The wild and foolish assassin brought down upon the heads of his
own people such a wrath as the great conflict had not awakened. We shall
see how bitter was the retribution.
Not then so fully as now was Lincoln's greatness understood. He has come
to personify for us the triumphs and glories, the sadness and the
pathos, of the great struggle which he guided. His final martyrdom seems
almost a fitting crown for his achievements. It has, without doubt, done
much to secure him the exalted niche which he occupies in the hearts of
the American people, whom, in a way, he died to save. Had he lived
through the troubled period of Reconstruction which followed, he might
have emerged with a fame less clear and shining; and yet the hand which
guided the country through four years of Civil War, was without doubt
the one best fitted to save it from the misery and disgrace which lay in
store for it. But speculations as to what might have been are vain and
idle. What was, we know; and above the clouds of conflict, Lincoln's
figure looms, serene and venerable. Two of his own utterances reveal him
as the words of no other man can--his address on the battlefield of
Gettysburg, and his address at his second inauguration--but two months
after he was laid to rest, James Russell Lowell, at the services in
commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College,
paid him one of the most eloquent tributes ever paid any man, concluding
with the words:
"Great captains, with their guns and 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, foreseeing man;
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;
New birth of our new soil, the first American.
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