The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1895-07-12

served.
His Honesty.
The universal testimony, He is an
honest man, gave him firm hold on
the masses, and they trusted him with
a blind religious faith. His sad, melan-
oholy face excited their sympathy, and
when the dark days came it was their
heart strings that intwined and sustain
ed him. With the sympathy and love
of the people, Lincoln had unlimited
mower over them. He threw an invisi.
BILE and weightless harness over them
and drove them through disaster and
desperation to final victory The trust
and worship by the people of Lincoln
were the result of his simple character
He held himself not aloof from the
masses. He became one OF them They
feared together, they struggled together,
they hoped together. Thus, melted and
nodded into one, they became one in
thought, one in will, one in action If
Lincoln cautiously awaited the full de-
velopment of the last fact in the great
drama before he acted, when longer
waiting would be crime, he knew that
the people were determinedly at his
back. Thus when blow was struck, it
came with the unerring aim and power
of bolt from heaven. A natural king,
not ruling men, but leading them along
the drifts and trends of their own tend
encies, always keeping in mind the
consent of the governed, he developed
what the future historian will call the
sublimest order of conservative states
mans q.
Whatever of life, vigor, force and pow
or of eloquence his peculiar qualities
gave him; whatever there was in fair,
manly, honest and impartial admins
tration of Justice under law to all men
at all times; whatever there was in a
strong will in the right governed by ten
derness and mercy; whatever there was
in toll and sublime patience; whatever
there was in these things or wise COM
bination of them, Lincoln is justly en-
titled to in making up the impartial YER
dict of history These limit and define
him as statesman, as an orator, as an
executive of the nation and as man.
They developed in all the walks of his
life; they were his law; they were his
nature; they were Abraham Lincoln
This long, bony, sad man floated down
the Sangamon river in a frail canoe in
the spring of 1881. Like piece of drift
wood, he lodged at last, without his
tory, strange, penniless and alone. In
sight of the capital of Illinois in the
fatigue of daily toll he struggled for the
necessaries of life. Thirty years later
this same peculiar man left the Sanga
mon river, backed by friends, by power,
by the patriotic prayers of millions of
people, to be the ruler of the greatest
nation in the world.
Had it not been for his conservative
craftsmanship, his supreme confidence
in the wisdom of the people, his ex-
IRENE care in cropping his way among
facts and before ideas, this nation might
have been two governments today. The
low and feeble circulation of his blood,
his healthful irritability, which re-
sponded so slowly to the effects of slim
uli, the strength of his herculean frame,
his peculiar organism conserving it's
force, his sublime patience, his wonder
full endurance, his great hand and heart,
saved this country from division when
division meant its irreparable ruin.
The central figure of our national his
tory, the sublime type of our civiliza
tion, posterity, with the record of his
career and actions before it, will decree
that, whether Providence so ordained it
or not, Abraham Lincoln was the man
for the hour
Tribute by Colleague at the Bar.
''The weird and melancholy associa,
tion of eloquence and poetry had strong
fascination for Mr.. Lincoln s mind. In
the indulgence of this melancholy taste
it is related of him that the poem, I'm
mortality, he knew by rote and appre-
ciated very highly. He had a strange
liking for the verses, and they bear a
just resemblance to his fortune. Mr..
Lincoln at the time of his assassination
was encircled by halo of immortal
glory such as had never before graced
the brow of mortal man. He had driven
treason from it's capital city, had slept
LII UlC p0lctOO VI tUo OIlOO pIOIu anu uS-
faint but now vanquished leader and had
saved his country and it's accrued glories
of three-quarters of a century from de-
struction. He rode, not with the naughty
and imperious brow Of an ancient con-
queror, but with te placid complacenoy
of pure patriot, through the streets Of
the political Babylon of modern times.
He had ridden over battlefieIds immor-
tai in history when, in power at least,
he was the leader. Having assured the
misguided citizens of the south that he
meant them no harm beyond determi-
nation to maintain the government, he
returned buoyant with hope to the ex-
ecutive mansion where for four long
years he had been held, as it were, a
prisoner
Weary with the stories of state, he
goes to seek the relaxation of amuse-
ment at the theater; sees the gay crowd
as he passes in; is cheered and gracious
ly smiled upon by fair women and brave
men: behOldS the gorgeous naranher-