Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Leonard Johnson and the Online

                         Our American Holidays

                           LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

                         Our American Holidays

A series of Anthologies upon American Holidays, each volume a collection
of writings from many sources, historical, poetic, religious, patriotic,
etc., presenting each American festival as seen through the eyes of the
representative writers of many ages and nations.

                               EDITED BY
                       ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

                    _12mo. Each volume $1.00 net_

                               NOW READY

                THANKSGIVING            LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY
                CHRISTMAS               MEMORIAL DAY

                             IN PREPARATION

                WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY   EASTER
                ARBOR DAY               FLAG DAY
                FOURTH OF JULY          NEW YEAR'S DAY

                          MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
                      31 East 17th Street   New York

                          Our American Holidays

                            LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

                    A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF LINCOLN AS
                   GIVEN IN THE MOST NOTEWORTHY ESSAYS,
                     ORATIONS AND POEMS, IN FICTION
                      AND IN LINCOLN'S OWN WRITINGS

                               EDITED BY
                        ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

                                NEW YORK
                        MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
                                  1916

                           Copyright, 1909, by
                        MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
                               NEW YORK

                         Published, January, 1909

                         2nd Printing--June, 1911
                         3rd Printing--July, 1914
                         4th Printing--Feb.  1916

CONTENTS

                                                                  PAGE
PREFACE                                                             ix

INTRODUCTION                                                        xi

A BIRDSEYE VIEW OF LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY                                      3
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF LINCOLN'S LIFE       _Osborn H. Oldroyd_          6

II
EARLY LIFE

LINCOLN'S EDUCATION                        _Horace Greeley_         15
ABE LINCOLN'S HONESTY                                               17
THE BOY THAT HUNGERED FOR KNOWLEDGE                                 18
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                         _Florence E. Pratt_         19
YOUNG LINCOLN'S KINDNESS OF HEART                                   20
A VOICE FROM THE WILDERNESS                _Charles Sumner_         21
CHOOSING ABE LINCOLN CAPTAIN                                        22

MATURITY

LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE                                                  31
HOW LINCOLN AND JUDGE B---- SWAPPED HORSES                          33
LINCOLN AS A MAN OF LETTERS                   _H. W. Mabie_         34
LINCOLN'S PRESENCE OF BODY                                          44
HOW LINCOLN BECAME A NATIONAL FIGURE       _Ida M. Tarbell_         45
LINCOLN'S LOVE FOR THE LITTLE ONES                                  89
HOW LINCOLN TOOK HIS ALTITUDE                                       90

IV
IN THE WHITE HOUSE

HOW LINCOLN WAS ABUSED                                              95
SONNET IN 1862                           _John James Piatt_         96
LINCOLN THE PRESIDENT                _James Russell Lowell_         96
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                               _Frank Moore_        109
THE PROCLAMATION                  _John Greenleaf Whittier_        110
THE EMANCIPATION                        _James A. Garfield_        112
THE EMANCIPATION GROUP            _John Greenleaf Whittier_        121
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CHRISTMAS GIFT               _Nora Perry_        122

V
DEATH OF LINCOLN

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!                       _Walt Whitman_        127
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEATH                      _Walt Whitman_        128
HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY                   _Walt Whitman_        134
TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN    _William Cullen Bryant_        135
CROWN HIS BLOODSTAINED PILLOW             _Julia Ward Howe_        136
THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN                 _Walt Whitman_        137
OUR SUN HATH GONE DOWN                        _Phoebe Cary_        139
TOLLING                                       _Lucy Larcom_        142
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                          _Rose Terry Cooke_        143
EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN         _Henry Ward Beecher_        144
HYMN                                _Oliver Wendell Holmes_        151
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                                _Tom Taylor_        153

VI
TRIBUTES

THE MARTYR CHIEF                     _James Russell Lowell_        159
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                       _Ralph Waldo Emerson_        161
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN                   _William McKinley_        169
LINCOLN                                _Theodore Roosevelt_        170
LINCOLN'S GRAVE                          _Maurice Thompson_        170
TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN                                                173
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                            _H. H. Brownell_        174
TRIBUTES                                                           189
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                               _Joel Benton_        189
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN _Richard Watson Gilder_        190
LINCOLN                                   _George H. Boker_        192
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                         _James A. Garfield_        193
AN HORATIAN ODE                            _R. H. Stoddard_        195
SOME FOREIGN TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN    _Harriet Beecher Stowe_        202
THE GETTYSBURG ODE                          _Bayard Taylor_        211
TRIBUTES                                                           212
LINCOLN                              _Macmillan's Magazine_        214
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                            _R. H. Stoddard_        215
LINCOLN                                 _Edna Dean Proctor_        215
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM'D     _Walt Whitman_        218

VII
THE WHOLE MAN

LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE              _Edwin Markham_        233
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN     _George Bancroft_        235
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                             _Goldwin Smith_        276
GREATNESS OF HIS SIMPLICITY                  _H. A. Delano_        278
HORACE GREELEY'S ESTIMATE OF LINCOLN                               279
LINCOLN                                  _J. T. Trowbridge_        282
THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF LINCOLN            _B. B. Tyler_        282
TO THE SPIRIT OF LINCOLN                     _R. W. Gilder_        296
LINCOLN AS A TYPICAL AMERICAN             _Phillips Brooks_        297
LINCOLN AS CAVALIER AND PURITAN               _H. W. Grady_        304
LINCOLN, THE TENDER-HEARTED                  _H. W. Bolton_        306
THE CHARACTER OF LINCOLN                    _W. H. Herndon_        307
"WITH CHARITY FOR ALL"                      _W. T. Sherman_        317
LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY                        _Ida V. Woodbury_        318
FEBRUARY TWELFTH                          _M. H. Howliston_        319
TWO FEBRUARY BIRTHDAYS      _L. M. Hadley and C. Z. Denton_        323

VIII
LINCOLN'S PLACE IN HISTORY

THE THREE GREATEST AMERICANS           _Theodore Roosevelt_        333
HIS CHOICE AND HIS DESTINY                  _F. M. Bristol_        333
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                       _Robert G. Ingersoll_        334
LINCOLN                              _Paul Laurence Dunbar_        341
THE GRANDEST FIGURE                          _Walt Whitman_        342
ABRAHAM LINCOLN                              _Lyman Abbott_        345
"LINCOLN THE IMMORTAL"                          _Anonymous_        346
THE CRISIS AND THE HERO                 _Frederic Harrison_        349
LINCOLN                                 _John Vance Cheney_        351
MAJESTIC IN HIS INDIVIDUALITY                _S. P. Newman_        353

IX
LINCOLN YARNS AND SAYINGS

THE QUESTION OF LEGS                                               359
HOW LINCOLN WAS PRESENTED WITH A KNIFE                             360
"WEEPING WATER"                                                    361
MILD REBUKE TO A DOCTOR                                            362

X
FROM LINCOLN'S SPEECHES AND WRITINGS

LINCOLN'S LIFE AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF                               365
THE INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY                                           365
SPEECH AT COOPER INSTITUTE                                         368
FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS                                            371
LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY                                           376
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION                                          378
THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION                                          380
GETTYSBURG ADDRESS                                                 382
REMARKS TO NEGROES ON THE STREETS OF RICHMOND                      383
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS                                           384

PREFACE

An astounding number of books have been written on Abraham Lincoln.
Our Library of Congress contains over one thousand of them in
well-nigh every modern language. Yet, incredible as it may seem, no
miner has until to-day delved in these vast fields of Lincolniana
until he has brought together the most precious of the golden words
written of and by the Man of the People. Howe has collected a few of
the best poems on Lincoln; Rice, Oldroyd and others, the elder prose
tributes and reminiscences. McClure has edited Lincoln's yarns and
stories; Nicolay and Hay, his speeches and writings. But each
successive twelfth of February has emphasized the growing need for a
unification of this scattered material.

The present volume offers, in small compass, the most noteworthy
essays, orations, fiction and poems on Lincoln, together with some
fiction, with characteristic anecdotes and "yarns" and his most famous
speeches and writings. Taken in conjunction with a good biography, it
presents the first succinct yet comprehensive view of "the first
American." The Introduction gives some account of the celebration of
Lincoln's Birthday and of his principal biographers.

NOTE

The Editor and Publishers wish to acknowledge their indebtedness to
Houghton, Mifflin & Company; the McClure Company, R. S. Peale and J.
A. Hill Co.; Charles Scribner's Sons; Dana Estes Company; Mr. David
McKay, Mr. Joel Benton, Mr. C. P. Farrell and others who have very
kindly granted permission to reprint selections from works bearing
their copyright.

INTRODUCTION

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born at
Nolin Creek, Kentucky, on Feb. 12, 1809. As the following pages
contain more than one biographical sketch it is not necessary here to
touch on the story of his life. Lincoln's Birthday is now a legal
holiday in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New
York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Washington (state) and Wyoming, and
is generally observed in the other Northern States.

In its inspirational value to youth Lincoln's Birthday stands among
the most important of our American holidays. Its celebration in school
and home can not be made too impressive. "Rising as Lincoln did,"
writes Edward Deems, "from social obscurity through a youth of manual
toil and poverty, steadily upward to the highest level of honor in the
world, and all this as the fruit of earnest purpose, hard work, humane
feeling and integrity of character, he is an example and an
inspiration to youth unparalleled in history. At the same time he is
the best specimen of the possibilities attainable by genius in our
land and under our free institutions."

In arranging exercises for Lincoln's Birthday the teacher and parent
should try not so much to teach the bare facts of his career as to
give the children a sense of Lincoln's actual personality through his
own yarns and speeches and such accounts as are given here by Herndon,
Bancroft, Mabie, Tarbell, Phillips Brooks and others. He should show
them Lincoln's greatest single act--Emancipation--through the eyes of
Garfield and Whittier. He should try to reach the children with the
thrill of an adoring sorrow-maddened country at the bier of its great
preserver; with such a passion of love and patriotism as vibrates in
the lines of Whitman, Brownell and Bryant, of Stoddard, Procter, Howe,
Holmes, Lowell, and in the throbbing periods of Henry Ward Beecher.
His main object should be to make his pupils love Lincoln. He should
appeal to their national pride with the foreign tributes to Lincoln's
greatness; make them feel how his memory still works through the years
upon such contemporary poets as Gilder, Thompson, Markham, Cheney and
Dunbar; and finally through the eyes of Harrison, Whitman, Ingersoll,
Newman and others, show them our hero set in his proud, rightful place
in the long vista of the ages.

In order to use the present volume with the best results it is
advisable for teacher and parent to gain a more consecutive view of
Lincoln's life than is offered here.

The standard biography of Lincoln is the monumental one in ten large
volumes by Nicolay and Hay, the President's private secretaries. This
contains considerable material not found elsewhere, but since its
publication in 1890 much new matter has been unearthed, especially by
the enterprise of Miss Ida Tarbell, whose "Life" in two volumes
contains the essentials of the larger official work, is well balanced,
and written in a simple, vigorous style perfectly adapted to the
subject. If only one biography of Lincoln is to be read, Miss
Tarbell's will, on the whole, be found most satisfactory.

The older Lives, written by Lincoln's friends and associates, such as
Lamon and Herndon, make up in vividness and the intimate personal
touch what they necessarily lack in perspective. Arnold's Life deals
chiefly with the executive and legislative history of Lincoln's
administration. The Life by the novelist J. G. Holland deals popularly
with his hero's personality. The memoirs by Barrett, Abbott, Howells,
Bartlett, Hanaford and Power were written in the main for political
purposes.

Among the later works there stand out Morse's scholarly and serious
account (in the American Statesmen series) of Lincoln's public policy;
the vivid portrayal of Lincoln's adroitness as a politician by Col.
McClure in Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times; Whitney's Life on the
Circuit with Lincoln, with its fund of entertaining anecdotes; Abraham
Lincoln, an Essay by Carl Schurz; James Morgan's "short and simple
annals" of Abraham Lincoln The Boy and the Man; Frederick Trevor
Hill's brilliant account of Lincoln the Lawyer, the result of much
recent research; the study of his personal magnetism in Alonzo
Rothschild's Lincoln, Master of Men; and The True Abraham Lincoln by
Curtis--a collection of sketches portraying Lincoln's character from
several interesting points of view. Abraham Lincoln The Man of the
People by Norman Hapgood is one of most recent and least conventional
accounts. It is short, vigorous, vivid, and intensely American.

Among the many popular Lives for young people are: Abraham Lincoln,
the Pioneer Boy, by W. M. Thayer; Abraham Lincoln, The Backwoods Boy,
by Horatio Alger, Jr.; Abraham Lincoln, by Charles Carleton Coffin;
The True Story of Abraham Lincoln The American, by E. S. Brooks; The
Boy Lincoln, by W. O. Stoddard; and--most important of all--Nicolay's
Boy's Life of Abraham Lincoln.

                                                              R. H. S.

A BIRDSEYE VIEW OF LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The following autobiography was written by Mr. Lincoln's own hand at
the request of J. W. Fell of Springfield, Ill., December 20, 1859. In
the note which accompanied it the writer says: "Herewith is a little
sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I
suppose, that there is not much of me."

"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin Co., Ky. My parents were both
born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families,
perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a
family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams Co., and
others in Mason Co., Ill. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln,
emigrated from Rockingham Co., Va., to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782,
where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle,
but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His
ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks Co., Pa. An
effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name
ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in
both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and
the like.

"My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and
grew up literally without any education. He removed from Kentucky to
what is now Spencer Co., Ind., in my eighth year. We reached our new
home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild
region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods.
There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called, but no
qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin',
and cipherin', to the rule of three. If a straggler, supposed to
understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was
looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite
ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know
much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of
three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little
advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from
time to time under the pressure of necessity.

"I was raised to farm work, at which I continued till I was
twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first
year in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in
Sangamon, now Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of
clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War, and I was elected a
captain of volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any
I have had since. I went into the campaign, was elected, ran for the
Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten--the only time I have
ever been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding
biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a
candidate afterward. During the legislative period I had studied law,
and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was elected to
the Lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From
1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever
before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral
ticket, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics
when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I
have done since then is pretty well known.

"If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be
said I am in height six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh,
weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark
complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes--no other marks or
brands recollected.

                                               "Yours very truly,
                                                          A. LINCOLN."

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF LINCOLN'S LIFE

BY OSBORN H. OLDROYD

From "Words of Lincoln"

The sun which rose on the 12th of February, 1809, lighted up a little
log cabin on Nolin Creek, Hardin Co., Ky., in which Abraham Lincoln
was that day ushered into the world. Although born under the humblest
and most unpromising circumstances, he was of honest parentage. In
this backwoods hut, surrounded by virgin forests, Abraham's first four
years were spent. His parents then moved to a point about six miles
from Hodgensville, where he lived until he was seven years of age,
when the family again moved, this time to Spencer Co., Ind.

The father first visited the new settlement alone, taking with him his
carpenter tools, a few farming implements, and ten barrels of whisky
(the latter being the payment received for his little farm) on a
flatboat down Salt Creek to the Ohio River. Crossing the river, he
left his cargo in care of a friend, and then returned for his family.
Packing the bedding and cooking utensils on two horses, the family of
four started for their new home. They wended their way through the
Kentucky forests to those of Indiana, the mother and daughter (Sarah)
taking their turn in riding.

Fourteen years were spent in the Indiana home. It was from this place
that Abraham, in company with young Gentry, made a trip to New Orleans
on a flatboat loaded with country produce. During these years Abraham
had less than twelve months of schooling, but acquired a large
experience in the rough work of pioneer life. In the autumn of 1818
the mother died, and Abraham experienced the first great sorrow of his
life. Mrs. Lincoln had possessed a very limited education, but was
noted for intellectual force of character.

The year following the death of Abraham's mother his father returned
to Kentucky, and brought a new guardian to the two motherless
children. Mrs. Sally Johnson, as Mrs. Lincoln, brought into the family
three children of her own, a goodly amount of household furniture,
and, what proved a blessing above all others, a kind heart. It was not
intended that this should be a permanent home; accordingly, in March,
1830, they packed their effects in wagons, drawn by oxen, bade adieu
to their old home, and took up a two weeks' march over untraveled
roads, across mountains, swamps, and through dense forests, until they
reached a spot on the Sangamon River, ten miles from Decatur, Ill.,
where they built another primitive home. Abraham had now arrived at
manhood, and felt at liberty to go out into the world and battle for
himself. He did not leave, however, until he saw his parents
comfortably fixed in their new home, which he helped build; he also
split enough rails to surround the house and ten acres of ground.

In the fall and winter of 1830, memorable to the early settlers of
Illinois as the year of the deep snow, Abraham worked for the farmers
who lived in the neighborhood. He made the acquaintance of a man of
the name of Offutt, who hired him, together with his stepbrother, John
D. Johnson, and his uncle, John Hanks, to take a flatboat loaded with
country produce down the Sangamon River to Beardstown, thence down the
Illinois and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Abraham and his
companions assisted in building the boat, which was finally launched
and loaded in the spring of 1831, and their trip successfully made. In
going over the dam at Rutledge Mill, New Salem, Ill., the boat struck
and remained stationary, and a day passed before it was again started
on its voyage. During this delay Lincoln made the acquaintance of New
Salem and its people.

On his return from New Orleans, after visiting his parents,--who had
made another move, to Goose-Nest Prairie, Ill.,--he settled in the
little village of New Salem, then in Sangamon, now Menard County.
While living in this place, Mr. Lincoln served in the Black Hawk War,
in 1832, as captain and private. His employment in the village was
varied; he was at times a clerk, county surveyor, postmaster, and
partner in the grocery business under the firm name of Lincoln &
Berry. He was defeated for the Illinois Legislature in 1832 by Peter
Cartwright, the Methodist pioneer preacher. He was elected to the
Legislature in 1834, and for three successive terms thereafter.

Mr. Lincoln wielded a great influence among the people of New Salem.
They respected him for his uprightness and admired him for his genial
and social qualities. He had an earnest sympathy for the unfortunate
and those in sorrow. All confided in him, honored and loved him. He
had an unfailing fund of anecdote, was a sharp, witty talker, and
possessed an accommodating spirit, which led him to exert himself for
the entertainment of his friends. During the political canvass of
1834, Mr. Lincoln made the acquaintance of Mr. John T. Stuart of
Springfield, Ill. Mr. Stuart saw in the young man that which, if
properly developed, could not fail to confer distinction on him. He
therefore loaned Lincoln such law books as he needed, the latter often
walking from New Salem to Springfield, a distance of twenty miles, to
obtain them. It was very fortunate for Mr. Lincoln that he finally
became associated with Mr. Stuart in the practice of law. He moved
from New Salem to Springfield, and was admitted to the bar in 1837.

On the 4th of November, 1842, Mr. Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd of
Lexington, Ky., at the residence of Ninian W. Edwards of Springfield,
Ill. The fruits of this marriage were four sons; Robert T., born
August 1, 1843; Edward Baker, March 10, 1846, died February 1, 1850;
William Wallace, December 21, 1850, died at the White House,
Washington, February 20, 1862; Thomas ("Tad"), April 4, 1853, died at
the Clifton House, Chicago, Ill., July 15, 1871. Mrs. Lincoln died at
the house of her sister, Springfield, July 16, 1882.

In 1846 Mr. Lincoln was elected to Congress, as a Whig, his opponent
being Peter Cartwright, who had defeated Mr. Lincoln for the
Legislature in 1832.

The most remarkable political canvass witnessed in the country took
place between Mr. Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. They were
candidates of their respective parties for the United States Senate.
Seven joint debates took place in different parts of the State. The
Legislature being of Mr. Douglas' political faith, he was elected.

In 1860 Mr. Lincoln came before the country as the chosen candidate of
the Republican party for the Presidency. The campaign was a memorable
one, characterized by a novel organization called "Wide Awakes," which
had its origin in Hartford, Conn. There were rail fence songs,
rail-splitting on wagons in processions, and the building of fences by
the torch-light marching clubs.

The triumphant election of Mr. Lincoln took place in November, 1860.
On the 11th of February, 1861, he bade farewell to his neighbors, and
as the train slowly left the depot his sad face was forever lost to
the friends who gathered that morning to bid him God speed. The people
along the route flocked at the stations to see him and hear his words.
At all points he was greeted as the President of the people, and such
he proved to be. Mr. Lincoln reached Washington on the morning of the
23rd of February, and on the 4th of March was inaugurated President.
Through four years of terrible war his guiding star was justice and
mercy. He was sometimes censured by officers of the army for granting
pardons to deserters and others, but he could not resist an appeal for
the life of a soldier. He was the friend of the soldiers, and felt and
acted toward them like a father. Even workingmen could write him
letters of encouragement and receive appreciative words in reply.

When the immortal Proclamation of Emancipation was issued, the whole
world applauded, and slavery received its deathblow. The terrible
strain of anxiety and responsibility borne by Mr. Lincoln during the
war had worn him away to a marked degree, but that God who was with
him throughout the struggle permitted him to live, and by his masterly
efforts and unceasing vigilance pilot the ship of state back into the
haven of peace.

On the 14th of April, 1865, after a day of unusual cheerfulness in
those troublous times, and seeking relaxation from his cares, the
President, accompanied by his wife and a few intimate friends, went to
Ford's Theater, on Tenth Street, N. W. There the foul assassin, J.
Wilkes Booth, awaited his coming and at twenty minutes past ten
o'clock, just as the third act of "Our American Cousin" was about to
commence, fired the shot that took the life of Abraham Lincoln. The
bleeding President was carried to a house across the street, No. 516,
where he died at twenty-two minutes past seven the next morning. The
body was taken to the White House and, after lying in state in the
East Room and at the Capitol, left Washington on the 21st of April,
stopping at various places en route, and finally arriving at
Springfield on the 3rd of May. On the following day the funeral
ceremonies took place at Oak Ridge Cemetery, and there the remains of
the martyr were laid at rest.

Abraham Lincoln needs no marble shaft to perpetuate his name; his
_words_ are the most enduring monument, and will forever live in the
hearts of the people.

II

EARLY LIFE

LINCOLN'S EDUCATION[1]

BY HORACE GREELEY

Let me pause here to consider the surprise often expressed when a
citizen of limited schooling is chosen to fill, or is presented for
one of the highest civil trusts. Has that argument any foundation in
reason, any justification in history?

Of our country's great men, beginning with Ben Franklin, I estimate
that a majority had little if anything more than a common-school
education, while many had less. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison had
rather more; Clay and Jackson somewhat less; Van Buren perhaps a
little more; Lincoln decidedly less. How great was his consequent
loss? I raise the question; let others decide it. Having seen much of
Henry Clay, I confidently assert that not one in ten of those who knew
him late in life would have suspected, from aught in his conversation
or bearing, that his education had been inferior to that of the
college graduates by whom he was surrounded. His knowledge was
different from theirs; and the same is true of Lincoln's as well. Had
the latter lived to be seventy years old, I judge that whatever of
hesitation or rawness was observable in his manner would have
vanished, and he would have met and mingled with educated gentlemen
and statesmen on the same easy footing of equality with Henry Clay in
his later prime of life. How far his two flatboat voyages to New
Orleans are to be classed as educational exercise above or below a
freshman's year in college, I will not say; doubtless some freshmen
learn more, others less, than those journeys taught him. Reared under
the shadow of the primitive woods, which on every side hemmed in the
petty clearings of the generally poor, and rarely energetic or
diligent, pioneers of the Southern Indiana wilderness, his first
introduction to the outside world from the deck of a "broad-horn" must
have been wonderfully interesting and suggestive. To one whose utmost
experience of civilization had been a county town, consisting of a
dozen to twenty houses, mainly log, with a shabby little court-house,
including jail, and a shabbier, ruder little church, that must have
been a marvelous spectacle which glowed in his face from the banks of
the Ohio and the lower Mississippi. Though Cairo was then but a
desolate swamp, Memphis a wood-landing, and Vicksburg a timbered ridge
with a few stores at its base, even these were in striking contrast to
the sombre monotony of the great woods. The rivers were enlivened by
countless swift-speeding steamboats, dispensing smoke by day and flame
by night; while New Orleans, though scarcely one fourth the city she
now is, was the focus of a vast commerce, and of a civilization which
(for America) might be deemed antique. I doubt not that our tall and
green young backwoodsman needed only a piece of well-tanned sheepskin
suitably (that is, learnedly) inscribed to have rendered those two
boat trips memorable as his degrees in capacity to act well his part
on that stage which has mankind for its audience.

[1] _By permission of Mr. Joel Benton._

ABE LINCOLN'S HONESTY

From "Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's Stories."

Lincoln could not rest for an instant under the consciousness that he
had, even unwittingly, defrauded anybody. On one occasion, while
clerking in Offutt's store, at New Salem, Ill., he sold a woman a
little bill of goods, amounting in value by the reckoning, to two
dollars six and a quarter cents. He received the money, and the woman
went away. On adding the items of the bill again, to make sure of its
correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents too
much. It was night, and, closing and locking the store, he started out
on foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house of his
defrauded customer, and, delivering over to her the sum whose
possession had so much troubled him, went home satisfied.

On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the night, a
woman entered, and asked for a half pound of tea. The tea was weighed
out and paid for, and the store was left for the night. The next
morning, Lincoln entered to begin the duties of the day, when he
discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw at once that he
had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took a long walk
before breakfast to deliver the remainder of the tea. These are very
humble incidents, but they illustrate the man's perfect
conscientiousness--his sensitive honesty--better perhaps than they
would if they were of greater moment.

THE BOY THAT HUNGERED FOR KNOWLEDGE

From "Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's Stories."

In his eagerness to acquire knowledge, young Lincoln had borrowed of
Mr. Crawford, a neighboring farmer, a copy of Weems' Life of
Washington--the only one known to be in existence in that section of
country. Before he had finished reading the book, it had been left, by
a not unnatural oversight, in a window. Meantime, a rain storm came
on, and the book was so thoroughly wet as to make it nearly worthless.
This mishap caused him much pain; but he went, in all honesty, to Mr.
Crawford with the ruined book, explained the calamity that had
happened through his neglect, and offered, not having sufficient
money, to "work out" the value of the book.

"Well, Abe," said Mr. Crawford, after due deliberation, "as it's you,
I won't be hard on you. Just come over and pull fodder for me for two
days, and we will call our accounts even."

The offer was readily accepted, and the engagement literally
fulfilled. As a boy, no less than since, Abraham Lincoln had an
honorable conscientiousness, integrity, industry, and an ardent love
of knowledge.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[2]

BY FLORENCE EVELYN PRATT

    Lincoln, the woodsman, in the clearing stood,
      Hemmed by the solemn forest stretching round;
    Stalwart, ungainly, honest-eyed and rude,
      The genius of that solitude profound.
    He clove the way that future millions trod,
      He passed, unmoved by worldly fear or pelf;
    In all his lusty toil he found not God,
      Though in the wilderness he found himself.

    Lincoln, the President, in bitter strife,
      Best-loved, worst-hated of all living men,
    Oft single-handed, for the nation's life
      Fought on, nor rested ere he fought again.
    With one unerring purpose armed, he clove
      Through selfish sin; then overwhelmed with care,
    His great heart sank beneath its load of love;
      Crushed to his knees, he found his God in prayer.

[2] _From The Youth's Companion._

YOUNG LINCOLN'S KINDNESS OF HEART

From "Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln."

An instance of young Lincoln's practical humanity at an early period
of his life is recorded, as follows: One evening, while returning from
a "raising" in his wide neighborhood, with a number of companions, he
discovered a straying horse, with saddle and bridle upon him. The
horse was recognized as belonging to a man who was accustomed to
excess in drink, and it was suspected at once that the owner was not
far off. A short search only was necessary to confirm the suspicions
of the young men.

The poor drunkard was found in a perfectly helpless condition, upon
the chilly ground. Abraham's companions urged the cowardly policy of
leaving him to his fate, but young Lincoln would not hear to the
proposition. At his request, the miserable sot was lifted to his
shoulders, and he actually carried him eighty rods to the nearest
house. Sending word to his father that he should not be back that
night, with the reason for his absence, he attended and nursed the man
until the morning, and had the pleasure of believing that he had saved
his life.

A VOICE FROM THE WILDERNESS

BY CHARLES SUMNER

Abraham Lincoln was born, and, until he became President, always lived
in a part of the country which, at the period of the Declaration of
Independence, was a savage wilderness. Strange but happy Providence,
that a voice from that savage wilderness, now fertile in men, was
inspired to uphold the pledges and promises of the Declaration! The
unity of the republic on the indestructible foundation of liberty and
equality was vindicated by the citizen of a community which had no
existence when the republic was formed.

A cabin was built in primitive rudeness, and the future President
split the rails for the fence to inclose the lot. These rails have
become classical in our history, and the name of rail-splitter has
been more than the degree of a college. Not that the splitter of rails
is especially meritorious, but because the people are proud to trace
aspiring talent to humble beginnings, and because they found in this
tribute a new opportunity of vindicating the dignity of free labor.

CHOOSING "ABE" LINCOLN CAPTAIN

From "Choosing 'Abe' Lincoln Captain, and Other Stories"

When the Black Hawk war broke out in Illinois about 1832, young
Abraham Lincoln was living at New Salem, a little village of the class
familiarly known out west as "one-horse towns," and located near the
capital city of Illinois.

He had just closed his clerkship of a year in a feeble grocery, and
was the first to enlist under the call of Governor Reynolds for
volunteer forces to go against the Sacs and Foxes, of whom Black Hawk
was chief.

By treaty these Indians had been removed west of the Mississippi into
Iowa; but, thinking their old hunting-grounds the better, they had
recrossed the river with their war paint on, causing some trouble, and
a great deal of alarm among the settlers. Such was the origin of the
war; and the handful of government troops stationed at Rock Island
wanted help. Hence the State call.

Mr. Lincoln was twenty-three years old at that time, nine years older
than his adopted State. The country was thinly settled, and a company
of ninety men who could be spared from home for military service had
to be gathered from a wide district. When full, the company met at the
neighboring village of Richland to choose its officers. In those days
the militia men were allowed to select their leaders in their own way;
and they had a very peculiar mode of expressing their preference for
captains. For then, as now, there were almost always two candidates
for one office.

They would meet on the green somewhere, and at the appointed hour, the
competitors would step out from the crowds on the opposite sides of
the ground, and each would call on all the "boys" who wanted him for
captain to fall in behind him. As the line formed, the man next the
candidate would put his hands on the candidate's shoulder; the third
man also in the same manner to the second man; and so on to the end.
And then they would march and cheer for their leader like so many wild
men, in order to win over the fellows who didn't seem to have a
choice, or whose minds were sure to run after the greater noise. When
all had taken sides, the man who led the longer line, would be
declared captain.

Mr. Lincoln never outgrew the familiar nickname, "Abe," but at that
time he could hardly be said to have any other name than "Abe"; in
fact he had emerged from clerking in that little corner grocery as
"Honest Abe." He was not only liked, but loved, in the rough fashion
of the frontier by all who knew him. He was a good hand at gunning,
fishing, racing, wrestling and other games; he had a tall and strong
figure; and he seemed to have been as often "reminded of a little
story" in '32 as in '62. And the few men not won by these qualities,
were won and held by his great common sense, which restrained him from
excesses even in sports, and made him a safe friend.

It is not singular therefore that though a stranger to many of the
enlisted men, he should have had his warm friends who at once
determined to make him captain.

But Mr. Lincoln hung back with the feeling, he said, that if there was
any older and better established citizen whom the "boys" had
confidence in, it would be better to make such a one captain. His
poverty was even more marked than his modesty; and for his stock of
education about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend
twenty-seven years later:

"I did not know much; still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher
to the rule of three, but that was all."

That, however, was up to the average education of the community; and
having been clerk in a country grocery he was considered an educated
man.

In the company Mr. Lincoln had joined, there was a dapper little chap
for whom Mr. Lincoln had labored as a farm hand a year before, and
whom he had left on account of ill treatment from him. This man was
eager for the captaincy. He put in his days and nights "log-rolling"
among his fellow volunteers; said he had already smelt gun-powder in a
brush with Indians, thus urging the value of experience; even thought
he had a "martial bearing"; and he was very industrious in getting
those men to join the company who would probably vote for him to be
captain.

Muster-day came, and the recruits met to organize. About them stood
several hundred relatives and other friends.

The little candidate was early on hand and busily bidding for votes.
He had felt so confident of the office in advance of muster-day, that
he had rummaged through several country tailor-shops and got a new
suit of the nearest approach to a captain's uniform that their scant
stock could furnish. So there he was, arrayed in jaunty cap, and a
swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons. He even wore fine boots, and
moreover had them blacked--which was almost a crime among a country
crowd of that day.

Young Lincoln took not one step to make himself captain; and not one
to prevent it. He simply put himself "in the hands of his friends," as
the politicians say. He stood and quietly watched the trouble others
were borrowing over the matter as if it were an election of officers
they had enlisted for, rather than for fighting Indians. But after
all, a good deal depends in war, on getting good officers.

As two o'clock drew near, the hour set for making captain, four or
five of young Lincoln's most zealous friends with a big stalwart
fellow at the head edged along pretty close to him, yet not in a way
to excite suspicion of a "conspiracy." Just a little bit before two,
without even letting "Abe" himself know exactly "what was up," the big
fellow stepped directly behind him, clapped his hands on the
shoulders before him, and shouted as only prairie giants can, "Hurrah
for Captain Abe Lincoln!" and plunged his really astonished candidate
forward into a march.

At the same instant, those in league with him also put hands to the
shoulders before them, pushed, and took up the cheer, "Hurrah for
Captain Abe Lincoln!" so loudly that there seemed to be several
hundred already on their side; and so there were, for the outside
crowd was also already cheering for "Abe."

This little "ruse" of the Lincoln "boys" proved a complete success.
"Abe" had to march, whether or no, to the music of their cheers; he
was truly "in the hands of his friends" then, and couldn't get away;
and it must be said he didn't seem to feel very bad over the
situation. The storm of cheers and the sight of tall Abraham (six feet
and four inches) at the head of the marching column, before the fussy
little chap in brass buttons who was quite ready, caused a quick
stampede even among the boys who intended to vote for the little
fellow. One after another they rushed for a place in "Captain Abe's"
line as though to be first to fall in was to win a prize.

A few rods away stood that suit of captain's clothes alone, looking
smaller than ever, "the starch all taken out of 'em," their occupant
confounded, and themselves for sale. "Abe's" old "boss" said he was
"astonished," and so he had good reason to be, but everybody could see
it without his saying so. His "style" couldn't win among the true and
shrewd, though unpolished "boys" in coarse garments. They saw right
through him.

"Buttons," as he became known from that day, was the last man to fall
into "Abe's" line; he said he'd make it unanimous.

But his experience in making "Abe" Captain made himself so sick that
he wasn't "able" to move when the company left for the "front," though
he soon grew able to move out of the procession.

Thus was "Father Abraham," so young as twenty-three, chosen captain of
a militia company over him whose abused, hired-hand he had been. It is
little wonder that in '59 after three elections to the State
Legislature and one to Congress, Mr. Lincoln should write of his early
event as "a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had
since." The war was soon over with but little field work for the
volunteers; but no private was known to complain that "Abe" was not a
good captain.

MATURITY

LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE--A PEEP INTO LINCOLN'S SOCIAL LIFE

In 1842, in his thirty-third year, Mr. Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd,
a daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky. The
marriage took place in Springfield, where the lady had for several
years resided, on the fourth of November of the year mentioned. It is
probable that he married as early as the circumstances of his life
permitted, for he had always loved the society of women, and possessed
a nature that took profound delight in intimate female companionship.
A letter written on the eighteenth of May following his marriage, to
J. F. Speed, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky, an early and a life-long
personal friend, gives a pleasant glimpse of his domestic arrangements
at this time. "We are not keeping house," Mr. Lincoln says in his
letter, "but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now
by a widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr.
Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a
week.... I most heartily wish you and your Fanny would not fail to
come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a
room prepared for you, and we'll all be merry together for awhile." He
seems to have been in excellent spirits, and to have been very hearty
in the enjoyment of his new relation. The private letters of Mr.
Lincoln were charmingly natural and sincere. His personal friendships
were the sweetest sources of his happiness.

To a particular friend, he wrote February 25, 1842: "Yours of the
sixteenth, announcing that Miss ---- and you 'are no longer twain, but
one flesh,' reached me this morning. I have no way of telling you how
much happiness I wish you both, though I believe you both can conceive
it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now, for you will be so
exclusively concerned for one another that I shall be forgotten
entirely. My acquaintance with Miss ---- (I call her thus lest you
should think I am speaking of your mother), was too short for me to
reasonably hope to be long remembered by her; and still I am sure I
shall not forget her soon. Try if you can not remind her of that debt
she owes me, and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her paying
it.

"I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois. I
shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be
arranged in this world! If we have no friends we have no pleasure; and
if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the
loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here, yet I own I
have no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times
more sacred than any you can owe to others, and in that light let them
be respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to
remain with her relations and friends. As to friends, she could not
need them anywhere--she would have them in abundance here. Give my
kind regards to Mr. ---- and his family, particularly to Miss E. Also
to your mother, brothers and sisters. Ask little E. D. ---- if she
will ride to town with me if I come there again. And, finally, give
---- a double reciprocation of all the love she sent me. Write me
often, and believe me, yours forever,

                                                         Lincoln."

HOW LINCOLN AND JUDGE B---- SWAPPED HORSES

From "Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln."

When Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer in Illinois, he and a certain Judge
once got to bantering one another about trading horses; and it was
agreed that the next morning at 9 o'clock they should make a trade,
the horses to be unseen up to that hour, and no backing out, under a
forfeiture of $25.

At the hour appointed the Judge came up, leading the sorriest-looking
specimen of a horse ever seen in those parts. In a few minutes Mr.
Lincoln was seen approaching with a wooden saw-horse upon his
shoulders. Great were the shouts and the laughter of the crowd, and
both were greatly increased when Mr. Lincoln, on surveying the Judge's
animal, set down his saw-horse, and exclaimed: "Well, Judge, this is
the first time I ever got the worst of it in a horse trade."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS A MAN OF LETTERS[3]

BY HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

From "Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature."

Born in 1809 and dying in 1865, Mr. Lincoln was the contemporary of
every distinguished man of letters in America to the close of the war;
but from none of them does he appear to have received literary impulse
or guidance. He might have read, if circumstances had been favorable,
a large part of the work of Irving, Bryant, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson,
Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Longfellow, and Thoreau, as it came from the
press; but he was entirely unfamiliar with it apparently until late in
his career and it is doubtful if even at that period he knew it well
or cared greatly for it. He was singularly isolated by circumstances
and by temperament from those influences which usually determine,
within certain limits, the quality and character of a man's style.

And Mr. Lincoln had a style,--a distinctive, individual,
characteristic form of expression. In his own way he gained an insight
into the structure of English, and a freedom and skill in the
selection and combination of words, which not only made him the most
convincing speaker of his time, but which have secured for his
speeches a permanent place in literature. One of those speeches is
already known wherever the English language is spoken; it is a classic
by virtue not only of its unique condensation of the sentiment of a
tremendous struggle into the narrow compass of a few brief paragraphs,
but by virtue of that instinctive felicity of style which gives to the
largest thought the beauty of perfect simplicity. The two Inaugural
Addresses are touched by the same deep feeling, the same large vision,
the same clear, expressive and persuasive eloquence; and these
qualities are found in a great number of speeches, from Mr. Lincoln's
first appearance in public life. In his earliest expressions of his
political views there is less range; but there is the structural
order, clearness, sense of proportion, ease, and simplicity which give
classic quality to the later utterances. Few speeches have so little
of what is commonly regarded as oratorial quality; few have approached
so constantly the standards and character of literature. While a group
of men of gift and opportunity in the East were giving American
literature its earliest direction, and putting the stamp of a high
idealism on its thought and a rare refinement of spirit on its form,
this lonely, untrained man on the old frontier was slowly working his
way through the hardest and rudest conditions to perhaps the foremost
place in American history, and forming at the same time a style of
singular and persuasive charm.

There is, however, no possible excellence without adequate education;
no possible mastery of any art without thorough training. Mr. Lincoln
has sometimes been called an accident, and his literary gift an
unaccountable play of nature; but few men have ever more definitely
and persistently worked out what was in them by clear intelligence
than Mr. Lincoln, and no speaker or writer of our time has, according
to his opportunities, trained himself more thoroughly in the use of
English prose. Of educational opportunity in the scholastic sense, the
future orator had only the slightest. He went to school "by littles,"
and these "littles" put together aggregated less than a year; but he
discerned very early the practical uses of knowledge, and set himself
to acquire it. This pursuit soon became a passion, and this deep and
irresistible yearning did more for him perhaps than richer
opportunities would have done. It made him a constant student, and it
taught him the value of fragments of time. "He was always at the head
of his class," writes one of his schoolmates, "and passed us rapidly
in his studies. He lost no time at home, and when he was not at work
was at his books. He kept up his studies on Sunday, and carried his
books with him to work, so that he might read when he rested from
labor." "I induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at home
as well as at school," writes his stepmother. "At first he was not
easily reconciled to it, but finally he too seemed willing to
encourage him to a certain extent. Abe was a dutiful son to me always,
and we took particular care when he was reading not to disturb
him,--would let him read on and on until he quit of his own accord."

The books within his reach were few, but they were among the best.
First and foremost was that collection of literature in prose and
verse, the Bible: a library of sixty-six volumes, presenting nearly
every literary form, and translated at the fortunate moment when the
English language had received the recent impress of its greatest
masters of the speech of the imagination. This literature Mr. Lincoln
knew intimately, familiarly, fruitfully; as Shakespeare knew it in an
earlier version, and as Tennyson knew it and was deeply influenced by
it in the form in which it entered into and trained Lincoln's
imagination. Then there was that wise and very human text-book of the
knowledge of character and life, "Æsop's Fables"; that masterpiece of
clear presentation, "Robinson Crusoe"; and that classic of pure
English, "The Pilgrim's Progress." These four books--in the hands of a
meditative boy, who read until the last ember went out on the hearth,
began again when the earliest light reached his bed in the loft of the
log cabin, who perched himself on a stump, book in hand, at the end of
every furrow in the plowing season--contained the elements of a
movable university.

To these must be added many volumes borrowed from more fortunate
neighbors; for he had "read through every book he had heard of in that
country, for a circuit of fifty miles." A history of the United States
and a copy of Weems's "Life of Washington" laid the foundations of
his political education. That he read with his imagination as well as
with his eyes is clear from certain words spoken in the Senate Chamber
at Trenton in 1861. "May I be pardoned," said Mr. Lincoln, "if on this
occasion I mention that way back in my childhood, the earliest days of
my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such a one as few
of the members have ever seen,--Weems's 'Life of Washington.' I
remember all the accounts there given of the battle-fields and
struggles for the liberties of the country; and none fixed themselves
upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton, New
Jersey. The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the
great hardships endured at that time,--all fixed themselves on my
memory more than any single Revolutionary event; and you all know, for
you have all been boys, how those early impressions last longer than
any others."

"When Abe and I returned to the house from work," writes John Hanks,
"he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn bread, sit down,
take a book, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read. We
grubbed, plowed, weeded, and worked together barefooted in the field.
Whenever Abe had a chance in the field while at work, or at the house,
he would stop and read." And this habit was kept up until Mr. Lincoln
had found both his life work and his individual expression. Later he
devoured Shakespeare and Burns; and the poetry of these masters of the
dramatic and lyric form, sprung like himself from the common soil,
and like him self-trained and directed, furnished a kind of running
accompaniment to his work and his play. What he read he not only held
tenaciously, but took into his imagination and incorporated into
himself. His familiar talk was enriched with frequent and striking
illustrations from the Bible and "Æsop's Fables."

This passion for knowledge and for companionship with the great
writers would have gone for nothing, so far as the boy's training in
expression was concerned, if he had contented himself with
acquisition; but he turned everything to account. He was as eager for
expression as for the material of expression; more eager to write and
to talk than to read. Bits of paper, stray sheets, even boards served
his purpose. He was continually transcribing with his own hand
thoughts or phrases which had impressed him. Everything within reach
bore evidence of his passion for reading, and for writing as well. The
flat sides of logs, the surface of the broad wooden shovel, everything
in his vicinity which could receive a legible mark, was covered with
his figures and letters. He was studying expression quite as
intelligently as he was searching for thought. Years afterwards, when
asked how he had attained such extraordinary clearness of style, he
recalled his early habit of retaining in his memory words or phrases
overheard in ordinary conversation or met in books and newspapers,
until night, meditating on them until he got at their meaning, and
then translating them into his own simpler speech. This habit, kept up
for years, was the best possible training for the writing of such
English as one finds in the Bible and in "The Pilgrim's Progress." His
self-education in the art of expression soon bore fruit in a local
reputation both as a talker and a writer. His facility in rhyme and
essay-writing was not only greatly admired by his fellows, but
awakened great astonishment, because these arts were not taught in the
neighboring schools.

In speech too he was already disclosing that command of the primary
and universal elements of interest in human intercourse which was to
make him, later, one of the most entertaining men of his time. His
power of analyzing a subject so as to be able to present it to others
with complete clearness was already disclosing itself. No matter how
complex a question might be, he did not rest until he had reduced it
to its simplest terms. When he had done this he was not only eager to
make it clear to others, but to give his presentation freshness,
variety, attractiveness. He had, in a word, the literary sense. "When
he appeared in company," writes one of his early companions, "the boys
would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was
figurative in his speech, talks and conversation. He argued much from
analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories,
maxims, tales and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or
idea by some story that was plain and near to us, that we might
instantly see the force and bearing of what he said."

In that phrase lies the secret of the closeness of Mr. Lincoln's words
to his theme and to his listeners,--one of the qualities of genuine,
original expression. He fed himself with thought, and he trained
himself in expression; but his supreme interest was in the men and
women about him, and later, in the great questions which agitated
them. He was in his early manhood when society was profoundly moved by
searching which could neither be silenced nor evaded; and his lot was
cast in a section where, as a rule, people read little and talked
much. Public speech was the chief instrumentality of political
education and the most potent means of persuasion; but behind the
platform, upon which Mr. Lincoln was to become a commanding figure,
were countless private debates carried on at street corners, in hotel
rooms, by the country road, in every place where men met even in the
most casual way. In these wayside schools Mr. Lincoln practiced the
art of putting things until he became a past-master in debate, both
formal and informal.

If all these circumstances, habits and conditions are studied in their
entirety, it will be seen that Mr. Lincoln's style, so far as its
formal qualities are concerned, is in no sense accidental or even
surprising. He was all his early life in the way of doing precisely
what he did in his later life with a skill which had become instinct.
He was educated, in a very unusual way, to speak for his time and to
his time with perfect sincerity and simplicity; to feel the moral
bearing of the questions which were before the country; to discern the
principles involved; and to so apply the principles to the questions
as to clarify and illuminate them. There is little difficulty in
accounting for the lucidity, simplicity, flexibility, and compass of
Mr. Lincoln's style; it is not until we turn to its temperamental and
spiritual qualities, to the soul of it, that we find ourselves
perplexed and baffled.

But Mr. Lincoln's possession of certain rare qualities is in no way
more surprising than their possession by Shakespeare, Burns, and
Whitman. We are constantly tempted to look for the sources of a man's
power in his educational opportunities instead of in his temperament
and inheritance. The springs of genius are purified and directed in
their flow by the processes of training, but they are fed from deeper
sources. The man of obscure ancestry and rude surroundings is often in
closer touch with nature, and with those universal experiences which
are the very stuff of literature, than the man who is born on the
upper reaches of social position and opportunity. Mr. Lincoln's
ancestry for at least two generations were pioneers and frontiersmen,
who knew hardship and privation, and were immersed in that great wave
of energy and life which fertilized and humanized the central West.
They were in touch with those original experiences out of which the
higher evolution of civilization slowly rises; they knew the soil and
the sky at first hand; they wrested a meagre subsistence out of the
stubborn earth by constant toil; they shared to the full the
vicissitudes and weariness of humanity at its elemental tasks.

It was to this nearness to the heart of a new country, perhaps, that
Mr. Lincoln owed his intimate knowledge of his people and his deep and
beautiful sympathy with them. There was nothing sinuous or secondary
in his processes of thought: they were broad, simple, and homely in
the old sense of the word. He had rare gifts, but he was rooted deep
in the soil of the life about him, and so completely in touch with it
that he divined its secrets and used its speech. This vital sympathy
gave his nature a beautiful gentleness, and suffused his thought with
a tenderness born of deep compassion and love. He carried the sorrows
of his country as truly as he bore its burdens; and when he came to
speak on the second immortal day at Gettysburg, he condensed into a
few sentences the innermost meaning of the struggle and the victory in
the life of the nation. It was this deep heart of pity and love in him
which carried him far beyond the reaches of statesmanship or oratory,
and gave his words that finality of expression which marks the noblest
art.

That there was a deep vein of poetry in Mr. Lincoln's nature is clear
to one who reads the story of his early life; and this innate
idealism, set in surroundings so harsh and rude, had something to do
with his melancholy. The sadness which was mixed with his whole life
was, however, largely due to his temperament; in which the final
tragedy seemed always to be predicted. In that temperament too is
hidden the secret of the rare quality of nature and mind which
suffused his public speech and turned so much of it into literature.
There was humor in it, there was deep human sympathy, there was clear
mastery of words for the use to which he put them; but there was
something deeper and more pervasive,--there was the quality of his
temperament; and temperament is a large part of genius. The inner
forces of his nature played through his thought; and when great
occasions touched him to the quick, his whole nature shaped his speech
and gave it clear intelligence, deep feeling, and that beauty which is
distilled out of the depths of the sorrows and hopes of the world. He
was as unlike Burke and Webster, those masters of the eloquence of
statesmanship, as Burns was unlike Milton and Tennyson. Like Burns, he
held the key of the life of his people; and through him, as through
Burns, that life found a voice, vibrating, pathetic, and persuasive.

[3] _By permission of R. S. Peale and J. A. Hill Co._

LINCOLN'S PRESENCE OF BODY

From "Abe Lincoln's Yarns and Stories"

On one occasion, Colonel Baker was speaking in a court-house, which
had been a storehouse, and, on making some remarks that were offensive
to certain political rowdies in the crowd, they cried: "Take him off
the stand!" Immediate confusion followed, and there was an attempt to
carry the demand into execution. Directly over the speaker's head was
an old skylight, at which it appeared Mr. Lincoln had been listening
to the speech. In an instant, Mr. Lincoln's feet came through the
skylight, followed by his tall and sinewy frame, and he was standing
by Colonel Baker's side. He raised his hand, and the assembly subsided
into silence. "Gentlemen," said Mr. Lincoln, "let us not disgrace the
age and country in which we live. This is a land where freedom of
speech is guaranteed. Mr. Baker has a right to speak, and ought to be
permitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take
him from this stand if I can prevent it."

The suddenness of his appearance, his perfect calmness and fairness,
and the knowledge that he would do what he had promised to do, quieted
all disturbance, and the speaker concluded his remarks without
difficulty.

HOW LINCOLN BECAME A NATIONAL FIGURE

BY IDA M. TARBELL

From "The Life of Abraham Lincoln."[4]

"The greatest speech ever made in Illinois, and it puts Lincoln on the
track for the Presidency," was the comment made by enthusiastic
Republicans on Lincoln's speech before the Bloomington Convention.
Conscious that it was he who had put the breath of life into their
organization, the party instinctively turned to him as its leader. The
effect of this local recognition was at once perceptible in the
national organization. Less than three weeks after the delivery of the
Bloomington speech, the national convention of the Republican party
met in Philadelphia, June 17, to nominate candidates for the
Presidency and Vice-presidency. Lincoln's name was the second proposed
for the latter office, and on the first ballot he received one hundred
and ten votes. The news reached him at Urbana, Ill., where he was
attending court, one of his companions reading from a daily paper just
received from Chicago, the result of the ballot. The simple name
Lincoln was given, without the name of the man's State. Lincoln said
indifferently that he did not suppose it could be himself; and added
that there was "another great man" of the name, a man from
Massachusetts. The next day, however, he knew that it was himself to
whom the convention had given so strong an endorsement. He knew also
that the ticket chosen was Frémont and Dayton.

The campaign of the following summer and fall was one of intense
activity for Lincoln. In Illinois and the neighboring States he made
over fifty speeches, only fragments of which have been preserved. One
of the first important ones was delivered on July 4, 1856, at a great
mass meeting at Princeton, the home of the Lovejoys and the Bryants.
The people were still irritated by the outrages in Kansas and by the
attack on Sumner in the Senate, and the temptation to deliver a
stirring and indignant oration must have been strong. Lincoln's speech
was, however, a fine example of political wisdom, an historical
argument admirably calculated to convince his auditors that they were
right in their opposition to slavery extension, but so controlled and
sane that it would stir no impulsive radical to violence. There
probably was not uttered in the United States on that critical 4th of
July, 1856, when the very foundation of the government was in dispute
and the day itself seemed a mockery, a cooler, more logical speech
than this by the man who, a month before, had driven a convention so
nearly mad that the very reporters had forgotten to make notes. And
the temper of this Princeton speech Lincoln kept throughout the
campaign.

In spite of the valiant struggle of the Republicans, Buchanan was
elected; but Lincoln was in no way discouraged. The Republicans had
polled 1,341,264 votes in the country. In Illinois, they had given
Frémont nearly 100,000 votes, and they had elected their candidate for
governor, General Bissell. Lincoln turned from arguments to
encouragement and good counsel.

"All of us," he said at a Republican banquet in Chicago, a few weeks
after the election, "who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken
together, are a majority of four hundred thousand. But in the late
contest we were divided between Frémont and Fillmore. Can we not come
together for the future? Let every one who really believes and is
resolved that free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who
can conscientiously declare that in the last contest he had done what
he thought best--let every such one have charity to believe that every
other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be bygones; let past
differences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the real issue let
us reinaugurate the good old 'central idea' of the republic. We can do
it. The human heart is with us; God is with us. We shall again be
able, not to declare that 'all States as States are equal,' nor yet
that 'all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew the broader,
better declaration, including both these and much more, that 'all men
are created equal.'"

The spring of 1857 gave Lincoln a new line of argument. Buchanan was
scarcely in the Presidential chair before the Supreme Court, in the
decision of the Dred Scott case, declared that a negro could not sue
in the United States courts and that Congress could not prohibit
slavery in the Territories. This decision was such an evident advance
of the slave power that there was a violent uproar in the North.
Douglas went at once to Illinois to calm his constituents. "What," he
cried, "oppose the Supreme Court! is it not sacred? To resist it is
anarchy."

Lincoln met him fairly on the issue in a speech at Springfield in
June, 1857.

"We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience to
and respect for the judicial department of government.... But we
think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that
made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we
can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to it.... If this
important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the
judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with
legal public expectation and with the steady practice of the
departments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on
assumed historical facts which are not really true; or if, wanting in
some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had
there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then
might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to
acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it
wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not
resistance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat
it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the
country."

Let Douglas cry "awful," "anarchy," "revolution," as much as he would,
Lincoln's arguments against the Dred Scott decision appealed to common
sense and won him commendation all over the country. Even the radical
leaders of the party in the East--Seward, Sumner, Theodore
Parker--began to notice him, to read his speeches, to consider his
arguments.

With every month of 1857 Lincoln grew stronger, and his election in
Illinois as United States senatorial candidate in 1858 against Douglas
would have been insured if Douglas had not suddenly broken with
Buchanan and his party in a way which won him the hearty sympathy and
respect of a large part of the Republicans of the North. By a
flagrantly unfair vote the pro-slavery leaders of Kansas had secured
the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution allowing slavery in the
State. President Buchanan urged Congress to admit Kansas with her
bogus Constitution. Douglas, who would not sanction so base an
injustice, opposed the measure, voting with the Republicans steadily
against the admission. The Buchananists, outraged at what they called
"Douglas's apostasy," broke with him. Then it was that a part of the
Republican party, notably Horace Greeley at the head of the New York
"Tribune," struck by the boldness and nobility of Douglas's
opposition, began to hope to win him over from the Democrats to the
Republicans. Their first step was to counsel the leaders of their
party in Illinois to put up no candidate against Douglas for the
United States senatorship in 1858.

Lincoln saw this change on the part of the Republican leaders with
dismay. "Greeley is not doing me right," he said. "... I am a true
Republican, and have been tried already in the hottest part of the
anti-slavery fight; and yet I find him taking up Douglas, a veritable
dodger,--once a tool of the South, now its enemy,--and pushing him to
the front." He grew so restless over the returning popularity of
Douglas among the Republicans that Herndon, his law-partner,
determined to go East to find out the real feeling of the Eastern
leaders towards Lincoln. Herndon had, for a long time, been in
correspondence with the leading abolitionists and had no difficulty in
getting interviews. The returns he brought back from his canvass were
not altogether reassuring. Seward, Sumner, Phillips, Garrison,
Beecher, Theodore Parker, all spoke favorably of Lincoln and Seward
sent him word that the Republicans would never take up so slippery a
quantity as Douglas had proved himself. But Greeley--the all-important
Greeley--was lukewarm. "The Republican standard is too high," he told
Herndon. "We want something practical.... Douglas is a brave man.
Forget the past and sustain the righteous." "Good God, righteous, eh!"
groaned Herndon in his letter to Lincoln.

But though the encouragement which came to Lincoln from the East in
the spring of 1858 was meagre, that which came from Illinois was
abundant. There the Republicans supported him in whole-hearted
devotion. In June, the State convention, meeting in Springfield to
nominate its candidate for Senator, declared that Abraham Lincoln was
its first and only choice as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas. The
press was jubilant. "Unanimity is a weak word," wrote the editor of
the Bloomington "Pantagraph," "to express the universal and intense
feeling of the convention. _Lincoln!_ LINCOLN!! LINCOLN!!! was the cry
everywhere, whenever the senatorship was alluded to. Delegates from
Chicago and from Cairo, from the Wabash and the Illinois, from the
north, the center, and the south, were alike fierce with enthusiasm,
whenever that loved name was breathed. Enemies at home and misjudging
friends abroad, who have looked for dissension among us on the
question of the senatorship, will please take notice that our
nomination is a unanimous one; and that, in the event of a Republican
majority in the next Legislature, no other name than Lincoln's will be
mentioned, or thought of, by a solitary Republican legislator. One
little incident in the convention was a pleasing illustration of the
universality of the Lincoln sentiment. Cook County had brought a
banner into the assemblage inscribed, 'Cook County for Abraham
Lincoln.' During a pause in the proceedings, a delegate from another
county rose and proposed, with the consent of the Cook County
delegation, 'to amend the banner by substituting for "Cook County" the
word which I hold in my hand,' at the same time unrolling a scroll,
and revealing the word 'Illinois' in huge capitals. The Cook
delegation promptly accepted the amendment, and amidst a perfect
hurricane of hurrahs, the banner was duly altered to express the
sentiment of the whole Republican party of the State, thus: 'Illinois
for Abraham Lincoln.'"

On the evening of the day of his nomination, Lincoln addressed his
constituents. The first paragraph of his speech gave the key to the
campaign he proposed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half
free. 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."

Then followed the famous charge of conspiracy against the slavery
advocates, the charge that Pierce, Buchanan, Chief Justice Taney, and
Douglas had been making a concerted effort to legalize the institution
of slavery "in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as
South." He marshaled one after another of the measures that the
pro-slavery leaders had secured in the past four years, and clinched
the argument by one of his inimitable illustrations.

"When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we
know have been gotten out of different times and places and by
different workmen,--Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James,[A] for
instance,--and we see these timbers joined together, and see they
exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and
mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the
different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a
piece too many or too few, not omitting even the scaffolding--or, if a
single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such a piece in--in such a case we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and
James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked
upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was
struck."

The speech was severely criticised by Lincoln's friends. It was too
radical. It was sectional. He heard the complaints unmoved. "If I had
to draw a pen across my record," he said, one day, "and erase my whole
life from sight, and I had one poor gift of choice left as to what I
should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it
to the world unerased."

The speech, was, in fact, one of great political adroitness. It forced
Douglas to do exactly what he did not want to do in Illinois; explain
his own record during the past four years; explain the true meaning of
the Kansas-Nebraska bill; discuss the Dred Scott decision; say whether
or not he thought slavery so good a thing that the country could
afford to extend it instead of confining it where it would be in
course of gradual extinction. Douglas wanted the Republicans of
Illinois to follow Greeley's advice: "Forgive the past." He wanted to
make the most among them of his really noble revolt against the
attempt of his party to fasten an unjust constitution on Kansas.
Lincoln would not allow him to bask for an instant in the sun of that
revolt. He crowded him step by step through his party's record, and
compelled him to face what he called the "profound central truth" of
the Republican party, "slavery is wrong and ought to be dealt with as
wrong."

But it was at once evident that Douglas did not mean to
meet the issue squarely. He called the doctrine of Lincoln's
"house-divided-against-itself" speech "sectionalism"; his charge of
conspiracy "false"; his talk of the wrong of slavery extension
"abolitionism." This went on for a month. Then Lincoln resolved to
force Douglas to meet his arguments, and challenged him to a series of
joint debates. Douglas was not pleased. His reply to the challenge was
irritable, even slightly insolent. To those of his friends who talked
with him privately of the contest, he said: "I do not feel, between
you and me, that I want to go into this debate. The whole country
knows me, and has me measured. Lincoln, as regards myself, is
comparatively unknown, and if he gets the best of this debate,--and I
want to say he is the ablest man the Republicans have got,--I shall
lose everything and Lincoln will gain everything. Should I win, I
shall gain but little. I do not want to go into a debate with Abe."
Publicly, however, he carried off the prospect confidently, even
jauntily. "Mr. Lincoln," he said patronizingly, "is a kind, amiable,
intelligent gentleman." In the meantime his constituents boasted
loudly of the fine spectacle they were going to give the State--"the
Little Giant chawing up Old Abe!"

Many of Lincoln's friends looked forward to the encounter with
foreboding. Often, in spite of their best intentions, they showed
anxiety. "Shortly before the first debate came off at Ottawa," says
Judge H. W. Beckwith of Danville, Ill., "I passed the Chenery House,
then the principal hotel in Springfield. The lobby was crowded with
partisan leaders from various sections of the State, and Mr. Lincoln,
from his greater height, was seen above the surging mass that clung
about him like a swarm of bees to their ruler. He looked careworn, but
he met the crowd patiently and kindly, shaking hands, answering
questions, and receiving assurances of support. The day was warm, and
at the first chance he broke away and came out for a little fresh air,
wiping the sweat from his face.

"As he passed the door he saw me, and, taking my hand, inquired for
the health and views of his 'friends over in Vermilion County.' He was
assured they were wide awake, and further told that they looked
forward to the debate between him and Senator Douglas with deep
concern. From the shadow that went quickly over his face, the pained
look that came to give quickly way to a blaze of eyes and quiver of
lips, I felt that Mr. Lincoln had gone beneath my mere words and
caught my inner and current fears as to the result. And then, in a
forgiving, jocular way peculiar to him, he said, 'Sit down; I have a
moment to spare and will tell you a story.' Having been on his feet
for some time, he sat on the end of the stone steps leading into the
hotel door, while I stood closely fronting him.

"'You have,' he continued, 'seen two men about to fight?'

"'Yes, many times.'

"'Well, one of them brags about what he means to do. He jumps high in
the air, cracking his heels together, smites his fists, and wastes his
breath trying to scare everybody. You see the other fellow, he says
not a word,'--here Mr. Lincoln's voice and manner changed to great
earnestness, and repeating--'you see the other man says not a word.
His arms are at his side, his fists are closely doubled up, his head
is drawn to the shoulder, and his teeth are set firm together. He is
saving his wind for the fight, and as sure as it comes off he will win
it, or die a-trying.'

"He made no other comment, but arose, bade me good-by, and left me to
apply that illustration."

It was inevitable that Douglas's friends should be sanguine, Lincoln's
doubtful. The contrast between the two candidates was almost pathetic.
Senator Douglas was the most brilliant figure in the political life of
the day. Winning in personality, fearless as an advocate, magnetic in
eloquence, shrewd in political manoeuvring, he had every quality to
captivate the public. His resources had never failed him. From his
entrance into Illinois politics in 1834, he had been the recipient of
every political honor his party had to bestow. For the past eleven
years he had been a member of the United States Senate, where he had
influenced all the important legislation of the day and met in debate
every strong speaker of North and South. In 1852, and again in 1856,
he had been a strongly supported, though unsuccessful candidate for
the Democratic Presidential nomination. In 1858 he was put at or near
the head of every list of possible Presidential candidates made up for
1860.

How barren Lincoln's public career in comparison! Three terms in the
lower house of the State Assembly, one term in Congress, then a
failure which drove him from public life. Now he returns as a bolter
from his party, a leader in a new organization which the conservatives
are denouncing as "visionary," "impractical," "revolutionary."

No one recognized more clearly than Lincoln the difference between
himself and his opponent. "With me," he said, sadly, in comparing the
careers of himself and Douglas, "the race of ambition has been a
failure--a flat failure. With him it has been one of splendid
success." He warned his party at the outset that, with himself as a
standard-bearer, the battle must be fought on principle alone, without
any of the external aids which Douglas's brilliant career gave.
"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown," he said; "All the anxious
politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years
past, have been looking upon him as certain, at no distant day, to be
the President of the United States. They have seen in his round,
jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshal-ships, and
cabinet appointments, chargéships and foreign missions, bursting and
sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by
their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive
picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken
place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but
with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him
marches, triumphal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the
days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his
favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.
In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages
were sprouting out. These are disadvantages, all taken together, that
the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon
principle, and upon principle alone."

If one will take a map of Illinois and locate the points of the
Lincoln and Douglas debates held between August 21 and October 15,
1858, he will see that the whole State was traversed in the contest.
The first took place at Ottawa, about seventy-five miles southwest of
Chicago, on August 21; the second at Freeport, near the Wisconsin
boundary, on August 27. The third was in the extreme southern part of
the State, at Jonesboro, on September 15. Three days later the
contestants met one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Jonesboro, at
Charleston. The fifth, sixth, and seventh debates were held in the
western part of the State; at Galesburg, October 7; Quincy, October
13; and Alton, October 15.

Constant exposure and fatigue were unavoidable in meeting these
engagements. Both contestants spoke almost every day through the
intervals between the joint debates; and as railroad communication in
Illinois in 1858 was still very incomplete, they were often obliged to
resort to horse, carriage, or steamer, to reach the desired points.
Judge Douglas succeeded, however, in making this difficult journey
something of a triumphal procession. He was accompanied throughout the
campaign by his wife--a beautiful and brilliant woman--and by a
number of distinguished Democrats.

On the Illinois Central Railroad he had always a special car,
sometimes a special train. Frequently he swept by Lincoln,
side-tracked in an accommodation or freight train. "The gentleman in
that car evidently smelt no royalty on our carriage," laughed Lincoln
one day, as he watched from the caboose of a laid-up freight train the
decorated special of Douglas flying by.

It was only when Lincoln left the railroad and crossed the prairie at
some isolated town, that he went in state. The attentions he received
were often very trying to him. He detested what he called "fizzlegigs
and fireworks," and would squirm in disgust when his friends gave him
a genuine prairie ovation. Usually, when he was going to a point
distant from the railway, a "distinguished citizen" met him at the
station nearest the place with a carriage. When they were come within
two or three miles of the town, a long procession with banners and
band would appear winding across the prairie to meet the speaker. A
speech of greeting was made, and then the ladies of the entertainment
committee would present Lincoln with flowers, sometimes even winding a
garland about his head and lanky figure. His embarrassment at these
attentions was thoroughly appreciated by his friends. At the Ottawa
debate the enthusiasm of his supporters was so great that they
insisted on carrying him from the platform to the house where he was
to be entertained. Powerless to escape from the clutches of his
admirers, he could only cry, "Don't, boys; let me down; come now,
don't." But the "boys" persisted, and they tell to-day proudly of
their exploit and of the cordial hand-shake Lincoln, all embarrassed
as he was, gave each when at last he was free.

On arrival at the towns where the joint debates were held, Douglas was
always met by a brass band and a salute of thirty-two guns (the Union
was composed of thirty-two States in 1858), and was escorted to the
hotel in the finest equipage to be had. Lincoln's supporters took
delight in showing their contempt of Douglas's elegance by affecting a
Republican simplicity, often carrying their candidate through the
streets on a high and unadorned hay-rack drawn by farm horses. The
scenes in the towns on the occasion of the debates were perhaps never
equalled at any other of the hustings of this country. No distance
seemed too great for the people to go; no vehicle too slow or
fatiguing. At Charleston there was a great delegation of men, women
and children present which had come in a long procession from Indiana
by farm wagons, afoot, on horseback, and in carriages. The crowds at
three or four of the debates were for that day immense. There were
estimated to be from eight thousand to fourteen thousand people at
Quincy, some six thousand at Alton, from ten thousand to fifteen
thousand at Charleston, some twenty thousand at Ottawa. Many of those
at Ottawa came the night before. "It was a matter of but a short
time," says Mr. George Beatty of Ottawa, "until the few hotels, the
livery stables, and private houses were crowded, and there were no
accommodations left. Then the campaigners spread out about the town,
and camped in whatever spot was most convenient. They went 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 was
gathered about us."

When the crowd was massed at the place of the debate, the scene was
one of the greatest hubbub and confusion. On the corners of the
squares, and scattered around the outskirts of the crowd, were fakirs
of every description, selling painkillers and ague cures, watermelons
and lemonade; jugglers and beggars plied their trades, and the brass
bands of all the four corners within twenty-five miles tooted and
pounded at "Hail Columbia, Happy Land," or "Columbia, the Gem of the
Ocean."

Conspicuous in the processions at all the points was what Lincoln
called the "Basket of Flowers," thirty-two young girls in a
resplendent car, representing the Union. At Charleston, a thirty-third
young woman rode behind the car, representing Kansas. She carried a
banner inscribed: "I will be free"; a motto which brought out from
nearly all the newspaper reporters the comment that she was too fair
to be long free.

The mottoes at the different meetings epitomized the popular
conception of the issues and the candidates. Among the Lincoln
sentiments were:

Illinois born under the Ordinance of '87.

    Free Territories and Free Men,
      Free Pulpits and Free Preachers,
    Free Press and a Free Pen,
      Free Schools and Free Teachers.

    "Westward the star of empire takes its way;
    The girls link on to Lincoln, their mothers were for Clay."

Abe the Giant-Killer.

Edgar County for the Tall Sucker.

A striking feature of the crowds was the number of women they
included. The intelligent and lively interest they took in the debates
caused much comment. No doubt Mrs. Douglas's presence had something to
do with this. They were particularly active in receiving the speakers,
and at Quincy, Lincoln, on being presented with what the local press
described as a "beautiful and elegant bouquet," took pains to express
his gratification at the part women everywhere took in the contest.

While this helter-skelter outpouring of prairiedom had the appearance
of being little more than a great jollification, a lawless country
fair, in reality it was with the majority of the people a profoundly
serious matter. With every discussion it became more vital. Indeed, in
the first debate, which was opened and closed by Douglas, the relation
of the two speakers became dramatic. It was here that Douglas hoping
to fasten on Lincoln the stigma of "abolitionist," charged him with
having undertaken to abolitionize the old Whig party, and having been
in 1854 a subscriber to a radical platform proclaimed at Springfield.
This platform Douglas read. Lincoln, when he replied, could only say
he was never at the convention--knew nothing of the resolutions; but
the impression prevailed that he was cornered. The next issue of the
Chicago "Press and Tribune" dispelled it. That paper had employed to
report the debates the first shorthand reporter of Chicago, Mr. Robert
L. Hitt--now a Member of Congress and the Chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Affairs. Mr. Hitt, when Douglas began to read the resolutions,
took an opportunity to rest, supposing he could get the original from
the speaker. He took down only the first line of each resolution. He
missed Douglas after the debate, but on reaching Chicago, where he
wrote out his report, he sent an assistant to the files to find the
platform adopted at the Springfield Convention. It was brought, but
when Mr. Hitt began to transcribe it he saw at once that it was widely
different from the one Douglas had read. There was great excitement in
the office, and the staff, ardently Republican, went to work to
discover where the resolutions had come from. It was found that they
originated at a meeting of radical abolitionists with whom Lincoln had
never been associated.

The "Press and Tribune" announced the "forgery," as it was called in a
caustic editorial, "The Little Dodger Cornered and Caught." Within a
week even the remote school-districts of Illinois were discussing
Douglas's action, and many of the most important papers of the nation
had made it a subject of editorial comment.

Almost without exception Douglas was condemned. No amount of
explanation on his part helped him. "The particularity of Douglas's
charge," said the Louisville "Journal," "precludes the idea that he
was simply and innocently mistaken." Lovers of fair play were
disgusted, and those of Douglas's own party who would have applauded a
trick too clever to be discovered could not forgive him for one which
had been found out. Greeley came out bitterly against him, and before
long wrote to Lincoln and 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."

Douglas's error became a sharp-edged sword in Lincoln's hand. Without
directly referring to it, he called his hearers' attention to the
forgery every time he quoted a document by his elaborate explanation
that he believed, unless there was some mistake on the part of those
with whom the matter originated and which he had been unable to
detect, that this was correct. Once when Douglas brought forward a
document, Lincoln blandly remarked that he could scarcely be blamed
for doubting its genuineness since the introduction of the Springfield
resolutions at Ottawa.

It was in the second debate, at Freeport, that Lincoln made the
boldest stroke of the contest. Soon after the Ottawa debate, in
discussing his plan for the next encounter, with a number of his
political friends,--Washburne, Cook, Judd, and others,--he told them
he proposed to ask Douglas four questions, which he read. One and all
cried halt at the second question. Under no condition, they said, must
he put it. If it were put, Douglas would answer it in such a way as to
win the senatorship. The morning of the debate, while on the way to
Freeport, Lincoln read the same questions to Mr. Joseph Medill. "I do
not like this second question, Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Medill. The two
men argued to their journey's end, but Lincoln was still unconvinced.
Even after he reached Freeport several Republican leaders came to him
pleading, "Do not ask that question." He was obdurate; and he went on
the platform with a higher head, a haughtier step than his friends had
noted in him before. Lincoln was going to ruin himself, the committee
said despondently; one would think he did not want the senatorship.

The mooted question ran in Lincoln's notes: "Can the people of a
United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any
citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to
the formation of a State Constitution?" Lincoln had seen the
irreconcilableness of Douglas's own measure of popular sovereignty,
which declared that the people of a territory should be left to
regulate their domestic concerns in their own way subject only to the
Constitution, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott
case that slaves, being property, could not under the Constitution be
excluded from a territory. He knew that if Douglas said no to this
question, his Illinois constituents would never return him to the
Senate. He believed that if he said yes, the people of the South would
never vote for him for President of the United States. He was willing
himself to lose the senatorship in order to defeat Douglas for the
Presidency in 1860. "I am after larger game; the battle of 1860 is
worth a hundred of this," he said confidently.

The question was put, and Douglas answered it with rare artfulness.
"It matters not," he cried, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter
decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go
into a territory under the Constitution; the people have the lawful
means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason
that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is
supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can
only be established by the local legislature, and if the people are
opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who
will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction
of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their
legislature will favor its extension."

His democratic constituents went wild over the clever way in which
Douglas had escaped Lincoln's trap. He now practically had his
election. The Republicans shook their heads. Lincoln only was serene.
He alone knew what he had done. The Freeport debate had no sooner
reached the pro-slavery press than a storm of protest went up.
Douglas had betrayed the South. He had repudiated the Supreme Court
decision. He had declared that slavery could be kept out of the
territories by other legislation than a State Constitution. "The
Freeport doctrine," or "the theory of unfriendly legislation," as it
became known, spread month by month, and slowly but surely made
Douglas an impossible candidate in the South. The force of the
question was not realized in full by Lincoln's friends until the
Democratic party met in Charleston, S. C., in 1860, and the Southern
delegates refused to support Douglas because of the answer he gave to
Lincoln's question in the Freeport debate of 1858.

"Do you recollect the argument we had on the way up to Freeport two
years ago over the question I was going to ask Judge Douglas?" Lincoln
asked Mr. Joseph Medill, when the latter went to Springfield a few
days after the election of 1860.

"Yes," said Medill, "I recollect it very well."

"Don't you think I was right now?"

"We were both right. The question hurt Douglas for the Presidency, but
it lost you the senatorship."

"Yes, and I have won the place he was playing for."

From the beginning of the campaign Lincoln supplemented the strength
of his arguments by inexhaustible good humor. Douglas, physically
worn, harassed by the trend which Lincoln had given the discussions,
irritated that his adroitness and eloquence could not so cover the
fundamental truth of the Republican position but that it would up
again, often grew angry, even abusive. Lincoln answered him with most
effective raillery. At Havana, where he spoke the day after Douglas,
he said:

"I am informed that my distinguished friend yesterday became a little
excited--nervous, perhaps--and he said something about fighting, as
though referring to a pugilistic encounter between him and myself. Did
anybody in this audience hear him use such language? (Cries of "Yes.")
I am informed further, that somebody in his audience, rather more
excited and nervous than himself, took off his coat, and offered to
take the job off Judge Douglas's hands, and fight Lincoln himself. Did
anybody here witness that war-like proceeding? (Laughter and cries of
"Yes.") Well, I merely desire to say that I shall fight neither Judge
Douglas nor his second. I shall not do this for two reasons, which I
will now explain. In the first place, a fight would prove nothing
which is in issue in this contest. It might establish that Judge
Douglas is a more muscular man than myself, or it might demonstrate
that I am a more muscular man than Judge Douglas. But this question is
not referred to in the Cincinnati platform, nor in either of the
Springfield platforms. Neither result would prove him right nor me
wrong; and so of the gentleman who volunteered to do this fighting for
him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would
certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder.

"My second reason for not having a personal encounter with the judge
is, that I don't believe he wants it himself. He and I are about the
best friends in the world, and when we get together he would no more
think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore, ladies and
gentlemen, when the judge talked about fighting, he was not giving
vent to any ill feeling of his own, but merely trying to excite--well,
enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience. And as I find he
was tolerably successful, we will call it quits."

More difficult for Lincoln to take good-naturedly than threats and
hard names was the irrelevant matters which Douglas dragged into the
debates to turn attention from the vital arguments. Thus Douglas
insisted repeatedly on taunting Lincoln because his zealous friends
had carried him off the platform at Ottawa. "Lincoln was so frightened
by the questions put to him," said Douglas, "that he could not walk."
He tried to arouse the prejudice of the audience by absurd charges of
abolitionism. Lincoln wanted to give negroes social equality; he
wanted a negro wife; he was willing to allow Fred Douglass to make
speeches for him. Again he took up a good deal of Lincoln's time by
forcing him to answer to a charge of refusing to vote supplies for the
soldiers in the Mexican War. Lincoln denied and explained, until at
last, at Charleston, he turned suddenly to Douglas's supporters,
dragging one of the strongest of them--the Hon. O. B. Ficklin, with
whom he had been in Congress in 1848--to the platform.

"I do not mean to do anything with Mr. Ficklin," he said, "except to
present his face and tell you that he personally knows it to be a
lie." And Mr. Ficklin had to acknowledge that Lincoln was right.

"Judge Douglas," said Lincoln in speaking of this policy, "is playing
cuttlefish--a small species of fish that has no mode of defending
himself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes
the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."

The question at stake was too serious in Lincoln's judgment, for
platform jugglery. Every moment of his time which Douglas forced him
to spend answering irrelevant charges he gave begrudgingly. He
struggled constantly to keep his speeches on the line of solid
argument. Slowly but surely those who followed the debates began to
understand this. It was Douglas who drew the great masses to the
debates in the first place; it was because of him that the public men
and the newspapers of the East, as well as of the West, watched the
discussions. But as the days went on it was not Douglas who made the
impression.

During the hours of the speeches the two men seemed well mated. "I can
recall only one fact of the debates," says Mrs. William Crotty, of
Seneca, Illinois, "that I felt so sorry for Lincoln when Douglas was
speaking, and then to my surprise I felt so sorry for Douglas when
Lincoln replied." The disinterested to whom it was an intellectual
game, felt the power and charm of both men. Partisans had each reason
enough to cheer. It was afterwards, as the debates were talked over by
auditors as they lingered at the country store or were grouped on the
fence in the evening, or when they were read in the generous reports
which the newspapers of Illinois and even of other States gave, that
the thoroughness of Lincoln's argument was understood. Even the first
debate at Ottawa had a surprising effect. "I tell you," says Mr.
George Beatty of Ottawa, "that debate set people thinking on these
important questions in a way they hadn't dreamed of. I heard any
number of men say: 'This thing is an awfully serious question, and I
have about concluded Lincoln has got it right.' My father, a
thoughtful, God-fearing man, said to me, as we went home to supper,
'George, you are young, and don't see what this thing means, as I do.
Douglas's speeches of "squatter sovereignty" please you younger men,
but I tell you that with us older men it's a great question that faces
us. We've either got to keep slavery back or it's going to spread all
over the country. That's the real question that's behind all this.
Lincoln is right.' And that was the feeling that prevailed, I think,
among the majority, after the debate was over. People went home
talking about the danger of slavery getting a hold in the North. This
territory had been Democratic; La Salle County, the morning of the day
of the debate, was Democratic; but when the next day came around,
hundreds of Democrats had been made Republicans, owing to the light in
which Lincoln had brought forward the fact that slavery threatened."

It was among Lincoln's own friends, however, that his speeches
produced the deepest impression. They had believed him to be strong,
but probably there was no one of them who had not felt dubious about
his ability to meet Douglas. Many even feared a fiasco. Gradually it
began to be clear to them that Lincoln was the stronger. Could it be
that Lincoln really was a great man? The young Republican journalists
of the "Press and Tribune"--Scripps, Hitt, Medill--began to ask
themselves the question. One evening as they talked over Lincoln's
argument a letter was received. It came from a prominent Eastern
statesman. "Who is this man that is replying to Douglas in your
State?" he asked. "Do you realize that no greater speeches have been
made on public questions in the history of our country; that his
knowledge of the subject is profound, his logical unanswerable, his
style inimitable?" Similar letters kept coming from various parts of
the country. Before the campaign was over Lincoln's friends were
exultant. Their favorite was a great man, "a full-grown man," as one
of them wrote in his paper.

The country at large watched Lincoln with astonishment. When the
debates began there were Republicans in Illinois of wider national
reputation. Judge Lyman Trumbull, then Senator; was better known. He
was an able debater, and a speech which he made in August against
Douglas's record called from the New York "Evening Post" the remark:
"This is the heaviest blow struck at Senator Douglas since he took the
field in Illinois; it is unanswerable, and we suspect that it will be
fatal." Trumbull's speech the "Post" afterwards published in pamphlet
form. Besides Trumbull, Owen Lovejoy, Oglesby, and Palmer were all
speaking. That Lincoln should not only have so far outstripped men of
his own party, but should have out-argued Douglas, was the cause of
comment everywhere. "No man of this generation," said the "Evening
Post" editorially, at the close of the debate, "has grown more rapidly
before the country than Lincoln in this canvass." As a matter of fact,
Lincoln had attracted the attention of all the thinking men of the
country. "The first thing that really awakened my interest in him,"
says Henry Ward Beecher, "was his speech parallel with Douglas in
Illinois, and indeed it was that manifestation of ability that secured
his nomination to the Presidency."

But able as were Lincoln's arguments, deep as was the impression he
had made, he was not elected to the senatorship. Douglas won fairly
enough; though it is well to note that if the Republicans did not
elect a senator they gained a substantial number of votes over those
polled in 1856.

Lincoln accepted the result with a serenity inexplicable to his
supporters. To him the contest was but one battle in a "durable"
struggle. Little matter who won now, if in the end the right
triumphed. From the first he had looked at the final result--not at
the senatorship. "I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish," he said
at Chicago in July. "I do not pretend that I would not like to go to
the United States Senate; I make no such hypocritical pretense; but I
do say to you that in this mighty issue, it is nothing to you, nothing
to the mass of the people of the nation, whether or not Judge Douglas
or myself shall ever be heard of after this night; it may be a trifle
to either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon
which hang the destinies of the nation perhaps, it is absolutely
nothing."

The intense heat and fury of the debates, the defeat in November, did
not alter a jot this high view. "I am glad I made the late race," he
wrote Dr. A. H. Henry. "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."

At that date perhaps no one appreciated the value of what Lincoln had
done as well as he did himself. He was absolutely sure he was right
and that in the end people would see it. Though he might not rise, he
knew his cause would.

"Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as
the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest," he
wrote. "No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in harmony
long. Another explosion will soon occur." His whole attention was
given to conserving what the Republicans had gained--"We have some one
hundred and twenty thousand clear Republican votes. That pile is worth
keeping together;" to consoling his friends--"You are feeling badly,"
he wrote to N. B. Judd, Chairman of the Republican Committee, "and
this too shall pass away, never fear"; to rallying for another
effort,--"The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the
end of one or even one hundred defeats."

If Lincoln had at times a fear that his defeat would cause him to be
set aside, it soon was dispelled. The interest awakened in him was
genuine, and it spread with the wider reading and discussion of his
arguments. He was besieged by letters from all parts of the Union,
congratulations, encouragements, criticisms. Invitations for lectures
poured in upon him, and he became the first choice of his entire party
for political speeches.

The greater number of these invitations he declined. He had given so
much time to politics since 1854 that his law practice had been
neglected and he was feeling poor; but there were certain of the calls
which could not be resisted. Douglas spoke several times for the
Democrats of Ohio in the 1859 campaign for governor and Lincoln
naturally was asked to reply. He made but two speeches, one at
Columbus on September 16 and the other at Cincinnati on September 17,
but he had great audiences on both occasions. The Columbus speech was
devoted almost entirely to answering an essay by Douglas which had
been published in the September number of "Harper's Magazine," and
which began by asserting that--"Under our complex system of government
it is the first duty of American statesmen to mark distinctly the
dividing-line between Federal and Local authority." It was an
elaborate argument for "popular sovereignty" and attracted national
attention. Indeed, at the moment it was the talk of the country.
Lincoln literally tore it to bits.

"What is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty?" he asked. "It is, as a
principle, no other than that if one man chooses to make a slave of
another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to
object. Applied in government, as he seeks to apply it, it is this:
If, in a new territory into which a few people are beginning to enter
for the purpose of making their homes, they choose to either exclude
from their limits or to establish it there, however one or the other
may affect the persons to be enslaved, or the infinitely greater
number of persons who are afterward to inhabit that territory, or the
other members of the families, or communities, of which they are but
an incipient member, or the general head of the family of States as
parent of all--however their action may affect one or the other of
these, there is no power or right to interfere. That is Douglas's
popular sovereignty applied."

It was in this address that Lincoln uttered the oft-quoted paragraphs:

"I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He
is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a
lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. That is the build of
the man, and consequently he looks upon the matter of slavery in this
unimportant light.

"Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is endeavoring to force this
policy upon the American people, that while he is put up in that way,
a good many are not. He ought to remember that there was once in this
country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a
Democrat--a man whose principles and policy are not very prevalent
amongst Democrats to-day, it is true; but that man did not exactly
take this view of the insignificance of the element of slavery which
our friend Judge Douglas does. In contemplation of this thing, we all
know he was led to exclaim, 'I tremble for my country when I remember
that God is just!' We know how he looked upon it when he thus
expressed himself. There was danger to this country, danger of the
avenging justice of God, in that little unimportant popular
sovereignty question of Judge Douglas. He supposed there was a
question of God's eternal justice wrapped up in the enslaving of any
race of men, or any man, and that those who did so braved the arm of
Jehovah--that when a nation thus dared the Almighty, every friend of
that nation had cause to dread his wrath. Choose ye between Jefferson
and Douglas as to what is the true view of this element among us."

One interesting point about the Columbus address is that in it appears
the germ of the Cooper Institute speech delivered five months later in
New York City.

Lincoln made so deep an impression in Ohio by his speeches that the
State Republican Committee asked permission to publish them together
with the Lincoln-Douglas Debates as campaign documents in the
Presidential election of the next year.

In December he yielded to the persuasion of his Kansas political
friends and delivered five lectures in that State, only fragments of
which have been preserved.

Unquestionably the most effective piece of work he did that winter was
the address at Cooper Institute, New York, on February 27. He had
received an invitation in the fall of 1859 to lecture at Plymouth
Church, Brooklyn. To his friends it was evident that he was greatly
pleased by the compliment, but that he feared that he was not equal to
an Eastern audience. After some hesitation he accepted, provided they
would take a political speech if he could find time to get up no
other. When he reached New York he found that he was to speak there
instead of Brooklyn, and that he was certain to have a distinguished
audience. Fearful lest he was not as well prepared as he ought to be,
conscious, too, no doubt, that he had a great opportunity before him,
he spent nearly all of the two days and a half before his lecture in
revising his matter and in familiarizing himself with it. In order
that he might be sure that he was heard he arranged with his friend,
Mason Brayman, who had come on to New York with him, to sit in the
back of the hall and in case he did not speak loud enough to raise his
high hat on a cane.

Mr. Lincoln's audience was a notable one even for New York. It
included William Cullen Bryant, who introduced him; Horace Greeley,
David Dudley Field, and many more well known men of the day. It is
doubtful if there were any persons present, even his best friends, who
expected that Lincoln would do more than interest his hearers by his
sound arguments. Many have confessed since that they feared his queer
manner and quaint speeches would amuse people so much that they would
fail to catch the weight of his logic. But to the surprise of
everybody Lincoln impressed his audience from the start by his dignity
and his seriousness. "His manner was, to a New York audience, a very
strange one, but it was captivating," wrote an auditor. "He held the
vast meeting spellbound, and as one by one his oddly expressed but
trenchant and convincing arguments confirmed the soundness of his
political conclusions, the house broke out in wild and prolonged
enthusiasm. I think I never saw an audience more thoroughly carried
away by an orator."

The Cooper Union speech was founded on a sentence from one of
Douglas's Ohio speeches:--"Our fathers when they framed the government
under which we live understood this question just as well, and even
better, than we do now." Douglas claimed that the "fathers" held that
the Constitution forbade the Federal government controlling slavery
in the Territories. Lincoln with infinite care had investigated the
opinions and votes of each of the "fathers"--whom he took to be the
thirty-nine men who signed the Constitution--and showed conclusively
that a majority of them "certainly understood that no proper division
of local from Federal authority nor any part of the Constitution
forbade the Federal government to control slavery in the Federal
Territories." Not only did he show this of the thirty-nine framers of
the original Constitution, but he defied anybody to show that one of
the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments to
the Constitution ever held any such view.

"Let us," he said, "who believe that 'our fathers who framed the
government under which we live understood this question just as well,
and even better, than we do now,' speak as they spoke, and act as they
acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask--all Republicans desire--in
relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again
marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and
protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us
makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the
guaranties those fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and
fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so
far as I know or believe, they will be content."

One after another he took up and replied to the charges the South was
making against the North at the moment:--Sectionalism, radicalism,
giving undue prominence to the slave question, stirring up
insurrection among slaves, refusing to allow constitutional rights,
and to each he had an unimpassioned answer inpregnable with facts.

The discourse was ended with what Lincoln felt to be a precise
statement of the opinion of the question on both sides, and of the
duty of the Republican party under the circumstances. This portion of
his address is one of the finest early examples of that simple and
convincing style in which most of his later public documents were
written.

"If slavery is right," he said, "all words, acts, laws, and
constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced
and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its
nationality--its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly
insist upon its extension--its enlargement. All they ask we could
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as
readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and
our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole
controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for
desiring its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong,
as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their
views, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and
political responsibilities, can we do this?

"Wrong, as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone
where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from
its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will
prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to
overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids
this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us
be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are
so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for
some middle ground between right and wrong: vain as the search for a
man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a
policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care;
such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to
Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington,
imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington
did.

"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the
government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right
makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty
as we understand it."

From New York Lincoln went to New Hampshire to visit his son Robert,
then at Phillips Exeter Academy. His coming was known only a short
time before he arrived and hurried arrangements were made for him to
speak at Concord, Manchester, Exeter and Dover. At Concord the address
was made in the afternoon on only a few hours' notice; nevertheless,
he had a great audience, so eager were men at the time to hear
anybody who had serious arguments on the slavery question. Something
of the impression Lincoln made in New Hampshire may be gathered from
the following article, "Mr. Lincoln in New Hampshire," which appeared
in the Boston "Atlas and Bee" for March 5:

The Concord "Statesman" says that notwithstanding the rain of
Thursday, rendering travelling very inconvenient, the largest hall in
that city was crowded to hear Mr. Lincoln. The editor says it was one
of the most powerful, logical and compacted speeches to which it was
ever our fortune to listen; an argument against the system of slavery,
and in defence of the position of the Republican party, from the
deductions of which no reasonable man could possibly escape. He
fortified every position assumed, by proofs which it is impossible to
gainsay; and while his speech was at intervals enlivened by remarks
which elicited applause at the expense of the Democratic party, there
was, nevertheless, not a single word which tended to impair the
dignity of the speaker, or weaken the force of the great truths he
uttered.

The "Statesman" adds that the address "was perfect and was closed by a
peroration which brought his audience to their feet. We are not
extravagant in the remark, that a political speech of greater power
has rarely if ever been uttered in the Capital of New Hampshire. At
its conclusion nine roof-raising cheers were given; three for the
speaker, three for the Republicans of Illinois, and three for the
Republicans of New Hampshire."

On the same evening Mr. Lincoln spoke at Manchester, to an immense
gathering in Smyth's Hall. The "Mirror," a neutral paper, gives the
following enthusiastic notice of his speech: "The audience was a
flattering one to the reputation of the speaker. It was composed of
persons of all sorts of political notions, earnest to hear one whose
fame was so great, and we think most of them went away thinking better
of him than they anticipated they should. He spoke an hour and a half
with great fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful
interest. He did not abuse the South, the Administration, or the
Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the solitary
exception of a few hits at Douglas's notions. He is far from
prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable,
and yet he wins your attention and good will from the start.

"He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages; he is
not a wit, a humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry
and good nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of
practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with
their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the
ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of
all his arguments; not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous
ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into
his train of belief, persons who are opposed to him. For the first
half hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and
from that point he began to lead them off, little by little,
cunningly, till it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He
displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind than
any public speaker we have heard since long Jim Wilson left for
California."

From New Hampshire Lincoln went to Connecticut, where on March 5 he
spoke at Hartford, on March 6 at New Haven, on March 8 at Woonsocket,
on March 9 at Norwich. There are no reports of the New Hampshire