The tears of four millions of slaves whom he had liberated, five hundred thousand free blacks whose future condition he had made better, and the twenty millions of whites in the free States, stricken as they never had been before by the death of a single individual, followed his body to the grave. No nation ever mourned more sincerely the loss of its head than did the people of the United States that of President Lincoln. We all love his memory still.
“His name is not a sculptured thing, where old Renown has reared
Her marble in the wilderness, by smoke of battle seared;
But graven on life-leaping hearts, where Freedom’s banners wave,
It gleams to bid the tyrant back, and loose the fettered slave.”
Faults he had; but we forget them all in his death. It seemed to us that God had raised this man up to do a great work; and when he had finished his mission, flushed with success over the enemies of his country, while the peals of exultation for the accomplishment of the noble deed were yet ringing in his ears, and while our hearts were palpitating more generously for him, he permitted him to fall, that we should be humbled, and learn our own weakness, and be taught to put more dependence in the ruler of the universe than in man.
‘So sleep the good, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blest.
When Spring with dewy fingers cold
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,