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Ulrich Walter
Astronautics
The Physics of Space Flight
Third Edition
Astronautics
Ulrich Walter
Astronautics
The Physics of Space Flight
Third Edition
123
Ulrich Walter
Institute of Astronautics
Technical University of Munich
Garching
Germany
Cover: The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on February 7, 2008, to ferry on its 29th flight the
European science laboratory Columbus to the International Space Station. (Used with permission of
NASA)
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to the astronauts and
cosmonauts, who lost their lives in the pursuit
of space exploration
Preface to the Third Edition
This textbook is about all basic physical aspects of spaceflight. Not all have been
covered in the past editions. So, what is new in this third edition? First, there are
new sections covering new topics, such as
– Sections 1.2 and 1.3 dealing with the physics of a jet engine and general rocket
performance have been widely extended to more sophisticated effects.
– Sections 7.4.5 and 7.4.6 describe two general solutions to Newton’s gravita-
tional equation of motion.
– Section 7.7 studies stellar orbits, which are not subject to the standard but more
general types of gravitational potentials.
– Hypersonic flow theory for reentry vehicles is expounded in Sect. 6.2 as a basis
to understand how lift and drag come about and in particular how both depend
on the angle of attack, the most important control parameter to guide a winged
body through the flight corridor (see Fig. 10.22).
– Accordingly, the reentry of a Space Shuttle, which in this book even more
serves as a case study, is explained in Sect. 10.7 in greater detail and in terms of
NASA terminology.
– In Sect. 8.1, the different basic types of orbit maneuvers are discussed and
exemplified.
– A new form of solution of Lambert’s problem is derived in Sect. 8.2.3, which is
visualized in Fig. 8.8.
– Section 8.4.3 discusses modern super-synchronous transfer orbits to GEO.
– Relative motion in near-circular orbits is examined in Sect. 8.5.4.
– The virial theorem for bounded and unbounded n-body systems is derived in
Sect. 11.1.2 and used to discuss the stability of an n-body system.
– Section 12.3 (Gravitational Perturbation Effects) has been revised and greatly
extended including other and higher order perturbation terms.
– Chapter 14 has been radically revised: There is a new Sect. 14.1 on orbit
geometric issues (eclipse duration and access area) and a fully revised Sect. 14.2
on orbit determination.
vii
viii Preface to the Third Edition
Textbooks are subject to continuous and critical scrutiny of students. So is this one.
Having received many questions to the book in my lectures and by e-mail, I
constantly improved and updated the content such that already after three years it
was time to have also the reader benefit from this. You will therefore find the
textbook quite revised as for instance rocket staging (Chapter 3), engine design
(Section 4.4), radial orbits (Section 7.5), or the circular restricted thee-body prob-
lem (Section 11.4). But there are also new topics, namely Lambert transfer
(Section 8.2), relative orbits (Section 8.5), and orbital rendezvous (Section 8.6),
higher orbit perturbations including frozen orbits (Sections 12.3.6 and 12.3.7),
resonant perturbations and resonant orbits (Section 12.4), and relativistic pertur-
bations (Section 12.6.2). Along with this also the structure of the content has
changed slightly. Therefore the section and equation numbers are not always
identical to the first edition.
Nevertheless the overall structure still serves the same intention: It is set up for a
two semester course on astronautics. Chapter 1–7 (except Sect. 1.4), Section 8.1, and
Chapters 9–10 is the basic subject matter an aerospace student should know or have
been exposed to at least once. The sequence of the chapters is first rocket basics
(Chapter 1–5), thereafter a flight into space “once around”, starting with ascent flight
(Chapter 6), then space orbits (Chapter 7) and basic orbital maneuvers (Section 8.1),
interplanetary flight (Chapter 9), and finally reentry (Chapter 10). The second part
of the textbook is more advanced material, which I lecture together with satellite
technology in an advanced course for true rocket scientists and space engineers.
The careful reader might have noticed that the book now comes with a subtitle:
The Physics of Space Flight. This was decided to provide a quick comprehension
of the nature of this textbook. In addition, because the Space Shuttle and the ISS are
running examples in this textbook, a picture of the launching Space Shuttle Atlantis
was chosen as a new frontispiece. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an equally
attractive picture of my Space Shuttle Columbia.
ix
Preface to the First Edition
If you want to cope with science, you have to understand it – truly understand it.
This holds in particular for astronautics. “To understand” means that you have a
network of relationships in your mind, which permits you to deduce an unknown
fact from well-known facts. The evolution of a human being from birth to adult-
hood and beyond consists of building up a comprehensive knowledge network
of the world, which makes it possible to cope with it. That you are intelligent just
means that you are able to do that – sometimes you can do it better, and sometimes
worse.
True understanding is the basis of everything. There is nothing that would be
able to substitute true understanding. Computers do not understand – they merely
carry out programmed deterministic orders. They do not have any understanding
of the world. This is why even a large language computer will always render a false
translation of the phrase: “He fed her cat food.” Our world experience intuitively
tells us that “He fed a woman’s cat some food.” But a computer does not have
world experience, and thus does not generally know that cat food is nasty for
people. Most probably, and according to the syntax, it would translate it as: “He fed
a woman some food that was intended for cats.”, what the Google translator
actually does when translating this phase into other languages. No computer pro-
gram in the world is able to substitute understanding. You have to understand
yourself. Only when you understand are you able to solve problems by designing
excellent computer programs. Nowadays, real problems are only solved on com-
puters – written by bright engineers and scientists.
The goal of this book is to build up a network of astronautic relationships in the
mind of the reader. If you don’t understand something while reading this book, I
made a mistake. The problem of a relational network, though, is that the underlying
logic can be very complex, and sometimes it seems that our brains are not suitable
for even the simplest logic. If I asked you, “You are not stupid, are you?”, you
would normally answer, “No!” From a logical point of view, a double negation of
xi
xii Preface to the First Edition
an attribute is the attribute itself. So your “No!” means that you consider yourself
stupid. You, and also we scientists and engineers, do not want this embarrassing
mistake to happen time and time again, and so we use mathematics. Mathematical
logic is the guardrail of human thinking. Physics, on the other hand, is the art of
applying this logic consistently to nature in order to be able to understand how it
works. So it comes as no surprise to find a huge amount of formulas and a lot of
physics in this book.
Some might think this is sheer horror. But now comes the good news. Most
of the formulas are just intermediate steps of our elaborations. To understand
astronautics, you only need to engage in the formulas shaded gray and to remember
those bordered black. There you should pause and try to understand their meaning
because they will tell you the essential story and lift the secrets of nature. Though
you don’t need to remember all the other formulas, as a student you should be able
to derive these stepping stones for yourself. Thereby you will always be able to link
nodes in your relational network whenever you deem it necessary. To treat formulas
requires knowing a lot of tricks. You will learn them only by watching others doing
such “manipulation” and, most importantly, by doing it yourself. Sometimes you
will see the word “exercise” in brackets. This indicates that the said calculation
would be a good exercise for you to prove to yourself that you know the tricks.
Sometimes it might denote that there is not the space to fully lay out the needed
calculation because it is too lengthy or quite tricky. So, you have to guess for
yourself whether or not you should do the exercise. Nonetheless, only very few of
you will have to derive formulas professionally later. For the rest of you: just try to
follow the story and understand how consistent and wonderful nature is. Those who
succeed will understand the words of Richard Feynman, the great physicist, who
once expressed his joy about this by saying: “The pleasure of finding things out.”
Take the pleasure to find out about astronautics.
Acknowledgements
Key parts of the new Chap. 16 are the two sections of thermal modeling. Thermal
modeling of vehicles in space requires not only high skill, but also a lot of expert
knowledge gathered in daily work. I am happy and very thankful to Philipp Hager
(Thermal Engineer in the Thermal Control Section of the European Space Agency
at ESTEC) and to Markus Czupalla (Full Professor at the Department of Aerospace
Engineering, University of Applied Sciences Aachen, Germany) that they agreed to
contribute these important sections.
I am grateful to Olivier L. de Weck, Bernd Häusler, and Hans-Joachim Blome
for carefully reading the manuscript and for many fruitful suggestions. My sincere
thanks go to my research assistants Markus Wilde, who contributed Sects. 8.5 and
8.6 for the second edition, and equally also for this third edition; Winfried
Hofstetter, who contributed Sect. 9.6 and the free-return trajectories to Sect. 11.4.4;
to my colleague Oskar Haidn for his expertise in Sect. 4.4; and to my master student
Abhishek Chawan at Technical University, Munich, who provided numerical cal-
culations and figures to the subsection Super-Synchronous Transfer Orbits in Sect.
8.4.3.
My special thanks go to Julia Bruder for her tedious work of translating the
original German manuscript into English. Many expounding passages of this book
would not be in place without the bright questions of my students, who reminded
me of the fact that a lot of implicit meanings that scientists have become used to are
not that trivial as they seem to be.
Many figures in this book were drawn by the interactive plotting program
gnuplot v4.0. My sincere thanks to its authors Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley,
Hans-Bernhard Bröker, and many others for establishing and maintaining this
versatile and very useful tool for free public use. The author is grateful to the
GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany’s National Research Centre for
Geosciences for providing the geoid views and the visualization of the spherical
harmonics in the color tables on pages 566, 568, and 569.
xiii
Contents
1 Rocket Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Rocket Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Repulsion Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Total Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.3 Equation of Rocket Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Jet Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.1 Nozzle Divergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Pressure Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.3 Momentum versus Pressure Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3 Rocket Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.1 Payload Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.2 Rocket Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.3.3 Performance Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.4 Relativistic Rocket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.4.1 Space Flight Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.2 Relativistic Rocket Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.4.3 Exhaust Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.4.4 External Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.4.5 Space–Time Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.5 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2 Rocket Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2 Rocket in Free Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.3 Rocket in a Gravitational Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.1 Impulsive Maneuvers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.2 Brief Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3.3 Gravitational Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4 Delta-v Budget and Fuel Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.4.1 Delta-v Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
xv
xvi Contents
xxv
xxvi Abbreviations
Superscripts
T Transpose of a vector or matrix
Subscripts
0 At the beginning (zero); or
osculating (momentary)
a With respect to the atmosphere
air Atmosphere
apo Apoapsis
B Body system
c Combustion; or
commensurate
CM Center of mass (a.k.a. barycenter)
col Collision
crit Critical (maximal deceleration)
D Aerodynamic drag
div (Jet) divergence
e At exit, or ejection; or
at entry interface
eff Effective
esc Escape (velocity)
ex Exhaust
ext External
EQW Equinoctial coordinate system EQW (see Sect. 7.3.5)
xxvii
xxviii Symbols Used and Terminology
f Final (mass); or
frozen orbit
F Force
G Gravitation
GEO Geostationary
GG Gravity gradient
h Horizontal
H Hohmann
i Initial (mass)
id Ideal engine
I Inertial reference frame
IJK Cartesian equatorial coordinate system (see Sect. 13.1.4)
IR Infrared
ion Ionic
in Initial, at entry, incoming
int Internal
jet Propellant exhaust jet
kin Kinetic (energy)
L Aerodynamic lift; or
payload; or
libration point
LVLH Local vertical, local horizontal (reference frame)
max Maximum
min Minimum
micro Microscopic
n Nozzle; or
normal (vertically to …)
NTW Corotating Cartesian topocentric satellite coordinate system
NTW (see Sect. 13.1.4)
opt Optimal (value)
out Final, at exit, outgoing
p Propellant; or
planet; or
perturbation; or
periapsis (only in the case of epoch tp )
P Principal axes system; or
orbital period
per Periapsis; or
periodic
PQW Cartesian geocentric perifocal coordinate system PQW
(see Sect. 13.1.4)
pot Potential (energy)
Symbols Used and Terminology xxix
r Radial; or
reflection; or
radiation
rms Root-mean-square (a.k.a. quadratic mean)
RSW Corotating Cartesian topocentric satellite coordinate system
RSW (see Sect. 13.1.4)
s Structural
S/C Spacecraft
sec Secular
sk Station keeping
sol Solar
SOI Sphere of influence
syn Synodic
t Tangential; or
throat (of thruster)
T Transfer orbit
tot Total
trans Translation; or
transition
TTPR Thrust-to-power ratio
v Vertical
VDF Velocity distribution function
vib Vibration
h Vertically to radial
x Rotation (or centrifugal); or
argument of periapsis (apsidal line)
X Relating to the ascending node (draconitic)
∞ External, at infinity
Effective (thrust), total
Earth
Sun
∇ Spacecraft
Inner (orbit); or
black body
Outer (orbit); or
in orbit plane
£ Diameter; or
cross section
jj Parallel to …
? Vertical to … (A? ¼ effectively wetted surface area)
At orbit crossing
xxx Symbols Used and Terminology
Latin Symbols
a Semi-major axis (of a Keplerian orbit); or
speed of sound; or
acceleration
A Area
Ap Daily global index of geomagnetic activity, 0 Ap 400
b Semi-minor axis (of a Keplerian orbit); or b :¼ L tan ce =ð2DÞ
B Ballistic coefficient (without index: for drag), (see Eq. (6.2.19))
c c :¼ L cot ce =ð2DÞ; or
speed of light
c Characteristic velocity, c :¼ p0 At mp
cp Specific heat capacity at constant pressure
cV Specific heat capacity at constant volume
C Jacobi constant
C3 Characteristic energy, C3 :¼ v21
C1 Infinite-expansion coefficient
CD Drag coefficient
Cf Thrust coefficient; or
skin friction drag coefficient
CL Lift coefficient
Cn Nozzle coefficient (a.k.a. nozzle efficiency)
Cnm Multipole coefficient of the cosine term
dx Variation (small changes) of x
d vjj Differential increase in orbital velocity due to kick-burn in
flight direction
d v?O Differential increase in orbital velocity due to kick-burn
vertical to flight direction, within orbital plane, outbound
d v?? Differential increase in orbital velocity due to kick-burn
vertical to flight direction and vertical to orbital plane, parallel
to angular momentum
Dv Delta-v budget
D Drag force
D Aerodynamic drag, D ¼ jDj; or
diameter
diag(…) Diagonal matrix with elements (…)
e Eccentricity; or
electrical charge unit; or
Eulerian number, e = 2.718281828 …
E Energy; or
(elliptic) eccentric anomaly
Eið xÞ Exponential integral (see Eq. (10.4.5))
fx f function (see definition Eq. (10.4.6))
F Force (without index: gravitational force); or
hyperbolic anomaly
Symbols Used and Terminology xxxi
Greek Symbols
a Thrust angle; or
angle of attack (AOA); or
proper acceleration; or
mass-specific power output of an electrical plant; or
absorptivity (a.k.a. absorption coefficient)
b b :¼ v=cor
geocentric latitude; or
(orbit) beta angle
d Deflection angle
dð x Þ Dirac delta function
dnm Kronecker delta
dx A finite (not differential) but small variation of x; or
small variation of an orbital element over one orbital
revolution; or
small error of x
dv An impulsive maneuver (kick-burn) varying the orbital
velocity by dv
D Impact parameter
Di Distance of the libration point i normalized to the distance
between the two primaries in the R3BP (see Sect. 11.3.1)
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XV
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down over
the minds of good men in all civil society, as the fearful tidings travel
over sea, over land, from country to country, like the shadow of an
uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and manifold
as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to
mankind as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and
this, not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so
closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and fears
which, in the present day, are connected with the name and
institutions of America.
In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and saw
at first only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow.
And perhaps, at this hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of
the President sets forward on its long march through mourning
states, on its way to his home in Illinois, we might well be silent, and
suffer the awful voices of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first
despair was brief: the man was not so to be mourned. He was the
most active and hopeful of men; and his work had not perished: but
acclamations of praise for the task he had accomplished burst out
into a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep
down.
The President stood before us as a man of the people. He was
thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been
spoiled by English insularity or French dissipation; a quite native,
aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no
frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a
flatboatman, a captain in the Black Hawk War, a country lawyer, a
representative in the rural legislature of Illinois;—on such modest
foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly,
and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place. All of us
remember—it is only a history of five or six years—the surprise and
the disappointment of the country at his first nomination by the
convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his
good fame, was the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the
new and comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced
(notwithstanding the report of the acclamations of that convention),
we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely
local reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times; and
men naturally talked of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it
turned out not to be chance. The profound good opinion which the
people of Illinois and of the West had conceived of him, and which
they had imparted to their colleagues, that they also might justify
themselves to their constituents at home, was not rash, though they
did not begin to know the riches of his worth.[174]
A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him.
He offered no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not
offend by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed
suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He
was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty, which it
was very easy for him to obey. Then, he had what farmers call a long
head; was excellent in working out the sum for himself; in arguing his
case and convincing you fairly and firmly. Then, it turned out that he
was a great worker; had prodigious faculty of performance; worked
easily. A good worker is so rare; everybody has some disabling
quality. In a host of young men that start together and promise so
many brilliant leaders for the next age, each fails on trial; one by bad
health, one by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly
temper,—each has some disqualifying fault that throws him out of
the career. But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persistent,
all right for labor, and liked nothing so well.
Then, he had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and
accessible to all; fair-minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner;
affable, and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits
paid to him when President would have brought to any one else.[175]
And how this good nature became a noble humanity, in many a
tragic case which the events of the war brought to him, every one will
remember; and with what increasing tenderness he dealt when a
whole race was thrown on his compassion. The poor negro said of
him, on an impressive occasion, “Massa Linkum am eberywhere.”
Then his broad good humor, running easily into jocular talk, in
which he delighted and in which he excelled, was a rich gift to this
wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret; to meet every kind of
man and every rank in society; to take off the edge of the severest
decisions; to mask his own purpose and sound his companion; and
to catch with true instinct the temper of every company he
addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in
anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, good as
sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain against rancor
and insanity.
He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised as
pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first but as
jests; and only later, by the very acceptance and adoption they find
in the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am
sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he
would have become mythological in a very few years, like Æsop or
Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and
proverbs. But the weight and penetration of many passages in his
letters, messages and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness
of their application to the moment, are destined hereafter to wide
fame. What pregnant definitions; what unerring common sense; what
foresight; and, on great occasion, what lofty, and more than national,
what humane tone! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be
surpassed by words on any recorded occasion. This, and one other
American speech, that of John Brown to the court that tried him, and
a part of Kossuth’s speech at Birmingham, can only be compared
with each other, and with no fourth.
His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense
of mankind, and of the public conscience. This middle-class country
had got a middle-class president, at last. Yes, in manners and
sympathies, but not in powers, for his powers were superior. This
man grew according to the need. His mind mastered the problem of
the day; and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it.
Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears and
jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man wrought
incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, laboring to find
what the people wanted, and how to obtain that. It cannot be said
there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly
tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor
of ridicule. The times have allowed no state secrets; the nation has
been in such ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that no
secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and we know all that
befell.
Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war. Here was
place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot
was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years,—four years of
battle-days,—his endurance, his fertility of resources, his
magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by
his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his
humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch.
He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by
step he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening his
march by theirs, the true representative of this continent; an entirely
public man; father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions
throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his
tongue.
Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in Houbraken’s portraits
of British kings and worthies is engraved under those who have
suffered at the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And
who does not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror
and ruin of the massacre are already burning into glory around the
victim? Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to
have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen—perhaps
even he—the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen
mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep the
greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow men,—the
practical abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri and
Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Savannah,
Charleston and Richmond surrendered; had seen the main army of
the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion
of Canada, England and France.[176] Only Washington can compare
with him in fortune.
And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that he
had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve
us; that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what
remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands,—a new
spirit born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to
show the world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his
country even more by his death than by his life? Nations, like kings,
are not good by facility and complaisance. “The kindness of kings
consists in justice and strength.” Easy good nature has been the
dangerous foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its
enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to
secure the salvation of this country in the next ages.
The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which
ruled in the affairs of nations; which, with a slow but stern justice,
carried forward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out
single offenders or offending families, and securing at last the firm
prosperity of the favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the
Eternal Nemesis. There is a serene Providence which rules the fate
of nations, which makes little account of time, little of one generation
or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is
called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and
obstruction, crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the
ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of everything which
resists the moral laws of the world.[177] It makes its own instruments,
creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his
genius, and arms him for his task. It has given every race its own
talent, and ordains that only that race which combines perfectly with
the virtues of all shall endure.[178]
XVI
HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH
Holmes.
Brownell.
ADDRESS
DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867