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THE MARTYR-PRESIDENT.
A S E K M O N
PREACHED IN
THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, LEAVENWORTH,
ON THP: first SUNDAY after EASTER,
AND AGAIN BY REQUEST
ON THE NATION /VL FAST DAY,
JUNK 1st, 1865.
BY THE REV. JOHN H. EGAR, B. D.,
RECTOR,
LEAVENWORTH :
PRINTED AT THE BULLETIN JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT.
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THE MARTYR-PRESIDENT.
A SERMON
PREACHED IN
THtLCHURCH OF ST. PAUL, LEAVENWORTH,
ON THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER,
AND AGAIN BY REQUEST
ON THE NATIONAL FAST DAY,
JUNE 1st, I860,
BY THE REV. JOHN H. EGAR, B. D.,
RECTOR.
LEAVENWORTH :
PRINTED AT THE BULLETIN JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT.
/-
Leavenworth City, Kansas, June 1, 1865.
Rev. John H. Egar^ Rector of the Church of St. Paul, Leaveii-
ivorfh, Kansas :
Sir : In common with many other of your parishioners, we
desire to see the influence of the sermon preached by you this
morniuo- on the assassination of the late President extended to a
wider circle than had the opportunity of hearing its delivery, be-
lieving that much good may be effected thereby ; we would, there-
fore, most respectfully request a copy for publication iu pamphlet
form. Very respectfully, yours,
E. N. O. CLOUGH,
M. P. RIVELY,
GEO. W. NELLES.
JOHN KERR.
J. C. HEMINGRAY.
Leavenworth, June 2, 1865.
Col. E. N. 0. Cloiigh, and others :
Gentlemen : Though my own judgment considers the ser-
mon delivered by me yesterday to be not quite up to the standard
which I think justifies printing, yet the suggestion of those who
heard it, that good may be done by its circulation, leaves me no
alternative but to place the manuscript at their disposal.
Yours respectfully,
JOHN H. EGAR.
S E R jvr O I^.
"He boing dead, yet speaketh." — Heb. xi, 4.
These words, as you remember, were spokea by St. Paul of
Abel, the second son of our first father, Adam, whose short me-
morial in the Old Testament, seems to have been recorded as the
type ofHhe history of this wicked world ; where what is good and
noble, and pure, and true, seems to be foreign and alien, and to
provoke the most malignant efforts of diabolical hatred. If we are
ever tempted to forget that this world is not the home of goodness
and truth, ever recurring experience brings it back to us ; the in-
tenser malice of our powerful and eternal enemy is aroused at the
nearer prospect of their triumph ; and the history of Abel recurs in
every page of the larger history of universal humanity. The second
son of our first father, Adam — the second person born into thiy
world — the first person who died under the curse pronounced upon
all mankind ; the first victim of that terrible root of sin and crime
planted in the world by the transgression of his parents, which
bore fruit instantly in full and dire perfection of evil, was the inno-
cent sufferer under the greatest, most dreadful crime of all that
humanity is capable of — murder — assassination. The parallel in
the fact re-produced in this last act of our national history, justifies
the appropriation of the text to him whom the nation at this time
mourns with a deep and swelling sorrow, its murdered President.
" He being dead, yet speaketh." He speaks from a bloody grave,
a martyr to the national integrity now all but re-established, by
his fearful and inauspicious death, by his simple, blameless, single-
hearted, earnest life ; by his fulfillment of the high responsibilities
of the chief station in the Grovernment — speaks more emphatically,
by the connection between this crime, and the crime against the
nation; by the causality which the Divine will, without whose
Providence no life is begun or ended, permitted to be the means of
calling him away from the world. He died at the moment most
fortunate for his fame ; when the plans which he had matured were
meeting their full success, when the instruments he had chosen had
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justified his insight by their efficiency, when the vision of a re-
united nation had risen fully above the horizon, and the dark night
of national danger was merging into day ; and his martyr's death
will stamp all that is good in his history indelibly on the hearts of
7 lie people, and bind his memory by all that is good and holy and
virtuous and patriotic — by the shame for the deed, and the sorrow
at its success — by all that reverences authority, and all that respects
character, and all that rises indignantly against crime — to the soul
of the Republic, to live as long as history is read, and martyrdom
consecrates the principles for which it is endured.
It is our duty, brethren, both in respect to the memory of our
late Chief Magistrate, and also to fulfill all we can of our ofiice, not
only as teachers of religion but of virtue, to gather together accord-
ing to our poor ability, the lessons which the present calamity — for
a national calamity it is of the deepest character — presents to our
minds. To this, then, let us address ourselves, praying for the
Divine blessing to enable us to consider the subject with the words
of Christian truth and soberness.
I. The crime of murder, considered without respect to station
or any other extraneous circumstance — considered as against any
one who bears our common nature — is one which is, and which
needs to be met with the utmost abhorence. The murderer of whom-
soever, high or low, is an object of Divine wrath, and the curse of
God, and of the detestation and horror of all thinking people. But
brethren, this crime — and it may have been permitted to teach us
the sacredness of human life— -sinks into the nation's heart deeper
than can any private crime ; not because it is physically less easy to
kill a President than a private citizen, not because it needs a heavier
bullet to do its fearful work ; but because, inthis conspicuous exam-
ple, the moral foundation of our institutions is attacked, and the very
law itself of our national and social being is assaulted in this dread-
ful crime. It is in vain to seek to disconnect it from the chain of
causes which has brought upon the country all the devastation and
bloodshed of the past years. We may, and for the honor of our
common nature, we will hope that it is no part of the organized
eff'ort to disrupt the country — that it is the private act of a few des-
perate conspirators, too cowardly to stand in the ranks of open war-
fare; but it is none the less true, that it is a calamity and a crime
growing out of the cause of all the other calamities which have
afflicted the nation in evoiy ner, ,' of its manifold life; and, there-
fore, that the ultimate responsibility for it, as for all the other
eiFects of this state of things, foreseen and unforeseen, must by dire
necessity rest upon and be borne as best it may, by those whom the
public opinion of the world will judge as the authors of all this mis-
chief. It was as the executive of national law — the repository of
constitutional power, exerted by mighty armies to preserve the
unity of the nation, that the late President was the object of the
individual hate of the worthless drunkard who took his life — aside
from that no human being would have borne him malice — it was
his responsibility in his office to uphold the trust which it was his
above all others to uphold, which made him the assassin's mark.
It was an effort against the very life of the nation ; and it is this
which arouses the terror and the sorrow that moves the nation to
the depths of its nature. For if the minister of the law, be he high
or low, be not safe in his person in carrying out those measures
which are necessary for government — wliether it be by marshalled
armies or by individual police, makes no difference — where then is
the guarantee of social order ? where is the bulwark against wild
anarchy and universal destruction? And this, brethren, itis, which is
the underlying principle of this mighty struggle. The possibility of
free government under the universal supremacy of law, whether our
institutions were sufficiently strong to uphold the fundamental con-
dition of our lives, our liberties and our manifold interests, though
the universal obedience to those conditions of all the parts and sec-
tions of the country. East, West, North and South alik« — it was
against this, when armies had failed, that the assassin's hand was
raised — raised, just at the moment when the solution of the question
seemed to be attained — raised fearfully, with self avenging success
to spread its effects beyond the immediate criminals to the antece-
dent causes — to make the terms of reconciliation harder, and to
repress the budding magnanimity of successful vindication by the
stern resolve to exact the extreme penalty.
I do not say that this revulsion of feeling is desirable, and I do
not say that it is not desirable. There is at this time and in this
place a higher and a nobler use to be made of the terrible crime and
awful calamity, than to make it the text of denunciation of that
misgaided people who are now suffering so fully the penalties of
their great mistake. It is to take account of the virtues in the
character of him whom we mourn. In the presence of so recent
and so sudden and so terrible a death, the personal peouliarities
8
the minor mistakes, if any there were, the incidental trivialities, the
partial misunderstandings, the party animosities are forgotten, and
we seek for and dwell upon those great, broad, noble characteristics of
our better nature, which are the deep substratum of humanity, and
we seek to sum up the life-work of him who is taken away. And
surely we cannot but recognize in one who, born in the floorless
cabin of a Western wilderness, by his own industry, clear sighted-
ness, honesty of purpose, and sympathy with the heart of the nation ,
won for himself the call to the seat of the great founder of the Re-
public, and who, under circumstances of equal responsibility and
complexity with the birth-throes of the Revolution, so carried on
the great work committed to him as not to be laid aside when the
term of his first election ceased, those great qualities which made
liis pre-eminence of station not a mere fortuitous conjunction of
accidents, but the testimony for all time, to a fitness for the work,
to principles which were necessary and just and true, to an adapta-
tion to the place and the occasion, sufficiently complete to give him
a name in history by his own right. If we have any faith in hu-
manity, if these earthly interests which compel so large a share of
our time and thought and absorbing care, are realities of Divine
Providence, if there is any hope of a triumph of human nature over
its ills, and a real progress in the history of mankind, if God is the
ruler of the world and his instruments are fitted to his operations,
then "he being dead, yet speaketh," by an example, which in its
essential particulars we may imitate, and a work which in its gen-
eral scope and design his survivors must complete.
1 1. We may attribute to the deceased President, without
fear that the judgment of history will reverse the decision, a con-
scientious devotion to the great trust with which he was charged,
and an honest purpose to discharge it to the best of his understand-
ing of its requirements, and of his ability to meet them. The proof
of this is the course of his administration as a whole, and the com-
plete revelation of the man in his endeavors towards the preserva-
tion and the permanent security of the nation's unity. It would be
superfluous to attempt the enumeration of the acts in which this
spirit showed most conspicuously ; and in like manner it would be
impertinent to offer an unlearned opinion upon any measures which
he thought necessary to accomplish the end in view. There are
doubtless those here present, the course of whose studies has been
directed that way in^the practice of a learned and laborous profes-
sion, at whose feet it would be my proper place to sit and be taught
in matters of this nature ; and it is no derogation from them to say
that he was at least their equal in that profession to which his life
and theirs have been directed , and, therefore, that his opinion of
the legal authority of these acts which have been the most dicusssed
is neither to be confirmed norcallcd in question by those like my-
self, whose studies, if they are faithful to their high calling, are
turned in another and widely different direction. The tribunal ot
ultimate decision on such questions is neither the pulpit nor the
press. It is ours to look, in this place, not at the legal formalities
which limit and define actions in their external shape, but, as far as
we can, at the inner spring and source of the life which animates
them. And I am confident that all, however, divided in opinion
respecting the particular measures developed by the course of events,
whether they seemed to them too fast or too slow, too mild or too
severe, will agree, now that the end is seen, that the spirit and in-
tention of the man and the magistrate, shining through all the difii-
culties of position and circumstance, in a state of things unprece-
dented in the history of the world, was a highly conscientious'
honest, patriotic spirit. He was in his exercise of the powers of the
Government, a patriot and not a politician. The two are wide apart.
The difference between them is indelibly stamped upon the percep-
tions of all right-minded and intelligent men. The general voice
of public opinion speaks of the one with contempt as surely as of
the other with approval ; and the difference between them is simply
that of the internal, conscious rectitude and conscientousness and
devotion to principle and to country — the unselfish devotion to duty
and to responsibility, — which contrasts, by the whole space between
light and darkness, with the hollow, insincere, selfish, mean and
crooked course of unprincipled greed and unhallowed ambition.
We may add to this sterling integrity, as another evident part
of his character, a judicious firmness and a practical wisdom in the
development of his plans and the selection of his instruments, and a
clear perception of the times and steady consistency in shaping the
progress of events toward the attainment of the end in view. It is
evident that he was, as his position required him to be, the master-
spirit in his Cabinet ; that his subordinates were subordinate, and
that, though he called statesmanlike ability and organizing tact,
and trusty council to his side, yet that his actions were*his|own, and*
therefore, that he is to be judged by the success of his measures j
10
and not stinted by the reward they return. It was his labor,- not
only to prevent the present disruption of the nation, but to secure,
if possible, its permanent and lasting pacification ; to keep the nation
one, not only for the few years of his term of office, but as far as in
him lay, to dig the foundations of a broader and deeper structure of
unity and prosperity for the common country of us all. lie lived
long enough to see the beginning of the end for which he labored.
The result must tell in the centuries that ai'e to come, whether he
has been successful ; but this at least is clear, that as he was con-
scientiously and honestly devoted to his work, so he brought to it
those qualities of character, that firmness of purpose, that practical
wisdom in planning, that judicious discrimination of opportunity in
executing, that insight in chosing his chief helpers, that singleness
of aim, and power of seizing on circumstances to set forward that
aim, which, under the irresistible logic of events, has approved
itself to the people as sagacious, and consistent, and necessary,
and which we may hope, under Grod's blessing, will result, not only
in re-uniting our country, but in perpetuating its peace, and adding
to the happiness and prosperity of all sections and of every indi-
vidual.
And here again we cannot too highly appreciate these quali-
ties of the late President, in their effect upon the destiny of the
country. The singular freedom of his nature from all dramatic
effect or rhetorical artifice blinds us to the weight of his influence,
until we carefully analyse the exact history of the times. It is
one thing to see the judiciousness of measures after they have suc-
ceeded, it is another thing to foresee their effect ; and this was his
prerogative. The ability to reduce order out of the chaos of public
opinion, to lead the preponderating power of the country, by a
steady progress, step by step, to unity of opinion and steadiness of
resolve, as tlie necessary antecedent to external unity restored, to
be firm in judgment and merciful in disposition, and so to temper
each with the other, as to sacrifice neither, to adapt the policy to
the circumstances and yet to keep in view the single end of all
operations, was not less necessary for the nation, than evident in
him who had the destinies of the nation in his earthly keeping.
It requires no extraordinary memory to recall the vacillation and
uncertainty which held the minds of men in unbearable suspense,
during the months immediately preceding and at the beginning of
his incumbency. The press of those days wa. united upon none
11
of the issues involved. Party maxims had no authority upon
which to ground an opinion as to the course to be pursued. The
uncertainty was not only as to the next step to be taken, but as to
the general direction in which to move. It was a period of anxious
waiting for the authoritative voice of the government ; and never,
perhaps, in the history of the nations, was there a time when gov-
ernment was so thrown upon itself to be in truth the leader and
director of the people, as in those days of the beginning of the
modern history of the Republic. There was no organized and
settled public opinion to indicate the way, no path beaten by the
footsteps of old established precedent, or surveyed and mapped out
by the logic of precise theory, in which the nation knew that it
was to march. Men turned to the new and untried administration
as the only guide in their perplexity. The strong deep instinct
of devotion was in their hearts, but the way in which to exert it
was not plain. And yet in this time of suspense, the utterances of
the government were not hasty and unreflecting. The suspense
might be painful ; but the consequences of a false estimate of the
position would be fatal. And when the government did develop
its method of procedure, the course pursued reflected equal lustre
upon the practical sagacity of the head of the nation, and the true
loyalty to authority of the mass of the people. The principle of
obedience to the constituted depositaries of the law, because they
are clothed with the authority of the law, (which is the only true
meaning of the word loyalty, and upon which the very existence of
our institutions depends) receives its most sviblime illustration in
the spontaneous response which met fully the demands of the gov-
ernment as soon as its will was declared — the more marked as
following upon the preceding uncertainty — proves that the sense
and realization of constituted authority, as distinguished from mere
personal influence or personal opinion, is a stable foundation of our
national freedom. And that that confidence thus fully given at
first was never afterwards withdrawn — that amid all the impatience
of some, and the hostile criticism of others, the people still recog-
nized and confided in him for their leader, is proof sufficient that
that leader had the sound practical judgment which the occasion
required, adapted his action to the times, made a fit selection of
associates in council and subordinates in action, and pursued his
general course in the exigencies of the nation, with a wisdom and
independence and a straight forwardness as rare as they were ne-
12
cessary to adapt to the principles by which he was guided, the
public mind and temper by which he must be sustained.
And thirdly, we may discover in the late President, an un-
failing faith in the rectitude and the final triumph of the principles
which he brought to the administration of public aifairs. The cir-
cumstances under which he entered upon his incumbency of his
high office were such as might have made any man falter ; but he
kept heart, and infused it into the people, and secured them to
himself, because he had principles and he had faith in them. He
had, as I have already remarked, comparatively no training in
ptatesmanship ; but it might have been that .such training would
have been gained at the expense of principle. A long and exclu-
f^ive devotion to public life is apt to sink the patriot into the poli-
tician — and, steady principle wanting, no practical wordly wisdom
will supply its place. This can be obtained in subordinates, that
cannot be dispensed with in the chief. His election was an infusion
of new blood into the decaying vitals of public afiairs — the ele-
vation of one immediately from among the people ; who, being in
sympathy with the popular heart should confirm and steady it,
and keep it true to the aspirations which it. honestly entertained.
And indeed, through ali his character this was prominent, his
being one with the mass of the people in all their better nature —
his kindliness of heart, and geniality of temper, his unassuming
manners and frank directness of spcceh and address, — all that is
public and all that is private in his character and actions, now
that the mists of prejudice are swept away by his sad and sudden
death — will be recognized as of one who was emphatically of the
people, and a leader among their hosts.
And indeed, itwastliis thorough honesty and straight-forward-
ness of character — this simple rectitude in private as well as in
public life, which was liis great strength with the people of the
country. Even those who made his election to the Chief Magis-
tracy the pretext of the attempt to break up the Union, feel and
confess that they have lost in him their best and truest friend.
And it may be, by that Providence which brings good out of evil,
that his martyrdom may exert an influence more potent than any
other cause to turn the hearts of the disobedient children of the Re-
public to the Government of their Fathers. There are arguments
plausible enough to those who are under their influence for the ap-
peal to arms ; but the crime of assassination is too palpable to the
13
most obtuse mind not to produce a horror of the cause which it is
sought to advance by such means. In such a death, the scales drop
irom the eyes of prejudice, and of hatred itself, and the conscience
opens to the real moral conditions involved. The world does him
justice now, and sees that in him the nation sought to its foundations
and quarried the strong tough granite of simple honesty and uncor-
rupted sincerity for the base of her re-edification. Comparatively
unknown before his selection for the Presidency, and altogether
unused to the arts which are the stock-in-trade of the professional
statesman — the trivial expedients by which party politicians post-
pone action and evade responsibility, and hide under precedent and
do nothing with busy earnestness, he came to the con duct of public
affairs, at a time when such arts would have been chaff in the whirl-
wind, with a strength in the rugged instincts of natural virtue which
was better than all art, more timely than all expediency, truer than
all precedent, and equal to all responsibility. The times required
a recurrence to first principles; they were past dallying with accord-
ing to the recognized forms of parliamentary and political inaction.
Years and years before the spirit of secession became overt rebellion
it was a deep and solemn question in the minds of thinking and
religious men, whether the nation was not about to be broken up ;
whether it could live with the corruption and dishonesty circulatino-
in its life-blood, which selfish politicians had infused into its veins
and arteries. The tactics of party had well nigh stifled government
itself. Shrewdness and astuteness and cunning had so overlaid the
true wisdom of righteousness with the multiplicity and success of
their arrangements for moving the masses, that honest and sincere
men washed their hands of the consequence, and retired from the
uuequal contest with the professional gambler in the spoils of ofiice.
The evil brooding in sullen shapeless darkness upon the face of the
land, took shape more suddenly than was looked for, and ere men
woke to the reality, the crisis was upon them. It was a day when
the ordinary maxims of political action had no force. Something
more was necessary than office-seeking cunning, and the art of
bai-gain and sale. That Providence which rules mankind, made
him the available man, and so guided his election, and brought to
the Chief Magistracy his sterling honesty, his sound unsophisticated
sense of I'ight and wrong, his uncorrupted mind and heart. During
the four years of his first incumbency, the nation learned that the
simplicity and the directness of a recurrence to first principles — to
14
honor and honesty and justice and truth — are the only sure founda-
tion of stability and permanence. A second election was a tribute to
the broad, genial characteristics of an honest Western life, stamping-
it with approval after the fiery trial. And now, though his perish-
able body is laid in its mother earth, he himself stands in history
like one of the granite statues which face an old Egyptian temple,
the representative of what the men of this nation must be, and of
what, by the discipline of Grod, wo hope and believe they are be-
C'oming through the purifying crucible of the national tribulation.
And it may be another reason for the permission by Providence of
this tragedy, that the country needed it to fix the lesson forever in
the hearts of men. The principle of martyrdom consecrates and
hallows every witness to great and holy truth. The baptism of
blood and the crown of fire arc everywhere the Divine symbols of
the ultimate triumph of the right. The martyred President would
have been none the less honest, none the less kind, none the less
sincerely desirous to save even his enemies, had he not been stricken
down ; but he would not have passed into history with the same
nimbus of glory that now surrounds his memory. His image would
not have struck so deeply into the heart of the nation, and the force
of his example, and the purity of his life, and thefgrandeur of his
character would have failed of half their lesson to posterity. Even
now, let us hope, there is in the atmosphere around us the impulse
of a better, higher, more uoble aim for our energies. God grant
that this impulse may exert its full efi'ect upon our own generation
and upon those who arc to come after us.
III. It is a judgment which history will confirm, that the
position of the nation this day, — its ordered movement through
the hurried series of events of the past four years — the germinaut
principles of its future course — owe as much to the personal cha-
racteristics ot the man thus feebly and imperfectly sketched, as to
any other single human instrumentality. A people can no more
act in unity and concert without a leader in sympathy with their
instincts, than an army without a general in whom they have con-
fidence. The late President is one of the main links which bind
the future to the past. It needs only to contemplate the diflferent
possibilities which might have come to pass, contrasting them with
what is now the accomplished fact, to sec this. Circumstances and
the man combine to make up the lesson of his history, and neither
is an empty cypher. Without the circumstances the man would
15
have lived comparatively unknown, and died unnuirked ; without
the man, the circumstances might have developed differently. The
examples in history of" rulers who have not risen to the height of
great occasions are too numerous not to be capable of application to
illustrate the possible condition of a President unequal to the task.
Four years ago there seemed to be two at least, — and perhaps
Many — different possibilities. Unity, or Disunion, or Universal
Anarchy depended, humanly speaking, upon the administration.
In the progress of the nation from its infant existence to its
growth over half a continent, there had developed too great diver-
sity of social states, as the principle of discord. Moral ideas on
the one side, and material interests on the other, entered into con-
flict,and the time had come to solve permanently the question wheth-
er diverse social states should develop into diverse nationalities, or
whether national unity should be preserved by making the social
state everywhere the same. Two answers were possible then ; one
has been given now, never to be reversed, by the grace of Provi-
dence using him as its chief instrument. The institution of slav-
ery has fallen before the principle of national supremacy, the
guarantee that the country once pacified will remain permanently
secure. With this guarantee, his great work, all lesser question,
are of no importance. Not that it is due to him alone. Ideas
and forces had to be called into activity and guided to their re-
sults, and without them he would have been powerless. But as
the helmsman at the wheel guides the direction of all the forces
(none of which he could originate) which give motion to the ship ;
so it was his, here to restrain, there to impel onward, and so to
bring the ship of state thus far on its course.
The work, brethren, is not yet ended. It is our country which
has suffered, though it triumphs in its suffering. After war comes
peace ; and the result of war at this moment is so sure and certain,
that all can look for peace in the shortest, surest way, — peace
that shall be permanent and enduring. It is the business of the
people now to heal the nation's wounds. The same God who called
him by the people's voice to the helm, and granted him to see so
much accomplished, still rules in Heaven, and has frustrated the
plot to throw the government into confusion, has preserved his
successor, and assigns our pathway between those fences of Mercy
and Judgment which hedge round all human walks, whether of
the individual or the community. "By Him kings rule, and princes
16
decree justice." It may suit the presumption which reckons itself
competent to proclaim beforehand on every occasion the secret
counsels of the Almighty and Infinitely Wise Being, who has de-
clared that "His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways
as our ways," to expound what is or what ought to be the policy
henceforward of the Government, the chief depositary of whose
power has been changed by Divine permission and by human
crime. I humbly decline the endeavor. I believe in the Provi-
dence of Grod, and that that Providence vindicates itself in the re-
sult, though its counsels may not be known beforehand, except by
prophetic Inspiration ; and I am sincerely of the opinion, that they
who by that Providence are vested with the trust taken from the
hand of him we mourn, are abundantly competent to consider their
responsibilities without my advice, and to resolve wisely and to
act well. Providence qalls us to the humbler duty of obedience
to the powers that are by His ordaining. To them it is for us
to look for guidance, and for them it is ours to pray, that God will
o-ive them the wisdom and the strength to secure to our posting
the heritage given to our fathers, and to bring the storm-tossed
ship of state, securely into the harbor of a stable and permanent
peace.
2^ ^'^'■■.'^