true estimate of their condition then; not one in ten was able to stand alone; some of them so covered and eaten by vermin that they nearly resembled cases of small-pox, and so emaciated that they were really living skeletons, and hardly that, as the result shows, forty out of one hundred and four having died up to this date. If there has been anything so horrible, so fiendish, as this wholesale starvation, in the history of this satanic Rebellion, I have failed to note it. Better the massacres of Lawrence, Fort Pillow, and Plymouth, than to be thus starved to death by inches, through long and weary months."

Mr. Lincoln could not consent to the starvation of rebel prisoners, nor to any approximation to cruel treatment. Retaliation must take some other form, or he would not endorse it. His real sympathy with soldiers, in their hardships and perils, extended even to rebel prisoners in our hands. At Frederick, Md., he visited a house in which there were a large number of Confederate wounded men. After viewing the scene, he said to them :

"I should be pleased to take you all by the hand, if you have no objections. The solemn obligations which we owe to our country and posterity compel the prosecution of this war. Many of you, no doubt, occupy the attitude of enemies through uncontrollable circumstances. I bear no malice toward you, and can take you by the hand with sympathy and good feeling."

There was hesitation at first, but it was soon broken, and the Confederates stepped forward to shake the President's hand. Some of the number were too badly wounded to rise; Mr. Lincoln approached them, and, taking each one by the hand in turn, remarked,—

"Be of good cheer, boys, and the end will be well. The best of care shall be taken of you."

It was a touching scene, and there were few dry eyes

It was

present. Many of the Confederates wept. evidently unexpected treatment to them. This was the kind of retaliation in which President Lincoln fully believed. It caused him unpleasantness and pain to be compelled to depart from it. He heartily enjoyed such a scene as was described to him after the battle of Antietam.

One of the agents of the Christian Commission found several wounded Confederate soldiers in a barnyard, deserted by their surgeons, and no one near to help them. They had been lying there with the dead for three days, without food or drink. The agent hurried food to them as soon as possible, and, with others, was proceeding to wash them, when one of the number, from whose feet he was pulling his dirty stockings, began to cry violently.

"What's the matter? Do I hurt you?" inquired the agent.

66

'No, you don't," sobbed the man.

"What, then, can be the matter? Really, I can't go on with my work unless you tell me what is the matter."

"Matter enough," ejaculated the Confederate. "You call us rebels, and I suppose we are; for I fought against the old flag; but, when we are wounded, you come to us here, not like angels, but like the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, washing our feet; and I can't stand it. I can't stand it!"

Such treatment of enemies just suited Mr. Lincoln. The rehearsal of that single incident made him happy for a whole day.

In the light of such facts, W. H. Herndon, Esq., of Springfield, Ill., was right in saying,—

"Through his perceptions, the suggestiveness of nature, his originality, and strength; through his mag

nificent reason, his understanding, his conscience, his tenderness, and kindness, his heart, rather than love,he approximated as nearly as most human beings in this imperfect state to an embodiment of the great moral principle, 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.''

Thousands of the brave men who honoured and loved Abraham Lincoln sleep on Southern soil. They went down to the graves of heroes from a thousand battlefields, through four long, bloody, dreadful years; and no heart throbbed with truer sympathy for them in their sufferings than the heart of the President; and no eyes shed hotter tears for their loss than his. And when the nation's offering was complete, and there were no more human sacrifices to be laid upon the altar of liberty on gory fields, and the country was jubilant over the final victory and the return of peace, the chieftain himself was added to the hecatomb of loyal men, the tears and lamentations of a loving and afflicted people consecrating the unparalleled sacrifice!

Well may the Grand Army of the Republic cherish the memory of their heroic leader, whose thoughts were ever with them on the field of conflict. How ring his beautiful words, "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature!"

XXVI.

HIS WORK FOR THE COLOURED RACE.

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race.

RESIDENT LINCOLN'S life in the White House was distinguished by his work for the coloured race. So providential and important were his relations to both free and enslaved negroes, that justice could not be done to him or the subject without a separate exhibit of his work for them. He was not only "The Saviour of His Country," but, also, "The Liberator of a Race." While his great purpose was to save the Union, giving freedom to the slaves became absolutely necessary. He expressed his views in the following clear, forcible, and characteristic way, after three years of war :

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not see, think, and feel that it was wrong, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. . . . I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to preserve slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of the government, country, and Constitution altogether. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party or any man devised or expected; God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills, also, that we of the North as well as you of the South shall pay fairly for our

complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

His memorable letter to Horace Greeley contained the following passages, which will appear more and more remarkable as the ages roll on:

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it -and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

"What I do about slavery and the coloured race, I do because it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

"I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause.

"I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as they appear to be true views.

"I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

For independent thought, invincible purpose, clearness of expression, model composition, and lofty sentiment, the foregoing was never excelled by American statesmen.

With these principles and aims, Mr. Lincoln grappled with slavery-the real cause of the Rebellion-and, finally, enlisted nearly two hundred thousand negroes as