Eulogy

Volley Club.

I mean, Eulogy played there, Believer in Creation.

Brutality, Nocturnus, The Guff.

Iron

Um, so there was this little secretary desk that Christina [laughs] said it look...

You're like, "It looks like a little Victorian wrote their..." Or was it obituary or eulogy on? [laughs]

[laughs] Eulogy.

Yeah, you're like, "Eulogy."

It was so beautiful, a little dark-

Yeah

Promises of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln.

Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln before the Municipal Authorities of the City of Boston, June 1, 1865.

Eulogy by Charles Sumner.

Part II.

whereas while heretofore states and nations have tolerated slavery recently for the first time in the world an attempt has been made to construct a new nation upon the basis of human slavery and with the primary and fundamental object to maintain enlarge and perpetuate the same therefore resolved that no such embryo state should ever be recognized by or admitted into the family of christian and civilized nations and that all christian and civilized men everywhere should by all lawful means resist to the utmost such recognition or admission observe how distinctly any recognition of rebel slavery as an independent power is branded and how all christian and civilized men everywhere are summoned to resist to the utmost such recognition and precisely for the same reason such christian and civilized men everywhere should have resisted to the utmost any recognition of rebel slavery as a belligerent power had this benign spirit entered into the councils of england when slavery first took arms this great historic nation would have shrunk at all hazard from that fatal concession in itself a plain contribution to slavery and opening the way to infinite contributions without which the criminal pretender must have speedily succumbed there would have been no plea of necessity but divine providence willed it otherwise perhaps it was essential to the full revelation of its boundless capacities that the republic should stand forth alone in sublime solitude warring for human rights and thus become an example to mankind meanwhile the war continued with proverbial vicissitudes battles were fought and lost other battles were fought and won rebel slavery stood face to face in deadly conflict with the declaration of independence when the president with unconscious power dealt another blow second only to the proclamation of emancipation this was at the blood-soaked field of gettysburg where the armies of the republic encountered the armies of slavery and after a conflict of three days drove them back with destructive slaughter as at that decisive battle of tours on which hung the destinies of christianity in western europe the invading mahometans after prolonged conflict were driven back by charles the hammer no battle of the present war was more important few battles in history compare with it a brief space later occurred another meeting on the same field it was of grateful fellow-citizens gathered from all parts of the union for its consecration to the memory of those who had fallen there eminent men of our own country and from foreign lands united in the service there too was your classic orator whose finished address was a model of literary excellence the president spoke very briefly but his few words will live as long as time since simonides wrote the epitaph for those who died at thermipoli nothing equal has ever been breathed over the fallen dead thus he began fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal how grandly and yet simply is the new nation announced with the equality of all men as its frontlet the truths of the declaration so often proclaimed by him and for which he was willing to die are inscribed on the altar of the slain while the country is summoned to their support that our duty may not be left undone it is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation under god shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth that speech uttered at the field of gettysburg and now sanctified by the martyrdom of its author is a monumental act in the modesty of his nature he said the world will little note nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here he was mistaken the world noted at once what he said and will never cease to remember it the battle itself was less important than the speech ideas are more than battles among events assuring to him the general confidence against all party clamour and prejudice this speech cannot be placed too high to some who doubted his earnestness it was touching proof of their error others who followed with indifference were warmed with grateful sympathy many felt its exquisite genius as well as lofty character there were none to criticise his re-election was not only a personal triumph but a triumph of the republic for him personally it was much to find his administration ratified but for republican ideas it was of incalculable value that at such a time the plume of the soldier had not prevailed in the midst of war the people at the ballot-box deliberately selected the civilian ye who doubt the destinies of the republic who fear the ambition of a military chief or suspect the popular will do not forget that at this moment when the noise of battle filled the whole land the country quietly appointed for its ruler this man of peace the inaugural address which signalized his entry for a second time upon his great duties was briefer than any in our history but it has already gone further and it will live longer than any other.

Part Four: Abraham Lincoln, The Oration.

Eulogy by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down over the minds of good men in all civilized society as the fearful tidings travel over sea, over land, from country to country like the shadow of an uncalculated eclipse over the planet.

Old as history is and manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as this has caused or will cause on its announcement, and this not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so closely together as because of the mysterious hopes and fears which in the present day are connected with the name and institutions of America.

Part Seven of Abraham Lincoln, A Commemoration by Various.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Part Seven, Promises of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln, Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln before the Municipal Authorities of the City of Boston, June one, eighteen sixty-five.

Eulogy by Charles Sumner.