and parts of states are and henceforth shall be free; and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. "And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States, to garrison forts, positions, stations and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. "In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the city of Washington, the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

"By the President:

"WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The full text of Mr. Lincoln's address at Gettysburg on the dedication of the National cemetery on November 19, 1863, is here reproduced as follows: "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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that Nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that Nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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 honored 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."

AIND

OF

ANDREW JOHNSON.

A

NDREW JOHNSON became President of the United States amid circumstances which would have justified fear and grave consideration upon the part of the greatest hero or most eminent statesman our country has yet produced; and when in his inaugural address he referred to the gravity of the task and the need he should have of help from all available sources, no one regarded his expressions as the empty form that modesty or humility might suggest. Only a few days since, Lee had handed his sword to Grant under the tree at Appomatox, and the Confederacy lay in ruins at the feet of the conquering north. To produce order out of chaos, to reconstruct the new out of the old, to preserve that which had the right to live, and destroy beyond repair that which fate had decreed must die, to bring healing in the wake of peace, to punish where justice and safety demanded, to forgive where forgiveness was safethese were the tasks that were before the Chief Executive and those associated with him in the conduct of National affairs. It was a labor before which one who possessed the experience, courage, faith and native statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln might well shrink, beloved as he was by the people, respected by all, and strong in the confidence of those by. whose immediate help success was alone possible. And when, at this critical period that demanded moderation and the calmness of wisdom above all things, the hand of a fanatic assassin was raised against the wise and tried leader whom all trusted, and Lincoln lay dead among his people; the complex web was tangled with new, dark threads of destiny, and the danger before the hand that attempt its untanglement was increased two fold. It was, indeed, a serious service which Andrew Johnson in those dark April days of 1865 was called upon to perform. The spirit in which he approached it, and the degree of success with which it was performed, can best be considered and understood after a brief glance at his life and public services in minor fields.

Whatever faults may have existed in Andrew Johnson's life, and whatever defects may have been welded into his character, false pride and a

desire to cover up or ignore the humbleness of his origin was not among them. In his outspoken bluntness, he seemed to lose no chance to show the proud and disdainful people of wealth among whom his early years were cast, that he despised their contempt and was more proud of his honest labor than they of their lineage and riches. When high in power and a subject of ridicule from those who despised his origin, he made use of a reply that should have silenced those who derided, when he said:

'When the recent nominations were made at Baltimore, the Tory papers of the country said: "They have a rail-splitter and buffoon for the head of the ticket, and upon the tail they have a boorish tailor.' The idea at the bottom of all this opposition is that the man who rises up from the mass of the people, who advocates the doctrine that man is capable of self-government, has virtue and intelligence to govern himself, should be repudiated. I have nothing to regret that my early life was spent in the shop. I never boast of it in my canvasses, but when it is brought up as a reproach, I have met it in the way that it should be met.

Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808. His father was in very poor circumstance, and when he died left his wife and son of five years absolutely dependent upon themselves for support. Of those early days little is known, except that when ten years of age the boy was apprenticed to a tailor, and commenced upon his life's work at a season when most boys are only fairly beginning to understand and appreciate their books. There was a natural thirst for knowledge within him. which caused him to make the most of such limited means of learning as came within his reach. In the society of his fellow workmen, we are told, he became conscious of his great ignorance, and was possessed with a desire to learn to read. The visits to the workshop of a gentleman who lightened the hours of toil by reading to the workmen, still further aroused the ambition of the young apprentice. The volume selected—a collection of speeches by eminent English statesmen--sowed in his mind an ambition. that genius and hard work in after years enabled him to achieve. "He devoted the hours after his day's work was done to mastering the alphabet, and then asked the loan of the volume that he might learn to spell. The gentleman, pleased at his earnestness and appreciating his ambition, presented him the book, and otherwise assisted him in his studies. Through industry and patience, aided by a strong determination to overcome all obstacles, success crowned his efforts, and books were no longer sealed volumes to his youthful mind." Upon the expiration of his apprenticeship, in 1824, he proceeded to Laurens Court House, South Carolina, where he worked as a journeyman tailor until May, 1826, when he returned to Raleigh. He remained there until the fall of the same year, when with his mother he removed to Greenville, a small town in eastern Tennessee, where he had succeeded in securing work. It was soon after his settle