The White Pine news. [volume] (Treasure City, Nev.) 1868-1906, 1870-07-24

stars of the American banner. I beg
that you will pause Q moment, for his
immortal name has here been invoked
for the perpetuation of slavery. All the
past century has not, the century to come
will not have, y figure so grand, because
as evil disappears, so disappears he
roism also.
| have often contemplated and de-
scribed his life. Born in a cabin of Ken
tucky, of parents who could hardly read;
born q new Moses in the solitude of the
desert, where are forged all great and OBJ
stinate thoughts, monotonous like the
desert. and, like the desert, sublime;
growing among those primeyal forests,
which, with their fragrance, send a cloud
of incense, and, with their murmurs, a
cloud of prayers to heaven; a boatman
at eight years in the impetuous current
of the Ohio, and at seventeen in the vast
and tranquil waters Of the Mississippi;
later, a woodman, with Ak and arm fell
ing the immemorial trees to open a way
TO unexplored regions for his tribe of
wandering workers; reading no other book
| than the Bible, the book of great sor-
rows and great hopes, di ctated often by
prophets to the sound of letters they
dragged through Ninevah and Babylon;
a child of Nature, in a word, by one of
those miracles only comprehensive
among free people, he fought for the
Country, and was raised by his fellow
citizens to the Congress at Washington,
and by the Nation to the Presidency of
the Republic; and when the evil grew
more yirulent, and when those States
were dissolved, when the Shareholders
,ttn~ad fbatr Uor arv and tho nlavaa
their groans of despair-the wood
cutter, the boatman, the son of the great
West, the descendant of Quakers, hum
science, greatest of the great before his
tory, ascends the Capitol, the greatest
moral hight of our time, and strong and
serene with his conscience and his
thoughts; before him q veteran army,
hostile Europe behind him, England
favoring the South, France encouraging
reaction in Mexico, in his hands the
riven Country; he arms two millions of
men, gathers a half million horses,
sends his artillery ! 200 miles in o week
from the banks Of the Potomac to the
shores of Tennessee; fights more than
600 battles; renews before Richmond
the deeds of Alexander, of Cesar; and,
after having emancipated 5000, 900
slaves, that nothing might be wanting,
he dies in the very moment of victory
like Christ, like Socrates, like all re-
deemers, at the foot of his work. His
work. Sublime achievement over
which humanity shall ~eternally shed its
tears, and God his benedictionsl
But Lincoln, you will tell me, attempt
ed gradual emancipation. This is true;
I never evade the truth. But the priv
LEGGED classes shut their eyes and opposed
it, as they shut their eyes here and OPP
pose every profound and radical reform.
And immediate abolition came. When
a man of the wisdom and political pru-
dence of Abraham Lincoln appealed to
supreme measures, it was because he was
thoroughly convinced that all hope
of compromise was gone, that gradual
steps are impracticable in reforms de-
manded by justice and humanity. Since
then, the United States, having turned
their slaves into men, have devoted
themselves to converting these men into
citizens.
And to-day, gentlemen, those beings
Aho were formerly not even mon, are
freer than the first of the sons of Europe.
Those men who could not learn TO read,
because the Southern gentlemen muir
dered any one who would dare to give
them a book, have to-day innumerable
schools. Those men who were like
beasts of burden, wretched as the rep
tiles that crawled among the cotton and
the cane, are free men, are American
citizens; they sit in the Congress and
the Senate of Washington.
The United States have refused to
recognize as members of the federation
those States which have not in their turn
recognized the liberty and the equality
of the Negroes.
You talk to me of exceptional laws.
Many have you given to sustain the in
fuence of priests and the Tyranny of
kings. l admit your exceptions if you
will present me 4,000,0 900 beasts con-
yerted into 1000, 900 men.