Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1898-02-18
the impotence of many at the conduct

of the early part of war.
The speaker continues: 1.-THE black
ness of war deepened. Tens Of thous-
ands of men were brushed out Of exist
ence; disaster piled upon disaster; the
whole foundation of the republic shook
to its centre, but Lincoln chung fast to
the hand of the people. In those days.
says Emerson, Lincoln became the en-
bodiment of the American people. Step
by step he walked before them; slow
with their slowness, quickening his
march by theirs, the true representative
of the continent, an entirely public man,
father If his country, the pulse of twenty
millions throbbing in his heart, the
thought of their minds articulated by
his tongue
At last, when the confederate army
under Lee, crossed the Potomac and i'll
vaded Maryland, Lincoln vowed a sol.
emn vow to God that if the Union army
were now blest with success, the decree
of freedom should be issued. The VIC
tory of Antietam was Gods answer to
his prayer, the preliminary Eman-
cipation Proclamation was the payment
of his VOW. And at the teginning Of
the new year, when he saw that the
people had been educated up to it, the
>
and triumphantly. Thus Lincoln earned
the title dearest to his heart-the liber-
ator of slaves He realized the RESPONSE
! bility and magnitude of the act, de-
clarlng IT to be the central act Of his
administration and the great event of
the nineteenth century.
The bloody months rolled on; four
years of unparalleled carnage, the Union
not yet saved and another presidential
election at hand. All the enemies of the
administration in the north rallied with
the slogan, the war is failure' But
III spite Of the attacks upon him by
friend and foe, the heart of the people
remained true, and he scored another
personal victory, unprecedented, BRILL
ant, overwhelming Yet he said While
| am deeply sensible TO the high compli-
ment of a re election, it adds nothing to
my satisfaction that any other man may
be panied or disappointed by the result,
and | do not impugn the motives of any
who opposed me, but / give thanks to
the Almighty for the evidence of the
peoples resolution to stand by free
government and the rights of humanity
This was Abraham Lincoln's character
as tested in that hottest of furnaces, the
furnace of prosperity
After trial, triumph after abasement,
exaltation after defeat, victory. The
glory months had GOMEZ Sherman,
Grant and Sheridan pursuing the foe
day ana night, Tightening their relentless,
resistless grip upon them, and Richmond
| tottering. During all the time of fail
ure, Lincoln, initiating Washington, had
not ceased to wrestle with God in an
agony of prayer, and now behold the
| answer,
Men were wild W it'll joy; but bappiest
Of all was that saddened but now radi-
ant, face. Yet, while others were glory
ing merely III the victories won, Lincoln
was thinking of the future. His last
utterance i'll Cabinet was: Enough
lives have been sacrificed; we must ex.
tinguish our resentments, if we expect
harmony and union And his last pub
lie utterance showed that his one con-
Stunning thought now was of the great
work yet TO be accomplished, recon-
struction. Though he had ruled with a
hand of iron, 1T was gloved in the velvet
of pity Now he must needs assuage the
anguish OF the maynard South and mitl-
gate the wrath of the outraged North.
| y Won Moltke and Won Room, with
your Woe 10 the vanguishedn You, at
the head of your irresistible legions, in
your naughty and purposely humiliating
| triumphal march through the proudest
but most PROSTATE OF capitals-behold
Lincoln, the conqueror, as he walks into
| Richmond, unheralded, unobserved, un-
armed, unattended except by those over
! Joyed creatures who hailed him III their
Transports as their Savior.
We CONT it not the greatest tribute
| to him that half hundred governments
of the world sent condolences TO our
nation for the life which went out with
a martyr halo about 1t, and all people
everywhere bowed i'll sympathetic grief
with our angulshed people but that, at
| the close of the French and German war,
down In the rottenest slums of Paris,
| the founder Of the McAll missions, him
! self an Engllshman, in the place of
1 honor III each of his little halls hung
| the portrait, not OF some great European
warrior or statesman, but the portrait of
him, whose wisdom Phillip Brooks SAID
was the wisdom of little children
| Under each portrait was the well known
motto, With malice toward none, with
charity for all For, said MIR. McAll,
when ] determined to take the gospel
of Christ TO the defeated and desperate
communists of Paris, l wondered what
would express at glance the meaning
and the spirit in which | came-mad, as
they were, against religion and especial
ly against Roman Catholicism and its
priests Then | thought of Lincoln and
| knew that in him they would recog.
nize the spirit of my coming"
Mr.. Scott closed his mastery grafton
by quoting at some length from the
closing lines of that excellent tribute to
Lincoln, Lowell's "Commemoration
Ode" II few lines of which we give:
Great captains with their guns aud drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes:
| These all are gone, and. standing like "a tower.
| Our children shall behold his fame
| The kindly, earnest, brave, toreseeinR man,
| Sagacious, patient. dIeadinP praise not blame,
| New birth OF Our new soil the frat Amer