Answer:
Lincoln said:
"I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable questions of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone."
-Lincoln After Losing 1858 Senate Race
Answer:
to prove that newly-freed African-Americans were making social and economic progress
The speaker and the captain are not happy; the captain is dead and the speaker sad because of this.
Yet, other people are happy about the end of the trip ("the people all exulting"). Those two images are being contrasted here- so the answer is:
<span>The poet is trying to show that there are people celebrating, but they do not feel the pain of the speaker.</span>
