As a public man, he set God before his eyes, and did reverence to the Most High. It was deeply a touching scene as he stood upon the platform of the car which was to carry him from his Springfield home, and tearfully asked his neighbors and old friends that they should remember him in their prayers. Amid tears and sobs they answered "We will pray for you." Again and again has he publicly invoked Divine aid, and asked to be remembered in the prayers of the people. His second Inaugural seems rather the tender pastoral of a white-haired bishop than a political manifesto.
What were his person relations to his God, I know not. We are not in all things able to judge him by our personal standard. How much etiquette may be demanded, how much may have been yielded to the tyranny of custom we cannot tell. In public life he was spotless in integrity and dependent upon Divine aid. He had made no public consecration to God in church covenant, but we may not enter the sanctuary of his inner life. He constantly read the holy oracles, and recognized their claim to be the inspired Scriptures.
He felt that religious responsibility when he set forth the Proclamation of Emancipation closing with the sublime sentence: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, on military necessity, I invoke the considerable judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
In one of the gloomy hours of the struggle he said to a delegation of clergymen: "My hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God. And when events are very threatening, and prospects very dark, I still hope, in some way which men cannot see, all will be well in the end, because our cause is just and God is on our side."
If, as the executive officer of the nation he erred, it was in excessive tenderness in dealing with criminals. Unsuspecting and pure, he could not credit unmixed guilt in others, and with difficulty could he bring himself to suffer condign punishment to be inflicted. There were times when he was inflexible. In vain did wealth and position plead for Gardner, the slave-captain. As vainly did they for Beall and Johnson. If he was lenient it was the error of amiableness.
In reviewing the administration of Abraham Lincoln, we see in him another of those Providentially called and directed leaders who have been raised up in great crises. His name stands on the roll with those of Moses and Joshua, and William of Orange, and Washington. Not only did Providence raise him up, but it divinely vindicated his dealings with slavery. As emancipation was honored, did the pillar of flame light our hosts on to victory!
In the dawning morn of peace and Union has this leader been slain. When the nation thought it most needed him, has he been basely butchered! As the ship which had been rocking in the waves and bowing before the storm was reaching the harbor, a pirate, who sailed with the passengers, basely stole on deck and shot the pilot at the wheel!
The assassin has been held in abhorrence among all people and in all ages. Here was a foul plot to destroy at one swoop the President, the officers eligible to the succession, the Cabinet, the Lieutenant- General, and no doubt the loyal Governors of the States. That the scheme was successful only in part, God be praised. Never has an assassination produced so terrible a shock. For—
"He had borne his faculties so meek, had been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Do plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking off."
He fell, and the whole land mourns. Secession smote him in her impotent death-rage, but the State lives on! The reins which dropped from his nerveless hand another grasped, and the nation lives. No revolution comes. No war of rival dynasties! The constitutional successor is in the chief seat of power, and how much secession has taken by this new crime remains to be seen.