striking for its forcible expressions
and conciliatory spirit. He spoke something as follows:

"On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts
were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. * * * Both parties
deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the
nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it
perish; and the war came. * * * Both read the same Bible, and pray to
the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem
strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us
judge not that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be
answered. That of neither has been fully. * * * With malice toward none,
with charity for all, with the firmness in the right, as God gives us
light to see the right, let us finish the work we are in to bind up the
nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and
for his widow and his orphans, to all which may achieve and cherish a
just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

He hated slavery from the beginning, but was not an abolitionist until
it was constitutional to be so. At the head of the nation, when
precedents were useless, he was governed by justice only. He was
singularly fortunate in the selection of his cabinet officers, and the
reason was he never allowed prejudice to prevent his placing a rival in
high office.

Yes, Mr. Lincoln is probably the most remarkable example on the pages of
history, showing the possibilities of our country. From the poverty in
which he was born, through the rowdyism of a frontier town, the rudeness
of frontier society, the discouragement of early bankruptcy, and the
fluctuations of popular politics, he rose to the championship of Union
and freedom when the two seemed utterly an impossibility; never lost
his faith when both seemed hopeless, and was suddenly snatched from
earth when both were secured. He was the least pretentious of men, and
when, with the speed of electricity, it flashed over the Union that the
great Lincoln--shot by an assassin--was no more, the excitement was
tremendous. The very heart of the republic throbbed with pain and
lamentation. Then the immortal President was borne to his last
resting-place in Springfield, Illinois. All along the journey to the
grave, over one thousand miles, a continual wail went up from friends
innu