In such passages, Mr. Beecher has something of the force which immortalized the “Voluspa.”  The “bardic inspiration,” which moved the early Norse poets to sing the bloody results of the “Berserker fury,” peculiar to the Teutonic and Norse peoples, seems to control him as he recounts the dreadful features of the war and reminds the vanquished of the meaning of defeat.

In considering the oratory inspired by the passions which found their climax in the destructiveness of civil war,—­and especially in considering such magnificent outbursts as Mr. Beecher’s oration at Fort Sumter, intelligence will seek to free itself alike from sympathy and from prejudice that it may the better judge the effect of the general mind of the people on the orator, and the extent to which that general mind as he voiced it, was influenced by the strength of his individuality.  If when we ourselves are moved by no passion we judge with critical calmness the impassioned utterances of the orators of any great epoch of disturbance, we can hardly fail to be repelled by much that the critical faculties will reject as exaggeration.  But taking into account the environment, the traditions, the public opinion, the various general or individual impulses which influenced the oratory of one side or the other, we can the better determine its true relation to the history of the human intellect and that forward movement of the world which is but a manifestation of the education of intellect.

Mr. Beecher had the temperament, the habits, the physique of the orator.  His ancestry, his intellectual training, his surroundings, fitted him to be a prophet of the crusade against slavery.  Of those names which for a time were bruited everywhere as a result of the struggles of the three decades from 1850 to 1880, a majority are already becoming obscure, and in another generation most of the rest will be “names only” to all who are not students of history as a specialty.  But the mind in Henry Ward Beecher was so representative; he was so fully mastered by the forces which sent Sherman on his march to the sea and Grant to his triumph at Appomattox, that he will always be remembered as one of the greatest orators of the Civil War period.  Perhaps when the events of the war are so far removed in point of time as to make a critical judgment really possible, he may even rank as the greatest.

RAISING THE FLAG OVER FORT SUMTER (Delivered April 14th, 1865, by request of President Lincoln)

On this solemn and joyful day we again lift to the breeze our fathers’ flag, now again the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that God will crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of civilization, liberty, and religion.  Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace.  Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it.  The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and