USA > Illinois > The centennial of the state of Illinois. Report of the Centennial Commission > Part 10
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getting an interview with hin. And when before the gentle face and the calm and passionless conversation she was subdued, she expressed her amazement.
As a matter of fact, always every hour even of Lincoln's hard youth, was a preparation and a forecast of the Presideney. He himself thought of this culmmation of his career from his earliest years and even in his earliest years he began his training. It is recorded that while still a childl he was in the habit of addressing his boy and girl companions aud eould command their tears and laughter as easily as afterwards he commanded the whole nation.
It is even still more remarkable that those who were brought into immediate contact with him even in his most squalid hours were impressed with his greatness. Offut, who lured him into the diastrous partnership in the store at New Salem, used to declare that he not only had the best storekeeper in the world, but a man who one day would be President of the United States.
There are several other carly prophecies of his future great- ness. I am very much struck by the fact, too, that in spite of the ungainliness of appearance set forth, of course. by ill-fitting elothes, he had an immense power of immediately impressing large bodies of people. All his biographers relate how before he addressed an audience he gave them a long look from those wonderful gray-blue eyes of his, and that this look nearly always produced an immediate and immense effect. It was at onec a manifestation of conscious mastery on his part and realization in the audiences of being faced by a master.
Those who didn't know him to be great were either those who were ignorant of him altogether or who. as is said to have been the case, were themselves too small to realize his greatness. His greatne-s at the White House was but the flowering of the seed that had been germinating in the days of his sad childhood and squalid youth.
Lincoln lived, moved and had his being in the city partly southern in its grographical situation, intensely southern in the sympathy of many of its people. Lincoln had ahnost every honr of the terrible four years of the Civil War to face division of opinion in almost every section of the country. Consequently
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even after he had apparently reached safe ground he found the ground trend ling and sinking under his feet. Among old political foes he found so grotesque a creature as Vallandigham of Ohio rise to a formidable enemy. liorace Greeley, one of the pioneers of the policy of emancipation, was weeping or appealing or de- nouncing at every critical Four.
This was the atmosphere of vituperation and disparagement, of disunion and false sentiment in which he lived from the first hour when a disgusted and supercihous Wasinngion gave a scant welcome to this western man of the people. My friend, Ward Lamon, from among his very valuable records of the period showed me some of the attacks of papers, the brutality of which give me a shudder that recurs whenever I recall it. In times of war pas- sionate and malignant tumor is busier and more fertile than in times of peace. There wasn't a step or a word of Lincoln's that wasn't scrutinized, misinterpreted, misrepresented by tens of thousands of malignant eyes.
Don't suppose because you laugh at these things today that Lincoln could laugh at them. He had the courage to go steadily on his way in spite of them all, but he went with bleeding heart and bleeding feet through that road of Golgotha. He was, as I have said, an intensely impressionable man, looking for the love in others that he gave to others, and we everywhere find upon him this hideous array of ignorant, rancorous and unscrupulous attack.
Have you ever, in thinking of the day of Appomattox, thought of the days that precoled them. the days after Bull Run and Fredericksburg? I own that as I read the descriptions of his contemporaries of that face, drawn. aged, gray as the gray walls of the chambers of the White House, with sleepless nights and days overhung with the hereditary gloom aggravated by all the anxiety and bloodshed and horrors, Abraham Lincoln appears to me as pre-eminently the greatest min of sorrows since he to whom that title was first given.
There never was a moment in the history of this country since the death of the illustrious man. by whose ashes we stand today. when the inspiration and lessons of his life are more needed by his people and his country. As a man, ho stands as
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much alive as though he were still among us. He is a flaming torch which leads on the inner soul of every American, whether he is standing by the honor of his country in his work at home or marching over barbed wire trenches against shell and cannon, to wounds or death. What American can be cowardly when his courage inspires, What American be selfish when his utter unsel- fishness is recorded in every page of his history? What Ameri- can can prefer the claims of ambition or party in face of his forgetfulness of all personal and partisan feeling before an im- perilled nation? What American can entertain or tolerate the very thought of a divided allegiance in face of his passionate patriotistn and of the inflexible resolution with which he fought for a united nation ?
Some men live by their writings, some by their glory on battle fields, some by their statesmanship. but there are rare men who, in addition to these great title deeds to immortality, live in the memory and gratitude of men as an undying inspiration by their own personal character and life. Such a man was Lincoln. Consider him in any of the many changes in his checked life, in private or in public; he never fails in your expectation of the highest. He was free from personal aninusity or vindictiveness. Hle could smash the subtle logic of Sterben A. Douglas and meet. him the same evening with a cordial ontstretched hand-a splendid private friendship amid political differences that illuminate the life and character of Douglas as well as Lincoln.
In forming his cabinet, Lincoln del not choose little men that might on the one hand be subservient, and on the other, by their obscurity concentrate attention on his central glory. He chose great ininds to share with him the awful task of saving the Union -- Chase and Seward and Stampon; men that had been his rivals and that divided with him in opial, sometimes in even larter degree, the affection and support of the great masses of the country. In the friction and dissent that are inevitable in even the best ordered and the most honorable assemblage of able men, he always said the right thing, always did the right thing, could be inflexible in his own opinions and respectful of the opinions and still more of the feelings of others. Thus he was the greatest
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chief of a cabinet that ever lived in the White House. The sweet- ness of temper that kept from his lips a word of impatience, the absence of even one word of self-esteem, the generous sharing with others of all the glory of victory, these things make him the greatest gentleman that ever lived in the White House. In his choice of policy when so many things were to be said in favor of one course or another, he opposed with tenacity and patience the opposition of political foes, the indiscretions of friends, the mis- taken haste and narrowness of political zealots. Biding his time, choosing his own path to the great end, he always proved to be right. Through all the black night of defeat, amid divided coun- sel, factions and inept opposition, he led the people to the full sunshine of victory, the nation united forever, the slaves einanci- pated forever. Thus he was the greatest stitesman that ever lived in the White House. Try to figure this man as he really was in his inner heart and soul. He was not of joyous nature. From hereditary or other causes he was a man who lived under the overshadowing gloom of melancholy. There was nothing in him of that robust love of battle (as in General Jackson) which trans- formed the battle field into the romance and chivalry of the per- sonal jousis of the knights of old. Still less was he one of the great adventurers of history that find in even sanguinary deeds the laurel: that transform them into a Caesar or a Napoleon. A burden though it was to him. that inner sadness has always appeared to me as suiting han for hi- task. It made him kin with all suffering men ; like to the Man of Sorrows to whom in his humanity he bears so striking a resemblance. his message is often but a variation of the Sermon on the Mount in its plea for the poor, the righteous, the mereiful. It was this sadness and sympathy with all men, this over present inner outlook on the transience, the griefs, the trials of human life that lifted him above personal vanity and por-onal feeling. Yet. was it not strange destiny that in a world out of joint, gave to this man the awful and tragie task of w. ging war amid changing and often black fortunes. through an unexpected length of time, amid a multitude of horrors. And again, does it not raise him still higher in our estir ate that yet he wert en to the end. equal and resohite,
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without ever listening to the shouting and reproachful world out- side or to the ember forebodings in his own breast.
In thus overcoming others and in overcoming himself in this most terrible of all times, he was the strongest man that ever lived in the White House.
If you give fall credit to all the brilliant men that helped him in the council chamber, to the generals whose skill won the victories in the field, Giaut and Meade, Thomas and Sherman, Sheridan and Logan; yet the supreme fact of the war is that Lincoln was the man of men, the real leader, the one who towered above all the others. And here again, it is the personality of Lincoln that is the heart of the mystery. It may be true, as some of his intimates hke your respected and venerable citizen, Mr. Bunn. insist, that nobody in this, his town, nor in any circle of friends, daed to offend his natural and commanding dignity by any address more familiar than "Mr. Lincoln." yet it was not as "Mr. Lincoln" that he was known to the plain people and to the soldiers. To them he was "honest Abe" or "Uncle be" or "Father Abraham." That meant that though hooted at, insulted, disparaged, despised. a huckstering politician, in the words of a great and good man who did not realise him, the plain people and the fighting soldier always understood him. They saw through all the poison gas in which enemies sought to cloud the glory of his character: realized his simplicity, his human nature, his tenderness, his honesty, his single-min led patriotism, and in defi- ance of the intrigues of politics and the misrepresentation of per- ronal enemies they re-elected him as the good, the true, the wise and the merciful man that could best lead them out of the wilder- ness into the light.
Lowell is right in attributing this hold of Lincoln on the popular heart largely to the fact that he was in the truest sense of the word the first American that ever ruled in the white house. His predecessors were. of course, as good Americans as he, but, perhaps with the exception of General Jackson, they were courtly gentlemen who had been born in easy circumstances and refined homes. Ile was a man who had led the life of the frontier pio- -9 CC
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neer, who had fought the primeval fight of man with nature, who had helped to gather in a portion of the wild and untilled heritage that nature had given to America. He was a man who had worked for small daily wage, with literally horny hands and been forced to all sorts and conditions of life to make a scanty living. He had dwelt among the real fathers of America-the fathers who, though they have not written constitutiens or Declarations of In- dependence, have in wild and reciote settlements in the solitude of forest and virgin soil brought into being the great America of today.
Lincoln was in the best sense of the word the self-made man, and the self-made man is the typical American. Of the energy, the self-reliance, the simplicity and the stern straight-forwardness which are still the spiritual foundations of AmericaL Gsacter, Lincelu was the embodiment. He was the embodiment of the other characteristics of the genuine American. Lowly, almost squalid in his birth and upbringing, poor all his life, child of the lonely cabin in the prairie, who wielded with his own hand the axe and the plow ; how in the small rural store of the village, then in the ill-paid postoffice, the country lawyer, traveling with a small equipment of baggage, and willing to share a bedroom with a friend, yet Lincoln became the gentleman in manner and appear- ance, in speech and demeanor as well as in the higher spiritual gifts of the soul. What nation could produce its greatest citizen out of such modest material but a Republic, which teaches to all its children, from their earliest hours, the equality, the pride, the self-reliance, the dignity that are the birthright of every child of a Republic? Thus the American people recognized in Lincoln not only the embodiment but the vindication of their institutions. Thus Lincoln was the greatest and most genuine American that ever lived in the white house.
Again, Lincoln is the most marvelous example of the easy and instinctive self-development of the child of the American Republic. Seanty in schooling, poor in the learning of the ages and the books, he produced speeches and writings that in their simplicity, their choice of the right word, their directness, their measured eloquence, are as much masterpieces of literature as the
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dialogues of Plato or the orations of Demosthenes. And so Lin- coln was the greatest man of letters that ever lived in the White House.
Finally, in the midst of all the storms of his day, while others raged, he did not rage, while others hated, he did not hate, while others cried for vengeance, he preached forgiveness. He was thus the greatest Christian that ever lived in the White House.
Such, then, was the man. What of his gospel, and especially what of his gospel as applied to the position of Lincoln's country today? Can any man doubt where he would stand if in the crisis through which his country is now passing he was still its ruler ?
His attitude with regard to the problems of his country today can be ascertain d almost as clearly as if he were still alive -- still at the White house; indeed so clear is this that you can pick a text in absolutely his own words that meets every problem-that answers every question -- that rouses every hope, and dissipates every apprehension of the hour.
Do you think that America could remain free while Europe was enslaved? Then the voice of Lincoln comes to you with the words "This Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free."
Have you any doubt as to the justice of President Wilson's demand that nations shall have the right of choosing their gov- ernment and shaping their own destinies? Listen to Lincoln. Lincoln's words : "What I do say is-that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent," or listen again to the passage which though applied to the extinct slavery of the New World is still applicable to the existing slavery which Germany imposes and seeks to extend on the world today: "When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man that is despo- tism."
When President Wilson addressed his appeal to the masses of Germany he might have quoted from Lincoln the words, "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and under a just God cannot long retain it."
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If you want the summing up of the issue between your nation and the Hohenzollerns here it is again in the precise words of Lincoln: "Two principles have stood face to face from the be- ginning of time and will ever continue to struggle-the one is the common right of humanity and the other is the divine right of the kings."
Could year task be better expressed than in these words: "It has been said of the world's history hitherto that might makes right. It is for us and for our times to reverse the maxim and to show that right makes might."
And finally if throughout a struggle which may be prolonged and must be checkered there be aus faint heartedl enough to think that you should end the struggle in an indecisive peace, let them go back + Lincoln and study his attitude in the hour of America's greatest " bulation. Here was a man distinguished above other men by his tenderness, pity and love; tenderness, pity and love not bounded by even human beings but extended to animals; so hateful of even necessary punishment that over and over again we have the phrase of bursting relief, "Give me that pen," as he rushes to sign a pardon. So considerate even in a time of frenzied passion, violent hate and boundless and cruel abuse as to be able to say "I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom."
Assailed, denounced wildly, importuned incessantly by the Horace Greeleys and other humane but unwise adherents of the unfinished work, think of all this in Lincoln's life and then see the inflexible tenacity with which he went through all the bloody horrors and often the unmitigated gloom of the Civil War to the end. "War." he said, "has been made and continues to be an indispensable means to the end." Or take the words, "I hope peace will come soon, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time."
Or finally, take these words, which are almost like the thunder from Mount Sinai :
"The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats."
The spirit then of Lincoln is the spirit of Wilson. Higher indeed than the spirit of Lincoln or Wilson or Washington is the
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spirit of the American people-that people with all the vast change- brought about by all the flowing tides of inaigration from all the races of the world remains one in purpose, in fundamental convic- tion; in essential ideals; in temperament. This nation founded by men who abailoned home and property and safety and sought over tempestuous seas new and unknown homes to flee from tyranny reniain the unconquerable enemies of tyranuy. The spirit of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence is still the spirit of America. It is the children of their Joins and of their ideals that are the governing spiritual and political forces of the nation.
Today the problem is different and yet essentially the same as brought the men and women to Plymouth Rock. They sought liberty instead of slavery of the Old World-today they are giving back to the Old World the liberty which they established in the New.
Like the Man of Sorrow, he drank the chalice in his garden of Gethsemane to its dregs, though often he wished that it might pass away. Like the Man of Sorrows, no cruelty would make him cruel. No undeserved suffering could make him hard. To his last hour and last words he remained the Abraham Lincoln known in his childhood-tender, understanding, compassionate. Ever throughout all his messages the grim and inflexible resolu- tion to fight ou to the end is interspersed with appeals to reason and to morey. Throughout it all there is the refrain, "with malice toward none, with charity to all."
It was mete that the day of such a man's taking off should be Good Friday. Tragic, horrible as was his assassination at such an hour, would it have been better for the world if it had been other- wise? Would he be today that powerful inspiration to all of us, to patriotism, towards firmness in the right, towards the noble life and the noble death if he had not so died? Today his coun- try and we are face to face again with an imperiled nation, with the old, old struggle between liberty and slavery, between might and right. Though dead, he speaketh. Laid low, he yet towers above your armies and your fleets. Ile is your invisible and your unconquerable leader.
THE CENTENARY OF THE ILLINOIS ENABLING ACT, APRIL. 18, 1918
The official celebration of the Illinois Centennial, commemo- rating the one hundredth anniversary of the passage of the En- abling Aet, was held in the Hall of Representatives on April 16th and 18th, under the joint auspices of the lilinois Centennial Com- mission, and the Illinois State Historical Society. Its impressive- ness was deeply felt by all who were present on that occasion.
The Illinois Centennial Commission joined with the Illinois Historical Society in an interesting observance of the anniver- sai. The celebration began on the evening of Wednesday, April 17th: with a session presided over by Dr. Otto L. Schmidt, presi- dent of the Illinois Historical Society, and chairman of the Cen- tennial Commission. There was a luncheon at the Illini Country Club at noon on Thursday the 18th, presided over by Dr. Schmidt, and attended by Governor Lowden ard the other State officers, Justices of the Supreme Court, the speakers of the day, and other distinguished guests. At the same time, the ladies of this party were entertained at a luncheon at the St. Nicholas Hotel presided over by Mrs. Jessie Palmer Weber, secretary of the Historical Society, and of the Illinois Centennial Commission. Thursday afternoon at 3:00 o'clock, another session was held, presided over by Dr. Schmidt. On Thursday evening the principal observance occurred. Governor Lowden presided at this session.
All of the sessions were held in the Hall of Representatives.
At the Wednesday evening session the address of welcome was delivered by President Edmund J. James, of the University of Illinois, who told of the early days of the State, and of its import- ance to the Union. Mr. H. J. Eckenrode, of Richmond, Virginia, discussed "Virginia in the Making of Illinois," and Professor Allen Johnson, of Yale University, delivered a most interesting address on "Illinois in the Democratic Movement of the Century."
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At the Thursday afternoon session, addresses were delivered by Professor Elbert Jay Benton, of the Western Reserve Univer- sity, Cleveland, Ohio, and Mr. Charles W. Moores, of Indianapolis. Mr. Benton discussed "Establishing the American Colonial System in the Old Northwest," and Mr. Moore's paper was on "Indiana's Interest in Historie Illinois." Professor Clarence Walworth Al- vord, of the University of Illinois, editor-in-chief of the Cen- tennial Memorial History, was on the program to tell of the "Illi- nois Centennial History," but because of the lateness of the hour his paper was not given.
Following the afternoon session, tea was served at Edwards Place, on the invitation of the Springfield Art Club.
At the evening session, Hon. Louis Aubert, a member of the Freneh High Commission to the United States, delivered an in- spining address on the relation of the French to Illinois. Governor Low n, in introducing Monsieur Aubert, paid a high tribute to the gallantry, the bravery and endurance of the French nation in the present crisis. The Centennial address was delivered by Hon. Edgar A. Bancroft, of Chicago. It was both eloquent and instructive.
Following the evening session, a reception was held in the lower corridor of the State Capitol, and refreshments were served.
Music for the various sessions was furnished by Mrs. Gary HI. Westenberger of Springfield, who sang the Centennial songs; Miss Ruby Evans, of Bloomington, who sang a group of songs; the John L. Taylor Orchestra, and the Temple Boys' Choir. The in- vocation was delivered at the opening session by Rev. William F. Rothenberger, and at the Thursday evening session by Bishop Granville II. Sherwood. Madame Aubert came to Springfield with her distinguished husband and Mrs. Edgar 1. Bancroft also was present.
The Hall of Representatives was beautifully decorated with Centennial banners, United States flags. and the flags of the Allies. A large temporary stage was erected across the front of the hall, and on this the State officers. Justices of the Supreme Court, and other dignitaries were scated during the celebration.
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The celebration of the adoption of the Enabling Act on April 18th was very general throughout the State. Schools and colleges, especially, observed the event.
The program for the official celebration at Springfield was as follows :
OPENING SESSION-WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL 17, 1918-8:00 O'CLOCK DR. OTTO L. SCHMIDT
President of the Historical Society and Chairman of the Centennial Commission, Presiding
Invocation. Rev. William F. Rothenberger
"Illinois"
Temple Boys' Choir
Address of Welcome -- "The Illinois Centennial". . President Edmund J. James University of Illinois
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