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St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Chicago. 
 
 Fronlismece. 
 
Abraham Lincoln: 
 His Story 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL SCOVILLE, Jr. 
 
 AUTHOR OF U BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS," ETC. 
 
 ARMY AND NAVY EDITION 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION 
 1816 Chestnut Street 
 
Copyright, 1918, by the 
 American Sundat-School Union 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 APR -8 1918 
 
 ©CI. A4 9 4 48 2 I 
 
To My Wife 
 Katharine Trumbull Scoville 
 
AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 The author takes this opportunity of ex- 
 pressing his obligation to Dr. Talcott Williams, 
 head of the Department of Journalism of 
 Columbia University, for access to his scrap- 
 book of Lincolniana, covering a period of 
 many years. For the facts and in some cases 
 for the phrasing of parts of this sketch the 
 author is indebted to the host of unknown 
 writers included in Dr. Williams' collection. 
 
 The author has also consulted and made use 
 of the following works: Abraham Lincoln: A 
 History, by John G. Nicolay and John Hay; 
 The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ida M. Tar- 
 bell; Abraham Lincoln — The Boy and the Man, 
 by James Morgan; Abraham Lincoln the Chris- 
 tian, by Rev. William J. Johnson; Lincoln the 
 Lawyer, by Frederick T. Hill; Life of Abraham 
 Lincoln, by J. G. Holland; and The Complete 
 Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by John 
 G. Nicolay and John Hay. Wherever pos- 
 sible the writer has allowed Lincoln to speak 
 for himself. 
 
 Samuel Scoville, Jr. 
 Philadelphia, March, 1918. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 More than half a century ago the feet of 
 this nation had slipped to the very brink of 
 the pit and were scorched with fire. Then came 
 the Man. Still his words ring down the years 
 a message to us who are today giving of our 
 best for the freedom of the world: 
 
 "This conflict will settle the question, at 
 least for centuries to come, whether man is 
 capable of governing himself, and consequently 
 is of greater importance to the free than to 
 the slaves." 
 
 "We shall nobly save or meanly lose the 
 last, best hope of earth." 
 
 "Government of the people, by the people, 
 and for the people, shall not perish from the 
 earth." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Boy 13 
 
 II. The Man 21 
 
 III. The Lawyer 33 
 
 IV. The Speaker 45 
 
 V. The Statesman 54 
 
 VI. The Christian 65 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln Frontispiece. 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Birthplace and White House 16 
 
 Lincoln in Early Manhood 38 
 
 Barnard's Statue of Lincoln 46 
 
 Lincoln and McClellan at Antietam 58 
 
 Lincoln and His Son "Tad" 66 
 
 11 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 HIS STORY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE BOY 
 
 In every century are born men whose lives 
 bring messages of help and hope to those who 
 come after. Such an one was Abraham Lin- 
 coln. The year of his birth, 1809, was a lion- 
 year. Charles Darwin was born the same day; 
 Mendelssohn, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, Alfred Tennyson, and William Ewart 
 Gladstone in the same year. Few boys of today 
 start life so handicapped by hardships or with 
 fewer opportunities. Lincoln knew little about 
 his ancestors. In later life he said that he was 
 more concerned to know what his grandfather's 
 grandson would be than who his grandfather 
 had been. 
 
 One of his grandfathers was named Abraham 
 Lincoln, and went as a pioneer to Kentucky — 
 then the "Dark and Bloody Ground" claimed 
 and guarded by fierce Indian tribes. There, 
 near where the city of Louisville now stands, 
 he cleared a field in the forest, not far from a 
 stockade erected by other settlers, and built 
 a cabin. A schoolmaster of that time remem- 
 13 
 
14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 bers boarding in a similar cabin, which had but 
 one room sixteen feet square, where lived a 
 father, mother, ten children, three dogs, and 
 two cats. It was so cold at night that he slept 
 on his shoes in order to prevent them from 
 freezing too stiff to be worn the next day. 
 
 One morning in the year 1784 this first 
 Abraham Lincoln started with his three sons, 
 Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, to work at a 
 little clearing near the cabin. Suddenly from 
 a near-by thicket sounded the crack of a rifle, 
 and this first Kentucky Lincoln fell back dead. 
 Josiah ran to the stockade for help. Mordecai 
 dashed back to the cabin and took down his 
 father's rifle just as an Indian, in full war paint, 
 reached Thomas, a little boy of six, who had 
 stayed by his father's body. It was necessary 
 to shoot quick and straight to save his brother's 
 life. Aiming through a loophole at a white 
 string of wampum on the Indian's breast, 
 Mordecai dropped him dead while Thomas 
 escaped into the cabin. From there Mordecai 
 fought off the other Indians until help came 
 from the stockade. 
 
 The sight of his father's death turned this 
 oldest boy Mordecai into an Indian-hunter, 
 and he spent his life in stalking and killing 
 Indians wherever he could find them. Thomas, 
 the father of Abraham Lincoln, grew up a 
 
THE BOY 15 
 
 wandering laboring boy, with just enough 
 education to write his name. Drifting from 
 one job to another he became a carpenter and 
 married Nancy Hanks, the niece of the man in 
 whose shop he worked. The young couple 
 went to housekeeping in a log cabin which had 
 one room, one door, and one window, and was 
 furnished with a spinning-wheel, a loom, and 
 a feather bed. 
 
 There, in Hardin County, Kentucky, on 
 February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born, 
 and there he lived until he was seven years old. 
 Lincoln's only playmate was his sister, and his 
 playground the lonely forest. With this sister 
 he went to school now and then under wander- 
 ing school-teachers, who held school in a de- 
 serted cabin made of round logs with a dirt 
 floor and small holes for windows covered with 
 greased paper. There he learned his alphabet. 
 
 The War of 1812 was being fought at this 
 time. "I had been fishing one day," he once 
 told a friend in speaking about these times, 
 "and had caught a little fish, which I was tak- 
 ing home. I met a soldier in the road and hav- 
 ing been told at home that we must be good to 
 the soldiers, I gave him my fish." 
 
 In April, 1816, Thomas Lincoln sold his 
 farm for four hundred gallons of whiskey and 
 twenty dollars, built a raft, and started down 
 
THE BOY 17 
 
 and killed one of them. He has never since 
 pulled trigger on any larger game." 
 
 The cabin had no window other than the 
 large cracks which he mentions, nor any door 
 to shut out the sleet and snow which drifted 
 in through the doorway. The bare earth which 
 served for a floor turned to mud during the 
 winter thaws. The little boy's bed was a heap 
 of loose leaves in a loft, which he reached by 
 climbing up on pegs driven into the wall. Some- 
 times the family had nothing to eat but roast 
 potatoes, and a neighbor remembers that 
 peeled, sliced raw potatoes were passed around 
 for dessert. Sometimes on cold days the chil- 
 dren would carry a hot roast potato with them 
 on their way to school to keep their hands 
 warm. "They were pretty pinching times," 
 wrote Abraham Lincoln in after years. 
 
 In 1818, when Abraham was nine years old, 
 a mysterious disease nearly wiped out the 
 small community at Little Pigeon Creek. It 
 was called the "milk-sick" and attacked cattle 
 and humans alike. Nancy Hanks Lincoln was 
 stricken down with it. There was no doctor 
 within thirty-five miles, and under the swift 
 fever she died before one could be called. Her 
 last message to her boy, as she lay dying, was 
 to be good to his father and sister, and to love 
 his kin and worship God. She was buried in a 
 
18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 rude coffin on a knoll near by, with no prayer 
 or service over the grave. Months later the 
 little boy learned to write, and his first letter, 
 addressed to a wandering preacher, brought 
 the latter to preach a funeral sermon over the 
 lonely, snow-covered grave. 
 
 Before the next winter was over, the father 
 went back to Kentucky and so successfully 
 courted a widow, Sarah Bush Johnston, that 
 they were married the morning after he called 
 upon her. This second marriage was the begin- 
 ning of a better life for the two little Lincoln 
 children. The new mother had so much prop- 
 erty that a four-horse team was needed to 
 bring it all to Little Pigeon Creek; and for the 
 first time in his fife Abraham Lincoln slept on a 
 feather bed, with a pillow and blankets and 
 even a quilt. From her, too, he received his 
 first woolen shirt, which took the place of the 
 deerskin one that he had always worn before. 
 The shiftless father was forced to make a door, 
 lay a floor, and cut out a window, which was 
 covered with greased paper instead of glass. 
 
 Sarah Bush Lincoln was an honest, energetic 
 Christian woman, who learned to love Abra- 
 ham quite as dearly as her own children. He 
 owed much to her love and care. It was she 
 who persuaded the father to let him go to 
 school. The boy would walk nine miles a day 
 
 ! 
 
THE BOY 19 
 
 and do his studying at night in the light of a 
 fire made from shavings, while his figuring was 
 done with a bit of charcoal on the back of a 
 wooden shovel, which he would whittle clean 
 when it could hold no more. His pen was the 
 quill of a turkey buzzard, and his ink was made 
 from the juice of a brier-root. Altogether he 
 had in his whole life less than a year of school- 
 ing, but he learned to read and spell and write 
 and cipher to the rule of three. 
 
 One day a wagon broke down in the road 
 near the house, and a woman with her two 
 daughters stayed with the Lincolns over night. 
 She had some books and told the children some 
 stories. For the first time Abraham discovered 
 what opportunity and happiness books can 
 bring to those who learn to read them. From 
 that day on he borrowed and read every book 
 that he could get for miles around. One of the 
 earliest writings which we have of his is a copy- 
 book form which he set for a neighbor: 
 
 Good boys, who to their books apply, 
 Will all be great men by and by. 
 
 There were six books which he read and read 
 and reread. These books were the Bible, 
 jEsop's Fables, Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, 
 Robinson Crusoe, A History of the United States, 
 and Weems's Life of Washington. The last- 
 
20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 named book was damaged by the rain which 
 drove in one night through the cracks in the 
 cabin, and Lincoln had to pull fodder in the 
 owner's cornfield for three whole days in order 
 to pay for it. The book belonged to one "Blue- 
 Nose" Crawford, and Lincoln afterward wrote 
 a poem about him, making fun of his stinginess, 
 — but he paid for the book. He kept on borrow- 
 ing and reading until, as he later said, he had 
 finished every book to be obtained within a 
 radius of fifty miles. 
 
 There are not many records left of his boy- 
 hood. Those that have come down to us are 
 all kindly ones. Once he saved the life of the 
 village drunkard, whom he found freezing by 
 the roadside, carrying him in his arms to the 
 tavern and working over him until he was out 
 of danger. Another time, it was remembered, 
 he rescued a mud turtle from some children 
 who were putting red-hot coals on its shell. 
 The words of his stepmother can best sum up 
 the story of his boyhood: "I can say that Abe 
 never gave me a cross word or look, and never 
 refused to do anything I asked him. I had a 
 son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both 
 were good boys, but I must say that Abe was 
 the best boy I ever saw." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 Lincoln's starved and straitened boyhood 
 stretched out into a manhood that seemed to 
 hold little but poverty and toil. As he grew 
 large enough he began to work out as a 
 farmhand and afterward as a flatboatsman. 
 Every yard of the brown jeans dyed with wal- 
 nut juice which he wore was earned by splitting 
 rails. A day's work lasted from sunrise to sun- 
 set and brought him in twenty-five cents. 
 Listen to the story of Lincoln's first dollar: 
 
 I was about eighteen years of age and belonged, as 
 you know, to what they call down South the "scrubs." 
 I was very glad to have the chance of earning something, 
 and supposed each of the men would give me a couple 
 of bits. I sculled them out to the steamer. They got 
 on board, and I lifted the trunks and put them on the 
 deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, 
 when I called out, "You have forgotten to pay me." 
 Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar 
 and threw it on the bottom of my boat. You may think 
 it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to 
 me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident 
 in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, 
 had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest 
 work I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and 
 thoughtful boy from that time. 
 
 It was on a trip to New Orleans on a flatboat 
 with John Hanks that he saw, for the first time, 
 men and women put up on a block and sold as 
 21 
 
22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 slaves. Lincoln turned to Hanks and said, 
 "John, if I ever get a chance to hit this thing, 
 . . . I'll hit it hard." 
 
 In 1831 he went to New Salem, on the San- 
 gamon River, twenty miles northwest of 
 Springfield. The town consisted of only fifteen 
 houses all built of logs. Lincoln reached there 
 on election day and the clerk of election needed 
 a helper. Seeing Lincoln hanging around the 
 polls he asked him whether he could write. 
 "Well," said Lincoln, "I can make a few rabbit 
 tracks." 
 
 He got the job and afterward was hired as 
 a clerk in the village store. It was there that 
 he laid the foundation of his reputation for 
 absolute honesty. Finding one evening that 
 he had taken six cents too much from a cus- 
 tomer, he walked three miles that night, after 
 the store was closed, to return the money. 
 Another time, in weighing out half a pound of 
 tea, he made a mistake of four ounces. Dis- 
 covering this mistake the first thing in the 
 morning, he closed the store until he could 
 deliver the rest of the tea. 
 
 While he was still a clerk in this store the 
 Black Hawk Indian War broke out. There was 
 a call for volunteers and Abraham Lincoln was 
 elected captain. The other candidate was a 
 man named Kirkpatrick, who had once hired 
 
THE MAN 23 
 
 Lincoln and cheated him out of two dollars in 
 wages. Lincoln afterward wrote that no other 
 success in life ever gave him so much satisfaction. 
 
 He did not make a great record as a military 
 man. In after-life he used to tell how he got his 
 men through a gateway into a field: "I could 
 not for the life of me remember the right word 
 of command for getting my company endwise, 
 so that it could get through the gate; so when 
 we came near I shouted, 'This company is 
 dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in 
 again on the other side of the gate.' ' 
 
 Lincoln did not win much glory in this 
 campaign, but at some risk to himself he saved 
 the life of a helpless old Indian whom his men 
 wished to kill. 
 
 When he came back to New Salem, in part- 
 nership with a man named Berry he opened a 
 store, giving his notes in payment for the stock. 
 Berry ran the business heavily into debt and 
 died. Instead of going through bankruptcy 
 Lincoln sold out, shouldered the burden for 
 fifteen years, and paid off every dollar of the 
 debt with interest. 
 
 Later on he became the postmaster at New 
 Salem. Most of the letters he carried around 
 in his hat and delivered to his neighbors at 
 their cabins on his way to work — one of the 
 earliest systems on record of rural free-delivery. 
 
24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 At length came a chance to secure an ap- 
 pointment as deputy state surveyor. The only 
 difficulty was that Lincoln knew absolutely 
 nothing about surveying. He borrowed a 
 textbook and, with the help of a schoolmaster 
 friend, worked night and day for six weeks. 
 At the end of that time, pale and haggard but 
 a master of surveying, he got the job. 
 
 It was about this time that he fell in love 
 with the beautiful Ann Rutledge, who died soon 
 after they became engaged. "My heart is 
 buried there," he said to a friend when they 
 once passed her grave. There is no doubt that 
 Lincoln was a changed man after her death and 
 that her loss deepened his life. This thought 
 has been nobly phrased by Edgar Lee Masters 
 in the epitaph which he has written for her 
 almost unmarked grave: 
 
 Ann Rutledge 
 Out of me, unworthy and unknown, 
 The vibrations of deathless music: 
 "With malice toward none, with charity for all." 
 Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, 
 And the beneficent face of a nation 
 Shining with justice and truth. 
 I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, 
 Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, 
 Wedded to him, not through union, 
 But through separation. 
 Bloom forever, O Republic, 
 From the dust of my bosom! 
 
 In 1834 Lincoln was elected to the state 
 
THE MAN 25 
 
 legislature and went to Springfield to live. 
 He reached that town on a borrowed horse, 
 with all of his possessions in a couple of saddle- 
 bags, and accepted the offer of Joshua Speed, 
 a storekeeper, to share his room and bed until 
 he got a start. Going upstairs Lincoln set his 
 saddlebags on the floor and coming down said 
 beamingly, "Well, Speed, I'm moved." 
 
 In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, a 
 spirited, pretty Kentucky girl. They lived 
 at the Globe Tavern at four dollars a week. 
 He wrote to a friend who had invited him to 
 visit in Kentucky: "I am so poor, and make so 
 little headway, that I drop back in a month 
 of idleness as much as I would gain in a year's 
 sowing." 
 
 Here is Lincoln's own account of his appear- 
 ance at this time: "I am in height six feet four 
 inches nearly, lean in flesh, weighing on an 
 average of a hundred and eighty pounds, dark 
 complexion, with coarse, black hair and gray 
 eyes. No other marks or brands recollected." 
 
 He always had unusual strength and en- 
 durance. Once he picked up and carried a 
 weight of six hundred pounds. At another 
 time he shouldered some posts which several 
 men were vainly trying to lift with a hoisting 
 machine. In harness he was able to lift a dead 
 weight of half a ton off the ground. Moreover, 
 
26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN : HIS STORY 
 
 he was able to use this strength in protecting 
 himself when it became necessary. At New 
 Salem, when forced into a fight, he whipped 
 Jack Armstrong, the leader of the Clary's 
 Grove gang, and then with his back to the 
 wall held his own against the rest of the gang, 
 all of whom afterward became his devoted 
 friends and supporters 
 
 Throughout life Lincoln was a melancholy 
 man. He thus wrote about himself in 1841 to 
 his friend and partner Stuart: "I am now the 
 most miserable man living. If what I feel 
 were equally distributed to the whole human 
 family, there would not be one cheerful face 
 on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I 
 cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not." 
 
 He fought this natural despondency with 
 his stories, when many another man would 
 have given in to it. Of this use of stories 
 Lincoln said: 
 
 I am not a story-teller. Often by the use of a story 
 I can illustrate a point, or take the sting out of a re- 
 fusal to grant a request. Sometimes, too, the telling 
 of a good story or the listening to one lightens the 
 load of sorrow and suffering that one in my position 
 has to bear; but it is a mistake to think that I am a 
 humorist or tell stories for the laugh that is in them. 
 
 Most of his stories come under this, his own 
 description of them, as when, at one of the 
 receptions given by him when President, a 
 
THE MAN 27 
 
 Virginia farmer pushed his way through the 
 crowd and told him that some Union soldiers 
 had carried off his hay. "I hope, Mr. Presi- 
 dent," he ended, "that you'll see that I'm 
 paid." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's only reply was to tell him the 
 story of Jack Chase, the river captain. Once 
 when he was piloting a steamer through the 
 rapids and straining every nerve and muscle 
 to follow the narrow channel, a boy pulled his 
 coat-tail and shouted in his ear above the roar 
 of the waters: "Say, Mr. Captain, I wish 
 you'd stop the boat a minute. I've dropped 
 my apple overboard." 
 
 At other times his whimsical drollery and 
 quaint flashes of humor were efforts, perhaps 
 unconscious, to relieve the rooted melancholy 
 of his life. "Why, Mr. President, do you black 
 your own boots?" exclaimed Charles Sumner 
 when he found Mr. Lincoln so engaged at the 
 White House. "Whose boots did you think 
 I blacked?" responded the President. 
 
 Another time, when he was visiting the 
 Union army, a young officer pushed his way 
 through the crowd and complained to him bit- 
 terly that Colonel Sherman, as he was then, 
 had threatened to shoot him. 
 
 "Did he threaten to shoot you?" exclaimed 
 Lincoln. 
 
28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN : HIS STORY 
 
 "Yes, shoot me!" the officer assured him 
 earnestly. 
 
 Leaning over to him Lincoln said in a stage 
 whisper, "Well, if I were you and Sherman had 
 threatened to shoot me, I wouldn't trust him 
 for a moment — for I believe he'd do it." 
 
 Early in life Lincoln resolved not to weigh 
 himself down with bad habits. He led a 
 straight, clean life morally. What he said 
 about the women of America at the end of 
 the Civil War can be quoted as his attitude 
 toward women during his entire life: 
 
 "If all that has been said by orators and 
 poets since the creation of the world in praise 
 of women were applied to the women of Amer- 
 ica, it would not do them justice for their con- 
 duct during this war. I will close by saying, 
 'God bless the women of America.' " 
 
 He neither drank nor smoked. In the early 
 forties he wrote to George E. Pickett, after- 
 ward a Confederate general: 
 
 "I have just told the folks here in Spring- 
 field, on the hundred-and-tenth anniversary 
 of Washington's birthday, that the one victory 
 we can ever call complete will be that one 
 which proclaims that there is not one slave nor 
 one drunkard on the face of God's green earth. 
 Recruit for this victory!" 
 
 The picture of his inner life is a harder one 
 
THE MAN 29 
 
 to draw than that of his appearance and habits. 
 There were two men in Lincoln. One of them 
 was the Lincoln known to all his townsfolk — 
 the plain, honest, shrewd, kindly, humorous 
 man, with a certain native dignity which kept 
 them from calling him by his first name. "He 
 was folky but not familiar," one of them after- 
 ward wrote. The other man was the dreamer, 
 who made his dreams come true; the mystic, 
 who dreamed of the swift ship carrying him to 
 a dark shore before the battles of Antietam, 
 Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the night before 
 his death; the thinker, who walked the streets 
 wrapped in solitude, not seeing his best friends, 
 but looking beyond the horizon and pondering 
 in his own mind through many a lonely night 
 the great problem of slavery. It was this 
 Lincoln whom few even of his best friends 
 knew. To the day of his death some of them 
 persisted in believing that his greatness was 
 an accident or a miracle. Lincoln's own words 
 throw light on what were the guiding motives 
 of his inner life: 
 
 The better part of one's life consists of our friend- 
 
 he wrote to Judge Gillespie. 
 
 I would have the whole human race your friend and 
 mine, 
 
 he said to his little son " Tad." 
 
30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN : HIS STORY 
 
 If any man cease to attack me I never remember 
 his past against him, 
 
 he declared in one of his speeches. 
 
 Stand with anybody that stands right, and part 
 with him when he goes wrong, 
 
 he said to men who esteem their party more 
 than they do their principles. 
 
 The advice of a father to his son, "Beware of entrance 
 to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed 
 may beware of thee," is good, but not the best. Quarrel 
 not at all. No man resolved to make the most of him- 
 self can spare time for personal contention. Still less 
 can he afford to take all the consequences, including 
 the vitiating of his temper and the loss of self-control. 
 Yield larger things to which you can show no more 
 than equal right; yield lesser ones, though clearly your 
 own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by 
 him in contesting the right. Even killing the dog would 
 not cure the bite. 
 
 So he wrote, and so he lived. 
 
 He trained himself into a habit of sympathy. 
 No man with whom he talked even for a few 
 moments but felt that Lincoln was genuinely 
 interested in him. Men trusted him for that, 
 and because they saw by his everyday life that 
 his sympathy was not put on but real. We 
 like to read of the time in Springfield when he 
 found a child sobbing on the porch of her home. 
 She was to take her first railroad trip. The 
 family had gone on and the hackman had for- 
 gotten to call for her trunk. There was no 
 
THE MAN 31 
 
 time to get him before the train went. Lincoln 
 shouldered the trunk and carried it on his back 
 down to the station, arriving just in time to 
 catch the train. This habit of kindness never 
 left him all his life through. He was merciful 
 in the merciless days of the Civil War. He 
 pardoned men condemned for cowardice in 
 battle. "If God Almighty gives a man a cow- 
 ardly pair of legs," he said, "how can he help 
 running away?" 
 
 He allowed no boys of eighteen to be shot 
 for desertion. Once when a man was con- 
 demned to death for sleeping at his post he 
 drove ten miles in the middle of the night to 
 make sure that his telegram pardoning him 
 had been received. On the very day of his 
 death he said at a Cabinet meeting, when the 
 treatment of the Confederate leaders was under 
 discussion: "Enough lives have been sacrificed. 
 We must extinguish our resentments." 
 
 Thirty-six hours after the fall of Richmond 
 Lincoln visited the place and sought out the 
 home of General Pickett, who had made the 
 great charge at Gettysburg. Lincoln had 
 known him as a boy. He found the house and 
 knocked at the door. "Is this where George 
 Pickett lives?" he asked a woman who came 
 to answer the door with a baby in her arms. 
 She said that it was and that she was Mrs. 
 
32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 Pickett. "I am Abraham Lincoln, George's 
 old friend," he said. Then he took the baby 
 in his arms and told Mrs. Pickett that every- 
 thing would be done to make her comfortable 
 and her home safe. 
 
 It is this simplicity and kindness which com- 
 panions Lincoln forever in our thoughts with 
 the gentle and heroic of older lands, so that of 
 him John Bright, the English statesman, wrote: 
 "In him I have observed a singular resolution 
 honestly to do his duty, a great courage, a great 
 gentleness under the most desperate provoca- 
 tions, and a pity and mercifulness to his ene- 
 mies. His simplicity did much to hide his 
 greatness." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE LAWYER 
 
 A man stands revealed by his work. For 
 twenty-three years Abraham Lincoln practiced 
 law and sowed the harvest which the nation 
 reaped in his presidency. 
 
 He was admitted to the bar in 1836, and his 
 bar examinations consisted simply of an in- 
 quiry into his moral character. In those 
 frontier days judges and lawyers depended 
 more on common-sense than on common-law, 
 and most of the courthouses were log cabins. 
 A contemporary of Lincoln remembered that 
 when Judge John Reynolds sat in the Circuit 
 Court of Washington County, the sheriff 
 opened court by coming to the door of the one- 
 room log-built courthouse and shouting to the 
 crowd outside: "Come in, boys; our John is 
 a-goin' to hold court." 
 
 Another sheriff used to announce the open- 
 ing of court as follows: "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh 
 yes! The Honorable Judge is now opened!" 
 
 One of the judges of Lincoln's time once 
 
 restored order in his court by leaving the bench 
 
 and thrashing the offenders, remarking as he 
 
 resumed his seat: "I don't know what power 
 
 33 
 
34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 the law gives me to keep order in this court, 
 but I know very well the power God Almighty 
 has given me." 
 
 Another one of Lincoln's contemporaries 
 tells of a trial which he attended, when the 
 sheriff burst into the courtroom, out of breath, 
 and announced to the judge that he had six 
 jurors tied up and that his deputies were run- 
 ning down the others. Evidently, jury duty 
 was no more popular in Lincoln's day than it 
 is at present. 
 
 It was in such surroundings that Abraham 
 Lincoln began the practice of law. Mis legal 
 training dated back to the day when he bought 
 an old barrel for his store for fifty cents, and 
 discovered under some rubbish in the bottom 
 a complete set of Blackstone's Commentaries. 
 He afterward said that was the best stroke of 
 business he ever did as a storekeeper. 
 
 Some of the happiest years of Lincoln's life 
 were spent in walking or riding the circuit, 
 which embraced more than a dozen counties 
 and was one hundred and fifty miles broad. 
 Once before he was able to afford a horse he 
 was trudging along a frozen road toward a 
 county-seat, when he was overtaken by a man 
 in a wagon. 
 
 "Would you mind carrying my overcoat to 
 town for me?" inquired Lincoln, stopping him. 
 
THE LAWYER 35 
 
 "Certainly," said the other, "but how will 
 you get it again?" 
 
 "Easy enough," replied Lincoln; "I'll stay 
 inside of it!" 
 
 Lincoln always had trouble in getting a bed 
 that was long enough for him. Once when trav- 
 eling by steamboat he found his usual difficulty 
 with his berth. During the day while Lincoln 
 was on deck the captain had it lengthened and 
 widened. The next morning Lincoln came to 
 breakfast much puzzled and said solemnly 
 that a great miracle had happened. During 
 the night he had shrunk at least a foot in length 
 and over six inches in breadth! 
 
 At the taverns the judge and lawyers sat at 
 one end of the table, while the witnesses and 
 prisoners, with the ordinary guests, sat at the 
 other. Lincoln, however, was often found at 
 the wrong end of the table among the common 
 folks. Once Judge Davis, who ruled the whole 
 bar with a rod of iron, tried to call Lincoln back 
 to his end of the table. 
 
 "Come up here where you belong, Lincoln," 
 he shouted. 
 
 "Got anything better to eat at your end, 
 Judge?" drawled Lincoln, remaining where 
 he was. 
 
 He soon became one of the best known and 
 best liked men throughout this great expanse 
 
36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 of country. In his hand he usually carried a 
 queer, old carpet-bag. Although he was al- 
 ways careless about his clothes he kept him- 
 self scrupulously clean, and had learned that a 
 man who shaves every day will go much farther 
 than one who does not. Sometimes his appear- 
 ance was against him, as when he was sent by 
 his first partner, Major Stuart, to try a case 
 in an adjoining county for one Baddeley, an 
 Englishman. The latter, who was accustomed 
 to the bewigged, powdered, and gowned advo- 
 cates of his home-country, was disgusted to 
 find that he was to be represented by a tall, 
 awkward young man whose trousers were as 
 much too short as his coat was too large. 
 Baddeley immediately sent him back to Stuart 
 and retained someone else. He lived, however, 
 to become one of Lincoln's most enthusiastic 
 admirers. 
 
 In 1850 Lincoln in a lecture to young lawyers 
 made some suggestions which are worth repeat- 
 ing: 
 
 The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the man of every 
 other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow 
 which can be done today. Never let your correspond- 
 ence fall behind. . . . Extemporaneous speaking should 
 be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue 
 to the public. However able and faithful he may be in 
 other respects, people are slow to bring him business 
 if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a 
 more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too 
 much on speech-making. If anyone, upon his rare 
 
THE LAWYER 37 
 
 powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the 
 drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance. 
 
 Lincoln brought into the practice of his pro- 
 fession the same charity and kindness that he 
 had shown as a laborer, a storekeeper, and a 
 surveyor. A young lawyer tells about arguing 
 his first case in Chicago and making a failure 
 of it. After he had sat down in despair a com- 
 plete stranger to him came forward from the 
 back of the room and stated that, as a member 
 of the bar, he claimed the privilege of helping 
 a young man who was evidently embarrassed. 
 In spite of the protests of the lawyers on the 
 other side, the court allowed him to do this, 
 and he delivered a short, concise summing-up 
 of the case which won it for the novice. The 
 latter afterward found out that the stranger was 
 Abraham Lincoln from Springfield. 
 
 Lincoln also had the rare faculty of trying 
 a case without insulting or quarreling with his 
 opponent. During all the years of his practice 
 he never made an enemy of another lawyer. 
 
 The honesty of Lincoln's character was al- 
 ways evident in his practice. Once Herndon, 
 his young partner, had drawn up a dilatory 
 plea which would throw a case over at least 
 one term of court. "Is this founded on fact?" 
 demanded Lincoln. Herndon admitted that 
 it was not, but urged that it would save the 
 
38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN : HIS STORY 
 
 interests of their clients if the delay was ob- 
 tained. "You know it is a sham," replied 
 Lincoln, "and a sham is very often 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 forgotten." 
 
 Such scrupulous honesty Lincoln carried 
 through all his practice. It gave him a stand- 
 ing and a reputation which were worth more to 
 him than fine gold. He never made the mistake 
 that young lawyers sometimes make of sacri- 
 ficing a reputation for honesty for the sake of 
 winning a case. Moreover, unless he had 
 confidence in a case he would not take it. 
 
 Once when it was shown that his client had 
 been guilty of fraud he walked out of the court- 
 room and refused to continue the trial. The 
 judge sent a messenger, directing him to re- 
 turn, but he positively declined. "Tell the 
 judge that my hands are dirty, and that I have 
 gone away to wash them," was the answer that 
 he sent back. 
 
 "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neigh- 
 bors to compromise whenever you can. Point 
 out to them how the nominal winner is often 
 a real loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of 
 time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a 
 superior opportunity of being a good man. 
 There will still be business enough." So 
 
J 
 
 Lincoln in Early Manhood. 
 
THE LAWYER 39 
 
 Lincoln lectured, and no man at the bar ever 
 carried out this advice more conscientiously. 
 Once he was asked to collect a claim of two 
 and a half dollars and his client insisted, against 
 Lincoln's advice, that suit be brought. Lincoln 
 thereupon gravely demanded ten dollars as a 
 retainer. Half of this he gave to the defendant, 
 who then confessed judgment and paid the 
 two and a half. By this method he satisfied 
 both parties. 
 
 "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt that I can 
 gain your case for you," he said to another 
 client, who had stated a case which Lincoln 
 thought an objectionable one. "I can set a 
 whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can dis- 
 tress a widowed mother and her six fatherless 
 children and thereby get for you six hundred 
 dollars, which rightfully belongs, it appears to 
 me, as much to them as to you. I shall not 
 take your case, but I will give you a little ad- 
 vice 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." 
 
 The lawyer, however, who under-estimated 
 Lincoln at a trial soon found that he had made 
 a fatal mistake. Underneath Lincoln's hon- 
 esty, frankness, and fairness was a consummate 
 mastery of tactics, an intimate knowledge of 
 
40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 human nature, and a broad grasp of legal prin- 
 ciples, which finally made him the leader of the 
 Illinois bar. "A stranger going into a court 
 when he was trying a case would after a few 
 minutes find himself instinctwely on Lincoln's 
 side and wishing him success." This was the 
 way his methods impressed an associate. 
 
 Lincoln's mildness and good humor were 
 habitual, but woe be to him who relied on those 
 qualities to take a wrongful advantage of his 
 client. In a murder case in which he repre- 
 sented the defendant, the judge unexpectedly 
 made a ruling which was contrary to the de- 
 cisions of the Supreme Court and was most in- 
 jurious to Lincoln's client. A spectator de- 
 scribed what follows: "Lincoln rose to his feet 
 as quick as thought and was the most unearthly 
 looking man imaginable. He roared like a 
 Hon roused from his lair and he said and did 
 more things in ten minutes than he ordinarily 
 said and did in an hour." 
 
 Perhaps the real secret of his success at the 
 bar can best be summed up by the statement 
 of E. M. Prince, who had seen him try over a 
 hundred cases of all kinds: 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had a genius for seeing the real point in 
 a case at once and aiming steadily at it from the be- 
 ginning of a trial to the end. The issue in most cases 
 lies in very narrow compass, and the really great lawyer 
 disregards everything not directly tending to that issue. 
 
THE LAWYER 41 
 
 The mediocre advocate is apt to miss the crucial point 
 in his case and is easily diverted by minor matters. 
 Mr. Lincoln instinctively saw the kernel of every case 
 at the outset, never lost sight of it, and never let it 
 escape the jury. 
 
 Often he clinched his point with some anec- 
 dote which so riveted it in the minds of the 
 jury that it could not be dislodged by any 
 amount of eloquence from his opponent. There 
 was the case where he appeared for a defendant 
 who was charged with assault and battery. It 
 was proved that the plaintiff, who had been 
 seriously injured, had made the first attack, 
 but his lawyer argued that the defendant 
 should not have defended himself so force- 
 fully. 
 
 "That reminds me of the man who was attacked by 
 a farmer's dog, which he killed with a pitchfork," com- 
 mented Lincoln. " 'What made you kill my dog?' 
 demanded the farmer. 'What made him try to bite 
 me?' said the other. 'But why didn't you go at him 
 with the other end of your pitchfork?' persisted the 
 farmer. 'Well, why didn't he come at me with his 
 other end?' was the retort." 
 
 Another time Lincoln disposed of the con- 
 tention that custom makes law with this anec- 
 dote: 
 
 Old Squire Bagley from Menard once came to my 
 office and said, "Lincoln, I want your advice as a 
 lawyer. Has a man what's been elected a justice of 
 the peace a right to issue a marriage license?" I told 
 him he had not. "Lincoln, I thought you was a law- 
 
42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 yer," he retorted. "Bob Thomas and me had a bet 
 on this thing and we agreed to let you decide it; but 
 if that is your opinion, I don't want it, for I know a 
 blame sight better. I've been squire now eight years, 
 and I've done it all the time!" 
 
 The case of Duff Armstrong, who was ac- 
 cused of murder, well shows Lincoln as a man 
 and as a lawyer. Duff was the son of Jack 
 Armstrong, the leader of the Clary Grove gang, 
 whom Lincoln had once whipped in a fight 
 when he was working as a clerk at New Salem. 
 Afterward Jack and he had become firm friends. 
 Duff and two others named Norris and Metzker 
 had been drinking and there had been a free 
 fight. Metzker had been struck over the head 
 with a club by Norris and had received other 
 injuries. Norris had already been convicted 
 of manslaughter and the case looked bad for 
 Duff Armstrong, who claimed that although 
 he had struck Metzker with his fist he had 
 not been guilty of the injuries which had 
 caused the former's death. 
 
 Jack Armstrong by this time had died, and 
 his widow appealed to Lincoln. He was in the 
 middle of a political campaign, but he dropped 
 everything to help the son of his old friend. At 
 the trial a witness by the name of Allen took 
 the stand and swore that he had actually seen 
 Duff strike Metzker a blow with a blackjack. 
 On cross-examination Lincoln brought out the 
 
THE LAWYER 43 
 
 fact that the fight had occurred at about eleven 
 o'clock at night, away from any house or light. 
 Then he asked the witness how he had been 
 able to see the occurrence so plainly. "By the 
 moonlight," answered the witness. 
 
 Under further cross-examination Lincoln had 
 Allen locate the position of the moon and testify 
 that it was about full. Lincoln asked him no 
 further questions and scarcely cross-examined 
 the other witnesses, none of whom had actually 
 seen the fight. Under the law of Illinois at that 
 time the defendant was not permitted to take 
 the stand himself. As Lincoln allowed wit- 
 ness after witness to testify, with scarcely a 
 word of cross-examination, all the spectators 
 in the courtroom felt that the case against 
 Armstrong was hopeless. This feeling became 
 a certainty when Lincoln announced that he 
 would call no witnesses, and had only one ex- 
 hibit to offer in evidence. This exhibit, how- 
 ever, turned out to be an almanac which 
 showed that the moon was only in its first 
 quarter and nearly set. Making but one point 
 —the complete discrediting of the only eye- 
 witness — Lincoln summed up to the jury and 
 acquitted his client. 
 
 There can be no better ending to an account 
 of Lincoln's life as a lawyer than the advice 
 which he once gave to young lawyers: 
 
44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 Let no young man choosing the law for a calling 
 yield to the popular belief that a lawyer cannot be an 
 honest man. If in your judgment you cannot be an 
 honest lawyer resolve to be honest without being a 
 lawyer. Choose some other occupation. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SPEAKER 
 
 It was Abraham Lincoln's speaking which 
 made him the President of the United States. 
 His first speech when he was twenty-three 
 years old raised him out of the ranks of day- 
 laborers in his tiny town. Later his speeches 
 sent him to the state legislature, to Congress, 
 and to the White House, and pointed out the 
 path which this nation followed and is still 
 following, although Lincoln has been in his 
 grave for more than half a century. 
 
 How did he do it? How did this awkward, 
 poor, uneducated man, with a bad speaking 
 voice which often broke, make himself the 
 greatest orator of his day? How did he deliver 
 the Gettysburg Address, "which will live until 
 languages are dead and lips are dust"? His 
 methods are plain and simple. Every boy and 
 every man, by following them, can make him- 
 self a speaker, and add to his influence with 
 men. Here are some of Lincoln's rules for 
 oratory : 
 
 Don't shoot too high. Aim low and the common 
 
 people will understand 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 under- 
 
 45 
 
46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 stand 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. 
 
 As a lawyer he never used a word that the 
 dullest juryman could not understand. He 
 followed the same method as a speaker. At 
 Yale University the writer studied elocution 
 under Prof. Mark Bailey, who had taught hfe 
 father before him. Prof. Bailey first heard 
 Lincoln speak when he was stumping New 
 England for Fremont. He was so impressed 
 with Lincoln's power that he followed him from 
 town to town to hear him. 
 
 Finally he succeeded in having a talk with 
 him and asked him to explain his success as a 
 speaker. "Well, all I know," said Lincoln, "is 
 that when neighbors would come to my father's 
 house and talk to father in language I did not 
 understand, I would become offended some- 
 times and I would find myself going to bed 
 that night unable to sleep. I bounded it on 
 the north, south, east, and west until I had 
 caught the idea, and then I said it to myself 
 and when I said it, I used the language I would 
 use when talking to the boys on the street." 
 
 That was one of the secrets of Lincoln's ora- 
 tory — the use of the small word. He never 
 used a big word when a little one would do. His 
 sentences were usually short and he spoke not 
 
Barnard's Statue of Lincoln. 
 
THE SPEAKER 47 
 
 to be heard but to be understood. More than 
 fifty per cent, of the words used in his great 
 speeches are words of one syllable. He would 
 say, "I dug a ditch," instead of, "I excavated a 
 channel"; "I lost out by bad luck," instead of, 
 "I was defeated by a fortuitous combination 
 of circumstances." It is for this reason that he 
 is quoted more than any other American except 
 Franklin, another master of short sentences. 
 
 In the Gettysburg Address, the greatest 
 short speech in the English language, he used 
 two hundred and seventy-one words. Of these 
 exactly two hundred are words of one syllable, 
 or almost seventy-four per cent. There are 
 whole lines of short words, such as: "That 
 these dead shall not have died in vain." This 
 use of the short word gives his sentences a force 
 like the impact of a bullet. 
 
 Again, Lincoln was a master in the use of 
 Anglo-Saxon. We are not a Latin race and 
 the speaker or the writer who can use language 
 from our Saxon and Viking forebears will al- 
 ways most strongly appeal to us. Examine 
 some of Lincoln's best sentences, such as : 
 
 The father of waters again goes unvexed to the sea. 
 
 That this government of the people, by the people, 
 and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 
 
 As sure as God reigns and school-children read, that 
 black, foul lie can never be consecrated into God's 
 hallowed truth. 
 
48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN : HIS STORY 
 
 There is hardly a word from the Latin or the 
 Greek in them. 
 
 The use of quaint, homely similies and illus- 
 trations was another of Lincoln's methods. 
 When the mayor of New York, in the panic 
 and bewilderment which followed the breaking 
 out of the Civil War, proposed that New York 
 City be taken out of the Union and made a 
 free city — another Hamburg — Lincoln dis- 
 posed of the plan in one sentence: 
 
 It will be some time before the front door sets up 
 housekeeping on its own account. 
 
 When his plan of reconstruction was objected 
 to as not elaborate enough, Lincoln defended 
 it with an illustration : 
 
 Admit that my policy is in the beginning to what 
 the final policy will be in the end as an egg is to the 
 chicken. Don't you think that you will get the chicken 
 quicker by hatching the egg than by smashing it? 
 
 His speeches were full of homely epigrams 
 which needed only to be heard to be admitted, 
 and which stuck forever in his hearers' mem- 
 ories : 
 
 God must have loved the common people, for he 
 made so many of them. 
 
 You can fool all of the people some of the time, and 
 some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool 
 all of the people all of the time. 
 
THE SPEAKER 49 
 
 Anything that argues me into social and political 
 equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic 
 arrangement of words, as if a man could prove a horse- 
 chestnut to be a chestnut horse. 
 
 Again he would crystallize his whole argu- 
 ment into a single sentence: 
 
 Among free men there can be no successful appeal 
 from the ballot to the bullet. 
 
 We must not promise what we ought not, lest we 
 be called upon to perform what we cannot. 
 
 We will say to the Southern disunionist, "We won't 
 go out of the Union and you shan't!" 
 
 I protest against the counterfeit logic which con- 
 cludes that because I do not want a black woman for 
 a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. 
 
 On the platform as in court Lincoln could 
 retort severely if the occasion demanded it. 
 When only twenty-six years of age he was once 
 bitterly attacked at a political meeting by a 
 sarcastic speaker of great local reputation, who 
 had changed his politics and by so doing had 
 been appointed Register of the Land Office. 
 Moreover, he had the distinction of owning 
 the only lightning-rod in the county. When 
 Lincoln came to reply he said: 
 
 I am young in years but younger in the tricks and 
 trade of a politician. Live long or die young, however, 
 I would rather die now than like the last speaker change 
 my politics in order to receive three thousand a year 
 and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house 
 to protect my guilty conscience from an offended God. 
 
50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 Like Franklin, Lincoln possessed in an ex- 
 traordinary degree the power of persuasion. 
 Can anything be more appealing, more frank, 
 more void of offense, than his appeal to the 
 South in his First Inaugural Address? 
 
 Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can 
 make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced 
 between aliens than laws can among friends? ... I am 
 loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. We 
 must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
 strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The 
 mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle- 
 field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- 
 stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus 
 of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, 
 by the better angels of our nature. 
 
 Like Franklin, too, Lincoln possessed the 
 tact of a true statesman. The night of Lee's 
 surrender at Appomattox there was a wild 
 time in Washington. A band serenaded the 
 President, playing various patriotic airs, such 
 as "Columbia" and "The Star-Spangled Ban- 
 ner." When Lincoln was called upon to speak 
 he turned to the bandmaster and said: "Play 
 'Dixie' now. It's ours again." 
 
 Another secret of Abraham Lincoln's strength 
 as a speaker was the fact that he had saturated 
 his mind with the two great masterpieces of 
 English literature, the King James' Version of 
 the Bible and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 
 Lincoln read and reread, again and again, both 
 
THE SPEAKER 51 
 
 of these books until they became for him a 
 storehouse to which he turned unconsciously 
 for words, and phrases, and ideas. A part of 
 his great speech in 1857 on the Dred Scott 
 Decision of the Supreme Court, which, in effect, 
 took away the last rights of the negro, might 
 have been written by Bunyan: 
 
 All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining 
 against the black man. Mammon is after him; am- 
 bition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of 
 the day is fast joining in the cry. They have him in the 
 prison house; they have searched his person and left 
 no prying instrument with him. One after another 
 they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and 
 now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of 
 a hundred keys, which cannot be unlocked without 
 the concurrence of every key ; the keys in the hands of a 
 hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred 
 different places; and they stand, musing as to what in- 
 vention in all the dominions of mind and matter can 
 be produced to make the impossibility of escape more 
 complete than it is. 
 
 Who but one nourished on the imagery of 
 the Bible could have spoken as Lincoln did in 
 his first reply to Senator Douglas in 1854? 
 
 These principles cannot stand together. They are 
 as opposite as God and Mammon, and whosoever 
 holds to the one must despise the other. . . . Our 
 Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let 
 us purify it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit 
 if not the blood of the Revolution. 
 
 Last and first and all the time Lincoln's 
 power lay in the fact that he always had some- 
 
52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 thing to say. He thought things out for him- 
 self, instead of accepting other men's con- 
 clusions. In 1856, at the first convention of 
 the Republican party, he delivered a speech 
 which cast such a spell over his audience that 
 even the reporters forgot to take notes. For 
 years it was known as the "Lost Speech." 
 Finally in recent years a report of it was found. 
 Across the years the echo of it thrills us today. 
 Every young man should read Abraham Lin- 
 coln's speech of May 19, 1856, which created 
 a great party and outlined principles that this 
 country has made a part of itself. 
 
 It was on November 19, 1863, that Lincoln 
 reached his full height as an orator. The 
 national cemetery at Gettysburg was to be 
 dedicated. Edward Everett had spoken for 
 two hours, furbishing up old ideas and redress- 
 ing old thoughts with wonderful rhetoric and 
 eloquence. Then Lincoln spoke for five min- 
 utes. Today no one remembers a sentence, a 
 line, or an idea from Everett's speech. Read 
 what Lincoln said, and note how every sentence 
 rings true and familiar, like some oft-heard 
 chapter of the Bible: 
 
 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
 forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in 
 liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
 are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great 
 civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation 
 
THE SPEAKER 53 
 
 so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We 
 are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have 
 come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final rest- 
 ing-place for those who here gave their lives that that 
 nation might five. It is altogether fitting and proper 
 that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can- 
 not dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, 
 this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
 struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor 
 power to add or detract. The world will little note 
 nor long remember what we say here, but it can never 
 forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, 
 to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they 
 who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is 
 rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re- 
 maining 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. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE STATESMAN 
 
 It has been well said that the difference be- 
 tween a politician and a statesman is that a 
 politician tries to make the people do something 
 for him, while a statesman tries to do some- 
 thing for the people. Applying this test Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was always a statesman. In his 
 first speech in 1832, when he was only twenty- 
 three years old, he declared: 
 
 Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. 
 W bother it be true or not I can say for one that I have 
 no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of 
 my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their 
 esteem. 
 
 It was the recognition that he was really 
 trying to serve them and not himself which 
 gave him the confidence of the people. More- 
 over, he had the same trust in the people that 
 they had in him. 
 
 Why should there not be a patient confidence in 
 the ultimate justice of the people? ... Is there any 
 better or equal hope in the world? 
 
 he asked in one of his speeches. 
 
 Honesty was the policy on which he founded 
 his public life. In 1831, when he was first 
 elected to the Illinois legislature, his friends 
 54 
 
THE STATESMAN 55 
 
 raised a fund of two hundred dollars for his 
 election expenses. After the campaign was 
 over he returned to them $199.25 of this fund. 
 In 1836 he first showed in public life that moral 
 courage which was to carry him so far. A bill 
 was introduced to move the capital of Illinois 
 to Springfield, which was Lincoln's home and 
 where he and all his constituents wished the 
 capital to be. Another measure, of which he 
 did not approve, was joined as a rider to this 
 bill, in the hope that it might be passed. 
 Lincoln refused to vote for it. An all-night 
 meeting was held and great pressure brought 
 to bear upon him by prominent citizens from 
 all over the state. Finally, after midnight, 
 Lincoln rose amid profound silence and made an 
 earnest speech, ending with this statement of 
 one of the abiding principles of his political 
 life: 
 
 You will never get m<> to support a measure which 
 I believe to be wrong, although by so doing I may ac- 
 complish thai which I believe to be right. 
 
 In 1837 he again had a chance to show his 
 moral courage against odds. Incidentally he 
 began to carry out the promise which he had 
 made when he first saw slaves sold on the block. 
 A few men had met together in Boston and, 
 protesting against slavery, had pledged them- 
 selves to light for its abolition. It seems strange 
 
56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 in these days, when all men are free as a matter 
 of course, to read of the fire and fury that arose 
 against the Abolitionists in both the North 
 and the South. A mob of prominent citizens 
 dragged William Lloyd Garrison, one of the 
 first of the Abolitionists, through the streets of 
 Boston with a halter around his body, while in 
 Cincinnati the publication of an anti-slavery 
 paper was stopped by the simple process of 
 throwing the printing-press into the Ohio 
 River, and in Illinois an editor was murdered. 
 When a resolution was offered in the legis- 
 lature of Illinois, attacking abolition and de- 
 fending slavery, Lincoln and one other man 
 voted against it. Lincoln offered a counter- 
 resolution that the institution of slavery was 
 not only founded on injustice but was bad 
 policy. At that time he announced another 
 of his political principles: 
 
 The probability that we may fail in a worthy cause 
 is not a sufficient justification for our refusing to sup- 
 port it. 
 
 In 1847 Lincoln was elected to Congress. 
 His own estimate of himself and his life up to 
 that time is contained in a few lines prepared 
 for the Congressional Record, in contrast with 
 the pages of biography so often inflicted on 
 that publication. It ran as follows: 
 
THE STATESMAN 57 
 
 Born, February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Ky. 
 
 Education, defective. 
 
 Profession, a lawyer. 
 
 Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk 
 War. 
 
 Postmaster in a very small office. 
 
 Four times a member of the Illinois legislature, and 
 a member of the Lower House of Congress. 
 
 In Congress he voted against the iniquitous 
 Mexican War, although his stand cost him a 
 re-election. He wrote to Herndon, his partner: 
 
 Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be 
 a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone 
 out of the House — skulked the vote.' 1 I expect not. 
 
 Lincoln returned to private life with his pop- 
 ularity shattered but with his conscience whole. 
 Apparently his principles had mustered him 
 out of public life forever. 
 
 Time went on. Stephen A. Douglas had 
 brought about in Congress a repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise, which was an agree- 
 ment that slavery should be kept out of all 
 territory north of a certain parallel. Lincoln 
 was riding circuit when the news of the repeal 
 of this last safeguard against slavery was 
 brought to him. A friend who occupied the 
 same room with him that night told afterward 
 how Lincoln spent the evening discussing the 
 repeal and what it meant to the country. 
 When this friend woke up in the morning he 
 
58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 saw Lincoln sitting just where he had left him 
 the night before. As if the conversation had 
 not been interrupted Lincoln said to him: "I 
 tell you, this country cannot continue to exist 
 half-slave and half-free." 
 
 That sentence became the keynote of his 
 convictions. From that night he again entered 
 politics. One of his friends was running for 
 re-election to Congress. Lincoln began to 
 speak for him and in all of his speeches he at- 
 tacked the extension of slavery. Finally in 
 1858 he was nominated for the United States 
 Senate, for the seat then occupied by Douglas. 
 At a convention at Springfield he said: 
 
 I do not believe that this government can perma- 
 nently endure half-slave and half-free. I do not ex- 
 pect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to 
 be divided. 
 
 This thought aroused men like a firebell at 
 midnight. There followed the great debate 
 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. 
 Douglas, rival candidates for the Senate. The 
 prize was the presidency of the United States. 
 The odds seemed overwhelmingly in favor of 
 Douglas. He was wealthy, a senator, a trained 
 debater with a magnificent voice, and the 
 leader of the Democratic party. Lincoln was 
 hardly known except as an able country law- 
 yer. Douglas traveled in a special train, car- 
 
President Lincoln and General McClellan at Antietam, 
 
 October 2, 1862, Soon After the Battle. 
 Photograph by Brady. From the collection of Frederick Hill 
 Meserve. New York City. 
 
THE STATESMAN 59 
 
 rying a cannon that announced his presence 
 at each town where he spoke. Lincoln was 
 likely to arrive shabby and haggard from an 
 all-night ride in a day-coach. At first the 
 rhetoric and eloquence of Douglas seemed to 
 give him the advantage. Little by little Lin- 
 coln began to win a verdict from his audiences 
 by the naked force of his arguments and his 
 pitiless logic. Finally, Lincoln propounded to 
 his opponent a question as unanswerable as 
 the one that Christ asked the Pharisees. Which- 
 ever way he answered it Douglas would inevit- 
 ably lose the support of either the North or the 
 South. Douglas tried to compromise. By so 
 doing he won the race for the senatorship but 
 lost the contest for the presidency later on. 
 
 "We accuse him for this," thundered Judah P. Ben- 
 jamin, the most able of the Southern senators. "Under 
 the stress of a local election his knees gave way, his 
 whole person trembled. His adversary stood upon 
 principle and was beaten; and lo, he is the candidate 
 of a mighty party for the presidency of the United 
 States. The senator from Illinois faltered. He got 
 the prize for which he faltered, but the grand prize of 
 his ambition today slips from his grasp because of his 
 faltering in his former contest; and his success in the 
 canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, 
 has cost him the loss of the presidency of the United 
 States!" 
 
 There followed the convention and campaign 
 of 1860, and the election of Abraham Lincoln 
 to the presidency of the United States. Under 
 
60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 the responsibilities and discipline of that great 
 office Lincoln reached his full stature as a 
 statesman and grew into the heroic figure 
 which has come down to us. Only a great man 
 could have shown the magnanimity and for- 
 getfulness of self which he showed to Seward, to 
 Stanton, to McClellan, and to a host of others. 
 Lincoln called political and personal oppo- 
 nents to office. His only test was whether they 
 could be of service to the country. Most of 
 his Cabinet and even his generals regarded his 
 election as an accident and himself as a coun- 
 try politician wholly unfitted to be President. 
 McClellan, one of Lincoln's first generals, was 
 a Democrat and had provided the special 
 trains on which Douglas had traveled during 
 his debates with Lincoln. When appointed a 
 general McClellan disregarded Lincoln's orders 
 and treated his chief in a way that but few men 
 could have borne. At one time when Lincoln 
 called at his house to see him on a critical mat- 
 ter, McClellan sent down word that he could 
 not be disturbed and calmly went to bed, leav- 
 ing the President of the United States to take 
 himself home. Lincoln bore with him, however, 
 until the very last, hoping against hope that he 
 would finally learn to lead the armies of the 
 Union to a victory. To one who urged him to 
 discipline the general for his insolence, Lincoln 
 
THE STATESMAN 61 
 
 merely said: "I will stand outside and hold 
 McClellan's horse for him if he will only bring 
 us success." 
 
 Seward was called to become Secretary of 
 State. He was the recognized leader of the Re- 
 publican party, a candidate for the presidency, 
 and in the Cabinet expected to be the power be- 
 hind the tin-one. Compassionating what he 
 supposed to be Lincoln's weakness, Seward 
 actually wrote him a letter, proposing to take 
 charge of the government and become acting- 
 President. Lincoln refused this extraordinary 
 suggestion, but with so much tact and kindness 
 that he made Seward one of his warmest sup- 
 porters and was able to avail himself of his 
 great talents for the country's good. It was only 
 a few weeks after this letter that the Secretary 
 of State wrote to Mrs. Seward: "The President 
 is the best of us all." 
 
 Throughout his presidency Lincoln refused 
 to treasure up any personal injury and utilized 
 even his enemies to help him save the country. 
 He kept Chase as Secretary of the Treasury 
 even when he knew that he was plotting to 
 secure the nomination for the presidency. 
 
 Lincoln had first met Edwin M. Stanton 
 when he had been retained with the latter in 
 one of the most important cases of his legal 
 career. "Where did that long-armed creature 
 
62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 come from, and what does he expect to do in 
 this case?" demanded Stanton after they had 
 met in Cincinnati, speaking so loudly as to be 
 heard by Lincoln through an open door in the 
 hotel. As a result of his contemptuous treat- 
 ment of Lincoln, the latter was sidetracked 
 and Stanton made the argument. After Lin- 
 coln had been elected President, Stanton, who 
 had served in Buchanan's Cabinet, wrote and 
 spoke of him with the utmost bitterness and 
 disdain, referring to him in his letters as a 
 "gorilla." Yet it was Stanton whom Lincoln 
 called to be Secretary of War. Even after his 
 appointment Stanton treated the President 
 with marked disrespect. Once when Lincoln 
 released some prisoners without regard to 
 Stanton's wishes, the latter said that the only 
 thing left to do was "to get rid of that baboon 
 in the White House." 
 
 "I wouldn't endure that insult," said an 
 indignant friend who reported the matter to 
 the President. "Insult? That is no insult," 
 returned Lincoln. "All he said was that I was 
 a baboon, and that is only a matter of opinion, 
 sir." Then he added after a pause, "The thing 
 that concerns me most is that I find that Stan- 
 ton is usually right." Yet Stanton lived to say 
 at Lincoln's bier: "There lies the greatest 
 leader of men the world has ever seen." 
 
THE STATESMAN 63 
 
 In the presidency, as outside, Lincoln was 
 great enough to do the right thing even when 
 the whole country was against him. When the 
 commander of a Union vessel took the Con- 
 federate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, by 
 force from a British steamer, the North made a 
 hero of the officer. Lincoln realized instantly 
 that this act was of the same class as those 
 committed by Great Britain which brought on 
 the War of 1812. In spite of the clamor of the 
 whole country he restored the Confederate 
 commissioners to Great Britain and disavowed 
 their capture. 
 
 He who looks ever into the far future and 
 seeks constantly to know the eternal purposes 
 of life wins to a clearer vision than ordinary 
 men. It was so with Abraham Lincoln. Listen 
 to some of the messages that he has left for us 
 of another generation: 
 
 No man is good enough to govern another person 
 without that other's consent. 
 
 This is a world of compensation. He who would 
 be no slave must be content to have no slave. Those 
 who deny freedom to others deserve it not themselves, 
 and under a just God cannot long retain it: 
 
 It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire 
 property as fast as he can. I don't believe in a law to 
 prevent a man from getting rich. It would do more 
 harm than good. I want every man to have a chance 
 to better his condition. 
 
64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN : HIS STORY 
 
 Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all the 
 compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; 
 repeal all past history — you still cannot repeal human 
 nature. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 Like Moses, Luther, and Washington, Lin- 
 coln became a great leader of men only when 
 he surrendered himself to God. His mother, 
 Nancy Hanks, was a Christian woman. Of her 
 he said: "I remember her prayers and they 
 have always followed me. They have clung 
 to me all my life." 
 
 As a boy he read his Bible and attended 
 church when he could. In those days he 
 learned the hymns which were his favorites 
 throughout life, "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" 
 and "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." 
 During his early manhood he drifted into a 
 temporary indifference toward religious mat- 
 ters. Yet even through this time he read and 
 reread his Bible, and his later life showed what 
 it did for him. 
 
 Take all of this book upon reason that you can and 
 the balance on faith and you will live and die a happier 
 man, 
 
 Lincoln wrote to a skeptical friend. 
 
 Another great war president of our own 
 time has borne testimony about this Book of 
 books, which Lincoln would have echoed in the 
 last years of his life: 
 
 65 ; 
 
66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 The Bible is the Word of life. I beg that you will 
 read it and find this out for yourselves. Read, not 
 little snatches here and there, but long passages that 
 will really be the road to the heart of it. You will not 
 only find it full of real men and women, but also of 
 the things you have wondered about and been troubled 
 about all your life, as men have been always; and the 
 more you read the more it will become plain to you 
 what things are worth while and what are not; what 
 things make men happy — loyalty, right dealings, speak- 
 ing the truth, readiness to give everything for what they 
 think their duty, and, most of all, the wish that they 
 may have the approval of the Christ, who gave every- 
 thing for them; and the things that are guaranteed to 
 make men unhappy — selfishness, cowardice, greed, 
 and everything that is low and mean. When you have 
 read the Bible you will know that it is the Word of 
 God, because you will have found it the key to your own 
 heart, your own happiness, and your own duty. 
 
 Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 Lincoln's period of indifference was followed 
 by an awakening to higher things. In 1842 he 
 wrote to his friend Speed a letter in which he 
 said: 
 
 I believe God made me one of the instruments of 
 bringing Fanny and you together, which union I have 
 no doubt he had foreordained. Whatever he designs 
 he will do for me yet. "Stand still and see the salvation 
 of the Lord" is my text just now. 
 
 More and more Lincoln's speeches became 
 tinged with religious thought. In 1856 in the 
 "Lost Speech" he said: 
 
 The stars in their courses, aye, an invisible power, 
 greater than the puny efforts of men, will fight for us. 
 . . . Our moderation and forbearance will stand us in 
 good stead when, if ever, we must make an appeal to 
 battle and to the God of hosts. 
 
Lincoln and His Son " Tad." 
 From photograph taken while Lincoln was President. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN 67 
 
 At last, preferred to all the great leaders of 
 his party, he was made the President of his 
 country. The sheer wonder of it made him 
 know that he had been chosen of God for a 
 great purpose. 
 
 I cannot but know what you all know that without 
 a name, perhaps without a reason why I should have a 
 name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not 
 rest even upon the father of his country; and so feeling 
 I cannot but turn and look for that support without 
 which it will be impossible for me to perform that great 
 task. I turn, then, and look to the great American 
 people and to that God who has never forsaken them. 
 
 His farewell to his friends at Springfield as he 
 
 left to go to Washington shows as does nothing 
 
 else the new spirit of his life. As with the 
 
 friends of the Apostle Paul at Miletus, many 
 
 of them "wept sore, . . . sorrowing most of all 
 
 for the words which he spake, that they should 
 
 see his face no more. ' ' To them he said : 
 
 My Friends: No one not in my situation can appre- 
 ciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this 
 place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every- 
 thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and 
 have passed from a young to an old man. Here my 
 children have been born, and one is buried. I now 
 leave, not knowing when or whether I may ever return, 
 with a task before me greater than that which rested 
 upon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
 Divine Being who ever attended him I cannot succeed. 
 With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in him, 
 who can go with me and remain with you, and be every- 
 where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet 
 be well. To his care commending you, as I hope in 
 your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affec- 
 tionate farewell. 
 
68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 From that day a new life begins for him — 
 the life of a devoted Christian. "I have been 
 driven many times to my knees," he later 
 wrote, "because I had nowhere else to go." 
 
 Again he declared: 
 
 I would be the veriest blockhead if I thought I could 
 get through with a single day's business without relying 
 upon Him who doeth all things well. 
 
 This spirit shows constantly throughout all 
 his duties. To a Missouri delegation he said: 
 
 I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administra- 
 tion that if at the very end, when I come to lay down the 
 reins of power, I have lost every friend on earth, I shall 
 have at least one friend left — my' conscience. 
 
 When a minister, representing a visiting del- 
 egation, said to him that he hoped the Lord 
 was on their side, Mr. Lincoln replied: 
 
 I am more concerned to know whether we are on the 
 Lord's side. 
 
 Constantly he sought for the sympathy, and 
 the prayers, and the help of all Christian peo- 
 ple. A minister from a little village in central 
 New York State called to tell him that every 
 Christian father and mother was praying for 
 him every day. The tears filled Lincoln's eyes 
 as he thanked his visitor and said: 
 
 But for these prayers I should have faltered and 
 perhaps failed long ago. Tell every father and mother 
 you know to keep on praying and I will keep on fighting. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN 69 
 
 After the Emancipation Proclamation had 
 been signed he said to some men who had called 
 to congratulate him on the success of the Union 
 arms: 
 
 On many a defeated field there was a voice louder 
 than the thundering of cannon. It was the voice of 
 God crying, "Let my people go." We were all very 
 slow in realizing that it was God's voice, but after 
 many humiliating defeats the nation came to believe 
 it as a great and solemn command. Great multitudes 
 begged and prayed that I might answer God's voice 
 by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and I did 
 it, believing that we should never be successful in the 
 great struggle unless we obeyed the Lord's command. 
 Since that the God of battles has been on our side. 
 
 Just before the Battle of Gettysburg all of 
 the members of the Cabinet were in a state of 
 terrible anxiety. General Lee with a power- 
 ful army had swept up into Pennsylvania. On 
 the eve of the battle General Meade, almost 
 an untried general, had been placed in com- 
 mand. A defeat meant the loss of the Capital 
 and perhaps the occupation of Philadelphia 
 and even New York. Everywhere was panic. 
 Only Lincoln remained unmoved and unafraid. 
 After the battle he told General Sickles the 
 reason of his confidence: 
 
 In the pinch of your campaign up there, when every- 
 body seemed panic-stricken^and nobody could tell what 
 was going to happen, I went to my room one day and 
 locked the door and got down on my knees before 
 Almighty God, and prayed for victory at Gettysburg. 
 I told him that this was his war, and our cause his 
 
70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 cause, but that we could not stand another Fredericks- 
 burg or Chancellorsville. Then I made a vow to Al- 
 mighty God that if he would stand by our boys at 
 Gettysburg, I would stand by him, and he did stand 
 by you boys and I will stand by him. And after that, 
 I don't know how it was and I can't explain it, but soon 
 a sweet comfort swept into my soul that God Almighty 
 had taken the whole business into his own hands, and 
 that is why I have no fears about you. 
 
 To Chittenden, the Register of the Treasury, 
 Lincoln said: 
 
 That the Almighty does make use of human agencies, 
 and directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the 
 plainest statements in the Bible. I have had so many 
 evidences of his direction, so many instances when I 
 have been controlled by some other power than my 
 own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes 
 from above. I frequently see my way clear to a deci- 
 sion when I am conscious that I have not sufficient facts 
 upon which to found it. I am satisfied that when the 
 Almighty wants me to do or not to do a particular 
 thing, he finds a way of letting me know it. 
 
 It was this deep and achieved faith in God 
 that made John Hay, who had been one of his 
 private secretaries, say of him: 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, one of the mightiest masters of 
 statecraft that history has known, was also one of the 
 most devoted and faithful servants of Almighty God 
 who have ever sat in the high places of the world. 
 
 Only a Christian could have written the 
 letter which he sent to a Mrs. Bixby, who had 
 lost five sons in the service. It is copied in 
 letters of gold on the walls of a great English 
 university: 
 
THE CHRISTIAN 71 
 
 Dear Madam: 
 
 I have been shown in the files of the War Department 
 a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts 
 that you are the mother of five sons who have died 
 gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and 
 fruitless must be any words of mine which should at- 
 tempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so over- 
 whelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you 
 the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the 
 Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly 
 Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, 
 and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 
 and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to 
 have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 
 Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Time went on. The war was drawing to its 
 close. On the day of the receipt of the news of 
 Lee's surrender the President held a meeting 
 of the Cabinet. Neither Lincoln nor any mem- 
 ber was able for a time to speak. Finally, at 
 the suggestion of the President, all dropped on 
 their knees and thanked God in silence and in 
 tears for the victory that he had granted to the 
 Union. It is doubtful whether there is any 
 other recorded instance where the meeting of 
 the Cabinet of a great country ended in 
 prayer. 
 
 The victories of the Union arms re-elected 
 Lincoln as President. In his Second Inaugural 
 Address he reached heights not achieved before, 
 when looking back over four years of war, 
 hatred, and calumny he was yet able to say: 
 
72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS STORY 
 
 The Almighty has his own purposes. If we shall 
 suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses 
 which in the providence of God must needs come, but 
 which, having continued through his appointed time, 
 he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North 
 and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by 
 whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any 
 departure from those divine attributes which the be- 
 lievers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly 
 do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty 
 scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
 wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by 
 the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
 quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood 
 drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
 by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, 
 so still it must be said: "The judgments of the Lord are 
 true and righteous altogether." 
 
 With malice toward none, with charity for all, with 
 firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, 
 let us strive on to finish the work we are now in, to bind 
 up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
 borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to 
 do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves and with all nations. 
 
 In his last public speech of April 11, 1865, 
 Lincoln again testified to his faith and trust in 
 God. He said in part: 
 
 We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness 
 of heart. The evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg, 
 and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give 
 the hope of a just and speedy peace, the joyous expres- 
 sion of which cannot be restrained. In all this joy, 
 however, He from whom all blessings flow must not 
 be forgotten. 
 
 Three nights later in the state box at Ford's 
 Theatre he was talking to Mrs. Lincoln about 
 
THE CHRISTIAN 73 
 
 a trip to the Holy Land. Just as he was saying 
 that there was no city which he so much wished 
 to see as Jerusalem, his words were cut short 
 by the fatal bullet. On the morning of April 
 15, 1865, he who had wept often but who had 
 never flinched nor faltered, went, not without 
 abundant entrance, into the presence of his 
 Lord. Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of 
 War and his onetime enemy, broke the silence 
 of the death-chamber and said: 
 
 Now he belongs to the ages. 
 
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