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CORNELL- 
 
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 1943 
 
Date Due 
 
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 Cornell University Library 
 E457 .S54 1903 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. f,,,,f,!;,f;?'iJf,';,,SSM 
 
 3 1924 032 764 346 
 
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 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 A CHARACTER 
 SKETCH ■ 
 
 ROBERT DICKINSON 
 SHEPPARD, D.D, 
 
 WITH SUPPLEMENTARY 
 ESSAY, BY 
 
 G. MERCER ADAM. 
 
 ALSO, SUGGESTIONS 
 
 FROM THE LIFE OF 
 
 LINCOLN, BY 
 
 Prof, FRANCIS W. 
 SHEPARDSON,Ph.D 
 
 the early days of 
 abraham lincoln, by 
 
 Prof. GOLDWIN 
 SMITH, D.C.L.(Oxon) 
 
 TOGETHER WITH 
 
 ANECDOTES, 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS, 
 
 AND CHROHOLOGY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Frederick J. Drake & Co. 
 
 PUBLl SHE.RS 
 
Copyright, 1898, 
 By The University Association 
 
 Copyrieht, 1903, 
 By H. G. Campbell Publishing Co. 
 
IT is a far cry from a Kentucky cabin to the White 
 House at Washington, from the estate of a poor white 
 child in the south to that of Chief Magistrate of the 
 United States of America. Yet it is our task to show 
 how that distance was spanned in the life of Abraham 
 Lincoln, and the story of it should be of the highest in- 
 terest to every American youth. 
 
 We are probably not sufficiently removed from the 
 times of Abraham Lincoln to estimate him in his full 
 proportions. The greater part of the literature that has 
 been written concerning him, that is not absolutely 
 ephemeral, has been written for a people who reverenced 
 him, and who would brook no other than a reverent hand- 
 ling of the object of their devotion. Such jealousy, how- 
 ever, was needless, for loving hands have written intel- 
 ligently and judicially the story of his life, and of the 
 unfolding of his character. They have written with the 
 ardor of personal friendship and almost in the heat of the 
 exciting days when Lincoln stood as their champion and 
 contended for the National Union to which they were 
 devoted. 
 
 These circumstances are not favorable to the ex- 
 
 5 
 
6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 position of the real Lincoln. And yet more than most 
 of the great men of history, his individuality was so strik- 
 ing, its outlines were so well defined, that even a poor 
 artist can trace them, and in his maturer years his action 
 was so studied and deliberate — as if he were appealing to 
 the solemn verdict of future generations — that it is not 
 easy to go far astray in our judgments concerning him. 
 Take him for all in all, he furnishes us a striking exam- 
 ple taken from our own times, of a typical American who 
 was born in poverty and reared amid unlikely surround- 
 ings and influences, but who made the most of his slen- 
 der opportunities for intellectual culture, kept himself 
 pure amid much that was degrading, and step by step, 
 attained to nobleness of character, to intellectual strength, 
 to honor and station among those who knew him best 
 and finally, to the highest eminence of position and honor 
 that an American can reach. 
 
 In his dareer he epitomizes a half century of the most 
 interesting and critical conditions of our national life. 
 And the progress of events that culminated in the Civil 
 War, its conduct, and the work of reconstruction that 
 followed it, can nowhere be studied as intelligently as in 
 the story of his outlook on the political life of the nation, 
 of his political affiliations, and his active participation in 
 the settlement of the great questions that involved the 
 existence and prosperity of the nation. 
 
 We shall turn first to his ancestry and early environ- 
 ment. He was bora Februarv I2th in the^yeax 1809, in 
 a miserablejcabin on the farm of Thomas lyincoln, or 
 "Linkhorn," as he was sometimes called, three miles from 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 7 
 
 Hocjgensville in the present county of LaRue in the state- 
 of Kentucky. Of his ancestry on the Lincoln side, little 
 is known save that they were among the early settlers of 
 Virginia and were of English descent, and probably were 
 Quakers. The mother of Abraham lyincoln was Nancy 
 Hanks, whos^ ancestors came from England to Virginia 
 and moved on to Kentucky with the Lincolns, settling 
 near them in Mercer County. 
 
 It was while learning his trade as a carpenter in the 
 shop of Joseph Hanks, the uncle of Nancy Hanks, that 
 Thomas Lincoln met and courted the mother of the great 
 president. He was of medium stature, standing five 
 feet-ten in his shoes. His complexion was swarthy, his 
 hair dark, his eyes gray, his face full and round, his nose 
 prominent; he was strong and sinewy; he was peace lov- 
 ing but brave enough to fight when occasion demanded, 
 as it often did in those rough days in the border state of 
 Kentucky; he was of roving disposition, a good story tel- 
 ler, and full of anecdote picked up in his wanderings. 
 In politics he was a Jackson Democrat, and in religion 
 "everything by turns and nothing long. " A botch car- 
 penter by trade, he soon tired of that and turned farmer, 
 though he did not entirely abandon rough carpentry, and 
 as a farmer he showed his inconstancy by frequent mi- 
 grations from one location to another. 
 
 Nancy Hanks is described as a slender, symmetrical, 
 woman of medium height, with dark hair, regular feat- 
 ures, and sparkling hazel eyes. Of her it is related, as an 
 unusual circumstance in the illiteracy of the time, that 
 she possessed the rare accomplishments of reading and 
 
8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 writing, and taught her husband to write his name. She 
 was born to drudgery and her natural beauty soon gave 
 place to the faded and woe- begone expression that pov- 
 erty and struggle and uncertainty are wont to write on 
 the faces and forms of the women of the frontier. The 
 first home of her married life was a wretched hovel in 
 one of the alleys of Elizabeth town, Kentucky, where her 
 first child was born, arid a little later she occupied with 
 her husband the miserable cabin on Nolin Creek_where, 
 on account of his thriftlessness, he barely met the neces- 
 sities of the little household. 
 
 It was here that Abraham , Lincoln was born. The 
 manger at Bethlehem was not a more unlikely birth- 
 place. And here he remained until he was four years 
 old, and then the elder Lincoln jiiigxated to another farm 
 some six miles from Hodgensville, on Knob Creek,whose 
 clear waters flowed at length into the Ohio, twenty-four 
 miles below Louisville. This new move that might have 
 proved advantageous — for the banks of the creek and the 
 valleys of the region gave great promise of fertility — 
 was like Thomas Lincoln's other experiences; only six 
 acres out of the two hundred and thirty-eight that made 
 up the farm, were worked, and- no permanent title to the 
 land was acquired by him. After four years a new mi- 
 gration began, this time to Indiana. 
 
 During these years of Kentucky life young Lincoln's 
 development went on with none of the modern aids. A 
 few days of schooling each summer at the hands of 
 Zachariah Riney and Caleb" Hazel were all the opportu- 
 nities that Kentucky offered him. During the re- 
 
--"aSfgivi.'-^sfiisS'fSr''^''- 
 
10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 mainder of his time he vegetated. In the fall of 
 1816, the spirit of change came over Thomas Lin- 
 coln once more. He had had some experience as a 
 flat-boatman on two trips to New Orleans, and thought 
 to move in that way. He used his skill in car- 
 pentry for the construction of a flat-boat, converted 
 his personal property into four hundred gallons of 
 whiskey, and started with his tools and his whiskey, alone. 
 He was ship-wrecked on the raging Ohio but righted his 
 boat, rescued most of his whiskey and a few of his tools, 
 and floated down to Thompson's Ferry two and a half 
 miles west of Troy, in Ferry County, Indiana. Sixteen 
 miles d istant from the river, he found a place that he re- 
 garded a promising location. Thence he started back 
 on foot for his wife and children, and on borrowed horses 
 he brought the few remaining effects of his family, their 
 clothicg and bedding and the small stock of kitchen 
 utensils. 
 
 The Lincoln farm was situated between the forks of 
 the Big and the Little Pigeon CreekiS. a mile and a half 
 east of the little village of Gentryville, in a small well- 
 woodrd region, full of game. There he built a log cabin 
 closec", on three sides and open on the fourth. The 
 house was about fourteen feet square and floorless. Into 
 this comfortless cabin, with few of the ordinary arrange- 
 men''s for warmth or covering, exposed to all the winds 
 that blow, for it was on a hillock and built of poles, he 
 con' lucted his little family. The place was a solitude. 
 No road approached it save the trail that Lincoln ha;d 
 'hU ed through the woods. For a whole year they en- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ii 
 
 dured the discomforts of this home in the woods, while 
 some ground was being cleared and a little crop planted. 
 Spme relatives followed them from Kentucky the next 
 year, and among 
 them, Dennis 
 Hanks, the young 
 cousin of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 In 1817 a new 
 log house was 
 reared by Thom^ 
 as Lincoln of un- 
 hewed timbers and 
 without floor, door 
 or windows. Sev- 
 en or eight older 
 settlers had pre- 
 ceded them to this 
 region and soon 
 a tide of emigra- 
 tion poured in, 
 sparsely peopling the waste places of the new state of 
 Indiana. The nearest hand-mill to Thomas Lincoln was 
 ten miles away, whither Abraham carried the grist. Of 
 schooling there was little more than , in Kentucky, and 
 that of a very simple kind. For two years Thomas Lin- 
 coln went the even- tenor of his way, raising a little corn, 
 shooting a little game, failing to provid e systematically 
 or with any solicitude for the needs of his family. No 
 furniture was in the house save the roughest — three-legged 
 
 Dennis Hanks. 
 
12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 stools for chairs, a log with legs on it for a table, bed- 
 steads made of poles fastened at one end to the wall and 
 resting on forked sticks, driven into the earthen floor at 
 the other end. On these, boards were laid, while leaves 
 and old clothing served for the bed. They ate from a 
 few pewter dishes, without knives or forks. A dutch oven 
 and a skillet, were the sole utensils of their cabin. A 
 bed-room in the loft, to which he climbed on pins driven 
 in the wall, was the nightly roost of the future president. 
 
 Now the milk sickness appeared, and Thomas Lin- 
 coln's carpentry was employed in building rough coffins 
 for the dying settlers. He cut out the timber from logs 
 with his whip-saw and made rough boxes for a number 
 of his friends. Nancy Lincoln was stricken. There was 
 not a physician witliin thirty miles, and no money to pay 
 him should he come. Without a hand to relieve her, the 
 poor jaded woman, the mother of the great president, 
 dropped away on the ^h of October, 1818, and was 
 buried without ceremony in an unmarked grave. She 
 had given birth to a man-child on whom time should set 
 the seal of greatness. His sole apparent inheritance from 
 her, however, seems to have been the tinge of melancholy 
 that often clouded his life. In his observations upon 
 the making of his character he has Tittle or nothing to 
 say of his own mother. The earlv vears of his life were 
 years of neglect. He grew up in deprivation, ill-fed. ill- 
 clothed, to develop alone in the sunshine and in the 
 forest the nature that was in him. 
 
 But a new influence was soon imported into the Lin- 
 coln home. After thirteen months of widowhood. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I3 
 
 Thomas Lincoln made a ioumey io- Kentucky, and 
 brought home with him a new wife, whom he had known 
 and loved many years before as Sally Bush, a woman of 
 ' 'great energy and good sense, very neat and tidy in her 
 person and manners, and who knew how to manage 
 children." She brought with her from her Kentucky 
 home a store of luxuries and comforts that the Indiana 
 cabin had never known. It took a four-horse team to 
 move her effects, and at once she demandle.d._that-the 
 floorless, windowiesslind doorless cabin shQuld_be- made 
 habrtable. Warm beds were for the first time provided 
 for the children. She took ofE their rags and clothed 
 them from her own stores; she washed them and treated 
 them with motherly tenderness, and to use her own lan- 
 guage, she made them look a little more human. 
 
 Her heart went out at once to young Abe and all was 
 changed for him. She discovered possibilities in him 
 and set about his training, gratified, loved and directed 
 him, and won his heart. She was, the mother whom he 
 describes as his"saintly mother,his angel of a mother who 
 first made him feel like a human being" — and took him 
 out of the rut of degradation and neglect and shiftless- 
 ness that, Tf long continued, might have controlled his 
 destinyr : "She^msisted that he should be sent to school 
 as soon as there was a school to go to; he had already ac- 
 quired a little reading and writing and was quick in the 
 acquisition of knowledge. 
 
 In the rude school house at Little Pigeon Creek where 
 Hazel Dorsey presided, Abraham attended in the winter 
 of 1819, and quickly became the best speller in the 
 
14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 school. In the winter of 1822 and '23 he attended An- 
 drew Crawford's school in the same place, where manners 
 as well as spelling, were a part of the curriculum. He 
 was now a lanky lad of fifteen, and rapidly rising to his 
 full stature of six feet-four. He was not a beauty with 
 his big feet and hands, his shrivelled and yellow skin, 
 and his costume of low shoes, and buckskin breeches too 
 short by several inches, his linsey-woolsey shirt and coon- 
 skin cap; but he was good-humored and gallant, popu- 
 lar with the boys and girls, and a leader. 
 
 His last schooling was in 1826, at a school four and a 
 half miles from his home, kept by Mr. Swaney. By this 
 time he had acquired all the knowledge that the poor 
 masters of that frontier region could impart, henceforth he 
 must supervise his own education, as the family were too 
 poor to spare him if opportunities for learning had pre- 
 sented themselves. He must work now in the shop or 
 on the farm, or as a hired boy among the neighbors. 
 One of his employers tells us that he used to get very 
 angry with him, he was always reading or thinking 
 when he got a chance, and would talk and crack jokes 
 half the time. After the days work was over, by the 
 light of the fire, he would sit and cipher on the wooden 
 fire shovel. Any book that fell in his way was eagerly 
 devoured, and its striking passages were written down 
 and preserved. "Aesops Fables" improved his native 
 art of pungent story telling, "Robinson Crusoe," Bun- 
 yan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and the Bible were eagerly 
 read by him, as were Weem's "Washington" and a his- 
 tory of the United States. These few books enriched 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 15 
 
 his mind and laid the basis of his straight-forward, lucid 
 literary style. The Revised Statutes of Indiana, that 
 could not be loaned from the office of the constable, drew 
 him thither like a magnet, and became the basis of his 
 legal lore. 
 
 At home, he was the soul of kindness, instantly ready 
 for kindly service, full of his jokes and stories. His 
 father and his cousin were storytellers and it was often a 
 matter of friendly rivalry which could out-do the other. 
 That talent, thus cultivated, was one of the sources of his 
 mastery of men. He had a powerful memory and would 
 often repeat to his comrades long passages from the books 
 he had read, or regale them with parts of the Sunday 
 sermon with such perfect mimicry that the tones and 
 gestures of the rude preachers of that day were vividly 
 reproduced. Even in the harvest field, he was wont to 
 take the stump and sadly interfere with the labor of the 
 day by discoursing to the harvest hands, and more than 
 once his father had to break up this diversion with se- 
 verity. He had the instincts of the politician and the 
 orator. He could please and divert men, and these rude 
 early opportunities developed in him the consciousness 
 of his power that should one day become so masterful. 
 
 His fondness for the society of his fellows was very 
 marked. He could withdraw himself utterly from men 
 over a book, but liis tastes were strong to be among men. 
 All the popular gatherings where men assembled were 
 eagerly sought out by him; corn shuckings, log rollings, 
 shooting niatches, weddings, had a strong fascination for 
 him. He enjoyed the sport and was one of the foremost 
 
i6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 to make it. In all rustic sports he was at home. His 
 strength was phenomenal, and as a wrestler he seldom 
 found his match. 
 
 From the time he left Crawford's school he was using 
 all his faculties daily and learning all that the rude world 
 about him had to teach him. Dennis Hanks tells us of 
 the educational processes of the time, "We learned by 
 sight, scent and hearing. We heard all that was said, 
 and talked over and over the questions heard, wore them 
 slick, greasy and threadbare, went to political and other 
 speeches and gatherings as you do now. We would 
 hear all sides and opinions, talk them over, discuss them, 
 agreeing or disagreeing. He preached, made speeches, 
 read for us, explained to us, etc. He attended trials, went 
 to court always, read the Revised Statutes of Indiana, 
 dated 1824, heard law speeches and listened to law trials. 
 He was always reading, scribbling, writing poetry, and 
 the like. To Gentryville, about one mile west of Thomas 
 Lincoln's farm, Lincoln would go and tell his jokes and 
 stories, and was so odd, original, humorous and witty, 
 that all the people in town would gather round him and 
 he would keep them there till mid-night. He was a good 
 talker, a good reader, and a kind of news-boy." 
 
 Thus he absorbed all the intellectual life that was 
 astir, and used his powers as he had occasion, observing 
 public business, watching the methods of the attorneys 
 at the bar and kindling with their eloquence. Once the 
 awkward boy attempted to compliment an attorney for 
 his great effort, and years afterward he met him and re- 
 called the circumstance, telling him that up to that time 
 
o 
 U 
 
 a 
 o 
 u 
 
 s 
 
 
 o '-' 
 '3 
 
 o 
 U 
 
 o 
 U 
 
 
i8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 it was the best speech he had ever heard, and of his feel- 
 ing that if ever he could make such a speech as that his 
 soul would be satisfied. High aspiration was evidently 
 stirring in him then, and more than once, when twitted 
 with his fooling, as his story telling and pranks were 
 called, and asked what would ever become of him, he was 
 wont to answer that he was going to be President of the 
 United States. In the rude circles in which he moved, 
 his power of instructing, entertaining and leading was 
 recognized. It was a prophecy to him of leadership in 
 a larger sphere. 
 
 In 1 828, he made his first trip to New Orleans as a flat- 
 boatman at eight dollars a month. The trip was full of 
 adventure, and attended with some danger, but it was a 
 profitable one for his employer, and one of enlargement 
 of mind for the employed. From that time till 1830, 
 when he became of age, he worked among the neighbors 
 or for his father. And then it was determined to emi- 
 grate to Illinois. There, at a point ten miles west of De- 
 catur, the Lincolns settled, and Abraham's last filial act 
 before his majority was to split rails for the fencing of 
 the ploughed land of the new homestead. Then he was 
 free and the home ties were sundered, though his love 
 for his step-mother was often manifested in later years by 
 frequent gifts of money and frequent visits. 
 
 He took odd jobs in the country round and the pay 
 was all his own. In 1831, he went to New Orleans on a 
 flat-boat which he helped to build. The boat was 
 launched on the Sangamon, stranded on a dam, and re- 
 lieved by Lincoln's ingenuity, and started again on a sue- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 10 
 
 Cessful voyage, laden with pork, hogs and corn. It was 
 on this trip that his reflective mind evolved an invention 
 for helping flat-boats over snags and shoals. The inven- 
 tion was patented, but like many another patent, failed 
 to enrich the owner. It was on this trip that Lincoln 
 observed for the first time some of the abominations of 
 the slave trade in the City of New Orleans. It depressed 
 him and drew from him the emphatic, almost prophetic 
 statement, "If I ever get a chance to hit slavery, I'll hit 
 it hard." 
 
 He found his way back to New Salem where he kept 
 store for the same employer that sent him to New Orleans. 
 There he won his way to consideration by his genial ways, 
 his gift of story telling, and his strength and skill in 
 wrestling. There, too, he found an English grammar 
 and mastered it by the light of pine shavings,in the long 
 evening hours. . 
 
 In 1832, the Black Hawk War broke out. Lincoln en- 
 listed, and though without military experience, his pop- 
 ularity won him the captaincy of his company by popu- 
 lar election. His career as an officer was not a brilliant 
 one. His command was an unsoldierly company of 
 American citizens who respected their captain, but who 
 were unwilling to subject themselves to very strict disci- 
 pline. They did no fighting and were discharged from 
 service after a brief campaign, and Lincoln re^enlisted as 
 a private in the Independent Spy Company. He was 
 wont afterwards to excite much amusement by his stories 
 of this bloodless war. Yet it was a school to him that 
 revealed his relations to his country and helped to fit him 
 
40 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 for the great duties of Commander-in-Chief in the War 
 of the Rebellion. 
 
 Returning to New Salem after the war, his friends 
 urged him, in view of his popularity in the recent war, 
 
 Jjinooln's Pioneer House on the Sangamon River. 
 Built and Occupied ty Himself. 
 
 to become a candidate for the State Legislature. His ap- 
 pearance in debate, and the favorable impression he made, 
 settled the question of his candidacy for his friends. He 
 felt that an election was an impossibility for him at that 
 time, but he undertook the canvass. It was the custom 
 then for every candidate to stand on his own merits with- 
 out the aid of a nominating convention. Mr. Lincoln at 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 21 
 
 this time was nominally a Jackson Democrat, though 
 some of his statements in his first campaign for office re- 
 sembled very closely Whig utterances, and he will be 
 found speedily to be on that side. 
 
 He issued a manifesto to the people of Sangamon 
 County on the question of local improvements, propos- 
 ing the improvement of the Sangamon River. He an- 
 nounced himself in favor of usury laws which would limit 
 the rate of interest to be paid in the state. He was in fa- 
 vor of education, and of the enactment of sundry laws that 
 would benefit the farming community in which he lived. 
 His manifesto was that of a crude and immature states- 
 man — or better, perhaps, of a young politician, seeking 
 to adjust himself to the popular opinions about him and 
 to reach public office thereby. He was defeated at the 
 election, but he had the satisfaction of knowing, that the 
 people who knew him best gave him their votes. The 
 canvass, however, gave him a wider acquaintance with 
 the people of the district and established him in their 
 eyes as a young man of considerable promise. 
 
 In default of a political opening, the question of his 
 future career pressed upon him. He could earn a poor 
 livelihood with his brawny arms, but to this he was in- 
 disposed, feeling, as he did, that there was a larger des- 
 tiny before him than of mere manual labor. He tried 
 clerking in a store, then merchandising on credit, which 
 last experience ended disastrously and left him a burden 
 of debt. Then he began the study of law, with borrowed 
 books. He put his new knowledge into practice by writ- 
 ing deeds, contracts, notes and other legal papers for his 
 
22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 neighbors, following prescribed forms, and conducting 
 small cases in justice's courts without remuneration. 
 This was his law school, self-conducted. Volumes on sci- 
 ence were at the same time eagerly devoured by him, and 
 the few newspapers on which he could lay hands were 
 the sources of his political information. Burns and 
 Shakespeare were his especial delight. 
 
 To pay his way, he won the good opinion of the sur- 
 veyor of Sangamon County, who appointed him dep- 
 uty, and gave him a chance to acquire a knowledge of 
 surveying, in which he became an expert. He was called 
 hither and yon about the county as a surveyor, and was 
 made arbiter in disputes on lines and corners. Best of 
 all, he earned a good living and made many friends for 
 the future. 
 
 From 1833 to 1836, he was postmaster of New Salem, 
 as a Jackson appointee on the score of right opinions. 
 The emoluments of the position were not burdensome. 
 He kept his office in his hat. 
 
 In 1 834, he was again a candidate for the Legislature. 
 This time he leaned to the Whig party. It was during 
 this year that his personal effects, including his survey- 
 ing instruments, were sold under the hammer by the 
 sheriff to satisfy a judgment against him on account of 
 his unsuccessful career as a merchant. But warm per- 
 sonal friendship intervened to save his property and keep 
 him in courage for the work of his life. 
 
 The campaign of 1834 was personally conducted, as 
 was that of 1832. In the harvest field, at the grocery or 
 on the highway, wherever he could find men to listen. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 23 
 
 he interested them in his cause and his personality, 
 chiefly the latter. Where he was known he was wel- 
 comed, and where he found it necessary to make himself 
 known, his auditors soon made the discovery that he 
 belonged to the singed cat variety. With his calico 
 shirt, short trousers, rough brogans, and straw hat with- 
 out a band, he raised a laugh at his appearance that was 
 soon turned to applause at his knowledge and his skill 
 in presenting it. He headed the poll on election day, 
 and appreciating the fact that a new outfit was necessary 
 to comport with his dignity as a legislator, he borrowed 
 two hundred dollars from Coleman Smoot, an admirer 
 who had never seen him, and got himself up in the best 
 clothes he had ever wprn. The loan was scrupulously 
 repaid. The time up to the session of the I^egislature 
 was spent in preparation for his new responsibilities, in 
 reading and writing. 
 
 He had enough of his two hundred dollars remaining 
 to pay his passage on the stage coach to the scene of the 
 L,egislature at Vandalia. That body was overwhelming- 
 ly Democratic in its political complexion, and set the 
 pace for Illinois of that class of legislation s^o common in 
 new countries: the creation of public debt and the 
 starting of great and ill-considered public improvements, 
 and the licensing of banks with great privileges, and 
 practically no guarantees, a class of legislation that 
 brought on the financial collapse of 1837. The legisla- 
 ture represented the overwhelming majority of the people 
 and accomplished their behests. All were crazed with 
 the spirit of speculation, all were similarly responsible. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and all suffered in the same general consequences. Mr. 
 Lincoln swam with the stream, voted for all the wild-cat 
 measures which, according to the best wisdom of the 
 time, were essential to the prosperity of the state. He 
 
 was a silent 
 member, how- 
 ever, at this ses- 
 sion of the Leg- 
 islature, though 
 he served on 
 the committee 
 on Public Ac- 
 counts and Ex- 
 penditures. 
 
 It was at this 
 session of the 
 legislature that 
 he met Stephen 
 A. Douglas,with 
 whose later ca- 
 reer his own 
 was destined to 
 be so closely in- 
 terwoven, and 
 whom at his first meeting he characterized as the "least 
 man he ever saw. ' ' In time he readily accorded him the 
 title of "The Little Giantj" with whose powers he, only, 
 seemed able to cope. This legislature was beset, as lat- 
 er legislatures of Illinois have been, by a corrupt and 
 persistent body of so-called log rollers, who were on 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas. 
 Born 1813. Died 1861 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 25 
 
 hand to push their schemes by persuasion and corrupt- 
 ion. But no taint attached to young Lincoln, who, if 
 he were carried away like the other legislators of the 
 time, by schemes of artificial prosperity, was beyond the 
 reach of bribery. 
 
 In 1836, he was again a candidate for the legislature, 
 self-nominated, for this was before the age of caucuses 
 and conventions. In the Journal of New Salem he an- 
 nounces his platform. He favors extending to all whites 
 who pay taxes or bear arms (not excluding women) the 
 right of suffrage. If elected, he should consider the 
 whole people of the district as his constituents, regard- 
 less of the manner of their voting, and while acting as 
 their representative he would be governed by their will 
 on all subjects on which they should make known their 
 will, and on other subjects he would follow his own 
 judgment as to what would advance their interests. He 
 further announced that he was in favor of distributing 
 the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several 
 states, to enable each state in common with others, to 
 dig canals and construct railroads without borrowing 
 money and paying the interest on it. On the question 
 of national politics, he announced his adhesion to the 
 standard bearer of the Whigs. 
 
 For two months the campaign was conducted in the 
 rough and ready manner peculiar to those times. Hot 
 words were bandied, personalities were indulged in, pis- 
 tols were frequently drawn, and the personal prowess of 
 the candidate was one of his strong claims to the respect 
 of a rough constituency. At no point was lyincoln lack- 
 
26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ing in his knowledge of his audiences. They had had 
 demonstrations of his physical prowess. Popular re- 
 port had credited him with fearlessness, and his plain 
 strong reasoning, his humor and skillful repartee did 
 the rest. 
 
 It was the custom for political antagonists to address 
 the same audiences, or at least for both sides to get a 
 hearing at the same time and place. It was during this 
 campaign that Geo. Forquer, who had been a Whig in 
 the legislature of 1834, and had changed his views on 
 being appointed registrar of the Land Office, presumed 
 to call lyincoln to account. Forquer had aroused much 
 attention as a political turn-coat, and likewise by his 
 sudden prosperity in being able to build the finest house 
 in Springfield, on which he set up the only lightning 
 rod of which the region could boast. He listened to 
 Lincoln's speech in defense of the principles that he had 
 recently repudiated, and when he had finished he arose 
 to answer, with a fine assumption of superiority, saying 
 that the young man would have to be taken down, and 
 he was sorry that the task devolved upon him. He there- 
 upon proceeded to take him down in a strong Democratic 
 speech. When he had concluded Mr. Lincoln replied to 
 his arguments, and then alluded to Mr. Forquer's re- 
 mark that the young man must be taken down. Turn- 
 ing to his audience, he said: 
 
 "It is for you to say whether I am down or up. The 
 gentleman has alluded to my being a young man. I am 
 older in years than I am in the tricks and trades of poli- 
 ticians. I desire to live and I desire place and distinct- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 27 
 
 ion as a politician, but I would rather die now than, like 
 this gentleman, live to see the day that I would have to 
 erect a lightning rod to protect a guilty conscience from 
 an offended God." 
 
 Another Democratic orator met his Waterloo in an en- 
 gagement with lyincoln in the same campaign. Dick 
 Taylor was severely Democratic in theory, denouncing 
 the Whig aristocracy and making much of his sympathy 
 with the hard-handed toiling masses, but in practice he 
 adorned himself with splendid apparel, and shone con- 
 spicuously with ruffled shirt, silk vest, and an impressive 
 watch chain. On one occasion when Taylor was parad- 
 ing his democracy and denouncing the aristocratic Whigs, 
 Lincoln edged up to the platform, and gave a jerk to 
 Taylor's vest, that exposed his ruffled shirt, his gold 
 Watch and chain and pendant jewelry. It was a move- 
 ment that took all the wind out of Taylor's sails and 
 hardly needed the speech which Mr. Lamon credits to 
 this occasion, which has so much of personal interest in 
 it, that we repeat it. 
 
 "While Taylor was making his charges against the 
 Whigs over the country, riding in fine carriages, wearing 
 ruffled shirts, kid gloves, massive gold watch chain with 
 large gold seals, and flourishing a heavy gold-headed 
 cane, I was a poor boy hired on a flat-boat at eight dol- 
 lars a month and had only one pair of breeches to my 
 back, and they were buckskin, and if you know the na- 
 ture of buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun, they 
 will shrink, and mine kept shrinking until they left sev- 
 eral inches of my legs bare between the top of my socks 
 
28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and the lower part of my breeches, and whilst I was 
 growing taller, they were becoming shorter, and so much 
 tighter that they left a blue streak around my legs that 
 can be seen to this day. If you call this aristocracy I 
 plead guilty to the charge." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was elected by a larger vote than any 
 other candidate. Sangamon County, that had usually 
 gone Democratic, went Whig by more than four hundred 
 majority. The Convention System was now taking root 
 in the west. Some of the members of the legislature of 
 1836 and 1837, among whom was Stephen A. Douglas, 
 were nominated by conventions, and hereafter the Whigs 
 are compelled to fall into line. Elections are to be con- 
 ducted no more on the self-nominating plan and person- 
 ally conducted canvass. But national issues and national 
 parties are to control in state affairs. This change, in the 
 minds of many, was prejudicial to the real interests of 
 state affairs and certainly detracted much from the gro- 
 tesqueness and individuality displayed in the self-nominat- 
 ing and self-conducted campaign. Men now stood upon 
 the platform of a party, when they accepted a nomination. 
 Mr. Lincoln was hereafter to be a party man, sometimes 
 leading his party, but all the time loyal to it, and seeking 
 to force no movement until the rank and file of his party 
 were abreast with him. 
 
 In national politics, at the time of the meeting of the 
 legislature of 1836-37, the country was on the verge of a 
 panic. The deposits of the United States had been with- 
 drawn from the U. S. Bank and deposited in specie-pay- 
 ing state banks. The whigs had passed an act requiring 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 29 
 
 the funds of the government to be deposited with the 
 states, the act to go into effect Jan. ist, 1837. A month 
 before this date the Legislature of Illinois met at Van- 
 dalia. Thither Mr. Lincoln went with the intention of 
 being an active member. He had been instructed by 
 his constituents to vote for a system of internal improve- 
 ments. All parts of the state were clamoring for them 
 and men of all parties were of one mind in the matter. 
 Lines of railroads, improvement of rivers, the Illinois 
 canal, and the location of the capital and the setting up 
 of state banks, were the great questions of the session. 
 Members of the legislature interested in one locality 
 swapped votes to other localities for votes in favor of 
 their project. Thus the log-rolling went on till nearly 
 every county in the state shared in the plunder of their 
 common treasury which was recruited by issues of bonds 
 that ought to have paralyzed any sane company of leg- 
 islators who could foresee the consequences; but they 
 were intoxicated by the spirit of speculation. 
 
 Among the schemes in which Mr. Lincoln chiefly fig- 
 ured was the removal of the capital to Springfield. As 
 a member of the Long Nine from Sangamon County — so 
 called because their average height was over six feet — he 
 so skillfully disposed of the votes of himself and his col- 
 leagues, in return for votes on behalf of Springfield, that 
 that city was selected as the capital of the state. Ford 
 estimates, in his"History of Illinois," that it was made to 
 cost the state six millions of dollars for the removal of 
 the capital from Vandalia, and naming the men who 
 participated in this reckless legislation and the high po- 
 
30 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 sitions to which most of them later attained, he declares 
 all of them to be "spared monuments of popular wrath, 
 evincing how safe it is to a politician, but how disas- 
 trous it may be to the country to keep along with the 
 present fervor of the people." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, in his part in the proceedings of the leg- 
 islature, obeyed the will 
 of his constituents in lo- 
 cating the capital at 
 Springfield, and the will 
 of the people at large in 
 voting for a general sys- 
 tem of improvements at 
 the public expense, and 
 his own judgment was 
 committed to the policy. 
 The fruition of their reck- 
 less legislation was debt 
 and disaster,all had sinned 
 and all suffered, and the 
 
 Library Chair used by Lincoln during his T,prialHp=; were Tint viiitpd 
 Occupancy of the White House. penal ueb were not visiteu 
 
 Upon the legislators who 
 recorded the popular will. More creditable to L,incoln's 
 mind and heart at this session of the state legisla- 
 ture was the protest in which he joined, against the act- 
 ion of the legislature on the subject of slavery. No 
 state was more pronounced than Illinois on the subject of 
 repressing the Abolition movement. Illinois had de- 
 cided once for all, in 1834, that it was not disposed 
 to become a slave state, but its people had no sympathy 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 3t 
 
 as yet with the movement to interfere with slavery in the 
 South. The name Abolitionist was counted by the peo- 
 ple of Illinois as hardly better than Horse-thief and the 
 so-called Black Code of the state, discriminating against 
 negroes whether free or slave would have been a disgrace 
 to Turkey. 
 
 In 1836, Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had been publishing 
 a moderately anti-slavery paper in St. Louis, moved to 
 Alton, where he found the opposition even stronger than 
 in Missouri, and his press was broken up and thrown into 
 the river. He again set up his press which was to pub- 
 lish a religious paper, and not distinctively an abolition 
 paper, though he claimed the right as an American citi- 
 zen to publish whatever he pleased on any subject, hold- 
 ing himself answerable to the laws of the country in so 
 doing. Only occasionally, did he discuss the subject of 
 slavery, but so repugnant was abolition sentiment to the 
 people about him that his office was again destroyed. The 
 setting up of another press was followed by his murder 
 in defence of his life and his property. It was during 
 this state of feeling, that culminated in Lovejoy's mur- 
 der, that Lincoln bravely wrote a protest against the ex- 
 treme action of the legislature on the slavery question, 
 and obtained the signature thereto of a colleague with his 
 own. The resolutions were read and ordered to be spread 
 upon the journal of the house. In these resolutions he 
 stated that he believed that the institution of slavery is 
 founded upon injustice and bad policy, but that the pro- 
 mulgation of abolition doctrine tends rather to increase 
 than to abate its evils. That the Congress of the United 
 
32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 States has no power under the Constitution to interfere 
 with the institution of slavery in the different states. 
 
 That the Congress of the United States has the power 
 under the Constitution to abolish slavery in the District 
 of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exer- 
 cized unless at the request of the people of the district. 
 On this question he saw clearer than his colleagues and 
 came nearest to the view of wise statesmanship that at 
 that stage of the game would make the abolition of slav- 
 ery the result of growth and of the logic of events, rather 
 than the result of upheaval and revolution. We do not 
 decry the work of the abolitionists, nor would he in his 
 later jears. They preached the iniquity of slavery and 
 roused the moral sense of the nation for the final struggle 
 when the hand that wrote the protest of 1838 might 
 write the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, with a 
 possibility of its enforcement. Between these documents 
 lies, perhaps, the most critical period of American his- 
 tory. Lincoln is at length to be the foremost figure of 
 that period, moving without haste, but steadily, to the 
 accomplishment of that supreme act which the impatient 
 Abolitionist would have performed at once, regardless of 
 the wreck and ruin which the attempt at immediate en- 
 forcement of his policy would work. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was again elected to the legislature in 
 1838, and had reached such prominence that he was the 
 candidate of his party for speaker. He was not elected, 
 but remained on tlie finance committee and took a hand 
 in trying to extricate the state from the almost hopeless 
 bankruptcy into which it had been plunged by the ex- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 33 
 
 travagant legislation of 1836 and '37. Mr. Linoolnwas 
 elected again in 1840, but did not appear in the session 
 of 1 841 and 1842 for reasons of a private nature. His 
 early love for Ann Rutledge had met with disappoint- 
 ment and he mourned over her gxave with a heart well- 
 nigh broken. Others had excited his interest, but the 
 old love was the ideal love for him, and no later affection 
 could compare with it, so. that although he believed it 
 was proper for him to settle down in married life, his loy- 
 alty to such affection as he had known, and his honorable 
 character, made it difl&cult for him to assume the vows of 
 married life on any other basis than full and complete 
 devotion to the woman whom he should call his wife. 
 
 In 1839, he was thrown much in the society of Miss 
 Mary Todd of Lexington, Ky., and he became engaged 
 to her. The date of the wedding was set, but he did not 
 appear. . His struggle with himself as to whether he was 
 doing right well-nigh unsettled his mind, and his friends 
 withdrew him to the quiet of Mr. Speed's home in Ken- 
 tucky, till this crisis of his history should pass. When he 
 returned, his relations to Miss Todd were resumed. She 
 was a clever writer, with some taste for politics, and dur- 
 ing the period of their courtship they beguiled them- 
 selves with political writing in the Sa.nga.mon/ournal un- 
 der the nom de plume of "Rebecca." The letters were 
 cleverly done in the style of caricature ajid bore hard upon 
 Mr. James Shields, an aspiring Democratic politician of 
 somewhat pompous and pretending manner. Mr. Lin- 
 coln chivalrously assumed the sole authorship of the let- 
 ters, for the protection of Miss Todd, and speedily found 
 
34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 himself embroiled with Mr. Shields, who demanded sat- 
 isfaction. Nothing but a duel or an abject apology 
 would be accepted, and the mutual friends of Mr. Lincoln 
 and Mr. Shields were kept busy arranging the prelimi- 
 naries of a contest. Mr. Lincoln treated the matter with 
 indifference, chose broadswords as the weapons, and 
 agreed upon the time and place for meeting, with little 
 thought that the duel would ever come off. He was op- 
 posed to dueling, and in choosing the weapons, he avoided 
 pistols to avert a tragedy, and chose cavalry broadswords, 
 knowing, as Arnold says, that if the meeting should take 
 place nothing but a tragedy could have prevented its be- 
 ing a farce. The matter was adjusted by the publication 
 of a statement that while Mr. Lincoln was the author of 
 the article signed "Rebecca," he had no intention of injur- 
 ing the personal or private character or standing of Mr. 
 Shields as a gentleman or man, and that he did not 
 think that the article could produce such an effect, and 
 had Mr. Lincoln anticipated such- an effect he would 
 have forborne to write it. Thus this serio-comic affair 
 passed with little result save to emphasize the vanity 
 and sensitiveness of Gen. Shields, and the cleverness and 
 candor of Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 ]\Ir. Lincoln carried out his engagement with Mary 
 Todd, and was married to her in November, 1842, with 
 forebodings that did not promise well for a happy married 
 life. Possibly, as Mr. Lincoln feared, they were not alto- 
 gether fitted for each other. But never, by word or deed, 
 was he disloyal to his marriage vows, nor did he ex- 
 pose the wounds of his heart. 
 
p 
 
 iCV 
 
 ..v^-xs.. , t.if>---gtJcaiM;;-i '- -^■.^■>ja=:-j:;>j-. 
 
 .aj'iiaiiiB:^ 
 
36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 He was not able at this time to provide a home of his 
 own, but took up his residence at the Globe Tavern in 
 Springfield at an expense of four dollars a week for board 
 and lodging for himself and wife. Mr. Lincoln had been 
 licensed as an attorney in 1837, and had removed to 
 Springfield when that city became the capital of the state. 
 Among the men who were his compeers, some of whom 
 afterwards attained prominence, were Stephen T. Logan, 
 Stephen A. Douglas, E. D. Baker, John T.Stuart, Ninian 
 W. Edwards, Jesse B. Thomas, and others of local re- 
 nown. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's reputation, thus far, has been as a poli- 
 tician in Sangamon Co. Politics will continue to have 
 the chief fascination for his mind, but law will be his 
 profession and his means of livelihood. He found his 
 first law partner in his friend John T. Stuart, to whom he 
 had previously been indebted for the loan of books from 
 which to learn the law. In a little dingy ofi&ce in the 
 then unkempt town of Springfield, the firm of Stuart & 
 Lincoln was installed, and Lincoln began his career of 
 divided interest between politics and law. He was still 
 a member of the legislature, and though the affairs of the 
 state were in sad need of attention, the politics of the 
 time began to be confined to national issues, and Mr. Lin- 
 coln, like the rest, began to occupy himself with a sur- 
 vey of national affairs. 
 
 In January, 1837, he delivered an address before the 
 Springfield Lyceum on the Perpetuation of our Free In- 
 stitutions, which shows that the young lawyer had now 
 attained to the full consciousness and dignity of an Amer- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 37 
 
 ican Citizen, who prizes his birth-right and seeks calmly 
 to discern the perils of the nation, and earnestly to put 
 her in a position of security and permanence. This 
 speech marks him at that early date, as more than a pol- 
 itician, grabbing and compromising in the state assembly 
 for local interests; rather as an American citizen open- 
 ing his eyes to the greatness of the nation, the difficulties 
 and the dangers that hazard the common weal. 
 
 As his physical vision overtopped that of his fellows, 
 so now he seems to look out on a broader political hori- 
 zon than they. His eye henceforth will not be with- 
 drawn from that wide view until all shall be clear to 
 him, and he shall be accepted as his nation's prophet and 
 seer. The speech to which I refer may be overcharged 
 with rhetoric, a vice that is common with young orators, 
 but it has the true ring of sincerity and patriotism, and 
 time will add the charm and force of directness and sim- 
 plicity to his style. 
 
 In all the political campaigns of the time his voice was 
 heard in the meetings of politicians, in the grocery, or the 
 office or on the rostrum. He was a central figure in these 
 meetings. He studied politics, got in shape his argu- 
 ments, and learned the art of putting things to an aver- 
 age American audience, as few politicians have acquired 
 it. The question of the sub-treasury was an absorbing 
 question of 1840. It was the Democratic party measure 
 to provide for the convenient and safe keeping of the na- 
 tional funds. It has proved a wise expedient, but Mr. 
 I^incoln opposed it, as did his party. Apparently, on 
 questions of public credit, fiscal expedients and finance, 
 
38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 he was not destined to be an authority. It was on the 
 questions of freedom and union, and the measures that 
 make for them, that he was to specialize and succeed. 
 Meanwhile, he was working hard at the bar, but leaving 
 no opportunity unused to evince his interest in politics. 
 
 In 1843, he aspired to run for Congress, but was dis- 
 tanced in the race for the Whig nomination by E. D. 
 Baker. He was appointed a delegate to the nominating 
 convention, and magnanimously served. He humorous- 
 ly alludes to his predicament in writing to his friend 
 Speed, where he says, "In getting Baker the nomination 
 I shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made 
 groomsman to a man that has cut him out and is marry- 
 ing his own dear 'gal. ' ' ' 
 
 In 1 844, he was a candidate for election on the Whig 
 ticket, and stumped the state for Mr. Clay for President. 
 In joint debates and independent speeches he maintained 
 his Whig principles and chivalrously labored for the 
 idol of his party. The defeat of Clay was, to him, a 
 source of sorrow, but setting aside his political disap- 
 pointment, he studiously set himself to the discharge of 
 his professional duties until 1846, when he was nomina- 
 ted for Congress and elected. Peter Cartwright was the 
 standard-bearer of the opposition. He was a doughty 
 antagonist, whose clerical relations were dead weight 
 upon him, and Mr. Lincoln easily "got the preacher" as 
 he expressed it, and with the aid of Democratic votes. 
 He was the only Whig member from Illinois, and thus 
 came into special prominence. Some of his colleagues 
 from the state were Wentworth, McClernand, Ficklin, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 39 
 
 Richardson and Turner. Douglas had just reached the 
 Senate. 
 
 The roll of the house at this, the 30th Congress, 
 showed a galaxy of great names. Robert Winthrop was 
 the Speaker, and among the Whigs were John Quincy 
 Adams, Horace Mann, CoUa- 
 mer, Stephens and Toombs; 
 and among the Democrats 
 were Wilmot and Cobb, Mc- 
 Dowell and Andrew Johnson, 
 while Webster and Calhoun, 
 and Benton and Clayton were 
 members of the Senate. 
 
 Lincoln at once took an act-, 
 ive part in the discussions 
 that related to the Mexican 
 War, that scheme of the 
 Southern statesmen to acquire 
 more territory for the ex- 
 pansion of slavery. He held, as did the Whigs, that the 
 war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun, 
 and in his famous "Spot Resolutions," he called upon 
 the president to put his finger on the spot on American 
 soil on which the Mexicans were aggressors, as the 
 president had alleged. Mr. Lincoln did, however, vote 
 with his party to give supplies to the troops and thanks 
 to the generals who conducted the war, while censuring 
 the president for his part in bringing it on. Mr. Lin- 
 coln had a weary time explaining to his constituents 
 what they considered his inconsistency in attacking the 
 
 Andrew Johnson. 
 Born 1808. Died 1875. 
 
40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 president for bringing on the war and then voting sup- 
 plies for its conduct. Before his return from the east 
 and after the session of Congress, he made several cam- 
 paign speeches in New England, enlarged his acquaint- 
 ance and became more familiar with the elements that 
 should enter into future politics. 
 
 His second session passed without any striking inci- 
 dent save one that indicated his attitude to the slavery 
 question. On the Wilmot Proviso, which favored the 
 purchase of Mexican territory and prohibiting of slavery 
 thereon, he voted, as often as it was up, in the affirma- 
 tive, and he himself proposed a resolution for the gradu- 
 al compensated emancipation of slaves in the District of 
 Columbia. Thus ended his congressional career in 
 which, in the national arena, he had gained a unique 
 outlook on public affairs, and where he won some repu- 
 tation as a consistent Whig, loyal to his party, and op- 
 posed to the extension of slavery; and likewise as a po- 
 litical antagonist, clear in statement, fertile in illustra- 
 tion, and with a talent for ridicule and sarcasm that was 
 difficult to be reckoned with. He easily yielded the 
 nomination to the next Congress to his friend, Stephen 
 T. IvOgan, and continued the practice of law, but with 
 an abiding interest in national affairs, ready when the 
 time should again come, to take his part in the struggle. 
 
 From 1848 to i860, his chief work as a lawyer was to 
 be done, and likewise the work that should determine 
 his selection as a candidate for the presidency of the 
 United States. In i860, the scene of his legal services 
 lay in the eighth judicial circuit in which Sangamon 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 41 
 
 County was included till 1859. The court itinerated 
 from county to county, and Mr. I^incoln followed it, 
 first on a borrowed horse, then on a nag of his own, which 
 he cared for himself, and later, in a second-hand buggy. 
 His coming was always welcomed at the hotel where he 
 was wont to stop and by the lawyers on the circuit. Un- 
 complaining, genial and unselfish, he met the incidents 
 and inconveniences of this itinerant life in so cheerful a 
 manner, and his pranks and stories were so enjoyable, 
 that outside of the court room and in it, no one was more 
 popular than he. His honesty was a proverb. No shady 
 case had any standing or encouragement from him. Pov- 
 erty was no bar to the securement of his services, and 
 when he entered on a case to which his judgment and 
 conscience were committed he entered upon it with a 
 thoroughness and fearlessness which seldom met with 
 failure. 
 
 Judge Caton, for many years one of the judges of the 
 Supreme Court and intimate with Mr. Lincoln, says of 
 him: "He was a close reasoner, reasoning by analogy and 
 usually enforcing his views by apt illustrations. His 
 mode of speaking was generally of a plain and unimpas- 
 sioned character, yet abounding with eloquence, imagin- 
 ation and fancy. His great reputation for integrity was 
 well deserved. The most punctilious honor ever marked 
 his professional and private life. He seemed entirely ig- 
 norant of the art of deception and dissimulation. His 
 frankness and candor were elements which contributed to 
 his professional success. If he discovered a weak point 
 in his cause he frankly admitted it and thereby prepared 
 
42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the mind to accept the more readily his mode of avoid- 
 ing it. No one ever accused him of taking an unfair or 
 underhanded advantage in the whole course of his pro- 
 fessional career." 
 
 He put the kindest construction possible on the frail- 
 ties of his fellow men. He sympathized with the un- 
 fortunate, and relieved them to the utmost of his ability 
 in their distress. He was true as steel to his clear appre- 
 hension of intellectual and moral truth, unyielding in 
 matters of honor and principle. He could flay an adver- 
 sary relentlessly who by cowardice or meanness, by ma- 
 lice or greed, exposed himself to his denunciation. He 
 could be tender as a woman to misfortune or suffering. 
 He was wondrously constituted to be a great jury lawyer 
 with his power of analysis, his logical faculties, his gen- 
 erous sympathies, his apt illustration, his candor and his 
 irresistable humor. 
 
 He was offered a lucrative partnership in Chicago with 
 Grant Goodrich on his return from congress, but he pre- 
 ferred his old circuit and his old companions. Though 
 he was frequently called to the trial of cases in prominent 
 courts in his own and other states, and responded to the 
 call, his heart was with his comrades on his old circuit, 
 and he could not be tempted from it. The day before 
 he left Springfield for Washington, in 1861, he went to 
 the office to settle up some unfinished business. After 
 disposing of it he gathered a bundle of papers and books 
 he wished to take with him. Presently he addressed Mr. 
 Herndon, his old partner: 
 
 "Billy, how long have we been together?" 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 43 
 
 "Over sixteen years," he answered. 
 
 "We've never had a cross word during all that time, 
 have we?" 
 
 Then, starting to go, he paused and asked that the 
 sign-board of Lincoln & Hern don which hung on its 
 rusty hinges at the foot of the stairs be allowed to re- 
 main. 
 
 "Let it hang there undisturbed," he said, with a 
 significant lowering of his voice. "Give our clients to 
 understand that the election of a president makes no 
 change in the firm of Lincoln & Herndon. If I live I 
 am coming back sometime and then we'll go right on 
 practicing law as if nothing had happened." 
 
 If Lincoln had had no other career than as a lawyer in 
 Central Illinois, he would have occupied a unique place 
 among the great lawyers of the state. But his mind was 
 always at work upon the higher problems of the national 
 life. He declined to run for congress in 1848 in favor of 
 Stephen T. Logan, who suffered defeat. He declined the 
 governorship of Oregon, preferring to remain in closer 
 touch with national affairs in Illinois, than he would be 
 if he removed to that distant region. 
 
 In 1850, he again declined to be a candidate for con- 
 gress, though he was strongly urged. He was coming to 
 the opinion that the sectional agitation between the North 
 and South was beyond the skill of politicians to settle 
 by the methods that had been and were still, being 
 tried. He had hoped that time would heal the animosi- 
 ties that threatened the existence of the union and the 
 principles of free government on American soil. In con- 
 
* >f r^S?^'^^''5*'*»»~»«»- 
 
 Lincoln's Home at Springfield. 
 
 In front of the house stands the tree planted by Lincoln previoug 
 
 to 1850. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 43 
 
 versation with intimate friends, in 1850, he stated that, 
 "the time is coming when we must all be Democrats or 
 Abolitionists." Though he acquiesced in the measures 
 of the Whig party, which were favorable to compromise 
 to avert strife, he spoke out his own conviction as to the 
 injustice of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and seemed 
 to feel disheartened as to any improvement as things 
 were going. 
 
 In 1852, his fellow citizens at Springfield chose him to 
 deliver a eulogy upon the life and services of Henry Clay. 
 This discourse was not remarkable in itself, save as it 
 was the occasion to Mr. lyi^coln for emphasizing the 
 opinion of Mr. Clay in regard to slavery and the proper 
 method of putting an end to it. Mr. Lincoln agreed 
 with him in his aversion to the institution and the advis- 
 ability of gradual emancipation by the voluntary action 
 of the people of the slave states, and the transporting of 
 the freedmen to Africa. Compensated and voluntary 
 emancipation and transportation were the features of 
 his plan, and he hoped that it might be realized. Then, 
 assuming the tones and language of a prophet, he said: 
 
 "Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagiies and his 
 hosts were drowned into the Red Sea for striving to retain 
 a captive people who had already served them more than 
 four hundred years. May like disaster never befall us. 
 If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and 
 coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means 
 succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence 
 of slavery, and at the same time restoring a captive peo- 
 ple to their long lost fatherland with bright prospects for 
 
46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the future, and this, too, so gradually that neither races 
 nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will 
 indeed be a glorious consummation." 
 
 If only that policy could have prevailed what sacrifice 
 of human blood and treasure, what agony and sorrow, it 
 might have saved! But it was not to be. 
 
 The Fugitive Slave Law had been passed and in the 
 Dred Scott Decision, not only was that law to be upheld, 
 but the most extravagant demands of slavery were to be 
 confirmed by the highest court in the land. Measures 
 were to be set on foot to open the territories north of 36°. 
 30" to the spread of slavery. The Missouri Compromise 
 was to be repealed and the agent of this legislation, its 
 crafty and eloquent advocate, was to be a son of Illinois, 
 the early compeer and antagonist of Mr. Lincoln, Stephen 
 A. Douglas. His rise in politics had been phenomenal. 
 His abilities were great and his ambition more than kept 
 pace with them. His objective point was the presidency 
 of the United States. If he could become the candidate 
 of a united Democracy for that high office, the coveted 
 prize was within his reach. To this end, he lent his great 
 abilities to the carrying of those measures that would be 
 acceptable to the pro-slavery element of the nation. He 
 identified himself actively with every movement that 
 sought to increase the area of territory for slavery expan- 
 sion. He held with Calhoun and Davis that, under the 
 Constitution, slaveholders could take their slaves into the 
 territories of the United States, subject only to the Mis- 
 souri Compromise. This obstruction, as chairman of the 
 committee on territories, he desired to set aside in the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 47 
 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, -which opened that vast area of 
 land to settlers who could vote up or down the question 
 of slavery, within their limit. With the passing of this 
 bill, the period of compromise was over. Friends of 
 Union and Freedom saw that there was now no prospect 
 of peace without submission to the extravagant and re- 
 volting pretensions of the pro-slavery party. 
 
 It was now that Mr. Ivincoln girded himself for the 
 great contest of his life, and at once, as if by common 
 consent, he became the leader of the Anti-Nebraska party, 
 as Mr. Douglas was the leader of the opposing party in 
 the North, and attention was fastened on these two great 
 antagonists whose strife should continue until freedom 'or 
 slavery should prevail. It was in October, 1 854, that 
 they first measured weapons at the Illinois State fair. 
 Mr. Douglas defended his position with his usual ability 
 and Mr. Lincoln was put up to answer him. There was 
 a marked contrast in the men. One was small of stature 
 but of great physical force, a successful demagogue, a 
 skilled debater, ready and resourceful, ambitious for pow- 
 er, contending for measures abhorent to the spirit of free 
 institutions as a means to the accomplishment of his am- 
 bitions. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was stalwart, angular, and plain, not de- 
 void of ambition, but resolutely opposed to the gaining 
 of a single foot of American soil for the extension or per- 
 petuation of slavery. He attacked the positions of Mr. 
 Douglas with clearness and force. He so completely un- 
 covered his purposes that he carried his audience captive, 
 and his speech was so permeated with intense moral con- 
 
48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 viction, that he often quivered with emotion in its utter- 
 ance. Others addressed the people that day, but to Mr. 
 Lincoln was awarded the honor of having pierced the 
 armor of his antagonist, and of having won the right to 
 carry the standard of freedom into the battle that could 
 not be averted. 
 
 The Abolitionists of the state now sought to commit 
 him fully to their programme. They felt that in his 
 Anti-Nebraska utterances he was with them and ought 
 to declare himself fully, but he avoided them. The time 
 for him had not yet come. In the fullness of time he 
 could be more useful to the cause of union and freedom 
 by a conservative record than if he had been open to the 
 charge of being a fanatical abolitionist. On the question 
 of the Anti-Nebraska Bill he could take strong ground, 
 and he followed Mr. Douglas to Peoria to repeat the same 
 triumph in debate as at Springfield. 
 
 In 1854, in spite of his unwillingness, he was elected 
 to the Illinois Legislature. A senator was to be elected 
 at that session in place of General Shields, and Lincoln 
 now aspired to that position. There was an Anti-Ne- 
 braska majority of two on joint ballot, but some of them 
 were pronounced Abolitionists, for whom Mr. Lincoln's 
 position was not sufficiently advanced, and five were Dem- 
 ocrats, who preferred to vote for a senator with antece- 
 dents like their own. To the Abolitionists, Mr. Lincoln 
 easily pledged himself to vote for the exclusion of slavery 
 in all territories of the United States. Matteson, the Dem- 
 ocratic candidate, was almost elected. The Anti-Ne- 
 braska Democrats would probably vote for him on the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 4g 
 
 next ballot in preference to a Whig like Lincoln. 
 In this emergency Mr. Lincoln magnanimously said 
 to the Whigs, ' 'You ought to drop me and go for Trum- 
 bull. That is the only way you can defeat Matteson. 
 The cause in this case is to be preferred to men." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was reserved for the conspicuous cam- 
 paign of 1858, when he should contest for senatorial hon- 
 ors with Mr. Douglas and discuss the great issues of slav- 
 ery extension in the hearing of the nation. Meanwhile, 
 the bloody conflicts between the freedom loving settlers of 
 Kansas,and the border ruffians, took place, and the North 
 became aroused over the plan of the pro-slavery men to 
 foist pro-slavery constitutions upon the territories that 
 should seek admission to the union. For these events, Mr. 
 Lincoln held Mr.Douglas responsible,and he likewise held 
 fast to the conservative position that the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise was an act of bad faith, and that 
 slavery should not be extended into territories heretofore 
 free. 
 
 The first national convention of the Republican party 
 met in February, 1856, and made its platform on the lines 
 of Mr. Lincoln's contention on the subject of slavery. 
 His prominence in the eye of the party was evinced by 
 the fact that from that convention he received no votes 
 for the vice-presidency. His voice was heard during the 
 campaign, discussing the great issues of the time. In 
 1858, a Democratic state convention met in Illinois, 
 which besides nominating a state ticket, indorsed the 
 name of Stephen A. Douglas as his own successor in the 
 senate. That crafty politician had begun to have doubts 
 
56 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 as to whether the Lecompton constitution was the act 
 and deed of the people of Kansas, and sought to recall the 
 support of the people of his state, who were estranged from 
 him by the violence that had been introduced in Kansas. 
 In the effort to restrain the friends of freedom from freely 
 voting upon the issues that were really before them, it 
 was even suggested that Mr. Douglas was on his way to 
 the Republican fold. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was not deceived by Mr. Douglas's change 
 of attitude. There was an election of senator in the next 
 year in the state of Illinois, and the two candidates were 
 the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and his most con- 
 spicuous opponent. If this prize should not slip from 
 Mr. Douglas's grasp, he must disavow some of the fruits 
 of his labor on behalf of slavery, and thus retain enough 
 of his former supporters for his election. It was upon 
 his record as a tool of slavery to open the territories to 
 that institution, and upon the ground of his inconsistency 
 in presenting the doctrine of popular sovereignty, that 
 Mr. L,incoln assailed him in his candidacy for the United 
 States Senate. 
 
 In April, 1858, a Democratic state convention met in 
 Illinois and indorsed Mr. Douglas. He had so befogged 
 many leading men of Illinois that they begged the Re- 
 publicans to trust him, and put no one in nomination 
 against him. Already Mr. Lincoln perceived that Mr. 
 Douglas had been crowded into a position that would ul- 
 timately destroy his chances of leading a united Demo- 
 cratic party in a national election, for in failing to uphold 
 the Lecompton convention, and in representing in Illinois 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. St 
 
 that popular sovereignity would demonstrate the ability 
 of the territories to protect themselves from slavery, he 
 created genuine alarm in the South. Mr. Lincoln's bat- 
 tle was nearly won. It did not matter if Mr. Douglas 
 should defeat him by his insincere scheming in 1858. A 
 greater day of reckoning was coming in i860. 
 
 On the i6th of June the Republican convention of Illi- 
 nois passed a resol ition unanimously declaring that" Abra- 
 ham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States 
 Senator to fill the vacancy about to be created by the ex- 
 piration of Mr. Douglas's term of ofiice." On the evening 
 of that day he locked his office door and produced the 
 manuscript of a speech and read the opening paragraph 
 to his partner, Mr. Herndon. When he had finished he 
 looked into the astonished face of Mr. Herndon and asked 
 him, "How do you like that?" 
 
 It was the speech that was to be delivered before the 
 Republican convention, avowing his candidacy for the 
 Senate. The paragraph was as follows: 
 
 "Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know 
 where we are and whither we are tending, we could then 
 better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now 
 far on into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with 
 the avowed object and confident promise, of putting an end 
 to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, 
 that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly 
 augmented. In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis 
 has been reached and passed. 'A house divided against 
 ;' itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot 
 endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not 
 
52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the 
 house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divid- 
 ed. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either 
 the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of 
 it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the 
 belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or 
 its adversaries will push it forward till it shall become 
 alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new; North 
 as well as South." 
 
 Then followed a masterly review of the aggressive 
 steps by which pro-slavery legislators had sought to ex- 
 tend the institution, and the part that Mr. Douglas had 
 played in it, and his present inconsistent attitude toward 
 his party and his insincere overture to the Republican 
 party. Then with the clarion peal of an acknowledged, 
 trusted, and confident leader, he concluded: 
 
 "Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mus- 
 tered, over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did 
 this under the single impulse of resistance to a common 
 danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of 
 strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gath- 
 ered from the four winds, and formed and fought the bat- 
 tle through under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, 
 proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all that to 
 fall now? Now, when that same enemy is wavering, dis- 
 severed and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We 
 shall not fail: If we stand firm we shall not fail. Wise 
 counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but sooner 
 or later the victory is sure to come." 
 
 Mr. Herndon said, "Is it politic to speak it as it is 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 53 
 
 written?" referring to the expression, "A house divided 
 against itself cannot stand." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln answered, "I want to use some universally 
 known figure, expressed in simple language as universally 
 known, that may strike home to t)ie minds of men in or- 
 der to rouse them to the peril of the times. I would 
 rather be defeated with this expression in the speech, and 
 it held up and discussed before the people, than to be vic- 
 torious without it." 
 
 Other friends were called in council. They thought 
 his utterance impolitic and sure to lead to his defeat. Mr. 
 Lincoln heard them patiently. Mr. Herndon was the 
 only one who said: 
 
 "Lincoln, deliver it just as it reads, the speech is true, 
 wise, politic and will succeed now or in the future." 
 
 Then Mr. Lincoln broke silence and said, "Friends, I 
 have thought about the matter a great deal, have weighed 
 the question well from all corners, and am thoroughly 
 convinced the time has come when it should be uttered, 
 and if it must be, that I must go down because of this 
 speech, then let me go down linked to truth, die in the 
 advocacy of what is right and just. This nation cannot 
 live on injustice. 'A house divided against itself cannot 
 stand,' I say again and again." 
 
 He spoke these words with deep emotion. For him 
 the die was cast The speech was delivered. 
 
 The Democrats thought he had dug his political grave. 
 The conservative Republicans shrugged their shoulders. 
 They thought it presaged defeat. The radical Republi- 
 cans and the Abolitionists recognized in it the platform 
 
54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of the coming struggle, and the watchword of victory. 
 
 Then followed the campaign with its joint meetings. 
 It was the intellectual combat of Titans. Mighty as- 
 semblies gathered all over the state, and the press of the 
 nation reproduced the struggle so that the entire country 
 witnessed the combat. The whole question of slavery, 
 and Mr. Douglas's relation to it, was discussed, in a 
 manner perfectly satisfactory to the friends of freedom 
 and union. In the course of the campaign, with the 
 shrewdness of the great lawyer that he was, Lincoln asked 
 Mr. Douglas for a candid answer to four questions that he 
 might get an answer to one of them. That question was, 
 "Can the people of a United States Territory in any law- 
 ful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United 
 States, exclude slavery from its limits?' ' 
 
 Mr. Douglas answered, ' 'It matters not what way the 
 Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract 
 question, whether slavery may or may not go into a ter- 
 ritory, under the Constitution. The people have the law- 
 ful means to introduce or exclude it as they please, for 
 the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour 
 anywhere unless it is supported by local police regula- 
 tions. Those police regulations can only be established 
 by the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to 
 slavery they will elect representatives to that body who 
 will, by unfriendly legislation, eflfectually prevent the in- 
 troduction of it into their midst." 
 
 The doctrine of "possible unfriendly legislation" 
 alarmed and incensed the South. The wedge that had 
 been started by Mr. Douglas's Anti-Lecompton a<-*-ihifle^ 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SS 
 
 was driven still deeper by the answer to this question. It 
 presaged the sundering of the Democratic party in twain, 
 and the triumph of the principles of Mr. Lincoln's Spring- 
 field speech. The election that should determine the 
 senator-ship took place Nov. 2, 1858. The ticket which 
 Mr. Lincoln championed had four thousand more votes 
 than the Democratic, but by an old and inequitable ap- 
 portionment of the districts of the state, a majority of 
 the law-makers chosen were Democrats. Mr. Douglas 
 was re-elected. When asked how he felt over the re- 
 sult, Mr. Lincoln answered that he felt like the boy that 
 stubbed his toe. It hurt too bad to laugh and he was 
 too big to cry. But he won a reputation as a debater 
 that was a revelation to the nation. He was so strong, 
 so fair, so temperate, so manly, in the great conflict, that 
 he instantly took front rank among the national leaders 
 who were devoted to the union and opposed to the ex- 
 tension of slavery. 
 
 On the 25th of February, i860, he was invited to New 
 York, and delivered at Cooper Institute, before one of the 
 most brilliant of American audiences, his masterly review 
 of the political questions of the hour. His utterances were 
 all that could be desired. The nation had made his ac- 
 quaintance and acknowledged his power and worth. 
 
 On May 9th and loth, the Republican state convention 
 of Illinois met at Decatur. Mr. Lincoln was present as 
 a, spectator, sitting quietly just within the door of the 
 wigwam. Richard J. Oglesby was on the platform. He 
 arose and stated: 
 
 "I am informed that a distinguished citizen of Illinois 
 
56 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and one whom Illinois will ever delight to honor, is pres- 
 ent, and I wish to move that this body invite him to a 
 seat on the stand." Here Mr. Oglesby paused, as if to 
 tantalize his audience and arouse their curiosity, 
 
 and then he announced 
 the magic name of Abra- 
 ham Ivincoln. 
 
 Pandemonium reigned 
 for a while in that wig- 
 wam. Then the motion 
 was seconded and carried 
 with tumultous shouts and 
 Mr. Lincoln was carried 
 over the heads of the au- 
 dience to his place on the 
 platform. Mr. Ivincoln 
 rose, smiled, bowed and 
 blushed,as if overwhelmed 
 with the enthusiastic attention of his fellow citizens. 
 Later, Mr. Oglesby rose again with a mysterious speech 
 upon his lips: 
 
 "There is an old Democrat," said he, "waiting outside, 
 who has something he wishes to present to the conven- 
 tion." 
 
 "Receive it," they cried. 
 
 The doors of the wigwam opened and in marched old 
 John Hanks with two fence rqjls on his shoulders, bear- 
 ing the inscription, "Two rails, from a lot made by Abra- 
 ham Lincoln and John Hanks, in the Sangamon bottom, 
 in the year 1830." The audience was beside itself. Mr. 
 
 Richard J. Oglesby, 
 War G overnor of Illinois. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 57 
 
 Lincoln blushed and laughed. They insisted upon a 
 speech, and he said: 
 
 "Gentlemen: I suppose you want to know something 
 about those things. Well, the truth is John Hanks and 
 I did make rails in the Sangamon bottom. I don't know 
 
 The Wigwam, at Chicago. The Building in which Lincoln was Nominated 
 for the Presidency hy the Republican Party, May 18, 1860. 
 
 whether we made those rails or not. The fact is I don't 
 think they are a credit to the makers. But I do know 
 that I made rails then, and think I could make better 
 ones than those now." a. 
 
 That convention closed with a resolution declaring: 
 "Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republican 
 party of Illinois for the presidency," and instructing the 
 
S8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 delegates to the Chicago convention to use all honorable 
 means to secure his nomination and to cast the vote of 
 the state as a unit for him. 
 
 Thus was the movement started that should make 
 Abraham Lincoln, the flat-boatman, the rail splitter, the 
 standard-bearer of the Republican party in the fateful 
 election of i860. 
 
 The convention met at Chicago on the i6th of May in 
 a great wigwam at the corner of Lake and Market 
 Streets. William H. Seward of New York was the rep- 
 resentative man of the East for the highest oiEce in the 
 gift of the nation, at the hands of the Republican party. 
 Favorite sons of other states received complimentary votes 
 on the first ballot. 
 
 On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln had distanced all 
 competitors and was within i-^ votes of the nomina- 
 tion. Those votes, were quickly given and the nom- 
 ination was made unanimous. When the dispatch an- 
 nouncing his nomination was handed him, at Spring- 
 field, he started home with it, saying: 
 
 ' 'Gentlemen, there is a little short woman at our house 
 who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I 
 am, and if you will excuse me I will take it up and let 
 her see it." 
 
 The formal letters of notification and acceptance were 
 passed. The Democrats were divided, as Mr. Lincoln had 
 foreseen. His Freeport question had rent them in twain. 
 Douglas and Breckenridge were their standard bearers, 
 and the result was not difficult to foresee. On the 6th 
 of November, the nation recorded its verdict. Abraham 
 
William H. Seward. 
 Born 1801. Died 1872. 
 
6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Lincoln was President-elect of the United States. Be- 
 tween November and March there was much to be done. 
 His cabinet was to be chosen, numerous ofl&ces were to 
 be filled, his private afEairs were to be wound up. The 
 magnanimity of his mind was soon made apparent in his 
 willingness to appoint his opponents to the highest 
 offices within his gift. 
 
 He offered the Secretaryship of the Treasury to Mr. 
 Guthrie of Kentucky; another secretaryship was ten- 
 dered to Mr. Gilmer of North Carolina; Stephens of 
 Georgia was also approached. He saw, as few party 
 men could see, the injustice and impolicy of admin- 
 istering the government in the interest of a party that 
 had no existence in the southern states. Though 
 he was a conqueror, he was a conciliator, and if grave 
 trouble was to be safely avoided, he would leave no stone 
 unturned to avoid it. 
 
 Without jealousy or fear, he intrusted the foremost 
 places in his cabinet to his late political rivals, utterly 
 oblivious to the suggestion that they might outshine or 
 supplant him. 
 
 Seward, the accomplished, eloquent statesman from 
 New York, he made his Secretary of State, Chase 
 his Secretary of the Treasury, Bates his Attorney Gen- 
 eral. 
 
 Cameron and Smith he appointed in deference to 
 the suggestions of his friends, for services rendered, 
 as alleged, in securing his nomination. Hundreds of 
 office seekers made a pilgrimage to Springfield and 
 made life a burden to him. He listened to their 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 6i 
 
 plea, regaled them with an apposite story and sent them 
 on their way. Many of his old-time friends hoped to reap 
 the reward of their friendship in appointment to office, 
 and felt hardly toward him that their cases were not al- 
 ways favorably considered. But he would not have it 
 said that he used his public position in the interest of his 
 friends. Then too, old friends and old scenes must be 
 visited that he might say good-bye, for his long absence, 
 from the region where he had grown to manhood. He 
 made a tender farewell visit to his old step-mother, who 
 had been a mother indeed. He visited New Salem and 
 shook hands with thousands of his old friends, whom he 
 had known in all the phases of his career. 
 
 The framing of his policy and the writing of his in- 
 augural address were absorbing cares. As he looked out 
 on the alarming situation in the South and the imbecility 
 and knavery that was being manifested in Washington, 
 his forced inactivity till March was like a consuming 
 canker. Southern States were seceding and appropriat- 
 ing national property. The arsenals of the North were 
 being looted for the benefit of the South, by order of the 
 Secretary of War. Frantic efforts were being made in 
 Congress to concoct some scheme of compromise that 
 would save the union, and Mr. Lincoln was implored to, 
 speak some word, or ofEer some suggestion as to his poli- 
 cy, that would help the situation. To such as sought to 
 know his position, he referred them to his record. 
 
 To the committee of thirty-three in the House he said, 
 "Entertain no compromise in regard to the extension of 
 slavery." To Mr. Washbumehe said on this point: 
 
62 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "Hold firm, as with a chain of steel." 
 On Dec.iyth, he wrote to Thurlow Weed thaf'no state 
 can in any way, lawfully, get out of the union without 
 
 [^^.^ 
 
 President Lincoln and his Cabinet. 
 
 the consent of the others," and, that "it is the duty of the 
 president and other government functionaries to run the 
 machine as it is." To Mr. Washburne he wrote, for the 
 
Abraham liKcolk. 63 
 
 advice of General Scott, "Please present my respects to 
 the General and tell him, confidentially, that I shall be 
 obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can to either 
 hold, or retake the forts, as the case may require, at and 
 after the inauguration." The summary way in which Gen- 
 eral Jackson had dealt with the nullifiers of 1830 and '32 
 was a frequent study during these months of waiting. 
 
 At length the time came for his departure to the scene 
 of his labors. With his mind fully made up, his cabinet 
 chosen, his inaugural written, he bade farewell to his old 
 partner, as we have related. Judge Gillespie, an old 
 friend, called to say good-bye and told him he believed 
 it would do him good to get to Washington. 
 
 "I know it will," Lincoln replied, "I only wish I could 
 have got there to lock the door before the horse was stol- 
 en. But when I get to the spot I can find the tracks." 
 
 With tender farewell he addressed the citizens of Spring- 
 field, commending them to the Divine care, and begging 
 their prayers on his behalf. 
 
 At different stages on the route he stated his position 
 with a clearness that admitted no uncertainty, that he 
 purposed to rule justly, respecting the rights of all under 
 the Constitution, maintaining the rights and possessions 
 of the nation in all its parts. 
 
 Assassins lay in wait for him, but he avoided them 
 and reached the Capital in safety more than a week be- 
 fore the inauguration. On the 27th of February, when 
 waited upon by the mayor and common council of Wash- 
 ington, he assured them, and the South through them, 
 that he had no disposition to treat them in any other way 
 
64 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 than as neighbors, and that he had no disposition to with- 
 hold from them any constitutional rights. They should 
 all have their rights under the Constitution, not grudg- 
 ingly, but fully and fairly. 
 
 No more fateful or solemn inauguration of a president 
 ever took place than that of Abraham Lincoln on the 4th 
 
 of March, 186 1. As 
 he stood before the 
 Capitol, serene, brave, 
 true to the noble in- 
 stincts of his nature, 
 and the promise of 
 his life, resolutely set 
 on upholding free- 
 dom and the Consti- 
 tution, there surged 
 about him a swarm 
 of traitors and con- 
 spirators, whose pur- 
 poses were but thin- 
 ly concealed. Presi- 
 dent Buchanan was 
 there, whose irreso- 
 luteness had permitted secession to get good headway. 
 Chief -Justice Taney and his associates were there, whose 
 perverse ingenuity had formulated the Dred Scott De- 
 cision. Generals soon to be conspicuous in the ranks of 
 the rebel army, surrounded him. Seward, the great rival 
 whom he had distanced, stood near. Chase, Scott, Sum- 
 ner and Wade, who should hold up his hands in the day of 
 
 James Buchanan. Fifteenth President 
 Born 1791. Died 1868. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 65 
 
 battle were there, and Douglas was holding the president's 
 hat, though the ambition of his life had been overthrown 
 by the man who was now the "observed of all observers." 
 He was solicitous for the safety and convenience of the 
 new president and defiant to the enemies of the union. 
 
 The great inaugural was but the fuller statement of the 
 views to which he had given expression in the period 
 since his election. It was conciliatory, but clear and firm. 
 He said, "I have no purpose directly, or indirectly, to in- 
 terfere with the institution of slavery in the states where 
 it now exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, 
 and I have no inclination to do so." "I hold that in 
 contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution 
 the union of the states is perpetual. I shall take care, 
 as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, 
 that the laws of the union be faithfully executed in all 
 the states In doing this there need be no blood-shed 
 or violence and there shall be none unless it is forced 
 upon the national authority." 
 
 He pointed out the way of curing dissatisfaction with 
 the form of government, by amending it, or by their rev- 
 olutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. Then he 
 counseled patience in the consideraton of sources of dis- 
 satisfaction, declaring that intelligent patriotism and 
 Christianity and a firm reliance on Him who has never 
 yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to ad- 
 just, in the best way, all our present difiiculties. Then, 
 as if clothed with the full dignity of his magisterial of- 
 fice, he pronounced these solemn and beautiful sentences, 
 "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and 
 
66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 not in mine, are the momentous issues of civil war. The 
 government will not assail you. You can have no con- 
 flict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have 
 no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, 
 while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, 
 and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies 
 but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion 
 may have strained, it will not break our bonds of affect- 
 ion. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from 
 every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart 
 and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell 
 the chorus of the union, when again touched, as surely 
 they will be, by the better angels of our nature." But 
 these gentle words were lost upon the men who had al- 
 ready committed themselves to the disruption of the 
 union and the founding of a Confederacy, of which the 
 institution of slavery should be the chief corner stone. 
 
 On the evening of the 4th of March, Mr. Lincoln en- 
 tered the White House, that should be his home for the 
 remainder of his days. There, was sumptuousness and 
 elegance to which he was not accustomed, formality and 
 etiquette, that in his quiet life he had not practiced, but 
 to all he adjusted himself with that simple grace that 
 taarked the American citizen, born to the purple and des- 
 tined to command. 
 
 He found the government in confusion, seven states in 
 secession and a rebel government already organized at 
 Montgomery, Alabama. The Southern heart had been 
 fired and her young men were in arms. 
 
 He nominated his cabinet and set himself earnestly 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 67 
 
 at work upon the tasks that were forced upon him. 
 Though his counselors were able men, famed for leader- 
 ship, they were only his advisers. He was their chief, 
 President of the Nation and Commander-in-Chief of the 
 
 Tlie Bombardment of Ft. Sumter, April 12, 1861. 
 
 army and navy of the United States. If any of them 
 supposed that he would divide that responsibility or yield 
 to their dictation they were soon, kindly but firmly, dis- 
 abused. Some of the Southern leaders thought that 
 there would be no war, that the North was divided and 
 that the Northern people would not fight. There was 
 
68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 some encouragement to this idea, but not in the calm, 
 resolute purpose of the new President. 
 
 On the 15th of April, the President issued T^s first call 
 for seventy-five thousand volunteers to put down the re- 
 bellion. Ft. Sumter had been attacked and had fallen. 
 One by one the rebel leaders had slunk away from the 
 scene of their treason, Breckinridge among the last. The 
 war was forced upon him. Patriotic devotion to the 
 Union effaced all differences. Half a million of men 
 responded to the President's call. Congress voted men 
 and money for the prosecution of the war. The times 
 were inauspicious. The best generals of the country were 
 in the rebel service. Arms, ammunition, and accoutre- 
 ments, had been seized, and foreign sympathies, and hos- 
 tile diplomacy, raised grave problems for the new exec- 
 utive; but he faltered not. Disasters came, incompetent 
 commanders and inadequate preparations demonstrated 
 that war would be discouraging and tedious. Still, he 
 did not falter. He .'succeeded in holding Maryland, Ken- 
 tucky and Missouri in the union, and in dividing Virgin- 
 ia and holding West Virginia loyal. 
 
 When Congress met in Dec, 1861, in his message on 
 the slavery question, he said, "I have adhered to the act 
 of Congress freeing persons held to service used for in- 
 surrectionary purposes." In relation to the emancipa- 
 tion and arming of the negroes he said, "The maintenance 
 of the integrity of the union is the primary object of the 
 contest. The union must be preserved and all indispen- 
 sable means must be employed. We should not be in 
 haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 69 
 
 which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are 
 indispensable." The possibility of injustice to the bor- 
 der states led him to counsel patience. 
 
 During this session of Congress, slavery was forbidden 
 in the territories 
 of the United 
 States, and Mr.Lin- 
 coln labored with 
 the representatives 
 of the border states 
 to accept the idea 
 of gradual com- 
 pensated emanci- 
 pation, which they 
 declined. In his 
 second message, he 
 urged the propo- 
 sition upon con- 
 gress of gradual 
 and compensated 
 emancipation. I 
 cannot forbear 
 quoting some of 
 his words. In concluding his appeal he said: 
 
 "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the 
 stormy present. The occasion is piled high with diffi- 
 culty. We must rise with the occasion. As our case is 
 new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must 
 disenthral ourselves, and then we shall save our country. 
 Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history! We of this 
 
 !■ 
 
 
 .>%?!* 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 I^Hk 
 
 ^S» 
 
 1^ 
 
 im^^^lp' 
 
 '^i. 
 
 i 
 
 ■IP* 
 
 Bdwin M. Stanton, Secretary ol War. 
 Born 1814. Died 1869. 
 
70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 congress .and this administration, will be remembered in 
 spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignifi- 
 cance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial 
 through which we pass will light us down in honor or 
 dishonor to the last generation. We say we are for the 
 Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We 
 know how to save the Union. The world knows we do 
 know how to save it. We, even we, here hold the power 
 and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave 
 we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what 
 we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or 
 meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means 
 may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, 
 peaceful, generous, just— a way which if followed, the 
 world will forever applaud and God must forever bless." 
 His plan, so earnestly and eloquently presented, re- 
 sulted in no action. The matter pressed upon his mind 
 until, on his own responsibility, he issued his proclama- 
 tion of warning, his own magisterial act, on Sept. 22, 
 1862, advising the states in rebellion that if they did not 
 return to loyalty by January, 1863, he would issue a 
 proclamation emancipating their slaves. January came, 
 and with it the most momentous document in the history 
 of the country, wherein the names of the states in rebel- 
 lion were cited; and then, by virtue of his power as Pres- 
 ident of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Army and Navy, he ordered and declared that "all per- 
 sons held as slaves within said designated states and parts 
 of states, are and henceforward shall be, free," and that 
 "the Executive Government of the United States, includ-. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 71 
 
 ing the military and naval authorities thereof, will recog- 
 nize and maintain the freedom of said persons." 
 
 Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of jus- 
 tice warranted by the constitution, upon military neces- 
 sity, he invoked, "the considerate judgment of mankind 
 and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 
 
 It was the crowning act of his career. The moment 
 of destiny had come and found him ready. The promise 
 of his young manhood, made amid the slave scenes of 
 New Orleans, "If I ever get a chance to hit Slavery I'll 
 hit it hard," was fulfilled. Henceforth, he is Lincoln 
 the Emancipator! 
 
 Supplementary legislation gave full effect to the pur- 
 pose of this great document, reaching to the slaves in bor- 
 der states and in sections under the control of the Union. 
 The tide of battle turned in favor of the Union, and ere 
 the close of his term the purposes for which he had gone 
 from Springfield to Washington were well-nigh accom- 
 plished. Through it all, he was the masterful leader, 
 bearing his own burden; resting his often breaking heart 
 and burdened mind with the wit and humor that had al- 
 ways been so restful to him; bearing with patience the 
 mistakes and jealousies and malice of men; never falter- 
 ing in his steady course; wisely avoiding entanglement 
 with foreign nations till our crisis should be passed; prac- 
 ticing humanity and kindness that sterner men thought 
 subversive of discipline; approachable to all who had an 
 errand, or who needed to invoke the great, strong, kind- 
 hearted President. He came down to the close of his 
 first term of office to be triumphantly re-elected, and to 
 
72 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 inaugurate the work of reconstruction, for he who saved 
 the Union was, in the judgment of the people, the one 
 who might most effectually restore it to its old form, free 
 
 from the curse 
 of slavery, to 
 the condition of 
 a great homo- 
 geneous c o m- 
 mon-wealth, the 
 home of happi- 
 ness and thrift 
 and freedom. 
 He began his 
 work with his 
 old kind, con- 
 ciliator}', yet 
 self-confident, 
 tact, and just as 
 he had begun, 
 the bullet of an 
 assassin remov- 
 ed him from la- 
 bor to reward. 
 That assassina- 
 tion conferred on him the crown of martyrdom. If he 
 had survived, he might have been Moses and Joshua in 
 one. It was enough that he was Moses. 
 
 Let us close with the words of Owen Lovejoy, spoken 
 when emancipation resolutions were under consideration 
 and Mr. Crittenden had said,"I have a niche for Abraham 
 
 Ford's Theatre, Washington, where Lincoln was shot 
 by John Wilkes Booth, April 14, 1865. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 73 
 
 Ivincoln. " Mr. Lovejoy exclaimed,"!, too, have a niche 
 for Abraham Ivincoln, but it is in Freedom's holy fame and 
 not in the blood besmeared temple of human bondage; not 
 surrounded by slaves, fetters and chains, but with the 
 symbols of freedom; not dark with bondage but radiant 
 with the light of liberty. In that niche he shall stand 
 proudly, nobly, gloriously, with shattered fetters and 
 broken chains and slave whips at his feet. 
 
 "If Abraham Lincoln pursues the path evidently point- 
 ed out for him in the Providence of God, as I believe 
 he will, then he will occupy the proud position I have 
 indicated. That is a fame worth living for, aye, more, 
 that is a fame worth dying for, though that death led 
 through the blood of Gethsemane and the agony of the 
 accursed tree. That is a fame which has glory, honor 
 and immortality and eternal life. 
 
 "Let Abraham Lincoln make himself, as I trust he 
 will, the Emancipator, the Liberator, as he has the 
 opportunity of doing, and his name shall be not only en- 
 rolled in this earthly temple, but it will be traced on the 
 living stones of the temple which rears its head amid the 
 thrones and hierarchies of heaven, whose top stone is to 
 be brought in with shouting of 'Grace unto it.'" 
 
 Mr. Lovejoy's confidence was not in vain. 
 
LINCOLN, "THE EMANCIPATOR." 
 
 (18C9— 1866) 
 
 By G. Mercer Adam.* 
 
 IF there ever was a life consecrated from early manhood 
 to humanity's cause, it was that of Lincoln, "the Eman- 
 cipator," the revered martyred President who fell in Free- 
 dom's name. His death, sad and lamented as it was and is, 
 was, however, a glorious and triumphal one, for it did 
 almost as Auch for Freedom, and, no matter of what color 
 the people were, for individual rights and popular liberty 
 in this great nation, as was done by the holocaust of human 
 life that fell in their cause, and by the colossal sums ex- 
 pended throughout a most critical and appalling era. His 
 demise and the manner of it, after so strenuous, honest, and 
 conscientious a life, influenced, if it did not actually mould, 
 the immediate future of the nation, and gave reconstruction 
 such a set and direction as it might hardly otherwise have 
 had, while potently reuniting and cementing the riven Union. 
 One far-seeing and most humane event in Lincoln's admin- 
 istration, while he lived, was instrumental not only in adding 
 glory to his name, but in bringing about the close of the 
 great conflict of his time. We refer, of course, to the edict 
 of Emancipation and the prohibiting of slavery in the States 
 and Territories of the Union. Emancipation, it is true, 
 
 * Historian, Biograplier, and Essayist, Author of a "Precis of Ene:llsh History," 
 a "Contlnnation of Grecian History,'* etc., and for many years Editor of Self- 
 Culture jWa^azine.— The Publishers, 
 
ABRA H A M LI N COLN . 75 
 
 was resorted to as "a war measure" in the thick of the 
 deadly contest; but with Lincoln, long before the era of 
 the decree and the amendment to the Constitution which 
 abolished slavery forever from the country, the vile traf- 
 fic had always been held in abhorrence, and deep in his 
 mind had lain the thought of abolishing it or seeing it abol- 
 ished. The immediate effect of the measure, we know, was 
 to drive the South to the verge of desperation ; while at the 
 North it was only partially accepted and for a time it 
 aroused even bitter animadversion. Happily, however, a 
 change of sentiment came ere long, when it was seen what 
 freedom meant to the slave, and how telling were the con- 
 sequences of emancipation in the issues of the war. The 
 act, almost entirely, was Lincoln's own, and its consumma- 
 tion did surpassing honor to him, as well as to his adminis- 
 tration, and, at large, to the people who endorsed and ap- 
 plauded it. 
 
 Thefe is little need here to rehearse the well-known in- 
 cidents in Lincoln's modest trading venture down the Mis- 
 sissippi, which led the great and humane President early in 
 his career to become an abolitionist, though he was never 
 a negrophilist. To a heart so tender as his and so open to 
 the dictates of justice and the rights of all, the sights he wit- 
 nessed in that expedition in the fiatboat on the great river of 
 manacled and whipped slaves, were sufificient to turn his 
 mind and heart against slavery and to avow, as he expressed 
 it, ihat some day he would "hit it hard," while he knew and 
 afifirmed that it could never be compromised with. His con- 
 servatism' and moderation, together with his respect for law, 
 at the outset of his career made him, not tolerant towards 
 
76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the evil institution, nor timid in his attitude towards it, but 
 careful to keep it within bounds and prevent its extension 
 where it was not law. This it is that has led some writers to 
 deny that Lincoln was opposed to slavery as a crime and a 
 moral wrong, and to affirm that he assumed hostility to it 
 only as a political manoeuvre, especially after his memorable 
 contest with Stephen A. Douglas. This, we think, unfair 
 and ungenerous toward the great Emancicator, since few 
 men in public life have more remarkably shown, as Lin- 
 coln throughout his career showed, a sense of moral right 
 and a mind and heart influenced by humane motives, and 
 prone to kindliness himself and by precept and example 
 urged its sway and interaction upon others. In some meas- 
 ure, then, critics are right, and are justified by Lincoln's own 
 written and spoken words in regard to slavery. But while 
 it is true that Lincoln's hand was for a time stayed by the 
 limits of the Constitution, and by his early powerlessness to 
 root the giant evil out, and while Emancipation was resorted 
 to as a means of saving the Union by an astute war meas- 
 ure, it is nevertheless also true that its author was, and had 
 long been, opposed in his heart of hearts to the curse of 
 slavery, believed it to be founded upon injustice and bad 
 policy, and though he would not force abolition upon any 
 State against the popular will and voice, he yet hated it 
 thoroughly and looked with pain and abhorrence upon its 
 existence in any and all sections of the Union. 
 
 It may also assuredly be said that Lincoln looked forward 
 with confidence to the ultimate extinction of slavery, though 
 it took, as it did, a great crisis in the history of the Nation 
 to gfet rid of it. His own beHef in this respect is enshrined 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 77 
 
 not only in the momentous edict that forever banned it from 
 the RepubHc, in his opposition to the Dred Scott decision, on 
 the ground that it deprived the black man of the rights and 
 privileges of citizenship, but in those prophetic words of his 
 which he uttered at the Springfield convention, in 1858, that 
 nominated 'him for the United States Senate. In that cry 
 for unity and singlemindedness in the Nation he affirmed his 
 belief that the Government of the country "cannot endure 
 permanently half-slave and half-free," for, as he added, "a 
 house divided against itself cannot stand." Once more, 
 in 1864, he said in memorable words, "if slavery is not 
 wrong, nothing is wrong" — a dictum of unmistakable truth 
 and force ; — while he knew that the war then going on be- 
 tween the North and South was a struggle on the part of 
 the latter, not only for the right of secession, but to per- 
 petuate slavery, the one factor that had divided the country 
 into two hostile and irreconcilable camps, and was, materially 
 and socially, the distinctive barrier between them. With the 
 prescience that marked his statesmanship, he saw this fact 
 so clearly that the Proclamation of Emancipation was the 
 result — a measure that almost everywhere was hailed by the 
 plaudits of mankind ; while, in the wording of the Act itself 
 and in Lincoln's own defence of it, we see the great Liber- 
 ator's realization of the profound moral agitation of the era 
 and the significance of the remedy he would apply in bring- 
 ing about the abiding issue of the conflict. 
 
 We have dealt with Mr. Lincoln's moral convictions in re- 
 gard to slavery, and of the righteousness of the measure he 
 resorted to in planning and launching, at the right juncture 
 in a critical time, the great Act of Emancipation. Of the 
 
78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 President's other conspicuous virtues and characteristics 
 much also might be said, and that not merely in the way of 
 commendation, but as the memorial of an eminent and high- 
 ly revered life of perpetual and priceless value as an example 
 to the Nation. One of the notable qualities in the man, 
 which has been the theme of not a little controversy, is that 
 of his own personal religious life. The question has re- 
 pyeatedly been asked : "What was his religious belief, if he 
 had any," for some venture, and wrongly and unjustly, we 
 believe, to class him as an unbeliever and agnostic. Of 
 Mr. Lincoln's religious life we do not know much, since he 
 never revealed his whole inner self to anyone. In early life 
 he was doubtless indifferent to religion ; but when he came 
 to high position he appeared to treat office as a trust, and 
 again and again acted as if he were plastic in the hands 
 of a Divine Being. His unblemished life, and thoughtful, 
 humane career, and the consecration of h'imself to the Na- 
 tion's need, show that he lived his life under a deep sense of 
 responsibility to a Higher Power. 
 
 At Salem, Illinois, he seems early to have come in con- 
 tact with a rather reckless set of men, of the rough Western 
 type, who among their other crudenesses indulged in scof- 
 fings at things sacred. With these men, Lincoln, in his 
 promiscuous comradeship, had associations, and it is prob- 
 able that at this time he joined them in their heedless flings 
 at Christian truth, and especially at the sects and their jar- 
 ring discords. But if he took part in their levities, and 
 even aired some of the cheap witicisims directed against 
 religion by Volney and Tom Paine, of whose sceptical writ- 
 ings he had been a reader, it was at an immature stage of 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 79 
 
 his intellectual and moral life, and before he was impressed 
 with the realities of human existence, and with the providen- 
 tial dealings of that Heavenly Power which he was after- 
 wards profoundly to acknowledge and pay r-everence to. 
 Later on, we see the true, frank, outspoken but reverent 
 man, who was the embodiment of kindness and "as tender 
 as a woman" — the man who got near to the people, for 
 whom he had a great, large-hearted, human love. To such 
 he often spoke affectionately and most truly his mind, as 
 on the occasion of his leaving Springfield, 111., to assume at 
 the capital the arduous duties of the Presidency. At the 
 slation, before his departure, he addressed a large assem- 
 blage of his fellow citizens and old acquaintances who had 
 come to bid him good-bye. "Friends," he said to them, 
 "one who has never been placed in a like position can little 
 understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sad- 
 ness- I feel at this parting. I go to assume a task more 
 difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Un- 
 less the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid 
 me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and al- 
 mighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and 
 support me, I shall not fail, I shall succeed." This is the 
 true Lincoln, and in the above words there is the mighty 
 source owned by him of his dependence and need. A like 
 religious attitude he also manifested throughout his admin- 
 istrations;- and during the great era of strife, when victory 
 was vouchsafed to the North by the God of battles, often 
 to that omnipotent Being did he publicly, and among inti- 
 mates and associates, give devout and grateful thanks. 
 Another and kindred trait in the man was his tender. 
 
8o ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 loving nature and the warmth of his sympathies for those 
 who were in trouble, and especially towards the common 
 people, whom, as he once said, God must assuredly like, 
 else, as he characteristically put it, "He wouldn't have made 
 so many of them." Very charming was the interesting, 
 figurative manner in which he would at times address them ; 
 while in his daily intercourse he ever showed his kindly in- 
 terest in their welfare, and, without effort or evident design, 
 would endear himself to them and readily win his way to 
 their hearts. His homely ways and quaint humor — at times 
 also even his caustic wit — were qualities that further com- 
 mended him to the affections of his own rough people and 
 brought him fame among those, far and wide, among whom 
 he spent his early and maturing years. Nor among these 
 honest, simple folk were his studious habits, meditative 
 moods, and even his occasional plaintive sadness, missed by 
 them, as many stories regarding him attest, such as are told 
 by those especially who knew him intimately, who worked 
 by his side, traded or did business with him in his early 
 homes, or who spent the long winter evenings with him by 
 his or their own kindly though rude firesides. Amid such 
 associations and in such varied relations, Lincoln was al- 
 ways the same modest, unassuming man, the same genial, 
 kindly and sympathetic friend. Even after good-fortune 
 and a change of circumstances came to him, aided by his 
 own natural and acquired gifts, he never altered in this re- 
 spect ; nor did he ever suffer himself to be beyond the reach, 
 and if need be the aid, of an old acquaintance or of an 
 erstwhile known and rarely-forgotten face. Humble and 
 obscure as was his origin, and rough and uncouth as was 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 8 1 
 
 the environment o£ his early days, only the possessioA of a 
 manly, humanized mind, in close touch with its fellow-mind, 
 and of a soul far removed from the ignobleness and mater- 
 ializing influences of high position, could have kept Lin- 
 coln the same kindly, approachable man he ever was and 
 remained to his lamentable, tragic end. 
 
 We have incidentally referred to Lincoln's studious habits 
 and meditative moods, and important were the results to 
 him of his early predilection for books and the acquisition 
 of knowledge through his unappeasable thirst for reading. 
 The stimulus in the direction of mental acquisitions appears 
 to have been early given him by his kind and intelligent 
 stepmother ; though his own ambition and longing for knowl- 
 edge were, obviously, an inheritance of birth, afterwards 
 strongly developed by innate propensity and an eager desire 
 for information, so far as such could be gratified through 
 the facilities and materials within his reach. Meagre, as we 
 know, were these facilities, as were those which he could 
 command through the fitful periods of desultory schooling. 
 The books in early youth at his service were, moreover, 
 few, including little besides the Bible and a spelling book; 
 for an English grammar, it is said, he' tramped six miles to 
 a neighbor's house to borrow and study it. Later on, he 
 seems to have become possessed, or obtained the loan of, 
 Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," the Life of Henry Clay, 
 and Weems's biography of Washington. These he eagerly 
 devoured. On the first of them he appears to have formed 
 the rudiments of an eminently good literary style, after- 
 wards assiduously improved by further reading, as well as 
 by his own excellent judgment and good taste. On the 
 
8z ABRAHAM LiNCOLll. 
 
 biographies, he gratified his desire for some practical ac- 
 quaintance with the political history of his country, other 
 than could be picked up among his neighbors and fellow- 
 settlers, and from such politicians of local -fame as he came 
 across. All told, this material was not much with which 
 to equip the future debater and statesman ; but it was more 
 to Lincoln than to a man of less inquiring mind and with 
 little of his powers of assimilation and reflection. Not much 
 more liberal was his training in law, though he assiduously 
 read the statutes of his State and some text-books and 
 other tomes of legal lore ; while, when he had need to search 
 for materials for any case he had to get up, he delved into 
 and primed himself with the decisions of the local courts. 
 In these and such like exploitations into the dry literature 
 of the law, he was greatly assisted by a retentive memory 
 and a remarkable power of getting into the heart of a sub- 
 ject and of clearly and cogently presenting it with all the 
 illuminating skill of a sound understanding. 
 
 When he had gained some local notoriety and was 
 known as "a character" in the towns of the West, he began 
 to take active part in the politics of the time, and occasion- 
 ally to mount the orator's stump. In this delectation he 
 more frequently indulged, especially after he had gained 
 confidence in his powers, and had partly slaked his appe- 
 tite for mental food. At this time he even began to com- 
 pose a little, one of his early attempts, it is related, being 
 an essay, prompted by his humane feelings, in which he 
 denounced cruelty to animals. What facility he manifested 
 later in his career, in both his written and his spoken utter- 
 ances, it is not a little curious to trace back to that early 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 83 
 
 composition deploring the cruelty of youth, in the wanton 
 snaring of birds, and on catching terrapins and putting live 
 coals on their backs. But it was as a stump speaker that 
 he more particularly shone, and on his appearance in that 
 capacity he never lacked an audience, who enjoyed to the 
 full the jokes and abounding humor of his harangues, and 
 when in his more earnest moods, the heartfelt power and 
 effectiveness of his serious address. The success he met 
 with as a public speaker was, as we have hinted, not a little 
 owing to his characteristic facetiousness, and, above all, to 
 the fund of stories he was possessed of and could recall and 
 use with remarkable appropriateness to the occasion, while 
 giving added point to his argument. As his political educa- 
 tion developed, Lincoln's fame as a speaker grew apace, es- 
 pecially after his contest with Douglas over the Senator- 
 ship, a contest that showed in a remarkable manner what 
 his powers were as a debater in the field of national as well 
 as of local politics, and how effectively he mastered the con- 
 stitutional and other questions of the time that enabled him 
 to floor his adversary. Other gifts and qualities as a 
 debater brought him success, particularly those that extort 
 admiration from an intelligent, dispassionate audience, 
 namely, restraint in the speaker, that puts a check upon un- 
 fair as well as inconclusive argument, and the absence of 
 temper and of anything bitter or personal in the style and 
 manner of his address. In these respects, the future Presi- 
 dent was invariably honest with himself, as well as with 
 his opponent and his hearers, and never allowed himself 
 to utter an unbecoming taunt or fling at those opposed to 
 him, even in the most heated of party controversies. Such 
 
04 ABRAHAM LtNCOLK. 
 
 were the traits in the man who, when great issues were 
 beginning to loom on the political horizon, was to take a 
 commanding position in their discussion and direction ; and 
 who brought with him the potent influences of a clean, high 
 heart, and a record for all that was worthy and honorable 
 in one aspiring to usefulness and patriotic duty in public 
 life. 
 
 In treating, as ere long he was called upon to do, with 
 the great issues of his time, another quality is discernable in 
 Lincoln's public utterances that marks him out as one who 
 will long live in the nation's heart. We refer to the lofty 
 sentiments and the profound religious tone of his addresses 
 and State papers. The tragic events of the era of the Civil 
 War, an era of calamities and long-enduring strife, with its 
 appalling shedding of blood which he deeply felt and de- 
 plored, naturally gave occasion for the manifestation of 
 emotion and for the heart-wringings he time after time 
 experienced, as news reached the capital of some great bat- 
 tle whose issues were either adverse or favorable to the 
 Union cause. In reflecting upon these tragedies of the bat- 
 tle-field, and especially in commenting upon them on some 
 public occasion, as in the Gettysburg address or in his sec- 
 ond Inaugural, Lincoln showed the moral grandeur of his 
 nature and the deep heart of pity and reverence that was in 
 him, by utterances of inspiring elevation that came home to 
 and touched to the quick all sympathetic hearts. For dignity 
 and simple beauty, as well as for the fervent patriotism which 
 inspired them, these addresses are unique in the annals of 
 eloquence, and as such are surely destined to immortality. 
 About them there is little of conscious artifice; while they 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 85 
 
 are marked by compactness of statement, logicalness of 
 thought, and lucidity of expression, as well as by a nervous 
 force which reveals the sincere conviction of the speaker, 
 and, despite his wonted humor, the earnestness and serious 
 caste of his mind. "To these qualities in Lincoln," ob- 
 serves a writer, "was added the great gift of poetry. He 
 spoke in figures, and they were tropes that, while they might 
 (at times) shock the polite, never failed to illustrate and 
 ornament what he was saying to the humble." 
 
 Like the poet, Robert Burns, of whose writings he was a 
 delighted reader and memorizer, Lincoln, as we have pointed 
 out, was of and near to the people. He loved the humble 
 bard's songs, and like him, too, he loved Mother Earth, and 
 had that gentleness of nature, sympathy for, and tender- 
 ness toward his fellowman whiich distinguished the Scot- 
 tish poet. "It was this deep heart of pity and love in him," 
 writes Hamilton W. Mabie, "which carried him far beyond 
 the reaches of statesmanship or oratory, and give his words 
 the finality of expression which marks the noblest art." 
 Of his poetic temperament, the same critic (Mr. Mabie) 
 thoughtfully remarks : "That there was a deep vein of 
 poetry in Mr. Lincoln is clear to one who reads the story of 
 his early life; and this innate idealism, set in surround- 
 ings so harsh and rude, had something to do with his mel- 
 ancholy. The sadness which was mixed with his whole life, 
 was, however, largely due to his temperament; in which 
 the final tragedy seemed always to be predicted. In that 
 temperament, too, is hidden the sepret of the rare quality 
 of nature and mind which suffused his public speech and 
 turned so much of it into literature. There was humor 
 
86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 in it, there was deep human sympathy, there was clear 
 mastery of words for the use to which he put them; but 
 there was something deeper and more persuasive, — there 
 was the quality of his temperament; and temperament is a 
 large part of genius. The inner forces of his nature play- 
 ed through his thought ; and when great occasions touched 
 him to the quick, his whole nature shaped his speech and 
 gave it clear intelligence, deep feeling, and that beauty 
 which is distilled out of the depths of the sorrows and 
 hopes of the world." 
 
 Another interesting feature in the early career of Lincoln 
 was his resort to law as a profession. His training for 
 this was a little less haphazard than his fitful school edu- 
 cation; though what he picked up in the way of legal lore 
 was, as we are told, as much "by sight, scent, and hearing." 
 He attended the Courts, read the Indiana Revised Statutes, 
 heard law speeches, and listened to law trials. In time he 
 became a popular Western advocate and a scrupulously 
 honest one, never upholding any case that was not mor- 
 ally right or in which he was likely to fail in court, so 
 acute and deeply engrained were his honorable instincts 
 and sense of justice. Where he had doubts of his client's 
 truthfulness and honesty, he would abandon his case rather 
 than take up his defense or argue in court what he knew or 
 suspected to be a false and unjust position. 
 
 Alike honorable was his attitude toward his fellowman, 
 and especially with his relations with women. ''There 
 is one part of Lincoln's early life," writes Professor Gold- 
 win Smith, "which, though scandal may batten on it, we 
 shall pass over lightly; we mean that part which relates to 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 87 
 
 his love affairs and his marriage. Criticism, and even bi- 
 ography, should respect as far as possible the sanctuary of 
 affection. That a man has dedicated his life to the service 
 of the public is no reason why the public should be licensed 
 to amuse itself by playing with his heart-strings. Not only 
 as a storekeeper, but in every capacity, Mr. Lincoln was 
 far more happy in his relations with men than women. He, 
 however, loved, and loved deeply, Ann Rutledge, who 
 appears to have 'been entirely worthy of his attachment, 
 and whose death at the moment when she would have felt 
 herself at liberty to marry him threw him into a transport 
 of grief, which threatened his reason and excited the grav- 
 est apprehensions of his friends. In stormy weather especi- 
 ally, he would rave piteously, crying th'at 'he could never 
 be reconciled to have the snow, rain, and storms to beat 
 upon her grave.' This first love he seems never to have for- 
 gotten. 'He next had an affair, not so creditable to him. 
 Finally, he made a match of which the world, perhaps, has 
 heard enough, though the Western lad was too true a gen- 
 tleman to let it hear anything about the matter from his 
 lips. It is enough to say that this man was not wanting 
 in that not inconsiderable element of worth, even the worth 
 of statesmen, strong and pure affection." 
 
 His marriage, in 1842, with Mary Todd of Lexington, 
 Ky., was, as all know, not a happy one, partly owing, it may 
 be, to her higher social position and superior education, 
 but more by reason of incompatability of temper. But of 
 this not a word is known to have escaped Lincoln in the 
 way of complaint or accusation, since his honor evidently 
 shrank from such disclosures. What he did, on the con- 
 
88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 trary, was to devote himself with more assiduity and pa- 
 tience to his profession, in the practice of which, as we have 
 affirmed, he was never mercenary or suffered the least taint 
 of dishonor or wrongdoing. 
 
 Though returned temporarily a member of Congress in 
 1847, it was not until 1854 that his political career actively 
 began, a few years after the outbreak of the national agita- 
 tion against slavery and the enforcement of the Fugitive 
 Slave Law. At this time, Lincoln's chief political oppon- 
 ent was Stephen A. Douglas, who, aspiring to the Presi- 
 dency, was courting the favor of the South by bringing 
 forward his Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which practically was 
 a repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1850 opening the 
 territory to the extension of slavery and adding to the politi- 
 cal preponderance of the Slave States. It was at this junc- 
 ture, when "the irrepressible conflict" began, that Lincoln 
 came actively and interestedly on the scene and set himself 
 to wrestle with the evil institution as an outspoken aboli- 
 tionist. Soon now (1858) occurred the famous debates 
 in Illinois between Lincoln and Douglas, in which the 
 former delivered himself of the effective rhetorical figfure 
 of "the house divided against itself," which gave point to 
 the controversy now on between freedom and slavery, and 
 in that keynote brought himself to the fore as a candidate 
 for the United States Senate, with an evident eye the while 
 to the office of the President. Though Douglas was suc- 
 cessful in the contest for the lesser post, Lincoln, by the 
 masterly part he took in the debates with "the little giant," 
 commended himself to the West as a candidate for the chief 
 office in the nation, and in the East spread his fame among 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 89 
 
 the electorate at large, especially after his able political ad- 
 dress at the Cooper Institute, New York, in February, i860, 
 followed by other telling speeches in New England. The 
 result came later in the year, with dissensions and a split 
 in the Democratic party and the nailing of antislavery col- 
 ors on the Republican banners, aided by the furore in the 
 entire North over threatened secession and the coming 
 precipitation of a conflict betwen the two radically opposed 
 sections of the Union. In November the Republican party 
 won by a large plurality in the North, in the contest at 
 Chicago, and Lincoln was elected to the Presidency. In 
 the following March (1861), the inauguration at Wash- 
 ington took place, and the humble frontier "rail-splitter" 
 assumed the reins of the Federal government, determmed, 
 God-willing, to maintain the integrity of the Nation and 
 uphold its undivided authority. 
 
 The election and installation of President Lincoln as suc- 
 cessor in office to the then chief magistrate, Buchanan, pre- 
 cipitated, as all know, the calamitous Civil War, and, by 
 the irony of Fate, settled not only the distracting contro- 
 versy in regard to State Rights, but ultimately the great 
 human question of the freedom of the slave. In the pre- 
 ceding month of December, South Carolina had declared 
 for secession and dissolved her connection with the Union, 
 in which momentous act she was joined before March, 
 1861, by six other States (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, 
 Florida, Louisiana, and Texas) ; while their people seized 
 the Federal forts, arsenals, custom-houses, post-offices, and 
 other national property within these States and practically 
 .defied its constitutional guardians. Placing themselves thus 
 
90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 outside the Union, they presently elected Jefferson Davis 
 president of what was styled the Southern Confederacy, 
 and in April (a month after Lincoln's inauguration) took up 
 the weapons of war and with them bombarded and cap- 
 tured Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. This aggres- 
 sion by the Confederacy while for the moment it appalled 
 the North, inflamed its people to almost the point of frenzy. 
 The retort to the Southern challenge to battle was the in- 
 stant call by President Lincoln, as commander-in-chief, for 
 7S,ooo men of the Union militia — a summons that was 
 promptly and enthusiastically responded to. In the procla- 
 mation calling for additional troops, Lincoln, while demand- 
 ing the seceding States in arms to disperse and retire peace- 
 ably to their homes within twenty days, at the same time 
 appealed "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid 
 this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and exist- 
 ence of our national Union, and the perpetuity of popu- 
 lar government, and to redress wrongs already long enough 
 endured." 
 
 There was one political advantage which the Lincoln 
 administration gained by Secession, namely, that it with- 
 drew the preponderating influence of the Southern Demo- 
 cratic representatives from the House of Representatives 
 and the Senate ; while in a large measure it fused in these 
 institutions the two opposing sections of the Northern Re- 
 publicans and united them in support of the government 
 and the War. At first, the latter did not at once come to- 
 gether in their design to coerce the South; indeed, many 
 leading men in the North were, for a while, if not apathetic, 
 dazed by the grave situation and peril of the country; 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9 1 
 
 though they ere long reasserted their patriotism and rallied 
 to the aid of the Nation and its administration. The latter, 
 moreover, was by this time organized, and Mr. Lincoln 
 had succeeded in forming a strong and able Cabinet; and 
 this had its influence on the country in enabling it to tackle 
 the great task before it, however little at first it was able to 
 accomplish by its arms in the field. For long, indeed, it 
 was a time of sore trial to the North, and a bitter humili- 
 ation that so little was eflFected by its troops in coping with 
 the enemy. The disaster and rout of Bull Run (July 21st) 
 early revealed the extent of the demoralization of the Union 
 forces at the outset and its inadequacy as the fighting re- 
 liance of the Nation. Even when a year had passed, though 
 the army had been recruited to over 200,000 men, there were 
 no decisive results; while still darker days were to follow, 
 and much inefiiicency and perplexity to come, ere any ap- 
 preciable gain cheered the North and lifted a corner of the 
 curtain of gloom. Nor did matters brighten for long, what 
 with failures and other experiments in the chief command 
 of the army ; the depreciation of the Federal currency ; 
 and with the adverse attitude of foreign powers (chiefly 
 Great Britain and France) in according belligerent rights 
 to the South, and having to surrender the Commissioners 
 of the latter to England, after a Northern blockader had 
 taken them from a British mail steamer on the high seas. 
 Nor did the outlook improve even with the change of 
 generals in command of the army of the Potomac after Mc- 
 Dowell's disastrous defeat at Bull Run. These changes 
 were successively from McClellan to Pope, and after the 
 former had been reinstated to his subsequent replacement 
 
92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 by Burnside, who at length gave place to Hooker, and 
 Hooker in turn gave place to Meade — all of them inferior 
 to, or at least less successful, than the great Southern 
 captains in the war, such as Lee, Longstreet, Johnston, 
 Beauregard, and Stonewall Jackson. These changes and 
 other dispositions in the chief command of the Northern 
 forces manifestly were a great concern and source of anx- 
 iety to Lincoln, who, at this era and throughout the war, 
 assumed the burden and responsibility of them, as well 
 as of the other heavy cares and solicitudes in the conduct of 
 affairs through the trying times and perplexities of the era. 
 Only a resolute, patriotic purpose and an undaunted, in- 
 vincible spirit, could have sustained him in these exacting, 
 onerous duties amid the many discouragements and sadden- 
 ing military reverses that marked his four years of rule, 
 to the collapse of the rebellion and the era of his martyrdom. 
 Nor was this all that we owe the mighty chieftain of the era 
 — great as his burden of exacting work and care was — in 
 these years of anxiety and prolonged civil strife; for we 
 now reach the period when Lincoln's lofty soul yearned, 
 and his sense of patriotic, statesmanlike duty compelled 
 him, to launch that immortal edict of his which was to 
 liberate the abject and downtrodden slave and extend the 
 blessed reality, as well as the beneficent bounds, of free- 
 dom to all men throughout the Union. Before this, com- 
 pensated emancipation had been honestly proposed and 
 urged by the great Liberator ; while by Ben Butler's thought- 
 ful, humane device, the escaping slaves had been relieved 
 to the extent of being decreed ' contraband of war," and 
 thus entitled to liberty and freedom in crossing the line of 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 93 
 
 strife. But both of these ameliorations, good as far as they 
 went, palled before the great Edict of Emancipation itself 
 — ^the act of Lincoln personally — and to him alone does 
 the country and the world owe gratitude and praise for the 
 magnanimity of the measure, the relief it brought to the 
 deserving objects of it, and the removal forever from the 
 nation of the reproach and sin involved in the condition 
 and existence of slavery. That the edict of Freedom was 
 "a war measure" matters little ; and hardly in any degree, 
 if at all, does it detract from the honors of him who had 
 long entertained the hope of seeing the slave attain free- 
 dom, and who now was happily instrumental in bringing 
 about the blessed consummation. 
 
 As a war measure, it is true, Emancipation was benefi- 
 cent and effective, for it touched the South in its tenderest 
 spot and gave a blow to the State-Rights doctrine, so dear 
 to the Southern and Democratic heart. But even before 
 the issue of the Edict much had been gained by the North 
 in the war, for New Orleans had fallen before Farragut's 
 fleet, and access was thus gained to the waters of the Mis- 
 sissippi, made more effective by the possession taken by 
 Halleck of Memphis and Corinth. Grant had also fought 
 and won the battle of Shiloh ; Lee had been repulsed at Mal- 
 vern Hill; while Richmond, the seat of the Confederate 
 capital, had been seriously threatened. Following the is- 
 sue and enforcement of the Edict came the Federal suc- 
 cesses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg; the capture of Fort 
 Donnelson on the Cumberland river, with the consequent 
 surrender of Johnston's and Buckner's forces ; which broke 
 the stubbornness of Southern fighting, soon to be para- 
 
94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 lized by the victories at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, 
 by Sherman's march through Georgia and his clever man- 
 oeuvering and driving out the enemy from the Valley of 
 the Shenandoah, and by Grant's destruction of Lee's army, 
 the capture of Richmond, and the final surrender at Ap- 
 pomattox. 
 
 The elation in the North due to this auspicious turn of 
 afifairs for the Union, and the practical close of the long 
 struggle, were an immense relief to Lincoln as well as to 
 the entire Northern and Western people, soon now to be- 
 come again, with the people of the South, a peaceful and 
 reunited nation. The cost of the strife, however, was tre- 
 mendous — a national debt contracted of over 3,000 million 
 dollars, and the loss or disablement on either side of nearly 
 half a million men each, including the dire slaughter on both 
 sides in the battles of the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania 
 Court House, and at Murfreesboro and Cold Harbor. The 
 result to the Federal cause had been, moreover, at the cost 
 of disastrous disturbance to the commercial, maritime, and 
 other affairs of the country, besides the disorganization 
 of the finances and the great depreciation of the 
 currency, in spite of Secretary Chase's herculean ef- 
 fort to control, improve, and check the effect of this, not to 
 speak of the riots over the drafts of men needed for the 
 recruitment of the army and the other difficulties of enlist- 
 ment. Much of the anxiety and perplexity of all this natur- 
 ally fell heavily upon President Lincoln, in addition to the 
 oversight and supervision he was called upon to give to the 
 army, in its different commands in the field, and to the se- 
 lection and appointment of its responsible and guiding chiefs. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9? 
 
 For this illustrious man, who throughout showed consum- 
 mate tact in the management of the nation's affairs — 
 never inclining on one side unduly to weakness or on the 
 other to the usurpation and exercise of autocratic author- 
 ity — it was a period of grave trial, with continuous strain- 
 ing of both heart and head. Alas! that the end to him 
 should come so pitifully and tragically after all he had suf- 
 fered and borne! 
 
 The remaining facts of importance to relate in this "true 
 story of a great American" may be briefly narrated. In 
 the autumn of 1864, the North re-elected Lincoln for another 
 period of rule, and showing public confidence in him and his 
 administration it also emphasized the national will to prose- 
 cute the war to a close. Happily the prospect of ending 
 the conflict was now good, for at this time close upon a mil- 
 lion men were upon the Northern muster rolls, while the 
 Southern fighting strength was greatly reduced, and the 
 shrunken forces under Lee and Johnston were in a precari- 
 ous position and in actual want of food. The gravity of 
 the situation soon now told upon the Confederates, men- 
 anced alike by circumstances and by the pressure and en- 
 leagurement of Grant's large force, aided by Sherman's 
 cavalry. The closing scene finally came (April 9, 1865) 
 at Appomattox, where Lee surrendered the army of North- 
 ern Virginia and the end came of rebellion. The conditions 
 imposed upon the South were no more irksome to these 
 combatants than the laying down of their arms, the ceasing 
 of all hostility, and the restitution to the Federal power of 
 all public property. Following upon this, the Confeder- 
 ate President and Cabinet abandoned Richmond for Dan- 
 
96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ville, and Mr. Davis subsequently fled into Georgia, where 
 he was captured and after a period of confinement was, 
 at the close of the year 1868, magnanimously included in 
 a general amnesty extended to all who had taken part on 
 the side of Secession. 
 
 In startling and grim contrast to the peaceful close of the 
 great struggle at Appomattox came the event which was to 
 send a thrill of horror and pain throughout and beyond 
 the confines of the country. Five brief days after Lee's 
 surrender, namely, on the evening of Good Friday, April 
 14th, the loved President Lincoln, who, since the evacua- 
 tion of Richmond by the Confederate administration, had 
 been visiting and had returned to Washington, sat with his 
 wife in a box to witness a play at Ford's theatre. Here, 
 in the fleeting hour of social relaxation from the engrossing 
 cares of office, he was struck down by the murderous hand of 
 an assassin and died on the following morning. Thus, 
 by the weapon of "a demented sympathizer with the cause 
 of disunion," came a close to the illustrous career of the 
 Great Emancipator and his departure to his reward in the 
 hither eternal world. Amid the lamentations and regret 
 of the stricken nation which he loved and died for came 
 the mighty pageantries which marked the funeral obse- 
 quies of the martyred one and the sad passing of his remains 
 to their last resting-place at the former home of the patriot 
 President, at Springfield, Illinois. 
 
 In a sense, Lincoln's end came as a fitting sequel to, and 
 admonition against. Civil War; and though it deprived the 
 nation of his wise counsels in the great work that lay be- 
 fore it of Reconstruction, his death and the manner of it 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 97 
 
 were factors of value in hushing all criticism of the man 
 and his career, while raising grateful peans to his memory. 
 In unity well might the two sections of the country, now 
 again become one, pay ceaseless honor to him who had had 
 much to do, through the long and appalling conflict, in 
 bringing about the happy issue of Union, and who, in mem- 
 orable words, in his immortal second Inaugural, after be- 
 moaning the scourge of war and yet foreseeing its close, 
 had admonished the Nation to have "malice toward none," 
 and "with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as 
 God gives us to see the right," besought them to "finish the 
 work they were in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care 
 for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
 and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish 
 a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all na- 
 tions." With such words of almost inspired wisdom and 
 beauty, and with such a manifestation of kindly and thought- 
 ful mood, ever customary in the speaker, we may take leave 
 of our subject and close our tribute of homage to the great 
 man. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FROM THE LIFE OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.* 
 
 By Prof, Fbancis Wavland Shepardson, Ph. D., 
 University of Chicago. 
 
 TWO contradictory tendencies find frequent expression in 
 American life. The one is a disposition to hero-worship 
 of public leaders ; the other an inclination to ridicule and be- 
 little them. The first is due partly to long prevalent meth- 
 ods of instruction, and partly to the peculiar conditions of ex- 
 istence here. The second results partly from these same con- 
 ditions and partly from the asperities of party politics, which 
 have encouraged both caricature and caustic criticism. 
 
 The past has been constantly exalted. We have been 
 accustomed to look backward through a haze, which has so 
 distorted our vision that the leaders of days gone by have 
 appeared as giants looming up through the mists of years. 
 This continual glorification has been the bane of all instruc- 
 tion. Environment has lent its powerful aid to the same 
 end. This pre-eminently is the land of opportunity. The 
 saying, "Every American boy expects to be President," has 
 sufficient warrant in the fact that several very unpromising 
 American boys have been elevated to that distinguished po- 
 sition. If conditions are favorable, a moment may make 
 an American one of the Immortals. Just so long as the 
 starry banner waves in the sky, the name of Lawrence will 
 be revered, because of those heroic words he uttered as he 
 was carried from the deck to his death below, "Don't give 
 
 * Originally contrlbnt«d, Feb. 1899, to Self-Cultnre Magazine, G. Mercer Adam, 
 Editor, and published by The Werner Co., Akron, O. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 99 
 
 up the ship!" A happy word at the right instant, an op- 
 portunity for duty seized, an act of heroism, a tragic death, 
 these have made American names immortal. 
 
 But there is another side. All is not glorification, for 
 one failure to use opportunity, one false move, one sign of 
 weakness at a critical time, has doomed a whilom hero to 
 the prison house of neglect and forgetfulness. A striking 
 instance is that of Citizen Genet, who basked in the smiles 
 of an enthusiastic populace now a century ago. For a 
 year his name was heard everywhere; then he was forgot- 
 ten. Only the special student of American history knows, 
 or cares to know, that for ,forty years after his ill-advised 
 triumphal advance from Charleston to Philadelphia, he lived 
 in the United States as a common private citizen. Equally 
 suggestive are the facts about Aaron Burr, who had thirty 
 years of obscurity after his trial for treason, before death 
 came to take him from a land which had once shown him 
 honor. These cases illustrate the second American tendency 
 — ^to disparage and belittle. A sentiment which applauds 
 quickly will blame with equal readiness and intensity. What 
 party passion does not accomplish, personal bitterness will 
 secure, and the result is that every public man has his life so 
 carefully scrutinized with microscopic exactness, that every 
 detail, no matter how personal or private, is brought to the 
 light to satisfy the imperious demands* of a scientific age. 
 The wonder increases, that anything remains to be praised, 
 that every idol is not thrown down. It speaks well for our 
 leaders that so many of them have come out of this search- 
 ing examination with honor and increased dignity. 
 
 In an address at Vassar College a few- years ago, a well- 
 
J 00 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 known Harvard professor mentioned a Christmas card which 
 he had lately seen in a store window in Cambridge. It had 
 upon it the pictures of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whit- 
 tier, Hawthorne, and Holmes. He found in the very pic- 
 tures a sufficient argument for the existence of an Ameri- 
 can literature, and then he expressed his opinion that these 
 men and their writings might safely be left to posterity. 
 "For," he continued, "posterity will judge; that is certain. 
 It will judge, too, with unthinking impartiality — without 
 acrimony, without tenderness. What mankind wants or 
 needs it will preserve and remember; what mankind finds 
 useless it will cast aside and forget. That is what makes 
 the past heroic to all eyes not unduly sharpened by the en- 
 gines of science. 'It is the sin and the tumult and the pas- 
 sion of human life that die. Enthroned in art the beauty of 
 the old days lives, and it will live forever.' And although 
 science nowadays teaches us the suggestive truth that the 
 old days which we have reverenced were, after all, when 
 the sun still shone on them, days of turbulence and wicked- 
 ness, disheartening as any that surges about us now, that 
 same science, one often thinks, is prone to forget the deep 
 law of human nature, which makes each generation, in the 
 end, remember instinctively, of those that are gone before, 
 only or chiefly those traits and deeds which shall add to the 
 wisdom and power of humanity." 
 
 No other public man in American history affords such 
 opportunities for study as are presented in the life of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. His lowly origin, his meteoric career, his 
 tragic death — these yield ample materials for artist and poet 
 and writer. From every hidden nook and corner of the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. lOI 
 
 western world eager hands are drawing forth the details of 
 his life, and with every added bit of information the mystery 
 of his existence becomes the more complex and inexplicable. 
 Henry Watterson uses words full of meaning, when he 
 says : "A thousand years hence, no story, no tragedy, no 
 epic poem will be filled with greater wonder, or be followed 
 by mankind with deeper feeling, than that which tells of his 
 [Lincoln's] life and death." 
 
 The constant tendency toward glorification already men- 
 tioned, and in this special case the added inclination to 
 deification, renders the task difficult, indeed, for him who 
 attempts in a brief chapter to tell what the life of Abraham 
 Lincoln means to the American of to-day. 
 
 The names of great Americans are associated with great 
 ideas or movements. The majority link the name of Alex- 
 ander Hamilton with federal finances, overlooking his great 
 influence in the building up of the central government and 
 his determined stand for that central authority as against 
 the individual state. So, likewise, the name of Calhoun will 
 go down to the coming ages as the synonym for Nullifica- 
 tion, much to the prejudice of the historic influence of that 
 distinguished statesman. In every case that might be men- 
 tioned, the central idea obscures the many other features of 
 a life full of illustration of phases of American develop- 
 ment. 
 
 In the case of Abraham Lincoln the crowning thought 
 always will be the emancipation of the slave, and yet it is 
 worth while considering whether, as the years go by and the 
 wonderful life is studied again and agam, other features than 
 this most dramatic one may not be chosen in real explana- 
 
I02 ABRABfAM LINCOLN, 
 
 tion of the power of this leader over the minds and hearts 
 of American citizens. Certainly Mr. Lowell had something 
 else in mind than praise for the Emancipator, when he 
 phrased his "Commemoration Ode" and called Abraham 
 Lincoln "the lirst American." 
 
 When the thought of emancipation first came into the 
 mind of Mr. Lincoln it is difficult to determine. The icono- 
 clastic scientific student casts discredit upon many of the 
 tales which have been told about his boyhood. Especially 
 desirable would it be that one story might be retained. Ac- 
 cording to that, one day, in the spring of 1831, two youths 
 might have been seen wandering about the streets of that 
 quaint southern city of New Orleans. In age and stature 
 they were men, but in knowledge of the world they were 
 mere children. They had come down the river from their 
 home in Illinois, bringing a flat-boat loaded with pork and 
 beef. They wondered much as they saw the sights of 
 the busy southern city, the centre of all the trade of the 
 West and South, and gained a glimpse of a life so differ- 
 ent from that of the simple quiet of their prairie home. 
 
 Among other places visited was the slave-mart, and there 
 for the first time they were brought face to face with the 
 evils of human slavery, as they saw men and women, boys 
 and girls, sold like cattle, and heard the sad cry of the 
 mother as the child was taken away, or the mournful 
 lamentation of the father as he realized that he was to be 
 separated from his loved ones. The coarse remarks of the 
 rude overseers grated harshly upon their ears^ and as they 
 turned away from the accursed spot and hurried out into the 
 pure sunlight, one of them, with quivering lip and clenched 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 10 3 
 
 fist, said to his companion : "John, if I ever get a chance 
 to hit that institution, I'll hit it hard, by the Eternal God !" 
 
 The closing cry of the auctioneer, "Going, going, gone," 
 echoing from the walls of the slave market, seemed to come 
 as a mocking defiance of the poor Illinois boatman, — ^half 
 horse, half alligator they used to call such as he, — who had 
 just uttered such portentous words. This young man from 
 Illinois, all through his life, was to be a believer in dreams 
 and omens. Many a time in his boyhood and youth he is 
 said to have declared that he was going to be President of 
 the United States, and over and over again during the 
 years at the White House he, felt the premonitions of his 
 sad end. Perhaps even at this moment his soul had some 
 mysterious communication with the supernatural, as he lived 
 the future in the present, and felt rising within him that 
 spirit which in later years was to lead to the Emancipation 
 Proclamation and crown his life with glory. 
 
 Every time he went near the borderland between freedom 
 and slavery, his heart was saddened by the sight of slaves 
 toiling on the plantations, working upon the levees, or, per- 
 haps, shackled in irons, on their way to the auction block. 
 Such sights were "continual torment" to him, so he after- 
 wards wrote to a friend. But no opportunity came to him 
 to strike any blow against slavery, until in 1837, being then 
 a member of the Illinois assembly, he joined a fellow-mem- 
 ber in a protest against a resolution on slavery, which was 
 probably designed to mollify those who had been disturbed 
 by the development of anti-slavery feeling. The language 
 of this protest makes dull reading now, but it took courage 
 for anyone in that time, when slavery interests were so 
 
I ©4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 powerful, especially for one who had political aspirations, 
 to declare that "the institution of slavery is founded both on 
 injustice and bad policy." 
 
 The idea of colonization may have taken root in his mind 
 because of his regard for Henry Clay. At one time he 
 travelled to Kentucky to hear this Whig leader, and although 
 he found his former idol shattered, after he had listened to 
 an indifferent speech and had received somewhat cavalier 
 treatment, yet this episode perhaps had a formative influ- 
 ence in his anti-slavery development. Being elected to 
 Congress during the height of the Mexican discussions, Mr. 
 Lincoln showed few qualities of leadership, but manifested 
 his opposition to the slave interest by frequent votes for the 
 principle of the Wilmot Proviso, as w;ell as by the introduc- 
 tion of a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia. This bill, moderate enough from a present day 
 standpoint, aroused intense antagonism at the timie, and 
 although it never came to a vote, it is interesting as show- 
 ing the position of Mr. Lincoln twelve years before he went 
 to Washington as President. 
 
 A few years passed by with the future Emancipator work- 
 ing as a lawyer in Springfield, 111. Then the full meaning 
 of the Compromise of 1850 broke uoon the people of the 
 North, and a new party was formed, the "Anti-Nebraska" 
 men, of whom Abraham Lincoln was a local leader in his 
 State. His ready wit and stump-speaking ability gave him 
 increasing prominence. The Anti-Nebraska men secured 
 control of the lower House of Congress. Then they organ- 
 ized a new political party on broad construction princi- 
 ples, a party which inherited the desires of the Whigs for a 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I05 
 
 protective tariff and internal improvements, and added the 
 new principle, that the Federal "Government had the right 
 to control slavery in the Territories. 
 
 This was the foundation-stone of the Republican party 
 — ^non-extension of slavery into the Territories. The hetero- 
 geneous combination of men of varying views was not 
 formed to secure abolition, but restriction. Old line Whigs, 
 who had forsaken their party because it would take no pro- 
 nounced position on slavery ; the new Whigs, led by Wil- 
 liam H. Seward, who came into the party after the Com- 
 promise of 1850; the Know-Nothings, who had tried to 
 create new issues when there was but one; the Free-Soilers, 
 who despaired of success because of the too radical Aboli- 
 tionists ; and Northern Democrats, who resented the control 
 of their party by the Southern slavemasters, — all these ele- 
 ments came together to support the old Free-Soil conten- 
 tion, "No more slave States. No more slave Territories!" 
 The institution of slavery was hateful to many of them, but 
 they were not ready as yet to demand its abolition in that 
 region where for so long a time it had made its home. The 
 radicals were not satisfied with the platform, but the ma- 
 jority of anti-slavery men voted for Fremont, who received 
 1,300,000 ballots, 114 electoral votes, and was defeated only 
 by a few of the accidents of politics. 
 
 At the first national convention of this party, when Fre- 
 mont was selected foi' the candidate, Abraham Lincoln had a 
 good following for the second place, but his fame was 
 chiefly local, until he entered upon the celebrated debate with 
 Stephen A. Douglas, gaining national reputation from be- 
 ing pitted against the distinguished leader of the Northern 
 
Io6 ABRAHAM LINCOLK. 
 
 Democracy. Then his Hfe-current began to move mort, 
 rapidly. A visit through the Northern cities, a pecuhar 
 turn in the affairs of a great nominating convention, and 
 the awkward rail-spHtter was the candidate of the Republi- 
 can party for President of the United States. The Demo- 
 cratic p>arty, still strong enough to win many a fight, became 
 hopelessly divided. There was an election of intense excite- 
 ment, and the party which declared that the normal condition 
 of all the territory of the Union was that of freedom won 
 the day. Abraham Lincoln, inexperienced in public affairs, 
 was President. The orators ridiculed him ; polite society 
 scoffed at him; the newspapers lampooned him; his party 
 leaders, who knew him not, despised his abilities ; seven 
 States rebelled before he could be inaugurated ; the belief of 
 the North that disunion was only a threat was proved false, 
 and yet some cried loudly against coercion ; foreign influ- 
 ence seemed about to favor the Southern Confederacy ; 
 there was no encouragement for him but the cries of the 
 radical anti-slavery people, some of whom wished the "way- 
 ward sisters" to depart in peace. Such was the distressing 
 condition of affairs when Abraham Lincoln left his neigh- 
 bors in Springfield, to undertake what he declared to be 
 a more difficult task than Washington had had, and secretly 
 entered the capital city, to begin his long and troubled ca- 
 reer as chief executive of the nation. 
 
 The war was begun with the views of Mr. Lincoln un- 
 changed. He believed that the end of slavery was near, 
 no matter what effect the war might have upon it. "I am 
 naturally anti-slavery," he said. "If slavery is not wrong, 
 nothing is wrong. I cannot remember the time when I did 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. lOJ 
 
 not SO think and so feel. And yet I have never understood 
 that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right 
 to act upon that judgment and feehng. It was in the oath I 
 took, that I would to the best of my ability preserve, protect, 
 and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could 
 not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it in 
 my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break 
 the oath in using that power. I understood, too, that in 
 ordinary civil administration this oath forbade me practically 
 to indulge my private abstract judgment on the moral ques- 
 tion of slavery. I did understand, however, also, that my 
 oath imposed upon me the duty of preserving to the best 
 of my ability, by every indispensable means, that govern- 
 ment, that nation, of which the Constitution was the organic 
 law. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had 
 even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery 
 or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of govern- 
 ment, country, and the Constitution altogether." 
 
 The time had not come for him to fulminate his decree. 
 There were many who would fight to sustain the Union, 
 who would not engage in a war for the abolition of slavery. 
 The President recognized this fact, and waited. Some- 
 times to the radicals he seemed to be taking backward steps, 
 as, for exafnple, when he kept Union generals from free- 
 ing the slaves. But his purpose was fixed. He early saw 
 that the recognition of the Southern Confederacy by foreign 
 nations would never corne, if the war were to be given an 
 anti-slavery cast. No civilized nation in the world would 
 recognize a country which had for its main pillar an insti- 
 tution which was held in horror by the most of mankind. 
 
Io8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Yet all the time disaster was following disaster to the Union 
 cause. Everything looked black for the Northern armies. 
 Some great act must be done to stimulate the people. Some- 
 thing must be done at once to arouse them to the situation. 
 
 But it was a surprise to Mr. Seward and other members 
 of the cabinet, when in July, 1862, the President presented 
 them with a draft of a proclamation, declaring the negroes 
 free in every state that should be in open rebellion on the first 
 of January, 1863. He seemed determined to issue it at 
 once. Mr. Seward showed him that it would seem like a 
 wail from a badly beaten party, and urged that its publica- 
 tion be delayed until victory had turned its tide toward 
 the Union forces. The President accepted the suggestion 
 and laid the paper away. The invading hosts of the South 
 came into Maryland, and then Mr. Lincoln resolved that 
 victory of the Union forces should be the signal for his 
 proclamation. The battle of Antietam came on the seven- 
 tenth of September, and five days later the world was given 
 an electric shock of surprise, when the great Emancipation 
 Proclamation appeared, proving in the long run the last 
 blow to the cause of slavery, and striking the shackles from 
 millions of human beings who had grown up in bondage 
 in the land of boasted freedom. 
 
 There were some voices of dissent; there was much 
 talk of an "abolition war" ; there were to be many days and 
 weeks and months of weary longing for peace ; but the work 
 of Abraham Lincoln in the slavery matter was practically 
 finished when he affixed his signature to this great charter 
 of liberties. "I had made a vow, a covenant, that if God 
 should give us victory in battle, I would consider it as an 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I09 
 
 indication of divine will, and that it would be my duty to 
 move forward with emancipation. God has decided the 
 matter in favor of the slaves. I am satisfied that I took the 
 right course." 
 
 Thus, at last, the boy of 1831 had had a chance to hit 
 "that institution," and he had hit it hard. 
 
 If Mr. Lincoln's life had closed then, he would still have 
 earned a place among the heroes of the nation. But the 
 tragic termination of his career no doubt had great influence 
 in making his name a household word. To many there 
 was recalled the picture of Moses, who had led his people 
 out of bondage and up to the borders of the promised land 
 of freedom, into which, however, he himself was not allowed 
 to go. Never in the world's history was there such a dra- 
 matic ending of a great life. The real root of internal dif- 
 ficulty had been discovered and destroyed. The armies 
 were ready for dissolution into the ranks of private citizen- 
 ship. Peace had come with its sweetening influence. What 
 remained was to bind up the wounds, and this might safely 
 be trusted to the man who had stretched out his hands in 
 tender entreaty a few years before, when he said: "We 
 are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained, it must not break our 
 bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretch- 
 ing from every battlefield and patriot grave all over this 
 broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when 
 again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels 
 of our nature." 
 
 Then the blow fell. It was swift; it was terrible. It 
 was hard to bear. It could not be understood. "Grief and 
 
tlO ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 a vague desire for revenge for this cruel and needless crime 
 struggled for mastery. This was the feeling all over the 
 country, when the heavy tidings of the foul and most un- 
 natural murder went forth over the length and breadth 
 of the land. Flags that had been flying in triumph were 
 lowered to half-mast in sorrow. It is not a stretch of the 
 imagination to say that a great wave of lamentation, spon- 
 taneous and exceeding bitter, swept over the Republic. Bells 
 were tolled and minute guns were fired. For days all 
 ordinary business, except that of the most imperative import- 
 ance, was practically suspended, and the nation seemed 
 abandoned to its mighty grief." 
 
 No one could understand it then ; no one can understand 
 it now. Perhaps, while the whole world wept with us over 
 Abraham Lincoln's bier, the broken bands of Union were 
 drawn closer together in a ministry of sorrow. Perhaps 
 the hand of the assassin saved this President from the dif- 
 ficulties which beset his successor, difficulties with leaders 
 of his party which might have lessened the influence rightly 
 earned by his noble Proclamation. It is idle to speculate, 
 and in the gloom of that dark April morning the martyred 
 President must be left, wrapped in that same mystery which 
 attends his whole career, as one attempts to tell the story 
 of his wonderful life. 
 
 Comparisons are unfair where conditions are dissimi- 
 lar, and yet the temptation is always strong to compare the 
 two great leaders whose births came in February, and who 
 stand at the head of American statesmen. Such compari- 
 son is courted by the words of Mr. Lowell's "Commemora- 
 tion Ode" already quoted. And perhaps comparison will 
 
A6&AHAM LINCOLN. 1 1 1 
 
 show a helpful suggestion from the life of Abraham Lin- 
 coln, a suggestion why, perhaps, he holds so high a place 
 in the hearts of his countrymen. 
 
 One picture of the boyhood of Mr. Lincoln shows "a 
 very tall rawboned youth, with large features, dark shrivel- 
 led skin, and rebellious hair ; his arms and legs long and out 
 of proportion; clad in deerskin trousers, which, from fre- 
 quent exposure to the rain, had shrunk so as to sit tightly on 
 his limbs, leaving several inches of bluish skin exposed be- 
 tween their lower end and the heavy tan-colored shoes ; 
 the nether garment held usually by only one suspender, that 
 was strung over a coarse home-made shirt ; the head covered 
 in winter with a codn-skin cap, in summer with rough straw 
 hat of uncertain shape, without a band." Such was the 
 overgrown youth who made his way through life as best he 
 might, a general helper, a boatman, a country store clerk, 
 until his homely wit, his keenness of judgment, and his 
 clearness of view made him a local celebrity. 
 
 Years before in our history a boy had spent his early 
 life in the wilderness. Tall and strong-limbed, active and 
 agile, he had tramped through the forests of Virginia as 
 a surveyor; he had learned the arts of woodcraft; he had 
 become familiar with the habits of the red men; he had 
 observed the fighting qualities of his countrymen ; and when 
 the time came he stepped forward, armed and equipped, his 
 whole training apparently fitting him to lead his fellows 
 through the trying period of national infancy. The 
 thoughtful student of American history believes that George 
 Washington was prepared in ways that he knew not to be 
 the leader in the Revolution. The same thoughtful student 
 
II* ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 must find the guiding hand in the backwoods' boyhood and 
 youth of Abraham Lincoln. Why may we not believe that 
 the squalor and penury of his early days were his to make 
 him tender toward the lowly and the suffering, and that the 
 hard blows of circumstance which developed his giant frame 
 were to strengthen the great shoulders for the time when 
 they were to bear the worry and the woes of the nation? 
 We may well question whether the son of opulence, the 
 old Virginia child of fortune, could have had his heart 
 stirred by the wail from the cabin of the slave, as was the 
 heart of the child of new Virginia, who had walked in the 
 paths of poverty and privation. Each had his peculiar mis- 
 sion ; the one to lead, when the world knew only the power 
 of royalty; the other to prove the grandest type of a new 
 democracy, which elevates its servants sometimes from 
 the lowest depths of despair to the highest pinnacles of 
 power. These men represented two distinct types of Am- 
 erican life. The aristocratic country gentlemen, with well- 
 filled purse, with rotund face, with velvet clothes, was the 
 best representative of the life of the eighteenth century. 
 The lank lawyer of the prairies, with face furrowed with 
 care, without family tradition of greatness, a self-made man, 
 is the ideal of the nineteenth. 
 
 When Washington ruled it was an age of privilege; it 
 was an age of aristocracy. Then only the favored ones 
 controlled affairs of state, only the few ruled the many. Now 
 it is an age of democracy, where the very humblest may 
 aspire. No longer is the popular ideal the man in knee- 
 breeches and ruffled shirt, who was chosen for the first Presi- 
 dent of the United States at the end of the old regime, but 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I I 3 
 
 the "miM-boy of the slashes," the "hero of Tippecanoe," the 
 "hero of New Orleans," the "canal-boat mule driver," and 
 greatest of all, "Honest Old Abe, the rail-splitter of Illi- 
 nois," — men who are popular heroes because they had lit- 
 tle sympathy with forms or ceremonies, and believed one 
 man to be just as good as another. 
 
 A generation has passed since Abraham Lincoln died. 
 Already he has been clothed with such romance, that the 
 more light there is shed upon his life, the more difificult its 
 interpretation becomes. That he will always be associated 
 with the great charter of freedom for the slave is certain. 
 That his tragic death will always lend additional halo to 
 his name seems likely. And yet, more satisfactory expla- 
 nation of his popularity may, perhaps, be found in the fact 
 that he always kept close to the plain people, whom he so 
 often mentioned, for he was a man "whose meek flock the 
 people joyed to be, not lured by any cheat of birth, but by 
 his clear-grained human worth, and brave old wisdom of 
 sincerity." 
 
Early years of Abraham Lincoln* 
 
 By GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L. (Oxon), Ex-Professor of Consti- 
 tutional History, Cornell University, N. Y. 
 
 Our readers need not be afraid that we are going to bore 
 them with the Slavery Question or the Civil War. We 
 deal here not with the Martyr President, but with Lincoln 
 in embryo, leaving the great man at the entrance of the 
 grand scene.- 
 
 After the murder, criticism, of course, was for a time 
 impossible. Martyrdom was/ followed by canonization, and 
 the popular heart could not be blamed for overflowing in 
 hyperbole. The fallen chief "was Washington, he was Mo- 
 ses, and there were not wanting even those who likened 
 him to the God and Redeemer of all the earth. These latter 
 thought they discovered in his early origin, his kindly 
 nature, his benevolent precepts, and the homely anecdotes 
 in which he taught the people, strong points of resemblance 
 between him and the Divine Son of Mary." A halo of 
 myth naturally gathered around the cradle of this new 
 Moses. Among other fables, it was believed that the Presi- 
 dent's family had fled from Kentucky to Indiana to escape 
 the taint of Slavery. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abra- 
 ham, was migratory enough, but the course of his migra- 
 tions was not determined by high moral motives, and we 
 may safely affirm that had he ever found himself among 
 the fleshpots of Egypt, he would have stayed there, how- 
 
 * By Permission, from " Setf-CnUure" Magazine, Edited by G» Mercer Adam. 
 
ABkAttAM LINCOLN. 11 J 
 
 ever deep the moral darkness might have been. He was a 
 thriftless '"ne'er do weel," who had very commonplace rea- 
 sons for wandering away from the miserable, solitary farm 
 in Kentucky, on which his child first formed a sad acquaint- 
 ance with life and nature, and which, as it happened, was 
 not in the slave-owning region of the State. His decision 
 appears to have been hastened by a "difficulty'' he got into, 
 which is set forth in one of the biographies of his son, to 
 which we are indebted for many of the facts in this paper.* 
 
 Lincoln senior drifted to Indiana, and in a spot which was 
 then an almost untrodden wilderness built a casa santa, 
 which his connection, Dennis Hanks, calls "that darned 
 little half-faced camp" — a dwelling enclosed oh three sides 
 and open on the fourth, without a floor, and called a camp, 
 it seems, because it was made of poles, not of logs. He 
 afterwards exchanged the "camp" for the more ambitious 
 "cabin ;" but his cabin was "a rough, rough log one," made 
 of unhewn timber, and without floor, door, or window. 
 In this "rough, rough" abode, his lanky, lean-visaged, awk- 
 ward and somewhat pensive, though strong, hearty and 
 patient son Abraham had a "rough, rough" life, and under- 
 went experiences which, if they were not calculated to form 
 a Pitt or a Turgot, were calculated to season a politician, 
 and make him a winner in the tough struggle for existence, 
 as well as to identify him with the people, faithful repres- 
 entation of whose aims, sentiments, tastes, passions and 
 prejudices was the one thing needful to qualify him for 
 obtaining the prize of his ambition. 
 
 "For two years Lincoln (the father) continued to live 
 alone in the old way. He did not like to farm, and he never 
 
Il6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 got much of his land under cultivation. His principal crop 
 was corn; and this, with the game which a rifleman so ex- 
 pert would easily take from the woods around him, supplied 
 his table." It does not appear that he employed any of 
 his mechanical skill in completing and furnishing his own 
 cabin. It has already been stated that the latter had no 
 window, door or floor. The son slept in the loft, "to which 
 he ascended by means of pins driven into holes in the wall." 
 
 Of his father's disposition, Abraham seems to have in- 
 herited at all events the dislike to labor, though his sounder 
 moral nature prevented him from being an idler. His ten- 
 dency to politics came from the same element of character 
 as his father's preference for the rifle. In after-life, we are 
 told, his mind "was filled with gloomy forebodings and 
 strong apprehensions of impending evil, mingled with 
 extravagant visions of personal grandeur and power." 
 His melancholy, characterized by all his friends as "terrible," 
 was closely connected with the cravings of his demagogic 
 ambition, and the root of both was in him from a boy. 
 
 In the Indiana cabin Abraham's mother, whose maiden 
 name was Nancy Hanks, died, far from medical aid, of the 
 epidemic called milk sickness. She was preceded in death 
 by her relatives, the Sparrows, who had succeeded the 
 Lincolns in the "camp," and by many neighbors, whose 
 coffins Thomas Lincoln made out of "green lumber cut with 
 a whip-saw." Upon Nancy's death he took to his green 
 lumber again and made a box for her. "There were about 
 twenty persons at her funeral. They took her to the sum- 
 mit of a deeply wooded knoll, about half a mile southeast 
 of the cabin, and laid her beside the Sparrows. If there 
 were any burial ceremonies, they were of the briefest. The 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I 17 
 
 great trees were originally cut away to make a small cleared 
 space for this primitive graveyard; but the young dog- 
 woods have sprung up unopposed in great luxuriance, and 
 in many instances the names of pilgrims to the burial place 
 of the great Abraham Lincoln's mother are carved on their 
 bark. With this exception, the spot is wholly unmarked. 
 The grave never had a stone, nor even a board, at its head 
 or its foot; and the neighbors still dispute as to which of 
 these unsightly hollows contains the ashes of Nancy Lin- 
 coln." If Democracy in the New World sometimes stones 
 the prophets, it is seldom guilty of building their sepulchres. 
 Out of sight, off the stump, beyond the range of the inter- 
 viewer, heroes and martyrs soon pass from the mind of a 
 fast-living people; and weeds may grow out of the dust 
 of Washington. But in this case what neglect has done 
 good taste would have dictated ; it is well that the dogwoods 
 are allowed to grow unchecked over the wilderness grave. 
 Thirteen months after the death of his Nancy, Thomas 
 Lincoln went to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and suddenly 
 presented himself to Mrs. Sally Johnston, who had in former 
 days rejected him for a better match, but had become a 
 widow. "Well, Mrs. Johnston, I have no wife and you 
 have no husband, I came a purpose to marry you. I 
 knowed you from a gal and you knowed me from a boy. 
 I have no time to lose, and if you are willin', let it be done 
 straight off." "Tommy, I know you well, and have no ob- 
 jection to marrying you ; but I cannot do it straight off, as 
 I owe some debts that must first be paid." They were mar- 
 ried next morning, and the new Mrs. Lincoln, who owned, 
 among other wonderous household goods, a bureau that 
 
I I 8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 cost forty dollars, and who had been led, it seems, to be- 
 lieve that her new husband was reformed and a prosper- 
 ous farmer, was conveyed with her bureau to the smiling 
 scene of his reformation and prosperity. Being, however, 
 a sensible Christian woman, she made the best of a bad bar- 
 gain, got her husband to put down a floor and hang doors 
 and windows, made things generally decent, and was very 
 kind to the chidren, especially to Abe, to whom she took 
 a great liking, and who owed to his good stepmothei* what 
 other heroes have owed to their mothers. "From that time 
 on," according to his garrulous relative, Dennis Hanks, 
 "he appeared to lead a new life." It seems to have been 
 difficult to extract from him, "for campaign purposes," the 
 incidents of his life before it took this happy turn. 
 
 He described his own education in a Congressional hand- 
 book as "defective." In Kentucky he occasionally trudged 
 with his little sister, rather as an escort than as a school- 
 fellow, to a school four miles off, kept by one Caleb Hazel, 
 who could teach reading and writing after a fashion, and 
 a little arithmetic, but whose great qualification for his office 
 lay in his power and readiness "to whip the big boys." So 
 far American respect for popular education as the key to 
 success in life prevailed even in those wilds, and in such 
 a family as that of Thomas Lincoln. Under the auspices 
 of his new mother, Abraham began attending school again. 
 The master was one Crawford, who tought not only reading, 
 writing and arithmetic, but "manners." 
 
 Mr. Crawford, it seems, was a martinet in spelling, and 
 one day he was going to punish a whole class for failing 
 to spell defied, when Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. II9 
 
 a young lady by putting his finger with a significant smile 
 to his eye. Many years later, however, and after his en- 
 trance to public life, Lincoln himself spelt apology with a 
 double p, planning with a single n, and very with a double 
 r. His schooling was very irregular, his school days hardly 
 amounting to a year in all, and such education as he had 
 was picked up afterwards by himself. His appetite for 
 mental food, however, was always strong, and he devoured 
 all the books, a few and not very select, which could be 
 found in the neighborhood of "Pigeon Creek." 
 
 Equally strong was his passion for stump oratory, the 
 taste for which pervades the New World, even in the least 
 intellectual districts, as the taste for church festivals per- 
 vades the people of Spain, or the taste for cricket the peo- 
 ple of England. Abe's neighbor, John Romine, says "he 
 was awful lazy. He worked for me ; was always reading 
 and thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for 
 me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, 
 he would laugh and talk and crack jokes all the time ; didn't 
 love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie 
 under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, 
 cipher, or • scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of 
 the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practiced stump ora- 
 tory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching 
 himself, to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetori- 
 cal line were high. When it was announced in the harvest 
 field that Abe had taken the stump, work was at an end. 
 
 Abe's first written composition appears to have been an 
 essay against cruelty to animals, a theme the choice of which 
 was at once indicative of his kindness of heart ar^d practi* 
 
I20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 cally judicious, since the young gentlemen in the neighbor- 
 hood were in the habit of catching terrapins and putting hot 
 coals upon their backs. The essay appears not to have 
 been preserved, and we cannot say whether its author 
 succeeded in explaining that ethical mystery — ^the love 
 of cruelty in boys. 
 
 Society in the neighborhood of Pigeon Creek was of the 
 thorough backwoods type; as coarse as possible, but hos- 
 pitable and kindly, free from cant and varnish, and a bet- 
 ter school of life than of manners, though, after all, the 
 best manners are learned in the best school of life, and the 
 school of life in which Abe studied was not the worst. He 
 became a leading favorite, and his appearance, towering 
 above the other hunting shirts, was always the signal for 
 the fun to begin. His nature seems to have been, like 
 many others, open alike to cheerful and to gloomy impres- 
 sions. A main source of his popularity was the fund of 
 stories to which he was always adding, and to which in 
 after-life he constantly went for solace, under depression 
 or responsibility, as another man would go to his cigar or 
 snuff box. The taste was not individual but local, and nat- 
 ural to keen-witted people who had no other food for their 
 wits. In those circles "the ladies drank whiskey-toddy, 
 while the men drank it straight." 
 
 Lincoln was by no means fond of drink, but in this, as 
 in everything else, he followed the great law of his life 
 as a politician, by falling in with the humor of the people. 
 One cold night he and his companions found an acquaint- 
 ance lying dead-drunk in a puddle. All but Lincoln were 
 dispo'sfeS to let him He where he was, and freeze to death. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. IZI 
 
 But Abe "bent his mighty frame, and taking the man in his 
 long arms, carried him a great distance to Dennis Hanks' 
 cabin. There he built a fire, warmed, rubbed and nursed 
 him through the entire night, his companions having left him 
 alone in his merciful task." His real kindness of heart 
 is always coming out in the most striking way, and it was 
 not impaired even by civil war. 
 
 Lincoln had a very good constitution, but his frame hard- 
 ly bespoke great strength ; he was six feet four and large- 
 boned, but narrow chested, and had almost a consumptive 
 appearance. His strength, nevertheless, was great. We 
 are told that, harnessed with ropes and straps, he could lift 
 a box of stones weighing from a thousand to twelve hun- 
 dred pounds. In wrestling, of which he was very fond, 
 he had not his match near Pigeon Creek, and only once 
 found him anywhere else. He was also formidable as a 
 pugilist. But he was no bully; on the contrary he was 
 peaceable and chivalrous in a rough way. 
 
 That Abraham Lincoln should have said, when a bare- 
 legged boy, that he intended to be President of the United 
 States is not remarkable. Every boy in the United States 
 says it. But Lincoln was really carrying on his political 
 education. Dennis Hanks is asked how he and Lincoln 
 acquired their knowledge. "We learned," he replies, "by 
 sight, scent and hearing. We heard all that was said, and 
 talked over and over the questions heard; wore them slick 
 and threadbare. Went to political and other speeches 
 and gatherings, as you do now ; we would hear all sides and 
 opinions, talk them over, discuss them, agreeing or disagree- 
 ing. Abe was originally a Democrat after the order of 
 
122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Jackson ; so was his father, so we all were. . . . He 
 preached, made speeches, read for us, explained to us, &c. 
 . . . . Abe was a cheerful boy, a witty boy ; was humor- 
 ous always ; sometimes would get sad, not very often. . . 
 Lincoln would frequently make political and other speeches ; 
 he was calm, logical and clear always. He attended trials, 
 went to court always, read the revised statutes of Indiana, 
 dated 1824, heard law speeches, and listened to law trials. 
 He was always reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writ- 
 ing poetry and the like. Abe was a good talker, a good 
 reader, and was a kind of newsboy." One or two articles 
 written by Abe found their way into obscure journals, to 
 his infinite gratification. His foot was on the first round 
 of the ladder. It is right to say that his culture was not 
 solely political, and that he was able to astonish the natives 
 of Gentryville by explaining that when the sun appeared 
 to set, it "was we did the sinking and not the sun." 
 
 Abe was tired of his home, as a son of Thomas Lincoln 
 might be, without disparagement to his filial piety; and he 
 was glad to get off with a neighbor on a commercial trip 
 down the river to New Orleans. The trip was successful 
 in a small way, and Abe soon after repeated it with other 
 companions. In the first trip the great emancipator came 
 in contact with the negro in a way that did not seem likely 
 to prepossess him in favor of the race. The boat was 
 boarded by negro robbers, who were repulsed only after a 
 fray in which Abe got a scar which he carried to the grave. 
 But he saw with his own eyes slaves manacled and whip- 
 ped at New Orleans; and though his sympathies were not 
 far-reaching, the actual sight of suffering never failed to 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I 23 
 
 make an impression on his mind. A negrophilist he never 
 became. "I protest," he said afterwards, when engaged in 
 the slavery controversy, "against the counterfeit logic which 
 concludes that because I do not want a black wom- 
 an for a slave I must necessarily want her for 
 a wife. I need not have her for either. I can 
 just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly 
 is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat 
 the bread which she earns with her own hands, she 
 is my equal and the equal of all others." It would be dif- 
 ficult to put the case better. 
 
 While Abraham Lincoln was trading to New Orleans, his 
 father, Thomas Lincoln, was on the move again. This time 
 he migrated to Illinois, and there again shifted from place 
 to place, gathering no moss, till he died as thriftless and 
 poor as he had lived. We have, in later years, an applica- 
 tion from him to his son for money, to which the son re- 
 sponds in a tone which implies some doubt as to the strict 
 accuracy of the ground on which the oldgentleman's request 
 was preferred. Their relations were evidently not very af- 
 fectionate, though there is nothing unfilial in Abe's conduct. 
 Abraham himself drifted to Salem on the Sangamon, in 
 Illinois, tw^enty miles northwest of Springfield, where he 
 became clerk in a new store, set up by Denton Ofifutt, with 
 whom he had formed a connection in one of his trips to 
 New Orleans. Salem was then a village of a dozen houses, 
 and the little centre of society very like that of Pigeon Creek 
 and its neighborhood, but more decidedly western. We 
 are told that "here Mr. Lincoln became acquainted with a 
 class of men the world never saw the like of before or 
 
'»4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 since. They were large men, — large in body and large in 
 mind; hard to whip and never to be fooled. They were a 
 bold, daring and reckless set of men ; they were men of their 
 own minds, — believed what was demonstrable, were men of 
 great common sense. With these men Mr. Lincoln was 
 thrown; with them he lived and with them he moved and 
 almost had his being. They were skeptics all — scoffers 
 some. These scoffers were good men, and their scoffs 
 were protests against theology — loud protests against the 
 follies of Christianity ; they had never heard of theism 
 and the new and better religious thoughts of this age. 
 Hence, being natural skeptics and being bold, brave men, 
 they uttered their thoughts freely.'' 
 
 It seems to be proved, by conclusive evidence, that Mr. 
 Lincoln shared the sentiments of his companions, and that 
 he was never a member of any Church, a believer in the 
 divinity of Christ, or a Christian of any denomination. He 
 is described as an avowed, an open free-thinker, some- 
 times bordering on atheism, going extreme lengths against 
 Christian doctrines, and "shocking" men whom it was prob- 
 ably not very easy to shock. He even wrote a little work 
 on "Infidelity," attacking Christianity in general, and espec- 
 ially the belief that Jesus was the Son of God ; but the manu- 
 script was destroyed by a prescient friend, who knew that 
 its publication would ruin the writer in the political market. 
 There is reason to believe that Burns contributed to Lin- 
 coln's skepticism, but he drew it more directly from Volney, 
 Paine, Hume and Gibbon. His fits of downright atheism 
 appear to have been transient ; his settled belief was theism 
 with a morality which, though he was not aware of it, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1 25 
 
 he had really derived from the gospel. It is needless to say 
 that the case had never been rationally presented to him, 
 and that his decision against Christianity vv^ould prove noth- 
 ing, even if his mind had been more powerful than it v^ras. 
 Like many skeptics, he was liable to superstitions, especially 
 to the superstition of self-consciousness, a conviction that he 
 was the subject of a special decree made by some nameless 
 and mysterious power. Even from a belief in apparitions 
 he was not free. 
 
 Abe's popularity grew apace; his ambition grew with it; 
 it is astonishing how readily and freely the plant sprouts 
 upon that "soil,. He was at this time carrying on his edu- 
 cation evidently with a view to . public life. Books were 
 not easily found. He wanted to study English Gram- 
 mar, considering that accomplishment desirable for a states- 
 man ; and, being told that there was a Grammar in a house 
 six miles from Salem, he left his breakfast at once and 
 walked off to borrow it. He would slip away into the woods 
 and spend hours in study and thinking. He sat up late 
 at night, and as light was expensive, made a blaze of shav- 
 ings in a cooper's shop. He waylaid every visitor to New 
 Salem who had any pretense to scholarship, and extracted 
 explanations of things which he did not under- 
 stand. It does not appear that the work of Adam Smith, 
 or any work upon political economy, currency, or any finan- 
 cial subject fell into the hands of the student who was 
 destined to conduct the most tremendous operations in the 
 whole history of finance. 
 
 The next episode in Lincoln's life which may be regarded 
 as a part of his training was in the command of 
 a company of militia in the "Black Hawk'' war 
 
tlS ABftAfltAM LI^fCOLN. 
 
 Black Hawk was an Indian chief of great craft and 
 power, and, apparently, of fine character, who had the 
 effrontery to object to being improved off the face of crea- 
 tion, an offense which he aggravated by an hereditary at- 
 tachment to the British. At a muster of the Sangamon 
 company at Clary's Grove, Lincoln was elected captain. 
 The election was a proof of his popularity; but he found it 
 rather hard to manage his constituents in the field. The 
 campaign opened with a cleverly-won victory on the part 
 of Black Hawk, and a rapid retrograde movement on the 
 part of the militia. Ultimately, however. Black Hawk was 
 overpowered, and most of his men met their doom in 
 attempting to retreat across the Mississippi. 
 
 "During this short Indian campaign," says one who took 
 part in it, "we had some hard times, often hungry, but 
 we had a great deal of sport, especially at nights — foot 
 racing, some horse racing, jumping, telling anecdotes, in 
 which Lincoln beat all, keeping up a constant laughter 
 and good humor all the time ; among the soldiers some card- 
 playing and wrestling in which Lincoln took a prominent 
 part. I think it safe to say he was never thrown in a 
 wrestle. While in the army he kept a handkerchief tied 
 around him all the time for wrestling purposes, and loved 
 the sport as well as anyone could. He was seldom if ever 
 beat jumping. During the campaign Lincoln himself was 
 always ready for an emergency. He endured hardships 
 like a good soldier; he never complained, nor did he fear 
 dangers." 
 
 Returning to New Salem, Lincoln, having served his ap- 
 prenticeship as a clerk, commenced storekeeping on his own 
 
Abraham liKcolM. 12; 
 
 account. An opening was made for him by the departure 
 of Mr. Radford, the keeper of a grocery, who, having 
 offended the Clary's Grove boys, they "selected a conveni- 
 ent night for breaking in his windows and gutting his es- 
 tablishment." From his ruins arose the firm of Lincoln 
 & Berry. 
 
 In storekeeping, however, Mr. Lincoln did not prosper; 
 neither storekeeping nor any other regular business or oc- 
 cupation was congenial to his character. He was born to 
 be a politician. Accordingly he began to read law, with 
 which he combined surveying, at which we are assured 
 he made himself "expert'' by a six weeks' course of study. 
 The few law books needed for western practice were sup- 
 plied to him by a kind friend at Springfield, and, according 
 to a witness who has evidently an accurate memory for 
 details, "he went to read law in 1832 or 1833 barefooted, 
 seated in the shade of a tree and would grind around with 
 the shade, just opposite Berry's grocery store, a few feet 
 south of the door, occasionally lying flat on his back and 
 putting his feet up the tree." Evidently, whatever he read, 
 especially of a practical kind, he made thoroughly his own. 
 It is needless to say that he did not become a master of 
 scientific jurisprudence; but it seems that he did become an 
 effective western advocate. What is more, there is conclu- 
 sive testimony to the fact that he was — what has been scan- 
 dalously alleged to be rare, even in the United States — 
 an honest lawyer. 
 
 "Love of justice and fair play," says one of his profes- 
 sional brothers of the bar, "was his predominant trait. 
 I have often listened to him when I thought he would state 
 
128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 his case out of Court. It was not in his nature to assume 
 or attempt to bolster up a false position. He would aban- 
 don his case first. His power as an advocate seems to have 
 depended on his conviction that the right was on his side. 
 Mr. Herndon, who visited Lincoln's office on business, 
 gives the following reminiscence : "Mr. Lincoln was seated 
 at his table, listening very attentively to a man who was 
 talking earnestly in a low tone. After the would-be client 
 had stated the facts of the case, Mr. Lincoln replied, 'yes, 
 there is no reasonable doubt but that I can gain your case 
 for you. I can set a whole neighborhood at logger heads; 
 I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless 
 children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which 
 rightly belongs, it appears to me, as much to the woman and , 
 her children as it does to you. You must remember that 
 some things that are legally right are not morally right. 
 I shall not take your case, but will give you a bit of ad- 
 vice, for which I will charge you nothing. You seem to 
 be a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try 
 your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other 
 way." 
 
 There is one part of Lincoln's early life which, though 
 scandal may fatten on it, we shall pass over lightly ; we 
 mean that part which relates to his love affairs and his 
 marriage. Criticism, and even biography, should respect 
 as far as possible the sanctuary of affection. That a 
 man has dedicated his life to the service of the public is 
 no reason why the public should be licensed to amuse itself 
 by playing with his heartstrings. Not only as a storekeeper, 
 but in every capacity, Mr. Lincoln was far more happy in his 
 
AUKAllAM LINCOLN. 1 29 
 
 relations with men than with women. He however loved, 
 and loved deeply, Ann Rutledge, who appears to have been 
 entirely worthy of his attachment, and whose death at the 
 moment when she would have felt herself at liberty to 
 marry him, threw him into a transport of grief, which 
 threatened his reason and excited the gravest apprehen- 
 sion of his friends. In stormy weather, especially, he would 
 rave piteously, crying that he could "never be reconciled 
 to have the snow, rains and storms to beat upon her grave." 
 This first love he seems never to have forgotten. He next 
 had an affair not so creditable to him. Finally, he made 
 a match of which the world has heard, perhaps, enough, 
 though the western boy was too true a gentleman to let it 
 hear anything about the matter from his lips. It is enough 
 to say that this man was not wanting in that not incon- 
 siderable element of worth, even of the worth of statesmen, 
 strong and pure affection. 
 
 "If ever," said Abraham Lincoln, "American society and 
 the United States Government are demoralized and over- 
 thrown, it will come from the voracious desire of office — 
 this wriggle to live without toil, from which I am not free 
 myself." These words ought to be written up in the largest 
 characters in every schoolrciom in the United States. The 
 confession with which they conclude is as true as the rest. 
 Mr. Lincoln, we are told, took no part in the promotion of 
 local enterprises, railroads, schools, churches, asylums. 
 The benefits he proposed for his fellow-men were to be ac- 
 complished by political means alone. 
 
 Lincoln's fundamental principle was devotion to the pop- 
 ular, will. In his address to the people of Sangamon 
 
IJO ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 County, he says, "while acting as their representative I 
 shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which 
 I have the means of knowing what their will is, and upon 
 all others I will do what my own judgment teaches me 
 will advance their interests." 
 
 Lincoln's first attempt to get elected to the State Legis- 
 lature was unsuccessful. It however brought him the 
 means of "doing something for his country," and partly 
 averting the "death-struggle of the world," in the shape 
 of the postmastership of New Salem. The business of the 
 office was not on a large scale, for it was carried on in Mr. 
 Lincoln's hat — an integument of which it is recorded, that 
 he refused to give it to a conjurer to play the egg trick in, 
 "not from respect for his own hat, but for the conjurer's 
 eggs." The future President did not fail to signalize his 
 first appearance as an administrator by a sally of the jocu- 
 larity which was always struggling with melancholy in his 
 mind. A gentleman of the place, whose education had been 
 defective, was in the habit of calling two or three times a 
 day at' the post-office, and ostentatiously inquiring for letters. 
 At last he received a letter, which, being unable to read 
 himself, he got the post-master to read for him before a 
 large circle of friends. It proved to be from a negro lady 
 engaged in domestic service in the South, recalling the 
 memory of a miitual attachment, with a number of incidents 
 more delectable than sublime. It is needless to say that the 
 post-master, by a slight extension of the sphere of his office, 
 had written the letter as well as delivered it. 
 
 In a second caadidature the aspirant was more successful, 
 and he became one of nine representatives of Sangamon 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I3I 
 
 County, in the State Legislature of Illinois, who, being all 
 more than six feet high, were called "The Long Nine." 
 With his Brobdingnagian colleagues, Abraham plunged at 
 once into the "internal improvement system," and dis- 
 tinguished himself above his fellows by the unscrupulous 
 energy and strategy with which he urged through the Legis- 
 lature a series of bubble schemes and jobs. Railroads and 
 other improvements, especially improvements in river navi- 
 gation, were voted out of all proportion to the means or 
 credit of the then thinly-peopled State. 
 
 It is instructive as well as just to remember that all this 
 time the man was strictly, nay sensitively, honorable in his 
 private dealings, that he was regarded by his fellows as a 
 paragon of probity, that his word was never questioned, 
 that of personal corruption calumny itself, so far as we 
 are aware, never dared to accuse him. Politics, it seems, 
 may be a game apart, with rules of its own which supersede 
 morality. 
 
 Considering that this man was destined to preside over 
 the most tremendous operations in the whole history of 
 finance, it is especially instructive to see what was the state 
 of his mind on economical subjects. He actually proposed 
 to pass a usury law, having arrived, it appears, at the sage 
 conviction that while to pay the current rent for the use of 
 a house or the current fee for the services of a lawyer is 
 perfectly proper, to pay the current price for money is to 
 "allow a few' individuals to levy a direct tax on the com- 
 munity." But this is an ordinary illusion. Abraham Lin- 
 coln's illusions went far beyond it. As President, when told 
 that the finances were low, he asked whether the printing 
 
132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 machine had given out, and he suggested, as a special temp- 
 tation to capitalists, the issue of a class of bonds which 
 should be exempt from seizure for debt. It may safely be 
 said that the burden of the United States debt was ultimately 
 increased fifty per cent, through sheer ignorance of the 
 simplest principles of economy and finance on the part of 
 those by whom it was contracted. 
 
 Lincoln's style, both as a speaker and a writer, ultimately 
 became plain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, 
 caused by imperfect education, pure as well as efifective. 
 His Gettysburg address and some of his State Papers are 
 admirable in their way. Saving one very flat expression, 
 the address has no superior in literature. But it was im- 
 possible that the oratory of a rising politican, especially in 
 the west, should be free from spread-eagleism. In debate 
 he was neither bitter nor personal in the bad sense, though 
 he had a good deal of caustic humor and knew how to 
 make an efifective use of it. 
 
 Passing from State politics td those of the Union, and 
 elected to Congress as a Whig, a party to which he had 
 gradually found his way from his original position as a 
 "nominal Jackson man," Mr. Lincoln stood forth in vigorous 
 though discreet and temperate opposition to the Mexican 
 War. 
 
 ■ Great events were by this time beginning to loom on the 
 political horizon. The Missouri Compromise was broken. 
 Parties commenced slowly but surely to divide themselves 
 into Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery. The "irrepressible con- 
 flict" was coming on, though none of the American poli- 
 ticians — not even the author of that famous phrase — dis- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1 33 
 
 tinctly recognized its advent. Lincoln seems to have been 
 sincerely opposed to slavery, though he was not an Aboli- 
 tionist. But he was evidently led more and more to take 
 anti-slavery ground by his antagonism to Douglas, who oc- 
 cupied a middle position, and tried to gain at once the sup- 
 port of the South, and that of the waverers at the North,, 
 by theoretically supporting the extension of slavery, yet 
 practically excluding it from the territories by the doctrine 
 of squatter sovereignty. Lincoln had to be very wary in 
 angling for the vote of the Abolitionists, who had recently 
 been the objects of universal obloquy, and were still oiifen- 
 sive to a large section of the Republican party. 
 
 On one occasion, the opinions which he propounded by no 
 means suited the Abolitionists, and "they required him to 
 change them forthwith. He thought it would be wise to 
 do so considering the pectdiar circumstances of his case; 
 but before committing himself finally, he sought an under- 
 standing with Judge Logan. He told the judge what he 
 was disposed to do, and said he would act upon the inclina- 
 tion if the judge would not regard it as treading on his 
 toes. The judge said he was opposed to the doctrine pro- 
 posed, but, for the sake of the cause on hand, he would 
 cheerfully risk his toes. And so the Abolitionists we^-e ac- 
 commodated. Mr. Lincoln quietly made the pledge, and 
 they voted for him." He came out, however, square 
 enough, and in the very nick of time with his "house divided 
 against itself" speech, which took the wind out of the sails 
 of Seward with his "irrepressible conflict." Douglas, whom 
 Lincoln regarded with intense personal rivalry, was tripped 
 
134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 up by a string of astute interrogations, the answers to which 
 hopelessly embroiled him with the South. 
 
 Lincoln's campaign against Douglas for the Senatorship 
 greatly and deservedly enhanced his reputation as a debater, 
 and he became marked out as the western candidate for the 
 Republican nomination to the Presidency. A committee 
 favorable to his claims sent to him to make a speech at 
 New York. He arrived "in a sleek and shining suit of 
 new black, covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles 
 acquired by being packed too closely and too long in his 
 little valise." Some of his supporters must have moralized 
 on the strange apparition which their summons had raised. 
 His speech, -however, made before an immense audience 
 at the Cooper Institute, was most successful, and as a dis- 
 play of constitutional logic it is a very good speech. It 
 fails, as the speeches of these practical men one and all did 
 fail, their common sense and shrewdness notwithstanding, 
 in clear perception of the great facts that two totally dif- 
 ferent systems of society had been formed, one in the Slave 
 States and the other in the Free, and that political institu- 
 tions necessarily conform themselves to the social character 
 of the people. Whether the Civil War could, by any men 
 or means, have been arrested, it would be hard to say; but 
 assuredly stump orators, even the very best of them, were 
 not the men to avert it. At that great crisis no saviour 
 appeared. > 
 
 On May loth, in the eventful year i860, the Republican 
 State Convention of Illinois, by acclamation, and amid great 
 enthusiasm, nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. One 
 who saw him receive the nomination says, "'I then thought 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I 3; 
 
 him one of the most diffident and most plagued of men 
 I ever saw." We may depend upon it, however, that his 
 diffidence of manner was accompanied by no reluctance 
 of heart. The splendid prize which he had won had been 
 the object of his passionate desire. In the midst of the pro- 
 ceedings, the door of the wigwam opened, and Lincoln's 
 kinsman, John Hanks, entered, with "two small triangular 
 'heart-rails,' surmounted by a banner with the inscription, 
 'Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John 
 Hanks in the Sangamon bottom, in the year 1830." The 
 bearer of the rails, we are told, was met "with wild and 
 tumultuous cheers," and "the whole scene was simply tem- 
 pestuous and bewildering." 
 
 The Democrats, of course, did not share the delight. An 
 old man, out of Egypt (the southern end of Illinois) came 
 up to Mr. Lincoln, and said: "So you're Abe Lincoln?" 
 "That's my name, sir." "They say you're a selfmade man." 
 "Well, yes, what there is of me is self-made." "Well, all I 
 have got to say," observed the old Egpytain, after a careful 
 survey of the statesman, "is, that it was a d — ^n bad job." 
 This seems to be the germ of the smart reply to the remark 
 that Andrew Jackson was a self-made man, "that relieves the 
 Almighty of a very heavy responsibility." 
 
 The nomination of the State Convention of Illinois was ac- 
 cepted after a very close and exciting contest between Lin- 
 coln and Seward by the convention of the Republican party 
 assembled at Chicago. The proceedings seem to have been 
 disgraceful. A large delegation of roughs, we are told, 
 headed by Tom Shyer, the pugilist, attended for Seward. 
 The Lincoln party, on the other side, spent the whole night 
 
136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 in mustering their "loose fellows," and at daylight the next 
 morning packed the wigwam, so that the Seward men were 
 unable to gel; in. Another politician was there nominally as 
 a candidate, but really only to sell himself for a seat in the 
 Cabinet. When he claimed the fulfilment of the bond, Lin- 
 coln's conscience, or at least his regard for his own reputation, 
 struggled hard. "All that I am in the world — the Presi- 
 dency and all else — I owe to that opinion of me which the 
 people express when they call me 'honest old Abe.' Now, 
 what will they think of their honest Abe when he appoints 
 this man to be his familiar adviser?" What they might 
 have said with truth was that Abe was still honest but 
 politics were not. 
 
 Widely different was the training undergone for the 
 leadership of the people by the Pericles of the American 
 Republic from that undergone by the Pericles of Athens, 
 or by any group of statesmen before him, Greek, Roman, 
 or European. The advantages and the disadvantages of 
 Lincoln's political education are manifest at a glance. He 
 was sure to produce something strong, genuine, practical, 
 and entirely in unison with the thoughts and feelings of 
 a people which, like the Athenian in the days of Pericles, 
 was to be led, not governed. On the other hand, it neces- 
 sarily left the statesman without the special knowledge 
 necessary for certain portions of his work, such as finance, 
 which was badly managed during Lincoln's Presidency, 
 without the wisdom which flows from a knowledge of the 
 political world and of the past, without elevation and com- 
 prehensiveness of view. It was fortunate for Lincoln that 
 the questions with which he had to deal, and with which 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 137 
 
 his country and the world proclaim him to have dealt, on 
 the whole, admirably well, though not in their magnitude 
 and importance, were completely within his ken, and had 
 been always present to his mind. Reconstruction would 
 have made a heavier demand on the political science of 
 Clary's Grove. But that task was reserved for other hands.* 
 
 The foregoing article, written a number of years ago for a volume of Lec- 
 tures and Essays, originally printed for private circulation, we have the liind 
 permission of the author to reproduce here. To bring it within the scope of our 
 pages, the essay has been considerably abridged. Despite the latter fact, the 
 paper will doubtless prove acceptable to our readers, as it presents some in- 
 teresting phases in the early career of Lincoln not usually met with in later-day 
 critiques. O. M. A.. Ed. 8. G. 
 
138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ANECDOTES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLN. 
 
 LINCOLN'S ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD BEFORE GOING 
 TO HIS INAUGURATION. 
 
 "Then came the central incident of the morning. Once 
 more the bell gave notice of starting; but as the conduc- 
 tor paused with his hands lifted to the bell-rope, Mr. Lin- 
 coln appeared on the platform of the car, and raised his 
 hand to command attention. The bystanders bared their 
 heads to the falling snow-flakes, and standing thus his 
 neighbors heard his voice for the last time, in the city of 
 his home, in a farewell address so chaste and pathetic 
 that it reads as if he already felt the tragic shadow of 
 forecasting fate: 
 
 " 'My Friends: No one not in my situation can ap- 
 preciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this 
 place and the kindness of these people I owe everything. 
 Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed 
 from a young to an old man. Here my children have 
 been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowins- 
 when, or whether I may ever return, with a task before 
 me greater than that which rested upon Washington. 
 Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever at- 
 tended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 •39 
 
 cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and 
 remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us con- 
 fidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care com- 
 mending you, as I 
 hope in your pray- 
 ers you will com- 
 mend me, I bid 
 you an affection- 
 ate farewell.' " — 
 Century Maga- 
 zine. 
 
 MONEY AND SELF- 
 ISHNESS. 
 
 The following 
 story was told by 
 the Hon. Schuyler 
 Colfax, who was 
 present at the in- 
 terview: 
 
 "In 1862, the 
 people of New 
 York City were 
 greatly troubled, 
 
 (some of them) for fear of a bombardment of the 
 city by the confederate navy. Public meetings were 
 held to discuss the situation, and the matter at last re- 
 sulted in the appointment of a delegation' of fifty men 
 who represented, in their own right, two hundred millions 
 of money. 
 
 Robert T. Lincoln. Son of Abraham Lincoln, 
 and Ex-Secretary of War. 
 
I40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "These millionaires were to call on the President and 
 induce him to send a gunboat or a warship to protect the 
 
 city. 
 
 ' 'When they called they were impressively introduced, 
 and the fact that they owned two hundred millions of 
 money was made especially prominent. 
 
 "The chairman of the delegation made a very earnest 
 appeal for protection, and he also emphasized the fact that 
 they owned two hundred million dollars worth of prop- 
 erty. 
 
 "In his reply L,incoln stated that he would be glad to 
 
 afford them the necessary protection, but the fact was 
 that under the circumstances it was impossible for him to 
 furnish them even a gunboat, all the boats being in use 
 and the credit of the government at low ebb. 'But,' 
 said he, 'if I were worth half as much as you gentlemen 
 are, arid were as badly frightened as you are, I would 
 build a gunboat and give it to the government for the 
 protection of my own city.' 
 
 " 'The wise men of Gotham' went away, realizing that 
 even the money in their pockets should be one of the fac- 
 tors of the war." 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE OFFICE SEEKERS, 
 
 A delegation once waited upon Lincoln to ask for the 
 appointment of a certain party as Commissioner to the 
 Sandwich Islands. 
 
 They argued their case earnestly, and at last made a 
 strong point of the fact that the applicant was in poor 
 health, and a residence in that climate would be of great 
 benefit to him. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 141 
 
 The President, however, closed the interview with the 
 following remark: 
 
 "Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that there are eight 
 other applicants for that place, and they are all sicker 
 than your man is?'' 
 
 The Battle of Bull Run, the First Great Battle ol the Civil War, 1861. 
 LOYALTY TO FRIENDS. 
 
 The mildness of the man, and the tenderness of feeling 
 hidden under a rugged exterior, were well known char- 
 acteristics of the martyred President. But there were 
 times when righteous indignation blazed in his eyes, 
 and his voice was raised in defense of the cause which 
 he had espoused. 
 
 The pressure of office seekers often annoyed him al- 
 most beyond endurance. During the first few months of 
 the administration, the frantic horde pursued him day 
 
H^ ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and night. It jarred upon his patriotism to see men so 
 eager for position and pelf when the country was just 
 entering upon the awful fight for life, and not only this, 
 but unpardonable selfishness was often revealed. 
 
 A delegation of California Republicans called on him 
 at one time with a list of proposals covering not only the 
 principal offices of that state, but indeed of the whole 
 Pacific coast. 
 
 Their program was opposed in part by Senator Baker, 
 who naturally claimed the right to be consulted respect- 
 ing the patronage of his section of the Union. 
 
 After considerable discussion some of the Californians, 
 in their eagerness to carry their point, went so far as to 
 assail the public and private character of Senator Baker, 
 who was an honored friend of I^incoln's. 
 
 The anger of the President was instantly aroused, and 
 he exhibited such vehemence and intensity that the party 
 of politicians fairly quailed before him. His wrath was 
 terrifying when he put his foot down, and declared that 
 Senator Baker was his friend, and that no man could as- 
 sail him with impunity — if they hoped to gain anything 
 by such nefarious conduct they were greatly mistaken. 
 
 The result was that the charges against Senator Baker 
 were retracted and ample apologies made, and such a dis- 
 position was made of the offices on the coast as satisfied 
 Mr. Baker, while the Californians were allowed to have 
 their own way to a great extent in their own state. 
 
 DANCE AT MIDNIGHT — HOW ]:«INCOLN RECEIVED THE 
 NEWS FROM GETTYSBURG. 
 
 "One evening at a crowded party given by Senator 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 H3 
 
 Dixon, I was forced by the press into a comer and on 
 looking around, found my next neighbor was Secretary 
 Stanton. By-and-by Dixon came along and spying us 
 said: 'Stanton, tell him the scene between old Abe 
 
 The Battle of Gettysburg, from the Painting by Wenderoth. 
 
 and you the night of the battle of Gettysburg. ' Stan- 
 ton then related the following: 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln had been excessively solicitous about the 
 result of that battle. It was known that Lee had crossed 
 into Pennsylvania, threatening Washington, and that a 
 battle had commenced near Gettysburg, upon which, in 
 all probability, the fate of Washington and the issue of 
 the war depended. The telegraphic wires ran into the 
 War Department and dispatches had been received of the 
 
144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 first day's fight, which showed how desperate was the 
 attack, the stubbornness of the defense, and that the re- 
 sult was indecisive. All that day and the next Mr. Lin- 
 coln was in an agony of anxiety, running over, as was 
 his wont, to the War Office to ascertain for himself the 
 latest news instead of waiting for the reports to be sent 
 him by his subordinates. Then came a long interval 
 when nothing was heard from Meade, and the President 
 was wrought up to an intense pitch of excitement. 
 
 "Night came on,and Stanton, seeing the President worn 
 out with care and anxiety, persuaded him to return to 
 the White House, promising if anything came over the 
 wires during the night to give him immediate informa- 
 tion. At last, toward midnight, came the electric flash 
 of that great victory which saved the Union. 
 
 "Stanton seized the dispatch and ran as fast as he could 
 to the Executive Mansion, up the stairs, and knocked at 
 the room where the President was catching a fitful slum- 
 ber. 
 
 '"Who is there?' he heard in the voice of Mr. Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 "'Stanton.' 
 
 "The door was opened, and Mr.Lincoln appeared with 
 a light in his hand, peering through the crack of the 
 door. Before Stanton, who was out of breath, could say 
 a word the President, who had caught with unerring in- 
 stinct the expression of his face, gave a shout of exulta- 
 tion, grabbed him with both arms around the waist, and 
 danced him around the chamber until they were both 
 exhausted. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. HS 
 
 "They then sat down upon a trunk, and the President, 
 who was still in his nightdress, read over and over again 
 the telegram, and then discussed with him the probabili- 
 ties of the future and the results of the victory, until the 
 day dawned. 
 
 "Such a scene at midnight between two of the greatest 
 Americans whom this generation had produced, to whom 
 all wise Providence had committed in largest measure 
 the fate of Republican liberty in this Western world, may 
 not afford a subject for the loftiest conceptions of the 
 poet or the painter, but more than any other incident 
 within my knowledge it shows the human nature of 
 these two great men, and brings them home to the hearts 
 and the hearthstones of the plain people of whom Mr. 
 Lincoln was, on whom he depended, and whom he loved. 
 
 "It shows him brooding all through those three awful 
 days, with an anxiety akin to agony which no one could 
 share — worn and weary with the long and doubtful con- 
 flict between hope and fear — treading the wine-press for 
 his people alone. And at last when the lightning flash 
 had lifted the dark cloud, dancing like a schoolboy in the 
 ecstasy of delight and exhibiting a touch of that human 
 nature which makes all the world akin. 
 
 "As I look back over the intervening years to the great 
 men and great events of those historic days, his figure 
 rises before my memory the grandest and most majestic 
 of them all. There were giants in those days, but he 
 towered above them like Popocatepetl or Chimborazo. 
 He was great in character, in intellect, in wisdom, in 
 tact, in council, in speech, in heart, in person — in every- 
 
H6 AfeKAtiAM LiNCOLlsr. 
 
 thing." — Hon. A. H. Brandege, in N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS. 
 
 In discussion Lincoln often combined wit and humor. 
 in such a way that it made his opponent ridiculous. Mr. 
 Douglas was often the victim of these little sallies during 
 the great debates before the people of Illinois in the year 
 1858. 
 
 In relation to the abolition of slavery, Douglas con- 
 stantly argued or assumed that if freedom were given to 
 the slave, it would be followed with intermarriage be- 
 tween the blacks and whites. He also charged that the 
 Republican party was anxious to repeal the laws of Ill- 
 inois which prohibited such marriages. At last Lincoln 
 retorted about as follows: 
 
 "I solemnly protest against that counterfeit logic, which 
 presumes that because I do not want a black woman for a 
 slave, that I do necessarily want her for a wife — I have 
 no fears of marrying a negro — it requires no law to pre- 
 vent me from doing it, but if Judge Douglas needs a law 
 of that sort I will do my utmost to retain the enactment 
 which forbids the marrying of white people with ne- 
 groes." 
 
 PARDONS. 
 
 Many a distressed father or mother found help in ap- 
 pealing to Lincoln. He was the terror of his generals, 
 who feared that by excessive use of the pardoning power 
 he would destroy the discipline of the army,and Secretary 
 Seward was more than indignant on many occasions 
 when he felt that the President trespassed to an unwar- 
 rantable extent upon his own domain. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 147 
 
 Attorney General Bates, who was a Virginian, once ap- 
 proached Lincoln with a special plea in behalf of a young 
 Virginian, who had run away from a Union father, and 
 enlisted in the rebel ranks. He had been Q&ptured, and 
 was then held as a prisoner 
 of war, and was in very poor 
 health. 
 
 The President pondered 
 on the matter for a moment, 
 and then replied: "Bates, I 
 have almost a parallel case 
 in which the son of an old 
 friend of mine ran away from 
 his home in Illinois and en- 
 tered the rebel army. 
 
 "The young fool has been 
 captured, and his poor old 
 father has appealed to me 
 to send him home, promising of course, to keep him 
 there. I have not seen my way clear to do it, but if you 
 and I unite our influence with this administration, I be- 
 lieve we can manage to make two loyal fathers happy." 
 And he did. 
 
 Schuyler Colfax once told a pathetic story of going to 
 Lincoln for a pardon for the son of a former constituent. 
 
 He said Lincoln listened to the story with his usual 
 patience, although he was even then tired out with in- 
 cessant calls and demands upon his time, and then 
 said: "Some of my generals complain that I impair dis- 
 cipline by my frequent pardons and reprieves, but after 
 
 Jefferson Davis, President of tlie 
 
 Soutliern Confederacy. 
 
 Born 180ij. Died 1889. 
 
148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 a hard day's work it rests me^ if I can find some excuse 
 for saving a poor fellow's life, and I shall go to bed to- 
 night thinking happily of the joy that the signing of my 
 name will give to that poor fellow and his family." 
 
 And with the tender smile which so often illumined 
 those care-worn features, he signed his name and saved 
 that life. 
 
 NO PARDON FOR SLAVE STEALERS. 
 
 The great clemency of the Chief Executive was so well 
 understood that many demands were made upon him for 
 unworthy objects. The Hon. John B. Alley says that 
 while he was in congress a petition was sent him, num- 
 erously signed, for the pardon of a man who had been 
 convicted of illegal slave trading as the commander of a 
 vessel engaged in kidnapping the natives of Africa, and 
 bringing them to a life of bondage in the United States. 
 
 The President courteously read the letter and petition, 
 then drawing his lank figure up to its full height, he 
 said : "I believe I am kindly enough to pardon almost 
 any criminal, but the man who for paltry gain can rob 
 Africa of her children to sell them into bondage will get 
 no pardon from me. He may lie in jail forever so far as 
 I am concerned." Lincoln evidently thought that men 
 of this stamp could serve their country better while in 
 jail, than they cculd if they had their freedom. 
 
 A father's experience. 
 A Congressman went up to the White House one 
 morning on business, and saw in the anteroom, always 
 crowded with people in those days, an old man, crouched 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 149 
 
 all alone in a corner, crying as if his heart would break. 
 As such a sight was by no means uncommon, the Con- 
 gressman passed into the President's room, transacted 
 his business, and went away. 
 
 The next morning he was obliged again to go to the 
 White House, and he saw the same old man crying, as 
 before, in the corner. He stopped, and said to him, 
 "What's the matter with you old man?" 
 
 The old man told him the story of his son ; that he 
 was a soldier in the Army of the James — General But- 
 ler's army — that he had been convicted by a court-mar- 
 tial of an outrageous crime and sentenced to be shot 
 next week ; and that his congressman was so convinced 
 of the convicted man's guilt that he would not intervene. 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Alley, "I will take you into the Ex- 
 ecutive Chamber after I have finished my business, and 
 you can tell Mr. Lincoln all about it." 
 
 On being introduced into Mr. Lincoln's presence, he 
 was accosted with, "Well, my old friend, what can I do 
 for you to-day?" The old man then repeated to Mr. 
 Lincoln what he had already told the Congressman in 
 the anteroom. 
 
 A cloud of sorrow came over the President's face as he 
 replied, "I am sorry to say I can do nothing for you. 
 Listen to this telegram received from General Butler 
 yesterday: 'President Lincoln, I pray you not to interfere 
 with the courts-martial of the army. You will, destroy 
 all discipline among our soldiers. — B. F. BuTLER.' " 
 
 Every word of this dispatch seemed like the death 
 knell of despair to the old man?s newly awakened hopes. 
 
15° ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln watched his grief for a minute, and then 
 exclaimed, "By jingo, Butler or no Butler, here goes!" — 
 writing a few words and handing them to the old man. 
 The confidence created by Mr. Lincoln's words broke 
 down when he read— "Job Smith is not to be shot until 
 further orders from me. — Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 "Why," said the old man, "I thought it was to be a 
 pardon; but you say, 'not to be shot till further orders,' 
 and you may order him to be shot next week." Mr. 
 Lincoln smiled at the old man's fears, and replied, "Well, 
 my old friend, I see you are not very well acquainted 
 with me. If your son never looks on death till further 
 orders come from me to shoot him, he will live to be a 
 great deal older than Methuselah." 
 
 LINCOLN AND STEVENS. 
 
 Thaddeus Stevens, who so often criticised Mr. Lincoln 
 very severely for not being aggressive and destructive 
 enough, used to tell, with great gusto, this story of his 
 own personal experience. 
 
 Mr. Stevens had gone with an old lady from Lancaster 
 County, Pennsylvania (his district), to the White House, 
 to ask the pardon of her son, condemned to die for sleep- 
 ing on his post. The President suddenly turned upon 
 his cynical Pennsylvania friend, whom he knew had so 
 often assailed him for excessive lenity, and said, "Now, 
 Thad, what would you do in this case if you happened to 
 be President?" 
 
 Mr. Stevens knew how many hundreds of his constit- 
 uents were waiting breathlessly to hear the result of that 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 151 
 
 old woman's pilgrimage to Washington. Of course, 
 congressmen who desired to be re-elected liked to carry- 
 out the desires of their constituents. Stevens did not 
 relish the President's home-thrust, but replied that, as he 
 knew of the extenuating circumstances, he would cer- 
 tainly pardon him. 
 
 ''Well, then," said Mr. Lincoln, after a moment's 
 writing in silence, "here, madam, is your son's pardon." 
 Her gratitude filled her heart to overflowing, and it 
 seemed to her as though her son had been snatched from 
 the gateway of the grave. 
 
 She could only thank the President with her tears as 
 she passed out, but when she and Mr. Stevens had 
 reached the outer door of the White House she burst out, 
 excitedly with the words, "I knew it was a lie! I knew 
 it was a lie!" "What do you mean?" asked her aston- 
 ished companion. "Why, when I left my country home 
 in old Lancaster yesterday, the neighbors told me that I 
 would find that Mr. Lincoln was an ugly man, when 
 he is really the handsomest man I ever saw in my life." 
 And certainly, when sympathy and mercy lightened up 
 those rugged features, many a wife and mother pleading 
 for his intervention had reason to think him handsome, 
 indeed. 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGIvASS ON THE INAUGURATION OF 
 
 LINCOLN. 
 
 "I was present at the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, the 
 4th of March, 1865. I felt then that there was murder 
 in the air, and I kept close to his carriage on the way to 
 
'52 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the Capitol, for I felt that I might see him fall that day. 
 It was a vague presentiment. 
 
 "At that time the Confederate cause was on its last 
 legs, as it were, and there was deep feeling. I could feel 
 
 it in the atmosphere here. I 
 got in front of the east portico 
 of the Capitol, listened to his 
 inaugural address, and wit- 
 nessed his being sworn in by 
 Chief Justice Chase. 
 
 "When he came on to the 
 steps he was accompanied by 
 Vice-President Johnson. In 
 looking out in the crowd he 
 saw me standing near by, and 
 I could see he was pointing me 
 Frederick Douglass. out to Andrew Johnsou. Mr. 
 
 Johnson, without knowing perhaps that I saw the move- 
 ment, looked quite annoyed that his attention should be 
 called in that direction. So I got a peep into his soul. 
 As soon as he saw me looking at him, suddenly he as- 
 sumed rather an amicable expression of countenance. I 
 felt that, whatever else the man might be, he was no 
 friend to my people. 
 
 "I heard Mr. Lincoln deliver this wonderful address. It 
 was very short; but he answered all the objections raised 
 to his prolonging the war in one sentence — it was a re- 
 markable sentence. 
 
 "'Fondly do we hope, profoundly do we pray, that this 
 mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. i,-.^ 
 
 ■wills it to continue until all the wealth piled up by two 
 hundred j'ears of bondage shall have been wasted, and 
 each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been 
 paid for, by one drawn by the sword, we must still say, 
 as was said three thousand years ago, the judgments of 
 the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' 
 
 "For the first time in my life, and I suppose the first 
 time in any colored man's life, I attended the reception 
 of President Lincoln on the evening of the inauguration. 
 As I approaclied the door I was seized by two policemen 
 and forbidden to enter. I said to them that they were 
 mistaken entirely in what they were doing, that if Mr. 
 Lincoln knew that I was at the door he would order my 
 admission, and I bolted in by them. On the inside I 
 was taken in charge of two other policemen, to be con- 
 ducted as I supposed to tlie President, but instead of 
 that they were conducting me out of the window on a 
 plank. 
 
 "Oh," said I, "this will not do, gentlemen," and as a 
 gentleman was passing in I said to him, ' 'Just say to I\Ir. 
 Lincoln that Fred. Douglass is at the door." 
 
 "He rushed in to President Lincoln, and in about 
 half a minute I was in\'ited into the East Room of 
 tlie White House. A perfect sea of beauty and ele- 
 gance, too, it was. The ladies were in ver^' fine attire, 
 and Mrs. Lincoln was standing there. I could not have 
 been more than ten feet from him when Mr. Lincoln 
 saw me; his countenance lighted up, and he said in a 
 voice which was heard all around: 'Here comes mj' 
 friend Douglass.' As I approaclied him he reached out 
 
154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 his hand, gave a cordial shake, and said: 'Douglass, I 
 saw you in the crowd to-day listening to my inaugural 
 address. There is no man's opinion that I value more 
 than yours: what do you think of it?' I said: "Mr. 
 
 gtutl (guailrrs ^m\ts al Iht ?MU& §iutts. 
 
 
 The Famous Last Dispatch of Lincoln to Grant with appended statement hy 
 Grant, certifying to its genuineness. 
 
 Ivincoln, I cannot stop here to talk with you, as there 
 are thousands waiting to shake you by the hand;" but he 
 said again again: 'What did you think of it?' I said: 
 "Mr. Ivincoln, it was a sacred effort," and then I walked 
 off. 'I am glad you liked it,' he said. That was the 
 last time I saw him to speak with him." 
 
 LINCOLN AND REPORTERS. 
 
 Joseph Medill, the veteran editor of the Chicago Trib- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. i ^- 5 
 
 une, v/ho was one of the corps of reporters, who followed 
 Lincoln in the great debates with Douglas, tells the fol- 
 lowing story: 
 
 ' 'You will remember that after Lincoln had been nom- 
 inated he was asked to speak at Cooper Union, in New 
 York. The eastern people knew nothing about him and 
 they desired to see and hear him. Lincoln prepared a 
 speech and gave copies to quite a number of us, request- 
 ing that we study it carefully and make such corrections 
 and suggestions as we saw fit. Well, I took my copy 
 and went over it very carefully, and finally made about 
 forty changes. The others to whom the address had 
 been submitted were equally careful, and they made sev- 
 eral amendments. When the speech was finally deliv- 
 ered it was exactly word for word with the original copy 
 which Lincoln gave us. Not a change suggested had 
 been adopted. I never knew whether Lincoln intended 
 to play a joke on us, or whether he really believed that 
 the alterations were not effective. I never mentioned 
 the matter to him, and he said nothing more to me. To 
 tell the truth, I was not exactly proud of the part I 
 played in the matter." 
 
 LINCOLN'S BRAVERY. 
 
 The following story is told by Gen. Butler: 
 "Lincoln visited my department twice while I was in 
 command. He was personally a very brave man, and 
 gave me the worst fright of my life. He came to my 
 head-quarters and said: 'General, I should like to ride 
 along your lines and see them, and see the boys and how 
 
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 157 
 
 they are situated in camp.' I said, "Very well, we will 
 go after breakfast." 
 
 "I happened to have a very tall, easy-riding, pacing 
 horse, and as the 
 President was ra- 
 ther long legged, 
 I tendered him the 
 use of him, while 
 I rode beside him 
 on a pony. He 
 was dressed,as was 
 his custom, in a 
 black suit, a swal- 
 low-tail coat, and 
 tall silk hat. As 
 there rode on the 
 other side of him 
 at first, Mr. Fox, 
 the Secretary of 
 the Navy, who was 
 not more than five feet six inches in height, he stood out 
 as a central figure of the group. Of course the staff offi- 
 cers and orderly were behind. 
 
 "When we got to the line of intrenchment, from which 
 the line of rebel pickets was not more than three hundred 
 yards, he towered high above the works, and as we came 
 to the several encampments the boys all turned out and 
 cheered him lustily. Of course the enemy's attention 
 was wholly directed to this performance, and with the 
 glass it could be plainly seen that the eyes of their ofii- 
 
 Gen. Geo. B. McClellan, Commander of the Army 
 
 of the Potomac. 
 
 Born 1826. Died 1865. 
 
15^ ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 cers were fastened upon Lincoln; and a personage riding 
 down the lines cheered by the soldiers was a very unusual 
 thing, so that the enemy must have known that he was 
 there. 
 
 "Both Mr. Fox and myself said to him, "Let us not 
 ride on the side next to the enemy, Mr. President. 
 You are in fair rifle-shot of them, and they may open 
 fire; and they must know you, being the only person not 
 in uniform, and the cheering of the troops directs their 
 attention to you. ' ' 
 
 '"Oh, no,' he said laughing, 'the commander-in-chief 
 of the army must not show any cowardice in the presence 
 of his soldiers, whatever he may feel.' 
 
 "And he insisted upon riding the whole six miles,which 
 was about the length of my intrenchments, in that po- 
 sition, amusing himself at intervals, when there was 
 nothing more attractive, in a sort of competitive exam- 
 ination of the commanding-general in the science of en- 
 gineering. This greatly amused my engineer-in-chief, 
 General Weitzel, who rode on my left, and who was 
 kindly disposed to prompt me while the examination was 
 going on. This attracted the attention of Mr. Lincoln, 
 who said, 'Hold on, Weitzel, I can't beat you, but I 
 think I can beat Butler.' 
 
 "I give this incident to show his utter unconcern under 
 circumstances of very great peril, which kept the rest of 
 us in a continued and quite painful anxiety. When we 
 reached the left of the line we turned off toward the hos- 
 pitals, which were quite extensive and kept in most ad- 
 mirable order by my medical director, Surgeon McCor- 
 
AMaHAM LINCOLN. 159 
 
 mack. The President passed through all the wards, 
 stopping and speaking very kindly to some of the poor 
 fellows as they lay on their cots, and occasionally admin- 
 istering a few words of commendation to the ward mas- 
 ter. Sometimes when reaching a patient who showed 
 much suffering the President's eyes would glisten with 
 tears. The effect of his presence upon these sick men 
 was wonderful, and his visit did great good, for there 
 was no medicine which was equal to the cheerfulness 
 which his visit so largely inspired." 
 
 ERECTION OF THE LINCOLN MONUMENT AT SPRINGFIELI^. 
 
 The movement for the erection of a national Lincoln 
 monument was begun immediately after the assassination 
 of President Lincoln, but it was not until Oct. 15, 1874, 
 that the Springfield memorial was dedicated, that city 
 being chosen because it was Lincoln's home when he 
 was elected to the Presidency. The monument stands 
 in the middle of six acres of high ground in Oak Ridge 
 cemetery. It is of massive proportions, of bronze and 
 granite, and was designed by Larkin G. Mead, Jr., an 
 American artist. Thirty-one artists of national repute 
 competed for the design, among them being Leonard 
 Volk, Harriet Hosmer, and Vinnie Ream. Some of the 
 designs submitted would have cost $5,000,000, but all 
 were adjudged as being of artistic merit, and it was only 
 after considerable difiiculty in making a choice that the 
 design submitted by Larkin G. Mead of Brattleboro, Vt., 
 was accepted. Whatever may be said in criticism, it 
 cannot be denied that the Lincoln monument is an im- 
 
i6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 posing structure. It consists of a central granite shaft, 
 or obelisk, rising from a massive, square base to a height 
 of ninety-eight feet. Allegorical figures in bronze crown 
 the four corners of the pedestal. A bronze statue of Lin- 
 coln standing in relief against the shining granite forms 
 the central figure of the groups of statuary. The monu- 
 ment is located on probably the highest ground in 
 Springfield, overlooking the capital and wide stretches 
 of Illinois prairie. The statue of Lincoln had been com- 
 mended as one of the most natural and lifelike represen- 
 tations of the martyred President. He is represented in 
 the attitude of making a public address, grasping the 
 emancipation proclamation in one hand. He stoops a 
 little, he is angular, his cheeks are thin, his forehead 
 deeply wrinkled. Old lUinoisans who had known Lin- 
 coln from his boyhood pronounced it an excellent like- 
 ness. The front of the pedestal on which the statue 
 rests, bears the coat of arms of the United States in 
 bronze. The American eagle on the shield is represent- 
 ed as having broken the chain of slavery, some of the 
 links being grasped in his talons, and the rest held aloft 
 in his beak. An olive branch, spumed, is thrust aside at 
 his feet. 
 
 Memorial hall, in the base of the monument, is filled 
 with various Lincoln relics and souvenirs. One of the 
 most interesting of these is a stone from the wall of Ser- 
 vius Tullius, presented to President Lincoln by citizens 
 of Rome in 1 865. It is a large, irregular slab of sand- 
 , stone, on which is carved the following inscription in 
 Latin; 
 
The Lincoln Monument at Springfield, 111. 
 
i6i ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "To Abraham Lincoln, President for the second time 
 of the American republic, citizens of Rome present this 
 stone from the walls of Servius TuUius, by which the 
 memory of each of those brave asserters of liberty may 
 be associated. Anno, 1865." 
 
 After Lincoln's death this stone was found in the base- 
 ment of the capital at Washington. It is supposed that 
 the President, not caring to have a furore raised over the 
 incident, had ordered the stone stored away without say- 
 ing anything about receiving it. The body of Lincoln 
 was removed to the crypt in the monument from a tem- 
 porary tomb in the public vault Oct. 9, 1874. The mar- 
 ble sarcophagus bears the inscription: "With malice 
 toward none, with charity for all. — Lincoln." The 
 bodies of Mrs. Lincoln and the three sons, William, Ed- 
 ward, and Thomas (Thad), have also been placed in the 
 monument. Two crypts are left for the two remaining 
 members of the family. 
 
 The national Lincoln monument was built by popular 
 subscription. Ex-Governor Richard J. Oglesby was the 
 president of the association which had the matter in 
 charge. Contributions toward the monument fund came 
 from every city and state in the Union and from every 
 country in the world. 
 
 LINCOLN'S SADNESS. 
 
 The Honorable Schuyler Colfax, in his funeral oration 
 at Chicago, said of him : — 
 
 "He bore the nation's perils, and trials, and sorrows, 
 ever on his mind. You know him, in a large degree, by 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 163 
 
 the illustrative stories of which his memory and his 
 tongue were so prolific, using them to point a moral, or 
 to soften discontent at his decisions. But this was the 
 mere badinage which relieved him for the moment from 
 the heavy weight of public duties and responsibilities un- 
 der which he often wearied. Those whom he admitted 
 to his confidence, and with whom he conversed of his 
 feelings, knew that his inner life was checkered with the 
 deepest anxiety and most discomforting solicitude. Elat- 
 ed by victories for the cause which was ever in his 
 thoughts, reverses to our arms cast a pall of depression 
 over him. One morning, over two years ago, calling 
 upon him on business, I found him looking more than 
 usually pale and careworn, and inquired the reason. He 
 replied, with the bad news he had received at a late hour 
 the previous night, which had not yet been communi- 
 cated to the press — he had not closed his eyes or break- 
 fasted; and with an expression I shall never forget, he 
 exclaimed, 'How willingly would I exchange places to- 
 day with the soldier who sleeps on the ground in the 
 Army of the Potomac!' " 
 
 HIS REUGIOtTS EXPERIENCE. 
 
 There is a very natural and proper desire, at this time, 
 to know something of the religious experience of the late 
 President, Two or three stories have been published in 
 this connection, which 1 have never yet been able to trace 
 to a reliable source, and I feel impelled to say here, that 
 I believe the facts in the case — if there were such — have 
 been added to, or unwarrantably embellished. Of all 
 
164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 meii in the world, Mr. Lincoln was the most unaffected 
 and truthful. He rarely or never used language loosely 
 or carelessly, or for the Sake of compliment. He was the 
 most utterly indifferent to, and unconscious of, the effect 
 he was producing, either upon official representatives, or 
 the common people, of any man ever in public position. 
 
 Aside from emotional expression, I believe no man 
 had a more abiding sense of his dependence upon God, 
 or faith in the Divine government, and in the power and 
 ultimate triumph of Truth and Right in the world. In the 
 language of an eminent clergyman of this city, who lately 
 delivered an eloquent discourse upon the life and charac- 
 ter of the departed President, "It is not necessary to ap- 
 peal to apocryphal stories, in circulation in the newspa- 
 pers — ^which illustrate as much the assurance of his visi- 
 tors as the simplicity of his faith — for proof of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's Christian character." If his daily life and various 
 public addresses and writings do not show this, surely 
 nothing can demonstrate it. 
 
 But while inclined, as I have said, to doubt the truth 
 of some of the statements published on this subject, I 
 feel at liberty to relate an incident, which bears upon its 
 face unmistakable evidence of truthfulness. A lady in- 
 terested in the work of the Christian Commission had 
 occasion, in the prosecution of her duties, to have several 
 interviews with the President of a business nature. He 
 was much impressed with the devotion and earnestness 
 of purpose she manifested, and on one occasion, after she 
 had discharged the object of her visit, he said to her: 
 "Mrs. , I have formed a very high opinion of your 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 if ■ 
 
 Christian character, and now, as we are alone, I have a 
 mind to ask you to give me, in brief, your idea of what 
 constitutes a true religious experience. ' ' The lady re- 
 
 The Old State House, Springfield. Completed in 1840, . 
 
 Afterwards used as the Sangamon County Court House. The Capitol was located 
 
 at Springfield through the efforts of "The Long Nine," sb-caUed because 
 
 the combined height of these men was 54 feet. Lincoln 
 
 was a member of this delegation. 
 
 plied at some length, stating that, in her judgment, it 
 consisted of a conviction of one's own sinfulness and 
 weakness, and personal need of the Saviour for strength 
 and support; that ; views bf mere doctrine might and 
 would differ, but when one was really brought to feel 
 
i66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 his need of Divine help, and to seek the aid of the Holy 
 Spirit for strength and guidance, it was satisfactory evi-. 
 dence of his having been born again. This was the sub- 
 stance of her reply. When she had concluded, Mr. I^in- 
 coln was very thoughtful for a few moments. He at 
 length said, very earnestly, "If what you have told me 
 is really a correct view of this great subject, I think I 
 can say with sincerity, that I hope I am a Christian. I 
 had lived," he continued, "until my boy Willie died, 
 without realizing fully these things. That blow over- 
 whelmed me. It showed me my weakness as I had never 
 felt it before, and if I can take what you have stated as 
 a test^ I think I can safely say that I know something of 
 that change of which you speak; and I will further add, 
 that it has been my intention for some time, at a suita- 
 ble opportunity, to make a public religious profession!" 
 — Frank B. Carpenter. 
 
 LEE'S SURRENDER. 
 "On the day of the receipt of the capitulation of L,ee, 
 as we learn from a friend intimate with the late President 
 Lincoln, the cabinet meeting was held an hour earlier 
 than usual. Neither the President nor any member was 
 able, for a time, to give utterance to his feelings. At the 
 suggestion of Mr. Lincoln all dropped on their knees, 
 and offered, in silence and in tears, their humble and 
 heartfelt acknowledgments to the Almighty for the tri- 
 umph He had granted to the National cause." — '■'■The 
 Western Christian Advocate. ' ' 
 
 LINCOLN AND HIS ADVISERS. 
 
 At the White House one day some gentlemen were 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 167 
 
 present from the West, excited and troubled about the 
 commissions or ommissions of the Administration. The 
 President heard them patiently, and then replied: — "Gen- 
 tlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in 
 gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry 
 across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the 
 cable, or keep shouting out to him — 'Blondin, stand up 
 a little straighter — Blondin, stoop a little more — go a lit- 
 tle faster— lean a little more to the north — lean a little 
 more to the south? No, you would hold your breath as 
 well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he 
 was safe over. The government officials are carrying an 
 immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. 
 They are doing the very best they can. Don't badger 
 them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across." 
 
 HIS FIRST DOLLAR. 
 
 On one occasion, in the Executive chamber, there were 
 present a number of gentlemen, among them Mr. Sew- 
 ard. 
 
 A point in the 'conversation suggesting the thought, 
 Mr. Lincoln said: "Seward, you never heard, did you, 
 how I earned my first dollar?" "No," said Mr. Seward. 
 "Well," replied he, "I was about eighteen years of age. 
 I belonged, you know, to what they call down South, the 
 'scrubs;' people who do not own slaves are nobody there. 
 But we had succeeded in raising chiefly by my labor, suf- 
 ficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it 
 down the river to sell. 
 
 "After much persuasion, I got the consent of mother to 
 
i68 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 go, and constructed a little flatboat, large enough to take 
 a barrel or two of things, that we had gathered, with my- 
 self and little bundle, down to New Orleans. A steamer 
 was coming down the river. We have, you know, no 
 wharves on the Western streams ; and the custom was, if 
 
 passengers were at any of the 
 landings, for them to go out in 
 a boat, the steamer stopping 
 and taking them on board. 
 
 "I was contemplating my 
 new flatboat, and wondering 
 whether I could make it strong- 
 er or improve it in any partic- 
 ular, when two men came down 
 to the shore in carriages with 
 trunks, and looking at the dif- 
 ferent boats singled out mine, 
 and asked, 'Who owns this?' I 
 answered, somewhat modestly, 
 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of 
 them, 'take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Cer- 
 tainly,'said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earn- 
 ing something. I supposed that each of them would give 
 me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flatboat, 
 the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I 
 sculled them out to the steamboat. 
 
 "They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks, 
 and put them on deck. The steamer was about to put 
 on steam again, when I called out that they had forgot- 
 ten to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a 
 
 ^ . "' 
 
 
 /-■I 
 
 ■, 
 
 C, V. 
 
 
 ^m^fe.. 
 
 
 
 1 ' 
 
 fmlim^i ' 
 
 t- ^^ 
 
 
 'M"^' 
 
 
 \^ ' 
 
 
 -it.!- 
 
 Chas. Sumner, a Supporter of Lin 
 coin during his Administration. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 169 
 
 silver half-dollar, and threw it on the floor of my boat. I 
 could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. 
 Gentlemen, you may think it was a very little thing, 
 and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was a 
 most important incident in my life. I could scarcely 
 credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than 
 a day — that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The 
 world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was a more 
 hopeful and confident being from that time." 
 
 SAYINGS OF LINCOLN. 
 
 When the white man governs himself, that is self-gov- 
 ernment; but when he governs himself, and also governs 
 another man, that is more than self-government — that is 
 despotism. 
 
 Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the 
 grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. 
 Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all 
 men are created equal; but now from that beginning we 
 have run down to the other declaration that for some 
 men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-govern- 
 ment. ' ' These principles cannot stand together. They 
 are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds 
 to one must despise the other. 
 
 So I say, in relation to the principle that all men are 
 created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If 
 we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do noth- 
 ing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. 
 
 All honor to Jefferson— to the man who, in the con- 
 crete pressure of a struggle for national independence by 
 
i-jo ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to 
 introduce into a merely revolutionary document an ab- 
 stract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so 
 to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days it 
 shall be a rebuke and stumbling-block to the harbingers 
 of reappearing tyranny and oppression. 
 
 Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm re- 
 liance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored 
 land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all 
 our present difiiculties. 
 
 I would despise myself if I supposed myself ready to 
 deal less liberally with an adversary than I would be 
 -willing to be treated myself. 
 
 In a storm at sea, no one on board can wish the ship 
 to sink; and yet, not unfrequently, all go down together, 
 because too many will direct, and no single mind can be 
 allowed to control. 
 
 I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, 
 and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear 
 to be true views. 
 
 We will speak for freedom and against slavery, as long 
 as the Constitution of our country guarantees free speech, 
 until everywhere on this wide land, the sun shall shine 
 and the rain shall fall and the wind blow upon no man 
 who goes forth to unrequited toil. 
 
 There are two ways of establishing a proposition. 
 One is, by trying to demonstrate it upon reason; and the 
 other is, to show that great men in former times have 
 thought so and so, artd thus to pass it by the weight of 
 pure authority. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 171 
 
 Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false ac- 
 cusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces 
 of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to 
 ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, 
 and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, 
 as we understand it 
 
 I hold that in the contemplation of universal law and 
 of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpet- 
 ual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fun- 
 damental law of all national governments. 
 
 If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal 
 truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on 
 your side of the South, that truth and that justice will 
 surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal, the 
 American people. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LINCOLN'S SPEECHES. 
 
 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 "The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, 
 in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and 
 and continued in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was 
 further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly 
 plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of 
 Confederation, in 1778; and finally, in 1787, one of the declared ob- 
 jects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was to form a 
 more perfect Union. But if the destruction of the Union by one or by 
 a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less than 
 before, the Constitution having lost the vital element of perpetuity. 
 
 "It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere mo- 
 tion, can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances 
 to that effect, are legally void; and that acts of violence within any 
 State or States against the authority of the United States, are insurrec- 
 tionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances 
 
172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "Physically speaking we cannot separate; we cannot remove our 
 respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall be- 
 tween them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the 
 presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts 
 of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; 
 and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between 
 them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous 
 or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make 
 treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more 
 faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? .... 
 
 "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him 
 who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to 
 adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulties. 
 
 "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in 
 mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not 
 assail you. 
 
 "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggress- 
 ors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Govern- 
 ment; while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, 
 and defend' it. 
 
 "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We 
 must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must 
 not break our bonds of affection. 
 
 "The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle-field 
 and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this 
 broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, 
 as surely they will be; by the better angels of our nature." 
 
 DEDICATORY ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG. 
 
 The version here given is a literal transcript of the speech Mr. 
 Lincoln wrote out for a fair in Baltimore, Nov. ig, 1863. 
 
 "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this 
 continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the 
 proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in 
 a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so con- 
 ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great 
 battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of thai 
 field as the final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 173 
 
 that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we 
 should do this. 
 
 "But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, — we cannot consecrate, 
 — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, 
 who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to 
 add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what 
 we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, 
 the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
 they who have fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 
 
 "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain- 
 ing before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devo- 
 tion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devo- 
 tion — that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in 
 vain, — that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
 — and that the government of the people, by the people for the peo- 
 ple, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 FAST DAY PROCLAMATION, MARCH 30, 1863. 
 
 "Whereas, It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own 
 their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their 
 sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that 
 genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize 
 the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures, and proven by 
 all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. 
 
 "And, insomuch as we know that, by his Divine laws, nations, like 
 individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this 
 world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, 
 which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon 
 us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our National ref- 
 ormation as a whole people? 
 
 "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. 
 We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. 
 We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has 
 ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the 
 gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and en- 
 riched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the de- 
 ceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by 
 some superior wisdono and virtue of our own." 
 
'74 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Gen. W. T. Sherman. 
 Bom 1820. Died 1891. 
 
 Gen. Philip H. Sheridan. 
 Born 1881. Died 1888. 
 
 THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 FOR A SCHOOL OR CLtJB PROGRAMME. 
 
 Each numbered paragraph is to be given to a pupil or 
 member to read, or to recite, in a clear, distinct tone. 
 
 If. the school or club is small, each person may take 
 three or four paragraphs, but should not be required to 
 recite them in succession. 
 
 1. Abraham Lincoln was born Feb. I2, 1809, in the county of 
 LaRue, in the state of Kentucky. 
 
 2. He first attended school at Little Pidgeon Creek in the win- 
 ter of i8ig. 
 
 3. Three or four years later he attended Crawford's school in 
 the same locality. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. J 75 
 
 4. In 1826, he received his last schooling under the tuition of 
 Mr. Swaney. To reach this "institution of learning," he walked foul 
 miles and a half each way. 
 
 5. Later, as a "hired boy," he taught himself as best he could 
 with his rude surroundings, often "ciphering" on a wooden fire shovel 
 or anything else that came in his way. 
 
 6. His reading was very limited, being confined to two or three 
 books, but fortunately he had access to the great fountain of Biblical 
 literature. 
 
 7. Obtaining access to the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," which 
 could not be loaned from the constable's office, he early laid the 
 foundation for legal study. 
 
 8. In 1831, he went to New Orleans on a flat-boat, with a little 
 cargo of pork, hogs and corn. It was here that he first saw some of 
 the abominations of slavery and the slave trade. The workings of 
 the system greatly depressed him, and drew from him the emphatic 
 and almost prophetic exclamation, "If I ever get a chance to hit slav- 
 ery, I'll hit it hard." 
 
 9. It was after his return from this trip that he found an English 
 grammar, and mastered it by the light of pine knots during the long 
 winter evenings. 
 
 10. The Black Hawk war broke out in 1832, and Lincoln enlist- 
 ed. Although without military experience, his personal popularity 
 made him the captain of his company. 
 
 11. After the war was over he became a candidate for the State 
 Legislature, and although he was defeated.the campaign was of great 
 service to him in the way of experience. 
 
 12. He began the study of law with borrowed books, and put his 
 own knowledge into practice by drawing up legal papers, and also 
 conducting small cases without remuneration. 
 
 13. Many volumes pertaining to the sciences now found their 
 way into his hands, and also some of the standard works of literature. 
 
 14. He then sought and obtained the position of deputy surveyor 
 of Sangamon County, and in this work he became an expert. He was 
 often sought for as a referee when trouble arose concerning boun- 
 dary lines, etc. 
 
 15. From 1833 to 1836 he was the postmaster of New Salem, 
 having received the appointment as a Jackson democrat. 
 
 16. It was during this time that he again became a candidate fc 
 the Legislature. His campaign was personally conducted, and this 
 time he was the victorious candidate. 
 
 17. It was at this session of the legislature that he met his great 
 opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. In time, he fully accorded him the 
 title of "The Little Giant." 
 
 18. In August of 1835, Lincoln met with a terrible loss, being no 
 
1/6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 less than the death of Anne Rutledge, the beautiful girl to whom he 
 was betrothed. Nearly thirty years afterward he spoke lovingly of 
 her to an old friend. "The death of this fair girl," said Mr. Herndon, 
 "shattered Lincoln's happiness. He threw off his infinite sorrow only 
 by leaping wildly into the political arena." 
 
 19. In 1836, he was again a candidate for the legislature. He 
 was self-nominated, for this was before the days of caucuses and con- 
 ventions. In the New Salem Journal he announced his platform, 
 which contained a suffrage plank to the effect that all men and 
 women who either bore arms,or paid taxes, should be allowed to vote. 
 
 20. Lincoln was elected in triumph. Sangamon County, which 
 had usually gone Democratic, voting the Whig ticket by more than 
 four hundred majority. 
 
 21. In 1837, Mr. Lincoln moved to Springfield, where his active 
 life as a lawyer began, the State Capital having been moved about 
 that time from Vandalia. 
 
 22. In November of 1842, he was married to Miss Mary Todd. 
 
 23. Mr. Lincoln was first elected to Congress in 1846. 
 
 24. One year later he took his seat as a member of the Thirtieth 
 Congress. Other notable members at this time were Ex-President 
 John Quincv Adams, Andrew Johnson, Alex. H. Stephens, besides 
 Robert Toombs, Robert B. Rhett, and others. In the Senate were 
 Daniel Webster, Simon Cameron, Lewis Cass, John C. Calhoun and 
 Jefferson Davis. 
 
 25. At the close of his Congressional services in 1849, Mr. Lin- 
 coln returned to Springfield and resumed the practice of law, al- 
 though his fees were considered by his legal brethren "ridiculously 
 small." 
 
 26. During the contest in Kansas, in 1855, Lincoln's views on 
 the subject of slavery were fully expressed in a radical letter to Mr. 
 Speed. 
 
 27. In 1858, Lincoln held his notable debates with Stephen A. 
 Douglas. 
 
 28. In i860, Abraham Lincoln received the nomination of the Re- 
 publican party for the presidency, Stephen A. Douglas was the nom- 
 inee of the Democratic party and these two prominent men were 
 again rivals. 
 
 2Q. Threatening times succeeded his election with the whole 
 country aroused by threats of secession. 
 
 30. In March of 1861, he was inaugurated amidst the most om- 
 inous conditions that a new president was ever called upon to face. 
 
 31. He dehvered an inaugural address which for wisdom, and 
 consistency has never been surpassed. 
 
 32. Following the fall of Fort Sumter, Mr. Lincoln issued on the 
 15th of April a call for 75000 volunteers. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 177 
 
 33. Four days later he issued a proclamation for the blockade 
 of Southern ports. 
 
 , . 34. In 1862, he met with the terrible loss by death of his son Wil- 
 lie. In the midst of this great trial his thoughts reverted to his own 
 mother whom he lost when a child, "I remember her prayers," he said 
 "they have always followed me^they have clung to me all my life." 
 
 35. During the long war he 
 was everywhere busy doing ev- 
 erything possible for the com- 
 fort of the soldiers, especially 
 the sick and wounded. 
 
 36. On Jan. ist, 1863, the 
 Emancipation Proclamation was 
 issued. 
 
 37. Following logically the 
 policy of the Emancipation Act, 
 he began the experiment of in- 
 troducing colored troops into 
 the armies of the United States. 
 
 38. In December of 1863, 
 he made General Grant the 
 commander-in-chief of all the 
 Union armies. 
 
 39. In 1864, Abraham Lin- 
 coln was again elected president 
 of the United States. 
 
 40. About the middle of August 1864, an attempt was made upon 
 Lincoln's life one evening as he was riding back from the Soldier's 
 Home. The bullet of the would-be assassin passed through the silk 
 hat which the president wore, but at his request the matter was kept 
 very quiet. 
 
 41. Early in December he submitted to Congress his fourth an- 
 nual message, and this was followed by the passage of the Constitu- 
 tional Amendment forever prohibiting slavery in the territory of the 
 United States. 
 
 42. On March 4th, 1865, Mr. Lincoln was again inaugurated as 
 President of the United States. 
 
 43. The great rebellion was brought to a successful close with 
 great rejoicing over General Lee's surrender. 
 
 44. On the afternoon before his death he signed a pardon for a 
 soldier who was under a death sentence. This act of mercy was his 
 last official order. 
 
 45. On the 14th of April he fell by the hand of an assassin and 
 the nation was in mourning. 
 
 Gen. U. S. Grant. 
 Born 1822. Died 1886. 
 
178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 PROGRAMME FOR A LINCOLN ENTERTAINMENT. 
 
 1. Music— "The Red, White and Blue." 
 
 2. Recitation — Mr. Lincoln's favorite poem, "Oh why should the 
 Spirit of Mortal be Proud?" 
 
 3. Essay — Early Life of Lincoln and the books that he read. 
 
 4. Recitation — Extracts from first Inaugural Address. 
 
 5. Dramatic Scene — Uncle Sam and Miss Columbia receiving 
 the Presidents. (A boy dressed as Uncle Sam and a girl as Col- 
 umbia, should stand on the platform receiving the Presidents as they 
 arrive, dressed in the costume of their period, Washington being the 
 first. They may be introduced by some one representing a hero of 
 the War of the Rebellion.) 
 
 6. Recitation — Bryant's Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 7. Music — "We are Coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred 
 Thousand Strong." 
 
 ALTERNATE PROGRAMME. 
 
 1. Music — "Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching." 
 
 2. Recitation — Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg. 
 
 3. Anecdotes of Lincoln. 
 
 4. Music — "Marching Through Georgia." 
 
 5. Recitation — Lowell's Commemorative Ode. 
 
 6. Music — "John Brown's Body." 
 
 7. Tableau — Lincoln Freeing the Slave. 
 
 8. Music— "Hail Columbia." 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW. 
 
 Where and -when was Abraham Lincoln born f What can you say 
 of his own mother? What can you say of his step-mother? What 
 sort of a man was his father? What were the early educational ad- 
 vantages of Abraham Lincoln? Describe his early home? What 
 books furnished his early reading? From, whence did he derive his 
 first knowledge of law? What can you say of his boyish character? 
 How did he earn his first dollar? What was his first business ven- 
 ture? What was his experience in the Black Hawk War? What 
 can you say of his first political work? When and where was he a 
 ps>stmaster? Describe his first political canvass? Discribe his per- 
 sonal appearance ? 
 
 Describe his second political campaign ? When and where did he 
 first meet Stephen A. Douglas? What can you say of his relation to 
 national politics in connection with the legislature of 1836-37? 
 
 What were his early views on the subject of slavery ? What can say 
 of Elijah P. Lovejoyt What relation did Lincoln sustain to the cam- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 '79 
 
 paign of 1844? What can you say of the Wilmot Proviso f What did 
 Caton say of Lincoln? What can you say of Lincoln' s eulogy upon 
 Henry Clay? 
 
 Describe the long rivalry between Douglas and Lincoln ? Des- 
 cribe his relation with the republican convention of Illinois in i8j8? 
 Describe his address at Cooper Institute in Feb. of i860 ? Describe hii 
 first nomination for the presidency ? Give a synopsis of his. last fare- 
 well to citizens of Springfield? Give an account of his first in- 
 augural? Recite briefly the principal events connected with his first 
 term? Give a synopsis of his second inaugural address? Give a 
 brief synopsis of his address at Gettysburg? 
 
 Describe his character and also his personal appearance while he 
 was president? In what way did he usually exercise executive clem.- 
 ency ? Mention a few instances of this ? What was his last official act? 
 When and how did he die? What can you say of the national grief ? 
 Describe some of the scenes connected with the passing of his body from 
 the Capital to the tomb ? 
 
 In reviewing his career what do you consider the most importauS 
 of his official acts? What is the general verdict of history upon thi 
 character of the man ? 
 
 SUBJECTS FOR SPECIAL STUDY 
 
 /. The Nebraska Controversy. 
 
 2. The humor of Lincoln. 
 
 3. The eloquence of Lincoln. 
 
 4.. Contrast between Douglas and Lincoln. 
 
 5. The Emancipation Proclamation. 
 
 6. Lincoln and Seward. 
 
 7. Lincoln and Horace Greeley. 
 
 8. Lincoln and Stanton. 
 g. Lincoln as a Statesman. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 
 
 18C39. Born in LaRue County, Kentucky, Ffeb. 12. 
 
 1816. Moved with his parents to Indiana. 
 
 1830. Moved with his father and step-mother to Macon County, 111. 
 
 1 831. Constructed a flat-boat and made a successful trip to New Or- 
 
 leans and back. 
 
 1832. Served as clerk in the store of Mr.Offutt. Captain of Volunteert 
 
 in Black Hawk War. 
 
 1833. Embarked in politics and studied law. Defeated for the legis 
 
 lature. Appointed postmaster at New Salem, 111. 
 
 1834- 1840. Elected successively to the legislature. Making Spring- 
 field his home. 
 
 1842. November, married Mary Todd, daughter of the Hon. Robert 
 S. Todd of Lexington, Ky. 
 
 1846. Elected to Congress over his competitor, Rev. Peter Cartwright 
 
i8o ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 1848. Made speeches in favor of General Taylor for the Presidency 
 
 1854. Made earnest speeches in favor of the Anti-Nebraska move- 
 
 ment. 
 
 1855. Defeated for the United States Senate by Lyman Trumbull 
 
 Declined the offered nomination for Governor of Illinois. 
 
 1856. Headed the Electoral ticket for General Fremont as President 
 1858. Engaged in the famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas. 
 i860. Delivered his speech in Cooper Institute, New York City, Feb. 
 
 27. Received the Republican Nomination for the Presidency, 
 at Chicago, May. Elected to the Presidency November 6. 
 
 1861. Delivered his wonderful inauguration address at Washington, 
 
 D. C, March 4. Called for 75000 men to preserve the Union 
 April 15. Blockade of Southern ports declared April 19. 
 Called for 42,034 Volunteers May 3. First Message to Con- 
 gress July 4. Appointed a Fast IDay on August 12, for the last 
 Thursday in September. 
 
 1862. Sent special Message to Congress for the gradual abolishment 
 
 of slavery, March 6. Signed bill for the abolishing of slavery 
 in the District of Columbia April 16. Preliminary Proclama- 
 tion of Emancipation issued September 22. Annual Message 
 to Congress Dec. i. 
 
 1863. Final Proclamation of Emancipation made Jan. i. Sent reply 
 
 to the testimonial of Sympathy and Confidence from the work- 
 ingmen of Manchester, England Jan. 19. Inaugurated the 
 custom of setting apart a common day throughout the land 
 for thanksgiving — the last Thursday in November. The re- 
 nowned dedicatory address at the consecration of the Na- 
 tional Cemetery at Gettysburg, Nov. 19. Annual Message 
 to Congress Dec. g. 
 
 1864. Re-elected President, November 8. 
 
 i86j. Delivered second inaugural address, one of the greatest state 
 papers that history has preserved. Entered Richmond with 
 the Union Army, April 1 1. Assassinated by J. Wilkes Booth, 
 April 14. Buried at Springfield, Illinois, May 4. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 For those who wish to read more extensively, the following works 
 are especially commended: 
 
 "Life of Lincoln," by Nicolay & Hay. Ten vols. The Century Co. 
 "Life of Lincoln," by Herndon & Weik. Two vols. Appleton & Co. 
 "Life of Lincoln," by Ward H. Lamon. J. R. Osgood & Co. 
 "Life of Lincoln," by Isaac N. Arnold. A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 "Life of Lincoln," by John T. Morse, Jr. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln," by Henry C. Whitney. Estes & 
 
 Lauriet. 
 "Life of Lincoln," by Wm. O. Stoddard. Fords, Howard & Hulbert. 
 "Life of Lincoln," by J. G. Holland.