of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of Freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

That speech, uttered at the field of Gettysburg, and now sanctified by the martyrdom of its author, is a monumental act. In the modesty of his nature he said: "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here." He was mistaken. The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech. Ideas are always more than battles.

Among the events which secured to him the assured confidence of the country against all party clamor and prejudice, you cannot place this speech too high. To some who had doubted his earnestness, here was touching proof of their error. Others who had followed him with indifference, were warmed with grateful sympathy. There were none to criticise.

He was re-elected President; and here was not only a personal triumph, but a triumph of the Republic. For himself personally, it was much to find his administration thus ratified; but for republican ideas it was of incalculable value, that, at such a time, the plume of the soldier had not prevailed. In the midst of war, the people at the ballot-box deliberately selected a civilian. Ye, who doubt the destinies of the Republic who fear the ambition of a military chief, or who suspect the popular will — do not forget, that, at this moment, when

the voice of battle filled the whole land, the country quietly appointed for its ruler this man of peace.

The Inaugural Address which signalized his entry for a second time upon his great duties, was briefer than any similar address in our history; but it has already gone farther, and will live longer, than any other. It was a continuation of the Gettysburg speech, with the same sublimity and gentleness. Its concluding words were like an angelic benediction.

Meanwhile there was a surfeit of battle and of victory. Calmly he saw the land of Slavery enveloped by the national forces; saw the great coil bent by his generals about it; saw the infinite garrotte as it tightened against the neck of the rebellion. Good news Good news came from all quarters. Everywhere the army was doing its duty. One was conquering in Tennessee; another was marching in Georgia and Carolina; another was watching at Richmond. The navy echoed back the thunders of the army. Place after place was falling — Savannah, Charleston, Fort Fisher, Wilmington. The President left his home to be near the Lieutenant-General. Then came the capture of Petersburg and Richmond, with the flight of Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Without pomp or military escort, the President entered the Capital of the rebellion and walked its streets, from which Slavery had fled forever. Then came the surrender of Lee. The surrender of Johnston was at hand. The military power of rebel Slavery had been broken like a Prince Rupert drop, and everywhere within its confines the barbarous government it had set up was tumbling in crash and ruin.

The country was in ecstasy. All this he watched without elation, while his soul was brooding on thoughts of peace and clemency. His youthful son, who had been on the staff of the Lieutenant-General, returned on the morning of Friday, 13th April, to resume his interrupted studies. The father was happy in the sound of his footsteps, and felt the augury of peace. On the same day the Lieutenant-General returned. In the intimacy of his family the President said that this day the war was over. In the evening he sought relaxation, and you know the rest. Alas! the war was not over. The agents of Slavery were dogging him, and that night he became a martyr.

The country rose at once in an agony of grief, and strong men everywhere wept. City, town, and village was darkened by the obsequies, as they swept by with more than "sceptred pall." Every street was draped with the ensigns of woe. He had become, as it were, the inmate of every house, and the families of the land were in mourning. Not only in the Executive mansion, but in innumerable homes, was his vacant chair. Never before was such universal sorrow; and already the voice of lamentation is returning to us from Europe, where candor towards him had begun even before death. Only a short time ago, he was unknown, except in his own State. Only a short time ago, he had visited New York as a stranger, and was shown about its streets by youthful companions. Five years later, he was borne through these streets with funeral pomp, such as the world never before witnessed.

At the first moment it was hard to comprehend this

blow, and many cried in despair. But the rule of God has been too visible of late to allow any doubt of his constant presence. Did not our martyr remind us in his last address, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether? And who will say that his death. was not a judgment of the Lord? Perhaps it was needed to lift the country to a more perfect justice and to inspire it with a sublimer faith. Perhaps it was sent in mercy to set a sacred irreversible seal upon the good he had done, and to put Emancipation beyond all mortal question. Perhaps it was the sacrificial consecration of those primal truths, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which he had so often vindicated, and for which he had announced his willingness to die. He is gone, and he has been mourned sincerely. It is only private sorrow that could wish to recall the dead. He is now removed beyond human vicissitudes. Life and death are both past. He had been happy in life. He was not less happy in death. In death, as in life, he was still under the guardianship of that Divine Providence, which took him early by the hand and led him from obscurity to power and fame. Only on the Sunday preceding his assassination, while coming from the front on the steamer, and with a quarto Shakespeare in his hands, he read aloud the wellknown words of Macbeth:

Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further.

Impressed by its beauty or by something else, he read it a second time. As the friends who then surrounded him listened to his reading, they little thought how, in a few days, what was said of the murdered Duncan would be said of him. Nothing can touch him further. He is saved from the trials that were gathering about him. He had fought the good fight of Emancipation. He had borne the brunt of war with embattled hosts against him, and had conquered. He had made the name of Republic a triumph and a joy in foreign lands. Now that the strife of blood was ended, it remained to be seen how he could confront those machinations, which are only a prolongation of the war, and more dangerous because more subtle, where recent rebels, with professions of Union on the lips, but still defying the principles of the Declaration of Independence, vainly seek to organize peace on another Oligarchy of the skin. From all these trials he was saved. But his testimony lives and will live forever, quickened by the undying echoes of his tomb. Dead, he will speak with more than living voice. But the author of Emancipation cannot die. His immortality on earth has begun. His country and his age are already enshrined in his example, as if he were its great poet gathered to his fathers:

Back to the living hath he turned him,

And all of death has past away;

The age that thought him dead and mourned him,

Itself now lives but in his lay.

If the President were alive, he would protest against any monotony of panegyric. He never exaggerated. He was always cautious in praise, as in censure. In endeav