The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1879-04-23

senses-the literary and the dramatic ones. I
Not In any common or low meaning OF those
terms, but . meaning precious to the race
and to every age. A long and varied series
of contradictory events arrives at last at its
highest poetic, single, central, pictorial de-
movement. The whole involved, battling,
multiform whirl of the secession period
comes to head, and is gather'd in one brief
fash of lightning illuminstion-one simple,
fierce deed. Its sharp elimination and, as it
were, solution of so many bloody and angry
problems illustrates those climax-momenfs
on the stage of universal time, where the
historic muse at one entrance, and the
tragic muse at the other, suddenly ringing
down the curtain, close an immense act in
the long drama of creative thought, and give
it radiation, tableau. stranger than fiction.
Fit radiation-fit close How the insignia
don-how the student loves these thingel
America, too. Is to have them. For not in
all great deaths, nor far or near-not Cesar
In the Roman Senate house, or Napoleon
passing away in the wild night storm at st.
Helena-not Palaologus, falling desperately
fighting, piled over dozens deep with Grecian
corpses-not calm old Socrates drinking the
hemiock-outvies that terminus of the
secession war in one mans life, here in our
midst, in our own time-that seal of the
emancipation Of 3 1000, 900 slaves-that par
turitiOn and delivery of our new born at
last really free Republic henceforth to
commence its career Of genuine homoge-
ueOuS OnlOn, COLuphct, CONSISTENT Win ltSelf
Nor will ever future American patriots
and Unionists, indffferently over the whole
land, or North or South, find better seal to
their lesson. The final use of the greatest men
of nation is, after all, not with reference to
their deeds in themselves, or their direct
bearing on their times or lands. The final
use OF a heroic-eminent lIfe-especiaIly of
heroic-eminent DEATHS its indirect filter
ing into the nation and the race, and to give,
often at many removes, but unerriDgly, age
after age, color and fibre to the personalism
of the youth and maturity of that age, and
of mankind. Then there Is a cement to the
whole people, subtler, more underlying than
anything in written constitution, or courts
or armies-namely, the cement of death
identified thoroughly with that people, at
its head, and for its sake. Strange (isl not?)
that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even
assassination, should so condense-perhaps
only really, Iastingly condense-a nation
atty.
repeat 1.-THE grand deaths of fhe race
the dramatic deaths of every nationality
are Its most important inheritance value-in
some respects beyond Its literature and art
Las the hero Is beyond his finest portrait,
and the battle itself beyond its choicest song
or epic.) Is not here indeed the point I'M
DERIVING all tragedy? the famous pieces of
the Grecian masters-and all masters? Why,
If the old Greeks had had this man, what
trilogies of plays-what epics-would haye
been made out of him. How the rhapsodies
would have recited him? How quickly that
quaint tall form would have entered into
the region where men vitalize gods, and
gods divinity men!
When, centuries hence (ss it must, in my
opinion, be centuries hence before the life of
these States or of democracy, can be really
written and illustrated,) the leading his
| torians and dramatists seek for some person
age, some special event, incisive enough to
mark with the deepest cut, and mennonite
this turbulent nineteenth century of ours
mot only these ates, but all over the po-
litical and social world something per-
haps, to close that gorgeous procession of
European feudalism, with all its pomp and
caste prejudices, of whose long train we in
America are yet SO inex;ricably the heirs
something to identify with terrible indenti-
fcation, by far the greatest revolutionary
step in the history of the United States (per :
haps the greatest of the world, our century
the absolute extirpation and erasure of
slavery from the States-those historians will
seek in vain for any point to serve more
thoroughly their purpose than Abraham
Lincoln's death.
Dear to the muse-thrice dear to nation
alIty-to the whole human race-precious to
this UnIon-precions to democracy-un-
speakably and forever precious-their first
great martyr chief.