Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1911 — Whitelaw Reid on Lincoln. [ARTICLE]

Whitelaw Reid on Lincoln.

I am only here to tell what this man •was and what he did —not to offer a oology upon him. If one were needed, •what nobler eulogy could be uttered than the simple statement that after such a strain and such trials, with final triumph plainly in Bight, he uttered those words and felt as he spoke > You have rightly selected him as the chief American maker of history in the nineteenth century. The world long ago chose another as our chief maker of history for the eighcentury. Both were typical products of your own race, as developed In new surroundings, in that conflict with wild nature and wild men which has subdued a continent to the highest uses of civilisation. Both were human; neither was entirely exempt from the weaknesses of humanity. But whether for patient fortitude and final success in war. or for wise leadership of a great people in peace, I venture to think George Washington and Abraham Lincoln not interior to any sons of the race bora in those centuries, under any skies. Nay, more, I venture to think that in the whole long and glorious history of that race while its history was ours as well as yours, they have never been surpassed.—From Address at Birmingham, Eng.