Throughout the war Mr. Merwin was in close personal touch with the nation's executive, and had a passport, given him by Mr. Lincoln, which admitted him to the White House at any time, day or night, except during the session of the cabinet. On the day of his assassination the President had Mr. Merwin to dine with him, and that afternoon sent him on an important mission to New York.
It will be a matter of interest to many to know that Mr. Lincoln looked very favorably upon a proposal that had been made for the excavation and completion of the Panama Canal by means of the labor of the freedmen. Those close to the President at the time were aware of the fact that he favored the plan, and it was for the purpose of securing the views of Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune, and other molders of public thought, in regard to the plan, that he called Major Merwin to the White House on the fatal Friday, April 14, 1865, the day that he was shot. After the President had explained this business to Mr. Merwin, perhaps recalling again those stirring times ten years before, when he had campaigned with him, he said, "After reconstruction, the next great question will be the overthrow of the liquor traffic."
That evening Mr. Merwin was on his way to New York, and the following morning, as he stepped from the train in that city, he heard the terrible news of the assassination at Ford's Theater, the night before.
Mr. Merwin says that Mr. Lincoln talked freely with him on the overthrow of the liquor traffic, and it is his strong conviction that if his life had been spared, even a decade, he would have emphasized his lifelong devotion to the temperance cause with an open and decisive championship of State and National prohibition. The slavery issue had come unforeseen into his life and swept him heart and soul into the very vortex of that terrific struggle. As he often expressed it, "there must be one war at a time," and the one that called him first was not of his own choosing in point of order.
The abridged address on "Lincoln as a Prohibitionist," delivered by Major Merwin at the Lincoln Monument, at Springfield, Illinois, May 26, 1904, which he furnished for this book, is here given. It was printed in the New Voice, Chicago, June 16, 1904, to which I am indebted for a number of the foregoing items, some of which were marked by Major Merwin with a blue pencil.
After a brief introduction by Mr. Alonzo Wilson, chairman of the State Prohibition Committee, Mr. Merwin, standing on one of the steps of the stairway of the monument, with a beautiful flag covering a part of the balustrade, said:
"We stand to-day in the heart of the continent, midway between the two oceans, within the shadow of the monument of the man who made more history—who made greater history than any other person, than all other persons who lived in the nineteenth century! A leader of the people, who was great in their greatness, who carried their burdens, who, with their help, achieved a name and a fame unparalleled in human history. He broke the shackles of four millions of slaves. He saved to the world this form of government, which gives to all our people the opportunity to walk, if they will, down the corridors of time, arm in arm with the great of all ages, sheltered and inspired by the flag which has become the symbol of hope and of freedom to all the world!
"In God's good providence, I came to know him—here in his humble home in Springfield, in 1854, and before he had come to be the hero, beloved, glorified, known and loved by all who love liberty. It was in the autumn of 1854. I was a young man full of all the enthusiasm of those first Neal Dow triumphs in New England. Accepting the invitation of friends, I came to Illinois, where the campaign for State prohibition was getting under way. I reached Springfield, and one night had the privilege of speaking in the old State House, where, with legislators and townspeople, I found an appreciative audience.
"After my address, there were calls of 'Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln!' and turning, I saw, perhaps, the most singular specimen of a human being rising slowly, and unfolding his long arms and his long legs, exactly like the blades of a jack-knife. His hair was uncombed, his coat sleeves were inches shorter than his shirt sleeves, his trousers did not reach to his socks. First I thought there was some plan to perpetrate a 'joke' on the meeting, but in one minute, after the first accents of the pathetic voice were heard, the crowd hushed to a stillness as profound as if Lincoln were the only person present, and then this simple, uncouth man gave to the hushed crowd such a definition of law, its design and mission, its object and power, such as few present had ever known or dreamed. Among the points he made were the following:
"Mr. Lincoln asked, 'Is not the law of self-protection the first law of nature; the first primary law of civilized society?' 'Law,' he declared, 'is for the protection, conservation, and extension of right things, of right conduct; not for the protection of evil and wrong-doing.'