father shared John Brown's opinions, my mother thought he was a kind of
monomaniac and frequently said so. At this Lincoln laughed heartily, but
he made no verbal comment.

Nobody could be more earnest or sincere than Lincoln, but he could laugh;
John Brown could not. My earliest impression, as a little boy, of John
Brown, was that he might be one of the old prophets; he made me think of
Isaiah. He was tall and thin; he wore a long beard and was always very,
very serious. He hardly ever told a joke. John Brown's part in the
business partnership was to sell the wool which my father bought from the
farmers in the surrounding territory. So Brown was the man in the office,
with time and opportunity for study and planning, while my father was out
in the open, dealing with other men. Until they became involved so deeply
in the antislavery movement the wool business prospered; the fact was that
my father trusted Brown's business judgment as being pretty good. But in
the end they gave up everything in the way of business of any sort. My
father was a Methodist, but I do not remember hearing that John Brown
belonged to any church. The liberation of the slaves obsessed his mind to
the exclusion of all other thoughts and interests.

Brown used to drive over to our house two or three times a week. It was a
thirty-mile drive from Springfield, so he had always to spend the night.

I have kept the latch of the door to his room--the room which he always
occupied. How many times he raised that latch in passing in and out!

I was a little chap then and used often to sit on his knee and listen to
his stories told in that solemn, deep voice, which lent a mysterious
dignity to the most unimportant tale.

When evening came and dinner was over and the womenfolk were busy outside,
Brown and my father would pull up their chairs to the dining table, on
which a big lamp had been set, and talk long and earnestly--sometimes far
into the night--while they pored over maps and lists and memoranda. Often
I would wake up, when it seemed that morning must be almost at hand, and
hear John Brown's low, even-toned voice speaking words which were to me
without meaning.

Next morning, after an early breakfast, he would harness his horse to the
buggy, if one of us boys had not already done it for him, and start on the
lonely drive back to Springfield.

Brown and my father had accurate knowledge of many facts which might
contribute to the success of a slave uprising in Virginia. They knew how
many plantations there were and how many negroes were owned in each
county--also the number of whites. Brown knew the names of the owners of
the plantations and the means of reaching the plantations by unfrequented
ways. He had talked this over with my father for years. William Lloyd
Garrison told him it was a very foolish enterprise that he contemplated,
and was opposed to it, although he was Brown's intimate friend.

It is a significant and a not generally known fact that John Brown
actually believed his insurrection would succeed; but whether it would or
not, he was determined sooner or later to make the attempt. He said, "If I
die that way, I will do more good than by living on; and, anyhow, I will
do it whether it succeeds or not."

The last time I saw John Brown was when he drove out to our house before
leaving Springfield to go to Harper's Ferry. My father drove him down to
the station--to Huntingdon railroad station; they called it Chester
Village then, but the name has since been changed. The last letter that he
wrote from the prison at Charleston was to my father. It was written the
day before his execution.

John Brown's character was perfectly suited to the part he elected to
play, and that this had a potent influence upon people's minds and
through them upon events leading up to the war cannot be denied. A less
austere man or a man less firm in his own convictions would never have
carried through such a mad exploit. But it is not a desecration of John
Brown's memory to state the simple fact that he lacked the quality of
human understanding which Lincoln possessed so richly and which showed
itself in the smile of sympathy and the word of good cheer.

Before I left Washington to go back to my regiment I learned that the
friend for whose life I had gone to plead had been pardoned by the
President. The hearty greeting which hailed the return of that young
soldier to his comrades was full of spontaneous joy, but in the background
of the picture was the great form of Old Abe, the greatest saint in the
calendar of all the soldiers.

He was indeed, as has been often said before, the best friend of the whole
country--the South as well as the North. Through all of that bitter
struggle he never forgot that he had been elected President of _all_ the
United States.

When I had a second long talk with Lincoln, just shortly before he was
murdered, not one word did he say against the South or against the
generals of the South. He spoke of General Lee always in respectful terms.
He respected the Southern army and the Southern people, and he estimated
them for just about what they were worth. He did not underestimate their
power nor their patriotism; not a word in that two hours' interview did he
say against the Southern army or the Southern people vindictively; it was
that of a calm statesman who estimated them for what they were worth; and
whenever he mentioned the name of General Lee he emphasized the fact that
Lee was fighting that war on a high principle, not one of vindictiveness
or any small ambition.

He realized that the Southern people were fighting for what they believed
was right, and he knew General Lee would not be in it unless he was
convinced it was right. He did not say that in words, but that is the
impression I received. To hear the stories of Southern barbarities which
would naturally be circulated about the enemy and then to find the
President of the United States treating the matter with such dignity and
calmness was a surprise and an enlightenment to me.

On that black day when the body of Abraham Lincoln lay in state in the
East Room of the White House it was my great privilege to be detailed for
duty there. I happened to be in Washington, recovering from a wound
sustained in the battle of Kenesaw Mountain a short time before, and I was
called upon, together with all unattached officers in the Capitol, to help
out. About twenty officers were continually on duty in the room in which
the casket stood. Two of us actually stood guard at a time--one at the
head and one at the foot. The casket was heaped high with flowers and the
people passed through the room in an unending stream.

No such grief was ever known on this continent. All wept, strong, hardened
warriors with the rest. People were heartily ashamed when their supply of
tears ran out. Some trembled as they passed through the door, and, once
outside the room, gave vent to their sorrow in groans and shrieks, while
others, in the excess of their grief, cursed God, as though Lincoln's
death was an unjust punishment of him instead of a glorious crown of
martyrdom.

Looking back through fifty-four years--after the calm judgment of sages
has reasserted their wisdom and after all Lincoln's enemies have turned to
devoted friends--we cannot forbear the renewed assertion that Abraham
Lincoln was in some special way unlike other men. That unusual power of
inspiration was exhibited in his words and acts almost every day of his
closing years.

Through the half century there comes down to us a wonderful sentence in
Lincoln's second inaugural address which is incarnate with vigorous life.
Out of the smoke, devastation, hate, and death of a gigantic fratricidal
war, above the contentions of parties, jealous commanders, and
grief-benumbed mourners, clear and certain as a trumpet call this
unlooked-for declaration rang out. It was the voice of God:

    With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
    right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
    work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who
    shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphans, to do
    all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among
    ourselves and with all nations.

What a Christian spirit, what a deference to God, what a determined
purpose for good! What a basis for peace among the nations was there
stated in one single sentence! Where in the writings of the gifted
geniuses, ancient or modern, is another one so potent. Yet the mere dead
words are not specially symmetrical, and the expression is in the language
of the common people. The influence is that of the spirit; it can never
die.

His enemies mourned when he died and all the world said a great soul had
departed. But the children of his dear heart and brain will live on the
earth forever. They will pray and teach and sacrifice and fight on until
all nations shall be the one human family which the prophet Lincoln so
clearly foresaw. Men are called to special work. Men are more divine than
material; and among the most trustworthy proofs of this intuitive truth is
the continuing force of the personality of Abraham Lincoln.