after they had gallantly stood the test of battle in the desperate attack on Fort Wagner.
On the first day of the year 1863, when Emancipation became a fact throughout the United States, a joyful meeting was held in Boston, and there Mr. Emerson read his "Boston Hymn."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In the year 1865, the people of Concord gathered on the Nineteenth of April, as had been their wont for ninety years, but this time not to celebrate the grasping by the town of its great opportunity for freedom and fame. The people came together in the old meeting-house to mourn for their wise and good Chief Magistrate, murdered when he had triumphantly finished the great work which fell to his lot. Mr. Emerson, with others of his townsmen, spoke.
Page 331, note 1. On the occasion of his visit to Washington in January, 1862, Mr. Emerson had been taken to the White House by Mr. Sumner and introduced to the President. Mr. Lincoln's first remark was, "Mr. Emerson, I once heard you say in a lecture that a Kentuckian seems to say by his air and manners, 'Here am I; if you don't like me, the worse for you.'"
The interview with Mr. Lincoln was necessarily short, but he left an agreeable impression on Mr. Emerson's mind. The full account of this visit is printed in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1904, and will be included among the selections from the journals which will be later published.
