Men of Our Times. Or, Leading Patriots of the Day

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Stowe Harriet Beecher. Men of Our Times. Or, Leading Patriots of the Day

CHAPTER I. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

CHAPTER II. ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

CHAPTER III. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

CHAPTER IV. CHARLES SUMNER

CHAPTER V. SALMON P. CHASE

CHAPTER VI. HENRY WILSON

CHAPTER VII. HORACE GREELEY

CHAPTER VIII. DAVID GLASCOE FARRAGUT

CHAPTER IX. JOHN ALBION ANDREW

CHAPTER X. SCHUYLER COLFAX

CHAPTER XI. EDWIN M. STANTON

CHAPTER XII. FREDERICK DOUGLASS

CHAPTER XIII. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN

CHAPTER XIV. WILLIAM T. SHERMAN

CHAPTER XV. OLIVER O. HOWARD

CHAPTER XVI. WILLIAM ALFRED BUCKINGHAM

CHAPTER XVII. WENDELL PHILLIPS

CHAPTER XVIII. HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Our times have been marked from all other times as the scene of an immense conflict which has not only shaken to its foundation our own country, but has been felt like the throes of an earthquake through all the nations of the earth.

Our own days have witnessed the closing of the great battle, but the preparations for that battle have been the slow work of years.

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These references to assassination and death, were no casual flourishes of oratory. They were deliberate defiances of the fate which had already been denounced against the speaker, in public and in private, which continued to be threatened during all the rest of his life, and which finally actually befel him, but the fear of which never made him turn pale nor waver in his duty. He began as soon as he was nominated, to receive anonymous letters from the South threatening him with death. They became so frequent that he kept a separate file of them. They continued to come, up to the year of his death. The first one or two, he said, made him "a little uncomfortable;" but afterwards he only filed them. The train on which he left home for the East, was to have been thrown off the track. A hand grenade was hidden in one of the cars. An association was known to exist at Baltimore for the express purpose of killing him. When therefore he spoke as he did at Philadelphia, it was doubtless with a feeling that some one concerned in these plans was probably hearing him, and understanding him. It was, no doubt, at the same time a sort of vow, taken upon himself under the feelings aroused by the birth-place of the Declaration which he had so often and so well defended. Whether a challenge, a vow, or a mere statement of principle, he kept his word. He lived by it, and he died by it.

The same mixture of firmness and kindness appears in the First Inaugural, and in this document there is also another most characteristic element; – circumspect adherence to the Constitution as he understood it, and most remarkable care and skill in the language used to interpret law, or to announce his own conclusions or purposes. Lover of freedom as he was, and believer in the rights of man, he had already been invariably careful not to demand from the masses of men whom he sought to influence, more than they could be expected to give. Now, he went even further. He expressly and clearly avowed his intention to execute all that he had sworn, even the laws most distasteful to any freeman. In speaking of the crisis of the moment, and after setting forth his doctrine of national sovereignty and an unbroken Union, he promised to maintain it as far as he could, and added:

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