"Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such an appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost." It is interesting here, as he came up out of the darkness into the dawn of his supreme humanity, to know what the greatest men of his times thought of him, when that great day of human service closed down over him, in the martyrdom of assassination. It is not eulogy, but an estimate of values in a personality, and as appreciation of righteousness exalting a man into an ideal of his age. Lord Beaconsfield, addressing the House of Commons, said, "In the life of Lincoln there is something so homely and so innocent that it takes the subject, as it were, out of the pomp of history, and out of the ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind." John Stuart Mill, one of the most distinguished philosophers of the last century, speaks in his writings of Lincoln as "The great citizen who afforded so noble an example of the qualities befitting the first magistrate of a free people, and who, in the most trying circumstances, won the admiration of all who appreciate uprightness and love freedom." D'Aubigne, the historian of the Reformation, wrote, "While not venturing to compare him to the great sacrifice of Golgotha, which gave liberty to the captive, is it not just to recall the word of the apostle John (I John 3:16): 'Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.' Among the legacies which Lincoln leaves to us, we shall all regard as the most precious his spirit of equity, of moderation, and of peace, according to which he will still preside, if I may so speak, over the destinies of your great nation." IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREAT TRAGEDY As we all now know, there was never a more fearless man than Abraham Lincoln, but so bitter and so threatening were his enemies that it was believed by his friends that the Presidency should not be endangered by taking any chances as to his assassination on the way to Washington, for his inauguration. Open boasts were widely made that he would never be inaugurated. Assassination was especially threatened if he should pass through Baltimore, and it was thought best by the managers of his transportation that it should not be known when he passed through Baltimore.