“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
   But his soul is marching on.”

And now, at the age of fifty-one, this child of the wilderness, this farm laborer, rail-sputter, flatboatman, this surveyor, lawyer, orator, statesman, and patriot, found himself elected by the great party which was pledged to prevent at all hazards the further extension of slavery, as the chief magistrate of the Republic, bound to carry out that purpose, to be the leader and ruler of the nation in its most trying hour.

Those who believe that there is a living Providence that overrules and conducts the affairs of nations, find in the elevation of this plain man to this extraordinary fortune and to this great duty, which he so fitly discharged, a signal vindication of their faith.  Perhaps to this philosophical institution the judgment of our philosopher Emerson will commend itself as a just estimate of Lincoln’s historical place.

“His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense of mankind and of the public conscience.  He grew according to the need; his mind mastered the problem of the day:  and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it.  In the war there was no place for holiday magistrate, nor fair-weather sailor.  The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado.  In four years—­four years of battle days—­his endurance, his fertility of resource, his magnanimity, were sorely tried, and never found wanting.  There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch.  He is the true history of the American people in his time, the true representative of this continent—­father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their mind—­articulated in his tongue.”

He was born great, as distinguished from those who achieve greatness or have it thrust upon them, and his inherent capacity, mental, moral, and physical, having been recognized by the educated intelligence of a free people, they happily chose him for their ruler in a day of deadly peril.

It is now forty years since I first saw and heard Abraham Lincoln, but the impression which he left on my mind is ineffaceable.  After his great successes in the West he came to New York to make a political address.  He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain people among whom he loved to be counted.  At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing about him—­except that his great stature singled him out from the crowd:  his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame; his face was of a dark pallor, without the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; his deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious; his countenance in repose gave little evidence of that brain power which had raised him from the lowest to the highest station among his countrymen;