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Before beginning the prepared address, I must make the remark that this introduction, this reception here. caused humility rather than pride, I am well aware of that, Not often in the story of mankind has a man arrived on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock, and soft as drifting fog. There was in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm
and peace, unspeakable and perfect. There have come, across centuries, reports of men alleged to have these contrasts, and the incomparable Abraham Lincoln, born one hundred and fifty years ago this day is an approach, if not a perfect realization of this character.
In the time of the April lilacs, in the year 1865, on his death, the casket with his body was carried north and west a thousands miles, and the American people wept as they never before. Bells sobbed, cities wore crepe, people stood in tears and with hats off as the red oak burial car paused in the leading cities of seven states, ending its journey at Springfield, Illinois. the hometown.
During the four years he was President, he, at times, especially in the first three months, took to himself the powers of a dictator. He commanded those powerful armies till then assembled in modern warfare, he enforced conscription of soldiers for the first time in American history and under imperative necessity he abolished the rights of Habeas Corpus. He directed it politically and spiritually while massive turbulent forces let loose in civil war. a war truly as time has shown, of brothers. He argued and pleaded for compensated emancipation of the slaves. The slaves were property they were on the tax books along with horses and cats, the valuation of each slave written next to his name in the tax assessors books. And failing to get action on compensated emancipation. he took the only other course. As a chief executive having more powers, he issued the paper by which he declared the slaves to be free, under military necessity In the end. nearly four billion dollars worth of property was taken away from those who were legal owners of it. Property confiscated, wiped out as by tire and turned to ashes. At his instigation and executive direction, chattel property recognized in law books for three hundred years was expropriated, seized without payment.
And how did Lincoln say he would like to be remembered? Something of it is in this present occasion, the atmosphere in this room. His beloved friend, Representative Owen Lovejoy of Princeton, Illinois. had died in May of 1864. and friends wrote to Lincoln, and he replied that the pressure of duties kept him from joining them in the efforts toward a marble monument to Lovejoy The last sentence of Lincoln's letter saying: "Let him have the marble monument, along with the well-assured and the more enduring one in the hearts of those who love liberty
unselfishly for all men."
Today when you say perhaps that the well-assured and the most enduring memorial to Lincoln is invisibly there today, tomorrow, and for a long, long time yet to come. It's there in the hearts of lovers of liberty This country is always paying prices, men and women who understand that where there is freedom, there is those who fought, toiled and sacrificed. Thank you.
