Recollections of a Long Life: An AutobiographyCuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Religion
Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography
Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Clergy -- United States -- Biography; Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard), 1822-1909
The last evening I ever spent with him was at a temperance meeting of
plain working people, to which he came several miles through a snow
storm. He spoke with great power, and when I told him afterwards it was
one of the finest addresses I had ever heard from him he said to me: "I
would rather tell some truths to help such plain people as we had
to-night than address thousands of the cultured in the Academy of
Music." As he bade me good-night at yonder corner of Fulton Street, I
said to him: "Uncle Horace, will you not come and spend the night with
me?" He said, "No, I have much work to do before morning. I am coming
over soon to spend a week in Brooklyn with my brother-in-law, and I will
come and have a night with you." Alas, it was not long before he came to
spend a night in Brooklyn,--that night that knows no morning. On a
chilly November day, towards twilight, I was one of the crowd that
followed him to his resting place in Greenwood, and I always, when on my
way to my own plot, stop to gaze on the monument that bears the
inscription, _"Founder of the New York Tribune."_
CHAPTER XI
THE CIVIL WAR AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
An enormous quantity of books, historic and reminiscent, have been
written about our Civil War, which, both in regard to the number of
combatants engaged, and the magnitude of the interests involved, and its
far-reaching consequences, was the most colossal conflict of modern
times. Before presenting a few of my own personal recollections of the
struggle, let me say that when the struggle was over, no one was more
eager than myself to bury the tomahawk, and to offer the calumet of
peace to our Southern fellow countrymen and fellow Christians. Whenever
I have visited them their cordial greeting has warmed the cockles of my
heart. I thank God that the great gash has been so thoroughly healed,
and that I have lived to see the day when the people of the North feel a
national pride in the splendid prowess of Lee, and the heroic Christian
character of Stonewall Jackson, and when some of the noblest tributes to
Abraham Lincoln have been spoken by such representative Southerners as
Mr. Grady, of Georgia, and Mr. Watterson, of Kentucky. I had hoped ere
this to see the Northern and Southern wings of our venerable
Presbyterian Church reunited; but I am confident that there are plenty
of people now living who will yet witness their happy ecclesiastical
nuptials. Terrible as was that war in the sacrifice of precious life,
and in the destruction of property, it was unquestionably inevitable.
Mr. Seward was right when he called the conflict "irrepressible."
Abraham Lincoln was a true prophet when he declared, at Springfield,
Ill., in June, 1858, that "A house divided against itself cannot stand;
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half
free." When in my early life I spoke to my good mother about some
anti-slavery addresses that had been delivered, she said to me, with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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