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 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
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 NiJ 
 
 From the Library of 
 
 Elizabeth Morton Johnston 
 Patterson 
 
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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2011 witii funding from 
 
 University of Nortii Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/truestoryofabrahObroo 
 
A boy's first sight of ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ' Fear not, Abraham ! I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." 
 
 See page !63. 
 
THE TRUE S3:ORY OF 
 
 
 ABRAHAM UHC^^, 
 
 K^ 
 
 THE AMERICAN 
 
 TOLD FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 
 
 . -) 
 
 BY 
 
 ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 
 
 Author of " The Story of Our War with Spain," " The American Soldibr," 
 
 "The American Sailor," "The True Story of the United States," 
 
 "The True Story of Columbus," "Washington," "Grant," 
 
 "Franklin," " Lafayette," and many others. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BOSTOIT 
 LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 
 
PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
 Copyright, 1896, 
 
 BY 
 
 LOTHROP Publishing Company. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
666341 ea.i<^ B/, t^+) 
 
 i 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Columbus the discoverer of our country and Washington the father of 
 bur country — -these two famous ones has this series of " Children's Lives of 
 Great Men " recalled for young Americans. Now comes the third and crown- 
 ing figure in the series — that of Abraham Lincoln, the savior of his country 
 ind, above all others, — the American. 
 ;^ His story is as marvellous as a fairy tale and yet as simple as the truth. 
 
 Sprung from nothing he rose to the highest eminence, and died a martyr for 
 liberty, union and the rights of man. Upon his life, through four terrible 
 years, hung the destinies of this republic and the redemption of a race. To- 
 day, the world reveres him as one of the most eminent rulers of any time ; the 
 future will yet place him where he rightly belongs — one of the world's great- 
 est men, perhaps, the greatest. 
 
 For the boys and girls of America, brought up in the atmosphere of 
 liberty, of justice and of patriotism, Abraham Lincoln the man of the peo- 
 ple, has an especial claim to reverence. He stands as a type — as, before all 
 others, the American. 
 
 In the preface to the "The True Story of George Washington," the 
 writer quoted, for boys and girls, a sentiment from one of the noblest of 
 American thinkers and authors, James Russell Lowell. This introduction to 
 the "True Story of Abraham Lincoln," can not be more fittingly closed than 
 with the splendid tribute of this same prophetic poet, in his noble "Com- 
 memorative Ode, " which every boy and girl of America should some day read : 
 
 " These all are gone ; and standing like a tower, 
 
 Our children shall behold his fame, 
 The kindly, earnest, brave, far-seeing man, 
 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American." 
 
 E. S. B. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING ....-.= 11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS ........ e 3I 
 
 ' CHAPTER III. 
 
 HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOW THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF . . . . c c 6? 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CAPTAIN LINCOLN ........... 84 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOW THE STOREKEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS o ICO 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN ........ US 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME . . . . . . . I3I 
 
CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT ..... I49 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE . . , c 167 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL , , . < 187 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WHY THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT " SWAP HORSES " ..... SOJ 
 
 CHAPTER XIII, 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN ........ 223 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 A boy's first sight of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 " The dark and bloody ground " . . 
 
 Daniel Boone ..... 
 
 The Birthplace of Lincoln . 
 
 " Thomas Lincoln loved to sit around" 
 
 Lincoln birthplace and spring 
 
 On Knob Creek ..... 
 
 " He liked to lay off " . 
 
 Off for a day's fishing .... 
 
 Little Abe's peril .... 
 
 Little Abe and the soldier . 
 
 The man who was president when Lincoln was a 
 
 " They lived like gypsies " . 
 
 "This was Abraham Lincoln " . 
 
 Going to bed ..... 
 
 " He bade the children good-bye " 
 
 " Something like comfort " . 
 
 The traveling schoolmaster . 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and the shingle scrapbook 
 
 " He was a great reader " . 
 
 " He was ' hired man ' and ' chore-boy ' " 
 
 On the farm ..... 
 
 Abe carrying the corn-crib post . 
 
 i' He was always ready to spout " 
 
 *' He was the champion wrestler" 
 
 A shooting-match on the border . 
 
 Lincoln " tending store "... 
 
 A flat-boat cruise .... 
 
 The hero of the cotton bales ( Jackson) 
 
 " They cut her adrift " ... 
 
 " Ever willing, handy and helpful " 
 
 Frontis. 
 
 boy 
 
 (Monroe) 
 
 13 
 'S 
 16 
 
 19 
 
 20 
 21 
 22 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 25 
 27 
 29 
 
 33 
 35 
 39 
 41 
 
 42 
 
 43 
 47 
 5' 
 52 
 S3 
 55 
 5S 
 59 
 62 
 
 63 
 63 
 64 
 66 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 A"Vandoo" . . . , 
 
 " Already famous as a rail-splitter " 
 
 Floating down to New Orleans . 
 
 On the levee at New Orleans 
 
 In Offutt's store .... 
 
 The " Clary-Grove Boys " . 
 
 ** He borrowed every book in New Salem 
 
 "Who should show up but Abe Lincoln ' 
 
 " I can rock and read too " . 
 
 A race for life .... 
 
 Black Hawk, Chief of the Sacs . 
 
 A refugee from the massacre 
 
 " Men, this must not be " . 
 
 In the Black Hawk War 
 
 Lincoln coming home from the war 
 
 Floating down the Illinois . 
 
 " On the navigation of the Sangamon 
 
 Henry Clay and " Ashland " 
 
 " People did not receive many letters in those dayi 
 
 " A. Lincoln, Postmaster " . 
 
 " He's a perfect take-in " 
 
 " He led the rest round the field " 
 
 Lincoln in 1840 .... 
 
 Lincoln and the " mired " pig 
 
 A station on the "Underground Railway" 
 
 " Law " answered the boy . 
 
 How Lincoln studied law 
 
 "He would never take a case he did not bel 
 
 A pickaninny .... 
 
 " Bill is free " . . . . 
 
 Lincoln's home in Springfield . 
 
 " On the circuit " ... 
 
 Daniel Webster of Massachusetts 
 
 Henry Clay of Kentucky 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas . 
 
 The Lincoln-Douglas debate 
 
 Abraham Lincoln of Illinois 
 
 " They will kill you, Abe " . 
 
 On the way to Washington . 
 
 The inauguration of President Lincoln 
 
 68 
 
 70 
 
 72 
 72 
 76 
 78 
 82 
 
 8S 
 85 
 88 
 89 
 9' 
 93 
 95 
 97 
 93 
 101 
 
 lOZ 
 
 108 
 109 
 112 
 
 "3 
 121 
 124 
 127 
 132 
 '33 
 138 
 141 
 144 
 
 '45 
 147 
 151 
 152 
 
 '34 
 '57 
 161 
 165 
 i6g 
 174 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Major Anderson 171 
 
 Boys of '61 . . . 17^ 
 
 Lincoln and his chief advisers ............. 177 
 
 Confederate leaders and generals ......,.,,.. 181 
 
 General Winfield Scott 183 
 
 Noted American abolitionists 1S9 
 
 A " contraband " ................ 193 
 
 First draft of the Emancipation Proclamation .......... 196 
 
 Boys ran through the streets crying " Extra ! " . . . . . . . . . . 201 
 
 Defenders of the Union .............. 207 
 
 " From the President!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 
 
 Two famous men in Washington (Lincoln and Grant) ........ 217 
 
 The last speech ................ 21S 
 
 The assassination of Abraham Lincoln ........... 219 
 
 " You see I've let my whiskers grow," he said .......... 224 
 
 " Who is this little boy ? " 226 
 
 Tad and his father ............... 228 
 
 " My boy, my bill is a large one " ............ 229 
 
 The Lincoln monument at Springfield 231 
 
 1809-1846-1361 237 
 
 The American 23S 
 
THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 EAR the story of Abraham 
 Lincoln, the man who saved 
 America. It is not an old story. 
 \t belongs to our own times. 
 I, who write these words, saw, 
 when I was a boy, the Great 
 President, then an untried man, 
 and have loved him ever since. 
 To-day, that untried man is rev- 
 erenced as one of the mightiest 
 men of the world, and stands foremost among them as.- 
 above all others, ^ke American. 
 
 When you study Latin you will come across an old, oid 
 sentence that means : /rom nothing, nothing comes. It 
 seems true ; and yet, how many of the world's great men 
 have, as a later saying runs, " sprung from nothing." 
 
 i 
 
12 ffOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 Of no man was this later saying more true than of 
 Abraham Lincoln. Listen to his story. 
 
 Very nearly ninety years ago a homely little baby was 
 born into the smallest and humblest and meanest of homes. 
 It was a miserable little cabin that you would hardly call a 
 hut, placed on a stony hillside, in what is now the central 
 section of the great state of Kentucky. 
 
 Ninety years ago the country thereabouts was a wilder- 
 ness. Great forests hedged it around. The settlers' cabins 
 stood in what were called " clearings," where the trees had 
 been cut down and some of the stumps had been either burned 
 or pulled away — just enough to get a little land on which to 
 raise corn or tobacco. 
 
 It was hard farming there. It was all new land. Only 
 a few years before, the Indians had left it, after many bloody 
 battles with the white men. Bears and panthers, wolves 
 and catamounts and other beasts lived in the thick shadows 
 of the woods, and there men hunted for food — for deer and 
 bears and turkeys and the wildest of game. Its streams and 
 rivers were full of fish. Even the buffalo had .not entirely 
 gone from the regions beyond the forests; while, in its rocks 
 and undergrowth, foxes had their dens, the lynx his lair, and 
 nobody was safe in the woods unless he had with him his 
 gun, his axe, or his hunting-knife. It was Kan-tuck-kee — 
 "the dark and bloody ground "; it was the home of Daniel 
 Boone, most famous of American hunters. 
 
"the dark and bloody ground." 
 (" Only a few years before, the Indian had left it, after many bloody battles with the white men. ") 
 
HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 15 
 
 On the banks of a small stream known as the " big south 
 fork " of Nolin's Creek, in what is now Larue County, 
 Kentucky, three miles from the present village of Hodgens- 
 ville, and fifty miles south of Louisville, stood the tumble- 
 down log cabin in which lived Thomas Lincoln and Nancy 
 Hanks, his wife. And there, on Sunday, the twelfth day of 
 February, in the year eighteen hundred and nine, Abraham 
 Lincoln was born. 
 
 It was a miserable little log cabin, scarcely fit, you would 
 think, to stable a cow in ; but it was 
 the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. 
 The " farm " was the roughest sort 
 of a clearing — rocky and weedy and 
 scrubby — about the last place in 
 the world you would pick out for a 
 home, or as a spot in which to 
 spend your vacation in the country; 
 but it was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln ; and some 
 day it will be marked by a stately monument, and visited 
 by tourists with as much of interest and as much of rev- 
 erence as are paid to the birthplaces of Washington, of 
 Shakspere, of Cromwell and Napoleon. Hunt up the place 
 on your mxap of Kentucky ; look well on the page which gives 
 you a picture of the house as it looks to-day, and never 
 cease to be attracted to the spot as the birthplace of the 
 Great American. 
 
 The place is even more attractive-looking than it was 
 
i6 HO IV SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 ninety years ago, when Thomas Lincoln picked it out for a 
 home, and put up his little log shanty. For Thomas Lin- 
 coln, the father of Abraham, was not the kind of a man to 
 " fix up " things. He was as lazy as loafing, as shiftless as 
 could be, and as poor as poverty. He was a carpenter with- 
 out any trade, a farmer without any crop, a man without 
 ambition, energy, or what you boys call " sand." He could 
 not read ; he could not write ; and he did not care to learn. 
 He loved to sit around and tell stories rather than work, and 
 though he had some affection and some friendly ways, he 
 was, after all, a hard drinker, a ready fighter and an uncom- 
 fortable sort of a father. He was of the class long known in 
 the South as "poor whites" — and, of these, he was one of 
 the poorest. Yet, somehow, he managed to get a superior 
 woman for his wife — one who will be forever famous in 
 history as the mother of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Nancy Hanks, when she married Thomas Lincoln, was 
 a young woman of twenty-three. She was good-looking, 
 could read and write, and, if she could have had one-tenth 
 of the chance that comes to a girl of to-day, might have 
 developed into a beautiful, superior, and noble woman. 
 
 She had very few of the^e opportunities as a girl ; she 
 had none whatever as a woman. In Thomas Lincoln's 
 humble, shiftless and poverty-stricken home she could do 
 nothing but work hard to give her children food and clothes. 
 They did not get much of either. 
 
 She had three children — a daughter named Sarah, a son 
 
/ 
 
HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 19 
 
 Abraham and a younger son Thomas, who died when he 
 was a baby. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln never forgot his mother. His earliest 
 recollection of her was of the days when he and his sister 
 Sarah, a year older than he, sat at their mother's feet in that 
 poor little log 
 
 cabin at Nolin's 
 Creek, while 
 she, as well as 
 she was able, 
 told them sto- 
 ries and taught 
 them to spell 
 and read. 
 
 Abraham 
 thousfht his 
 mother could do 
 anything. In 
 
 "THOMAS LINCOLN LOVED TO SIT AROUND AND TELL STORIES." 
 
 her rough way she certainly did much for her boy. She 
 could hunt as well as a man ; and many a time, when food 
 was scarce in the home and her husband was not to be 
 depended upon, she would take down the rifle and go out 
 and shoot a bear or a deer, skin it, clean it, and cook it for 
 the family meat. She made the deerskin into clothes ; she 
 worked herself to death for her husband and her children ; 
 but, while doing this, she laid in her son the foundations of 
 truth, and honor, and purity, and goodness, and the ambition 
 
20 
 
 HO IF SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 
 :$ 
 
 J' 
 
 to do something and be something in the world, that helped 
 him all through life. So, whatever her lack of opportunities 
 
 or ability, let us never forget the 
 mother of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 When the boy was about four 
 years old, his father, in some way, 
 became possessed of a much 
 larger and better farm on what 
 was known as Knob Creek, near 
 where it joins with another stream, 
 called the Rolling Fork. It was 
 only a few miles from the miser- 
 able little hillside patch on Nolin's 
 Creek, but the land was much bet- 
 ter and might have been worked 
 into a fine farm of over two hun- 
 dred acres. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln, however, did 
 not like to work. To briny two 
 hundred acres under culti^'ation 
 was altogether too big a job for him; so he simply cleared 
 and farmed enough to give his family " a little meal and a 
 little milk," and that had to satisfy them. 
 
 It takes pluck to keep a farm up to the mark, and this 
 Thomas Lincoln never had. He was too lazy to w"ork and 
 too poor to keep the good piece of farmland that had come 
 into his possession. Before Abraham was seven years old 
 
 
 THE LINCOLN ErRTlIPLACE AND THE 
 LINCOLN SPRING. 
 
HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 the place on Knob Creek had to be given up, and the family 
 went wandering away towards a new home. 
 
 This new home was many miles away in the southern 
 part of the new State of Indiana. It was a long journey 
 and a hard one, but the Lincoln family set out on it, bidding 
 good-bye forever to their " old Kentucky home." 
 
 It was in that old Kentucky home, however, that Abra- 
 ham Lincoln had grown 
 to boyhood. It had 
 been a hard and com- 
 fortless " little boy- 
 hood." It had given 
 him none of the ad- 
 vantages and none of 
 the childish pleasures 
 that make the memory 
 of " home, sweet home " 
 dear to so many men 
 
 and women. There was but little fun and frolic about it ; 
 there were no games to play and no boys and girls to play 
 with ; the nearest school was eight miles away, and the 
 boy's father thought going to school a waste of time. 
 
 His mother was hard-worked, sad-eyed and discouraged ; 
 but she declared her girl and boy should go to school, and 
 so, for a few weeks, once in a while, the brother and sister 
 would trudge off eight miles to the log schoolhouse, with 
 nothing to eat but corn bread, and little to learn except 
 
 ON KNOB CREEK. 
 
HOU' SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 spelling and arithmetic. Even this schooling was short, 
 and, in all his life, Abraham Lincoln never went to school 
 more than a year, counting all the days together. 
 
 So he was a lonely little fellow, in his home on Knob 
 Creek. His father hated work, but was perfectly willing to 
 have his wife and son and daughter work ; and he put many 
 hard tasks on the small and scrawny eight-year-old. 
 
 I may as well tell you, however, that Abraham never 
 
 "HE LIKED TO 'LAY OFF.' 
 
 really loved work. But what boy does? He liked to "lay 
 off." He liked to roam into the woods, as far as it was safe, 
 and watch the birds and animals and all the life that fills the 
 great forest. He had some lonely little games of his own, 
 and liked to play by himself, when his father would let him, 
 among the scanty shavings of the rarel3--used shed which his 
 father the carpenter spoke of as " the shop." 
 
HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 23 
 
 THE SPOT WHERE LINCOLN WAS BORN. 
 {Near Hodgensvillc, Ky.) 
 
 He liked to fish, when he did not have to ; and we are 
 told that his only recollection of the war with England, 
 called the War of 181 2, which was fought when he was a 
 small boy, was meeting an American soldier in the woods 
 and giving him the only fish he had caught that day, 
 because his mother had told him always to be good to the 
 soldiers, who were fighting for his protection. 
 
 He never cared much to trap or to hunt. It is danger- 
 ous work for so small a boy ; and, moreover, it was work 
 Free PubHr Library, Newark, N, J. 
 
24 
 
 HOW SOMETIIIXG CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 and not play — for that was often the only way to get any- 
 thing to eat. 
 
 But he did, once in a while, go partridge-hunting^, boy- 
 fashion, even when he was a little fellow ; and, this very year, 
 there was still living, near Knob Creek, an old man who tells 
 people how, when he was about eleven years old, he and 
 
 LITTLE ABE S PERIL. 
 
 little eight-year-old "Abe Lincoln" went off one day par- 
 tridge-hunting, and how, when they were trying to cross 
 Knob Creek on a log (•' cooning across," the old man called 
 it), little "Abe" rolled off into the water and would have 
 been drowned, if the older boy had not fished him out with 
 a svcamore branch. Do \o\x wonder that this old man has 
 
LITTLE "ADE" and THE SULDIIE. 
 
HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 27 
 
 All that he was able to get for his good Ken 
 
 been proud to tell the story? It is a great thing to be able 
 to boast that you once saved the life of a hero. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln was eight years old, his father, 
 as I have told you, concluded that he could not get along in 
 Kentucky and so " pulled up stakes," as they said, for the 
 
 West. 
 
 He went off first on his own hook to find a place for the 
 
 new home 
 
 tucky farm of two 
 hundred acres and his 
 little log cabin was 
 twenty dollars in 
 money and ten barrels 
 of whiskey. A barrel 
 of whiskey was as 
 good as money in 
 those days; it was 
 worth about twenty- 
 five dollars, and men, 
 in that western coun- 
 try, were always as 
 ready to trade for whiskey as for cash ; they did not drink 
 it up, they " swapped it off " for something else, so it was 
 the same as money to them ; and houses and land, tools and 
 cattle, food and clothing were often bought and sold for so 
 much whiskey in exchange. 
 
 According to this, Thomas Lincoln had received for his 
 
 THE MAN WHO WAS PRESIDF.NT WHEN LINCOLN WAS A BOY. 
 ( James Monroe, author of the '^Monroe Doctrine") 
 
28 HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 Kentucky farm about three hundred dollars. He built a 
 raft, loaded it with some furniture and ten barrels of whis- 
 key, and with his twenty dollars and his kit of carpenter's 
 tools he floated off, down the Rolling Fork to the Ohio 
 River on a search for Southern Indiana and a new home. 
 
 Abraham pushed his father's raft from the river bank 
 and then went back to the log cabin that was soon to be 
 no longer his home, to help his mother until his father came 
 back to report. 
 
 He went to school a few days, worked about the cabin, 
 snared a few birds for dinner, chopped wood or fished and 
 did a good deal of thinking things over, while his mother 
 went out to shoot a deer to keep the family in meat. 
 
 At last his father came back. He had not met with real 
 good luck, he said. Somehow, he never did. When he had 
 poled his raft into the broad Ohio River, the current had 
 floated the wobbly craft against some sunken snags, tipped 
 it, turned it over, and spilled Thomas Lincoln, his carpenter's 
 kit, his furniture and his ten barrels of whiskey, into the 
 river. 
 
 For once in his life he worked hard. People came to 
 his aid and, after much fishing and dragging, the kit of car- 
 penter's tools and the most of the whiskey and furniture 
 were pulled ashore, loaded on an ox-cart and carried through 
 the forests to an "oak-opening" where there was a settler's 
 cabin, about eight miles from the river. 
 
 Then, so Thomas told his family, after he had taken care 
 
HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING. 
 
 29 
 
 of his rescued goods, he walked straight into the forest to 
 hunt up a spot for a home. He had found a place, he 
 declared, that just suited him, as it would them, and they 
 must all get ready to go at once with him to Indiana. 
 
 It did not take the Lincolns long to get ready. All that 
 they had to pack up were a few pots, pans and kettles, some 
 bedding and less clothes. These they loaded on the backs 
 of two borrowed horses, and, 
 trudging along on foot, they 
 pushed into the western forests 
 on the way to their Indiana home, 
 ninety miles away. 
 
 Through thickets and under- 
 brush, fording, swimming or raft- 
 
 ing rivers, living like gypsies. 
 
 "lived like gypsies." 
 
 plodding along like tramps, they 
 
 finally reached the settler's cabin 
 
 where Thomas Lincoln had stored 
 
 his cargo of shipwrecked goods. 
 
 There they managed to hire or 
 
 borrow a wagon, loaded it with their little stock of worldly 
 
 goods, and literally chopping a path through the dense 
 
 forests they finally reached the spot which Thomas Lincoln 
 
 had selected for their home. 
 
 It sounds very adventurous and " pic-nicky," does it not? 
 No doubt little Abraham enjoyed the excitement and novelty 
 of this kind of " house-moving," but often, I imagine, he was 
 
^o JfOJV SOMETHING CAME FROM NOJHIiXG. 
 
 tired, wet, cold, footsore and uncomfortable, and wondered 
 when they would get to the end of their hard journey. 
 
 The end came at last. The place selected by Abraham's 
 father was near the stream called Little Pigeon Creek, a mile 
 and a half from the present town of Gentryville in Spencer 
 Countv, Southern Indiana. 
 
 It \\'as a grassy knoll in the heart of a vast forest. But 
 4;he father assured his family that it was just the spot for 
 them ; the land, he said, was rich and fertile, the- forests 
 were full of game, the creek was alive with fish, and all they 
 had to do was to settle down and make themselves a home. 
 
 The first thing needful was a house. But, though 
 Thomas Lincoln was a carpenter, he had no desire to spend 
 much time on a buildino". 
 
 O 
 
 "We'll just put up a half-faced camp, now," he said; 
 " and, later on, we'll run up something better." 
 
 Now, a half-faced camp is a good-enough shelter for a 
 summer night in the woods ; but who would think of living 
 in such a thing, not for a week or a month only, but for a 
 year and more — including a cold winter? 
 
 Take four uprights for four corner posts — the two rear 
 one'; being higher than the front ones ; from the forked tops 
 of these corner posts stretch four others across to form the 
 edges of the roof ; lay some others across these edge pieces 
 to make a sloping roof, and cover these with thin slabs or 
 "edgings" to keep out the rain ; around their sides, set up 
 poles close together and " chink in " between them with chips 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 31 
 
 or clay; hang up some deer skins along the lowest front — ■ 
 and there you have a half-faced camp. It is scarcely shelter 
 enough for a horse or a cow ; and yet, in such a rough, cold 
 and comfortless hut did the Lincoln family live for more 
 than a year — summer and winter, just because the "head 
 of the house " was too lazy to put up anything better. 
 
 It was the first Indiana home of Abraham Lincoln. 
 Scarcely the sort of a olace, was it, that one would think 
 of as the first step toward the stately White House at 
 Washington? 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 ' I "HE future president of the United States was eight 
 -*- years old when he spent the winter with his father, 
 mother and sister in the " half-faced camp " on Pigeon 
 Creek. 
 
 He was growing fast. Already he was a long-legged, 
 spindling, uncouth little fellow, with a shock of black hair, 
 dreamy-looking eyes, a hatchet face, and a skin tanned and 
 sallow from his out-door life. 
 
 He was not a pretty boy; I doubt, even, if he was 
 
32 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 healthy-looking. But his muscles were hard and tough ; he 
 was sturdy, strong and wiry; and he could endure cold and 
 heat, poor food and privation, even better than many a 
 trained athlete who, to-day, puts himself into what is called 
 " condition." 
 
 He wore a homespun shirt of cotton and wool, woven by 
 his mother and colored with a dye made from roots and 
 bark; he had deerskin breeches and a deerskin hunting- 
 shirt, while his feet, ^vhcn he did not go barefoot, were shod 
 with deerskin moccasins; on his head was a queer cap cut 
 from a raccoon skin with the tail left on and hanging down 
 the back of the boy's neck. 
 
 This was Abraham Lincoln, dressed in the best his 
 mother could do — a boy of the frontier, in the days when 
 there were few necessities, less comforts, and no advantages 
 for boys and girls ; when life was hard and home was dreary, 
 and men and women were rough, careless, uncultivated and 
 uncouth — the western backwoods life of eighty years ago. 
 
 Be glad, boys and girls, that you have comfortable 
 homes, pleasant schools, and all the advantages that wealth 
 and progress and what is called public spirit have secured, 
 largely through the energy, the sacrifices and the ambition 
 of the men and women of those hard days of rough living. 
 
 It was, indeed, rough living in the Lincoln home on 
 Little Pigeon Creek. When he w^as " good and ready " 
 Thomas Lincoln set about building a better shelter for his 
 family than the forlorn " half-faced camp." 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 33 
 
 The new building was not such a great improvement; 
 but it was more like a house. It was a rough cabin of logs, 
 without door, window or floor. But it seemed so much bet- 
 ter than the shanty in which they had been living, that 
 Abraham and his sister felt quite princely. 
 
 The boy had helped at building the new house ; and 
 
 S'^"-- 
 
 "THIS WAS ABRAHAM LINCOLN DRESSED IN HIS BEST." 
 
 when it was finished and he could climb up to the loft by 
 the ladder of pegs which he had driven into the logs, he 
 would fling himself down on his bed of dried leaves and 
 think it all quite comfortable and homelike. 
 
 You would have turned up your nose at such accommo- 
 dations and said you never could feel at home in such a 
 place ; but little Abraham Lincoln had never known any- 
 thing better. To him, the home-made furniture of three- 
 legged stools, rickety pole-bedstead built into the logs, and 
 
34 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 hewn-log table were sufficient to sit on, sleep on and eat on. 
 What more could a boy need ? 
 
 The new home was in a great game country. All one 
 needed to do for meat was to go out and shoot it — deer or 
 bear or partridge or turkey; there were fish to be caught in 
 the streams near by ; in the cleared land around the house 
 was raised enough corn to grind into meal. 
 
 " You have a roof to cover you, a bed to sleep on and 
 plenty to eat," his father would say ; " what more can a boy 
 want ? " 
 
 A boy needs and wants more than just enough to keep 
 himself alive. If he did not, he would be no better off than 
 the wild beasts of the woods. Contentment, we are told, is 
 better than wealth ; but if men and women, if boys and girls, 
 were perfectly satisfied with just what they had and did not 
 have the desire to better themselves there would be no such 
 thing as progress and the world would never improve. So 
 let us be thankful that this poor little boy of the Indiana 
 backwoods did wish for better things. 
 
 That he did so, you may be certain. The whole story of 
 his life is based on a desire for improvement. He never 
 was one to complain. But the things his mother had told 
 him gave him the knowledge that there were, in the world, 
 plenty of opportunities for wide-awake boys to get ahead. 
 And, even as a little fellow, he got to thinking, as so many 
 boys do, what he would be and what he would do when he 
 was a man. 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 35 
 
 Even as a boy he was a thoughtful little fellow. He 
 loved to go out into the great woods that stretched all about 
 his home, and to lie on his back and — just think! I 
 imagine, from what we know of his story, that he liked this 
 sort of thing better than splitting wood or lugging water or 
 feeding the animals — in tact, better 
 than work. But that shows us, does 
 it not, that he was just a boy ; for 
 no boy really loves to work. 
 ] His life was lonely enough in that 
 wilderness ; but, before many months, 
 he had company. His Uncle and 
 Aunt Sparrow and his boy cousin, 
 Dennis Hanks, came from Kentucky 
 to try their luck in Indiana. Abra- 
 ham's father gave them the old " half- 
 faced camp" as a home, and so the 
 Lincolns had near neighbors. 
 
 But before the winter set in there 
 came sad days to both houses. A 
 terrible sickness — what we call an 
 epidemic — visited that section of 
 Indiana. Many people died from it, 
 and among these were, first. Uncle and Aunt Sparrow, and 
 then Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of Abraham. 
 
 The nearest doctor was thirty-five miles away, and tney 
 had no money to pay him or spend in medicine, even if he 
 
 GOING TO BED. 
 
36 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 could have come to them. The dreadful malaria that is pres- 
 ent in all swampy lands weakened the invalids ; they were 
 ill-fed, poorly housed and without any of the comforts that sick 
 people need; so they speedily fell victims to the epidemic. 
 
 It was a terrible blow to the Lincoln children. Their 
 father was not fitted to care for them or be tender to them ; 
 and they had grown to depend upon their sad-faced, hard- 
 working mother for instruction, help and companionship- 
 She could not give them much, if any, of these things; but 
 what little she could do for them she did cheerfully and, 
 when she was taken from them, they were poor indeed. 
 
 They buried her in the forest. No clergyman was 
 within call; her husband himself made her rough cof^n; and, 
 many a time, little neglected Abraham would sit by the 
 mound that was his mother's forest grave and cry, long and 
 bitterly, wishing her back again. 
 
 The life of the mother of Abraham Lincoln had been a 
 hard and dreary one. She had known little but poverty, 
 worry and work. But she dearly loved her forlorn and 
 ragged little nine-year-old son, and it was to him that she 
 turned as she was dying and gave her last message. 
 
 " Be kind to father and sister," she said, placing her hand 
 on the boy's head; " be good to each other, won't you ? Lve 
 tried to teach you to do so. I hope you'll live, Abe, to 
 remember your mother, love your folks and pray to God." 
 
 To-day, a stone monument marks the grave of Nancy 
 Lincoln, on a little knoll half a mile from where her shabby 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 37 
 
 log hut of a home once stood. For long years, her grave 
 was unmarked, but the memory of her patient life and her 
 desire for her children's welfare ever lived with her famous 
 son, even when, years after, he spoke of the story of his 
 childhood days as being only what a famous poet once 
 described as 
 
 "The short and simple annals of the poor." 
 
 What boy or girl knows from what noble poem this line is 
 taken ? It was a favorite poem with Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Little Dennis Hanks, having lost his protectors also, 
 came into the Lincoln family, and the long winter that 
 followed Mrs. Lincoln's death was dreary and gloomy and 
 empty enough to those three lonely children. 
 
 The boy Abraham felt especially grieved that no clergy- 
 man had held a service or preached a funeral sermon above 
 his mother's grave. He thought over the matter a long 
 time and, one day, he wrote what was, I believe, really his 
 first letter. It was to the good minister whom he remem- 
 bered in the old Kentucky home, miles away, and it begged 
 him to come into Indiana and hold a memorial service for 
 Nancy Lincoln. 
 
 The kindly clergyman wrote to the boy promising to 
 visit the Lincoln home when he next made a journey into 
 Indiana; and, sure enough, when the next summer came, 
 " Parson Elkins," as he was called, did come to the little 
 settlement and, when the people had gathered from far and 
 
38 A BOY CF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 near, he preached the funeral sermon, as he had promised the 
 lonely boy, who so remembered and honored the mother he 
 had lost. 
 
 It was, I imagine, a pretty poor kind of housekeeping 
 they had in that shiftless home on Little Pigeon Creek, 
 after the mother of the home had been taken away. Sarah, 
 the eldest child, was only twelve ; Abraham was but ten, 
 and little Dennis Hanks was eight. 
 
 Sarah tried to " keep house" ; and her father, in his care- 
 less way, tried to help her. But about all they could do was 
 to keep from going hungry. Deer-meat broiled on the coals 
 of the wood-fire, ash-cakes made of corn-meal, with, now and 
 then, a slab of pork was their only bill of fare. About all 
 the pleasure that little Abraham found, when he was not 
 trying to keep from being cold and hungry, was in his 
 books. 
 
 How many do you think he had ? Just three: the Bible, 
 ^j^op's Fables and the Pilgrim's Progress. Think of that, 
 you boys and girls who have more books than you can read, 
 and for wdiom the printing presses are always hard at work. 
 
 The boy knew those three books almost by heart. He 
 could repeat whole chapters of the Bible, many parts of the 
 Pilgrim's Progress and every one of ^sop's Fables ; and he 
 never forgot them. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln knew that the uncomfortable state of 
 affairs in his log cabin could not long continue, or his home, 
 such as it was, would go to wrack and ruin. So, one day, 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 39 
 
 he bade the children good-bye and told them he was going 
 back to Kentucky on a visit. 
 
 How under the sun those three children got along, all 
 alone, in their lonely home while their father was away, I 
 don't know. But per- 
 haps, it was quite as 
 easy for them as when 
 he was about the house. 
 He was away for 
 weeks; but when 
 Thomas Lincoln re- 
 turned from his Ken- 
 tucky visit, in Decem- 
 ber, 1819, he brought 
 back a new wife to 
 look after his home 
 and be a mother to his 
 motherless children. 
 
 It was one of the 
 best things he ever did. 
 The second Mrs. Lin- 
 coln was an excellent 
 woman. People spoke 
 of her as a " poor wid- 
 ow"; but she was really rich, in the eyes of the three neg- 
 lected children, whom she took to her heart as soon as she 
 saw them — forlorn and ragged and dirty though they were. 
 
 "HE BADE THE CHILDREN GOOD-BYE." 
 
40 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 She brought with her, from Kentucky, the things most 
 needed to brighten up that shiftless home — a kind heart, 
 go-ahead ways, and decent furniture. 
 
 This last included a bureau and a table, chairs and 
 "cooking things," a clothes-chest, bedding, knives and forks, 
 and other things that you could not do without, but which, 
 up to that time, the Lincoln children had never known. 
 
 She had three children of her own — a boy and two girls ; 
 but she never made any difference between them and the 
 three motherless children into whose home she had come. 
 She knew just how to keep them all in hand, and just how 
 to go to work to make that home a united and happy one — 
 humble and poor though it was. 
 
 If you have ever read Dickens's story of poor little 
 David Copperfield, you will remember that, when that small 
 runaway tramp appeared in his aunt's home, she asked funny 
 Mr Dick what she should do with the boy, and Mr. Dick 
 promptly suggested "wash him." Mrs. Lincoln was quite 
 as practical as Mr. Dick, for the first thing she did for little 
 Abraham Lincoln was to wash him ! 
 
 Then, out of her own little stock of clothing, she made 
 for the boy warm, clean clothes ; she took his part when his 
 father abused or scolded him, and, in fact, made life so much 
 inore pleasant and agreeable for Abraham that, from that 
 time on, the boy, so we are told, "appeared to lead a new 
 life." 
 
 She had a good influence, too, on the boy's shiftless do- 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 41 
 
 norhing father. She made him fix up that dreary little 
 house at once. Urged on by her, he laid a floor in the 
 cabin, where only hard earth had been before ; he put a door 
 and window in the house, and brought about something like 
 comfort where, before, there had scarcely been even secu- 
 rity. In fact, as lit- 
 tle Dennis Hanks 
 said, many years 
 after, the new 
 mother so changed 
 things in a few 
 weeks' time, that, 
 " where everything 
 was wanting, now 
 all was snug and 
 comfortable." 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln 
 seemed to take an 
 especial liking for 
 the little ten-year 
 old Abraham. She 
 saw something in 
 the boy that made 
 her feel sure that 
 a little trying would do wonders for him. 
 
 Having first made him clean and comfortable, she next 
 made him intelligent, bright and good. She managed to 
 
 ' SOMETHING LIKE COMFORT. 
 
42 
 
 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 send him to school for a few months. The little log school- 
 house, close by the meeting house, to which the traveling 
 schoolmaster would come to give four weeks' schooling was 
 scarcely high enough for a man to stand straight in ; it had 
 holes for windows and greased paper to take the place of 
 glass. But, in such a place Abraham Lincoln "got his school- 
 ing," for a few weeks only, in " reading, writing and cipher- 
 ing;" here he was, again and 
 again, head of his class ; and 
 here he " spelled down " all the 
 big boys and girls in the excit- 
 ing contests called "spelling 
 matches." 
 
 He was ten years old now 
 and growing " like a weed." 
 People declared, when he was 
 twelve years old, that you could almost see him grow. He 
 seemed all legs and arms. He grew so fast, after he got into 
 his teens, that, when he was fifteen, he was six feet, four 
 inches high. 
 
 The care that his stepmother gave for his health and 
 mind soon began to show for itself. He was long ; he was 
 strong ; he was wiry. He was never sick, was always good- 
 natured, never a bully, always the friend of the weak, the 
 small and the unprotected — and the girls. 
 
 He must have been a funny looking boy. His skin was 
 sallow and his hair was black. He wore a linsey-woolsey 
 
 THE TRAVELING SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 45 
 
 shirt, buckskin breeches, a coon-skin cap and heavy "clumps " 
 of shoes. He grew so fast that his breeches never came 
 down to the tops of his shoes, and, instead of stockings, you 
 could always see " twelve inches of shinbone," sharp, blue 
 and narrow. He laughed much, was always ready to give and 
 take jokes and hard knocks, had a squeaky, changing voice, 
 a small head, big ears — and was always what Thackeray 
 called "a gentle-man." Such was Abraham Lincoln at fifteen. 
 
 He was never cruel, mean or unkind. His first compo- 
 sition was on cruelty to animals, written because he had 
 tried to make the other boys stop " teasin' tarrypins " — 
 that is, catching turtles and putting hot coals on their backs 
 just to make them move along lively. 
 
 He had to work hard at home ; for his father would not, 
 and things needed to be attended to if " the place " was to be 
 kept from dropping to pieces. 
 
 He became a great reader. He read every book and 
 newspaper he could get hold of and, if he came across any- 
 thing in his reading that he wished to remember, he would 
 copy it on a shingle, because writing paper was scarce, and 
 either learn it by heart or hide the shingle away until he 
 could get some paper to copy it on. 
 
 His father thought he read too much. 
 
 " It'll sp'ile him for work," he said. " He don't do half 
 enough about the place, as it is, now, and books and papers 
 ain't no good." 
 
 But Abraham, with all his reading, did more work than 
 
46 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 his father any day ; his stepmother, too, took his side and at 
 last got her husband to let the boy read and study at home. 
 
 " Abe was a good son to me," she said many, many years 
 after, " and we took particular care when he was reading not 
 to disturb him. We would just let him read on and on till 
 he quit of his own accord." 
 
 The boy kept a sort of shingle scrap-book ; he kept a paper 
 scrap-book, too. Into these he*^ would put ^^'hatever he 
 cared to keep — poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. 
 
 He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic " sums " too, and 
 one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a 
 boyish scrawl, underneath one of his tables of weights and 
 measures : 
 
 Abraha7n Lincoln 
 his hand and pen 
 he ziiill he good hut 
 god knows When. 
 
 God did know when ; and that boy, all unconsciously, was 
 working toward the day when his hand and pen were to do 
 more for humanity than any other hand or pen of modern 
 times. 
 
 Lamps and candles were almost unknown in his home, 
 and Abraham, flat on his stomach, would often do his read- 
 ing, writing and ciphering in the firelight, as it flashed and 
 flickered on the big hearth of his log-cabin home. An older 
 cousin, John Hanks, who lived for a while with the Lincolns, 
 says that when " Abe,'' as he always called the great president, 
 would come home, as a boy, from his \vork, he would go to 
 
A BOY OF THE BACKWOOJJU. 
 
 41 
 
 the cupboard, take a piece of corn bread for his supper, sit 
 down on a chair, stretch out his long legs until they were 
 higher than his head — and read, and read, and read. 
 
 "Abe and I," said John Hanks, "worked barefoot; 
 grubbed it, ploughed it, mowed and cradled it ; ploughed corn, 
 gathered corn. 
 
 and shucked corn, ^^ .y^i^'^%"^M0^'''-- - ^ 
 
 and Abe read con- 
 stantly, whenever 
 he could get a 
 chance." 
 
 One day Abra- 
 ham found that a 
 man for whom he 
 sometimes worked 
 owned a copy of ' 
 Weems's " Life of 
 Was hington." 
 This was a famous ^, 
 book in its day. 
 Abraham borrowed it at once. When he was not reading 
 it, he put it away on a shelf — a clapboard resting on wooden 
 pins. There was a big crack between the logs, behind the 
 shelf, and, one rainy day, the " Life of Washington " fell 
 into the crack and was soaked almost into pulp. Old Mr. 
 Crawford, from whom Abraham borrowed the book, was a 
 cross, cranky and sour old fellow, and when the boy told 
 
 " HE WAS A GREAT READER." 
 
48 A BOY OF THE BACKWOODS. 
 
 him of the accident he said Abraham must "work the 
 book out." 
 
 The boy agreed, and the old farmer kept him so strictly to 
 his promise that he made him " pull fodder" for the cattle 
 three days, as payment for the book! And that is the way 
 that Abraham Lincoln bought his first book. For he dried 
 the copy of Weems's " Life of Washington " and put it in 
 his " library." But what boy or girl of to-day would like to 
 buy books at such a price? 
 
 This was the boy-life of Abrah im Lincoln. It was a 
 life of poverty, privation, hard wor.c, little play and less 
 money. The boy did not love work. But he worked. His 
 father was rough and often harsh and hard to him, and what 
 Abraham learned was by making the most of his spare time. 
 
 He was inquisitive, active and hardy, and, in his comfort- 
 less boyhood, he was learning lessons of self-denial, inde- 
 pendence, pluck, shrewdness, kindness and persistence. 
 
 These were the very things to do such a boy good. They 
 developed his real character and helped to build him up. 
 They were the very things that made him the ambitious, large- 
 hearted, strong-souled, loving and kindly man he afterwards 
 rounded into, and they fitted him to "endure all things" as 
 he rose to eminence and fame. 
 
HOW ABRAHAM SAIV 2 HE IVORLD. 49 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 
 
 I ."VERY boy is a dreamer. He is continually thinking 
 -*— ^ about what he would' like to do, or what he will surely 
 do " when I'm a man ! " 
 
 The more there is tc him, the more is it possible for him 
 to make his dream come true. 
 
 There is a legend,, still accepted around Abraham Lin- 
 coln's boyhood home, that the young fellow always declared 
 that " some day " he was going to be " president of the 
 United States." ; 
 
 If he did say soj it may have been just his "funning"; 
 but he dreamed ot it, nevertheless, and determined to be 
 more of a man than was his shiftless father. 
 
 Abraham was not much of a carpenter; that must be 
 confessed. But he was wise enough to acknowledge this 
 and to declare that he would not be a carpenter when he 
 became a man. He used to work in his father's shop — 
 when he had to. In fact, there is still in existence, in an 
 Indiana home, a little walnut cabinet, about two feet high 
 and containing two rows of drawers, that was made by Abra- 
 ham Lincoln and his father in their " shop." 
 
5° 
 
 HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 
 
 Just because he did not mean to be a carpenter he kept 
 away from the shop as much as possible and " hired out " to 
 work among the neighbors. Until he was twenty-one, of 
 course, his wages belonged to his father, and I imagine 
 Abraham, himself, never had much to show for his work 
 before he became of age. 
 
 He was such a willing, good-natured, handy young fellow 
 that he was known and liked in every cabin and every farm- 
 house between " the forks " of Big Pigeon and Little Pigeon 
 Creeks. He could build a lire, carry water, chop wood, 'tend 
 the baby or do any needed "chores" for the women; he 
 could split rails, plough, mow, reap or sow for the men. He 
 was a " master hand " with the axe. From the time he was 
 ten years old, so he tells us, he was " almost constantly hand- 
 ling that most useful instrument." And when he was work- 
 ing or when he was "loafing" — and he did enjoy this — he 
 always had a story to tell about what he had seen or heard 
 or read, 
 
 When he was sixteen years old he ran a ferry-boat across 
 the mouth of Anderson Creek, where it empties into the 
 Ohio river. The ferry was owned by a man named Taylor, 
 and young Lincoln, when he was not paddling the boat, 
 did chore-work about the farm. His wages were six dollars 
 a month. 
 
 He earned them. During the nine mtjnths that he 
 worked for Mr. Taylor, he was hostler, plough-boy, ferr^'- 
 man and farm-hand, when he was out of the house ; when 
 
HO W ABRAHAM SA W THE WORLD. 
 
 he was in-doors, he did everything, from running the hand- 
 mill that ground the corn into meal for the family, to " fixing 
 things " about the kitchen like any maid-of-all-work. He 
 slept in the loft with the Taylor boy, and took the "bull- 
 ing" of his employer's son good-naturedly. Once, however, 
 
 "HE WAS 'hired-man' AND ' CHORE-HOY.' 
 
 he confesses he did " get mad " when the boy beat him over 
 the head with an ear of corn. But he did not " thrash " his 
 tormenter, as he could easily have done, because, you see, the 
 Taylor boy was not so big as he. 
 
 From ferrying, he took to other work wherever he could 
 "get a job." He earned thirty-one cents a day killing hogs 
 
52 HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 
 
 " in hog-time," and did this so satisfactorily that the farmersc, 
 all liked to have him " help butcher." ^ 
 
 He hired out to cross old Mr. Crawford, who had made-^-~^ 
 him pay for the water-soaked " Life of Washington ; " but 
 he enjoyed working there because he got a chance to read 
 all Mr. Crawford's books — though this "all " was not much 
 of a library. He learned everything he could from these 
 
 
 ON THE FARM. 
 
 books, however, copying the parts he liked, with a burnt stick 
 on a wooden shovel. But he never could like cranky Mr. 
 Crawford who " docked him " whenever he " missed time," 
 and it is said that the boy revenged himself on his stingy 
 employer by making up verses about Crawford's big nose, 
 until the nose, which was an enormous one, and the verses, 
 which were very poor, became famous all the country round. 
 It wasn't really a nice thing to do, but it was just like a mis- 
 chievous boy. 
 
 Abraham's long arms were as strong as iron and his long 
 legs were as steady as tree trunks. He was a champion 
 wrestler, just as Washington had been, and he could " throw " 
 
HO W ABRAHAM SA TV THE WORLD. 53 
 
 even his employer in a friendly " rassle," every time he tried. 
 Though a hard worker he was a slow one — sometimes to 
 
 o 
 
 Mrs. Crawford's disgust ; for she was heard to declare, when 
 at last Lincoln had grown to fame, "Wal', Abe wasn't no 
 hand to pitch into his work like killin' snakes." 
 
 The boy liked to hang around the house after meal time 
 before Sfoingf out to work with " old Crawford." But he 
 would not shirk his duty; for, after he had joked and gos- 
 siped with the girls as long as he felt that he dared, he would 
 unwind his long legs from the chair-rungs, jump up and say, 
 "Well, this 
 
 won't buy the 
 child a coat, 
 will it? " and 
 stride out to 
 the fields. 
 
 " Abe " Lin- ^\ -^,s^^^i^>iL^\im>. \ ^^- 
 
 coln was, like 
 Washington, 
 very strong. 
 
 He could carry easily a load that three men would stagger 
 under. He once picked up and walked away with a chicken- 
 coop that weighed six hundred pounds; and, another time, 
 when he saw four men making a litter of sticks on which to 
 carry the great posts that were to support a new corn-crib, 
 Lincoln, without any help, shouldered the posts and took 
 them to the spot where they were to be used. 
 
 'abe" carrying the corn-crib post. 
 
54 HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 
 
 He liked fun, and he made it. I have told you of his 
 "poetry" about Mr. Crawford's nose. I am afraid wherrc 
 young " Abe Lincoln " found that those verses " took " so 
 well, that he indulged in the same sort of fun toward some 
 other people he knew. He was always ready to " spout," 
 as the boys called it ; he delighted to jump on a stump, in 
 the midst of the hardest work in the field or the clearing, and 
 set the boys and men to laughing or applauding his comic 
 " stump speeches," until the exasperated farmer who was 
 " bossing the job " would haul the young orator down with 
 words that were no gentler than his hands. Mrs. Crawford, 
 indeed, was not the only one who declared, in after years, 
 that her now famous " chore-boy " did'nt like to "pitch in" 
 when he worked. We have the record of still another em- 
 ployer to the effect that "Abe liked his dinner and his pay 
 better than his work." 
 
 But you know the old rhyme that tells us that 
 
 " All work and no play 
 Make Jack a dull boy." 
 
 It was this rough, back country " play," this fun and 
 frolic and foolishness interspersed with his hard work that 
 kept Abraham Lincoln from being dull. He was "just a 
 boy; " just such another healthy, growing boy, as in all ages 
 of the world, has always preferred fun and his meals to hard 
 work. 
 
 But Lincoln's mind was working all throug^h this " hob 
 
HO W ABRAHAM SA W THE WORLD. 
 
 55 
 
 bledehoy " period. He loved to read, to study and to im- 
 prove himself. He learned slowly, at first ; but by regular 
 stages of growth, he taught himself gradually to think 
 clearly, to reason out things and to give himself, what we 
 call, a " logical mind." It is not the brilliant boys and the 
 prize scholars who 
 make the best mark 
 in the world ; it is the 
 patient and persistent 
 ones, who stick to a 
 thing until they under- 
 stand and master it, 
 and learn, by practice, 
 how to do and how to 
 say things with the 
 best results. Young 
 Abraham Lincoln kept 
 
 pegging away, 
 
 and 
 
 ' HE WAS ALWAYS READY TO ' sroUT.' 
 
 he never forgot what 
 
 he had learned by 
 
 application and hard 
 
 work. He educated himself to remember; as a result, his 
 
 memory, when he grew to manhood, was remarkably clear 
 
 and correct. 
 
 He was so fair, so honest, so true, so kindly and so just in 
 his relations with those about him that he became a leader 
 among the boys and young men of his neighborhood. 
 
56 JIOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 
 
 He liked company; he liked to " sit around " in the kitch- 
 ens or the store better than to go off hunting with the boys or 
 roam by himself in the woods. Even this, however, was 
 part of his schooling. For this social, sky-larking, gossipy, 
 hail-fellow side of young Abraham Lincoln's nature taught 
 him to know men and women. 
 
 He lived a hard life in a rough country, where every man 
 and woman, every boy and girl were workers, with but few 
 amusements — and these not always high-toned, gentle or re- 
 fined. But young Abraham Lincoln was good, lovable, kind- 
 hearted, generous, pleasant-spirited and conscientious — and 
 all that makes a pretty fair boy ! It kept him from yielding 
 to low tastes and evil thoughts ; by elevating him in mind 
 it so led him to improve every opportunity that he soon 
 became just enough dissatisfied with his surroundings to 
 make up his mind to amount to something more than a 
 chore-boy, a day-laborer or a " hired-mani' 
 
 The boy was what is called a "shrewd observer." He 
 studied men and women as well as books. His ability to 
 adapt himself to circumstances as it is called — that is to say, 
 to make the best of everything, gave him such a knowledge 
 of the characters of men and women that, as he grew to 
 manhood, he knew just how to "take" people, as we say. 
 He could " size up " men as well as boys, and could see the 
 good as well as the bad that was in them. He could turn this 
 knowledge to good account, both for his own purposes and for 
 those of his community — and, in later years, of the nation 
 
HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 57 
 
 This ability to make the most from his surroundings, to 
 take part in whatever fun was going on, to do his share, 
 whether in work or frolic, made " Abe Lincoln," as every one 
 called him, popular with all the young people of his little 
 neighborhood. 
 
 He was a leader in all the " goings on." I have told you 
 of his great strength, his skill as a wrestler, his pleasure in 
 hearing or telling stories, his readiness to "talk over" things 
 and his love of mimicry, verse-making and " stump" oratory. 
 He would work hard when he had to ; he could turn his 
 hand to almost anything ; but he could always be depended 
 upon to join in any of the boyish games that were set on 
 foot by the boys of the village. 
 
 Some of these games were such as all boys and girls en- 
 joy — running, jumping, " stumping," " follow your leader" 
 and such sports ; others had such odd names as " cat," 
 " throwing the mall," " hopping and half-hammer," " bull-pen," 
 "old sister Feby," "four-corner bull-pen" — home-made 
 games, the most of them. Perhaps the boys and girls of the 
 the West can explain some of these to their cousins of the 
 East and South — can you ? 
 
 In such of these games as called for skill and strength, 
 for agility, quickness of hand and eye, Abraham Lincoln was 
 an acknowledged leader. He was the champion athlete, and 
 few could " down " him in a tussle or distance him in a race. 
 
 As I have told you, he was a great reader. What he 
 read, he remembered, and he used his knowledge for the bene- 
 
S8 
 
 HO W ABRAHAM SA W THE WORLD. 
 
 fit or amusement of his comrades. They looked upon him as 
 an "awfully smart chap," and he was certain to be asked to 
 all the gathering's and merry-makings of the neighborhood ; 
 there his ready joke, his quick wit, his lively stories, his knowl- 
 edge of what to say and how to do things could all be made the 
 most of. Few corn-shuckings, log-rollings, shooting-matches, 
 
 ./y-V.v- 
 
 " HE WAS THE CHAMPION WRESTLER AND NOT A SAKE FELLOW TO 'TACKLE.'" 
 
 house-raisings or country-weddings were held without "Abe 
 Lincoln," and the boys always expected some report of the 
 affair in "Abe's poetry" or "chronicle." 
 
 The town nearest to his home was a little village called 
 Gentryville. In this place there was, of course, a village 
 store; this, the grocery and the blacksmith's shop, furnished 
 the favorite "loafing-places " for the boys of the neighborhood. 
 
 " Abe " was, of course, one of these boys, and there were 
 
HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 6i 
 
 the usual " carryings-on " when they met after work. These, 
 in almost every case, included " stumping " one another to 
 feats of boyish strength — lifting, jumping, pushing weights, 
 wrestling, etc., or singing, telling stories and, I am afraid, 
 some "grog drinking." 
 
 Such places have ruined many easily-tempted or weak- 
 minded boys ; but those who, like young Lincoln, had 
 strength of character or good common-sense, were not to be 
 spoiled by such mixed associations. 
 
 To the credit of Abraham Lincoln, also, be it said, that, 
 although brought up in " drinking-days " and drinking 
 neighborhoods, where the well-filled whiskey-jug was a feature 
 of every home, he rarely touched liquor and always abhorred 
 intemperance. He could always say " no, I thank you ; " 
 and this habit of abstinence continued all through his 
 eventful life. 
 
 The store in Gentryville was " kept " by a man named 
 Jones. He was the leading " merchant " and " business 
 man " of the village. Young Abe Lincoln did " odd jobs " 
 for him so satisfactorily that, at last, he made the boy a sort 
 of assistant-clerk in his store, took an interest in the young 
 fellow, talked politics, business and general affairs with him, 
 let him " 'tend store " and in a way, as we say, " brought him 
 out. 
 
 This taste of business led young Abraham Lincoln to 
 wish to strike out for himself; so, when another leading man 
 of the neighborhood — the Mr. Gentry for whom the village 
 
62 
 
 HO W ABRAHAM SA W THE WORLD. 
 
 was named and for whom Abe had done considerable work at 
 odd time': — determined to load a flat-boat and send it 
 " down river " to New Orleans, offered Abe a place as ' bow 
 hand," and the boy at once accepted the opportunity. 
 
 , It was quite an event in his life. Abraham Lincoln was 
 now nineteen years old ; he was tall and awkward, but he was 
 wiry, strong and reliable. He was, so Mr. Gentry thought, 
 just the fellow to work the " front oar " on his flat-boat. 
 
 The flat-boat of 
 seventy years ago 
 was an ungainly- 
 looking craft. It 
 was long, wide and 
 heavy, flat-bottomed 
 and clumsy ; it was 
 simply a great scow ; 
 but it was strongly 
 built ; it would carry 
 much freight, and 
 could slide over the snags and shallows, where a keel-boat 
 never could go. It would float with the current, steered or 
 guided by long oars at either end. It could not be worked 
 against the stream, however; so the crew generally came 
 back from their journey's end by steamboat, leaving the use- 
 less flat-boat to be sold for some other use or split into 
 kindling wood at the port to which it had floated. 
 
 Mr. Gentry loaded his clumsy craft with a cargo of bacon 
 
 LINCOLN "'tending STORE.' 
 
HOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 
 
 63 
 
 A FLAT-BOAT CRUISE. 
 
 and other Indiana produce. Abraham's wages were to be 
 eight dollars a month, and he was to live on the boat. 
 
 It was a long, slow voyage 
 down Pigeon Creek to the Ohio, 
 then down to the Mississippi, 
 and then, down the great river 
 one thousand miles to the sea. 
 But the boy enjoyed it all and 
 used his eyes and ears to excel- 
 lent advantage. 
 
 He saw the varied life of the 
 river, the farms, the river towns, 
 the broad plantations and the 
 old French city at its mouth, over which had floated, in 
 turn, the flags of France, of Spain and of the United States, 
 and where, when Abraham Lincoln was 
 five years old. General Andrew Jack- 
 son had fought the British behind his 
 rampart of cotton bales. 
 
 The trip was without special adven- 
 ture to the boys who made up the crew 
 of "Gentry's flat-boat," until one night 
 when the craft lay just below the town 
 of Baton Rouge. It was tied to the 
 river bank, along which stretched the 
 plantation of a wealthy creole woman named Madame 
 Duchesne. 
 
 THE HERO OF THE COTTON 
 BALES. 
 
64 
 
 HO W ABRAHAM SA W THE WORLD. 
 
 flat-boat and 
 
 It was the 
 But it was dai" 
 not care to risk 
 
 The two boys were asleep in the little shelter that served 
 as a cabin, in the stern of the boat. Suddenly, they heard a 
 noise on the boat and found that they were set upon by 
 negro river thieves. 
 
 The over-confident darkies did not know the strength of 
 arm of the young giant they had roused. Lincoln seized a 
 
 club, though his comrade told him to 
 take a gun ; then, falling upon the 
 marauders, he drove them off the 
 
 ''■''m far ashore. 
 
 f two to seven, 
 .e conquerors did 
 .ther fight. Hurry- 
 'r bo'^'', the boys cut 
 her adrift and floated down the river, 
 wounded but vict -ious. And the tall, 
 lank, long-limbed rkwoods boy car- 
 ried, all his life, a .-n his forehead 
 to tell of his first p cned battle — and 
 it was with men of the very race 
 whom he afterwards made forever free. 
 He was, in truth, a long and lank 
 young fellow. Before he was eighteen he " got his growth," 
 as the saying is. He was very tall — six feet and four inches. 
 He was very thin ; indeed, one of the Gentryville girls who 
 used to make fun of his looks, as girls will, says he was " a 
 long, thin, leggy, gawky boy, dried up and shrivelled." 
 
 ing back to tl 
 
 "THEY CUT HFR ADRIFT AND 
 FLOATED DOWN THE RlVtK. " 
 
NOW ABRAHAM SAW THE WORLD. 65 
 
 Perhaps that was because she found that " Abe," as she 
 called him, was, " giving himself airs " on his learning ; for, 
 sitting on that very flat-boat at Gentry's Landing one even- 
 ing-, " Abe " had told her that the earth turned around and 
 that the sun and moon did not really sink, as they seemed to. 
 The girl, of course, thought that she knew better and told the 
 boy so ; but, years after, she said, " I know now that I was 
 the fool, and not Abe Lincoln." 
 
 The flat-boat voyage to New Orleans was a successful 
 one. The two boys sole' 'all their cargo, disposed of the boat, 
 and came back up the ver by steamer — successful traders 
 and travelers. Abrah' a had seen the world ; he had gone a 
 step further from the' d rut of " farm-hand," out of which he 
 determined to get en' -ely, when he became a man. 
 
 He was almost u man by this time. Tall, wiry and 
 strong, a champion t ^-estler and not a safe fellow for any boy 
 or man to" tackle, 'j e was a prominent figure in the little 
 world about Gentrj'-. ille. He had read and studied so much 
 that he knew morc'than all the boys and girls of Gentryville 
 put together. He was a ready talker, a great story-teller, the 
 life o.f every circle, whether at the country store, the black- 
 smith's shop, the house-raising or the husking-bee. The bul- 
 lies were all afraid of his long arms and terrible fists; the 
 girls all liked him ; the men preferred him to all other "hired, 
 men " on the farm work, and the women found him ever 
 handy, willing and helpful. 
 
 He was not a genius. He was slow, but sure. Whenever 
 
66 
 
 HO W ABRAHAM SA W THE WORLD. 
 
 he set about learning anything he kept at it until he knew it 
 completely. Some of his early writing actually found its 
 way into print, and one "piece," on national politics, was de- 
 clared, by a lawyer to whom it was shown, to be so good that 
 he carried it off and had it published in the papers. "The 
 world can't beat it 1 " the lawyer declared, and Lincoln was, 
 of course, very proud of this criticism, and still more proud 
 of thus "getting into print." Knowing what you do of the 
 future of this long-legged, awkward, gawky but " thorough " 
 
 country boy, you 
 ^iT": ^ will say that the 
 
 ^^-v'^f "piece" was a 
 ■-^. good introduc- 
 ^p^^' g*y tion to the prin- 
 
 
 1 ;-''- '' ,^,ww/--ii' - 
 
 EVER WILLING, HANDY AND HELPFUL. 
 
 ciples that, in af- 
 ter years, made 
 Abraham Lin- 
 coln famous. 
 For this "piece," 
 1. as everybody 
 
 then called any written composition, maintained that "the 
 American Government was the best form of government 
 for an intelligent people; that it ought to be kept sound, 
 and preserved forever ; that general education should be fos- 
 tered and carried all over the country; that the constitution 
 should be saved, theL^nion perpetuated and the laws revered, 
 respected and enforced." 
 
BOU'' THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 67 
 
 Not a bad beginning, was it, for a boy brought up with- 
 out education, without advantages, without opportunity, with 
 nothing but a clear mind, a cool head, a thoughtful nature, 
 unbounded pluck, and a determination to get ahead? 
 
 Yet that is the best sort of foundation to build upon. 
 Any boy, so furnished, can achieve great results even from 
 small beginnings. It was this building-up of himself that 
 made Abraham Lincoln a fresh creation — original, self-made, 
 ambitious, reliable, a real leader, a true and noble man, the 
 American. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 
 HOW THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 
 
 "D OYS and girls always like change. To them, it means 
 -"-^ new places to explore, new sights to see, new things 
 to do. As they grow older, it means, so they think, a better 
 chance to get on in the world. 
 
 When, therefore, restless Thomas Lincoln, the father of 
 Abraham, decided to change his home once more and try his 
 luck in the neighboring state of Illinois, young Abraham 
 was quite ready to make the change. Boy-like,, he thought, 
 no doubt, that there would be a better opening for a young 
 man in the new surroundings. 
 
68 
 
 BOIV THE RAJL-SFLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 
 
 His good step-mother was quite ready to move. The 
 same epidemic, or sickness, that had killed Abraham's own 
 mother visited that Indiana neighborhood again ; indeed, it 
 
 was there a great part 
 of the time, and — 
 " Wal', folks say as 
 how it's right healthy 
 over in Illinoy," so 
 Abraham's father de- 
 clared. 
 
 In the Spring of 
 1830, therefore, there 
 was another " mov- 
 ing time " for the 
 Lincolns. The corn 
 and the cattle, the 
 farm and its hogs 
 were all sold at pub- 
 lic " vandoo," or auc- 
 tion, at low figures; 
 and with all their 
 household goods 
 on a big " ironed " 
 wagon drawn by four 
 oxen, the three related families of Hanks, Hall and Lincoln, 
 thirteen in all, pushed on through the mud and across rivers, 
 high from the spring freshets, out of Indiana, into Illinois. 
 
JIOW THE RAIL-SFLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 6g 
 
 Abraham held the "gad" and guided the oxen. He 
 carried with him, also, a little stock of pins, needles, thread and 
 buttons. These he peddled along the way; and, at last, after 
 fifteen days of slow travel, the emigrants came to the spot 
 picked out for a home. 
 
 This time it was on a small bluff on the north fork of the 
 Sangamon river, ten miles west of the town of Decatur. 
 The usual log house was built ; the boys, with the oxen, 
 " broke up," or cleared, fifteen acres of land, and split enough 
 rails to fence it in. Abraham could swing his broad-axe 
 better than any man or boy in the West ; at one stroke he 
 could bury the axe-blade to the haft, in a log, and he was 
 already famous as an expert rail-splitter. 
 
 By the time his people Avere settled in their new home, 
 Abraham Lincoln was twenty-one. He was "of age" — he 
 was a man ! By the law of the land he was freed from his 
 father's control; he could shift for himself, and he deter- 
 mined to do so. 
 
 This did not mean that he disliked his father. It simply 
 means that he had no intention of following his father's ex- 
 ample. Thomas Lincoln had demanded all the work and all 
 the wages his son could do or earn, and Abraham felt that 
 he could not have a fair chance to accomplish anything or 
 get ahead in the world if he continued living with this shift- 
 less, never-satisfied, do-nothing man. 
 
 So he struck out for himself. But, lest you should imag- 
 ine that he " went back on " his family, as you boys say, or 
 
70 
 
 HO IV THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF, 
 
 forgot his duty to them, especially to the good woman 
 who was his step-mother, let me say that, to the day of his 
 death, he was always helping them — and he was never a 
 rich man, never even what folks call " well-to-do." 
 
 In the summer of 1S30, Abraham left home and hired out 
 on his own account, wherever he could get a job in the new 
 country into which he had come. In that region of big farms 
 
 'ABRAHAM WAS ALREADY FAMOUS AS AN EXPERT KAIL-SPLITTER, 
 
 and no fences, these latter were needed, and Abraham Lin- 
 coln's stalwart arm and well-swung axe came well into play, 
 cutting up logs for fences. He was what was called in that 
 western country a "rail-splitter." Indeed, one of the first 
 things he did when he struck out for himself was to split 
 four hundred rails for every yard of " blue jeans " necessary 
 to make him a pair of trousers. From which it will be 
 seen that work was easier to get than clothes. 
 
HOW THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 71 
 
 He soon became as much of a favorite in Illinois as he 
 had been in Indiana. Other work came to him, and, in 1831, 
 he " hired out " with a man named Offutt to help sail a flat- 
 boat down the Mississippi to New Orleans. 
 
 Mr. Offutt had heard that "Abe Lincoln " was a good 
 river-hand, strong, steady, honest, reliable, accustomed to 
 boating and that he had already made one trip down the 
 river. 
 
 So he engaged young Lincoln at what seemed to the 
 young rail-splitter princely wages — fifty cents a day, and a 
 third share in the sixty dollars which was to be divided 
 among the three boatmen at the end of the trip. 
 
 They built the flat-boat at a saw mill near a place called 
 Sangamon-town, " Abe " serving as cook of the camp while 
 the boat was being built. 
 
 Then, loading the craft with barrel-pork, hogs and corn, 
 they started on their voyage south. At a place called 
 New Salem the flat-boat ran aground; but Lincoln's inge- 
 nuity got it off. He rigged up a queer contrivance of his 
 own invention and lifted the boat off and over the obstruc- 
 tion, while all New Salem stood on the bank, first to criticise 
 and then to applaud. 
 
 Just what this invention was I cannot explain. But if 
 you ever go into the patent office at Washington, ask to see 
 Abraham Lincoln's patent for transporting river boats over 
 snags and shoals. The wooden model is there ; for, so 
 pleased was Lincoln with his success that he thought seri- 
 
72 
 
 no IF THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 
 
 ously of becoming an inventor, and his first design was the 
 patent granted to him in 1S49, ^he idea for which grew out 
 of this successful floating of Offutt's flat-boat over the river 
 snags at New Salem nineteen years before. 
 
 Once again he visited New Orleans, returning home, as 
 before, by steamboat. That voyage is remarkable, because 
 it first opened young Lincoln's eyes to the enormity of Afri- 
 can slavery. Of course, he had seen slaves before; but the 
 
 FLOATING DOWN TO NKW ORLEANS. 
 
 sight of a slave sale in the old market place of New Orleans 
 seems to have aroused his anger and given him an intense 
 hatred of slave-holding. He, himself, declared, years after, 
 that it was that visit to New Orleans, that had set him so 
 strongly against slavery. 
 
 There is a story told by one of his companions that Lin- 
 coln looked for awhile upon the dreadful scenes of the slave 
 market and then, turning away, said excitedly, "Come away, 
 boys ! If ever I get a chance, some day, to hit that thing" 
 
HO IV THE HAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 75 
 
 — and he flung his long arm toward the dreadful auction 
 block — " I'll hit it hard!" 
 
 Now this may have been, as some folks say it is, a 
 " made-up story ; " but we know, from Lincoln's own words, 
 that his intense hatred of slavery dated from that New 
 Orleans trip. If he did speak those words, he spoke as a 
 prophet; for he did get the chance; he did "hit" slavery; 
 he hit it so " hard " that it fell, never to rise again ; and, 
 to-day, north and south, east and west, all true Americans 
 thank God for Abraham Lincoln and the death grapple he 
 gave to human slavery. 
 
 But that, you see, was just the way with this brawny 
 rail-splitter, this backwoods boy, this man of the people. 
 When he set out to do a thing, he did it. It was this very 
 determination, this powerful "grip" with which he took 
 hold of things, this impatience with what seemed to him 
 wrong, or brutal or unfair, that helped Abraham Lincoln to 
 master things, and made him the righter of wrongs, the sav- 
 ior of the union. He always did hate unfairness in boys, in 
 men, in manners and in action. 
 
 Soon after he returned from his flat-boat trip to New Or- 
 leans he had an opportunity to show that he could not and 
 would not stand what is termed " foul play." 
 
 The same Mr. Ofl'utt who had hired Lincoln to be one of 
 his flat-boat "boys," gave him another opportunity for work. 
 
 Offutt was what is called in the West a "hustler;" he 
 had lots of " great ideas" and plans for making money; and. 
 
76 
 
 HO IV THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELE. 
 
 among his numerous enterprises, was one to open a country 
 store and mill at New Salem — the very same village on the 
 Sangamon where, by his "patent invention," Lincoln had 
 lifted the flat-boat off the snags. 
 
 Mr. Offutt had taken a great fancy to Lincoln, and 
 offered him a place as clerk in the New Salem store. 
 
 tv 
 
 IN OFFUTT'S store "he'll be PREalDENT SOME DAY, HE WILL!' 
 
 The young fellow jumped at the chance. It seemed to 
 him quite an improvement on being a farm-hand, a flat-boat- 
 man, or a rail-splitter. It was, indeed, a step upward; for 
 it gave him better opportunities for self-instruction and more 
 
 chances for getting ahead. 
 
HO IV THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 11 
 
 I suspect that Offutt was what you boys call " a great 
 blower." He liked to hear himself talk, and he liked to talk 
 " big." One of his favorite themes was Abraham Lincoln. 
 That young fellow's length of arm and limb, his strength, his 
 handiness, his learning and his oratorical powers were all 
 made the most of by his friend and employer the "hustling 
 Hoosier," who boasted loudly and constantly that " my clerk, 
 Abe Lincoln " "could beat the universe." 
 
 "Why," he declared, "that boy of mine knows more 'n 
 any man in these U-nited States. He'll be president, some 
 day, he will. Yes, ma'am, you mark my words : that boy '11 
 be president of the U-nited States, some day." 
 
 Offutt's store was a favorite " loafing place " for the New 
 Salem boys and young men. Among these, were some of 
 the roughest fellows in the settlement. They were known 
 as the " Clary Grove Boys " and they were always ready for 
 a fight, in which they would, sometimes, prove themselves to 
 be bullies and tormentors. 
 
 When, therefore, Offutt began to brag about his new 
 clerk the " Clary Grove Boys " made fun of him; whereupon 
 the store keeper cried: "What's that? You can throw 
 him? Well, I reckon not; Abe Lincoln can out-run, out- 
 walk, out-rassle, knock out and throw down any man in 
 Sangamon county." 
 
 This was too much for the Clary Grove Boys. They 
 took up Offutt's challenge, and, against " Abe," set up, as their 
 champion and " best man," one Jack Armstrong. 
 
7 8 
 
 HOW THE RAIL-SFLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 
 
 All this Avas done without Lincoln's knowledge. He 
 had no desire to get into a row with anyone — least of all 
 with the bullies who made up the " Clary Grove Boys." 
 
 " I won't do it," he said, when Offutt told him of the pro- 
 
 "the 'clary grove boys' were always ready for a fight." 
 
 posed wrestling match. " I never tussle and scuffle, and I 
 will not. I don't like this woolling and pulling." 
 
 " Don't let them call you a coward, Abe," said Offutt. 
 
 Of course, you know what the end would be to such an 
 affair. Nobody likes to be called a coward — especially 
 
HOW THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 79 
 
 when he knows he isn't one. So, at last, Lincoln consented 
 to " rassle " with Jack Armstrong. 
 
 They met, with all the boys as spectators. They wres- 
 tled, and tugged and clenched, but without result. Both 
 young fellows were equally matched in strength. 
 
 " It's no use, Jack," Lincoln at last declared. " Let's 
 quit. You can't throw me and I can't throw you. That's 
 enough." 
 
 With that, all Jack's backers began to cry " coward ! " 
 and urged on the champion to another tussle. 
 
 Jack Armstrong was now determined to win, by fair means 
 or foul. He tried the latter, and, contrary to all the rules of 
 wrestling began to kick and trip, while his supporters stood 
 ready to help, if need be, by breaking in with a regular free 
 fight. 
 
 This " foul play " roused the lion in Lincoln. He hated 
 unfairness, and, at once, resented it. He suddenly put forth 
 his Samson-like strength, grabbed the champion of the 
 Clary Grove Boys by the throat, and, lifting him from the 
 ground, held him at arm's length and shook, him as a dog 
 shakes a rat. 
 
 Then he flung him to the ground, and, facing the amazed 
 and yelling crowd, he cried : 
 
 " You cowards ! You know I don't want to fight ; but 
 if you try any such games, I'll tackle the whole lot of you. 
 I've won the fight." 
 
 He had. From that day, no man in all that region 
 
8o BOW THE RAJL-SFLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 
 
 dared to "tackle" young Lincoln, or to taunt him \\'ith 
 cowardice. And Jack Armstrong was his devoted friend 
 and admirer. 
 
 I have told you more, perhaps, of the famous fight than 
 I ought — not because it was a fight, but because it gives 
 you a glimpse of Abraham Lincoln's character. He disliked 
 rows ; he was too kind-hearted and good-natured to wish to 
 quarrel with any one ; but he hated unfairness and was 
 enraged at anything like persecution or bullying. If you 
 will look up Shakspere's play of " Hamlet " you will see that 
 Lincoln was ready to act upon the advice that old Polonius 
 gave to his son Laertes : 
 
 " Beware 
 Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, 
 Bear it that the opposed may beware of thee." 
 
 That was Abraham Lincoln's way. And, in the supreme 
 moments of his life, he lived up to that advice, and con- 
 quered — whether in "downing" the bullies of the Clary 
 Grove Boys, or in defending the nation from those who 
 sought its life. 
 
 He became quite a man in that little community. As a 
 clerk he was obliging and strictly honest. He was the 
 judge and the settler of all disputes, and none thought of 
 combating his decisions. He was the village peace-maker. 
 He hated profanity, drunkenness and unkindness to women. 
 He was feared and respected by all, and even the Clary 
 Grove Boys declared, at last, that he was " the cleverest fel- 
 ler that ever broke into the settlement." 
 
HO IV THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 8i 
 
 All the time, too, he was trying to improve himself. He 
 liked to sit around and talk and tell stories, just the same 
 as ever ; but he saw this was not the way to get on in the 
 world. He worked, whenever he had the chance, outside 
 of his store duties ; and once, when trade was dull and hands 
 were short in the clearing, he " turned to " and split enough 
 logs into rails to make a pen for a thousand hogs. 
 
 When he was not at work he devoted himself to his 
 books. He could " read, write and cipher " — this was more 
 education than most men about him possessed ; but he hoped, 
 some day, to go before the public ; to do this, he knew he 
 must speak and write correctly. He talked to the village 
 schoolmaster, who advised him to study English grammar. 
 
 " Well, if I had a grammar," said Lincoln, " I'd begin 
 now. Have you got one ? " 
 
 The schoolmaster had no grammar; but he told "Abe " ot 
 a man, six miles off, who owned one. 
 
 Thereupon, Lincoln started upon the run to borrow that 
 grammar. He brou.ght it back so quickly that the school 
 master was astonished. 
 
 Then he set to work to learn the " rules and exceptions." 
 He studied that grammar, stretched full length on the 
 store-counter, or under a tree outside the store, or at night 
 before a blazing fire of shavings in the cooper's shop. And 
 soon, he had mastered it. 
 
 He borrowed every book in New Salem; he made the 
 schoolmaster give him lessons in the store ; he button-holed 
 
S2 
 
 HOW THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 
 
 every stranger that came into the place " who looked as 
 though he knew anything ; " until, at last, every one in New 
 Salem was ready to echo Offutt's boast that " Abe Lincoln " 
 knew more than any man " in these U-nited States." 
 
 One day, in the bottom of an old barrel of trash, he 
 made a splendid " find." It was two old law books. 
 
 "HE BORROWED EVERY BOOK IN NEW SALEM.'' 
 
 He read and re-read them, got all the " juice " and sense 
 and argument out of their dry pages, blossomed into a de- 
 bater, began to dream of being a lawyer, and became so skilled 
 in seeing through and settling knotty questions that, once 
 again, New Salem wondered at this clerk of Offutt's, who 
 
HOW THE RAIL-SPLITTER RAISED HIMSELF. 83 
 
 was as long of head as of arms and legs, and declared that 
 "Abe Lincoln could out-argue any ten men in the settlement." 
 
 You see now, do you not, what pluck and perseverance 
 will do ? You know how Abraham Lincoln started in the 
 world ; how he came from the poorest and most unpromising 
 beginnings; how poverty and ignorance and unfavorable sur- 
 roundings and awkwardness and lack of good looks could 
 not keep him down, because he was determined to raise 
 himself and become somebody. 
 
 In all the history of America there has been no man who 
 started lower and climbed higher than Abraham Lincoln, 
 the backwoods boy. He never " slipped back." He always 
 kept going ahead. He broadened his mind, enlarged his 
 outlook, and led his companions rather than let them lead 
 him. He was jolly company, good-natured, kind-hearted, 
 fond of jokes and stories and a good time generally ; but he 
 was the champion of the weak, the friend of the friendless, 
 as true a knight and as full of chivalry as any of the heroes in 
 armor of whom you read in " Ivanhoe" or " The Talisman." 
 
 He never cheated, never lied, never took an unfair ad- 
 vantage of anyone ; but he was ambitious, strong-willed, a 
 bold fighter and a tough adversary — a fellow who would 
 " never say die " ; and who, therefore, succeeded. 
 
 Take well to heart, boys and girls of America, the story 
 of the plucky boy who, upon what, seventy years ago, was 
 the outskirts of civilization, was all unconsciously training 
 himself to be the American. 
 
84 CAFTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 ** TTONEST ABE." That was what the people in and 
 •^ -■■ about New Salem called the tall, awkward-looking, 
 good-natured and always-reliable young clerk at Offutt's 
 store. It is a good nickname; for it is one that is generally 
 given in earnest, and not in fun. In this case, too, it fitted. 
 
 " Abe Lincoln," said the women who traded at the store, " is 
 as honest as the day is long ; " and then one of them would 
 tell how, one evening, she went to Offutt's to buy a pound 
 of tea. Abe weighed it out for her and she carried it home. 
 
 " And what do you think," she told her neighbor, " be- 
 fore I'd much more 'n got home, 'long came Abe with a lit- 
 tle package. ' See here,' says he ; ' somethin's the matter 
 with our scales. They weighed short to-night, and I've 
 brought you enough tea to make up your pound.' " 
 
 " You don't say so," rejoined her neighbor, " Well \ 
 that's just like 'honest Abe,' ain't it? Why, t'other day I 
 went into Offutt's to buy some things. I paid for 'em : and 
 what do you think ? Next morning, bright and early, who 
 should show up but Abe Lincoln. ' I figured up that bill of 
 goods you bought last night,' says he, ' and I find I charged 
 
CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 8S 
 
 you six and a quarter cents too much. Here is the money. 
 It jest plagued me all night,' says he. I tell you that boy'll 
 get along." 
 
 " They was tellin' me up to New Salem," said the first 
 
 "next MORNINr,, WHO SHOULD SHOW UP BUT ABE LINCOLN?" 
 
 speaker, " that one day, last week, one of them Clary Grove 
 Boys was struttin' 'round in Offutt's, and he begun to 
 curse and swear while there was some wimmin around. 
 Abe, he told him to quit ; but the feller kept it up just the 
 
86 
 
 CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 same ; then Abe, he jumps over the counter, ketches the fel- 
 ler by the nap of the neck and lugs him out of the store. 
 They had a little tussle ; but you know what Abe's arm is. 
 He threw that feller in a minute. ' I'll teach you to swear 
 at wimmin,' says Abe, says he; and he just took some dog 
 fennel — he was awful mad, Abe was — and he rubbed that 
 fennel in the feller's eyes. You know how it smarts. My! 
 but that feller yelled. By that time, Abe got kind o' cooled 
 
 off; and what do you 
 think — he went and 
 got some water and 
 bathed that good-for- 
 nothin's eyes and 
 face till all the smart 
 was gone. Did ever 
 you see sich a feller? " 
 Good opinions 
 travel and stick, just 
 as much as bad ones ; remember that, boys and girls. They 
 certainly did with Abraham Lincoln, away off in that little 
 frontier town. Every one liked him — from bullies like Jack 
 Armstrong and others who had felt the weight of his arm, 
 to Offutt the blower. Mentor Graham the schoolmaster, 
 Captain Bogue of the steamer Talisman, whose vessel 
 "Abe" piloted through the crooked Sangamon, and the hard- 
 working housewife whom he was always ready to help, when- 
 ever she was tired out or her baby's cradle needed rocking. 
 
 ' I CAN ROCK AND READ, TOO," ABE WOULD SAY. 
 
CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 87 
 
 '■'I can rock it just as well as not, if you'll lend me a book 
 to read," Abe would say. " I can rock and read too, and it'll 
 sort of spell you." 
 
 His reading, and his law book, and his newspaper, and 
 his talking with people gave him a desire to take part in 
 public affairs. Offutt's business enterprises failed all of a 
 sudden; the good-natured "blower" disappeared from New 
 Salem, and Abraham Lincoln was out of a steady job. He 
 did whatever came to hand that would bring him in a little 
 money, and then, urged by his friends, he suddenly decided 
 that he would go into politics. 
 
 He struck high. "I'm going to try for the legislature," 
 he declared. 
 
 The legislature, in America, you know, is a body of men 
 elected by the people to make laws for the state in which 
 they live and are elected. Lincoln's friends applauded his 
 ambitious resolve and on the tenth of March, 1832, as the 
 custom was, he printed a circular in which he announced 
 himself as a candidate for representative to the Illinois 
 State Legislature. 
 
 But he did not go that time. For, before election time 
 came around, all the western country was in a ferment. The 
 Indians were on the war-path, and the governor called for 
 volunteers to fight them. 
 
 Many of the young men of the state sprang to arms, and, 
 foremost among them, was Abraham Lincoln. He had never 
 had much to do with the Indians. They had not come near 
 
88 
 
 CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 where he lived, very often, but he had been brought up 
 among Indian fighters, and had learned the lesson which too 
 many Americans have so readily accepted, that "the only 
 good Indian was a dead Indian." He recalled the stories 
 
 told of the fierce 
 fights in Kentucky 
 in the early days, of 
 many a terrible race 
 for life, and how his 
 own grandfather, 
 Abraham Lincoln, 
 had been shot down 
 at his own doorstep 
 by hostile Indians, 
 while his father, 
 lazy Thomas, then 
 a little fellow of six, 
 stood by his side 
 So, with the rest of 
 the young men of 
 his section he was 
 full of indignation 
 against these " scalp- 
 in' creeters " and 
 was quick to volun- 
 teer to drive back the great chief Black Hawk and his band. 
 Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiah, the chief of the Sacs, popu- 
 
 A RACE FOR LIFE. 
 
CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 89 
 
 BLACK HAWK, THE CHIEF OF THE SACS. 
 
 larly known as " Black Hawk," was one of the last of the 
 Indian patriots. At fifteen, he was the leading brave of his 
 tribe; at twenty-one, he made himself chief of the Sacs, and, 
 within five years, he had conquered or made vassals of all of 
 the neighboring tribes. He burned with a relentless hatred 
 against the white men of the border, who were fast driving 
 
go CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 the Indians away from their homes and hunting grounds. 
 In the end he was defeated, and we rarely give glory to the 
 conquered. But none the less was Black Hawk, the chief of 
 the Sacs, a patriot and a hero. 
 
 This is the way we read his story to-day ; but, sixty years 
 ago, on the western frontier where men's homes and families 
 were in danger from the aroused Indians, it was read in 
 quite another fashion. 
 
 The volunteers who marched against the " red-skins " 
 were pledged to fight for a short time only. People thought 
 the war would soon be ended and the young men left their 
 farm work for \\hat many of them looked upon as a " thirty- 
 day picnic." 
 
 As is the way with volunteer soldiers, they elected their 
 own officers. When the men of Sangamon County met to 
 choose their officers, there were two men nominated for cap- 
 tain of the company ; and, when the vote was declared, the 
 choice was found to be, by a large majority, for Abraham 
 Lincoln. He was surprised ; but he was greatly pleased, too. 
 Any man or boy likes to know that he is popular with his 
 companions or his neighbors. 
 
 So, off to the war marched the Sangamon company of 
 volunteers under the command of Captain Abraham Lincoln. 
 The state troop gathered at Beardstown, and there Captain 
 Lincoln's company was made part of the regiment com- 
 manded by Colonel Thompson. The general in command 
 of the volunteer troops was General Whiteside. 
 
CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 91 
 
 If, now, you are expecting a story of great deeds — 
 forced marches, dashing Indian fights, bloody battles, heroic 
 actions and all the adventures, exploits and rush of furious 
 conflict, you will not find it here. 
 
 Captain Lincoln's regiment never had an encounter with 
 the Indians. They 
 were an unruly lot of 
 soldiers, poorly drilled 
 and without discipline. 
 One night they broke 
 into the company 
 stores and every man 
 "got drunk." For this 
 act of insubordination 
 Captain Lincoln had 
 to suffer. For, though 
 he knew nothing of 
 the affair until the 
 mischief was done, he 
 was held responsible 
 and compelled to wear 
 a wooden sword for 
 
 A REFUGEE FROM THE MASSACRE. 
 
 two days. 
 
 He had a hard time of it with " his boys," and, after the 
 inglorious defeat of a portion of the army, in what is known 
 as "Stillman's Massacre," the camp was in a sorry condition, 
 short of provisions, discontented and mutinous. 
 
9^ CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 Lincoln was patient and determined and, in time, would 
 have brought his men into some sort of discipline. The 
 period of their enlistment, however, was soon over and they 
 clamored to be discharged and sent home. 
 
 But, if his men displayed no bravery, their captain on 
 one occasion, certainly did. 
 
 It seems that a poor, forlorn, helpless and hungry old 
 Indian wandered into camp. He claimed to be a friend of 
 the white men and begged for their help and protection. 
 The soldiers however, had come to fight Indians ; so they 
 surrounded the poor old fellow and proposed to kill one 
 " red-skin," anyhow. 
 
 The Indian showed a letter of recommendation from 
 General Cass, but the men said it was a forgery and made a 
 rush at the old man. 
 
 Captain Lincoln heard the noise and dashed out just in 
 time to protect the victim of the soldier's brutality. He 
 placed himself beside the Indian and shouted : " Men, this 
 must not be done ! He must not be shot and killed by'us!" 
 
 " He's a spy ; a spy ! " shouted the soldiers. 
 
 The Indian crouched at Lincoln's feet, and the tall cap- 
 tain, bade the angry men fall back and let the Indian go. 
 
 " O, Lincoln ! you're a coward " shouted one of the 
 armed mob. 
 
 Captain Lincoln knew the men he had to deal with. 
 "Who says I'm a coward?" he demanded, rolling up his 
 sleeves. 
 
CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 93 
 
 The " boys " knew what that meant. They had no 
 desire to come within range of those long and brawny arms. 
 
 " That's not fair, Lincoln ! " cried one, " you're larger and 
 heavier than we are." 
 
 By military rules, the captain could have ordered his 
 mutineers under arrest. But he knew, that to do so, would 
 be counted by his men as taking an advantage and, therefore, 
 cowardly and tyrannical. So he offered, as was the rule in 
 a 1 1 backwoods 
 settlements, to 
 fight it out with 
 them, one after 
 the other. 
 
 The men 
 knew the use- 
 lessness of a 
 wrestle with 
 Abraham Lincoln. None of them dared try it; so the old 
 Indian was left under the captain's protection and no harm 
 was done him. 
 
 It was a small matter; but it proved Lincoln's courage, if 
 any proof were needed. It calls for real bravery, you know, 
 to champion an unpopular cause; but this, as Lincoln's 
 whole life-story shows, was his way when injustice or 
 wrong sought to prevail. 
 
 One day, an officer of the regular army^ with that con- 
 tempt for the militia which all professional soldiers always 
 
 "MEN, THIS MUST NOT BE DONE!" HE SAID. 
 
94 
 
 CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 display, attempted to take advantage of the volunteer troops, 
 and ordered Captain Lincoln to carry out his command. 
 
 Lincoln knew that obedience to superiors in command 
 was a soldier's first duty. He did as directed; but he went 
 immediately to the regular officer who had issued the com- 
 mand and said, " You forget, sir, that we are not under the 
 regulations of the War Department at Washington. We are 
 volunteers, subject only to the orders of the State of Illinois. 
 Attend to your own business and there will be no trouble ; 
 but any unjust orders by you will be resisted by all of us. 
 We must not be served in any other way than as soldiers 
 and gentlemen." 
 
 This spirited stand was respected by the United States 
 officers. They recognized that Captain Lincoln would not 
 let his men be imposed upon, and they did not again 
 attempt to act with injustice to the volunteers. 
 
 You may be sure that this brave act made Lincoln all 
 the more popular with his men. 
 
 But, when their time of service was up and they de- 
 manded to be sent home, Captain Lincoln would not re- 
 turn with them. 
 
 " We came here to fight this thing out," he said. " Fm 
 not going home until it is over." 
 
 So, when his company was disbanded and sent home, 
 Lincoln at once re-enlisted as a private, and, as Private Abra- 
 ham Lincoln he served to the end of the war. 
 
 " The war " soon came to an end. Black Hawk was 
 
CAPTAJN LINCOLN. 
 
 97 
 
 defeated. His tribesmen were scattered and he was taken 
 prisoner. The fighting was over and the " Independent Spy 
 Company " in which Private Lincoln served was disbanded 
 at Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and Lincoln started for 
 home. 
 
 That very night his horse was stolen by some other 
 home-returning recruit, and he, with his comrade Harrison 
 "just hoofed it," as the soldiers said, most, of the way back. 
 Getting an occasional " lift," now and then, they tramped as 
 
 LINCOLN COMING HOME FROM THE WAK- 
 
 far as Peoria, in Illinois. Here they got a canoe and paddled 
 to Pekin where they just escaped shipwreck, made friends 
 with the men on a log- raft and on that floated down the Illi- 
 nois river as far as Havana. There they sold their canoe 
 and again footed it across country until they reached home. 
 
 This was Lincoln's only attempt at " soldiering." It 
 was neither very exciting nor very heroic, and, ever after, he 
 was accustomed to make fun of his experiences, and especi- 
 ally to " take down " those who tried to boast of their " mar- 
 
98 
 
 CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 
 
 tial deeds " and tell how brave they were and how much the 
 country owed them for courageous service. Lincoln never 
 did have any interest in or sympathy for what the boys call 
 
 I'l.MA riNi; DOWN THE ILLINOIS. 
 
 "a blower." With him, always, actions spoke louder than 
 words. 
 
 " Did you know," he once said in a speech, at a time 
 when a certain candidate was attempting to " trade " on his 
 military record, "that I also am a military hero? In the 
 days of the Black Hawk War I fought, bled — and came 
 away If ever I am a candidate for the presi- 
 
CAPTAIN LINCOLN. 99 
 
 dency people shall not make fun of me by attempting to 
 make me into a military hero." 
 
 But for all his fun, this " war record " of Abraham Lin- 
 coln had an effect on his character and his life. It made 
 him familiar with men. It gave him a wider knowledge of 
 the world. Especially did it show him the selfish side of life, 
 and lead him to see that men, after all, are what they make 
 themselves and are not to be called heroes because of their 
 own brag or bluster. 
 
 On the other hand, his comrades and associates learned 
 to know him better. They saw how much sincerity, truth- 
 fulness and real courage were in this tall and lanky young 
 militia captain ; while his willingness to accept a lower posi- 
 tion and fill it cheerfully and satisfactorily, showed them 
 his manly qualities and gave them a new lesson in honor, 
 obedience and common-sense. Not many men step down 
 with grace. It is hard to do this. But, sometimes, the step 
 down, is in reality, a step up/ 
 
 It was Abraham Lincoln's step up in the world. Hence- 
 forth, he was to be a leader among his fellow men. 
 
 Leadership came slowly, however, and, as is best in the 
 world, for boys and men, for girls and women, the path to 
 success proved long and full of obstacles to be overcome. 
 
 But obstacles are sometimes the very things that put us 
 ahead, by making us labor to conquer them and, while doing 
 this, to conquer ourselves. Abraham Lincoln was learning 
 this truth early in life, and he never forgot his lesson. 
 
J/OIV 2 HE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOW THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 TTVEN as a boy, Abraham Lincoln had a taste for public 
 -'-^ speaking and took an interest in politics. 
 
 There are many stories told in regard to this. From the 
 day when, in his humble Indiana home, he used to recite 
 long declamations for the boys or say over the minister's ser- 
 mon, to the days of his first real speechmaking in Illinois, 
 "Abe" was always ready to "take the stump" and make a 
 funny or a political speech, recite a poem or preach a ser- 
 mon, as his audience desired. 
 
 - In fact, he used to indulge in this " speechifying " so 
 much, in the hay-field or on the farm, that his employers often 
 objected to such a waste of time, and would pull him from 
 the stump, amid the laughter and applause of the hearers. 
 
 He was a leading light at the " speaking meetings " in 
 the GentryviUe schoolhouse where he was ready to discuss, 
 at short notice, such topics as : " Which is the busier, *^he 
 bee or the ant ? " " Which is the more useful, water or fire ? " 
 "Which is the stronger, wind or water? " "Which has the 
 most right to complain, the Indian or the negro? " 
 
 Once, when he was a gawky Indiana farm-hand, he faced 
 
HOW THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 in debate, out in the cornfield, a famous orator and politician 
 of those parts, and almost overcame him in the wordy wres- 
 tle. At another time, when a popular politician came around 
 " electioneering," John Hanks told the man that his " Cousin 
 Abe" could beat him talking, "all holler." Whereupon, to 
 prove it, he turned a keg bottom-side up, mounted the boy 
 upon it and told him to " sail in." This, young Abraham 
 proceeded to do, and in a 
 discussion of the subject of 
 the navigation of the San- 
 gamon river, (a question in 
 which every one in that 
 region was interested,) he 
 out-argued his opponent, 
 and, as John Hanks de- 
 clared, "just beat him to 
 death." 
 
 Such experiences as 
 these had taught the young 
 man to " think on his feet," 
 as the saying is ; that is, to 
 be quick in thought, ready with words and bold in argument. 
 
 He did not like farm-work ; he did not like store-keeping ; 
 he was ambitious; he had many friends in his own neigh- 
 borhood; he was popular; he was " Honest Abe Lincoln;" 
 his strong desire was for public life. So, when he re- 
 turned home " from the war," he again gave notice, as was 
 
 'ON THE NAVIGATION OF THE SANGAMON 
 
102 
 
 ffOlF THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 the custom in these days, that he was a candidate for the 
 Legislature. 
 
 Some folks laughed at the idea of this raw and uncouth 
 young fello\\', who had no money, nothing of what was called 
 " social distinction," and little that could help him on, unless it 
 were brains and determi- 
 nation, thinking he could 
 become one of the law- 
 makers of the State of 
 Illinois. ,^^; ^^ 
 
 HI-NRY Cl.AV. 
 
 But Lincoln 
 
 was bound to 
 
 He went about mak- 
 
 j;ivianii Kenrv ci^. try 
 
 Ne- L-ev'ncton. Ky. -^^^ specchcs, and inter- 
 esting people in him and in the cause which he represented. 
 
 You would suppose that a man who wished to be suc- 
 cessful would take the popular side, and belong to the party 
 that was the strongest. 
 
 But this was never Abraham Lincoln's way. He was 
 
HOW THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 103 
 
 called" Honest Abe," you know; and, with him, honesty was 
 not only " the best policy," but it meant truthfulness in 
 thoughts and words, as well as in acts. 
 
 At that time, the two leading political parties were the 
 Whies and the Democrats. In the State of Illinois almost 
 every man was a Democrat. But Lincoln could not accept 
 what were called the Democratic principles. He had 
 thought the whole thing out, as he grew to manhood, and 
 he became a Whig — a follower of that great Kentucky 
 statesman and greater American, forever famous as Henry 
 
 Clay. 
 
 So, when he announced himself as a candidate for the 
 state legislature, he declared that he was a Whig — " a Clay 
 man through and through ! " 
 
 We get a glimpse of him as he made his first political 
 speech. It was at a little place called Pappsville, about 
 eleven miles west of Springfield, now the capital of Illinois. 
 There had been a public auction sale in the place ; a lot of 
 people had gathered there, and Lincoln thought it was a 
 good time to have his say; so he stood on the platform to 
 
 speak. 
 
 Those were the days of rough times and rough people. 
 Almost any election season was as full of fights as of 
 speeches. Just as Lincoln was about to begin his speech 
 there were signs of a "free fight" in the crowd, which was 
 composed of men and boys of both political parties. Lin- 
 coln saw one of his friends getting badly hustled and bullied. 
 
104 HOW 7 HE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 At once, he leaped down into the crowd and pushed the bul- 
 lies aw ay from his friend ; one of them resisted and began to 
 shove and talk back ; whereupon, Lincoln, without a word, 
 seized the fellow and made him "walk Spanish" — you 
 know how that is done — out of the crowd. Then he 
 mounted the platform again and began his speech. 
 
 This is what he said : 
 
 Gentlemen ajid Fellow Citizens : " I presume you all 
 know w ho I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have 
 been solicited by many friends to become a candidate fof 
 the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the 
 old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I 
 am in fa^'or of the internal improvement system and a 
 high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political 
 principles. If elected, I shall be thankful ; if not, it will be 
 all the same." 
 
 This was Abraham Lincoln's first public speech as a can- 
 didate for election. When you get further on in this book 
 to what was almost his greatest public speech — the immortal 
 "Gettysburg oration," — just turn back to this page and 
 compare the two. Both were very short. Abraham Lincoln 
 never wasted words. But see how the years made of 
 the uncouth stump speaker at Pappsville one of the noblest 
 orators in the English language. 
 
 He was an odd-looking figure as he stood there, making 
 his first speech. One who was with him thus describes his 
 dress: " He wore a mixed jeans coat, claw-hammer style. 
 
IfOlV THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 105 
 
 short in the sleeves and bobtail — -the tails so short, in fact, 
 that he could not sit on them — flax and tow linen panta- 
 loons and a straw hat. I think he wore a vest, but do not 
 remember. He wore pot-metal boots." 
 
 But looks do not make the man. So when, soon after, 
 some of his opponents began to poke fun at the long-armed, 
 long-legged, poorly-dressed candidate for political honors, 
 this is the way he answered them : 
 
 Fellow Citizens : I have been told that some of my 
 opponents have said that it was a disgrace to the county of 
 Sangamon to have such a looking man as I am stuck up for 
 the Legislature. Now, I thought this was a free country ; 
 that is the reason I address you to-day. Had I known to 
 the contrary I should not have consented to run. But I 
 will say one thing, let the shoe pinch where it may ; when I 
 have been a candidate before you some five or six times and 
 have been beaten every time, I will consider it a disgrace, 
 and will be sure never to try it again; but I am bound to 
 beat that man if I am beaten myself. Mark that ! " 
 
 I have given you both these speeches that you may see 
 that there was no " backing down " in Abraham Lincoln. 
 When he determined upon a thing, he stuck to it to the end. 
 He was making his way, as I have told you, in a rough time 
 and among rough people He knew how to talk to them. 
 They liked courage and will and persistence ; and all of 
 these, the young man from New Salem possessed. 
 
 So, when election day came around, he had a large vote 
 
io6 HOW THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 and many who were opposed to him politically voted for 
 him because they liked him and knew that he was honest, 
 straightforward and reliable. He was beaten; but he 
 gained the respect, the confidence and the good-will of the 
 community — and he was never again defeated, on what is 
 called the popular vote. 
 
 This is the way in which he concluded his printed 
 address to the voters of Sangamon county. It is typical of 
 the man : 
 
 " Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. 
 Whether 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. How far 
 I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be de- 
 veloped. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was 
 born in the humble walks of life. I have no wealth or pop- 
 ular relatives or friends to recommend me. My case is 
 thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the coun- 
 try ; and, if elected, they \\\\\ have conferred a favor upon 
 me, which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compen- 
 sate. But, if the good people in their wisdom see fit to keep 
 me in the background, I have been too familiar with dis- 
 appointments to be very much chagrined." 
 
 This was straightforward and manly, was it not? When 
 he was disappointed in this first effort for political honors 
 he was just as manly and straightforward. 
 
 He had made a good impression ; he had made a good 
 
HOW THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 107 
 
 many friends. But he had not succeeded. Now he must 
 goto work again; and he went to work. 
 
 lie went into business in a country store. His partner 
 was shiftless and good-for-nothing and the business was a 
 failure. It left Lincoln burdened with debt ; but he never 
 tried to shirk this debt, as too many men do. Though it 
 took him many years to accomplish it, he paid off every 
 dollar. He wa ^ " honest Abe," you know. 
 
 After he failed as a store-keeper, he began to study law 
 again. Sometimes he had to walk as far as Springfield to 
 borrow a law book ; but whatever he read, he remembered. 
 
 His way of reading was peculiar. Sometimes he would 
 sit cross-legged on top of a woodpile ; sometimes, bare-footed, 
 in the shade of a bis: tree, moving around as the shade 
 moved; sometimes, lying flat on his back, with his feet "up 
 a tree;" sometimes, walking in the woods, and sometimes 
 in the cooper's shop by the light of the flaming wood fire. 
 But always, whatever his place or his posture, with a book 
 in his hand — studying, studying, studying ! 
 
 There was a good chance in that new country for a man 
 who was a surveyor, so Lincoln determined to become one. 
 He i.ould not go to an Institute of Technology, or a Poly- 
 technic school, but he borrowed a book on surveying, 
 and studied it diligently for six weeks. Then he set up as a 
 surveyor. 
 
 The man who helped him in this attempt, who loaned 
 him the book and gave him his first " job " at surveying was 
 
io8 
 
 flow THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITJOUS. 
 
 his political opponent; but Lincoln never forg'ot the friendly 
 act; and though, later on, he had to fight his friend hard, 
 politically, he never said one unkind word or one unpleasant 
 thincT about him. 
 
 In 1S33, Lincoln was appointed postmaster at his home 
 village of New Salem. The duties were not very hard. 
 
 
 PEOPLE DID NOT RECEIVE MANY LETTEKS IN THOSE DAYS. 
 
 Indeed, the mail was so small — people did not write or re- 
 ceive many letters in those days — that, it is said, the post- 
 master of New Salem carried his post-office in his hat. In 
 fact, he would go off on^a surveying trip and take the post- 
 office along with him delivering letters by the wav. 
 
 So, with his sur\x*ying and his post-office he managed to 
 
"a. LINCOLN, POSTMASTER. 
 
 ' He -1x101111! go oil a surveying trip a?id take tlie post ojfice along with him.' 
 
HO IV THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. iii 
 
 live for several years his pinched, humble, but helpful and 
 honest life. He was just as good-natured, just as friendly 
 and just as popular as ever — the umpire in all disputes and 
 the peacemaker in many an ugly row. 
 
 One day a combative little fellow who did not take kindly 
 to the " referee's " decision, strutted up to him and said, " See 
 here, Abe! I'll lick you." 
 
 Lincoln looked down at his small challenger. "All 
 right," he said, " but let's fight fair. See here ; you chalk 
 out on me just your size, and I'll count every blow out- 
 side that mark as ' foul.' " 
 
 This was so funny that the little bully began to laugh ; 
 that took all the fight out of him, and what promised to be 
 a row, ended in fun. 
 
 At another time, Lincoln came upon a poor fellow whom 
 he knew to be in a bad way, chopping up an old hut which he 
 had been hired to split into firewood. The day was raw, 
 the man was barefooted and thinly clothed ; he looked sick 
 and pitiful ; he was cold and shivering. 
 
 Lincoln stopped and spoke to the poor wood-chopper. 
 
 "See here! how much do you get for this job?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " A dollar," said the man. " I've got to have it to get me 
 some shoes." 
 
 Lincoln took the axe from the man. " You go in and 
 warm yourself," he said. 
 
 Then he swung the axe as only Abe Lincoln could ; he 
 
[12 
 
 HOW THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 had that old hut chopped into kindlings so quickly that it 
 was soon finished. Then the poor wood-chopper got his 
 dollar and his shoes, and never forgot the kindness of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 It was just such humane, friendly and kindly acts as these 
 
 i:rkk( r takimn, i i'kll you, said thk doubter. 
 
 that endeared him to his neighbors, and made him respected 
 and popular. So, when, later on, he again decided to try his 
 chances "on the stump," he was successful; for almost every 
 one voted for him, and in 1834 he was elected to the Legis- 
 lature by a majority larger than that of any other man on 
 the ticket. 
 
JfOlV THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 "3 
 
 But even this success was not all' due to his popularity. 
 It was also because of his ability and his "fnerits. 
 
 "Who is this man Lincoln?" one citizen 'asked another, 
 in a town to which Lincoln had come " electioneering." 
 
 " He's a candidate for the Legislature," was the reply. 
 
 "Well, I must say!" exclaimed the first speaker, \vi,th, a 
 
 J 
 
 sneer; " can't the party raise no better material than that?" 
 
 "HE I.ED THE RKST OF THE MOWERS ALL THE WAY ROUND THE FIELD. 
 
 " Hold on," returned the other citizen; "you just go hear 
 him speak to-morrow, before you pass judgment on him." 
 
 The speech was made, and after it was over, the doubter 
 was asked what he had to say now about Lincoln. 
 
 "Why, sir!" he cried, " he's a perfect take-in, I tell you. 
 He knows more than all the rest of 'em put together." 
 
 It was during this canvass for votes that Lincoln went 
 one day into a harvest field where some thirty men were at 
 
 %» 
 
114 IIOIV THE STORE-KEEPER GREW AMBITIOUS. 
 
 work. The friend who was with him introduced him to the 
 mowers as a candidate for the Legislature. 
 
 " No use," said one of the men, looking the young fellow 
 over, " we don't vote for any man who can't make a hand " — 
 that is, who can't cut a good piece of standing grain. 
 
 " Well, boys, if that's all," said Lincoln, " I'm sure of your 
 votes." 
 
 He took up the "cradle"; he swung it against the grain 
 with those terrible arms of his ; he led the rest of the mow- 
 ers all the way around the field. That satisfied them ; 
 they were all Lincoln men after that. 
 
 So, you see, by his personal bearing, by his popular ways 
 and his real ability, he reached his ambition at last. The 
 poor boy, the farm-hand, the store-keeper entered public life. 
 He became one of the law-makers of his State. 
 
 Politics sometimes means low measures, underhand ways, 
 doing things one may well be ashamed of — anything to 
 secure success. But good politics means honorable meas- 
 ures, uprightness, truth, noble ambitions, persistence, patri- 
 otism and good character. Any boy may aspire to be such 
 a politician — preferring defeat to dishonor, and feeling 
 jubilant over success honestly obtained. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was this last kind of a politician. 
 He worked hard for success ; but he never stooped to do a 
 mean, a questionable or an unfriendly act. He raised him- 
 self to success from poverty, and, because he was such a 
 man, he won the respect and love of all. 
 
THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 115 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 
 
 A BRAHAM LINCOLN was twenty-five years old when 
 he was elected to the legislature. It was a real step 
 upward for the backwoods boy; but it had been won by 
 hard work and through many bitter experiences. He was 
 poor; he was unsuccessful ; he was unknown, save to those 
 of his own neighborhood. 
 
 That very year in which his friends and supporters had 
 sent him to the Illinois legislature, he had seen hard 
 times. The failure of his business as storekeeper at New 
 Salem, of which I have told you, burdened him with worries, 
 for his creditors seized what little possessions he owned in 
 the world, and sold them for debt. 
 
 It was a severe loss to the young man. They did not 
 even leave him his horse and his surveying instrument, 
 upon which he depended to carry on his profession as a sur- 
 veyor, in which he was meeting with such success. 
 
 But he did not grumble nor sulk. " It is the law," he 
 said. " If I got into trouble by my own carelessness, I 
 must suffer the consequences." 
 
 It was hard, however. But good friends are the bles- 
 
n6 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 
 
 sing of every honest man ; and, in this strait, a friend who 
 believed in Lincoln and knew that, if he were helped over 
 this hard place, he would come out all right at last, went to 
 the sale. Although he had but little money himself he, 
 bought Lincoln's horse, bridle, compass, chain and instru- 
 ment and gave them back to Lincoln. 
 
 " Pay me when }'ou can," he said. " You'll do it, I 
 know." 
 
 See now, what an excellent capital is a good reputation ! 
 To be known as " honest Abe Lincoln," was worth a great 
 deal to this needy young man. His friend never regretted 
 this generous deed. For Lincoln, within a few years, paid 
 back the debt and never forgot the kindness. Lincoln never 
 did forget. 
 
 When he was elected to the legislature he had not a dol- 
 lar. But here, again, his reputation was his capital. He 
 went to a friend and said, " I want to make a decent appear- 
 ance in the legislature. Lend me some money to buy some 
 clothes, won't you? you know Lll pay you, some day." 
 
 Without hesitation, his friend lent him two hundred dol- 
 lars. It was more than enough. The young representative 
 went to the legislature " in decent trim," and, out of his 
 salary, managed, in time, to pay back the friendly loan. 
 
 So " the Honorable Mr. Lincoln " went to the legislature. 
 He did not do much or say much there, at first. He was 
 still studying books and studying men. He knew wherein 
 he was lacking. He felt that he was ignorant in many ways 
 
THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 117 
 
 — indeed, that was one good thing about this remarkable 
 man. He Avas never ashamed to say " I don't know," as he 
 was, also, never ashamed of the poverty from which he had 
 risen. He was always ready to learn how to do things in 
 the best way, and to gain instruction whenever and wher- 
 ever he had a chance — whether from men or from books. 
 
 So, in the legislature, he spoke but little. He listened 
 and learned. That is always a safe and sure way to "get 
 the hang of things " and make a good beginning. 
 
 Out of the two hundred dollars his friend had loaned 
 him, he bought a suit of decent clothes. They were not 
 elegant — not " purple and fine linen"; they were what was 
 known as " blue jeans " — the workman's best dress of that 
 simple and homely western country. 
 
 Everybody in the State capital, which was then Vandalia, 
 knew the tall, raw-boned, awkward " member from New 
 Salem." His fellow-legislators liked to talk with him and 
 listen to his stories and hear his shrewd remarks on men and 
 things. They grew to respect him ; the people who sent 
 him as their representative were satisfied with him, and, 
 when election day again came round, Lincoln was re- 
 elected, receiving the largest vote ever given in that region. 
 
 In this campaign he became even more broad-minded 
 and American. 
 
 " I go," so he said in his address to the voters, " for all 
 sharing the privileges of the government who assist in shar- 
 ing its burdens. I go for admitting all white persons to the 
 
ii8 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 
 
 right of suffrage " — that is the right to vote — "all who pay 
 taxes or bear arms — by no means excluding females." 
 
 This was quite a stand for a young man to take. For, 
 at that time, men were in doubt as to who should have the 
 right to vote, and most of them were sure women ought 
 not. Many persons declared that if a man were not born 
 in the United States, he should not be allowed to vote. 
 There were long and hot discussions over this question, and 
 it was quite a popular thing for men to cry "America for 
 Americans." But Abraham Lincoln, even in those days, 
 saw that America could only be made great and strong and 
 prosperous by giving to all who were Americans — whether 
 by birth or " adoption," as it is called — the right to say how 
 they should be governed and what the people should do. 
 " Those who bear the burden," he declared, " should have the 
 right to decide about those burdens." 
 
 It was quite a brave thing to take the stand he did. But 
 Lincoln never shirked what he believed to be his duty. 
 
 His fearless speech and his homely ways made a great 
 impression on the people whom he worked to serve. He 
 was a Whig, and those on the other side tried to turn the 
 people against the Whigs by saying that they were aristo- 
 crats, money-barons, ruffled-shirt gentlemen, silk-stocking 
 wearers, trying, by all these nicknames, to turn the poor 
 against the rich. 
 
 In one of the political meetings, where rival candidates 
 made " stump speeches " against each other, a certain con- 
 
LINCOLN IN 1840. 
 
 "Let it be my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her 
 
THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 121 
 
 ceited and flashily-dressed man put a long overcoat over his 
 fine clothes and began to make fun of the Whigs in the 
 usual way, saying that he belonged to the poor man's party, 
 and that Lincoln was the " silk-stocking " candidate. Imag- 
 ine Lincoln in silk stockings ! 
 
 The speaker grew quite excited in his remarks and, 
 becoming eloquent, made a fine gesture in emphasis. It 
 was a fatal burst of eloquence. For it tore open his long 
 overcoat and showed the people his fine clothes, his long 
 chain and ornaments and his ruffled shirt-front. 
 
 Lincoln saw his opportunity and seized it. He stood 
 out before all the people — a tall, poorly-dressed, awkward- 
 looking man. 
 
 " Here you are, my friends ! " he cried, placing a hand on 
 his homely suit of " blue jeans "; " here's your aristocrat ; one 
 of your silk-stocking gentry, at your service." Then he held 
 out to them his great, toil-worn, sunburned hands : " Here's 
 your rag-baron with lily-Vv^hite hands," he said. " Yes, I sup- 
 pose I am what our friend here calls a bloated aristocrat," 
 and he turned with a bow to his rival who was hastily en- 
 deavoring to button up his long coat over all the disclosed 
 finery. That " settled " the discomfitted orator ! 
 
 In fact, it does not pay to make fun of a man's poverty, 
 low birth, or unattractive appearance. People never like to 
 hear honest poverty ridiculed. In America, all men have 
 equal opportunities and small beginnings are no bar to ad- 
 vancement or success. 
 
12 2 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 
 
 In this same campaign, it so happened that Lincoln rode 
 into Springfield to speak at a political meeting. One of the 
 speakers on the other side was a leading man of the town • 
 who, for the sake of a fine political office, had recently deserted 
 the Whigs for the opposite party. He had also just put on his 
 big house a whole "outfit" of lightning rods — a new thing 
 in those parts. 
 
 At the meeting, this man made the mistake of attempting 
 to ridicule and make people laugh at the raw-boned young 
 fellow from New Salem who " wanted to go to the legisla- 
 ture." He poked fun at his appearance, his mean dress, his 
 youth, and called the candidate " an uncouth youngster." 
 
 V Lincoln "got mad" slowly. He liked fun and was 
 always ready to take a joke. But this he knew was not jok- 
 ing — it was malicious ridicule. 
 
 He sprang to his feet with flashing eyes. He swept his 
 long arm toward his detracter. 
 
 " I am not so young in years," he said, "as I am in the 
 tricks and trades of a politician. But, live long or die young, 
 I would rather die now than, like that gentleman, change 
 my politics, and with the change receive an office worth three 
 thousand dollars a year, and then feel obliged to erect a light- 
 ning rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from 
 an anQTv God." 
 
 The people cheered the speaker to the echo. They saw 
 and appreciated the double rebuke — for men never take 
 kindly to one who changes his politics for a reward ; and, in 
 
THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 123 
 
 those days and in that western country, those who put up 
 lio-htning rods were supposed to be afraid of the lightning — 
 which was always spoken of as a " visitation from God." 
 
 But, though he could be justly severe with all shams 
 and false statements and meannesses of word or deed, he 
 had the kindly, helpful and beautiful spirit that would 
 assist an enemy in trouble, or go out of the way to help 
 even an animal in distress. You remember how, as a mere 
 boy, he went back to bring a timid dog across an icy stream. 
 We have a later picture of him in a similar act of kindness. 
 It was told by him as a good joke on himself; but it really 
 exhibits the man's kindliness and humanity. 
 
 It was when he was a young legislator, and, as most suc- 
 cessful young men are apt to do, thought pretty well of him- 
 self. He was riding over the prairie to make a visit and, as 
 he says of him.self, was "rather fixed up "^- which means, I 
 suppose, that he had on his best clothes. As he rode along 
 he saw a poor pig "mired down" — that is, stuck in the 
 mud. He felt badly for the poor beast, but being "fixed 
 up " he knew it would hardly be safe to meddle with a 
 muddy pig. So he resolved to ride by without even look- 
 ing at the distressed animal. But he couldn't help it. The 
 feelino- of pity for anything in trouble was too strong, and 
 he looked back. As he did so, poor piggy shot at him an 
 imploring glance from its little eyes as much as to say, so 
 Lincoln declared, "What! you going to leave me here? 
 Then my last hope is gone." 
 
124 
 
 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 
 
 The appealing look was too much for the young man. 
 He turned back, got down from the horse and pulled the 
 imprisoned pig from its peril. Then he rode on, muddy, 
 but much relieved. 
 
 It was this sympathy with whatever was in trouble, dis- 
 tress or bondage — an outgrowth, probably, of his own hard 
 and sad boyhood — that, as he grew into manhood, led him to 
 put himself on the side of the weak and unfortunate. This 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE "MIRED" PIG. 
 
 tenderness, this love of justice and hatred of wrong, dis- 
 played itself in his action daring his second term as a mem- 
 ber of the Illinois legislature. 
 
 He had grown to have more confidence in himself and 
 he spoke and acted more frequently than during his first ses- 
 sion. The nine members of the legislature from his county 
 all happened to be very tall men. Each one of them was at 
 least six feet in height; some of them were over; but Lin- 
 
THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 125 ^''A, jj^ 
 
 coin was the tallest ; and his height in inches, added to his 
 popularity and ability, led to his being called "the Sangamon 
 chief," while he and his eight tall associates were nicknamed 
 " the Long Nine." 
 
 There was but one of the Long Nine, however, beside 
 Lincoln who felt as he did about one question that was 
 already stirring the hearts of men in the northern states — 
 the subject of slavery. 
 
 For two hundred years, negro slavery had existed on the 
 American continent. Gradually, however, it had been given 
 up in the north and, in Lincoln's day it was confined almost 
 entirely to the southern states, while the question as to 
 whether it was right, just or American was already begin- 
 ning to be deeply considered by all thinking men who loved 
 their country and longed to see her prosper. 
 
 Those who objected most strongly to negro slavery and 
 wished to see it stopped altogether, were called " Abolition- 
 ists," because they wished to do away with, or "abolish" 
 slavery. They were good, honest and noble men, but they 
 were not always wise, cautious or what is called " politic." 
 They said many hard things about slavery and the people 
 who owned negro slaves, and, by their fiery words and head- 
 strong actions, made much trouble and many enemies for 
 themselves. But people of this stamp — who are what are 
 called " reformers," because they wish to " reform," or make 
 over the world according to their own ideas — always set the 
 people to thinking; and thinking usually ends in action. 
 
125 THE HONORABLE MR. MNCOLN. 
 
 For many years, however, the abolitionists were unpopu- 
 lar all through the United States. Even .though many men 
 and women believed that slavery wasjj^rong, they thought 
 there were other ways to correct the eyil than those desired 
 by the abolitionists. So there was often serious trouble in 
 the north and, especially, in the states that bordered upon 
 the actual slave states of the Union. Illinois was near 
 enough to these border states to be affected. 
 
 Still, as I have told you, all this talk and trouble set 
 men to thinking, and among these was Abraham Lincoln. 
 What he had read and what he had seen led him to believe 
 that slavery was wrong. You remember how his experience 
 in New Orleans made him disgusted with slavery as he saw 
 it ; when he became a man and a law-maker in the Illinois 
 legislature he gave even more thought to the subject. 
 
 Many of the northern states felt that the Abolitionists 
 did more harm than good ; they felt that it was not right to 
 interfere with the "prosperity " of their southern neighbors, 
 and that such actions as helping runaway slaves to escape, 
 or seeing them through to Canada by such secret aid as was 
 called the " underground railroad," were alike illegal and 
 criminal. For this reason they took measures to " head 
 off " the abolitionists, and punish all those who attempted 
 to interfere with what were thought to be the " rights " of 
 the slave holders of the south. 
 
 Among other states, Illinois passed such repressive meas- 
 ures — they were what is known in our history as " black 
 
THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 129 
 
 laws," while Others were full of what the Bible calls " threat- 
 ening and slaughter " against those who dared to interfere 
 
 with slavery. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln believed these laws to be unwise, 
 unjust and un-American. He was not afraid to say so. 
 Abraham Lincoln was never afraid. So, in March, 1837, he 
 made a protest to the legislature of which he was a mem- 
 ber, in which he put himself on record as hostile to slavery 
 and opposed to the stern and harsh methods that were to 
 be put in operation against the Abolitionists. 
 
 He could — as I have told you — get but one man to 
 sign this protest. This man's name was Daniel Stone, and 
 though this " protest " reads to-day, after slavery has been 
 ended forever, as a very mild and cautious utterance, still it 
 was a bold thing to do at that time ; for it declared, among 
 other things, that " the institution of slavery is founded on 
 both injustice and bad policy" — and men had got them- 
 selves into terrible trouble for daring to say such a thing. 
 But you know enough of Abraham Lincoln, by this time, to 
 feel certain that he dared do anything he thought to be 
 
 right or just. 
 
 It does not seem to have destroyed Lincoln's popularity 
 with the people of Sangamon county who had sent him to 
 the legislature. They admired his pluck ; they knew that he 
 had worked hard in their interest, and, when he came home, 
 they gave him a dinner at which, when they called him up to 
 make a speech they thus introduced him : " Abraham Lin- 
 
130 THE HONORABLE MR. LINCOLN. 
 
 coin ; he has fulfilled the expectations of his friends and 
 disappointed the hopes of his enemies." 
 
 In 1837, tl^s capital of Illinois was removed to the new 
 town of Springfield — now a flourishing and beautiful city. 
 
 " The Honorable Mr. Lincoln " went to serve in the legis- 
 lature to which he was again elected. He begun to make 
 his mark as a speaker to whom men like to listen, as a 
 champion for his political ideas whose words could always 
 be understood and as a man who never " dodged the issue." 
 
 In the year 1837 ^^ took part in a long debate in the 
 legislature in which all the leading men spoke. One of Mr. 
 Lincoln's opponents boasted that his side was the stronger 
 and most popular, and made fun of Lincoln's party, declaring 
 they could never succeed, because they were so few in num- 
 bers and so weak in their cause. 
 
 Lincoln, you know, kindly-hearted though he was, never 
 would stand the charge of fear, nor meekly listen to words of 
 ridicule. 
 
 He rose to his feet and, turning his tall form toward the 
 speaker, he cried : " Address that argument to cowards and 
 knaves. With the free and brave it will affect nothing. It 
 may be true ; if it is, let it be. Many free countries have lost 
 their liberty and ours may lose hers ; but, if she shall, let it 
 be my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but 
 that I never deserted her." 
 
 That w^as almost prophetic, was it not ? We, who know 
 how steadfast Lincoln stood in the days that threatened the 
 
HOW THE COUNTY LAWYEJi WON FAME. 131 
 
 liberties of his native land, can see how, even from boyhood, 
 this one idea of love of country filled his mind. 
 
 Simple in manners, careful in speech, kind-hearted, affec- 
 tionate, full of wit and good common sense, the one thing 
 which Abraham Lincoln could never stand with patience 
 was ridicule of patriotism. As he rose, step by step, from 
 poverty to position, the thing that influenced him above all 
 others — above ambition, above individual success, above pop- 
 ularity, above personal advancement, was devotion to country. 
 For this he labored as boy and man ; for this he plead with 
 all his fellow Americans ; for this he died, when years of toil 
 and sacrifice had worn him out in the service of the land he 
 so dearly loved. 
 
 -*r» 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 /'~\NE day, when Abraham Lincoln was a grocery clerk in 
 ^-^ New Salem the village squire happening to stroll by 
 " Jake Bales's " woodpile, saw a long-legged young fellow 
 " settin' straddle " on top of the woodpile. 
 
 " Hello, Abe !" he cried ; " what you readin'? " 
 
 " I'm studying " was the reply. 
 
132 
 
 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 " Studyin', eh ? What you a-studyin' of ? " asked the 
 squire. 
 
 " Law," answered the boy on the woodpile. 
 
 The idea of that long, lank, gawky country boy perched 
 on a woodpile studying law was too much for the amazed 
 
 " LAW," ANSWERED IHE BOV ON THE WOODPILE. 
 
 squire who thought he knew all the law that any one could 
 know, or needed to know, in New Salem. 
 
 He pushed back his hat from his forehead. " Well ! 
 Great Jehoshaphat ! " he exclaimed. That was all. As he 
 said, afterward, he couldn't do justice to the occasion. 
 
 That woodpile, the shade-tree in front of the grocery 
 store, a woodpath in the forest, the kitchen hearth and the 
 light of the cooper's fire were Abraham Lincoln's only law 
 
BOW THE COUNTY LAWYEJi WON FAME. 135 
 
 school. But he kept up his reading and studying, went to 
 the court house where the lawyers were arguing, listened and 
 learned whenever he could, and, years after, became one of 
 the leading lawyers of the State of Illinois. 
 
 While he was in the legislature, he decided to become a 
 lawyer by profession. So he left New Salem and went to 
 the new capital of the state. This was Springfield; and 
 there, so he believed, was the best place to build up a prac- 
 tice. From that time, April, 1837, until he was elected presi- 
 dent, Springfield was his home. 
 
 He rode into town that April day, on a borrowed horse 
 and with all that he owned in the world packed in a bag 
 which he had fastened before him on the saddle. 
 
 He went to live with an acquaintance named Speed who 
 offered to share his bed with him and to trust him for the 
 board-money until he was settled. 
 
 Lincoln accepted the friendly offer, went into the bedroom, 
 put his bag on the floor and said to his friend with a laugh : 
 
 " There, Speed, I'm moved ! " and thus he became a 
 practising lawyer. 
 
 He rode about the country following the courts, picking 
 up- cases wherever he could, and, little by little, he got ahead. 
 
 He was bright, smart, clear-headed, logical and shrewd, 
 and he made a good country lawyer. But, even when he was 
 most anxious for business, he was still the good-natured, 
 simple-minded, tender-hearted man that he always was 
 whether as rail-splitter, boatman, store-keeper or legislator. 
 
136 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON EAME. 
 
 One day, as he was " riding the circuit," as this traveling 
 with the lawyers was called, he saw two little birds that the 
 wind had blown from their nest. Lincoln dropped from 
 his horse, picked up the birds and hunted about until he 
 had found their nest and put them into it. 
 
 His companions joked him for such foolishness. 
 
 " That's all right, boys," replied Lincoln. " But I tell 
 you I couldn't sleep unless Ld got those birds back to their 
 mother." 
 
 It is little things that show a man's character. Such an 
 incident as this — I have told you of some others just like 
 it — is a key to the nature of this great-hearted man; it is 
 one of the secrets of his hold on men and the reason for that 
 broad humanity, which made him the friend of the oppressed, 
 the down-trodden and the unfortunate. 
 
 You remember, do you not, how that splendid poem by 
 Coleridge, " The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner," 
 closes ? 
 
 '^ "Farewell ! farewell! but this I tell 
 
 To thee, thou wedding guest ! 
 He prayeth well who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
 "He prayeth best who loveth best 
 
 All things both great and small 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 That was Abraham Lincoln's religion — love to man, 
 love to God, love to country. In that spirit he lived, to 
 
HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 137 
 
 that end he labored, for that he gave up his great, helpful, 
 noble life. 
 
 You remember, too, do you not, how he was so thoroughly 
 to be relied upon that the people who knew him got to call- 
 ing him "honest Abe Lincoln." He was that in business; 
 he was that as a lawyer. People could trust in him ; they 
 could believe him. He was an honest lawyer. Men could 
 never get him to do a mean or underhand thing ; he would 
 never take a case that he did not believe in himself. No 
 man could purchase his honor, his justice or his voice. 
 
 "Go to Lincoln," one lawyer advised a man who asked 
 him to defend a negro slave who had run away ; " I don't 
 dare to take your case. It would hurt me in politics. But 
 you go to Lincoln; he's not afraid of an unpopular case." 
 
 That was Abraham Lincoln's reputation. He was never 
 afraid to stand up for anything that was right or just or 
 honorable, even if it were unpopular. He was afraid of a 
 lie, he did shrink from a dishonorable action, he had a hatred 
 of injustice and wrong, and no man, no matter how much 
 money he had, could procure the services, in a questionable 
 case, of " honest Abe Lincoln." 
 
 It is the business and privilege of a lawyer to settle dis- 
 putes and decide quarrels. They can do much good in the 
 world. Sometimes, however, there are lawyers who make it 
 their business to stir up trouble and to cause trouble for 
 others, just to make some money for themselves. Abraham 
 Lincoln did not belong to this latter class. 
 
I3S 
 
 7/(9 7/' THE COUNTY LAWYER WON EAME. 
 
 One day, a man came to him and stated a case that some 
 lawyers would have been quick to undertake. Mr. Lincoln 
 listened patiently and then said to the man, looking him 
 squarely in the eye: 
 
 "Yes, sir; I can gain that case for you. I can set 
 a whole neighborhood to quarrelling. I can distress a 
 
 "UK WOULD NEVER TAKE A CASE HE DID NOT BELIEVE IN, HIMSELF." 
 
 widowed mother and her six fatherless children. If 1 do 
 so, I can get for you the six hundred dollars which, sc it 
 seems to me, belong just as much to that mother and her 
 children as they do to you. But you see, some things that 
 are legally right are not morally right. I will not take your 
 case. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll give you a little 
 advice and won't charge you for it. You look like a 
 sprightly, energetic sort of a man. I'd advise you to try 
 
HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 139 
 
 your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other 
 way." 
 
 After he had lived in Springfield several years he formed 
 a law partnership with a Mr. Stuart. That was in 1839. 
 In 1841 he made a new connection with a Mr. Logan, and 
 in 1843 he formed the law firm of Lincoln and Herndon. 
 This last partnership lasted until 1861. 
 
 He steadily gained friends and clients — that is, people 
 who brought him business. He began to make money — ■ 
 never very much, for he never charged the big fees that 
 some lawyers do. And, in a few years, he was able to get 
 married. 
 
 On the fourth of November, 1840, he married Miss Mary 
 Todd, a Kentucky girl, who had come to live in Springfield. 
 The young couple commenced life at the Globe Tavern in 
 Springfield, where they paid four dollars a week for board 
 and lodging. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln was a bright, attractive and clear-headed 
 young woman, who could save money much better than her 
 husband could. She believed in him, and was sure he 
 would get ahead in the world. 
 
 He did, slowly but surely. He bought for himself and 
 wife a little story-and-a-half house in Springfield and 
 begun to save a little money. When he first rode off " on 
 the circuit " with the other lawyers he had to borrow a 
 horse; then he hired one; at last, he was able to buy one; 
 and he was very proud of it, I can tell you. He took care 
 
140 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 of it himself, and grew very fond of it, as he did of all ani- 
 mals. I ha\'e told you several stories of his kindness to 
 animals. His history is full of such. 
 
 Once, when he was sharing a room with a friend on his 
 trips about the state, a cat, that had somehow got into the 
 bedroom asked in cat language to get out, and finally began 
 "mewing and scratching and making a fuss generally." 
 Lincoln got out of bed, caught the cat, stroked its fur, 
 "gently and kindly," till he had quieted it down and put it 
 in good humor; then he opened the door, put the cat out 
 "gently," went back to bed and kept his friend laughing 
 over his funny stories and his memories of the days " when 
 they were boys." 
 
 At another time, he was riding with a brother lawyer 
 through a small grove in Illinois where they heard a little 
 pig near by, squealing fearfully. In a flash, Lincoln jumped 
 out of the buggy, picked up a big stick and, rushing to the 
 place from which the squealing came, began to pound some- 
 thing lustilv. It \\as an old sow, whom he had cauarht eat- 
 ing one of her young ones. Lincoln was very angry. 
 
 " You old brute ! " he cried, " you shan't eat up your own 
 children ! " and so he saved the pig. 
 
 As I have already said, it is such things as this that 
 show a man's character; and Lincoln's kindness toward 
 animals was simply one phase of his sympathy for those 
 who were in real distress. 
 
 Scarcely a step above animals in those days stood the 
 
no IV THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 141 
 
 negro slaves. Mr. Lincoln's sympathy toward these down- 
 trodden people grew stronger as he grew older and saw 
 more of men and life. You remember how he exclaimed 
 against slavery on that flat-boat trip to New Orleans where 
 he had been present at a slave auction. It was then, as he 
 said, that " the iron entered into his soul." 
 Whenever he saw men in actual slavery he 
 sympathized with them and wished, in some 
 way, to change their condition. 
 
 So, when he became a lawyer, he took 
 charge of quite a number of cases in which a 
 defense was required, either for free negroes 
 who were being persecuted, or for runaway 
 slaves whose masters were trying to get them 
 back into slavery. Lincoln always declared 
 that no man had a right by law or justice to 
 own slaves. He could only hold them, as 
 property, by what is called " brute force." 
 Until Abraham Lincoln became president he 
 never could see just how slavery could be 
 done away with — or "abolished," as it is 
 termed ; but he made up his mind, early in his career, that 
 he would oppose slavery actively — and he did. 
 
 When he was a traveling lawyer, " on the circuit " in 
 Illinois, it was not a popular thing to befriend the run- 
 away slaves; this I have already told you; but Lincoln 
 could always be depended on to take their side, when 
 
 A PICKANINNY. 
 
142 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 Other lawyers refused to do so because of a fear of being 
 unpopular. 
 
 " When I go to a lawyer to defend an arrested fugitive 
 slave," one man opposed to slavery declared, " other lawyers 
 will refuse me ; but, if Lincoln is at home, he will always 
 take my case." 
 
 The son of a negro woman was a waiter on a Mississippi 
 steamboat ; he had been a slave, but was now free. At New 
 Orleans, he went ashore, and, as the unjust law permitted 
 the arrest of a free negro on shore if he could show no pass, 
 this black boy was arrested and sold into slavery, because 
 he could not pay the fine. 
 
 The boy's mother went to Springfield to find someone to 
 help rescue her boy. No one would take her case. At last, 
 she went to Lincoln. He made application to the governor 
 for help, but the law could give him none. Lincoln was 
 greatly excited. He sprang to his feet and exclaimed, 
 "Nothing can be done? Something shall be done! By 
 the Almighty! Lll have that negro back, or Lll have a 
 twenty years' excitement in Illinois until the governor does 
 have a legal and constitutional right to do something in 
 such a case." 
 
 When he found that the law really could do nothing, he 
 "chipped in" with another lawyer, sent money to New 
 Orleans to release the boy and then brought him back to 
 his mother. And, as you know, from his story, he did not 
 rest until that wicked law was removed from the statutes. 
 
ffOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 143 
 
 Do you remember, when Lincoln first went to New 
 Salem, the trouble he had with the rough gang known as the 
 "Clary Grove Boys," and how, at last, in a fair tussle, he first 
 conquered and then punished Jack Armstrong who would'nt 
 " rassle fair," and thus made a firm friend of the man? 
 
 Well, when he was a lawyer at Springfield, the son of 
 Jack, the Clary Grove bully, got into trouble. Jack 
 Armstrong, the boy's father was dead ; but Hannah Arm- 
 strong, his mother, came to Lincoln in great distress and 
 begged him to save her boy's life, on trial for murder. Lin- 
 coln was much moved. In Jack Armstrong's cabin, he had 
 rocked little Bill's cradle, when the boy was a baby ; and 
 Hannah had mended his clothes and often given him shelter. 
 So he looked into the boy's case, and feeling certain that the 
 young fellow was innocent, he fought hard for the prisoner's 
 life. 
 
 It was a harder tussle than the " rassle " with young Bill's 
 father, years before. And there was, somewhere, unfairness 
 in it, too, just as there had been in that other struggle. 
 The case seemed going against young Bill ; the evidence 
 was all strong and unfavorable; but still Lincoln fought on. 
 At last, one witness testified that he saw Bill Armstrong do 
 the deed, and all the more clearly because it was seen in 
 "the light of the moon, which was shining brightly." 
 
 Lincoln said nothing until he came to "sum up the 
 evidence," as it is called — that is, go over the testimony 
 of the witnesses and show wherein it is not strono-. He 
 
144 
 
 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 made a strong case in favor 
 of Bill's innocence of the 
 charge; but when he came 
 to the evidence of the man 
 who swore he saw the blow- 
 given in the moonlight, 
 Lincoln opened an almanac 
 and showed the jury that, 
 on the night of the murder, 
 there was no moon at all ! 
 
 That settled it. The 
 jury gave a verdict of " not 
 guilty"; a messenger sped 
 away to the boy's mother 
 with the joyful news, " Bill 
 is free ! " 
 
 You may be sure Han- 
 nah Armstrong was very 
 grateful to her old friend. 
 ^\ As for Lincoln, he would 
 not take a penny for the 
 great work he had done. 
 All he said was " I pray to 
 God, Hannah, that William 
 may be a good boy hereafter ; and that this trouble may 
 prove in the end a good lesson to him and to all." 
 
 As he won fame as a lawyer, many important cases were 
 
 " BILL IS FREE ! " 
 
I/OJV THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 145 
 
 entrusted to him, and, at times, he even sat as judge in the 
 Circuit Court. 
 
 He gradually rose in the world ; but it was all done, as 
 you can see, by hard work. He fairly won his way. From 
 a borrowed horse, he rose to the proud ownership of one 
 which he fed and groomed and took care of himself. On 
 this horse he rode away " on the circuit," with only a pair 
 of scantily-filled saddle-bags and an old cotton umbrella. 
 After a while he was able to own a buggy; a clumsy-looking 
 one it was, made by a country 
 blacksmith, but Lincoln was 
 very proud of it. As he begun 
 to succeed in life, his wife 
 wished a better house ; but he 
 didn't think this was needed. 
 So, once, while he was away on 
 one of his long trips, Mrs. Lin- 
 coln hired a carpenter, and put 
 on the little house a second 
 story and a new roof. Then what a surprised man Lincoln 
 was ! As he approached the enlarged house, he stopped, 
 puzzled and startled; then, pretending not to recognize it as 
 his house, he called out to a man in the street : 
 
 "Say, stranger! can you tell me where Lincoln lives? 
 He used to live here." 
 
 He was a good neighbor, always ready to do a friendly 
 turn. As I write this chapter, there is still living, in 
 
 Lincoln's house in Springfield. 
 
146 HOW THE COUNTY LAWYER WON FAME. 
 
 Waltham in Massachusetts, an old lady who was next door 
 neighbor to the Lincolns in Springfield in Illinois, and she 
 loves to tell people how, many a time, Lincoln would hunt 
 up her cow for her and drive it home to save her the trouble 
 of going off for it. 
 
 He was never tired of learning. He was always studying, 
 just as he did when a boy. In these long journeys "on the 
 circuit," which at one time covered the wide region embraced 
 in fourteen counties in the central part of Illinois, he always 
 carried, in his saddle-bags or in his home-made buggy, a num- 
 ber of schoolbooks, from geometry to grammar, which he 
 would read as he rode along. He read Shakspere till he 
 knew the great dramatist almost by heart, and would recite 
 long passages as he journeyed along, either to himself or to 
 his companion. 
 
 You see what he was — a conscientious, hard-working, 
 successful country lawyer ; a man to be depended upon for 
 good advice, and one who, when he took a case, was wrapped 
 up in it until he fought it through successfully. Whatever 
 money he made — and his fees were never large — he worked 
 for; and so he plodded along, beginning with nothing and 
 rising up, until at last he was able to charge and receive a 
 fee of five thousand dollars for a single case. When that 
 was paid him he felt very rich; for it was more money than 
 he had ever before had at any one time. 
 
 People honored him; his associates delighted in him, and 
 it was very dull, on circuit, when Abraham Lincoln was not 
 
ffO^V 2 HE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 149 
 
 along. He always had a cheery word for everyone, and his 
 stories were famous all over Illinois. 
 
 He saw hard times, often ; but poverty was sweetened 
 by work, and even misfortune never soured him. 
 
 Out of his slender means, he helped his father and step- 
 mother, and other of his poor relations. His father, who 
 remained a rover and shiftless to the end, lived to see his 
 son one of the best-known, most respected and most popular 
 men in the state. Thomas Lincoln died in 1 851, at his cabin 
 farmhouse at Goose Nest Prairie ; and, before he died, he 
 had learned to honor and look up to this loyal and devoted 
 son, who was slowly but surely " winning his way." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 "^ 7[ THEN Abraham Lincoln was a boy he heard a great 
 * ' deal about Andrew Jackson. 
 All the world, indeed, heard a great deal of that famous 
 American ! From the day when, as a plucky boy, he had 
 refused to blacken a British officers' boots, to the day when 
 he declared "the Union must and shall be preserved!" 
 
150 HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRES7DEN1. 
 
 Andrew Jackson had grown steadily into fame, popularity 
 and greatness. 
 
 But Jackson was a man of strong character; as self- 
 willed as he was patriotic, and as hot-headed as he was 
 honest. 
 
 He did many things and advocated many measures that 
 some people opposed as strongly as other people favored; 
 and, when Abraham Lincoln was a young man, the country 
 was divided into the followers and the opponents of Andrew 
 Jackson — into Jackson men and anti-Jackson men. 
 
 At first, Abraham Lincoln was an admirer of Jackson. 
 But when, in 1829, that famous man became President of 
 the United States, he set himself firmly against many things 
 that young Abraham Lincoln believed to be for the good of 
 the country. 
 
 One of these things was what is called " internal 
 improvements " — ■ that is, making roads, digging canals, 
 building railroads and other matters that were for the public 
 good at the expense of the Government. President Jackson 
 declared that the Government had no right to tax the people 
 for such enterprises ; Lincoln, living in a country where 
 " internal improvements " were needed, advocated them 
 strongly. Thus he became an anti-Jackson man, and made 
 his first entry into public life as an anti-Jackson stump 
 speaker. 
 
 Out of this position grew other questions. Lincoln 
 became, in politics, what was then called a Whig. The two 
 
HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 151 
 
 greatest Whigs of that day were two very famous Ameri- 
 cans, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Lincoln followed and 
 greatly admired Clay ; and, in a region and at a time when 
 Andrew Jackson was a mighty power in the land, this 
 young politician be- ^^^^^ 
 came a fearless, able 
 and devoted follower 
 of Henry Clay. As a 
 Whig, he was elected 
 to the Illinois legisla- 
 ture; he was a candi- 
 date for election on 
 the Whig ticket, and, 
 as a Whig, he was, 
 in 1846, elected to 
 the Congress of the 
 United States — the 
 only Whig member 
 of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives from Illi- 
 nois. 
 
 It was quite an 
 honor for this poor country lawyer. It was one toward 
 which his ambition had been leading him ever since he 
 " went into politics," as the saying is, and you may be sure 
 that the country-folks in his western home who had always 
 been prophesying great things for this awkward but able 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
IS2 HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 young lawyer, said : '•' See there ! Didn't we tell you 
 so? 
 
 They expected wonderful things of him, no doubt. But 
 in a congress, in which such great men as Daniel Webster 
 
 and John Q u i n cy 
 Adams were members, 
 Abraham Lincoln, un- 
 known except in his 
 own neighborhood and 
 state, had the good 
 sense to " take a back 
 seat " and " go slow." 
 His day for greatness 
 in Washington had 
 not yet arrived. 
 
 He and his wife 
 lived quietly and 
 plainly in Washing- 
 ton during his term 
 in Congress. He did 
 not speak often ; but 
 when he did, he said 
 something. He opposed the Mexican War, as did so many 
 other Americans ; but he always voted to reward the services 
 of the brave soldiers who fought in that war; and when 
 his term as Congressman was over, he went back to his home 
 in Springfield and again took up his profession as a lawyer. 
 
 HENRY CLAY OF KENTUCKY. 
 
HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 153 
 
 But he was now fairly " in politics." People knew where 
 he stood and what to expect of him ; and, when election time 
 came around, Abraham Lincoln was one of the favorite 
 speakers, sure of an audience and certain to command atten- 
 tion and receive applause. 
 
 At that time, the leading Democrat in Illinois was 
 Stephen A. Douglas. The Democrats were the political 
 party opposed to the Whigs. Douglas, too, was a fine law- 
 yer, a prominent member of Congress, an eloquent speaker, 
 and a popular man. People called him "the little giant," 
 because, though short in person, he was great in intellect 
 
 and ability. 
 
 As the question of slavery became the important one in 
 the United States, people took different sides. Some said 
 that the Government ought to put a stop to it, or, at least, 
 not allow it to exist in any of the new states that were 
 being made in the west; others said that any person who 
 wished to own slaves ought to be allowed to do so, or that, 
 in the new states, the people of those states should say 
 whether or not slavery was to be permitted there. 
 
 At one time an agreement was made that slavery should 
 not be permitted north of the state of Missouri. But when 
 the new states of Kansas and Nebraska were made, this old 
 ao-reement was cast aside and a bill was passed by the Con- 
 gress of the United States leaving the question of the 
 " extension of slavery," as it was called, to be settled by the 
 people of those states themselves. 
 
'54 
 
 JWW 'J BE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 At that, the people in the north were, many of them, 
 very angry ; for they declared that this new bill broke 
 through, as it did, the agreement limiting slavery to a cer- 
 tain line. New parties were formed known as pro-slavery 
 
 men (or those for sla- 
 very,) and anti-slavery 
 men (or those against 
 slavery.) 
 
 It was an exciting 
 time. Men who were 
 public speakers spent 
 much time in arguing 
 about the matter in 
 meetings of the people. 
 Douglas was the 
 man who had intro- 
 duced the new bill into 
 Congress. Lincoln, at 
 his home in Illinois, 
 was bitterly opposed 
 to it; and, in 1854, 
 these two men met in 
 debate in Illinois and 
 made strong speeches in support of the opposing sides. 
 Lincoln's first speech was a fine one. People all over 
 the country read it and began to ask who this Illinois law- 
 yer was. But they were to hear yet more of him. For that 
 
 STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 
 {LincobPs cJtit^f political op/^ojiciit. ) 
 
HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 155 
 
 debate led to others between the two men, and when, in the 
 year 1858, the new party, which had succeeded the old Whigs 
 and was called the Republican party, nominated, in Illinois 
 Abraham Lincoln as United States Senator, the Democrats 
 renominated Douglas, and the two men were pitted against 
 each other in a great and famous struggle. 
 
 That year of 1858, is one to mark in American history 
 with a red letter. It should stand out for all time. For 
 that year made Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 If you have followed this story carefully you will be 
 perfectly correct if you say : " I don't see why you should 
 call Abraham Lincoln a great man. He rose from poor 
 beginnings and was called 'Honest Abe Lincoln.' But 
 other men have done quite as much as that. Other men 
 have risen from nothing and become famous. Lincoln was 
 not rich; he was not fine looking; he was not much more 
 than a good-natured, respectable lawyer in a western town, 
 who had been sent to the legislature two or three times and 
 had been to congress. We could pick out lots of Americans 
 who have done that ; and you wouldn't call them great." 
 
 That is true; and, up to the year 1858, Abraham Lincoln 
 had done no more than hundreds of other honest American 
 citizens. But now, read on. 
 
 On the seventeenth of June, 1858, the eighty-second anni 
 versary of the battle of Bunker Hill — the battle that showed 
 the world that America meant to be free — Abraham Lin 
 coin was nominated to the Senate of the United States. 
 
156 BOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 That very day he accepted the nomination. In doing so, 
 he nia^e_aj;epiark^^^ speech. It is one of the great spee'^hes 
 of ffieirorld. In it, he boldly declared that, if America were 
 to be reklly free, it must cast off the stain of human slavery. 
 The^ were his words: "A house divided against itself 
 cannot stand. I believe this governmient cannot endure half 
 slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
 solved ; I do not expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it 
 will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or 
 all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest 
 the further spread of it and place it where the public mind 
 shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate 
 extinction, or the advocates will push it foward till it shall 
 become alike lawful in all the states — old as well as new, 
 North as well as South." 
 
 That speech roused the land. For years, good men and 
 patriotic men had been trying to do the right thing in re- 
 gard to slavery in the United States. But they had not 
 said just the right thing nor done just the right thing. 
 Abraham Lincoln had a sudden inspiration, just as the proph- 
 ets in the Bible were inspired to speak — and he spoke. He 
 put things in just the right light ; he spoke the truth. If 
 America were to endure as a free country it must be free ! 
 
 His friends who wished him to be elected senator were 
 horrified. " You have made a great mistake," they said. 
 " You have ruined all your chances ; you have killed your- 
 self politically." 
 
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE. 
 (" Up and down the state these two men traveled, speaking to t/ie people, fighting for success, 
 
 educating the people,") 
 
HUIF 2 BE BACKWOODS BOV BECAME PRESIDENT. 159 
 
 "I am so sorry," one of his friends said to him; "so 
 sorry; I wish it were wiped out of existence. Don't you 
 ivish it, now ? " 
 
 Lincoln laid down his pen ; lifted his spectacles — he 
 wore spectacles then, when he read or worked ; looked at his 
 friend, and said : " If I had to draw a pen across my whole 
 life and erase it from existence, and I had one poor little gift 
 or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, 
 I should choose that speech and leave it to the world 
 unerased." That was a brave thing to say, was it not? His 
 friends were right. It did ruin his chances ; it did defeat 
 him in the election for senator. 
 
 But it went out to all the world ; it set men to thinking 
 as they never had thought before ; it sent a death-shot 
 straight to the heart of slavery; it made Abraham Lincoln 
 President of the United States. 
 
 Not right away, of course. That speech was but the 
 beginning of the famous struggle of which I have told you 
 — the discussions or debates with his great opponent in the 
 race for the senate — Judge Douglas. 
 
 I cannot tell you all about these debates ; you can read 
 the speeches for yourselves when you grow older. Up and 
 down the state of Illinois these two men traveled, speaking 
 to the people — in halls, in buildings called " wigwams," in 
 out-of-door assemblies, together or apart, fighting for success 
 on election day, but, more than this, fighting for or against 
 "slavery, educating the people of the whole land. 
 
i6o HO IF THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 For, you see, those speeches made Lincoln known to the 
 people of the United States. They recognized him as the 
 champion of real liberty. People outside of his own state 
 wished to hear him; and. East and West — in Illinois and 
 Ohio and New York, in Connecticut and New Hampshire, 
 in Rhode Island and Kansas — Abraham Lincoln held grreat 
 audiences spell-bound, as he pled the cause of liberty and 
 dealt heavy blows at slavery. In one year, he rose, from an 
 unknown country lawyer to an American champion, whose 
 praise was in the mouths of the people. 
 
 Of course, thousands could not believe as he did. They 
 were not ready to think as he did; they said he was wrong, 
 and that, to follow his lead, would be to ruin the country 
 and destroy the Union. 
 
 But you know enough of Abraham Lincoln's story to 
 feel certain of one thing — he kept at it. He knew that he 
 spoke the truth, and neither threat nor abuse nor ridicule nor 
 fe:ir could move him from his purpose nor make him take 
 back one word he had said in behalf of justice and freedom 
 and right. He was brave; he was sincere; he was true; he 
 was heroic. 
 
 He lost the election is senator. His celebrated oppo- 
 nent, Douglas, was electe ; and Lincoln went back to his law 
 office in Springfield. 
 
 But the people would not let him stay there. They saw 
 that the right man had arisen in the land to lead the forces 
 of liberty; and when the National Republican Convention 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN OF ILLINOIS. 
 {As he looked when nominateJ for president.) 
 
now THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 163 
 
 met at Chicago on the sixteenth of May, i860, to nominate 
 candidates for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln was no'Tii- 
 nated as President of the United States of America. 
 
 It was a great triumph for the backwoods boy, was it 
 not? It was a greater triumph for the American people, 
 though they knew it not. The successful Republicans were 
 overjoyed, of course ; but they did not begin to know the 
 real character of the man they had elected. Ths defeated 
 parties — for there were three other candidates nominated 
 for the presidency besides Lincoln — felt, of course, that his 
 election was a mistake, a misfortune, a calamity. But, 
 to-day, as we read the past, men of all parties unite in the 
 opinion that the election of Abraham Lincoln was the best 
 thing that ever happened to the country ; for, even though 
 trouble and sorrow and blood and tears followed after, still 
 it was because of him — even because of all the sad and 
 sorry things that followed his election, that America moved 
 upward and onward. It was a new reading of the old Latin 
 motto ; " through night to light." I wonder if you know 
 why ? 
 
 But to me, one of the things to remember about the elec- 
 tion of Lincoln was the man's own bearing in victory. Of 
 course, he was proud to know that he had been made the 
 leader of the forces of freedom ; but he knew, as few other 
 men did, what a responsibility and what a burden this great 
 gift of power meant. He was not jubilant; he was 
 thoughtful, silent, almost sad. 
 
1 64 HO IV THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 He spent the months that remained between his election 
 and his inauguration in settling up his law business and 
 planning out his work. He was terribly bothered by office- 
 seekers — men who, because they belonged to the party that 
 had elected him and had worked for his election as all inter- 
 ested American citizens should work for success, thought he 
 ought to give them positions in his new government. It's 
 poor business, this office-seeking, boys and girls. Some one, 
 we know, must fill this or that office; but it is a great deal bet- 
 ter to let the office seek you than to go seeking it, yourself. 
 And it does make a great deal of worry and unnecessary work 
 for the man who has the gift of such office in his power. 
 
 At last, the time came for Abraham Lincoln to bid good- 
 bye to his home. What do you suppose was one of the last 
 things he did? He traveled down to the little hoj.ise in 
 which his good old stepmother was living and bade her 
 an affectionate farewell. 
 
 The old lady loved him dearly; she was very proud of 
 him and of his success; but she was terribly afraid some- 
 thing would happen to him. She knew, so she told him, 
 she should never see him again. " They will kill you, Abe," 
 she said; "I know they will," and she clung to him with 
 tears. 
 
 " O, no, mother; no, no," her stepson replied; "don't you 
 be afraid; they won't do that. Trust in the Lord, and all 
 will be well. We shall see each other again." And then he 
 bade her good-bye. 
 
HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 165 
 
 On the eleventh of February, 1861, he left Springfield 
 for Washington. A great crowd gathered at the railway 
 station to " see him off." This is the farewell speech he 
 made to the people of his home-town, as he stood on the 
 rear platform of the train while the rain was falling fast, and 
 all men stood silent and with uncovered heads: 
 
 ''Friends: 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 
 received nothing 
 but kindness at your 
 hands. Here, I have 
 lived from my youth 
 
 Unill now i am an "they will kill you, abe," she said. 
 
 old man. Here, the 
 
 most sacred ties of earth were assumed. Here, all my 
 children were born ; here, one of them is buried. To you, 
 dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am All the 
 strange, checkered past 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 and aid me, I shall 
 fail ; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm 
 
i66 
 
 HOW THE BACKWOODS BOY BECAME PRESIDENT. 
 
 that directed and protected him shall guide and support 
 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 
 sincerity and faith, you will invoke his wisdom and guid- 
 ance for me. With these words I must leave you, for 
 how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now 
 bid you an affectionate farewell." 
 
 Then the train moved slowly from the station, with 
 Abraham Lincoln still standing on the platform, taking his 
 last view of his home. It was his last, indeed. 
 
 Soon, Springfield was left behind, and the train rolled 
 eastward. The boy of the log cabin was on his way to the 
 White House. 
 
HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 167 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 WHEN you grow to be men and women, and look back 
 at the years that have gone, you will be surprised to 
 find how well you remember things that happened when you 
 were children. 
 
 Certain of the happenings of your young days, you will 
 
 remember even better than things that occurred later in life. 
 
 There are some lines, by a writer whose name I have 
 
 forgotten, that describe this much better than I can explain 
 
 to you. Here they are : 
 
 " How is it, growing old, that what we've been 
 
 In earliest days should cling to memory yet; 
 When all the interval of life between, 
 
 Compared to that, seems easy to forget? 
 
 "How life, in which we've fought and fagged and striven. 
 
 Looked back upon, should be but empty noise, 
 While far between it, like the hills of heaven. 
 
 Stand out the days when we were girls and boys? 
 
 Ask your father and mother if this is not so. 
 One of those days stands ever out to me — a particularly 
 high-peaked " hill of heaven." I was a schoolboy in New 
 
i68 HOIV THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 York city. It was a February day in 1861. I stood on 
 a crowded street corner. A procession was marching down 
 the street. There was a great crowd. Music was playing. 
 Flags were e^'erywhere. As I peeped out between the 
 surrounding shoulders of the throng that lined the side- 
 walk, I caught a glimpse of an open carriage, in which 
 stood a tall — -as I remember him, a very tall man; his 
 clothes hung loosely, almost ungracefully, upon him ; he 
 was lifting his hat in acknowledgement of the cheers that 
 greeted him ; his hands were large ; his arms seemed long 
 and almost ungainly; but his eyes were full of light, and a 
 pleasant smile plaved over his face, crowned with its high 
 forehead and its thick black hair. Just as I caught a full 
 view of him, he ^\'as passing beneath a great flag, stretched 
 across the street ; and on the bottom of the flag, as it swayed 
 in the breeze, \\'as flung out this motto in bold letters: 
 " Fear not, Abraham ! I am thy shield and thy exceeding 
 great reward." 
 
 It was my first and only sight of Abraham Lincoln. 
 Do you wonder that I never forgot it? 
 
 He was on his way to Washington to be inaugurated as 
 President of the United States. Strange rumors were afloat. 
 It was whispered that it was dangerous for him to try to get 
 to the capital. There had even been threats that he would 
 never get there alive. Men who were bitterly opposed to 
 him said he would never live to be inaugurated. 
 
 The country w^as in great excitement. He was the leader 
 
HOW 7 HE FLAT-BO A I'M AN GUIDED THE SHIP OF S2ATE. 169 
 
 of a party which was, for the first time, in power, and which 
 was pledged to enforce the laws, even against those who 
 were banded together to set those laws at defiance. He was 
 the champion of liberty and the rights of man against 
 slavery and the selfishness of man. 
 
 It has always seemed to me that Abraham Lincoln must 
 have seen and taken to heart 
 that motto on the flag. For 
 he did not fear. 
 
 Yielding to the entreaties 
 of his friends, he took an- 
 other train from 
 Philadelphia 
 than the one 
 originally in- 
 tended, and thus 
 escaped the deep- 
 laid plot that 
 had been formed 
 
 to murder him as he passed through Baltimore. True brav- 
 ery is not to needlessly face danger; it is to face it fearlessly 
 when it comes. It is those lines of Shakspere again, which 
 I have already quoted for you : 
 
 " Avoid the entrance to a quarrel." 
 
 Lincoln, at that critical time, displayed his courage by keep- 
 ing out of unnecessary danger. 
 
 ON THE WAY TO WASHINGTON. 
 
170 BO IV THE FLAl-BOAlAfAjY GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 So he came to Washington; and, on the fourth of March, 
 in the year iS6i, standing on a platform built for the occa- 
 sion on the splendid east-front of the then uncompleted 
 capitol, he took the oath of office, administered to him by 
 Chief Justice Taney, and read his inaugural address as 
 President of the United States of America. 
 
 And what do you think? In the throng about him, a 
 short, stout, dignified-looking gentleman held the new 
 president's hat ^\•hile he was delivering his inaugural 
 address. That gentleman was his opponent and greatest 
 ri\'al, the one who had met Lincoln in the great debate that 
 really made the tall westerner president. It was the "little 
 giant " — Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. 
 
 As soon as Douglas found that the liberties of his 
 native land were endangered and that the Union was in 
 peril, he stood manfully by the side of his former rival, and, 
 by his patriotic action, brought to Lincoln's support many 
 who might have been waverers. That is why he stood so 
 near the president on Inauguration Day. 
 
 President Lincoln's inaugural address was a grand speech. 
 As you look at Mr. Bridgman's picture of the inauguration, 
 which he has made to show you the historic scene, you can 
 almost imagine that the new president is uttering those noble 
 words of peace and good-will, of entreaty and patriotism, 
 weighted with sadness but bold in their firmness, that will 
 live through the ages : 
 
 " I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
 
THE INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN (MARCH 4, iSGl). 
 " IVe are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. " 
 
HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 173 
 
 We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
 strained, it must not break our bands of affection. The 
 mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 
 and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all 
 over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, 
 when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better 
 angels of our nature." 
 
 Those words of brotherly love and entreaty had no 
 influence on the leaders of the disunion party in the 
 southern states. Even before the inauguration of Lincoln, 
 seven of the southern states had declared that they had a 
 right to withdraw from the Union — " secede," they called 
 it — and had done so. At a convention in Montgomery, 
 in Alabama, the men sent as delegates in the name of their 
 respective states, banded together and announced to the 
 v/orld th2.t a new nation had been formed, under the name 
 of the Confederate States of America. Over this so- 
 called nation, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected 
 to preside as president. 
 
 Other states joined this confederacy later; and, through 
 the four years of strife that followed, eleven of the southern 
 states were included in the Confederacy. 
 
 I shall not attempt to explain the causes of the great 
 rebellion. This is not the story of the War for the Union ; 
 it is the story of the man who, through all the trouble that 
 followed, acted for one simple result — to save the Union; 
 Abraham Lincoln the American. 
 
 iZ^ 
 
174 J^OIV THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 He had a great task before him. But no man in the 
 n'orld was better fitted for that task. 
 
 He would not declare war. He worked for peace. He 
 felt that war must come; but he meant that the first act that 
 brought about war should come, not from him, but from 
 those who had arrayed themselves against the Union. 
 
 When men demanded that he should " do somethino- " 
 to show •' the rebels," as the confederates 
 were called, that they must be careful how 
 they talked and acted, Lincoln said: " I 
 am not here to make war against our fel- 
 low Americans. I am here to preserve 
 the laws and maintain the Union. If these 
 men openly make war on the government, 
 then it is time to act. They must strike 
 the first blow." 
 They did. They, too, became tired of waiting. They 
 were as impatient as Lincoln was patient. They wished the 
 North to make the first move that would really mean war; 
 but the president would not ; and then the southern rebels 
 made their first great mistake. They fired on Fort Sumter, 
 in the harbor of Charleston in South Carolina. Major Rob- 
 eit Anderson, the officer in charge of the fort, surrendered it 
 after a gallant stand. War at last was begun. At once the 
 North, which the southern leaders hoped would be divided, 
 was made one for Union, and aroused to resent the attack 
 upon the government of the Republic. ' . 
 
 MAJOR ANDERSON. 
 
HO IV THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIF OF STATE. 175 
 
 The North sprang to arms. President Lincohi called 
 for seventy-five thousand troops. One hundred thousand 
 answered the call. Washington became a camp, and, for 
 
 BOYS OF '6r — -F-NLISTING FOR THE UNION. 
 
 four years, the men of the North and the men of the South 
 fought for the mastery. In that four years, four million 
 men, from the North and South, marched to the field of war. 
 It was a terrible war. No need to tell you that, however; 
 scarce a boy or girl, living in America to-day, but is familiar 
 with the story, and knows some one, relative or friend, who 
 
176 NO IV THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF ST A IE. 
 
 \va§,xai£ of the soldier boys of '61 — either on the northern 
 or southern side. 
 
 From the very beginning of that dreadful strife, Abraham 
 Lincoln was the leader. This man, untrained to war, who 
 had never held any office of responsibility or direction, inex- 
 perienced, unfamiliar, ignorant — so far as affairs of govern- 
 ment and of battle were concerned — took his place at the 
 helm of what we call the Ship of State, determined to do 
 one thing — to save it from shipwreck. 
 
 He called able men about him as his advisers. He gave 
 them plenty of work to do, and they did it. These advisers 
 were members of what is called the cabinet, and some of 
 them imagined that, with more experience and a broader 
 knowledge of affairs than had this new president, fresh 
 from a western town, they would direct and " steer" him. 
 
 But they soon learned that they had a leader to deal 
 with ; not a follower. Once, two senators took upon them- 
 selves to advise and caution him in regard to some impor- 
 tant measure. 
 
 " Beware, Mr. President," one of them said; "do not go 
 too fast ; there is danger ahead." 
 
 " I know that," Lincoln replied. " I shall go just so fast, 
 and only so fast as I think Lm right and the people are 
 ready for the step." 
 
 When some one told him that one of his cabinet officers 
 was supposed to be really the "power behind the throne" — 
 that is, the one who really ruled him — Lincoln replied, " I 
 
PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CHIEF ADVISERS. 
 Stanton, Secretary Of War. y,^^ Presiaent. Seward, Secretary of StaU. 
 
 Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 Welles, Seci-etary of the Navv. 
 
HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 179 
 
 may not rule myself, but certainly he shall not. The only 
 ruler I have is my conscience — following God in it — and 
 these men will have to learn that yet." 
 
 They did learn it, speedily. They found out that 
 Lincoln's brain was as clear and his hand as strong as 
 that of any living man; and they came at last to know 
 how great and clear-sighted he was, to follow where he led, 
 and to carry out his ideas, not theirs. 
 
 As he led his associates and helpers, so he led the 
 people. At fi.rst, men thought him slow, and were loud 
 in criticism and demands. But Lincoln stood firm. His 
 hand was on the rudder; he was steering the ship on the 
 best and safest course. 
 
 He largely won success by his patience. As I have told 
 you, it was because he would not act impatiently and make 
 the first act of war, that the South rushed ahead and crip- 
 pled its cause by over-hastiness. 
 
 So, later, when a brave naval officer. Captain Wilkes, boldly 
 stopped a British ship, the Trent, and took from it two men 
 whom the Confederate government were sending as envoys 
 to Europe to plead the cause of the South with England 
 and France, Lincoln, in the face of the anger of the North, 
 decided that Captain Wilkes had no right to take these men 
 from a foreign vessel, and had them set at liberty. That 
 was because he knew that if the government refused to give 
 them up, it would mean another war with England ; and he 
 said, like the great statesman that he was, "In 181 2 we 
 
i8o now I'HE FLAT-BO ATAIAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 fought England for doing just what Captain Wilkes has 
 done. If Great Britain demands the release of these men 
 we must give them up, if we believe in what we fought for 
 in 1812. Besides — one war is enough, now." 
 
 , He stood almost alone. The North would have him 
 keep the men prisoners, even if it meant wai with England. 
 The South wished to see the North drawn into such a war, 
 because that meant England's help ; so it, too, hoped the presi- 
 dent would not give up its envoys. But this great, far-seeing 
 man declared that, according to law, justice and common 
 sense, there was but one thing to do. He did it. The 
 prisoners were set free and proceeded to England. A war 
 with Great Britain was averted ; and, to-day, the world 
 applauds Lincoln's wisdom and patience. The great presi- 
 dent never made a mistake. 
 
 At another time, one of the Union generals, the brave 
 soldier and "pathfinder," Fremont, declared that all slaves 
 belonging to " rebels in arms," in the region under his com- 
 mand were free. The North was divided in opinion. Many 
 people thought this a great blow at the South. The south- 
 erners were very angry; but they were glad, too; because 
 they thought such an act would bring to their side all the 
 men in the North, and especially in what were called the 
 border states, who did not wish to have slavery interfered 
 with. 
 
 Lincoln knew the American people better than any other 
 man. He knew just how far to go, and just what to do. 
 
Robert E. Lee. 
 A. S, Johnston. 
 
 CONFEDERATE LEADERS AND GENERALS. 
 Jefferson Davis. 
 
 " Stonewall " Jackson. 
 Alexander H. Stephens. 
 
HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUTDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 183 
 
 He quietly over-ruled, as it is called, Fremont's hasty act; 
 and, when another general attempted the same thing, he 
 over-ruled his action, also, and gave public notice that the 
 President of the United States was the one to decide when 
 such a measure was 
 necessary, and not 
 soldiers or generals 
 in the field. This 
 action held the wav- 
 ering people of the 
 border states loyal ; 
 it really weakened 
 the rebel cause far 
 more than the hasty 
 declarations of the 
 two generals could 
 have done. 
 
 When good old 
 General Scott retired 
 from the command 
 of the army raised 
 for the defence of the 
 Union, and General McClellan was placed in command, 
 Lincoln, while giving the new commander all possible help 
 and support, himself carefully planned what seemed best to 
 be done; and, just as he had, when a boy, made himself 
 master of grammar and geometry and surveying and law, he 
 
 GENERAL WINFIKLD SCOTT. 
 
i84 HO IV THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 now set himself to studying out the science of war and how to 
 fight battles. The president's " plan," as he called it, was 
 made fun of by McClellan and the men who thought they 
 knew better. It was not accepted by the Council of War to 
 whom it was submitted. But time proved McClellan wrong 
 and Lincoln right ; and it was the president's " plan," finally, 
 that led the way toward success. 
 
 As with the war measures, so with the others ; Lincoln's 
 hand was in them all. The way in which the nation dealt 
 with foreign countries, some of them friendly to the south- 
 ern cause and anxious to see it succeed ; the raising of the 
 vast sums of money necessary to carry on the war and meet 
 the expenses of the government; the part that the navy took 
 in the great strife ; the conduct of what is called the civil 
 departments of the government, that is, those not dealing 
 with the army or navy — these were all under Lincoln's eye 
 and had his constant and earnest care. 
 
 Indeed, military authorities now declare that Abraham 
 Lincoln was a better director than his generals, as students 
 of history assert that he was a better diplomatist than his 
 ministers, and a greater statesman than his councillors. 
 
 The burden placed upon him was enough to break down 
 any man. I don't believe there was another man in all the 
 world who could have lived through all the worry and 
 trouble and strain and responsibility of that terrible time 
 when the nation was fighting for life. But Lincoln \\as not 
 only able to do it all; he did it all. His hand was on the 
 
HOW THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 185 
 
 helm, guiding, directing, and watchful. With a patience 
 greater than any man ever possessed, he stood erect and 
 vigrilant until men came to see that he knew what he was 
 about, that he was right, and that, to him alone, the Republic 
 must look for safety, security, guidance, strength and vic- 
 tory. Gradually Congress gave him unlimited powers ; no 
 king ever had greater; but he never abused them, as some 
 great leaders of the world have done. The people learned 
 to depend upon him for support in dark times and for wis- 
 dom in bright times ; and, whenever they grew impatient, or 
 fearful, or despondent, they looked at that tall, sad-faced, 
 quiet, patient, determined, noble figure and felt their faith 
 grow strong again and their fear subside. 
 
 When more soldiers were needed, he called for them and 
 they came ; when more money was needed, he asked for it 
 and it came; when things looked dark and all the rest of 
 the world said that the North could never win and that the 
 American Republic would end in failure, Lincoln said: "We 
 shall win!" and the people believed him and called him 
 " Father Abraham " and " Honest Abe." 
 
 When you boys and girls have something to do that 
 seems to you hard or almost impossible, you go to your 
 father, with confidence that he can help you or bring the 
 thing about ; and your father can generally help you out. It 
 was so with Lincoln. He was the father of the people. 
 They learned to rely upon him, to have faith in him, to 
 believe that he would carry them through. And he did. 
 
i86 HO IV THE FLAT-BOATMAN GUIDED THE SHIP OF STATE. 
 
 Historians now — those who study all the moves and turns 
 of that great Civil War — agree that it ended successfully 
 because Lincoln was at the head of things and that he never 
 made a mistake. 
 
 Is it not wonderful, when you think of this man's story, 
 when you know, as you now do, what he sprang from, how lit- 
 tle he really knew of government or war, or the great ques- 
 tions and acts that had to be faced and decided, that such a 
 man could so guide, direct and save a great nation from 
 destruction ? 
 
 Learn from him, boys and girls, patience, kindliness, cour- 
 tesy, gentleness, firmness, faith, hope, courage, purpose and 
 honor. For, all of these, Abraham Lincoln possessed, as no 
 other man in all the world had them. These were what 
 kept him steadfast to the end and enabled this marvellous 
 man to guide the ship of state through stormy seas to tri- 
 umph, prosperity and peace. 
 
 
HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 187 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 
 
 "X/OU remember, do you not, how Abraham Lincoln hated 
 -■■ slavery from the day he saw the slave auction in New 
 Orleans ? It was not so much regard for the black man as 
 hatred of the system, that raised his anger. He had high 
 ideas of freedom and what it had done for him. He saw 
 that slavery injured alike the slave and the master, and in 
 one of his great speeches he declared that he would speak 
 for freedom and against slavery, as long as the constitution 
 of the land guaranteed free speech, " until everywhere, in 
 this broad land, the sun shall shine and the rain shall fall 
 and the wind shall blow upon no man that goes forth to 
 unrequited labor. 
 
 As I have told you, there were people, long before the war, 
 who favored an immediate stopping or abolition of slavery — 
 hence they were called Abolitionists. They said : " Slavery 
 is wrong ! therefore it must be stopped, at once." They did 
 noble and brave work for freedom, with voice and pen ; but 
 they were not always wise in the ways by which they would 
 bring about the end they had in view ; so, for years, the 
 name of Abolitionist was not popular with the people. 
 
188 HO IF ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 
 
 Other men and women, hating slavery just as much, still 
 wished to be just. They said the slaveholders took their 
 slaves or their belief in slavery from those who went before 
 them. It would not^ be fair to strip them at once of their 
 property— even though that property were in men and 
 ^ women. We must destroy slavery gradually, they said. 
 
 Through most of his life Lincoln, was of this belief. He 
 was bound that slavery should not spread any further; he 
 used all his influence to limit it to certain sections, and, finally, 
 to do away with it, altogether. 
 
 So he fought against the extension of slavery; he pro- 
 tested against the free states giving in to the demands of 
 the slave states. You remember how he introduced such a 
 measure when he first wen^^o the Illinois legislature. He 
 was always ready to defend the cause of the runaway slave; 
 he tried to lead men and women to see how wrong slavery was 
 and how much better off the republic would be without it. 
 
 He favored what is' called gradual emancipation. He 
 even advocated the purchase of all slaves by the govern- 
 ment and then setting them free; so that those who owned 
 them should not be losers by abolition. 
 
 He loved the Union above everything else, and could 
 not bear to think of its being broken or split into two 
 nations. He was a stout defender of the Constitution of 
 the United States, and believed that it should be followed 
 out to the letter. I told you of the first " piece " that he 
 wrote, and which was printed in the newspaper. It was a 
 
Harriet Beecher Siowe. 
 Chailes Sumner. 
 
 NUThL) AMLKICAN ABOLITIONISTS. 
 
 John Brown, 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison. 
 John G. Whittier. 
 
HO W ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 191 
 
 boyish, but earnest defence of the constitution. That devo- 
 tion to the law of his country was the guiding principle of 
 his whole life. 
 
 So, when he became president, while he hated slavery, 
 and would like to see it swept out of existence, he knew 
 that the Constitution allowed it to exist, and he could not 
 see his way clear to abolish it. He declared that the war 
 was not being fought to abolish slavery, but to save the 
 Union ; but he was also certain that the triumph of the 
 Union meant the downfall of slavery. 
 
 Many people in the North found fault with the president 
 because he did not at once take strong measures against 
 slavery. But Lincoln knew what was right, even better than 
 they. 
 
 He knew that to declare the slaves free, at once, would 
 make all the people of what were called the border states — 
 that is, states lying between the North and South, like Mary- 
 land and Kentucky — hostile to the Union; and he intended 
 to keep them loyal. 
 
 So he went slowly; and when the great editor, Horace 
 Greeley, who wished to bring about the triumph of the 
 Union, but was impatient of slow measures, addressed a 
 letter to the president, demanding that the slaves be made 
 free at once, Lincoln, calm, patient, far-seeing, determined, 
 answered in words that showed men how grand and brave 
 and patriotic the great president was, and how he stood for 
 the rights and the welfare of the whole people — the Union. 
 
192 NO IV ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 
 
 " My paramount duty," he said, in this answer to Mr. 
 Greeley, " is to save the Union, and not either to destroy or 
 save slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing 
 any slaves, I would do it ; if I could save it by freeing all 
 the slaves, I would do it ; and if I could do it by freeing 
 some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I 
 do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe 
 it helps to save the Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear be- 
 cause I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I 
 shall do less, whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts 
 the cause ; and I shall do more, whenever I believe doing 
 more will help the cause. . . I have stated my purpose 
 according to my views of official duty, and I intend no mod- 
 ification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men 
 everywhere could be free." 
 
 This means, you see, that Lincoln would do, not what 
 he wanted as Abraham Lincoln, but what he believed to be 
 best as President of the United States. That is a hard 
 thing to do, boys and girls — to separate personal desire 
 from the general good. 
 
 But, all this time, Lincoln saw how things were moving, 
 and felt that the downfall of slavery was not far distant. 
 
 He was waiting for the proper time to take the great 
 step he had in mind. He took it not a moment too soon, 
 nor a moment too late. To know just when to act is what 
 makes the great man. 
 
 The war had been raging for nearly two years. There 
 
A "contraband." 
 
HOW ABRAHAM LINCCLJST MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 195 
 
 were defeats and victories; there were dark days and hopeful 
 ones ; but both sides were determined ; they were " clinched " 
 in as mighty a grapple as ever Abraham Lincoln, the cham- 
 pion wrestler, had tugged at, when he was a boy. 
 
 There was a flush of rebel triumph. General Lee and 
 the Confederate army crossed the Potomac and invaded 
 Maryland. Washington was in danger. Everything looked 
 black for the Union cause. Then it was, that Lincoln made 
 a solemn vow to God that, if the rebels were driven back, 
 he would follow up the victory by declaring the slaves free. 
 
 This was not so much a vow, such as the knights and 
 kings of old use to make, promising to build a church or do 
 something as payment to the Lord, if they could be victors 
 or escape disaster. It was a wise and practical decision. 
 For now, the President saw that the emancipation of the 
 slaves was necessary to the success of the Union arms. 
 
 He had grown into the idea gradually. As you know, 
 he hated slavery ; he wished to see it abolished ; but he 
 wished this to be done lawfully and justly. He still be- 
 lieved in the statement he had made in the speech that 
 made him famous, that the government could not continue 
 half slave and half free. He meant to have it all free ; but, 
 just how to accomplish this, was the problem he had to 
 solve. 
 
 At first, he had consented to the shrewd decision of one 
 of the Union generals, Butler, who said that if slaves were 
 property, the same as horses or fodder, they could be set 
 
196 HO IV ABRAHAM LINCOLN AIADE HIS NAME LMMORTAL. 
 
 down, when taken by the Union troops, as captured war 
 material, or what is called " contraband of war." So the 
 darkies, who came into the lines of the Union army, were 
 set to work on the fortifications and were called " contra- 
 bands." 
 
 Next, Lincoln favored a gradual abolition of slavery, 
 paying slave-holders who were loyal to the government the 
 price of the negroes thus set free; then, he declared himself 
 a believer in what was called the colonization scheme — 
 that is, sending all the negroes out of the country, and 
 settling them in some section of South America, where they 
 could make a nation of their own ; neither of these plans 
 were liked by the people of the border states, who were 
 loyal to the government ; so Lincoln made a further step, 
 by advising Congress to abolish slavery forever in the 
 District of Columbia. This was done, and the president 
 signed the act gladly. After that, he advocated arming 
 the negroes, making soldiers of them, and giving freedom 
 to all slaves who would serve as Union soldiers. This 
 became a law. Soon after, another act was passed by 
 Congress, and approved by the president, which made 
 slavery illegal in all the territories of the United States — 
 that is, those sections not yet made states. 
 
 So, you see, President Lincoln, step by step, was leading 
 the country toward that final abolition of slavery, which he 
 now saw must, some day, come about. 
 
 He thought the question all out carefully, wrote out 
 
THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 
 
HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMOIiTAL. 199 
 
 what is called "a draft "of a paper, proclaiming freedom to 
 all slaves within the rebel lines. It is stated that the very 
 first draft of the emancipation proclamation was written by 
 President Lincoln, one day, as he was sailing down the 
 Potomac River on a steamboat on his way to visit the 
 army. 
 
 Whether this is really so or not, it is certain that he 
 wrote out his proclamation of his own accord, and not under 
 any advice or pressure from other persons. 
 
 At last, one day in September, 1862, the president called 
 his cabinet together and told them what he had decided to 
 do. Then he drew from his pocket the paper he had 
 written and submitted it to them for suggestions and opin- 
 ions — though we must all remember that, even had they 
 then been opposed to it, Lincoln would not have backed 
 down. 
 
 He knew that the day of action had arrived ; he could 
 not longer waste precious time trying to please the people 
 of the border states or those within the rebel lines. He felt 
 certain that the people of the North would agree with him, 
 and that something final must be done to show the world 
 that the government of the United States pledged itself not 
 only to victory but to freedom. 
 
 So at last the great step v/as taken. On the twenty-sec- 
 ond of September, 1862, the emancipation proclamation was 
 issued. It declared that, on the first day of January, 1863, 
 " all persons held as slaves within any state or part of a 
 
200 HO W ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE HIS NAME IMMORTAL. 
 
 state in rebellion against the United States shall be thencE' 
 FORWARD AND FOREVER FREE," and that " the executive 
 government of the United States, including the military 
 and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the 
 freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to 
 repress such persons, or any of them, in any effort they may 
 make for their actual freedom." 
 
 It was done. The Emancipation Proclamation ! The 
 telegraph flashed the tidings all over the land. Boys ran 
 through the city streets crying the news in " Extras." It was 
 read with eagerness and satisfaction. The North hailed the 
 act with joy. The president was assured that the nation 
 approved and applauded his action. The war took a new 
 form. It was fought for a republic of freemen — the preser- 
 vation of a Union without slavery. 
 
 The final issue of the proclamation was made as an- 
 nounced, on the first day of January, 1863, and closed with 
 these solemn words: "Upon this act, sincerely believed to 
 be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon 
 military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of 
 mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had made his name immortal. He 
 had kept the oath he had taken before the auction block 
 in New Orleans ; he had kept the vow he made when 
 victory came to the Union arms. From that day, America 
 was indeed "the home of the free," and was to be so, forever 
 and ever. 
 
'BOYS RAN THRriUr.H THE CITY STRFF.TS CRYING THE NEWS IN 'EXTRAS 
 
 L 
 
WIfV THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT '' SWAP HORSES." 203 
 
 It is hard for you, boys and girls, to understand or ap- 
 preciate, now, the wisdom, the magnitude, the courage or 
 the solemnity of this great act of emancipation. 
 
 What Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and all 
 the great men who had founded and builded the United 
 States of America had earnestly desired, but which none 
 of them, up to that time, had dared to perform, Lincoln 
 had dared. This man of the people, sprung from the 
 people, in the face of hostility, of armed rebellion, of 
 fanaticism on one side and timidity on the other, had 
 wisely seen and boldly acted, and, by a stroke of his pen, 
 had freed a race, put his native land in the foremost rank 
 of the free nations of the earth, gained for himself the 
 plaudits of mankind and secured an immortality that will 
 cling to the name of Abraham Lincoln so long as the 
 world shall last. 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 WHY THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT " SWAP HORSES.' 
 
 " I "HE Emancipation Proclamation did not end the war. 
 -*- There were yet to be two bloody years of fighting, 
 defeat, anxiety and delay before the final triumph came. 
 
 There were dark days after that historic first of January, 
 
204 Jf'Bi' THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES." 
 
 1863. The President had faith in the future; but the 
 generals in command of his armies were sometimes not 
 " up to the mark," and occasioned him much trouble and 
 annoyance. 
 
 Especially was this so in the Army of the Potomac, 
 which was fighting to capture the city of Richmond, in 
 Virginia, the capital of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 President Lincoln insisted upon no plan of his own for 
 fightino- the battles of the Union. What he desired was 
 to win them. While he studied the situation carefully, 
 and proposed lines of action, he preferred to leave what 
 was called the plan of campaign to the generals in com- 
 mand. All he asked of them was to do something, to cap- 
 ture Richmond, to overthrow the rebel forces, to end the 
 war. Things moved along well in the West. But in 
 Virginia, where the main struggle took place, matters 
 went too slowly to suit the impatient people of the North, 
 and the anxious, but ever-patient president. 
 
 I have told you that old General Scott, who was in com- 
 mand when the war begun, felt obliged to give up the 
 command because he was too old for active service. 
 General McClellan, who succeeded him, was a fine officer 
 to build fortifications and drill soldiers ; but he was 
 timid in advancing; he demanded too much before he 
 would engage in battle, and, instead of helping the pres- 
 ident, really hindered him by complaints and demands and 
 objections, until even the patient president saw that sue- 
 
IVffV THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES:' 205 
 
 cess depended upon a change of generals, and he put 
 another leader in command. 
 
 Meantime, in the West, America's greatest soldier was 
 rising into prominence; fighting successfully, and drawing 
 toward himself the hope and faith of the people. So, when 
 General Grant had driven the Confederate armies from the 
 field, captured Vicksburg, a most important point, and, 
 with the help of the brave Admiral Farragut, opened the 
 Mississippi River to the sea, the president did what all men 
 felt that he would do, in time. He made Grant general-in- 
 chief of all the armies of the United States, and gave the 
 Army of the Potomac into his especial charge. 
 
 These matters occupied three years of the war. During 
 all that time, the great president was in Washington, bur- 
 dened with so many duties, so many anxieties and so many 
 cares that it was making an old man of him before his time ; 
 it was furrowing his homely face with wrinkles ; it was 
 wearing out his life, his strength, his heart — everything 
 but his will, his hope and his faith. 
 
 Everyone criticised him — friends and foes alike. Lit- 
 tle minds that could not appreciate his greatness of soul, 
 called him hard names ; impetuous people who would not 
 wait to weigh all the necessities, called him slow and stupid; 
 men with plans and schemes which would have wrecked 
 rather than saved the Union cause, were angry because he 
 would not do as they wished ; people who wanted office or 
 favors, almost worried the life out of him ; jealous people 
 
2o6 WJir THE FEOPLE WOULD NOT '' SWAP HORSES." 
 
 carried all sorts of tales to him ; those who wished for peace 
 and those who wanted a still more bitter war cried out against 
 him ; friends who should have stood true, deserted him ; 
 foes who wished his overthrow, laid traps for him — there 
 never was, in all the history of great and noble and mighty 
 leaders in the world's progress one more beset, maligned or 
 worried than Abraham Lincoln in those years of war, which 
 were a struggle for the very life and existence of the proud 
 Republic of the United States. 
 
 But, through it all, Abraham Lincoln stood firm. With 
 his hand on the tiller he steered the ship of state cautiously, 
 securely, safely through the breakers. 
 
 There he stood at his post, serene, patient, uncomplain- 
 ing; unmoved by insult, criticism or assault; a man abso- 
 lutely to be relied upon to do the right thing, always. No 
 other man in all the world could have filled his place so 
 well, labored so persistently or won success so nobly. He, 
 after all, was the Great Captain. 
 
 In the midst of the conflict his term of office as president 
 expired. Who should succeed him ? Who, in all the land, 
 was able to take up his work? So men asked each other; 
 and, as the time drew near, those who most bitterly opposed 
 him set up other men as candidates for president. 
 
 Lincoln never made any secret of the fact that he wished 
 to be president a second time. Office-seeking, boys and 
 girls, when done from selfish motives is contemptible. But 
 there are times when he who seeks an office may be consid- 
 
Sherman. 
 Farragut. 
 
 DEFENDERS OF THE UNION. 
 Grant. 
 
 Sheridan. 
 McClellan. 
 
WHY THE FEOFLE WOULD NOT ''SWAT HORSES." 209 
 
 ered a hero, I have known men who sought and accepted an 
 office simply for the good they could do in it, or because they 
 felt it their duty to undertake a certain work, even at the 
 risk of being called " office-seekers." 
 
 It was this spirit that animated Abraham Lincoln. He 
 had accepted a great trust; he had attempted a great work; 
 he knew, better than any other man, what was needed to 
 carry that work to final success. 
 
 He had no hesitation in saying so. Abraham Lincoln 
 was always truthful. He knew that a change of presidents — 
 even if the new president should be of the party in power — 
 would be unwise. As he put it, in the quaint way he had of 
 speaking in homely phrases that appealed to the people, "it 
 isn't safe to swap horses when you are crossing a stream." 
 
 The people knew this, too. Abraham Lincoln was 
 re-nominated, with scarcely a dissenting vote, in the National 
 Convention at Baltimore; and in November, 1864, he was 
 re-elected president of the United States, by 212 out of the 
 233 electoral votes cast, or what was a majority of over four 
 hundred thousand on the popular vote. The people had 
 decided not to " swap horses." 
 
 One year before, on the nineteenth of November, 1863, 
 Lincoln made what will probably always be considered the 
 greatest speech of his life and one of the few great speeches 
 of the world. 
 
 It was very short — 267 words in all; but every word 
 counted. It was an occasion of especial interest to him. 
 
210 IVHV THE PEOPLE WOULD MOP ''SWAP HORSES." 
 
 Only four months before, upon those Pennsylvania hills and 
 meadows that have now become historic, was fought and 
 won the battle that was the turning point of the war — the 
 battle of Gettysburg. The field was to be dedicated as a 
 resting place, a national burying ground for those brave sol- 
 diers of the Union who fell in the fearful fight. To such a 
 man as Abraham Lincoln, the place and the occasion had a 
 peculiar influence. As a result, this brief but glorious ora- 
 tion came straight from the speaker's heart ; and to-day, all 
 over the world, it is esteemed of men, as Lincoln's master- 
 piece. But he never thought of it as an " oration." He 
 simply called it "a little talk." 
 
 I asked you, some pages back, when I told you of Lin- 
 coln's first public speech, to set these two side by side, and 
 see what the years had made of Abraham Lincoln — a 
 thinker, an orator, a prophet. 
 
 To-day, that Gettysburg address is shrined in the heart 
 of the nation as one of America's classics — that is, an 
 utterance that will never die. Let every boy and girl in the 
 land — North and South, alike — become familiar with its 
 simple, but noble phrases ; for, in the centuries to come, it 
 will stand alone — unique, grand, inspired. 
 
 Read it again, all of you. Here it is: 
 
 " 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 
 
WHY THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT "SWAP HOPSES." 211 
 
 whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so ded- 
 icated, 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 strug- 
 gled 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 unfin- 
 ished 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 free- 
 dom ; and that government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 With Grant in command of the army of the Potomac 
 and in control of all the armies of the Union, steadily and 
 persistently fighting on a plan that knew no such word as 
 fail, and with a determination to " fight it out " to the bitter 
 end, the close of the rebellion gradually drew near. At once, 
 
212 l-VJiy THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES." 
 
 Lincoln's dear vision saw this; and, with entire confidence in 
 the man he had placed at the head of the armies, he did all 
 in his power to help on the movements that should decide 
 the final wrestle between the North and South. 
 
 But, though he had faith in Grant's ability as general and 
 commander, his cares were not lessened, his anxiety was not 
 abated. He watched even more eagerly for news from the 
 front; he had to raise both men and money to carry on the 
 war; great troubles burdened his soul ; great problems filled 
 his mind. It was the old experience of his days of wrest- 
 ling come again. He gathered himself together for the final 
 tussle, and put heart and mind and strength into the closing 
 fall. 
 
 When certain officious, but well-meaning men on both 
 sides wished for a conference for a possible peace, he did 
 not say No ; instead, he welcomed anything that would bring 
 peace with honor — and an undivided Union ; he even went 
 himself to the conference at Fortress Monroe and talked 
 with the men who represented the rebel government. But 
 his will was as unyielding, his determination as strong, his 
 desires as clear as ever. He would only proceed on General 
 Grant's terms of unconditional surrender ; the conference 
 accomplished nothing, as he knew it could not ; but it did 
 show the people that the man at the helm was one who 
 could not in any way be turned from his duty, and their con- 
 fidence in his ability became stronger than ever. They saw 
 that they had made no mistake when they refused to " swap 
 
' FROM THE PRESIDENT ! ' 
 
tVJiy THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSESr 215 
 
 horses," or put another man in the place of the one directed 
 of God to carry out to final success the cause of liberty and 
 union. 
 
 In the midst of all these mighty events came the day of 
 Lincoln's second inauguration as President of the United 
 States — the fourth of March, 1865. 
 
 It was a raw and unpromising March day; but as the 
 hour for the inauguration approached, the storm-clouds 
 cleared away, and, as the president arose to deliver his 
 brief inaugural address, the sun broke through the vanish- 
 ing clouds, and a strain of glorious sunlight fell upon the 
 speaker. It was a significant omen. 
 
 No less significant was the inaugural address. It is one 
 of the shortest in the history of presidential inaugurals. 
 But it will ever be remembered for its noble utterances, its 
 thankful recognition of success, its confident note of victory, 
 and, above all, for the immortal words of affection, devotion 
 and kindliness with which it closed. You know them, of 
 course : 
 
 " With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with 
 firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
 us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the 
 nation's wounds; 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." 
 
 It is a noble speech — that whole second inaugural. 
 
2i6 WHY THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES." 
 
 Read it, I beg, boys and girls alike; and as you recall the 
 words of praise that, as I told you, the western lawyer gave 
 to Lincoln's first " piece " that was published in the village 
 paper, in the old Indiana days, see how well that verdict fits 
 this last of his public " pieces " — " The world can't beat it ! " 
 I doubt if, in the whole history of oratory, the world can really 
 "beat," in composition, sympathy, sentiment and simplicity, 
 this matchless second inaugural of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Does it not seem as if this man of noble soul, this man 
 who was absolutely " with malice toward none," should have 
 been spared to show the people he had so wondrously di- 
 rected, how best "to bind up the nation's wounds?" It 
 seems so, no doubt. But God knew best. He knew that it 
 needed the crowning act of sacrifice to show the world, 
 which had scarcely begun to appreciate the real greatness of 
 Abraham Lincoln, how mighty a soul had been sent to this 
 nation in its hour of deepest need. History is full of such 
 sacrifices, but never one more notable than this. 
 
 The war came to an end. The armies of the Union 
 crushed out the great rebellion, and peace came to the 
 troubled land. Lincoln stood in the captured capital of 
 the Confederacy, toward which, through all those months 
 and years of struggle, his eyes had turned in desire and de- 
 termination. Walking the streets of Richmond, the Eman- 
 cipator had heard the cries of thanksgiving from the race 
 to whom he had given freedom ; in sight of the melting 
 ranks of the army of opposition, he had clasped hands in 
 
WJiy THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES." 
 
 217 
 
 joy and gratitude with the great general who had won the 
 final triumph. He knew that the war was over. He knew 
 that the Union had been saved. His mission was done. 
 
 His heart was full of love for the vanquished; his 
 thoughts \vere bent on how best to make all Americans 
 brothers once more. From every part of the land came 
 praise and 
 
 lation that the end 
 had been reached, and 
 that, to him, were due 
 the thanks of his coun- 
 trymen for a nation 
 reunited and a home- 
 land saved for free- 
 dom. 
 
 Crowds stormed 
 the White House, wild 
 with joy and pride. 
 Again and again, they 
 called for the presi- 
 
 TWO FAMOUS MEN. 
 
 Liucoln and Grant in JVas/iini^/on. 
 
 dent ; and, from the central window, above the noble entrance 
 to that home of our presidents, Lincoln made his last public 
 speech — that one beginning, "We meet this evening, not in 
 sorrow, but in gladness of heart." The future looked bright 
 to him, at last ; and, with joy and comfort in his patient heart, 
 he said to his wife : " We have had a hard time together since 
 we 'came to Washington; but now the war is over, and, with 
 
2i8 llJ/y THE FEOJ'LE WOULD NOT "SIFAT HOJiSES:' 
 
 God's blessing upon us, we may hope for four years of hap- 
 piness. Then, we will go back to Illinois and pass the 
 remainder of our lives in peace." 
 
 How differently that journey back to Illinois was made, 
 you know too well. 
 
 On the night of the fourteenth of April, 1865; in the 
 theatre to which, because the people wished to see him, he 
 had gone, accompanied by his wife and two young friends ; 
 while his mind was easy, his heart full of love and peace, and 
 
 THE LAST SPEECH. 
 " We meet not in sorrtrw, but m gladness of heart. "^^ 
 
 his thoughts given to how best he could smooth from the 
 land the scars and wounds of war — the end came. 
 
 One to whom he had done no ill ; one who had, against 
 this great and royal soul, no personal complaint or any cause 
 for revenge — a thoughtless, ambitious, conceited and hair- 
 brained fanatic named John Wilkes Booth — shot down the 
 
THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 (April 14, 1865.1 
 
IVIfV THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES." 221 
 
 president, as he sat enjoying the play ; and, at half-past seven, 
 on the morning of Saturday, the fifteenth of April, the great 
 president closed his eyes forever. Abraham Lincoln was 
 dead. 
 
 Such of us as lived in those stirring times may forget, 
 as the years go by, many things of note and importance that 
 happened in those years of war. But no one will ever for- 
 get the great wave of indignation, sorrow, amazement and 
 despair that swept over the land when the sad news was told. 
 On the same crowded city street where, four years before, I 
 had as a schoolboy, seen the living president go southward 
 to enter upon his duties, I watched again the silent proces- 
 sion, the eight black horses, the sombre catafalque trapped 
 with nodding plumes, beneath which lay the body of the 
 martyr, stilled in death, borne westward to his final resting 
 place. 
 
 Along the same route by which he had first come to 
 Washington to assume the great duties to which the people 
 had called him, the dead president was borne. Bells tolled, 
 cannons boomed, great throngs stood uncovered and mute, 
 in sun and rain, as the funeral train rolled on; in great cities 
 the people, in tears and silence, filed past the dead form of 
 the man who had done so much for them and for the wodjd ; 
 then, in the western town, where so much of his life had been 
 spent, in pleasant Oak Ridge Cemetery, just outside the city 
 of Springfield in Illinois, the great captain was laid to rest. 
 His life-work was done. 
 
 '^ 
 
222 M^HY THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT ''SWAP HORSES." 
 
 It was a sad day for America ; and yet it was a glorious 
 one. For his was a death that cemented anew, as no other 
 occasion could, the people who for years had been divided ; 
 now, thanks to the great man who had died for his fellow- 
 men, the Republic was to move steadily forward, reunited, 
 reconsecrated and renewed, to a future and a grandeur that 
 this great man foresaw, and freely gave his life to assure. In 
 all the history of the world, boys and girls, there has been no 
 nobler life, no grander death, no surer immortality than that 
 of Abraham Lincoln, the savior of his country. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 223 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 T HAVE not attempted in this story of the martyr-presi- 
 -*- dent to introduce or explain grave political questions, to 
 tell of generals or statesmen, or to speak of battles and cam- 
 paigns. Of all these you may read in any history of the 
 United States ; and, when you are older, you must read for 
 yourselves some one of the excellent lives of Lincoln to 
 which this story stands only as an introduction. 
 
 But I have tried to show you what Abraham Lincoln 
 was — a man sprung from the people, working his way from 
 poverty to fame, from a little log cabin beside a Kentucky 
 stream to the stately White House in Washington. You 
 have read of his trials and his troubles, his desires and his 
 drawbacks, his determination, his pluck and his ambition. 
 You are not to think of him as a man without faults ; for he 
 had them — but he rose above them. All his life, before the 
 year 1858, was a preparation for the seven years of states- 
 manship, leadership and greatness that made his work 
 enduring and his name immortal. 
 
 I wish you to think of him not as a marble statue, a 
 thing to regard with awe; but as a man, a being to love. 
 
224 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 And children did love him. His life is filled with little 
 incidents that show his aiYection for children. It is this 
 part of his noble nature that made him so full of sympathy 
 and tenderness that he could not say No to a petition for 
 leniency, life or pardon, and has linked, to his fame as a 
 
 ' WELL, GRACE, YOU SEE I'VE LET MY WHISKERS GROW," HE SAID. 
 
 leader in a mighty war, his forgiveness, alike to those who 
 had fought against the Union he adored, and to those unfor- 
 tunates whom the demands of war would have punished 
 with death, but for this great-hearted man's tenderness and 
 sympathy. 
 
 From the days when he rocked the babies to sleep in the 
 humble log cabins of his acquaintances, to the days when he 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 225 
 
 romped with his own children in the White House, his 
 regard for children was ever noticeable. All his early pict- 
 ures show him beardless ; all his pictures after his election 
 give him a beard. That beard was due to the suggestion 
 of a little girl in New York state; having seen and heard 
 Mr. Lincoln in the days before the war, when he was travel- 
 ing and speaking in the east, she thought a beard would 
 greatly improve his looks, and wrote to tell him so. He 
 took the hint kindly, as he always did, and when on his way 
 to the White House as president, his train stopped at the 
 village where Grace lived. He asked if Grace were in the 
 throng at the depot. She was, of course. For she greatly 
 admired Mr. Lincoln. She was brought forward and Mr. 
 Lincoln said : " Well, Grace ; you see I have let my whisk- 
 ers grow for you." Then he took her hands, bent down 
 and kissed her, and Grace was a happy little girl, you may 
 be sure. 
 
 Once, a country boy, who had come to Boston to begin 
 the world, could not withstand temptation, and stole money 
 from the letters that he took to or from the post-ofifice. He 
 was found out, arrested, and sent to prison. But some 
 tender-hearted people interested themselves in the boy and 
 applied for his pardon, believing that if he had another 
 chance he would be a better boy. The pardon was pre- 
 sented to the president, who, in the funny way he had, said 
 if the petition were true, it would seem as if there were not 
 many such boys as this one, outside the sunday-school. 
 
226 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 For, you know, a petition for pardon always dwells on the 
 good qualities of the one to be pardoned. Then, growing 
 serious, he asked the boy's father what would be done if his 
 son were released. The father replied that the boy had had 
 quite enough of the city, and would gladly go back to the 
 
 farm. At once, the pre- 
 sident signed the pardon, 
 and the boy was set free. 
 One day, a little boy 
 of twelve slipped into 
 the president's room, un- 
 noticed, in the crowd of 
 senators, and represent- 
 atives, and generals and 
 politicians, who were 
 crowding for an audi- 
 ence. But the president 
 noticed him. 
 
 "Who is this little 
 boy ? " he asked pleas- 
 antly. 
 
 There was not a sena- 
 tor, nor a politician, nor 
 a general in the room who could tell; but the boy, plucking 
 up courage, said he was " a good little boy " who had come 
 to Washington to get a situation as page in the House of 
 Representatives — you know, small boys are used as messen- 
 
 'WHO IS THE LITTLE BOY?" HE ASKED. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 227 
 
 gers in Congress. The bothered president, his mind full of 
 important affairs, told the little fellow, kindly, that the presi- 
 dent did not appoint pages, but that he must see the head 
 doorkeeper of the House of Representatives. The boy, 
 however, evidently did not intend to let go of the president 
 who, so he supposed, was head of everything, and had the 
 say. So he again told the president that he was a good boy ; 
 and, in proof, he drew from his pocket a recommendation, 
 signed by his pastor and the leading men of his town ; he told 
 the president, too, that his mother was a widow and that the 
 appointment would be a great help to her. Then Mr. Lin- 
 coln, smiling down at the little fellow, took the applicant's 
 letter of recommendation and wrote on the back of it : " If 
 Captain Goodnow (the head doorkeeper) can give this 'good 
 little boy' a place he will oblige A. Lincoln." The boy got 
 the place. 
 
 The president was very fond of his own boys. One had 
 died in Springfield, before Mr. Lincoln was president, and 
 the father had always tender memories of the boy he had 
 lost. Three went with him to the White House — Robert, 
 aged eighteen, Willie, ten, and Thomas, or " Tad " as he was 
 called, a bright little fellow of eight. In the very darkest 
 days of the war-time, in February, 1862, Willie died, to the 
 great grief of his father and mother. Robert was in college 
 and, after he graduated, went to the war. But " Tad " lived 
 in the White House all the time, and a book could be writ- 
 ten about his experiences, his doings and his pranks. He 
 
228 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 was full of fun, and Lincoln loved him dearly. It was 
 "Tad " who could cheer him up in days of gloom or when 
 he was most worried or troubled ; and the burdened president 
 was never so busy or occupied that he could not stop for a 
 
 word or a frolic with 
 his boy. At the very 
 end of the war, when 
 men were jubilant 
 \\\\.\\ victory, and 
 some were vindic- 
 tive toward the con- 
 quered, Mr. Lincoln 
 in a speech said : 
 "What shall we do 
 with the rebels ? " 
 One man cried, " hang" 
 them;" but Tad, who 
 \\"as at his father's 
 elbow, said, " hang 
 on to them." " Tad's 
 cfot it," said Mr. Lin- 
 coin ; " he's right. 
 We'll hang on to them," smiling at the little fellow's desire 
 for clemencv. Do you remember the character of Mr. 
 Great-Heart in Bunyan's wonderful story of the " Pilgrim's 
 Progress?" That was Abraham Lincoln. His great heart 
 held in it patience, courage, determination, sympathy and love. 
 
 "TAD AND HIS FATHER. 
 
" MY BOY, MY BILL IS A LARGE ONE," SAID THE PRESIDENT, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 231 
 
 ^ Defeat could not subdue him ; impatience could not move 
 him; criticism could not turn him from his purpose. He 
 saw what was to be done and he stood upright and sturdy 
 in the path he had marked out, fighting gallantly to the end. 
 But distress in others always affected him. He could be 
 stern if need be, though always just; but if he ever wavered 
 at all, it was when some poor fellow's life was in danger. 
 
 " Go away, Swett," 
 he said to an old 
 friend, who called on 
 him in the White 
 House. "To-morrow 
 is butcher-day. I 
 must go through 
 these papers and see 
 if I cannot find some 
 excuse to let these 
 poor fellows off ; " and 
 the tender-hearted 
 president turned to 
 the pile of papers 
 which were the death- 
 warrants of soldiers 
 who had failed in their duty; not because he wished to shirk 
 the evidence, but to find one single loophole that would 
 give any of them a chance for life through pardon. " The 
 man must not be shot, Mr. Lincoln," cried the friend of a 
 
 THE LINCOLN MONUMENT AT SPRINGFIELD, ILL. 
 {Dedicated October 15, 1S74.) 
 
232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 recreant soldier, whom Stanton, the just, but stern war-secre- 
 tary would not pardon. " Well," said the president, " I don't 
 believe shooting will do him any good. Give me that pen," 
 and the pardon was granted. 
 
 The story of William Scott, " the sleeping sentry," is one 
 of the best known among all these tales of Lincoln's sym- 
 pathy. Perhaps you have read it. William Scott had 
 marched all day and then volunteered to stand as sentry, at 
 night, in place of a sick comrade. He was found asleep on 
 his post. He was courtmartialed and sentenced to be shot. 
 Friends tried to save his life and went to Mr. Lincoln with 
 the story. He heard it and made up his mind to save the 
 boy's life. He was afraid to trust another with the message 
 and went himself to see the prisoner, who was under guard 
 at Washington. Lincoln entered the tent where Scott was 
 confined, talked with him of his home on the Vermont farm, 
 his school, his mother. Then he said : " My boy, look me 
 in the face. You are not going to be shot to-morrow. I am 
 going to trust you and send you back to your regiment. 
 How are you going to pay me ? " 
 
 Young Scott was surprised, overjoyed, but worried. He 
 did not know how be could pay Mr. Lincoln. A president 
 would need a big fee, he thought. And when, finally, he 
 said he thought the boys would club together, and perhaps 
 they could raise five or six hundred dollars, the great presi- 
 dent put his hands on the lad's shoulders and said : " My 
 boy, my bill is a large one. Your friends cannot pay it. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 233 
 
 There is only one man in all the world who can pay it, and 
 his name is William Scott. If, from this day, William Scott 
 does his duty, so that if I were there when he comes to die, 
 he can look me in the face and say, ' I have kept my prom- 
 ise, I have done my duty as a soldier,' then, my debt will be 
 paid. Will you promise?" 
 
 Utterly broken down by the kindness and seriousness of 
 the president, Scott promised ; he was released, sent back to 
 his regiment, and died, months after, fighting bravely in 
 battle, where almost his last words were : " Boys, I've tried to 
 do the right thing. If any of you get the chance, tell the 
 president I have tried to be a good soldier, and true to the 
 flagf, and tell him I think of his kind face and thank him 
 aofain that he gfave me the chance to fall like a soldier in bat- 
 tie and not like a coward, by the hands of my comrades." 
 
 All through the life-story of this great American, as you 
 have read it, you must have felt the influence of his loving- 
 kindness. We see it, again and again — from the time he 
 picked up the little birds and put them back into the nest, to 
 the hour where he pardoned a deserter, because he could 
 not bear to see the tears of the soldier's wife or look at the 
 little baby, which would be made fatherless unless this kind- 
 hearted president interfered. 
 
 I have told you, particularly, of Lincoln's sympathetic 
 nature ; for after all, it was because of his deep sympathy 
 that he possessed the spirit of charity, and because of his 
 charity that he was absolutely without hatred or resentment 
 
234 ABRAHAM LINCOLX THE AMERICAN. 
 
 against those who fought him openly in the field or secretly 
 at home. 
 
 And yet he could " get mad," even as Washington could, 
 under certain circumstances. You remember how, in his 
 boyhood, he hated meanness or foul play ; how, later, he was 
 indignant against falsehood and ridicule ; especially, how he 
 could not endure a slander against the Union. 
 
 No more could he endure an insult to a friend. One of 
 the few times when he was known to be really angry after 
 he was in the White House, was when certain officious per- 
 sons came to him with an evil report against one of his 
 nearest friends. 
 
 As the president listened silently, his face flushed. Then 
 he took the paper. " Is this mine, to do with as I please?" 
 he asked. " Certainly, Mr. President," replied one of the 
 delegation. Lincoln walked to the fireplace and dropped 
 the paper in the fire. "Good-morning, gentlemen," he said. 
 But that was a sufficient reply. " I could not trust myself 
 to reply in words," the president said afterward, " I was so 
 angry. It was an unjust attack upon my dearest personal 
 friend." 
 
 At another time, a person, strongly recommended, swore 
 in the course of an interview. When he did so the second 
 time, the president opened the door. " I thought the sena- 
 tor had sent me a gentleman," he said. "I find I am mis- 
 taken. There is the door, sir. Good-evening ! " Do you 
 'suppose that man ever forgot the rebuke? 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 Heroic statue by Augustus St. Gaiidens, in Lincoln Park, Chicago, 
 
■ABRAHAM LINCOLN 2 HE AMERICAN. 
 
 237 
 
 I could go on for hours, telling you stories about Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. Of few other Americans are so many stories 
 
 told; and not one but shows 
 him to have been a remarkable 
 man, with a wonderful story. 
 Think of it ! A poor boy, born 
 amid mean and poor surround- 
 ings ; brought up on a rough 
 frontier, among rough people; 
 
 many 
 but 
 
 failing 
 
 givmg 
 
 educating 
 
 times, 
 
 in 
 
 spite of diffi- 
 
 couragements; 
 
 self respected 
 
 with the peo- 
 
 whomhelived; 
 
 never 
 
 himself, in 
 
 cultiesanddis- 
 
 making him- 
 
 and popular 
 
 pie among 
 
 he becarne, in time, the 
 
 chosen representative of 
 
 those people in their state 
 
 government, and, at last, 
 
 in the hour of uncertainty , 
 
 and danger, was selected 
 
 by the people of the 
 
 whole country to become 1861 
 
 the head of the nation. Then it was, that Abraham Lincoln 
 
 through four terrible years of conflict, anxiety and peril, 
 
238 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 
 
 displayed an ability for leadership that was only excelled by 
 his marvellous patience, and a masterly grasp of public 
 affairs that was equalled by his knowledge of men and his 
 wisdom in handling them. 
 
 Fearless, upright, truthful, just and kind, he would do any- 
 thing to save an erring soldier from death ; and yet, because 
 he knew its need, he would not take one backward step in 
 
 the mighty war fought 
 to keep the nation un- 
 divided. 
 
 More power was 
 given into his hand 
 than king or emperor 
 holds; and yet he was 
 never, for one instant, 
 moved by ambition or 
 the desire for personal 
 power. He lived and 
 died a poor man, with 
 no desire to make 
 money out of his nat- 
 ion's distress, and with 
 no time to devote to anything but his country's need and 
 service. He saved a nation and emancipated a race. 
 
 While he lived, the world did not understand his meth- 
 ods or appreciate his greatness ; but his countryman learned 
 to put their trust in him without question, and to feel that 
 
 
 THE AMERICAN. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE AMERICAN. 239 
 
 it was due to him that the nation passed successfully- 
 through a life and death struggle. 
 
 When he died, the whole world mourned, and each year 
 only increases his greatness and the world's recognition of 
 his nobility, his grandeur and his statesmanship. 
 
 His is a story, boys and girls of America, that you can 
 never know too well; for it tells you how the poorest boy 
 can reach the highest power, through ways more wonderful, 
 and by paths more difficult than were ever trod by hero in 
 wonder story or prince in fairy tale. Men call him the 
 typical American, the man of the people, the noblest product 
 of American civilization. He is all that ; but, as time goes 
 on, and the real truth of his marvellous life comes to light, the 
 world, and you, too, boys and girls, upon whom depends the 
 future of the Republic he saved from ruin and the people he 
 made anew, will carry him in your hearts and hail him in 
 your speecfe as, before all others, the American — the great- 
 est, wisest, noblest, truest man of the nineteenth century. 
 
 I 
 
 free fU'J'''^ Lioiury, NewaiK, '- iy 
 
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