Volume II Part 25 (2/2)

From first to last he had the full confidence of the army and of the ma.s.ses of the voters in the Republican Party, and of that confidence Mr. Lincoln was always a.s.sured. Hence he was able to meet the aspirations of rivals and the censures of the disappointed with a good degree of composure. To the honor of the ma.s.ses of the Republican Party it can be said that they never faltered in their devotion to the President and in that devotion and in the fidelity of the President to the principles of the party were the foundations laid on which the greatness of the country rests.

The measure of grat.i.tude due to Mr. Lincoln and to the Republican Party may be estimated by a comparison of the condition of the country when he accepted power in March, 1861, with its condition in 1885, and in 1893, when we yielded the administration to the successors of the men who had well-nigh wrecked the Government in a former generation.

The Republican Party found the Union a ma.s.s of sand; it left it a structure of granite. It found the Union a by-word among the nations of the earth, it left it ill.u.s.trious and envied, for the exhibition of warlike powers, for the development of our industrial and financial resources in times of peace, for the unwavering fidelity with which every pecuniary obligation was met; for the generous treatment measured out with an unstinted hand to the conquered foe; and, finally, for the cheerful recognition of the duty resting upon the Republican Party and upon the country to enfranchise, to raise up, to recreate the millions that had been brought out of bondage.

This work was not accomplished fully in Mr. Lincoln's time, but he was the leader of ideas and policies which could have no other consummation.

At the end it must be said of Mr. Lincoln that he was a great man, in a great place, burdened with great responsibilities, coupled with great opportunities, which he used for the benefit of his country and for the welfare of the human race. Among American statesmen he is conspicuously alone. From Was.h.i.+ngton to Grant he is separated by the absence on his part of military service and military renown. On the statesmans.h.i.+p side of his career, there is no one from Was.h.i.+ngton along the entire line who can be considered as the equal or the rival of Lincoln.

And we may wisely commit to other ages and perhaps to other lands the full discussion and final decision of the relative claims of Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln to the first place in the list of American statesmen.

XLIV SPEECH ON COLUMBUS

DELIVERED AT GROTON, Ma.s.s., OCTOBER 21, 1892

We celebrate this day as the anniversary of the discovery of the American continent.

”The hand that rounded Peter's dome.

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from G.o.d he could not free; He builded better than he knew.”

Of these lines of Emerson, the last three are as true of Columbus, as of

”The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,”

for he, too,

”Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from G.o.d he could not free; He builded better than he knew.”

And shall we therefore say that he is not worthy of praise, of tribute, of memorials, of anniversary days, of centennial years, of national and international gatherings and exhibitions, that in some degree mankind may ill.u.s.trate and dignify, if they will, the events that have followed the opening of a new world to our advanced and advancing civilization?

In great deeds, in great events, in great names, there is a sort of immortality, an innate capacity for living, a tendency to growth, to expansion, and thus what was but of little comment in the beginning is seen, often after the lapse of years, possibly only after the lapse of centuries, to have been freighted with consequences whose value can only be measured by the yearly additions to the sum of human happiness.

Franklin's experiments in electricity were followed at once by the common lightning-rod, but a century pa.s.sed before the electrical power was utilized, and made subservient, in some degree, to the control of men.

Every decade of three centuries has added to the greatness of that one immortal name in the literature of the whole English speaking race. The security for the world that the name of Shakespeare and the writings of Shakespeare cannot die may be found in the selfishness, the intelligent selfishness of mankind, which will struggle constantly to preserve and to magnify a possession which if once lost, could never be regained.

After four centuries of delay we have come to realize, with some degree of accuracy, the magnitude of the event called the Discovery of America.

Identified with that event, and as its author, is the man Columbus.

Involved in controversies while living, the object of the base pa.s.sions of envy, hatred and jealousy, consigned finally to chains and to prison, and in death ignorant of the magnitude of the discovery that he had made, there seemed but slight basis for the conjecture that his name was destined to become the one immortal name in the annals of modern Italy and Spain.

As if accident and fate and the paltry ambitions of men had combined to rob Columbus of his just t.i.tle to fame, the name of the double continent that he discovered was given to another. To that other the name remains, but the continent itself has become the continent of Columbus.

In connection with the event no other name is known, and so it will ever be in all the centuries of the future.

In these years we are inaugurating a series of centennial anniversary celebrations in honor of Columbus, and in testimony of the importance of the discovery that he made. This we do as the greatest of the states that have arisen on the continent that he discovered, and I delay what I have to say of Columbus and of the discovery that I may express my regret and the reasons for my regret, that the celebration and the ceremonies have not been made distinctively and exclusively national.

In this I do not disparage, on the other hand I exalt, the public spirit, the capacity for large undertakings, the will and the courage of the city and the citizens of Chicago in a.s.suming burdens and responsibilities from which any other city on this continent would have shrunk.

My point is this: If the people and Government of the United States were of the opinion that the discovery of a continent--a continent in which one of the great governments of the world has found an abiding place--was worthy of a centennial celebration, then the conduct of the celebration ought not to have been left to the care of any community less than the whole. Nor is it an unworthy thought that something of dignity would have been added to the celebration if the nations of the earth could have been invited to the capital which bears the name of the discoverer of the continent and the founder of the Republic.

There are occasions which confer greatness upon an orator. Such are revolutionary periods, the overthrow of states, radical changes in a long-settled public policy, struggles for power, empire, dominion.

These and kindred exigencies in the affairs of men and states, seem to create, or at least to furnish opportunity and scope for, statesmen, orators, poets and soldiers.

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