II. THE TIME WHEN “THOSE WHO CAME TO SCOFF REMAINED TO PRAY”
Lincoln’s death was received throughout the South generally as the death of an enemy. Well do they know now that it could have been said of them then, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The sorrow throughout the North was as in the midst of Egypt’s ancient woe. It was as if “There was not a house where there was not one dead.”
As was once said of a great martyr of liberty, slain three centuries before, so it could be said of Lincoln, “He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. While he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.”
Periodicals that had ridiculed him from his first appearance in their view, and that had caused many of their readers to believe him little better than a clown in the arena of affairs, or than a court fool before the nations, dropped their defaming caricatures of him, and gave him nearer justice.
One of the most belittling and besmirching periodicals of England against Lincoln was the “London Punch.” The war-president of the United States was, largely from this source of authority, the jest of all Europe.
But the issue following the assassination of Lincoln contained a great picture. It was symbolical of England laying a wreath of flowers upon Lincoln’s coffin. The picture was drawn by Tenniel and with it was a most penitent poem by Tom Taylor, who was author of the play, “Our American Cousin,” which Lincoln was attending when assassinated. Five of the expressive stanzas are as follows:
“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 changed to cheers;
“The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both with the same unwavering mood:
Till, as he came to light, from darkling days,
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,
“A felon hand, between the goal and him,
Reached from behind his back, a trigger pressed,—
And those perplexed and patient eyes grew dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!
“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, scurril 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 hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men.”
In 1879, at an unveiling in Boston of Freedman’s Memorial Statue, a duplicate of the original in Lincoln Square, Washington, a poem was read from Whittier, of which the last three stanzas are the most significant in their characterization. It beautifully expresses the faith that in righteousness is personal power, even as it also “exalteth a nation.”
“We rest in peace where these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife and pain;
His was the nation’s sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
“O, symbol of God’s will on earth
As it is done above!
Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.
“Stand in thy place and testify
To coming ages long,
That truth is stronger than a lie,
And righteousness than wrong.”