LINCOLN 
 
 FOR BOYS 
 
 FRANCES CSPABHAWK 
 
Reserve StoragS 
 Collection 
 
 Class 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
Copyright, 19U0, by McClure, Phillips & Co. 
 
 LINCOLN IN 1857. 
 From a photograph. 
 
A Life of Lincoln 
 
 FOR BOYS 
 
 BY 
 
 Frances Campbell Sparhawk 
 
 M 
 
 Author of " Honor Dalton," " Polly Blatchley," etc. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 New York 
 Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
^572 
 
 V 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Couies Received 
 
 AUG 2\ 1907 
 
 Copyright Entry 
 
 CLASS A XXc, No, 
 
 COPY A. 
 
 Copyright, 1907, 
 By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 
 
TO 
 E. J. S. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 We know the old legend of the great gulf that 
 once opened in the earth in Rome and threatened to 
 destroy the city. The oracle declared that this gulf 
 would never close until the most precious thing in Rome 
 had been thrown into it. So the people brought gold 
 and jewels and beautiful furniture and ornaments of all 
 kinds. But the gulf remained as wide open as ever, and 
 the people were in despair. At last one brave man 
 who loved his country cried out : "The most precious 
 thing in Rome is her manhood !" And he leaped straight 
 down into the gulf, dying for the sake of his country. 
 For immediately it shut together over his head and 
 Rome was saved. 
 
 In 1861, more than two thousand years afterward, 
 in our own land of America, a great gulf of disunion 
 opened in the midst of our Republic, and all our efforts 
 at closing it were of no avail, until the most precious 
 possession in our land, or in any land, had leaped into 
 the gulf. Four hundreds of thousands of brave men 
 gave their lives to the closing of this gulf of disunion 
 which would have destroyed the peace and greatness of 
 our land. 
 
 The last life to be sacrificed was Abraham Lincoln's. 
 And the gulf closed. For Lincoln was a man whom the 
 North as well as many in the South mourned for as a 
 patriot, a lover and friend of his whole country. He 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 was, as Stanton said of him, the greatest ruler of men 
 that the world has seen, a ruler by persuading, convinc- 
 ing, leading by his own purity of purpose and great 
 abilities. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was as poor as any poor man ; 
 none has fewer opportunities than he had. But who 
 can bring so much out of so little, because who has his 
 ability and his wonderful industry? 
 
 Yet the keynote of his character was not his 
 ability or his industry, remarkable as these were. It 
 was something still higher — it was his purpose. A 
 remark that he once made shows how he felt as to all 
 the honors that life could give him. He said one day 
 that some persons were satisfied with being " Governor " 
 or holding some office; but this kind of thing could 
 never satisfy him. This was true. Not what he had, 
 but what he was and what he could do in the world 
 seemed to him worthy of struggle and labor. 
 
 The history of his life gives us a faint idea of what 
 his struggle and labor were. It tells us also how his 
 great desire to help the world was gratified in a 
 wonderful way. 
 
 In all our land, indeed, in all the world there has 
 been but one Abraham Lincoln. But of those who have 
 his purpose to leave their world in some ways better 
 than they found it, there should be many. 
 
 F. C. S. 
 
 Newton Centre, Mass. 
 June, 1907 
 
IV 
 
 VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 i How People Lived in 1809 ... 9 
 
 ii Daniel Boone and the Lincoln Pioneers 17 
 
 in The Little Boy in the Lonely Woods . 26 
 
 Going to Indiana 33 
 
 A Good Step-Mother 40 
 
 Axe and School-Book 47 
 
 vii What Lincoln Liked Best of All to do 54 
 
 vm Among His Comrades 61 
 
 i\ His Trips to New Orleans ... 68 
 
 x How He Kept Shop; What Came of it 76 
 
 xi The Black Hawk War .... 82 
 
 xii Stumping for Election 89 
 
 xiii In Vandalia 97 
 
 xiv The Lincoln-Stone protest .... 105 
 
 xv Settled in Springfield 113 
 
 xvi Abraham Lincoln Marries . . . . 120 
 
 xvn In Congress 126 
 
 xvin A Real Student 132 
 
 xix How Lincoln Practiced Law ... 139 
 
 xx The Lincoln-Douglas Debates . . . 153 
 
 xxi Lincoln in New York and New England 162 
 xxii The Organization of the Republican 
 
 Party . 170 
 
 xxiii In the Wigwam at Chicago . . . . 177 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 xxiv What the South Was Doing in the 
 
 Winter of 1860-61 185 
 
 xxv What the New President Had to Face 192 
 
 xxvi Firing on the Flag 200 
 
 xxvii How the North Responded .... 205 
 
 xxvin The Battle of Bull Run .... 212 
 
 xxix Some of the Union Generals . . . 221 
 
 xxx People who Tried to Advise . . . 228 
 
 xxxi General Lee Comes into Maryland . 234 
 
 xxxn Congress and Slavery 240 
 
 xxxiii The Emancipation Proclamation . . 246 
 
 xxxiv Foes Before and Foes Behind . . 253 
 
 xxxv General Grant at Vicksburg . . . 259 
 
 xxxvi War on the Ocean 268 
 
 xxxvn On the Field of Gettysburg . . . 274 
 
 xxxviii How Mr. Lincoln Tried for Peace . 284 
 
 xxxix How the People Learned to Trust Him 288 
 
 xl How Grant Fought It Out on That 
 
 Line 295 
 
 xli Lincoln's Walk Through Richmond 306 
 
 xlii The Joy of the Nation in Victory and 
 
 Peace 310 
 
 xliii A People's Grief 318 
 
 xliv The Great American 
 
A LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 I. 
 
 How People Lived in 1809. 
 
 If you should shut your eyes on this present 
 year and some fairy would whisk you backward 
 into the year 1809, and, still keeping your eyes 
 shut, you should listen, it would seem to you 
 very still. Not a sound of the electric cars 
 would you hear ; not an automobile would rum- 
 ble in the distance and make you look to find if 
 you were in its track; no whistle and rush of 
 steam cars would you hear; no postman's 
 whistle would sound shrill in the distance as he 
 hurried from house to house with his bag of 
 mail ; no footsteps of the boy with the morning 
 or the evening paper to deliver would sound on 
 the pavement or come running over the grass, 
 cross lots; no telegram would be handed in at 
 your door; no telephone bell would make you 
 rush to the receiver to find out what somebody 
 miles away was going to talk to you about— 
 
 9 
 
10 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 none of these things would you hear, for at that 
 time they did not exist; there were no electric 
 cars, or automobiles, or steamcars ; no postmen, 
 or paper-boys, or telegraphs or telephones; no 
 steamers crossing and re-crossing the ocean. 
 
 Then if you could open your eyes on this 
 country as it was in 1809, remembering how you 
 live and travel nowadays, you would wonder 
 more and more how people got on at all in 
 those times. 
 
 For from somewhere far down the dusty road 
 you would hear a rumbling slowly growing 
 more distinct ; by and by you would see a cloud 
 of dust heavier than that raised now by an 
 automobile, because in those times the roads 
 were not so good; then two horses would come 
 into view, and behind them two more, drawing a 
 lumbering stagecoach such as you have never 
 seen except in pictures. If you wished to take 
 a journey, this would be the coach you would 
 travel in— unless you were very rich and went 
 in your own carriage with your own pair of 
 horses. 
 
 If you were going any great distance, for 
 instance, from New York to Boston— for that 
 was a great distance in those days — you would 
 have to prepare for a week's journey; for that 
 trip used to take six days by stagecoach. Now 
 the fast expresses do it in less than six hours. 
 
HOW PEOPLE LIVED IX 1S09. 11 
 
 As you were getting ready to start, people in 
 your neighborhood would come or send to you 
 asking if you would do them the kindness to 
 deliver certain letters to their friends or busi- 
 ness correspondents in Boston, or wherever you 
 might be going. In those days it cost so much 
 to send a letter by post that people always asked 
 their friends to carry it, whenever this was 
 possible. They used to begin their letters : "I 
 take this opportunity of Mr. So-and-So's going 
 to such a place"— wherever this might be— "to 
 send you a letter. ' ' Then they would tell their 
 news. In those days letters did not have envel- 
 opes; they were folded in a peculiar way that 
 we should find it hard to imitate and sealed with 
 sealing wax with a monogram, or a crest, or 
 some pretty device pressed into the wax from 
 the stamp. 
 
 The regular mail went on these stagecoaches 
 according to a law that Congress passed in 
 the March of 1802. Before that time the mail 
 was carried by men on horseback. How small 
 the mailbags must have been ! Only the great 
 iron horse can now carry the mails that are 
 going from city to city all over the land, not 
 once in two or three days, or even once a day, 
 but all the time, every few hours. And a mail 
 bag, or perhaps two thrown across a saddle 
 with horse and rider jogging along the heavy 
 
12 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 roads! — why, now it takes a car fitted up for 
 the purpose to carry the mails. It used to cost 
 twenty-five cents and then twelve cents to send 
 a letter. Now, as we know, one will go from 
 Maine to California for two. So people don't 
 ask their friends to take letters for them on 
 journeys as they once did; they only have to 
 ask them to drop these into the letter boxes. 
 
 If you had been traveling in 1809, you would 
 not have gone inside the stagecoach if it had 
 been fine weather ; but would have taken a seat 
 aloft beside the driver where you could breathe 
 the fresh air and enjoy the country. And you 
 would have found that the driver was express- 
 man also and stopped at this house and that to 
 deliver letters and packages and to receive and 
 deliver messages. You would have found, too, 
 that he knew all the gossip of the places he 
 passed through on his route and could tell you 
 the history of most of the people in them. For 
 all the world loves to hear and tell news; and 
 those were not the days of newspapers where 
 people could read all the news they wanted, and 
 sometimes more than they wanted. For in 1801 
 there were only two hundred weekly and seven- 
 teen daily newspapers published in all the coun- 
 try. So, if people had not told each other the 
 news, how would they have heard any? 
 
 The stagecoaches stopped at taverns on the 
 
HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN 1809. 13 
 
 way for fresh horses ; and if you had been one of 
 the passengers, you would have gone in with the 
 rest to get breakfast, or dinner, or supper. In 
 those times dinner was in the middle of the day, 
 unless with a few very fashionable persons who 
 had it in the middle of the afternoon. 
 
 When you reached the end of your journey, 
 if it happened to be winter weather and you 
 were cold and snowy, no doubt you would have 
 found a warm welcome from your friends, but 
 you would not have found a warm house. They 
 would have ushered you into the drawingroom 
 where you would have found a great blazing 
 fire of wood looking so comfortable and so beau- 
 tiful. If you sat up close to the fire your nose 
 would have been warm, or if you turned your 
 back to the blaze your back would have been 
 warm; but you would have found it difficult to 
 keep both warm at the same time. Or if you 
 had found a Franklin stove— for these were in 
 use before that time, you would have been 
 warmer so long as you kept near it. But as 
 to having rooms and halls all over a house 
 warmed as they are now, nobody ever dreamed 
 of such a thing. 
 
 You might ask: "If it took so long to go 
 between New York and Boston, how long did 
 it take to go to California V 9 
 
14 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 There was no California— there was the conn- 
 try of course. But it belonged to Mexico and 
 only came to the United States when Texas did, 
 in the Mexican war, 1845-1848. 
 
 In early times, and even after the Bevolu- 
 tionary war, it had been thought that we should 
 never want the country west of the Mississippi, 
 and that this would always be a wilderness and 
 a place for the Indians. But as the country 
 grew, people changed their minds. In 1821 the 
 United States bought Florida from Spain. 
 Before that, however, in 1803, Louisiana was 
 bought by us from France. The French had 
 first come there in 1699; then France ceded it 
 to Spain, 1762 ; but in 1800 Spain gave it back 
 to France. Three years later the United States 
 bought it from France. 
 
 We know the boundaries of Louisiana now. 
 But in those days it was very much larger and 
 its boundaries were " vague and undeter- 
 mined." On the north it went to Canada; or 
 one old record says it "ends on the north at a 
 place called Detroit between Lake Erie and 
 Lake Huron." On the south it ran to the Gulf 
 of Mexico. And as no one could tell on the west 
 just where the French country ended which the 
 United States had bought as Louisiana, and 
 where the Spanish possessions began, the 
 
HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN 1809. 15 
 
 Americans pushed west as far as they could and 
 said the land had been French and belonged to 
 them. 
 
 Ohio had been made a State only in 1802 ; and 
 in 1809 the country west of this largely re- 
 mained to be settled and conquered from the 
 wilderness for civilization. Kentucky and 
 Tennessee were States about the end of 1700; 
 Vermont was admitted in 1791. But in 1809 
 these were the only new States admitted into 
 the Union since the Revolution. This makes us 
 realize what a different country even in size it 
 was from today. 
 
 But, after all, it is not the size of a country 
 that counts so much; it is not its many inven- 
 tions and comforts and conveniences of business 
 and of life, and, especially, it is not its vast 
 wealth that makes its real power and greatness 
 —it is the men and women in it that really count 
 for its present and its future. And in America 
 at that time were men and women as strong and 
 brave and able as any who live today ; and most 
 of all there were good and true men and women 
 who loved God and loved their country. 
 
 It was into this country of great perform- 
 ance and still greater promise, and to be a 
 leader of such men and women in a time of ter- 
 rible struggle and danger, the choice of the 
 
16 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 people and, under God, their ruler to guide this 
 nation to life instead of death— it was to do all 
 this, and beyond it, to show in his own character 
 how true and great a man can be, that, February 
 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born. 
 
II. 
 
 Daniel Boone and the Lincoln Pioneers. . 
 
 The original grant of Colonial Virginia was 
 a very large country indeed ; it included not only 
 Virginia as it now is on the map, but the whole 
 of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and "every- 
 thing westward to the Mississippi, and as much 
 further as the colony had a mind to claim/ ' 
 The Virginia called afterward "the mother of 
 States' ' was only the part between the Alle- 
 ghany Mountains and Chesapeake Bay — our 
 present Virginia. 
 
 The people who settled Virginia, were more 
 from the rural districts of England than those 
 who came to New England; some were squires 
 and many were yeomen. They were not so 
 ready to build cities and live together as in New 
 England; they liked better to spread over the 
 country and have great estates. And they did 
 not have so hard a time with the Indians as did 
 the New England people, so that they could do 
 this more safely. 
 
 17 
 
18 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 As we know, the first Virginia company was 
 organized in 1606. But this did not succeed, be- 
 cause people in England wanted to do all the 
 management and give those here no rights. 
 Then, in 1624, the English government took 
 control, and the colonists came over faster. 
 They soon found that there was no gold in the 
 State and that they were too far south to get 
 furs from the Indians. But about this time 
 tobacco was introduced into Europe, and Vir- 
 ginia was found to be a fine place to grow 
 tobacco; the colonists went into its culture 
 largely. They needed plenty of land for this; 
 and after a time when the best lands in Virginia 
 had been taken up, they began to look over the 
 mountains to see what was beyond. 
 
 It was not all desire for tobacco fields, how- 
 ever, that influenced them. The Anglo-Saxon 
 people love land, they want space enough to 
 live in, and to own for themselves acres and 
 acres of rich lands. So, as has been said, after 
 the best lands in Virginia had been taken up, 
 the most ambitious and adventurous settlers be- 
 gan to dream of going to those beyond ; and at 
 that time Kentucky seemed to them a world of 
 wonders and romance. It had the Ohio river 
 on the north, the Mississippi on the west, the 
 Cumberland Mountains between it and Virginia ; 
 it had rich and fertile lands ready for the pio- 
 
BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 19 
 
 neers ; also, many of its rivers were navigable. 
 There was another advantage. Only the Chick- 
 asaw Indians were really living in the country ; 
 the other tribes passed through it often on their 
 raids but lived north or south, or beyond the 
 Mississippi; so that the land was open to the 
 white man if he could come and take possession 
 of the forests and cultivate the rich plains that 
 he would find. These fertile acres proved too 
 tempting to resist when the farmers in Virginia 
 found that they would have to farm on the 
 slopes of the Alleghanies or go beyond these for 
 new lands. As early as 1750 Indian traders had 
 found passes through these mountains; and it 
 was one of these Indian traders who guided 
 Daniel Boone to the State that he helped to build 
 up and that made him so famous. 
 
 The first Kentucky colony was founded in 
 1774; and the following year other footholds 
 were taken and held; all earlier attempts had 
 failed. 
 
 Boone was not the first there; but he came 
 early enough to find plenty to do, and to do it. 
 
 Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania, in 
 1734. But when he was a young man he moved 
 from there, and through the Shenandoah Valley 
 in Virginia went to the banks of the Yadkin 
 Biver in North Carolina. There he married; 
 and it was not until May of 1769 that he began 
 
20 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 his exploration of Kentucky. Several men went 
 there in company with Boone. 
 
 But that winter Boone and a friend he was 
 hunting with were captured by Indians. The 
 Indians spoiled the camps and then set Boone 
 and his companion free and told them they 
 must never come there again, because they were 
 trespassing upon Indian hunting grounds un- 
 der treaties made with the Indians. This was 
 true ; but Boone did not know it, or care for it. 
 The Boone family were Quakers; and Daniel's 
 grandfather had come to Pennsylvania to be 
 near William Penn. Daniel had always been 
 used to Indians ; in his childhood they had come 
 to his father's house and had always been on 
 friendly terms with the Boones; and Daniel 
 knew them thoroughly. All his life he had great 
 influence over them. They captured him several 
 times; but they never hurt him. But he never 
 saw again the other men of their party who had 
 come to Kentucky with him. 
 
 After their release, as he was going through 
 the woods with his companion, they met two 
 men who called to them that they were white men 
 and friends. One proved to be Daniel's younger 
 brother, Squire Boone, come in search of Daniel. 
 
 The two men with the Boones were not long 
 afterward killed. Then the two brothers were 
 alone together in the vast woods. There they 
 
BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 21 
 
 spent the long winter. In the spring their am- 
 munition ran low. As they had to depend upon 
 hunting for food, and for skins which gave them 
 what money they had, there was nothing to do 
 but go to the settlements for more. And they 
 must have more horses and other supplies. 
 Daniel decided that one of them must go and 
 one stay; and that he must be the one to stay. 
 For three whole months he was there, "by my- 
 self,' ' he afterward said, "without bread, salt or 
 sugar, without company of my fellow-creatures, 
 or even a horse or dog." But he was born to 
 live in the woods, he loved them so, and he loved 
 hunting. It is said of him : "He was wanting in 
 no quality of wise woodcraft. He could outrun 
 a dog or a deer; he could thread the woods with- 
 out food day and night ; he could find his way as 
 easily as a panther could. Although a great 
 athlete and a tireless warrior, he hated fighting 
 and only fought for peace. In council and in 
 war he was equally valuable. His advice was 
 never rejected without disaster, nor followed 
 but with advantage ; and when the fighting once 
 began there was not a rifle in Kentucky which 
 could rival his." 
 
 Yet for all his skill and his love of great 
 spaces about him, he was homesick in those long 
 lonely months and was glad enough to see his 
 brother again. After Squire's return the two 
 
22 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 hunted for a year longer "in those lovely 
 wilds.' ' For they had to earn money by the 
 skins of the animals they shot. Then they went 
 back to the Yadkin Kiver and brought their 
 families to Kentucky. 
 
 The first ancestor of Abraham Lincoln to 
 reach America came to Hingham, Massachu- 
 setts, in 1838, and died there. His grandson 
 removed to New Jersey, and from there to Penn- 
 sylvania, where he died in 1735. His appraisers 
 called him "Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman,' ' so 
 that he must have had property. To one of his 
 sons he left land in New Jersey; and this son 
 about 1750 went to Virginia. It was this son, 
 Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of our presi- 
 dent, who went to Kentucky, partly because he 
 wanted more land and partly because he was 
 so interested in what he had heard from Boone 
 about that country. For the Boones and the 
 Lincolns were well acquainted; there had been 
 marriages in the families ; both were of Quaker 
 origin. This ancestor of our president was quite 
 well off, and when he sold his Virginia estates 
 he bought land in Kentucky that would .have 
 made the family rich if they had kept it. 
 
 When he went there in 1780, the country was 
 not quite so wild and uninhabited as it had been 
 at Boone's coming. The people had begun to 
 cultivate the land and they had built forts for 
 
BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 23 
 
 defence. For Kentucky was the border land 
 between the northern and southern Indians who 
 were at war with one another and was directly 
 in the warpaths of these Indians. Also, in deal- 
 ing with the Indians the white settlers did not 
 regard the treaties made with them and some- 
 times were quite as treacherous and savage in 
 warfare with them as the Indians themselves. 
 Then, west of the Mississippi, and also north 
 and south of Kentucky were the French who 
 always got on well with the Indians and many 
 a time roused them against the English settlers. 
 The Indians loved their own lands as much as 
 the white men did who came to crowd them out 
 and take possession. There was enough land 
 for both ; but neither saw it so ; and it was a time 
 of savagery and horror. 
 
 In 1780 three hundred " large family boats' ' 
 went down the Ohio River with people who 
 settled in Kentucky; for that must have been 
 an easier way of bringing families and house- 
 hold stuff than by land. In that same year the 
 town of Louisville was incorporated; and the 
 Virginia legislature— for then Kentucky was a 
 part of. Virginia, as we remember— endowed a 
 college in that country, the origin of the Uni- 
 versity of Lexington. 
 
 In 178.1 more people came ; and after the war 
 of the Revolution a good many soldiers went 
 
24 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 back to Virginia who had no regular occupa- 
 tion ; some of these came to Kentucky as settlers. 
 There were among the settlers many worthy 
 people, and some knaves, as in every com- 
 munity. 
 
 But it was a hard, hard life, with terrible 
 work and great danger, and no amusements ; no 
 books or papers, very little visiting; only once 
 in a while an opportunity to hear a preacher, 
 and for this they had to take much time and 
 travel far. The people dressed in skins of wild 
 beasts that the men had killed and in linen stuffs 
 that the women had woven. Except in firearms 
 and knives they had almost no iron. They ate 
 chiefly game, fish and coarse cornmeal. They 
 used to buy and sell by barter, so that many a 
 child grew up without ever seeing money. Their 
 dwellings were open to the weather and some 
 were so cold that the people living in them had 
 to sleep on their shoes lest they should freeze 
 too stiff to put on in the morning. Children 
 used to play barefoot in the snow. But they 
 suffered much from such hardships, and grew 
 old and died before their time. 
 
 But for all their hard living these people had 
 a great regard for* law and through everything 
 kept a certain order. They organized for them- 
 selves courts and councils; enforced contracts; 
 collected debts ; and in knowledge of government 
 
BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 25 
 
 were far above their social condition. They 
 were strong and courageous men and women. 
 To the pluck and endurance of our pioneers all 
 over the land, we owe much of what our country 
 is today. 
 
 It was from such ancestors as these that 
 Abraham Lincoln was descended. In the great 
 struggles and victories of his life he needed all 
 the courage that came to him from brave and 
 worthy men and women. 
 
III. 
 
 The Little Boy in the Lonely Woods. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of our 
 president, was killed by Indians. He was work- 
 ing with his three sons at the edge of a clearing. 
 When he was shot, the oldest son, Mordecai, 
 ran to the house and seized a rifle; the second 
 son flew to the neighboring fort for assistance ; 
 and Thomas, the youngest, afterward the father 
 of President Lincoln, but then a child of six 
 years, was left alone with the body of his father. 
 Mordecai saw through a loophole in the cabin 
 an Indian stooping to pick up the child ; and he 
 shot the Indian dead. Help came from the fort 
 and the Indians who had begun to gather, ran 
 away. The rest of his life Mordecai always shot 
 all the Indians he could, and never waited to 
 find out whether they were his friends or his 
 foes. 
 
 After her husband's death Abraham Lincoln's 
 widow moved to a more thickly settled neighbor- 
 
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LITTLE BOY IN THE LONELY WOODS. 27 
 
 hood ; and there her children grew up. Thomas 
 became a carpenter. He could do good work, 
 but had no ambition, and was the poorest of 
 any of the Lincoln family. But he was honest 
 and good and self-respecting, and of a sunny 
 disposition. While he was learning his trade, 
 he married Nancy Hanks, the niece of his em- 
 ployer. Her family had come from Virginia at 
 the same time with the Lincolns and others. 
 She could read and write, and she taught her 
 husband to write his name. She was bright 
 and handsome ; but they were very poor. After 
 the birth of a daughter, they moved to a little 
 farm, barren and unattractive. There, when 
 Thomas and his wife were poorer than ever, on 
 the twelfth of February, 1809, their son Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was born. Evidently, he was 
 named for his grandfather who was killed by 
 Indians. Little did father and mother guess 
 that this baby son after he had lived over fifty 
 years was destined also to be shot, not by In- 
 dians, but by one quite as wicked and savage 
 as any of them. j 
 
 When we see young people with every advan- 
 tage, able to go to the best schools, to have all 
 the best books to read, to travel and see many 
 countries and famous places, to have all kinds of 
 privileges and enjoyments in life, we are led to 
 
28 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 think that they have such opportunities to grow 
 great in mind and power and do a noble work in 
 the world that we are tempted to envy them all 
 their possibilities. But when we study the mat- 
 ter we find that of all those who have made their 
 lives a blessing to the world in any walk of life, 
 in science, art, literature, discovery, government, 
 very few have begun their lives with special 
 advantages. A much greater number have 
 worked their own way from poverty and hard 
 circumstances and grown strong in their battles 
 with hardships. A man's real possessions are 
 his mind, become strong by study and thought 
 and exercise along the lines in which he grows 
 great, and especially his heart, which guides 
 him in honesty and honor and justice and love 
 to his fellowmen and points out the only right 
 way to walk. 
 
 But of all the children who began life with 
 little and grew to greatness, very few had so 
 little as Abraham Lincoln. It is said that he 
 never talked even to his intimate friends of 
 those very early years. The first four years of 
 life Abraham passed on a dismal and barren 
 farm on Nolin Creek in Hardin County. Then 
 his father bought a fine farm on Knob Creek 
 and put a part of it under cultivation. Here 
 they lived until the boy was seven years old. 
 
 What a lonely life for the little fellow! His 
 
LITTLE BOY IN THE LONELY WOODS. 29 
 
 sister, a year or two older, was, no doubt often 
 helping her mother. The two children went to 
 school together to the only school in the neigh- 
 borhood, where they learned the alphabet and 
 not much more. But of books, toys, games and 
 home care and petting, the little fellow knew 
 nothing. 
 
 From a baby he wandered out by himself to 
 find his own amusement in the lonely woods. 
 Perhaps he, like Daniel Boone, loved the vast, 
 beautiful woods, the stateliness of the trees— 
 the sycamores, tulip trees, sugartrees, honey 
 locusts, coffee trees, pawpaws, cucumber trees 
 and black mulberries. There were not very 
 many pines or fir trees which made it much 
 easier for the pioneers, because they could so 
 much more readily make a path through the 
 woods, since the branches were high and there 
 was not much underbrush. Then, the flowers 
 were very beautiful, and there were so many of 
 them in such variety. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln when he was a young 
 man was never a hunter like Daniel Boone. And 
 in addition to his great tender heart, which 
 loved all men and creatures too, there may have 
 been another reason for this. For we can picture 
 the lonely little fellow all by himself in the great 
 woods, seated at the foot of some tree and 
 making playmates of the inhabitants of these 
 
30 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 forests, the rabbits, the squirrels, and the birds. 
 They would not be afraid of him; they would 
 come about him and he would welcome them. 
 He would watch them and learn their habits and 
 come to love them far too well ever to point his 
 gun at any of the fur or feather denizens of the 
 great forests. They had been his companions 
 and friends. It was not in his heart to hurt 
 them. 
 
 Like the barefoot boy whom the Poet Whittier 
 writes about, little Abraham Lincoln must have 
 learned 
 
 "Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
 Of the wildflower's time and place, 
 Flight of fowl and habitude 
 Of the tenants of the wood ; 
 How the tortoise bears his shell, 
 How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
 And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
 How the robin feeds her young, 
 How the oriole 's nest is hung ; 
 Where the whitest lilies blow, 
 Where the freshest berries grow, 
 Where the groundnut trails its vine, 
 Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; 
 Of the black wasp 's cunning way, 
 Mason of his walls of clay, 
 And the architectural plans 
 Of grey hornet artisans! — " 
 
LITTLE BOY IN THE LONELY WOODS. 31 
 
 And the "barefoot boy" says: 
 
 "I was rich in flowers and trees, 
 Humming-birds and honey-bees; 
 For my sport the squirrel played, 
 Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
 For my taste the blackberry cone 
 Purpled over hedge and stone; 
 Laughed the brook for my delight 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 Whispering at the garden wall, 
 Talked with me from fall to fall." 
 
 The little shepherd boy, David, who after- 
 wards became king of Israel, is not the only 
 great man in history who in childhood or youth 
 has been put out into the wilderness with fields 
 or forests around him and the stars overhead. 
 Many men who have brought blessings to their 
 nation and to the world have been thus left 
 alone for a time. Perhaps this is that they may 
 come to depend upon themselves, to learn their 
 own resources, to find what is in their minds 
 and hearts, and may come to use what they find 
 there and by using, to develop and strengthen 
 their own powers. And also by watching the 
 stars and the great sky spaces, to learn to have 
 more faith in God and to rest more upon Him 
 and grow strong. 
 
 It may have been that Abraham Lincoln was 
 
32 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 always more sad at times for the memories of 
 his lonely infancy and early childhood. 
 
 But, no doubt, also, he was a stronger man 
 and understood better his own powers and how 
 to use them. 
 
 It is with pity and love and admiration that 
 we picture to ourselves the little boy wandering 
 and playing, and dreaming and learning in the 
 lonely woods. 
 
IV. 
 
 Going to Indiana. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln was a very sunny-tempered, 
 jovial man, fond of a story and able to tell one 
 well— a quality which his son inherited from 
 him ; but he had no ambition. He had self- 
 respect, however, and when some bullies in his 
 neighborhood were insolent to him, he gave 
 them a good drubbing. He was an excellent car- 
 penter and could do fine work when he tried; 
 but from his life it seems as if he was not fond 
 of taking trouble, and as if he did not know how 
 to keep what he had. For this fine farm to 
 which he moved when Abraham was four years 
 old was soon lost. 
 
 He made up his mind then that Kentucky was 
 not the State for a poor man to live in. Things 
 had changed a good deal from the early settle- 
 ment of the State. From the first, plantations 
 had been laid out for the cultivation of tobacco, 
 and some of the settlers had brought their 
 
 33 
 
34 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 slaves to work the tobacco fields. These set- 
 tlers who owned slaves felt themselves much 
 superior to the settlers who had none and made 
 a class by themselves and looked down upon the 
 white men who had no slaves, just as they did 
 in the Southern States. Now, Thomas Lincoln 
 was a very poor man. He was ignorant also, 
 for when his father was killed by Indians his 
 mother had had to bring up her sons as she could 
 and had been able to give them no advantages. 
 But the Lincolns had always been well-to-do 
 before that time, and it was not pleasant to 
 Thomas to have himself and his family looked 
 down upon as if they were good for nothing 
 because he was not a slave owner. It may be 
 that he did not like slavery, anyway. But his 
 son thought that it was also because land titles 
 were so defective in Kentucky that he resolved 
 not to stay there. 
 
 So, Thomas made up his mind that he would 
 move to Indiana. It cannot be denied that he 
 was fond of moving, at any rate; for he did it 
 so many times. 
 
 What an easy thing it would be to move from 
 Kentucky into Indiana nowadays. But the man- 
 ner in which Thomas Lincoln did it, not only 
 proved his own poverty, but showed also how 
 difficult travel of any kind was at that time. 
 He built a raft and put on it his carpenter's 
 
GOING TO INDIANA. 35 
 
 tools and ten barrels of whiskey, a part of the 
 pay he had received in barter for his place, and 
 his heavier goods of the household. Then he 
 pushed off all by himself and floated down the 
 Rolling Fork on which his farm was, to the Ohio 
 River. When he landed he found a way to carry 
 his goods into Spencer County where he had 
 determined to settle. He left them there with 
 a settler, crossed the Ohio again and then went 
 back to his home on foot. 
 
 While he was away, his wife went with her 
 little son Abraham to visit and take leave of the 
 grave of the little chifil she had buried in the 
 wilderness. Abraham always remembered this. 
 
 The removal was made on the backs of three 
 horses, two of these borrowed. A little bedding 
 and clothing, a few pans and kettles were all 
 they had. The father's kit of tools was to make 
 their furniture, and his rifle to give them their 
 food. At the settler's where Lincoln had left 
 his tools and his goods, he hired a wagon and 
 they cut their way through the wilderness to a 
 place on Little Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville 
 which was to be their new home. It was a fine 
 forest country. 
 
 His wife and children helped, and Lincoln 
 built what was called "a half- faced camp." It 
 was made of poles and protected the people in 
 it from the weather on three sides but was all 
 
36 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 open on the fourth. Into it flooded the winter 
 rains and drifted the winter snows. The fam- 
 ily lived in this place for a whole year while 
 Lincoln was clearing a patch for planting corn 
 and building a rough cabin for their use. This 
 was not finished when they moved into it; but 
 the family of Sparrows had come there from 
 Kentucky, and they wanted the camp. So the 
 Lincolns took possession of the cabin, and it 
 seemed to them so comfortable after the 
 wretched place they had been living in that they 
 staid there for a year or two without doors or 
 windows or floor. Thomas raised enough corn 
 to live on ; the forest with game was all around 
 them; near his cabin he could shoot a deer 
 readily. This would give them meat for days 
 and leather for breeches and shoes. They had 
 the roughest furniture; and Abraham when a 
 boy used to climb up into his bed of leaves in 
 the loft by a ladder made of wooden pins driven 
 into the logs of the cabin. Abraham was be- 
 tween seven and eight years old when they 
 moved to Indiana. 
 
 In the autumn of 1818, when he was a little 
 over nine years old, he lost his mother. It was 
 no wonder. She was a delicate young woman 
 and could not endure the hardships of her life. 
 The woods were full of malaria, and that 
 autumn a form of fever attacked many of the 
 
GOING TO INDIANA. 37 
 
 little community where Lincoln lived. The 
 Sparrows died of it; and soon after Nancy 
 Hanks Lincoln. They were all three buried in 
 a little clearing in the dense forest all around 
 the home of the Lincolns. The little son 
 mourned with his father that there had been no 
 Christian service at his mother's burial. Little 
 Abraham in the few months that he had gone to 
 school in Kentucky had learned to read and 
 write, and, child as he was, he had kept prac- 
 ticing his writing on sand and the bark of trees, 
 so that he not only forgot nothing that he had 
 learned, but he gained, and could write a letter 
 after a fashion. Both he and his father thought 
 of the good Parson Elkin whom they had left 
 in Kentucky; and Abraham wrote him asking 
 him to come over to them and preach a sermon 
 over his mother's grave. It had taken the 
 Lincolns seven days to reach their new home 
 from their old one on Knob Creek. BuT al- 
 though the preacher could travel faster, it was 
 a hundred miles through the wilderness from 
 his home. Abraham had heard him preach, 
 and from him had received his first ideas of 
 public speaking. 
 
 The good man came to the sorrowing family. 
 The whole neighborhood was told; news went 
 from schoolhouse to schoolhouse and every 
 family within twenty miles learned of his com- 
 
38 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 ing. There were two hundred persons gath- 
 ered to listen to him. Some came in the rudest 
 carts; some on horseback, two or three on a 
 horse; some in wagons drawn by oxen; and 
 some on foot. Then they went to the little 
 grave under the tree. Parson Elkin prayed 
 and sang, and preached a sermon upon this 
 beautiful Christian woman. The memory of 
 that scene and of the preacher's words lived in 
 little Abraham's heart. Years afterward he 
 said to a friend: "All that I am, or hope to 
 be, I owe to my angel mother— blessings on 
 her memory ! ' ' 
 
 Both father and mother believed in God ; and 
 we know that Abraham Lincoln always believed 
 deeply in Him through all the great trials and 
 responsibilities of his life. His mother could 
 read; and when once in a great while a book 
 came their way, she would read it to her chil- 
 dren, who would listen to her with infinite de- 
 light. But from her patient and beautiful life 
 they learned most of all. 
 
 With so much lonely and sad in his early 
 life, it was no wonder that even when Abraham 
 Lincoln grew to be a man he had moods of mel- 
 ancholy, as well as times of gayety when he 
 could make everybody about him laugh at his 
 droll stories and his bright sayings. 
 
 But while he suffered and remembered, he 
 
GOING TO INDIANA. 39 
 
 spent no time in moping or selfish mourning. 
 Already, so early as when they went to In- 
 diana, his little axe rang out in the woods help- 
 ing his father clear the farm and build the rude 
 cabin. He was a very fine example of indus- 
 trial education; for his head and his hands 
 always kept pace. He worked and studied and 
 thought and grew strong in mind and body. 
 
 And at this time the little pioneer was not 
 yet ten years old. 
 
V. 
 
 A Good Step-Motheb. 
 
 Imagine a cabin eighteen feet square built of 
 hewn logs, a cabin with a doorway without any 
 door, with openings for windows without any 
 frames or windows in them, and into door and 
 windows slanting the winter rains and drifting 
 snows. The cabin was in the midst. of the for- 
 est, there was always plenty of wood to be had 
 for the cutting. But how much heat would the 
 great logs manage to get into a dwelling where 
 the bitter cold of an Indiana winter poured in 
 unchecked through all these openings, and the 
 dampness of the woods added a chill to the 
 frosty air? Thomas Lincoln thought it was 
 good enough. But even he passed a dreary 
 winter there after the death of his wife. 
 
 In that cabin were his two children, Abraham 
 who that season saw his tenth birthday, and his 
 sister about two years his elder. There was not 
 much housekeeping to be done; even the floor 
 
 40 
 
A GOOD STEP-MOTHER. 41 
 
 was the hard earth uncovered by planks. It 
 must have been bitterly cold. The furniture 
 was such as other pioneers had; a few three- 
 legged stools; a bedstead made of poles fas- 
 tened to the logs in the cabin and on the outer 
 corner held up by a stick driven into the ground. 
 A great hewn log on four legs made the table ; 
 kettle, skillet, pot and a few tin and pewtef 
 dishes were all they had to cook with and to eat 
 from. Abraham slept in the loft of the cabin; 
 it has been said before that he got up there 
 by a ladder made of wooden pegs driven in 
 between the logs of the cabin wall. 
 
 The poor children had plenty of time that 
 winter to remember the dear mother lying under 
 the snow, and to grieve for her. 
 
 But this was as to hardship the dreariest and 
 saddest year to Abraham. When another De- 
 cember was upon them, a great and happy 
 change had come into the lives of these poor 
 children. It came about in this way. One day 
 after his wife had been dead a year, Thomas 
 Lincoln left the cabin and the children and went 
 to Kentucky. It was late in the autumn. 
 There was corn enough in the house, and bacon, 
 and they could get fresh meat in the forest ; they 
 could have wood for the chopping; and there 
 were neighbors to go to if they should need them 
 very much, although we should probably think 
 
42 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 that the people they called neighbors lived a 
 long way off. There was another boy also in 
 the cabin, Dennis Hanks, a relative of the chil- 
 dren's mother. That made it better for them. 
 He had come to Indiana with the Sparrows, and 
 after their death lived with the Lincoln house- 
 hold. But it was no fun for these poor little 
 folks to wait there nearly a month with the snow 
 drifting into the cabin, the winds howling 
 through the forest and the little dwelling all 
 open to the weather. The children made the 
 best of things, however. 
 
 Then, one day in December they heard Tom 
 Lincoln's voice shouting to them, and they all 
 ran out of doors to see what was the matter. 
 
 There at the edge of the clearing was the 
 father, sure enough, with a team of four horses 
 and a lumber wagon full of furniture finer than 
 the children had ever seen. But this was not 
 all; it was a very small part of all. For with 
 Mr. Lincoln was his new wife, Mrs. Sally John- 
 ston of Kentucky. Tom used to know her when 
 they were both young people and she was Miss 
 Sally Bush. It is said that he wanted to marry 
 her then, and she would not have him. But 
 after she had married Mr. Johnston, and he had 
 died, she changed her mind and said "yes" to 
 Mr. Lincoln. So, here she was with her three 
 children and her household goods, come to be 
 
A GOOD STEP-MOTHER. 43 
 
 the mistress of the cabin. And more than this, 
 a great deal— to be a true, loving mother to 
 these little ones and to make no difference be- 
 tween her own children and her husband's. 
 
 It is said that what first touched her mother 
 heart was the utter forlornness of them. Since 
 their mother's death Abraham and his little sis- 
 ter had not known how to make any new clothes 
 for themselves, or had them to make, and their 
 father had to do the best he could for himself. 
 They stood there pushing their bare, frost bit- 
 ten feet back and forth in the snow, looking 
 down at their tattered garments, remembering 
 their own matted hair, their unwashed hands 
 and faces, and gazing with a bitter sense of 
 contrast at the neat and well-dressed children 
 of the new mother. 
 
 But what put shyness into their greeting 
 filled the warm mother heart of the noble wo- 
 man with pity and love for the motherless ones. 
 From that day so long as she and they lived— 
 and she long outlived her famous step-son— 
 the two were the children of her love as much 
 as her very own were. 
 
 But she did not take her lovingness out in 
 sentiment. She went straight to work on the 
 problem before her; and it was a hard one. 
 Her husband's children and the young stranger 
 were made clean, and comfortably clothed. She 
 
44 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 was a woman full of energy as well as kindness. 
 She liked to have things about her look well. 
 She had brought some fine furniture for those 
 days; and she had no intention of having it in 
 a house like that. She could not make Thomas 
 Lincoln "hum"; for " humming/ ' or spinning 
 around was not in him. But she made him come 
 as near to this as she could. It was not long 
 before she had glass windows in the vacant 
 frames, a door in the uncovered doorway, and 
 good wooden flooring on the cabin, and other im- 
 provements which made it better fitted for the 
 new furniture that looked so grand to the Lin- 
 coln children. For the new wife had "a fine 
 bureau, a table, a set of chairs, a large clothes- 
 chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, 
 and other articles, the like of which had never 
 before been carried under any roof of Tom Lin- 
 coln's.' ' 
 
 But Mrs. Sally Bush Lincoln possessed not 
 only a good heart and skilful hands ; she had a 
 wise head as well. So when the house had been 
 put into order and the children made respect- 
 able by sharing some of the clothing of her own 
 children, she began to try to find out what kind 
 of step-son she had in the big, shy, keen-witted, 
 quick-tongued, warm-hearted Abe. And soon 
 the two began to love one another with a love 
 that lasted all their lives, and when he was 
 
A GOOD STEP-MOTHER. 45 
 
 assassinated, she mourned for him as if he had 
 been her very own son. 
 
 She was a real American in this— she be- 
 lieved in learning; she loved a book. She 
 understood the boy's ambition to make some- 
 thing of himself, and she delighted in it and 
 helped him forward in every way she could. 
 She set herself to find out what Abe knew, and 
 how he had managed to pick it up. She found 
 that from what his own mother had taught him 
 and what he had learned the very few months he 
 had gone to school with his sister in Kentucky, 
 he had learned to read and write. He did not 
 do either very well then. But she soon found 
 out one thing about him which was the greatest 
 encouragement. Abe had a wonderful memory 
 and a grip on anything he had once learned that 
 would never let it go again ; it seemed as if he 
 were just made up of determination to keep 
 every scrap of knowledge he had ever gained, 
 and from this to reach up to more. He was 
 like a mountain climber who hews out for him- 
 self with his tools a foothold in the steep rock, 
 and then puts his foot on this and stands on it 
 until he has cut himself out a higher step. 
 Then he mounts into this. And so, when there 
 is no path, he makes one, on to the top. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln gloried in Abe's studying. 
 She would not let him be interrupted in it; he 
 
46 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 must read until he put down his book of his own 
 accord; and she made his father allow him to 
 do this. It is not necessary to say that a woman 
 like her wanted all the children to go to the best 
 schools there were at that time and place. 
 And those were strange enough. 
 
VI. 
 
 Axe and School-Book. 
 
 A schoolmaster of the old early days of Ken- 
 tucky says that his first boarding place— for 
 then schoolmasters boarded around in the homes 
 of their pupils— was in a house consisting of a 
 single room sixteen feet square. In this room 
 lived the father and mother of the family, ten 
 children, three dogs, two cats and himself. 
 
 But it was at about this time that the Uni- 
 versity of Lexington was founded, and oppor- 
 tunities began to open for a wider education 
 and betters teachers than usually were willing 
 to live in such wilds. 
 
 In the early days of Indiana things were a 
 good deal after the same style. Abraham Lin- 
 coln wrote of those days: "It was a wild 
 region, with many bears and other wild animals 
 still in the woods. There were some schools 
 so-called, but no qualification was ever required 
 of a teacher beyond 'reading writin' and 
 
 47 
 
48 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 cipherin' to the Eule 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.' ' 
 
 But on Little Pigeon Creek a mile and a half 
 from the Lincoln farm, the settlers had built a 
 log schoolhouse; it stood near what to them 
 was a grand new meeting-house. Hazel Dorsey 
 was the schoolmaster. To him Mrs. Lincoln 
 sent the boys and girls of her family. To Abe 
 this was the opening of a new world. For when 
 he could read and write readily, he took his 
 education into his own hands, since there was 
 nobody else there to teach him, and read every 
 book he could lay his hands on. Among the 
 very few volumes in his own home was the 
 Bible. He learned a great deal of that by heart. 
 It is surprising how many men who have been 
 great as writers and orators have been familiar 
 with the Bible; they seem to have taken to it, 
 at least at first, not because they knew it was the 
 great teacher, not only in life but in expression 
 also; but more, perhaps, because in households 
 where books were very scarce there was usually 
 a Bible. 
 
 "-rfEsop's Fables" and "Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
 Progress" were two of the other books that 
 Abe read. But he did not read as we read, 
 
AXE AND SCHOOL-BOOK. 49 
 
 skim today and forget tomorrow in reading 
 something else ; he would have soon been out of 
 books in that way. He read a book over and 
 over and copied out parts that he liked best and 
 learned them, until that book was a part of his 
 life, just as we masticate our food until it 
 becomes a part of our bodies. 
 
 After all, in education it is not so much the 
 schoolhouse that counts. Lincoln's schoolhouse 
 was a little "cabin of round logs, with split logs 
 for a floor, split logs roughly smoothed with an 
 axe and set up on legs for benches, and a log cut 
 out at one end and the space filled in with 
 squares of greased paper for window panes.' ' 
 It was lighted by keeping the door open. The 
 only books, or slates and pencils, or pens, ink 
 and paper were what the settlers brought with 
 them. We all know the story of how Lincoln 
 used to put scraps of writing on pieces of bark 
 scrawled with charcoal, or on the wooden shovel 
 by the fireplace which he used to shave clean 
 when it was covered with figures or writing, and 
 begin over again. He had a very precious 
 scrapbook, like a copybook, or notebook, where 
 he used to write down what he wanted most to 
 save. 
 
 And not only Lincoln, but many other great 
 men have begun their education in very insig- 
 nificant buildings ; it is not the schoolhouse that 
 
50 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 counts. It is not even the teacher, although he 
 makes much more difference. The person who 
 really counts is the boy— whether he wants to 
 slip along in life and do as little as he can, or 
 whether he means to make the best use of the 
 talents God has given him. When a man, or a 
 boy, takes things too easily, his mind gets 
 flabby, like his muscles; and there is no good 
 work coming out of him ; he cannot be an athlete 
 in brain or body. 
 
 Abe was a fine speller, and it is said that he 
 was so ready to help out the other children when 
 they got into hard places that when the teacher 
 had spelling matches, he used to put Abe out of 
 doors sometimes so that he could not help the 
 rest. And one day came when the teacher 
 declared that the whole school should stay until 
 the children could spell "defied" correctly. 
 Everybody in the school was sure there was 
 a . "y" in the word but poor Lincoln, and he was 
 safely outside. But not so safely as the master 
 thought. For when the word came to a little 
 girl who was a favorite of Abe's, there stood 
 the boy at the window with his finger pointed 
 straight at his eye. The little girl caught his 
 meaning and spelled the word; and the teacher 
 was happy in the thought that Lincoln had had 
 nothing to do with it. 
 
 After Abraham had studied a few months 
 
AXE AND SCHOOL-BOOK. 51 
 
 with these schoolmasters, he knew all that they 
 could teach him. His last teacher was Swaney 
 who taught between four and five miles from 
 Lincoln's home. All these miles of walking 
 seemed waste of time to Thomas Lincoln, and 
 he soon put his son at steady work, and the 
 boy bade good-by to school. 
 
 But all the time from a very young boy he 
 knew what it was to work. He was so tall and 
 strong that he did a man 's work from the time 
 he left school. He was so bright and witty that 
 everybody liked to employ him. He was always 
 doing kind things. Once he found a drunken 
 man lying freezing by the roadside. His com- 
 panions wanted to leave him to his fate. But 
 Lincoln carried him on his back to the near- 
 est tavern, sent word that he was not coming 
 home that night, and staid and worked over the 
 poor fellow until he revived. But Lincoln him- 
 self never took intoxicating liquor of any kind, 
 although at that time almost everybody drank 
 more or less. He hated it, and saw that it was 
 a curse. 
 
 The young man was a great favorite every- 
 where for his capacity for hard work, his love 
 of fun, his droll stories, his kind-heartedness. 
 And he did not keep this kindness for the world 
 beyond his home. Owing to the strength and 
 loveliness of character of his step-mother and to 
 
52 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 Abraham's own good nature and Helpfulness 
 largely, it was a happy and united household. 
 Brothers and sisters and cousins all acknowl- 
 edged that their big brother Abraham was first 
 of them all in goodness and cleverness. Mrs. 
 Lincoln not long before her death said to his 
 friend, Mr. Herndon: "I can say what scarcely 
 one mother in a thousand can say, Abe never 
 gave me a cross word or look, and never refused 
 in fact or appearance to do anything I asked 
 him. His mind and mine— what little I had— 
 seemed to run together. Abe was the best boy I 
 ever saw or expect to see. ' ' 
 
 His fun, and he was full of it, was never 
 viciousness or unkindness to any human crea- 
 ture, or dumb animal. What he must have suf- 
 fered in our civil war when he was President 
 and knew of all the wounded and suffering and 
 dying and dead on the battlefields of our land — 
 he who could not endure to see an animal tor- 
 tured ! 
 
 There are so many kinds of schools in the 
 world, schools where books are studied ; schools 
 of hardships where men are made strong in soul 
 and body ; schools of life where men are trained 
 in various tasks ; schools of greatness where God 
 has a special service for a man and prepares 
 him for it by many experiences of joy and sad- 
 ness, of self-denial and hardship, of perplexity 
 
AXE AND SCHOOL-BOOK. 53 
 
 and struggle and conquest ; and always by 
 plenty of work ; in every life worth living work 
 is never left out. The great thing is to do the 
 right kind of work, work that will endure. It 
 is told of Lincoln that one day after he had 
 become a lawyer and was riding the circuit, 
 that is, going from court to court in the different 
 counties, he began to talk to a friend about the 
 growing corruption of the world in politics and 
 morals. "Oh, how hard it is," he said, "to die 
 and not be able to leave the world any better 
 for one's little life in it!" 
 
 This was his desire in life. How wonder- 
 fully the wish of his heart was granted! 
 
VII. 
 
 What Lincoln Liked Best of All to Do. 
 
 John Hanks, Lincoln's mother's cousin, said 
 of him: "When Abe and I returned to the 
 house from work, he would go to the cupboard, 
 snatch a piece of cornbread, take down a book, 
 sit down, cock his legs up as high as his head, 
 and read." 
 
 Except for his great fondness for reading and 
 study, his life at that time was like that of other 
 farm-hands. He went from farm to farm and 
 worked. He was so strong, so willing to help 
 in an emergency, and so efficient and good-tem- 
 pered that his services were always in demand. 
 Yet while he was using his great physical 
 strength and getting his living, although a poor 
 one, he was always preparing for the grand life 
 of work and leadership before him which he so 
 little guessed in its fame, but which, no doubt, 
 he felt from early life was a work in which 
 
 54 
 
WHAT LINCOLN LIKED BEST TO DO. 55 
 
 farming, crop-raising, husking and the life of 
 the men about him had no part. 
 
 But he never made the great mistake of 
 slighting or lightly esteeming his neighbors and 
 comrades on account of his dreams' of a great 
 future. He used what opportunities he had— 
 the only way to arrive at more— and he con- 
 stantly reached out after the more. He was 
 full of the greatest curiosity to know what was 
 going on in the world and all facts that he 
 could find about the universe, and was always 
 picking up scraps of knowledge that went over 
 the heads of his companions. One day when the 
 little Polly Roby whom a few years before he 
 had taught through the window to spell " de- 
 fied," had grown up and married, she came to 
 the boat where young Lincoln was working and, 
 happening to look up at the sky, she remarked 
 that the sun was going down. The young man 
 took occasion to inform her that it was the earth 
 that moved, and not the sun. She stared at 
 him in utter scorn. To his statement that the 
 sun was not going down but we were "coming 
 up," she retorted: " Don't you s'pose I've got 
 eyes ? ' ' And when he went into further explana- 
 tions as to the swinging around of the earth so 
 that we could not see the sun, she cried: "Abe, 
 what a fool you are !" It was of no use for the 
 flatboatman, as he then was, to try to teach the 
 
56 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 people along the Ohio River anything about an 
 object so familiar to them as the sun. Like 
 many others before and since, they believed 
 their eyes, which in some cases we, certainly, 
 cannot believe. 
 
 The Bible and "iEsop's Fables' ' which it has 
 been said he read so much, gave Lincoln in 
 after life many a strong illustration, and also 
 taught him much as to the best way of putting 
 things. The " Fables" helped him in his own 
 stories and illustrations. 
 
 After a while he got hold of "Robinson Cru- 
 soe" and delighted in the new life it told him 
 of and the ingenuity of Crusoe in meeting all 
 his emergencies. "Sinbad the Sailor" revealed 
 to him a world of wonders. A "History of the 
 United States" was perhaps the first direct 
 preparation which he had for the work that, long 
 afterward, lay before him. For then he began 
 to learn somewhat of the country which after- 
 ward he was to be the leader in saving from 
 disunion. 
 
 When he was fifteen he found that one of 
 his neighbors had a copy of the "Life of Wash- 
 ington." It was a small, thin book but full of 
 enthusiasm for its hero. Lincoln borrowed it 
 and read it over and over very carefully and 
 made many notes both on his shingles and his 
 shovel and in his precious notebook. But one 
 
WHAT LINCOLN LIKED BEST TO DO. 57 
 
 unhappy night there came a great storm; and 
 when the boy was fast asleep it beat through 
 the chinks of the log house and deluged the shelf 
 on which this "Life of Washington' ' was lying. 
 The next morning Abe discovered the book 
 soaked and ruined ! And there was not another 
 "Life of Washington" in that part of Indiana! 
 The poor boy took home the dilapidated book 
 and offered to pay for it in work, since he had 
 no money. It had been soiled and thumbed 
 and dog's-eared when he borrowed it; but the 
 owner took advantage of the accident and made 
 the boy pull fodder for three days in payment. 
 Then it became Abe's own. But later Abe in 
 some ways "got even" with the old gentleman 
 who had made him pay so much for the volume. 
 Whenever new settlers came and brought one 
 or more volumes with them, Abe borrowed these 
 if he could. He seemed to scent out a book as 
 a hunter scents game. And when he borrowed, 
 he did not return until he had read the books 
 over and over again, and brought into use his 
 shingle and charcoal or his wooden shovel and 
 his notebook for the quotations he wanted to 
 keep or the thoughts that the books inspired in 
 him. It was good practice that he had to make 
 his own sentences as compact as possible for lack 
 of paper; it taught him condensation which 
 often means power of expression. 
 
58 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 It is interesting that Lincoln's first effort to 
 express himself on paper at sufficient length to 
 be considered a composition should have been 
 called forth by his compassion for a little crea- 
 ture that was suffering and his indignation at 
 his own young companions who were torturing 
 it. For the boys had put a live coal on the back 
 of a terrapin. When Abe saw it crawling along 
 in the anguish of its burning, he broke out into 
 indignant protest against the torturers for their 
 wanton cruelty. No doubt he made a good 
 defence; and he was always listened to, for 
 what he said was always interesting and con- 
 vincing. So, we may well believe that he saved 
 the poor terrapin from further torture; for he 
 was a friend to all the helpless creatures of the 
 woods. After his plea he began to put down on 
 his shingle, or his shovel, a part of what he had 
 said to the boys ; he added to this, until, at last, 
 there stood in his notebook his first composition : 
 ' ' Cruelty to Animals. ' ' Then he perceived that 
 he could put words on paper and make them 
 effective. 
 
 What a long road from this first plea for 
 kindness toward the creatures beneath us to his 
 wonderful speech upon the battlefield of Gettys- 
 burg, a speech that, all the world over, is con- 
 sidered one of the most beautiful and touching 
 in the English language! A long road it was 
 
WHAT LINCOLN LIKED BEST TO DO. 59 
 
 from one to the other ; and every step of it was 
 taken with labor, although many steps with 
 labor that he loved; and not a few were in the 
 sorrow of a great heart that mourned for suf- 
 fering and bloodshed in our nation where men 
 were fighting each other to the death. He had 
 a wonderful mind as leader and guide of our 
 people to higher truths. But his ever true and 
 ever loving heart has taught us the better to 
 understand the words of Longfellow: 
 
 "It is the heart, and not the brain, 
 That the highest doth attain." 
 
 It is significant that his first essay which his 
 playmates alone heard, and, less than two years 
 before his death, his immortal words to his coun- 
 try and the world should both be full of tender- 
 ness for suffering. One reproves his mates for 
 bringing it cruelly upon a little creature. And 
 it was this very spirit which led him on through 
 the long years to reverencing the consecration 
 of suffering when the cause was worthy of it. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was an ideal American in 
 many ways. And he was one of the builders up 
 of a new continent in this way, that he did not 
 study for the sake of the knowledge alone; he 
 had not the spirit of the lonely student who hugs 
 what he learns and loves it for itself and lives in 
 
60 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 it and for it and wants nothing further. This in 
 its own way brings gain in knowledge and helps 
 the world also. But this was not what we 
 needed at that time; it was not Abraham Lin- 
 coln's work. Life among men and power over 
 them, noble power to lead them to good was to 
 be his part in life ; and, even when a boy, he was 
 making himself ready for the leadership which 
 was to be his one day. 
 
 For he not only wrote down his thoughts, he 
 spoke them out. For the boy's mind was like 
 a living spring, it had to bubble over. If he 
 found no comrades to listen to his fun or his 
 earnest— and he usually did find them— but if 
 not, then the woods, the birds, the very frogs 
 must listen in their way; for an audience he 
 must and would have. Year after year he 
 went on preparing for the time when great 
 words of his should help to sway the hearts of 
 the nation into daring to be honest and just. 
 For no man on the face of the earth, no matter 
 what his name or rank, can ever be greater, or 
 so great as the man who helps to turn the lives 
 of other men into noble thoughts and deeds. 
 So, Lincoln began early; and he kept at it all 
 his life. For the man to whom the hardest 
 work of the world is given has no time to be 
 idle; he does not get it done by letting things 
 come along as they will. 
 
vin. 
 
 Among His Comrades. 
 
 After Little Pigeon Creek became more 
 settled, there was frequently preaching at the 
 meeting house there. Mrs. Sally Lincoln al- 
 ways went, and insisted upon her husband 
 accompanying her. When the children were 
 left at home after their elders were out of sight, 
 the family Bible would come down from the 
 shelf and Abe would find a text, and when a 
 hymn or two had been sung he would start off 
 upon a sermon. Sometimes this was earnest 
 enough; but, generally, it was an imitation of 
 some traveling preacher that they had heard, 
 and was excellent mimicry. 
 
 Abraham was not a perfect boy, and he was 
 far from being a " goody-goody " boy. He 
 liked fun and plenty of it, as all persons do who 
 are capable of hard work. Some of his em- 
 ployers said of him that he "liked his dinner 
 and his play better than his work," But if 
 
 6J 
 
62 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 shirking had been his habit, he would never 
 have been sought after everywhere, as he was, 
 to do all kinds of hard work that others failed in, 
 and to help out in an emergency. The fact 
 was that he always had his book at hand to read 
 in his leisure moments, he was always studying 
 and thinking out questions that came to him 
 with his reading ; and the people around him did 
 not understand it; they thought that work like 
 this was idleness. 
 
 Then, it probably was aggravating to a 
 farmer in a hurry to get his harvest in to find 
 Abe mounted on a stump making burlesque 
 speeches or delivering comic sermons while the 
 hired hands stood or sat about him in delight, 
 and the harvest had to wait. He used to anger 
 the persons at whom his satires and chronicles 
 were directed and make fun of them for the 
 rest of the community. He was descended from 
 Quakers and had a real love of peace ; but when 
 he was fairly in a quarrel, the other side gener- 
 ally had the worst of it. 
 
 The people among whom Lincoln lived at 
 that time would seem very strange to us. Their 
 houses were for the most part of one room built 
 of round logs with the bark on. Their dress 
 was principally of tanned deer-hide which was 
 very uncomfortable when the wearer was caught 
 in a shower, it shrank and grew so tight. Their 
 
AMONG HIS COMRADES. 63 
 
 shoes were made of the same, and somebody 
 called a wet moccasin "a decent way of going 
 barefoot. " 
 
 Pigeon Creek was much interested in politics ; 
 and young Lincoln soon began to give these a 
 good share of his attention. It was no wonder; 
 for they were largely discussed in neighborly 
 visits and chats. In Pigeon Creek a whole fam- 
 ily would go over to call upon another family 
 and always find a welcome. If there happened 
 not to be chairs and benches enough for the 
 whole party to sit down upon, some were always 
 ready to be satisfied with the floor. If apples 
 were scarce, or their hosts had used up their 
 supply of these, "a plate of raw potatoes or tur- 
 nips, nicely washed, could be offered instead, 
 with a bottle of whiskey ; and there was the very 
 soul of liberality in the offering.' ' It has been 
 said before that Abraham could never bring 
 himself to use any kind of intoxicating liquor, 
 and after a while he used to speak and write 
 against it. 
 
 Abraham in going from house to house and 
 farm to farm among these people was learning 
 much of their character which, later, was of 
 great use to him. And he, no doubt, remem- 
 bered many of their old superstitions. They 
 thought a great deal of luck, and used to believe 
 in witchcraft; when a person thought himself 
 
64 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 bewitched, he used to shoot "at the image of the 
 witch with a bullet melted out of a half dollar. ' ' 
 If a dog crossed a hunter's path it spoiled his 
 day, unless he at once hooked his little fingers 
 together and pulled until the dog had taken 
 himself out of sight. They believed in witch- 
 hazel, or the divining rod, and thought a great 
 deal of "cure by faith,' ' perhaps as much as 
 many do today. If a wagon with a load of 
 baskets drove past a house it meant rain; they 
 had rules for plantings and sowings, and all 
 farm work; they must fell trees for fence-rails 
 before noon; fences built when there was no 
 moon would give way; but that was the right 
 time for planting potatoes ; they had much faith 
 in the influence of the moon. 
 
 But with all the superstitions about fence- 
 rails, it never occurred to Abe, or anybody else, 
 that the rails he and John Hanks split and put 
 around the new home of the family when the 
 Lincolns first moved to Illinois would ever be 
 heard of throughout the nation. Nobody then 
 foresaw the day that John Hanks would walk 
 into a public meeting with two of these rails on 
 his shoulder, and kindle the whole country to 
 enthusiasm by means of them and what they told 
 of Abraham Lincoln's faithful work and his 
 ability to conquer all the obstacles of his life and 
 
AMONG HIS COMRADES. 65 
 
 stand the ideal of the working man who had 
 made the best of American opportunities. 
 
 It was when the family were on their way 
 to the Illinois home in the March of 1830, a 
 two weeks' tramp over roads so muddy as 
 to be almost impassable, that one of the lovable 
 traits of Lincoln's character came out. After 
 crossing one of the swollen and dangerous 
 streams on their passage, it was found that a 
 little dog belonging to the Lincolns had fallen 
 behind on the march and had reached the oppo- 
 site side of the river too late. There he stood 
 whining and leaping in terror and making pite- 
 ous appeal to his owners. For the little creature 
 was afraid to plunge into the water running over 
 the broken ice. The people thought that it 
 would not pay to go back for a dog; they were 
 anxious to get on and could not think of putting 
 the oxen over again. So they resolved to go on 
 and leave the little animal to his fate which 
 would have been sad enough. But Abe was of 
 a different mind; he pulled off his shoes and 
 stockings, waded through the icy water and back 
 again bringing the happy dog under his arm. 
 
 Lincoln had been more and more away from 
 his father's farm and among those of the neigh- 
 bors where he was earning wages ; he had come 
 to perceive that he must work for himself, since 
 
66 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 his father would never do anything worth while. 
 But when Thomas Lincoln came to doing less 
 and less, leaving his work for others, Mrs. Lin- 
 coln insisted that somebody must keep things in 
 order about the place ; and this Abe and Dennis 
 Hanks did. Then when finding that the region 
 of Indiana where they had settled was unhealth- 
 ful, and going to Illinois where John Hanks had 
 already established himself, Abraham did all 
 that he could to make the new home comfortable. 
 How good it seems to remember that these very 
 rails which he split in helping to build the fence 
 for the step-mother whom he always loved and 
 cared for should have been heard of all over 
 the land! 
 
 At this time he was twenty-one; and he 
 started in life for himself. But he seemed to 
 have nothing except the right to come and go as 
 he liked. He had no trade or profession; it 
 seemed as if he could be nothing but wood- 
 chopper, boatman, or a farmer. But he could 
 do hard work and he had employment. He did 
 not love drudgery, but he did it faithfully, like 
 everything else he did; and the people on the 
 Sangamon Biver began to find out how interest- 
 ing he was, as those in Indiana where he used to 
 live had done. 
 
 For all the time although he was in appear- 
 ance so rough, and seemed to be only a common 
 
AMONG HIS COMRADES. 67 
 
 workman, a wonderful genius was in him that 
 the men around him were already beginning to 
 discover. He was one day to be a great orator; 
 and lie was always preparing for it. In Indiana 
 debating societies and all meetings had heard 
 his voice. And now in Illinois the autumn he 
 arrived, there was quite a political excite- 
 ment and a man traveling through the country 
 stump-speaking, came to Decatur where he made 
 a speech. John Hanks was contemptuous. He 
 declared that Abe Lincoln could beat that all 
 hollow. "Abe, try him on," he pursued. A 
 box was turned over for the young man to 
 stand upon; and then and there Abraham Lin- 
 coln began his career as stump-speaker in Illi- 
 nois. There must have been a kindness and a 
 charm about him; for the man whom he had 
 beaten completely was astonished and asked 
 him "where he learned to do it?" 
 
 All that year Lincoln was still a farm hand. 
 But another year something else opened for him. 
 
IX. 
 
 His Trips to New Orleans. 
 
 To read about places and people, and to see 
 with one's own eyes are so different! It must 
 have been that the boy Abe often longed to 
 eateh at least a glimpse of the great world he 
 was so fond of studying about. He once asked 
 a friend to recommend him to some steamboat 
 on the Ohio River. But when the friend re- 
 minded him that his father had a right to his 
 time for a few years longer, Abe gave up the 
 idea of going out into the world, for a while. 
 But in 1828 the opportunity came to him, and he 
 took it eagerly. This was when he was living 
 in Indiana. Mr. Gentry the great man of the 
 neighborhood wanted a young man to go down 
 to New Orleans in a flatboat with his son, the 
 young man who had married Abe 's little school- 
 mate, Polly Boby. He offered Abe the position 
 of "bow-hand," or bow-oar, with his rations 
 and eight dollars a month and his return passage 
 
 68 
 
HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 69 
 
 on a steamboat paid ; for the boat could not come 
 back; flatboats go down stream, not up. The 
 boat was to be loaded with bacon and other prod- 
 uce for a trading trip down the Mississippi. 
 
 The money was much to Abe who had none. 
 But the prospect of getting a glimpse of the 
 world outside his narrow home was much more 
 to him. 
 
 There were sights and suggestions in this 
 trip which Abraham never forgot. Before this 
 time he had written an essay on temperance 
 which had been printed in a country newspaper, 
 and he was eager to do much more. He had 
 written another about the necessity of education 
 for all the people. He began early in life to 
 think of the people and their needs and rights. 
 He had seen how injurious degraded poverty 
 and intemperance were to white people. On this 
 trip he saw also the hardest side of slavery, 
 negroes on the boats and the wharves working 
 and lashed by their overseers, negroes in the 
 cotton fields, also driven and lashed when any 
 fault, or even the unjust anger of the overseer 
 brought punishment upon them. And, worst of 
 all, he saw men and women and children in the 
 slave markets handled and bought and sold as if 
 they were beasts of burden. He never forgot 
 these sights. He had been opposed to slavery 
 before that time ; but such scenes helped him to 
 
70 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 know all the better why he ought to do what was 
 in his power to prevent the extension of slavery 
 into new Territories and States acquired by our 
 government. 
 
 But all this came later. During his voyage 
 he helped to draw up the clumsy flatboat at the 
 different wharves where they stopped, and in 
 selling the goods the boys both did well. Gentry 
 made more money; but Lincoln brought home 
 a wider knowledge and understanding of the 
 things that they had both seen on the trip. One 
 night they had quite an adventure. The flat- 
 boat was attacked by negroes who attempted to 
 rob it ; and both Lincoln and Gentry had to make 
 a brave defence to drive off the thieves. But 
 they did it. 
 
 It was two years later, in the winter of 1830- 
 31, that the second opportunity to go down to 
 New Orleans came to Lincoln. This time it was 
 to be in company with John Hanks, his mother's 
 cousin; and afterward John Johnston, Lincoln's 
 foster brother, was taken into the party. They 
 were to go with a merchant, Denton Offutt, and 
 to meet him at Springfield. So, in the spring 
 when the rivers broke up and the melting snows 
 poured into every brook and stream, the three 
 young men paddled down the Sangamon River, 
 perhaps the only way they could get there, to 
 
HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 71 
 
 within five miles of Springfield and then walked 
 these five miles to keep their engagement with 
 OfTutt. 
 
 But OfTutt had been attending to so many 
 other things that he was so far from being ready 
 for his boatmen that he had no flatboat bought. 
 If they wanted to go to New Orleans, the first 
 thing they must do was to build one. They cut 
 the timber and built the boat— a good, strong 
 one— and went down the current of the Sanga- 
 mon in it to New Salem. You will not find it 
 on the map; for today there is no New Salem; 
 that queer little town was settled only a short 
 time before Lincoln went there to live, and all 
 went to nothing after he had gone away from it 
 to make his home in Springfield. 
 
 Lincoln's first appearance in New Salem 
 was made in a way that interested the people in 
 him. OfTutt 's boat had stuck on a milldam on 
 the river, and there it hung, the fore part high 
 in air, the stern shipping water from the Sanga- 
 mon. About all the people of New Salem stood 
 there on the banks, watching the unhappy boat ; 
 and nobody knew how to do anything to help 
 out matters except "the bow-oar," a great tall 
 fellow "with his trousers rolled up some five 
 feet" says an account of him. That was Lin- 
 coln. He waded about the boat, rigged up some 
 contrivance to unload the cargo and tilt the 
 
72 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 boat. Then he bored a hole through the bottom 
 and let out the water ; and straightened the boat 
 and brought it safely to mooring below the dam. 
 Then the hole was stopped up, the cargo put in 
 again, and the boat went on her way. His 
 employer was full of admiration for Lincoln's 
 cleverness. The party made a quick trip down 
 the Sangamon to the Illinois, and from there 
 down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It was 
 in some respects like the former voyage with 
 young Gentry. But Lincoln was older and all 
 that he saw made a deeper impression upon him. 
 John Hanks said of Lincoln on this voyage when 
 he saw the slaves chained, whipped and 
 scourged: "Lincoln saw it; his heart bled; said 
 nothing much, was silent, looked bad." 
 
 Ten years later he made another water trip 
 with Joshua Speed, a friend whom he knew in 
 Kentucky. Long afterward he said to him, 
 speaking of the "tedious trip" on the steamer 
 from Louisville to St. Louis: "You may re- 
 member, I well do, that from Louisville to the 
 mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a 
 dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That 
 sight was a continual torment to me, and I see 
 something like it every time I touch the Ohio, 
 or any other slave border. It is not fair for 
 you to assume that I have no interest in a thing 
 which has, and continually exercises, the power 
 
HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 73 
 
 of making me miserable.' ' So, from his early 
 youth Lincoln had the thought of slavery and 
 the hatred of it on his heart. But he never 
 wanted freedom by violence ; but by the laws of 
 his country ; and he longed for the day of free- 
 dom. He could not see that God would grant 
 to him as a right and a duty to give freedom to 
 four millions of human beings. That was not 
 his business now. All he had to do was the best 
 at the time ; and that he always did ; he walked 
 as straight on toward his work as if he had seen 
 it, always getting ready for what was to come. 
 Abraham Lincoln's fame and honors did not 
 come to him by chance; the best things never 
 do; he earned them. 
 
 After this trip to New Orleans on OfTutt's 
 boat, the party went up the river again in early 
 summer, and when they reached St. Louis, 
 Abraham and his foster brother, John Johns- 
 ton, walked across country to see Mr. Thomas 
 Lincoln who by that time had made another 
 move. Abraham never lost sight of his parents 
 even when his home was no longer with them. 
 From time to time he paid them visits, and even 
 when he himself was very poor he helped them 
 out with money. His only own sister, Sarah, 
 had married and died while they were in 
 Indiana. 
 
 When Lincoln went back to New Salem, on 
 
74 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 the day of his arrival a local election was 
 being held. But one of the two clerks was ill 
 and the question was where to find a substitute 
 who could write. When young Lincoln ap- 
 peared upon the scene, the people asked him if 
 he could write. He said that he " could make 
 a few rabbit tracks.' ' So, he was the clerk for 
 that day. The people remembered his wading 
 into the Sangamon River and rescuing the flat- 
 boat stuck high and dry on the milldam. Now 
 they learned another accomplishment of his. 
 Soon they were to find out others. 
 
 For Mr. OfTutt had hired him to help keep 
 store which Lincoln did when his employer's 
 goods arrived. Meanwhile, he found odds and 
 ends of work to do. Mr. OfTutt was so fond of 
 Lincoln and so proud of him that he was never 
 tired of boasting about him. His clerk was the 
 most wonderful young man, he said ; there was 
 nothing he did not know ; there was nothing he 
 could not do. 
 
 There was a set of roughs in New Salem ; they 
 called themselves "Clary's Grove Boys." 
 They did all sorts of rowdyish things and 
 when strangers came to town they were apt to 
 give them somewhat of a hazing to find out 
 what stuff they were made of. These Clary's 
 Grove Boys were tired of hearing Abraham Lin- 
 coln praised up to the skies, and they made up 
 
HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 75 
 
 their minds to "take him down a bit." And 
 they proposed a wrestling match. Lincoln 
 wanted nothing of all this "wooling and pull- 
 ing" as he called it. But the Clary's Grove 
 Boys had a champion, Jack Armstrong, who, 
 they were sure, could beat Lincoln, or anybody 
 else, and they were determined to try it. So 
 Abe was obliged to show his mettle. Jack Arm- 
 strong had a bet to throw him. 
 
How He Kept Shop; What Came of It. 
 
 When Jack Armstrong closed with the tall 
 stranger for his wrestling match he soon found 
 that he had got hold of new material; he had 
 never wrestled with anybody like him before. 
 The Clary's Grove Boys all clustered around; 
 and when they found that their pet and bully, 
 Jack Armstrong, was not likely to come out vic- 
 tor, they all gathered about Lincoln and tried 
 to pull him down. By that time Lincoln's tem- 
 per was fully aroused. He caught Armstrong 
 and held him in his arms like a child and nearly 
 choked the life out of him. For a minute it 
 looked as if there would be a general fight. But 
 Lincoln with his back against the wall standing 
 so strong and unafraid made them change their 
 minds; they respected him; they admired him. 
 As for Jack Armstrong whom he had so thor- 
 oughly beaten, he became one of Lincoln's 
 warmest admirers and champions. 
 
 76 
 
HOW HE KEPT SHOP. 77 
 
 The young man had no more battles to fight 
 with the Clary's Grove Boys. Indeed, he often 
 interfered to prevent their ill treatment of 
 strangers and became a general peacemaker in 
 the neighborhood. Nobody questioned that he 
 knew how to fight; so it was well understood 
 that his suggestions of peace never came from 
 fear, and he was listened to and respected. It 
 seems strange that this victory of his over that 
 wild set of young men should have really made 
 a difference in his life, and given him a position 
 of influence and a certain authority in the com- 
 munity and prepared the way for his political 
 career. But it did so. His personal strength 
 and his knowledge how to use this made him 
 looked up to by the people of that new country 
 where physical strength and skill counted for so 
 much. And his other qualities did the rest. 
 
 For the people of New Salem soon found out 
 how interesting he was and what good stories he 
 could tell; his encounter with Jack Armstrong 
 traveled far and they admired his pluck and 
 courage as well as his wit. They admired, too, 
 his being able to fill in all the hard places and 
 bring things out straight when other people 
 could not do it. For Lincoln was always ready 
 to take trouble. If a thing was to be done 
 whether in work or study, he never hesitated 
 because it might happen that he did not want 
 
78 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 to do it. Indeed, there never was a human 
 being in the world worth anything, and there 
 never will he one, who has not done and who 
 will not do hundreds of things that he did not 
 or will not want to do. This strengthens the 
 mind and will as truly as exercise strengthens 
 the muscles. So, Abe had his good times when 
 people came around him and listened to his 
 stories and his comical rhymes and they all 
 laughed and joked together. 
 
 But there was something more, another trait 
 in him that won him a nickname which after- 
 ward became known all over the country; he 
 never lost it, for he always deserved it. For it 
 was while he was keeping store for Mr. OfYutt 
 that he gained the name of "honest Abe." Dr. 
 Holland tells us how Lincoln could not rest 
 for an instant if he had, even without meaning 
 it, defrauded anybody. He says that one day 
 Lincoln sold a woman a little bill of goods. She 
 paid it and went away. When he came to add 
 up the bill again, to make sure of its being cor- 
 rect, he found that he had taken six and a quar- 
 ter cents too much from her. It was night. He 
 shut and locked the store and walked two or 
 three miles to the woman 's house and gave back 
 to her the money he had unconsciously de- 
 frauded her of. At another time he was just 
 closing the store for the night when a woman 
 
HOW HE KEPT SHOP. 79 
 
 came in and asked for half a pound of tea. He 
 weighed it out. She paid for it and went home. 
 And Lincoln closed the store and went home also. 
 But the next morning he found that there had 
 been a quarter instead of a half pound weight on 
 the scales ; he had sold the woman only a quarter 
 of a pound of tea, and she paid for half a pound. 
 He shut up the store again and took a long walk 
 before breakfast to carry the woman the rest of 
 her tea. Nothing was too trifling for Lincoln to 
 be honest about. For this honesty in the goods 
 under his hand was only evidence of the deeper 
 honesty to truth and principle within him which 
 one day was to win him the confidence of the 
 nation. 
 
 But Lincoln's love of peace was founded on 
 no submission to bullying, as he one day showed 
 while he was in Mr. OfTutt's store. A rough 
 fellow was making himself especially offensive 
 by loud swearing when women were present. 
 Lincoln asked him to be silent. This was 
 enough to enrage the bully, and Lincoln had to 
 follow him into the street and fight it out with 
 him then and there. The battle did not last 
 long; Lincoln threw him to the ground at once 
 and picking a handful of dog-fennel which grew 
 all about, he rubbed the fellow's face and eyes 
 with it until he cried out for mercy. Then Lin- 
 coln having punished the rough, brought water 
 
80 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 and bathed his face and eyes and sent him away 
 comforted and a good deal wiser. It did not 
 need many fights like this to make people let 
 Lincoln alone. 
 
 "While he was clerk in Offutt's store he 
 began to study English grammar. He con- 
 sulted Mr. Menton Graham, the schoolmaster 
 of New Salem, and his friend, upon the matter, 
 and the latter advised him by all means to study 
 grammar if he intended ever to speak in public. 
 Lincoln learned of a text book upon this subject 
 owned by a man living seven or eight miles 
 away. His long limbs soon measured this dis- 
 tance and he bought the book. The work of Mr. 
 OfTutt's store did not take up all his time, and 
 his friend, Mr. Herndon, tells of how young Lin- 
 coln would stretch out at full length on the 
 counter— it must have been a long counter— his 
 head propped against a stack of calico prints, 
 studying his grammar; or sometimes he went 
 off under the shade of a tree and spent "hours 
 at a time in a determined effort to fix in his 
 mind the arbitrary rule that 'adverbs qualify 
 verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.' " Often 
 Mr. Graham helped him. After his grammar, 
 he would turn to mathematics for " relaxation.' ' 
 Thus he was studying, studying, reading, read- 
 ing — a habit that in some form he kept up all 
 his life. 
 
HOW HE KEPT SHOP. 81 
 
 In the evenings Lincoln would often go over 
 to the cooper shop and read there by burning 
 shavings, one kindled from another, because 
 candles were scarce and dear and his small 
 wages could not afford these. That year there 
 were debating clubs, and Abe used to walk six 
 or seven miles to some of these. One of them, 
 however, was held at an old storehouse in New 
 Salem. It was at this club that Lincoln made 
 his first speech in Illinois. The men in these 
 clubs were all rough, uneducated men. Still, 
 the practice was good for the young politician. 
 This first speech of his was upon a subject of 
 great interest to the people of the region who 
 believed that the Sangamon River, a branch of 
 the Illinois, was navigable, and that Springfield 
 could be reached by water from the Ohio. 
 
 When the little steamer, " Talisman,' ' made 
 the attempt, Lincoln was her pilot, and carried 
 her past the dam above New Salem. But no- 
 body can make a boat float in water too shallow 
 for it; and Lincoln showed his skill by getting 
 the " Talisman' ' down stream again. 
 
XI. 
 
 The Black Hawk War. 
 
 A lady who used to know Lincoln when he was 
 a school boy, told his friend, Mr. Herndon, of 
 the school exhibitions of those days — declama- 
 tions, dialogues and debates. The declama- 
 tions were chiefly from a book called "The Ken- 
 tucky Preceptor. " Lincoln had often used it, 
 she said. The questions for discussion were 
 such as called for thought and power. One of 
 these was: "Which has the most right to com- 
 plain, the Indian, or the Negro?" If Lincoln 
 had ever studied it, and we may be sure that 
 nothing in the book had escaped him, he may 
 have had a different opinion from most people 
 as to the rights and wrongs of the Indians and 
 our general policy toward them. 
 
 But when Black Hawk, the old Sac chief, 
 kept up his raiding of land ceded to the white 
 man and at last brought over a large band of 
 warriors having been promised aid by other 
 
 82 
 
THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 83 
 
 tribes, Gov. Reynolds called for volunteers to 
 move the tribe of Black Hawk across the Missis- 
 sippi, for the settlers in the neighborhood had 
 been in terror. In the summer of 1831, after 
 having been driven across the Mississippi, Black 
 Hawk had made a solemn treaty never to come 
 to the east side again, unless by permission of 
 the President or of the Governor of Illinois. 
 But in the summer of 1832 there he was again. 
 He said that he and the young men with him 
 had come to "plant corn." But he marched up 
 the Rock River, expecting to be joined by other 
 tribes. These, however, would not come to him. 
 The truth was that the poor chief was old and 
 loved the lands where the graves of his fathers 
 were and where he would have his own to be; 
 and, most of all, could not keep away from the 
 place where his beloved daughter was buried. 
 Every year he had made a pilgrimage to her 
 grave, and he was not willing to give this up, 
 even if he died for it. 
 
 General Atkinson commanding the United 
 States troops there sent a command to Black 
 Hawk to return. But Black Hawk refused, and 
 the Governor called for volunteers. Abraham 
 Lincoln was one of the first to respond. In 
 those days the volunteer companies chose their 
 captains just like an election. When this com- 
 pany assembled on the green and some one pro- 
 
84 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 posed an election, three-fourths of the men 
 walked across to where Lincoln was standing; 
 that was their way of voting. The man who 
 received the other quarter of the votes was one 
 of some wealth from another town ; and Lincoln 
 had once tried to work for him, but he had been 
 so overbearing that he could not be endured. 
 Now when the majority had decided, all the 
 others turned and came with them. So, Lin- 
 coln was this man's captain. But he was too 
 generous ever to take advantage of this. 
 
 Lincoln has said that nothing ever gave him 
 more pleasure than this first recognition of him 
 as a leader. How little the young man under- 
 stood then that he was to learn something of 
 army life that would be of service to him in the 
 great struggle of the nation where he was to be, 
 not captain of a company, but commander-in- 
 chief of army and navy, as every President is. 
 The volunteers did not understand military 
 rules as the regular soldiers did, and many 
 things in their drilling and getting into order 
 were amusing. Some of Lincoln's droll stories 
 were about the drills he used to give his men. 
 One morning he was marching at the head of his 
 company. The men were marching twenty 
 abreast when they came to a gate. They could 
 not possibly get through the gate twenty 
 abreast and they could not change their order 
 
THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 85 
 
 without the command of their captain, and their 
 captain could not remember the military term to 
 turn the company endwise. But up they were 
 marching nearer and nearer to the gate, and 
 something had to be done. Lincoln had not 
 taken boats up and down shallow rivers and 
 slipped them off their grounding on falls, and 
 done so many difficult tasks, to be stopped by a 
 gatepost. "Halt!" he shouted, facing round to 
 the men. "This company will break ranks for 
 two minutes and form again on the other side 
 of the gate!" So they got through all right, 
 but not in military style. 
 
 But if the young captain was not skilled in 
 military manoeuvres, he had plenty of wit and 
 keenness and was never slow to defend those 
 needing defence, no matter to whom he spoke. 
 The officers and soldiers of the regular army 
 despised and laughed at the volunteers, as all 
 regular army men do. Lincoln could not help 
 this. But there was another thing quite differ- 
 ent. For they disliked the volunteers so much 
 that they were unfair to them in rations and 
 pay and in duties assigned to them. One day 
 an improper order came to Captain Lincoln. He 
 obeyed it. But he went immediately to protest 
 against it and against the injustice done his 
 men and the other volunteers. Mr. Stoddard 
 
86 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 in his "Life of Lincoln" tells that he said to the 
 officer : 
 
 "Sir, you forget that we are not under the 
 rules and regulations of the War Department 
 at Washington; are only volunteers under the 
 orders and regulations of Illinois. Keep in 
 your own sphere and there will be no difficulty ; 
 but resistance will hereafter be made to your 
 unjust orders. And, further, my men must be 
 equal in all particulars, in rations, arms, camps, 
 &c, to the regular army." 
 
 Things improved at once. Lincoln had won. 
 But it was a brave thing for him to do and very 
 expressive of his character. For when he knew 
 he was in the right, there was no human being 
 whom he was afraid to speak to and declare the 
 right; and all his life he was studying how to 
 be able to say this right in the clearest way and 
 make most people see it and believe it. All the 
 volunteers who were better fed and better 
 treated for this bold protest held Lincoln in 
 higher esteem than ever. 
 
 When his company's term of service was over 
 and the company had been mustered out, Lin- 
 coln with a number of others re-enlisted. Then 
 he was a private ; and he enjoyed himself during 
 the short time he was there. For he was out of 
 service before the battle, which was more a 
 massacre, in which nearly all the young braves 
 
THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 87 
 
 were killed and the Indians completely defeated. 
 When Black Hawk was captured and carried to 
 Washington, he said to President Jackson: "I 
 am a man, and you are another. I did not 
 expect to conquer the white people. I took up 
 the hatchet to avenge injuries which could no 
 longer be borne." Nicolai and Hay whose 
 history gives this speech of the old Indian chief, 
 refer at the same time to Lincoln's call for 
 troops at the beginning of the civil war, " 'to 
 redress wrongs already long enough endured. ' ' ' 
 
 It is good to know that Lincoln was not in any 
 fight with these poor savages whose greatest 
 fault often was that we wanted their land and 
 got it at much too cheap a price, since we made 
 them sell it. But he, really, almost got into a 
 fight once with his own men while he was cap- 
 tain, and that was for an Indian. Mr. Stoddard 
 tells the story. An old Indian trusting to the 
 protection of a written passport from Gen. 
 Cass and saying that he was a friend of the 
 white man— as many Indians were— one day 
 came into camp. The soldiers had been having 
 a hard time of it with short rations and other 
 privations and they were all ready to think 
 every Indian a kind of wild beast to be killed 
 wherever they could get him. 
 
 The poor old savage was alone, helpless, 
 hungry and trying to get food and he saw 
 
88 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 a host of angry men rushing at him to mur- 
 der him. They had almost done it, when a tall 
 man in captain's uniform rushed between them 
 and the Indian. "Men! This must not be 
 done ! He must not be killed by us ! ' ' cried Lin- 
 coln. "But Captain, that Indian is a spy!" 
 cried one in the crowd. The men were so angry 
 and so determined, that for a few moments it 
 looked as if they might kill their Captain him- 
 self rather than be balked of their pray. But 
 at last they yielded sullenly. 
 
 That fight of Lincoln's for the life of the 
 harmless old Indian was the best fight of all 
 that war. And his saving the life of the old 
 man the best victory. 
 
LINCOLN IN EARLY LIFE. 
 From a woodcut. 
 
XII. 
 
 Stumping for Election. 
 
 When Lincoln came home from the war with 
 Black Hawk and his Indians, the election for 
 the State Legislature was only ten days off and 
 he had offered himself as candidate for repre- 
 sentative from his own district. In those days 
 candidates were not nominated as they are now 
 by convention; but a man stood forth and 
 announced himself as candidate and declared 
 his political principles and made speeches at 
 different places to induce people to vote for 
 him. At this time Lincoln, as he always did, 
 announced his platform clearly in a circular 
 dated in March before he went to the war. He 
 was a Whig, favored a national bank, a liberal 
 system of internal improvements and a high pro- 
 tective tariff. He took up all the leading ques- 
 tions that at the time interested the people of 
 the State, railroads, river navigation, especially 
 the question of improving the Sangamon River 
 
90 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 in which his county was much interested, and 
 other matters. He dwelt particularly on the 
 need of public education. In ending he said: 
 "I was born and have ever remained in the 
 most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy 
 or popular friends or relatives to recommend 
 me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the 
 independent voters of the county ; and if elected, 
 they will have conferred a favor upon me for 
 which I shall be unremitting in my labors to 
 compensate. But if," he finished, "the good 
 people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me 
 in the background, I have been too familiar 
 with disappointments to be very much cha^ 
 grined." 
 
 The time was too short to do much electioneer- 
 ing. Lincoln made a few speeches in the neigh- 
 borhood of New Salem and one at Springfield. 
 He had often a rough audience. Once he saw a 
 ruffian attack a friend of his in the crowd, and 
 as the contest was not going as Lincoln wished, 
 he stepped down from the stump, seized the 
 fighting rowdy by the neck and threw him about 
 ten feet; then he mounted the platform again 
 and went on with his speech, his logic unchecked 
 by the episode. The day Lincoln went to 
 Springfield, Judge Logan who was afterward 
 his law partner, saw him for the first time. ' ' He 
 was a very tall, gawky, rough-looking fellow 
 
STUMPING FOR ELECTION. 91 
 
 then," the Judge said of Lincoln, "his panta- 
 loons didn't meet his shoes by six inches. But 
 after he began speaking I became very much 
 interested in him. He made a very sensible 
 speech. His manner was very much the same 
 as in after life ; that is, the same peculiar char- 
 acteristics were apparent then, though in after 
 years he evinced more knowledge and experi- 
 ence. But he had then the same novelty and the 
 same peculiarity in presenting his ideas. He 
 had the same individuality that he kept through 
 all his life." 
 
 We can believe this. There was never but 
 one Abraham Lincoln and he could not have 
 been like anybody else had he tried ; and he was 
 too busy in his work to ever think of trying. 
 
 He was defeated in this election, the only 
 time in his life in which he was defeated when 
 he went before the people. If it had depended 
 upon the people of New Salem, things would 
 have gone differently, for he was such a favorite 
 in his own town that he had two hundred and 
 seventy-seven votes while only three went 
 against him. But this defeat was not all loss; 
 he had had practice in public speaking, and he 
 had made friends of importance, Judge Logan, 
 Major Stuart and others; he was getting to 
 be better known, and wherever he was known 
 he was liked. 
 
92 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 But he was face to face with the question how 
 to get a living. He had been in the army, he 
 was in politics, he ought not to be a day laborer ; 
 he wanted some occupation that would support 
 him and at the same time give him opportunity 
 to study. Years before he had read his first 
 law book, "The Eevised Statutes of Indiana." 
 Other law books had followed; but not yet had 
 he seriously devoted himself to the study of law. 
 He meant to do it, however ; and he wanted time 
 for this while he was in some other way earning 
 his daily bread. Mr. Offutt's business had gone 
 to wreck. Two of his friends in New Salem, 
 the Herndon brothers, were then keeping a 
 grocery store which they wanted to sell out; it 
 was one of those country stores where every- 
 thing was kept. One brother sold out his share 
 to an idle fellow named Berry, the other one sold 
 out to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and Berry, 
 now partners, also bought out another man and 
 thus became owners of the only store in the 
 village. They hadn't any money with which to 
 do this buying; they gave notes for everything. 
 
 Now, if Lincoln had been destined for a multi- 
 millionaire, he would soon have freed himself 
 from his worthless partner and from little to 
 larger his ventures would have grown; he would 
 have thrown up other interests and gone into 
 making money. But making money was the one 
 
STUMPING FOR ELECTION. 93 
 
 thing- Lincoln could never do, which does not 
 mean that from early childhood he did not sup- 
 port himself and help others; he never was so 
 needy that he could not lend a helping hand; 
 when he was going about from place to place 
 often working for his board alone, it used to be 
 said of him that he visited the fatherless and the 
 widows and chopped their wood. But the nation 
 and the world have reason to be grateful that 
 Lincoln was not built for a millionaire or cared 
 to be one. He is one of our noblest examples 
 of what can be done and won, without wealth ; 
 and it is worth remembering. For the man who 
 gives his money for a good cause does much. 
 But the man who gives his life does far more. 
 It is quite a feat to make four million dollars. 
 But it is a wonderful destiny to make four mil- 
 lion men free. To this task in the preparation 
 and the doing Abraham Lincoln gave his life, in 
 strength, in work; and, at last, his very life's 
 blood in martyrdom. It costs a great price to 
 do a great work. 
 
 It was not strange that Lincoln's heart was 
 elsewhere than in weighing out sugars and teas 
 — although we know that when he did weigh he 
 took care to do it honestly— and he thought 
 more of the time that his business would give 
 him than of the money which ought to come 
 from it. So, he would often lie on the counter 
 
94 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 when no one was there, or on his back under a 
 tree, his feet against the trunk, with his books 
 and leave the storekeeping to Berry. And 
 Berry, although he had no ambition for politi- 
 cal life and ought to have looked after the store, 
 preferred to spend much of his time in the back 
 shop drinking up the liquors which were then 
 kept in these country stores. As no business 
 looks after itself, it was not very long before 
 matters went from bad to worse. The store, as 
 Lincoln put it, "winked out." 
 
 Then, the promissory notes were to be paid 
 and neither partner had any money to pay them 
 with. Berry settled his share of the business 
 by running away. So, the whole burden of 
 responsibility fell upon Lincoln. He took it 
 upon his broad and honest shoulders and car- 
 ried it for years and years ; and so heavy a bur> 
 den was it for a young man struggling for a 
 living that he and his friends used to call it 
 "the national debt," and so have their joke over 
 what was in itself very far from a joke. It was 
 years, as has been said, before that burden of 
 debt was lifted from Lincoln's shoulders, and 
 then only by his having paid it little by little, 
 but wholly paid it— another evidence of how 
 well he deserved his title of "honest Abe." 
 
 For a time after his store "winked out," he 
 did whatever he could find to do, often working 
 
STUMPING FOR ELECTION. 95 
 
 for his board alone. In 1833 lie was appointed 
 postmaster of New Salem and held this office 
 for three years. The salary must have been 
 very small but there was no heavy work con- 
 nected with the office, for the letters were so few 
 that he used to be himself the walking post-office. 
 People would look him up and ask for letters, 
 and Lincoln would take off his hat and search 
 for them there ; his hat was the largest mailbag 
 necessary! It is said of him— and we must 
 believe it— that he read all the papers and maga- 
 zines that came to his post-office. 
 
 Dr. Holland tells a beautiful story of him in 
 connection with this office. He says that sev- 
 eral years afterwards, after Lincoln had become 
 a lawyer and had been to the legislature and 
 had passed through great poverty and had many 
 hard experiences, one day when he was in his 
 partner's law-office, an agent of the post-office 
 department came in and inquired for Abraham 
 Lincoln. AYhen Mr. Lincoln answered, the 
 agent said he had called to collect a balance due 
 the department since the New Salem post-office 
 had been given up. Mr. Lincoln looked per- 
 plexed for a moment, and some friends in the 
 office said: "Lincoln, if you're in want of 
 money, let us help you. ' ' Lincoln said nothing, 
 but rose and pulled out from a pile of books a 
 little old trunk and asked the agent how much 
 
96 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 the debt was. The man told him. Lincoln 
 opened the trunk, pulled out a little package of 
 coin wrapped up in a cotton rag, and counted 
 out the exact sum amounting to over seventeen 
 dollars. After the agent had gone, Lincoln 
 said quietly that he never used any man's money 
 but his own. In all his straits he had been too 
 truly "honest Abe" to touch that money. 
 
 After the store was done for, when Lincoln 
 was looking for something else to do, work came 
 to him. John Calhoun of Springfield, surveyor 
 of Sangamon County, needed an assistant, and 
 asked Lincoln to help him and gave him all the 
 work in the immediate neighborhood of New 
 Salem. 
 
 Lincoln accepted the position and the work. 
 He knew nothing whatever of surveying ; but he 
 was going to know a great deal about it, and 
 very soon, too ; he was not the man to undertake 
 any work and not do it well. So he began to 
 study surveying with the same energy that he 
 had studied everything else. Mr. Calhoun lent 
 him a book ; the second master, Mentor Graham, 
 lent him his aid; and in six weeks' close study 
 Lincoln was a surveyor. Finally, he became a 
 better one than Mr. Calhoun himself. 
 
XIII. 
 In Vandalia. 
 
 Lincoln, as has been said, was a Whig. Mr. 
 Calhoun was a strong Democrat. Before the 
 young man would accept the position of assist- 
 ant surveyor from him, he inquired if he should 
 be expected to renounce his principles and turn 
 Democrat ; for much as he needed the work, he 
 would not take it on those terms. And he did 
 not. It was not a small matter to fit himself 
 for the work so thoroughly and quickly as he 
 did; it cost him very hard study and plenty of 
 it. That he was ready to give; but he would 
 not sell his vote to any man. 
 
 As a surveyor he was so fair and just that he 
 was often sent for to settle disputed boundaries. 
 Herndon tells an incident where after much dis- 
 cussion the parties agreed to send for Lincoln 
 and to abide by his decision. " 'He came with 
 compass, flag-staff and chain,' " said Mr. 
 
 97 
 
98 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 McHenry whom Herndon quotes. ' ' ' He stopped 
 with me three or four days,' " he added, 
 " 'and surveyed the whole section. When in 
 the neighborhood of the disputed corner by 
 actual survey, he called for his staff and driving 
 it in the ground at a certain spot said, ' ' Gentle- 
 men, here is the corner." We dug down into 
 the ground at the point indicated and lo ! there 
 we found about six or eight inches of the orig- 
 inal stake sharpened at the end, and beneath 
 this was the usual piece of charcoal placed 
 there by the surveyor who laid the ground off 
 for the government many years before." Lin- 
 coln had done so fairly and well that everybody 
 went away satisfied. 
 
 With his income as surveyor, small enough, 
 and his salary as postmaster of New Salem, 
 still smaller, Lincoln was getting on well — when, 
 suddenly, something happened. He had never 
 forgotten his notes given for the purchase of the 
 store, and as he could, he was paying some- 
 thing on them, scrimping himself in every way 
 to do it. But one man grew impatient, sued 
 him for his note and took away his personal 
 possessions, the few he had, and, worse than 
 that, sold his horse and surveying instruments 
 to pay the debt. Then the young man was in a 
 hard place ; for he could not do surveying with- 
 
IN VANDALIA. 99 
 
 out instruments. But friends bought in the 
 property for him and gave him back his instru- 
 ments and his horse, waiting until Lincoln could 
 repay them. 
 
 There is a proverb that a man who has friends 
 must show himself friendly. Lincoln, certainly, 
 did this to every one he could help, and with no 
 thought whether he himself would ever gain by 
 his kindness. It is told of him that one day 
 when he was about fourteen miles from Spring- 
 field he was overtaken by a man whom he knew 
 very slightly, and who was in great haste to 
 reach the land office in Springfield before 
 another man traveling on a different road. He 
 explained to Lincoln that he wanted to enter a 
 small tract of land which joined his ; but that this 
 other man w T ho was rich had made up his mind 
 to get it, and would get it if he arrived first. 
 But his own neighbors had advanced the neces- 
 sary money and he could secure the land by 
 being on Jiand before the other man. Lincoln 
 looked at the speaker's tired horse and saw that 
 it would give out before the journey's end if it 
 were urged. " Here's my horse," he said. "He's 
 fresh and full of grit ; there's no time to be lost; 
 mount him and put him through." And he told 
 the man where to leave the horse for him. At 
 about dark when Lincoln rode in on the jaded 
 
100 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 horse which he had let take its time, he found 
 the other man radiant ; he had arrived in season 
 and secured his land. The two men were 
 friends the rest of their lives although they were 
 on opposite sides in politics. 
 
 One man who knew Lincoln at this time says : 
 "Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends." 
 Another said of him that in every circle where 
 he found himself, whether refined or uneducated, 
 he was always the centre of attraction. One 
 day when some of the boys from Illinois college 
 went to see him, they found him flat on his back 
 on a cellar door reading a newspaper. It is 
 said that then Lincoln could repeat the whole 
 of Burns and was a great student of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 And while he was reading law and studying 
 Shakespeare and the politics of the day at the 
 same time, he was going about from place to 
 place surveying, doing fine work in this occupa- 
 tion, making new friends every day and keeping 
 all the old ones, and getting ready for his nom- 
 ination a second time as representative to the 
 State Legislature. And this second time, in 
 1834, he had no defeat, but was elected by a 
 good majority. 
 
 When Washington was a young man he was 
 a surveyor, also. And the business gave him 
 
IN VANDALIA. 101 
 
 such opportunity to see good land and to know 
 it that he selected many choice acres which 
 afterwards brought him in money. But Lin- 
 coln never used his business for himself further 
 than to receive pay for his work; he made no 
 money out of it. It seems as if his heart were 
 set upon something before him to be done even 
 when he could not yet see what it was, and he 
 could not give his thoughts to other things. 
 Some biographies of him tell us that he was so 
 poor that when he was elected representative, 
 he walked the hundred miles to Vandalia. But 
 others tell us that he borrowed money from a 
 friend that he might go to the capital in dress 
 and conveyance suitable to a representative, and 
 that he went there by stagecoach which was then 
 the usual way of traveling. 
 
 At this first session of the Legislature he was 
 quiet and modest and did nothing to make him- 
 self conspicuous. He was all the time learning, 
 learning, not books alone, although he was still 
 studying law harder than ever; but he was get- 
 ting into knowledge of men who make laws, was 
 growing to perceive how to handle men, that is, 
 how to handle them in law-making. He was 
 born with great power to appeal to men of all 
 ranks and touch their hearts and lead them. 
 No doubt, when he sat there in his place among 
 
102 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 other representatives he sometimes thought of a 
 day when he had received one of the hard les- 
 sons of his life, a lesson given by a snob in fine 
 clothes to a man too great for him to under- 
 stand although he was dressed like one of the 
 roughest of country folk. Lincoln was always 
 very fond of going into the courts and listening 
 to the cases tried there. One day a Mr. Breck- 
 inridge made a most vigorous and eloquent 
 defence of his client. Lincoln, who had never 
 heard so fine a speech, listened in delighted 
 astonishment. When the case was over, Mr. 
 Breckinridge was walking grandly out of the 
 courtroom, when, straight in his path, stood 
 this immense, raw-boned youth, stretching out 
 a hand and arm with a sleeve far up his 
 wrist, and congratulating Mr. Breckinridge 
 upon his wonderful eloquence. The great man 
 looked for a moment at the tall, ungainly youth, 
 aud without having the good manners to take 
 his hand or to utter one word to him, he swept 
 out of the courtroom, indignant at such a fel- 
 low's having presumed to speak to him. This 
 was what the young legislator might have 
 lecalled as he sat there listening to speeches or 
 went about making acquaintance with his fellow 
 legislators, some of whom in future days would 
 be comrades of his, and others his opponents. 
 
IN VANDALIA. 103 
 
 But little could the young man foresee in 
 those days that he and this same snob of a Mr. 
 Breckinridge would one day meet again, that 
 time in Washington; and that when they met, 
 this young man whose hand the snob had refused 
 would then be President of the United States, 
 and Mr. Breckinridge would be only too much 
 honored by being spoken to by him. When that 
 time arrived, Lincoln showed the noble spirit 
 he was of, for again he congratulated the law- 
 yer upon that fine speech of so long before. One 
 can imagine that then Mr. Breckinridge was 
 glad enough to listen to the praise of the man he 
 had flouted as a boy. 
 
 In Lincoln's canvass of 1834, or that of 1836, 
 his constituents gave him two hundred dollars 
 to meet the expenses of campaign. When the 
 election was over, he handed back one hundred, 
 ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents to the 
 subscribers. "I did not need the money/' he 
 said. * ' I made the canvass on my own horse ; my 
 entertainment being at the houses of friends, 
 cost me nothing; and my only outlay was sev- 
 enty-five cents for a barrel of cider which some 
 farm hands insisted I should treat them to." 
 What candidate for the humblest office could be 
 elected now at an outlay of seventy-five cents! 
 But what candidate could be found with Lin- 
 coln's power and popularity! 
 
104 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 There was much to learn socially in Vandalia 
 where society was more polished than in New 
 Salem; and the young legislator did not fail to 
 profit by his opportunities. And here in the 
 Legislature he measured himself with the lead- 
 ing men of the community, and held his own 
 with them. 
 
XIV. 
 
 The Lincoln-Stone Protest. 
 
 The men who in 1836 assembled at Vandalia 
 as members of the newly elected Legislature of 
 Illinois were a set of picked men. There has 
 been scarcely any other legislative assembly 
 anywhere in which so many members later 
 gained brilliant political reputation. What they 
 did for the State of Illinois in the way of voting 
 money for railroads, canals, and all other 
 improvements which they could devise will be 
 remembered as disastrous legislation which in 
 the end crippled the resources of the State for 
 years to come. But they were new at the work 
 and their purposes were good. Lincoln was 
 among these; he was one of the finance com- 
 mittee busy with these schemes of internal 
 improvement in the State and he did not per- 
 ceive more than the others that they were bad 
 legislation. In the performance of his duties 
 large sums of money passed through his hands. 
 
 105 
 
106 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 But not a dollar staid by the way. When in 
 1837 he began to practice law he was a very 
 poor man. 
 
 It seemed best to the people of Illinois that 
 the capital should be changed from Vandalia 
 to a place more nearly in the middle of the 
 State and having other advantages that Van- 
 dalia had not. Springfield was the new capital 
 fixed upon, and the task of bringing this to the 
 Legislature and securing the vote was intrusted 
 to Lincoln. He managed it successfully and to 
 the great satisfaction of his constituents. He 
 also had in charge some improvements on the 
 Sangamon River in which the people of New 
 Salem had not yet lost faith as to the possibility 
 of its being made navigable. 
 
 But in his record in the Legislature of Illinois 
 is something of vastly greater importance than 
 the foolish financial schemes in which he joined 
 through ignorance of their folly; and of more 
 value than his advocacy of the opening of the 
 Sangamon River — now long since forgotten — or 
 even than his work in changing the capital to 
 Springfield, a permanent advantage. For it 
 was here while a member of the Legislature 
 that his real work began, the work for which it 
 seems to us human beings as we look at it rever- 
 ently, that God created him and led him through 
 years of hardship and sorrow and struggle up 
 
THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. 107 
 
 to a pinnacle of fame where still greater sorrow 
 and struggle awaited him, but with it a wonder- 
 ful power and a wonderful opportunity which 
 his character and his life led him to seize and 
 use for the blessing of the nation. For it was 
 during the session of 1836-37 that he first pub- 
 licly took that stand in regard to slavery which 
 —although at first it looked just the other way— 
 in reality, led him to the White House. 
 
 We read books of travel and stories of adven- 
 ture and novels to hear of men so strong and 
 great that all disadvantages and trials they can 
 overcome and all things that seem against them 
 come in the end to stand for their good; they 
 conquer everything; they conquer everybody; 
 they reach the end they aim at ; everybody trusts 
 them and admires and obeys them; their very 
 presence brings strength and help; in every 
 emergency they know the right thing and do it ; 
 in every danger they are able to bring relief; 
 they are the great success of genius and the 
 highest in honor and fame. When we read of 
 such heroes we often shut our books with a sigh 
 and wish such persons actually lived. But no 
 book of imagination ever painted a hero so 
 remarkable and so successful as Abraham Lin- 
 coln was, if by success we mean accomplishing 
 the great object for which he labored and died; 
 reaching the highest place in one of the greatest 
 
108 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 of modern nations and being followed and hon- 
 ored and loved by millions of people. It is true 
 that in stories, and in real life also, men have 
 risen from humble life to a throne. But no 
 other man who has so risen has lifted with him 
 four millions of slaves into freedmen. 
 
 The first preparation for this work was Lin- 
 coln's sight of the slaves in the cotton fields and 
 in the market when he went to New Orleans, 
 and many times much nearer him also. This 
 sight of men and women bought and sold like 
 cattle, and often of cruel treatment of them by 
 overseers, Lincoln's own great love of freedom 
 and his own remarkable practical sense which 
 saw the unwisdom of slavery, led him to vote 
 against a set of resolutions passed by the Illinois 
 Legislature of 1837 in regard to slavery. 
 
 For he believed then, as he said publicly after- 
 ward, that for a man to govern himself was 
 "self-government"; but to govern himself and 
 govern another man also was more than self- 
 government; it was despotism. He said also 
 that no man was good enough to govern another 
 man without that other man's consent. That 
 referred to slavery. 
 
 These resolutions of the Illinois Legislature 
 were much more favorable to slavery than Lin- 
 coln was and endeavored to soothe the South, 
 irritated by discussions about slavery and oppo- 
 
THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. 109 
 
 sition to it; for the South could no more keep 
 people from talking about it than it could pre- 
 vent the wind from blowing; and in trying to 
 stop the talking, it talked a great deal itself and 
 grew more and more angry. These resolutions 
 were discussed for some time and, finally, passed 
 unanimously in the Senate, and passed in the 
 House of Representatives with none but Lin- 
 coln and five other members voting against 
 them. 
 
 Many men would have thought that having 
 voted against a measure which he disapproved 
 of, he had done his duty; the measure was popu- 
 lar, still, he had voted against it because he 
 thought it wrong. Why not leave the matter 
 there when he was going before the people 
 again for re-election? He was a young and am- 
 bitious man with his way to make ; why should 
 he say or do anything more about a subject that 
 was unpopular? 
 
 Because he was Abraham Lincoln, and it was 
 not his way to leave a thing he believed wrong 
 alone because it was unpopular and he might 
 lose by having anything to do with it. The 
 day before the end of the session he presented 
 to the House, for he was a representative, the 
 following protest which was read and ordered 
 to be recorded: 
 
110 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 " Representative from the county of San- 
 gamon. 
 
 "Resolutions upon the subject of domestic 
 slavery having passed both branches of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly at its present session, the under- 
 signed hereby protest against the passage of the 
 same. 
 
 "They believe that the institution of slavery 
 is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but 
 that the promulgation of abolition doctrines 
 tends rather to increase than abate its evils. 
 
 ' ' They believe that the Congress of the United 
 States has no power under the Constitution to 
 interfere with the institution of slavery in the 
 different States. 
 
 "They believe that the Congress of the United 
 States has the power under the Constitution, to 
 abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but 
 that the power ought not to be exercised, unless 
 at the request of the people of the District. 
 
 "The difference between these opinions and 
 those contained in the above resolutions is their 
 reason for entering this protest. 
 
 "(Signed) Dan Stone, 
 "A. Lincoln, 
 "Representatives from the County of Sanga- 
 mon." 
 
 We, to-day, cannot understand why anything 
 so very mildly put should be against anyone's 
 
THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. Ill 
 
 opinion. Yet there is one sentence: "They 
 believe that the institution of slavery is founded 
 on both injustice and bad policy/' which shows 
 where Lincoln stood. There he planted him- 
 self like a rock, and from this belief and the 
 expression of this belief nothing could move 
 him. He had said once to John Hanks in the 
 New Orleans trip that if ever he had a chance 
 to hit slavery, he would hit it hard. He began 
 then and there. And in some form from that 
 time until his voice through the thunder of can- 
 non overthrew slavery, he was always hitting it 
 hard ; and the more people defended it, the more 
 the evils of it stood out, as is the way with all 
 bad things. The South to-day is thankful to be 
 rid of the burden of slavery and has grown 
 stronger in its freedom. 
 
 But in those times things were very different. 
 After a terrible conflict which had waked up all 
 the best people in the State, Illinois had voted 
 to be a free instead of a slave State. But the 
 victory won at the polls for freedom did not 
 keep the people from admiring the slave-owners 
 when they came over bringing their slaves to 
 wait upon them. Then, Missouri was just being 
 settled; and the people who passed through 
 Illinois to go to the new State said what a pity 
 it was that they could not remain in Illinois 
 which was so attractive, but they preferred to 
 
112 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 go where they could take their slaves with them 
 or could buy them as they liked. Years before 
 Illinois had passed an act hiring slaves from 
 Southern states because it said the people could 
 not operate their mills without them ; yet all the 
 while they were treating shamefully the free 
 colored people who came into the State. 
 
 Thus, in March, 1837, Abraham Lincoln in 
 the Legislature which had just passed such a 
 vote stood up all the height of his six feet and 
 four inches and declared that "the institution of 
 slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
 policy" — it would have been hard to find two 
 more rotten pegs to stand anything upon ! 
 
 But of the five men who voted with him,. only 
 one would sign this protest, and he was not 
 going to stand for another election so he did 
 not fear for his office. 
 
 It was Lincoln's belief that God guided men's 
 lives. And as Lincoln did the thing he knew to 
 be right and left the result with God, he has 
 made it plain to us that in such a life God does 
 guide. 
 
XV. 
 
 Settled in Springfield. 
 
 The Sangamon County delegation to the Leg- 
 islature was called "The Long Nine" because 
 all the members were so tall; it was said that, 
 .put together, they would have been fifty -five 
 feet ! Lincoln with his six feet four inches was 
 the tallest of any. They were very good 
 friends ; the Dan Stone who with Lincoln signed 
 the Lincoln-Stone protest was one of them. 
 After the session was over the nine were dined 
 and made much of in Springfield because they 
 had worked to have this city made the capital, 
 and especially was Lincoln praised since he had 
 led in this enterprise. 
 
 In March, 1837, just as his term as represent- 
 ative was over, Lincoln was admitted to the bar 
 in Illinois. From the advice of his friends and 
 by his own wish also he decided to begin the 
 practice of law in Springfield and he made this 
 city his home. He had no money. One of his 
 
 113 
 
114 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 most intimate friends, Mr. Joshua Speed, tells 
 the story of the young man coming into town on 
 a borrowed horse with a few law books and a 
 few pieces of clothing in a pair of saddle-bags, 
 all he owned. He made inquiries as to the cost 
 of a little furniture in a room and found it more 
 than he could pay. Speed told him that he had 
 a very large room and a large double bed and 
 Lincoln would be welcome to share it with him. 
 " Where is your room?" asked Lincoln. Speed 
 told him it was upstairs. The other took his 
 saddle-bags, went upstairs and set them down 
 on the floor, then came down in smiles and cried : 
 "Well, Speed, I'm moved!" 
 
 To a person familiar with other cities Spring- 
 field would have seemed uncouth enough. But 
 it had never been really a pioneer town. 
 A number of well-to-do Kentucky families had 
 come there, besides settlers of a more polished 
 type than usual with the genuine Western pio- 
 neer in those days. Lincoln wrote about it as 
 a place where there was "a good deal of flour- 
 ishing, about in carriages. " We find a reference 
 to the goods advertised in the newspaper of 
 Springfield at that time showing how much 
 attention was paid to dress. "Cloths, cassi- 
 meres, silk, satin, velvet, Marseilles vestings, 
 fine calf boots, seal and morocco pumps, for 
 gentlemen; and for ladies, silks, bareges, 
 
SETTLED IN SPRINGFIELD. 115 
 
 crepe lisse, lace veils, thread lace, lace hand- 
 kerchiefs, fine prunella shoes, <fcc." A few 
 years before this there had been a gradual 
 change in the dress of the people of Illinois. 
 Leather and linsey woolsey, hunting knife 
 and tomahawk had disappeared from men's 
 dress; and these wore leather boots and 
 shoes instead of moccasins; they did not tie 
 leather breeches around their ankles, but wore 
 pantaloons in place of them. Women no longer 
 went barefoot, and instead of homespun frocks 
 wore gowns of calico and, sometimes, silk ones ; 
 they did not any more tie up their heads in 
 hideous red cotton turbans, but put on pretty 
 bonnets. The old pioneers shook their heads 
 and declared that bad things would come to a 
 country where the young people did not believe 
 in things that were "good enough for their 
 fathers.' ' But the new clothes looked much 
 better than the old garments that the pioneers 
 wore, because they could not get any better, and 
 not because they loved them. 
 
 Springfield was between the woods on the 
 north and the prairie lands on the south. The 
 soil was so rich that the mud in the streets was 
 perfectly black and in the spring there seemed to 
 be no bottom to it. There were no pavements or 
 sidewalks ; large chunks of wood were laid down 
 to make crossings, and these were not likely to be 
 
116 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 either very even or very steady. The houses 
 were chiefly built of wood and built in blocks. 
 A large square had been left in the middle of 
 the town because people thought that they would 
 want this when Springfield grew to be a great 
 city, and when Lincoln came to Springfield they 
 were clearing the ground there for the new 
 State House. The offices of the county court 
 were in one of the largest houses looking on this 
 square, and the other rooms in the building were 
 let for lawyers' offices. Major Stuart, whom 
 Lincoln had known in the Black Hawk war and 
 who had lent the young man law books, now 
 offered Lincoln a partnership with him; and 
 one of the offices in that building was that of 
 "Stuart and Lincoln.' ' The furniture of this 
 room was a small lounge or bed, a chair with a 
 buffalo robe in it in which Lincoln used to sit 
 and study, a hard, wooden bench, a rough book- 
 case and a table that also served as a desk. 
 
 At this time Judge Logan, afterward Lin- 
 coln's law partner, was judge of the circuit court 
 and Stephen A. Douglas with whom the future 
 President had in coming years such debates that 
 the whole nation echoed to his trenchant argu- 
 ments against the slave power and marveled at 
 his clear exposition of its treacheries— Douglas 
 was then prosecuting attorney. 
 
 The method of practicing law in those days 
 
SETTLED IN SPRINGFIELD. 117 
 
 and in that new country was entirely different 
 from the present. If a lawyer in Illinois had 
 staid in his office and waited for clients, he might 
 have waited there forever. But many of the 
 lawyers then were half politicians. In the 
 stores, in the streets, in the public halls, every- 
 where, they discussed politics, they knew what 
 was going on, they found their clients. There 
 were not the difficult questions of law to be 
 decided in those days that we have now; there 
 were no corporation lawyers, for there were no 
 great corporations such as we have now; and 
 many questions of interstate commerce and rail- 
 roading and other matters, certainly in their 
 present shape, were not known. Lawyers de- 
 pended a great deal upon their influence with a 
 jury, more than upon what they really knew of 
 law. Major Stuart, Lincoln's first partner, was 
 a candidate for Congress in 1838, and was 
 elected over the head of Stephen A. Douglas. 
 So that the Major could set Lincoln no example 
 of industry in law. 
 
 Lincoln himself was still a politician ; he was 
 elected to the State Legislature in 1838, and 
 again in 1840 ; so that from 1834 to 1842 he was 
 a representative. Speed's store was a great 
 gathering place for political and all other de- 
 bates, and there Lincoln became well known for 
 his brightness and his good stories. 
 
118 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 No lawyer in the country ever had a greater 
 influence over a jury than Lincoln had. He had 
 a remarkable power of putting a case so clearly 
 that nobody could misunderstand it. But this 
 was not all his power ; a part of this came from 
 the fact that here as everywhere he was "honest 
 Abe," he would not take a case that he did not 
 believe in, and when he found that his client had 
 deceived him and was really guilty of what he 
 was accused of, Lincoln has been known to turn 
 the case over to his partner, saying he himself 
 was helpless to plead in the case. And when his 
 partner undertook a case where the client was 
 guilty, and brought him off, Lincoln would not 
 touch a dollar of his share of the fee. Once 
 when a sheep-grower had employed him, it came 
 out in evidence that although he had delivered 
 to the other man the number of animals agreed 
 upon, yet some of them were so young that they 
 were under the average value. When Mr. Lin- 
 coln understood this, he found out how many of 
 these cheaper sheep had been delivered con- 
 trary to the agreement, and told the jury that 
 they must give a verdict against his client and he 
 only asked them to be careful to give just the 
 right amount. He must always be on the side 
 of justice, no matter whether himself or his 
 clients suffered for it, 
 
 The lawyers in Springfield were not willing to 
 
SETTLED IN SPRINGFIELD. 119 
 
 undertake the defence of any person who had 
 been engaged in helping off fugitive slaves ; and 
 they were especially unwilling when they were 
 running, or about to run for office. A man went 
 to Edward D. Baker asking him to undertake 
 his case. But Baker would not do it; he said as 
 a political man he could not afford to do this. 
 The man went to an anti-slavery friend for 
 advice. This friend told him to go to Lincoln. 
 "He's not afraid of an unpopular case," he said. 
 "When I go for a lawyer to defend an arrested 
 fugitive slave, other lawyers will refuse me, but 
 if Mr. Lincoln is at home, he will always take 
 my case." 
 
 This testimony concerning the young lawyer 
 proves that to Abraham Lincoln the Lincoln- 
 Stone protest was no mere instrument of empty 
 words, but the belief on which his life work was 
 based. For no politicians, for no place, for no 
 power would he move from his principles. He 
 was not born a seeker of popularity; he was 
 born a leader of the nation in its terrible 
 struggle. 
 
XVI. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln Marries. 
 
 Dr. Holland says of Abraham Lincoln when 
 he was in Mr. Oifutt's store: "He was judge, 
 arbitrator, referee, umpire, authority, in all dis- 
 putes, games and matches of man-flesh and 
 horse-flesh ; a pacificator in all quarrels ; every- 
 body J s friend; the best-natured, the most sen- 
 sible, the best-informed, the most modest and 
 unassuming, the kindliest, gentlest, roughest, 
 strongest, best young fellow in all New Salem 
 and the region round about.' ' 
 
 From the days when he was a big school-boy 
 and he and little Kate Roby, like school-boy and 
 school-girl, used to sit on the banks of the San- 
 gamon and dangle their feet over the water while 
 they talked and laughed together, Lincoln knew 
 very few women except his noble step-mother. 
 It was probably from her and from his own 
 mother whom he always remembered with great 
 affection that he gained the great reverence for 
 women which he always had. It came in part, 
 
 120 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARRIES. 121 
 
 too, from his own beautiful nature that believed 
 in things good and true. 
 
 But while he was in New Salem he became 
 acquainted with Anne Rutledge, the daughter 
 of Mr. Rutledge who owned the mill and was one 
 of the founders and principal men of New Salem. 
 He liked young Lincoln and made him welcome. 
 At one time he kept the tavern where Lincoln 
 came to board in 1833. Anne was a beautiful 
 girl. One description of her says that she had 
 auburn hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion, 
 and was slender and fragile. She had a bright 
 mind and a gentle and sympathetic heart. Lin- 
 coln came to love her so much that when she 
 died it seemed as if he, too, would die or lose 
 his mind through grief. It is said of him that 
 before this time he was thoroughly gay and 
 light-hearted ; but afterward, although he often 
 seemed to his companions to be enjoying life 
 much, yet he had moods of deep melancholy. 
 
 But the duties and demands of life pressed 
 upon him ; and he took them up again. He did 
 his work in the Legislature, his studying and his 
 practice, and always that unconscious prepara- 
 tion for his great work. For he came to under- 
 stand better and better the public questions of 
 that day, and especially that great question of 
 slavery which was fast becoming so immense 
 that everything else was small beside it. 
 
122 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 When he went to live in Springfield, he was 
 often at the house of one of his intimate friends, 
 Mr. Ninian Edwards. There he met constantly 
 Mrs. Edwards' sister, Miss Mary Todd of Ken- 
 tucky. His friends and hers told him that he 
 had better marry Miss Todd ; and at one time he 
 was engaged to her. Then he began to question 
 whether he loved her enough to marry her; for 
 no one could be to him like Anne Rutledge, and 
 he must give Miss Todd a real affection, for he 
 had too much reverence for her not to do this. 
 The young man was full of honor and noble 
 feeling; he was as eager to do right here as in 
 any public question that could come to him — 
 even more eager. He went into Kentucky for a 
 time and staid with his friend, Mr. Speed, and 
 rested from all work — and, no doubt, he needed 
 the rest — then he returned to Springfield. He 
 knew now what he ought to do. Miss Todd 
 loved him. In November, 1842, they were 
 married. 
 
 There is an amusing story of a duel that Lin- 
 coln was forced to fight the summer before his 
 marriage. It happened in this way. Miss Todd 
 was a very bright young woman and could 
 write articles making fun of persons and arous- 
 ing their anger. There was some public ques- 
 tion in which she was interested and she and 
 another young woman, a friend of hers, wrote 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARRIES. 123 
 
 some witty and cutting articles in the paper 
 about a certain Mr. Shields, afterwards General 
 Shields. He resented them and demanded from 
 the paper the name of the author. The editor 
 would not give the name of the ladies and asked 
 Lincoln what he should do. Lincoln told him: 
 ' ' Give my name." It has been suggested that 
 he did really give Miss Todd and her friends 
 some "points" for the articles. So, Shields 
 challenged Lincoln; and Lincoln could not get 
 out of it without disgrace. But he did not want 
 to hurt Shields and he had no wish to be killed 
 himself; so, as he had the choice of weapons, 
 being the person challenged, he chose "cavalry 
 broadswords of the largest size"; and the two 
 were "to stand on each side of a board placed on 
 the ground, each to fight within limit of six feet 
 on his own side of the board." Lincoln was 
 ashamed of the whole thing; Shields was de- 
 lighted with it. But just at the last minute 
 friends reconciled the two. 
 
 When Lincoln and Miss Todd were married 
 they went at first to board at the Globe Tavern 
 in Springfield where they paid what was then 
 a good price— four dollars a week. Lincoln was 
 out of debt at last ; but he was still poor and he 
 never made money as so many men with his 
 opportunities would have done. 
 
 After a time, however, he had his own house 
 
124 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 in Springfield. He spent the money his practice 
 gave him in educating his children and in living 
 plainly, yet liberally. People who knew him 
 speak* of "the old-fashioned hospitality of 
 Springfield,' ' and Mrs. Lincoln's dinners and 
 evening parties in her "modest and simple home 
 where everything was so orderly and refined." 
 Both she and Mr. Lincoln were full of the cordial 
 Western manner which put the guests at ease 
 at once. They had many rare Kentucky dishes 
 on their table, and venison, and other game so 
 abundant then. For from this time Mr. Lin- 
 coln could afford to live comfortably; hence- 
 forth his income was sufficient for his wants. 
 His personal wants were always few; he never 
 drank, he never smoked, he lived a simple, beau- 
 tiful life. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had four children, all 
 sons. These were Robert Todd, Edwards, 
 William and Thomas. Edwards died when a 
 baby, and William died in the White House. 
 Thomas used to be called "Tad," because while 
 he was a wee baby, before he had been named, 
 his father called him, "Tadpole." The name 
 clung and we shall always remember him as 
 "Tad" in the stories that are told of him while 
 a child in the White House. 
 
 It is said of Lincoln that he was a devoted 
 father, was never impatient with his children's 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARRIES. 125 
 
 restlessness or perversity, but delighted in being 
 with them and took them to his heart with an 
 affection so deep as to make him overlook their 
 faults. The worst he could bring himself to 
 say to a naughty child was: "You break my 
 heart when you act like this. ' ' And his tender- 
 ness and the pain in his face and his tones were 
 enough to make the boy repent. People in 
 Springfield used to see him almost any summer 
 morning walking back and forth before his house 
 drawing one of his children in a child's gig, 
 and so deep in the study of some law or some 
 political question that he would often pass his 
 friends without seeing them. 
 
XVII. 
 In Congkess. 
 
 In 1840 Lincoln was nominated for Presiden- 
 tial Elector to vote for General Harrison for 
 President, and at once made a spirited and suc- 
 cessful canvass for him, traveling over a large 
 part of the State. There were many brilliant 
 speakers ; but one of Lincoln's orations was con- 
 sidered the best of the whole and it was after- 
 ward printed and circulated as a campaign docu- 
 ment. It was a bright, witty speech, full of 
 hard hits at the other side, and was very 
 popular. 
 
 It was not the last time that Lincoln was made 
 Presidential Elector. For in every presidential 
 campaign the Whigs used to send him out to 
 talk to the people in their own dialect, and after 
 their own way of looking at things, in favor of 
 the party candidate. 
 
 But when in 1844 Henry Clay was nominated 
 by the "Whigs for President, Lincoln's canvass 
 
 126 
 
IN CONGRESS. 127 
 
 for him was made with a zeal he had not known 
 before. For he had the greatest admiration 
 for Clay and believed in him with all his heart. 
 And when Clay was defeated, it seemed to Lin- 
 coln a great calamity. Some time afterward he 
 went to visit the great statesman at his home. 
 But here he was disappointed in him; for he 
 found Mr. Clay lofty and condescending, as if 
 no one could be of so great consequence as he 
 himself was; and the speech which the young 
 man heard him deliver was not eloquent at all. 
 
 After Mr. Lincoln had left the Illinois Legis- 
 lature, he was elected Representative, and took 
 his seat in the Thirtieth Congress at Washing- 
 ton, December 6, 1847. There were many emi- 
 nent men in that Congress, but none so great as 
 Lincoln afterward became. He had been elected 
 by the largest majority given in his district; 
 for the people had the greatest confidence in his 
 integrity and faithfulness. He had had experi- 
 ence in the State Legislature, so that he was at 
 home in methods and debates; and he was well 
 acquainted with the questions of the day and 
 knew how the parties stood toward one another, 
 and the desires and aims of each. He took his 
 place quietly, and in this first session he did 
 nothing especially striking, although he intro- 
 duced a set of resolutions calling upon Presi- 
 dent Polk to give a statement of facts concern- 
 
128 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 ing the Mexican war, so that Congress and the 
 country would know what to believe. The reso- 
 lutions were laid over, and Mr. Lincoln did not 
 call for them again; but in January he made 
 a speech in the House founded upon these. In 
 this he called upon President Polk to explain 
 the causes and the origin of the war with Mex- 
 ico; and when it would end? 
 
 We had to get out of the war somehow. So 
 some of the best soldiers and most famous 
 generals and other officers in the Mexican war 
 were Whigs. But they went to help out the 
 country in time of need and not because they 
 sustained President Polk and his evil policy. 
 For the House of Eepresentatives voted in the 
 January of 1848 that it was "a war unneces- 
 sarily and unconstitutionally made by the Presi- 
 dent of the United States.' ' 
 
 Lincoln and his famous political opponent, 
 Stephen A. Douglas, were in Congress at the 
 same time. 'Lincoln was the tallest man in the 
 House and Douglas the shortest man in the 
 Senate; he was called "the little giant, " because 
 he was so short of stature and so strong in 
 mind. But there was a greater difference 
 between him and Lincoln than that of height or 
 ability, the difference which came out after this 
 time between honor and dishonor in character; 
 Douglas wanted power, and he could be bought 
 
IN CONGRESS. 129 
 
 to gain it; Lincoln liked power also, as any man 
 does who is capable of wielding it, but truth was 
 always more to him than his own success, or any 
 man's; it was not in him to say or do what he 
 did not believe for any place or any power. He 
 was already beginning to distrust Douglas. But 
 the great battles between the two had not then 
 been thought of. 
 
 Congress adjourned in August, 1848 ; and then 
 Lincoln began to electioneer for General Zach- 
 ary Taylor, our next President. He so inter- 
 ested the people in his own district that they 
 gave nearly as large a vote as they had done 
 for Lincoln himself. Then he went to New 
 England and there he made some telling cam- 
 paign speeches. He had a great power of seeing 
 what things really meant, no matter how they 
 had been covered up with false statements ; and 
 he could present the truth in such a way that 
 people could not help seeing it and remember- 
 ing it. 
 
 When Congress met again the following 
 December there was a great change in feeling 
 in it. The election was over; the Whigs had 
 been successful in electing their President. The 
 House was ready to try to bring in New Mexico 
 and California as free Territories. But the 
 Senate would not agree, and the matter was 
 left for a time. 
 
130 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 Lincoln was as desirous as any one to have 
 the new Territories free; he always voted 
 against slavery. But, much as he hated it, he 
 did not believe that we had a right to touch it 
 in the slave States; because, although it was 
 wrong, the law upheld it; and he wanted to 
 have the time come when this law would be 
 changed; and, meanwhile, not to let slavery 
 encroach any further into free ground. 
 
 It seemed to him, however, as it did to many 
 others, that to have slaves bought and sold in 
 our own capital city of Washington owned by 
 the United States, was a disgrace to our country. 
 He wanted Congress with the consent of the 
 people of the District of Columbia to free their 
 slaves and pay the masters for them; and he 
 tried to have this thing done. A good many 
 approved of the measure. 
 
 But the people of Washington opposed it very 
 strongly. So, the mayor of Washington who 
 had at first given his consent to freeing the 
 slaves was obliged to withdraw it — or he thought 
 he was — and the measure fell through. 
 
 That bill freeing the slaves in the District of 
 Columbia waited fifteen years. Then, during 
 the civil war when Mr. Lincoln was President, 
 Congress passed it and he signed it. 
 
 Lincoln's term in Congress ended on the 
 fourth of March, 1849 ; and he did not try to be 
 
IN CONGRESS. 131 
 
 re-elected. He said that there were many Whigs 
 who could do as much as he "to bring the dis- 
 trict right side up. ' ' 
 
 President Taylor wanted to make him gov- 
 ernor of Oregon. But Mrs. Lincoln was not 
 willing to go to a country so far away and 
 unsettled as Oregon was at that time ; it seemed 
 to her a wilderness; and Lincoln decided not 
 to go. 
 
 We have reason to be thankful he did not. 
 For he was needed in the forefront of the com- 
 ing battle of arguments and opinions ; and, later, 
 in that terrible war between the South and the 
 North in which he was to have so great a work 
 to do. 
 
 But before all this there came to him a little 
 breathing space. 
 
 For he went back to Springfield and took up 
 again his practice of law. 
 
XVIII. 
 A Real Student. 
 
 In 1841 Lincoln had dissolved partnership 
 with Major Stuart who was in Congress, and 
 was associated with a much more thorough and 
 careful lawyer, Judge Logan. From this time 
 until political duties took all his care and 
 thoughts, Lincoln devoted himself more ear- 
 nestly to his profession. He said of himself: 
 "From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, I practiced 
 law more assiduously than ever before." 
 
 He studied his cases with great care and 
 patience and had a wonderful power with juries. 
 When he returned from Congress he found that 
 some changes had taken place in the methods of 
 practice from old ways, there was more knowl- 
 edge of law required, and more care in presen- 
 tation of a case. It had seemed to him while 
 he was in Congress that he lacked a certain 
 power of close and sustained reasoning. So, 
 when he came home he set himself to study such 
 
 132 
 
A REAL STUDENT. 133 
 
 works on logic and mathematics as he thought 
 would, be useful to him; he soon learned by 
 heart six books of Euclid and always remem- 
 bered the principles they contained. 
 
 Judge David Davis, who was for many years 
 presiding judge of the circuit when Lincoln was 
 on this circuit and who knew him well, said of 
 him: "In all the elements that constitute the 
 great lawyer he had few equals. He seized the 
 strong points of a case and presented them with 
 clearness and great compactness. The frame- 
 work of his mental and moral being was hon- 
 esty, and a wrong cause was poorly defended 
 by 111111." Davis said that Lincoln could not ex- 
 plain away the bad points of a case, and spoke of 
 how little power Lincoln had if he did not believe 
 in his cause ; how he never meant to take a case 
 where his client was in the wrong, but sometimes 
 was at first deceived himself— and how strong 
 he was when he knew he was right ; how he hated 
 wrong and oppression and made the man who 
 had been defrauding writhe under his terrible 
 rebukes. He said that Lincoln, even when he 
 won, never took from a client more than he 
 thought his services were worth or the man 
 could afford to pay; and that his charges were 
 always small because the people among whom 
 he practiced were not rich. When he was elected 
 President it is probable that there was not a 
 
134 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 lawyer in the circuit who had been at the bar as 
 long who had not more money than Abraham 
 Lincoln ; it was not the business of his life to 
 make a fortune. 
 
 Mr. Herndon who was afterward his law part- 
 ner tells how a man came to Lincoln one day 
 and wanted him to take an objectionable case. 
 Lincoln said to him after he had heard him 
 through: "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt 
 but that I can gain your case for you. I can 
 set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads ; I can 
 distress a widowed mother and her six father- 
 less children, and thereby get for you six hun- 
 dred dollars which rightfully belongs, it appears 
 to me, as much to them as it does to you. 
 I shall not take your case, but I will give a little 
 advice for nothing. You seem a sprightly, ener- 
 getic man. I would advise you to try your hand 
 at making six hundred dollars in some other 
 way. ' ' 
 
 Sometimes after he had undertaken a criminal 
 case, it would suddenly come to him that his 
 client was guilty. At one such time he turned 
 to his associate and said: "Swett, the man is 
 guilty ; you defend him ; I can 't. ' ' And he gave 
 up his share of a large fee. At another time in 
 defending a man accused of larceny, he said to 
 the lawyer who was with him : "If you can say 
 anything for the man, do it; I can't. If I 
 
A REAL STUDENT. 135 
 
 attempt it, the jury will see I think he is guilty, 
 and convict him." At another time he found 
 that his client was attempting a fraud. Lincoln 
 got up in great disgust and went off to his hotel. 
 The judge sent for him. He would not go into 
 court. "Tell the judge," he said, "my hands 
 are dirty; I came over here to wash them." 
 
 Lincoln had been in practice only a short 
 time when he was engaged on one side or the 
 other of all the most important cases on the 
 circuit. At the beginning of his work he was 
 only "a case lawyer," knowing how to carry the 
 jury but not well enough educated to be an 
 authority. But toward the latter part of his 
 life he had so trained his powers of generaliza- 
 tion and deduction and studied the principles of 
 law that the best lawyers held him their equal. 
 
 When he returned from Congress an eminent 
 lawyer in Chicago wanted him to become his 
 partner in that city. But Mr. Lincoln said that 
 practice in a large city would be injurious to his 
 health. 
 
 He enjoyed the life on circuit although there 
 were many hardships. And if any one among 
 the lawyers had to be imposed upon by a room 
 not so good or crowded with others, it was 
 always Lincoln. He was always welcomed 
 wherever he went. But it has been said of him 
 that at hotels he was never put beside the land- 
 
136 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 lord to have the choicest bits at table nor did he 
 have the best seats in coaches or any such atten- 
 tions pressed npon him. But by reason of his 
 wit and his stories he was always the centre of 
 an admiring crowd of friends and acquaintances. 
 
 Mr. Herndon tells how he often went on cir- 
 cuit with him. At such times in country taverns 
 the two usually occupied the same bed. In most 
 instances the beds were too short for Lincoln 
 whose feet would hang over the footboard. He 
 would put a candle on a chair at the head of the 
 bed and read and study for hours. It was in 
 this way he studied Euclid, as well as other 
 works. When he once fixed his mind on any 
 subject, nothing could disturb him, he had such 
 power of concentration. To a young man who 
 wrote asking how he could best gain a thorough 
 knowledge of law, Lincoln answered that it was 
 a very simple thing, but very tedious and toil- 
 some; he must get books and read and study 
 carefully. li Begin with 'Blackstone's Com- 
 mentaries, ' and after reading carefully through, 
 say twice, take up 'Chitty's Pleadings/ 'Green- 
 leaf's Evidence' and 'Story's Equity' in suc- 
 cession. Work, work, work is the main thing." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln enjoyed a joke even when it was 
 against himself; and he was sometimes able to 
 turn it back upon the perpetrators. One day in 
 the spring of 1849 two travelers were waiting to 
 
A REAL STUDENT. 137 
 
 take the stage from Terre Haute to Indian- 
 apolis. When it arrived it had only one pas- 
 senger, -a long, lank man who was sound asleep 
 on the back seat, his head appearing at one side 
 of the coach and his feet on the other. One of 
 the travelers slapped him on the shoulder and 
 asked him if he had chartered the stage for the 
 day! " Certainly not," returned the man; and 
 he at once got up and took the front seat giving 
 up the place of honor and comfort to the 
 strangers. "He was a queer-looking fellow," 
 wrote one of the travelers, "dressed in a well- 
 worn and ill-fitting suit of bombazine, without 
 vest or cravat, and a twenty-five cent palm hat 
 on the back of his head. His very prominent 
 features in repose seemed dull and expression- 
 less. Regarding him as a good subject for merri- 
 ment, we perpetrated several jokes. He took 
 them all with the utmost innocence and good- 
 nature, and joined in the laugh although at his 
 own expense. At noon we stopped at a way- 
 side hostelry for dinner. We invited him to 
 eat with us, and he approached the table as if 
 he considered it a great honor." 
 
 So the story goes on, telling how, late in the 
 evening, the stage reached Indianapolis. The 
 travelers went to a hotel and lost sight of the 
 stranger. Later, coming from their rooms they 
 saw the "long, gloomy fellow-traveler in the 
 
138 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 center of an admiring group of lawyers who 
 seemed to be amused and interested in a story 
 he was telling." The travelers asked the land- 
 lord who the tall man was? "Abraham Lin- 
 coln of Illinois, a member of Congress, " re- 
 turned the landlord. The travelers slunk out of 
 the hotel by the back door and went to another 
 place. Yet when Mr. Lincoln was President, 
 he appointed one of these men minister to Chili. 
 
 With all his work Lincoln found time to 
 advocate the temperance cause in which he was 
 deeply interested. He never drank himself, as 
 has been said before ; but he had opportunity to 
 see the misery that drink caused and to hate it. 
 Neither did he smoke, or chew. What strength 
 and life he had went to the service of others, not 
 to self-indulgence of any kind. 
 
 His partner, Mr. Herndon, says that occasion- 
 ally he himself used to get a little grandiloquent 
 in his language; and one day Lincoln warned 
 him. "Billy, don't shoot too high," he said, 
 "aim lower and the common people will under- 
 stand you. They are the ones you want to reach 
 —at least they are the ones you ought to reach. 
 The educated and refined people will understand 
 you anyway. If you aim too high your ideas 
 will go over the heads of the masses, and only 
 hit those who need no hitting. " 
 
XIX. 
 
 How Lincoln Practiced Law. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln was very ambitious and had 
 great faith in her husband's future. She was 
 much delighted when a few years after their 
 marriage he was elected to Congress. She went 
 with him to Washington and was there during 
 one session of Congress. Herndon says that if 
 Lincoln seemed homely to other people, he was 
 "the embodiment of noble manhood" to her. 
 She was one day at the law office while her hus- 
 band was absent and when she and Mr. Herndon 
 were talking of Douglas, she said: "Mr. Lin- 
 coln may not be as handsome a figure, but people 
 are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large 
 as his arms are long." 
 
 It is a question, however, whether she ever 
 heard one instance of her husband's large-heart- 
 edness toward the lower animals also. Dr. Hol- 
 land tells how one day when Lincoln was riding 
 the circuit he went by a deep slough where to his 
 
 139 
 
140 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 great distress he saw a pig struggling, but so 
 faintly that it was plain the poor creature was 
 nearly exhausted and had no chance of getting 
 out of the mire into which it was constantly 
 sinking deeper. Mr. Lincoln looked at the pig 
 and the mud in which it was wallowing and at 
 his own new clothes which he did not want to 
 ruin. The clothes won the day and he rode on 
 leaving the poor pig to its sad fate. He did not 
 ride far, however, he could not stand it. He 
 went back, fastened his horse, took some old 
 rails lying about and built a passage to the 
 bottom of the hole. Then he walked down on 
 these, seized the pig and dragged it to firm 
 ground ; but not without great injury to his new 
 clothes. Washing his hands in the nearest 
 brook, he went on his way, discussing with him- 
 self what had made him do this thing. At first 
 he imagined it was "pure benevolence, " but at 
 last he decided that it was just selfishness, since 
 he went to the pig's relief, as he put it to a 
 friend, ' ' to take a pain out of his own mind. ' ' 
 
 Lincoln's presentation of his first case has no 
 parallel in law records. He rose and said to 
 the bench: "This is the first case I have ever 
 had in this court, and I have therefore examined 
 it with great care. As the Court will perceive 
 by looking at the abstract of the record, the only 
 question in this case is one of authority. I have 
 
HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 141 
 
 not been able to find any authority sustaining 
 my side of the case, but I have found several 
 cases directly in point on the other side. I will 
 now give these cases and then submit the case." 
 
 A young, poor lawyer needing practice, and 
 his first case! And he told the truth against 
 himself as freely as if it had been in his favor. 
 Was it any wonder that he had weight witli 
 juries when they were absolutely sure that lie 
 believed exactly what he said ? For, clear, witty, 
 interesting to fascination as he certainly was, 
 the foundation of his influence was that they 
 believed him. There were cases brought to him 
 that he would have nothing to do with; no fee 
 that could be offered would make him try to win 
 an injustice because it was legal or technical. 
 He was not deeply learned in rules of evidence or 
 practice as in text-books, and did not care for 
 them. His sense of justice was keen ; he strug- 
 gled for justice, throwing aside forms, methods 
 and rules, until at last justice appeared "pure 
 as a ray of light flashing through a fog bank." 
 He was not a wide reader, but when he had a 
 matter to investigate he went to the root of it, 
 he was thorough and unwearied in his search; 
 and he found what he searched for, and put it 
 before others in such a form that they could not 
 help seeing it. 
 
 One story of him is that he went one day to a 
 
142 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 lawyer in another town, saying: "I see youVe 
 been suing some of my clients, and I've come 
 down to see about it." The other lawyer 
 explained the case and showed the proofs. Lin- 
 coln said that he would be equally frank; that 
 the other's client was entitled to a decree and he 
 should represent it thus to the court ; and that it 
 was against his principles to contest a clear 
 matter of right. So the other's client received 
 a deed for a farm which, if anybody but Mr. 
 Lincoln had been on the opposite side, would 
 have been all used up in law-suits, with, prob- 
 ably, the same decision at last. 
 
 A widow, Lincoln's client, owned some valu- 
 able land. Lincoln was not satisfied as to the 
 description of a part of it in the title-deed; so 
 he surveyed it himself, and found that the man 
 who had sold it to the person from whom she 
 had inherited it had conveyed more land than 
 he had been paid for; and that she ought to 
 make it right with his heirs. She objected very 
 strongly; but when Lincoln and his partner 
 told her that they would drop the case unless 
 she did it, she paid the amount. 
 
 Mr. Herndon who from 1845 was the law part- 
 ner of Lincoln until his death has many incidents 
 of him. He tells how at one time in Lincoln's 
 absence and without his knowledge he made a 
 fictitious plea from something he had gathered 
 
HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 143 
 
 the opposing counsel believed, so that they could 
 not question it, but were much perplexed about 
 it. Before things had gone further Lincoln 
 came into court. He looked carefully over the 
 papers in the case and when he saw Herndon's 
 ingenious falsehood, he asked : ' 'Is this seventh 
 plea a good one?" The other said it was. 
 "But is it founded on fact?" persisted Lincoln. 
 Then Herndon explained, and said that they 
 were justified because their client must have 
 time, or be ruined. But Lincoln shook his head. 
 ' ' Hadn 't we better withdraw that plea ! ' ' he said. 
 "You know it's a sham, and a sham is very often 
 but another name for a lie. Don't let it go on 
 record. The cursed thing may come staring us 
 in the face long after this suit has been for- 
 gotten. ' ' The plea was withdrawn ; it had to be. 
 And, oddly enough, not by their act, however, 
 the case was continued and the client saved. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln disliked the mechanical work of 
 the office ; he wrote fewer papers than most men 
 at the bar ; his young partner had this work at 
 first, and afterward their law students. To one 
 of these young men Lincoln gave the caution not 
 to be as enthusiastic as two other students they 
 had had. He pointed to a large inkstain on 
 the wall. "One of these young men got so 
 enthusiastic in his pursuit of legal lore," he said, 
 
144 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 "that he fired an inkstand at the other's head, 
 and that is the mark he made." 
 
 Lincoln's favorite position when he was work- 
 ing over a knotty case was to stretch both legs 
 at full length upon a chair and have his books 
 in his lap and on a table at hand. Then, no 
 matter how busy he was, if anybody came in he 
 had time to tell some joke or droll story. In- 
 deed, he had the same habit then which he found 
 so useful when President. A man would come 
 to him to find out something that Lincoln did 
 not want to have him find out and yet did not 
 want to refuse him. Lincoln would do the chief 
 of the talking, skirting round the special point 
 but never touching it, and adding so many 
 stories and jokes to his answers, that the man 
 would go away in high good humor. Afterward 
 he would remember that he had not found out 
 anything after all. 
 
 Lincoln's letters were never formal and tech- 
 nical. He once wrote to a lawyer in another 
 town apologizing for delay in not answering a 
 letter sooner: "First, I have been very busy 
 in the United States Court; second, when I 
 received the letter I put it in my old hat, and 
 buying a new one the next day the old one was 
 set aside and so the letter was lost sight of for a 
 time. ' ' Perhaps he learned the habit of carry- 
 ing things in his hat when he used to carry the 
 
HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 145 
 
 post-office there in New Salem. He had a bun- 
 dle of papers on the top of his desk into which 
 he slipped things he wanted to keep and refer 
 to later. Years after his death Mr. Herndon, 
 removing the furniture from the office took down 
 this bundle of papers and blew the dust from 
 the top. Under the string tying the bundle was 
 a little slip of paper in Lincoln's handwriting. 
 It read: "When you can't find it anywhere 
 else, look in this." 
 
 When Lincoln grew more prominent and the 
 law business more profitable, there were some 
 who would have been glad to supplant Mr. Hern- 
 don in the partnership. One of these told Mr. 
 Lincoln that Herndon was in a way weakening 
 the influence of the firm. "I know my own 
 business, I reckon, ' ' retorted Lincoln. l i I know 
 Billy Herndon better than anybody, and even if 
 what you say of him is true, I intend to stick 
 by him. ' ' 
 
 Lincoln needed two things for managing a case 
 successfully. One was time; and the other, as 
 has been already said, confidence in the justice 
 of his cause. He used to say if he could free the 
 case from technicalities and get it properly 
 swung to the jury he would win. His partner 
 was sometimes restless at Lincoln's slow move- 
 ments and speeches in court, and would tell him 
 to speak with more "vim," to talk faster and 
 
146 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 keep the jury awake. One day Lincoln answered 
 him by an illustration. "Give me your pen- 
 knife with its short blade," he said, "and hand 
 me that old jack-knife lying on the table. " 
 Opening the pen-knife, he said: "You see 
 this blade at the point travels rapidly, but only 
 through a small portion of space till it stops; 
 while the long blade of the jack-knife moves no 
 faster but through a much greater space than 
 the small one." This he likened to his own 
 mind. "I may not emit ideas as rapidly as 
 others, because I am compelled by nature to 
 speak slowly, ' ' he said. ' ' But when I do throw 
 off a thought, it seems to me, though it comes 
 with some effort, it has force enough to cut its 
 own way and travel a greater distance. ' ' That 
 was said only when the two were alone together, 
 as explanation. 
 
 Lincoln with his partner won a case for the 
 Illinois Central Railroad. Lincoln went to Chi- 
 cago and presented his bill asking two thousand 
 dollars over the retainer fee of two hundred and 
 fifty. The official in charge, supposed to have 
 been the superintendent, George B. McClellan, 
 afterward the general who never won his battles, 
 looked at the bill in great surprise. "Why, 
 sir," he exclaimed, "this is as much as Daniel 
 Webster himself would have charged. We can- 
 not allow such a claim. ' ' Mr. Lincoln took the 
 
HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 147 
 
 bill and went home. On the way he stopped at 
 Bloomington and met a number of attorneys 
 who told him he had asked too little for his 
 valuable services, and persuaded him to make 
 his bill five thousand dollars and bring suit. The 
 railroad paid promptly. "Well, Billy, " said 
 Mr. Lincoln to his partner, "here's our fee; sit 
 down and let me divide.' ' And he counted out 
 the half and handed it ever as if it had been a 
 few cents. If he came into the office with a fee 
 and Herndon was out, he would wrap up his 
 share in a piece of paper and put it into the 
 latter 's drawer, making it: "Case of Roe vs. 
 Doe— Herndon 's half." 
 
 A lawyer friend of Lincoln's gives an account 
 of the manner of Lincoln in Court. In places 
 where most lawyers would object he would 
 "reckon" it would be fair to let in this thing or 
 that; and sometimes when the opponent could 
 not quite prove a thing and Lincoln knew it was 
 the truth, he "reckoned" it would be fair to 
 admit such and such evidence. When he did 
 object and the court answered his objection, he 
 would "reckon" he must be wrong. "Now, 
 about the time he had practiced this three- 
 fourths through the case," said this colleague 
 writing of Lincoln, "if his adversary didn't 
 understand him, he would wake up in a few 
 minutes, learning that he had feared the Greeks 
 
148 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 too late, and find himself beaten. Lincoln was 
 as wise as a serpent in the trial of a cause," 
 says this friend, "but I have had too many 
 scares from his blows to certify that he was 
 harmless as a dove. When the whole thing 
 was unraveled, the adversary would begin to 
 see that what he (Lincoln) was so blandly 
 giving away was simply what he couldn't get 
 and keep. Any man who took Lincoln for a 
 simple-minded man would very soon wake up 
 with his back in a ditch." 
 
 What Lincoln's opponents feared most in 
 his management of a case before a jury was 
 the way in which he would brush aside all con- 
 ventional rules and come out with some strange 
 and clever performance which would carry the 
 jury; his "dramatic strokes" or his bringing 
 in some sudden interruption not provided for, 
 were always dreaded. He was once in a case 
 where Judge Logan was on the other side. 
 The judge was always very grave and precise. 
 Lincoln looked at him, but said nothing until 
 he came to address the jury; then he said: 
 "Gentlemen, you must be careful and not per- 
 mit yourselves to be overcome by the eloquence 
 of the counsel for the defence. Judge Logan, I 
 know, is an effective lawyer. I have met him 
 too often to doubt that. But shrewd and care- 
 ful though he be, still he is sometimes wrong. 
 
HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 149 
 
 Since this trial has begun I have discovered 
 that, with all his caution and fastidiousness, 
 he hasn't knowledge enough to put his shirt on 
 right.' ' Logan was scarlet; but Lincoln was 
 right; the judge in putting on a new shirt had 
 by mistake drawn it over his head with the 
 pleated bosom behind. The laugh that fol- 
 lowed this speech destroyed the effect of Lo- 
 gan's eloquent plea to the jury; and that was 
 what Lincoln intended. 
 
 One of his most famous cases was that of 
 a son of the Jack Armstrong whom he had been 
 compelled to fight and had conquered when he 
 first went to New Salem. The young man had 
 been accused of murdering a companion and 
 many witnesses swore to having seen him strike 
 the blow; among them was one who was so cir- 
 cumstantial that he told just where the moon 
 was in the sky, a bright moon by which he had 
 seen everything. Lincoln listened and ques- 
 tioned and drew him out more and more, until it 
 seemed as if there was not the smallest chance 
 for poor young Armstrong. Then he called for 
 an almanac and by it proved that at that time of 
 night on the date testified to by the witness 
 there was no moon at all ! The young man was 
 triumphantly acquitted. 
 
 But although Lincoln was so humble and so 
 ready to forgive and, probably, to forget an 
 
150 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 injury to himself, yet he could be aroused to 
 great indignation by injustice, and when so 
 roused he was terrible. In a murder case which 
 he was defending, the judge kept ruling against 
 him. At last, in a point around which the 
 whole case centred the judge ruled against 
 Lincoln again. The prosecution rejoiced and 
 Lincoln grew despondent; he saw that defeat 
 was sure unless he could recover his ground. 
 He perceived that the Court's rulings were 
 silly if not spiteful, and he began to think that 
 they were aimed at him. He was very angry. 
 "I have determined to crowd the Court to the 
 wall and regain my position before night,' ' he 
 said. When the Court assembled in the after- 
 noon Lincoln rose to read a few authorities in 
 support of his position. And then he launched 
 out. Keeping within bounds of propriety, so 
 that he could not be reprimanded for contempt 
 of court, he characterized the repeated rulings 
 against him as unjust and foolish; and "figu- 
 ratively speaking," says Herndon, "he pealed 
 the Court from head to foot." The crowd, a 
 part of the bar, and the jury were with him. 
 He was so wrought up, so furious and eloquent 
 by turns and all the while so right, finishing 
 up with a story, that the judge pretended to 
 see his former error and reversed his position 
 in favor of Lincoln; the client was acquitted. 
 
HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 151 
 
 But Lincoln could never have done this had he 
 not known the innocence of the man he was 
 defending. 
 
 One day an old negro woman came into Lin- 
 coln's office and told her troubles. She and 
 her children were born slaves in Kentucky ; but 
 her owner had brought the whole family to 
 Illinois and given them their freedom. Her 
 son had gone down the Mississippi as waiter, 
 or deck hand, on some of the steamboats. At 
 New Orleans he had unwisely gone ashore, when 
 the police had snatched him up and thrown 
 him into prison in accordance with a law con- 
 cerning free negroes from other States. Mr. 
 Lincoln through his partner inquired of the 
 governor if there was not something that he 
 (the governor) could do to obtain possession 
 of this free negro. The governor sent word 
 that he was sorry to say that he "had no legal 
 or constitutional right to do anything in the 
 premises." Lincoln sprang up in great excite- 
 ment, and exclaimed that he would have that 
 negro back soon or he would have a twenty 
 years' agitation in Illinois, "until the governor 
 does have a legal and constitutional right to 
 do something in the premises." He and Mr. 
 Llerndon sent money to a friend in New Orleans 
 —their own money— and the negro was re- 
 turned to his mother. 
 
152 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 All the time that Lincoln was at the bar he 
 was interested, as was every patriot, in the 
 politics of his country and watched the progress 
 of the slave power with feelings of which the 
 above incident gives the key. Yet he was grow- 
 ing more and more fond of his profession, and 
 the time had not yet come when, like a soldier 
 marching to the front, he would leave every- 
 thing for the battle of arguments in defence of 
 the liberties of his country— the "Battle of the 
 Giants," it was justly called. 
 
XX. 
 
 The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. 
 
 At the time of the Revolution all the States 
 tolerated slavery and allowed the slave-trade, 
 that is, the bringing of more slaves from Africa. 
 But many of the most prominent patriots, 
 Washington among them, disapproved of slavery 
 and thought it ought to be, and would be grad- 
 ually abolished ; they feared that it would cause 
 confusion to do this at once. But a majority of 
 public opinion demanded that the "necessary 
 evil," as they called slavery, should cease. 
 And the Ordinance of 1787 passed by Congress 
 establishing government in the Territories had 
 in it an article "ordaining the immediate and 
 perpetual prohibition of slavery," in the Terri- 
 tories. In a few years also the slave trade was 
 to cease; and then slavery would gradually 
 die out. The founders of the republic saw how 
 inconsistent it was to fight for one's own free- 
 dom and then enslave other men. 
 
 153 
 
154 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 Under the Ordinance of 1787, Ohio, Indiana, 
 Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin were added 
 to the Union as free States ; they had been part 
 of the Territories. After this for about a 
 whole generation the North and the South were 
 evenly balanced as to power; for of the eight 
 new States, four were north of the Ohio Eiver 
 and were free— Vermont, admitted in 1791; 
 Ohio, in 1802 ; Indiana, in 1816 ; Illinois, in 1818. 
 But Kentucky, admitted in 1792; Tennessee, in 
 1796; Louisiana, in 1812; and Mississippi in 
 1817 were slave States ; and Alabama was also 
 to be admitted as slave. 
 
 But then the South was not satisfied; it 
 wanted more slave States; and after much dis- 
 cussion in Congress, it was decided that the 
 "Louisiana purchase,' ' that great strip of land 
 bought from France and running from the Gulf 
 to the Great Lakes, should be divided ; the part 
 south of latitude 36° 30' should be slave ; and that 
 part north of this line should be free ; Missouri 
 should be admitted as a State, part slave and 
 part free as the line 36° 30' ran through it ; and 
 Maine should be admitted as a free State. This 
 act was approved in March, 1820, and became 
 the famous "Missouri Compromise.' ' So, the 
 old motto of the framers of the Constitution, 
 "no extension of slavery" was thrust aside 
 
THE LINCOLX-DQUGLAS DEBATES. 155 
 
 until the Bepublicans brought it to the front 
 in 1860. 
 
 The South having brought in Arkansas a 
 slave State, began to see that after they had 
 Florida, which was admitted in 1845, there was 
 nothing more for them to have as things stood 
 then. So, by means of the Mexican war a 
 large territory was taken from Mexico, larger 
 than Texas rightfully was, and annexed to 
 the United States, and Texas came in as a 
 slave State, the largest State in the Union 
 at that time. Then there was a bitter fight in 
 Congress over the Territories of New Mexico 
 and California which had come as part of the 
 country gained by the war with Mexico. The 
 South wanted to stretch the line of the Missouri 
 Compromise out to the Pacific Ocean taking 
 away the provision of 1787 for free Territories 
 and making New Mexico slave and California 
 half slave and half free, as the line 36° 30' ran 
 across the State. At last, for the sake of peace 
 and to save the Union, for the South threatened 
 to secede if it did not have its way, a com- 
 promise was agreed upon. Congress admitted 
 California as a free State ; organized the Terri- 
 tories of New Mexico and Utah as they had 
 come from Mexico which had forbidden slavery ; 
 abolished the domestic slave trade in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia; and passed a more severe 
 
156 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 fugitive slave law; and gave Texas ten million 
 dollars to adjust her State boundaries. This 
 was the compromise of 1850. Neither North 
 nor South liked it; but both accepted it for 
 peace. 
 
 In 1833 when Stephen A. Douglas came to 
 Illinois he was twenty years old and penniless. 
 First he was a clerk; then he taught school; he 
 began to practice law the second year, and at 
 twenty-two was elected attorney general of the 
 State; in 1835 he was elected member of the 
 Legislature ; and it was here that he and Abra- 
 ham Lincoln met for the first time. In 1840 
 he was secretary of State for Illinois; in 1843 
 he was elected to Congress and re-elected in 
 1844 and 1846. Before he took his seat under 
 the last election he was elected to the United 
 States Senate. In 1850, during the discussion 
 of the compromise measures in the Senate, 
 Douglas had especially defended the "Missouri 
 Compromise. ' ' The year before that he had said 
 it had "an origin akin to the Constitution" and 
 the American people held it as "a sacred thing 
 which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless 
 enough to disturb." 
 
 But in 1852 he was talked of as candidate for 
 President, and was voted for in the Democratic 
 National Convention held at Baltimore, June, 
 1852 ; and although he did not receive the nomi- 
 
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES. 157 
 
 nation, he believed that he should do so another 
 time if he could get the votes of the South. The 
 South wanted more lands for slavery; and 
 Douglas determined to give over to slavery the 
 Territories of Kansas and Nebraska which were 
 soon to come into the Union as States. He 
 preached "popular sovereignty," saying that 
 the States ought to be free or slave as they 
 themselves voted. He originated the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill to bring in these States as slave 
 States; and to do this the "Missouri Compro- 
 mise" must be repealed. Through Mr. Douglas, 
 it was repealed in the February of 1854. 
 
 A great storm of anger and protest swept 
 over the North; they had looked for peace; in- 
 stead of this the slavery question was discussed 
 in every State, every city and town and village, 
 almost in every household. When Douglas re- 
 turned to his own State and tried to speak to 
 the people who had elected him, he was nearly 
 mobbed in Chicago. 
 
 But much more than this awaited him. He 
 was to meet face to face a man to whom God 
 had given power to lay bare his false statements 
 and to speak the truth to the people in such 
 way that the nation would listen to him. Abra- 
 ham Lincoln had come to the front again. The 
 "battle of the giants" was to begin. Lincoln 
 was "intellectually energetic," Herndon says 
 
158 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 of him; "and more, he was industrious, tireless, 
 indefatigable. Therefore, if in debate with him 
 a man stood on a questionable foundation he 
 might well watch whereon he stood. Lincoln 
 could look a long distance ahead and calculate 
 the triumph of right. With him justice and 
 truth were paramount. If to him a thing 
 seemed untrue, he could not in his nature simu- 
 late truth.' ' 
 
 Opposition journals accused Lincoln of 
 "mousing about the libraries in the State 
 House." Yes; here was where he found the 
 facts with which he overthrew his opponent ; he 
 did not get his information at second-hand; 
 it is said of him "he had fewer anecdotes and 
 more history." Douglas had been making 
 speeches through the State and people listened 
 to him. At last he came to Springfield at the 
 time that the State Fair was being held. Lead- 
 ing men from nearly all the counties were 
 there. The first day of the Fair, Douglas made 
 a speech and announced that Mr. Lincoln of 
 that city was expected to answer him. Lincoln 
 spoke on the Kansas-Nebraska bill for which 
 Douglas had caused the Missouri Compromise 
 to be repealed, and made an overwhelming ex- 
 posure of its wrong statements and wicked- 
 ness. He quoted that Douglas had said it 
 was an insult to the emigrants of Kansas 
 
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES. 159 
 
 and Nebraska to suppose they were not able 
 to govern themselves. "I admit that the emi- 
 grant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to 
 govern himself," said Mr. Lincoln, but I deny 
 his right to govern any other person without 
 that person's consent.' ' For there was a great 
 difference between Lincoln and Douglas; Lin- 
 coln appreciated the honors of a Senator; but he 
 would never pay the price that Douglas had 
 done ; for no reward that could be given him 
 would he betray the cause that God had en- 
 trusted him to defend and, later, to lead. His 
 hearers knew as he made this answer that " pop- 
 ular sovereignty" meant giving the South the 
 States for slavery. Mr. Lincoln spoke for 
 about four hours, and the crowd hung on his 
 words; his great knowledge of the history of 
 the whole question, his kindness of temper in 
 his wonderful arguments, his wit and, best of 
 all, his deep faith in his cause carried his audi- 
 ence; his success was absolute. "His whole 
 heart was in his words," said a Springfield 
 paper; "he quivered with feeling and emotion; 
 the whole house was still as death. When he 
 had finished, every man felt that what he had 
 said was unanswerable, nothing could overthrow 
 it. Douglas felt that, too; he struggled to say 
 something to weaken Lincoln's victory. Before 
 that time Lincoln had been leader in his dis- 
 
160 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 trict ; after this one debate with Douglas, Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was leader in the State on this new 
 question that filled the hearts of the nation." 
 
 He was called for at all the places where 
 Douglas was to speak; and twelve days after 
 the Springfield debate the two met at Peoria. 
 Lincoln as he had done before gave the opening 
 and closing speeches to Douglas, saying that 
 in this way the Democrats would hear him, for 
 they would wait to hear Douglas' reply. When 
 Lincoln came home he wrote out his speech and 
 published it. Douglas had said in regard to 
 slavery that he did not care whether slavery 
 was voted up or down. But Lincoln in answer- 
 ing explained what had been the purposes of 
 the founders of the country in regard to slavery ; 
 everywhere he showed how unjust and wicked 
 slavery was. He said that we ought to return 
 to these purposes once more. And he said also 
 that so long as we held slaves in America, the 
 world did not believe so much in us as a re- 
 public. 
 
 " Allow all the governed an equal voice in the 
 government ; that, and that only, is self-govern- 
 ment. ' ' 
 
 "I particularly object to the new position 
 which the avowed principle of the Nebraska 
 law gives to slavery in the body politic. I ob- 
 
m ._ mft 
 
 '-B r ?M 
 
 ■IfcC " " ~~ ~ -fe4w«18 
 
 TplCNOXCOLLECE tor LINCOLN' ff 
 
 pyright. 1900, by Mct'lure, Phillips & Co. 
 
 THE LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS MEETING AT GALESBURG, ILLINOIS. 
 
XIII. 
 
 In Vandalia. 
 
 Lincoln, as has been said, was a Whig. Mr. 
 Calhoun was a strong Democrat. Before the 
 young man would accept the position of assist- 
 ant surveyor from him, he inquired if he should 
 be expected to renounce his principles and turn 
 Democrat ; for much as he needed the work, he 
 would not take it on those terms. And he did 
 not. It was not a small matter to fit himself 
 for the work so thoroughly and quickly as he 
 did; it cost him very hard study and plenty of 
 it. That he was ready to give; but he would 
 not sell his vote to any man. 
 
 As a surveyor he was so fair and just that he 
 was often sent for to settle disputed boundaries. 
 Herndon tells an incident where after much dis- 
 cussion the parties agreed to send for Lincoln 
 and to abide by his decision. " 'He came with 
 compass, flag-staff and chain/ " said Mr. 
 
 97 
 
98 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 McHenry whom Herndon quotes. ' ' ' He stopped 
 with me three or four days,' " he added, 
 " 'and surveyed the whole section. When in 
 the neighborhood of the disputed corner by 
 actual survey, he called for his staff and driving 
 it in the ground at a certain spot said, "Gentle- 
 men, here is the corner." We dug down into 
 the ground at the point indicated and lo ! there 
 we found about six or eight inches of the orig- 
 inal stake sharpened at the end, and beneath 
 this was the usual piece of charcoal placed 
 there by the surveyor who laid the ground off 
 for the government many years before." Lin- 
 coln had done so fairly and well that everybody 
 went away satisfied. 
 
 With his income as surveyor, small enough, 
 and his salary as postmaster of New Salem, 
 still smaller, Lincoln was getting on well — when, 
 suddenly, something happened. He had never 
 forgotten his notes given for the purchase of the 
 store, and as he could, he was paying some- 
 thing on them, scrimping himself in every way 
 to do it. But one man grew impatient, sued 
 him for his note and took away his personal 
 possessions, the few he had, and, worse than 
 that, sold his horse and surveying instruments 
 to pay the debt. Then the young man was in a 
 hard place ; for he could not do surveying with- 
 
IN VANDALIA. 99 
 
 out instruments. But friends bought in the 
 property for him and gave him back his instru- 
 ments and his horse, waiting until Lincoln could 
 repay them. 
 
 There is a proverb that a man who has friends 
 must show himself friendly. Lincoln, certainly, 
 did this to every one he could help, and with no 
 thought whether he himself would ever gain by 
 his kindness. It is told of him that one day 
 when he was about fourteen miles from Spring- 
 field he was overtaken by a man whom he knew 
 very slightly, and who was in great haste to 
 reach the land office in Springfield before 
 another man traveling on a different road. He 
 explained to Lincoln that he wanted to enter a 
 small tract of land which joined his ; but that this 
 other man who was rich had made up his mind 
 to get it, and would get it if he arrived first. 
 But his own neighbors had advanced the neces- 
 sary money and he could secure the land by 
 being on hand before the other man. Lincoln 
 looked at the speaker's tired horse and saw that 
 it would give out before the journey's end if it 
 were urged. "Here's my horse," he said. "He's 
 fresh and full of grit ; there's no time to be lost ; 
 mount him and put him through. " And he told 
 the* man where to leave the horse for him. At 
 about dark when Lincoln rode in on the jaded 
 
100 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 horse which he had let take its time, he found 
 the other man radiant ; he had arrived in season 
 and secured his land. The two men were 
 friends the rest of their lives although they were 
 on opposite sides in politics. 
 
 One man who knew Lincoln at this time says : 
 "Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends." 
 Another said of him that in every circle where 
 he found himself, whether refined or uneducated, 
 he was always the centre of attraction. One 
 day when some of the boys from Illinois college 
 went to see him, they found him flat on his back 
 on a cellar door reading a newspaper. It is 
 said that then Lincoln could repeat the whole 
 of Burns and was a great student of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 And while he was reading law and studying 
 Shakespeare and the politics of the day at the 
 same time, he was going about from place to 
 place surveying, doing fine work in this occupa- 
 tion, making new friends every day and keeping 
 all the old ones, and getting ready for his nom- 
 ination a second time as representative to the 
 State Legislature. And this second time, in 
 1834, he had no defeat, but was elected by a 
 good majority. 
 
 When Washington was a young man he was 
 a surveyor, also. And the business gave him 
 
IN VANDALIA. 101 
 
 such opportunity to see good land and to know 
 it that he selected many choice acres which 
 afterwards brought him in money. But Lin- 
 coln never used his business for himself further 
 than to receive pay for his work; he made no 
 money out of it. It seems as if his heart were 
 set upon something before him to be done even 
 when he could not yet see what it was, and he 
 could not give his thoughts to other things. 
 Some biographies of him tell us that he was so 
 poor that when he was elected representative, 
 he walked the hundred miles to Vandalia. But 
 others tell us that he borrowed money from a 
 friend that he might go to the capital in dress 
 and conveyance suitable to a representative, and 
 that he went there by stagecoach which was then 
 the usual way of traveling. 
 
 At this first session of the Legislature he was 
 quiet and modest and did nothing to make him- 
 self conspicuous. He was all the time learning, 
 learning, not books alone, although he was still 
 studying law harder than ever ; but he was get- 
 ting into knowledge of men who make laws, was 
 growing to perceive how to handle men, that is, 
 how to handle them in law-making. He was 
 born with great power to appeal to men of all 
 ranks and touch their hearts and lead them. 
 No doubt, when he sat there in his place among 
 
102 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 other representatives he sometimes thought of a 
 day when he had received one of the hard les- 
 sons of his life, a lesson given by a snob in fine 
 clothes to a man too great for him to under- 
 stand although he was dressed like one of the 
 roughest of country folk. Lincoln was always 
 very fond of going into the courts and listening 
 to the cases tried there. One day a Mr. Breck- 
 inridge made a most vigorous and eloquent 
 defence of his client. Lincoln, who had never 
 heard so fine a speech, listened in delighted 
 astonishment. When the case was over, Mr. 
 Breckinridge was walking grandly out of the 
 courtroom, when, straight in his path, stood 
 this immense, raw-boned youth, stretching out 
 a hand and arm with a sleeve far up his 
 wrist, and congratulating Mr. Breckinridge 
 upon his wonderful eloquence. The great man 
 looked for a moment at the tall, ungainly youth, 
 and without having the good manners to take 
 his hand or to utter one word to him, he swept 
 out of the courtroom, indignant at such a fel- 
 low's having presumed to speak to him. This 
 was what the young legislator might have 
 lecalled as he sat there listening to speeches or 
 went about making acquaintance with his fellow 
 legislators, some of whom in future days would 
 be comrades of his, and others his opponents. 
 
IN VANDALIA. 103 
 
 But little could the young man foresee in 
 those days that he and this same snob of a Mr. 
 Breckinridge would one day meet again, that 
 time in Washington; and that when they met, 
 this young man whose hand the snob had refused 
 would then be President of the United States, 
 and Mr. Breckinridge would be only too much 
 honored by being spoken to by him. When that 
 time arrived, Lincoln showed the noble spirit 
 he was of, for again he congratulated the law- 
 yer upon that fine speech of so long before. One 
 can imagine that then Mr. Breckinridge was 
 glad enough to listen to the praise of the man he 
 had flouted as a boy. 
 
 In Lincoln's canvass of 1834, or that of 1836, 
 his constituents gave him two hundred dollars 
 to meet the expenses of campaign. When the 
 election was over, he handed back one hundred, 
 ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents to the 
 subscribers. "I did not need the money, " he 
 said. ' ' I made the canvass on my own horse ; my 
 entertainment being at the houses of friends, 
 cost me nothing; and my only outlay was sev- 
 enty-five cents for a barrel of cider which some 
 farm hands insisted I should treat them to." 
 What candidate for the humblest office could be 
 elected now at an outlay of seventy-five cents ! 
 But what candidate could be found with Lin- 
 coln's power and popularity! 
 
104 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 There was much to learn socially in Vandalia 
 where society was more polished than in New 
 Salem ; and the young legislator did not fail to 
 profit by his opportunities. And here in the 
 Legislature he measured himself with the lead- 
 ing men of the community, and held his own 
 with them. 
 
XIV. 
 
 The Lincoln-Stone Protest. 
 
 The men who in 1836 assembled at Vandalia 
 as members of the newly elected Legislature of 
 Illinois were a set of picked men. There has 
 been scarcely any other legislative assembly 
 anywhere in which so many members later 
 gained brilliant political reputation. What they 
 did for the State of Illinois in the way of voting 
 money for railroads, canals, and all other 
 improvements which they could devise will be 
 remembered as disastrous legislation which in 
 the end crippled the resources of the State for 
 years to come. But they were new at the work 
 and their purposes were good. Lincoln was 
 among these; he was one of the finance com- 
 mittee busy with these schemes of internal 
 improvement in the State and he did not per- 
 ceive more than the others that they were bad 
 legislation. In the performance of his duties 
 large sums of money passed through his hands. 
 
 105 
 
106 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 But not a dollar staid by the way. When in 
 1837 he began to practice law he was a very 
 poor man. 
 
 It seemed best to the people of Illinois that 
 the capital should be changed from Vandalia 
 to a place more nearly in the middle of the 
 State and having other advantages that Van- 
 dalia had not. Springfield was the new capital 
 fixed upon, and the task of bringing this to the 
 Legislature and securing the vote was intrusted 
 to Lincoln. He managed it successfully and to 
 the great satisfaction of his constituents. He 
 also had in charge some improvements on the 
 Sangamon Kiver in which the people of New 
 Salem had not yet lost faith as to the possibility 
 of its being made navigable. 
 
 But in his record in the Legislature of Illinois 
 is something of vastly greater importance than 
 the foolish financial schemes in which he joined 
 through ignorance of their folly; and of more 
 value than his advocacy of the opening of the 
 Sangamon River — now long since forgotten — or 
 even than his work in changing the capital to 
 Springfield, a permanent advantage. For it 
 was here while a member of the Legislature 
 that his real work began, the work for which it 
 seems to us human beings as we look at it rever- 
 ently, that God created him and led him through 
 years of hardship and sorrow and struggle up 
 
THE LINCOLN-STOXE PROTEST. 107 
 
 to a pinnacle of fame where still greater sorrow 
 and struggle awaited him, but with it a wonder- 
 ful power and a wonderful opportunity which 
 his character and his life led him to seize and 
 use for the blessing of the nation. For it was 
 during the session of 1836-37 that he first pub- 
 licly took that stand in regard to slavery which 
 —although at first it looked just the other way— 
 in reality, led him to the White House. 
 
 We read books of travel and stories of adven- 
 ture and novels to hear of men so strong and 
 great that all disadvantages and trials they can 
 overcome and all things that seem against them 
 come in the end to stand for their good; they 
 conquer everything; they conquer everybody; 
 they reach the end they aim at ; everybody trusts 
 them and admires and obeys them; their very 
 presence brings strength and help; in every 
 emergency they know the right thing and do it ; 
 in every danger they are able to bring relief; 
 they are the great success of genius and the 
 highest in honor and fame. When we read of 
 such heroes we often shut our books with a sigh 
 and wish such persons actually lived. But no 
 book of imagination ever painted a hero so 
 remarkable and so successful as Abraham Lin- 
 coln was, if by success we mean accomplishing 
 the great object for which he labored and died; 
 reaching the highest place in one of the greatest 
 
108 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 of modern nations and being followed and hon- 
 ored and loved by millions of people. It is true 
 that in stories, and in real life also, men have 
 risen from humble life to a throne. But no 
 other man who has so risen has lifted with him 
 four millions of slaves into freedmen. 
 
 The first preparation for this work was Lin- 
 coln's sight of the slaves in the cotton fields and 
 in the market when he went to New Orleans, 
 and many times much nearer him also. This 
 sight of men and women bought and sold like 
 cattle, and often of cruel treatment of them by 
 overseers, Lincoln's own great love of freedom 
 and his own remarkable practical sense which 
 saw the unwisdom of slavery, led him to vote 
 against a set of resolutions passed by the Illinois 
 Legislature of 1837 in regard to slavery. 
 
 For he believed then, as he said publicly after- 
 ward, that for a man to govern himself was 
 "self-government"; but to govern himself and 
 govern another man also was more than self- 
 government ; it was despotism. He said also 
 that no man was good enough to govern another 
 man without that other man's consent. That 
 referred to slavery. 
 
 These resolutions of the Illinois Legislature 
 were much more favorable to slavery than Lin- 
 coln was and endeavored to soothe the South, 
 irritated by discussions about slavery and oppo- 
 
THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. 109 
 
 sition to it; for the South could no more keep 
 people from talking about it than it could pre- 
 vent the wind from blowing; and in trying to 
 stop the talking, it talked a great deal itself and 
 grew more and more angry. These resolutions 
 were discussed for some time and, finally, passed 
 unanimously in the Senate, and passed in the 
 House of Representatives with none but Lin- 
 coln and five other members voting against 
 them. 
 
 Many men would have thought that having 
 voted against a measure which he disapproved 
 of, he had done his duty ; the measure was popu- 
 lar, still, he had voted against it because he 
 thought it wrong. Why not leave the matter 
 there when he was going before the people 
 again for re-election! He was a young and am- 
 bitious man with his way to make; why should 
 he say or do anything more about a subject that 
 was unpopular ? 
 
 Because he was Abraham Lincoln, and it was 
 not his way to leave a thing he believed wrong 
 alone because it was unpopular and he might 
 lose by having anything to do with it. The 
 day before the end of the session he presented 
 to the House, for he was a representative, the 
 following protest which was read and ordered 
 to be recorded: 
 
110 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 " Representative from the county of San- 
 gamon. 
 
 "Resolutions upon the subject of domestic 
 slavery having passed both branches of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly at its present session, the under- 
 signed hereby protest against the passage of the 
 same. 
 
 "They believe that the institution of slavery 
 is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but 
 that the promulgation of abolition doctrines 
 tends rather to increase than abate its evils. 
 
 ' l They believe that the Congress of the United 
 States has no power under the Constitution to 
 interfere with the institution of slavery in the 
 different States. 
 
 "They believe that the Congress of the United 
 States has the power under the Constitution, to 
 abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but 
 that the power ought not to be exercised, unless 
 at the request of the people of the District. 
 
 "The difference between these opinions and 
 those contained in the above resolutions is their 
 reason for entering this protest. 
 
 "(Signed) Dan Stone, 
 "A. Lincoln, 
 "Representatives from the County of Sanga- 
 mon." 
 
 We, to-day, cannot understand why anything 
 so very mildly put should be against anyone's 
 
THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. Ill 
 
 opinion. Yet there is one sentence: "They 
 believe that the institution of slavery is founded 
 on both injustice and bad policy, ' ' which shows 
 where Lincoln stood. There he planted him- 
 self like a rock, and from this belief and the 
 expression of this belief nothing could move 
 him. He had said once to John Hanks in the 
 New Orleans trip that if ever he had a chance 
 to hit slavery, he would hit it hard. He began 
 then and there. And in some form from that 
 time until his voice through the thunder of can- 
 non overthrew slavery, he was always hitting it 
 hard ; and the more people defended it, the more 
 the evils of it stood out, as is the way with all 
 bad things. The South to-day is thankful to be 
 rid of the burden of slavery and has grown 
 stronger in its freedom. 
 
 But in those times things were very different. 
 After a terrible conflict which had waked up all 
 the best people in the State, Illinois had voted 
 to be a free instead of a slave State. But the 
 victory won at the polls for freedom did not 
 keep the people from admiring the slave-owners 
 when they came over bringing their slaves to 
 wait upon them. Then, Missouri was just being 
 settled; and the people who passed through 
 Illinois to go to the new State said what a pity 
 it was that they could not remain in Illinois 
 which was so attractive, but they preferred to 
 
112 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 go where they could take their slaves with them 
 or could buy them as they liked. Years before 
 Illinois had passed an act hiring slaves from 
 Southern states because it said the people could 
 not operate their mills without them ; yet all the 
 while they were treating shamefully the free 
 colored people who came into the State. 
 
 Thus, in March, 1837, Abraham Lincoln in 
 the Legislature which had just passed such a 
 vote stood up all the height of his six feet and 
 four inches and declared that "the institution of 
 slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
 policy' ' — it would have been hard to find two 
 more rotten pegs to stand anything upon ! 
 
 But of the five men who voted with him, only 
 one would sign this protest, and he was not 
 going to stand for another election so he did 
 not fear for his office. 
 
 It was Lincoln's belief that God guided men's 
 lives. And as Lincoln did the thing he knew to 
 be right and left the result with God, he has 
 made it plain to us that in such a life God does 
 guide. 
 
XXIII. 
 In the Wigwam at Chicago. 
 
 In 1858, after Lincoln had been defeated by 
 Douglas as a Senator from Illinois, he wrote to 
 a friend: "You doubtless have seen ere this 
 the result of the election here. Of course, I 
 wished, but I did not much expect, a better re- 
 sult. I am glad I made the late race. It gave 
 me a hearing on the great and durable question 
 of the age" (slavery) "which I could have had 
 in no other way ; and though I now sink out of 
 sight and shall be forgotten, I believe I have 
 made some marks which will tell for the cause 
 of civil liberty long after I am gone." 
 
 Lincoln was here referring to his debates with 
 Douglas of that same year when Douglas was 
 running for Senator and Lincoln had brought 
 him so before the country by Douglas ' own 
 words in his political answers that in 1860, when 
 Douglas wanted to be President, the South 
 would have nothing to do with him, although 
 
 177 
 
178 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOE BOYS. 
 
 he had gone through some of the Southern 
 States making speeches to uphold slavery. The 
 Convention at Charleston said that Douglas 
 had gone back from his former position because 
 he was so anxious to please the people of Illi- 
 nois ; and he had secured his election as Senator 
 from that State. But he should never get votes 
 for President from the South. 
 
 And he never did. 
 
 When the Kepublican National Convention 
 met in Chicago, May 16, 1860, important events 
 had happened since the Philadelphia Convention 
 of 1856. Kansas had narrowly escaped by fraud 
 and violence within its borders and aid of the 
 administration from being forced to become a 
 slave State contrary to the wishes of its people ; 
 Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, 
 who in 1856 had been struck down and nearly 
 murdered in the Senate because he had declared 
 the wrongs of Kansas, had come back to his seat 
 there after years of illness, had declared the 
 "Barbarism of Slavery' ' in a speech in the Sen- 
 ate which rang through the North; Lincoln in 
 his own State, in Ohio, in New York, New Eng- 
 land and elsewhere had thoroughly shown that 
 the aggressions of the slave power were contrary 
 to the Constitution; that the famous "Dred 
 Scott" decision of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, that the black man had no rights 
 
IN THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO. 179 
 
 which the white man was bound to respect, was 
 illegal and monstrous, and many others whether 
 lawyers or not held the same opinion; John 
 Brown's raid and execution had aroused public 
 feeling North and South; many things had 
 served to prove that the contest between slavery 
 and freedom was growing hotter and that the 
 Republican party, if it would make a firm stand 
 against more aggression, if it would again put 
 slavery upon the ground that it had when the 
 government was formed, must make choice of a 
 leader wise and firm, and one who would be able 
 to secure the support of the people. 
 
 Of late years one name had been more and 
 more frequently in the hearts and on the lips 
 of Republicans, the name of the man who in 1858 
 had been defeated as Senator from Illinois, but 
 whose words of wisdom and courage and power 
 had been taken up all over the land. The Lin- 
 coln-Douglas debates had been published and 
 had been sold by many thousands, so that those 
 who had never heard Lincoln speak had read 
 his words. 
 
 Something else also happened before the 
 meeting of the Republican National Convention 
 at Chicago. The Republican State Convention 
 of Illinois was held at Decatur about a week 
 earlier than the other. Mr. Lincoln's friends 
 determined that the first Convention should 
 
180 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 sound the note for the other one. But they said 
 nothing to him of their plans. Mr. Lincoln 
 attended the Convention, but he was among the 
 audience. Gov. Oglesby rose and said, as Mr. 
 Stoddard tells us: "I am informed that a dis- 
 tinguished citizen of Illinois, and one whom 
 Illinois will ever be delighted to honor, is pres- 
 ent; and I wish to move that this body invite 
 him to a seat upon the stand." After pausing 
 a moment he added in a clear voice : ' ' Abraham 
 Lincoln!" 
 
 The dense crowd shouted its enthusiasm, and 
 Lincoln was actually borne over their heads and 
 shoulders to his seat of honor. After the busi- 
 ness of the meeting had gone on for a while, 
 the Governor rose again, and said: "There is 
 an old Democrat outside who has something he 
 wishes to present to this Convention." Then 
 the door opened and a strong old man came 
 marching in with two fence rails on his shoulder 
 and on them a banner which had in large letters : 
 
 "TWO RAILS 
 from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John 
 Hanks, in the Sangamon Bottom, in the year 
 1830." 
 
 The bearer was John Hanks. 
 
 In an instant, "Abraham Lincoln, the rail- 
 splitter" was accepted as "the representative 
 of the working man and the embodiment of the 
 
IN THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO. 181 
 
 American idea of human freedom and possible 
 human elevation." A great wave of enthusiasm 
 swept over the audience. It was destined to 
 sweep to Chicago, and thence over the North. 
 
 When the crowd called on Lincoln for a speech, 
 he said that in 1830, John Hanks and he did 
 make some rails in the Sangamon bottom to 
 fence a piece of land; he didn't know whether 
 those were the same rails; he didn't think they 
 were a credit to their makers; and he thought 
 he could make better rails now. His listeners 
 laughed and shouted and listened to him fur- 
 ther. But the thing was done. Abraham Lin- 
 coln was the choice of the Convention for Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and the delegates 
 were instructed to cast the vote of the State as 
 a unit for him. 
 
 In the National Republican Convention at 
 Chicago, W 7 illiam H. Seward was considered the 
 strongest man; and besides the regular dele- 
 gates many of his personal and political friends 
 were present, as were those of the other possible 
 candidates. There was no building in Chicago 
 at that time which had a hall large enough to ac- 
 commodate ten thousand persons, and it was es- 
 timated that about that number was at the Con- 
 vention. A temporary frame building called 
 "The Wigwam" was put up for the occasion, 
 so arranged that all the important personages 
 
182 LIFE OP LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 could be seen, and every speech could be heard. 
 And here was made a choice at which coming 
 generations, as well as those past, have reason 
 to rejoice. 
 
 After the opening prayer and a few items of 
 business, Mr. Evarts of New York stood forth 
 and named "as a candidate to be nominated by 
 this Convention for the office of President of the 
 United States, William H. Seward.'' Then Mr. 
 Judd desired "on behalf of the delegation from 
 Illinois, to put in nomination as a candidate for 
 President of the United States, Abraham Lin- 
 coln, of Illinois." After this were names of 
 others who were to be complimented, as the cus- 
 tom was, by the first votes of their States ; these 
 "complimentary" men were cheered by their 
 own States. "But," says an account, "at the 
 names of Seward and Lincoln the whole wigwam 
 seemed to respond together." Some States 
 seconded one candidate, and some the other. In 
 the shouting and stamping the whole building 
 shook. Then the balloting began. 
 
 The first ballot gave one hundred seventy- 
 three and one-half votes to Seward, and one 
 hundred and two for Lincoln, with many scat- 
 tering votes. In the next ballot Lincoln had 
 gained seventy-nine votes, Seward only eleven. 
 Two hundred and thirty-three votes were needed 
 for a choice. The balloting went on again. 
 
IN THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO. 183 
 
 Lincoln was still gaining. At last, a teller waved 
 his tally sheet and shouted a name, a cannon 
 was fired from the roof of the wigwam, the 
 crowds in the streets took up the shouts of those 
 within the wigwam. At last, when he could be 
 heard, the presiding officer announced that on 
 the third ballot Abraham Lincoln of Illinois had 
 received three hundred and sixty-four votes and 
 was "the candidate of the Convention for Presi- 
 dent of the United States." Then Mr. Evarts 
 with great dignity and eloquence moved to make 
 the nomination unanimous. 
 
 It was a busy campaign to elect the "Illinois 
 Rail-Splitter." "Wide-Awake" Clubs were 
 organized all over the country, the Republicans 
 in these "marching in close and orderly ranks, 
 wearing each a cap and large cape of oil-cloth, 
 and bearing over his shoulders a long staff, on 
 the end of which blazed a brilliant torch-light." 
 The first "Wide-Awake" Club was in Hartford, 
 Connecticut, and escorted Mr. Lincoln when he 
 went to that city directly after his speech at the 
 Cooper Institute, New York. 
 
 In the campaign the "W T ide Awakes" were 
 everywhere. Sometimes in the great cities there 
 were twenty thousand marching in a procession ; 
 and no village was too small to have its "Wide 
 Awakes." Xo doubt, they did give evidence of 
 being awake to the situation. For as the months 
 
184 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 went by, the prospects of the Eepublicans grew 
 better and better. In the great battle of the 
 ballot between freedom and slavery, freedom 
 was to conquer. The other terrible battles of 
 the bayonets, the war for the Union — was to 
 follow. 
 
 The election for President came November 6, 
 1860. 
 
 When the polls closed that day, Abraham 
 Lincoln was elected President of the United 
 States. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 What the South Was Doing in the 
 Winter of 1860-61. 
 
 The South of the time of which we are speak- 
 ing was very different from the South as we 
 know it today. The Southerners were always 
 brave and cordial in their manners and hospi- 
 table, and they have always had as they have 
 now many fine traits of character. 
 
 But when we think of the South as it was at 
 the time of the Civil War, we must remember 
 those words of Abraham Lincoln's, one of the 
 most beautiful thoughts ever uttered. "With 
 malice toward none, with charity for all," he 
 said in his second inaugural address. And it is 
 in this spirit that we must judge the South of 
 that day. It caused the country to spend thou- 
 sands of millions of dollars in bringing it back 
 to the Union. And the money was a small 
 thing; for thousands upon thousands of the best 
 and bravest young men were killed in the battles 
 
 185 
 
186 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 and the sufferings of the terrible Civil War; 
 fathers and mothers mourned for their sons; 
 wives for their husbands; children for their 
 fathers; maidens for their lovers; friends for 
 friends; in every city, and even in every little 
 village in the country, from household to house- 
 hold there was mourning for the brave soldiers 
 who had died. It was a time of grief and dread 
 and agony; there were days when it seemed as 
 if there would no longer be our great nation, 
 but only a country divided and always at war. 
 But if the South made the North suffer in this 
 way, it also suffered itself in some ways even 
 much more. It was not so rich as the North in 
 the first place ; and it grew so poor that before 
 the war was over people were hungry, almost 
 starving; and, at last, there was no food for the 
 soldiers. Then, the war was fought in the South 
 altogether, except two or three battles; and 
 where armies marched and bivouacked and 
 fought, the country was made desolate ; forests 
 cut down, earth torn up for ramparts, fields of 
 grain trampled, cattle and forage driven and 
 carried away, and all that was fine and blooming 
 before the armies came left like a wilderness. 
 And much more than all this, the South lost its 
 best and bravest young men as well as the 
 North; and in all homes was sadness and 
 mourning. 
 
WHAT THE SOUTH WAS DOING. 187 
 
 But the Southerners believed with all their 
 hearts that they were fighting for their own land 
 and their freedom; they never thought of the 
 whole land as their own but only of the South 
 and especially of their own State. For a whole 
 generation of them had been educated to believe 
 in slavery and State's Rights. They thought 
 that allegiance was due to their own State above 
 any allegiance that they owed to the nation, and 
 that the rights of their States were being 
 trampled upon, and must be defended. Many 
 of the Southerners really believed that the 
 North intended to destroy their liberties. 
 
 In some way, the end of this state of things 
 had to come ; and the whole country is glad that 
 out of all the suffering and strife came good 
 results. One of these was that when the North- 
 ern soldiers and the Southern soldiers stood 
 face to face and fought each other day after 
 day, and sometimes the wounded of one side 
 were cared for and helped by the other, they 
 learned that after all they were brothers, and 
 now they have come to love one another. And 
 then the cause of all the trouble — slavery — was 
 taken away. So, after long years it has come to 
 pass that North and South no longer stand face 
 to face like foes, but shoulder to shoulder, like 
 true brothers, as they are. In this narrative we 
 shall have to recall many hard times and terrible 
 
188 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 battles and wrongs. But through all we must 
 remember that these days have gone by. 
 
 In the Presidential campaign of 1860, the 
 extreme Democrats of the party to which Jeffer- 
 son Davis and others like him belonged, nom- 
 inated John C. Breckinridge for President and 
 declared that slavery was morally right and a 
 blessing to the country and that they would 
 extend it into the Territories and into new 
 States. The regular Democratic party nomi- 
 nated Douglas and declared that it did not care 
 whether slavery was right or wrong, or limited 
 or extended ; it would let the people of the Terri- 
 tories do as they pleased about it, and would 
 obey the Constitution and the Supreme Court. 
 The party which nominated Bell and Everett, 
 pretended to ignore slavery and stand only by 
 "the Constitution, the Union, and the Laws." 
 But the Republican party believed slavery 
 morally wrong and hurtful to society, and in- 
 tended to restrict it to where it was at that time 
 under the constitutions and laws of the slave 
 States. 
 
 The leader of this party, the man who had 
 declared the Kansas-Nebraska bill to mean: 
 "That if any one man chooses to enslave 
 another, no third man shall be allowed to 
 object,'' Abraham Lincoln, in November, 1860, 
 was elected President of the United States. 
 
WHAT THE SOUTH WAS DOING. 189 
 
 This meant to the South that in its own prov- 
 ince it would not be interfered with; but that 
 there were people in the country with both will 
 and vote ; and the South could not then rule the 
 nation by the ballot. 
 
 Seeing this, the Southern leaders withdrew 
 their States from the Union to form a Southern 
 Confederacy. Many of the Southern people did 
 not realize what they were doing; and some did 
 not want to go; but they were swept on in the 
 tide. Indeed, the people of some of the States 
 never had a chance to say whether they wanted 
 to secede or not ; they were not asked to vote on 
 the matter; they simply followed their leaders. 
 
 South Carolina, however, was delighted to 
 go out of the Union, and passed an ordinance 
 of secession on the twentieth of December, 1860 ; 
 Mississippi seceded the ninth of the following 
 January; and Alabama, Florida, Georgia soon 
 after; Louisiana went out January twenty- 
 eighth; and Texas, February first. On the 
 sixth of February delegates from these seven 
 States met at Montgomery, Alabama, and organ- 
 ized the "Confederate States of America' '; they 
 elected Jefferson Davis as President, and he 
 was installed on the eighteenth. Then a law 
 was passed to raise an army for these Confed- 
 erate States and in place of the dear old ' ' stars 
 and stripes " of our flag, they made a flag of 
 
190 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 " stars and bars." As we know, Virginia fol- 
 lowed these States; and so did Arkansas; and 
 in Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mis- 
 souri, border States, there was a hard struggle 
 between the loyal and the disloyal men. 
 
 Many more Southerners than Northerners 
 had been educated at the United States West 
 Point Military Academy. A large number of 
 these officers followed their States and gave 
 their services to the Southern Confederacy; 
 there were between two and three hundred of 
 these. So when it came to a question of war 
 between North and South, these skilfully trained 
 officers were a great loss to the North. But 
 many of these men went over to the South 
 promptly and openly; and although they were 
 false to the country which had educated them, 
 they did the thing they believed right; for, as 
 has been said, they had been taught that they 
 owed allegiance to their State rather than to 
 the nation. Those officers who were true to the 
 nation had a hard time, if they happened to be 
 stationed at the South, in getting away and 
 offering their services to their country. 
 
 But there was another class of men ; and what 
 word can we have for these? They were men 
 who kept their positions of trust under the 
 United States government, some even in Presi- 
 dent Buchanan's cabinet, learned all the secrets 
 
;WHAT THE SOUTH AY AS DOING. 191 
 
 of the forts and arsenals and arms belonging 
 to the nation, sent the ships away to foreign 
 ports in order that they might not be on hand 
 at time of need, stole for the Southern Confed- 
 eracy all the government arms and ammunition 
 they could lay hands on, captured some of the 
 forts in Southern harbors, and in every way 
 possible deceived and frightened the weak Presi- 
 dent into yielding to their wishes. 
 
 It would take a volume to tell of all the things 
 that were going on at the South where every- 
 body was preparing for war ; at the North where 
 everybody hoped that war need not come; in 
 Congress where parties were trying to patch up 
 a peace; in the army where the most skilful 
 officers were resigning from their commands ; in 
 the navy where many officers were false to their 
 trusts, although many were very true— all the 
 country was in stress and strain, doing it did 
 not realize what, waiting for it knew not what. 
 For very much went on between November, 
 1860, and the following March, 1861. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln was not yet President ; 
 he was only President-elect. He could do 
 nothing yet to oust the traitors from the cabinet 
 and councils of Buchanan. 
 
XXV. 
 
 What the New President Had to Face. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln had been elected 
 President of the United States he was still the 
 same kindly man and had the same care for the 
 pleasure of others as when in the old days he 
 used to ride the circuit and in the evenings 
 instead of enjoying himself at the inns with the 
 other lawyers, would often walk far to visit 
 some old friend of his humbler days. Once 
 when urged not to go, as he would have to walk 
 several miles, he answered: "Why, aunt's 
 heart would be broken if I should leave town 
 without calling upon her. " 
 
 Now, so many people from all parts were con- 
 stantly coming to call upon the President-elect 
 that he could not receive them all in his own 
 home and a large room in the State House was 
 set apart for him to receive his guests. But 
 there was no ceremony; there were no ushers 
 to present them, or even servants to attend the 
 
 192 
 
LINCOLN, AT THE TIME OF HIS ELECTION AS PRESIDEN' 
 From an nnretouched negative. 
 
WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 193 
 
 door; whoever wished to do so opened the door 
 and walked in, and he received a kind greeting 
 and probably carried away with him some word 
 that he would remember. 
 
 But these were very busy days with Mr. Lin- 
 coln. Many of his friends seemed to feel that 
 because they were his friends he should give 
 them an office; and although when they were 
 well suited to the place desired, he sometimes 
 did this, he was far from making a rule ; he said 
 that public offices were not to be distributed as 
 a reward of private friendship. He had the 
 idea of civil service reform long before it was 
 spoken of in the country and when it was the 
 custom of every administration to turn out of 
 office all those whom the former administration 
 had appointed and to put in its own men as per- 
 sonal friends, or to reward political services, or 
 to give the office-holders an opportunity to work 
 for that party. The famous motto: "To the 
 victors belong the spoils," refers to this cus- 
 tom, and the "spoils of office" mean the same 
 thing. 
 
 In the selection of his cabinet, that is, the 
 heads of the departments of state, army and 
 navy, and the other departments most closely 
 connected with the President and constantly 
 meeting and advising with him, Lincoln showed 
 the same spirit; he called around him, not his 
 
194 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 personal friends, but men of influence from 
 different parts of the country who represented 
 the feeling of their section and who were skil- 
 ful in the duties required of them. William H. 
 Seward whom he had defeated as Presidential 
 nominee in the Chicago convention, he invited 
 to be secretary of state, and Salmon P. Chase 
 of Ohio, a skilful financier, to be secretary of 
 the treasury. It needed such a man, for the 
 Republicans when they came into office found 
 the public treasury empty. Lincoln was so 
 anxious to be fair to all the people and give the 
 South a representation also, that at one time he 
 would have invited Mr. Stephens of Georgia 
 into his cabinet ; but he was afraid that Georgia 
 would secede and take him with her ; and this is 
 what happened ; for Mr. Stephens became Vice- 
 president of the new Confederacy. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln decided to leave Springfield in 
 season to visit a few of the large cities and meet 
 the people there on his way to his inauguration. 
 On the morning of the eleventh of February, 
 1861, he and his party left Springfield. It was 
 a cold, rainy morning. Long before the hour 
 for starting a great crowd of his fellow-citi- 
 zens had collected at the station. A few 
 minutes before the hour Mr. Lincoln passed 
 through the crowd shaking hands with as many 
 as possible, and stepped upon the rear platform 
 
WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 195 
 
 of his train. "Here," says Mr. Lamon, "facing 
 about to the throng which had closed around 
 him, he drew himself up to his full height, re- 
 moved his hat, and stood for several seconds in 
 profound silence. His eye roved sadly over that 
 sea of upturned faces ; and he thought he read 
 in them again the sympathy and friendship 
 which he had often tried, and which he never 
 needed more than he did then. There was an 
 unusual quiver in his lip, and a still more un- 
 usual tear on his shrivelled cheek. His solemn 
 manner, his long silence, were as full of mel- 
 ancholy eloquence as any words he could have 
 uttered. . . . Imitating his example, every man 
 in the crowd stood with his head uncovered in 
 the fast-falling rain. 
 
 " ' Friends,' " he said at last, u 'no one who 
 has never been placed in a like position can 
 understand my feelings at this hour, nor the 
 oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For 
 more than a quarter of a century I have lived 
 among you, and during all that time I have re- 
 ceived nothing but kindness at your hands. 
 Here I have lived from my youth, until now I 
 am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of" 
 earth were assumed. Here all my children 
 were born; and here one of them lies buried. 
 To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, 
 all that I am, AH the strange, checkered past 
 
196 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I 
 leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult 
 than that which devolved upon Washington. 
 Unless the great God who assisted him, shall 
 be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the 
 same omniscient Mind and almighty Arm that 
 directed and protected him shall guide and sup- 
 port me, I shall not fail— I shall succeed. Let 
 us all pray that the God of our fathers may not 
 forsake us now. To Him I commend you all. 
 Permit me to ask, that, with equal security and 
 faith, you will invoke His wisdom and guidance 
 for me. With these few words I must leave 
 you; for how long I know not. Friends, one 
 and all, I must now bid you an affectionate 
 farewell.' " 
 
 Did any warning come to him as he stood 
 there that never again would he look into these 
 well-known faces! Was any hint given to him 
 at the moment that when next he came to 
 Springfield he would be borne there as the mar- 
 tyred President and that these same faces 
 would gaze upon him with sadness and tears! 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had great public receptions at 
 Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburg, 
 Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York City and 
 Philadelphia. Then there were stops at places 
 on the route where Lincoln showed himself and 
 spoke to the people. At one of these he said: 
 
WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 197 
 
 "Let me tell you that if the people remain right, 
 your public men can never betray you. If, in 
 my brief term of office, I shall be wicked or 
 foolish, if you remain right and true and honest 
 you cannot be betrayed. My power is tempor- 
 ary and fleeting— yours as eternal as the prin- 
 ciples of liberty. Cultivate and protect that 
 sentiment, and your ambitious leaders will be 
 reduced to the position of servants. " 
 
 At Philadelphia Mr. Lincoln was informed 
 that there was a plot to assassinate him as he 
 passed through Baltimore, and that he must 
 reach there by an earlier train than the one ex- 
 pected. He said that he had two public engage- 
 ments in Philadelphia, and that he should meet 
 these if it cost him his life. The first was rais- 
 ing a new flag over Independence Hall. It was a 
 sacred act to him to speak a few words in the 
 very room in which the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence had been signed, and then to draw 
 up with his own hands the stars and stripes 
 until they floated over the hall of liberty. Then 
 he went on that night through Baltimore, in- 
 stead of the following morning as had been pub- 
 licly announced ; and arrived safely in Washing- 
 ton. History has shown that there was no doubt 
 as to the plot against him ; it was so well known 
 that the son of Mr. Seward, the new secretary, 
 
198 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 came in person to Philadelphia to tell Mr. Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 The whole country, North and South, waited 
 eagerly for the inaugural address. On the 
 morning of the Fourth of March, President Bu- 
 chanan, the out-going President, as the custom 
 was and still is, called in his carriage to escort 
 to the Capitol Abraham Lincoln, who was then 
 to be made President in his place. And although 
 it had been said over and over again that he 
 should never be allowed to live to be President, 
 there he stood reading his inaugural and beside 
 him stood Mr. Douglas, his defeated rival for 
 the Presidency, holding the new President's hat 
 with the greatest courtesy. And it should be 
 remembered that Mr. Douglas during the re- 
 mainder of his life was most true to the Union 
 and did all in his power to aid Mr. Lincoln in 
 defending it. So that the two became good 
 friends. 
 
 The inaugural stated the whole case so clear- 
 ly, declared so plainly the intention of the Re- 
 publican party not to interfere with slavery 
 w r here it then existed, and was so kind and re- 
 spectful in tone towards the South that the 
 Southern papers were afraid it would make 
 their people take a "sober second thought," and 
 they said untrue things against it. After show- 
 ing the disadvantages of disunion and saying 
 
WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 199 
 
 many wise things, he finished by warning the 
 secessionists that the burden of this act would be 
 upon them. He said: "In your hands, my dis- 
 satisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is 
 the momentous issue of civil war. The govern- 
 ment will not assail you. You can have no con- 
 flict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
 You have no oath registered in Heaven to de- 
 stroy the government; while I have the most 
 solemn one to 'preserve, protect and defend' 
 it." 
 
 This meant that if there was to be a war, 
 the South would have to begin it. There stood 
 the President; and the North was with him. 
 
XXVI. 
 
 FlKING ON THE FLAG. 
 
 When Mr. Lincoln was reading his inaugural 
 address to the people, a man standing in a door- 
 way of the Capitol was watching him with a 
 scornful expression as he listened. This was 
 Senator Wigfall from Texas. He knew how 
 the plans of the Southerners had been made; 
 how even then troops were ready to take posses- 
 sion of the Territory of New Mexico; how a 
 conspiracy in California hoped to bring in that 
 State for the South; how in New York City 
 there were men who felt that before long they 
 could win this to the South as an " independent 
 city"; how Maryland had thousands of her 
 population longing to join the other Southern 
 States ; how, soon, they would capture the North, 
 which was much too busy buying and selling 
 ever to dream of fighting them, even if they had 
 not so many friends among the Northerners; 
 how after this, the South would take posses- 
 sion of Cuba and the rest of the West Indies, 
 
 200 
 
FIRING ON THE FLAG. 201 
 
 and Mexico — all these they would have and 
 would form a mighty slave empire o*n this conti- 
 nent; there was nothing to resist them. And 
 over this vast empire Mr. Wigfall and his 
 friends were to rule as absolutely as they ruled 
 over their slaves and the poor whites at the 
 South, and some— not all— of the Democratic 
 party at the North. To Mr. Wigfall listening 
 scornfully in the doorway of the national Cap- 
 itol, the matter was entirely settled, and the 
 Southern Confederacy a resistless success. 
 
 He lived to see something far different. For 
 by the mercy of God, the United States, found- 
 ed in toil and prayer and battle, were not des- 
 tined to be slave, but to be free; and Abraham 
 Lincoln had been made President, 
 
 All through that March the North was unde- 
 fended, entirely so at first, but more guarded 
 as the days went by. The soldiers, the officers, 
 the arms, the cannon, were principally at the 
 South, seized from government arsenals and 
 stations, or sent there from the North by some 
 of the officers of President Buchanan's cabinet. 
 
 Still, Abraham Lincoln waited and waited as 
 the days went by. He was keeping to the letter 
 his promise to the South made in his inaugural : 
 "The government will not assail you. You can 
 have no conflict without being yourselves the 
 aggressors.'' And while he waited he was sav- 
 
202 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 ing his time and gaining strength; he was 
 silently getting ready for the struggle that he 
 feared must come; and the North, holding its 
 breath in the waiting and watching the Presi- 
 dent, saw that he was doing his very best to 
 keep peace with the South and to give it an 
 opportunity to take that sober second thought 
 and return to the Union. So, he waited, and 
 made ready. If a very great matter may be 
 likened to a small one, his attitude was what it 
 had been in the old days at New Salem when 
 he told Jack Armstrong and his wild boys of 
 Clary's Grove that he did not want to fight, and 
 stood off and tried to pacify them until they 
 attacked him. Then he roused and showed his 
 giant strength. 
 
 The South waited also. But while it waited, it 
 grew all the time weaker and weaker. The truth 
 was that it had really no grievances to fight 
 for ; nothing was the matter except that its lead- 
 ers wanted the power all the time, and the elec- 
 tion had shown that the other party was to have 
 its turn at that ; that slavery was to stay within 
 its present limitations and be protected there by 
 the government, not molested in any way, but 
 not permitted to stride over the whole land. 
 The Southern leaders knew that there were 
 many persons in the South who would be only 
 too glad to remain in the Union, if they could, 
 
FIRING OX THE FLAG. 203 
 
 but who were being held down so that they 
 could not speak but at peril of their lives. 
 
 These leaders perceived that every day that 
 nothing happened, every day that the Federal 
 government held off and let them alone, these 
 secret Unionists thought better of the govern- 
 ment; that after a time they would gather 
 strength to say so; and that something must 
 be done speedily to unite the whole South as 
 one man against the North. 
 
 They saw that while they waited, they lost 
 time. If they did not use the army they had col- 
 lected, it would melt away; if they did not strike 
 a blow to show that the Southern Confederacy 
 was something more than a convention, it would 
 go to pieces of itself. They had hoped that, 
 after all, they could force Abraham Lincoln to 
 strike first in the name of the government. 
 They had not become very well acquainted with 
 him then. 
 
 It has been said that some of the forts at the 
 South had fallen into the hands of the Con- 
 federacy—those on the Texan frontier, and 
 those in Pensacola Bay, and others. But in 
 the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, the 
 forts, Pinckney, Moultrie and Sumter had still 
 stood garrisoned by the United States troops 
 when South Carolina seceded. And when Lin- 
 coln was inaugurated, more than two months 
 
204 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 later, although the other two forts had been 
 abandoned because Buchanan could not protect 
 and properly garrison and supply them with 
 food and ammunition, the stars and stripes still 
 floated over Fort Sumter guarded by that loyal 
 officer, Major Robert Anderson. 
 
 But the confederates blockaded it so thor- 
 oughly that no help could get to it. When Major 
 Anderson sent word to the President that the 
 troops had food for only a few days longer, 
 Mr. Lincoln sent a message to the Governor of 
 South Carolina that an attempt would be made 
 "to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only," 
 and that if the attempt was not resisted, no pro- 
 visions, or arms, or ammunition would be 
 thrown in without giving notice, or unless the 
 fort were attacked. 
 
 The relief expedition started. But it never 
 got in. And the confederate authorities decided 
 that this attempt to carry food to a starving 
 garrison was "a declaration of war." 
 
 April 12th, 1861, the first gun was fired 
 against Fort Sumter ; and then the batteries all 
 about the fort opened a vigorous cannonade. 
 
 Major Anderson endured this as long as he 
 could; and then he and his seventy men sadly 
 hauled down the stars and stripes and surren- 
 dered to General Beauregard and his seven 
 thousand armed confederates. 
 
XXVII. 
 
 How the North Responded. 
 
 The people of the North were not familiar 
 with military tactics. They had not understood 
 that the blockade of Fort Sumter was in itself 
 war. They were still dreaming of compromise 
 and peace, although the political sky was black 
 with storm. 
 
 But in every city and town and village and 
 little hamlet and far-away house, and in every 
 room of every house, and in every heart 
 throughout the length and breadth of the North 
 was heard the boom of that cannon at Sum- 
 ter firing upon our flag. 
 
 And at the sound of that cannon the North 
 rose up, flung away all thought of question or 
 compromise, and stood forth in its wrath— a 
 giant. 
 
 Much, much had it endured, and would have 
 endured for peace and brotherhood. But to 
 fire on the flag! That was war! 
 
 Then men forgot whether they were Repub- 
 
 205 
 
206 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 licans, or Democrats. They remembered only 
 that they were Americans; that they had a 
 country to save and must save it; and that 
 death would be better than to have their flag 
 trailed in the dust. Some Englishman who had 
 been visiting this country a few years previous- 
 ly had said that we were a nation of soldiers. 
 The guns of Sumter proved the truth of his 
 prophecy. In a day, as it were, an army of 
 patriots had sprung up to the defence of their 
 country. 
 
 For directly after Fort Sumter was taken, the 
 States of North Carolina, Arkansas, and Vir- 
 ginia went out of the Union and joined the 
 Southern Confederacy. Until this time Virginia 
 had been between the confederates and Wash- 
 ington. But now that it had itself become dis- 
 unionist, it was a threat instead of a protection 
 tc the national capital, while if Maryland had 
 not actually joined the South, so many of her 
 people wanted to do it that she also was a 
 menace rather than a safeguard to the govern- 
 ment; and the government meant the country. 
 
 There was only one thing to do in this great 
 emergency, and Mr. Lincoln did it promptly. 
 Sumter fell on the fourteenth of April, 1861. 
 That was Sunday. That very day by mail and 
 telegraph there started over the country the 
 President's first proclamation calling for 
 
HOW THE NORTH RESPONDED. 207 
 
 troops. It was dated Monday, April 15. In 
 this proclamation he called forth "the militia 
 of the several States of the Union, to the ag- 
 gregate number of seventy-five thousand. " This 
 was to suppress the "combinations" of the dif- 
 ferent States against the Union, "and to cause 
 the laws to be duly executed.'' 
 
 He called for this militia for only ninety days. 
 In the same proclamation he summoned an 
 extra session of Congress for the following 
 "fourth day of July, then and there to consider 
 and determine such measures as in their wisdom 
 the public safety and interest may seem to de- 
 mand. " 
 
 So, all the North awoke to the war that was 
 to be for ninety days. The preacher* preached ; 
 the orators declaimed; the poets sang; the gov- 
 ernors of the different States issued proclama- 
 tions and made ready; hammers clanged and 
 anvils rang, and arms were to be forged, and 
 arsenals opened their doors to furnish weapons 
 for the soldiers who were marching to the de- 
 fence of their country, marching to defend the 
 Union; all the land was in the bustle of pre- 
 paration for this war, the end of which we were 
 to see in ninety days— that is, if in that time 
 the Southern confederacy would yield to per- 
 suasion, or force, and give up its war against 
 the government 
 
208 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 But a dozen times ninety days was not to see 
 the end of this war. 
 
 Men crowded about the recruiting offices and 
 enlisted. They wanted to rush to the front. The 
 first regiment to get to Washington came from 
 the Pennsylvania militia. It was not half 
 armed, but at least it arrived, to finish prepara- 
 tions there. It went through Baltimore so 
 suddenly that the people there who were ready 
 to take part with the South had no chance to 
 block its passage. But they were all ready 
 directly afterward. For, April seventeenth, the 
 Massachusetts Sixth Regiment, all armed and 
 equipped, had started for Washington. On the 
 eighteenth it marched down Broadway, New 
 York, singing as it went, while thousands in the 
 streets watched it: 
 
 "John Brown's body lies a -mouldering in the grave, 
 His soul goes marching on ! " 
 
 The next day the New Y r ork Seventh Eegiment 
 set out for the capital of the nation. 
 
 But on the nineteenth of April— the anniver- 
 sary of the battle of Lexington— the Massachu- 
 setts troops were attacked by a mob in Balti- 
 more, and fired upon, and some of them killed. 
 The soldiers kept their discipline and fired only 
 when compelled to defend themselves. That 
 night the secession mob of Baltimore and others 
 
HOW THE NORTH RESPONDED. 209 
 
 in the State cut the telegraph wires and burned 
 the nearest bridges from the free States into 
 Baltimore, so that no more troops should go 
 through in aid of the government; the feel- 
 ing was so strong that the State was almost car- 
 ried into secession; and if the mob had had a 
 leader equal in ability to its desires, the seces- 
 sionists in Maryland would have shut in Wash- 
 ington between themselves and the confederates 
 at the South and captured it before the other 
 regiments could have arrived. This was what 
 Jefferson Davis had arranged with the people 
 of Maryland to do. For a time Washington was 
 in great danger. 
 
 But Lincoln did not lose his head. He brought 
 in the other regiments a different way, in spite 
 of the Governor of Maryland; and soon the 
 I nion forces had come in. So, the stars and 
 bars never floated over Washington, as the 
 confederates had expected at that time, and so 
 often threatened afterward. 
 
 All this did not make the North less swift in 
 sending men to protect and defend our country. 
 But one of Mr. Lincoln's great difficulties was 
 to know who was loyal to the Union. About a 
 week after the taking of Fort Sumter he spoke 
 to Colonel Robert E. Lee, a WTest Point officer, 
 in regard to his taking command of the Lmion 
 army. Colonel Lee, however, was a Virginian 
 
210 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 and was waiting to see bow his State went. 
 When he found that Virginia had seceded, he 
 resigned his place in the United States army 
 that same day, and within a week was given 
 command of the Virginia State army, and soon 
 afterward was made general of the confederate 
 army. 
 
 But General Scott, another Virginian, was 
 loyal and he helped the President as much as 
 he could ; and soon the forts around Washington 
 were manned and in order. Maryland did not 
 secede, as we know, although it came so near it ; 
 and after a time the loyal people in it gained 
 the power and the State remained for the Union 
 throughout the war. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had been in the Black Hawk war, 
 one of the volunteer militia. He understood 
 that, however brave and willing ninety days' 
 men may be, they are ready to go home when 
 their time is up; and he speedily realized that 
 a longer time would be needed to make these 
 recruits into the soldiers that this conflict would 
 require. So he sent out word through the war 
 department that over forty thousand of the men 
 who all over the country were volunteering for 
 the army would be accepted for three years, 
 or during the war. And at the same time he 
 called for seamen. In this way he had an army 
 
HOW THE NORTH RESPONDED. 211 
 
 and a navy to stand by him when the ninety 
 days' militia should go home. 
 
 It may be that that old history of Washington 
 which he had borrowed when a boy and had let 
 get wet in the storm and so had to work so hard 
 to pay for, helped him now. For Stoddard tells 
 us that he remembered how Washington had 
 been hampered in his work, and at times almost 
 defeated in his efforts, through his soldiers' time 
 of enlistment being out just when he needed 
 them most. Lincoln determined to be provided 
 against this danger. 
 
 So, daily, hourly, by constant study and 
 watchfulness, by learning from all who could 
 tell him, and then using his own best judgment 
 in action, Abraham Lincoln labored to guide 
 into peace and safety again the nation which 
 had chosen him for its leader and head. 
 
XXVIII. 
 
 The Battle of Bull Run. 
 
 A great many important things in a military 
 sense were done in the latter part of April. 
 Washington was made safe for that time; Fort- 
 ress Monroe, that commands the " water gate- 
 way of Virginia,'' was reinforced and held; the 
 government works at Harper's Ferry were 
 blown up and burned to save them from the 
 confederate troops; the city of Cairo, Illinois, 
 at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi 
 Rivers, was held by government forces ; and the 
 blockade of the Southern States by water which 
 Mr. Lincoln had ordered was extended to Vir- 
 ginia and North Carolina; and different mili- 
 tary departments were formed under the charge 
 of different generals. 
 
 It was of as great importance to the govern- 
 ment to keep the border States out of the con- 
 federacy as it was to the South to have them 
 join it; the Southern leaders were all the time 
 pressing and forcing upon them the decision to 
 
 212 
 
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 213 
 
 secede, and Mr. Lincoln was all the time holding 
 back from everything which would give them 
 even an excuse for going over to the confed- 
 eracy. The matter of the "long bridge' ' is 
 one instance of how careful he was not to do 
 anything which a border State could resent. 
 Washington, as we know, is so situated that in 
 order to make the city really secure it was 
 necessary that the government should hold some 
 of the surrounding heights and places of stra- 
 tegic importance across the Potomac. But these 
 were on Virginian soil; therefore, so long as 
 Virginia remained in the Union, although it 
 was plain that her secessionists were going to 
 drag her out, the heights yet remained un- 
 touched by the Federal government. It kept 
 a small guard at the bridge, it was true, to pre- 
 vent its being destroyed ; but nobody interfered 
 with travel or merchandise going across it ; and 
 when a stray secessionist from Maryland want- 
 ed to go South to join the confederate army, no- 
 body hindered him. And it is said that after 
 nightfall the squad of Union soldiers in charge 
 there went across and "hobnobbed" with the 
 Virginia State militia posted on the other side 
 and their officers said very little about it. Just 
 as long as it was possible to forbear, Mr. Lin- 
 coln did it. 
 In addition to all that was to be done here, it 
 
214 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 was necessary to make the government right 
 with the nations of Europe, some of whom were 
 much interested in the Southern confederacy. 
 For Jefferson Davis had early sent over repre- 
 sentatives to induce them to recognize and ap- 
 prove of the "Confederate States of America"; 
 and if they had done so, it would have been much 
 harder for the government. But Mr. Lincoln 
 knew they would do it unless he prevented it. 
 He said in effect that this was a family quarrel 
 and that foreign nations had nothing to do with 
 it. The details of this statement he left to Sec- 
 retary Seward, who was well versed in diplo- 
 macy and knew how to manage the matter with 
 skill and success. 
 
 Meanwhile the North had sent forth its men 
 by the thousands, the hundred thousand, for 
 soldiers and sailors; and the people could not 
 imagine why Mr. Lincoln did not take hold with 
 them and conquer the confederacy straightway? 
 Why was he so slow? They thought they saw 
 everything. But, really, they saw at the time but 
 little of the difficulties and dangers in the way. 
 They could not even realize— for they knew 
 only in a general way at the time— how the 
 government found secret enemies at every turn, 
 in army and navy and in the different depart- 
 ments of the administration. At that time to 
 find out anything that "Lincoln" proposed to 
 
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 215 
 
 do and to tell it to the confederates was held a 
 fine thing by certain persons. 
 
 April twenty-ninth Jefferson Davis assembled 
 the confederate Congress at Montgomery, and 
 made a long and public statement of the wrongs 
 of the South which he published to the world. 
 It was full of untruths carefully put. But after 
 declaring all the preparations for war and for 
 maintaining the Southern confederacy, he add- 
 ed one more word which was certainly true and 
 became a byword at the North through the war. 
 For: "All we want," said Mr. Jefferson Davis, 
 "is to be let alone. " 
 
 The speeches of the Southern leaders aggra- 
 vated the North. Mr. Jefferson Davis said 
 openly that the North, and not the South, should 
 be the field of war. And Floyd, who had stolen 
 all he could of government property while he 
 was secretary of war under Buchanan, prophe- 
 sied that the stars and bars, the flag of the con- 
 federacy, would float over the dome of the old 
 capitol at Washington before May first, 1861, 
 and that it "might float eventually over Fanueil 
 Hall itself." So little did the people of the 
 South understand the North. 
 
 It has been said that directly after the fall 
 of Sumter the Legislature of Virginia voted 
 the State out of the Union. But this vote had 
 to go to the people of the State to be confirmed. 
 
216 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 A few days afterward Jefferson Davis trans- 
 ferred the seat of his government to Richmond. 
 So, the leaders and plenty of troops were on 
 hand there. May twenty-third the vote was 
 taken. By sunset that same day, within an 
 hour of the time that Lincoln learned that Vir- 
 ginia had seceded, regiments of Union troops 
 were marching across the long bridge, and by 
 daylight every position of defence desired had 
 been seized by the government. And early 
 that same day regiments were at work with 
 pick and spade throwing up fortifications. 
 For, as we know, the great battle-ground of the 
 war was not the North, but the South. Up and 
 down, and back and forth, over and over in 
 different States, but especially in Virginia, the 
 armies marched, and entrenched, and fought 
 for four terrible years. 
 
 There never was a more remarkable army 
 than that which answered the call of President 
 Lincoln. Never were twenty millions of people 
 more full of zeal and enthusiasm for the cause 
 for which their soldiers were to fight ; and never 
 were soldiers themselves more deeply interested 
 in the cause for which they were to fight. It 
 was no wonder ; the spirit of the war was every- 
 where. In all the cities and towns ; not only in 
 public halls and at war meetings ; but in all the 
 workshops and factories, in all the homes, yes, 
 

 Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips k Co; 
 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SON THOMAS ("TAD"). 
 From a photograph. 
 
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 217 
 
 and even by the school boys and girls, the war 
 was talked over. And around the doors of the 
 homes of the foreign population groups would 
 be collected, one reading the newspaper and 
 the others listening to what was doing in the 
 army. 
 
 The army was made up of men of every rank 
 from the sons of millionaires to day laborers. 
 In it were skilled mechanics of every descrip- 
 tion. When on their march they found rail- 
 roads torn up, or bridges burned, or when any- 
 thing went wrong, there was always somebody 
 among the soldiers who knew how these things 
 were to be repaired and who could step out from 
 the ranks and help to do it. There is a story 
 of a day when one of the Union generals needed 
 badly to use an engine to transport some of his 
 troops. But the engine had been put out of 
 order by the confederates. One man came for- 
 ward and said he thought he " could fix it." 
 "What makes you think you can fix it!" asked 
 his general. "Because I made it," returned the 
 man. And he did "fix" it. 
 
 But one thing this army did not know at the 
 beginning of the conflict ; and that was the rules 
 and manoeuvres of war. They were not used to 
 fighting, and this takes training as truly as 
 baseball and football and boat-racing and other 
 games need training, and a great deal more of 
 
218 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 it. These men were, really, not as well prepared 
 as the minute men in the Revolutionary war, 
 because those had been trained in Indian wars 
 and in hunting and had had more practice in the 
 use of weapons. In case of fire in a school- 
 house we know what the difference is between 
 the very same children when they have had no 
 practice and when they have been well trained 
 in the fire-drill. If they have, they will go out 
 of the house in perfect order and nobody is 
 hurt, or even frightened. But if not, there will 
 be a terrible rush and crowding and danger. 
 Yet, in both cases the children will be the same 
 children. That was a good deal the difference 
 between our army at first, and later. Then, as 
 it has been said before, the greater part of the 
 officers trained by the government to fight for 
 it in times of danger had been Southerners and 
 had gone with their States; while many Union 
 officers were untrained in war. All this made a 
 vast difference at the Battle of Ball Run. 
 
 There is not time to tell of the things that 
 came to pass before those July days on which 
 the battle was fought. Only, this was true, that' 
 some of the generals were very stupid or dis- 
 loyal in carrying out the spirit of their orders, 
 and General Johnston, the confederate general 
 who should have been intercepted by the Union 
 forces, was allowed to join General Beauregard, 
 
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 219 
 
 and this made up largely the force that won the 
 battle at Bull Run. For at Bull Run, in Vir- 
 ginia, the Union forces had been ordered to 
 meet the confederates in battle. The battle was 
 not opened at the time arranged for; the Union 
 officers did not know how to deploy their troops 
 skilfully and the confederates attacked the army 
 instead of its being the other way, and in a place 
 particularly unfortunate. 
 
 There was a great deal of hard fighting on 
 both sides ; but after the battle had raged nearly 
 two days a panic seized the Union forces, such 
 as sometimes seizes the best-trained soldiers, 
 and they broke and ran away, until at last 
 they all gathered in Washington — those who 
 were left of them, and the great army upon 
 which the country had depended for victory 
 was too disorganized even for defence. Had the 
 confederates followed up hard, they could have 
 captured Washington in that first wild alarm. 
 Congress was in extra session during this bat- 
 tle; and some of the congressmen had gone to 
 the field of Bull Run to "see the fight," as if it 
 were to be a holiday victory. One of these was 
 captured ; and the others came flying back with 
 no desire to see any more battles. 
 
 The South was wild with delight over its 
 victory; while for a very short time the North 
 was in despair over this terrible defeat. It 
 
220 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 seemed as if for us all was blackness, while for 
 the confederacy success was near. But things 
 did not prove so. The South began to feel that 
 if victory was to be won so easily, there was 
 no need of its trying so very hard to raise men 
 and money. Then, it did not follow up the 
 victory and received not much more than the 
 fame of the battle. On the other hand, the 
 North gathered itself together for the long, 
 hard combat and put forth new strength. It 
 took courage and saw that, after all, everything 
 was not lost. Congress voted the President 
 all the men and all the money he needed at the 
 time, even more money than he asked for. And 
 when some of the New York bankers met and 
 began to be afraid of the future value of the 
 government bonds, one of them said: "If you 
 let the government go down, your other securi- 
 ties won't be worth much to speak of. We must 
 let the President have the last cent." 
 
 This was the spirit in which the North met 
 the defeat of Bull Run, and in the end turned 
 it into a victory. Just as in a man 's life, many 
 a defeat proves in the end a gain to him. 
 
XXIX. 
 
 Some of the Union Generals. 
 
 After the battle of Bull Kun over which the 
 confederates boasted so much there was a feel- 
 ing in the South, as has been said, that it would 
 be easy enough to conquer the " Yankees"; the 
 South was then in the habit of calling all the 
 Northerners — especially those who opposed it — 
 "Yankees." And it was even whispered at the 
 North that the men had become so discouraged 
 and frightened by the Bull Run defeat, that they 
 would flee at the sight of any confederate forces. 
 But in October this was found to be most untrue. 
 For then came the battle of Ball's Bluff, in Vir- 
 ginia. Here the Union troops were badly 
 handled by their officers, and although General 
 McClellan was fairly near with a very large 
 army, he sent no reinforcements. As a result 
 the army was so badly beaten by the confeder- 
 ates that almost half the men engaged were 
 killed. Much as the North grieved over this 
 
 221 
 
222 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 disaster, it proved beyond question that the 
 troops would fight splendidly against great 
 odds. The question of their courage was 
 settled. It must be seen to that they had proper 
 leaders. 
 
 General Scott, who until then had been in 
 charge of the army, resigned. He did not like 
 the way many things were going. He said he 
 was too old for the labor and responsibility. 
 The President appreciated so much his services 
 and his loyalty when so many officers had 
 deserted and taken sides with their different 
 seceding States, that he and all his cabinet paid 
 an official visit to the old General and read 
 him the letter he had written to him expressing 
 the regret of the President and his Cabinet 
 and of the people at his impaired health, and the 
 sense of the many great and important services 
 which General Scott had rendered his country ; 
 for Scott had also won honor in the Mexican 
 war. It was like Lincoln to make General 
 Scott happy by this thoughtfulness. But many 
 men oppressed by harassing cares would never 
 have done it. It was only another evidence that 
 if a man's heart is right, he can be in the truest 
 sense as much a gentleman if he was born in 
 a log cabin as in a palace. 
 
 Then he gave General McClellan the place 
 that General Scott had resigned. McClellan 
 
SOME OF THE UNION GENERALS. 223 
 
 was excellent at organizing and drilling an 
 army, and great things were expected of him 
 in those early days. The President did all he 
 could to help him on to victory, the country 
 waited on his footsteps and the army loved him; 
 he could have had laurels in plenty by reaching 
 out for them. 
 
 But many more generals were needed ; and the 
 President as commander-in-chief of the army 
 and navy must see that these were wisely 
 chosen; he must appoint men both skilful and 
 trusty, men who knew how to win victories and 
 who would not do all they could to keep the 
 government from defeating the confederacy 
 while at the same time they were pretending to 
 serve their country. There were such generals 
 in the army at one time; it was hard to discover 
 them and weed them out. As the war went on a 
 good many men who had been educated at the 
 West Point military academy and then had left 
 the army and gone into business came forward 
 to offer their services to their country. Ulysses 
 S. Grant was one of these ; and a command was 
 given him in the West where he with other gen- 
 erals and the brave men under them won vic- 
 tories of great value. For these destroyed 
 the plans of the confederates to carry Missouri 
 and Kentucky out of the Union and gave new 
 strength to the Union men there. Then, the 
 
224 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 army under General Sherman and the navy 
 under Commodore Dupont captured Port Royal 
 in South Carolina. The following year still 
 more was done in Kentucky and Tennessee ; and 
 New Orleans was captured and a part of the 
 Mississippi River opened by the Union gun 
 boats, and held. 
 
 After the Union defeats in Virginia, the first 
 year, nothing was done by the army of the 
 Potomac. Poor General McClellan got into 
 the Virginia mud— not being willing to fight 
 during fine autumn weather when everybody 
 wanted him to do it. He would not put his army 
 into winter huts as the confederates did their 
 soldiers; he wished to have the appearance of 
 being always just about to advance; but the 
 months went by and the soldiers died by the 
 thousands in the swamps and the President in 
 vain commanded him to go forward; he always 
 had some excuse. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Lincoln was laboring at his 
 terrible task, with other generals besides those 
 named, or any that have a place on the list of 
 officers. Mr. Stoddard tells us of the great room 
 where he worked "through all the days and 
 half through all the nights." There was but 
 little furniture in it; and this had never been 
 altered since the days of President Jackson 
 whose favorite chair still stood there. There 
 
SOME OF THE UNION GENERALS. 225 
 
 were folios of maps against the walls ; volumes 
 of military history came and went from the 
 libraries and lay about on the President's table. 
 Lincoln arose early and always breakfasted 
 simply; he was often at work before the hum- 
 blest clerk of the government had eaten his 
 breakfast. ' ' He knew, ' ' says Stoddard, ' ' every 
 river, mountain range, creek, hill, valley, on the 
 broad acres through which the tides of war 
 were to flow. He was better than ever ac- 
 quainted with the local populations, their indus- 
 tries, tendencies, origins, wealths or poverties. 
 No man living was endowed with better capacity 
 to digest, assimilate and use all this knowledge. " 
 What it was to the country that Lincoln so 
 studied and informed himself cannot be told. 
 He once wrote to General McClellan about some 
 point on which McClellan disputed him— as he 
 was very apt to do— "I ordered" (such a 
 thing) "on the unanimous opinion of every mil- 
 itary man I could get an opinion from, and 
 every modern military book,— yourself only 
 excepted.'' What study that meant! 
 
 Then, in winning the great battle for the 
 Union against disunion, Mr. Lincoln had to 
 unite all the forces of the North, and some of 
 these were not friendly to him and were difficult 
 to manage. In all these matters he had to use 
 the services of those skilful generals of dis- 
 
226 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 cretion, carefulness, faithfulness, wisdom, un- 
 selfishness, industry, ability that dwelt in his 
 own head and heart. A busy time of it had the 
 President bending day and night over his work 
 and trying to turn all forces at his command 
 into the service of his country. 
 
 In the November of 1861, Captain Wilkes of 
 our navy captured two Southerners, Messrs. 
 Mason and Slidell, who had run the blockade 
 and were going abroad to try to get England 
 and France to recognize the Southern Con- 
 federacy. They had run across to Havana and 
 there taken passage in a British mail steamer 
 — the " Trent.' ' It was from this ship that Cap- 
 tain Wilkes took them. There was great ado. 
 The South rejoiced, because she believed that 
 the English were so angry to have passengers 
 taken from one of their ships that they would 
 go to war. It was perhaps right that the men 
 should not be detained ; but the manner in which 
 they were demanded by the British minister 
 proved to the Americans how much the English 
 people were in favor of the South and hoped for 
 their success, and how rude they could be to 
 the government when they thought it had on its 
 hands a war in which perhaps it could not con- 
 quer. 
 
 But this was a time when President Lincoln 
 took counsel of his wise General Discretion 
 
SOME OF THE UNION GENERALS. 227 
 
 decided that he would not have a war with Eng- 
 land on our hands at the same time with the 
 war with the Southern confederacy, or at all, if 
 he could help it, and gave up Messrs. Mason and 
 Slidell. They could not do any real harm, after 
 all. For England and France did not recognize 
 the confederacy then, or ever; and after the 
 Union cause had won, of course they said that 
 they had never thought of doing it. 
 
XXX. 
 
 People Who Tried to Advise. 
 
 Stoddard says that a President's mail is 
 always large; but that Mr. Lincoln's grew so 
 heavy that it was impossible that he should 
 examine it himself. "Counting packages of 
 documents as one 'letter,' the number of letters 
 of all kinds," he says, "varied from two hun- 
 dred to two hundred and fifty a day." These 
 treated of all imaginable subjects. Some one 
 tells a story of one of Mr. Lincoln's private sec- 
 retaries who sat opening and throwing letters 
 into the waste basket by dozens and scores. A 
 gentleman who sat watching him grew very 
 angry and asked him how he dared to destroy 
 what the President himself should have an 
 opportunity to read? 
 
 "Look at those letters yourself," answered 
 the secretary. 
 
 And when the gentleman did so, his wrath 
 turned against the writers. For the letters 
 
 228 
 
PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO ADVISE. 229 
 
 were full of anger, insult, abuse and all evil 
 and hateful words heaped upon the sad and 
 burdened President. 
 
 Such fault-finding and abuse as this never 
 reached Mr. Lincoln. But there was much 
 advice, some mixed with much criticism and 
 fault-finding which he did receive. Some of 
 this he paid no attention to in words, although, 
 no doubt, it hurt him. And other advice came 
 to him in such ways that he must notice if he 
 did not follow it. For Mr. Lincoln had a mind 
 of his own and followed that; and it brought 
 him out right, while other people 's advice would 
 very possibly have landed the country in de- 
 struction. It seems so strange to have persons 
 who are not in a thing at all think they know 
 so much more about it than those who are in 
 the midst of affairs and have every means of 
 knowing the truth, and of knowing the way out, 
 when there is a way out of difficulties. 
 
 It happened that those who ought to have 
 known Lincoln better sometimes tried to guide 
 him as they should not have done. When he 
 first became President, Mr. Seward who was his 
 secretary of state and a great scholar, remem- 
 bered that Mr. Lincoln had not been educated 
 like himself and thought that the President 
 would not know at all what to say or do in 
 regard to managing the representatives of Eng- 
 
230 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 land and France and other countries, nor know 
 about many things requiring information and 
 skill and ability such as a President ought to 
 have. So, he offered to guide Mr. Lincoln and 
 act for him in such affairs. He wrote something 
 of this sort to him. Mr. Lincoln was very kind 
 and noble; he never told about the letter, or 
 referred to it again after he had answered Mr. 
 Seward. But he said to him that such things 
 were the President's business to attend to, and 
 that he should do it. So Seward found out that 
 Lincoln had a mind of his own and knew how to 
 use it; and the two men became good and true 
 friends so long as Mr. Lincoln lived — so good 
 friends that when Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, 
 the murderers tried to kill Mr. Seward also. 
 
 There was an editor in Washington who was 
 always finding fault with the President and 
 writing things against him. One day a friend 
 said to Mr. Lincoln that if only he would invite 
 that editor to call to see him and pay him a little 
 attention, the man would probably be pleased 
 about it, and turn around and say good things of 
 him. But Abraham Lincoln answered with that 
 honest pride which had won the hearts of the 
 people and made them trust him. "I never 
 have done an official act for my own personal 
 political power," he said; "and I shall not do it 
 now. I have not invited Horace Greeley and 
 
PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO ADVISE. 231 
 
 other editors of much more importance and pa- 
 triotism than this editor to call upon me, and I 
 shall not ask this one." And he did not. 
 
 But there was one letter which Horace Gree- 
 ley, then the editor of the Neiv York Tribune, a 
 leading Kepublican paper, wrote him a week 
 after the battle of Bull Run which must have 
 grieved the President much. ' ' You are not con- 
 sidered a great man, ' ' wrote Mr. Greeley. And 
 then he went on to say that if Mr. Lincoln was 
 sure that we could never recover from the defeat 
 at Bull Run, he ought not to carry on the war 
 any longer, to have more men killed, but should 
 call a peace conference at once, and arrange 
 with the South ; and he begged him not to think 
 of himself; but to do what he thought right and 
 that Greeley would help him. 
 
 But though some men thought with Greeley 
 that all was lost because of one defeat, all 
 were not so; the faith of the people swept 
 back in a great tide of loyalty. Congress was 
 true ; men came into the army to more than fill 
 the places of those lost; the Governors of the 
 States offered troops and hurried them forward 
 to Washington. In it all the President was calm 
 in speech and manner, however his heart ached ; 
 and he began to show his great ability in admin- 
 istrating affairs, which, it was said of him 
 "enabled him to smooth mountains of obstacles 
 
232 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 and bridge rivers of difficulty in his control of 
 men." On the night after the battle of Bull 
 Run he began to plan out what next the army 
 should do, and when people came to him with 
 their advice and their plans, he was all ready to 
 tell them a story and send them away, not letting 
 them know at all what was in his own mind, for 
 that would have spoiled all. 
 
 There was once a temperance committee which 
 waited on the President and told him that the 
 reason the army of the Potomac did not win vic- 
 tories was because the soldiers drank so much 
 whisky that the Lord would not allow them to 
 be successful. Now, nobody hated intoxicating 
 drink of all kinds more than Mr. Lincoln. But 
 he could not help saying to this committee which 
 came to advise him, that it seemed strange if 
 their belief was true, because the confederate 
 army drank a great deal more whisky than the 
 Northern did. 
 
 If he could call people's attention to any fact 
 he wanted them to notice, he never sought 
 around for fine words; this is the reason his 
 speeches and letters are so forceful and so 
 admired. One day a man who knew him very 
 well came to him and begged him not to use 
 the word "sugar-coated" in some message he 
 was sending. "If you think there's any 
 doubt about their knowing what ' sugar-coated' 
 
PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO ADVISE. 233 
 
 means/ ' returned Mr. Lincoln, "I will change 
 it." But as there could not be, he let it stand. 
 
 He was worn and tired with the great numbers 
 of persons always coming to see him. Yet he 
 was impatient of any measures taken to keep 
 the people away from him; he wanted them to 
 have the opportunity to come freely as he 
 believed the people ought to be able to come to 
 their President. So, he answered them as best 
 he could, granted their requests when he be- 
 lieved it possible, and sent them away with 
 stories when he could do no more for them. 
 
XXXI. 
 
 General Lee Comes into Maryland. 
 
 One day when President Lincoln and some of 
 his generals had arranged to meet General 
 McClellan and he kept them waiting for him a 
 long time and then never came at all, when the 
 generals were angry for this insult to the Presi- 
 dent whom McClellan often treated rudely, Mr. 
 Lincoln said to them : ' ' Why, I would hold his 
 horses for him if he would only give us vic- 
 tory !" 
 
 General McClellan had been put in command 
 of the great army of the Potomac after General 
 Scott resigned his position as commanding gen- 
 eral in the October of 1861; but he was prac- 
 tically in command from almost directly after 
 the battle of Bull Eun on the July before, until 
 the seventh of November, 1862, when he was 
 finally relieved of his command. In that time 
 there had been a brief interval when without 
 being definitely superseded, the command of an 
 
 234 
 
GENERAL LEE COMES INTO MARYLAND. 235 
 
 army called the army of Virginia instead of that 
 of the Potomac had been given to other generals. 
 This was because McClellan either could not or 
 would not attack the confederates when he had 
 a splendid army under his command and the 
 whole country was waiting and wondering at 
 his delay and asking why he did not do some- 
 thing, and the President was sending him word 
 over and over and over that he must get after 
 the enemy "by some route ;" for McClellan 
 always objected to whatever Mr. Lincoln sug- 
 gested. He did drill the army into good order 
 and discipline; but he never did anything with 
 it like what it was reasonable to expect from a 
 splendid army like the army of the Potomac. 
 Mr. Lincoln said of him that he was "an admir- 
 able engineer," but he seemed "to have a 
 special talent for a stationary engine." He was 
 always so afraid of doing something "to bring 
 on a general engagement," — as if that was not 
 what everybody else wanted ! 
 
 How many times the President ordered him to 
 start on his campaign could not be told. But 
 as some one said: " McClellan 's capacity for 
 waiting a little longer was marvellous." At 
 last, however, he did set forward for what the 
 President and the country hoped was Richmond. 
 But instead he went to Yorktown without deci- 
 sive result. 
 
236 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 There had been righting, though, that season 
 and terrible battles, " Seven Pines," "Fair 
 Oaks," "Mechanicsville," " Malvern Hill, " and 
 smaller engagements. So many men had been 
 wounded and killed, or died of illness, and noth- 
 ing had been done for the government. Indeed, 
 it was the greatest advantage to the confeder- 
 ates that McClellan did nothing for so long; it 
 gave them a fine opportunity to get ready. 
 
 At last the President and the country had had 
 enough of this thing. In spite of the battles, 
 some won, some lost, the campaign of the Penin- 
 sula had been a great failure. McClellan was 
 ordered to come back from Yorktown, and gen- 
 eral command of the armies was given to Gen- 
 eral Halleck who had been doing good work out 
 West;, so that for a time General McClellan 
 was under him. Then also Mr. Lincoln made 
 an army of Virginia and put General Pope in 
 command of this. So that in the summer of 
 1862 McClellan although he was not put out of 
 his command had to stand aside for awhile and 
 let somebody else try to work, and to help all he 
 could. 
 
 But did he help ? General Halleck kept send- 
 ing for him to return; but he would not start 
 until he got ready and that was too late to be 
 of service. Some of his officers also cared more 
 to injure other generals than to save their coun- 
 
GENERAL LEE COMES INTO MARYLAND. 237 
 
 try. General Pope intercepted a letter from 
 General Lee to another confederate general say- 
 ing that he (Lee) intended to get between 
 General Pope and Washington and destroy him 
 in a great battle and then march into Maryland. 
 Now was the time for McClellan to send Pope 
 reinforcements from his army of the Potomac, 
 so that Pope might win a great victory. Instead 
 of this, one of McClellan 's friends and generals 
 heard the guns of Pope's army all the day of the 
 battle and never sent him any help. Pope was 
 brave and the soldiers fought splendidly. He 
 had reason to expect that forty or fifty thousand 
 men from the army of the Potomac would reach 
 him in time for the battle, and he made his 
 arrangements accordingly. About seven thou- 
 sand came to him instead. The whole Virginia 
 army of the confederates was upon him. It was 
 no wonder that his plans went wrong and he was 
 defeated at the battle of Manassas, commonly 
 called the second Bull Run, and at Gaines ' Mills, 
 and had to retreat, and afterward to resign his 
 command. 
 
 At that time there was nothing for Mr. Lin- 
 coln to do but give the command again to Gen- 
 eral McClellan, and let him have another chance, 
 and a splendid chance, to make his name and 
 fame by a great victory, so that the country 
 would forget how slow he had been and would 
 
238 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 only rejoice that, at last, he had, as we say, "got 
 there." For this was the time that the Poet 
 Whittier tells us of in his poem, "Barbara 
 Frietchie": 
 
 "On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
 When Lee marched over the mountain-wall, — 
 
 "Over the mountains winding down, 
 Horse and foot into Frederick town. 
 
 When 
 
 "Up the street came the rebel tread, 
 Stonewall Jackson riding ahead." 
 
 Here was Lee with his army in Maryland. 
 He thought that he had come to stay, or to march 
 still further into the Northern States. General 
 Lee issued a proclamation to the people of Mary- 
 land that he had come to free them from their 
 bondage to the Union. But all the men who 
 had wanted to join the confederate army had 
 gone over the Potomac long before, and only two 
 or three hundred enlisted in Lee's army. 
 
 General McClellan followed up Lee, and 
 although it was thought that with better manage- 
 ment he might have fought the army while it 
 was divided, and really "smashed" it, yet he 
 actually did come to a battle at Antietam. It 
 was a terrible battle, too, fought desperately on 
 both sides. This battle followed the Union vic- 
 tory of South Mountain, where McClellan did 
 
GENERAL LEE COMES INTO MARYLAND. 239 
 
 not pursue vigorously. Antietam was fought 
 September seventeenth, 1862. It was not well 
 managed ; but it was splendidly fought on both 
 sides, as has been said. Each side claimed the 
 victory; to General Lee it was "a drawn bat- 
 tle' ' where it should have been an absolute de- 
 feat. But it was so " drawn' ' that he had to 
 go back into Virginia again and give up his 
 attempt upon the North for that time. 
 
 As General McClellan did not follow up Gen- 
 eral Lee, the President decided to appoint a 
 new commander — Ambrose E. Burnside. Gen- 
 eral Burnside did not want to take command of 
 the army; he was afraid he did not know enough 
 of generalship. And although he was very loyal 
 and brave, it seemed true. For in December 
 came the terrible defeat of Fredericksburg. In 
 this battle both sides had very many brave sol- 
 diers killed and wounded. And so the year 1862 
 came to an end sadly for the country. 
 
XXXII. 
 
 Congress and Slavery. 
 
 In the winter of 1861-2, while the army of the 
 Potomac was still under the command of Gen- 
 eral McClellan, some members of the famous 
 Hutchinson family of singers who in those days 
 were widely known in New England came to 
 Washington, and asked the secretary of war to 
 permit them to visit the camps across the Poto- 
 mac and sing to the soldiers. Secretary Cam- 
 eron was delighted, for their songs were simple 
 and beautiful; he not only allowed them to go, 
 but he commended them. So, McClellan gave 
 his permission to have them sing. Delighted 
 crowds of soldiers gathered about wherever the 
 singers went ; for the songs brought the best and 
 dearest thoughts of their own homes back to 
 them. But an officer passing near caught a 
 word that sounded like " abolition. ' ' That 
 would never do. There was a small tempest 
 among those to whom this was reported until 
 
 240 
 
Copyright, 1900, bj M:Clure, Phillips, 
 
 THE PRESIDENT VISITS CAMP. 
 
CONGRESS AND SLAVERY. 241 
 
 news reached McClellan himself. For the Hut- 
 chinsons were singing that most stirring and 
 beautiful hymn written by the Poet Whittier 
 "In War Time," a translation of Luther's 
 Hymn, meaning "A Mighty Fortress is our 
 God. ' ' It was a song for men to hear when none 
 knew how soon they might be called to give up 
 their lives for their country. 
 
 "In vain the bells of war shall ring 
 Of triumphs and revenges, 
 While still is spared the evil thing 
 That severs and estranges. 
 But blest the ear 
 That yet shall hear 
 The jubilant bell 
 That rings the knell 
 Of Slavery forever!" 
 
 As soon as he heard of it, McClellan issued an 
 order forbidding the Hutchinsons to sing to the 
 troops and sending the singers back across the 
 Potomac. For General McClellan had an- 
 nounced to the people of Virginia what amount- 
 ed to a promise to send back to them any slaves 
 who should escape into the Union lines. This 
 treatment of the Hutchinson family shows how 
 many of the commanders felt in regard to 
 slavery. But they could not keep the soldiers 
 from that strange song which came from no- 
 
242 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 body knows where and was a favorite in the 
 army for so long: 
 
 "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, 
 His soul is marching on ! " 
 
 This was a hidden threat against slavery 
 whether the soldiers understood it or not. 
 
 But all generals did not agree with McClellan. 
 General Butler at first thought the same. But 
 when he was in command at Fortress Monroe, 
 three negro slaves came within the Union lines 
 from the confederate army near by. They said 
 they were the property of a confederate colonel 
 who was going to send them to North Carolina 
 to work on confederate fortifications there. The 
 owner sent word to Butler to return them to 
 him. But General Butler thought that if the ne- 
 groes were going to be set to work on fortifica- 
 tions, it would be better to set them to work on 
 his own. He could not see why we should send 
 men, black or white, to help build confederate 
 fortifications behind which the Union soldiers 
 could be shot down. If the negroes were going 
 to do any digging or work of any kind, they 
 ought to do it for him. He did not discuss sla- 
 very at all; he took the colored men just as he 
 would have taken horses or mules or powder 
 and shot, or food, or fodder for cattle, or the 
 cattle themselves, or anything, no matter what 
 
CONGRESS AND SLAVERY. 243 
 
 it was, that could help the confederates and 
 make them stronger. In all war this is fair and 
 is always done, and it is called " contraband of 
 war." So, General Butler informed the Colonel 
 that he should not return the slaves ; and he kept 
 them to help build fortifications and do what 
 else they could; and he called them and other 
 slaves that came into our lines "contraband of 
 war." 
 
 The term was caught up instantly all over 
 the country ; and the newspapers and the people 
 laughed over the cleverness of this lawyer gen- 
 eral and saw the point at once. Why should 
 Union men dig in the ditches and send back the 
 slaves to do the confederates ' digging for them? 
 Why should the government try to save the con- 
 federates at the cost of its own soldiers, since 
 everything that helped these confederates hurt 
 its own men? 
 
 And Congress took up the matter after a 
 time. 
 
 But first .it passed a bill declaring slavery 
 abolished in the District of Columbia, and the 
 President signed this April sixteenth, 1862. Mr. 
 Lincoln as he signed it said: "Little did I 
 dream in 1849 when I proposed to abolish slav- 
 ery at this capital, and could scarcely get a 
 hearing for the proposition, that it would be so 
 soon accomplished." 
 
244 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 On the nineteenth of June, 1862, Congress 
 passed a bill forbidding slavery forever in all 
 the Territories of the United States then exist- 
 ing, or that might hereafter be acquired. 
 
 March thirteenth, 1862, President Lincoln 
 signed a bill passed by Congress forbidding 
 officers and soldiers in the army and navy from 
 returning fugitive slaves. And July sixteenth, 
 1862, Mr. Lincoln signed a law passed by Con- 
 gress declaring that all slaves of persons in 
 arms against the government or aiding the con- 
 federacy escaping from such persons and taking 
 refuge within Union army lines, and all slaves 
 captured from such persons or deserted by 
 them, and coming under control of the govern- 
 ment, or slaves found in a place where the con- 
 federate army had been and the Union army 
 came, should be considered "captives of war, 
 and shall be forever free of their servitude and 
 not again held as slaves." 
 
 If good Union men in confederate States or 
 in the border States remaining in the Union lost 
 their slaves, the government was to pay them 
 for these. But this law came later. 
 
 At the beginning of the war when General 
 Fremont, given command in Missouri, had 
 issued a proclamation freeing the blacks of the 
 confederates whom he was fighting, Mr. Lincoln 
 had forbidden it because the time had not then 
 
CONGRESS AXD SLAVERY. 245 
 
 come. But in 1862 when the slaves had been 
 freed at Washington and the war was going on, 
 with men always needed to fill up the army, the 
 question of arming the blacks to fight for their 
 own freedom and help the Union as soldiers, 
 was discussed. The right to do this became a 
 law, on the seventeenth of July, 1862. 
 
 But this was not all. The rest which was 
 so much needed was coming, not too soon, but at 
 the time when it must come, the time that Abra- 
 ham Lincoln had been waiting for with his wise 
 patience, when the people were ready, too, and 
 waiting, and when emancipation— freedom for 
 the colored race— would unite the North and not 
 divide it. At last he spoke; and the world 
 heard. 
 
XXXIII. 
 
 The Emancipation Proclamation. 
 
 While all this discussion about slavery was 
 going on, and Congress was passing laws as to 
 what should be done with the slaves, and Abra- 
 ham Lincoln with all the powers of his great 
 mind and all the earnestness of his great heart 
 and all the prayers of his soul that trusted in 
 God for guidance, was laboring over the ques- 
 tion as to what he was to do for them— what 
 were the slaves doing for themselves? How 
 were they behaving? The South had always been 
 in terror lest they should rise and murder their 
 masters and seize upon freedom with hands red 
 with the blood of the white men? It had 
 watched all travelers, for fear that these should 
 bring suggestions to the slaves; it had forbid- 
 den teaching of all kind for the colored people- 
 all for fear of what might happen. 
 
 And when the war came, what did happen? 
 
 246 
 
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 247 
 
 Did the negroes rise against their masters ? Not 
 at all. The worst thing they did was to run 
 away from them ; or, sometimes, it was the mas- 
 ters who ran away and left the colored people 
 they had owned to do as they pleased. And 
 many and many a time, instead of cruelty to 
 their old masters when these grew poor and 
 helpless in the war, the former slaves were full 
 of loyalty and goodness to them. 
 
 But there was one thing the slaves all wanted 
 —to be free. And not the wisest man in America 
 knew so surely from the very beginning that the 
 war was going to make them free as these ignor- 
 ant black men and women knew it. 
 
 As soldiers in the Union army they fought 
 well and bravely side by side with other soldiers 
 who were trying to save the Union. But ex- 
 cept as soldiers under discipline, they were 
 peaceable; they waited for the liberty which 
 was certainly coming to them. The spirit of 
 faith and prayer in which they waited Whittier 
 has told us in his "At Port Royal" where the 
 negro boatmen, freed by the coming of the 
 Union troops, row and sing: 
 
 "We pray de Lord ; He gib us signs 
 Dat some day we be free ; 
 De norf-wind tell it to de pines, 
 De wild-duck to de sea." 
 
248 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 This was months before Abraham Lincoln's 
 Emancipation Proclamation. But from the first 
 the faith of the colored people in "Massa Lin- 
 kum" was perfect and unbounded. Others 
 feared and hoped and watched ; but these people 
 knew. It seemed as if the God they loved had 
 whispered in wind and wave and bird the 
 prophecy of liberty to them. 
 
 We should remember, too, that if the govern- 
 ment helped the slaves to freedom, they most 
 surely helped it to victory. If slavery had con- 
 tinued, we should have had no united country 
 today. For the cause of separation would have 
 still separated North and South, unless we had 
 been as Lincoln said years before the war, all 
 slaveholding, North and South. But before the 
 end of the war between one and two hundred 
 thousand colored men were in our army. 
 
 And then the negroes not only fought in the 
 Union army; they helped the government in 
 a hundred other ways. They worked on its 
 ramparts and in its ditches; they brought the 
 generals to whom they came valuable informa- 
 tion as to what the confederates were doing and 
 where they might be found ; and many an expe- 
 dition owed its success to the guidance of some 
 escaped slave who knew the country and the 
 roads and piloted the soldiers to victory. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln never proved better the per- 
 
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 249 
 
 feet uprightness of his character than when he 
 hesitated in declaring the slaves of the confeder- 
 ates free and waited to do this until he was sure 
 the time had fully come. All his life, as we 
 know, he had hated slavery. No man in the 
 world wanted more to have these people free 
 than he did. But Lincoln never did a thing 
 simply because he wanted it done, and even 
 when he knew that on some accounts it ought 
 to be done ; he must be satisfied that he was fully 
 right ; then no power in the world could prevent 
 his doing the thing. Others could tell what 
 ought to be done, what they would do in his 
 place. But they were not in his place. Even if 
 the South did deny it for the time, Lincoln was 
 President of the whole country, of the South 
 as well as the North; that was what the armies 
 and the war meant; his oath of office meant to 
 him that he was friend and ruler of the South, 
 not its enemy, and was bound to consider in 
 all he did what was best for it as well as for 
 the North. Then, there were the loyal border 
 States which held slaves and were not ready to 
 give them up, even for money ; for Mr. Lincoln 
 had tried these States. 
 
 Then, as it grew more and more plain that 
 nothing could be done until slavery was out of 
 the way, while people on both sides of the ques- 
 tion talked him to death as to what he ought or 
 
250 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 ought not to do, he made up his own mind and 
 waited the right time. 
 
 The spring and summer of 1862 were hard for 
 the Union cause; it had some victories bought 
 with many lives of the soldiers; but the cam- 
 paign before Richmond had been a failure ; Lee 
 was threatening to invade the North and things 
 looked very dark. That summer Lincoln made 
 a draft of his Emancipation Proclamation ; and 
 at the end of July, or the first of August, he 
 called a full meeting of the Cabinet, and read 
 it to them. Some liked, and some criticised. 
 Then Mr. Seward said that he liked it, but 
 thought it ought not to be issued just at that 
 time because the government had been having 
 so many defeats that the country would think 
 it had come to the end of its resources ; it would 
 be better to wait until times had improved. It 
 is probable that the President himself thought 
 so, too ; but he wanted to hear what his advisers 
 would say. He said to some one afterward that 
 he knew when Lee came over the Potomac that 
 McClellan would drive him back sometime, and 
 then the Emancipation Proclamation should be 
 sent after him. 
 
 The Saturday after the battle of Antietam, 
 when Lee, not beaten thoroughly as he ought 
 to have been, but still driven back, had crossed 
 the Potomac again, the President called another 
 
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 251 
 
 Cabinet meeting; but this time it was not to 
 give advice, but to hear his decision. For he 
 said that the time for hesitation or delay had 
 passed, that emancipation must now be the de- 
 clared policy of the administration, and that 
 public sentiment would sustain it. "That was 
 not all," says Stoddard in telling the scene. 
 "In a low voice and reverently, Mr. Lincoln 
 added: 'And I have promised my God that I 
 will do it.' Mr. Chase who sat nearest him, 
 heard indistinctly, and asked : 'Did I understand 
 you correctly, Mr. President V Mr. Lincoln re- 
 plied : ' I made a solemn vow before God, that, 
 if General Lee should be driven back from 
 Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the 
 declaration of freedom to the slaves.' " 
 
 The proclamation was issued Monday, Sep- 
 tember twenty-second, 1862. It announced that 
 on January first, 1863, all persons held as slaves 
 in any State or part of a State then in resistance 
 against the United States should be thencefor- 
 ward and forever free, and that the government 
 would maintain their freedom. 
 
 There were the border States still loyal to the 
 government, and there were places even in the 
 States resisting the authority of the government 
 where people were loyal. But it was plain that 
 if the other slaves were free, the time would 
 
252 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 soon come when these would be also, and Mr. 
 Lincoln in his proclamation promised to recom- 
 mend that all citizens who had remained loyal 
 during the war should be paid for all losses of 
 property they had suffered "by acts of the 
 United States, including the loss of slaves/ ' 
 
 Before the sun went down that twenty-second 
 of September, the whole nation had heard of 
 the proclamation. The greater part of the 
 loyal people received it with thanks to Lincoln, 
 and with thanksgiving to G-od. All over New 
 England, and over New York, and Pennsyl- 
 vania, and across the Western prairies to the 
 little towns by the Rockies the people rang the 
 joy bells. There were great public meetings, 
 and resolutions of approval, and thanksgiving 
 in the churches. In many places the soldiers 
 cheered and fired salutes. McClellan said his 
 army would not fight an abolition war ; but when 
 Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to this army, the sol- 
 diers welcomed him with delight. 
 
XXXIV. 
 
 Foes Before and Foes Behind. 
 
 That first year in the White House Mr. Lin- 
 coln's two boys, Willie and "Tad," used to run 
 in and out through the rooms and the offices 
 bringing sunshine with them, going everywhere 
 and doing everything, as boys have a way of 
 doing. There is a story how one day all the 
 bells in the White House rang the whole day long 
 and nobody could make out what was the matter 
 —until, at last, little Tad was discovered in the 
 garret at work on the centre pin from which all 
 the wires started. Willie's tricks were no less 
 amusing. Often, one, or perhaps both boys 
 would come and stand by their father's knee 
 when he was talking to grave statesmen or self- 
 important generals. And if they did receive 
 a rebuke from the President, it was most mildly 
 given and did not much resemble "army disci- 
 pline"; for no man ever loved his children better 
 than Mr. Lincoln did. 
 
 253 
 
254 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 But these happy moments to the burdened 
 President came suddenly to an end. For in the 
 February of 1862, when all his strength was 
 needed to try to start a vigorous campaign in 
 Virginia, both boys were taken ill ; and the elder 
 of the two, Willie, a child full of promise, died. 
 The broken-hearted father could spare but little 
 time for mourning; even then his duties filled 
 his days, and he well understood that noble say- 
 ing that grief for those who have died should 
 not interfere with our duties to the living. But 
 his sorrow lived with him the rest of his days. 
 
 And so, saddened by his personal loss in the 
 midst of the disasters and dangers of his coun- 
 try, he went forward to meet her foes who were 
 marshalled before in battle array ; but he often 
 turned about, to drive back the foes and traitors 
 behind him at the North who were striking at 
 the nation's life. At the South in the bad days 
 of the war, no man dared for his life to say a 
 word in favor of the Union. But at the North 
 men said what they pleased, until some inter- 
 fered with the raising of men for the army and 
 the carrying on of the war. Then how did Mr. 
 Lincoln punish the worst of these Northern 
 traitors? He sent him down South among the 
 secessionists and ordered him to stay there until 
 the war was over ! 
 
 All the North laughed. But the traitors trem- 
 
FOES BEFORE AND FOES BEHIND. 255 
 
 bled. To be sent as prisoners to a Northern 
 fortress might make them pitied ; and they could 
 perhaps get away. But times were hard at the 
 South; people there had not too much to eat, 
 even then. Besides, there men thought a great 
 deal of going with one's State and might despise 
 them. They felt like the Southern wife of a 
 naval officer who had been true to his flag; after 
 he died in the service of his country, she lived 
 among his relatives and railed against the 
 North. But when they asked her why she did 
 not go South among her own relations, she said 
 she was much safer and more comfortable at 
 the North. So, after Mr. Lincoln had sent the 
 Copperhead, Vallandingham, down South, the 
 other Copperheads kept more quiet. 
 
 But so many of the best patriots were in the 
 army, away from their States, that the fall elec- 
 tions went badly; and this might mean shortness 
 of men and money for the war. The President 
 must keep the North united. He must make 
 Europe perceive that the government would 
 be successful in this war. He must make the 
 emancipation policy a fact. And to do these 
 things he needed victories. No wonder that he 
 turned his sad eyes to the army where General 
 Ambrose E. Burnside, brave and loyal, but not 
 a great commander, was leading the army of the 
 Potomac. But in Burnside as a leader there was 
 
256 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 bitter disappointment. For, so far from bring- 
 ing victory,- it was under him that was fought 
 and lost the battle of Fredericksburg in the 
 December of 1862, a battle which, as has already 
 been said, cost thousands of brave men. That 
 defeat made the confederates jubilant, discour- 
 aged the loyal people, but did not break their 
 spirit, and gave fresh opportunity to those at 
 the North who opposed the war. 
 
 The year 1862 ended in the gloom of this de- 
 feat. It was understood also that the next year, 
 1863, the confederates would put forth their 
 utmost military strength. There must be new 
 strength in the armies to conquer this. But of 
 all the war measures during Lincoln's adminis- 
 tration none was so unpopular as the " Draft 
 Act" which he requested of Congress. This 
 would enroll the militia of all the States and 
 make them subject to the call of the President at 
 need. Instead of taking only those who were 
 willing, as the volunteers had been, it would take 
 also the cowards and those who did not care for 
 their country. But men must be had; for ter- 
 rible battles were coming, as Lincoln knew. 
 
 Early in April came the victories of Shiloh 
 and Corinth, which will be more fully spoken 
 of later. Mr. Lincoln in a proclamation asked 
 the people to "render thanks to our Heavenly 
 Father for these inestimable blessings." 
 
FOES BEFORE AND FOES BEHIND. 257 
 
 In the May of 1863, however, the army of the 
 Potomac under General Hooker, who had taken 
 General Burnside's place, was terribly defeated 
 by General Lee at Chancellorsville in Virginia. 
 The fighting was long and obstinate and the 
 losses on both sides very great. The people did 
 not know then, as Mr. Lincoln did, that the bat- 
 tle had cost the South very much, so that a few 
 such battles would have left the confederates 
 but a small army. Lincoln kept urging that 
 another battle should be fought immediately, 
 before Lee could rest from this one. But he 
 could not get it done. The right man had not 
 come to Virginia yet. 
 
 There was more and more hatred of the draft ; 
 and, a little later, a great riot in New York City, 
 on account of it. At no time in the whole war 
 had things looked darker for the Union than 
 after Chancellorsville. 
 
 But the Emancipation Proclamation of Jan- 
 uary first, 1863, had been made. Slavery was 
 gone, although there were still acts to be passed 
 to wipe it from our records. And the South 
 was in trouble also; it realized its failing 
 strength, and resolved that something desperate 
 must be done. 
 
 General Lee did it. For the South had heard 
 all the Copperhead talk at the North and be- 
 lieved that it meant a great party to rise to its 
 
258 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 support if the Southern army were present to 
 support it. The fact was that the Copperheads 
 were no fighters; they took it out in talk; they 
 would never help anybody. But the confeder- 
 ates counted on them and on New York City. 
 And so, General Lee with the best army that the 
 South had, crossed the Potomac and marched 
 into Pennsylvania. 
 
 Then the whole North awoke and shook itself 
 in its wrath. The draft was almost popular. 
 The weary eyes of the President lightened as 
 the military movements on the Mississippi 
 brightened the dark sky with hope. And his 
 waiting ears caught the sound, all over the 
 North, of men marching to swell the army of 
 the Union and singing as they marched: 
 
 "We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
 thousand more, 
 From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New 
 England's shore!" 
 
XXXV. 
 
 General Grant at Vicksburg. 
 
 In the May of 1861, at about the same time 
 that McClellan was created a general of the 
 army of the Potomac, there was a little man 
 whose home was at Galena, Illinois, but who 
 had been serving on the staff of the Governor 
 of Illinois, helping to organize the State militia. 
 He had been educated at the military school at 
 West Point, as had McClellan, and also he had 
 been in the Mexican war, as McClellan had been. 
 At first offers of a position in the army had 
 been declined by this little man from Galena. 
 But when the President called for one hundred 
 and fifty thousand soldiers, this modest man 
 from Lincoln's own State wrote to the war de- 
 partment at Washington that he had served fif- 
 teen years in the regular army, four of these at 
 West Point, and he orfered his services to the 
 government to the close of the war in any capaci- 
 ty that might be offered him; and he added 
 
 259 
 
260 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 that he felt himself competent to command a 
 regiment "if the President in his judgment 
 should see fit to intrust me with one." He 
 added that he was still serving on the Gov- 
 ernor's staff, and that a letter addressed to him 
 at Springfield would reach him. 
 
 This modest little man who held himself ca- 
 pable of commanding a regiment was Ulysses 
 S. Grant, a general who blazed a track to victory 
 through the woods of difficulty, destined to be 
 Lincoln's final choice to command the armies of 
 the Union, the coming man whom the country 
 and all the world would honor. 
 
 He got his appointment. He telegraphed 
 back : "I accept the regiment and will start im- 
 mediately." The regiment given to him was a 
 set of insubordinate men whom nobody else 
 could do anything with and whom most of the 
 officers were afraid of. As soon as he arrived, 
 ' ' travel-stained, ununif ormed, with a large ban- 
 dana tied outside the waist of his sack-coat for 
 a sash," say Nicolay and Hay, "and a stick for 
 a sword, Colonel Grant undertook to get his reg- 
 iment into line— a vain task. The new com- 
 mander persevered in his efforts quietly, with- 
 out bluster, without oaths, without for a moment 
 losing his patience or his temper, but holding 
 on to his work with that desperate and char- 
 acteristic pertinacity which made him famous, ' ' 
 
GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 261 
 
 Still, this first attempt failed, and the Governor 
 went home thinking he had made a mistake in 
 Grant. Soon after Fremont, who was then 
 commander, ordered the regiment to Quincy. 
 The railroad agent went to Grant to find what 
 transportation he wanted. Grant said that a 
 part of the way he should have to march, as 
 there was no railroad and they could not wait 
 to have one built; and as the regiment was in 
 bad discipline, he would march all the way ; his 
 orders gave him time enough. So he started 
 with his wagons. 
 
 The first evening he issued an order that the 
 next morning the regiment would march at six 
 o'clock. But at six o'clock many of the men 
 were still asleep and the regiment did not get off 
 until seven. The next evening he gave the order 
 that the following morning the regiment would 
 march at six, ready or not ready. At six exactly 
 the column was formed and the march began ; a 
 good many of the laggards had not even their 
 shoes on and had to march without them and 
 could not even carry them. After two or three 
 miles' march the column halted, and the shoes 
 were sent for. The next morning "the tap of 
 the six o'clock drum found every man ready 
 to fall in." This is one of the stories told of 
 Grant. At least, we know that one wonderful 
 
262 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 thing about him was that he was always on 
 time ; and his men had to be. 
 
 It was Mr. Lincoln's belief that the Southern 
 confederacy could not be captured at once, ' ' all 
 in a lump," as one might say; but must be taken 
 possession of "a slice at a time." By wonder- 
 ful tact and ability and knowledge of conditions, 
 Lincoln had kept the States of Missouri, Ken- 
 tucky, and Maryland in the Union when at the 
 beginning of the war they were all perched on 
 a fence so narrow that even a jolt would have 
 sent them to the Southern confederacy. Before 
 the war was over he could say that many sol- 
 diers were in the Union army from each of these 
 States which had at first refused any. 
 
 And the President was continually watching 
 the West to find what was going on there. He 
 found some things he liked well. So did the 
 country. Halleck, Grant, Thomas, on land, and 
 Foote and Farragut in the navy were making it 
 lively for the confederates and taking possession 
 of Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee 
 in a series of victories which there is not space 
 to give in detail. For by the November after 
 his appointment as colonel, Grant had risen to 
 be a general. 
 
 The confederates had fortified and garrisoned 
 Fort Donelson on the Cumberland and Fort 
 Henry on the Tennessee Rivers running through 
 
GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 263 
 
 Kentucky and Tennessee from the South into 
 the Ohio River, because they wanted to keep out 
 the Union gunboats. But General Grant and 
 Flag-officer Foote were not of that mind; they 
 planned an attack of Fort Henry. February 
 sixth, 1862, Foote captured the fort without 
 waiting for Grant to come up. Then Grant and 
 Foote went to Fort Donelson, and besieged it, 
 February sixteenth. After several days' hard 
 fighting, the confederate General Buckner sent a 
 flag of truce to General Grant and asked him to 
 stop the firing for a time until they could settle 
 terms of surrender. Grant did not stop a can- 
 non, but answered him: "No terms except 
 unconditional surrender can be accepted. I pro- 
 pose to move on your works immediately. ' ' But 
 Buckner did not give him a chance; he sur- 
 •rendered at once. Arms, stores and more than 
 twelve thousand prisoners were captured. This 
 was why Grant came to be called: "Uncon- 
 ditional Surrender Grant." How the North 
 liked the name ! 
 
 That same month the Union troops marched 
 into Nashville, and the Unionists in East Ten- 
 nessee rejoiced to see the dear old flag. Early 
 in March the battle of Pea Ridge was fought— a 
 three days' battle— and then General Halleck 
 telegraphed : ' ' The Union flag is floating in Ar- 
 kansas. ' ' The confederates saw that at that rate 
 
264 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 the whole valley of the Mississippi River would 
 soon be lost to them. So General Lee calculated 
 that all would stay "quiet on the Potomac,' ' as 
 it so long had done, and sent some of his best 
 forces West to defeat Generals Grant and BuelL 
 But at the battles of Shiloh— or Pittsburgh 
 Landing, as it is sometimes called — and Corinth, 
 things did not come out as the confederates had 
 planned. General Johnston, one of the best con- 
 federate generals, attacked in haste and fury, 
 planning to whip Grant before General Buell 
 could come up with him. Grant met him with 
 unflinching determination. All day long the bat 
 tie lasted; the Union troops were gradually 
 driven back, with the river behind them, and the 
 day closed in with the advantage all on the con- 
 federate side. General Beauregard announced a 
 complete victory for the confederates. But he 
 spoke a little too soon. For that night Buell 
 came up with his fine army and joined Grant. 
 Some men would have thought he came too late 
 to be of use. But Grant did not look at it so. 
 The next day he started in again, fought the 
 battle all over, drove the confederates from the 
 field and pursued them toward their entrench- 
 ments at Corinth. Soon came the battle of Cor- 
 inth where they were again defeated, and driven 
 from their entrenchments, and the Union forces 
 won an important victory. These were among 
 
GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 265 
 
 the most bloody battles of the war. But the sun 
 went down on flying confederates who had found 
 out what kind of men the soldiers of the "West 
 were, and who never forgot it. The confederate 
 army, too, fought splendidly. 
 
 After New Orleans and some other points 
 upon the river had been captured, Vicksburg, 
 in Mississippi and not far from Jackson, the 
 capital, stood in a strong position and bristling 
 with fortifications which the confederates were 
 always strengthening still more. Its formidable 
 guns swept across the Mississippi River and up 
 and down it for miles and blockaded for the 
 government the passage of this great waterway 
 through our country. Attempts had been made 
 to capture Vicksburg in 1862 ; but they had not 
 been successful, for the place was too strong to 
 be taken by storm. But so long as Vicksburg 
 was in the hands of the South, the river was cut 
 in two for the government, and the States it had 
 conquered were subject to raids if not recap- 
 ture by the confederate forces. It was abso- 
 lutely necessary that the government should 
 have Vicksburg, for that fortress in the West 
 was almost as important to it as Richmond in 
 the East. 
 
 General Grant was set to capture Vicksburg. 
 
 It is impossible to begin to tell all the hard 
 work that he and the brave generals and the 
 
266 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 brave soldiers did, and all the toil and weariness 
 and suffering they endured ; how Grant tried to 
 approach the fortress from different points; 
 how he had to give up now one thing and now 
 another and change his plans to suit the needs 
 of his undertaking; and how more than once 
 some colored man faithful to the Union troops 
 would tell him of a road that he had not known 
 about. The soldiers forced little gunboats up 
 and down narrow rivers where great boughs of 
 trees hung so low that they swept the decks; 
 they encircled the city by land and blockaded it 
 by water so that provisions should not go to the 
 garrison ; they made magnificent charges in try- 
 ing to storm the place ; they then began to mine, 
 when General Grant found that the place was too 
 strong to storm. The men in their mining were 
 sheltered in the woods where they found shade 
 and fine springs of water and were better off 
 than when camping in the dusty city. So, day 
 after day, the mining and fighting went on and 
 the troops were digging their way into Vicks- 
 burg. As the confederate general watched them 
 he had also to meet another foe — hunger. His 
 army was short of provisions; and Grant had 
 surrounded him so thoroughly that there was 
 no chance of relief. Therefore, at last he hung 
 out a white flag and sent to Grant for terms of 
 
GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 267 
 
 surrender. Grant told him it must be " uncon- 
 ditional surrender. " 
 
 In his report, Grant says that the confeder- 
 ates had been defeated in five battles outside of 
 Vicksburg; and that over thirty thousand pris- 
 oners and arms and munitions for sixty thou- 
 sand men had been captured, also much public 
 property, railroads, cars, steamboats, etc., and 
 that much had been destroyed to prevent the 
 Union forces from capturing it. Altogether, the 
 capture of Vicksburg was the most brilliant and 
 successful campaign of the war. 
 
 Vicksburg was captured on the Fourth of 
 July, 1863. 
 
 But that day the nation did not know it. Lee 
 had come into Pennsylvania; and that very 
 Fourth of July something else was taking place 
 that filled all thoughts and all hearts. 
 
XXXVI. 
 
 Wak on the Ocean. 
 
 In a letter of Mr. Lincoln's for publication 
 written in the August of 1863, summing up the 
 results of the war and showing the people where 
 the government then stood, he wrote, referring 
 to the work of the navy: "Nor must Uncle 
 Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the watery 
 margins they have been present, not only on the 
 deep sea, the broad bay and the rapid river, but 
 also up the narrow and muddy bayou, and wher- 
 ever the ground was a little damp, they have 
 been and made their tracks. ' ' When Mr. Stod- 
 dard to whom the President read the letter be- 
 fore sending it, objected to this paragraph, Mr. 
 Lincoln laughed and said he thought Stoddard 
 would point at that. " 'I won't strike it out, 
 though,' he added. 'The plain people will like 
 it. It's just what I mean to say.' " 
 
 And it was true. The navy had been skirting 
 around the Southern shores, running up by 
 
 2G8 
 
WAR ON THE OCEAN. 269 
 
 river and creek and bay into the land and in 
 union with the army taking possession wherever 
 this was possible. Early in 1862 General Burn- 
 side, with Commodore Goldsborough, had cap- 
 tured Roanoke Island in North Carolina, and 
 shortly afterward, in concert with another naval 
 officer, the city of Newburn, the most important 
 seaport of North Carolina. Fort Hatteras and 
 Port Royal in North and South Carolina had 
 been seized by our troops in 1861, and were held. 
 And in 1862, Fort Pulaski in Georgia was cap- 
 tured. And so, by these places, all through the 
 war the stars and stripes floated over three 
 States fighting against them, South Carolina 
 the most violent of all in the confederacy. 
 
 But New Orleans must be captured. In the 
 autumn of 1861 an expedition under command 
 of Captain David G. Farragut, one of the most 
 skilful and daring naval officers in the world, 
 and of General Butler, who commanded the land 
 forces, was organized to capture it. The follow- 
 ing March Butler landed his troops on Ship 
 Island, which is in the Gulf of Mexico between 
 Mobile and New Orleans. This was as far as 
 he could go until Farragut should come with his 
 gunboats and open the way up the river. April 
 seventeenth Farragut began to bombard the 
 forts that guarded the approach to New Orleans 
 by the river. He kept on bombarding for sev- 
 
270 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 eral days ; but the forts would not surrender and 
 he could not destroy them. So, he said that he 
 would run past their guns. It was a wonderful 
 undertaking; for the forts stood on opposite 
 sides of the river and mounted more than one 
 hundred heavy cannon, which swept everything 
 that tried to pass them. And besides this, the 
 river itself was blocked by sunken hulks, by 
 piles and everything else which could be put 
 into it to stop the passage of ships. And this 
 was not all, although it seemed enough; the 
 confederates had thirteen gunboats, an ironclad, 
 and the ram Manassas. 
 
 The people of New Orleans boasted that all 
 they were afraid of was that "the Northern 
 invaders ' ' would not come. They need not have 
 been anxious as to Farragut 's not coming ! ' ' On 
 the night of April twenty-fourth, ' ' says Arnold, 
 "amidst a storm of shot and shell, the darkness 
 illuminated by the mingled fires of ships, forts 
 and burning vessels, he passed Forts Jackson 
 and St. Philip; he crushed through all obstruc- 
 tions ; he destroyed the gunboats which opposed 
 him; he steamed past the batteries; he ascended 
 the great river and laid his broadsides to the 
 proud city of the Southwest." Then New 
 Orleans hauled down the confederate flag, and 
 never had a chance to put it up again. 
 
 But not only on the bays and rivers, but on 
 
WAR ON THE OCEAN. 271 
 
 the ocean also were there battles fought between 
 the North and the South. There is time only 
 to refer to some of them. 
 
 At the beginning of the war when the naval 
 station at Norfolk was given up to the confeder- 
 acy by traitors in the navy, there were ships 
 left in the hands of the confederates, and among 
 them the famous "Merrimac." The confeder- 
 ates sheathed her sides with iron, named her the 
 "Virginia," and in the March of 1862, she 
 steamed down the James River, and destroyed 
 the government vessels, the "Cumberland" and 
 the ' ' Congress. ' ' The ' i Cumberland ' ' fought to 
 the last and went down with flags flying. The 
 * ' Minnesota, ' ' when she was coming to the aid of 
 the "Cumberland," ran aground and was at the 
 mercy of the terrible "Merrimac." There was 
 terror in the North; for Washington itself 
 seemed to be in the power of this frightful 
 "Merrimac." 
 
 But just when we feared the most, there came 
 floating through the water the strangest looking 
 thing that ever called itself a vessel. This was 
 the ironclad "Monitor," built by the famous 
 Ericsson. It attacked the big "Merrimac" with 
 great boldness, and fired into it again and again 
 and again, doing much damage at every shot. 
 But it made no difference how many broadsides 
 the ' i Merrimac ' ' fired back ; they couldn 't hit the 
 
272 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 little "Monitor," for there was nothing of it to 
 hit; it was about all under water, like a turtle. 
 So, the North was no longer afraid of the great 
 "Merrimae," for the little "Monitor" riddled 
 it with shot, until it was glad enough to run to 
 shelter. With all honor to the genius of its 
 builder and the skill and daring of its com- 
 mander, it is said that the chief credit for having 
 the "Monitor" built and on hand at such a 
 crisis, is due to President Lincoln. 
 
 Every one has heard of the battle between the 
 "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama," a cruiser 
 built in England and sailing under the confeder- 
 ate flag, capturing merchant vessels and with 
 others like it doing all it could to ruin com- 
 merce. The "Alabama" was one of the worst 
 of these cruisers. In the June of 1864, after 
 it had been doing much damage on the seas, 
 it put in at Cherbourg, France. Captain Wins- 
 low of the United States navy, in command of 
 the "Kearsarge," heard of it, and started for 
 Cherbourg, and waited for the "Alabama." 
 The "Alabama" made ready for the fight as 
 carefully as possible and then came out to meet 
 the "Kearsarge." There was a tremendous 
 battle between the two ships for about an hour, 
 and then the "Alabama" put out the white flag 
 of surrender, and soon sank. The "Kearsarge" 
 helped to save some of the crew. Admiral Far- 
 
WAR ON THE OCEAN. 273 
 
 ragut said of this battle: "It was fought in full 
 view of thousands of French and English, with 
 full confidence on the part of all but the Union 
 people that we would be whipped. I would 
 sooner have fought that fight than any ever 
 fought on the ocean. " 
 
 There is not space to tell how Admiral Farra- 
 gut captured the forts and city of Mobile when 
 everybody said it could not be done. Nor to 
 speak of other brave and spirited deeds of the 
 United States navy. 
 
XXXVII. 
 
 On the Field of Gettysburg. 
 
 General Lee with a splendid army was now 
 in Pennsylvania; part of his troops had come 
 to Carlisle, about an hour by train from Harris- 
 burg, the capital of the State. Even in Phila- 
 delphia, people had begun to throw up entrench- 
 ments. Where would Lee stop? Who would 
 stop him? This work was for the army of the 
 Potomac, and at that time General Hooker was 
 its commander. To say that Lincoln was anxious 
 is putting it lightly; his whole soul was filled 
 with the importance and the urgency of the 
 coming battle. It must be a fierce one ; for the 
 world has seldom seen as good, and never better 
 armies than the two which were then to meet, 
 General Lee's confederate forces and the Union 
 army of the Potomac, both armies seasoned by 
 many battles, each well aware of the fighting 
 qualities of the other and ready to meet these 
 with equal valor. 
 
 274 
 
ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 275 
 
 But General Hooker just at that time was 
 offended by some orders which he received from 
 General Halleck, or from the President, and he 
 resigned. He was arranging matters finely and 
 it was dangerous at that time to put a new com- 
 mander at the head of the army, but it had to 
 be done. Mr. Lincoln said: "A general who 
 resigns his commission on the eve of battle 
 should always have his resignation accepted, let 
 the consequences be what they may. ' ' So Gen- 
 eral Meade was put in command. General 
 Hooker was noble and patriotic enough to ask 
 to be allowed to serve under him. But Meade 
 did not wish it. But the President later gave 
 Hooker an opportunity to show his valor at the 
 West. This Hooker did. 
 
 It was not at first the purpose of either com- 
 mander to fight the battle at Gettysburg; indeed, 
 Meade chose another spot. But the attack came 
 on at Gettysburg, and there the fight had to be 
 finished. The situation was fine for our army, 
 which was excellently posted in a sort of semi- 
 circle on high ground so that the centre and the 
 wings of the army supported each other. 
 
 On the first of July, 1863, came the first attack 
 of the confederates. That afternoon they had 
 the best of it. But the next day began a fiercer 
 battle with more troops on each side. Some of 
 
276 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 Meade's generals tried to induce him to attack 
 Lee's centre and try to smash through it and 
 divide the confederate army; but Meade wisely 
 chose to keep his strong position and let Lee 
 attack him. Longstreet, the ablest confederate 
 general, begged Lee not to attack as he had 
 ordered. But Lee would do it. He had been 
 successful the day before, and he could not 
 resist trying to defeat Meade ; for he saw what 
 victory would mean to the South. So, the after- 
 noon of July second the battle was on again. 
 How terrible and fierce it was ! The soldiers 
 on both sides, as well as the officers, knew that 
 they were fighting for the life of their cause. 
 For Gettysburg was one of the great battles of 
 the world, not merely because it was one of the 
 most obstinately contested ever fought, and 
 with greater loss of life in proportion to the 
 numbers engaged than in almost any other, nor 
 even because never was greater bravery shown 
 on both sides. But it was a battle for the liber- 
 ties of a great people, a battle to test whether 
 our government was to stand. 
 
 When the sun went down on July second the 
 battle was not yet over. At dawn the morning 
 of the third the two armies went at it again. 
 The confederates were attacked and General 
 Ewell, who commanded the forces which Stone- 
 wall Jackson led when he was living, was driven 
 
ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 277 
 
 back. Then there was a little lull on the battle- 
 field. 
 
 But Lee had determined to take Cemetery 
 Hill, which was the key of the Union position. 
 So, at one o'clock in the afternoon there sud- 
 denly burst out of the stillness the thunder of 
 one hundred and thirty cannon. Never had the 
 soldiers or officers on either side heard or 
 imagined anything so terrific; and when the 
 Union artillery answered back, the uproar was 
 still more terrible. This cannonade lasted about 
 an hour. Then because General Howard ceased 
 firing, to cool off the guns and save the ammu- 
 nition for the coming infantry attack, General 
 Lee thought his artillery was silenced, and he 
 ordered the attack. The confederates came on, 
 as steady as troops on parade. But when they 
 were half way across the valley toward the 
 lines, the artillery Lee had thought he had 
 silenced burst upon them. Growing fewer in 
 number at every step the column still moved on, 
 and the battle joined. So fierce and terrible was 
 it that for a few minutes the soldiers on both 
 sides could not even hear their officers, and 
 fought man to man. Then the confederates gave 
 way; the Union soldiers sprang forward; the 
 shortest and, considering its shortness, the most 
 bloody of the three days' battle was over. Lee 
 had tried at Gettysburg somewhat the same 
 
278 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 thing that Burnside had at Fredericksburg; and 
 he had lost. 
 
 But Meade did not at first realize how matters 
 stood, nor how thoroughly he had beaten Lee. 
 The next day the armies were drawn up in 
 battle. Lee had expected his army to be cut to 
 pieces after its repulse on the day before; and 
 if G rant or Sheridan had been in Meade 's place, 
 the critics say, he would have had only the rem- 
 nants of an army to carry across the Potomac. 
 The greater part of that following day the coun- 
 try waited to know how the battle had gone. 
 
 What a Fourth of July it was ! Those who 
 remember and speak of it say that it can never 
 be forgotten. North and South, men and women 
 waited, breathless for news. They thought of 
 the soldiers wounded and dying, of the dead on 
 the field, and at the North, as they looked up at 
 the dear old flag which floated in every town in 
 memory of the day when the United States had 
 first become a nation, they wondered if the 
 sacrifice of so many precious lives had been 
 accepted, and if we had yet a country. The joy- 
 bells of the Fourth that rang half fearfully in 
 the morning were silent in many towns at the 
 hour of noon when still the country waited. 
 
 Then came the news! The President an- 
 nounced to the country that up to ten o 'clock on 
 the third, the news from the army of the Poto- 
 
ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 279 
 
 mac was "such as to cover the army with the 
 highest honor— to promise great success to the 
 cause of the Union— and to claim the condolence 
 of all for the many gallant fallen"; and for this 
 he added, "he especially desired that on this 
 day, 'He whose will, not ours, should ever be 
 done be everywhere remembered and reverenced 
 with the profoundest gratitude.' " 
 
 On the evening of that July Fourth Mr. 
 Lincoln was serenaded. In answer he spoke of 
 what that day means to the nation, how many 
 remarkable national events had happened on 
 the Fourth of July, and how these battles in 
 Pennsylvania fought on the first, second, and 
 third of that month were victories over the 
 cohorts of those who opposed the Declaration 
 of Independence. 
 
 July fifteenth the President issued a procla- 
 mation appointing the fourth of August as a 
 day "for thanksgiving, praise and prayer, and 
 to render homage to the Divine Majesty for the 
 wonderful things He had done for the nation, 
 and to pray for the Holy Spirit to bring it the 
 blessings of union and peace." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was deeply thankful for the Union 
 victories East and West. But he was terribly 
 disappointed that Meade allowed Lee to get 
 safely back across the Potomac into Virginia. 
 "We had them in our grasp," Nicolay and Hay 
 
280 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 tell of his saying; "we had only to stretch 
 out our hands and they were ours, and nothing 
 I could say or do could make the army move." 
 He was angry at Meade 's speaking of ' ' driving 
 the invader from our soil, ' ' and said it was like 
 McClellan who claimed a great victory because 
 "Pennsylvania and Maryland were safe." 
 "Will our generals never get that idea out of 
 their heads! " he cried. "The whole country 
 is our soil. ' ' He said : ' ' Our army held the war 
 in the hollow of their hand and they would not 
 close it." But he added that he was "very 
 grateful to Meade for the service he did at 
 Gettysburg. ' ' 
 
 It was no wonder that Lincoln was distressed 
 that Lee's army had not been destroyed and the 
 war ended at once. It was the President's habit 
 when his duties allowed him the time to go to 
 visit the sick and wounded soldiers; he often 
 went at night to the hospitals at Washington 
 and the field hospitals around it. Here the line 
 of ambulances moving from the steamers to the 
 hospitals was often one and two miles long. 
 Arnold speaks of one day meeting the President 
 driving slowly toward the Soldiers' Home. He 
 had just parted from one of those lines of ambu- 
 lances. "Look yonder at those poor fellows," 
 he said. "I cannot bear it. This suffering, this 
 loss of life is dreadful." It was no wonder he 
 
ON TOE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 281 
 
 was distressed, as it has been said, that Meade 
 had not crushed Lee's army and ended the war 
 then and there. 
 
 The idea of a military cemetery at Gettysburg 
 was soon made national. The State of Penn- 
 sylvania bought a piece of land on this illus- 
 trious battlefield, and gave it to the United 
 States as a cemetery in which to bury its heroes 
 slain there. November nineteenth of this year 
 1863, this ground was consecrated with solemn 
 and touching ceremonies. There were present 
 Seward, Stanton, Welles and Chase of the Cabi- 
 net; war governers, Andrew of Massachusetts, 
 Seymour of New York, Morgan of Indiana, 
 Johnson of Tennessee; Everett, Sumner, Fes- 
 senden, Wilson, Greeley, Frederick Douglas, and 
 Grant, Meade, McClellan, Howard and Butler, 
 representing strong yet different elements of 
 the forces that had struggled to maintain the 
 Union. Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a 
 distinguished scholar and orator, had been 
 chosen to give the oration. 
 
 But above all these, the central figure, as he 
 always was wherever he was seen, was the 
 President, Abraham Lincoln. On the way to 
 Gettysburg he had been told that he would be 
 expected to say something. He had borrowed 
 a pencil and written down on rough paper those 
 few words that he read at Gettysburg, words 
 
282 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 that have gone around the globe, and that have 
 rightly been held for brevity, simplicity, force 
 and beauty one of the great orations of the 
 world. He had written it hastily, to be sure; 
 but it was great because he had first lived it, 
 and because in living and writing it he had for- 
 gotten himself entirely and thought only of the 
 soldiers and the country. He rose slowly, his 
 face alight with deep feeling, and read what he 
 had written. It was this: 
 
 "Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth on this continent, a new nation, 
 conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the propo- 
 sition that all men are created equal. 
 
 "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
 testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
 conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
 We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
 We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, 
 as a final resting place for those who here gave 
 their lives that that nation might live. It is 
 altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
 this. 
 
 "But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — 
 we cannot consecrate— we cannot hallow— this 
 ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
 struggled here have consecrated it, far above 
 our poor power to add or detract. The world 
 will little note, nor long remember what we say 
 
ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 283 
 
 here, but it can never forget what they did here. 
 It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated 
 here to the unfinished work which they who 
 fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 
 It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
 great task remaining before us,— that from these 
 honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
 cause for which they gave the last full measure 
 of devotion— that we here highly resolve that 
 these dead shall not have died in vain— that this 
 nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
 freedom— and that government of the people, 
 by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth. ' ' 
 
 As Mr. Lincoln finished speaking, and the 
 tears and sobs and cheers which had met him 
 subsided, he turned to Edward Everett and con- 
 gratulated him on his success. 
 
 Arnold tells us that Everett answered: "Ah, 
 Mr. President, how gladly would I exchange all 
 my hundred pages to have been the author of 
 your twenty lines.' ' 
 
XXXVIII. 
 
 How Mr. Lincoln Tried for Peace. 
 
 It has been said, and truly, that there was no 
 time from the beginning to the end of the civil 
 war when we could have had peace without 
 acknowledging the Confederate States as a sep- 
 arate government; that would have meant dis- 
 union. 
 
 There were many people at the North and 
 some at the South who talked of peace ; but they 
 did not mean peace of the right kind. No one 
 in the whole country longed for peace more 
 earnestly than Mr. Lincoln did. When there 
 was a prospect of another great battle with its 
 dreadful list of killed and wounded, his kind, 
 loving heart was wrung at the thought. But he 
 knew that we must conquer a peace ; the South 
 would have no other kind, except without the 
 Union. 
 
 June, 1863, leaders of the peace party met at 
 Springfield, Illinois, and held a mass meeting. 
 They wanted to carry the Northwest and make a 
 
 284 
 
HOW MR. LINCOLN TRIED FOR PEACE. 285 
 
 peace that should submit to whatever the South 
 desired. After this the Republicans resolved to 
 hold a great meeting at the same place the third 
 of September, 1863; and they asked the Presi- 
 dent to be present. How much Mr. Lincoln would 
 have liked to meet his old neighbors and friends, 
 whom he was never to see again together, as he 
 would have done there. But he could not leave 
 his work at Washington. So, he wrote a letter 
 to be read at the Convention. One of his biogra- 
 phers declares : * * In this letter which the chair- 
 man took only ten minutes to read, Lincoln said 
 more than all the orators at all the stands/ ' 
 Among many other things, all of which the read- 
 ers of this record of Lincoln should some day 
 read, he said : 
 
 "The signs look better. The Father of 
 Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." (For 
 a few days after the fall of Vicksburg, General 
 Grant had captured Port Hudson, which opened 
 the Mississippi River entirely.) : : * "Peace 
 does not appear so distant as it did," wrote Mr. 
 Lincoln after speaking of the Union victories. 
 "I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and 
 so come as to be worth the keeping in all future 
 time. * * * Still, let us not be over-sanguine 
 of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite 
 sober" (reasonable). "Let us diligently apply 
 the means, never doubting that a just God, in 
 
286 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 His own good time, will give us the rightful 
 result. ' ' 
 
 The only peace that Lincoln really believed 
 would come was when the war was fought out 
 and the confederacy conquered. He thought 
 this because he believed that the confederates 
 would not come back so long as they had an 
 army to fight with. And this proved true. 
 
 But when people talked to him about listening 
 to suggestions of peace, he was always most 
 ready, provided this did not mean that the South 
 was a separate and independent power. Mr. 
 Greeley again wrote him one of his letters tell- 
 ing him he (Mr. Lincoln) did not know how 
 much the people wanted peace, and that there 
 were men in Canada with authority to propose 
 peace to him. Mr. Lincoln said he should be 
 glad to talk with them, provided everything was 
 all right to do so. But it turned out very far 
 from right. Mr. Greeley always meant well; 
 but, like other people, he made mistakes. Other 
 attempts at peace conferences also amounted to 
 nothing. 
 
 But Mr. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke), in his book 
 upon Lincoln, tells how the President once seized 
 upon an opportunity to allow him to go in com- 
 pany with another gentleman and interview Mr. 
 Jefferson Davis as to any possibility of peace 
 he would accept, or suggest. Mr. Lincoln would 
 
HOW MR. LINCOLN TRIED FOR PEACE. 287 
 
 not send Mr. Gilmore, but was ready to learn if 
 there was any chance to save further bloodshed. 
 
 Mr. Gilmore had a long interview with Mr. 
 Davis, and the most positive assurances from 
 him that nothing short of the independence of 
 the Southern confederacy was to be thought of. 
 
 So, he came home with his companion— al- 
 though the two, came near being imprisoned in 
 Richmond and kept there. When they reached 
 the North, Mr. Gilmore wrote out what Mr. 
 Davis had said, proving that if we would have 
 the Union, we must fight the war out. 
 
 The article was published in the " Atlantic 
 Monthly," and republished by almost all the 
 leading newspapers in the North, and copied 
 entire by several English papers. "It was 
 read," says Mr. Gilmore, "by not less than one- 
 half of the four million men who voted in the 
 Presidential election of 1864;" and he adds that 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote him that it, cer- 
 tainly, had a larger number of readers than any 
 other magazine article ever written. 
 
 So, the interview of Jefferson Davis with Mr. 
 Gilmore, who was then one of the editors of Mr. 
 Greeley's "New York Tribune," helped, after 
 all, to bring about the peace that Lincoln be- 
 lieved in— a peace bought on the battle-field; 
 but a peace that would come to stay and would 
 be worth the keeping. 
 
XXXIX. 
 
 How the People Learned to Trust Him. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's letter to the meeting of the 
 Republicans in Springfield, Illinois, was so full 
 of logic and keen and clear reasoning and wit 
 and so strong in the sense of his own responsibil- 
 ity, that it was a great success. Charles Sumner, 
 who at first had not approved of the President 
 but afterward came to like him much, wrote to 
 him: " Thanks for your true and noble letter. 
 It is a historical document. The case is admir- 
 ably stated, so that all but the wicked must con- 
 fess its force. It cannot be answered." For in 
 this letter Mr. Lincoln had spoken of peace 
 measures and of emancipation, questions of 
 which the country was full then. Henry Wilson, 
 the other Senator from Massachusetts with Sum- 
 ner wrote Lincoln: "God Almighty bless you 
 for your noble, patriotic and Christian letter. 
 It will be on the lips and in the hearts of hun- 
 dreds of thousands this day." And one of the 
 
 288 
 
HOW PEOPLE LEARNED TO TRUST HIM. 289 
 
 messages about his letter that the President 
 most appreciated came from Josiah Quincy, 
 then ninety-one years old. Mr. Quincy wrote: 
 "I cannot refrain from expressing to you my 
 gratification and my gratitude for your letter 
 to the Illinois Convention— happy, timely, con- 
 clusive, and effective. What you say concern- 
 ing emancipation, your proclamation, and your 
 course of proceeding in relation to it was due 
 to truth, and to your own character shamefully 
 assailed as it has been. The development is an 
 imperishable monument of wisdom and virtue. " 
 He went on to say that compromise was impos- 
 sible, that only the war could bring us peace and 
 Union. 
 
 It is good to know that many such letters as 
 these were written to Mr. Lincoln at that time ; 
 for no man in a public office had ever been so 
 cruelly misunderstood and spoken against. , But 
 at last the skies were brightening and people 
 were coming to perceive what a wonderful man 
 he was and what a great leader. But the thing 
 which Lincoln cared for most of all— more than 
 anything that could come to himself— was the 
 success of the war for the Union, and the assur- 
 ance of emancipation of the slaves. And what 
 Lincoln says in this letter about the aid of the 
 slaves in the war we ought to remember when 
 we are proud of our great united country. After 
 
290 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 showing that we were not fighting "to free 
 negroes," but using the help of the negroes, he 
 says : "I thought that whatever negroes can be 
 got to do as soldiers leaves just so much less 
 for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. 
 Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, 
 like other people, act upon motives. Why should 
 they do anything for us if we will do nothing 
 for them? If they stake their lives for us, they 
 must be prompted by the strongest motive, even 
 the promise of freedom. And the promise, being 
 made, must be kept." 
 
 We have the problem of the colored people 
 with us today; and when we think of it, we 
 should remember that between one and two 
 hundred thousand colored troops fought to help 
 us save the Union, and have a right to feel this 
 their country as well as ours, and to be treated 
 as other men are treated. 
 
 In this September of 1863, the Springfield 
 Convention passed a resolution : ' ' That we will 
 lay aside all party questions and forget all party 
 prejudices and devote ourselves unreservedly 
 to the support of our Government, until the 
 rebellion shall be finally and forever crushed; 
 that whatever else may perish, the Government 
 shall survive in all its constitutional integrity; 
 whatever else may be destroyed, the nation shall 
 be preserved in its territorial unity ; and to this 
 
HOW PEOPLE LEARNED TO TRUST HIM. 291 
 
 end we pledge anew our lives, our fortunes, and 
 our sacred honor." 
 
 As a result of the victories and Lincoln's 
 letter and the Springfield Convention, every 
 State that held elections that fall of 1863, except 
 New Jersey, gave great majorities for the ad- 
 ministration. The great riots against the draft 
 in New York City in the July of that year helped 
 the government in the end; the rioters were 
 so horribly cruel that they turned thousands 
 against their party. 
 
 Grant and Sherman and Thomas and other 
 generals in the West gave new courage to the 
 deep loyalty of the North; and the better the 
 people came to understand Mr. Lincoln, the 
 more they trusted and the better they loved him. 
 The men whom all the country most honored 
 came out strongly in favor of the war .as our 
 only road to peace. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 wrote : 
 
 "Listen, young heroes. Your country is calling, 
 Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true ; 
 Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, 
 
 Fill up the ranks that have opened for you. 
 You whom the fathers made free and defended, 
 Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame ; 
 You whose fair heritage spotless descended, 
 Leave not your children a birthright of shame!" 
 
292 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 Dr. Holmes could call upon the young men to 
 go to the war ; for his own son was there ; and 
 with him thousands upon thousands of the true 
 and brave ; for the flower of the land went forth 
 at the call of the President and filled up the 
 ranks from which other soldiers not less noble 
 had fallen in battle. There was not a home 
 where one of the household, or some friend of 
 the family was not in the army, or had not 
 fallen in battle among the heroes. And many 
 parents mourning for their sons, recalled how 
 the sad-eyed President had lost his own little 
 son and could understand how they suffered. 
 Also, his oldest son was in the army sharing 
 the same risks that their sons did. 
 
 In the June of 1864, when much hard work 
 had been done since the Springfield Convention, 
 and many hard-fought battles had been won— 
 and some lost— the Kepublicans a second time 
 nominated Abraham Lincoln for President. His 
 opponent, the candidate of the peace party who 
 said that the war was wrong and that everything 
 about it had gone wrong, was General McClel- 
 lan, who put himself side by side with men who 
 hated and railed against the Union. 
 
 In the July of 1864, the President called for 
 iive hundred thousand more men, to be had by 
 draft if enough did not volunteer. His friends 
 told him he would lose his election by doing 
 
HOW PEOPLE LEARNED TO TRUST HIM. 293 
 
 such a thing; and even his enemies could not 
 say that this was trying for his own election. 
 But Mr. Lincoln had something more important 
 than his election to look out for, although he 
 certainly wanted to he allowed to finish the work 
 so faithfully and successfully carried on thus 
 far. But what was much more important was 
 not to lose the Union battles for lack of soldiers ; 
 the more quickly he could finish the war, the 
 kinder for North and South alike. 
 
 And Lincoln was right to trust in God to 
 bring things out in the best way whatever that 
 was ; and to trust the great heart of the people 
 to be true to him who was so true to them. For 
 in November, when the people by their votes 
 declared whom they chose for President, Lincoln 
 had the largest majority that had ever been 
 known, he was elected almost by acclamation. 
 McClellan carried the electoral vote of New 
 Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky— three States. 
 All the rest were Lincoln's. 
 
 < 'It was the carefully formed and solemnly 
 announced judgment of the nation,' ' says Stod- 
 dard. 
 
 How grateful the country must always be to 
 remember that in the few months of life still 
 remaining to Abraham Lincoln, he was not only 
 to have his hands strengthened for the great 
 work, but to have such assurance how deep was 
 
294 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 the nation's trust in him and love for him as 
 their leader. 
 
 And Lincoln thanked God and took courage, 
 as it was his way to do. 
 
XL. 
 
 How Grant Fought It Out on That Line. 
 
 In the March of 1864, eight months before the 
 re-election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, 
 early one morning when the trains arriving in 
 Washington from the West brought guests to 
 the hotels, there came into Willard's with the 
 others two passengers who took matters more 
 quietly than the rest of the rushing crowd. One 
 of the two was a middle-aged, sunburned man 
 with an army hat and a linen duster, below which 
 a glimpse of the narrow stripe of the army uni- 
 form could be seen. The other was a boy of ten 
 whom he held by the hand. The gaslights were 
 turned down, and the sleepy clerk had been care- 
 lessly assigning upper rooms to the guests ; this 
 was before the days of elevators. When this 
 was done, he subsided into his armchair again 
 and closed his eyes. As the two travelers 
 modestly approached the counter, the clerk not 
 deigning to rise, gave the register a whirl so that 
 
 295 
 
296 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 the open page was before the stranger and said : 
 ' ' I suppose you will want a room together. ' ' He 
 named a high number while the guest without 
 reply wrote his name. The clerk twisted the 
 register around to himself and was about to 
 write the number of the room— when he sprang 
 to his feet, thoroughly awake, bowed, scraped 
 and begged a thousand pardons ! The traveler 
 had been expected. The best apartments in the 
 hotel had been reserved for him, on the first floor 
 only up one flight. As the clerk took from the 
 guest the small leather bag he had been carry- 
 ing in his hand, and conducted him personally 
 to his apartments, another guest watching took 
 a peep at the register to see what great man this 
 was who was treated with such honor. The 
 stranger had written: "U. S. Grant and son, 
 Galena, Illinois.' ' 
 
 This was the famous general who had cap- 
 tured what the South had supposed the impreg- 
 nable Vicksburg, then Port Hudson, and had 
 thus opened the Mississippi River; and, later, 
 had won a series of victories with his splendid 
 generals, Sherman, Sheridan, Hooker, and 
 Thomas who from his victory was called the 
 "Rock of Chickamauga," because he won that 
 battle after Rosecrans had been defeated. For 
 when the confederate General Bragg was en- 
 trenched at Lookout Mountain and Missionary 
 
HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 297 
 
 Ridge and threatening Chattanooga, Grant and 
 the others fought him, and Hooker followed him 
 up Lookout Mountain until the army saw his 
 battle flags above the clouds. So, Bragg ran 
 away as fast as he could ; but Thomas followed 
 him up and made him fight again, and drove 
 him twenty miles. Then Grant drove back 
 Longstreet, who was threatening Burnside. So, 
 at the end of that campaign the Union forces 
 held possession of Tennessee. 
 
 After Vicksburg President Lincoln had writ- 
 ten a beautiful letter of thanks to General Grant. 
 And now in the following March when Congress 
 had again created the office of Lieutenant-Gen- 
 eral which had been dropped when Scott re- 
 signed, Mr. Lincoln had nominated for that 
 office, Ulysses S. Grant ; Congress had confirmed 
 his nomination, and that early spring morning 
 at Willard's here was Grant next in military 
 rank to the President and the secretary of war. 
 It was no wonder that the clerk bowed down to 
 him ; and perhaps not so surprising that he had 
 not known him; for McClellan had not traveled 
 with a hand bag; it had taken several six-horse 
 wagons to carry his furniture. 
 
 General Grant at once assumed command of 
 the armies, and announced that his headquarters 
 would be in the field and until further orders 
 with the army of the Potomac. 
 
298 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 Stoddard tells how one Sunday morning a few 
 weeks later he called to see the President. Mr. 
 Lincoln was stretched upon the sofa with one 
 hand thrown up over his head and an air of 
 relaxation about him, as if some burden had 
 been removed from him. After talking for a 
 time, his visitor asked: 
 
 " 'Now, Mr. Lincoln, what sort of a man is 
 Grant? I've never even seen him. He has 
 taken hold here while I have been laid up. 
 What do you think of him?' 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln half rose, and laughed. 'Well, 
 I hardly know what to think of him, altogether, 9 
 he answered. 'He's the quietest little fellow 
 you ever saw.' 
 
 " 'How is that!' 
 
 " 'Why, he makes the least fuss of any man 
 you ever knew. I believe two or three times he 
 has been in this room a minute or so before I 
 knew he was here. It's about so all around. 
 The only evidence you have that he's in any 
 place is that he makes things git! Wherever 
 he is, things move ! ' " The President talked with 
 animation; he was describing the man he had 
 been longing for. Then his visitor asked about 
 Grant's generalship, and whether he was going 
 to be the man? " 'Grant is the first general I've 
 had! He.'s a general!' returned Lincoln. 'You 
 know how it has been with all the rest. As soon 
 
HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 299 
 
 as I put a man in command of the army, he'd 
 come to me with a plan of a campaign and about 
 as much as say : ' ' Now, I don 't believe I can do 
 it, but if you say so, I'll try it on," and so put 
 the responsibility of success or failure on me; 
 they all wanted me to be the general. Now, it 
 isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what 
 his plans are. I don't know, and I don't want 
 to know. I'm glad to find a man that can go 
 ahead without me.' " 
 
 General Sherman was put into Grant's former 
 place as commander of the army of the Missis- 
 sippi; Halleck was still the President's military 
 adviser; and one thing was especially to be 
 noticed— from the time that Grant took com- 
 mand of the army, there was one plan, making 
 one movement fit in with another. The Presi- 
 dent, Grant, Sherman and all the generals 
 worked in harmony; rivalries and jealousies so 
 prevalent under McClellan were almost wholly 
 banished. The officers ceased to fight each other 
 and took to fighting the enemy. For, henceforth, 
 1 ' there was energy in attack, speed in pursuit, 
 and everywhere the right man in the right 
 place. ' ' Grant and his officers had most perfect 
 faith in each other. 
 
 At midnight May third, 1864, the Union troops 
 began to move; and on the fourth the whole 
 army was across the Rapidan. The two follow- 
 
300 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 ing days were fought the terrible battles of the 
 Wilderness. May seventh Grant began to move 
 toward Spotsylvania Court House ; but Lee who 
 was nearer reached there first. May ninth, tenth 
 and eleventh were spent in constant manceuver- 
 ing and fighting. And on the eleventh Grant 
 sent to Washington that famous dispatch: 
 "Our losses have been heavy as well as those 
 of the enemy, and I propose to fight it out on 
 this line if it takes all summer." 
 
 But not only all summer, but all the autumn, 
 and the winter also, did the brave army of 
 Northern Virginia with its able commander hold 
 out against the forces that were closing in upon 
 it from all sides. We should pity the soldiers 
 in their final surrender, if that surrender had 
 not been the most blessed thing for themselves, 
 as well as for the whole nation. 
 
 May twelfth, 1864, and later at North Anna 
 and Cold Harbor, indeed, during the whole 
 weeks of May and early June came constant 
 fighting and marching in both armies, and in 
 all these furious and persistent battles terrible 
 loss of life on both sides; but greater in the 
 Union army, because Lee had shorter marches 
 and knew the country perfectly and could choose 
 his own time and place to fight. Petersburg, on 
 the Appomattox River about twenty miles south 
 of Richmond, connected Richmond by rail with 
 
HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 301 
 
 all the South and Southwest. If Petersburg 
 could be taken and held by the Union forces, 
 Kichmond must soon fall. Grant struggled long, 
 however, before the capture of this city. 
 
 General Grant moved his army south of the 
 James River. General Hunter who had been 
 sent up the Shenandoah Valley, defeated the 
 confederates at Piedmont and then marched to 
 Lynchburg. He arrived there June sixteenth. 
 The confederate General Breckinridge was hold- 
 ing the place and Lee sent General Early to him 
 with reinforcements. Together, they made Hun- 
 ter retreat. Then Early with twelve thousand 
 veterans marched down the Shenandoah Valley 
 toward Maryland. General Lew Wallace with 
 a small force stood between him and Washing- 
 ton and Baltimore. But Early came within 
 seven miles of the White House! Grant had 
 sent troops to keep Early from Washington, and 
 told Sheridan to drive him back and then 
 destroy the Shenandoah valley so that it could 
 no longer furnish support to the confederate 
 troops. In September Sheridan attacked Early 
 at Opequan Creek, and drove him from the field 
 with loss, and pursued him to the passes of the 
 Blue Ridge Mountains. Then he tore up the 
 railroads, destroyed provisions and forage and 
 drove off the stock, so that the whole country 
 about there was a wilderness. But the middle 
 
302 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 of October Early crossed the mountains again, 
 and while Sheridan was absent surprised a part 
 of the Union army and drove it off the field. 
 But Sheridan away off at Winchester, heard 
 the guns and came back. His army had made 
 a stand at Middleton. He had not a word of 
 blame for his men, but treated the defeat like 
 an accident that they were going to make up for 
 at once. And so they did. They went after 
 Early, attacked and defeated him and got back 
 the prisoners and the guns they had lost. This 
 battle will be remembered by that fine poem, 
 "Sheridan's Bide." 
 
 At the time that Grant crossed the Eapidan, 
 Sherman commanding in the West, but under 
 Grant's orders, was watching the confederate 
 army "proud, defiant and exultant" at Dalton. 
 They had recovered from Mission Ridge and 
 were ready for more battles. There is not time 
 to tell of all that wonderful campaign; how 
 Sherman drove them under their skilful com- 
 mander, Johnston, and defeated them again and 
 again when Hood took Johnston's place; and 
 how, early in September, he obtained possession 
 of Atlanta, Georgia, and turned the city into a 
 military post. When the citizens objected, he 
 told them that as soon as they would come into 
 the Union, his army would do nothing but pro- 
 tect and defend them. Hood turned North to 
 
HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 303 
 
 get Sherman back from Atlanta. But Sherman 
 telegraphed to Grant asking permission to 
 march through the enemy's country, "smashing 
 tilings as he went,"— destroying railroads and 
 whatever would be of use to the confederates. 
 He let General Thomas take care of Hood at 
 Nashville ; and Thomas with battle and prison- 
 ers broke up Hood's army. 
 
 The story of "Sherman's grand march to the 
 sea ' ' reads like a wonderful romance. He broke 
 up the telegraph wires and the railroads, and 
 started. Then he must reach the sea, or perish. 
 On his way he captured the city of Macon, and 
 Milledgeville, the capital, and on the twentieth 
 of December with aid of Admiral Dahlgren 
 whom Lincoln had sent by water to co-operate 
 with him, he wrote the President a dispatch: 
 "I present you as a Christmas gift the city of 
 Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns, 
 plenty of ammunition, and about twenty-five 
 thousand bales of cotton." 
 
 Then followed the capture of Wilmington, 
 Columbia, Goldsboro, and Charleston; and a 
 battle with General Johnston who was driven 
 back. And now the Union forces from all parts 
 were gathering about Lee, and the end of the 
 war was near. 
 
 When, at last, Lee tried to escape, there was 
 Grant on one hand, and Sheridan was on the 
 
304 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 other, watching, marching, fighting, and always 
 barring his way to safety. 
 
 On the twenty-seventh of March the Presi- 
 dent, and Generals Grant and Sherman met on 
 a steamer in the James River and talked over 
 the situation. Seldom, if ever, have three more 
 wonderful men met together; Sherman famed 
 from his campaign in Tennessee which, as Lin- 
 coln said, would live in history, his devotion to 
 Grant, his generous appreciation of the work of 
 all the splendid officers and men that surrounded 
 them; Grant who when chosen for his position 
 modestly said that Sherman ought to have the 
 place; and Lincoln, strong, patient, far-seeing, 
 crowned with success, yet using his success to 
 unite his country and to bless his countrymen, 
 North and South. The generals both agreed 
 that one more bloody battle was likely to be 
 fought before the end of the war. ' ' Must more 
 blood be shed ? ' ' questioned Mr. Lincoln. * ' Can- 
 not this be avoided V 9 But they thought that 
 Lee would fight. 
 
 Even while the three were talking, General 
 Sheridan was marching to cut off Lee's re- 
 treat. "Ten days of incessant marching and 
 fighting, with Sheridan in the lead and Grant 
 closely following," says Arnold, "finished the 
 campaign. 9 9 March twenty-ninth Grant wrote to 
 
HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 305 
 
 Sheridan: "I now feel like ending the matter, 
 if it be possible, before going back." 
 
 And he did end it. For, April second, Long- 
 street who had been defending Richmond was 
 ordered to join Lee, who made one last desper- 
 ate attempt to cut his way through the Union 
 armies. That same day Lee sent to Jefferson 
 Davis saying that Richmond and Petersburg 
 could not be held any longer. And, "the bells 
 of Richmond tolled the knell of the Confed- 
 eracy. " 
 
 But Grant, with Sheridan and other generals 
 helping, kept on after Lee who was penned up 
 so that he had no escape and who could not 
 cut his way out. 
 
 Therefore, on the ninth of April, 1865, he 
 surrendered. Truly, Grant had "fought it out 
 on that line." 
 
 Generous terms of surrender were made with 
 Lee; and officers and men were permitted to 
 return to their homes, "not to be disturbed so 
 long as they observed their parole, and the 
 laws." 
 
XLI. 
 Lincoln's Walk Through Eichmond. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had been staying at City Point 
 for several days, getting daily, almost hourly 
 news from General Grant how things were 
 going, and sending word to Washington, to be 
 distributed over the country. The day after 
 the fall of Richmond he went in a gunboat 
 accompanied by Admiral Porter, Hon. Charles 
 Sumner and a few others to within a mile of the 
 city, and from there in a row boat to the wharf. 
 Landing, he walked on, leading his little son Tad 
 by the hand and with the few sailors who had 
 rowed him for a body-guard. If he had had all 
 the escort that came in the gunboat which had 
 been blocked by obstructions in the river, it 
 would have been little more. 
 
 Never before did conqueror enter conquered 
 city like this. Troops, martial music, a splendid 
 procession, the chief prisoners captured, kings 
 
 306 
 
LINCOLN'S WALK THROUGH RICHMOND. 307 
 
 and generals, walking behind loaded with chains 
 and reserved for torture and death— these were 
 the triumphs of old days, of Rome, and of later 
 times also. But Lincoln was too great for the 
 display that many conquerors of modern times 
 would have demanded ; he was a king of men in 
 himself and did not need to try to impress 
 people with his grandeur. God had made him 
 so grand that he could not have helped doing 
 this, had he tried. 
 
 But in addition to Lincoln's hatred of display, 
 he did not come as a conqueror to Richmond 
 and the South ; he came as a peace-maker, a pro- 
 tector, a comforter. That day his troops were 
 busy putting out the fires which the confederates 
 had kindled in the beautiful city, just as he him- 
 self was laboring to put out the fires of suffer- 
 ing kindled throughout the South by Jefferson 
 Davis and his co-workers; and as he walked 
 that fourth of April through the streets of Rich- 
 mond, his thoughts were not of pride of victory 
 over the people, but that he was their President, 
 their rightful ruler for the time of his election, 
 one who had the best of all rights to inquire 
 into their condition and bring them what aid 
 he could. 
 
 But if the confederates were not ready to 
 understand and welcome him, the colored people 
 
308 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 were. With a black man as guide Lincoln went 
 on to the headquarters of the commanding 
 officer, the house from which Jefferson Davis 
 had run away. And as Lincoln went on, the 
 crowd of the liberated blacks gathered more and 
 more thickly about him with shouts and bless- 
 ings and prayers and tears, until the tears fell 
 from Lincoln's eyes also. However much the 
 whites, North and South, might abuse and vilify 
 this wonderful man, the colored people never 
 made a mistake about him ; nothing shook their 
 faith in him. 
 
 They were right. One of the few times when 
 Lincoln's even temper was roused well-nigh to 
 fury was when some one proposed to him to try 
 to win over the belligerent masters and secure 
 peace by abandoning the freedmen. "Why, it 
 would be an astounding breach of faith!" cried 
 Lincoln. "If I should do it, I ought to be 
 damned in time and eternity!" He had forced 
 the confederates to treat the colored troops cap- 
 tured as prisoners of war. At first they sold 
 them back into slavery, or else shot them. 
 
 That fourth of April he held a short recep- 
 tion in the room lately used by Mr. Davis, took 
 a drive about the city, and went back that even- 
 ing to City Point. 
 
 A few days later the President with Mrs. 
 
LINCOLN'S WALK THROUGH RICHMOND. 309 
 
 Lincoln and several senators and friends went 
 to Richmond once more. Neither then did he 
 go as its conqueror, but as its President and its 
 friend. 
 
XLIL 
 
 The Joy of the Nation in Victory and Peace. 
 
 That was a strange scene at Appomattox in 
 Virginia, the ninth of April, 1865, when Gen- 
 eral Lee had surrendered and the great civil 
 war was virtually over. The two armies no 
 longer faced each other in battle array, or 
 fought, each with a bravery which made the 
 other respect it and feel that enemies so valiant 
 must make worthy friends. The time for friend- 
 ship had come; it was here. For confederates 
 and Union men, officers and soldiers, were all 
 mixed up together shaking hands, congratu- 
 lating one another, no doubt, on brilliant 
 achievements each side had performed, and 
 glad enough to be able to talk these over instead 
 of more fighting. But this was not all; the 
 confederate soldiers were starving; the Union 
 soldiers made them their guests and shared 
 their rations with them until the government 
 stores should come up and furnish them more 
 
 310 
 
JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 311 
 
 bountifully. The confederates were half clad, 
 sometimes not even that, and the Union soldiers 
 shared their clothing with them. And even this 
 was not all; the confederates had been given 
 permission to return to their homes; but they 
 had no money to go with; and the Union 
 soldiers loaned them money for this. Their 
 enemies had vanished; these men, brave, van- 
 quished, suffering and needy were their fellow- 
 countrymen, and as such the Union soldiers 
 treated them. And as such they have remained 
 through all the years that have gone by since 
 those days. Complaint, suffering, poverty, bit- 
 terness have been in plenty. But, thanks to the 
 spirit of peace and patriotism and Christian 
 brotherhood which God put into Lincoln's heart 
 to inaugurate, from the very first instant that 
 reconciliation was possible, the peace which 
 came, as he had longed and worked for it to 
 come, was a peace "worth the keeping in all 
 future time." 
 
 Nothing connected with the surrender of Lee 
 could have touched Lincoln so deeply as that 
 brotherly spirit of the soldiers of the two armies. 
 < < With malice toward none, ' ' he had said. And 
 he was right. The soldiers who had fought; 
 the parents and children, the wives and sweet- 
 hearts who had given their dearest a sacrifice 
 to their country— all these knew that the South 
 
312 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 who had fought a brave fight for what many of 
 them had been taught was liberty, or who were 
 also mourning their dear ones, had already 
 suffered more than their victors could inflict. 
 For though revenge strides side by side with 
 anger, it is not found in the hearts of those who 
 sorrow deeply. 
 
 There had been no compromise ; the war had 
 been fought out. The South could not lift a 
 hand again if she would. It was time to remem- 
 ber that we were countrymen, and that the ter- 
 rible battlefields where Union and confederate 
 lay buried side by side proved how truly we 
 were brothers in the valor and endurance that 
 all men prize. Thus at the end of the war the 
 North and the South were much better ac- 
 quainted than at its beginning; and when in 
 the poverty that fell upon the South, it became 
 necessary for their men to work as they had 
 never done before, they had learned from the 
 hard-fought battles with Northern soldiers that 
 labor does not make cowards, as some had 
 believed in the old days. 
 
 Then, the Union at the North after the war 
 was much closer than it had ever been before. 
 This was partly because any great cause unites 
 the people who love it and work in it, and be- 
 cause those in one place who mourned for their 
 soldiers slain were drawn in thought and inter- 
 
JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 313 
 
 est toward other parts of the country mourning 
 also. The same is true of the rejoicing over 
 Union victories. 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln had recognized the necessity 
 of closer union and knew that this would come 
 by acquaintance of one part with another. In 
 his famous letter to the Springfield Convention 
 which has been spoken of, when he says of the 
 opening of the Mississippi: "The Father of 
 Waters again goes unvexed to the sea, ' ' he adds : 
 "Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet 
 wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they 
 met New England, Empire, Keystone and Jer- 
 sey, hewing their way right and left. The 
 sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also 
 lent a helping hand. On the spot their part of 
 the history was jotted down in black and white. 
 The job was a great national one and let none 
 be slighted who bore an honorable part in it." 
 And then he speaks of "Antietam, Murfrees- 
 boro, Gettysburg and many other fields. ' ' This 
 was Mr. Lincoln's way of bringing East and 
 West together and making soldiers of different 
 sections acquainted with each other and every 
 part of the country dear to those who had fought 
 for it. He was always sending Eastern troops 
 out West and bringing Western soldiers to the 
 army of the Potomac. It was truly said of him 
 that he could take a long look ahead. He saw 
 
314 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 what needed to be done to make the Union 
 stronger than it ever had been: and he helped 
 to bring this about. 
 
 But there was something of far greater im- 
 portance that Abraham Lincoln did; and for 
 this alone his name would be immortal. This 
 was his emancipation proclamation freeing four 
 millions of human beings, and destroying the 
 cause of the war and one of the means of carry- 
 ing it on by the South. To complete this work 
 and to make freedom secure, it was necessary 
 that Congress should pass a constitutional 
 amendment abolishing slavery in the whole 
 country, and that three-quarters of all the 
 States should ratify it. 
 
 One evening early in 1865, a vast crowd 
 assembled at the White House to congratulate 
 the President on the passage in Congress of 
 this constitutional amendment. The band 
 played national airs, and Mr. Lincoln radiant 
 with joy said to the assembly: 
 
 "The great job is ended. * * * The occasion 
 is one of congratulation, and I cannot but con- 
 gratulate all present, myself, the country, and 
 the whole world upon this great moral victory. 
 The amendment has already been ratified by 
 Illinois, and Maryland is half through; but I 
 feel proud," he added, "that Illinois is a little 
 ahead. * * * This ends the job." 
 
JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 315 
 
 In 1858 Abraham Lincoln had lost his elec- 
 tion as Senator from Illinois by his declaration : 
 "This nation cannot endure permanently half 
 slave and half free." Within seven years, he, 
 as the second time elected President of the 
 United States could say of slavery, formerly so 
 pre-eminent: "The great job (of its abolition) 
 is ended. " As he said, Illinois led off. Khode 
 Island, Michigan, Maryland, and so on, followed 
 until more than three-fourths of all the States 
 had ratified the amendment. 
 
 Lincoln's second inaugural was most bril- 
 liantly attended; he had become the beloved and 
 trusted of the nation. On that Fourth of March, 
 1865, he stood a moment looking over the crowd 
 and recalling the memories of those last four 
 years. His voice was clear, but sad at times, 
 and afterward it seemed to the people a fare- 
 well. An eminent man present said as he came 
 down from the Capitol: "The President's in- 
 augural is the finest state paper in all history.' ' 
 Arnold says of it: "This paper in its solemn 
 recognition of the justice of Almighty God, 
 reminds us of the words of the old Hebrew 
 prophets. The paper," he adds, "was read in 
 Europe with the most profound attention, and 
 from this time all thinking men recognized the 
 intellectual and moral greatness of its author." 
 All who read about Lincoln should read this 
 
316 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 second inaugural. But the last paragraph be- 
 came household words in the nation. It has 
 been said that not even Washington's farewell 
 address made so deep an impression upon the 
 people. He said: 
 
 "With malice towards none, with charity for 
 all, with firmness in the right as God gives us 
 to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, 
 to bind up the nation's wounds, * * * to do all 
 which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves and with all nations.' ' 
 
 This was his spirit toward the South. The 
 world saw that it was the spirit of Christ. 
 
 How fast those days sped between the last 
 inauguration and the end! And how full they 
 were of triumph and satisfaction to Lincoln. 
 As soon as Lee surrendered, the President 
 ordered all drafting and recruiting for the 
 armies to cease. 
 
 From the eleventh of April to the fourteenth 
 the days were crowded with joyful events; 
 the confederate armies all surrendered; and 
 throughout the North, every city, town, village 
 and little hamlet went wild with joy. All the 
 houses, even those homes from which soldiers 
 had died were decorated with Union flags and 
 Union colors. All the houses were illuminated. 
 The people rang the bells and fired salutes. 
 Bands of music played and people sang patriotic 
 
JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 317 
 
 songs; and everywhere went up the voice of 
 praise and thanks to God for the blessings of 
 peace and freedom. 
 
 No one was more happy than Mr. Lincoln. 
 That morning of April fourteenth his son Rob- 
 ert just come back from the front, told his father 
 all the details of Lee's surrender. Victory, 
 honor, the love of the nation, peace, freedom for 
 the slave, and the spirit of mercy and peace in 
 his heart— all blessings crowned this great life 
 on that fourteenth day of April; he and the 
 nation were glad together— that last day. 
 
XLIII. 
 A People's Grief. 
 
 In the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington 
 lay a funeral bier tenderly watched and guarded 
 by sad and sorrowing soldiers to whom the 
 silent figure lying there had seemed in life to 
 care for them with a father's protectingness. 
 The coffin was constantly covered with quan- 
 tities of beautiful spring flowers daily renewed 
 and always fresh, while as the days went by, 
 thousands and tens of thousands of people in a 
 mournful procession bent down for a last look 
 at the serene face of the figure on the catafalque, 
 and turned away with grief-stricken faces and 
 with streaming eyes. For a week this silent 
 figure lay thus in the Capitol, and then the 
 funeral procession started for the West. 
 
 What did it all mean— this death and the sor- 
 rowing multitudes? 
 
 On the evening of the fourteenth of April 
 when after the storm of four years' war, peace 
 
 318 
 
THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 
 
A PEOPLE'S GRIEF. 319 
 
 had come to the country and a nation's deep 
 devotion to its President, a man had come into 
 the theatre where Mr. Lincoln had gone for a 
 little recreation from his toils, and entering the 
 President's box, had shot him. Abraham Lin- 
 coln had been assassinated. 
 
 The country that only the day before had been 
 wild with joy over the return of peace, was in 
 its length and breadth like a land where in 
 every household there is one dead. There was 
 universal mourning in city and town and coun- 
 try, in the crowded streets, in the lonely farm- 
 houses—everywhere was mourning; but no dis- 
 turbance, no outbreak unfitting respect to such 
 a man as Lincoln; the grief was too deep and 
 genuine. People who had not heard of Lin- 
 coln's assassination coming into great cities 
 would be amazed at the strange aspect of the 
 place ; the whole people were mourning, all busi- 
 ness was suspended. Everywhere the flags that 
 only the day before had been floating high in 
 joy were sadly lowered to half-mast; and by 
 common consent all the people draped black in 
 their homes in sign of grief. In the great streets 
 of cities, on the magnificent buildings, in hand- 
 some private houses — not in a few places alone, 
 but throughout the land this emblem was but 
 outward sign of a sorrow that gripped the deep- 
 
320 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 est heart of the people. But when in the dwell- 
 ings of the poor, even of the very poor, there 
 could be seen the shabby bit of black gathered 
 one knew not whence and displayed as symbol 
 of a real grief — then Abraham Lincoln was 
 mourned as he would have been mourned; the 
 " plain people" whom he loved and deeply 
 appreciated, paid him their tribute of sorrow. 
 One instance illustrates many. In a small 
 town in Massachusetts, the duty of putting 
 up the flags of the place on fitting occasions 
 devolved at that time upon a Democrat famed 
 for his want of feeling, and of interest in pub- 
 lic affairs. That morning after the assassina- 
 tion, as he walked toward the flagstaff carrying 
 the flag under his arm, one who had not heard 
 the sad event asked him the news. As the man 
 turned to answer, his eyes were filled with tears. 
 
 Memorial services were held in churches and 
 halls everywhere. 
 
 This assassination was no plot of the South 's; 
 and it was never proved that even any of the 
 Southern leaders knew anything of the pur- 
 pose of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin. 
 Others were working with him, for that same 
 evening Secretary Seward was assaulted, and 
 would also have been killed but for those in 
 the house with him. But the South was already 
 
A PEOPLE'S GRIEF. 321 
 
 beginning to perceive what a friend it had 
 in the President. In public and private the 
 people expressed their horror at the deed. In 
 Little Rock, Arkansas, a meeting of the order 
 of masons was called to express their sorrow; 
 the hall was well filled, most of those present 
 were ex-confederate soldiers and they listened 
 to a funeral oration upon Lincoln given by a 
 well-known Union man. Never was so deep a 
 mourning in a nation. 
 
 April twenty-first the funeral procession left 
 Washington, and Lincoln lay in state in some 
 of the cities it passed through. It was a long 
 and sorrowful journey. From all cities, towns, 
 from the country — everywhere — people came 
 with uncovered heads and eyes full of tears, 
 bringing flowers. Minute guns, tolling bells, 
 mournful music, flags at half-mast were every- 
 where. The reception at Baltimore was im- 
 pressive, and especially there and elsewhere the 
 colored people mourned him. At Philadelphia 
 he lay in state in old Independence Hall. The 
 old historic bell with its words: "Proclaim 
 liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants 
 thereof," stood at the head of Lincoln's bier. 
 It was he who, under God, had made those words 
 absolutely true in this land. 
 
 So, the sad procession passed on to Spring- 
 field where the President was buried. 
 
322 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln still lives in the hearts 
 of the American people ; and he will live there 
 so long as the liberty for which he lived and 
 died exists in our land. 
 
XLIV. 
 
 The Great American. 
 
 Was it only because Abraham Lincoln was the 
 President of a great republic which had just 
 ended successfully a long and terrible civil war 
 that there came from all over the world tributes 
 to his memory? No. From the throne to the 
 humblest cottage the wail of sorrow was heard ; 
 for a man who blessed the world had gone from 
 it. Queen Victoria with her own hand wrote 
 to Mrs. Lincoln her message of sorrow. From 
 Parliament and Westminster Abbey, from India 
 and Australia, and Canada, and the isles of the 
 sea, from the whole English-speaking race, 
 everywhere, came the voice of sorrow. And not 
 the English alone, but all nations sent their 
 word of grief and sympathy for us. Mr. Seward 
 called all these messages from abroad which 
 were sent to the State Department of our Gov- 
 ernment: ''The Tribute of the Nations to 
 Abraham Lincoln. ' ' They were printed, and fill 
 
 323 
 
324 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 a quarto volume of almost one thousand pages, 
 " unique in its character,' ' comments one writer, 
 "and a tribute never before in any age paid to 
 any man." 
 
 In the famous cemetery of Calton Hill, Edin- 
 burgh, Scotland, stands a beautiful monument 
 erected to Abraham Lincoln, with a statue of 
 Lincoln and at his feet a freedman kneeling 
 with broken chains. 
 
 To the world, as well as to his countrymen, 
 Abraham Lincoln is "the great American." 
 He and Washington are the only men who can 
 be compared. "Washington is the great man 
 of the era of the Revolution," says an his- 
 torian; "and so will Lincoln be of this (the 
 Civil War) : but Lincoln will reach the higher 
 position in history." 
 
 The prediction he made in leaving his Spring- 
 field friends for his inauguration, that the task 
 before him was harder than Washington's had 
 proved true. And, under the guidance of God 
 whom he came to recognize more and more, he 
 performed this task with a perfection which 
 even Washington, born in a different era and 
 differently trained, could not have reached. 
 
 If Abraham Lincoln had been born anywhere, 
 and at any time, he must have been great. But 
 only in America could he have reached the 
 place he did, and done the great work for which 
 
THE GREAT AMERICAN. 325 
 
 we are thankful to him. But he is "the great 
 American" in a deeper sense than that he was 
 born and did his wonderful work in this land. 
 He is the highest example that the world has 
 seen, and perhaps ever will see, of what America 
 means and wants to be. For the American 
 republic in its ideal is the highest form of gov- 
 ernment in the world and requires the highest 
 kind of man to carry it "out perfectly; and this 
 Lincoln was. Every man should be good and 
 true. But a man born in a republic has a special 
 responsibility, because here every man has a 
 voice and is in that sense a ruler, and to the 
 extent of his power the fate of the country rests 
 upon him ; he should think of public affairs, 
 and have a broad outlook, know what is going 
 on and what ought to be done; he should not 
 be ignorant; and he should be interested in 
 everything helpful to free institutions and 
 should work for these. 
 
 In his love for free institutions Abraham Lin- 
 coln stands second to none in the world. In 
 upholding these against one of the greatest 
 attacks upon them that the world has seen, he 
 stands the very first. His brains were as much 
 above the brains of ordinary men as his inches 
 were ; the work he did was stupendous ; and the 
 way he did it won the admiration of the whole 
 world and the deep gratitude of his countrymen. 
 
326 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 To have been born in a log-cabin and to have 
 risen to be the President of one of the greatest 
 countries in the world is much; yet other men 
 also have from humble birth risen to great 
 power. But no man who has so risen has used 
 his great power as Lincoln did; and no man not 
 born on a throne has ever freed four millions of 
 human beings, as Lincoln did. And all the while 
 that he fought the confederacy at the South, he 
 led and guided the people at the North, persuad- 
 ing, convincing, as no other man could do. As an 
 orator he was wonderful ; and for clearness and 
 power and greatness his public letters and state 
 papers will live as long as the English language. 
 It was no wonder that his secretary of war, Ed- 
 win M. Stanton, as he stood gazing at Abraham 
 Lincoln dead by the bullet of an assassin, said: 
 " There lies the most perfect ruler of men the 
 world has ever seen." 
 
 But intellect alone never blesses. There was 
 more. When the young man, "Abe Lincoln," 
 clerk in a country store, locked the door of his 
 shop and walked miles to return to a customer 
 a few cents that he had overcharged by mis- 
 take, he showed that quality which afterward 
 held to him in the dark days of the war the 
 "plain people" of whom he was always so fond, 
 and so appreciative. No matter how much they 
 blamed him— and at times the blame was ter- 
 
THE GREAT AMERICAN. 327 
 
 rible— under it all was the absolute faith that he 
 meant well. Although the title, "honest Abe" 
 was buried under the later honors poured out on 
 him, yet his unswerving fidelity was the real 
 cause of his success. 
 
 And when, years after the store-keeping, he 
 gave up the chance of being senator from Illinois 
 —a place he wanted much— because he held it 
 of more importance to speak a truth which 
 might help to lead his country to perceive 
 whither slavery was leading it, and to resist- 
 when Abraham Lincoln did this, he proved that 
 he held his country and free institutions higher 
 than place for himself, and that he could not be 
 bought to be silent when he ought to speak. 
 That was an honesty which, joined to his great 
 power of mind, made him worthy to lead the 
 nation through its peril, as God gave him to do ; 
 and to speak the great word of freedom to the 
 slave and wipe out slavery from our land. 
 
 One thing more. A real republic is always 
 a theocracy, which means that it has God for 
 its ruler; or it cannot continue. No man ever 
 believed this more than Abraham Lincoln. God 
 must have been often in his thoughts, for Lin- 
 coln came to speak of Him and His help and 
 guidance as the most natural force in life. He 
 had suffered so much and done so much, that 
 the more honors he had put upon him, the more 
 
328 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
 
 he wanted to do the work God had appointed 
 him, and help to heal and bless the nation when 
 peace had come at last. 
 
 In mental ability, in moral power, in faith in 
 God from whom all came, in what he has done 
 for the nation, in the example of a life perfectly 
 true from first to last to its devotion to free 
 institutions— true even to dying for them— 
 Abraham Lincoln is "the great American.' ' 
 
 Two things that he has said let us remember 
 through life, to do them; and they will help us 
 more than anything else to honor his memory 
 in our own lives and to help as we can do to 
 keep freedom and peace among men. Let us 
 " resolve,' ' as he said at Gettysburg, "that gov- 
 ernment of the people, by the people, for the 
 people, shall not perish from the earth.' ' 
 
 And all of us in living will help the republic 
 to live if we hold in our hearts and lives those 
 wonderful words from Abraham Lincoln: 
 "With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
 with firmness in the right as God gives us to 
 see the right." 
 
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