Addresses by Phillips Brooks

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Thus I have tried briefly to trace out the gradual course by which God
brought the character which He designed to be the controlling character
of this new world into distinct collision with the hostile character
which it was to destroy and absorb, and set it in the person of its
type-man in the seat of highest power. The character formed under the
discipline of Freedom and the character formed under the discipline of
Slavery developed all their difference and met in hostile conflict when
this war began. Notice, it was not only in what he did and was towards
the slave, it was in all he did and was everywhere that we accept Mr.
Lincoln's character as the true result of our free life and
institutions. Nowhere else could have come forth that genuine love of
the people, which in him no one could suspect of being either the cheap
flattery of the demagogue or the abstract philanthropy of the
philosopher, which made our President, while he lived, the centre of a
great household land, and when he died so cruelly, made every humblest
household thrill with a sense of personal bereavement which the death of
rulers is not apt to bring. Nowhere else than out of the life of freedom
could have come that personal unselfishness and generosity which made so
gracious a part of this good man's character. How many soldiers feel yet
the pressure of a strong hand that clasped theirs once as they lay sick
and weak in the dreary hospital! How many ears will never lose the
thrill of some kind word he spoke--he who could speak so kindly to
promise a kindness that always matched his word! How often he surprised
the land with a clemency which made even those who questioned his policy
love him the more for what they called his weakness,--seeing how the man
in whom God had most embodied the discipline of Freedom not only could
not be a slave, but could not be a tyrant! In the heartiness of his
mirth and his enjoyment of simple joys; in the directness and shrewdness
of perception which constituted his wit; in the untired, undiscouraged
faith in human nature which he always kept; and perhaps above all in the
plainness and quiet, unostentatious earnestness and independence of his
religious life, in his humble love and trust of God--in all, it was a
character such as only Freedom knows how to make.

Now it was in this character, rather than in any mere political
position, that the fitness of Mr. Lincoln to stand forth in the struggle
of the two American natures really lay. We are told that he did not come
to the Presidential chair pledged to the abolition of Slavery. When will
we learn that with all true men it is not what they intend to do, but it
is what the qualities of their natures bind them to do, that determines
their career! The President came to his power full of the blood, strong
in the strength of Freedom. He came there free, and hating slavery. He
came there, leaving on record words like these spoken three years before
and never contradicted. He had said, "A house divided against itself
cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently, half
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not
expect the house to fall; but I expect it will cease to be divided. It
will become all one thing or all the other." When the question came, he
knew which thing he meant that it should be. His whole nature settled
that question for him. Such a man must always live as he used to say he
lived (and was blamed for saying it) "controlled by events, not
controlling them." And with a reverent and clear mind, to be controlled
by events means to be controlled by God. For such a man there was no
hesitation when God brought him up face to face with Slavery and put the
sword into his hand and said, "Strike it down dead." He was a willing
servant then. If ever the face of a man writing solemn words glowed with
a solemn joy, it must have been the face of Abraham Lincoln, as he bent
over the page where the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was growing
into shape, and giving manhood and freedom as he wrote it to hundreds of
thousands of his fellow-men. Here was a work in which his whole nature
could rejoice. Here was an act that crowned the whole culture of his
life. All the past, the free boyhood in the woods, the free youth upon
the farm, the free manhood in the honorable citizen's employments--all
his freedom gathered and completed itself in this. 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. The character of
Slavery was brutal, barbarous, and treacherous; and so the whole history
of the slave power during the war has been full of ways of warfare
brutal, barbarous, and treacherous, beyond anything that men bred in
freedom could have been driven to by the most hateful passions. It is
not to be marvelled at. It is not to be set down as the special sin of
the war. It goes back beyond that. It is the sin of the system. It is
the barbarism of Slavery. When Slavery went to war to save its life,
what wonder if its barbarism grew barbarous a hundred-fold!

One would be attempting a task which once was almost hopeless, but which
now is only needless, if he set himself to convince a Northern
congregation that Slavery was a barbarian institution. It would be
hardly more necessary to try to prove how its barbarism has shown itself
during this war. The same spirit which was blind to the wickedness of
breaking sacred ties, of separating man and wife, of beating women till
they dropped down dead, of organizing licentiousness and sin into
commercial systems, of forbidding knowledge and protecting itself with
ignorance, of putting on its arms and riding out to steal a State at the
beleaguered ballot-box away from freedom--in one word (for its simplest
definition is its worst dishonor), the spirit that gave man the
ownership in man in time of peace, has found out yet more terrible
barbarisms for the time of war. It has hewed and burned the bodies of
the dead. It has starved and mutilated its helpless prisoners. It has
dealt by truth, not as men will in a time of excitement, lightly and
with frequent violations, but with a cool, and deliberate, and
systematic contempt. It has sent its agents into Northern towns to fire
peaceful hotels where hundreds of peaceful men and women slept. It has
undermined the prisons where its victims starved, and made all ready to
blow with one blast their wretched life away. It has delighted in the
lowest and basest scurrility even on the highest and most honorable
lips. It has corrupted the graciousness of women and killed out the
truth of men.

I do not count up the terrible catalogue because I like to, nor because
I wish to stir your hearts to passion. Even now, you and I have no right
to indulge in personal hatred to the men who did these things. But we
are not doing right by ourselves, by the President that we have lost,
or by God who had a purpose in our losing him, unless we know thoroughly
that it was this same spirit which we have seen to be a tyrant in peace
and a savage in war, that has crowned itself with the working of this
final woe. It was the conflict of the two American natures, the false
and the true. It was Slavery and Freedom that met in their two
representatives, the assassin and the President; and the victim of the
last desperate struggle of the dying Slavery lies dead to-day in
Independence Hall.

Solemnly, in the sight of God, I charge this murder where it belongs, on
Slavery. I dare not stand here in His sight, and before Him or you speak
doubtful and double-meaning words of vague repentance, as if we had
killed our President. We have sins enough, but we have not done this
sin, save as by weak concessions and timid compromises we have let the
spirit of Slavery grow strong and ripe for such a deed. In the barbarism
of Slavery the foul act and its foul method had their birth. By all the
goodness that there was in him; by all the love we had for him (and who
shall tell how great it was); by all the sorrow that has burdened down
this desolate and dreadful week,--I charge this murder where it belongs,
on Slavery. I bid you to remember where the charge belongs, to write it
on the door-posts of your mourning houses, to teach it to your
wondering children, to give it to the history of these times, that all
times to come may hate and dread the sin that killed our noblest
President.

If ever anything were clear, this is the clearest. Is there the man
alive who thinks that Abraham Lincoln was shot just for himself; that it
was that one man for whom the plot was laid? The gentlest, kindest, most
indulgent man that ever ruled a State! The man who knew not how to speak
a word of harshness or how to make a foe! Was it he for whom the
murderer lurked with a mere private hate? It was not he, but what he
stood for. It was Law and Liberty, it was Government and Freedom,
against which the hate gathered and the treacherous shot was fired. And
I know not how the crime of him who shoots at Law and Liberty in the
crowded glare of a great theatre differs from theirs who have levelled
their aim at the same great beings from behind a thousand ambuscades and
on a hundred battle-fields of this long war. Every general in the field,
and every false citizen in our midst at home, who has plotted and
labored to destroy the lives of the soldiers of the Republic, is brother
to him who did this deed. The American nature, the American truths, of
which our President was the anointed and supreme embodiment, have been
embodied in multitudes of heroes who marched unknown and fell unnoticed
in our ranks. For them, just as for him, character decreed a life and a
death. The blood of all of them I charge on the same head. Slavery armed
with Treason was their murderer.

Men point out to us the absurdity and folly of this awful crime. Again
and again we hear men say, "It was the worst thing for themselves they
could have done. They have shot a representative man, and the cause he
represented grows stronger and sterner by his death. Can it be that so
wise a devil was so foolish here? Must it not have been the act of one
poor madman, born and nursed in his own reckless brain?" My friends, let
us understand this matter. It was a foolish act. Its folly was only
equalled by its wickedness. It was a foolish act. But when did sin begin
to be wise? When did wickedness learn wisdom? When did the fool stop
saying in his heart, "There is no God," and acting godlessly in the
absurdity of his impiety? The cause that Abraham Lincoln died for shall
grow stronger by his death,--stronger and sterner. Stronger to set its
pillars deep into the structure of our nation's life; sterner to execute
the justice of the Lord upon his enemies. Stronger to spread its arms
and grasp our whole land into freedom; sterner to sweep the last poor
ghost of Slavery out of our haunted homes. But while we feel the folly
of this act, let not its folly hide its wickedness. It was the
wickedness of Slavery putting on a foolishness for which its wickedness
and that alone is responsible, that robbed the nation of a President and
the people of a father. And remember this, that the folly of the Slave
power in striking the representative of Freedom, and thinking that
thereby it killed Freedom itself, is only a folly that we shall echo if
we dare to think that in punishing the representatives of Slavery who
did this deed, we are putting Slavery to death. Dispersing armies and
hanging traitors, imperatively as justice and necessity may demand them
both, are not killing the spirit out of which they sprang. The traitor
must die because he has committed treason. The murderer must die because
he has committed murder. Slavery must die, because out of it, and it
alone, came forth the treason of the traitor and the murder of the
murderer. Do not say that it is dead. It is not, while its essential
spirit lives. While one man counts another man his born inferior for the
color of his skin, while both in North and South prejudices and
practices, which the law cannot touch, but which God hates, keep alive
in our people's hearts the spirit of the old iniquity, it is not dead.
The new American nature must supplant the old. We must grow like our
President, in his truth, his independence, his religion, and his wide
humanity. Then the character by which he died shall be in us, and by it
we shall live. Then peace shall come that knows no war, and law that
knows no treason; and full of his spirit a grateful land shall gather
round his grave, and in the daily psalm of prosperous and righteous
living, thank God forever for his life and death.

So let him lie here in our midst to-day, and let our people go and bend
with solemn thoughtfulness and look upon his face and read the lessons
of his burial. As he paused here on his journey from the Western home
and told us what by the help of God he meant to do, so let him pause
upon his way back to his Western grave and tell us with a silence more
eloquent than words how bravely, how truly, by the strength of God, he
did it. God brought him up as he brought David up from the sheepfolds to
feed Jacob, his people, and Israel, his inheritance. He came up in
earnestness and faith, and he goes back in triumph. As he pauses here
to-day, and from his cold lips bids us bear witness how he has met the
duty that was laid on him, what can we say out of our full hearts but
this--"He fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them
prudently with all his power." The _Shepherd of the People_! that old
name that the best rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it like this
dead President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with
counsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes
faltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful
cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He fed
hungry souls all over the country with sympathy and consolation. He
spread before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and
patriotism, on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solid
truths. He taught us the sacredness of government, the wickedness of
treason. He made our souls glad and vigorous with the love of liberty
that was in his. He showed us how to love truth and yet be
charitable--how to hate wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure
one personal injury or insult. He fed _all_ his people, from the highest
to the lowest, from the most privileged down to the most enslaved. Best
of all, he fed us with a reverent and genuine religion. He spread before
us the love and fear of God just in that shape in which we need them
most, and out of his faithful service of a higher Master who of us has
not taken and eaten and grown strong? "He fed them with a faithful and
true heart." Yes, till the last. For at the last, behold him standing
with hand reached out to feed the South with mercy and the North with
charity, and the whole land with peace, when the Lord who had sent him
called him and his work was done!

He stood once on the battle-field of our own State, and said of the
brave men who had saved it words as noble as any countryman of ours ever
spoke. Let us stand in the country he has saved, and which is to be his
grave and monument, and say of Abraham Lincoln what he said of the
soldiers who had died at Gettysburg. He stood there with their graves
before him, and these are the words he said:--

"We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this
ground. The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it far
beyond our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor
long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they
did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain; and this nation, under God, shall have
a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the
people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

May God make us worthy of the memory of Abraham Lincoln!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: A sermon preached in Philadelphia, while the body of the
President was lying in the city.]

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