In Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier counted the late American President as one of his heroes. In 1909, for example, Laurier delivered a remarkable speech before the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal. During his address he discussed Lincoln at length, even quoting the latter’s famous Second Inaugural Address word-for-word.

Sir Wilfrid’s speech is worth quoting at length. You will find it below.

Prime Minister Laurier: Abraham Lincoln is one of the greatest men in history…  He had an intuitive and instructive discernment in political problems and, with all, he had a most tender heart, and the most humane soul.

When he was a young man, he had gone down the Mississippi as far as New Orleans on a business errand and he had seen with his eyes something of the cruelty, shame and degradation of slavery, and it is said that he remarked to a friend, “If ever I have an opportunity, I shall hit slavery hard.”

He was elected President of the United States, he was installed in office, and you might have thought he could have hit slavery hard; but he could not do it because public opinion would not permit him to do it. The Civil War broke out; it was to go on for four long years; the Northern States were invaded by the Southern armies, and even then, Abraham Lincoln could not carry out his own instinct. He had to submit to contumely, and to insults, and to taunts from ardent abolitionists, but he stood the infliction and did not move until he thought the time had come.

I may, perhaps, upon this point read you a letter which he addressed to (newspaper editor and abolitionist) Horace Greeley, an able, passionate, petulant man, who clamorously called for the immediate enfranchisement of the slaves.

“I have just read yours of the nineteenth, addressed to myself through the New York Tribune. If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn I do not, now . . . argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored the sooner the Union will be the Union as it was. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the coloured race I do because I believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I believe that whatever I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”

I have quoted you this letter because it shows that in a democracy such as ours, American as well as (Canadian), public opinion has always to be scanned and measured, and that it is possible while respecting it to lead it. Mark the way in which Abraham Lincoln at that time places the question before the country. He says it is not a conflict to save or to destroy slavery, but that it is a conflict for the Union and upon that ground he appealed to the nation, and his appeal was responded to; but, had he asked the nation to fight to abolish slavery, his appeal would have remained unheeded. Yet, at the very time that Lincoln was penning that letter, he had in his desk a proclamation already prepared for the abolition of slavery; he was biding his time, and two months later, when he thought the moment had come, he issued his proclamation. It was simply a war measure, not applicable all over the Union, but only in the insurgent States.

As the war proceeded public opinion at last commenced to move, and then moved rapidly. At first the Northern people, who were averse to slavery, out of the respect they had for the views of their fellow countrymen in the South, had refused to interfere with it; but, when they found their country invaded, the Union jeopardized, then they were prepared to go to the bottom and to deal with slavery, and Abraham Lincoln, the keenest judge of the fluctuation of public opinion that ever lived, saw the time was ripe. He advised the Republican Convention, which met in 1864, to adopt a plank in favour of the total abolition of slavery. His advice was accepted, the plank was adopted, and in November following the principle was ratified by the people, and, in the following March, 1865, the curse and the shame of slavery was forever blotted out from the fair name of the American Republic.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, it may be interesting if I give you the judgment which was passed by Lincoln himself upon slavery, its origin, its course and the responsibilities of the American people for the same. I will, therefore, if you will permit me, read you the Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, delivered by him on the fourth of March, 1865, a few weeks before his assassination, and to me it is one of the most extraordinary papers that was ever written. I think you will agree that in it there is a tone which has been observed by one of Lincoln’s historians that is not far from the dignity of the ancient prophets:

“At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging too all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.”

“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.”

“One-eighth of the whole population were coloured slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”

“It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offences; for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’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 by another drawn with 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.”

I do not know how you regard it, but it seems to me that these last words sound the loftiest note that could be struck in politics.