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THE GEEAT

FUNERAL ORATION

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

MISS EMMA HARDINGE.

DELIVERED SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 1865, AT COOPER INSTITUTE,
NEW YORK, BEFORE UPWARDS OF THREE
THOUSAND PERSONS.

Prebu op Wynkoop Sl Hallenbedk, No. 113 Fultow Street, N. Y.

THE GEEAT

FUNERAL ORATION

ON

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY
MISS EMMA HARDINGE.

DELIVERED SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 1865, AT COOPER INSTITUTE,
NEW YORK, BEFORE UPWARDS OF THEEE
THOUSAND PERSONS.

NEW YORK: »
AMERICAN NEW3 COMPANY,
Nassau Street.

TWENTY-njE CENTS,

C^2Zn z }
B77

PBBFAOE.

The news of the death of Abraham Lincoln, President of
the United States, was telegraphed to New York on Saturday
morning, April 15. Toward the close of the day, Miss
Emma Hardinge received an invitation from several influen
tial citizens to deliver an oration upon the lamented Chief
Magistrate of the nation. The invitation was accepted, and
the time agreed upon for its delivery was the next day, Sun
day, at three o'clock, P. M., at Cooper Institute. There was
no time for preparing an address of so important a character,
and the effort was entirely cxlempo%aneous. The attention
with which the speaker was listened to, the deep interest
aroused, and the irrepressible applause with which an assem
bly of upward of three thousand persons interrupted her dis
course, sufficiently testified not less to the earnestness and
justice of the tribute paid to the illustrious martyr than io
the eloquence that characterized this most valuable oration.
The oration having fortunately been phonographically
reported, is now published in response to a very generally
expressed desire on the part of citizens of all shades of polit
ical belief, who are solicitous that so fitting a memento of
the virtues of Abraham Lincoln should be read by every
American patriot.

INVOCATION.
0 Thou that nearest prayer ! Look upon us, Thy
children, in this hour of deepest soul-affliction ! Lord of
the sunshine and the storm, Q-od of the starry night and
sunlit day, Thou who art our joy, our grief, our all ! teach
us to remember, in the darkness as the light, that 'tis our
Father's hand that's dealing with us; our Father's footsteps
leading us, through mystery and gloom, to pierce the ever-
brightening path of His omniscient goodness. Eighteen
hundred years ago Thy best beloved meekly stood to hear
the roaring multitude reject him for Barabbas. Eighteen
hundred years ago and the rocking earth sustained a dying
Augel on the cross of shame, while a murderer went forth
free. Once more we see Thy son beloved, Thy child of
light, and faithful servant, struck down beneath the hand of
guilt and crime, a sacrifice to the lost and darkened souls
that choose a Barabbas and reject a Jesus ! O Thou whose
still small voice we wait to hear when the whirlwind of our
grief sweeps by, and the tempest of our anguish is sobbed
out ! Teach us, as we mourn the day of Crucifixion, to
turn with brightening memory to the hopes of Easter.
Teach us to recollect that, if the best and purest that ever
walked the earth must needs be lifted up on the cross of
death, all earth might rejoice in a resurrecting Easter, so
has the martyr whom we mourn this hour gone from our
mortal eyes, a sign to all mankind of this day of Resurrec
tion — a bright and strong assurance for us, who so dearly
loved him, that as the Master so the servant rises, and, like
the blessed Nazarene, His follower in life, His prototype in
death, he has joined the sons of light, the hosts of victory
crowned, and wears the palm of a glorious immortality,
arisen, arisen ! to his Father's home, and ours.

ORATION.
It seems to me as if I heard a tone, borne on the wings of
time and -sounding through the corridors of space, sweeping
the earth like a breeze, from the shores of the remotest East
to this land of the distant West— a voice that for eighteen
hundred years has pleaded before the throne of Almighty-
Justice in the only strain that can solve the dire and dreadful
problem of red murder saying, "Father, forgive them,
they know not what they do." Friends, this voice most surely
speaks, both to you and me, in this hour of awful grief.
There seems no other utterance fit to explain its meaning,
or able to pronounce sentence on the terrible cause of pain
.that afflicts us in this most unparalleled and sublime national
woe. I recall the page of history in vain to find any prece
dent .(save the one which laid the foundations of your re
ligion) for this foul and monstrous act of guilt which forms
the record of this solemn hour.
When I remember the circumstances, time, and person
ages of this tragic history, all attempts at parallel grow
pale and fail us utterly. Rome's Caesar pleads to us with the
dumb but most eloquent voices of " his bleeding wounds ;"
but before that piteous sacrifice stand the avenging forms of
patriots. France points to a Louis Capet, and the execrat
ing hiss of abashed posterity pronounces his doom was
martyrdom ; but even then his guiltless life was yielded up
to time and preparation, a show of justice, and the sanction
of a multitude. The wrongs of an oppressed people and the
ruin of a nation were on the heads of both the Roman and
French rulers.
The shadow, if not the substance, of justice condemned

them, and the contagious barbarism of the times exceeds in
each case the atrocity of the murderous act. But where is
the plea which we can hand down to a candid posterity in
exculpation, wholly or partially, of the parricidal act which
has robbed the American nation of a father, every American
citizen of a friend, factious parties of their most generous
judge, a relentless enemy of their best protector, and the
whole world of an honest man ? Where is the precedent in
history for the insanity which destroys in a nation's pre
server a nation's institutions ; in a nation's noblest man her
brightest jewel; and in the hour of his* noblest recorded acts
inflicts on him the blow that recoils in an immortal stain upon
a nation's honor ?
Pass over the perilous scenes of strife, political hatred,
and factional discord, that might have drawn lines of sepa
ration between himself and those who could not appreciate
his acts of policy, and follow him to the time when he stands
the central figure of the dark and distracting scenes of war.
Behold him therein the mid-«t of contending armies, confront
ing the friends who were so often unfaithful and cold, and
the enemy that was always pitiless and cruel ;' see him ex
tending the blessed flag of peace and reconciliation over all
alike; stretching his paternal arm over every American, and,
like the almighty and merciful father of the parable, receiv
ing the prodigal back to his heart with a magnanimity and
beneficence that challenges the deepest gratitude of the
wrong-doer, the fealty of friends, and the admiration of the
whole world. Strong, brave, and immovable in the hour of
trial and calamity, Abraham Lincoln practiced the last
crowning virtue of a great man's life, the divine attribute of
mercy; and after having gallantly conquered, generously
forgave the foe, uniting again in one fraternal clasp the sev
ered hands of North and South, and silenced every jealous

lip or rebellious tongue by a clemency calculated to win
more hearts by his kindness than the invincible armies of the
North have subdued by their arms. In all his public acts,
even to the very last, we see him ever casting himself trust
ingly and nobly on the fealty of the people. Surely he must
have loved them, for who ever before so trusted them ?
Despite of the fearful storm which treason had conjured
up around him, in defiance of the insolent presence of the
rebellion and the infamous serpent-trail of conspiracy, the
generous, unselfish heart of the man still confided in the
people, and he went among them with none of the panoply
of state, none of the assumptions of power or place, common
to others of his position ; he went without guard or protec
tion but in the people's fealty an 1 love ; and it was even for
their sakes, to please the people, nor suffer a shade of dis
appointment to embitter, by his absence, their hours of
recreation, that the noble heart went forth to its death, the
tender father to cast himself into the arms of the parricide
that struck him down. Oh ! what an hour, and under what
a sacred trust, to consummate this deep and burning stain
upon humanity ! Accursed be the band, the time, the place,
that wrote upon the page of history the foulest blot that
page has evtr borne.
'Tis well the dying Master on the cross plead, in his pity
ing love, for the children of perdition. Our lips are too
unchristlike, face to face with such an act as this, to say
amen for the prayer of mercy on this wretch.
In view of the special infamy which time, circumstance,
and person all so fearfully aggravate, permit me here to
speak my deep conviction that this act, however fatally we
know it is the work of plot and rebellion, still cannot be, for
the honor of humanity, the organized act of any great section
of the land we call American. I cannot believe it the work

of South, North, West, the common enemy, or even a foreign
foe. The act of a demon scarcely suffices to brand a whole
humanity ; and we should pause long ere we accept, as con
clusive, evidence to show that a knot of inhuman serpents
wearing the shape of men, or a coil of conspirators doing
the deeds of demons, should represent the country of our
birth and manhood. Of this I shall speak more hereafter,
but having entered my protest against the belief that an
enemy we once called brother, still Americans, an.l always
men, could have wrought the deed which none but earth's
Cains are capable of doing. I propose to extract whatever
remains of use or instruction in this hour of gloom by trac
ing, as we may, the deep, mysterious purposes of God dis
closed in this solemn lesson. First, then, we are called upon
to review the noble teaching in our lost friend's history;
next, to scrutinize the deed which closed it ; and then deter
mine what the trumpet-voice of this dread hour demands of
us as duty.
I cannot think it is out of place to-day to retrace " those
shining foot-prints on the sands of time" which he we mourn
has lfilt behind him, although they are, as they justly should
be, already household words among the people of his love. \
Now, will you deem it less in order that I should pre
sume to be your memento of this sacred page? Month after
month it has seemed my special inspiration to call upon the
people, whom it was my privilege to ad.lress, to study out
and comprehend the acts of him whom I felt and named as
the true " Preserver of his Country."
Scarcely ten days have passed since these walls re-echoed
to the gallant cheer that hailed my voice when I told you
of the sterling worth, the loyal faith, and providential wisdom
of this noble incarnation of earth's best republicanism — the
man of the people, the People's Abraham Lincoln. Some

10
of you heard me then, but none of you know that the high
est hope that my ambition cherished was that some future day
should see me clasp his honest hand in mine, as the noblest
meed I ever could receive for unpaid and zealous service.
My hope is quenched, and the kind paternal hand is marble
now ; nor you nor I shall clasp it, until that day when we
stand with him " where the sun goes down no more ; where
the mourners cease to weep; and the just rejoice forever."
What a retrospect of a splendid career developed, if not
wholly fashioned, by the fostering sun of American repub
licanism, does our great chief magistrate's history present us
with ! Fifty-six years ago, and the low sigh of the breeze stir
ring the trees of old Kentucky, the song of the lonely woodbird
and the chirp of the tenants of the wildest solitudes were the
natal songs that welcomed into life the child whose name has to
reverberate through the earth in the clarion tones of a world
wide fame ; born to the inheritance of stern poverty and rude
toil, a log-cabin was his only shelter, the cathedral arches of
the green forest his baptismal roof, and the lonely stars and
voiceless flowers, the backwoodsman father and humble
mother, his only friends and teachers ; and yet we trace the
germs of Nature's truest nobility unfolding themselves in
every year of his faithful life; always the good and dutiful
child, the industrious little aid of the toiling father, the will
ing little drudge of the patient mother.
At seven years he goes forth with the spelling-book, one
of the three volumes that constitute the family library. At
eight he learns the first dread lesson of slavery, namely, that
free white labor has no chance in competition with captive
black ; that the condition of a poor white laborer in a slave
State is more hopeless than the slave himself; and hence him
self and little household endure the toil and hardship of a
weary pioneer journey from Kentucky slavery and darkness,

11
to Indiana freedom and light. Remember, thus early did
Abraham Lincoln learn his first practical lessons of the cor
rupting and festering influences of slavery. At ten years
old the little backwoodsman's boy, by industry and (for
time and condition) most arduous study, had become the
wonder of the scattered population in which he dwelt for
his skill in reading, and his yet more astonishing faculty for
writing, only equaled by the kindness which urged him to
become the scribe of all who sought the good boy's service
in this humble way. At nineteen he is the Mississippi boat
man, intrusted with wealth and others' welfare, honored and
sought for himself and his honest manhood.
At twenty-one he first set foot in that Illinois whose
proudest boast to-day is to call him hers. Here he makes
his father's home, helps build his house, and fence his farm,
and immortalized that humble form of labor which renders
the title of the " rail-splitter" a patent of America's nobility.
From this we trace him from his final exodus from the pater,
nal roof, now the hired farm hand, the clerk in the
petty store, the agent, buyer, scribe, postmaster, captain
in the Black Hawk war, surveyor, lawyer, legislator, but
ever the same, good, self-made, self-taught, toiling, honest,
truthful, studious man. 0 earthly potentates ! proud Euro
pean princes ! fortune's favored children ! how would you
smile to be bid to school in the forest log-hut ; to study the
ragged page of one single volume ; to learn of the teachers
grinding poverty and toil, and. prepare for a rule more large,
more onerous and high in import, than Asia or Europe's
greatest monarchs know in the farmer's barn, the boat
man's raft, the village store, or the poor clerk's office !
Bright, beautiful, and just republicanism, thou knowest
thy kings, and never can mistake thy princes ! And in every
step of this great magic ladder cut by his hands, erected by

12
his industry, and trod by the unwearying feet of good
Abraham Lincoln, thou didst determine that the lowest
round of that ladder, the people's ladder, the ladder of
Nature's royalty and Grod's nobility, was fitly placed in the
old Kentucky woods, the last and highest in the New World's
presidential mansion.
Don't you remember, you who are familiar with this" won-
'derful page of human history, how nobly and skillfully the
kind young lawyer used one of his first exercises in his sub
tle profession for the saving of that precious boon of life
\\-hich has been so savagely wrung from him.
Oh, how the heart aches at the fearful contrast !
Young Armstrong, the son of a poor widow, who had once
been kind to the boy Lincoln, stood arraigned on the charge
of murder, in danger of his life.
The young lawyer Lincoln, never forgetful of the least of
kindnesses, came forward in the hour of the widow's desola
tion and her son's dire need, and, without the least expecta
tion of other reward than the applause of his noble heart,
tendered his service to the wretched pair. They say, on the
day of the trial he promised the' widow he would give her
back her son to life and freedom "before the sun went
down.'' By the keen perception of his lucid mind to per
ceive his client's innocence, aided by genius, skill, and elo
quence to prove it, he kept his word, and, with the last
lingering rays of the setting sun gilding his noble brow, he
bestowed on the widow her son, " her only son," restored
by him to life and light and liberty. Such was the youth's
career; the statesman's is public history — the history of that
mighty struggle in which the noble heart of the man and
the clear head of the politician became both alike so remark
ably distinguished.
The most prominent and renowned evidence of this is

13
found in his famous senatorial contest with Judge Douglas.
No one can fail to perceive, from the entire tenor of Mr.
Lincoln's remarkable life, that he fully understood and com
pletely loathed the monstrous blot that had crept into the
national legislation in the form of legalized slavery.
He was its open and avowed enemy, ever voting in his
place, whenever occasion served, against its extension iu any
foi-m ; the contest I have alluded to, euabled him to bring all
the powers of his acute and logical mind and forcible nervous
oratory, to bear on the monstrous evil of its extension into
the Territories, or the perpetuation of the gigantic wrong in
any form outside of its then existing State limits. Aud yet,
despite the unequivocal opposition which he maintained so
constantly to the character, political influence, and destructive
nature of this suicidal institution, we find Mr. Lincoln just
as firm in his defense of that State-right sovereigntv which
granted the constitutional privilege of retaining slavery in
each State's precinct unrestrained by the interference of the
central government. I do not propose in this place to dis
cuss the vexed problem of the just equilibrium to be attained
between the powers of the States as petty sovereignties and
the central government as a whole. I notice the subject
here to point to the fact, that while the known beneficence
and wisdom of Mr. Lincoln's character inclined us to expect
of him an uncompromising war on slavery, by what I believe
to be the providential character of his mind, anticipating the
irrepressible conflict in which the nation's life was yet to be
iuvolved, he was ever led to refuse his sanction to a single
act, by which (as we now perceive) in after years the rebel
lious South could have founded a plea upon, to exeuse their
base secession.
That rash and hasty zeal that would have hurried the
nation's Chief Magistrate into acts which ignored the letter

14
of the Constitution, infringed on the guarantees it offered to
Southern slavery, or recklessly cast the West and border
States in the eager arms of a half justifiable rebellion, the wise
and deep-sighted policy of the noble statesman never suffered
him to adopt; and either to a human wisdom beyond the
ken of too many one-idead politicians, or a divine inspiration
providing against the inevitable hour of coming woe, we owe
it that the country's best defender left the traitor South no
shadow of excuse, nor ray of plea, for resistance to his wise
paternal rule. Such was the politician and the man — equal
to all emergencies and times. Behold him next assuming
the reins of government at a time when every other mind
on earth would have shrunk aghast from the fearful task, or
sunk beneath its complicated perils.
Surrounded by treason, environed by secret foes, the
ground beneath him undermined by plots, a vast and relent
less offensive war already thundering at the nation's gate,
while the thews and sinews of defense were stolen, removed,
and broken ; ships, arsenals, forts, treasuries despoiled and
plundered; a navy to create, an army to raise, a treasury to
improvise; a people, all unused to war and taxes, to bend
and discipline, to both equip and provide for all; no section
of a continent, like European lands, to garrison or conquer,
but a vast New World to cover, guard, and conquer with
great armies, any one of which would eat up or destroy a
country of any other quarter of the globe ; the taunts of
enemies to bear ; the fearful changes and chances of a gigantic
war to calculate upon and provide for; foes to repel, treason
to subdue; clamorous harpies to satisfy, presumptuous
friends to check; the whole seaboard of the wide Atlantic
coast, a highway for treacherous foreign despot powers, all
waiting, longing greedily to aid the ruin of the earth's democ
racy, their own most dreaded foe — and yet, in any of these

15
vast and momentous issues, where are the acts or words,
the noble State papers, brilliant messages, or clear and
unwavering deeds of Abraham Lincoln ever found at fault?
I answer, boldly challenging earth's statesmen to disprove
my words — not in one single instance!
There's not a statesman of the age but might read a les
son in the firm and lofty dignity of tone in which the na
tion's status was defined, aye, and maintained, too, in all his
foreign messages and ministerial instructions. When dark,
impending ruin shook the earth beneath his feet, where will
you find the evidence of weakness in one single word to any
foreign power? Where one jot of yielding of the nation's
undivided dignity ? Where one base concession to, the des
pot's aim to force him to submission through the country's
real internal weakness ? He took with the oath' of office
the nation's weal or woe upon his shoulders ; wore it as a
mantle ; girdled it about his towering form with his heart
strings ; and wraps it now around the lifeless ruin of his still
and pulseless heart as a winding-sheet of glory. To him you
owe it that the name and dignity of the still united States
towered like a monitor above the wreck and ruin, so high
and grand and threatening, that no hand but an armed Am
erican's dare rise in presumptuous threat against the Stars
and Stripes. One of the noblest State papers that the re
cords of any nation can show is, to my thinking, to be found
in Mr. Lincoln's first inaugural address to this nation. There
the entire question of the Protean Problem — Slavery — in con
nection with its legalized existence in the States as guaran
teed by the Constitution, is fairly and fully laid out, the
suicidal character of secession unvailed, and the magnificent
proportions of a united American republicanism grandly
depicted. A mind capable of analyzing with such irresistible
and clear deductions the entangled meshes of treason in which

16
the nation's life was involved, never could fail in steering the
ship of State through all the shoals and reefs in which she
was subsequently to struggle for the port of safety. The
prescient wisdom of the many great statesmen who had pre
ceded him seemed to culminate in his simple yet lucid defi
nition of the nation's situation, in a speech made by him, as
early as 1S5S, on the occasion of his nomination as candi
date for senator in Illinois, when he says : " A house divided
against itself cannot stand ; I believe this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and. half free. I do
not expect the Union to be dissolved ; I do not ex
pect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will oease to be
divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."
These and many other such utterances of his public life
conclusively prove not only his perfect understanding of the
Vexed questions that were agitating the land, but also give
the key to that policy which his opponents have so often
and so rashly denounced as "time-serving," but which now
looms up as the providential wisdom which not only foresees,
but knows how to await the ripening of the proper time for
action. And when that, time came, was Mr. Lincoln slow,
fearful, or disobedient to " the higher law " that ever ruled
his life in availing himself of it? I allude to the enuncia
tion of the immortal proclamation of emancipation, the deed
which, beyond all others of his l.fe, crowns him with eternal
honor, and will hand his name down to an immortal glory
through all posterity. Up to the end of the first three
years of the war Mr. Lincoln had robbed the rebellious foe
of every shadow of plea against his administration by a
guard over the very rights they had forfeited, as jealous as
themselves could have exercised, retaining by his wise policy
the strength of the vacillating western and border States
still attached to the Union.

17
Assailed by unwise friends and bitter foes, with taunts and
revilings on every hand, still he moved not ; but when the
crisis came in which the nation's life was balanced against
protective southern policy, how long did the noble statesman
hesitate ? The cry of the discontented and disloyal raised
its accustomed wail against freedom and howled out
" abolitionism ;" but above the murmur of the storm arose
in his ear the grand Mosaic cry of " Let my people go ! "
and although that voice has been thundering down the
ages, and a burning bush and a fire-crowned Sinai has
flashed before the eyes of despots in every century of time,
whenever God's oppressed and captive people cried to Him
for deliverance, three thousand years has seen that awful
charge held disregarded, mocked, and spit upon, until good
Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, proclaimed it in " Liberty
throughout the land, to every inhabitant thereof!" God
bless him for it !
I was present in San Francisco one year after this memor
able deed, a,nd, in company with the only other white orator
who could be found to take part on such an occasion,
helped the enfranchised race to honor the glorious anniver
sary. The memory of the sable martyrs that had perished at
Port Hudson and Fort Pillow was still green in memory;
they told of the black regiments, formed of men whose
ancestors' unpaid toil had made the country rich, whose
backs were still seamed with lashes, and whose limbs still
gashed with the mark of fetters, but whose freed lives were
now devoted to the salvation of the land that had enslaved
them. These pictures were vividly portrayed in strains of
their own peculiar, wild, and touching eloquence ; but all was
forgotten, all forgiven- when the name of their modern
Moses was pronounced, and then it was that a shout went
2

18
up to God, chorused by four millions of glad, rejoicing
voices, echoed by the white slaves of despotism and tyranny
all over the world — a shout of " God bless Abraham Lin
coln !" That Cry will be a passport to his soul through the
courts of heaven, in all ete'rnity, did it stand alone as the
only record of his pure and spotless life.
But wherever I turn my eyes in his unprecedented career
I find some fresh challenge to my wonder and admiration.
No man in history was ever before intrusted with the charge-
of such vast armies, the disbursements of such enormous sums
of money, or the exercise of such stupendous powers. Mr.
Lincoln modestly professed himself unequal to the task of
directing the military situations of his vast armies, yet his
correspondence with General McClellan proves that either
his clear intuitions or his real ability always dictated the
wisest and most able instructions to his generals, the only
real failure of which was the disregard with which they were
received. No scrutiny however searching, has yet disclosed
one jot of selfishness, dishonesty, or aught but generous sin
gleness of purpose in the use of all the power, finance, and
vast resources intrusted to his charge Oh people of
the land he blessed and saved ! can I deal justly with his
sacred name, unless I present it to your undivided admira
tion as your "Father Abraham Lincoln !" — a man whose
page of history stands without a blemish, whose bright
escutcheon will shine through all futurity without one single
spot. My retrospect of this noble life is almost ended. It
but remains in this place to remind you that if our Chief
Magistrate was, in his own unassuming phrase, " too deficient
in military experience to general the situation," he was
amply supplied with that moral fitness for command which
has made the world's most potent conquests and furnished
in history its brightest wreaths of victory. From the very

19
hour when he gave to the armies of the North, a moral
watchword and the glorious war-cry " Liberty" the most
genuine and unequivocal success has marked their every
action. From point to point, their march has been a triumph.
They swept the border States; opened twelve hundred miles
of highway on the grand old Father of Waters ; pierced
every gate of life in the quivering body of the confederate
South ; drew their girdle of irresistible conquest around the
vast chain of territorial lands, East, West, and South, back
to the North again, and paused not until they had torn the
heart of rebeldom throbbing from the midst of the Old Domin
ion, and placed Richmond, a votive offering on the shrine of
that glorious Union that bent beneath the storm only to rise
in more glorious majesty again on the shattered walls of
Sumter — and the crowning acts of all were the last of this
strange eventful history.
True to the genius of the opposing sections, behold the
pampered aristocrats of the South, made rich on stolen labor
sending their " Commissioners" to treat with the nation they
had so recklessly sought to destroy ; on the other hand, see
• the man who held the highest dignity the earth could confer
on man going, in simple presence, almost unattended — with
none of the guards his sacred life required, none of the out
ward shows of form his stupendous charge might sanction,
going himself, in person, father-like, to receive and welcome
back his prodigal child.
What a contrast does trie simple, unassuming presence of
the man, conferring with the rebel emissaries, present to the
lofty and unflinching tone of the President when he spoke
for the natiou ! He was nothing for himself, all for the peo
ple ; he went forth, the unassuming backwoodsman's boy )
to meet his southern brothers ; he stood, the chiefof the great
New World, to speak of the terms on which its peace

20
could be insured ; nor, when treating for its people, abated
one jot of the unconditional submission of every soul beneath
the shelter of the American Constitution, the just but lit
eral letter of its laws.
We have traced him as the incarnate spirit of true
republicanism, the self-made boy, the unimpeachable
youth, the noble man, the legislator, statesman, orator,
chief magistrate, and father of a mighty people, their staff
in the earthquake's shock, their anchor in the storm.
What more remains than to contemplate him obeying the
behests of his Almighty Father, killing the fatted calf to
welcome back the returning prodigal, following the foot
steps of his Christian Master, returning good for evil, dis
pensing blessings for curses, and conquering foes more surely
with his generous acts of mercy than all the armies of the
earth could do with sword and cannon. Did he forget the
miserable wrecks of manhood incarcerated in Libby prison
and Castle Thunder ? Did he cease to mourn the heroes
slain, the homes made desolate, the hearts bereaved, the
thousands fiercely massacred ? Had he forgotten the emaci
ated shadows of what once were men returned from the
fiendish grasp of demon captors? Or had his ear grown dull
to the dying shrieks from Fort Pillow and many a battle
field? He forgot nothing, this brave,, great heart ! but he
forgave far more than he forgot. And however we may know
in theawful lesson of his shameful murder that his magna
nimity upreared his own funeral pyre, I do believe, when this
dark record of the great American conflict and its termina
tion shall pierce the astounded ears of foreign nations, all
other acts will be forgotten, all other blood-stained memo
ries wiped away, and all other stormy passages of this tem
pestuous time be obliterated in the triumph of that Christ
like spirit which opened its arms of welcome to the fallen

21
and penitent General Robert E. Lee. Would that the story
ended here ! Would that the hero-life filled up the glitter
ing page ere the martyr's doom blots out the light in blood !
Oh, that our eyes might have followed those brightening
footprints through the earth made holier . by his presence,
rather than, turning as they do this day through falling
tears, to seek him midst the martyred hosts of light in the
far, far distant skies ! But I fence with the dreadful truth
that shuts out the glorious life and quenches the lamp
which so brightly shone for us, leaving our land and our
hearts, our homes and hearths, so very, very dark ! I pause
on the threshold of that fearful gate through which our
strength and our hope went out, scarcely daring to cast our
mourning eyes to the dreadful beyond which has left our
country desolate ! But I must redeem the promise of the
hour, and speak to the very deed, the fearful act of murder,
whose harsh, dissonant voice rings in the requiem notes of
the very bells that to-day should have sounded out the glad-
rejoicing tones of peace. I have but a few words to say
concerning this deed, but a passing glance to cast upon its
already doomed and inhuman authors !
He who knows the secrets of all hearts can best decide
how many of His creatures sink so low beneath the human
image of Himself as to be concerned in the act that struck
down the noblest in his very noblest hour, and added to the
impious crime of parricidal murder the wanton, miserable
waste of golden opportunities, the only ones that could save
the fallen South or rejoice the conquering North. I still
hope, for the honor of humanity, for the name of free Amer
ica, for the sake of judgment, reason, sanity, and manhood,
that this deed does not represent more than a petty band of
Cains. But while the hiss of a whole earth's execration hoots
the wretch from life who was the foremost hand to strike the

22
blow ; while we acquit a large humanity or any section of
God's earth we call a country, from complicity in the mon
ster deed, should we forget the upas-tree which bears such
dismal fruits as this assassin ? Shall we forget the accursed
cause, the hateful, poisonous cause, that makes a country
pamper to its slaves, feeds up and pampers on the shameful
gains of others' labor a whole community in idleness,
b'uilds up a rank, degraded aristocracy, living by theft of
men, ruling, by force of blows and stripes and bullying
tones, weakness and ignorance, and bearing inevitably
(from a brutal source) the rank and hideous weeds secession,
savage war, and treacherous murder.
There are men now who sit beneath the southern orange
and magnolia and weep for him as we weep ; hearts in the
unhappy South as sorrowful as ours ; heads bowed with
shame, and many a one who would — .as I or many of you
would — cheerfully lay down his life to recall the precious
one the country mourns.
Thousands of southern Rachels weep this day for our
dead chief; and wide, clear-sighted men in the furthest South
know their best friend and the country's true preserver will
lie low in the grave of Lincoln.
: But what is that to the past ? Who can recall it ? God's
footsteps never return upon themselves. The southern insti
tution, enemy alikeof God and man, has slain the South,
and as the monstrous blossom of a poi3on-tree, has slain its
friend and honor in Abraham Lincoln. For never man would
have dared to raise his wicked hand to slay a good man in
the very hour when his goodness shone most brightly ; never
coward stolen to the helpless bed of an almost dying creature
to cut and hack the unresisting form of sickness — but those
who had learned to love the traffic in human life ; but those
whom the groans of lacerated black men had made callous,

23
and who, having seen the murderous knife of treason whetted
Cor the nation's life, scrupled not to sharpen it for fathers
and for brothers. I do not tax this deed upon the South,
but on its spirit ; if not upon the men of the South, yet on its
institutions; and if not the act in very person of slave-own
ers, the blood of Lincoln lies at the door of Slavery!
Oh, friends! the prayer of the gentle Master, "Father,
forgive them, they know not what they do," constitutes the his
tory of this dreadful wrong, but nevertheless it must not close
our ears to the mighty right. We know that the cause that
makes men forget their humanity ; the mean and truckling
spirit that lives on others' labor ; the greedy and insatiate
purpose that determines to govern others without their con
sent, and compels all men to bow to them ; the aristocratic
spirit that can never be satisfied, and cries " Give, give," in
cessantly ; the dark and terrible necessity that demands more
territory for its growing millions, more lands, more States,
more funds, more power ; that fatal institution that dare not
trust the spelling-book and Bible, that gags free speech and
keeps back the light of intelligence from the darkened minds
of ignorance — must culminate at last in the arm of force
and murder; must throw away the ballot and take instead
the bullet, and send its worst fanatics forth to do deeds that
recoil in nameless horror on itself. And thus believing, I
do dismiss the hideous contemplation of the deed. And for
the doer, what is he now but Cain ? — a fugitive and a vaga
bond, henceforth he'll live till the earth shall weary of him,
yet the terrible hereafter refuse to give him shelter. The
sobs of the widow and the orphan his noble victim cheered,
the hiss of a loathing world whose every heart is closed
against him, shall murder his sleep for evermore ; the gates
of. every home on earth all violated by his parricidal act,
shall close against him ; the curse of every fettered captive

24
on the earth, who looked to Abraham Lincoln as their Moses,
shall bow his head beneath their bitter load ; and the dyingf
eyes of the crucified One of old, and the gentle modern
martyr, shall be the only prayers the human family shall
dare put up to God for him, who cannot utter with his
guilty lips one prayer for himself. Our tears fall fast this
hour in shame for him and his loathed deed ; in pity for
ourselves, in our heavy loss, and our land's dimmed glory.
But who weeps for him ? who pities him ? or what hand of
man can outstretch to save the wretch, who himself knew
naught of pity ! The hour is even now upon him when he
must cry, though mortal may never hear him, " My punish
ment is heavier than I can bear." Let Him who judges
heed him. Man answers not, except in the fearful chorus,
Justice herself must swell, " Death to Lincoln's murderer!"
No more of him, but wake from the fearful palsy fallen
upon you people, and answer to yourselves and to your
country. What is now your duty ? what the demands of the
hour, if any, on your individual action ?
Friends, the hour has come to try men's souls. The coun
try waits for you, with arm and heart and head, to rebuild
its shattered altars, remould its glory, and restore or recon
struct, if need be, the charter of its life and all your liber
ties — your national Constitution. Permit me, then, to close up
this address by a brief reference to this absorbing subject of
your duties.
The very night before that fatal one that robbed us of pur
nation's strong right arm, the people's voice demanded of me,
in the city of Philadelphia, suggestive words on the theme of
reconstruction. I then said what I now repeat — that the question of recon
struction depends almost solely on the time that is chosen,
and the conditions under which the work commences

The true time is not yet, or can or will be, until the Govern
ment, by the war power by which it is clothed in the sacred
Constitution, restores intact, in peace and in full integrity,
every one of the thirty-six States which constitute the Union,
to the people, who intrust that Union to the Government-
The States are the people's, the Government their guard
ians, the war power the means by which the government
restores the States in their full proportion unto the people ;
and never until such full and entire restoration is fully made
should the war power cease or the people {the true legis
lators of the country) pretend to reconstruct the laws, which
are made for the union and the people, not the people
for the union and the laws. It is plain, then, that recon
struction signifies, first, the restoration of peace in every
State of the Union ; the Union then itself is reconstructed.
The States are one and at their former status, restored there
by the war, and only need that legislative wisdom shall deal
with, execute, and annihilate the fatal thing that was the
cause of war. And if the legislative wisdom of the people
cannot in solemn council agree to accuse and condemn the
monster Slavery as cause enough — if some lingering rem
nants of the suicidal folly which cherished the serpent, in
whose foul embrace the land has well-nigh died, should still,
in blind infatuation, refuse its sanction to an amended charter,
killing the nation's cause of death to save its life, what then ?
Why, reconstruction will come from the same source that
made construction — the People ! The Constitution was the
creation of the people ; and shall it destroy its author ? Or
are those who made it, and find it protects the nation's
death instead of the nation's life, incapable of making
another and' a better one ? Nations grow and parchments
don't ; and if a nation's growth is to be hindered to suit the
narrow limits of its laws, let them grow loo ; or if they can-

26
not, kill them, and save the nation's life ! Or if you hesi
tate to add to or amend the law which you've outgrown,
let the heart speak what the timid tongue fears to pronounce,
and " He, being dead, yet speaketh." Let the glorious voice
of Freedom, calling in trumpet-tongue from the grave of
Abraham Lincoln, and ascending, in the immortal procla
mation of emancipation, to the very heavens with his march
ing soul — let this speak for you, and, in the name of the
" higher law," God's law, and Abraham Lincoln's own most
godlike act, decide your problem, and reconstruct your
laws on the rock which death, nor hell, nor time, nor human
trespass can ever touch with fingers of decay — the eternal
rock of Justice ! You say you love your " Father Abra
ham " — prove it by swearing over his martyr-grave not to
dishonor the grandest of his deeds by a base repudiation of its
legality. That charter which will not sanction liberty in
the land of the Stars and Stripes, and nullifies the brightest
act of Abraham Lincoln's life, is itself the fittest subject in
the land for the scalpel-knife of reconstruction. As for flie
rest, your duty's very simple. The first that presses home on
every living creature in this land is a firm and devoted heart
of loyalty tendered to your new President. Did not the enor
mous exigencies of his momentous situation appeal to every
better feeling in man's nature for faithful service ? Andy
Johnson of Tennessee deserves it of you — another self-made
man ; another man of the people ; another grand Republican
ladder, on which the mudsills rise to the highest rounds of
nature's loyalty ; another living protest against the destroy
ing influence of slavery on whites p,s well as blacks.
Rally around your President with heart and head and hand,
and be sure of this, that, if the mantle of the too-merciful
Lincoln has not fallen upon his shoulders, that of bold
Andrew Jackson has, and that in these troublous times,

27
when mercy is requited with assassination, the spirit of the
immortal Andrew Jackson and the mortal Andrew Johnson
can better deal with treason and murder than the saintlike
form whose arms enfold its destroyer.
Mourn for Abraham Lincoln with your hearts, but prove
your love to him by taking up the burden he's laid down and
finishing the noble purposes of his great life so untimely
quenched. ' For you, his country, and the holy cause of
patriotism, he perished. He spoke no word, he made no
sign, nor left a single charge on mortal man ; but, oh, if
ever silence was most eloquent, if speechless, dying martyr
dom pleads now, as in the days of "righteous Stephen," with
an angel light upon its blood-stained brow, obey that dumb
hehest, and do his work, and break the last blood-crusted
link of those iron bonds that have well-nigh killed the earth's
last, best republic. We must have no treasonable words ; no
more disloyal murmurs ; no more pretense of plain, blunt
speech to stab the government, ruin the nation, and kill its
best defenders. Crush out the serpent in the egg, the hen
bane in the seed, and we'll have no more such bitter fruit as
murder and rebellion.
Trust to the man of the people, raised up, in this hour of
sudden need and strange calamity, like a God-given answer
to a prayer our lips have not had time to fashion. Ques-
tionnot his faults, but regard his sterling qualities. Follow his
brave, strong footsteps in his great ascent of life ; his noble
words and pledges of good faith ere the nation's need had
come, and be sure that God has sent him to our rescue, and
your part is to give him added strength in a nation's united
heart and faith.
What matters it, then, that he we love and so bitterly de
plore has gone before us? Sooner or later, for usall, his sum
mons will be ours. God only give us grace to follow him to

28
the land of light and never-setting sun, to clasp his immortal
hand again in eternal fellowship in our own Easter resurrect
ing day', and hear the glorious greeting that, with the arisen
sun of his bright eternity, has welcomed him to the home
he's so justly earned : "Well done, thou good and faithful
servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

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