In his beautiful ode recited at the meeting at Harvard College, July 21, 1865, in commemoration of the Harvard men who fell in the war, James Russell Lowell has these lines on Lincoln:

To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan

And measure of a stalwart man,

Limbed like the old heroic breeds,

Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,

Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,

With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man

Save on some worn-out plan
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,

Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, fore-seeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

Our final selection is the tribute paid by Edwin Markham in his lines entitled "Lincoln ":

When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour,
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,

She bent the strenuous heavens and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need.
She took the tried clay of the common road
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
It was a stuff to wear for centuries,

A man that matched the mountains, and compelled
The stars to look our way and honor us.

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;
The tang and odor of the primal things -

The rectitude and patience of the rocks;

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
The loving-kindness of the wayside well;
The tolerance and equity of light

That gives as freely to the shrinking weed
As to the great oak flowing to the wind-

To the graves' low hill as to the Matterhorn
That shoulders out the sky. And so he came
From prairie cabin up to Capitol,

One fair Ideal led our chieftain on.
Forevermore he burned to do his deed
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,
The conscience of him testing every stroke
To make his deed the measure of a man.

So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the step of Earthquake shook the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold
He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place —
Held the long purpose like a growing tree-
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a kingly cedar green with boughs
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ERA OF RECONSTRUCTION

HOW THE NORTH USED ITS VICTORY

Southerner's

Among the Johnson papers in the Library of Congress at 100. A Washington is the following letter of General Howell Cobb advice to of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury under Buchanan, President Johnson on written at the request of Major General J. H. Wilson of reconstructhe Union army in Georgia, to be submitted to President tion, June 14, Johnson : [477]

1865

Macon, 14 June, 1865

Com'ding &c.

Macon, Ga.

Brevet Maj. Genl. J. H. Wilson

GENERAL

In compliance with my promise I submit to you in writing the views and suggestions which I had the honor of presenting in our interview on yesterday. It is due to candor to say that I was a secessionist, and counseled the people of Georgia to secede. When the adoption of that policy resulted in war, I felt it my duty to share in the privations of the struggle, and accordingly at the commencement of the contest, I entered the army, and declining all civil employments, remained there to its close.

I was an ardent supporter of the cause throughout the struggle. Upon the surrender of General Johnston, I regarded the contest at an end, and have since that time conformed my actions to that conviction. . . .

The contest has ended in the subjugation of the South. The parties stand toward each other in the relative position of conqueror and conquered; and the question for statesmen to decide,

1 See No. 91, p. 394, for Cobb's advice to the people of Georgia.

is, the policy and duty of the respective parties. With regard to the latter [the conquered South] the course is plainly marked out. . . . A return to the peaceful and quiet employments of life; obedience to the constitution and laws of the United States; and the faithful discharge of all the duties and obligations imposed upon them by the new state of things, constitute their plain and simple duty.1

In the adoption of the policy, which the Government will pursue towards the people of the South, there are two matters which present themselves for primary and paramount consideration, 1st the present condition of things in the South. 2nd the state of things it is desirable to produce, and the best mode of doing it..

The whole country [South] has been more or less devastated. Their physical condition in the loss of property, and the deprivation of the comforts of life . . . is as bad as their worst enemy could desire. . . . The abolition of slavery not only

1 That the men of the South were sincerely ready to fulfill that duty we have ample testimony. General Grant, who was sent South on a tour of inspection by Johnson, reported in December, 1865: "I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith. The question which has hitherto divided the sentiment of the two sections Slavery and State rights, or the right of a State to secede from the Union - they regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal [arms] that man can resort to. ... My observations lead me to the conclusion that the citizens of the southern States are anxious to return to self-government, within the Union, as soon as possible. . . . It is to be regretted that there cannot be a greater commingling, at this time, between the citizens of the two sections, and particularly of those entrusted with the law-making power (Senate Executive Documents, 39th Congress, 1st session, No. 2, p. 107). General Lee wrote to a friend, September 7, 1865: "Like yourself, I have, since the cessation of hostilities, advised all with whom I have conversed on the subject, who come within the terms of the president's proclamations [of amnesty, May 29, 1865] to take the oath of allegiance, and accept in good faith the amnesty offered. . . . The war being at an end, the Southern States having laid down their arms, and the questions at issue between them and the Northern States having been decided, I believe it to be the duty of every one to unite in the restoration of the country and the reëstablishment of peace and harmony" (W. L. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, Vol. I, p. 63).