The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-02-13
F.. HI. DILLON & co.

l citement can sometimes be forgiven but these have been carefully read, anC l revised in cold blood and bound into : substantial volume. Phillips and Gar rison hated Lincoln and would have
 ruined him if they could. Even up te 1864 they considered him an incompet-
 ent man. These speeches must have hurt Lincoln terribly: they must have stung the gentlest man in the world Read these speeches and get the New England point of view at that time o1 Abraham Lincoln. He was called { pawn on the chess board" whose inn
 portante depended upon his position.
 In 1861 Phillips said: '"The Union is g failure" Phillips and Garrison were both disunionistS. They said Lincoln was conducting the war to save slav- cry. If he had been a traitor he could not have worked better for the South.
 He has neither insight nor foresight; he halts and fears: he is 8 first rate second rate man He is waiting for any errand the people may send him upon. His policy is one of delay to see what will turn up. There is no stiffness in him. He is stumbling faithless and uncertain-he ventures now step and then another I do not believe en the government at washing ton, said Phillips. Let me make the generals and I do not care who makes the proclamations Cease to lean on
 the government at Washington. The
 President is an honest man-that is
 Kentucky honest! This, added Prof Phelps, was the extreme abolition view
 of the New England abolitionists.
 Reference was made to a letter which Horace Greeley wrote to Lincoln. tell ing him what to do, and Prof. Phelps read Mr. Lincoln's masterly reply. It was the letter in which he said: ''I could save the Union" He would do this if he could without freeing the slaves or by freeing a part of them or by freeing all of them, as circum- stances might require. My paramount object is to save the Union"
 That said Prof. Phelps. shows the statesman. It is almost like the voice of Daniel Webster speaking from the grave. There is danger always of this Union. We are apt to forget dan gers when they have passed. In the campaign of 1896 the question involved was one of national honor. There was a great sentiment for secession in the northwestern states and even in Kan sas. People ought to be educated in the belief that no one section should stand in the way of the interests of the whole. People on the other side of the Rocky Mountains are just as much Americans as we. born here in Strat- ford. And SO too the people of the coast of Louisiana, or Texas.
 rLincOln's letter to Greeley was the personification of calmness. When the war came the people fought for the preservation of the Union. People were found who were even willing to die for it.
 '"There is another side to Lincoln's character-his sweetness. kindness, honesty. sympathy. gratitude. No man knows what he suffered in the White House."
 Prof Phelps then read the we'll known letter which Lincoln wrote to Mrs Bixby of Boston who lost five sons in the war.
 well" he said. that's the kind of letter that cannot be improved upon at all. Tlle English press loved to repre- sent him as clown and when some of his cabinet ministers came into the cabinet chamber and found him roar ing over the writing of Petroleum V. Nasby. and shaping his knees like boy they thought him crazy. But he was the most serious. profound and wisest of them all. He had the quail ties we like-a pure heart. absolute devotion to duty. a kindly tempera- ment. with no affection. \honest. sin cere, a man who never posed. and who was full of humor. The best descrip- ton ever given of him is by James Russell Lowell. in the commemoration ode. delivered at Harvard. July 21, 1865"