mighty for the life,
character, and service of the great President.

Four brief, crucial years he represented the soul of the Union
struggling for immortality--for perpetuity; in him was the spirit of
liberty struggling for a new birth among the children of men.

"Slavery must die," he said, "that the Union may live."

We have a Union to-day because we have Emancipation; we have
Emancipation because we have a united country. Though nearly fifty years
have elapsed since his martyr death and we see his images everywhere,
yet Lincoln is no mere legendary figure of an heroic age done in colors,
cast in bronze, or sculptured in marble; he is a living, vital force in
American politics and statecraft. The people repeat his wise sayings;
politicians invoke his principles; men of many political stripes profess
to be following in his footsteps. We of this generation can almost see
him in the flesh and blood and hear falling from his lips the sublime
words of Gettysburg, the divine music of the second inaugural and the
immortal Proclamation of Emancipation. We see this man of mighty thews
and sinews, his feet firmly planted in mother earth, his head towering
in the heavens. He lived among men but he walked with God. He was
himself intensely human, but his sense of right, of justice, seemed to
surpass the wisdom of men. A true child of nature, he beheld the races
of men in the raw without the artificial trappings of civilization and
the adventitious circumstances of birth or wealth or place, and could
see no difference in their natural rights.

"The Negro is a man," said he, "my ancient faith tells me that all men
are created equal."

As a man he was brave yet gentle, strong yet tender and sympathetic,
with the intellect of a philosopher, yet with the heart of a little
child. As a statesman he was prudent, wise, sagacious, far-seeing and
true. As President he was firm, magnanimous, merciful, and just. As a
liberator and benefactor of mankind, he has no peer in all human
history.

As Lowell said in his famous commemoration ode, it still must be said:

"Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These are all gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American."

There