Year: 1865




tell you they are the men who have nc
share in the triumphs of the contest.
am of the same opinion with our Chic
Magistrate; am willing that those who
love slavery so much should try it them
selves. l have never symphathized with
j the view that this war was brought upon
| the North because of the sins of the
| North. 1t is not denied that we have ma
tional and individual sins to answer for.
There are as wicked men north of Mason
and DiXOn's line as in any part of the
world. But the particular sins that
brought on the present civil war should
be charged home upon the people to
whom they belong. The crime of slavery
and heresy of State Sovereignty are for
eign to the great body of the people at
the North 1t was reserved for South
ern clergyman to say that ''he had as much
faith in the divinity of slavery as In the
divinity of Jesus Christ"


The sectional contest that has forbid
den the nation to be at rest, was In part
political and In part nsilitdrg-begun with
the ballot, it is being finished with the
sword. Great moral questions are at is
sUe-great problems are to be solved by
the contest. He who cannot look above
self and nO10-taking in the grand idea of
sacrifce-is not fit to serve as messenger
boy IN Congress, or even as sutler IN the
army. If the spectacle were not too hu-
initiating, it would be amusing to see how
these men have chafed and fretted in their
places until at last they have fallen out
by the way. They no longer lead the
halting armies of the nation; their voices
no longer resound in the nations Capitol
The men who fought for glory during the
first two years of the war-and that is
thought by many to be a commendable
motive in a soldier-failed to see it, and
returned to their homes. But the re-
enlisted veterans, who stood by the coun-
try In its darkest hour, who will not leave
their work until they can say it is finish
ed; they are our saYIors. But of how
many it may be already mournfully said,
themselves they could not save; the long
marches, the protracted seiges, the bloody
battles, the terrible campaigns of the war
have thinned their ranks most fearfully
They sleep upon almost every hillside,
from the Ohio to the Gulf, from Duvall's
Bluff to the Atlantic. The nations Gem
etery is not Gettysburg alone-but wher-
ever blood has been split that cannot be
gathered-whereve is deposited the dust
of our slain-"that is hallowed ground"
There let the monuments rise, let the
marble speak If there Is a cemetery in
the north not honored as the burial place
of soldier, it is wanting in that which
teaches most plainly the great lesson of
sacrifice


The nations soldiers stand first upon
the roll of honor Then comes the Gov
ernment, and the people who stood by the
Government-always hopeful, never de-
spending, even in the darkest hour
With the contest already begun, the Pres
dent attained to place divested of power
The great Premier took the portfolio
which shared neither the good will nor
respect of foreign powers. The Secretary
of the Treasury found an empty purse
and all credit destroyed. The Naval Sec
retary was not long in discovering that
secession winds had scattered our ships
90 the four quarters of the globe. The
people had forgotten to use the sword and
musket of their revolutionary sires. All
military organizations had been laid aside,
and in some of the States it was hard to
ind man who knew enough of military
tactics to properly organize a regiment.
Four years have passed, and what a rev.
olution has been wrought! We are now
a military peOple-our navy of iron clads
IS the best in the world Our national
debt is great-but such is the public con-
idence in the stability of the Government
that its stock bonds are sold for prem
ium at the stock boards of the great me-
tropolis.


Such has been the management of our
foreign affairs, that we are both feared
and respected by the great nationalities
of Europe.


Many of the great lights had gone out
before the struggle began. The sage of
Ashland and the orator and statesman
rom Marshfeld had died. The chief
man of the cid Cabinet, who had
been connected with our national af-
fairs for more than forty years, gave up
his portfolio and retired to private life
These men all saw the ''irrepressible con-
dictcOming, and they quailed like towards
before it. They buised themselves with
inventing compromises. They dishOnored
their place in history-to make peace with
the Moloch of Slavery. But Seward did
not, he opposed the fugitive slave law he
spake and voted against the Kansas
Nebraska bill; he stood up manfully
against the aggressiOns of the accursed
institution in every form, and when the
great presidential struggle came, though
himself a defeated candidate before the
Convention, his clarion voice went ringing
through the land from New England to
Western Kansas. When called from the
foremost place in the Senate to the Secre-
taryship, he forgot his ambition for the
presidency, and devoted all his energies
to save the Nation. Without the comprO-
mise of honor or self-respect, he has saw
ed us from foreign war, task second only
to crushing the Rebellion. He has been
criticised and maligned, and who of our
leaders have not? A wiser than | has
stood up in this pulpit and called him
cowardly, a man Of theories that did not
comprehend the situation But [ am
sure that opinion will be reversed. When
the history of the great conflict shall come
to be impartially written, justice will be
done him, and Justice viii be justified OF
her children"


Labors greater than those of Hercules,
greater burden than Atlas sustaining the
heavens, have been imposed upon the
President, which he bore up under like a
giant. But to-day he is the happiest man
in the Nation, not happy for his own sake,
but for ours. A man of limited political
experience, not genius, not of polished
speech or dignity of manners-with what
moderation and perseverance-wlth what
patience and steady purpose-has he gone
| forward in the work of reinvesting
the Nation in her stolen territories =
Let us inquire by paraphrasing the
language of Cicero In saving Rome from
desperate conspiracy: If we deem him
who founded the Republic worthy OF
| Divine honors, in what reverence ought
we to hold him who saved the Republic
founded and enlarged ~


Let him be held from this day forward
in perpetual remembrance. When he
dies let him sleep not at Monticello with
the author of the Declaration of Inde-
pendenee, but at Mount Vernon, side by
side with him who made that declaration
raal authOr of the great DrOclamation oi