That kindly fellowship with all the Nation in the sorrows of the war, with its lowly confession of all the guilt, and its patient endurance of all the atoning cost, proclaims and demonstrates that Lincoln's respect for righteousness was supreme. It betokens a living sense of law, a hearty assent to duty, a careful reckoning of guilt, an uncomplaining readiness to own and rectify all wrong, a manly purpose to inaugurate a new rule of equity, a reverent acknowledgment of God, an ideal esteem for manhood everywhere, freedom from the dominion of greed, friendliness for the erring, pity for the hurt and poor. Above all it shows the faith of a moral seer in its manifest confidence that human evil, and all its awful sorrow, are under the joint divine and human control and can be absolutely and joyfully overthrown and done away. Here is a type of manhood that, under the discipline of God, grew sterling to the core, and by a signal favoring Providence provided an ample basis for a national moral ideal. Here is an ideal where conscience and righteousness stand in close affiance, where liberty springs from equity, and where pity never fails. Here is a person and a name worthy and able demonstrably to inspire and lead to national triumph a new political league. And here is an official whose spontaneous honesty has left upon all his state papers an indelible moral stamp, creating thereby out of his official documents a national literature of finished beauty and excellence and power. PART II. ANALYSIS HIS REVERENCE FOR LAW--CONSCIENCE Deeply set within the heart of Lincoln in this last inaugural was his binding sense of right. This obligation was civic. The speech can be described as a statement of what a loyal citizen under confederate law is bound to do, when his civic loyalty is put to a final test. It is an illustration of obedience facing rebellion. It is an exposition of a confederate's duty, when confederates secede. It is a civilian's announcement of the law that is singly and surely sovereign, when the sole alternative in the Nation's life is dissolution or blood. It is a revelation of the law that still prevails among and above a Republic of freemen, when all law is faced by the challenge and defiance of war. Here is a supreme exhibit of a solid co-efficient in Lincoln's character. It shows in a commanding way how moral duty held dominion in his life. He had no predilection for war. That he must face its menace, or forswear his fealty to his freeman's covenant, was a pathetic fate. And when in that alternative he upheld his oath and endured the war, it is past all denial that he was bowing under an inexorable constraint. He was plainly ordering his speech and conduct in submission to an all-commanding, all-reviewing moral regimen. His will was listening to a moral behest. His judgment was pondering a moral choice. His eye was forecasting a moral award. He was shaping sovereign issues with a sovereign responsibility.