all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the
work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall
have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan to do all which
may achieve, and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and
with all nations."

His prayer was answered. The forty days of life that remained to him
were crowned with great historic events. He lived to see his
Proclamation of Emancipation embodied in an amendment of the
Constitution, adopted by Congress, and submitted to the States for
ratification. The mighty scourge of war did speedily pass away, for it
was given him to witness the surrender of the Rebel army and the fall of
their capital, and the starry flag that he loved waving in triumph over
the national soil. When he died by the madman's hand in the supreme hour
of victory, the vanquished lost their best friend, and the human race one
of its noblest examples; and all the friends of freedom and justice, in
whose cause he lived and died, joined hands as mourners at his grave.




THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN