companions in arms, who had fought the battles of constitutional liberty in America, call up the image of the pure, the just, the humane, the unambitious Washington! How different would have been the fate of France, if her victorious chieftain, when he had reached the giddy heights of power, had imitated the great example which he caused to be eulogized! He might have saved his country from being crushed by the leagued hosts of Europe; he might have prevented the names of Moscow and Waterloo from being written in letters of blood on the pages of history; he might have escaped himself the sad significance of those memorable words of Fontanes, on the occasion to which I have alluded, when, in the presence of Napoleon, he spoke of Washington as a man who, "by a destiny seldom shared by those who change the fate of empires, died in peace as a private citizen, in his native land, where he had held the first rank, and which he had himself made free!"

How different would have been the fate of Spain, of Naples, of Greece, of Germany, of Mexico, and the South American Republics, had their recent revolutions been conducted by men like Washington and his patriotic associates, whose prudence, patriotism, probity, and disinterestedness conducted our Revolution to an auspicious and honorable result!

But it is, of course, at home that we must look for an adequate appreciation of our Washington's services and worth. He is the friend of the liberties of other countries; he is the father of his own. I own, Mr. Mayor, that it has been to me a source of inexpressible satisfaction, to find, amidst all the bitter dissensions of the day, that this one grand sentiment, veneration for the name of Washington, is buried-no, planted-down in the very depths of the American heart. It has been my privilege within the last two years to hold it up to the reverent contemplation of my countrymen, from the banks of the Penobscot to the banks of the Savannah, from New York to St. Louis, from Chesapeake Bay to Lake Michigan; and the same sentiments, expressed in the same words, have everywhere touched a sympathetic chord in the American heart.

To that central attraction I have been delighted to find that the thoughts, the affections, the memories of the people, in whatever part of the country, from the ocean to the prairies of the West, from the land of granite and ice to the land of the palmetto and the magnolia, instinctively turn. They have their sectional loves and hatreds, but before the dear name of Washington they are all absorbed and forgotten. In whatever region of the country, the heart of patriotism warms to him; as in the starry heavens, with the circling of the seasons, the pointers go round the sphere, but their direction is ever toward the pole. They may point from the east, they may point from the west, but they will point to the northern star. It is not the brightest luminary in the heavens, as men account brightness, but it is always in its place. The meteor, kindled into momentary blaze from the rank vapors of the lower sky, is brighter. The comet is brighter that streams across the firmament,

"And from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war."

But the meteor explodes; the comet rushes back to the depths of the heavens; while the load-star shines steady at the pole, alike in summer and in winter, in seed-time and in harvest, at the equinox and the solstice. It shone for Columbus at the discovery of America; it shone for the pioneers of settlement, the pilgrims of faith and hope at Jamestown and Plymouth; it will shine for the mariner who shall enter your harbor to-night; it will shine for the navies which shall bear the sleeping thunders of your power while the flag of the Union shall brave the battle and the breeze. So, too, the character, the counsels, the example of our Washington, of which you bid me speak: they guided our fathers through the storms of the Revolution; they will guide us through the doubts and difficulties that beset us; they will guide our children and our children's children in the paths of prosperity and peace, while America shall hold her place in the family of nations.

2.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), President of the United States from 1861 to 1865, was after Washington the greatest of all America's public men. Lincoln's speeches rank as classics in our literature because of their simple, direct, unadorned style. Again in his case the style is the man-sincere, unaffected, forceful. Every American should know the Gettysburg Address by heart.

ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE GETTYSBURG NATIONAL CEMETERY, NOVEMBER 19, 1863

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate- -we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS (MARCH 4, 1865) Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new can be presented.

On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it-all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

magnitude or Neither anticcease with, or

Neither party expected for the war the the duration which it has already attained. ipated that the cause of the conflict might even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 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. Fondly do we hope fervently do we pray-that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it shall 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.

3. Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) was a great antislavery orator. Before the Civil War he devoted most of his time to the cause of the abolitionists. His best-known address is Toussaint L'Ouverture, an extract from which follows.

THE GREATNESS OF TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE

(From Toussaint L'Ouverture. First delivered in 1861)

If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts—you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his Country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, and hated him because he had beaten them in battle.