to be captured and carried off to become a by-word and a scorn to the nations of the world." And with that courageous spirit which distinguished him he said: "I refuse to fly from that capital.'

WAS A MAN OF PEACE

"So long as there was hope of a peaceful solution," said Douglas, "I prayed and implored for peace. I can appeal to my countrymen with confidence that I have spared no effort, omitted no opportunity to adopt a peaceful solution of all these troubles and thus restore peace, happiness and fraternity to this country, *** I have struggled almost against hope to avert the calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren of the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out to you how it may be. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. Bloody-calamitous I fear it will be. May we so conduct it, if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less to the desire for conquest or ambition. I can see no path of ambition open in a bloody struggle for triumph over my countrymen. There is no path of ambition open to me in a divided country after having so long served a united and glorious country. Hence whatever we may do must be the result of duty, of conviction, of patriotic duty-the duty that we owe to ourselves, to our posterity and to the friends of constitutional liberty and self-government throughout the world."

Douglas, in this speech, in a single sentence, disclosed both his conception of the mighty struggle and his fitness for military command, with which, if he had lived, he undoubtedly would have been entrusted. "Whenever our government is assailed," said he, "when hostile armies are marching under new and odious banners against the government of our country, the shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war."

He concluded his address with these words:

"My friends, I can say no more. To discuss these topics is the most painful duty of my life. It is with a sad heart-with a grief that I have never before experienced-that I have to contemplate this fearful struggle. But I believe in my conscience that it is a duty that we owe ourselves and our children and our God to protect this government and that flag against every assailant, be he who he may.'

These were the words of Douglas. How appalling the possible result if they had not been spoken. Think, for a moment, of the situation in which Douglas was placed and of the mighty power which he possessed at the most critical moment in the life of his government. Douglas was the leader of a great party that had been dominant in the affairs of this nation for 40 years. In every political combat in which he had ever engaged until that time he had known only the thrill of victory. He had a personal following that filled the North, magnificent in number and unswerving in devotion. A million men in the North were ready to follow where the "Little Giant" led. Defeat -bitter, crushing defeat-had now come to Douglas and his party. If Douglas, in the face of the great crisis that then confronted the nation, had lapsed into the sullen silence of disappointment, who can doubt he would have changed the whole course of history? In all human probability you and I would not be here today, citizens of the greatest republic on earth; but a line from east to west would divide this land of ours; from the dome of the capitol at Richmond would now float the flag of the Confederate states of America, and in the southland millions of men would yet be in the thraldom of slavery. But Douglas was not silent. He spoke, and his words came thundering over the mountains and down the valleys and across the plains, from Maine to California; and instantly thousands of men all over the great North sprang to the front and became "boys in blue;" and to many of you comes back the memory of the stirring drum-beat, of the flaunting flags, of the wild huzzahs, as they marched way to the Southland to battle for their country, that a free government might not perish from the earth.

LITTLE GIANT'S PATRIOTISM

American history furnished no higher example of patriotism than the conduct of Stephen A. Douglas in 1861. There was peculiar pathos in his death. Lincoln lived a finished life; his great mission was accomplished; and he passed beyond the purple hills in the full splendor of an imperishable fame. But Douglas died in the very noon day of life, with his life ambition unrealized, with magnificent possibilities yet unfulfilled. The American people owe much to Stephen A. Douglas, and if Abraham Lincoln could speak again he would gladly pay his antagonist the tribute of praise that belongs to a great and patriotic man.

LINCOLN THE GREATEST MAN

Abraham Lincoln was not a deity. It is among the glories of the human race that he was a man. He stands on a pinacle alone, the greatest man in our history-the most wondrous man of all the ages. The world will forever marvel at his origin and his career. Whence came this wondrous man? Back of Lincoln-generations before he was born-events happened which helped to shape and mold his destiny. No man escapes this inheritance from the past. We cannot know what seeds were sown a thousand years ago. We cannot see far beyond the log cabin in the wilderness of Kentucky. He came to us with no heritage save the heart and the brain which came from the fathomless deeps of the unknown.

He was endowed with that divine gift of imagination which enable him to behold the future. The emancipation proclamation loomed in his mind when as an unknown, friendless youth, he stood on the levee in New Orleans and saw a slave auction 30 years before the civil war. As he sat in the White House he saw beyond battles, beyond the end of the war, beyond the restoration of peace, a reunited country-the grandest nation on the globe, under a single and triumphant flag, moving down the centuries to its glorious destiny.