INTRODUCTION.

The author feels that no one man can say what ought to be said of that great statesman, renowned president, and noble martyr-Abraham Lincoln— and therefore begs leave to present as a preface what has been said of him by the greatest men of our times.

[From Lincoln's Memorial.]

Sprung from the people, with no ancestral renown or services, with none of the auxiliaries which wealth, social position, or academic honors afford the mass of aspirants to great public honors, Abraham Lincoln rose step by step to the highest station in the gift of his fellow-countrymen

And although party virulence, which in our press has no check, persistently coupled his name with odious epithets, there has never been the slightest charge of any thing to detract from a high moral character. He was too great to stoop to vile means to accomplish his ends

No Cæsar he, whom we lament,

A man without a precedent,
Sent. it would seem, to do

His work, and perish too!

[From a Speech by General B. F. Butler, in New York City.]

Fellow Citizens:-But a day or two since we assembled throughout the nation in joy, gladness, and triumph, at the success of the armies of the republic,

which opened to us the promise of a glorious peace and a happy country in the future.

These flags now the token of mourning, were then raised in gladness. To-day, in a short hour, Abraham Lincoln has been struck down by the hand of an assassin, and we assemble to mingle our grief with that of the loved ones at home, who mourn the honest man, the incorruptible patriot, the great statesman, the savior of his country in its crisis.

[From a Speech by Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson.]

It is not merely the death of Abraham Lincolngreat, good, patient, faithful, sincere as he was-but it is the great nation that has been wounded in her Chief Magistrate, that she had, with great and unusual eclat, continued in the position, and said, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

[From a Sermon by Rev. Henry W. Bellows.]

Our beloved president, who had enshrined himself not merely in the confidence, the respect, and the gratitude of the people, but in their very hearts, as their true friend, adviser, representative, and brother; whom the nation loved as much as it revered, who had soothed our angry impatience in this fearful struggle with his gentle moderation and passionless calm; who had been the head of the nation, and not the chief of a successful party; and had treated our enemies like rebellious children, and not as foreign foes, providing even in their chastisement for mercy and penitent restoration; our prudent, firm, humble, reverential, God-fearing president is dead.

[Archbishop McClosky, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, in New York.]

We pray that those sentiments of mercy, of clemency, and of conciliation, that filled the heart of the beloved president we have just lost, may animate the heart and guide the actions of him who in this most trying hour is called to fill his place.

[From a Sermon by his Pastor, Rev. D. Gurley.]

I have said that the people confided in the late lamented president with a full and a loving confidence. Probably no man, since the days of Washington, was ever so deeply and firmly imbedded and enshrined in the very hearts of the people as Abraham Lincoln. Nor was it a mistaken confidence and love. He deserved it, deserved it well, deserved it all. He merited it by his character, by his acts, and by the whole tenor, and tone and spirit of his life. He was simple and sincere, plain and honest, truthful and just, benevolent and kind. His perceptions were quick and clear, his judgments were calm and accurate, and his purposes were good and pure beyond a question. Always and every-where he aimed, and endeavored to be and to do right. His integrity was thorough, all-pervading, all-controlling, and incorruptible.

[Public Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson.]

The president stood before us as a man of the people. He was thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled by English insularity or French dissipation; a quiet, native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboatman, a captain in the

Blackhawk war, a country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature of Illinois-on such modest foundation the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood an heroic figure in the center of an heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time.

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 of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue.

[General Banks, at New Orleans.]

There is not a man on the continent or globe that will, or can, say that Abraham Lincoln was his enemy; or that he deserved punishment or death for his individual acts. No, Mr. President, it was because he represented us that he died, and it is for our good and the glory of our nation that God, in his inscrutable providence, has been pleased to do this, while for the late President it is the great crowning act and security of his career.

[By George Bancroft.]

But after every allowance, it will remain that members of the government which preceded the administration opened the gates to treason, and he closed them; that when he went to Washington the ground on which he trod shook under his feet, and he left

the republic on a solid foundation; that traitors had seized public forts and arsenals, and he recovered them for the United States, to whom they belonged; that the Capital which he found the abode of slaves, is now only the home of the free; that the boundless public domain which was grasped at, and, in a great measure, held for the diffusion of slavery, is now irrevocably devoted to freedom.

[From Bishop Simpson's Funeral Oration.]

But the great cause of the mourning is to be found in the man himself. Mr. Lincoln was no ordinary man, and I believe the conviction has been growing on the nation's mind, as it certainly has been on my own, especially in the last years of his administration.

By the hand of God he was especially singled out to guide our government in these troublous times, and it seems to me that the hand of God may be traced in many events connected with his history.

[From a Sermon by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.]

Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for the 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 life millions were striking at home; upon it foreign eyes were lowered, and 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 upon not one such, and in such