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people soon learned to love and trust the honest, tactful, and patient yet resolute man in the White House, and their confidence in his wisdom and in his patriotism grew as long as he lived.

of 1864

When the time came for the presidential election of 1864 a few dissatisfied Republican politicians wanted to set Lincoln aside, but the people would not listen to them and the president The election was renominated almost without opposition. The supporters of Lincoln in 1864 called themselves the Union party. This party, which included many war Democrats as well as the Republicans, declared in the plainest terms for the restoration of the Union and the destruction of slavery. Andrew Johnson, a loyal Democrat of Tennessee, was named for the vice-presidency. The Democrats said in their platform that the war to preserve the Union was a failure and that it ought to be stopped. But General McClellan, their candidate for the presidency, declared that he could not look his old comrades in the face and say that, and insisted that no peace could be permanent without Union. The campaign of 1864 resulted in the triumphant reëlection of Lincoln.

On March 4, 1865, Lincoln took the oath of office as president for a second time. The short address which he made on that occasion is one of the most beautiful in all literature. Lincoln's Speaking of the North and of the South he said, "Both read second inaugural the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes address His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged."

Of the approaching end of the war Lincoln said: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.""

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive

The death of Lincoln

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 orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Just a month after Lincoln began his second term, he walked through the streets of Richmond after the Confederates abandoned that city. The end of

the war was at hand. In a few days there came the news of Lee's surrender. But in the midst of their joy over the coming of peace, the people whom Lincoln had led through four awful years of war were suddenly called upon to mourn him "with the passion of an angry grief." On the evening of April 14, 1865, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln went with two young friends to Ford's Theatre in Washington. During the play an actor named Booth entered the president's box from the rear and shot Mr. Lincoln through the head. The unconscious victim was carried to a house across the street, where he died the next morning. "Now he belongs to the ages," said Stanton, Lincoln's great war secretary, as he stood in tears by the bedside of his fallen chief.

[graphic]

Keystone View Co., Meadville, Pa. Ford's Theatre in which Lincoln was shot, Washington, D. C.

The deep national sorrow caused by Lincoln's death is best pictured in Walt Whitman's noble poem, "O Captain! My "The first Captain!" Many writers have told the fascinating story of American" Lincoln's rise from the rude log cabin in Kentucky in which he was born to the foremost place in our nation in the most critical hour in its history. No American biography is more inspiring. Among the numerous estimates of Lincoln's life and character in prose and verse perhaps the finest is that of Lowell in his immortal "Commemoration Ode."

"Standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man;
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American."

REFERENCES.

Wilson, Division and Reunion; Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War (especially Chaps. XV-XVI); Rhodes, History of the United States, III-V (especially Chaps. XXVII-XXVIII); Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. VI; Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During the Civil War; Schwab, The Confederate States of America.

TOPICAL READINGS.

1. The Leaders in the Civil War.

19-34.

Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms,

2. Getting Ready to Fight. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, 70-83. 3. Life in War Time. Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 57-71. 4. The Soldiers of the Civil War. Schouler, History of the United States, VI, 290-316.

5. The Spirit of the North. Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 249268.

6. The Spirit of the South. Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 269-289. 7. The Treatment of Prisoners of War. Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 483-515.

8. The Effect of the Blockade in the South. Rhodes, History of the United States, III, 544-548.

9. The Gains and Losses of the War. Dodge, Bird's-Eye View of the Civil War, 320-327.

10. Emancipation. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 390-411.

11. The North in War Time. Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 189-342.

12. The South in War Time. Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 343-481.

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE.

Poems: Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!; Tom Taylor, Abraham Lincoln; Markham, Lincoln; Ryan, The Conquered Banner; Osgood, Driving Home the Cows.

Stories: Page, Two Little Confederates; Marse Chan; Among the Camps; Andrews, The Perfect Tribute; Seawell, The Victory; Eggleston, The Master of Warlock; Glasgow, The Battle Ground; Mitchell, In War Time; Westways; Fox, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come; Churchill, The Crisis.

Reminiscences: Alcott, Hospital Sketches; Eggleston, A Rebel's Recollections; Harris, Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War; Wise, The End of an Era.

Biographies: Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln; Dodd, Jefferson Davis; Pendleton, Alexander H. Stephens; Lothrop, William H. Seward; Hart, Salmon P. Chase; Gorham, Edwin M. Stanton.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

1. Can both sides be right in war?

2. Sum up the causes of the Civil War. What great questions did it decide?

3. Make a list of all the Civil War songs that you can find. Make a similar list of famous poems upon Civil War topics. How many of these poems have you read?

4. What progress has been made in medicine and surgery since the Civil War? Compare military life in the Civil War and in our war with Germany in 1917-1918. Make a similar comparison of the experiences of the folks at home.

5. Was the good conduct of the slaves in the Civil War due to their virtues or to their ignorance?

6. Define "bond," "treasury note," "bank note," "legal tender," "suspension of specie payment." What is meant by saying that "gold is at a premium"?

7. Explain the difference between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

8. Why was the death of Lincoln a great misfortune to the South? Find all the poems you can about Lincoln.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION

The Home-Coming of the Soldiers.-When the Civil War was over the soldiers on both sides returned to their homes.

The defeated Confederates were permitted to go home at once The armies upon their promise not to fight any more against the Union. disbanded The huge Union army was disbanded more slowly. The troops of Grant and Sherman were brought to Washington, where for two days they marched in triumphal review through the streets of the national capital. Then as rapidly as the work could be done the men who had saved the Union were mustered out and sent to their homes. For months the trains were filled with returning soldiers. Every nook and corner of the North welcomed the home-coming veterans. Within a year nearly a million men had gladly turned from the ways of war to the peaceful pursuits of civil life.

The nation did not forget the men who had borne the heat and burden of battle. The government gave generous pensions

to those who were disabled by wounds or by the hardships of The "old army life. Many "old soldiers" became the leaders in the soldiers" industrial and political life of their communities. Soon associations of veterans, like the Grand Army of the Republic, were organized to continue the comradeship formed in the army and to keep alive the memories of the war.

We have seen how the industries of the North had prospered during the war. There was work for all, and most of the returning Union soldiers soon found places on the farms or in the work- In the North shops and offices of their section. Those whom life in the army had unsettled and given a taste for adventure went to the West where they established new homes on the frontier or helped construct the Union Pacific Railroad, which was built just after the war to connect the valley of the Mississippi with the Pacific Coast. Far different was the home-coming of the soldiers of the South. Slowly and painfully they tramped homeward through

a land ravaged by war. Upon their arrival they faced poverty, In the South for the war had taken from them everything that they possessed

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