This rail-splitter, this boy who passed his ungainly youth in the dire
poverty of the poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and
painful labor, lived to lead his people through the burning flames of a
struggle from which the nation emerged, purified as by fire, born anew to a
loftier life.

After long years of iron effort, and of failure that came more often than
victory, he at last rose to the leadership of the Republic, at the moment
when that leadership had become the stupendous world-task of the time. He
grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success came to him, but never
happiness, save that which springs from doing well a painful and a vital
task. Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deepened on his brow,
but his eyes were undimmed by either hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders were
bowed, but his steel thews never faltered as he bore for a burden the
destinies of his people. His great and tender heart shrank from giving
pain; and the task allotted him was to pour out like water the life-blood
of the young men, and to feel in his every fibre the sorrow of the women.
Disaster saddened but never dismayed him.

As the red years of war went by they found him ever doing his duty in the
present, ever facing the future with fearless front, high of heart, and
dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by scorn, he worked and
suffered for the people. Triumph was his at the last; and barely had he
tasted it before murder found him, and the kindly, patient, fearless eyes
were closed forever.

As a people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the
two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they
differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky
backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great
qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all
mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render. Each
had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty ideals was
guided by the soundest common sense. Each possessed inflexible courage in
adversity, and a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all
the gentler virtues commonly exhibited by good men who lack rugged strength
of character. Each possessed also all the strong qualities commonly
exhibited by those towering masters of mankind who have too often shown
themselves devoid of so much as the understanding