There was the difficulty. He said, "I do not want to destroy this thing of slavery without compensation. Let me pay you four hundred million dollars. It is costing millions of dollars a day to carry on the war. Take this money that would be spent in war, and stand with the Union, and let your slaves go free. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I want it to stand; it must stand. Give up your peculiar institution." No. The vote in the House of Representatives was against it. No more eloquent passages were ever written by Abraham Lincoln, than in his message recommending compensated emancipation.

I often wonder, when we read the Gettysburg address, and the second inaugural address, and the conclusion of the first inaugural address and the letter to Mrs. Bixby, with which you are all familiar-I often wonder that there is not read with them the conclusion of that message to Congress on the first of December, 1862, after the first emancipation proclamation had been issued on September 22d-I often wonder that the passage commencing "We cannot escape from this thing," is not put alongside of them as one of the most expressive and eloquent expressions that Mr. Lincoln ever used.

The battle of Antietam occured after Mr. Lincoln had written the Emancipation Proclamation. He had it put away. He was afraid that if he sent forth that proclamation when we were in defeat the world would say, "Oh, that is a desperate ruse of a man that has no other resources. You are striking blindly." He would not do that. The son of the old pioneer, the grandson of one who had fallen in the wilderness with the shot of an Indian, the boy who was born in Kentucky and had lived in this great state, was a man of infinite courage. He would not do an act of any kind, even an act setting free the slave, from an idea of weakness. He said to the ministers that came to him from Chicago, and wanted to issue the proclamation before it was ready, "I do not want to issue a bull, like the Pope against a comet. I cannot stop that. I can scarcely enforce the Constitution. I am trying to do that. Why do you want me to do this other?" He waited until after the battle of Antietam, when General Lee came north and invaded the state of Maryland. Then there was victory for the United States. What did the victory cost? Fourteen thousand men on their side and twelve thousand men on our side killed and wounded. It was fought on Friday. On Saturday it was uncertain for a while whether we had gained the victory or lost the battle. On Sunday Mr. Lincoln knew that it was a victory; and as he said, "I brushed up my proclamation and on Monday I let them have it."

At last the thunderbolt was thrown! That which was to destroy the institution and make perfect the character of the United States! Justice! Freedom! Not only for the slave, but for all the world, because that thought, thus expressed and thus embodied, became a part of our Constitution, that slavery or involuntary servitude, except for crime, whereof the party has been duly convicted, shall not exist in the United States or any place within their jurisdiction.

Now thus this Illinois man, that had borne this mighty weight of battle, even of defeat in the field, of strenuous days, for four years rounded out and perfected the character of the United States, as truly just and truly statesmanlike and politic, and embodied it in the Constitution of the United States.

So I say, the character of these United States, being of these lineaments and qualities which I have endeavored to portray, were impersonated in this man.

What has been done for us? I bore my little part in that Grand Army, with your father, and your grandfather. I helped a little, but I received, and have received, from that day to this, untold blessings, in my country's career. What is our country now? Is it dissevered? Is it disorganized? Is it weak? Look to that fleet now coming home across the broad sea, in three columns, like the tines in Neptune's trident. It has been around the world with our country's flag. Would we have had that, had not Lincoln stood up for the Union, had the man not been for the Union, had the Union not been preserved? I think not.

Listen to that tall shaft that on the Republic, in danger, sent out the summons of peril, to harbor and town and vacant ocean, to vessels that hastened to the rescue. You can see Lincoln standing there for the Union like that great electric shaft, and you can hear the throb in distant household and park and altar and field, and the tapping of that mysterious sympathy that united a great people in a great struggle. They hastened to the support of his great effort to save our Union, as the vessels went to the rescue of the Republic. Bless you! I think so. And I think that as mankind is in sympathy everywhere with those who rescue from death and the grave in the ocean, so our people are in sympathy with the spirit of our great republic, and realize that there was a redemption, a life-saving act of this great man, and that we owe him what he gave us, -integrity. My young friends, integrity, honesty, in all of the relations of life. Abraham Lincoln paid a debt of a few dollars years after it was due because he could not pay it when it was due. He walked miles to return to a woman the change she had given him over the amount she ought to have paid him, in his store. He went to his store one morning, and found he had sold a parcel of tea to a young woman and had put a weight in the scales, so it measured lighter than he had supposed. He took that much tea, that she had paid for and not received, and carried it to her.