entirely ignorant of their movements or their plots. As I now look back and review, more calmly than I could then, the words and acts of our greatest men, Lincoln stands forth pre-eminent among them all. Without experience, and confronted by trials and responsibilities greater than any President who had preceded him, he proved equal to every emergency, and never failed in the most trying and difficult hour. Surrounded on every hand by traitors and often misinformed by real but mistaken friends and betrayed by pretenders, he faced a million rebels in arms, and never quailed nor faltered; he, more than all others, secured the loyal co-operation of the border slave States; he was the one great leader of the Republican party, and more, of all men of whatever party, who hoped for the triumph of the Union, and he occupied this position because he was fitted by nature for the great task imposed upon him. His leadership was gentle but firm, cautious yet persistHe was the one man of all the men I knew in those days of trial and danger, best fitted for the place he filled so well. As tender as a woman to suffering and sorrow, he stood forth, during the entire rebellion, a Colossus among men. ent. tions and catastrophies which this nation escaped by having Abraham. Lincoln for President in 1861 instead of William H. Seward. Back of Lincoln and Congress stood the rank and file of the army, to whom the greatest credit is due. And back of the army there was a patriotic sentiment for national unity and national glory, which represented the moral force of an overwhelming majority of the nation. This sentiment moulded and directed Lincoln and her statesmen, and inspired her generals and the army with the necessity of union and the hope of victory. Without this united moral force Congress would not have acted, the President would have been powerless, and the Republic of Washington and Jefferson would have been divided, dismembered and destroyed, and on its ruins two or more discordant and hostile governments erected, which would have been a perpetual menace to each other and to the peace of the world. TRUE STATESMANSHIP. We have now reached a time (so far have we advanced in a single generation) where we can form a proper estimate of the statesmen who ruled this nation from 1836 to 1860. Even the ordinary observer of today no longer recognizes their pretensions to statesmanship. Plain, practical, common-sense Americans who believe in 66 a government of the people, by the people, for the people," The folly and crimes of the secession leaders and their allies of the North can never be repeated again; even the memory of them will soon have Gone glimmering through the gleam of things that were A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour." Never again shall there be witnessed in the land of Washington and Lincoln the blasphemy of religious teachers preaching that saint and sinner alike must see to it "that servants obey their masters in all things because acceptable in the sight of the Lord," and that when escaping, it was the duty of the public to provide for returning slaves to their slavemasters at the nation's expense, and, crowning all, by boldly affirming the divinity of slavery. The conspirators and their apologists may write thousands of volumes in defense of their dogma of secession and State rights, and fill them with long-drawn-out logic and quotations from the Bible and from pretended Christian teachers affirming the divinity of slavery; they may build monuments of marble, brass or iron to their lost cause and its dead leaders, and do what they may to justify or excuse their blunders or their crimes, and yet the time is coming, and now is, in which no sane man will read their writings except to learn from their own pens the heighth and depth of their amazing folly. And a generation of men shall not have passed away before all who stand before their monuments will be asking themselves whether the leaders of the Whiskey rebellion, the schemers of the Hartford Convention plot, or Aaron Burr and his conspirators are not better entitled to commemoration, in brass or iron, than the leaders of the slaveholders' rebellion. I have not spoken personally of any of the leaders of the rebellion, because they were all the followers and satellites of Calhoun, from Jefferson Davis down to Senator Wigfall, of Texas, who was dubbed by his fellow conspirators "one of the most eloquent fools on the continent." To me there are inseparably connected with the history of the rebellion three men in civil life, who stand out more prominently than their associates-Calhoun, the great conspirator; Seward, the dreamer, and Lincoln, the statesman. Calhoun, able, ambitious, logical and persistent, and as unyielding as death; Seward, the philosophical dreamer, political prophet and Presidential aspirant, the coiner of beautiful and highsounding phrases, with no practical. ability for a crisis, such as the rebellion of 1861. When the hour of action and trial came, he suggested, in his speech of January 12th, "that we meet prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concessions, violence with the right hand of fellowship," and surrender to the rebels all the public property of the nation in their States, "except where the authority of the United States could be exercised without war." To crown all, he offered to vote for an amendment to the Constitution which would preserve slavery forever, and thus make the “irrepressible con In his great speech in Springfield, in 1858, he said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." This great speech made Mr. Lincoln President. After his inauguration he followed logically, and with fidelity, the doctrine announced in that speech. And when he declared, in his inaugural address, that his oath and duty alike required him to see that the laws were impartially and honestly executed, and added: power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and en "The flict" perpetual, so long as a single force the laws of the government," a State elected to maintain the institution of slavery in its borders. The world recognizes when it reads Mr. Lincoln's statement of the "irrepressible conflict," that he was the practical, just and far-seeing states man. 66 practical and patriotic people knew what that declaration meant. They knew that Mr. Lincoln intended that the house should not be divided nor fall," but that the Union should be maintained forever, and be all one thing—all free. And to the accom plishment of that great work he consecrated his life. Mr. Seward would not only have been dismissed from office by any other government, but would have been arrested for usurpation of power -and for holding secret and unauthorized communication with the public enemy. And I do not believe that any President who had preceded Mr. Lincoln would have continued Mr. Seward in his cabinet for a single day after the formal and unanimous request of the Senate for his removal. It was Mr. Lincoln's hopefulness and faith in man that made him so long-suffering in his dealings with Seward, Chase and McClellan, and hundreds of others, myself included. think I am so bad a man as some people say I am.” I think he was in that respect one of the most wonderful of men. I can remember two instances, one of which was with reference to myself, the other, Senator Schurz. Schurz was in the army, and was as restless as a nervous man could be, and fired a letter of sixteen pages over the head of his commander to Mr. Lincoln, a thing which, as a military matter, was not to be tolerated. Afterward he thought better of it, and wrote Mr. Lincoln a kind of an apology for having committed this breach of military discipline. The President kindly wrote him: Never mind; come and see me." When he came to meet him he began to apologize. "Never mind, Schurz. I guess before we get through talking you won't 'Well," said he, "that reminds me of a story." I was determined to have a solid talk with him. So I said, rising to my feet: "Mr. President, I beg your pardon, but I didn't come this morning to hear a story." He looked at me and said, with such a sad face: "Ashley, I have great confidence in you, and great respect for you, and I know how sincere you are. But if I couldn't tell these stories I would die. Now, you sit down!" So he ordered a cup of coffee, and we discussed the situation. That was the peculiar character of the man. I saw him one day give a pardon for a soldier sentenced to be shot, where the mother and some women of his household came there. When he did it, of course there was a scene. Tears came to the eyes of many. The President says: "Well, I have made one family happy, but I don't know about the discipline of the army!" That was the characteristic of the man, and because of that he held together the discordant elements-held together the border States; and I think carried us to victory better than any man, certainly, of whom I have the least knowledge. I don't know of any man in this country that I would rather have had for President, considering it after it is all over, for a quarter of a century, than Abraham Lincoln. That the historian of the future will accord the highest order of statesmanship to Abraham Lincoln and the Union men of 1861-65 I do not doubt. A practical world will judge public men by what they accomplish, not by what they profess. Soldier and statesmen alike must be judged by this simple standard. From this point of view the historian will show that Mr. Lincoln found the government disrupted and bankrupt, with a hostile government organized by conspirators on its supposed ruins. He will show that Mr. Lincoln and a Union Congress proceeded at once to secure its political unity and territorial integrity; that they raised, organized and equipped armies and crushed the rebellion; that they amended the National Constitution prohibiting slavery forever; that they were both merciful and forgiving as conquerors never were before; that all laws and constitutional amendments were impartial in their character, and operated on the North and South alike. He will show that under their State governments, as reorganized by them, the South has prospered and increased in wealth as never before; that the census of 1890 confirmed all we hoped and promised when we declared that her increase in cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice, iron and manufactures more than doubled in value between 1860 and 1890, and that her plantation and city property increased in value threefold, that a National Government, with amnesty and impartial suffrage, found a complete vindication, both at home and abroad. And knowing this, as each Union soldier and Union citizen who took part in the great drama of 1861 "folds the drapery of his couch about him," and joins the silent majority, he will know that his sacrifices have not been in vain. There are men before me to-night who bore aloft and followed that flag at Shiloh and Stone River, at Murfesboro, Missionary Ridge and Nashville, and from Chickamauga to Chattanooga and the top of Lookout Mountain, and from Atlanta through Georgia on to Washington, as they carried it in triumph back to their homes prior to placing it here within ern H |