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h an hour, with such tremendous issues in the balance, a steady hand was at the helm; that a conservative statesman--one whose mission was to save, not to destroy--was in the high place of responsibility and power. It booted little then that he was untaught of schools, unskilled in the ways of courts, but it was of supreme moment that he could touch responsive chords in the great American heart, all-important that his very soul yearned for the preservation of the Government established through the toil and sacrifice of the generation that had gone. How hopeless the Republic in that dark hour, had its destiny hung upon the statecraft of Talleyrand, the eloquence of Mirabeau, or the genius of Napoleon! It was fortunate indeed that the ark of our covenant was then borne by the plain, brave man of conciliatory spirit and kind words, whose heart, as Emerson has said, 'was as large as the world, but nowhere had room for the memory of a wrong.' "Nobler words have never fallen from human lips than the closing sentences of his first inaugural uttered on one of the pivotal days of human history, immediately after taking the oath to preserve, protect, and defend his country: "'I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot's grave to every heart and hearthstone of this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when touched as they will be by the better angels of our nature.' "In the light of what we now know so well, nothing is hazarded in saying that the death of no man has been to his country so irreparable a loss, or one so grievous to be borne, as that of Abraham Lincoln. When Washington died his work was done, his life well rounded out. Save one, the years allotted had been passed. Not so with Lincoln. To him a grander task was yet in waiting, one no other could so well perform. The assassin's pistol proved the veritable Pandora's box from which sprung evils untold,--whose consequences have never been measured.--to one-third of the States of our Union. But for his untimely death how the current of history might have been changed,--and many a sad chapter remained unwritten! How earnestly he desired a restored Union, and that the blessings of peace and of concord should be the common heritage of every section, is known to all. "When in the loom
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