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Caption: Booklet - Life of President Lincoln on his Birthday (1896)
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.. » >l southern Illinois among*a |> >ple who werestroi sympathetic with the people of the south bj i o( kindred and associations. The ti< \ of bh h. of kindred, of years of familiar association with a chivalric people, and of marriage, all combined i cyive the man whose official acts were to : ither 1 greatest army that a constitution;!! stafo r\ r marshalled to subdue insurrection, a deep and abiding sympathy with the people of the south. This it was thai led him when the crucial m nuMit had come which required him to speak from his great other to an agitated people, already torn into fragments, to take his inaugural address upon his knee, even when surrounded by multitudesof great men and the excitement of a rgreat occasion. ^ even after the bugles had sounded the onward march of the inaugural procession, and add the important part of these memorable words: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen. and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail y o u / ' "You can have no conflict without being* yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government; while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and t defend it. " "1 am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Thou h pas sion may have strained, it must not break OUJ l « >nds of a Sect u>n." > "The mystic <-i)v<\ of memory, stretchin from ery battle Held and patriot $ rave to every livinj h( irt and hearthstone, all over this broad land will 3 t well the chorus of the Union, when atrain touched, as surely as they will be, by the better in e l s «d" o u r n a t l i r e . "
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