And the proudest day of his life was when
He struck off the chains from four millions of men.
From the depths of our hearts, for this priceless boon,
Let songs of thanksgiving our voices attune ;
Let gratitude from these dark temples arise
Like incense from altars, whose flame never dies.
If ever beatified spirits descend
And with those of mortals in harmony blend,
The spirit of LINCOLN is with us to-day,
To charm all our fears and our sorrows away.
So long as the Freedman inhabits this zone,
PHILANTHROPIST, STATESMAN, and SAGE, all in one
We'll hail him, the greatest, the wisest and best,
Who sleeps in yon " windowless palace of Rest."
INDIANAPOLIS, 1881.
DAVID DAVIS. 553
BORN in the humblest walks of life, and unaided by
education or by fortune, Abraham Lincoln, by his
own endeavors and native resources, attained to the
highest honor of the republic. He administered that
great office so as to win the confidence and affection of
the American people. His name will go down through
all time imperishably associated with the freedom of a
race, and as one of the noblest champions of liberty,
humanity and charity for all, in war and in peace.
WASHINGTON, 1880.
554 HO WARD CROSB Y.
I LOOK upon Abraham Lincoln as a special instru-
ment of God (as was Washington) to meet a fear-
ful crisis in our country's history. He was a thorough
American, carrying a calm mind and tender heart, with a
firm sense of right, through the stormy period of civil
strife.
NEW YORK, 1880.
WM. F. SMITH. 555
MR. LINCOLN'S place in the hearts of the nation
and on the pages of history is so well fixed, that
it seems like presumption in one like myself to write of
his merits. I do it, however, because of my great ad-
miration for his character and services. At the begin-
ning of his administration I was very much prejudiced
against him, but I was intensely interested in the success-
ful termination of the war, and that interest was far above
all prejudices or friendship ; and so at last I came to
recognize in President Lincoln a man of extreme con-
scientiousness and patriotism ; to which was added an
ability for the grave duties devolved upon him far beyond
that of the most able men known for years in the councils
of the nation. I have long held to the opinion that at
the close of the war Mr. Lincoln was the superior of his
generals in his comprehension of the effect of strategic
movements and the proper method of following up vic-
tories to their legitimate conclusions. Had he lived, I
have always believed that the long and bitter struggle
over reconstruction would never have been initiated, and
that substantial peace and prosperity would have followed
the laying down of arms. It would seem as .though the
two sections of the country had not been sufficiently
punished by the war, and that he was removed from his
high place and that we lost the power which his character
had won with the people, so that a new set of plagues
might be turned loose over the land.
NEW YORK, 1882.
556 GEORGE WASHINGTON NANCE.
I BECAME acquainted with Mr. Lincoln in the year
1833. I moved from Kentucky to Illinois about that
time, and Mr. Lincoln was then engaged in the grocery
business in New Salem, Illinois. I had previously re-
ceived the impression that the inhabitants of New Salem
were perfect " ogres and hobgoblins," and that no one
ever attempted to pass through the town without being
either killed or robbed. I had some business with a
friend living near there, and on calling at his house, I
learned that he had gone to Salem. I scarcely knew
whether it would be safe to venture there alone or not.
I at length made up my mind to try it, anyhow. I
reached the town without meeting with an accident ; but
as I neared the center my ear caught the sound of a loud
voice. I began to tremble in my boots, for I felt sure the
devouring angel was close at hand. I kept up my cour-
age as well as I could, and proceeded in the direction
of the voice, and a few steps brought me to the house
from whence the voice issued. There sat the dreaded
monster with a note-book open before him, practicing
music. He at once recognized me, having been ac-
quainted with two of my brothers, to whom I bore a
close resemblance ; he then introduced himself as Abra-
ham Lincoln. We spent a very pleasant evening to-
gether, and some time after this meeting, I had an op-
portunity to become better acquainted with him. The
family with whom he was then boarding went away on a
visit, and he engaged board with a gentleman for whom I
GEORGE WASHINGTON NANCE. 557
was making a frame for a house, and we soon became in-
timate friends and room-mates. After he became a law-
yer I engaged his services in a law-suit, and on asking
his charge, to my surprise he only asked me two dollars
and fifty cents. I had no idea of paying less than ten
dollars. When Mr. Lincoln first became a lawyer he
was a general favorite with all the wild young men who
knew him, and in one of his speeches, delivered after he
was elected to the Illinois Legislature, he displeased
some of these young bloods, and it reached his ears. He
called a meeting and addressed them, saying that they
had made him what he was, and if he had said anything
that displeased them he was willing for them to take him
to pieces limb by limb.
PETERSBURG, 1882.
558 JOHN BENNETT.
I CAME to Illinois in the fall of 1835, and in January,
1836, located in Petersburg, a little village recently
laid out on the Sangamon river, two miles north of Salem,
Mr. Lincoln's home. My earliest acquaintance with Mr.
Lincoln commenced in February of that year, on his
return home from Vandalia, where he had spent the
winter as a member of the legislature from Sangamon
county. Mr. Lincoln spent the most of the month of
March in Petersburg, finishing up the survey and planning
of the town he had commenced the year before, and I was
a great deal in his company and formed a high estimate
of his worth and social qualities, which was strengthened
by many years of subsequent social intercourse and busi-
ness transactions, finding him always strictly honest ; in
fact, he was universally spoken of in this region as
11 Honest Abe." After Menard county was formed out of
a portion of Sangamon county, and the county seat
established at Petersburg, Mr. Lincoln was a regular
attendant at the courts, and as I was then keeping a
hotel, he was one of my regular customers, where he met
many of his old cronies of his early days at Salem, and
they uniformly spent the most of the nights in telling
stories, or spinning long yarns, of which Mr. Lincoln was
veryjond. In the early settlement of this community,
when a stranger came to settle amongst them, it was their
custom to try him on. This trying on was to ascertain
what he was made of, and all sorts of sports were resorted
to, such as running, jumping, wrestling and occasionally
a knock-down, if necessary. In all these sports, Mr.
Lincoln not only proved himself a match, but an over
JOHN BENNETT. 559
match for the most of them, and they at on:e became his
fast friends. On one occasion, Mr. Lincoln, with a
number of other persons, was descending the Sangamon
river in a flat-boat. The boat leaked badly and took in a
good deal of water, and when they reached the Salem
mill-dam, the water was not high enough to take the boat
over with so much weight, and the bow ran up high and
dry on the dam. The question was, What was to be done ?
Mr. Lincoln suggested that they should bore a hole in
the bottom of the boat and lighten it by letting the water
out. This was a novel idea, but the hole was bored in
the bow, and all hands went to that end, which raised the
stern ; the water flowed to the bow and passed off through
the hole, and the boat went over the dam in safety.
On another occasion, when Mr. Lincoln and some of
his friends were visiting a neighbor, a very large, fleshy,
rough and uncouth old woman came in and seated her-
self on one of those old-fashioned, straight-backed, split-
bottomed chairs, leaned back, balancing herself on the
hind legs and rocking to and fro, and telling of every-
thing going on in the neighborhood (for she knew every-
body's business), Mr. Lincoln was sitting near, and being
always fond of a joke, he couldn't withstand the tempta-
tion, and slyly put his foot under the front , round of the
chair and upset her. She fell in such a position that she
could not extricate herself without his assistance ; what
followed can better be imagined than described.
PETERSBURG, 1882.
560 E. C. POMEROY.
THAT Mr. Lincoln was an eminently good man
that he was really great in the best moral aspects
of human character, is very widely if not universally con-
ceded. That he was equally great from the purely intellec-
tual point of view, has been spoken of with more reserve.
It was not unnatural, therefore, that his extraordinary suc-
cess in political life, obtained as it was without resort to
the crafty methods of the mere politician, and without
the usual personal solicitation by himself in his own be-
half, should have been regarded by many as something
of a mystery especially when considered in connection
with the fact that he was not supposed to be an educated
man. His success was largely due, no doubt, to his re-
markable sagacity in determining the condition of the
public mind, and in reading the signs of the times. He
seemed to have a special gift in this direction. Perhaps
it was intuition, but so largely developed in his case as
to be almost equivalent to a separate mental endowment,
giving him, as it were, one faculty more than other men
have, and bestowing upon him a corresponding advan-
tage over his contemporaries. But that he was intellec-
tually great, aside from this, is one of the most conspicu-
ous facts of his life. And it is clearly evident from the
circumstances in which he was placed, during the most
important period of his political career being the leader
alike of a new party and a new thought that he could
not have succeeded nor laid a foundation for success, if
this had not been a fact in his favor. Whatever he may
E C. POMEROY. 5<h
have lacked in the way of education or scholarship, he
certainly did not lack knowledge, or the ability to acquire
knowledge to any extent needed at any time when want-
ed, nor the intelligence and skill necessary to use it to the
best possible advantage. There are thousands of educa-
ted men who would rejoice to have this same power, but
have it not. Such talent as this, in the field of duty to
which he was called, was an ample substitute for the
scholarship he did not have, and out of this talent came
the giant forces which wrought his success. With these
at his command, no difficulties embarrassed him, no emer-
gencies found him unprepared, he made no mistakes, and
met with no failures.
In the stirring Illinois campaign which brought him to
the front as the champion of freedom, and which resulted
two years later in making him the nominee of his party
for the Presidential office, he manifested capabilities equal
to the highest and the best. The country was filled with
able men at that time, men noted for great learning, elo
quence, skill in debate, and wisdom of management, but
it is not likely that any one could have been selected from
among them all, who would have gone through that cam-
paign, in his place, with a success and brilliancy equal to
his. And yet the performance did not seem to be in any
way difficult or extraordinary for him. It was only in
keeping except as to its greater importance, and the
greater excitement attending it with all his former e % f-
forts in the political field. Without pretending to be an
orator, he swayed the multitudes by his eloquence as the
tempest stirs the sea ; and vanquished his opponents in
debate with the same easy grace and irresistible force of
36
562 E. C. POMEROY.
logic with which lesser fields had been won, and which
lesser foes had been taught to respect in the less trying
situations of the past, and which all parties, friends and
foes alike, were destined to admire. He wrought with-
out malice ; without personal animosity towards anybody ;
simply for his love of the right, and his hatred of the
wrong, as matters of principle ; and won the respect of
all by the fairness and candor and good temper with
which his work was done. With pleasant smiles, and
keen wit, and unanswerable argument, he cleared the path
before him, for himself and his party, and pointed the
way to a higher and better life for the nation ; and then,
stepping quickly to the front, led the nation on to
take possession of and permanently occupy that higher
ground. And this was essentially his own work from be-
ginning to end. He started it, and kept with it all the
way through, as the most capable and efficient worker of
all, and finally finished it at the end. A nobler exhibition
of mental supremacy and magnificent success, in the politi-
cal field, has not been seen on this earth. This is a strong
statement, but it is no doubt a perfectly truthful one.
If there are men now living who would withhold from him
this large credit for intellectual greatness, let them explain
how, from the condition of helpless poverty in which he was
born, and in which he continued through all the years of
childhood and youth, he could come to be the master-spirit
of the nation, and to hold its highest position of official
trust and power with such transcendent ability and faultless
wisdom, through the most trying ordeal any nation or any
ruler of a nation has ever experienced ; and do all this
without aid from any outside source except such as he
E. C. POMEROY. 563
created for himself and drew unto himself by his own ef-.
forts alone, as he advanced. His known integrity and
goodness of heart were, of course, strong elements of pop-
ularity, but such success as this cannot be rationally ac-
counted for without including among its causes that most
indispensable one of all great intellectual ability. If we
call it wisdom, it means the same thing.
Mr. Lincoln was a profound admirer of our great men
of the past. He studied their lives and made himself
minutely acquainted with their characters, and became
one of the noblest defenders of their work. Particularly
is this true with regard to the men of the Revolution.
He had imbibed their very spirit. The Declaration of
Independence was the light which lighted him on his po-
litical way. He believed in it as sincerely and devoutly
as he believed in his Bible. Its principles to him were as
sacred as any earthly thing could be. He regarded them
as of divine origin. And now, when he found that noble
instrument assailed by gifted northern orators, and
sneered at and ridiculed as containing nothing but "glit-
tering generalities," and determined efforts being made to
destroy its influence over the public mind, in order to
make more room for slavery, he was naturally roused
with indignation and inspired with eloquence in its de-
fense. He came to its defense with a magnanimity and
power no other man has shown. It would not be diffi-
cult to prove, if there were time and space, that he really
possessed many of the leading characteristics of our great
men of the past, more, perhaps, than has been manifested
by any other single American. At the same time, he was
wholly unlike them all in his intellectual methods as
564 E. C. POMEROY.
well as in his personal appearance and was not equal to
any one of them, probably, in those educational advanta-
ges that corne from the schools. But his great soul, man-
ifesting itself by great deeds, has won for him a reputa-
tion and fame superior to all other Americans, with the
single exception, perhaps, of Washington and he stands
before the world an illustrious example of human great-
ness, creditable alike to the men who created the govern-
ment and to the government which they created. They
made it possible for such a man to be produced ; and he
is without any exception the grandest fruit of their deep
political foresight. He was wholly American, and
wholly a United States American, of the purest and best
type : a broad-minded, big-hearted, genial-tempered prod-
uct of the prairies : with a love of country and of free-
dom aad of man a thousand times more boundless than
the prairies, as boundless as humanity. With such en-
dowments of mind and such attributes of character, it is
not to be wondered at that he could move men as they
had never been moved before ; nor is it a matter of won-
der to those who believe in an overruling Providence that
fits the man for the hour and the hour for the man, in the
great concerns of earth, that at his chief advent into pub-
lic life, the time had come for them to be so moved.
A country that has produced two such men as Wash-
ington and Lincoln during the first century of its exist-
ence- -besides the large number of other great men neces-
sarily implied in the production of these two can afford to
be well satisfied with its laurels. Washington, the Father
of Liberty and the Founder of the Republic ; Lincoln,
the Father of Freedom and the Preserver of the Re-
E. C. POMEROY. 565
public : these might not improperly be distinguishing
titles of these distinguished men. No brighter names
than theirs shine out from the pages of history, in ancient
or modern times. The united voice of the country, and
of all countries, has given to Washington his proper
place, where he will stand, bathed in glory, forever. Lin-
coln's time has not yet come. It is too early for him to
take his right place in the undivided opinion of the world.
Another generation must pass perhaps many genera-
tions before he can be seen by all alike and in his true
light. When the asperities of the war are all gone, and
the memory of its bitterness has faded from the minds of
men, and the prejudices excited by its passions are at an
end when the animosities engendered by party strife are
forgotten, and when the losses caused by the war to the
present generation are found to be an immense gain in
the future, as they certainly will be when all of these
ameliorated conditions, in so far as they relate to him,
shall have been reached then the memory of his great
deeds and pure life and noble character will take posses-
sion of men's minds to the exclusion of their former false
views and errors, and thus being able to look upon him
with unclouded sight, they will behold him exactly as he
was, and as he will continue to be in reputation, one of
the greatest of earth's great men.
The divine oversight and guidance of earthly affairs is
nowhere more manifest than in that portion of our
national history which relates to slavery. The nation
has been punished, as it deserved to be, for tolerating
the hideous wrong. The oppressed race has been bene-
fited, as was right that it should be, by the continuance
566 E. C. POMEROY.
of that wrong. I he emancipated slave comes from his
bondage better fitted for the duties of civilization and bet-
ter capable of self-support and self-improvement than any
other equal number of his race. Shall he not share these
advantages with the less-favored portion of his people ?
Shall he not be a missionary to his fellows of the " dark-
continent," still suffering under a bondage more crushing
and cruel than that from which he himself has been
freed ? The bondage of ignorance and superstition by
which they are enslaved is a bondage from which they
cannot be emancipated by proclamation, but only by slow
growth in knowledge through generations of instruction.
Their period of instruction will come and growth in
knowledge follow as one of the fruits, in part at least, of
the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Mr. Lincoln ;
and in so far as they shall then be liberated from the
gross barbarism in which they are sunk, the credit of their
improved condition must proportionally be attributed to
the same cause, and will in like proportion enhance the
glory of that great act.
The far-reaching beneficence of this great man's life
character and services cannot now be realized. Believers
in the world's ultimate redemption from evil may picture
to themselves the golden glories of that millennial era and
rejoice in the contemplation of its purity and peace, but
this is the work of the imagination. Not till the era
comes shall its real brightness be seen, and not till then
shall there be men wise enough to trace the blessed in-
fluences by which it was brought about, not till then
shall the full measure of his greatness be known to the
children of earth.
E. C. POMEROY. 567
When the freedman shall have come to his own and
can speak for himself and his race with an applauding
world to listen, men will look back over the landmarks of
human progress, recalling the mighty agencies by which
the grand result was achieved, and nowhere shall they find,
in the long, bright vista of their vision, a glory more brilliant
and beautiful and pure than that which rests upon the
name and hallows the fame of Abraham Lincoln.
BUFFALO, 1882.
568 ANDREW BO YD.
I AM glad to be recorded with the many as one who
had great love for Mr. Lincoln ; who reveres his
name and memory, and who believes that God gave him
to us for the crisis we were to pass through; to lead us
successfully through that four years of terrible civil war
into the bright sunlight of a blessed peace, the early
dawn only of which he was permitted to see, when he
was cruelly and brutally murdered during an evening of
recreation. We question if there was ever a man holding
public office in our country who received more blame
and more praise than Abraham Lincoln while President ;
but when he died the nation staggered under the sad in-
telligence ; a cry of unfeigned sorrow went up from every
loyal breast ; even enemies had pity in their hearts ; and
from almost every hamlet throughout the world came ex-
pressions of sympathy for the loss of our good President.
Mr. Lincoln's kind and forgiving nature should never be
called in question. It was like unto the following :
" Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how oft shall
my brother sin against 'me and I forgive him ? Till seven
times ? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until
seven times, but until seventy times seven" I believe the
answer which Jesus made to have been the ruling spirit
of Mr. Lincoln towards his fellow-beings friends or
enemies : for he said, with malice towards none, with
charity for all.
He was pure-hearted and pure-minded. There were
times, perhaps, in our impatience we thought him wrong,
ANDREW BO YD. 569
and wished him to do different ; but the result showed
that he was about right, and did things at the proper
time for the benefit of all concerned. It is not likely
that any man could have filled his place during the try-
ing time he was President, perhaps, without erring with-
out displeasing many ; and it is certainly beyond doubt
that but few would have been as conscientiously just as he.
Who would have been more faithful ? He stood like the
noble pine, that can bend before the storm but will not
break. "He stood when others fell!" No matter who
was discouraged, it was not for him to be disheartened ;
or, at least, to show it. How well did he try to conceal
the burden he had to bear ; wearing a smile, and telling a
story to forget his own sorrow, and to cheer up the timid
and desponding. Mr. Lincoln has spoken and written
some of the finest sentences to be found in our language.
His speech at Gettysburg, and portions of his inaugurals,
are very superior. A few words of his last inaugural,
although written in prose, are really in rhyme.
" Fondly do we hope,
Fervently do we pray,
That this mighty scourge of war
May speedily pass away, &c., &c."
Many of his speeches abound with fine, tender, poetic
expression. His little off-hand good-bye address to his
old friends when leaving Springfield in 1861 is full of
deep pathos, and will never be forgotten.
Mr. Lincoln, with his pen and that was law gave
freedom to 4,000,000 of colored slaves. Mr. Lincoln was
not looked up to with any degree of awe or reverence as
57c ANDREW BO YD.
some great men have been ; but he was respected and
truly beloved by the masses of the people for his hon
esty and justness to all ; for his amiable temper and dis-
position ; for his great kindness of heart ; and for his un-
swerving integrity to the principles of free government,
and the honor of his country. He was really one of the