THE FIRST ANNUAL LINCOLN DINNER of the REPUBLICAN CLUB of the City of New York FEBRUARY 12, 1887 Address of HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLEY, LL.D. Senator Hawley was born in Stewartsville, S. C., 1826, but spent his early life in New York and Connecticut. He graduated from Hamilton College, 1847; was admitted to the Bar but gravitated to journalism and became an ardent Abolitionist and one of the founders of the new Republican party. He was part proprietor of the Hartford "Courant." He enlisted at the outbreak of the Rebellion and was brevetted a major-general in 1864, taking part in many important battles of the Virginia campaigns. In 1866 he was elected Governor of Connecticut. In 1868 he was president of the Republican National Convention that nominated Grant for the presidency. He was elected Congressman for the First Connecticut District, and in 1881 U. S. Senator from that State. He was president of the Centennial Commission in 1876. Address of HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY I am profoundly grateful for the cordiality of your greeting. Three days ago I received notice that this evening I was to address what I understood was the Young Men's Republican Club of New York, and that I would be expected to say something concerning Abraham Lincoln. I have had no leisure hour since that time—no hour of entire peace and quiet, save those spent in sleep. It is not given to every man to have entire leisure for study, reflection and penmanship-like our friend Depew, who doubtless has a thoroughly-prepared speech. His lateness in arrival was certainly suspicious. I thought it was a young men's Republican club, and it is; for we are, a few of us, at this moment, looking into the mirrors; and a man is as old as he feels; a woman, perhaps, as old as she looks. We are feeling young to-night, and I had (thinking the invitation a compliment to my youth) many things in my mind to say concerning the pleasure that I feel in hearing of the organization of young men's Republican clubs in several of the New England States and elsewhere. It is getting to be a fashion with us in New England-in Rhode Island and in Connecticut especiallythat the really young men, the boys of twenty-one, twenty-five, thirty and thirty-five, should organize young men's Republican clubs, taking up the glorious traditions that have come down to them from the history of the last twenty-five years, and prepar ing to make the future as true to whatever is noble and beautiful in the idea of the republic as the past twenty-five years have been. I was asked to say something concerning Lincoln. Well, sir, like all the rest of you, and like the rest of the world, I have been thinking of nothing but what was good of Abraham Lincoln. No, not all the rest of the world; but like all of the Republicans. Why, it is only a very few years, it seems to me, since men spoke of him in the public prints, habitually, as a "guerilla"; even sneering at him, after his glorious death, as the "late lamented"-that being the favorite phrase of a great metropolitan journal at one time; and there were men who called him "uncouth," "coarse," "brutal," "ignorant," and "rail-splitter" in jest and not in honor. But all that has gone by now, and there is not in the civilized world a voice or a pen that does not place Abraham Lincoln among the foremost of the world's history-not one-and it has become the fashion, even among our friends, the enemy, to speak of him with respect. I have here Abraham Lincoln's biography, as written by himself, about thirty years ago, for Larman's Dictionary of Congress: "Born February 12, 1809"-well, he would not be the oldest of our dear old friends if he were with us now-"in Harden County, Kentucky. Education defective. Profession, lawyer. Have been a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war." What is a captain nowadays? The distinguished man is a private! "Postmaster at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature"-New York men don't think much of that "and was a member of the lower house of Congress. Yours, &c., Abraham Lincoln." Well, there has been an addition made to that biography since that time. "Education defective." I suppose that there are still people in the world who will say that Abraham Lincoln was de fective in what is called culture. He had none of the advantages that the salon gives to men. There were no gatherings of intellectual, trained, travelled and experienced people to improve his manners or his language; yet none since Socrates has spoken like him; and there have been very few in all the world's history whom the common people heard more gladly. What was it, then, that made Abraham Lincoln one of the men who, in truth and justice, was of the very finest human culture known to mankind? Let the eminence to which he attained, the power he had over men, the almost divine sagacity with which he led them-let these things, then, be an encouragement to all men who believe in the possibility as well as the necessity of popular government in the coming ages of the world. Abraham Lincoln had a profound faith in the people. Oh, if one of us says, nowadays, that you may in the end trust the people; that it is a magnificent jury; that if you have a good cause and will fight for it, and write for it, and talk for it, and preach for it, you may trust the great heart of the American people to act right finally, there are not lacking men all around Europe, and in considerable numbers in the United States, who put up their glasses, as I am obliged to do mine, and look at us with curiosity. I am not going to read to you at length, but I have here in a delicate little volume, selected by the author of "The Man Without a Country"—which was a regiment, a brigade of itself-some extracts from what Abraham Lincoln said: "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present difference is either party without faith or being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on your side of the South, then truth and justice will surely pre |