“Who can doubt that Providence put the preposterous notion of a round world into the head of the Genoese sailor? Who can doubt that Providence designed Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant each for his own mission? The Declaration of Independence was the Genesis of American liberty, but the gospel of its New Testament was the Emancipation Proclamation. Until the Emancipation Proclamation the tide of success set strongly against the Union shore. But afterward the soldiers of the Union marched steadily from Chattanooga to Atlanta and from Atlanta to the sea. From the time the flag of liberty became the flag of freedom and the Stars and Stripes no longer floated over slaves, the Union never wavered in its onward march. “Almost a third of a century has passed away. Blue and gray they lie together beneath the sod. Heroes all, they fell face to face, brother against brother. But through the mingled tears that fall alike upon the dead of both sections, the eyes of all turn toward a new future under the old flag. To the North and South, to the white and the black, Abraham Lincoln was God’s special providence. What is the heritage to us? In his own words, ‘A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ “I wish that my voice could reach from one end of the land to the other while I tell what true Americanism is. I come from a State that has as great local necessities, perhaps, as any other. The State of Nebraska put one star into the flag. The great State of New York put another. But when they set them there, they ceased to shine for themselves, but for the whole Union. “What we need in this country is the Emancipation Proclamation and the Stars and Stripes at every polling place. We need a revival of the American flag. Let it float over every American battlefield, be taught in every public school. Set the Stars of the Union in the hearts of our children and the glory of the Republic will remain forever. It does not matter whether the American cradle is rocked to the music of ‘Yankee Doodle’ or the lullaby of ‘Dixie’ if the flag of the nation is displayed above it, and the American baby can be safely trusted to pull about the floor the rusty scabbard and the battered canteen, whether the inheritance be from blue or gray, if from the breast of a true mother and the lips of a brave father, its little soul is filled with the glory of the American constellation. “The memory of Lincoln cannot perish. On freedom’s roll of honor the name of Lincoln is written first. His colossal statue stands on a pedestal of the people’s love, and in its protecting shadow, liberty and equality are the heritage of every American citizen.” LINCOLN ANALYZED.