From Lincoln's Life

In the days and years before and immediately following the martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln, many earnest and eminent men expressed themselves concerning his qualifications and contributions to his country. From these we sample some few excerpts, first one from Frederick Douglass, born to the people whose slavery was at issue.

As to Lincoln, he said: “We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances… not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events: and,… we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had met in the person of Abraham Lincoln…. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another.”

From Daniel Dougherty, speaking during Lincoln’s lifetime on “The Perils of the Republic,” came these words: “Amid all these events and scenes… the people, like a sleeping drunkard, will not awake… and… the… evil spirits of the nation, with whom fair is foul and foul fair,… are… dancing around the boiling cauldron of partisan hate,… [yet] knowing that in this dread crisis whatever our fate, all must share it alike…. [The people] have deceived themselves and been deceived… and partisan leaders have flattered their follies, praised their weaknesses,… and made them believe even defeats in the field were strategic triumphs.” But of Abraham Lincoln: “No fair man can question his personal integrity and patriotic motives.”

By Josiah Gilbert Holland, these words were spoken four days following Lincoln’s death: “… You, Christian men who have voted, and voted, and voted again, for impure men, for selfish men, for drunkards, for unprincipled men… have learned a lesson from the life and achievements of Mr. Lincoln which you cannot forget without sin against God and crime against your country…. We have witnessed in the highest seat the power of Christian wisdom and the might of a humble, praying man. Let us see that we remain a Christian nation⎯that our votes are given to no man who cannot bring to his work the power which has made the name of Abraham Lincoln one of the brightest which illustrates the annals of the nation….”

Thus spoke the contemporaries of Abraham Lincoln, who lived and died with the prayer and purpose “that this nation, under God [should] have a new birth of freedom,… and… [should] not perish from the earth.”