SERMONS ON RECENT NATIONAL VICTORIES, AND THE NATIONAL SORROW. PREACHED, APRIL 23D, 1865, IN THE PLYMOUTH CHURCH, By the Pastor, E. P. POWELL. Adrian, Mich., SMITH & FOSTER, PRINTERS, OPPOSITE LAWRENCE HOTEL. 1865. JOHN 11, 50.—“Consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole Nation perish not." May 18th, 1860, the American people met at Chicago, by Delegates, to elect a Candidate to rule over twenty-five degrees of latitude and sixty degrees of longitude. Thirty millions of people, recognizing the fact that liberty can be preserved only under due restraints, sought voluntarily a Chief Magistrate. They looked at McLean, who, among our Judges was in wisdom dignity and judgment, Chief before the Chief Justice. They looked at William H. Seward, who was, without doubt, the choice of a majority of the Republican party.Seward had led us as no other Statesman ever did. Clay was the peoples friend, Webster the peoples defender, Jefferson the peoples oracle, Jackson the peoples pride; but history will write that William H. Seward, during the first century of American Independence, was the real peoples leader. Never going but one point ahead of us, he patiently waited for his logic to take its effect, and the people were sure to come up to him; then onward just one step more, and he waited for us to take the same step, and take it we did. He gave us our political passwords; and in twenty-five years induced more progress in political views than perhaps all other Statesmen from Hamilton down to the present. Men with the same views achieved nothing with the popular will, because they were only . agitators. As radical as Phillips or Garrison, Seward led the people, while Phillips strove to drive them. Yet the Convention passed by Seward, in their choice for President. Old men who loved his greatness and gloried in his strength, sat down like children and wept. They looked to Attorney General Bates. In him some saw the model gentleman, who by a wise conservatism, reserved dignity, and soundness of judgment would be just the man to combine conflicting elements. He was to be the oil on the waters of threatened secession. But they passed by Bates. They looked, I am sorry to add, at Simon Cameron, the Simon Magus of American politics. All these were men of note, ability, and great personal and political strength. But it was as when Samuel was sent to the family of Jesse to anoint a King over Israel. Eliab passed before him, and he said surely this is the Lords anointed. But the Lord said look not on his countenance, for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance; but the Lord looketh on the heart. And nine other sons passed by, but the Lord refused them all. But David the youngest was tending sheep, and when the prophet insisted on his being sent for, the Lord said This is he, anoint him. A Thus our old leaders and Statesmen were passed by, and the people invited to give their suffrages to Abraham Lincoln. The name was somewhat familiar to the American people, as that of the only man on the prairies who could face Stephen A. Douglas. The choice was simply a direction of Providence. Lincoln never would have been the choice of the majority of voters, had not a Convention first selected him. Seward, or Chase, or McLean were decidedly more in popular favor. man who never in his life received but one years school education; a farm boy chopping a clearing in the forest at ten; a hired hand on a river flat boat at nineteen; at twenty-one a rail splitter, living in a log cabin of his own building; at twentytwo a boat builder, at twelve dollars a month; at twenty-four a store keeper, and poor at that; at twenty-five a Postmaster; at twenty-six a Surveyor; at twenty-seven a member of the Legislature; at twenty-eight a Lawyer; at thirty-five Presiden tial Elector; at thirty-seven a Representative in Congress; at fifty-one President of the the Uuited States. He was not the first choice of the people; but he was the |