Lincoln accepted war to save the Union, the safeguard of our liberties, and re-established it on indestructible foundations as forever "one and indivisible." To quote his own words: "Now we are contending that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." LINCOLN BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT Abraham Lincoln--the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War--was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men. A man who embodied the qualities of his fellow-men, but who embodied them to the highest and most unusual degree of perfection, who embodied all that there was in the nation of courage, of wisdom, of gentle, patient kindliness, and of common sense. LINCOLN'S GRAVE BY MAURICE THOMPSON May one who fought in honor for the South Uncovered stand and sing by Lincoln's grave? Why, if I shrunk not at the cannon's mouth, Nor swerved one inch for any battle-wave, Should I now tremble in this quiet close Hearing the prairie wind go lightly by From billowy plains of grass and miles of corn, While out of deep repose The great sweet spirit lifts itself on high And broods above our land this summer morn? Meseems I feel his presence. Is he dead? Death is a word. He lives and grander grows. At Gettysburg he bows his bleeding head; He spreads his arms where Chickamauga flows, As if to clasp old soldiers to his breast, Of South or North no matter which they be, Not thinking of what uniform they wore, His heart a palimpsest, Record on record of humanity, Where love is first and last forevermore. He was the Southern mother leaning forth, At dead of night to hear the cannon roar, Beseeching God to turn the cruel North And break it that her son might come once more; He was New England's maiden pale and pure, Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain; He was the mangled body of the dead; He writhing did endure Wounds and disfigurement and racking pain, Gangrene and amputation, all things dread. He was the North, the South, the East, the West, The thrall, the master, all of us in one; There was no section that he held the best; His love shone as impartial as the sun; And so revenge appealed to him in vain; He smiled at it, as at a thing forlorn, And gently put it from him, rose and stood A moment's space in pain, Remembering the prairies and the corn And the glad voices of the field and wood.