For hours they stood about him as he lay moaning or struggling for breath, his wife, his Cabinet officers, his pastor, secretary and doctors. At daybreak the troubled look vanished from his face. There was absolute stillness, followed by a trembling prayer by the pastor. “Now he belongs to the ages,” said the deep voice of Secretary Stanton. * * * * * No, while Lincoln lives in the heart of the nation, it is idle to think that the Republic can be corrupt or cowardly. There were less than nine millions of Americans when he was born. These have become almost ninety millions. The national wealth has grown to more than a hundred billions of dollars. The flag he defended now flies over the Philippines, Hawaii and Porto Rico. The law-resisting millionaire, the “captain of industry” and the “tariff baron” have taken the place of the slaveholder. Yet the love of Lincoln deepens with increasing years; and a century after his birth in a Kentucky log cabin, and nearly forty-four years after his martyrdom, the American people answered the charge that they had outlived their early ideals by the tribute they paid to the memory of their humblest-born, plainest, most beloved leader and President. _Set up, Electrotyped and Printed at_ THE OUTING PRESS DEPOSIT, NEW YORK Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced. Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations. This book does not have a Table of Contents. Page 3: Transcriber removed redundant book title.