"The fifty-six years that compassed the life of Abraham Lincoln were years of transcendent significance to our country. While he was yet in his rude cradle the African slave trade had just terminated by constitutional inhibition. While Lincoln was still in attendance upon the old field school, Henry Clay--yet to be known as the 'great pacificator'--was pressing the admission of Missouri into the Union under the first compromise upon the question of slavery since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. From the establishment of the Government the question of human slavery was the one perilous question,--the one constant menace to national unity, until its final extinction amid the flames of war. Marvellous to man are the purposes of the Almighty. What seer could have foretold that, from this humblest of homes upon the frontier, was to spring the man who at the crucial moment should cut the Gordian knot, liberate a race, and give to the ages enlarged and grander conception of the deathless principles of the declaration of human rights? "'Often do the spirits of great events Stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow.' "The first inauguration of President Lincoln noted the hour of breaking with the past. It was a period of gloom, when the very foundations were shaken, when no man could foretell the happening of the morrow, when strong men trembled at the possibility of the destruction of our Government. "Pause a moment, and recall the man who, under the conditions mentioned, on the fourth of March, 1861, entered upon the duties of the great office to which he had been chosen. He came from the common walks of life--from what, in other countries, would be called the great middle class. His early home was one of the humblest, where he was a stranger to the luxuries and to many of the ordinary comforts of life. His opportunities for education were only such as were common in the remote habitations of our Western country one century ago. "Under such conditions, began a career which in grandeur and achievement has but a single counterpart in our history. And what a splendid commentary this upon our free institutions,--upon the sublime underlying principle of popular government! How inspiring to the youth of high aims every incident of the pathway that led from the frontier cabin to the Executive Mansion,--from the humblest position to the most exalted yet attained by man! In no other country than ours could such attainment have been possible for the boy whose hands were inured to toil, whose bread was eaten under the hard conditions that poverty imposes, whose only heritage was brain, integrity, lofty ambition, and indomitable purpose. Let it never be forgotten that the man of whom I speak possessed an integrity that could know no temptation, a purity of life that was never questioned, a patriotism that no sectional lines could limit, and a fixedness of purpose that knew no shadow of turning.