Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday Part 10

[15] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

Again a great leader of the people has pa.s.sed through toil, sorrow, battle and war, and come near to the promised land of peace into which he might not pa.s.s over. Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people? Since the November of 1860, his horizon has been black with storms.

By day and by night, he trod a way of danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a government dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity millions of men were striking at home. Upon this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of storms, and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, n.o.ble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impa.s.sioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial, in hours of defeat, to the depths of despondency, he held on with immovable patience and fort.i.tude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution that it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein G.o.d was cleansing the sin of His people as by fire.

At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness and the East came rus.h.i.+ng toward us with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceedingly that had sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy and rest, such honor, such trust, such grat.i.tude. But he looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone from among us. Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul. Thou hast, indeed, entered the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou art sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice exceedingly,--thou that hast enough suffered! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. Around thee are the royal men that have enn.o.bled human life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore.

Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it.

In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, an everlasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity and goodness.

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness.

That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth--these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days--all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe.

In one hour, joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings?

It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow--noon and midnight, without a s.p.a.ce between.

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get strength to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly.

All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable inst.i.tutions, and write his name above their lintels, but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellows.h.i.+p of anguish.

This Nation has dissolved--but in tears only. It stands four-square, more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than ever before. The government is not weakened; it is made stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks closed! Another steps forward, in the hour that one fell, to take his place and his mantle; and I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of liberty; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him; vigilant of the Const.i.tution; careful of the laws; wise for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has known what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from bitter personal experiences.

Where could the head of government of any monarchy be smitten down by the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin, and the funds not quiver or fall one-half of one per cent? After a long period of national disturbance, after four years of drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of the country, in the height and top of our burdens, the heart of this people is such that now, when the head of government is stricken down, the public funds do not waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our mountains.

Republican inst.i.tutions have been vindicated in this experience as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems in the providence of G.o.d, to have been clothed now, with an ill.u.s.tration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected nor imagined. G.o.d, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to all nations of the earth: "Republican liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe."

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Was.h.i.+ngton, and your children and your children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, pa.s.sed, in party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hea.r.s.e, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquis.h.i.+ng him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror.

I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery, with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right, and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of his country shake out of place. I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.

You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of G.o.d? There will be wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom G.o.d sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them? O, thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort Thy people of old, to Thy care we commit the helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved.

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The Nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Was.h.i.+ngton dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the un.o.bstructed sphere where pa.s.sion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be.

Pa.s.s on, thou that hast overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and bands and m.u.f.fled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; G.o.d made it echo joy and triumph there. Pa.s.s on.

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man, and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror.

Not thine any more, but the Nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty.

HYMN[16]

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

O Thou of soul and sense and breath, The ever-present Giver, Unto Thy mighty angel, death, All flesh thou didst deliver; What most we cherish, we resign, For life and death alike are Thine, Who reignest Lord forever!

Our hearts lie buried in the dust With him, so true and tender, The patriot's stay, the people's trust, The s.h.i.+eld of the offender; Yet every murmuring voice is still, As, bowing to Thy sovereign will, Our best loved we surrender.

Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold This martyr generation, Which Thou, through trials manifold, Art showing Thy salvation!

O let the blood by murder split Wash out Thy stricken children's guilt, And sanctify our nation!

Be Thou Thy orphaned Israel's friend, Forsake Thy people never, In One our broken Many blend, That none again may sever!

Hear us, O Father, while we raise With trembling lips our song of praise, And bless Thy name forever!

[16] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Foully a.s.sa.s.sinated April 14, 1865

BY TOM TAYLOR (MARK LEMON) IN LONDON PUNCH.

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to s.h.i.+ne, of art to please;

You whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain:

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?

Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen:-- To make me own this man of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose; How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true; How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be: How in good fortune and in ill, the same: Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work,--such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,-- As one who knows, where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command;

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That G.o.d makes instruments to work His will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights,--

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid, that o'erbears the boatsman's toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear;-- Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: Rough culture,--but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it: four long suffering years, Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers.

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood: Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seem to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,-- And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips, Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.