Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln Anniversary: Thursday Evening, February 15, 1917, Under Auspices of Men's Circle of Richard Street M. E. Church, Joliet, Illinois
The president was acrimoniously criticised and aspersed by many of his friends because he did not take more summary and aggressive action on the slavery question. But the patient and far-sighted man had an almost inspired gift for doing the right thing at the right time. He knew that to free the slaves at once would be resented by the Border States and prevent thousands Of loyal Democrats from joining the Union Army, who loved the Union but were not then willing to wage war for the emancipation Of the slaves. Even the great editor, Horace Greeley, a man Of supreme intellect, but impractical, lost his temper and wrote Lincoln a letter on the subject, and such as none but he could write, from his own standpoint, demanding immediate emanci pation. In reply Lincoln wrote a letter that became famous for its patient, judicious, logical and far-seeing views and spirit. It shed new luster on the moral grandeur and intellectual grasp Of the man. The eloquent, vehement and fanatical Wendell Phillips, who called him the slave hound Of Illinois, assailed and denounced him, with hundreds Of other radicals, who were too impatient to wait for the president to consummate his own pur poses. But for two years the president held steadily to his determined course, unmoved amid victories and defeats, and when the hour struck, he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation, not a day too soon or too late. He had kept the vow he had made before the auction block in New Orleans to John Hanks and made possible the realization of his own dream, that the time would come, When the sun would not shine, when the rain would not fall and the wind would not blow upon any man who went forth to unrequited toil.
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