h an hour, with such tremendous issues
in the balance, a steady hand was at the helm; that a conservative
statesman--one whose mission was to save, not to destroy--was in
the high place of responsibility and power. It booted little then
that he was untaught of schools, unskilled in the ways of courts, but
it was of supreme moment that he could touch responsive chords
in the great American heart, all-important that his very soul
yearned for the preservation of the Government established through
the toil and sacrifice of the generation that had gone. How
hopeless the Republic in that dark hour, had its destiny hung upon
the statecraft of Talleyrand, the eloquence of Mirabeau, or the
genius of Napoleon! It was fortunate indeed that the ark of our
covenant was then borne by the plain, brave man of conciliatory
spirit and kind words, whose heart, as Emerson has said, 'was as
large as the world, but nowhere had room for the memory of a wrong.'

"Nobler words have never fallen from human lips than the closing
sentences of his first inaugural uttered on one of the pivotal days
of human history, immediately after taking the oath to preserve,
protect, and defend his country:

"'I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot's grave to every heart and hearthstone of this broad land,
will yet swell the chorus of the Union when touched as they will
be by the better angels of our nature.'

"In the light of what we now know so well, nothing is hazarded
in saying that the death of no man has been to his country so
irreparable a loss, or one so grievous to be borne, as that of
Abraham Lincoln. When Washington died his work was done, his life
well rounded out. Save one, the years allotted had been passed.
Not so with Lincoln. To him a grander task was yet in waiting,
one no other could so well perform. The assassin's pistol proved the
veritable Pandora's box from which sprung evils untold,--whose
consequences have never been measured.--to one-third of the States
of our Union. But for his untimely death how the current of history
might have been changed,--and many a sad chapter remained unwritten!
How earnestly he desired a restored Union, and that the blessings of
peace and of concord should be the common heritage of every section,
is known to all.

"When in the loom