ation that the breeding system of such mischiefs and
monsters shall be forever and utterly destroyed. We needed not that
he should put on paper that he believed in slavery, who, with
treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal, hovered round that
majestic man to destroy his life. He was himself the lifelong sting
with which Slavery struck at Liberty, and he carried the poison
that belonged to Slavery; and as long as this Nation lasts it will
never be forgotten that we have had one Martyr-President--never,
never while time lasts, while heaven lasts, while hell rocks and
groans, will it be forgotten that Slavery by its minions slew him,
and in slaying him made manifest its whole nature and tendency.
This blow was aimed at the life of the Government. Some murders
there have been that admitted shades of palliation, but not such a
one as this--without provocation, without reason, without
temptation--sprung from the fury of a heart cankered to all that is
pure and just.

The blow has failed of its object. The Government stands more solid
today than any pyramid of Egypt. Men love liberty and hate slavery
today more than ever before. How naturally, how easily, the
Government passed into the hands of the new President, and I avow
my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of
liberty, true to the whole trust that is imposed in him, vigilant
of the Constitution, careful of the laws, wise for liberty: in that
he himself for his life long, has known what it is to suffer from
the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from the bitter
experience of his own life. Even he that sleeps has by this event
been clothed with new influence. His simple and weighty words will
be gathered like those of Washington, and quoted by those who, were
he alive, would refuse to listen. Men will receive a new access to
patriotism. I swear you on the altar of his memory to be more
faithful to that country for which he perished. We will, as we
follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which
he warred, and which in vanquishing him has made him a martyr and
conqueror. I swear you by the memory of this martyr to hate slavery
with an unabatable hatred, and to pursue it. We will admire the
firmness of this man in justice, his inflexible conscience for th