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It is no mere official mourning which hangs its sad drapery
everywhere. It is not alone that a President of the Republic is, for
the first time, assassinated. No; there is a tender grief that
characterizes the bereavement of a loved friend, which shows there
was something in this man which grappled him to men's hearts as with
hooks of steel.
But mourning the death of the Chief Magistrate, it becomes us to
review the elements of his career as a ruler, which have so endeared
him to loyal hearts.
If I were to sketch the model statesman, I would say he must have
mental breadth and clearness, incorruptible integrity, strength of
will, tireless patience, humanity, preserved from demoralizing
weakness by conscientious reverence for law, ardent love of country,
and, regulating all, a commanding sense of responsibility to God, the
Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were
found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. In
spite of a defective early education, he became a self-taught
thinker, and later in life he read widely and meditated profoundly,
until he acquired a thorough mental discipline. He possessed the
power to comprehend a subject at once in the aggregate and in its
details. His eye swept a wide horizon and descried clearly all within
its circumference. He was a keen logician, whose apt manner of
"putting things" made him more than a match for practiced
diplomatists and wily marplots.
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