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ONE HUNDRE.DTH ANNIVERSARY
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This book is issued by Dr. T. D. Bancroft, who was captain
of a company of Wide-awakes, in the presdential political cam-
paign that elected Mr. Lincoln in 1860.
He was with John Brown during the border war of 1856 in
Kansas, and a member of the "Frontier Guard" quartered in the
White House, before any troops arrived in Washington, and they
slept on the velvet carpet of the big East room in 1861. The
company was composed of 110 Kansas men. They acted as body
guard to President Lincoln, and Avhen the Capitol was threatened,
saved the Capitol from the rebels. Senator James H. Lane, of
Kansas, was captain of this company.
President Lincoln signed and granted each member a discharge,
or Certificate of Service, which is the only recognition they ever
received. Preston G. Plumb, who was afterward elected Senator
from Kansas, introduced a resolution in Congress to grant the
"Frontier Guards" some other recognition for valuable service to
the government, but died before thle matter was reached, and the
resolution has not been heard of since.
Dr. Bancroft was present in Ford's Theater, Washington, D. C,
on the night Mr. Lincoln was assassinated by J. Wilkes Booth.
He secured a piece of the program with a drop of Mr. Lincoln's
life-blood on it, and presented the same to the Kansas State His-
torical Society at Topeka, Kansas, on January 18th, 1901.
BANCROFT.
Kansas State Historical Society,
Topeka, Kansas. January 18, 1901.
This Society has received as a donation to its library, from T. D. Bancroft,
the following:
Framed piece of the program played in Ford's theater, Washington, D. C,
on the night Abraham Lincoln svas assassinated. When the body was carried
out a drop of blood fell on this program and was seen by donor, who picked
it up and has kept it in his possession ever since.
For which grateful acknowledgment is tendered.
Aery respectfully.
GEO. W. MARTIN, Secretary.
INTRODUCTION
This book is dedicated to the memory of Abraham Lincoln, Avho
was divinely fitted to do the work he accomplished. When he was
yet a little boy, his mother laid the foundation for divine char-
acter, by teaching him to always tell the truth. Not one of his
old neighbors has ever charged him with being two-sided, or telling
a falsehood. He was thoughtful and examined every question that
came to him, until he understood it. For this reason he was a
master in debate. He had no enemy. He could have made finan-
cial gains, but would not stoop to do so. Every one with whom
he came in contact loved him. He gained the applause of the
world by his firmness of character, anl equal justice to all. His
words of wisdom were so mixed with equal justice to all, that
those who would meet him in debate surrendered to him. He
lived at a time when those who met him in debate were called
giants — little giants. He entered the arena with the greatest of
them all, Stephen A. Douglas, and when he saw Mr. Lincoln in
his true light, he turned to the on-looking world, and said, follow
Lincoln, for he is right, "Stand by the Union."
DR. T. U. BANCROFT.
Second Edition
NOTES
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish
the work we are in."
A drop of Abraham Lincoln's blood on a piece of the program played the
night he was assassinated. Picked up by I>r. T. D. Bancroft and presented
to the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kans.
AN ADDRESS
Delivered before the
5PRINGF1LLD WA5HINGTONIAN
TEMPERANCE SOCIETY
at the
Second Presbyterian Church
on the
Twenty-second day of February, 1842
l.v
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Order New ELdition from Lincoln Souvenir Book Co.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010 with funding from
State of Indiana through the Indiana State Library
http://www.archive.org/details/addressdelive3271linc
ADDRL55
Although the Temperance Cause has been in progress for near
twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned
with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled.
The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties,
of hundreds and thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly trans-
formed from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active
and powerful chieftain, going forth "conquering and to conquer."
The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and
dismantled: his temples and bis altars, where the rites of his
idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human
sacrifices have long been wont to lie made, are daily desecrated
and deserted. The trump of the conqueror's fame is sounding
from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and call-
ing millions to his standard at a blast.
For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. That that
success is so much greater now than heretofore is doubtless owing
to rational causes; and if we would have it continue we shall do
well to inquire what those causes are.
The warfare heretofore waged against the demon intemperance
has, somehow or other been erroneous. Either the champions en-
gaged, or the tactics they adopted, have not been the most proper.
These champions for the most part have been preachers, lawyers
and hired agents. Between these and the mass of mankind there
is a want of approarhabilit;/. if the term be admissible, partially
at least fatal to their success. They are supposed to have no
sympathy of feeling or interest with those very persons whom it
is their object to convince and persuade.
And again, it is so easy and so common to ascribe motives to
men of these classes other than those they profess to act upon.
The preacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a
fanatic, and desires a union of the church and State; the lawyer,
from his pride, and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired
agent, for his salary.
But when one who lias long been known as a victim of intem-
perance bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before
his neighbors "clothed and in his right mind/' a redeemed speci-
men of long lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy tremb-
ling- in his eves, to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be
(Engraved by Rose Gate Eiijj. Co., Kansas City, Mo.)
\BRAHAM LINCOLN'S MONUMENT
Springfield, 111.
endured no more forever ; of his once naked and starving children,
now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife, long weighed down with
woe, weeping and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness
and a renewed affection; and how easily it is all done, once it is
resolved to be done; how simple his language, there is a logic and
an eloquence in it that few with human feelings can resist. They
cannot say that he desires a union of church and State, for he is
not a church member; they cannot say he is vain of hearing him-
self speak, for his whole demeanor shows he would gladly avoid
speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks for pay, for he receives,
none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be
doubted; or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate
his example be denied.
In my judgment it is to the battles of this new class of chains
pions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But
had the old school champions themselves been of the most wiip
selecting, was their system of tactics the most judicious? It seems
to me it was not. Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and
dramj-drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both impolitic
and unjust. It was impolitic because it is not much in the nature
of a man to be driven to anything; still less to be driven about that
which is exclusively his own business; and least of all. where such
driving is to lie submitted to at the expense of pecuniary interest
or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker were in-
cessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffi-
dently addressed by erring man to an erring brother, but in the
thundering tones of anathema and denunciation, with which the
lordly judge often groups together all the crimes of the felon's
life, and thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence of
death upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and
misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers
and material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that
iniost the earth ; that their houses were the workshops of the
devil, and that their persons should be shunned by all the good
and virtuous as moral pestilences. I say, when they were told all
this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very
slow to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to join
the rani's of their denouncers, in a hue and cry against them-
selves.
To have expected them to do otherwise than they did — to haye
expected them not to meet denunciation with anathema — was to
expect a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can
never be reversed.
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, per-
suasion — kind, unassuming persuasion — should ever be adopted
It is an old and a true maxim "that a drop of honey catches "more
flies than a gallon of gall." So with men. If you would win your
man to your cause first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
fflss iMSDipaa oiy hobs ©ifa'ss ®i? aaanTOHSo
To any Minister of ihc Gospel, or other authorisdPcrsofi-GREETINa
SSKS^S eu& to y&luMe, (uutj&umb wm, to join. u> $4 flX 6aad*
of ^Uu^ny^^^x^***^^ aiu)
tfancAtncK and vXrtt, ol JUinoM, cuu) txt> ±c Tktn& t t/u4 ifuSi &c uoui
*oim tuv^t Ktu R<ut3 and iw c£ *>j|W, at
y^^, //^z- {%M-"f^~
FACSIMILE OF MARHIAQE LICEN8C AND CERTIFICATE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Fiom the original on file in the County Clerk's office of Springfield, 111.
Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what
he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which when
once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his
judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really
be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment,
or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned
and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the ave-
nues to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked
truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel,
and sharper than steel can be made, and though you throw it with
more than herculean force and precision, you shall no more be
able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise
with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by
those who lead him, even to his own best interests.
On this point the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance
advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince
and persuade are their old friends and companions. They know
they are not demons, nor even the worst of men; they know that
generally they are kind, generous and charitable, even beyond the
example of their more staid and sober neighbors. They are prac-
tical philanthropists ; and they glow with a generous and brotherly
zeal that mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Benevolence
and charity possess their hearts entirely, and out of the abundance
of their hearts their tongues give utterance. "Love through all
their actions run, and all their words are mild" ; in this spirit
they speak and act, and in the same they are heard and regarded
And when such is the temper of the advocate and such of the
audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful. But I have said that
denunciation against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers are unjust
as well as impolitic. Let us see.
I have not inquired at what period of time the use of intox-
icating liquors commenced nor is it important to know. It is suf-
ficient that to all of us who now inhabit the world, the practice
of drinking them is just as old as the world itself — that is, we
have seen the one just as long as we have seen the other. When all
such of us as have now reached the years of maturity first opened
.our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor ;
recognized by everybody, used by everybody, draught of the infant
and the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard of the
parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer it was
constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that and the
other disease; governments provided it for soldiers and sailors;
and to have a log rolling or raising, a husking or "Tioe-down" any-
where about without it was positively insufferable. So, it was
everywhere a respectable article of manufacture and merchandise.
The making of it was regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he
that could make most was the most enterprising and respectable.
Large and small manufactories pf It were everywhere erected, in
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which all the earthly goods of their owners were invested. Wagons
drew it from town to town; boats bore it from elime to clime, and
the winds wafted it from nation to nation ; and merchants bought
and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with precisely the same feel-
ings on the part of the seller, buyer and bystander as are felt at
the buying and selling of plows, beef, bacon or any other of the
real necessities of life. Universal public opinion not only toler-
ated, but recognized and adopted its use.
It is true that even then it was known and acknowledged that
many were greatly injured.!)}' it; but none seemed to think the
injury arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of
a very good thing. The victims of it were to be pitied and corn-
passioned, just as are the heirs of consumption and other hered-
itary diseases. Their failing was treated as a misfortune, not as
a crime, or even as a disgrace.
If, then, what I have been saying is true, is it wonderful that
some should think and act now as all thought and acted twenty
years ago, and is it just to assail, condemn and despise them for
doing so ? The universal sense of mankind on any subject is an
argument, or at least an influence not easily overcome. The suc-
cess of the argument in favor of the existence nf an overruling
Providence mainly depends upon that sense; and men ought not,
in justice, to be denounced for yielding to it in any case, or giving
it up slowly, especially when they are backed by interest, fixed
habits or burning appetites.
Another error, as it seems to me, into which the ^ 1 ' 1 T-eformers
fell was the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly in-
corrigible, and therefore must be turned adift, and damned with-
out remedy in order that the grace of temperance might abound ;
to the temperate then., and to all mankind some hundreds of years
thereafter. There is in this something so requgnant to humanity,
so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless, that it never did,
nor never could enlist the enthusiasm of a popular cause. We
could not love the man who taught it — we could not hear him with
patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it, the
generous man could not adopt it — it could not mix with his blood.
It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers
overboard to lighten the boat for our security — that the noble-
minded shrank from the manifest mleanness of the thing. And
besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a
system were too remote in point of time to warmly engage many
in its behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity,
and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing
for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very
little for it unless we are made to think we are, at the same time,
doing something for ourselves.
What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit to ask or
expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal
LINCOLN DESKS.
Upon this desk was written Mr. Lincoln's first inaugural address in which
these words were used: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds
of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely
they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
This photograph was taken while the desk was on exhibition in the Lincoln
Bank at Springfield, 111., on Mr. Lincoln's centennial birthday, April 12, 1909,
and for Dr. T. D. Bancroft, who was present In Ford's theater on the ulgnt
of Mr. Lincoln's assassination,
happiness of others, after they themselves shall be consigned to
the dust, a majority of which community take no pains whatever
to secure their own eternal welfare at no greater distant dav?
Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull
and render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed,
or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but
little regarded, even in our own cases, and much less in the cases
of others.
Still, in addition to this, there is something so ludicrous in
promises of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, as to render
the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned
into ridicule. "Better lay down that spade you're stealing, Paddy
if you don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment." "Be the
powers, if ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist."
By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the habitual
drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more en-
larged philanthropy; they go for present as well as future good.
They labor for all now living, as well as hereafter to live. They
teach hope to all- — despair to none. As applying to their cause,
they deny the doctrine of unpardonable sin, as in Christianity it
is taught, so in this they teach —
"While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return."
And, what is a matter of the most profound congratulation, they,
by experiment upon experiment, and example upon example, prove
the maxim to be no less true in the one case than in the other.
On every hand we behold those who but vesterdav were the chief
of sinners, now the chief apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are
cast out by ones, by sevens, by legions ; and their unfortunate vic-
tims, like the poor possessed, who was redeemed from his long and
lonely wanderings in the tombs, are publishing to the ends of
the earth how great things have been done for them.
To these new champions, and this new system of tactis, our
late success is mainly owing; and to them we must mainly look
for the final consummation. The ball is now rolling gloriously
on, and none are so able as they to increase its speed, and its bulk
— to add to its momentum and its magnitude- — even though un-
learned in letters, for this task none are so well educated. To fit
them for this work they have been taught in the true school. They
have been in that gulf from which they would teach others the
means of escape. They have passed that prison wall which others
have long declared impassable, and who that has not shall dare
to ; weigh opinions with them as to the mode of passing ?
But if it be true, as I have insisted, that thosle who have suf-
fered by intemperance personally and have reformed are the most
Section of the door, with old woodeu button that Abraham Lincoln turned
a thousand times. The door of bis boarding house in Old Salem. Sangamon
County, 111. Mrs. M. E. Bennett, wife of Dr. Bennett, who owned the house,
preserved the relic and presented it to Dr. T. D. Bancroft, June 27, 1008.
powerful and efficient instruments to push the reformation to
ultimate success, it does not follow that those who have not suf-
fered have no part left them to perform. Whether or not the
world would be vastly benefited by a total and final banishment
from it of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open
question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with
their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge it with their
hearts.
Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what good the
good of the whole demands? Shall he who cannot do much be,
for that reason, excused if he do nothing? "But," says one,
"what good can I do by signing the pledge? I never drink, even
without signing."' This question has already been asked and an-
swered more than a million times. Let it be answered once more.
For the man suddenly, or in any other way. to break off from the
use of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of years,
and until his appetite for them has grown ten or a hundredfold
stronger and more craving than any natural appetite can be, re-
quires a most powerful moral effect. In such an undertaking he
needs every moral support and influence that can possibly be
brought to his aid and thrown around him. And not only so, but
every moral prop should be taken from whatever argument might
rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. When he casts
his eyes around him he should be able to see all that he respects,
all that he admires, all that he loves, kindly and anxiously point-
ing him onward and none beckoning him back to his former mis-
erable "wallowing in the mire/'
But it is said by some that men will think and act for them-
selves; that none will disuse spirits or anythinng else because his
neighbors do ; and that moral influence is not that powerful engine
contended for. Let \is examine this. Let me ask the man who
would retain his position most stiffly what compensation he would
accept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the sermon
with his wife's bonnet on his head? Not a trifle, I'll venture. And
why not? There would be nothing irreligious in it; nothing im-
moral, nothing uncomfortable — then why not? Is it not because
there would be something egregiously unfashionable in it? Then
it is the influence of fashion ; and what is the influence of fashion
but the influence that other people's actions have on our own ac-
tions — the strong inclination each of us feels to do as we see all
our neighbors do? Nor is the influence of fashion confined to any
particular thing or class of things. It is just as strong on one
subject as another. Let us make it as unfashiooahlp to withhold
our names from the temperance pledge as for husbands to wear
their wives' bonnets to church, and instances will be just as rare
in the one case as in the other.
"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall not ac-
knowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkard's society,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DOG, FRITZ.
This dog was left in Springfield with John E. Roll, an old friend, who
helped build the historical Flatboat. This dog was assassinated by a
drunken, bruitish man in Springfield. Mr. Lincoln met the same fate in
"Washington. D. C.
whatever our influence might be/' Surely no Christian will ad-
here to this objection.
If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotent '"-undescended
to take on Himself the form of sinful man and. as such, to die an
ignominious death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse
submission to that infinitely lesser condescension for the temporal
and perhaps eternal salvation of a large, erring and unfortunate
class of their fellow creatures. Nor is the condescension very
great. In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims-
have been spared more from the absence of appetite than from
any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, ]
believe if we take habitual drunkards as a class their heads and