knit the present to the past, and made our diverse peoples one. So he said at the West, in 1858, of the Germans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, who have come here since the war of Independence: "If they look back through our history to trace their connection with those days of blood, they find they have none; they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch, and make themselves feel that they are part of us. But when they look through the Declaration of Independence, they find that these old men say that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;' and then they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to these men; that it is the father of all moral principle in them; and that they have a right to claim it, as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration. And so they have. That is the electric cord that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men."

So he said afterward, in 1861, substantially at Trenton, and more fully at Philadelphia: "It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the Mother-Land, but it was that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but I hope to the world, for all future time. It was that which promised that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men ;"-adding, with what now looks like prescience, "If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it."

From this conviction of the essential authority and value, and the enduring cosmical importance, of the principles he maintained, came in part, no doubt, his singular freedom from personal assumption, from all personal greed for pleasure or gain. He was called, by one who knew him well, "the honestest man he had ever known;" and certainly no man's pecuniary honesty has been tested more thoroughly-with uncounted millions at his command, and a secret service, responsible to him, which swallowed gold as thirsty sands soak up the rain. But his honesty was not a separate trait, set mechanically into his nature and governing what was alien to it. It was a part, living and inseparable, of his conscientious and ingenuous mind. He believed in the Right, for himself and for others. Its rules were clear to him, its authority perfect; and it governed him in small things as well as in the greatest.

From this came also his singular patience, and his unwearied courage, in regard to the issue of the terrible contest. Sadly as he felt the sacrifice it involved, inclined as he was to distrust himself, and knowing as none beside could know with what manifold perils the cause was beset, he seems never to have doubted the final result. The mind of the public, fixed chiefly on the visible forces engaged, wavered often, sometimes violently oscillated, between the utmost confidence of success and the most extreme depression and fear. He held with marvelous steadiness on his way; never exasperated, never over-elated, yet always expecting sure victory in the end, if it took a lifetime to attain it; because his hold on the principles involved was utterly infrangible, and their ultimate victory he believed to

be certain. He saw the divine forces which, all unheard by mortal ear, were still contending on our side; and he knew that till Christianity went down, slavery could not succeed against liberty. The "rapture of battle" he never felt. The "courage of conscience" he always knew; and the key to all his policy is found in one sentence of one of his speeches, before he was President: "Let us have faith that Right makes Might; and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

The same element in his character, the same unswerving confidence in principles, gave a true moral unity to his administration. It imparted a certain philosophical tone, almost a religious, to much of his statesmanship; a tone most emphatic in his latest address. A latent enthusiasm was bred in him by it; an enthusiasm that rarely was wrought into utterance, but that kept all his powers in most complete exercise, while it sometimes made his sentences throb with its inward fervor. He became, in some sense, to his own consciousness, a consecrated man; consecrated to the championship of principles of government, "by which," as he said, "the Republic lives and keeps alive," and in which the whole human race has a stake. Hence came the undertone that thrilled through his short address at Gettysburg, which is more henceforth to the American people than the stateliest oration preserved in its archives. Hence came, in part, the tranquillity and the scope of his high-leveled policy. It was to himself an inspiration; while it gave him a power over the enlightened reason of the people which no other president since Washington has had.

With this came also, in intimate agreement, that

sense of the presence and providence of God, which seems never to have wavered, from the time when he went forth from Springfield for Washington, asking the friends whom he left to pray for him, till the time when he said, in his latest address, "As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."" Without the least taint of fanaticism, his belief in God's regard for the principles which he was defending was so earnest and constant, and at last so devout, that the whole long war became to him a sacred war. He recognized the guidance of Providence throughout it, in our reverses as well as our successes, and saw the forecast that had shaped it. Reverently, practically, he felt himself but an instrument in God's hand; and knew that when the divine consummation had been attained, the mystic and awful tragedy would be over. "Let us be quite sober," he said; "let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."

Hence came the crown of dignity on the character in which sympathy with men, and conscientious fidelity to principles, had been before so intimately blended. No man can be morally great whose soul does not rest on God as its center, and does not draw from communion with him its inmost life. Especially when the leader in great affairs stands face to face with the possible speedy wreck of his country,-when he treads a path all hidden and perilous, without precedent to govern, or parallel to direct him, and sees the contracting horizon around shot through with blood and all aflame, the only thing to keep him staunch,

Not

serene, clear-visioned, is trust in the Highest. It was the life within his life to him whom we mourn. uttering itself in any set phrase, not prompting much to religious ceremonial, it gave him a steadiness almost invincible. It made him expectant of a future as grand as the way that led to it was bloody and dark. It united his soul with all that was highest in the heart and conscience of the people which he ruled.

It was this alone which enabled him to say, in closing his second inaugural address, in words that illustrate the whole character of the man, and that will live while the language in which they were uttered endures: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on, to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans; to do all which we may to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

Combine now, with all these loftier elements, a natural mirthfulness that was constant, exuberant, that sparkled into jest and story, and kept his faculties always fresh;-remember that these so various traits were melted together into a character utterly simple, utterly personal, in which was nothing copied from antique models, and nothing imported from foreign examples, which was wholly an American product, born of the influences that had moulded his youth, and nourished by the woods, the river and the prairie, as modern as the West, and as native as its oaks ;-remember that through the whole atmosphere of the times this character daily radiated influence, in some