 The DuPont Company, makers of better things for better living through chemistry, presents the Cable Cade of America, starring Raymond Massey and Beatrice Pearson in The Thinking Heart. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is more than his glory! On next Sunday, our nation will celebrate the birthday of one of its greatest sons. More words, more eloquent words have been written about Abraham Lincoln than of any other American. And tonight, on the DuPont Cable Cade of America, we want to put together some of those great words. Words written by Carl Sandford, Walt Whitman, Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Markham, and other authors who have set down in poetry and in prose portions of the Lincoln story. Now, to tell that story, the DuPont Cable Cade presents the foremost Lincoln interpreter of our time, Raymond Massey, with Beatrice Pearson as Anne Rutledge. Anne Rutledge, whose sleep beneath these weeds, beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, wedded to him, not through union, but through separation, bloom forever, O Republic, from the dust of my bosom. In the short and simple annals of the poor, it seems there are people who breathe with the earth and take into their lungs and blood some of the dark strength of its mystery. Such a one was Abraham Lincoln, my beloved. He was a learning man. All the years of his life he sought after new wisdom. Here is a picture of his early seeking. My beloved sits at the feet of his prairie teacher, Mentor Graham of New Salem in Illinois. Now the moods. Every one of us has many moods. You yourself have more than your share of them, Abe. They express the various aspects of your character. So it is with the English language. Now then, name me the five moods. The indicative, imperative, potential, subjunctive and infinitive. And what do they signify? Well, the indicative mood is the easy one. It indicates a thing like he loves or he is loved. The imperative mood is used for commanding, like, get out of here and be doggone quick about it. Well, is that the best example you can think of? Well, you can put it in the Bible way, go thou in peace, but it's still imperative. Good, good. Now go on with the potential mood. Well, that signifies possibility, usually of an unpleasant nature, like if I ever get out of debt, I'll probably get right back in the game. Well, Abe, just bear in mind that there are always two professions open if all else fails, school teaching and politics. I'll choose school teaching. You go into politics and you may get elected and if you get elected you got to go to the city. What's your objection to cities, Abe? Have you ever seen one? Sure, I've been downriver twice to New Orleans. Do you know every minute of the time I was there I was scared? Scared of what, Abe? Well, it sounds kind of foolish. I was scared of people. Did you imagine they'd rob you of all your gold and jewels? No, I was scared they'd kill me. Why? Why should they want to kill you? I don't know. You think a lot about death, don't you? No, I've had to, because it's always seemed to be so close to me, always as far back as I can remember. When I was no higher than this table we buried my mother. The milkshake got her poor creature. I helped Pa make the coffin, whittled the pegs for it with my own jackknife. We buried her in a timber clearing beside my grandmother, old Betsy Sparrow. I used to go there often and look at the place. Used to watch the deer running over a grave with their little feet. I never could kill a deer after that. You're a hopeless mess of inconsistency, Abe Lincoln. Yes, I came here to listen to you and then I do all the talking. I'll get along. No, no, no, wait a minute. There's just one more thing I want to show you. It's a poem. Yeah, here it is. You read it, Abe. On death, written at the age of 19 by the late John Keyes, can death be sleep when life is but a dream and scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by the transient pleasures as a vision seen and yet we think the greatest pains to die. How strange it is that man on earth should roam and lead a life of woe but not forsake his rugged path nor dare he view alone his future doom which is but to awake. That sure is good, Mendoor. It's fine. Such a man was my beloved, a learning man and a loving man, gentle, kind and pure in heart. See now an evening in April on the Sangamon. The red bird is speaking its first pink whispers and the dandelion scatter buttercolors in long handfuls over the upland grass, spring breezes move in the oaks and poplars, the branches of the trees register their forks and angles and flat black shadows over the flat white spread of moon-silver on the ground. Lilacs in the dooryard remember to bloom and my beloved speaks. Anne, will you marry me? Marry, Abe? I reckon I will love you past any mortal love. Go on, no, I got no right to, no right to hope nor expect anything. Oh, yeah, you're not speaking very well for yourself, Mr. Candidate for the Illinois Legislature. No, no, I'm not. Of course, I might win this election and that might be a point in my favor. I've thought things out clear as I could. Folks seem to like to hear me talk. You can't tell a thing about how they'll vote, though. I wish I knew. Anne? Yes, Abe? Anne, will you marry me? Yes, Abe. I think perhaps I will. August of that summer came. Corn and grass fed by rich rains in May and June stood up stunted of growth for want of more rain. The red berries on the honeysuckles refused to be glad and I, Anne Rutledge, lay fever-burned. Days passed, health arrived and was helpless. Mones came from me for the one man of my thoughts they sent for him. They left the two of us together for a last hour in the log house with slats of light on his ashen face from an open clabbered door, his eyes burning in a thin shaft of light between the shadows, and then, then... Abe. Yes, Doctor? She's gone, Abe. I knew. I knew the moment. Doctor, I can't live with myself any longer. I've got to die and be with her again or I'll go crazy. Listen. I can't bear to think of her out there alone. I'm going with her. I'll find her. Abe, I guess we've got to bear these things like men. I've got to feel it like a man first. Abe, let me go. Let me out. Let me out of here. I never left him. Oh, believe me, unbeliever, I was always by his side unseen but not unknown to him, not quite unknown through all his years. He was a learning man. He was a loving man. He was, most of all, a brave man. In his knowing, in his loving, he could not fail to act. In Springfield, the little men, the quibblers, the tremors, the sharp-eyed ones, they told him, hold your tongue, Abe, and take both sides. That's the way to get votes. But he spoke out. He said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. This government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. Such was Abraham Lincoln. He was a man of wisdom, of fortitude, of human-heartedness. But he was also a laughing man. He had laughter and youth in his bones. In his head, a rag-bag of thoughts he never could expect to sell, as Swinney said. A woman is the only thing I'm afraid of that I know woman hurt me. And when he criticized a bad and childish novel? For those who like this kind of a book, this is the kind of a book they like. And when they came to him and asked him to compose an epitaph for a red Indian beggar for a dead and friendless tramp in a tattered blanket, he looked down and he wrote, Here lies poor Johnny Kongapod. Have mercy on him, gracious God, as he would do if he were God, and you were Johnny Kongapod. He was a laughing man, was Abe, and the color of the ground was in him, the redder, the smell and smack of elemental things, the rectitude and patience of the cliff, the good will of the rain that loves all leaves, the secrecy of hidden streams. See him now as he stands on the back platform of a train bound for Washington, bearing on his shoulders a gray shawl and all the cares of a country moving toward war. Perhaps this is why I had to die. If I had lived, I'd not have pushed him and prodded him toward this fate. He might never have needed to say goodbye to the prairie, to his neighbors in Springfield. My dear friend, no one not in my situation can appreciate my feelings of sadness at this party. To this place and the kindness of you people, I owe everything. I have lived here a quarter of a century and passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born and one is buried. I now leave not knowing when or whether ever I may return. I am called upon to assume the presidency at a moment when eleven of our sovereign states have announced their intention to secede from the union and threats of war increase in fierceness from day to day. It is a grave duty which I now face. In preparing for it I have tried to inquire what great principle or ideal it is that has kept this union so long to get. I believe that it was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence and which gave liberty to the people of this country and hope to all the world. This sentiment was the fulfillment of an ancient dream which men have held through all time. A dream that one day they might shake off their chains and find freedom in the brotherhood of life. We gained democracy and now there is doubt whether it is fit to survive. Perhaps we have come to the dreadful day of awakening and the dream is ended. And yet let us believe that this is not true. Let us live to prove that we can cultivate the natural world that is about it and the intellectual and moral world that is within it so that we may secure an individual, social and political prosperity whose course shall be forward which while this earth endured shall not pass away. I commend you to the care of the Almighty as I hope that in your prayer you will remember me. Goodbye, my friends and neighbors. Goodbye. The war came as it had to come and I was by his side unseen but not quite unknown to him. Look now upon another picture deep in torment and in war. A man of peace meditates before the bloody carnage of Antietam. General McClellan is now in touch with Lee in front of Sharpsburg and will attack as soon as the fog clears. It's cleared by now. They must be fighting now. What is God's will? They come to me and talk about God's will in righteous deputations and platoons day after day, laymen and ministers. They write me prayers from 20 million souls defining me God's will in the Horace Greeley's. All of them are sure they know God's will. I am the only man who does not know it and yet if it is probable that God should and so very clearly state his will to others on a point of my own duty it might be thought he would reveal it me directly more especially as I so earnestly desire to know his will. It is unfathomable. Yet I know this and this only. While I live and breathe I mean to save the union that I can and by whatever means my hands can find under the constitution will of God. I utterly lift up my hands to you and here and now beseech your aid. I have held back when others tugged me on. I have gone on when others pulled me back striving to read your will, striving to find the justice and experience of this case. I narrow down the chilly airs until my eyes are blind with the great wind in my heart sick with running after peace. And now I stand and tremble on the last edge of the last blue cliff. A hound beat out, tail down and belly flatten to the ground. My lungs are breathless and my legs are whipped. Everything in me is whipped except my will. I can't go on. And yet I must go on. We can fail and fail but deep against the failure something wars, something goes forward, something lights a match, something gets up from Sangamon County ground armed with a bitter and a blunted axe and 20,000 wasted strokes brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground. Though came the captain with a thinking heart and when the judgment thunder split the house wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest he held the ridgepole up and spiked again the rafters of the home. He held his place. Held the long purpose like a growing tree held on through blame and faltered not at praise. With victory near came praise and a great call for vengeance but still Abraham Lincoln could rise above all violent counsel and say 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 wound to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and for his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Again it is spring. Look now upon this last picture. Here is the stage and all eyes set upon it. There is the box in shadow in darkness and neglected in this moment by the laughing crowd lurking in the shadow shadow see an evil man the one appointed to snuff out a life of wisdom and courage and love his name the name of evil John Wilkes Boat his love is hate his wisdom is cunning but he's brave enough as such men go he knows the cardboard play and he waits to kill at a time he has plotted well when a laugh will go up to the players on stage at Ford's while Booth and his bullet wait behind the curtains of the box You'll see it's like where I was addressing my daughter and in my prison I've come to the earth to your room Yes, ah, the nasty bee Graciously, what's everybody going to think am I hanging on to you so? They won't think anything about it listen Mary, it's been a long time since I've had a good laugh listen and I don't know if it's you the impertinent of which you have been guilty ah, now the man is a good society, hey? well, I guess I know one and the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night I mourned and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring there was a funeral it took long to pass many given points many millions of people saw it the line of March ran 1,700 miles yes, there was a funeral from the White House in Washington where it began they carried his coffin and followed it nights and days for twelve days bells tolling the Reclim the salute guns cannon rumbling their inarticulate thunder to Springfield, Illinois the old hometown the Sangamon nearby the new Salem hilltop nearby for the final rest of the cherished dust and the night came with a great quiet and there was rest the prairie years the war years were over a man Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln wedded to him not through union but through separation bloom forever O Republic from the dust of my bosom you have just heard a special broadcast of the DuPont cavalcade of America dedicated to the memory of Abraham Lincoln the principal voices were Raymond Massey and Beatrice Pearson the words for this broadcast were taken from Carl Sandberg's the prairie years and the war years the plays Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood and Prologue to Glory by E. P. Conkel the poems Lincoln Man of the People by Edwin Markham and Rutledge by Edgar Lee Masters when lilacs last in the doryard bloomed by Walt Whitman and John Brown's body by Stephen Vincent Benet the words were chosen and arranged by George H. Faulkner Bill Hamilton speaking for the DuPont Company what would you say if DuPont Chemical Science offered you an automobile tire that was much lighter and at the same time much stronger you'd probably say I want that well that's exactly what alert progressive tire manufacturers did say when DuPont suggested Cordura high tenacity rayon for tire cords the tires on your car right now may have rayon cords so they give you extra strength and safety because of teamwork between the chemical industry and tire manufacturers tire manufacturers tested DuPont Cordura in heavy-duty truck tires on baking hot desert roads during the war it proved itself on command cars trucks and jeeps today rayon cord tires are widely used by trucks and buses and leading manufacturers now use DuPont Cordura in tires they make for passenger cars why does Cordura help make a tire better? with a natural fiber the growing conditions even the climate affect the strength of the cord as finally used in the tire a chemically made fiber on the other hand is uniform the tires on your car today if they have high tenacity rayon cords are lighter, stronger and safer and this same combination of lightness with strength has also earned a welcome for DuPont Cordura rayon from makers of garden hose conveyor belts and V-belt one of the newest uses is in plastic clothes line Cordura high tenacity rayon is one of the DuPont companies better things for better living through chemistry next week we will present Lee Bowman in his story of a veteran of World War II his friend and their hometown the music for tonight's program is composed by Arden Cornwell conducted by Donald Vorey our director John Zoller the DuPont Cavalcade of America comes to you from the stage of the Belasco Theater in New York and is sponsored by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware makers of better things for better living through chemistry