That evening Mr. Merwin was on his way to New York, and the following morning, as he stepped from the train in that city, he heard the terrible news of the assassination at Ford's Theater, the night before.
Mr. Merwin says that Mr. Lincoln talked freely with him on the overthrow of the liquor traffic, and it is his strong conviction that if his life had been spared, even a decade, he would have emphasized his lifelong devotion to the temperance cause with an open and decisive championship of State and National prohibition. The slavery issue had come unforeseen into his life and swept him heart and soul into the very vortex of that terrific struggle. As he often expressed it, "there must be one war at a time," and the one that called him first was not of his own choosing in point of order.
The abridged address on "Lincoln as a Prohibitionist," delivered by Major Merwin at the Lincoln Monument, at Springfield, Illinois, May 26, 1904, which he furnished for this book, is here given. It was printed in the _New Voice_, Chicago, June 16, 1904, to which I am indebted for a number of the foregoing items, some of which were marked by Major Merwin with a blue pencil.
After a brief introduction by Mr. Alonzo Wilson, chairman of the State Prohibition Committee, Mr. Merwin, standing on one of the steps of the stairway of the monument, with a beautiful flag covering a part of the balustrade, said:
"We stand to-day in the heart of the continent, midway between the two oceans, within the shadow of the monument of the man who made more history—who made greater history than any other person, than all other persons who lived in the nineteenth century! A leader of the people, who was great in their greatness, who carried their burdens, who, with their help, achieved a name and a fame unparalleled in human history. He broke the shackles of four millions of slaves. He saved to the world this form of government, which gives to all our people the opportunity to walk, if they will, down the corridors of time, arm in arm with the great of all ages, sheltered and inspired by the flag which has become the symbol of hope and of freedom to all the world!
"In God's good providence, I came to know him—here in his humble home in Springfield, in 1854, and before he had come to be the hero, beloved, glorified, known and loved by all who love liberty. It was in the autumn of 1854. I was a young man full of all the enthusiasm of those first Neal Dow triumphs in New England. Accepting the invitation of friends, I came to Illinois, where the campaign for State prohibition was getting under way. I reached Springfield, and one night had the privilege of speaking in the old State House, where, with legislators and townspeople, I found an appreciative audience.