If the four years' administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people any one lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and proclaim, and that he, as President, was bound to execute their will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he did four years ago, "I wait the voice of the people." The stern logic of the events of today would guide him, not those of yesterday. Therefore let us not be thrown off our watch by any of these appeals to our reverence for the opinions and plans of our departed President. If his freed spirit is permitted today to hover over each and all of the vast gatherings of the loyal people throughout the nation, it is beckoning every soul upward and onward in the path of equal justice to all; it is urging the great heart of the nation to plant our new Union on the everlasting rock of republicanism—universal freedom and universal suffrage.
FOOTNOTES:
[134] Sidney Clark, of Lawrence.
[135] S. C. Pomeroy.
[136] James H. Lane.
Chapter XVI—Page [259].
ADDRESS TO CONGRESS.
Adopted by the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, held in New York City, Thursday, May 10, 1866.
Prepared by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.