Permit me to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you with such eloquence, simplicity, and appropriateness at the consecration of the cemetery. I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."
It has always been a popular impression that Lincoln's speech was written upon the cars, en route to Gettysburg from Washington on the morning of the ceremonies, but General Fry, of the army, who was detailed from the War Department as his escort on that occasion and was with him every moment, says that he has no recollection of seeing him writing or even reading a manuscript, nor was there any opportunity during the journey for him to do so. Colonel Hay, his private secretary, says that he wrote out a brief speech at the White House before leaving Washington, and, as usual on such occasions, committed it to memory; but the inspiration of the scene led him to make material changes, and the version given here, copied from Nicolay and Hay's Biography, was written out by the President himself after his return. While it may not be exact, it is nearly accurate.
The London Times pronounced Lincoln's second inaugural address to be the most sublime state paper of the century. Equally competent critics have called it a masterpiece of political literature. The following extract will show its style and sentiment:
89 "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
General Sherman described it accurately when he said, "I have seen and heard many of the famous orators of the century, but Lincoln's speeches surpassed90 them all. They have never been equalled. It was not his scholarship; it was not rhetoric; it was not elocution; it was the unaffected and spontaneous eloquence of the heart. There was nothing of the mountain-torrent in his manner; it was rather the calm flow of the river."
Lincoln's own comments upon his inaugural address, like everything he ever said about himself, are unique. In reply to a complimentary letter from Thurlow Weed, he wrote, "I expect the latter to wear as well as, perhaps better than, anything I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it."
Messrs. Hay and Nicolay, who were nearer to him and knew him better than any other men, say, "Nothing would more have amazed Mr. Lincoln than to hear himself called a man of letters; but this age had produced few greater writers. Emerson ranks him with ?sop; Montalembert commends his style as a model for princes. It is true that in his writing the range of subjects is not great. He was chiefly concerned with the political problems of the time and the moral considerations involved in them. But the range of treatment is remarkably wide, running from the wit, the gay humor, the florid eloquence of his stump speeches to the marvellous sententiousness and brevity of the address at Gettysburg and the sustained and lofty grandeur of his second inaugural; while many of his phrases have already passed into the daily use of mankind."
But he made other speeches, equally admirable, and some of them unsurpassed by the greatest political or91 platform orators. Wendell Phillips,
