It is needless to say that excitement, amounting to panic, prevailed throughout the North. Had Lee been successful in his bold movement, he would probably have continued his victories through the State, and menaced more than one Northern city. The danger was averted, but the victory was won at large cost. The Federal loss in dead, wounded, and missing amounted to twenty-three thousand, though considerably less than the losses on the other side. A piece of land adjoining the cemetery of the town was given by the State as a last resting-place for the loyal soldiers who had fallen in the battle, and on the 19th of November it was dedicated. Two addresses were made—one by Hon. Edward Everett, which was not unworthy of the eminent Massachusetts orator; but the second, though brief, was a gem which will live longer than the stately periods of Everett. It was by President Lincoln himself, and surprised even those who best appreciated him. There are few of my readers to whom it is not familiar, but I can not deny myself the pleasure of recording it here:
“Four score and seven years ago,” said Mr. Lincoln, “our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Is there anything to be found in the addresses of any orator, ancient or modern, more elevated in sentiment or admirable in expression? Yet the speaker had been reared in the backwoods, a stranger to schools and colleges, and his eloquence was neither acquired nor inherited. This speech alone proclaims Abraham Lincoln a man of genius.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE CURTAIN FALLS.
An Oriental monarch, fearing that in the plenitude of his power he might forget the common fate, engaged a trusted attendant from time to time to remind him of his mortality.
Abraham Lincoln needed no such reminder. Before his first inauguration, and at intervals during his official life, he received frequent threatening letters, menacing him with death. These he kept in a package by themselves. Though he never permitted them to influence his action, they had their natural effect upon a mind and temperament subject to despondency, and not free from superstition. Mr. Lincoln had a strong impression that he would not live through his term of office. When, however, he was inaugurated for a second time, amid the plaudits of the nation, and the clouds of civil war seemed lifting to reveal a brighter future, his spirits, too, became buoyant, and he permitted himself to believe that all would end well, and he would be permitted to reconcile the disaffected States, and bring them back into the national fold. His heart was full of tenderness and magnanimity toward the States in rebellion. His large heart was incapable of harboring malice, or thirsting for revenge.
But he was only to come in sight of the Promised Land. It was for another leader to finish his weary and protracted task, and reap where he had sown.
On the evening of the fourteenth of April, 1865, President Lincoln and wife with two friends occupied a box at Ford’s Theatre, by invitation of the manager, to witness a performance of Tom Taylor’s “American Cousin.” They arrived late, and their entrance was greeted with enthusiasm, the large audience rising to their feet and cheering.
Not long afterward, John Wilkes Booth, a young actor, who, throughout the war, had made no secret of his sympathy with the Confederate cause, entered the theatre, and, not without difficulty, made his way through the crowded dress circle to the back of the box in which the President’s party were seated.
“The President has sent for me,” he said to the servant, showing his card, and thus he gained admission.