“If it be thought advisable that the name of the lectureship, as was suggested, should be the Morse Lectureship, I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is so named in honor of my venerated and distinguished father, whose zealous labors in the cause of theological education, and in various benevolent enterprises, as well as of geographical science, entitle his memory to preservation in connection with the efforts to diffuse the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and his gospel throughout the world.”

Curiously enough I find no reference in the letters of the year 1865 to the assassination of President Lincoln, but I well remember being taken, a boy of eight, to our stable on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street, from the second-floor windows of which we watched the imposing funeral cortege pass up the avenue.

The fifty-fifth reunion of his class of 1810 took place in this year, and Morse reluctantly decided to absent himself.  The reasons why he felt that he could not go are given in a long letter of August 11 to his cousin, Professor E.S.  Salisbury, and it is such a clear statement of his convictions that I am tempted to give it almost in its entirety:—­

“I should have been most happy on many personal accounts to have been at the periodical meeting of my surviving classmates of 1810, and also to have renewed my social intercourse with many esteemed friends and relations in New Haven.  But as I could not conscientiously take part in the proposed martial sectional glorification of those of the family who fell in the late lamentable family strife, and could not in any brief way or time explain the discriminations that were necessary between that which I approve and that which I most unqualifiedly condemn, without the risk of misapprehension, I preferred the only alternative left me, to absent myself altogether.

“You well know I never approved of the late war.  I have ever believed, and still believe, if the warnings of far-seeing statesmen (Washington, Clay, and Webster among them) had been heeded, if, during the last thirty years of persistent stirring up of strife by angry words, the calm and Christian counsels of intelligent patriots had been followed at the North, and a strict observance of the letter and spirit of the Constitution had been sustained as the supreme law, instead of the insidious violations of its provisions, especially by New England, we should have had no war.

“As I contributed nothing to the war, so now I see no reason specially to exult in the display of brave qualities in an isolated portion of the family, qualities which no true American ever doubted were possessed by both sections of our country in an equal degree.  Why then discriminate between alumni from the North and alumni from the South at a gathering in which alumni from both sections are expected to meet?...  No, my dear cousin, the whole era of the war is one I wish not to remember.  I would have no other memorial than a black cross, like those over the graves of murdered travellers, to cause a shudder whenever it is seen.  It would be well if History could blot from its pages all record of the past four years.  There is no glory in them for victors or vanquished.  The only event in which I rejoice is the restoration of Peace, which never should have been interrupted....