Howard University - Bison Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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 “One science only will one genius fit. So vast is art, so narrow human wit '—Pope

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Sbraljam Hmtoln j cruicc to uinanitp By James C. Cobb, ’28 HISTORY is full of personages who strike the eye with great and illustrious deeds; who have come on the stage of action, played well their parts, and have gone the way of all humanity leaving the stage vacant for the next players. They sprang up out of the dust, as it were, to serve humanity—to write their names on the tablet of every human heart and live forever in the minds of men. We find, as we open the tomb of the past, that therein lies a career the like of which is not to be found in history; the career of a man intimately of the world, yet unsoiled by it; vividly in contact with every emotion of his fellows and aware always of the practical design of their lives; always lonely, brooding apart from all, yet alienated from none—Abraham Lincoln, pioneer, citizen, country lawyer, astute politician, and incorruptible statesman. Already, more than a half-century after his death, the mind of man perceives in this single-hearted champion of a moral idea, a figure to whom all sorrows and ambitions may be brought, a touchstone by which every ideal of conduct may be tried, a witness for the encouragement of the forlornest hope. If predestination plays any part whatsoever in the natural course of events in human life, then Abraham Lincoln was chosen by God Almighty to serve his country, his fellowmen, and to deliver from bondage his black brother, by unloosening the political shackles which bound the latter and placing his eyes in the sun so that he might see a new and brighter day. It might be said that the brightest jewel in Lincoln’s crown was his steady, uncompromising, unconditional opposition to slavery. This he saw to be the mother of treason, the author of secession, the source of collision, trouble and suffering, the cause of degradation and discord. North as well as South. If Abraham Lincoln, alive to the moral aspect of slavery, seized the first opportunity to strike it down as fatal to the principles of justice and liberty on which a restored or permanent Union must depend, insisting that H'ontlmifit In Mcrrtl nnnit IHilsiom

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General ©liber ©tis $?otuarb erbice to a ftace A SOLDIER among soldiers, a statesman among statesmen. a man among men. with a principle that has elevated him in the hearts of his comrades and friends. He has left an indelible imprint upon the annals of the history of educational benefactors to our race. General Oliver Otis Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, on November 8, 1830. He was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1850, and from the United States Military Academy in 1857. In 1861 he became assistant professor of mathematics at West Point. During the Civil War he received many honors among which were Colonel of the Third Maine Volunteer Regiment and Brigadier General of Volunteers. He lost his right arm in the Battle of Seven Pines. For conspicuous bravery in this action, he received in 1803, a Congressional Medal of Honor. In March of 1865, he was brevetted Major General of the U.S.A. for gallant and meritorious service in the campaign against Atlanta. After the war he served as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees. Freedmen. and Abandoned Lands from 1865 to 1874. It was during this period that General Howard conceived the Herculean task of the intellectual redemption of the four million Negroes of America. He founded a Howard University, that was a combination of the home, the church and the school. Today Howard is a well equipped modern university in a city where there are nearly one hundred and fifty thousand colored people, for whose equipment and uplift it specially stands. It is not only a city university, but a national university for twelve million people. It is the greatest educational center for the colored race in the Western World. The ideal of General Howard is more than realized. Howard is the laboratory out of which Negroes who are of great worth are turned to fit into every aspect of life as American citizens. It is an international Service Center, for graduates have gone to every State of the Union, to the Islands of the Sea, to Africa, Asia. Europe, and South America. General Howard retired from active service in 1894 and died in Burlington, Maine, October 26, 1909. The service wrought by General Howard is inestimable. The prophecy. “The good men do lives after them,” is amply fulfilled.