side the other and better half of man - he always advocated her rights - yes, rights. In the year 1836 Mr. Lincoln issued a kind of handbill, making a declaration of some things which he wished and would advocate, and among them were these I quote his words: "I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females. "If elected I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those who oppose as those that support me." Mr. Lincoln was twenty-three years of age when he issued his first handbill in 1832, and twenty-seven when he issued the one in 1836. When Mr. Lincoln once, as said before, on due consideration, took a step forward, he never took one backward. He would at any time have supported and advocated and voted for woman's rights. Though he believed in woman's rights, he thought the time probably had not yet come to openly advocate the idea before the people. He said: "This question is one simply of time." SPRINGFIELD, ILL. LINCOLN'S FAITH IN PRAYER. AFTER GETTYSBURG. BY GEN. JAMES F. RUSLING, LL.D. Of course, secession was a miserable sophism, and the Southern Confederacy based on slavery was an anachronism. It was a pirate-ship in the nineteenth century. It sailed under the curse of both God and man, and was sure to sink or be sunk in due time. But whether we could have made such a good fight against it as we did, with any other chief and leader than President Lincoln, may well be doubted. It is true, he did not have the culture and prestige of Mr. Seward; but he had real breadth and sagacity, fine moral fibre, and was pre-eminently a man of his age and time. It may be his early beliefs were unsettled and variable; but it is certain that our great War, as it progressed, sobered and steadied him, and that in the end he came to accept as the rule of his life "to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God." As striking evidence of this, I beg to give a significant conversation of his in my presence, in July, 1863, in Washington, D. C., on the Sunday after the battle of Gettysburg. General Sickles, of New York, had lost a leg on the second day at Gettysburg, while in command of the Third Corps, and arrived in Washington on the Sunday following (July 5th). As a member of his staff, I called to see him, and while there Mr. Lincoln also called, with his son Tad, and remained an hour or more. He greeted Sickles very heartily and kindly, of course, and complimented him on his stout fight at Gettysburg, and then, after inquiring about our killed and wounded generally, passed on to the question as to what Meade was going to do with his victory. They discussed this pro and con at some length, Lincoln hoping for great results if Meade only pressed Lee actively, but Sickles was dubious and diplomatic, as became so astute a man. And then, presently, General Sickles turned to him, and asked what he thought during the Gettysburg campaign, and whether he was not anxious about it? Mr. Lincoln gravely replied, no, he was not; that some of his Cabinet and many others in Washington were, but that he himself had had no fears. General Sickles inquired how this was, and seemed curious about it. Mr. Lincoln hesitated, but finally replied: "Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of your campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went into my room one day and locked the door, and got down on my knees before Almighty God, and prayed to him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told him this was his war, and our cause his cause, but that we couldn't stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. And I then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if he would stand by our boys at Gettysburg I would stand by him. And he did, and I will. And after that. I don't know how it was and I can't explain it but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that things would go all right at Gettysburg, and that is why I had no fears about you." He said this solemnly and pathetically, as if from the very depths of his heart, and both Sickles and I were deeply touched by his manner. Presently General Sickles asked him what news he had from Vicksburg. He answered, he had none worth mentioning, but that Grant was still "pegging away" down there, and he thought a good deal of him as a general and wasn't going to remove him, though urged to do so; and "Besides," he added, "I have been praying over Vicksburg also, and believe our Heavenly Father is going to give us victory there too, because we need it, in order to bisect the Confederacy and have the Mississippi flow unvexed to the sea." Of course he did not know that Vicksburg had already fallen, July 4th, and that a gunboat was soon to arrive at Cairo with the great news that was to make that Fourth of July memorable in history forever. He said these things very deliberately and touchingly, as if he believed thoroughly in them. Of course, I do not give his exact words, but very nearly his words, and his ideas precisely. He asked us not to repeat what he said at least, not then-lest "people might laugh, you know." But his tragic death, and the long lapse of years since, and his imputed infidelity if not atheism, would seem to justify my speaking now. General Sickles also well remembers the above conversation, and gave the substance of it in a recent after-dinner address in Washington, but not so fully as the above. Of course, he could not be expected to recall it so well, "done to the death" as he then nearly was. Altogether, we Americans may well be proud of Abraham Lincoln. If not our first American, he is at least only second after George Washington; and he will go down to history an honor and a credit to human nature. In any other age he would long since have been canonized as Abraham the Just or St. Abraham the Good. On this the thirtieth anniversary of his assassination let us devoutly say of him, as was said of that good knight of old: TRENTON, N. J. "His good sword is rust, His bones are dust, His soul is with the saints, |