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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 BRAND WHITLOCK 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 
 MCMXVI 
 
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 Copyright, 1909, 1916 
 
 By small, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 
 (incorpobated) 
 
 JAN-.!8i9l7 
 
 8. J. Pakkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
 
k. 
 
 TO 
 E L B. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To compress between the covers of a little 
 book like this the whole story of Abraham 
 Lincoln, to present within such limitations a 
 life so epical, a character so original and yet so 
 universal, is obviously impossible. It would be 
 impossible, indeed, in a work of a score of 
 volumes. The fascinating subject has already 
 yielded a whole literature. In the List of Lin- 
 colniana in the Library of Congress, compiled 
 by Mr, George Thomas Ritchie, there are al- 
 ready a thousand titles. Almost any phase of 
 Lincoln s remarkable personality is worth a 
 volume by itself, Mr, Hill, for instance, has 
 written a charming book on "Lincoln the Law- 
 yer," devoted in the main to what, in many re- 
 spects, is the most interesting period of his life; 
 namely, those years when he was on the old 
 Eighth Circuit, Mr, Bates's reminiscences of 
 
 9 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ''Lincoln in the Telegraph Office'' are most 
 delightful. The student will wish to read 
 Herndon's racy pages, — though he would bet- 
 ter take some of them with a grain of salt, — for 
 these supply the biographers with all that is 
 known of the early life of the subject. He will 
 wish, too, to read Lamon, who used Herndons 
 materials; he will wish to peruse the pious pages 
 of Holland; and he will find valuable the data 
 which but for Miss Tarbell might otherwise 
 have been lost. He will find Nicolay and 
 Hay's monumental work authoritative, if not 
 definitive; and he will not like to miss the fine 
 flavor of that latest volume, so sympathetic, so 
 full of insight, that has come to us from over 
 the sea in Mr, Binns's most excellent Life, He 
 will wish to read, also, the intimate personal 
 sketches Walt Whitman has scattered all 
 through his prose; and above all, of course, he 
 will wish to read Lincoln's speeches, letters, 
 messages, and State papers, where, better than 
 any other words can give it, is to be found the 
 expression of his noble personality, 
 
 10 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To all these works, to all those cited in the 
 Bibliography, the present writer owes, and 
 wishes to express, his gratitude and acknowl- 
 edgments. All he knows, aside from some 
 personal recollections of Springfield friends, he 
 got from them. He makes no claim of original 
 research or new material: he has contributed 
 nothing of his own save the labour of condensa- 
 tion and a love of the subject which finds it hard 
 to resist the temptation to write at as great a 
 length as any of them. He would, however, 
 urge the reader to get the other books about the 
 greatest American, and to seek out for himself 
 the secret that was in his wonderful and beauti- 
 ful life, — the secret that, let us hope, was re- 
 vealed to America for the saving of the world. 
 
 Brand Whitlock. 
 
 Toledo, October 20, 1908 
 
 11 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1809 
 
 February 12. Abraham Lincoln was born on the 
 Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in Hardin, now 
 LaRue County, Kentucky. 
 
 1816 
 Removed with his parents to Indiana, settling on 
 Little Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville, Spencer 
 County. 
 
 1818 
 Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother, died. 
 
 1819 
 His father married Sarah Bush Johnston. 
 
 1828 
 Went to New Orleans on a flatboat. 
 
 1830 
 The Lincolns went to Illinois, settling near Decatur, 
 
 Macon County. 
 Abraham split the historic rails. 
 
 15 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1831 
 Went to New Orleans on a flatboat. 
 July. Went to New Salem, Sangamon County. 
 Clerk in store. 
 
 1832 
 March, Announced himself candidate for legisla- 
 ture. 
 Captain in Black Hawk War. 
 July. Mustered out. 
 August, Defeated for election. 
 
 1833 
 
 Engaged in business with Berry. Began to study 
 
 law. 
 The firm of Lincoln & Berry failed. 
 May. Postmaster of New Salem. Deputy surveyor 
 
 of Sangamon County. 
 
 1834 
 Again candidate for legislature, and elected. 
 
 1835 
 Was at Vandalia as member of legislature. Met 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas. 
 Fell in love with Anne Rutledge, who died. Was 
 
 plunged into melancholia. 
 
 16 
 
5> 
 
 CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1836 
 
 Love affair with Mary Owens. 
 
 Re-elected to legislature. Leader of **Long Nine. 
 Worked for Internal Improvement bubble, and 
 succeeded in having State capital removed to 
 Springfield. 
 
 Protested against resolutions condemning abolition- 
 ism. 
 
 Admitted to the bar. 
 
 1837 
 Settled in Springfield, forming partnership with 
 John T. Stuart. 
 
 1838 
 Re-elected to legislature. Minority candidate for 
 Speaker. 
 
 1840 
 Candidate for Presidential elector on Whig ticket. 
 Stumped the State for Harrison. Had encoun- 
 ters with Douglas. 
 Re-elected to legislature, and again minority candi- 
 date for Speaker. 
 
 1841 
 
 He and Douglas rivals for hand of Mary Todd. 
 Engagement with Mary Todd broken. Ill and al- 
 most deranged. Visited his friend Joshua Speed 
 in Kentucky. 
 
 Challenged to a duel by James T. Shields. 
 
 17 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 April 14. Formed law partnership with Judge Ste- 
 phen T. Logan. 
 Refused Whig nomination for governor. 
 
 1842 
 November 4. Married to Mary Todd. 
 
 1843 
 
 September 20. Formed law partnership with Wil- 
 liam H. Herndon. 
 
 1844 
 
 Candidate for Presidential elector on Whig ticket, 
 and stumped Illinois and Indiana for Henry Clay. 
 
 1846 
 Elected to the Thirtieth Congress over Peter Cart- 
 wright. 
 
 1847 
 In Congress. Introduced famous '^^Spot" Resolu- 
 tions. 
 
 1848 
 Presidential elector on Whig ticket, and stumped 
 
 New England for Taylor. 
 December. Attended second session of the Thirtieth 
 Congress. Voted for Wilmot Proviso and Ash- 
 mun's amendment. 
 Introduced bill abolishing slavery in District of Co- 
 lumbia. 
 
 18 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Sought appointment as commissioner of General 
 Lands Office, and failed. 
 
 Declined appointment as Territorial Governor of 
 Oregon. 
 
 Went back to Springfield, disappointed and disillu- 
 sioned. 
 
 1849 
 
 Practised law on old Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illi- 
 nois. 
 
 1852 
 Campaigned for Scott. 
 
 1854i 
 
 Roused by repeal of Missouri Compromise and pas- 
 sage of Kansas-Nebraska bill. 
 Attacked Douglas's position. 
 Novemher, Elected to legislature against his will, 
 
 1855 
 
 January, Resigned from legislature to become can- 
 didate for United States senator. 
 February, Defeated for United States senator. 
 
 1856 
 
 May S9. Spoke at Bloomington Convention, which 
 organised the Republican party in Illinois. 
 
 Received 110 votes for Vice-President in Republican 
 Convention at Philadelphia. 
 
 19 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Candidate for Presidential elector on Republican 
 
 ticket, and campaigned for Fremont. 
 Attacked Douglas's position. 
 
 1858 
 
 June 16. Nominated for United States Senate by 
 
 Republicans in State Convention. 
 July 24. Challenged Douglas to joint debate. 
 Great debate with Douglas. 
 Carried Illinois for Republicans on popular vote, but 
 
 lost a majority of the legislative districts. 
 
 1859 
 January. Defeated for Senate by Douglas before 
 
 legislature. 
 Spoke that fall in Ohio, and in December in Kansas. 
 
 1860 
 February 27. Delivered notable address at Cooper 
 
 Institute, New York. 
 Spoke also in New England. 
 May 9. Named by Illinois Convention at Decatur 
 
 as "Rail" candidate for President. 
 May 16. Nominated for President by Republicans 
 
 at Chicago. 
 November, Elected. 
 
 1861 
 February 11. Left Springfield for Washington. 
 March 4. Inaugurated as President. 
 
 20 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 April 13. Fall of Fort Sumter. 
 
 April 15. Issued call for volunteers, and convened 
 Congress in extraordinary session for July 4. 
 
 JuItj 21. Battle of Bull Run. 
 
 July 25. Appointed McClellan to command Army 
 of Potomac. 
 
 November 1. Appointed McClellan commander-in- 
 chief, under the President, of all armies. 
 
 December S, Message to Congress. 
 
 December 25. Ordered the return of Mason and Sli- 
 dell, captured Commissioners of the Confederacy, 
 and averted war with England. 
 
 1862 
 
 January 13. Appointed Edwin M. Stanton Secre- 
 tary of War. 
 
 Sent special message to Congress, recommending 
 gradual compensated emancipation of slaves. 
 
 July 11. Appointed Halleck general-in-chief. 
 
 September 22. Issued preliminary proclamation of 
 emancipation after battle of Antietarp. 
 
 December, Message to Congress again urging 
 gradual compensated emancipation. 
 
 Superseded McClellan in command of Army of the 
 Potomac by Burnside. 
 
 December 13. Burnside defeated at Fredericksburg. 
 
 186S 
 
 January 1. Issued Emancipation Proclamation. 
 
 21 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 January 26. Appointed Hooker to succeed Burn- 
 side. 
 
 May S. Hooker lost battle of Chancellorsville. 
 
 June 27. Appointed Meade to succeed Hooker, 
 
 July 1-4. Battle of Gettysburg. 
 
 July 4. Fall of Vicksburg. 
 
 September 19-20. Battle of Chickamauga. 
 
 November 19. Delivered address at dedication of 
 the National Cemetery on the battlefield of Gettys- 
 burg. 
 
 November 24-25. Grant won battles of Lookout 
 Mountain and Missionary Ridge. 
 
 December 8. Message to Congress and Proclama- 
 tion of Amnesty. 
 
 1864 
 
 March 3. Commissioned Grant lieutenant-general 
 and placed him in command of all the armies. 
 
 June 7. Renominated for President by Republican 
 National Convention at Baltimore. 
 
 August 23. Had premonition of defeat. 
 
 November 8. Re-elected. 
 
 1865 
 
 February 1. Hampton Roads Peace Conference 
 
 with Confederate Commissioners. 
 March 4. Inaugurated as President a second time. 
 March 22. Visited Grant at City Point. 
 
 22 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 April 4. Entered Richmond. 
 
 April 14. Shot in Ford's Theatre at 10.^0 o'clock 
 
 in the evening. 
 April 15. Died at 7.22 o'clock in the morning. 
 May 4. Buried in Springfield. 
 
 23 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The story of Lincoln, perfect in its unities, 
 appealing to the imagination like some old 
 tragedy, has been told over and over, and will 
 be told over and over again. The log cabin 
 where he was born, the axe he swung in the 
 backwoods, the long sweep to which he bent on 
 the ilatboat in the river, the pine knot at mid- 
 night, — these are the rough symbols of the 
 forces by which he made his own slow way. 
 Surveyor and legislator, country lawyer riding 
 the circuit, poHtician on the stump and in Con- 
 gress, the unwearied rival of Douglas, finally, 
 as the lucky choice of a new party, the Presi- 
 dent, — the story is wholly typical of these 
 States in that earlier epoch when the like was 
 possible to any boy. But the story does not 
 
 27 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 end here. He is in the White House at last, 
 but in an hour when reahsed ambitions turn to 
 ashes, the nation is divided, a crisis confronts 
 the land, and menaces the old cause of liberty. 
 We see him become the wise leader of that old 
 cause, the sad, gentle captain of a mighty war, 
 the liberator of a whole race, and not only the 
 saviour of a republic, but the creator of a na- 
 tion; and then, in the very hour of triumph, — 
 the tragedy for which destiny plainly marked 
 him. Rightly told, the story is the epic of 
 America. 
 
 It was like him to have little interest in his 
 forbears. In the brief autobiographical notes 
 of 1859 he mentioned the Lincolns of Massa- 
 chusetts, but he did not know that with them he 
 was descended from those Lincolns who came 
 from England about 1635. The genealogists 
 trace the line down to that Abraham who, in 
 Kentucky in 1788, was killed by the Indians. 
 The tragedy separated the family. Thomas, 
 the youngest son, was only ten. He did not 
 
 28 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 even know how to read. He worked as he 
 could, became a carpenter, and in 1806 married 
 his cousin, Nancy Hanks, whose pathetic 
 young figure has emerged from mystery as the 
 daughter of Joseph Hanks and his Quaker 
 wife, Nannie Shipley, whose sister Mary was 
 Thomas Lincoln's mother. 
 
 At Elizabethtown a daughter was born. 
 Then they moved to a farm on the Big South 
 Fork of Nolin Creek, three miles from 
 Hodgensville, in what was then Hardin, now 
 LaRue, County. And here in a cabin, on 
 February 12, 1809, their second child was born. 
 They named him Abraham, after old Abraham, 
 his grandfather, who had been killed by the In- 
 dians. When he was four years old, his father 
 removed to Knob Creek, then, in 1816, aban- 
 doned his clearing, and went to Indiana. He 
 staked off a claim on Pigeon Creek, near Gen- 
 tryville, Spencer County, and built a "half- 
 faced camp" of unhewn logs, without floor, en- 
 closed on three sides, the open front protected 
 only by skins. Here they lived for a whole 
 
 29 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 year. Then Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came, 
 and Dennis Hanks, and they reared a log 
 cabin. The life was hard, but Abraham could 
 play and sometimes hunt with his cousin Den- 
 nis, though he was too tenderhearted to kill, 
 and after one day shooting a wild turkey, he 
 never afterward, as he was able to record in 
 1860, "pulled the trigger on any larger game." 
 Despite the abounding game, however, the fare 
 was poor ; and one day, after the "blessing" had 
 been said over the monotonous potatoes, the boy 
 looked up with that expression which in later 
 years foretold a joke, and said, "I call these 
 mighty poor blessings." 
 
 In 1818 the settlement was swept by the 
 dreaded "milk-sick." Thomas and Betsy 
 Sparrow died of it; then Thomas Lincoln's 
 wife fell ill. She lived a week, and, calling the 
 children to her bed of skins and leaves, she told 
 them "to love their kindred and worship God," 
 and so died. There were no ceremonies at this 
 most miserable funeral, and the winter that 
 came upon the grave in the forest, where 
 
 30 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Thomas Lincoln laid his wife in the rude coffin 
 he had made, beat on a desolate home. The 
 motherless children shivered in a cabin without 
 a floor, and the sorrow of it all, the mystery of 
 death, the loneliness of the woods, made a dark 
 impression on the sensitive boy. 
 
 But back in Kentucky there was a widow, 
 Sarah Buck Johnston, once a sweetheart of 
 Thomas Lincoln. He went to court her, and 
 in December, 1819, they were married. Her 
 household goods — among them "a walnut bu- 
 reau valued at fifty dollars" — improved the 
 cabin, and the family, augmented by her three 
 children, began life anew. This motherly 
 housewife dressed the forlorn little Lincolns in 
 her own children's clothes, and for the first time 
 they knew the luxury of a feather bed. And, 
 best miracle of all, she inspired Thomas to lay 
 a floor, mend doors, cut windows, and plaster 
 the chinks in the cabin walls. She had what 
 poor Nancy Hanks had lacked, — the robust 
 strength for rude labour. She was a "very tall 
 woman, straight as an Indian, of fair complex- 
 
 31 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ion, . . . handsome, sprightly, talkative and 
 proud." And between her and the young Ab- 
 raham there grew a love which was to last all 
 his life : she said he w^as the best son woman ever 
 had. Thomas Lincoln had little patience with 
 *'book learning," and, failing to interest Abra- 
 ham in carpentry, hired him out to neighbours. 
 He went to school, as he said, "by littles," — 
 scarcely a year in all; but he learned "reading, 
 writing and ciphering to the Rule o' Three," 
 became an excellent penman, and, it is said, 
 corrected the spelling and the pronunciation of 
 the family name, which in the settlement was 
 "Linkhern" or "Linkhorn." The new mother 
 encouraged him to study at home, and he read 
 "every book he heard of within a circuit of fifty 
 miles," — Murray's English Reader, the Bible, 
 u.^ sop's Fables, Eohinson Crusoe, The Pil- 
 grimes Progress, a History of the United 
 States, and Weems's Life of Washington, 
 This last book he had borrowed of Josiah Craw- 
 ford, and one night, through carelessness, it 
 was stained and warped by rain. Crawford 
 
 32 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 made him pull fodder for three days at twenty- 
 five cents a day to pay for the volume, and the 
 boy in revenge bestowed on him the enduring 
 nickname of "Blue Nose." 
 
 From these books he made extracts in brier- 
 root ink with a pen made from a buzzard's 
 quill. Sometimes he figured with charcoal on 
 the wooden fire-shovel, shaving it off white and 
 clean when it was covered. He studied by the 
 firelight, and was up with his book at dawn. 
 He read everything, even the Revised Statutes 
 of Indiana; and, if he did not commit its con- 
 tents to memory, — for so preposterously has 
 the legend grown, — he must have studied the 
 Declaration of Independence and the Constitu- 
 tion. He would mount a stump and harangue 
 the field hands, telling even then his stories or 
 imitating to the life the last itinerant preacher 
 who had passed that way. He wrote, too, 
 articles on "Temperance," on "Government," 
 and on "Cruelty to Animals." Unkindness he 
 could not endure, and unkindness was not un- 
 common among those thoughtless folk. Thus 
 
 33 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he made friends — even of the town drunkard, 
 whose Hfe he saved one night by dragging him 
 from a ditch. He even attempted rhymes and 
 satire, not always in the best taste, avenging 
 himself on Blue Nose Crawford and on the 
 Grigsbys for not inviting him to a wedding. 
 Of course, he attended court over at Boonville, 
 walking fifteen miles to watch the little come- 
 dies and tragedies. Once he was bold enough 
 to congratulate counsel for defence in a murder 
 trial, and years afterward, in the White House, 
 the greatest of the Presidents said to that law- 
 yer, "I felt that, if I could ever make as good 
 a speech as that, my soul would be satisfied." 
 He said his "father taught him to work, but 
 never taught him to love it." He preferred the 
 pioneer sports, — running and wrestling, — but 
 he did work, and worked hard, making rails, 
 ploughing, mowing, doing everything. At 
 nineteen he attained his extraordinary physical 
 growth, "six feet, two inches tall, weighing one 
 hundred and fifty pounds — with long arms and 
 legs, huge and awkward feet and hands, a slen- 
 
 34i 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 der body and small head." Surely, an un- 
 gainly figure, almost grotesque, in coon-skin 
 cap, linsey-woolsey shirt, and buckskin breeches 
 so short that they exposed his shins. He was 
 said to be "equal to three men," able to "lift and 
 bear a pair of logs." He could "strike with a 
 maul a heavier blow — could sink an axe deeper 
 into wood than any man I ever saw." 
 
 In 1828 he went for the first time out into 
 the world as bowman on a flatboat, down to 
 New Orleans. It was an adventure for him, of 
 course, — at Baton Rouge a fight with negroes, 
 at New Orleans the levees and the slave mart. 
 
 Thus he grew and came to manhood, with 
 some knowledge of books, some knowledge of 
 men, some knowledge of life. His learning 
 was tainted with the superstitions that were rife 
 in the settlement, and always, in a measure, 
 they clung to him, to merge in later years into 
 the mysticism of his poetic nature. There had 
 been sorrows, too : his sister Sarah had married 
 and died in child-birth; then in 1829 the milk- 
 sick again, and the call of the West. 
 
 35 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 In March, 1830, they set out for Illinois. 
 The tall young Abraham, in coonskin cap and 
 buckskins, strode beside the huge wagon, wield- 
 ing a long gad over the oxen. They were two 
 weeks on the way, over roads that froze by 
 night and thawed by day, but at last they all 
 arrived safely in the Sangamon country, even 
 the dog which, left behind one morning after 
 they had forded a stream, looked with such re- 
 proachful eyes that the tender-hearted Abra- 
 ham waded to his rescue back through the icy 
 waters. John Hanks met them five miles 
 north-west of Decatur, in Macon County ; and 
 on a bluff overlooking the muddy Sangamon 
 they built a cabin, split rails, fenced in fifteen 
 acres, and broke the virgin prairie. Abraham 
 was twenty-one and free. He remained in 
 JMacon County, however, that winter, splitting 
 rails, "four hundred for every yard of jeans 
 dyed with walnut juice necessary to make him 
 a pair of trousers," and all of them for history, 
 and in the spring found a patron in Denton 
 Offut, an adventurer who engaged him, with 
 
 36 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Hanks, to take a boat-load of provisions to 
 New Orleans. At New Salem the boat 
 grounded on a dam, and but for Lincoln's inge- 
 nuity would have been broken up. The inci- 
 dent moved Lincoln to invent and ultimately, 
 in 1849, to patent an apparatus to lift vessels 
 over shoals, and it introduced him to New 
 Salem with eclat, for the people gathered and 
 cheered the young navigator when he cleverly 
 contrived to get his boat off the dam and on its 
 way. At New Orleans he spent a month on 
 the levee, among the half-savage rivermen ; and 
 the slave mart brought home to him in all poign- 
 ancy and pity the institution he had already be- 
 gun to study and, perhaps, to hate. 
 
 In August he was back at New Salem, "a 
 piece of floating driftwood," as he said, await- 
 ing Offut, who was to open a store. The vil- 
 lage had a busy land of!ice, twenty log cabins, 
 and a hundred inhabitants. In seven years it 
 had vanished from the earth. Here Lincoln 
 loafed about, a river boatman out of a job, un- 
 til election day, and then, naturally, loafed 
 
 37 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 about the polls. Mentor Graham, village 
 schoolmaster, clerk of elections, needed an as- 
 sistant, and, looking up, saw the tall, young 
 stranger. "Can you write?" he asked. "I can 
 make a few rabbit tracks," said Lincoln. He 
 did the work to Graham's satisfaction, and, 
 while the voters straggled up, "spun a stock of 
 Indiana yarns." They made a hit, and New 
 Salem long afterwards repeated his stories, 
 even those, perhaps, that would better not have 
 been repeated. Oifut opened his store, put 
 Lincoln in charge, bragged of him, and claimed 
 that he could outrun, whip, or throw any man 
 in Sangamon County. The "Clary's Grove 
 Boys" — the name itself suggests their charac- 
 ter — issued promptly from their strip of tim- 
 ber, declaring that Jack Armstrong was "a bet- 
 ter man than Lincoln." Lincoln said he did 
 not like to "tussle and scuffle," and despised 
 "pulling and wooling," but he was badgered 
 into it, and gave their champion a famous 
 thrashing. The victory established him in 
 New Salem, and the Clary's Grove Boys 
 
 38 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 formed the nucleus of his poHtical following. 
 Before long he had part in a picturesque scene, 
 piloting the first steamboat, the Talisman, up 
 the Sangamon. There was a banquet at 
 Springfield to celebrate the event, but Lincoln 
 was not invited. Only the "gentlemen" were 
 asked, and Lincoln was but a pilot. Within a 
 year Offut failed, and Lincoln found himself 
 floating driftwood again. 
 
 A young man in the Illinois of 1832, who 
 was ambitious, given to stump -speaking, to the 
 reading of history and of law, and to arguing in 
 country stores, must necessarily have found a 
 lively interest in politics. So it was with Lin- 
 coln. From youth he had been attracted by 
 the romantic figure of Henry Clay, and had 
 adopted most of his political principles. If he 
 was not a Whig, he was Whiggish, as Lamon 
 puts it. To one of Clay's principles, that of 
 gradual, compensated emancipation, he clung 
 with devotion all his life. In March, there- 
 fore, of the year under notice, he announced 
 himself as a candidate for the legislature, de- 
 
 39 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 daring in favour of "at least a moderate educa- 
 tion" for every man, and a law against usury, 
 though "in cases of extreme necessity there 
 could always be means found to cheat the law. 
 . . . My case is thrown exclusively upon the 
 independent voters of the county. . . . But if 
 the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to 
 keep me in the background, I have been too 
 familiar with disappointments to be very much 
 chagrined." 
 
 Here, indeed, with the people he had to leave 
 his case, for his campaign was presently inter- 
 rupted by the Black Hawk War. The old 
 chief of the Sacs, who gave his name to this last 
 Indian uprising in Illinois, had broken the 
 treaties by which the tribes had gone beyond 
 the Mississippi, and, asserting that "land can- 
 not be sold," appeared at the head of his braves 
 in war paint on the ancestral hunting-grounds 
 in northern Illinois. Governor Reynolds 
 called for volunteers, and Lincoln was among 
 the first to respond. The Clary's Grove Boys, 
 glad of a chance of fun and fighting, enlisted 
 
 40 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 enthusiastically, and elected Lincoln captain, — 
 *'a success," he afterwards wrote, "which gave 
 me more pleasure than any I have had since." 
 His enjoymentfof the whole experience, indeed, 
 seems to have been keen. But withal there 
 were weariness and hardship. He was learn- 
 ing something of the gentle art of ruling men, 
 though with his company, impatient of disci- 
 pline, the art was not so gentle, after all; and 
 there is an instance in which Captain Lincoln 
 had to face his whole command, mutinous and 
 threatening, and to put his own body between 
 them and a poor friendly Indian who, with safe 
 conduct from General Cass, had taken refuge 
 in camp. When his company was mustered 
 out, he re-enlisted immediately as a private. 
 He saw no fighting and killed no Indians, and 
 was able long afterward to convulse Congress 
 by a humorous account of his "war record." 
 The war ended in July, and he got back to New 
 Salem in time to stump the county before the 
 election in August, when he was defeated, — 
 "the only time," as he said in the Autobiog- 
 
 41 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 raphy, "I have ever been beaten by the peo- 
 ple." 
 
 Failing of employment in the three village 
 groceries, he and a man named Berry bought 
 out one of them, giving their notes for the pur- 
 chase price. Then, by the same means, they 
 bought out the other two, and thus had a 
 monopoly. But unlike some monopolies, even 
 when procured by such financiering, this did 
 not succeed. Then the firm secured a license 
 to sell hquor, — an incident of the business in 
 those days, — but Berry drank up the liquor 
 himself, while Lincoln, his heels cocked up on 
 the counter, or sprawling under a tree outside 
 the door, was reading Shakespeare, Burns, 
 Gibbon, Rollin, and a little later Paine and 
 Voltaire. It is said that he wrote a mono- 
 graph on Deism which was burned by a friend, 
 who just then had more political sense than 
 Lincoln, though later on neither he nor any man 
 could have had more. Next he was deep in 
 Blacks tone. He had found the book in a 
 barrel of rubbish he had obligingly bought from 
 
 42 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 some poor fellow in trouble, and nothing had 
 ever so interested and absorbed him. He be- 
 gan, too, with the help of Mentor Graham, the 
 study of English grammar. 
 
 With both members of the firm thus preoc- 
 cupied, it is not surprising that in the spring 
 of 1833 the business "winked out," to use Lin- 
 coln's phrase. He was not a "business man" 
 then or ever. Soon Berry died, and Lincoln 
 was left alone with the firm's indebtedness, 
 about twelve hundred dollars, — to him an ap- 
 palling sum. But, with the humour that saved 
 every situation to him, he called it "the national 
 debt," and, paying it as he could, he was thus 
 referring to it as late as 1848, sending home 
 part of his salary as Congressman to apply 
 on it. 
 
 In May he was commissioned postmaster 
 of New Salem. The office was so small that 
 old Andrew Jackson must have overlooked it, 
 — so small, indeed, that Lincoln distributed the 
 letters from his hat and read the newspapers 
 before he delivered them. But he was scrupu- 
 
 43 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 lous always, and years afterward, when a gov- 
 ernment agent came to Springfield to make 
 settlement, Lincoln from his trunk drew forth 
 "an old blue sock with a quantity of silver and 
 copper coin tied up in it," and was able to turn 
 over the identical moneys he had collected in his 
 official capacity, which, often and sorely as he 
 had needed money, he had never touched. 
 
 And now he got a better chance. With the 
 wild speculation in Illinois lands, John Cal- 
 houn, county surveyor, had more than he could 
 do, and offered Lincoln a post as deputy. Lin- 
 coln knew nothing of surveying, but said he 
 could learn, and, bargaining for political free- 
 dom, — Calhoun was a Democrat, — ^he mastered 
 the science and went to work. His surveys 
 were accurate, and he was doing well, when 
 suddenly "the national debt" loomed before him 
 in the sinister figure of a man who held notes 
 of the extinct firm. But he found friends, and 
 James Short and Bowling Green, justice of the 
 peace, redeemed for him his horse and survey- 
 ing instruments which the creditor had levied 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 on. Indeed, the whole story of those New 
 Salem days is the story of the kindness, the 
 helpfulness, that always prevail among the 
 poor. One picture reveals it all. Hannah 
 Armstrong, the wife of that Jack whom Lin- 
 coln thrashed, always had milk and mush or 
 cornbread for him. He would ^ 'bring the chil- 
 dren candy, and rock the cradle while she got 
 him something to eat." And, when Lincoln 
 got buckskins as his first pay for surveying 
 Hannah "foxed" them on his trousers. In 
 1834 Lincoln again offered himself for the leg- 
 islature. All that summer he was electioneer- 
 ing, making speeches, lifting and throwing 
 weights, wrestling, cradling in the harvest 
 fields, telling stories. He was elected this time, 
 at the head of the poll; stud an old friend of 
 the Black Hawk War, Major John T. Stuart, 
 was one of the successful candidates on the 
 ticket with him. Stuart loaned him law books, 
 and Lincoln began to practise, in the small way 
 of the pettifogger, before Squire Bowling 
 Green. 
 
 45 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 When the legislature convened at Vandalia, 
 he was there, making "a decent appearance" 
 in new clothes, for the purchase of which an- 
 other New Salem friend had loaned the money. 
 He spent the winter there, reading in the State 
 library, and learning otherwise of laws and the 
 curious making of them. He was assigned, in- 
 appropriately, it would seem, to the House 
 Committee on Finance. Many of the men he 
 met were cast for big parts in the drama just 
 then opening in Illinois, among them a dashing 
 youth of twenty-two, lately come from Ver- 
 mont, with but thirty-seven cents in his pocket, 
 but already admitted to the bar and running for 
 office, — Stephen A. Douglas, whom Lincoln 
 noted as "the least man I ever saw." For 
 twenty-eight years this least man was to be his 
 rival, even in love, though he was not his rival 
 in the love which then was filling Lincoln's sus- 
 ceptible heart. Back in New Salem he had left 
 Anne Rutledge, a pretty maid with auburn 
 hair and blue eyes. But Anne was already 
 betrothed. Her lover, James McNamar, had 
 
 46 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 gone back East, promising to return. After 
 a while his letters ceased. Then there was 
 rumour, while Anne waited — and Lincoln al- 
 ways at her side, wooing her, even at the quilt- 
 ing bees. She sang for him, and sometimes, 
 one could wish, songs more cheerful than those 
 hymns the chroniclers report. It seems prob- 
 able that the verses, "Oh, why should the spirit 
 of mortal be proud?" were learned from her, 
 and that they owed their almost morbid fascina- 
 tion for him to an association with this phase 
 and period. Soon Anne sickened, and in 
 August died. New Salem said it was of a 
 broken heart, but toward the end she sent for 
 Lincoln, and he was at the bedside, alone with 
 her. 
 
 After her death there settled upon him a ter- 
 rible despondency. That fall and winter he 
 wandered alone in the woods, along the Sanga- 
 mon, almost crazed with sorrow. ''The very 
 thought of the rains and snows falling upon 
 her grave filled him with indescribable grief." 
 His friends watched him, and at last, when on 
 
 47 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the very verge of insanity, Bowling Green took 
 him to his home, nursed him back to health, and 
 the grief faded to that temperamental melan- 
 choly which, relieved only by his hmnour, was 
 part of the poet there was in him, part of the 
 prophet, the sadness that so early baptised him 
 in the tragedy of life, and taught him pity for 
 the suffering of a world of men. 
 
 In July he was running for the legislature 
 again. "I go for all sharing the privileges of 
 the government who assist in bearing its bur- 
 dens," he said in his address. "Consequently, 
 I go for admitting all whites to the right of 
 suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no 
 means excluding females). ... If elected, I 
 shall consider the whole people of Sangamon 
 my constituents, as well those that oppose as 
 those that support me. 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 shall do what my own judgment teaches me 
 will best advance their interests." 
 
 48 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The whole theory of representative govern- 
 ment was never more clearly understood, never 
 more clearly expressed. Even then he had an 
 occult sense of public opinion, knew what the 
 general mind was thinking. Always funda- 
 mentally democratic, he was so close to the 
 heart of humanity that intuitively he measured 
 its mighty pulsations, and believed that the 
 public mind was not far from the right. Years 
 afterward, expressing his belief in the people's 
 judgment as the one authority in affairs, he 
 asked, ''Is there any better or equal hope?" 
 
 One incident of that bitter campaign must 
 be given. George Forquer, a Whig, about 
 the time he changed his politics and became a 
 Democrat, received appointment as register of 
 the Land Office. His house, the finest resi- 
 dence in Springfield, was distinguished for its 
 lightning rod, the first that Lincoln or Spring- 
 field had ever seen. At a meeting held near 
 Forquer's home, Lincoln spoke, and, when he 
 had done, Forquer announced that *'he would 
 have to take the young man down." Lincoln 
 
 49 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 stood by with folded arms, endured the attack, 
 and then, replying spiritedly, concluded by say- 
 ing: "The gentleman has seen fit to allude to 
 my being a young man; but he forgets that I 
 am older in years than I am in the tricks and 
 trades of politicians. I desire to live, and I 
 desire place and distinction, but I would rather 
 die now than, like the gentleman, live to see 
 the day that I would change my politics for an 
 office worth three thousand dollars a year, and 
 then feel compelled to erect a lightning rod to 
 protect a guilty conscience from an offended 
 God." 
 
 The Whig ticket was elected, Lincoln lead- 
 ing the poll. The Sangamon delegation, seven 
 representatives and two senators, each over six 
 feet tall, were known as the "Long Nine." 
 "All of the bad or objectionable laws passed 
 at that session," says one of them, "and for 
 many years afterwards, were chargeable to the 
 management and influence of the 'Long 
 Nine.' " An extensive system of public im- 
 provements was being urged, — canals and rail- 
 
 50 
 
O ^ 
 
 U z 
 
 7 w 
 
 ^ O 
 
 J Q 
 
 C 
 
 - K 
 
ABRAHAil LINCOLN 
 
 roads, to be paid for from the proceeds of the 
 sale of pubhc lands, as Lincoln said, "without 
 borrowing money and paying the interest on 
 it." This wonderful scheme was to develop 
 Illinois immediately, and the people were 
 dazzled by it. Lincoln, infatuated like the 
 rest, was already dreaming of the governor- 
 ship, confiding to a friend his purpose to be- 
 come the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." At 
 Vandalia he was the leader of the Long Nine, 
 and laboured to advance this project. The 
 Assembly voted to construct the system of rail- 
 roads and canals, and authorised an immediate 
 loan of $12,000,000. Such a colossal scheme, 
 making or blasting communities, afforded, of 
 course, infinite opportunity for local and spe- 
 cial legislation. In such an atmosphere of 
 manoeuvre, Lincoln was wholly in his element. 
 None knew human nature better than he, none 
 was more expert in log-rolling, and he and his 
 "Long Nine" rolled their logs so skilfully that 
 they succeeded in removing the capital of Il- 
 linois to Springfield. 
 
 51 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 And yet, while all this showed that he knew 
 perhaps more of the tricks and trades of the 
 politicians than he had admitted in his en- 
 counter with Forquer, he was true to principle. 
 When the legislature adopted resolutions 
 * 'highly disapproving" of "the formation of 
 abolition societies and the doctrines promul- 
 gated by them," Lincoln voted against them; 
 and, while nothing more was demanded of him, 
 — certainly half so much could not have been 
 expected of a mere politician, — he drew up a 
 protest against the resolutions, and inducing 
 his colleague, Dan Stone, to sign it with him, 
 had the protest entered upon the journal for 
 March 3, 1837. The protest was cautiously 
 worded, but it did declare that "the institution 
 of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
 policy." 
 
 When the "Long Nine" went home in 
 March, taking the capital with them, a celebra- 
 tion was arranged, the like of which Spring- 
 field had not seen since that day the Talisman 
 came up the Sangamon. There was a ban- 
 
 52 
 
ABKAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 quet, and, though Lincoln was as much the 
 pilot in this enterprise as he had been in the 
 other, the fact did not exclude him: rather it 
 gave him place at the head of the board. He 
 was toasted as "one of nature's noblemen," as 
 one who ''has fulfilled the expectations of his 
 friends and disappointed the hopes of his ene- 
 mies," and, of course, he made a speech. It 
 is not strange that after this he should remove 
 to Springfield, for he had finished his law stud- 
 ies, and JMarch 24, 1836, had been "certified as 
 of good moral character" for admission to the 
 bar. 
 
 53 
 
II 
 
 The new capital of Illinois in the spring of 
 1837 was a town of less than two thousand in- 
 habitants, deep in mud, and yet to Lincoln, en- 
 tering one morning the store of Joshua Speed 
 with all his belongings in his saddle-bags, 
 it was a metropolis. Speed said the young 
 man had the saddest face he ever saw ; though 
 when told that he could share Speed's bed in a 
 room above, and Lincoln had shambled up, 
 dropped his saddle-bags, and shambled down 
 again. Speed smiled at the diy way in which 
 Lincoln remarked, — 
 
 "Well, Speed, I'm moved." 
 
 But the town was not so small that it could 
 not boast social distinctions. The Todds, 
 Stuarts, and Edwardses were there, and, with 
 the Lambs, Mathers, Opdykes, Forquers, and 
 Fords, were the leaders of the provincial aris- 
 tocracy. Lincoln observed all this, and soon 
 
 54i 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was writing to a girl he had been in love with 
 that there ''is a good deal of flourishing about 
 in carriages here," though he wrote this, it 
 seems, in warning rather than in entreaty, ex- 
 plaining that, as his wife, she "would be poor, 
 without the means of concealing her poverty." 
 This latest love was Mary Owens, to whom 
 quixotically he felt himself bound, but erelong 
 he wrote : "If you feel yourself in any degree 
 bound to me, I am now willing to release you, 
 provided you wish it ; while, on the other hand, 
 I am willing to bind you faster, if I can be con- 
 vinced that it will in any considerable degree 
 add to your happiness." This cautious letter 
 naturally ended the affair, as it was probably 
 intended to do. Mary Owens never took his 
 attentions too seriously. While she respected 
 him, she considered him " deficient in those 
 little links which make up the chain of woman's 
 happiness." 
 
 Meanwhile he had begun to practise law. 
 His old friend of the Black Hawk War, Major 
 John T. Stuartj who had loaned him law books, 
 
 55 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 took him into partnership. To Stuart, as to 
 so many lawyers, the law was but a milieu for 
 politics; he was contesting the Congressional 
 election with Douglas, and, as Lincoln himself 
 was thinking more of politics than of law, it is 
 not strange that the business suffered. Lin- 
 coln spent his time at Speed's store, talking 
 politics and arguing religion. He delivered 
 a highly rhetorical address before "The Young 
 Men's Lyceum" on "The Perpetuation of our 
 Free Institutions," and in the Presbyterian 
 church he engaged in a formal partisan debate 
 with Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and 
 Thomas. In 1838 he was again elected to the 
 legislature, and was minority candidate for 
 Speaker. The panic of 183T had brought to 
 Illinois the hour of reckoning for the internal 
 improvement bubble, and in that session Lin- 
 coln, again on the Finance Committee, trying 
 to repair the mischief he had helped to make, 
 owned that he was "no financier," and admitted 
 his "share of the responsibility in the present 
 crisis." In 1840 he was again elected, and 
 
 5Q 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 again defeated for Speaker, and nothing more 
 important befell during that session than his 
 joining other Whigs in an ignominious flight 
 through the window in order to break a 
 quorum. In the campaign he had had many 
 exciting engagements, — one, for instance, with 
 Jesse B. Thomas, a Democrat who in a speech 
 attacked the "Long Nine," Lincoln especially. 
 Lincoln replied, and with that talent which 
 years before had amused Gentryville, mimicked 
 Thomas in voice and manner, while the crowd 
 roared with delight. Carried away, he ex- 
 posed Thomas to such scathing ridicule that 
 the poor fellow actually wept. The event was 
 destined to live in local annals as "the skinning 
 of Thomas," but it was a triumph of which 
 Lincoln was so ashamed that he hunted up 
 his victim, implored forgiveness, and tried to 
 heal the wounds he had inflicted. Less and less 
 thereafter did he resort to the unworthy weap- 
 ons he could wield so skilfully, but more and 
 more invoked the power of reason and of his 
 own kindly humour. 
 
 57 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 He had, too, conflicts with Douglas, as he 
 was destined to have for a quarter of a century, 
 for in that year of the gay campaign for 
 * 'Tippecanoe and Tyler too," Lincoln was on 
 the Whig, and Douglas on the Democratic, 
 electoral ticket. The campaign had hardly 
 ended with the triumph of Harrison than the 
 two entered into another rivalry, — this time for 
 the hand of a woman. Mary Todd, a Ken- 
 tucky girl, had come to Springfield to visit her 
 sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, and in the 
 local aristocracy that "flourished about in car- 
 riages" soon was the reigning belle, with Lin- 
 coln and Douglas in her train. In the pursuit 
 of a proud, clever girl, who "spoke French 
 or English with equal fluency," the brilliant, 
 dashing Douglas might have been expected to 
 distance the slow, ungainly Lincoln. Some 
 account for her preference for Lincoln on the 
 strained hypothesis that she had determined to 
 marry a future President, which is absurd, be- 
 cause Douglas then seemed more likely than 
 any unknown young man in Springfield to 
 
 58 
 
ABRAHAJI LINCOLN 
 
 reach that lofty chair, and it was not many 
 years before he seemed the hkehest man in all 
 America. But Mary Todd made her own 
 choice, and she and Lincoln were engaged to 
 be married on New Year's Day, 1841. But, 
 after the day was set, Lincoln was filled with 
 uncertainty. Springfield intimated a new at- 
 tachment, another pretty face. The day came, 
 the wedding was not solemnised. Now there 
 came upon him again that black and awful mel- 
 ancholy. He neglected the law, neglected the 
 legislature, and wandered about, as before, in 
 utter gloom, actually, it is said, contemplating 
 suicide. "I am now the most miserable man 
 living," he wTote to Stuart. "If what I feel 
 were equally distributed to the whole human 
 family, there would not be one cheerful face on 
 earth. . . . To remain as I am is impossible. 
 I must die or be better, as it appears to me." 
 
 To distract him, Joshua Speed, probably the 
 closest friend he ever had, took him away to 
 Kentucky, and there, amid new scenes, he im- 
 proved, though he bemoaned the fact "that he 
 
 59 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 had done nothing to make any human being re- 
 member that he had lived." Speed himself 
 was engaged to be married, and, curiously 
 enough, had an experience of uncertainty 
 similar to Lincoln's. On his return to Spring- 
 field, Lincoln wrote Speed a series of letters, 
 arguing against Speed's feelings, perhaps at 
 the same time arguing against his own, and 
 when Speed was married at last, and happy, 
 he wrote: "It cannot be told how it thrills me 
 with joy to hear you say you are *far happier 
 than you ever expected to be.' . . . Your last 
 letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum 
 of all I have enjoyed since that fatal first of 
 January, 1841. ... I cannot but reproach 
 myself for even wishing to be happy when she 
 is otherwise. She accompanied a large party 
 on the railroad cars to Jacksonville last Mon- 
 day, and on her return spoke, so that I heard of 
 it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly. 
 God be praised for that!" 
 
 About this time occurred another incident 
 that influenced this odd courtship. The Audi- 
 
 ao 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tor of State, James Shields, a "gallant, hot- 
 headed bachelor from Tyrone County, Ire- 
 land," afterwards a general and senator from 
 three States, had had his vanity wounded by the 
 publication in the Sangamon Journal of "Let- 
 ters from Lost Townships." These political 
 lampoons were exactly of a style and humour to 
 please Lincoln, and, when he learned that their 
 author was JMary Todd, he was moved himself 
 to write another in like vein. Shields de- 
 manded the name of the author. The timid 
 editor consulted Lincoln, who embraced the op- 
 portunity of chivalry by taking on himself the 
 whole responsibility. There followed a chal- 
 lenge from Shields, and, observing every ab- 
 surdity of the code of honour, a duel was ar- 
 ranged, Lincoln choosing "cavalry broadswords 
 of the largest size." The duelling ground was 
 near Alton, and principals and seconds had 
 repaired there, when "friends effected an ar- 
 rangement." The affair got into the news- 
 papers, and Lincoln was so ashamed of the 
 escapade that no one ever dared mention it in 
 
 61 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 his presence. "If all the good things I have 
 ever done," he said, "are remembered as long 
 and well as my scrape with Shields, it is plain I 
 shall not soon be forgotten." But it helped 
 to bring him and Mary Todd together, and on 
 November 4, 1842, they were married. If it 
 was a marriage not ideally happy, it may be 
 conjectured that a happier one would have 
 interfered with that career for which destiny 
 was preparing him. 
 
 In April, 1841, Stuart having been sent to 
 Congress, Lincoln accepted the opportunity to 
 end the partnership and formed another with 
 Judge Stephen T. Logan, a little, weazened 
 man, with high, shrill voice and a great plume 
 of yellowed white hair, but picturesque in his 
 old cape, and accounted the best lawyer in Il- 
 linois. He loved money, and kept most of the 
 earnings ; but this did not trouble Lincoln, who 
 loved men more than money, and regarded 
 wealth as "simply a superfluitj^ of things we 
 don't need." Contact with Logan made him 
 a closer student and an abler practitioner of 
 
 62 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the law, but two such strong personahties could 
 not long work side by side, and in 1843 Lin- 
 coln formed a partnership with William H. 
 Ilerndon, a young radical, already consorting 
 with the abolitionists, and afterwards Lincoln's 
 biographer. The partnership endured until 
 Lincoln's death. But the struggle was hard, 
 and Lincoln and his bride were perforce frugal, 
 *'not keeping house," as he wrote to Speed, 
 *'but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is 
 very well kept by a widow lad}^ of the name of 
 Beck. Our room and boarding only costs us 
 four dollars a week. ... I am so poor and 
 make so little headway in the world that I drop 
 back in a month of idleness as much as I gain 
 in a year's sowing." In 1841 he might have 
 had the nomination for governor, but, after 
 his experience of the internal improvement 
 dream, he had foregone his ambition to become 
 the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." He had an 
 eye, however, as doubtless his ambitious wife 
 had, on the political field, and already was cast- 
 ing glances toward Congress. He met pp- 
 
 63 
 
ABKAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 position, of course. On Washington's Birth- 
 day, 1842, during the Washingtonian temper- 
 ance movement, in an address on "Temper- 
 ance" he deplored the Pharisaical attitude of 
 some church members toward the drunkard, 
 saying, "If we take the habitual drunkards, as 
 a class, their heads and hearts will bear an ad- 
 vantageous comparison with those of any other 
 class." The whole admirable address is con- 
 ceived in a tone of the highest humanitarian- 
 ism, quite distinct from that of the professional 
 reformer of other persons, — a tone which Lin- 
 coln, of all men, must have despised. He was 
 full of a wise and gentle tolerance that sprang 
 equally from his knowledge and his love of 
 men. He said about this time, when "ac- 
 cused" of being a "temperance" man, "I am 
 temperate in this, to wit: I don't drink." 
 But so temperate an address was certain to fall 
 short of the demands of the more intemperate 
 of the temperance reformers. He was criti- 
 cised, and because of this, and because his wife, 
 as an Episcopalian, a Todd and kin to the 
 
 Q4i 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Edwardses, was an "aristocrat," and because 
 he had "once talked of fighting a duel," he had 
 to postpone his Congressional ambitions. 
 There were, besides, "political complications." 
 He stood aside for Hardin and for Baker, and 
 it was said that there was an agreement among 
 them — Hardin, Baker, Lincoln, and Logan — 
 that "they should in turn have the coveted hon- 
 our." In 1844 he was on the Whig electoral 
 ticket, and not only stumped Illinois for Henry 
 Clay, but went over into Indiana and had the 
 satisfaction of speaking at Gentryville, where 
 he was so moved by memories that he ex- 
 pressed his sentiments in verse, which, if not 
 poetical in form, were, as he himself pleaded, 
 poetic in feeling. 
 
 At last, in 1846, he was nominated and 
 elected to Congress. His Democratic oppo- 
 nent was old Peter Cartwright, the pioneer 
 Methodist preacher, who did not hesitate to 
 use the Washington Birthday address against 
 Lincoln, or to charge atheism, going back for 
 evidence to the New Salem days and the mono- 
 
 65 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 graph in the Tom Paine style Lincoln was said 
 to have written. 
 
 The charge of atheism was not altogether 
 lacking in foundation, for, while deeply and in 
 a poetic and mystic way profoundly religious, 
 Lincoln never united with any church, and his 
 theological opinions were not orthodox. Then 
 and down to his death he seems to have been 
 unitarian in belief, and said that whenever any 
 church would inscribe over its altar, as the sole 
 qualification for membership, the words of 
 Jesus, ''Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy soul, and with all thy might, and with 
 all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thy- 
 self," he would join that church. Surely, as 
 far as man may, in a complicated civilisation 
 which dares not take Christianity too literally, 
 he exemplified this religion. 
 
 When, in 1847, Lincoln took his seat in the 
 Thirtieth Congress, he found there the last 
 of the giants of the old days, — Webster, Cal- 
 houn, and Clay, and old John Quincy Adams, 
 dying in his seat before the session ended. 
 
 66 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Douglas was there, too, to take his new seat 
 in the Senate. Lincohi, soon a favourite for 
 his stories and for the quaint manner of which 
 he was so unconscious, was among those in- 
 vited to Webster's breakfasts, and became the 
 friend of Joshua R. Giddings. The Whigs 
 were in a majority, as a result of popular dis- 
 approval of President Polk's course in a war 
 of which America has always felt half-ashamed, 
 and, while criticising the President, neverthe- 
 less made what capital they could out of the 
 brilliant victories the Whig generals, Scott and 
 Taylor, had achieved, and voted them supplies. 
 With this course Lincoln was in sympathy. 
 "By way of getting the hang of the House," 
 he wrote Herndon, "I made a little speech, 
 . . . and was about as badly scared, and no 
 worse, as I am when I speak in court. . . . 
 As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish 
 myself, I have concluded to do so before long." 
 This half -humorous promise he kept by intro- 
 ducing the famous "Spot" Resolutions, so 
 called because after quoting the President's as- 
 
 67 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sertions that Mexico had first "invaded our 
 territory," and "shed the blood of our citizens 
 on our own soil," they requested the Presi- 
 dent in a series of adroit questions to inform the 
 House on what "spot" all this had occurred. 
 The searching interpellation was met by silence 
 in the White House. On January 12, 1848, 
 Lincoln called up the resolutions and spoke in 
 their support. They were not acted upon, but 
 they served to expose Polk's duplicity and to 
 make their author known. 
 
 That spring he was writing home to Hern- 
 don to organise all the "shrewd, wild boys 
 about town" in "Old Rough and Ready's" 
 cause, — although but thirty-nine, he was al- 
 ready feeling old, — and, after he had helped to 
 nominate Taylor in June, he delivered on the 
 floor of Congress a stump speech that kept the 
 House roaring with its ridicule of the Demo- 
 cratic candidate. "By the way, Mr. Speaker, 
 did you know I am a military hero? Yes, sir, 
 in the days of the Black Hawk War, I fought, 
 bled, and came away. ... It is quite certain 
 
 68 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 I did not break my sword, for I had none to 
 break; but I bent my musket pretty badly on 
 one occasion. If Cass broke his sword, the 
 idea is, he broke it in desperation. I bent the 
 musket by accident. If General Cass went in 
 advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess 
 I surpassed him in charges upon wild onions. 
 If he saw any live Indians, it was more than 
 I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles 
 with mosquitoes ; and, although I never fainted 
 from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often 
 very hungry." 
 
 He was on the electoral ticket and stumped 
 New England and Illinois for Taylor. The 
 New England speeches were full of moral 
 earnestness, and most significant was the fact 
 that, after hearing Governor Seward speak in 
 Boston, he said: "I reckon you are right. 
 We have got to deal with this slavery ques- 
 tion, and got to give much more attention to 
 it hereafter than we have been doing." In 
 December he went back to Washington for the 
 second session, and stood consistently for the 
 
 69 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Wilmot Proviso, designed to exclude slavery 
 from territory acquired from Mexico, and while 
 in Congress, as he afterwards said, voted for 
 the principle "about forty-two times." And 
 he introduced, and almost succeeded in passing, 
 an act excluding slavery from the District of 
 Columbia. 
 
 But, as he had known all along, his opposi- 
 tion to the Mexican War had been displeasing 
 to his constituents, who would rather be warlike 
 than right. Besides introducing "the Spot 
 Kesolutions," he had voted for Ashmun's 
 amendment, which declared that "the war had 
 been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally com- 
 menced by the President." But he would not 
 "skulk": he had "voted for the truth rather 
 than for a lie." It cost him his renomination, 
 and, when Logan was nominated to succeed 
 him, Lincoln's course lost the district even to 
 him. He tried to obtain the appointment as 
 commissioner of the General Lands Office, but 
 failed. Then he was offered the governor- 
 ship of the new Territory of Oregon, and 
 
 70 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 thought of accepting, but his wife fortunately 
 said "no," and he went back to Springfield and 
 out on the muddy roads of the old Eighth Cir- 
 cuit, a saddened, disillusioned, and disap- 
 pointed man. 
 
 His figure, garbed in black, became familiar 
 to Springfield, as he strode along, usually with 
 one of his boys tugging at him, between his 
 dwelling in Eighth Street and his dingy law 
 ofiice on the Square. Though clean in dress 
 and person and with the most orderly of minds, 
 he was not orderly in his affairs. He carried 
 most of his legal documents in his high hat; 
 and there is a direction, written in his own 
 hand, on a bundle of papers, "When you can't 
 find it anywhere else, look into this." He kept 
 poor accounts, forgot to enter charges in his 
 books, but, when money was paid in, he divided 
 it, put half of it in his pocket, and left the 
 other labelled "Herndon's half." He could 
 not exact retainers or charge large fees, and he 
 needed money in those days. His father had 
 moved three times, and when he died, in 1851, 
 
 71 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 there was a mortgage on the farm in Coles 
 County to be raised, his mother to help, and a 
 shiftless stepbrother, John Johnston, to ex- 
 postulate with in letters deeply interesting. 
 Besides, the "national debt" still hung over 
 him, though about this time he succeeded in 
 paying the last of it. But he was working 
 hard, and rapidly developing into one of the 
 best lawyers in Illinois. 
 
 What joy there was for him in a life that 
 carries the impression of having been destined 
 for great sacrifice came to him on the old 
 Eighth Judicial Circuit. Here, in an uncom- 
 monly active practice, he encountered such men 
 as Leonard Swett, Judge Logan, Edward D. 
 Baker, O. H. Browning, Richard J. Oglesby, 
 and John ]M. Palmer. Twice a year, spring 
 and fall, the lawvers went out on the circuit in 
 the train of Judge David Davis, massive and 
 able. Lincoln was Davis's favourite. When 
 he arrived at a tavern, Davis would look about 
 and ask, "Where's Lincoln?" and his great 
 form shook with delight over Lincoln's drolier- 
 
 72 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ies. The stories now and then disturbed the 
 dignity of the court, for, if Lincoln were not 
 engaged in the case on trial, he would have a 
 loiot of men about him in the court-room. 
 More than once Davis was forced to say: 
 *'Mr. Lincoln, I can't stand this. There is no 
 use trying to carry on two courts: I must ad- 
 journ mine, or you yours." But a few min- 
 utes later he would beckon one of the group to 
 the bench, and ask, "What was that story Lin- 
 coln was telling?" 
 
 The impression, however, that Lincoln was 
 a mere story-teller, a raconteur^ a lawyer who 
 practised by his wits, is inaccurate. He was 
 fundamentally serious and a man of dignity: 
 he was not given to uncouth familiarities. 
 Men referred to him affectionately as "Hon- 
 est Abe" or "Old Abe," but they addi^ssed 
 him always as "Mr. Lincoln." His humour, 
 never peccant, was close to his brooding mel- 
 ancholy, and saved every situation in a life he 
 knew so profoundly as to feel its tragedy and 
 its tears. It was not for his stories that men 
 
 73 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 loved him : it was for his kindhness, his simplic- 
 ity, his utter lack of self -consciousness. Of 
 course there was the mysterious influence of his 
 personality, and the fascination of a nature 
 that seemed complex only because, in the midst 
 of many complexities, it was, after all, so sim- 
 ple. All his life long he strove to make things 
 clear, and to men, to juries, to statesmen, dip- 
 lomats, and whole peoples he was ever explain- 
 ing, and he told his stories to help this purpose. 
 Thus he drew interested groups about him, on 
 the public square, in the court-room, in the 
 tavern. 
 
 These taverns were dreadful places by all 
 accounts, with cooking bad enough to make 
 any man melancholy, but Lincoln was the last 
 to complain of the inconveniences. He liked 
 the life, with its roving, careless freedom and 
 its comradeship. They all sat at table to- 
 gether, — lawyers, jurymen, litigants, witnesses, 
 even prisoners, if they had friends who could 
 get them out on bail; and Lincoln liked the 
 foot of the table as well as the head, where the 
 
 74 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 huge Davis presided. He would sleep two in 
 a bed or eight in a room, and in the evenings 
 he would sit with them all in a Bohemian socia- 
 bility, though now and then, when his melan- 
 choly was on him, he would slip away, perhaps 
 to pore over problems in Euclid in order to 
 learn the meaning of "demonstrate," or to 
 study German, or to attend some little magic 
 lantern show given for the children, — pathetic 
 evidence of his restricted opportunities, for it 
 was his destiny to be fond of the theatre. 
 
 But he was not always mild, he was not al- 
 ways funny. He could be terrible when 
 aroused, and nothing so aroused him as un- 
 truth or injustice. He was dreadful in cross- 
 examination, as many of the stories show, and 
 he had a subtle, almost occult power over wit- 
 nesses and over juries. "If I can clean this 
 case of technicalities," he once remarked to 
 Herndon, "and get it properly swung to the 
 jury, I'll win it." And, surely, no one could 
 swing cases to juries better than he. He had, 
 in the first place, an extraordinarily sympa- 
 
 75 
 
ABKAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 thetic and profound knowledge of human na- 
 ture. Part of this was intuitive, some inex- 
 phcable element of the almost feminine gentle- 
 ness that was in him. Part of it came from his 
 wide experience with almost primitive men. 
 Then there was the commanding dignity of his 
 presence: men might describe him as homely, 
 but when stirred, when in the heat and passion 
 of forensic effort, his features lighted up with 
 a strange beauty. And there was his drudg- 
 ing, laborious determination to make things 
 clear; and, above all, there was his honesty of 
 statement, of motive, of method, so that courts 
 and juries believed what he said, and this, with 
 that baffling power of the great personality, 
 made him the ideal jury lawyer. He knew 
 that a cause well stated is half won, and he had 
 mastered the art of putting a question so that 
 it answered itself. He was no quibbler, he was 
 impatient of technicalities, and he was ready to 
 make concessions all the time, quietly sitting 
 there in the barren court-room, admitting this 
 or that, "reckoning he must be wrong,'* that 
 
 76 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "that ought to be conceded," or that "that's 
 about right," until, as Leonard Swett said, 
 "about the time he had practised through three- 
 quarters of the case in this way, his adversary 
 would wake up to find himself beaten." 
 
 He was a poor lawyer when he was on the 
 wrong side of a case, and many times refused, 
 and sometimes abandoned, causes in which he 
 could not believe. Once, indeed, discovering 
 in the very midst of a trial that his client had 
 acted fraudulently, he stalked out of the court- 
 room in disgust, and, when sent for by the 
 judge, returned the answer that he "had gone 
 out to wash his hands." He never was a good 
 prosecutor : he had too much human sympathy ; 
 and he was no better business man then than 
 in New Salem days. His charges were so 
 small that Herndon and the other lawyers, and 
 even Davis, who was avaricious, expostulated 
 with him. His income was little more than 
 two or three thousand a year. His name ap- 
 pears in the Illinois Heports in one hundred 
 and seventy-three cases, — a record entitling 
 
 77 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 him to fii'st rank among the lawyers of his 
 State. He was engaged in causes of the first 
 importance, like that of the Illinois Central 
 Railroad Company v. The County of McLean, 
 in which for the railroad he successfully resisted 
 an attempt to tax land ceded to the railroad by 
 the State, — and had to sue to recover his modest 
 fee of $5,000, — the Rock Island bridge case, 
 and the McCormick reaper patent litigation. 
 In this case he was of counsel with Edwin M. 
 Stanton, who, in the federal court at Cincin- 
 nati, treated him contemptuously, referring 
 to him as "that giraffe," and prevented him 
 from delivering the argument he had so solici- 
 tously prepared. To a man of Lincoln's sen- 
 sitiveness such an experience was intensely 
 painful, and it shows how great he was that, 
 despite the protestations of friends who re- 
 called it all to him, and more besides, he ap- 
 pointed Stanton his War Secretary. In this 
 case he was paid $2,000, and this and the fee 
 in the Illinois Central case were the largest he 
 ever received. 
 
 78 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Two of his great murder cases must always 
 be recalled when his legal career is mentioned. 
 In May, 1858, he defended Wilham, or "Duff," 
 the son of his old foe and friend. Jack Arm- 
 strong. This youth, wild as the wildest of the 
 Clary's Grove Boys had ever been, was charged 
 with murder, and on the trial at Beardstown 
 a witness told how, by moonlight, he had seen 
 the blow struck. It was a pretty desperate 
 case for William, and for Hannah, his mother, 
 who had "foxed" the buckskins on Lincoln's 
 trousers; but Lincoln, remembering old bene- 
 fits, reassured her, and, subjecting the pros- 
 ecuting witness to one of his dreadful cross- 
 examinations, confronted him with the almanac 
 of the year of the murder, and by it showed 
 that, at the hour at which the witness claimed 
 to have seen Armstrong strike the blow, the 
 moon, only in its first quarter, had already set. 
 The boy was acquitted, and Lincoln would 
 have no fee but old Hannah's tears and grati- 
 tude. The next year he appeared on behalf 
 of "Peachy" Harrison, charged with the mur- 
 
 79 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 der of Greek Crafton, and it must have been a 
 dramatic moment when the aged Peter Cart- 
 wright took the witness-stand and turned to 
 face Lincoln, against whom he had waged a 
 campaign for Congress so long before. Cart- 
 wright was Harrison's grandfather, and the 
 white head of the old pioneer Methodist 
 preacher drooped to his breast as Lincoln had 
 him tell how, as he lay dying, Greek Crafton 
 had said, "I want you to say to my slayer that 
 I forgive him." After such a scene and with 
 such a dying declaration to build upon, Lin- 
 coln was sure to make a speech that would touch 
 the hearts of the jury with the forgiveness and 
 the pity he himself felt for all souls in trouble ; 
 and Harrison was acquitted. This was the 
 last scene of that experience at the bar which 
 made him the great lawyer he was, prepared 
 liim for the mighty legal argument with Doug- 
 las, and fitted him to try and to win the great 
 cause of humanity before the people and the 
 world. 
 
 80 
 
Ill 
 
 Lincoln was losing interest in politics, 
 when, in May, 1854, the abrogation of the Mis- 
 souri Compromise aroused him. He was out 
 on the circuit when the news of the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill came. All evening at the tavern 
 he denounced it, and at dawn, when his room- 
 mate, Judge Dickey, awoke, there he was, sit- 
 ting on his bed. "I tell you, Dickey," Lincoln 
 exclaimed, "this nation cannot exist half -slave 
 and half- free!" From that hour he was more 
 serious, more solitary, more studious than ever 
 before. 
 
 Douglas, whose new leadership had done 
 this, came home in the fall to face an angry 
 constituency. In Chicago he was hissed and 
 hooted, but he set to work to win back his Il- 
 linois. He spoke in Springfield, and Lincoln 
 replied a few days later in a speech that aston- 
 
 81 
 
ABRAHAIVI LINCOLN 
 
 ished even those who knew him best and loved 
 him most. The abohtionists were so delighted 
 that Owen Love joy, whose father had met 
 death in the cause at Alton, immediately ar- 
 ranged a meeting of the ''friends of liberty," in- 
 tending to invite Lincoln to speak. Herndon 
 was in their comisels, and, though radical as 
 any of them, was more of a politician. He 
 knew the danger to Lincoln of openly consort- 
 ing just then with the abolitionists, and hur- 
 riedly sent his law partner word to "take Bob 
 and drive somewhere into the country, and stay 
 till this thing is over." Lincoln, already 
 dreaming of the Senate, and wary, discreet, 
 politic, took Bob in his buggy, and drove to 
 Tazewell County, where Davis was holding 
 court. Thus he escaped the dilemma. The 
 next day Douglas spoke again, and Lincoln re- 
 plied at Peoria. "Judge Douglas," he said, 
 "frequentl}'-, with bitter irony and sarcasm, 
 paraphrases our argument by saying, 'The 
 white people of Nebraska are good enough to 
 govern themselves, but they are not good 
 
 82 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 enough to govern a few miserable negroes.* 
 Well, I doubt not that the good people of 
 Nebraska are, and will continue to be, as good 
 as the average of people elsewhere. I do not 
 say to the contrary. What I do say is, that 
 no man is good enough to govern another man 
 without that other's consent." 
 
 These speeches were really the first of the 
 great debate. They showed anti-Nebraska 
 men and abolitionists that they had a champion 
 on fire with the passion of a great cause, and 
 the Little Giant so recognised their power that 
 he proposed a truce, which Lincoln good- 
 naturedly accepted. It was agreed that 
 neither should speak again during the cam- 
 paign, and it was like Douglas, on his way 
 home, to stop in Princeton and deliver a long 
 address. 
 
 That fall, 1854, against his will, Lincoln was 
 nominated and elected to the legislature, but, 
 when he saw that many Democrats were in 
 revolt, he resigned. "I have really got it into 
 my head to try to be a United States senator," 
 
 83 
 
ABRAHAIVI LINCOLN 
 
 he wrote to a friend; "and if I could have your 
 support my chances would be reasonably good. 
 I should like to be remembered affectionately 
 by you, and also to have you make a mark for 
 me with the anti-Nebraska members down 
 your way." He had forty-five votes on the 
 first ballot, February 8, 1855, Shields, the 
 Democrat, his old duelling antagonist, forty- 
 one, Trumbull, anti-Nebraska Democrat, five, 
 with a few scattering. But the anti-Nebraska 
 Democrats, holding the balance of power, 
 would not go to Lincoln, and he generously 
 urged his following to vote for Trumbull, which 
 they did, and Trumbull was elected. 
 
 Though disappointed, Lincoln knew that the 
 struggle was only begun. The nation was 
 aroused. Within a year the Republican party 
 had suddenly sprung into being, there was 
 bloodshed in Kansas, Sumner had been as- 
 saulted in the Senate, and Lincoln watched the 
 growing flame with interest and concern. 
 When the first Republican State Convention 
 met in Bloomington on May 29, 1856, there 
 
 84 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 were cries all over the hall for "Lincoln! Lin- 
 coln!" He went forward, and launched into a 
 speech that so charmed and electrified his audi- 
 ence that even the reporters sat spell-bound, 
 forgetting to take it down. The burden of 
 his utterance was, "Kansas shall be free!" and 
 he concluded in a passage of highest spirit: 
 "We will say to the Southern disunionists, we 
 won't go out of the Union, and you 
 SHAN'T !" 
 
 He was done, at last, with the Whigs, and 
 committed to the Republicans. But when he 
 went back to Springfield, and he and Herndon 
 had called a "mass" meeting, only one other be- 
 sides himself and Herndon was present. Lin- 
 coln spoke, nevertheless, dryly remarking that 
 the meeting was larger than he knew it would 
 be, for, while he had been sure that he and 
 Herndon would attend, he had not been sure 
 any one else would. And then he concluded: 
 "While all seems dead, the age itself is not. 
 It liveth as surely as our Maker liveth. Un- 
 der all this seeming want of life and motion, the 
 
 85 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 world does move, nevertheless. Be hopeful, 
 and now let us adjourn and appeal to the 
 people." 
 
 Three weeks afterwards, in the Republican 
 National Convention at Philadelphia, he re- 
 ceived 110 votes for Vice-President, and, 
 though he observed that *'it must have been the 
 great Lincoln of Massachusetts" they were vot- 
 ing for, he was already known to the nation, 
 and entered into the campaign as an elector for 
 Fremont with such earnestness that, even 
 though they lost in that campaign, his enthusi- 
 astic friends at home said he was "already on 
 the track for the presidency." 
 
 With the contest of 1858 approaching, he 
 was confident of success. The pro-slavery 
 leaders of Kansas, by an unfair vote, forced 
 the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution 
 allowing slavery in that State, but, when Presi- 
 dent Buchanan urged Congress to admit Kan- 
 sas with this constitution, Douglas broke with 
 the administration, opposed the Lecompton 
 Constitution, and voted against the admission 
 
 86 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of Kansas. If this angered Buchanan and the 
 South, it dehghted the Repubhcans. Many of 
 them thought they saw a chance to gain a bril- 
 Hant and notable convert ; and Horace Greeley, 
 editor of the New York Tribune^ honest, well- 
 meaning, blundering, urged the Republicans 
 of Illinois to put up no candidate against 
 Douglas. 
 
 But Lincoln knew men and he knew politics 
 better than Greeley, and, above all, he knew 
 Douglas. The Illinois Republicans knew 
 Douglas, too, and when they met at Spring- 
 field, June 16, 1858, they resolved that *'Hon. 
 Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice 
 for United States Senator." Lincoln had 
 been expecting the nomination, and he was 
 ready. For weeks he had been pondering his 
 speech of acceptance, jotting it down bit by bit, 
 as it came to him in moments of inspiration, on 
 scraps of paper, and, after his curious custom, 
 bestowing them in his hat. At last he wrote 
 it out and read it to a few friends, all of whom, 
 except the radical Herndon, opposed his de- 
 
 87 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 livering it in that form. But he was wiser 
 than they, and remarking that, though he might 
 have *'to go down with it," he would "rather 
 be defeated with that . . . speech than to be 
 victorious without it," held to his own purpose 
 and his own counsel. He delivered the speech 
 in the Hall of the House of Representatives in 
 Springfield the day after his nomination, and 
 he stated the issue clearly, to the consterna- 
 tion of friends and the delight of enemies, in 
 his exordium: — 
 
 "Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Con- 
 vention : — If we could first laiow where we are 
 and whither we are tending, we could better 
 judge what to do and how to do it. We are 
 now far into the fifth year since a policy was 
 initiated with the avowed object and confident 
 purpose of putting an end to slavery agitation. 
 Under the operation of that policy that agita- 
 tion has not only not ceased, but has constantly 
 augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease 
 until a crisis shall have been reached and passed, 
 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' 
 
 88 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 I believe this government cannot endure, per- 
 manently half-slave and half-free. I do not 
 expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not 
 expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will 
 cease to be divided. It will become all one 
 thing or all the other. Either the opponents 
 of slavery will arrest the further 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 advocates will push it for- 
 ward till it shall become alike lawful in all the 
 States, old as well as new. North as well as 
 South." 
 
 The speech, which really went no further 
 than to advocate a return to the principle of 
 the old Missouri Compromise, was regarded as 
 radical, even revolutionary. Douglas replied 
 to it on July 9 at Chicago, and found it full of 
 difficulties, so compact was it of accurate his- 
 tory and logical argument, but he could per- 
 vert some of Lincoln's sayings into "abolition- 
 ism," and he could express indignation at Lin- 
 coln's disrespect for courts and lack of "rev- 
 
 89 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 erence for the law," implied in bis strictures on 
 the Dred Scott decision. 
 
 These speeches, in the picturesque phrase of 
 Illinois politicians, *'set the prairies on fire." 
 After Lincoln had rejoined at Chicago and, 
 a week later, Douglas had spoken at Bloom- 
 ington and at Springfield, Lincoln replying on 
 the evening of each day, it was evident that 
 there was to be a battle of the giants. On 
 July 24 Lincoln sent Douglas a challenge to 
 meet him in a series of joint debates. If Lin- 
 coln knew Douglas, Douglas knew Lincoln, 
 "I shall have my hands full," he said to his 
 friends. *'He is the strong man of his party, 
 — full of wit, facts, dates,— and the best stump 
 speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in 
 the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd, 
 and, if I beat him, my victory will be hardly 
 won." He was loath to accept. He had ex- 
 pected to come home to an easy, triumphant 
 campaign, in the warmth of approval for his 
 really gallant stand against Buchanan: he did 
 not wish, as he saw Lincoln had adroitly forced 
 
 90 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 him to do, to discuss his own record, — the Dred 
 Scott decision, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and 
 the moral issue of slavery; and it was only 
 human in him to be disappointed when he found 
 himself confronted by such a task as Lincoln 
 set for him. But the advantage was with him : 
 he had the prestige of great success ; the power 
 of money, which always supports the conserva- 
 tive and aristocratic side, was with him ; and he 
 had proved himself the equal in debate of Sew- 
 ard, Chase, and Sumner. Then, too, he was 
 rather unscrupulous in the use of his wonder- 
 ful arts. No one realised more than Lincoln 
 the apparent disparity. ''With me," he said, 
 with that sad expression in his face, *'the race 
 of ambition has been a failure — a flat failure. 
 With him it has been one of splendid success." 
 Besides, he was slow in his mental processes: 
 he used to talk to Herndon of *'the long, la- 
 boured movements" of his mind. But Doug- 
 las accepted, and seven debates were set, — at 
 Ottawa, August 21; Freeport, August 27; 
 Jonesboro', September 15; Charleston, Sep- 
 
 91 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tember 18; Galesburg, October 7; Quincy, 
 October 13; and Alton, October 15. 
 
 In lofty spirit, Lincoln entered these de- 
 bates, and the high course he took he held unto 
 the end. Seeming to realise that he was the 
 champion of the American ideal, he would 
 stoop no lower, and the tone he adopted was 
 kind, impersonal, and fair. It was a new thing 
 in those days to eliminate bitter personalities 
 from political discussion, but he did it, though 
 he did not eliminate his humour and his droller- 
 ies. *'Think nothing of me," he said, conclud- 
 ing an eloquent speech at Beardstown on 
 August 12, the week before the formal debate 
 began, "take no thought for the political fate 
 of any man whomsoever, but come back to the 
 truths that are in the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. You may do anything with me you 
 choose, if you will but heed these sacred princi- 
 ples. . . . While pretending no indifference to 
 earthly honours, I do claim to be actuated in 
 this contest by something higher than an anxi- 
 ety for office. I charge you to drop every 
 
 92 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 petty and insignificant thought for any man's 
 success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge 
 Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that 
 immortal emblem of humanity — the Declara- 
 tion of American Independence." 
 
 Douglas began the debate with condescen- 
 sion and affected tolerance. He travelled in 
 state, accompanied by his beautiful wife, on 
 special trains which the Illinois Central Bail- 
 road provided. Everywhere he was received 
 with ceremony. Salutes were fired, he was 
 escorted royally to hotel and public square, 
 where, in open air, the debates were held. The 
 radicals then, as ever, had little money to ex- 
 pend, and could not contrive such magnificent 
 receptions for their long, lank champion ; and, 
 if they could, he would not have liked them. 
 Even when they did appear with banners and 
 devices, and with floats in which girls in white 
 rode in allegorical figures, he was embarrassed 
 and distressed. He detested ''fizzlegigs and 
 fireworks," and, when at Ottawa his supporters 
 grew so enthusiastic that they bore him from 
 
 93 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the platform on their shoulders, he cried in dis- 
 may, *'Don't, boys; let me down; come now, 
 don't." 
 
 The crowds were enormous. There were 
 fakirs vending ague cures, painkillers, water- 
 melons and lemonade; jugglers and beggars; 
 and bands from everywhere crashing out pa- 
 triotic tunes. Hotels, boarding-houses, and 
 livery stables were overflowing. At Ottawa 
 thousands encamped along the bluff and on the 
 bottom lands, and that night "the camp fires, 
 spread up and down the valley for a mile, made 
 it look as if an army w^re gathered about us." 
 At Charleston a great delegation of men, 
 women, and children in carriages, buggies, 
 wagons, on foot and horseback, came from In- 
 diana in a long caravan that wound over the 
 prairie for miles, sending up a great cloud of 
 dust. 
 
 At Freeport Douglas misrepresented the in- 
 cident at Ottawa, and taunted Lincoln with 
 the charge that he was "so frightened by the 
 questions put to him that he could not walk." 
 
 94i 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 But Lincoln bore this with his inexhaustible 
 good humour, though it must have been mad- 
 dening to have the adroit Douglas twist and 
 turn his every utterance and lead him off con- 
 stantly into irrelevancies and side issues. But 
 these methods soon reacted. Almost in the 
 beginning Douglas, in his efforts to fasten upon 
 Lincoln the odium of abolitionism, charged him 
 with having been a subscriber in 1856 to an 
 abolition platform. The paper he read was 
 soon proved to be a forgery. "The Little 
 Dodger was cornered and caught," as the news- 
 papers said ; and even Greeley came out against 
 him, and wrote Herndon that Douglas was 
 "like the man's boy who, he said, didn't weigh 
 so much as he expected, and he always knew he 
 wouldn't." All this served Lincoln's purpose 
 wxll, and thereafter, whenever he had to quote a 
 document, he paused long enough to explain 
 with elaborate sarcasm that, "unless there was 
 some mistake on the part of those with whom 
 the document originated and which he had been 
 unable to detect," it was authentic. 
 
 95 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 He was able with more deadly effect to 
 counter on those questions which Douglas 
 charged had so frightened Lincoln that he had 
 to be borne from the platform. For in the 
 second debate at Freeport he put four ques- 
 tions to Douglas, and in the third at Jonesboro' 
 three others, on which, as events proved, the 
 whole debate, and indeed, one might almost 
 say, the fate of the nation itself, turned. Here 
 was the lawyer again, the wily cross-examiner, 
 the profound jurist, the clear-eyed statesman, 
 who could look further into the future than any 
 of them; for, as with the "house divided" 
 speech, his friends urged him not to put the 
 questions, especially the second, saying it would 
 cost him tlie senatorship. But Lincoln was 
 willing to risk that. "I am after larger game," 
 he said; "the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred 
 of this." 
 
 The second question was this: "Can the 
 people of a United States territory in any law- 
 ful way, against the wish of any citizen of the 
 United States, exclude slavery from its limits 
 
 96 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 prior to the formation of a state constitution?" 
 Lincoln believed that if Douglas, in applying 
 his doctrine of popular sovereignty, should an- 
 swer "no," he would lose Illinois and the sen- 
 atorship ; if he answered "yes," he would alien- 
 ate the South and lose the Presidency. And 
 he was right. Douglas, in a remarkably adroit 
 reply, answered "yes." His delighted follow- 
 ers celebrated the manner in which he had es- 
 caped ^'Lincoln's trap," and claimed the vic- 
 tory already won. Eut, when the news reached 
 the South, protests were heard, and, as there 
 the "Freeport doctrine" became known, so in- 
 evitably Douglas's chances for 1860 waned. 
 At Alton, in the last of the great engage- 
 ments, when Douglas proclaimed himself the 
 living representative of Henry Clay and of the 
 true Whig policy, Lincoln replied that there 
 was but one issue between them, — "Is slavery 
 right or wrong?" And he closed in the same 
 high spirit in which he had begun: — 
 
 "It is the eternal struggle betv/een these two 
 principles — right and wrong — throughout the 
 
 97 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 world. They are the two principles that have 
 stood face to face from the beginning of time, 
 and will ever continue to struggle. The one is 
 the common right of humanity, and the other 
 the divine right of kings. . . . Whenever the 
 issue can be distinctly made and all extraneous 
 matter thrown out, so that men can fairly see 
 the real differences between the parties, this 
 controversy will soon be settled, and it will be 
 done peaceably, too." 
 
 The fatigue of any campaign is great, even 
 in these days of luxury and convenience in 
 travel: in those it would seem to have been be- 
 yond human endurance. The protagonists 
 spoke nearly every day in the intervals between 
 debates, and Lincoln, to whom the conserva- 
 tives with their means were no more kind in 
 that day than they would be in this, had to find 
 rest when he could, often on the miserable rail- 
 way coaches of those days, wrapped in his 
 shawl. There were, besides, in this furious 
 campaign many others speaking, — Chase, the 
 red abolitionist of Ohio, Senator Trumbull, 
 
 98 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Owen Love joy, Oglesby, and Palmer. The 
 election was on November 2, and in the popular 
 vote Lincoln had a plurality, the Republicans 
 polling 126,084, the Douglas-Democrats 121,- 
 940, and the Buchanan Democrats 5,091 votes. 
 But, owing to the legislative apportionment, 
 the Democrats carried a majority of the As- 
 sembly districts, and there in January Douglas 
 was re-elected senator, having 54 to Lincoln's 
 46 votes. 
 
 Of course, Lincoln was disappointed, but 
 still he could joke. He felt "like the boy that 
 stumped his toe — it hurt too bad to laugh, and 
 he was too big to cry." But he was glad he 
 made the race. "It gave me a hearing on the 
 great and durable question of the age which I 
 would have had in no other way; and though 
 I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten, 
 I believe I have made some marks which will 
 tell for the cause of civil liberty long after 
 I am gone." But he was not to sink out of 
 view. He received congratulations from all 
 parts of the nation, and invitations to speak. 
 
 99 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 j^Iost of the invitations he deehned. His law 
 practice had been neglected; the canvass had 
 cost more money than he could afford; he was 
 "absolutely without money even for household 
 expenses.'' To recoup his losses, he prepared 
 a lecture on ''Discoveries, Inventions, and Im- 
 provements" ; but soon realising that he was not 
 a success outside the political field, and seeming 
 to require a moral question to bring out his 
 powers, he abandoned the lecture field almost 
 immediately. But, when Douglas appeared 
 in the gubernatorial campaign in Ohio in 1859, 
 he could not resist the temptation to reply to 
 his old antagonist, and he spoke in Columbus 
 and in Cincinnati before tremendous audiences. 
 In December he spoke in Kansas, and then ac- 
 cepted an invitation to deliver an address, 
 February 27, 1860, at Cooper Institute in New 
 York. 
 
 It was a notable speech, delivered before a 
 distinguished audience, presided over by Wil- 
 liam Cullen Bryant. Lincoln was at first un- 
 comfortable and embarrassed: he "imagined 
 
 100 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that the audience noticed the contrast between 
 his Western clothes and the neat-fitting suit 
 of Mr. Bryant and others who sat on the plat- 
 form." But Llorace Greeley said next day in 
 the Tribune J "No man ever made such an im- 
 pression in his first appeal to a New York 
 audience." 
 
 From New York he went to New England. 
 His speeches there were not so formal as the 
 Cooper Institute address, but they made as 
 deep an impression, and he went home with a 
 national reputation. Men were inquiring 
 about him. The strange story of his life ap- 
 pealed to the imagination of the North, and 
 his Illinois friends m^ged him to let them set 
 about the work so congenial to them. "What's 
 the use of talking about me whilst we have 
 such men as Seward, Chase, and others?" he 
 said to Jesse Fell, who sought data for a biog- 
 raphy. Fell pleaded. At last Lincoln rose, 
 wrapped his old grey shawl about him : "Fell, 
 I admit that I am ambitious and would like to 
 be President. I am not insensible to the com^ 
 
 101 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 pliment you pay me and the interest you mani- 
 fest in the matter, but there is no such good luck 
 in store for me as the Presidency of these 
 United States. Besides, there is nothing in 
 my early history that would interest you or 
 anybody else." But Davis, Swett, Logan, 
 Palmer — the lawyers who had known him on 
 the circuit, and loved him — urged the more be- 
 cause of their love. At last he consented, and 
 was quietly occupied during the spring with 
 that wire-pulling at which he was so adept. 
 He went, as a spectator, to the State Conven- 
 tion at Decatur on JMay 9, and when a banner 
 was borne in, inscribed "Abraham Lincoln, the 
 Rail Candidate for President in 1860," sup- 
 ported by two well- weathered fence rails dec- 
 orated with ribbons, "from a lot of 3,000 made 
 by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the 
 Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830," the con- 
 vention went wild. Lincoln, of course, made 
 a speech, and the State delegation was in- 
 structed to "use all honourable means" to se- 
 cure his nomination. 
 
 102 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The National Convention met in Chicago a 
 week later, and Davis, Swett, Judd, Palmer, 
 Logan, and Oglesby were there. The town 
 was filled with a turbulent crowd. Processions 
 trailed in the streets all night, shouting for the 
 several candidates. But night and day, with- 
 out rest, without sleep, Lincoln's friends 
 worked, — "like nailers," as Oglesby said. 
 Surely, they left nothing undone, even to dis- 
 regarding Lincoln's ov/n expressed wishes, and 
 entering into a bargain with Simon Cameron, 
 of Pennsylvania, which was to plague Lincoln 
 later. Cameron v/as Pemisylvania's candi- 
 date, as Chase was Ohio's, and Seward New 
 York's. Indeed, Seward, who in his "higher 
 law" and ''irrepressible conflict" utterances had 
 taken ground as advanced as Lincoln, was by 
 all considered as sure of the nomination. But 
 so well did the friends of Lincoln work that on 
 May 16, on the third ballot, he received 2311/2 
 votes, Seward 180, with 53^/4 scattering, and 
 he v/as nominated. At the announcement of 
 the result a frenzied partisan shouted: "Hal- 
 
 103 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 lelujah! Abe Lincoln's nominated!" and a 
 cannon boomed from the top of the huge wig- 
 wam in which the convention assembled, but 
 the convention could not hear it for the amazing 
 demonstration the delegates made, — a demon- 
 stration that spread outside, literally all over 
 Illinois. 
 
 JMeanwhile, down in Springfield, with rising 
 and falling hopes, now confident, now plunged 
 in his constitutional melancholy, Lincoln was 
 waiting. When the news came, he was found 
 playing handball. Looking at the telegram a 
 moment, he said, "There is a little woman down 
 on Eighth Street who will be glad to hear this 
 news," and strode away to tell her. 
 
 And down in Washington Douglas was say- 
 ing, *'There won't be a tar barrel left in Illinois 
 to-night." 
 
 The notification, so great a ceremony in these 
 days, was prompt and simple. A day later, 
 in the evening, the committee was received by 
 Lincoln in the parlour of his home. The com- 
 mittee had its own misgivings, which the tall, 
 
 104 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 gaunt figure, with its drooping shoulders, 
 standing awkwardly and with downcast eyes on 
 the hearthstone, did not do much to reassure, 
 until he began to speak. Then the bronze face 
 caught a new light from the grey eyes, through 
 which the great soul looked out upon the com- 
 mittee, and an hour later the distinguished gen- 
 tlemen departed, all delighted. 
 
 The Democrats, splitting at Charleston, had 
 adjourned to Baltimore and nominated Doug- 
 las and Johnson. The bolters nominated 
 Breckenridge and Lane. There was a fourth 
 ticket. Bell and Everett, representing the 
 "Constitutional Union" party. Douglas made 
 a vigorous canvass, but that second question 
 Lincoln had put to him in the Freeport debate 
 would not do\\Ti. The radical Southerners 
 would none of him, but supported Brecken- 
 ridge. 
 
 During the campaign Lincoln remained 
 quietly in Springfield. The governor's rooms 
 in the State House were placed at his disposal, 
 and here he met his callers, talked and joked 
 
 105 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 and whispered with them, was skilful, wary, 
 and discreet in all he said and in the very little 
 he wrote, and, when embarrassing questions 
 were asked, he told a story or had the private 
 secretary he had newly installed make a stereo- 
 typed reply, referring to his record and his 
 speeches. The abolitionists, of course, were no 
 more satisfied with him than the radicals of 
 any cause ever are with their representatives 
 when the cause arrives, though Chase supported 
 him, and Seward, with a sincerity that pleased 
 him. Perhaps nothing more distressed him 
 than the attitude of the Springfield preachers. 
 Of the twenty-three in the town, twenty were 
 against him. "These men well know," he said, 
 "that I am for freedom, and yet with this 
 book," indicating the New Testament, "in their 
 hands, in the light of which human bondage 
 cannot live a moment, they are going to vote 
 against me. I do not understand it at all." 
 In November he received a total popular vote 
 of 1,866,452, and 180 electoral votes, all of the 
 eighteen Northern States except New Jersey, 
 
 106 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 which gave part of her vote to Douglas. The 
 Little Giant polled 1,375,157 votes, but in the 
 electoral college had but 12 votes, three in New 
 Jersey and nine in Missouri. Breckenridge 
 had 72 electoral votes, carrying ail the Southern 
 States except Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennes- 
 see, which gave their 39 electoral votes to Bell. 
 Four days after the election the South began 
 to execute its threat of secession. The South 
 Carolina senators resigned, by Christmas the 
 palmetto flag floated over every federal build- 
 ing in that State, and early in January the 
 South Carolinians had fired on the Star of the 
 West as she entered Charleston harbour with 
 supplies for Fort Sumter. Meanwhile Lin- 
 coln had to wait in Springfield while the great 
 conspiracy matured, while the impotent 
 Buchanan let the very government slip from 
 his weak hands, while Greeley aided the disin- 
 tegration of the nation by his silly editorials, 
 while men were for peace at any price, even 
 Seward anxious for compromise, and the busi- 
 ness interests of the East, timid as ever, for 
 
 107 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 anything that would save their sacred stock 
 market. By February, seven of the Southern 
 States — South Carohna, Mississippi, Florida, 
 Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas — 
 had declared themselves out of the Union and 
 formed the Confederate States of America, 
 with Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, as Presi- 
 dent, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, 
 Vice-President. 
 
 Well might Lincoln appear "more distracted 
 and absent-minded" and "sorrowful unto 
 death," with a "preternatural expression of ex- 
 quisite grief" in his eyes; well might he say, "I 
 shall never be glad any more." But, if sad, he 
 was calm during this trying interregnum, and 
 did not take seriously the coarse editorials in 
 Southern newspapers, referring to him as 
 "Lincoln, the beast," the "Illinois ape," etc. 
 He was at work on his inaugural address, and 
 at the same time troubled with his cabinet ap- 
 pointments. The trade Judge Davis had 
 made at Chicago with Cameron, the political 
 boss of Pennsylvania, already plagued him. 
 
 108 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 But the time passed at last; and, after a pil- 
 grimage to the grave of his father in Coles 
 County and a visit to his stepmother, early on 
 Monday morning, February 11, he left Spring- 
 field for Washington. His old friends and 
 neighbours went down to the railway station to 
 see him off, and stood patiently, bareheaded in 
 the rain, while, with tears streaming down his 
 dark cheeks, he made his touching little fare- 
 well speech from the platform of the coach : — 
 "My friends, no one, not in my situation, can 
 appreciate my feeling of sadness at this part- 
 ing. 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 
 knowing when or whether ever I may return, 
 with a task before me greater than that which 
 rested upon Washington. Without the assist- 
 ance of that Divine Being who ever attended 
 him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, 
 I cannot fail. Trusting to Him who can go 
 
 109 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with me, and remain with you, and be every- 
 where for good, let us confidently hope that all 
 will yet be well. To His care commending 
 you, as I hope in your prayers you will com- 
 mend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 
 On the way he stopped at Indianapolis, Cin- 
 cinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Buffalo, Al- 
 bany, and New York, and everywhere to the 
 waiting crowds made short, informal ad- 
 dresses, warily avoiding any announcement of 
 policy. At Philadelphia on Washington's 
 Birthday, in celebration of the admission of 
 Kansas as a free State, he raised a new flag of 
 thirty- four stars over Independence Hall. He 
 was deeply moved, and spoke fervently of 
 "that sentiment in the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence which gives liberty not alone to the 
 people of this country, but hope to all the world 
 for all future times; . . . which gave promise 
 that in due time the weights would be lifted 
 from the shoulders of all men, and that all 
 should have an equal chance." And then "If 
 this country cannot be saved without giving up 
 
 110 
 
ABRAHA:M LINCOLN 
 
 that principle, I was about to say I would 
 rather be assassinated on this spot than surren- 
 der it." 
 
 This reference to assassination was signifi- 
 cant. Detectives claimed to have discovered a 
 plot to kill him as he passed through Baltimore. 
 He insisted on fulfilling his engagement to ad- 
 dress the legislature at Harrisburg, then con- 
 sented to go on that night, incognito. The 
 next morning the country heard that he was 
 safe in the capital. Even then and the nine 
 succeeding days, men were betting in hotel cor- 
 ridors that he would never be inaugurated. 
 Those were trying days. The office-seekers, 
 willing to take the chance of assassination, had 
 already begun their descent upon him. 
 
 Inauguration Day, March 4, 1861, dawned 
 in brilliant sunshine. At noon President 
 Buchanan, "far advanced in years, in low- 
 crowned, broad-brimmed silk hat, an immense 
 w^hite cravat, wdth swallow-tail coat not of the 
 newest style," w^aited on Lincoln to escort him 
 to the Capitol and place upon the strong shoul- 
 
 111 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ders of tlie great Westerner the burden which 
 had been too heavy for the infirm old diplomat. 
 They drove together down Pennsylvania Ave- 
 nue. The ceremonies were held in the eastern 
 portico of the new Capitol, and on the tempo- 
 rary platform distinguished officialdom had 
 gathered. The crowd, small because of the 
 rumour of tragedy, — old Winfield Scott had 
 posted troops, and was ready, *'if any of them 
 show their heads or raise a finger," to "blow 
 them to hell," — awaited in unsympathetic si- 
 lence. Lincoln, attired in new clothes, his so- 
 ber face changed by the beard that had not yet 
 grown sufficiently to justify the predictions of 
 the little girl who had naively advised it, was 
 plainly embarrassed, and stood for an awkward 
 moment holding in one hand his high hat and in 
 the other a large gold-headed ebony stick. 
 But Douglas, his old rival, was there, and, step- 
 ping promptly forward, relieved him of hat 
 and cane and held them for him, — a graceful 
 incident, the significance of which was not lost. 
 The ceremonies were brief. Edward D. 
 
 112 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Baker, dearest of old Springfield friends, now 
 senator from Oregon, formally presented him, 
 and, after he had read his inaugm^al address, 
 the aged Chief Justice Taney, who had written 
 the Dred Scott decision, in his black robes ad- 
 ministered the oath to the new President, who 
 was forever to overthrow the doctrine on which 
 that decision was based. 
 
 He read his address, so long and eagerly 
 awaited, read it distinctly, so that all could hear, 
 — hear him say that misunderstandings had 
 caused differences, disavov/ any intention to 
 interfere with the existing privilege of slavery, 
 and even declare himself in favour of a new 
 fugitive slave law. But he was firm. "The 
 Union of these States is perpetual," he said, 
 and "no State, upon its own mere motion, can 
 lawfully get out of the Union." "I shall take 
 care, as the Constitution itself expressly en- 
 joins upon me, that the laws of the Union be 
 faithfully executed in all the States," and he 
 was determined "to hold, occupy, and possess 
 the property and places belonging to the Gov- 
 
 iia 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ernment and to collect the duties and imposts." 
 And he closed with the beautiful passage, 
 founded upon Seward's suggestion: *'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 chords of 
 memory, stretching from every battlefield and 
 patriot grave to every Hving heart and hearth- 
 stone 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." 
 
 114 
 
IV 
 
 When Lincoln drove from his inaugural to 
 the White House, it was, indeed, to face a task 
 greater than that which rested upon Washing- 
 ton, as great surely as ever rested on any man. 
 He realised his task fully, but his way, he said, 
 was "plain as a turnpike road." He was, first 
 of all, tormented by the office-seekers, so ter- 
 rible an affliction to every executive in these 
 States, and in bitterness he said, "This human 
 struggle and scramble for office will finally test 
 the strength of our institutions." But the dif- 
 ficulties of cabinet making at least were done, 
 and the next day he sent to the Senate these 
 names: William H. Seward, Secretary of 
 State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the 
 Treasury; Simon Cameron, Secretary of War; 
 Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb 
 B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; Edward 
 
 115 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Bates, Attorney- General; and Montgomery 
 Blair, Postmaster-General. 
 
 That same day, the very first thing, the 
 whole issue was presented to him in a letter 
 from Major Anderson, with his little band, 
 hungry in Fort Sumter. He wanted pro- 
 visions. The place could be held only by 
 20,000 disciplined troops. The army num- 
 bered but 16,000 men. What was he to do? 
 General Scott said "evacuation." Lincoln re- 
 plied, "When Anderson goes out of Fort Sum- 
 ter, I shall have to go out of the White 
 House." While he pondered, the country 
 clamoured. Congress demanded the Ander- 
 son correspondence, which he refused, his mil- 
 itary advisers differed, his cabinet differed. 
 The days went by. Meanwhile Seward, cheer- 
 fully joining in the assumption that he, and 
 not Lincoln, was the man of the hour, had 
 taken it upon himself to assure the Confed- 
 erate Commissioners, then in Washington, that 
 Sumter would be evacuated. When he 
 learned that Lincoln had decided otherwise, he 
 
 116 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 laid before him, on April 1, "Some Thoughts 
 for the President's Consideration," in which, 
 after complaining of the *lack of policy," he 
 proposed to make war on Spain and France, 
 to "seek explanations from Great Britain and 
 Russia," and suggested that the direction of 
 this policy be devolved by the President "on 
 some member of his cabinet," concluding with 
 modest significance, "It is not in my especial 
 province ; but I neither seek to evade or assume 
 responsibility." This astounding proposal 
 Lincoln received in his kind, magnanimous 
 spirit. "As to the policy, I remark that if this 
 must be done, I must do it. . . . When a gen- 
 eral line of policy is adopted, I apprehend 
 there is no danger of its being changed without 
 good reason, or continuing to be a subject of 
 unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising 
 in its progress I wish, and suppose I am en- 
 titled to have, the advice of all the cabinet." 
 Thus Seward learned, as the nation was to 
 learn, who was master, and how great and 
 wise and capable he was, and two months later 
 
 117 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Seward acknowledged the superiority. "Ex- 
 ecutive force and vigour are rare qualities," he 
 wrote; "the President is the best of us." 
 
 A few days later the relief for Fort Sumter 
 sailed from New York harbour. The Presi- 
 dent had scrupulously notified the Governor 
 of South Carolina that the relief would be at- 
 tempted, but by a blunder of the President's 
 own the warship Powhatan was sent to Fort 
 Pickens instead. When the news that the ex- 
 pedition had sailed reached Charleston, Beau- 
 regard demanded surrender, and then gave the 
 order to reduce the fort. On April 12 the 
 bombardment began, as Anderson and his men 
 were eating the very last of their rations. 
 They fought gallantly, but on the morning of 
 the 13th their guns were silenced. All the 
 time the three transports of the relief expe- 
 dition had been lying outside the bar, awaiting 
 the Powhatan, With her assistance the fort 
 could have been relieved, for the night was 
 very dark. It was a grievous blunder, for 
 which Lincoln assumed the whole responsibil- 
 
 118 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ity. It is a question for debate what history 
 would have been, had this blunder not oc- 
 curred, — one of those perhaps useless questions 
 which never can be answered. Lincoln has 
 been criticised for having delayed so long, but 
 miltary advisers had told him that evacuation 
 was inevitable, his cabinet was against the at- 
 tempt, public opinion was compromising and 
 opposed to any overt act. But, whatever the 
 result otherwise might have been, the effect 
 was instantaneous. The whole North arose, 
 a unity at last in its mighty wrath. Douglas 
 promptly assured the President of his support, 
 and telegraphed his followers that he had given 
 his pledge to ''sustain the President in the ex- 
 ercise of all his constitutional functions to pre- 
 serve the Union and maintain the government, 
 and defend the Federal Capital." No more 
 talk of compromise or concession, nor more dis- 
 cussion of the right or wrong of slavery. Lin- 
 coln, for that issue, had substituted the issue 
 of Union, and he had forced the Confederacy 
 into the position of aggressor. On the 15th 
 
 119 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 came liis proclamation calling for 75,000 vol- 
 unteers and convening Congress in extra ses- 
 sion for July 4. The response was electrical. 
 Hundi-eds of thousands of men all over the 
 North offered themselves in the Union cause, 
 glad that the long anxiety was over. This 
 temper was not softened when, on April 19, 
 the Sixth Massachusetts was assaulted in the 
 streets of Baltimore. Twelve rioters and four 
 soldiers were killed, and many wounded. It 
 was a trying time. All about the little Dis- 
 trict of Columbia lay Maryland, full of seces- 
 sion sentiment, protesting against the passage 
 of any more troops through Baltimore. 
 There was great danger of the capture of 
 Washington, and with the capital in its hands 
 the Confederacy would be certain of European 
 recognition. At the White House they could 
 get no news. The wires to the North had been 
 cut, and Lincoln, awaiting the Seventh New 
 York, groaned: "Why don't they come! 
 Why don't they come!" 
 
 In this crisis, if, as always, conciliatory, he 
 
 120 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was firm. If troops could not march through 
 Baltimore, they could march around it; and, 
 when there were protests against the troops 
 crossing the "sacred" soil of Maryland, he re- 
 plied that his soldiers could neither fly over the 
 State nor burrow under it, and that Maryland 
 must learn that "there was no piece of Ameri- 
 can soil too good to be pressed by the foot of a 
 loyal soldier as he marched to the defence of 
 the capital of his country." Gradually, senti- 
 ment in Maryland changed, especially when 
 business in Baltimore was affected; and, when 
 soldiers enough arrived in Washington to in- 
 sure the defence of the capital, union sentiment 
 in Maryland was stimulated and grew until the 
 end of the war, keeping her in the Union. 
 
 And now, while visiting the camps about 
 Washington, consulting with officers, hobnob- 
 bing with private soldiers in his simple West- 
 ern way, joking, listening to queries and com- 
 plaints, gaining that personal love which they 
 bore him through the whole war, Lincoln was 
 constantly brooding over his mighty problem. 
 
 121 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 His task just then was to prevent further de- 
 fections from the Union, to prevent European 
 recognition of the Confederacy, and to create 
 an army and navy that could reassert the 
 national power throughout the States in re- 
 bellion. Slowly, cautiously, patiently, with 
 many blunders and mistakes, in the midst of 
 misunderstanding, noisy criticism, and malig- 
 nant abuse, he made his way. It was a tri- 
 umph of diplomacy that he prevented Ken- 
 tucky from following Virginia in secession; 
 and, while he was not so successful with otlier 
 States, — for, by June, Arkansas, North Caro- 
 lina, and Tennessee had joined the Confed- 
 eracy, — he did save not only Kentucky, but 
 Missouri. The secession of Virginia was a 
 disastrous blow. The capital of the Confed- 
 eracy was removed to Richmond, and the Old 
 Dominion gave its great son, Robert E. Lee, 
 to command the Southern army, and for four 
 years the stars and bars were to fly in defiance, 
 almost in the President's face, from the hills 
 across the Potomac. 
 
 122 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 With growing mastery President Lincoln 
 watched over men and events, tempered with 
 his kindhness and caution Seward's diplomacy, 
 studied the science of war while the army and 
 navy were being organised; and driven in 
 April to suspend the writ of habeas corpus,, 
 thereby, on the one hand, bringing down on his 
 head the criticism that he was a dictator and 
 usurper, and, on the other, that he was not 
 tyrannical enough, he was ready, when Con- 
 gress convened on the Fourth of July, to give 
 to it and to the people his reasons for the 
 course he was following. The army was 
 anxious to move, the North was clamouring, 
 and Lincoln decided to seize Arlington 
 Heights across the Potomac. On May 23 the 
 movement began, the Heights were occupied, 
 the enemy fled, the flag was lowered, but it cost 
 the life of young Ellsworth, a dashing com- 
 mander of Zouaves whom Lincoln had known 
 and loved back at Springfield. Then for 
 weeks the army lay inactive, while the North, 
 led by Greeley, cried, "On to Richmond!" 
 
 123 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The enemy had intrenched at Manassas Junc- 
 tion, and General Scott opposed an advance, 
 saying that the army was not ready; but Lin- 
 coln, nevertheless, ordered the movement. 
 There were delays, but at last, on July 21, 
 McDowell was ready to attack Beauregard. 
 It was a hot Sunday of brilliant sunshine, and 
 by afternoon reports were so encouraging that 
 Lincoln went for a drive; but that night with 
 his cabinet and General Scott in the telegraph 
 office, where he was to spend so many anxious 
 hours during the rest of his life, there came the 
 report from McDowell, *'Our army is retreat- 
 ing," and soon he knew of the first great dis- 
 aster of Bull Bun. At dav/n, in a drizzling 
 rain, demoralised troops began to pour into 
 Washington over Long Bridge. If the blow 
 staggered the North, it sobered and steadied 
 it. The nation realised that it was in a real 
 war, and it set itself, with grim determination, 
 to the great task. Congress voted men and 
 money, and Lincoln called to the command of 
 the Army of the Potomac the young general, 
 
 124 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 George B. McClellan, who had been winning 
 successes in Western Virginia, and electrify- 
 ing the North by Napoleonic despatches. 
 These despatches, his youth, and his dash had 
 made him popular. He was a man of engag- 
 ing personality, an efficient organiser and engi- 
 neer, though Lincoln was soon to remark that 
 his especial talent was as a stationary engineer. 
 McClellan came in the brilliant style in which 
 he always moved, and out of the remnants of 
 the militia who had fled from Bull Run and out 
 of the new volunteers pouring into camp — in- 
 telligent artisans of the North, hardy farmers 
 of the West, come to fight for principle — he 
 proceeded to create one of the finest armies in 
 history. 
 
 Fremont, in command in the West, took it 
 upon himself that fall to issue a proclamation 
 emancipating the slaves of non-Union men in 
 Missouri. If the act pleased the abolitionists, 
 it created consternation in the Border States 
 and added to Lincoln's burden. He revoked 
 the proclamation, of course, and thereby saved 
 
 125 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland to the 
 Union. The abolitionists, mightily offended, 
 talked of impeachment. They saw the moral 
 issue of slavery rather than the political issue 
 of union ; and the clamour, led by Greeley, was 
 long and loud. The troubles in Missouri were 
 long to exasperate the patient man in the 
 White House. It was the beginning of that 
 period, destined to last so long, when he was 
 constantly distressed by the childish piques and 
 prides of his generals, who, considering them- 
 selves competent to command armies, could not 
 even command themselves. Eut his patience 
 never was exhausted, — not even by the imperti- 
 nence of Buell, who failed to move into east- 
 ern Tennessee and stop the depredations of 
 Confederate soldiers who were harrying and 
 even hanging the loyal residents. But there 
 was one general who was not so, — Grant in the 
 West, taking Fort Henry, then Donelson, and 
 in February, 1862, sending his famous des- 
 patch to Buckner: "No terms except uncon- 
 ditional and immediate surrender. I propose 
 
 126 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to move immediately upon your works." 
 What balm to that weary spirit! They urged 
 him, of course, to remove Grant; but "this man 
 fights," he said. Then the "good" people told 
 him that Grant drank. "Do you know what 
 brand of whiskey ?" he asked. "I'd like to send 
 a barrel to each of my other generals." But it 
 was too soon for Grant. There v/ere yet 
 long months of JMcClellan and his successors, 
 and the only victories worth while were that of 
 the Monitor over the Merrimac, March 9, 
 1862, and the capture of New Orleans in 
 April. 
 
 IMcClellan, meanwhile, had been organising 
 and intrenching his 168,000 men. Lincoln 
 watched him intently, intelligently, and with 
 the sympathy of a father, visiting him at his 
 headquarters, giving him all he asked, but all 
 his solicitude and kindness were lost. To 
 ]McClellan the President's friendly visits were 
 merely "interruptions" of his tremendous 
 thoughts and large schemes; the cabinet were 
 "the greatest geese" ; and, being obliged to at- 
 
 127 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tend their meeting, he was "bored and an- 
 noyed." But the President and the country 
 Avere patient. The people had learned a lesson 
 from Bull Run, and were no longer crying, 
 *'0n to Richmond!" Every day there were 
 guard-mounts and parades, and now and then 
 reviews, brilliant military spectacles wherein 
 McClellan excelled, which all Washington 
 went out to see. It was a gay holiday time for 
 every one but Lincoln, for whom there never 
 was gayety and were never more to be holi- 
 days. 
 
 But when the autumn moved by, with its 
 glorious weather, and nothing was done, the 
 muttering began and increased to wrath and 
 new dismay by the end of October, when on the 
 21st the blunder of Ball's Bluff occurred. 
 Lincoln was at McClellan's headquarters when 
 the news came from up the Potomac that his 
 old friend. Colonel Edward D. Baker, had 
 been killed. It was a terrible blow. C. C. 
 Coffin saw him, "unattended, with bowed head 
 and tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, his 
 
 128 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 face pale and wan, his breast heaving with emo- 
 tion," pass through the room. "With both 
 hands pressed upon his heart, he walked down 
 the street, not returning the salute of the senti- 
 nel pacing his beat before the door." The 
 fault here was not McClellan's, and, though 
 the nation grumbled, Lincoln had not lost faith 
 in him, and when on October 31 the aged Gen- 
 eral Scott, who had won his spurs nearly half a 
 century before at Lundy's Lane, retired, he 
 raised McClellan to the post of commander-in- 
 chief, under the President, of the armies of the 
 United States. 
 
 But now for a space he was to be distracted 
 from the concern McClellan's immobility 
 caused him by another difficulty, which for a 
 time seemed likely to plunge the nation into 
 war with England. On November 8 Captain 
 Wilkes, commanding the warship San Jacinto, 
 overhauled the British royal mail packet 
 Trent, one day out from Havana, brought her 
 to by a shot across her bows, and took from her 
 Mason and Slidell, commissioners from the 
 
 129 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Confederacy on their way to Europe. Wlien 
 the news was made pubKc, the nation was in 
 a high state of jubilation. But Lincoln saw 
 the mistake; he feared the captured commis- 
 sioners would "prove to be white elephants." 
 If there were bluster and jingoism in England, 
 so there were in America, and public sentiment 
 favoured the keeping of the commissioners and 
 braving another war. Of this feeling Seward 
 himself partook, and Lincoln took upon him- 
 self the burden of diplomacy, and by his kind- 
 ness moderated the too offensive tone Seward 
 was apt to adopt in his dealings with Lord 
 Palmerston. He had, however, by his ex- 
 quisite tact and almost preternatural knowl- 
 edge of men, won to his side the proud and rad- 
 ical Sumner, chairman of the Senate Commit- 
 tee on Foreign Relations, and, though as Lin- 
 coln said slyly, "Sumner thinks he runs me," 
 he really "ran" Sumner. While the country 
 raged, Lincoln kept silent. Sumner was in 
 correspondence with Cobden and with Bright, 
 whose portrait hung in the President's execu- 
 
 130 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tive chamber, struggling for the people's cause 
 in England as Lincoln was in America. The 
 British ultimatum, demanding immediate resti- 
 tution and apology, was presented, and on 
 Christmas morning Lincoln convened his cab- 
 inet. Sumner was present with urgent letters 
 from Bright and Cobden, speaking of "your 
 country, the great hope of humanity," and 
 urging a "courageous stroke" to save "you and 
 us." Lincoln was ready for the courageous 
 stroke. Mason and Slidell were released, war 
 was averted, and sentiment in England was so 
 softened and appeased that John Stuart Mill 
 doubtless reflected the best of it when he wrote, 
 "Is there any one capable of a moral judgment 
 or feeling who will say that his opinion of 
 America and American statesmen is not raised 
 by such an act done on such grounds?" 
 
 Lincoln had made no reference to this crit- 
 ical affair in his message to Congress in De- 
 cember: he knew how to keep silence just as 
 he knew how to explain ; but there was in that 
 message a splendid paragraph expressing his 
 
 131 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 views on the labour question, — a paragraph 
 which shows that, if he were not a pohtical 
 economist, he was, what is greater, a lover of 
 humanity, and knew instinctively that the 
 cause of the workers of the world was the cause 
 of democracy everywhere, and that the war he 
 was in was a war in that cause. 
 
 "Labour," he said, "is prior to and independ- 
 ent of Capital. Capital is only the fruit of 
 Labour, and could never have existed if La- 
 bour had not first existed. Labour is the su- 
 perior of Capital, and deserves much the higher 
 consideration. Capital has its rights, which 
 are as worthy of protection as any other rights. 
 Nor is it denied that there is, and probably 
 always will be, a relation between Capital and 
 Labour producing mutual benefit. The error 
 is in assuming that the whole Labour of a com- 
 munity exists within that relation. A few 
 men own Capital, and that few avoid Labour 
 themselves, and with their capital hire or buy 
 another few to labour for them. A large ma- 
 jority belong to neither class — neither work 
 
 132 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 for others, nor have others working for them. 
 . . . Many independent men everywhere in 
 these states, a few years back in their lives, 
 were hired labourers. The prudent, penniless 
 beginner in the world labours for wages awhile, 
 saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land 
 for himself, then labours on his own account 
 another while, and at length hires another new 
 beginner to help him. This is the generous 
 and just and prosperous system which opens 
 the way to all — gives hope to all, and conse- 
 quent energy and progress and improvement 
 of condition to all. No men living are more 
 worthy to be trusted than those who toil up 
 from poverty — none less inclined to take or 
 touch aught which they have not honestly 
 earned. Let them beware of surrendering a 
 political power which they already possess, 
 and which, if surrendered, will surely be used 
 to close the door of advancement against such 
 as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens 
 upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost." 
 Far as he could see into the future, he could 
 
 isa 
 
ABHAHAJ^I LINCOLN 
 
 not foresee the great change which, with eco- 
 nomic evolution, was to come over America 
 and the world, — a change that would sweep 
 away the individualistic system which, in the 
 beginning, the fathers had admirably met in 
 theii' political constitution, — the system which 
 he hoped to perfect. Perhaps he confused 
 then, as most do to-day, political liberty with 
 economic liberty; but he had before him the 
 great ideal of equality of opportunity so beau- 
 tifully imagined in the immortal Declaration, 
 and so constantly before the mind of our ideal- 
 ist, whose dream and passion it became. In 
 that war this superiority, the right of man as 
 against the right of property, was at stake, and 
 in a sense it was fortunate that the rights of 
 property were then contended for by a com- 
 pact section rather than by capitalists scattered 
 everywhere, by a class easily recognised rather 
 than by one that merged its identity in the 
 whole mass of the people, for it made the issue 
 clear. 
 
 But the cause was being carried forward 
 
 134 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with tremendous difficulty, and almost, one 
 might say, by Lincoln alone. 
 
 The trouble he had feared from his redemp- 
 tion of Davis's unauthorised promise to Cam- 
 eron at Chicago had been present for some 
 time: if Cameron was not all he should be in 
 the War Office, he was exactly what Lincoln 
 had expected him to be, and January 11, 1862, 
 Lincoln offered him the post of minister to 
 Russia. Cameron accepted, and on the 13th 
 Lincoln appointed Edwin M. Stanton Sec- 
 retary of War. Stanton was a Democrat, a 
 friend of McClellan, and had never ceased, it 
 seems, to speak of Lincoln with that gross abuse 
 with which he had greeted him in the McCor- 
 mick case at Cincinnati in 1859. But, with 
 all his revilings and insults, he did not hesitate 
 promptly to accept, as a man of finer nature 
 might have done, though a man of finer na- 
 ture would, of course, never have been so in- 
 solent as Stanton was. But if he was insolent, 
 truculent, and brow-beating, with all the petty 
 tyrannies and injustices of the bully, and if 
 
 135 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he often sorely tried the patient President, he 
 was an honest man who broke the ring of con- 
 tractors, and he was a prodigious worker. 
 And he soon learned — as Seward had learned 
 and as McClellan was about to learn — that 
 Lincoln was master; and, though it was im- 
 possible that he should do it gracefully, as 
 Seward did, he recognised that mastery and 
 superiority. The appointment of Stanton is 
 but another of many instances of Lincoln's 
 ability to rise above all personal feelings and 
 considerations. He had no thought for him- 
 self, for his personal or political fortune: he 
 was wholly absorbed in the great cause. He 
 needed men, and he took them whenever and 
 wherever he could get them, no matter who 
 they were. Surely, he dwelt at high spiritual 
 altitudes ! 
 
 Meanwhile, for six months, McClellan had 
 been preparing to advance; but there was no 
 advance. With American humour the North 
 accepted the daily bulletins, until "All quiet 
 along the Potomac" passed into the fixities of 
 
 136 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 common speech. The President met the sit- 
 uation with his almost divine patience, and, 
 though in distress, that humour which lay so 
 near the sadness in his nature, as it does in all 
 great natures, came to his relief, and epito- 
 mised the situation in his observation "that if 
 General McClellan did not want to use the 
 army, he would like to borrow it." He had 
 recognised his own want of knowledge of the 
 art of war, if it is an art, and in McClellan 
 he reposed a confidence which it v\^as not Mc- 
 Clellan's nature to appreciate. In December 
 he had ventured to ask McClellan, "if it was 
 determined to make a forward movement of 
 the Army of the Potomac, . . . how long 
 would it require to actually get it in motion?" 
 And to this, after waiting ten days, ]^*IcClellan 
 returned a disrespectful reply. Then Mc- 
 Clellan fell ill. The President was in despair. 
 But he undertook the study of the military 
 problem himself, and by the time McClellan 
 recovered, in January, he had a plan which he 
 proposed; namely, to move directly upon the 
 
 137 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 enemy at Centreville and Manassas, and to 
 press him back upon Richmond, in order to 
 captm^e that city. McClellan's plan was to 
 move by way of Urbana and West Point, 
 using the York River as a base. Upon the 
 relative merits of the two plans a difference 
 arose that continues to this day. There was 
 a long discussion between Lincoln and his re- 
 calcitrant general, which lengthened the de- 
 lay. The North divided into factions, the one 
 accusing *'The Virginia Creej^er" — the nick- 
 name with which American humour inevitably 
 provided him — of disloyalty, the other criticis- 
 ing Lincoln for his civilian interference with 
 the inscrutable science of war. But Lincoln, 
 unmoved by McClellan's conduct or by politi- 
 cal clangour, in his "General War Order No. 
 1" directed that February 22, 1862, "be the 
 day for a general movement of the land and 
 naval forces of the United States against the 
 insurgent forces." The critics laughed, but 
 Lincoln had, as always, his own purpose. On 
 January 31 he ordered McClellan to seize and 
 
 138 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 occupy a point near Manassas Junction, and 
 this forced the issue. McClellan remon- 
 strated, and then began that long exchange 
 of letters and despatches which, better than 
 other words can do, reveals the characters of 
 the two men. Lincoln was all patience, kind- 
 ness, humour : McClellan was querulous, petty, 
 and sometimes positively insulting. Wash- 
 ington's birthday came: McClellan did not 
 move. By March Johnston had evacuated 
 Manassas. Then the President relieved Mc- 
 Clellan of command, though he retained him 
 at the head of the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 Those were dark days. The burden Lin- 
 coln bore so patiently was tremendous, and 
 was made wearier by the advice which was so 
 copiously tendered him. Abuse and criticism 
 he could endure: the newspapers he did not 
 often read, for, as he said, "I know more about 
 it than they do"; but he could not escape ad- 
 vice. Besides the daily calls of senators and 
 representatives, Congress had created a Com- 
 mittee on the Conduct of the War, and the 
 
 139 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 politicians who composed that inquisitorial 
 body could jauntily dispose of the most intri- 
 cate military problems in the midst of their 
 political schemes, and Lincoln had to surrender 
 useful time and employ the greatest tact with 
 them. The newspapers and the pulpits in the 
 churches were full of counsel, — and of abuse 
 because it was not heeded, — and there were, of 
 course, delegations of clergymen and of bank- 
 ers. "Money!" he exclaimed one day when 
 Chase, whom he allowed to manage the finances 
 in his own way, wished to present a delegation 
 of financiers, — "money! I don't know any- 
 thing about mone}^ I never had enough of 
 my own to fret me, and I have no opinion about 
 it, anyway." And he bore it all patiently, even 
 meekly, and went on his high, lonely way. 
 
 Besides all this, there were sombre shadows 
 in the private chambers of the White House. 
 Willie and Tad were ill with the typhoid fever, 
 and night after night, after a day half -crazed 
 by the cares of a nation, he spent watching by 
 their beds. When Willie died, it was a blow 
 
 140 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that overwhelmed him, and for a month he 
 seemed hkeiy to sink under the grief of this 
 afFiiction. It proved to be one of the great 
 inner crises of his life. Always religious in 
 the highest sense, he seems at this time to have 
 gained deeper insight into the mysteries of the 
 spiritual hfe. "Why is it? Why is it?" he 
 would cry out in despair, as he sat watching 
 at the child's bedside; and, if the pious nurse 
 who shared those weary vigils with him trans- 
 lated his experience into the terms of her own 
 understanding, it is probable that her sympa- 
 thy, if not her theology, comforted him. 
 
 From that hour on his tender heart was 
 tenderer, and yearned in growing love over the 
 nation, South as well as North, and in a thou- 
 sand beautiful and pathetic individual in- 
 stances softened the severities of that war 
 which, by some strange and inscrutable fate, 
 this most peaceful of men was called upon to 
 wage. He himself expressed a sense of this 
 incongruity in a letter to a Quaker, when he 
 said, "Engaged as I am, in a great war, I 
 
 141 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fear it will be difficult for the world to under- 
 stand how fully I appreciate the principles of 
 peace inculcated in this letter and everywhere 
 by the Society of Friends." 
 
 While this war was being fought for the 
 Union, the question of slavery was, neverthe- 
 less, as every one knew, at the bottom of it; 
 and Lincoln had early seen that the two issues 
 could not long be separated. As long as could 
 be, he refrained from interference with the in- 
 stitution, but the question arose in many forms. 
 Slaves were constantly seeking refuge in 
 Union camps, and what to do with them was a 
 problem which military commanders in the 
 field dealt with as their principles or their 
 prejudices or their politics moved them. Gen- 
 eral Ben Butler held them as "contraband of 
 war," — a legal trick that delighted the North 
 and gave the slaves a new sobriquet; McClel- 
 lan threatened to put down any uprising of the 
 blacks with an "iron hand" he seemed to reserve 
 for that exclusive purpose; Halleck sent the 
 
 142 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fugitives out of camp; Buell and Hooker al- 
 lowed their owners to take them. 
 
 But abolition sentiment was growing, and 
 from press and pulpit there were adjurations 
 to "set the slaves free." The torrent of ad- 
 vice, muddied by abuse, poured on him. With 
 the ease with which those to whom the people 
 have neglected to delegate the authority know 
 how to exercise it, his advisers informed him of 
 the people's will; and to this the preachers, in 
 their delegations, added that it was the will of 
 God. But he held his own counsel, thinking 
 out a way. It was the essence of his Border 
 State policy to avoid offence to the people 
 there, where slavery made a problem of ex- 
 quisite delicacy. 
 
 On March 6, 1862, he sent a special message 
 to Congress, recommending the adoption of a 
 joint resolution that "the United States ought 
 to co-operate with any state which may adopt 
 gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such 
 state pecuniary aid ... to compensate for the 
 
 U3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 inconvenience, both public and private, pro- 
 duced by such change of system." The resolu- 
 tion was finally adopted, but the Border States 
 would have none of it. On IMarch 10 he in- 
 vited to the White House the Congressmen 
 from those States, hoping to win them to his 
 view, which had as its object the disposition he 
 had held to since boyhood; namely, gradual 
 compensated emancipation. But the border 
 members were deaf to his pleadings. Again, 
 on July 12, he besought them, but two-thirds 
 of them were opposed to the plan. 
 
 In the midst of this difficulty, May 9, 1862, 
 General Hunter proclaimed martial law in 
 Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, and 
 "the persons in these states, heretofore held as 
 slaves, . . . forever free." Lincoln revoked 
 this order, as he had Fremont's, adding firmly, 
 "I further make known that, whether it be 
 competent for me as Commander-in-Chief of 
 the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of 
 any state or states free, and whether at any 
 time, in any case, it shall have become a neces- 
 
 144 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sity indispensable to the maintenance of gov- 
 ernment to exercise such supposed power, are 
 questions which, under my responsibihty, I 
 reserve to myself." 
 
 In his proclamation cancelling Hunter's or- 
 der, he referred again to the ''solemn proposal 
 of the nation" of gradual emancipation to the 
 Border States, and added : "To the people of 
 these states I now earnestly appeal. I do not 
 argue; I beseech you to make the arguments 
 for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be 
 blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you 
 a calm and enlarged consideration of them, 
 ranging, if it may be, far above personal and 
 partisan politics. This proposal makes com- 
 mon cause for a common object, casting no re- 
 proaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. 
 The change it contemplates would come as 
 gently as the dews from Heaven, not rending or 
 wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? 
 So much good has not been done by one effort 
 in all past time, as in the providence of God 
 it is now your high privilege to do. May the 
 
 145 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 vast future not have to lament that you have 
 neglected it!" 
 
 The scheme, of course, was impractical. 
 Union slaveholders were not ready to give up 
 their property, and even the most radical of 
 abolitionists were not ready to buy them in 
 order to set them free. But even then, as back 
 in New Salem, Lincoln was not a business 
 man: he was a dreamer, a humanitarian, with 
 a vision of free men that subordinated consid- 
 erations of property. 
 
 Then, relinquishing his old dream, he began 
 to think of emancipation. Constantly he was 
 urged to it. Constantly he argued with his 
 callers, his volunteer advisers, in his clever way 
 weighing the reasons and the chances. While 
 he travailed in the agony of this problem, in 
 the midst of all his woes there was, of course, 
 always Greeley, — "Brother Greeley," as he 
 called him. 
 
 On August 19, 1862, Greeley published in 
 his newspaper an address to the President, 
 under the imposing title of "The Prayer of 
 
 146 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 20,000,000 of People," demanding immediate 
 emancipation. It was an unfair and foolish 
 paper, but if the editor did not, as he imagined, 
 represent twenty millions of people, he did rep- 
 resent the extreme group of radicals in the 
 Republican party, and they could make as 
 great an outcry as twenty millions. To this 
 paper Lincoln thought fit to reply, in order to 
 explain, not to Greeley, — for that would have 
 been impossible, — but to the people. The let- 
 ter is really one of his great state papers, and 
 it has been said that "it did more to steady 
 the loyal sentiment of the country in a very 
 grave emergency than anything that ever came 
 from Lincoln's pen." Its essence is found in 
 these words : "My paramount object is to save 
 the Union, and not either to save or destroy 
 slavery. If I could save the Union without 
 freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I 
 could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would 
 do it. And if I could save it by freeing some, 
 and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
 ... I have here stated my purpose, according 
 
 147 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to my view of official duty, and I intend no 
 modification of my oft-expressed personal 
 wish, that all men everywhere shall be free." 
 
 The spirit and the sense were all lost on the 
 oblivious Greeley, who retorted v/ith abuse. 
 But the abolitionists did not cease their agita- 
 tion, and to a committee of Chicago preachers 
 that waited on him in September, to reveal to 
 him the will of God, Lincoln said: — 
 
 "If it is probable that God would reveal His 
 will to others on a point so connected with my 
 duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it 
 directly to me. . . . These are not, however, 
 the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be 
 granted that I am not to expect a direct revela- 
 tion. I must study the plain physical facts 
 of the case, ascertain what is possible, and 
 learn what appears to be wise and right." 
 
 And he continued: — 
 
 "What good would a proclamation of eman- 
 cipation from me do, especially as we are now 
 situated? I do not v/ant to issue a document 
 that the whole world v/ill see must necessarily 
 
 148 
 
ABRAHA:^! LINCOLN 
 
 be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the; 
 comet." 
 
 Meanwhile, at Major Eckert's desk in the 
 cipher-room of the War Department telegraph 
 office, this silent, self-reliant man, without in- 
 timates, without friends, who bore almost alone 
 on his mighty shoulders the burden of the na- 
 tion's war, had been w^riting the Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation. It was thus that lie was 
 accustomed to spend such moments of respite 
 as he could snatch from the never-ending 
 stream of tormentors in tlie White House, — 
 the office-seekers, politicians, and volunteers of 
 sage advice. Ever since June, shortly after 
 McClellan's terrible "Seven Days' Fight," he 
 had been sitting at that desk, deep in thought, 
 nov/ gazing out the window at a colony of 
 spiders, nov/ writing a few sentences. All 
 these months he had been at work, with his 
 slow but accurate thought and slow and clear 
 writing, preparing the most momentous docu- 
 ment in American history since Thomas Jef- 
 ferson had wTitten the Declaration. No one 
 
 149 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 knew what he was writing: his cabinet had no 
 notion. He was waiting for the right time, 
 waiting for a victory. 
 
 He waited long, in his great patience and his 
 great anguish. Far back in April he had writ- 
 ten McClellan: "Your dispatches complain- 
 ing that you are not properly sustained, while 
 they do not offend me, do pain me very much. 
 . . . The country will not fail to note, is now 
 noting, that the present hesitation to move 
 upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of 
 Manassas repeated. I beg to assure you that 
 I have never written you or spoken to you in 
 greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with 
 a fuller purpose to sustain you so far as, in 
 my more anxious judgment, I consistently can. 
 But you must act." In May, sick of waiting, 
 he had wired, "Is anything to be done?" 
 Then, when the cautious "Little JMac" was 
 ready, at last, the enemy had abandoned the 
 intrenchments. He advanced, fighting, all the 
 while demanding reinforcements, which caused 
 Lincoln to remark that "sending troops to Mc- 
 
 150 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Clellan is like shovelling fleas across a barn- 
 yard." He had waited, the only friend Mc- 
 Clellan had left in Washington, and the one 
 McClellan most flouted and contemned, un- 
 til August, when McClellan's campaign ended 
 in fiasco, and the movement on Richmond was 
 abandoned. It was a disaster which deepened 
 the careworn aspect of that sad countenance, 
 but still alone in his mighty trial he struggled 
 on. Halleck and Pope were tried; and the 
 defeats at Cedar Mountain and the second 
 battle of Bull Run were the result. Then, at 
 last, on September 17 McClellan fought and 
 won the battle of Antietam. It was not so 
 great a victory, nor did McClellan press Lee 
 after it had been won, but it could be called a 
 victory; and Lincoln felt it might serve to in- 
 dicate the moment for which, almost supersti- 
 tiously, he had been waiting. 
 
 About the end of July he had told his cabinet 
 of his determination to issue the proclamation. 
 He had told them that he did not desire them 
 to offer any advice, — he had so much advice! 
 
 151 
 
— but that they might make suggestions as to 
 details. They had been naturally silent. He 
 had the news from Antietam at the Soldiers' 
 Home, where he lived in the summer, and driv- 
 ing into Washington on Saturday, September 
 20, he called his cabinet together. To Stan- 
 ton's undisguised disgust, he first read to them 
 from Artemus Ward, on the "Highhanded 
 Outrage at Utica," had his laugh, as did the 
 cabinet, "except Stanton, of course," and then, 
 growing solemn, he read the Proclamation. 
 It was preliminary onl}^ and did not promise 
 universal emancipation; he still must save the 
 Border States. It proclaimed that on Jan- 
 uary 1, 1863, "all persons held as slaves within 
 any state or designated part of a state, the 
 people whereof shall then be in rebellion 
 against the United States, shall be then, 
 thenceforward, and forever, free"; and that 
 "the Executive will, on the first day of Jan- 
 uary aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the 
 states and part of states, if any, in which the 
 
 152 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 people thereof respectively shall then be in 
 rebellion against the United States." 
 
 It was all his own. "I must do the best 
 I can," he said, "and bear the responsibility of 
 taking the course which I feel I ought to take." 
 The proclamation was published on September 
 
 He had kept his secret well, and the country 
 was taken hj surprise. The act was, though 
 not wholly or heartily, sustained by the people 
 and by Congress, though the radical abolition- 
 ists even then were not satisfied; they com- 
 plained that he had been "forced" to do it, or 
 had "drifted with events," or some such thing. 
 
 Then came the fall elections, with such Re- 
 publican losses in the Northern States that 
 Congress would have been lost to the adminis- 
 tration, had it not been for gains in the West 
 and in the Border States, and the prospect 
 deepened in gloom with the approach of win- 
 ter. As a result of these reverses at the polls 
 — so discouraging that Greeley, with his un- 
 
 153 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 erring instinct for the wrong thing, was favour- 
 ing foreign intervention — there were dissen- 
 sions in the cabinet and the party, and these led 
 Seward to tender his resignation. Lincohi 
 held it until he could secure also the resignation 
 of Chase, and then remarking, "Now I can ride ; 
 I have a pumpkin in each end of my bag," he 
 got both secretaries to reconsider and with- 
 draw their resignations, and avoided a cabinet 
 crisis. 
 
 On Congress he once more urged his old 
 policy of gradual compensated emancipation. 
 '^Fellow citizens," he wrote, "we cannot escape 
 history. We of this Congress and this admin- 
 istration shall be remembered in spite of our- 
 selves. 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 honour or dishonour, to the latest 
 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 know how to save it. We — even 
 
 154 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 we here — hold the power and bear the responsi- 
 bihty. In giving freedom to the slave, we as- 
 sure freedom to the free — honourable 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 for- 
 ever bless." 
 
 But they were not to be persuaded. And the 
 lonely man in the White House, with eyes more 
 deeply sunken, bronzed face ashen and deeply 
 furrowed, tall form bent, went about his duty, 
 asking help nor counsel of any one. "I need 
 successes more than I need sympathy," he said. 
 
 On New Year's Day, 1863, after the great 
 public reception was over, Lincoln, in the mid- 
 dle of the afternoon, signed the final Proclama- 
 tion of Emancipation. His hand was swollen 
 from shaking the hands of the long line that 
 had passed through the East Room, and he 
 remarked to Seward, when he had dipped his 
 
 155 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 pen and was holding it over the broad sheet 
 spread out before him on the cabinet table: 
 "If they find my hand trembled, they will say, 
 'he had some compunction.' But, anyway, it 
 is going to be done!" Then slowly and care- 
 fully he wrote his name. "If my name is ever 
 remembered," he said, "it will be for this act, 
 and my whole soul is in it." 
 
 If the radical abolitionists could still find 
 cause for complaint in the fact that he had 
 signed it in the afternoon instead of the morn- 
 ing, and if the country could divide over the 
 constitutionality of the measure and resume the 
 ridicule and abuse which are the right of the 
 Bepublic, — for many dreary, anxious months 
 were to elapse before events justified the act, 
 — it was well received by the people, if not by 
 the government, of England. The sailing of 
 the privateer Alabama^ which the British gov- 
 ernment permitted or did not prevent, not- 
 withstanding American protests, proved al- 
 most, if not quite, as serious as the earlier in- 
 cident of the Trent, and strained the feeling 
 
 156 
 
AEF^AHAM LINCOLN 
 
 between the two countries ; and the embarrass- 
 ment at their own failure did not improve the 
 temper of the British ministers. The govern- 
 ment might perhaps have recognised the Con- 
 federacy if it could have found excuse, and the 
 starving cotton-mill workers in Lancashire, 
 idle because of the Northern blockade of 
 Southern ports, could have furnished the ex- 
 cuse. But English Radicalism, led by Cob- 
 den and Bright, knew that the cause which 
 Lincoln was representing was their cause, — 
 the cause of the people, and of labour through- 
 out the world; and it was a splendid and in- 
 spiring proof of the solidarity of labour that 
 six thousand men at Manchester sent the Presi- 
 dent an address congratulating and encourag- 
 ing him. In his grateful acknowledgment, 
 Lincoln referred to the act of the men of Lan- 
 cashire as, under the circumstances of their 
 suffering, "an instance of Christian heroism 
 which had not been surpassed in any age or in 
 any country." Similar meetings were held in 
 London and Sheffield, and a notable one by 
 
 157 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the Trades Unions at St. James's Hall in 
 March 
 
 Thus, if governments and principalities and 
 powers and the great and strong and power- 
 ful of the earth were sneering in opposition, the 
 great heart of the people everywhere was with 
 him who bore their cause so bravely ; and when, 
 a few years later, those British mechanics gave 
 their pennies to erect a modest monument to 
 his memory, they erected, perhaps, the most 
 beautiful and significant memorial ever given 
 him, when they inscribed on it his name as a 
 "Lover of Humanity." 
 
 158 
 
After Antietam, Lincoln came as near to 
 losing patience with McClellan as he ever came 
 with any one; but he wrote him another kind 
 letter about what he considerately called "over- 
 cautiousness," and finally, long after every one 
 had lost faith, relieved him of his command and 
 devolved it on Burnside. The result was an- 
 other failure. On December 13, 1862, Lee 
 defeated Burnside at Fredericksburg. All 
 day Lincoln had been in the telegraph office, in 
 dressing-gown and slippers, forgetting even to 
 eat, and, when at night the dreadful news came, 
 — more than ten thousand dead and wounded, 
 — ^he was close on despair: "If there is any 
 man out of perdition who suffers more than I 
 do," he said, "I pity him." 
 
 Then on January 26, 1863, he put "Fight- 
 ing Joe" Hooker in Burnside's place, writing 
 him : "I have heard, in such way as to believe 
 
 159 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 it, of your recently saying that both the army 
 and the government need a dictator. Of 
 course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, 
 that I have given you the command. Only 
 those generals v^ho gain successes can set up as 
 dictators. What I now ask of you is military 
 success, and I will risk the dictatorship." 
 Hooker read the letter with tears in his eyes. 
 But that splendid army, too, was to meet de- 
 feat. Hooker, though a good lieutenant, was 
 a poor chief, and when, May 2, he met Lee at 
 Chancellorsville, "though the Federals fought 
 like devils," he was beaten fti a bloody battle. 
 When the wires bore the news to Lincoln, his 
 face went ghastly grey, and, with hands clasped 
 behind his back, he paced the floor, saying pite- 
 ously : "My God ! My God ! What will the 
 country say! What will the country say!" 
 
 But he put all this behind him, and fixed his 
 sad eyes, sinking deeper and deeper into their 
 caverns, on the future. In the telegraph office 
 he began to ask: "Wliere's Meade? What's 
 the Fifth Corps doing?" And when Hooker, 
 
 160 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 angry with Halleck, resigned, he appointed 
 Meade in his place. On July 1 the armies of 
 Meade and Lee grappled in a death struggle 
 at Gettysburg. Those three terrible days Lin- 
 coln was in the telegraph office, anxiously lean- 
 ing over the shoulder of the operator who re- 
 ceived the story, — Cemetery Ridge, Little 
 Round Top, Culp's Hill, and, at last, the mag- 
 nificent, forlorn charge of Pickett. Then his 
 hopes rose. He knew that Meade had won a 
 notable victory. And yet Meade, too, like 
 McClellan after Antietam, failed to pursue, 
 and Lee got away across the Potomac. Lin- 
 coln felt this failure deeply. He had always 
 believed that, if Lee crossed the Potomac, his 
 army could be destroyed and the war ended. 
 Now the failure to reap all the fruits of the 
 noble victory, bought at such an awful price 
 of human life, would indefinitely prolong the 
 war. 
 
 But, when he received Grant's despatch an- 
 nouncing the fall of Vicksburg, his spirits rose 
 with the nation's spirits, and he issued a 
 
 161 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 proclamation, one of that series he wrote, in 
 the solemn style of the old prophets, often in 
 sorrow appointing days of "fasting and 
 prayer," now for the second time, in gladness, 
 naming August 6 as "a day for National 
 Thanksgiving, praise and prayer." 
 
 These victories, in the East and in the West, 
 falling by a striking coincidence on the day 
 in the spirit of which the war was being car- 
 ried on, brought him encouragement when he 
 was in need of encouragement. The times had 
 been full of embarrassment; volunteer enlist- 
 ments had ceased, he had been obliged to re- 
 sort to the hateful draft, and this, in July, had 
 brought on riots in New York. Then there 
 were the "Copperheads," and the "Knights of 
 the Golden Circle," with their secret oaths, and 
 Vallandigham, court-martialed for treason and 
 sentenced to imprisonment. Lincoln, 
 
 "slow to smite and swift to spare," 
 
 was not much concerned over the Copperheads, 
 and he disposed of all the arguments about 
 
 162 
 

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Vallandigham by saying, "Must I shoot a 
 simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while 
 I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who 
 induces him to desert?" And then (with a 
 humorous chuckle, no doubt) he modified the 
 sentence, and ordered Vallandigham to be con- 
 ducted within the Confederate lines. 
 
 But Gettysburg and Vicksburg turned the 
 tide; and in good spirits he summed up the 
 situation in a letter to friends in Springfield, 
 which must have sounded pleasantly familiar 
 to the old neighbours he would have liked so 
 much to visit once more : "The signs look bet- 
 ter. The Father of Waters rolls unvexed to 
 the sea. ... It is hard to say that anything 
 has been more bravely and well done than at 
 Antietam, Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on 
 many fields of lesser note. . . . Peace does not 
 appear so distant as it did. I hope it will 
 come soon, and come to stay; and so come as 
 to be worth the keeping in all future time. 
 . . . Still, let us not be oversanguine of a 
 speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober, 
 
 163 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 let us diligently apply the means, never doubt- 
 ing that a just God, in his own good time, will 
 give us the rightful result." 
 
 The letter, passing suddenly from gay to 
 grave, was characteristic. He was not always 
 sad. Not a day passed, not the darkest hour, 
 that he did not have his joke or tell his story. 
 This habit distressed the literal Seward, the 
 irascible Stanton, and others; and yet when 
 Congressman Ashley said severely, "Mr. Presi- 
 dent, I didn't come in here this morning to 
 hear stories : it is too serious," the light died out 
 of the sensitive face as he said, ''If it were not 
 for this occasional vent, I should die." He 
 liked, as we have seen, the humour of Artemus 
 Ward, of Orpheus C. Kerr, and of "Petroleum 
 V. Nasby," though he w^as not a great reader. 
 Herndon says he "read less and thought more 
 than any man who ever lived." But he had 
 favourites, — Burns, whose point of view was 
 like his own, and Byron and Bacon. The 
 lines, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal 
 be proud?" he had loved ever since they had 
 
 164 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 been associated in his mind with Anne Rut- 
 ledge, and he hked to recite Shakespeare, 
 though in his writings he quoted httle. He 
 was fond of the theatre, and sometimes went 
 to the play, sometimes to concerts. He was 
 delighted with the acting of James H. 
 Hackett, and wrote him, after a friendliness 
 had sprung up between them: "For one of 
 my age I have seen very little of the drama. 
 I think nothing equals Macbeth; it is wonder- 
 ful." When the letter got into print, and cer- 
 tain of the elect sneered at him, he wrote: 
 * 'Those comments constitute a fair specimen 
 of what has occurred to me through life. I 
 have endured a great deal of ridicule without 
 much malice; and have received a great deal 
 of kindness not quite free from ridicule. I am 
 used to it." 
 
 As he went about the White House, in the 
 telegraph office, out at the Soldiers' Home, 
 even on trips to headquarters at the front. Tad 
 was usually with him. He would sit in his lap 
 or hang on his chair even while the President re- 
 
 165 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ceived important callers, and we have intimate 
 pictures of him, late in the evening, when, worn 
 by the trials each day brought in abundance, 
 he would lift the sleepy boy in his great arms 
 and bear him off to bed. "All well, including 
 Tad's pony and the goats," he wired Mrs. Lin- 
 coln at Manchester, Vermont, and later he 
 found time to send this intelligence: "Tell 
 dear Tad poor Nanny goat is lost. . . . The 
 day you left Nanny was found resting herself 
 and chewing her little cud on the middle of 
 Tad's bed, but now she's gone." With this 
 parental love there was the parental concern, 
 and in him there was an occult strain that ex- 
 pressed itself in little superstitions. He was, 
 for instance, curiously affected by dreams, 
 which at times became portents and omens to 
 him. Thus in June, 1863, he wired to Mrs. 
 Lincoln at Philadelphia: "Think you had 
 better put Tad's pistol away. I had an ugly 
 dream about him." The tremendous strain 
 was wearing on his nerves. His health had 
 suffered ; under his mighty burden he was tired, 
 
 166 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and he slept badly, especially at the White 
 House. Because of the callers — who of course 
 asked "only a minute" of his time, which meant, 
 as he explained, that, if he could hear and 
 grant the request in that time, a minute would 
 suffice — and because of the long weary nights 
 in the War Office, hanging intently on the 
 next click of the telegraph, regular hours were 
 impossible. He ate little, — a glass of milk and 
 biscuit or some fruit at luncheon; and though 
 he dined at six, as he told Mrs. Stov/e, he "just 
 browsed round a little now and then." 
 
 Much of his time was spent in the telegraph 
 office. There, when he was not looking over 
 despatches or writing them, or studying war 
 maps, he would chat with the operators, or 
 perhaps only lean back in his chair, with his 
 long legs stretched to a table, and gaze moodily 
 out into Pennsylvania Avenue. The soldiers 
 almost individually he had on his heart with a 
 love that was personal. The long list of the 
 telegrams he sent from that office are but a 
 beautiful repetition of pardon and forgive- 
 
 167 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ness. One finds orders to commanders in the 
 iield to postpone the executions of death sen- 
 tences pronounced on deserters, — precious 
 fruits of that day's audience at the White 
 House. He knew how those boys at the front 
 suffered from homesickness. He had, indeed, 
 at his own heart, all his life, a pain not unlike 
 nostalgia, — the pain that comes of the knowl- 
 edge of life and of the suffering men make for 
 their brothers in the world, a pain that filled 
 him with a vast and tender pity. "Will you 
 please hurry off the above? To-morrow is the 
 day of execution," he frequently wrote to 
 Major Eckert in transmitting such despatches. 
 And he took infinite pains to seek out, in all 
 those vast armies, some hapless individual of 
 whom he had imperfectly heard. "If there is 
 
 a man by the name of K under sentence to 
 
 be shot, please suspend execution until further 
 orders, and send record," he wired to Meade, 
 and similarly to other generals. 
 
 "But that does not pardon my boy," a father 
 
 168 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 said to him one day, in disappointment at what 
 seemed to him a mere postponement. 
 
 "My dear man," Lincoln rephed, "do you 
 suppose I will ever give orders for your boy's 
 execution?" 
 
 He was constantly visiting the hospitals, and 
 just a week before his assassination, as he was 
 about to enter a ward occupied by sick and 
 wounded prisoners, the attendant said, "Mr. 
 President, you won't want to go in there : they 
 are only rebels." He laid his hand on the at- 
 tendant's shoulder, and said, "You mean Con- 
 federates/^ and went on in. Such was the more 
 than paternal love and tenderness that brooded 
 in his great heart. No wonder the soldiers 
 called him "Father Abraham," and the South, 
 in after years, learned that it had lost its best 
 friend. 
 
 Thus, through trial and sorrow and disap- 
 pointment, under the most tremendous respon- 
 sibility that ever weighted a leader, he came 
 to that great character which made him wholly 
 
 169 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and completely a Man. They sneered at him 
 for his lack of education, and yet he might 
 have been said to be almost perfectly educated. 
 Certainly he was cultured ; for had he not wis- 
 dom, pity, love, humour, shrewdness, and a 
 rarely sympathetic imagination, that enabled 
 him to put himself in every other man's place? 
 These qualities, with what is denoted by the 
 phrase "common sense," though in him, surely, 
 it was rather an uncommon sense, combined in 
 perfect equilibrium to make him the ideal 
 American. He came to fullest expression, 
 perhaps, in the beautiful address at the dedica- 
 tion of the National Cemetery on the battle- 
 field of Gettysburg, November 19, 1863. Ed- 
 ward Everett delivered the formal oration, and 
 then Lincoln, having been asked to make a 
 "few appropriate remarks," arose, and "in an 
 unconscious and absorbed manner" slowly put 
 on his spectacles and read the immortal words. 
 Those who heard were disappointed. Seward 
 and others thought he had not proved equal to 
 the occasion, and were glad that Everett had 
 
 170 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 been there to save the day. Everett's ora- 
 tion is neglected, if not forgotten, but hterature 
 will imperishably preserve these noble lines : — 
 ''Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth on this continent a new nation, 
 conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the prop- 
 osition that all men are created equal. Now 
 we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
 whether that nation, or any nation so conceived 
 and so dedicated, can long endure. We are 
 met upon a great battlefield of that war. We 
 have come to dedicate a portion of that field as 
 a final resting place for those who here gave 
 their lives that that nation might live. It is 
 altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
 this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedi- 
 cate, 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 
 
 171 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
 they who fought here have thus far so nobly 
 advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedi- 
 cated to the great task remaining before us; 
 — that from these honoured dead, we take in- 
 creased devotion to that cause for which they 
 gave the last full measure of devotion; — ^that 
 we here highly resolve that these dead shall 
 not have died in vain, that this nation, under 
 God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and 
 that government of the people, by the people, 
 for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 The tide had turned, but more than eighteen 
 weary months were to pass before it would be 
 at the flood of victor}^ Lincoln was spending 
 anxious hours in the War Office, his attention 
 just then focussed on the maps of south-east- 
 ern Tennessee. He was trying to force Burn- 
 side to unite with Rosecrans, and move on 
 Bragg. Burnside got to Ivnoxville and 
 halted. On September 19, without waiting 
 longer, Rosecrans had to give battle, and the 
 armies clashed stubbornly on the field of Chick- 
 
 172 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 amauga. After two days of fiercest fighting, 
 Rosecrans withdrew, and the battle would have 
 been a Confederate victory but for Thomas, 
 who held the Federal left and earned his name 
 of "The Rock of Chickamauga." Thomas 
 covered Rosecrans's withdrawal to Chatta- 
 nooga, where, though demoralised, he found he 
 had not been so badly worsted as he had 
 thought. Lincoln telegraphed to him: *'Be 
 of good cheer, we have unstinted confidence in 
 you. . . . We shall do our utmost to assist 
 you." And he did his utmost. He pricked 
 Burnside forward, ordered Sherman up, and, 
 when Rosecrans's alarms came to him at the 
 Soldiers' Home, he rode to Washington by 
 moonlight, and there in the War Office was 
 devised the remarkable plan of transporting 
 by rail the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps under 
 Hooker. In twelve days these veterans from 
 the Army of the Potomac were at Chattanooga. 
 Wisest act of all, he put Thomas in Rose- 
 crans's place, and Grant in command of the 
 military division of the JMississippi. Grant 
 
 173 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 came, and, with Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, 
 and Hooker under him, on November 24 and 
 25 fought and won the battles of Lookout 
 I^Iountain and Missionary Ridge. Thus East 
 Tennessee was cleared of Confederate occu- 
 pation, and its loyal inhabitants freed from 
 their long thraldom. The President had good 
 reason now to issue his third proclamation of 
 National Thanksgiving. The document, in its 
 high and solemn st3de, breathes his own spirit : 
 "No human counsel hath devised, nor hat4i any 
 mortal hand v^orked out these great things. 
 They are the gracious gifts of the most high 
 God, who, while dealing with us in anger for 
 our sins, hath, nevertheless, remembered 
 mercy." Nor could his pity forget "all those 
 who have become widows, orphans, mourners 
 or sufferers in this lamentable civil strife." 
 
 Meade, no nearer Richmond than ever, had 
 gone into winter quarters, and now for a while 
 Lincoln was to be burdened more with politics 
 than with war. On December 8, 1863, he sent 
 to Congress his third annual message, wlJob 
 
 174 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 surprised every one by its "Proclamation of 
 Amnesty." The proposed amnesty, offered 
 in his own concihatory spirit, was to be em- 
 braced on taking an oath to "support, protect 
 and defend" the Constitution and the Union. 
 At first the proclamation was received in good 
 temper, but soon this changed. The politi- 
 cians were jealous of the legislative preroga- 
 tive, and were incapable of the forgiving spirit 
 of Lincoln. They still hated the "rebels," as 
 they called the Southerners who v/ere trying 
 so hard to secede, though Lincoln seldom called 
 them that. And even those who could put 
 away revenge felt that it was unsafe to restore 
 to the Southerners all rights of citizenship 
 upon mere protestation of loyalty. The ques- 
 tion, too, was involved in many difficulties, 
 among them the granting of suffrage to the 
 negroes, in which, by the way, if at all, Lin- 
 coln believed only to a limited extent. Con- 
 gress took up the subject in fiery spirit, and 
 eventually passed a bill which was much more 
 exacting than the President's, and beyond that 
 
 175 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 retained in the power of Congress the whole 
 execution of the pohcy of reconstruction. Of \ 
 this bill Lincoln could not approve, and it thus 
 may be said to have inaugurated that unfor- 
 tunate policy which inflamed the wounds al- 
 ready made, and which, conceived in hatred, 
 under the great law of moral equivalents pro- 
 duced its ugly results of hatred long after he 
 was gone, — a policy that would have been so 
 wisely otherwise, had he lived to imbue it with 
 his great spirit! But in these troubles he had 
 consolation. At last, in Grant, whom he had 
 been watching ever since Donelson, he had 
 found a general. Congress created the grade 
 of lieutenant-general, — a rank not held by any 
 one since Washington, save Scott, and then 
 only by brevet, — and on March 8, 1864, Lin- 
 coln gave Grant his commission and placed 
 him in command of all the armies. A few days 
 later Grant arrived in Washington, and these 
 two Westerners met for the first time. The 
 President looked at the square jaw, the de- 
 termined face, and knew that he had found his 
 
 176 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 man. Grant, his headquarters with the Army 
 of the Potomac, started on that long and ter- 
 rible campaign which was to end only with 
 the fall of Richmond. "The particulars of 
 your plan I neither know nor seek to know," 
 Lincoln wrote him; and Grant replied, "Should 
 my success be less than I desire and expect, the 
 least I can say is, the fault is not with you." 
 Strange, comforting words from a general, 
 especially a general in Virginia ! He gave Lee 
 battle immediately, and for two days the dread- 
 ful swamps in the Wilderness were the scene 
 of such carnage that Grant could say, "More 
 desperate fighting has not been seen on this 
 continent." From Spottsylvania he wired, "I 
 propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
 all summer." But his despatches were few 
 and laconic. To Lincoln the waiting in the 
 War Office for news was sometimes a strain. 
 "This man doesn't telegraph much," he re- 
 marked. The terrible sacrifice of life sad- 
 dened him, and, after bloody Cold Harbour, a 
 groan went up from the North ; and yet he sent 
 
 177. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Grant word, "Hold on with a bull-dog grip, 
 and chew and choke as much as possible." 
 And Grant held on, and, if the country could 
 not realise it, Lincoln, with Grant before Rich- 
 mond, felt that the end was sure. 
 
 For one day, early in July, the President 
 himself was under fire. Grant had left the 
 capital uncovered, and Lee detached Early's 
 cavalry to dash into Maryland and, if possible, 
 capture Washington. Lew Wallace held him 
 back, however, at the Monocacy, and saved the 
 capital and the cause. There were skirmishes 
 as desperately close as Fort Stevens, four miles 
 from Lincoln's summer cottage at the Soldiers' 
 Home, and twice he visited the fortifications 
 and witnessed the fighting through glasses, his 
 tall form a conspicuous target for sharp- 
 shooters. An officer was killed within a few 
 feet of where he stood, and Stanton ordered the 
 President — rather sharply, it may be suspected 
 — to remain in Washington. When Early got 
 closer, his men recognised the tattered flag of 
 the Sixth Corps, and the veterans Grant had 
 
 178 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sent were there to save Washington. The 
 crisis was short, but it had been big with dan- 
 ger. On September 3, 1864, came word from 
 Sherman that * Atlanta is om's, and fairly 
 won." A month later Sheridan made his ride 
 to Winchester. Then came Farragut's dar- 
 ing victory in Mobile Bay. 
 
 These successes were sorely needed, for with 
 the approach of the presidential campaign of 
 1864 the administration seemed to totter. The 
 news of the fall of Atlanta and of Farragut's 
 victory came just as the Democrats in conven- 
 tion were declaring the war to be a failure. 
 Early in the year there had been serious op- 
 position to Lincoln's renomination. Chase 
 was graceless enough to be an avowed candi- 
 date for the Presidency against the man in 
 whose cabinet he sat, but Lincoln was indif- 
 ferent. He had a keen insight into the moods 
 of the public mind, and an almost unerring 
 instinct as to public opinion, and took little ac- 
 count of the politicians, for he sustained in- 
 timate relations with the people. The differ- 
 
 179 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ence with Chase finally sent the Secretary of 
 the Treasury out of the cabinet, and the Presi- 
 dent appointed William Pitt Fessenden of 
 Maine to the vacancy. But the President 
 never cherished ill feeling. When the aged 
 Chief Justice Taney died, not long after, he 
 appointed Chase to his place on the Supreme 
 Court. Many of the radicals in his party were 
 against him, — Fremont, and Wendell Phillips, 
 and, of course, Greeley. But William Lloj^d 
 Garrison, Owen Love joy, and Oliver Johnson, 
 wiser, more practical than the rest, supported 
 him warmly, though the radicals and some of 
 the Missouri malcontents held a factional con- 
 vention at Cleveland, May 31, and nominated 
 Fremont for President. 
 
 Lincoln did nothing to bring about his own 
 renomination, and by the time the Republican 
 Convention met at Baltimore, June 7, opposi- 
 tion had ceased, and he was renominated, with 
 Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, for Vice- 
 President. Lincoln was pleased, of course, 
 and said to a delegation, come with congratu- 
 
 180 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 lations, that he supposed that it had been "con- 
 cluded that it is not best to swap horses while 
 crossing the river." 
 
 But he was to meet heavy opposition. Val- 
 landigham, from his asylum in Canada, was 
 running for Governor of Ohio on the Demo- 
 cratic ticket, the cry for peace was going up, 
 Greeley was writing in his Tribune about "our 
 bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country," 
 and the "prospect of new rivers of human 
 blood." Lincoln's friends were losing hope, 
 and Leonard Swett expressed their feeling 
 when he wrote, "Unless material changes can 
 be wrought, Lincoln's election is beyond any 
 possible hope." But, while Lincoln humanly 
 desired re-election, he would not listen to his 
 friends when they proposed politicians' 
 methods of bringing it about. He would not 
 allow office-holders to influence their em- 
 ployees, he would not use patronage to buy 
 votes, nor would he stop the draft, but in the 
 very midst of the campaign approved an order 
 calhng for 500,000 men. "I cannot run the 
 
 181 
 
ABEAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 political machine," lie said. "I have enough 
 on my hands without that. It is the people's 
 business — the election is in their hands. If 
 they turn their backs to the fire and get 
 scorched in the rear, they'll find they have to 
 sit on the blister." 
 
 The old melancholy settled black upon him. 
 He felt certain of defeat. On August 23, 
 1864, he wrote this memorandum: "This 
 morning, as for some days past, it seems ex- 
 ceedingly probable.that this administration will 
 not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty 
 to so co-operate with the President-elect as to 
 save the Union between the election and the in- 
 auguration, as he will have secured his elec- 
 tion on such ground that he cannot possibly 
 save it afterward. A. Lincoln." He showed 
 it to no one, but sealed it and had the cabinet 
 members sign their names on the envelope. 
 Then he put it away, — curious evidence of his 
 utter devotion to duty, on the one hand, and of 
 the strain of superstition that was in him; for 
 
 182 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in the act there must have been some half -un- 
 conscious effort to propitiate the fates. 
 
 And yet, despite abuse and vihfication such 
 as few men have endured in silence, despite 
 the foolish advice of panic-stricken friends, he 
 kept his head, and went on, alone, in his own 
 way. He was accused of prolonging the war 
 for inscrutable purposes of his own, and, when 
 a man known as "Colorado Jewett" wrote 
 Greeley that two ambassadors, representing 
 Jefferson Davis, were on the Canadian side at 
 Niagara Falls, ready and willing to negotiate 
 a peace, Greeley wrote the President an hys- 
 terical letter, urging that representatives be 
 sent to meet them. Lincoln "just thought" he 
 would let Greeley "go up and crack that nut 
 for himself," and promptly appointed him to 
 negotiate this peace. Greeley for once was 
 taken aback and demurred, but Lincoln with 
 keen satisfaction insisted, and Greeley had to 
 go, — for Lincoln was adamant when once his 
 purpose was fixed, — and, after days of nego- 
 
 183 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tiations mysterious and secret, the whole thing 
 fell through, the "representatives of Davis & 
 Co." had no authority whatever, and Greeley 
 succeeded, as the wise President had foreseen, 
 only in making himself ridiculous. The news- 
 papers published the correspondence, though 
 not all of it. Greeley would not consent to 
 publication unless elisions were made of items 
 reflecting on him, and this Lincoln magnan- 
 imously waived, even though the publication 
 in that form did him an injustice. But the 
 incident, ridiculous as it was, convinced the 
 people that there was no such chance of peace 
 as Greeley and the Democrats contended. 
 
 The Democratic Convention, late in August, 
 met at Chicago, and nominated McClellan for 
 the Presidency on a peace platform, and his 
 chances then seemed excellent; but Farragut's 
 victory in Mobile, the fall of Atlanta, and 
 Sheridan's ride disposed of their claim that the 
 war was a failure. Though McClellan re- 
 pudiated this platform declaration, his chances 
 waned as the campaign advanced, and when 
 
 184 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the October elections were over, with their Re- 
 pubhcan gains, Vallandigham defeated in 
 Ohio, and all that, it was evident that Lincoln's 
 forebodings had no basis. On the night of 
 November 8, 1864, he sat in the telegraph 
 office with his cabinet officers about him, and, 
 while the returns were coming in, he read at 
 intervals from Nasby's latest "Letters from 
 Confederate X Roads." Stanton was indig- 
 nant, and grumbled at the President's trifling. 
 But the President was serene, and for the mo- 
 ment happy, in the vindication the people had 
 given him. His mighty faith was justified, 
 the prayer that was his very habit of thought 
 had been answered, and his weary eyes at last 
 saw, not far off, the end of the war. 
 
 At two o'clock in the morning, to serenaders 
 at the White House, he spoke simply: "If I 
 know my heart, my gratitude is free from any 
 taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn 
 the motives of any one opposed to me. It is 
 no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, 
 but I give thanks to the Almighty for this 
 
 185 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 evidence of the people's resolution to stand by 
 free government and the rights of humanity." 
 He had a plurality of 494,567, and received 
 212 votes in the electoral college to McClellan's 
 21. 
 
 186 
 
YI 
 
 At last, the end was in sight. Grant 
 was beleaguering Petersburg, Sherman had 
 marched from Atlanta to the sea, Thomas had 
 shattered the Confederate army at Nashville, 
 the stars and bars had been swept from the 
 ocean. There was in the heart of Lincoln, as 
 in the heart of every one, an ineffable longing 
 for peace, but he demanded a "peace worth 
 winning," "The war," he said in his message 
 to Congress, "will cease on the part of the 
 Government whenever it shall have ceased on 
 the part of those who began it." And he 
 would never be a party to the re-enslavement 
 of any of those emancipated by his Proclama- 
 tion: "If the people should, by whatever 
 mode or means, make it an executive duty to 
 re-enslave such persons, another and not I 
 must be their instrument to perform it." He 
 
 187 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 urged the Thirteenth Amendment, abohshing 
 slavery, and when, with the assistance of 
 Democratic votes, the amendment was 
 adopted, there were cheers and a mighty dem- 
 onstration which Speaker Colfax's gavel could 
 not silence or abate, the House adjourned in 
 "honour of this immortal and sublime event," 
 and artillery roared its salutes from Capitol 
 Hill. Then crowds swarmed into the White 
 House, and Lincoln expressed his gratitude 
 that "the great job is ended." 
 
 All the while the agitation for peace went 
 on, and finally, as the result of Francis P. 
 Blair's efforts, early in February the President 
 went with Seward to Hampton Roads, and 
 there on board the steamer River Queen met 
 the Peace Commissioners of the Confederacy, 
 Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, 
 and John A. Campbell. For five hours they 
 talked, but it came to nothing. Lincoln would 
 enter into no agreement with "parties in arms 
 against the Government." He would do noth- 
 ing, say nothing, that might be construed as a 
 
 188 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 recognition of the Confederacy as a treating 
 power. Hunter found a precedent in the case 
 of Charles I of England, who had treated 
 "with the people in arms against him." Lin- 
 coln gazed across the water. "I do not profess 
 to be posted in history," he said in his dry, in- 
 imitable way; "on all such matters I will turn 
 you over to Seward. All I distinctly recol- 
 lect about the case of Charles I is that he lost 
 his head!" 
 
 It was perhaps only what Lincoln had ex- 
 pected. And yet, if he brought back from 
 Hampton Roads nothing tangible, he brought 
 back the conviction that the Southern cause 
 was lost, and that the Southerners knew it; 
 for, reader of men that he was, those sad eyes 
 had penetrated the masque of pride worn by 
 the Confederate Commissioners and read the 
 hopelessness in their hearts. His own heart 
 was centred on forgiveness, amity, and gener- 
 osity. He feared that the vindictive spirit he 
 found about him, now when the triumph should 
 come, would keep alive the ugly hatred the 
 
 189 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 war had generated in nearly every breast but 
 his. This beautiful spirit he breathed into his 
 second inaugural addi^ess, comparable in dig- 
 nity and in literary beauty only to the Gettys- 
 burg address. On the 4th day of March, 1865, 
 from the east portico of the Capitol, to an audi- 
 ence assembled under conditions far different 
 from those which had existed four years be- 
 fore, he read the enduring words : "Fondly do 
 we hope, fervently do we j^ray, that this mighty 
 scourge of war may speedily pass away. 
 Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the 
 wealth piled by the bondmen's two hundred 
 and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
 and until every drop of blood drawn with the 
 lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 
 sword, as was said three thousand years ago, 
 so still it must be said, *The judgments of the 
 Lord are true and righteous altogether.'' 
 With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
 with firmness in the right as God gives us to 
 see the right, let us strive on to finish the work 
 we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; 
 
 190 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 to care for him who shall have borne the battle, 
 and for his widow and his orphan, — to do all 
 which may achieve and cherish a just and last- 
 ing peace among om^selves and with all na- 
 tions." 
 
 About the middle of that month of March, 
 Lincoln had word from Grant telling him he 
 was about to close in on Lee and end the war. 
 Then on the 20th Grant telegraphed: "Can 
 you not visit City Point for a day or two? I 
 would like very much to see you, and I think 
 the rest would do you good." Rest! For this 
 weary man! Could it be? ''I am afraid," he 
 had said to some woman who, taking the hand 
 that had signed the pardon of her husband 
 and her son, had gone down on her knees and 
 spoken of meeting him in heaven, — "I am 
 afraid with all my troubles I shall never get 
 to the resting place you speak of." He was 
 deeply moved. Speed was there, the old 
 friend, whom the war had separated from him. 
 It was the close of a hard day, and Speed 
 remonstrated with him for yielding to such 
 
 191 
 
ABKAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 demands upon his sympathies. He had wear- 
 ily half agreed, saying that he was ill, that Ijis 
 hands and feet were always cold, and that he 
 ought to be in bed. And yet such scenes jis 
 that through which he had just passed con- 
 soled him, after all. *'It is more than one can 
 often say," he told Speed, "that in doing right, 
 one has made two people happy in one day." 
 And so he accepted Grant's invitation. 
 Mrs. Lincoln and his beloved Tad went with 
 him; and they all were happy as the River 
 Queen dropped down the Potomac, and as- 
 cended the James to City Point, where Grant 
 had his headquarters. While he was there, 
 Sherman came up from North Carolina, and 
 with him and Grant the President conferred. 
 The generals felt that each must fight another 
 battle to end the war, but Lincoln pleaded for 
 "no more bloodshed." Lie was there in touch 
 with the final movements of the army on that 
 night of awful thunderstorms which Grant 
 chose for his last general advance against Lee, 
 and the moment the news came that the Con- 
 
 192 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 federate capital had fallen and that Jefferson 
 Davis had fled he said, "I want to go to Rich- 
 mond." And so, on the morning of April 4, 
 with Admiral Porter and little Tad, he went 
 aboard the River Queen; but obstructions 
 placed in the James by the Confederates dur- 
 ing the siege deterred them, and, leaving 
 the steamer, the President went on in the ad- 
 miral's barge. They stopped long enough to 
 let Tad disembark and gather some spring 
 flowers from the river-banks, and then went on 
 to Richmond. 
 
 Thus, after four years of war, with Tad and 
 the admiral and his little escort of sailors, 
 simply, on foot, he entered the abandoned 
 capital. The city was in utter demoralisation, 
 parts of it in flames, fired by the flying Con- 
 federates; but he walked in safety, bringing 
 with him not the vengeance of a conqueror, 
 but the love of a liberator. The negroes 
 flocked to see him, greeting him with supersti- 
 tious reverence, bursting into tears, shouting 
 veritable hosannas. "Mars' Lincoln he walk 
 
 193 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 de yearf lak de Lo'd!" shouted one; and an- 
 other, f aUing on his knees to kiss his feet, cried, 
 "Eress de Lo'd, dere is de great Messiah!" 
 And there was no more significant moment, 
 perhaps, in all history than that which recog- 
 nised political liberty in America, when an 
 aged negro, baring his white wool, made rever- 
 ent obeisance, and Lincoln in acknowledgment 
 lifted his high hat. 
 
 The guard rescued him, however, from the 
 crowd, and conducted him to the Confederate 
 Mansion, the late residence of Jefferson Davis. 
 He remained in Richmond two days, discuss- 
 ing the details of the restoration of Federal 
 authority. His counsel was all for kindness, 
 forgiveness. ''Once get them to ploughing," 
 he said to Porter, "and gathering in their own 
 little crops, eating popcorn at their own fire- 
 sides, and you can't get them to shoulder a 
 musket again for half a century." To the 
 military governor he said, *'Let them down 
 easy." And when, at Libby Prison, some one 
 declared that Jefferson Davis ought to be 
 
 194 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hanged, he said, "Judge not, that ye be not 
 judged." It was in this temper, the expres- 
 sion of a spiritual development far beyond 
 that of any of his contemporaries, a develop- 
 ment that centuries hence will still be in ad- 
 vance of the world of men, that he was already 
 preparing to "bind up the nation's wounds." 
 He went back to City Point, and thence, on 
 hearing that Seward had been injured by be- 
 ing thrown from his carriage, he hastened on 
 to Washington. There he heard of Lee's sur- 
 render at Appomattox. Two days later, to a 
 large crowd at the White House, he delivered 
 a carefully prepared address on the rehabilita- 
 tion of the Southern States. In this speech 
 he outlined the policy of reconstruction he in- 
 tended to pursue, and had already applied in 
 the case of Louisiana. He had been bitterly 
 criticised, as usual. The address was full of 
 his pungent personality, marked by his quaint 
 and trenchant style. "Concede," he said, 
 "that the new government of Louisiana is only, 
 to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl, 
 
 195 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the 
 egg than by smashing it." It was the last 
 speech he ever made. 
 
 It was little Tad who said that his father had 
 never been happy since they came to Washing- 
 ton. He had, indeed, under that awful 
 burden, grown rapidly old, his laughter had 
 failed, he had become more and more detached, 
 more abstracted, his grey eyes were veiled, as 
 though his physical, like his spiritual, vision 
 were turned inward. Dreadful dreams had 
 haunted him. On the night of the 13th he had 
 one which oppressed him: he "was in a singular 
 and indescribable vessel — moving toward a 
 dark and indefinite shore." In the morning 
 —it was Good Friday, April 14, the fourth 
 anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter 
 — he told this dream to his cabinet, then turned 
 to business. Grant was present, having come 
 up from Appomattox. They wished to know 
 about Sherman's movements. 
 
 But now, at last, he was happy, sharing with 
 the people he loved the gladness that came with 
 
 196 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 the end of the war. The sadness in his face 
 was giving way to an expression of lofty seren- 
 ity, of sweet and quiet joy. That day he was 
 especially cheerful. The nation in its noisy 
 American way, with bands and bonfires and 
 bells, with illuminations and resolutions and 
 speeches, was celebrating the victory down in 
 Charleston harbour. Henry Ward Beecher 
 was delivering the oration at the ceremony of 
 raising the Union flag once more over black- 
 ened Sumter. All Washington was celebrat- 
 ing, the draft had been suspended, Grant was 
 in town, the war was over; and in the cabinet 
 Lincoln would hear of nothing but amnesty, 
 reconciliation, fraternal love. There were no 
 more "rebels," he said: they were ''our fellow- 
 citizens." 
 
 He drove out with Mrs. Lincoln in the soft 
 sunshine of the spring day. The trees were 
 blossoming; the lilacs, which Walt Whitman 
 has forever associated with the fragrant mem- 
 ory of him, were in bloom, and, as they drove 
 together, he spoke of the future. He had 
 
 197 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 saved a little money during his Presidency, 
 they would save a little more, go back to 
 Springfield, and he would practise law again. 
 And yet to the wife by his side this joy was 
 portentous. He had been like this, she re- 
 membered, just before Willie died. 
 
 They drove back to the White House in the 
 waning afternoon, and, seeing some old friends 
 from Illinois on the lawn, he called to them. 
 Hichard Oglesby was among them, and they 
 went to the President's office, where he read 
 to them some book of humour, — John Phoenix, 
 perhaps, — and laughed and loitered, and was 
 late to dinner. For the evening Mrs. Lincoln 
 had arranged a theatre party, with General 
 and Mrs. Grant as her guests. They were 
 going to Ford's Theatre, to see Laura Keene 
 play in Our American Cousin, The manager 
 of the theatre, with an eye to business, had 
 advertised the fact that "The President and 
 his Lady" and "The Hero of Appomattox and 
 Mrs. Grant" would be there; and, when Stan- 
 ton learned of it, he tried to dissuade them, for 
 
 198 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the secret service had heard rumours of threat- 
 ened assassination. He was so vigorous that 
 he succeeded with Grant, who withdrew his 
 acceptance of the invitation, and left for Bur- 
 hngton, New Jersey, to see his daughter 
 Nelhe. But Lincoki laughed at Stanton. 
 The party was reorganised. He took with 
 him Major Rathbone, "because Stanton in- 
 sists upon having some one to protect me." 
 Miss Harris, the daughter of a New York 
 senator, was asked, and about nine o'clock the 
 party entered the presidential box at the 
 theatre. The holiday mood was on him still. 
 He enjoyed the performance with that keen 
 relish the play always afforded him, and 
 laughed and joked and was delightful. 
 
 At twenty minutes after ten o'clock there 
 was a pistol-shot. Some thought, in the mo- 
 ment's flash, that it was all part of the play. 
 And then two men were struggling in the 
 President's box. There was the siclmess of 
 the confusion of tragedy, and a woman's voice 
 shrieking : — ; 
 
 199 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "He has killed the President!" 
 
 A man leaped from the box, caught his spur 
 in the American flag that draped it, and then, 
 rising from the stage where he had heavily 
 fallen, he brandished a dagger, cried out with 
 awful theatricalism, ^^Sic semper tyrannisr 
 and, stalking lamely, crossed the stage and 
 disappeared. Then horror and chaos in the 
 theatre and in the city. 
 
 They bore the President from the theatre, 
 and some lodger, leaving a house just across 
 the street, said, "Take him up to my room." 
 Thither they bore him, to the lodger's bed, and 
 watched all the night through. The bullet, 
 entering at the back of the head, had passed 
 through his brain. He never was conscious 
 any more, and in the morning, at twenty-two 
 minutes after seven o'clock, while the crowds 
 were straining their eyes on the bulletins and 
 the dawn had come after the blackest and most 
 horrid night Washington had ever known, he 
 died; and Stanton, at his bedside, said, — 
 
 200 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 '*Now he belongs to the ages." 
 
 All that night the city had been in uproar, 
 drums beating the long roll, soldiers ransack- 
 ing everywhere. Seward had been almost 
 mortally stabbed. There were awful rumours 
 that Vice-President Johnson was killed, and 
 Grant and Stanton. The city shuddered with 
 the fear of some vast, unknown conspiracy. 
 The blow had been struck so suddenly, no effi- 
 cient pursuit had been made. But, as the day 
 progressed, it was learned that the plot had 
 succeeded only in the President's case. Se- 
 ward was desperately wounded, but could re- 
 cover. The others were safe. Grant was 
 hastening back from New Jersey. Johnson 
 had taken the oath, and was President. 
 
 The assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a 
 melodramatic actor, one in most ways un- 
 worthy of the great name he bore. He was 
 a fanatic in the Southern cause, and long, it 
 seemed, cherished the plot he had at last so 
 successfully executed that he struck down the 
 
 201 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dearest life in America. At the stage door of 
 the theatre he had had a horse in waiting, and 
 had ridden off into Maryland. 
 
 All over the North, that next day, the peo- 
 ple were dumb with grief and rage. The il- 
 luminations, the festoons, the arches, the Stars 
 and Stripes with which they had decorated 
 whole towns, mocked them now, and they took 
 them down or hid them away under the black 
 of their mourning. Men met in the street, and 
 stood mute, gazing at each other with tears 
 running down their cheeks, and even those who 
 had hated and maligned and opposed him un- 
 derstood him now in the transfiguration 
 through which his last sacrifice revealed him. 
 They folded the body of Abraham Lincoln in 
 the flag, and bore it from that lodging-house 
 in Tenth Street to the White House, and after 
 that to the Capitol, where it lay in state. Then 
 began that long, strange funeral procession 
 homeward, when it was borne back over the 
 very route he had taken in 1861 when he went 
 to Washington to take up his task, with pauses 
 
 202 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and funeral marches and lyings in state in 
 city and capital. Night, storm, and rain made 
 no difference to the crowds. At New York, 
 when the bells tolled midnight, a German 
 chorus began to sing the Integer Vitae; and, 
 as the train sped through the wide country, 
 little groups of farmers could be seen, dim 
 figures in the night, watching it sweep by, wav- 
 ing lanterns in sad farewell. 
 
 Long before the procession ended, the as- 
 sassin, at bay in a barn in Virginia, had been 
 shot down by a soldier, a fanatic in the Union 
 cause, Boston Corbett. But, in the face of 
 Abraham Lincoln, the sweeping thousands 
 that looked upon it as it was slowly borne 
 homeward through the States saw forgiveness 
 and peace. He was buried May 4, 1865, with 
 stately civil and military ceremonies, in Oak 
 Ridge Cemetery at Springfield. 
 
 His beautiful dream was not to be. 
 Shrewd, logical realist though he was, never- 
 theless he was essentially an idealist, and his 
 
 203 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ideal was too high, too far. Mutual forgive- 
 ness, immediate reconciliation, brotherly love, 
 were not for his contemporaries, and their 
 hatred bore its inevitable fruit in the bitter 
 days of reconstruction that followed. Because 
 they could not understand him, the men of his 
 time reviled and ridiculed him, measured him 
 by the standards with which they measured 
 themselves, and, in judging him, judged only 
 themselves. Themselves impractical, they 
 thought him impractical who was the most 
 practical of men; thought him ignorant who 
 was the wisest of men; sneered at him as un- 
 educated, — ^him on whom degrees and doctors' 
 hoods would have appeared pinchbeck and 
 ridiculous ! And his fate, in hf e, in death, was 
 the lonely fate — and the immortal glory of all 
 the prophets and saviours of the world. As 
 the scenes in the great war receded, as the per- 
 spective lengthened and passions cooled, men 
 came to see how great, how mighty, how orig- 
 inal he was. As slowly they grew in the 
 
 204i 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 national spirit he breathed into them, as man- 
 kind in its upward striving reached toward 
 his stature, they began to recognise in him not 
 only the first, but the ideal American, realising 
 in his life all that America is and hopes and 
 dreams. And more and more, as time goes 
 on, he grows upon the mind of the world. The 
 figure of Washington, the first of American 
 heroes, has taken on the cold and classic isola- 
 tion of a marble statue. But Lincoln, even 
 though inevitable legend has enveloped him in 
 its refracting atmosphere, remains dearly 
 human, and the common man may look upon 
 his sad and homely face and find in it that 
 qiiality of character which causes him to re- 
 vere and love him as a familiar friend, one of 
 the common people whom, as he once humor- 
 ously said, God must have loved ^'because he 
 made so many of them." Thus he remains 
 close to the heart, just as if he had lived on 
 through the years, essentially and forever 
 human, not alone the possession of our own 
 
 205 
 
ABRAHAJM LINCOLN 
 
 people, but of all people ; not of a nation only, 
 but of the whole human brotherhood he loved 
 with such perfect devotion, and of that human- 
 ity to which he gave his life. 
 
 206 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The books, sketches, essays, and poems on Lin- 
 coln, as was intimated in the Preface, are already 
 legion. Besides, his life is written all over and 
 through the history of our nation during the critical 
 period to which slavery brought it. It would be 
 impossible to name them all, perhaps it would be 
 impracticable to read them all. Historical works 
 dealing with his times and with the war, all of which 
 must certainly take him into account, are therefore 
 omitted, together with much else of interest. But 
 the following titles have been selected as being, it is 
 thought, the leading Lives and books bearing directly 
 on his career. Those considered most valuable are 
 marked with an asterisk. 
 
 I. * Lives and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln 
 AND Hannibal Hamlin. By William Dean 
 Howells and John L. Hayes. (Columbus, Ohio, 
 1860: Follett, Foster & Co.) 
 
 II. Political Debates between Hon. Abraham 
 Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in the 
 Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois, etc. 
 (Columbus, Ohio, 1860: Follett, Foster & Co.) 
 
 207 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 III. Life of Abraham Lincoln, etc. By Joseph 
 H. Barrett. (Cincinnati, 1865: Moore, Wilstach 
 & Baldwin.) 
 
 IV. Abraham Lincoln, his Life and Public 
 Services. By Phoebe A. C. Hanaford. (Boston, 
 1865: B. B. Russell & Co.) 
 
 V. The Life and Public Services of Abraham 
 Lincoln, Etc. By Henry J. Raymond. (New 
 York, 1865: Derby & MHler.) 
 
 VI. The History of Abraham Lincoln and the 
 Overthrow of Slavery. By Isaac N. Arnold. 
 (Chicago, 1866: Clarke & Co.) 
 
 VII. * Six Months at the White House with 
 Abraham Lincoln, etc. By Francis B. Car- 
 penter. (New York, 1866: Hurd & Houghton.) 
 
 VIII. * Life of Abraham Lincoln. By J. G. 
 Holland. (Springfield, Mass., 1866: C. Bill.) 
 
 IX. * The Life of Abraham Lincoln, from his 
 Birth to his Inauguration as President. By 
 Ward H. Lamon. (Boston, 1872: J. R. Osgood 
 &Co.) 
 
 X. Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition op 
 Slavery in the United States. By Charles G. 
 Leland. (New York, 1879: G. P. Putnam's 
 Sons.) 
 
 208 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 XL * Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by 
 Distinguished Men of his Time. Edited by 
 Allan Thorndike Rice. (New York, 1886: North 
 American Publishing Co.) 
 
 XII. * Abraham Lincoln, a History. By John 
 C. Nicolay and John Hay. (New York, 1890: 
 The Century Company.) 
 
 XIH. * Herndon's Lincoln, the True Story of 
 A Great Life, etc. By William H. Herndon and 
 Jesse W. Weik. (Chicago, 1889: Belford, Clarke 
 & Co.) Same, with Emendations. (New York, 
 1892: D. Appleton & Co.) 
 
 XIV. Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, etc. 
 By Henry C. Whitney. (Boston, 1892 : Estes & 
 liauriat.) 
 
 XV. * Abraham Lincoln. By John T. Morse, 
 Jr. (Boston and New York, 1893: Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co.) 
 
 XVI. * Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. 
 Edited by John C. Nicolay and John Hay. (New 
 York, 1894: The Century Company.) 
 
 XVII. Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of 
 American Slavery. By Noah Brooks. (New 
 York, 1894: G. P. Putnam's Sons.) 
 
 209 
 
l/ 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 XVIII. * Abraham Lincoln, the Man of the 
 People. By Norman Hapgood. (New York, 
 1899: The Macmillan Company.) 
 
 XIX. * The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ida 
 M. Tarbell. (New York, 1900: The Doubleday 
 & McClure Co.) 
 
 XX. * Lincoln, the Lawyer. By Frederick 
 Trevor Hill. (New York, 1906: The Century 
 Company.) 
 
 XXL * Lincoln, Master of Men, a Study of 
 Character. By Alonzo Rothschild. (Boston 
 and New York, 1906: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) 
 
 XXII. * Lincoln in the Telegraph Office. 
 By David Homer Bates. (New York, 1907: The 
 Century Company.) 
 
 XXIII. * Abraham Lincoln. By Henry Bryan 
 Binns. (London: J. M. Dent & Co.; New York, 
 1907: E. P. Dutton&Co.) 
 
 XXIV. * The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 
 1858. Volume I. of Lincoln Series ; Collections 
 of the Illinois State Historical Library, Vol. III. 
 Edited by Edwin Erie Sparks. (Springfield, 
 Illinois, 1908.) 
 
 210 
 
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