Chapter 9

Thus ended the attempted secession of these States; thus the four years' war. But the main things come subtly and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward--neither military, political, nor (great as those are), historical. I say, certain secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of this death, are, in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murder itself. Not that Mr. Lincoln strings the principal points and personages of the period, like beads, upon the single string of his career. Not that his idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance and disappearance, stamps this Republic with a stamp more mark'd and enduring than any yet given by any one man--(more even than Washington's)--but, join'd with these, the immeasurable value and meaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me, in senses finally dearest to a nation (and here all our own)--the imaginative and artistic senses--the literary and dramatic ones. Not in any common or low meaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the race, and to every age. A long and varied series of contradictory events arrives at last at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the secession period comes to a head, and is gather'd in one brief flash of lightning-illumination--one simple, fierce deed. Its sharp culmination, and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angry problems, illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other, suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than fiction. Fit radiation--fit close! How the imagination--how the student loves these things! America, too, is to have them. For not in all great deaths, nor far or near--not Cæsar in the Roman senate-house, nor Napoleon passing away in the wild night-storm at St. Helena--not Paleologus, falling, desperately fighting, piled over dozens deep with Grecian corpses--not calm old Socrates, drinking the hemlock--outvies that terminus of the secession war, in one man's life, here in our midst, in our own time--that seal of the emancipation of three million slaves--that parturition and delivery of our at last really free Republic, born again, henceforth to commence its career of genuine homogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself.

[12] _By permission of David McKay._

OUR SUN HATH GONE DOWN[13]

BY PHOEBE CARY

Our sun hath gone down at the noonday, The heavens are black; And over the morning the shadows Of night-time are back.

Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon, Hush the mirth and the shout;-- God is God! and the ways of Jehovah Are past finding out.

Lo! the beautiful feet on the mountains, That yesterday stood; The white feet that came with glad tidings, Are dabbled in blood.

The Nation that firmly was settling The crown on her head, Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, And watches her dead.

Who is dead? who, unmoved by our wailing, Is lying so low? O, my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish, Do you feel, do you know,

That the hand which reached out of the darkness Hath taken the whole? Yea, the arm and the head of the people-- The heart and the soul!

And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence A nation has wept; Was the truest, and gentlest, and sweetest, A man ever kept!

Once this good man, we mourn, overwearied, Worn, anxious, oppressed, Was going out from his audience chamber For a season to rest;

Unheeding the thousands who waited To honor and greet, When the cry of a child smote upon him, And turned back his feet.

"Three days hath a woman been waiting," Said they, "patient and meek." And he answered, "Whatever her errand, Let me hear; let her speak!"

So she came, and stood trembling before him, And pleaded her cause; Told him all; how her child's erring father Had broken the laws.

Humbly spake she: "I mourn for his folly, His weakness, his fall"; Proudly spake she: "he is not a TRAITOR, And I love him through all!"

Then the great man, whose heart had been shaken By a little babe's cry; Answered soft, taking counsel of mercy, "This man shall not die!"

Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields, The dark holds of ships; Every faint, feeble cry which oppression Smothered down on men's lips.

In her furnace, the centuries had welded Their fetter and chain; And like withes, in the hands of his purpose, He snapped them in twain.

Who can be what he was to the people; What he was to the State? Shall the ages bring to us another As good, and as great?

Our hearts with their anguish are broken, Our wet eyes are dim; For us is the loss and the sorrow, The triumph for him!

For, ere this, face to face with his Father Our Martyr hath stood; Giving unto his hand the white record, With its great seal of blood!

[13] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

TOLLING[14]

(April 15, 1865)

BY LUCY LARCOM

Tolling, tolling, tolling! All the bells of the land! Lo, the patriot martyr Taketh his journey grand! Travels into the ages, Bearing a hope how dear! Into life's unknown vistas, Liberty's great pioneer.

Tolling, tolling, tolling! See, they come as a cloud, Hearts of a mighty people, Bearing his pall and shroud; Lifting up, like a banner, Signals of loss and woe; Wonder of breathless nations, Moveth the solemn show.

Tolling, tolling, tolling! Was it, O man beloved, Was it thy funeral only Over the land that moved? Veiled by that hour of anguish, Borne with the rebel rout, Forth into utter darkness, Slavery's curse went out.

[14] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[15]

"Strangulatus Pro Republica"

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE

Hundreds there have been, loftier than their kind, Heroes and victors in the world's great wars: Hundreds, exalted as the eternal stars, By the great heart, or keen and mighty mind; There have been sufferers, maimed and halt and blind, Who bore their woes in such triumphant calm That God hath crowned them with the martyr's palm; And there were those who fought through fire to find Their Master's face, and were by fire refined. But who like thee, oh Sire! hath ever stood Steadfast for truth and right, when lies and wrong Rolled their dark waters, turbulent and strong; Who bore reviling, baseness, tears and blood Poured out like water, till thine own was spent, Then reaped Earth's sole reward--a grave and monument!

[15] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow, battle and war, and come near to the promised land of peace into which he might not pass over. Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people? Since the November of 1860, his horizon has been black with storms.

By day and by night, he trod a way of danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a government dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity millions of men were striking at home. Upon this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of storms, and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial, in hours of defeat, to the depths of despondency, he held on with immovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution that it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of His people as by fire.

At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness and the East came rushing toward us with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceedingly that had sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy and rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone from among us. Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul. Thou hast, indeed, entered the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou art sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice exceedingly,--thou that hast enough suffered! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. Around thee are the royal men that have ennobled human life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore. Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, an everlasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity and goodness.

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness.

That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth--these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days--all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe.

In one hour, joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow--noon and midnight, without a space between.

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get strength to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels, but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish.

This Nation has dissolved--but in tears only. It stands four-square, more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than ever before. The government is not weakened; it is made stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks closed! Another steps forward, in the hour that one fell, to take his place and his mantle; and I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of liberty; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him; vigilant of the Constitution; careful of the laws; wise for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has known what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from bitter personal experiences.

Where could the head of government of any monarchy be smitten down by the hand of an assassin, and the funds not quiver or fall one-half of one per cent? After a long period of national disturbance, after four years of drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of the country, in the height and top of our burdens, the heart of this people is such that now, when the head of government is stricken down, the public funds do not waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our mountains.

Republican institutions have been vindicated in this experience as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems in the providence of God, to have been clothed now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to all nations of the earth: "Republican liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe."

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington, and your children and your children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery, with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right, and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of his country shake out of place. I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.

You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of God? There will be wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them? O, thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort Thy people of old, to Thy care we commit the helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved.

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The Nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be.

Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and bands and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on.

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man, and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the Nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty.

HYMN[16]

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

O Thou of soul and sense and breath, The ever-present Giver, Unto Thy mighty angel, death, All flesh thou didst deliver; What most we cherish, we resign, For life and death alike are Thine, Who reignest Lord forever!

Our hearts lie buried in the dust With him, so true and tender, The patriot's stay, the people's trust, The shield of the offender; Yet every murmuring voice is still, As, bowing to Thy sovereign will, Our best loved we surrender.

Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold This martyr generation, Which Thou, through trials manifold, Art showing Thy salvation! O let the blood by murder split Wash out Thy stricken children's guilt, And sanctify our nation!

Be Thou Thy orphaned Israel's friend, Forsake Thy people never, In One our broken Many blend, That none again may sever! Hear us, O Father, while we raise With trembling lips our song of praise, And bless Thy name forever!

[16] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Foully Assassinated April 14, 1865

BY TOM TAYLOR (MARK LEMON) IN LONDON PUNCH.

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please;

You whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain:

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?

Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen:-- To make me own this man of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose; How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true; How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be: How in good fortune and in ill, the same: Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work,--such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,-- As one who knows, where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command;

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes instruments to work His will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights,--

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid, that o'erbears the boatsman's toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear;-- Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: Rough culture,--but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it: four long suffering years, Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers.

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood: Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seem to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,-- And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips, Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of sympathy and shame! Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high; Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt If more of horror or disgrace they bore; But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out.

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; And with the martyr's crown crownest a life With much to praise, little to be forgiven.

VI

TRIBUTES

THE MARTYR CHIEF[17]

From the Harvard Commemoration Ode,

BY JAMES RUSSEL LOWELL