Lower the starry flag!
Let the great bells be toll’d Slowly and mournfully in every steeple, Let them make known the sorrow of the people;
Let the great bells be toll’d!
Lower the starry flag, And let the solemn, sorrowing anthem, pealing, Sound from the carven choir to fretted ceiling; Lower the starry flag!
Let the great bells be toll’d,
And let the mournful organ music, rolling, Tune with the bells in every steeple tolling;
Let the great bells be toll’d!
Lower the starry flag;
The nation’s honored chief in death is sleeping, And for our loss our eyes are wet with weeping; Lower the starry flag!
Let the great bells be toll’d;
His honest, manly heart has ceased its beating, His lips no more shall speak the kindly greeting;
Let the great bells be toll’d!
Lower the starry flag;
No more shall sound his voice ‘in scorn of error, Filling the traitor’s heart with fear and terror; Lower the starry flag!
Let the great bells be toll’d;
He reverenced the gift which God has given, Freedom to all, the priceless boon of Heaven, Let the great bells be toll’d!
Lower the starry flag;
Hit dearest hopes were wedded with’ the nation, He valued more than all the land’s salvation;
Lower the starry flag!
Let the great bells be toll’d;
His name shall live on History’s brightest pages, His voice shall sound through Time’s remotest ages; Let the great bells be toll’d!
Ah! Grief doth follow fast on Victory! The victors’ shout is lost in silence, deep—Too deep for our poor human utterance. The jubilant flags that only yesterday Were the bright heralds of a nation’s gain, Now droop at half-mast for her woeful loss. Our foremost Hero fallen, sore at heart we lie Prostrate, in tears, at our dear Lincoln’s grave!
The dust of our great Leader, kissed to rest, And folded to our hearts, is there inurned, Beyond the breath of scandal, in sweet peace. Wounded with his wound, our hearts receive The mantle of his spirit as it flies.
His words remain to us our sacred Law: Do we not hear them from the Capitol?—
“Malice toward none, with charity for all!”
The blow at Sumter touched us not so much With grief, or awe of treason, as this last—This cruelest thrust of all at his dear head, Which with spent rage the baffled serpent aimed. It is the world’s old story, told again,
That they who bruise the serpent’s venomed head Must bear, even as Christ did, its last foul sting, Taking the Savior’s Passion with His Crown!
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.“—Last Words of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.
Abraham Lincoln.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ABRAHAM LINCOLN has done that. He has sealed his service to his country by the last sacrifice. On the day that commemorates the great sorrow which Christendom reveres, the man who had no thought, no wish, no hope but the salvation of his country, laid down his life. Yet how many and many a heart that throbbed with inexpressible grief as the tragedy was told would gladly have been stilled forever if his might have beat on. So wise and good, so loved and trusted, his death is a personal blow to every faithful American household; nor will any life be a more cherished tradition, nor any name be longer and more tenderly beloved by this nation, than those of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
On the 22d of February, 1861, as he raised the American flag over Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, he spoke of the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not only to this country, but, “I hope,” he said, “to the world for all future time.” Then, with a solemnity which the menacing future justified, and with a significance which subsequent events revealed, he added, “But if this country can not be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated upon this spot than surrender it.” The country has been saved by cleaving to that principle, and he has been assassinated for not surrendering it.
Called to the chief conduct of public affairs at a time of the greatest peril, he came almost unknown, but he brought to his great office a finer comprehension of the condition of the country than the most noted statesmen of all parties, and that sure instinct of the wiser popular will which made him the best of all leaders for a people about to maintain their own government in a civil war. Himself a child of the people, he lived and died their friend. His heart beat responsive to theirs. He knew their wants, their character, their powers, and knowing their will often better than they knew it themselves, he executed it with the certainty of their speedy approval. No American statesman ever believed more heartily than he the necessary truth of the fundamental American principle of absolute equality before the laws, or trusted with ampler confidence the American system of government. But he loved liberty too sincerely for passion or declamation. It was the strong, sturdy, Anglo-Saxon affection, not the Celtic frenzy.
With an infinite patience, and a dauntless tenacity, he was a man of profound principles but of no theories. This, with his insight and intuitive appreciation of the possibilities of every case, made him a consummate practical statesman. He saw farther and deeper than others because he saw that in the troubled time upon which he was cast little could be wholly seen. Experience so vindicated his patriotic sagacity that he acquired a curious ascendency in the public confidence; so that if good men differed from his opinion they were inclined to doubt their own. Principle was fixed as a star, hut policy must be swayed by the current. While many would have dared the fierce fury of the gale and have sunk the ship at once, he knew that there was a time to stretch every inch of canvas and a time to lay to. He was not afraid of “drifting.” In statesmanship prudence counts for more than daring. Thus it happened that some who urged him at the beginning of the war to the boldest measures, and excused what
