_My Search for the
Captain_, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and Colonel T. W. Higginson's _Army
Life in a Black Regiment_, collected into a volume in 1870.

Of the public oratory of the war the foremost example is the
ever-memorable address of Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the
National Cemetery at Gettysburg. The war had brought the nation to its
intellectual majority. In the stress of that terrible fight there was no
room for {560} buncombe and verbiage, such as the newspapers and
stump-speakers used to dole out in _ante bellum_ days. Lincoln's speech
is short--a few grave words which he turned aside for a moment to speak
in the midst of his task of saving the country. The speech is simple,
naked of figures, every sentence impressed with a sense of responsibility
for the work yet to be done and with a stern determination to do it. "In
a larger sense," it says, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The
world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure 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, for
the people, shall not perish from the earth." Here was eloquence of a
different sort from the sonorous perorations of Webster or the polished
climaxes of Everett. As we read the plain, strong language of this brief
classic, with its solemnity, its restraint, {561} its "brave old wisdom
of sincerity," we seem to see the president's homely features irradiated
with the light of coming martyrdom--

"The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American."

Within the past quarter of a century the popular school of American humor
has reached its culmination. Every man of genius who is a humorist at
all is so in a way peculiar to himself. There is