For the space of five minutes every train in the country was stopped, and held motionless. Engineers, firemen, conductors and crews paused for that period in their occupation, turned devoutly to the little town where the last sad rites were being performed, and sent their thoughts out to the hovering spirit of the man who had fallen.
Labor in shop, in store, on farm, in mill—everywhere—had ceased.
That stopping of America, that pause of the United States, that wait of every citizen while the body of one dead was lowered to the tomb, is a mightier miracle than that which marked the last victory of Judea’s leader.
Five minutes taken out of life! Five minutes snatched from activity, lost to productive effort, subtracted from material struggle! It is an amazing thing in the most energetic, the most thrifty nation on the face of the earth.
And yet that five minutes, stricken from the total money value of the day, brought in return a sense of tenderness, of fraternity with all the other millions waiting, bowed and reverent, which nothing else could have produced. That five minutes was the best investment that busy lives could make. It brought them nearer to the ideal life that had been ended. It helped to impress upon them the value of his splendid example. It gave them a better confidence in the citizenship of America. It enacted anew the law of love, and blessed with its swift ministrations the purer patriotism for which this man of the people, this believer in God had stood as a representative.
Silence and tears for the noble victim of malignant hate; new resolves for the upholding of law and the extension of real liberty; unbounded faith in the stability of our republican institutions; an impressive warning to the foes of order—such was the day’s meaning to every loyal American citizen.
Eighty millions of people gathered about six feet by two of hallowed earth! That is the spectacle bought at a price so matchless.
CHAPTER XLIII.
ASSASSINATIONS OF LINCOLN AND GARFIELD.
There had been a long and fratricidal war, the most pitiful that has ever occurred in the history of the world, or even that of heaven, described by Milton. For in the latter the rebellious ones were urged on by envy and utter wickedness, with no thought of right on their side, and their end was “outer darkness.” In the Civil War between the States, both sides fought for what they deemed the right, and the patriotism of both was as pure as mother love.
Born of the one side and nurtured by the other, Abraham Lincoln loved both alike, but the logic of events and the uncontrollable influences of environment made him the President and partisan of the Union, the head and director of a stern, relentless, cruel and long-continued war, for the preservation of that Union’s integrity on one side, for independence and the strong claim of “States rights” on the other.