And as the swarthy
multitudes came in, ragged, and tired, and hungry, and ignorant, but
free forever from anything but the memorial scars of the fetters and the
whip, singing rude songs in which the new triumph of freedom struggled
and heaved below the sad melody that had been shaped for bondage; as in
their camps and hovels there grew up to their half-superstitious eyes
the image of a great Father almost more than man, to whom they owed
their freedom,--were they not half right? For it was not to one man,
driven by stress of policy, or swept off by a whim of pity, that the
noble act was due. It was to the American nature, long kept by God in
his own intentions till his time should come, at last emerging into
sight and power, and bound up and embodied in this best and most
American of all Americans, to whom we and those poor frightened slaves
at last might look up together and love to call him, with one voice, our
Father.
Thus, we have seen something of what the character of Mr. Lincoln was,
and how it issued in the life he lived. It remains for us to see how it
resulted also in the terrible death which has laid his murdered body
here in our town among lamenting multitudes to-day. It is not a hard
question, though it is sad to answer. We saw the two natures, the nature
of Slavery and the nature of Freedom, at last set against each other,
come at last to open war. Both fought, fought long, fought bravely; but
each, as was perfectly natural, fought with the tools and in the ways
which its own character had made familiar to it.
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