CHAPTER X

I. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY

The nation was in mourning at the unspeakable tragedy. Friend and foe had just begun to learn how great was the difference between him and other men. Coming as it did at the close of the war, in the very dawn of peace, the assassination seemed so needless and cruel, even in the name of his bitterest foe.

Walt Whitman wrote one of the most stirring appreciations of the time.

"O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.

"But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen, cold and dead.

"O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills, For you the bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

"Here, Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead.

"My Captain does not answer me, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.

"Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck, my Captain lies, Fallen, cold and dead."

William Cullen Bryant wrote the ode for the funeral services held in New York City. Two of the stanzas are as follows:

"In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that husheth all, And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall.

"Pure was thy life; its bloody close Has placed thee with the Sons of Light, Among the noble hearts of those Who perished in the cause of Right."

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote for the funeral services at Concord, Massachusetts, a poem of which the following is the last stanza:

"Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last, silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American."

II. THE TIME WHEN "THOSE WHO CAME TO SCOFF REMAINED TO PRAY"

Lincoln's death was received throughout the South generally as the death of an enemy. Well do they know now that it could have been said of them then, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The sorrow throughout the North was as in the midst of Egypt's ancient woe. It was as if "There was not a house where there was not one dead."

As was once said of a great martyr of liberty, slain three centuries before, so it could be said of Lincoln, "He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. While he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets."

Periodicals that had ridiculed him from his first appearance in their view, and that had caused many of their readers to believe him little better than a clown in the arena of affairs, or than a court fool before the nations, dropped their defaming caricatures of him, and gave him nearer justice.

One of the most belittling and besmirching periodicals of England against Lincoln was the "London Punch." The war-president of the United States was, largely from this source of authority, the jest of all Europe.

But the issue following the assassination of Lincoln contained a great picture. It was symbolical of England laying a wreath of flowers upon Lincoln's coffin. The picture was drawn by Tenniel and with it was a most penitent poem by Tom Taylor, who was author of the play, "Our American Cousin," which Lincoln was attending when assassinated. Five of the expressive stanzas are as follows:

"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 changed to cheers;

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

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

"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, scurril 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 hind of princes peer, This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men."

In 1879, at an unveiling in Boston of Freedman's Memorial Statue, a duplicate of the original in Lincoln Square, Washington, a poem was read from Whittier, of which the last three stanzas are the most significant in their characterization. It beautifully expresses the faith that in righteousness is personal power, even as it also "exalteth a nation."

"We rest in peace where these sad eyes Saw peril, strife and pain; His was the nation's sacrifice, And ours the priceless gain.

"O, symbol of God's will on earth As it is done above! Bear witness to the cost and worth Of justice and of love.

"Stand in thy place and testify To coming ages long, That truth is stronger than a lie, And righteousness than wrong."

III. SOME TYPICAL EXAMPLES GIVING VIEWS OF LINCOLN'S LIFE

Vachel Lindsay invokes the spirit of American patriotism when he says,

"Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all, That which is gendered in the wilderness, From lonely prairies and God's tenderness. Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream, Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream, Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave, About that breast of earth and prairie-fire-- Fire that freed the slave."

Herr Loewes in the Prussian Parliament said: "Mr. Lincoln performed his duties without pomp or ceremony, and relied on that dignity of the inner self alone, which is far above rank, orders and titles. He was a faithful servant, not less of his own country than of civilization, freedom and humanity."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing of Lincoln's death, said:

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

Samuel Francis Smith, author of the national hymn, "America," in a long poetic tribute wrote:

"Grandly he loved and lived; Not his own age alone Bears the proud impress of his sovereign mind. Down the long march of history, Ages and men shall see What one great soul can be What one great soul can do To make a nation true."

Horace Fiske closed a poem inspired by the Saint Gaudens statue, as follows:

"In human strength he towers almost divine, His mighty shoulders bent with breaking care, His thought-worn face with sympathies grown fine: And as men gaze, their hearts as oft declare That this is he whom all their hearts enshrine---- This man that saved a race from slow despair."

Theodore Roosevelt said, in an address on the character of Lincoln, "One of his most wonderful characteristics was the extraordinary way in which he could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong, and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from whom he differed."

Woodrow Wilson said, "There was no point at which life touched him that he did not speak back to it instantly its meaning."

Sir Spencer Walpole says in his history, "Of all men born to the Anglo-Saxon race in the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln deserves the highest place in history."

IV. REMEMBRANCE AT THE END OF A HUNDRED YEARS

The centennial anniversary of Lincoln's birth called forth expressions of appreciation from over all the world. His memory and his meaning had not grown dim in the interests of humanity. A few typical examples illustrate the love and reverence inspired by his great work in the human cause.

James Oppenheim, in his poem in praise of the Lincoln child, says,

"Oh, to pour our love through deeds---- To be as Lincoln was! That all the land might fill its daily needs Glorified by a human cause! Then were America a vast World-Torch Flaming a faith across the dying earth, Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch That a New World was struggling at the Birth!"

James Whitcomb Riley, writing of Lincoln, the boy, says in the last stanza:

"Or thus we know, nor doubt it not, The boy he must have been Whose budding heart bloomed with the thought All men are kith and kin---- With love-light in his eyes and shade Of prescient tears: Because Only of such a boy were made The loving man he was."

Ambassador Bryce of England, speaking at Lincoln's tomb before a vast gathering at the centennial anniversary of Lincoln's birth, said, "To us in England, Lincoln is one of the heroes of the race from whence we sprung. Great men are the noblest possession of a Nation, and are potent forces in the moulding of national character. Their influence lives after them, and, if they be good as well as great, they remain as beacons lighting the course of all who follow them. They set for succeeding generations the standards of public life. They stir the spirit and rouse the energy of the youth who seek to emulate their virtues in the service of their country."

Vice-President Fairbanks in an address at Harrisburg on that occasion said, "His life was spent in conflict. In his youth, he struggled with nature. At the bar of justice he contended for the rights of his clients. In the wider field of politics, he fought with uncommon power to overthrow the wrong and enthrone the right. He fought not for the love of conquest, but for the love of truth. By nature he was a man of peace. He instinctively loved justice, right, and liberty. His conscience impelled him to uphold the right whenever it was denied his fellowman."

S. E. Kiser ended a centennial poem with the following stanza:

"Lo, where the feet of Lincoln passed, the earth Is sacred. Where he knelt we set a shrine! Oh, to have pressed his hand! That had sufficed To make my children wonder at my worth---- Yet, let them glory, since their land and mine Hath reared the greatest martyr after Christ!"

Virginia Boyle, in her poem for the Philadelphia Brigade Association, said in two of her stanzas:

"No trumpet blared the word that he was born, No lightning flashed its symbols on that day: And only Poverty and Fate pressed on, To serve as handmaids where he lowly lay.

"And up from Earth and toil, he slowly won,---- Pressed by a bitterness he proudly spurned, Till by grim courage, born from sun to sun, He turned defeat, as victory is turned."

Edwin Markham concluded a centennial poem as follows:

"He held his place---- Held the long purpose like a growing tree---- Held on through blame and faltered not at praise, And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, And leaves a lonesome place against the sky."