No one bullet ever went forth on a deadlier mission, or struck so heavy a blow to friends and foes alike, as did the bullet that laid Abraham Lincoln low in the dust.
Victor and vanquished, who had come up out of a great struggle with their garments rolled in blood to ground their arms at his feet, and who had received his benediction of peace and good-will to all, were alike mourners when the assassin’s bullet did its deadly work.
It was as though there was one dead in every house. The mourners went about the streets uncomforted. Men forgot their love for gold and their lust for power; statesmen groped about like blind men for some hand to lead. The world was in mourning; for all the world knew that he had come to the kingdom for such a time as that.
The lives of such men as Abraham Lincoln are measured by deeds, and not by length of days. His work was wrought in a few short years. He answered the question of the wisdom and solidity of a republican form of government by hurling its betrayers from power. He established human liberty on the immutable rock of intelligent public sentiment. When he proclaimed above the sleeping heroes of Gettysburg, “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” he sounded forth an endless jubilee that has echoed and re-echoed through the world, till the people of every kindred and tongue have heard the glad tidings, and human slavery has been branded as a crime, and outlawed by all the civilized nations of the earth.
The saviour of his people, the liberator of the oppressed, the great-hearted friend of humanity, he will stand out a colossal figure in history while men love liberty more than life, while men love freedom more than chains, and while human sympathy links us to each other and draws us toward God and heaven.
It seems fitting, as there was not one of all the millions who loved him, and who would have shielded him at any cost, but knew not of his peril, that the flag he loved should have become his avenger, and caught the foot of the assassin in its loyal folds, and hurled him away to certain death. That flag, kept securely in a glass case, is held sacred in the treasure-house of the nation. The swift-footed years have gone by, till twenty-nine have passed; but Lincoln is not forgotten: his memory is as fresh and sweet as it was at the first.
The robins come to build their nests, and the bluebirds sing their sweet spring songs, just as they did twenty-nine years ago this April-time; but he is not forgotten, for his work goes on. The flag that Lincoln upheld is the banner honored of all nations, the principles he sustained and taught are more and more becoming the heritage of the world, and will be universal.
HOW I GOT THE COTTON.
A FEW days after the first fleet ran the blockade at Vicksburg, another fleet, composed entirely of wooden steamers, ran through that fiery channel.