H. H.
Vance, J. W.
Vancil, Burke
Van Cleave, J. R. B.
Van Duyn, Walter
Vredenburg, Peter, Sr.
Vredenburg, Robert 0.
Vredenburg, Thomas, D.
Vredenburg, W. R.
Walters, C. H.
Walters, J. C.
Warren, P. B.

Weber, Howard K.
Werner, Charles
Wheeler, L. E.
White, J. E.
Whittemore, H. C.
Wiedlocher, Frank
Wiggins, Horace L.
Wiggins, Lewis N.
Willett, H. T.
Willett, Samuel J.
Williams, Daniel T.
Wilson, Bluford
Wilson, G. M.
Wilson, H. Clay
Wilson, H. W.
WTilson, J. F.
Wilson, Thomas W.
Wineteer, Chas. G.
Wing, T. E.
Woods, C. M.
Workman, W. F.
York, John
Young, W. A.
Zapf, William
Zimmerman, Joseph
Zumbrook, Chas. W.