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Read Ebook: Abraham Lincoln by Eddy T M Thomas Mears
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He struck slavery because slavery had clutched the throat of the Republic, and one of the twain must die! Mr. Lincoln said, LET IT BE SLAVERY!
PROFOUND RELIGIOUS DEPENDENCE.
As a public man, he set God before his eyes, and did reverence to the Most High. It was deeply a touching scene as he stood upon the platform of the car which was to carry him from his Springfield home, and tearfully asked his neighbors and old friends that they should remember him in their prayers. Amid tears and sobs they answered "We will pray for you." Again and again has he publicly invoked Divine aid, and asked to be remembered in the prayers of the people. His second Inaugural seems rather the tender pastoral of a white-haired bishop than a political manifesto.
What were his person relations to his God, I know not. We are not in all things able to judge him by our personal standard. How much etiquette may be demanded, how much may have been yielded to the tyranny of custom we cannot tell. In public life he was spotless in integrity and dependent upon Divine aid. He had made no public consecration to God in church covenant, but we may not enter the sanctuary of his inner life. He constantly read the holy oracles, and recognized their claim to be the inspired Scriptures.
He felt that religious responsibility when he set forth the Proclamation of Emancipation closing with the sublime sentence: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, on military necessity, I invoke the considerable judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
In one of the gloomy hours of the struggle he said to a delegation of clergymen: "My hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God. And when events are very threatening, and prospects very dark, I still hope, in some way which men cannot see, all will be well in the end, because our cause is just and God is on our side."
If, as the executive officer of the nation he erred, it was in excessive tenderness in dealing with criminals. Unsuspecting and pure, he could not credit unmixed guilt in others, and with difficulty could he bring himself to suffer condign punishment to be inflicted. There were times when he was inflexible. In vain did wealth and position plead for Gardner, the slave-captain. As vainly did they for Beall and Johnson. If he was lenient it was the error of amiableness.
In reviewing the administration of Abraham Lincoln, we see in him another of those Providentially called and directed leaders who have been raised up in great crises. His name stands on the roll with those of Moses and Joshua, and William of Orange, and Washington. Not only did Providence raise him up, but it divinely vindicated his dealings with slavery. As emancipation was honored, did the pillar of flame light our hosts on to victory!
In the dawning morn of peace and Union has this leader been slain. When the nation thought it most needed him, has he been basely butchered! As the ship which had been rocking in the waves and bowing before the storm was reaching the harbor, a pirate, who sailed with the passengers, basely stole on deck and shot the pilot at the wheel!
The assassin has been held in abhorrence among all people and in all ages. Here was a foul plot to destroy at one swoop the President, the officers eligible to the succession, the Cabinet, the Lieutenant- General, and no doubt the loyal Governors of the States. That the scheme was successful only in part, God be praised. Never has an assassination produced so terrible a shock. For--
"He had borne his faculties so meek, had been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Do plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off."
He fell, and the whole land mourns. Secession smote him in her impotent death-rage, but the State lives on! The reins which dropped from his nerveless hand another grasped, and the nation lives. No revolution comes. No war of rival dynasties! The constitutional successor is in the chief seat of power, and how much secession has taken by this new crime remains to be seen.
Fellow-citizens, there are some duties which press upon us in this hour.
"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain-- Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree, Murder, stern murder, in the darkest degree; All several sins, all used in each degree, Throng to the bar, crying all--Guilty! guilty! I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; And, if I die, no soul will pity me."
A morning journal, which has been somehow retained in the interest of wrong, of home-traitors, of misrule, has already impliedly put in the plea of insanity for the assassin. The same journal runs a parallel between him and John Brown. Well, Virginia executed John Brown--its own precedent is fatal to its own client!
Let justice be done on the leaders of rebellion. Have done with the miserable cant of curing those perjured conspirators with kindness. Libby Prison mined under Federal captives, the starved skeletons of our slowly murdered kinsmen, the grave of Lincoln, and the gaping wounds of Seward are your answer. It must be taught men for all time that treason is, in this life, unpardonable! It is all crimes in one. In this case it is without the glitter of seeming chivalry for its relief. It has had nothing knightly. It has conspired to starve prisoners, has plotted conflagrations which were to consume, in one dread holocaust, the venerable matron, the gray-haired sire and the mother with her babe; has resorted to poison, the knife of the cut- throat and the pistol of the assassin. No treason was ever so repulsively foul, so reekingly corrupt. For its great leaders, the block and the halter; for its chieftains, military and civic, of the second class, perpetual banishment with confiscation of their goods, for all who have volunteered to fight against the Union perpetual disfranchisement--these are the demands of a long-suffering people.
Abraham Lincoln is no more. His work is done. We may not comprehend the mystery which permitted his removal at such an hour, in such a way. God hideth himself wondrously, and sometimes seems to stand afar from His truth and His cause when most needed.
Our leader is gone. His work is finished, and it may be that his Providential mission was fully accomplished. His memory is imperishably fragrant. WASHINGTON--LINCOLN! Who shall say which name shall shine brighter in the firmament of the historic future!
He is dead! In the Presidential Mansion are being said words of solemn admonition and godly counsel. In a few hours his remains will be on their way to sleep in their Illinois grave!
Dead! "How is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod!"
Pray devoutly for the smitten widow and fatherless children of our Chief Magistrate. They are sorely stricken and God alone can heal them. To them it is not the loss of the Chief Magistrate that makes this hour so sad, but that they have no more a husband or a father!
And now that there has been sorrow in all the land, and the death- angel in all its homes, from the humblest to the highest, is not our expiation well-nigh wrought, and will not our Father have compassion upon us?
Let us implore Divine guidance upon Mr. Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States. He was faithful amid the faithless. He was true to the Union when few in his section had for it aught but curses. Pray for him. He comes to power at a critical time and needs wisdom from above. Confide in him. He will surely rise above the one error which temporarily drew him down. He is only hated by traitors, and when they hate, it is safe for loyal men to trust.
His grand purposes will go forward. The wrath of man shall praise Him, and the remainder of wrath will He restrain. Remember, and take heart as you remember, the ringing line of Whittier.
"God's errands never fail."
He who rides upon the whirlwind and directs the storm, is neither dead nor sleeping, and He is a God who never compromises with wrong, and never abdicates His throne.
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