Thursday, April 9, 2015

Lincoln Assassination: President Lincoln on "FREE, AND EQUAL." (1865)

We note and share the following from the 'Note of the Week' section of the August 5, 1865 edition of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser published in Honolulu:

From Mr. Charles Sumner's eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered in Boston, we make the following extracts which, with the speech alluded to, might be made use of by the people in answer to the authorities quoted by the antiquated Minister of Foreign Affairs and his colleagues, which we be so unfortunate as to be plunged into another Constitutional Convention. The speech mentioned was made during his great contest with the Hon. S.A. Douglas:

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But the topic to which the future President returned with the most frequency, and to which he clung with all the grasp of his soul, was the practical character of the Declaration of Independence in announcing the Liberty and Equality of all men. These were no idle words, but substantial truth binding on the conscience of mankind. I know not if this grand pertinacity has been noticed before; but I deem it my duty to say, that to my mind it s by far the most important  of that controversy, and one  of the most interesting in the biography of the speaker. The words which he then uttered live, after him, and nobody can hear of that championship without feeling a new motive to fidelity in the cause of Liberty and Equality.
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He finished his speech on this occasion by saying:

"I leave you, hoping that the lamp of Liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal."

He has left us now, and for the last time, and I catch the closing benediction of that speech, already sounding through the ages, like a choral harmony.

Lincoln Assassination: A Masterly Tribute from an Unexpected Source (1865)

The following was published on the first page of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, published in Honolulu, dated July 8, 1865. The illustration below was included in Punch Magazine, not the Alta California or the Honolulu Commercial Advertiser. 


[From the Alta California]
A Masterly Tribute from an Unexpected Source.
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Perhaps no paper in Europe has more persistently misrepresented, defamed and insulted the people of America and our martyred President than Punch, and certainly none has winged its shafts with a deeper venom, or sent them home with surer aim. It is therefore with no little surprise and, (must we own it, also, with pleasure as well,) that, on taking up the number for May, 1865, received by Overland Mail, by George H. Bell, in advance of the regular packages, we find in place of the usual caricature of American subjects, a full page cartoon representing a couch, on which a corpse is lying draped in the Stars and Stripes; Columbia, with face hidden in the pillow, weeping over her dead, and a negro slave- no, a negro boy, a slave no longer-crouching on the floor at the feet in an attitude of unutterable grief, his broken fetters lying beside him, and in the centre of the picture Britannia, with sympathy and sorrow in her face, placing with reverent hand another wreath of evergreen upon the great of the martyred Father of Freedom. Accompanying the cartoon is an elegiac poem of nineteen stanzas, than which no nobler tribute has been paid to our Nation's dead. We give it entire:

You lay a wreath on murdered LINCOLN'S bier,
You, who with mocking pencil won't to trace,
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face.

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair,
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,
His lack of all we prize as debonair,
Of power or will to shine, of art to please.

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,
Judging each step, as though the way were plain;
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,
Of chief's perplexity, or people's paid.

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurril jester, is there room for you?

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen-
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men.

My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue,
Noting how to occasion's height he rose,
How is quaint wit made home-truth seem more true,
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.

How humble yet how hopeful he could be;
How in good fortune and in ill the same;
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he,
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.

He went about his work-such work as few
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand-
As one who knows, where there's task to do,
Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command.

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,
That God makes instruments to work His will,
If but that will we can arrive to know,
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side
That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,
As in his peasant boyhood he had plied
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights-

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,
The iron bark, that turns the lumberer's axe,
The rapid, that overbears the boatsman's toil,
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks.

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear-
Such were the needs that helped his youth to train;
Rough culture-but such trees large fruit may bear,
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it, four suffering long years'
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,
And then he heard the hisses change to tears.

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both with the same unwavering mood;
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood.

A felon hand, between the goal and him,
reach from behind his back, a trigger prest-
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest.

The words of mercy were upon his lips,
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men.

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high,
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt
If more of horror or disgrace they bore;
But thy foul name, like Cain's, stands darkly out.

Vile hand, that grandest murder on a strife,
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven,
And with the martyr's crown crow nest a life
With much to praise, little to be forgiven! 

















Tuesday, April 7, 2015

HPR Interview with Professor Justin Vance: Native Hawaiians in the American Civil War.



Go to this link at Hawaii Public Radio. Scroll down to "Appomattox, Civil War History: Justin Vance." 

Professor Justin Vance was interviewed by HPR on the subject of Native Hawaiians in the American Civil War. 

He's an organizer of Hawaii’s participation in a national event called 'Bells across the Land: A Nation Remembers Appomattox.' 

It will commemorate the anniversary of the meeting of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee that brought a formal end to the war. 

On Thursday at 9:15 a.m., Our Lady of Peace will ring its bells for 4 minutes, along with thousands of others across the nation.

Honoring the Memory of Lincoln in Honolulu: The Friend, June 1, 1865



The Friend, Honolulu: June 1, 1865
Page 1, col. 1-2

It affords us gratification to record the fact that every possible effort has been made by loyal Americans and others in Honolulu to honor the memory and becomingly notice the death of President Lincoln. 

The sad intelligence was received May 5th, and on the following day at 12 o'clock M. there was at Fort street Church the largest gathering of foreigners, for religious purposes, we have ever seen in Honolulu. Mr. McBride, our Minister Resident, appropriately stated the object for which the assembly had been called together. 

The choir followed with appropriate music. Select portions of Scripture were read, and a prayer offered by the Rev. S. C. Damon. His Honor, Chief Justice Allen, then addressed the audience, and was followed by the Rev. E. Corwin. Their addresses have already been published. All the exercises were most solemn and impressive. 

Religious exercises becoming the occasion were also held in the Roman Catholic and Reformed Catholic Churches. 


The Hawaiian Government ordered the National Flag lowered, and all officers to wear crape for fourteen days. We cannot imagine any observance, omitted, the performance of which could have added a deeper solemnity to the day, or been the! occasion of showing additional respect to the Illustrious Dead. Events of such momentous magnitude as the closing of the civil war in America, and the death of President Lincoln, occur but seldom in the slow progress of centuries. The Great Rebellion had most marvelously disturbed the elements ol society and trade throughout the world, and now to have, from the receding thunder clouds of war, an angry flash prostrates the noble man at the head of the great Republic, makes the civilized world stand aghast. We hope the waves of political strife and civil war will soon subside, and when the elements do become tranquil and calm, may it be in obedience to Him who said to the troubled waters of the Galilean Lake, eighteen hundred years ago, " Peace, be still."

Lincoln Assassination (April 15). In Memory of Abraham Lincoln, The Pacific Commercial Advertiser of July 29, 1865


The following poem by "Gravity Joy" was published on the front page of the July 29, 1865 edition of Honolulu's Pacific Commercial Advertiser:


In Memory of Abraham Lincoln
by "Gravity Joy"

Toll the ponderous, deep-toned Bell,
With cadent pauses grand!
Roll the solemn, echoing Knell
From Mountain-top to Strand
Let the heavy, pendant hammer
Wake a mournful, brazen clamor-
Spread a melancholy glamour
O'er the Land!

Near and far, let Patriots all,
Weep o'er the Stricken Just
Efer and funeral plume and pall
Give to his Holy Dust!
Let the Wall our deep grief urges
Swell to mighty, vocal Surges
Antheming a Nation's Dirges
O'er it's Trust!

Borne safely through the Battle-Wrath
By God's abundant Power
Torn from his heaven Appointed Path
In his High Zenith-Hour!
But Forevermore, the Story
How the Wrongs of Ages Hoary
He subdued, shall be his Glory-
Stand his Tower!

Crushed he the Monster, Slavery,
For Darkness gave he Light;
Hushed the Rebellious Knavery,
Restored the Country's Right
"Malice to None; but Charity
To All," without disparity-
Ehoue this such Christian Rarity
in him Bright!

Oh, his Sweet Heroism shall nerve
To braver deeds the Brave!
No More shall Freedom's Progress swerve
No More shall toil the Slave!
He shall Live in Hist'ry's pages
As Earth's Purest, Best of Sages,
Truth shall Radiate through Ages
From his Grave!