Excerpt from An Address in Commemoration of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln: Delivered at the 337th Dinner of the New England Club

The most unique among the great men of our country, indeed among the great of the world, i have not named. Let me call your attention for a little while to one who rose above all the men of his time; who, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his humanity, stood an heroic figure in the center of an heroic epoch; the one providential leader, the indis pensable hero of a great drama; who was the embodi ment of the self-denial, the courage, the hope, and the nobility of a nation; whose fame will grow brighter with succeeding years; whose name will be revered in all coming time wherever men love liberty; the great central figure of our Civil war; the Eman cipator of a Race, - Abraham Lincoln. As the rising generation know little, and I fear care less, about the sufferings and heroic struggles of the men who fought the Great War for the preservation of the Union, so we, surrounded by all the comforts and luxuries of civ ilized life, and in the enjoyment of great public and private blessings, give little heed to the, self-sac rifice, courage, and patriotism of the Pioneers of the Republic, whose history is the history of our liberty. From the day the Mayflower furled her tattered sails in the harbor of Plymouth to the present time there has existed in America the pioneer spirit, caused partly by a desire for freedom and independence, and partly by that anglo-saxon lust for land which is a charac teristic of the race. Hardy and enterprising men have gone forth from the older settlements with ax and gun in hand; have entered the trackless wilderness; and upon the banks of distant rivers, laboring with difficulties, languishing perhaps from disease, and in deadly peril from a savage foe, have established new homes. The forest disappears by their sturdy arms, the school house and the church appear, law and order soon pre vail, a new State is formed, a new member enters the political family, and a new star is added to the Old Flag.

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