is
statement of mine. It admits of no possible equivocation. Mr. Lincoln
carried with him to Fortress Monroe two documents that still stand in
his own handwriting; one of them a joint resolution to be passed by the
two houses of Congress appropriating the four hundred millions, the
other a proclamation to be issued by himself, as president, when the
joint resolution had been passed. These formed no part of the discussion
at Hampton Roads, because Mr. Stephens told Mr. Lincoln they were
limited to treating upon the basis of the recognition of the
Confederacy, and to all intents and purposes the conference died before
it was actually born. But Mr. Lincoln was so filled with the idea that
next day, when he had returned to Washington, he submitted the two
documents to the members of his cabinet. Excepting Mr. Seward, they were
all against him. He said: "Why, gentlemen, how long is the war going to
last? It is not going to end this side of a hundred days, is it? It is
costing us four millions a day. There are the four hundred millions, not
counting the loss of life and property in the meantime. But you are all
against me, and I will not press the matter upon you." I have not cited
this fact of history to attack, or even to criticize, the policy of the
Confederate Government, but simply to illustrate the wise magnanimity
and justice of the character of Abraham Lincoln. For my part I rejoice
that the war did not end at Fortress Monroe--or any other
conference--but that it was fought out to its bitter and logical
conclusion at Appomattox.

It was the will of God that there should be, as God's own prophet had
promised, "a new birth of freedom," and this could only be reached by
the obliteration of the very idea of slavery. God struck Lincoln down in
the moment of his triumph, to attain it; He blighted the South to attain
it. But He did attain it. And here we are this night to attest it. God's
will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. But let no Southern man
point finger at me because I canonize Abraham Lincoln, for he was the
one friend we had at court when friends were most in need; he was the
one man in power who wanted to preserve us intact, to save us from the
wolves of passion and plunder that stood at our door; and as that God,
of whom it has been said that "whom He loveth He chasteneth," meant that
the South should be chastened, Lincoln was put out of the way by the
bullet of an assassin, having neither lot nor parce