The first account in the measurement of the man is that with a sublime reliance on God, he conducted an immense nation through the most tremendous civil war ever waged, and never committed a single serious mistake.  The Illinois backwoodsman did not possess Hamilton’s brilliant genius, yet Hamilton never read the future more sagaciously.  He made no pretension to Webster’s magnificent oratory; yet Webster never put more truth in portable form for popular guidance.  He possessed Benjamin Franklin’s immense common sense, and gift of terse proverbial speech, but none of his lusts and sceptical infirmities.  The immortal twenty-line address at Gettysburg is the high water mark of sententious eloquence.  With that speech should be placed the pathetic and equally perfect letter of condolence to Mrs. Bixby of Boston after her five sons had fallen in battle.  With that speech also should be read that wonderful second Inaugural address which even the hostile London Times pronounced to be the most sublime state paper of the century.  This second address—­his last great production—­contained some of the best illustrations of his fondness for balanced antithesis and rhythmical measurement.  There is one sentence which may be rendered into rhyme: 

   “Fondly do we hope,
   Fervently do we pray
   That this mighty scourge of war
   May soon pass away”

Terrible as was the tragedy of that April night, thirty-seven years ago, it may be still true that Lincoln died at the right time for his own imperishable fame.  It was fitting that his own precious blood should be the last to be shed in the stupendous struggle He had called over two hundred thousand heroes to lay down their lives and then his own was laid down beside the humblest private soldier, or drummer boy, that filled the sacred mould of Gettysburg and Chickamauga.  In an instant, as it were, his career crystalized into that pure white fame which belongs only to the martyr for justice, law and liberty.  For more than a generation his ashes have slumbered in his beloved home at Springfield, and as the hearts of millions of the liberated turn toward that tomb, they may well say to their liberator:  “We were hungry and thou gavest us the bread of sympathy; we were thirsty for liberty and thou gavest us to drink; we were strangers, and thou didst take us in; we were sick with two centuries of sorrow, and thou didst visit us; we were in the oppressive house of bondage, and thou earnest unto us;” and the response of Christendom is:  “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.”