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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The story of Abraham Lincoln, by Mary
+A. Hamilton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The story of Abraham Lincoln
+       The children's heroes series
+
+Author: Mary A. Hamilton
+
+Editor: John Lang
+
+Illustrator: S. T. Dadd
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2022 [eBook #68423]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+             at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was created from images
+             of public domain material made available by the University
+             of Toronto Libraries.)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF ABRAHAM
+LINCOLN ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE CHILDREN’S HEROES SERIES
+  EDITED BY JOHN LANG
+
+
+  THE STORY OF
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration--Map of the Southern United States]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: For the first time he saw negroes being scourged]
+
+
+
+
+  THE STORY OF
+  ABRAHAM
+  LINCOLN
+
+  BY MARY A. HAMILTON
+  WITH PICTURES BY S. T. DADD
+
+  LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+  NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  MARGOT
+
+
+
+
+O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
+
+  “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!
+  The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won.
+  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
+  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
+              But O heart! heart! heart!
+              O the bleeding drops of red,
+              Where on the deck my Captain lies,
+                Fallen cold and dead.
+
+  O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
+  Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
+  For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding:
+  For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
+              Here Captain! dear father!
+              This arm beneath your head!
+              It is some dream that on the deck
+                You’ve fallen cold and dead.
+
+  My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
+  My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
+  The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
+  From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
+              Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
+              But I with mournful tread
+              Walk the deck; my Captain lies,
+                Fallen cold and dead.”
+
+                                             --_Walt Whitman._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  Chapter                                           Page
+
+      I. Boyhood                                       1
+     II. The Young Backwoodsman                       17
+    III. Slavery                                      30
+    IV. Lincoln the Lawyer                            44
+     V. Defeat of the Little Giant                    57
+    VI. The New President and Secession               73
+   VII. The War                                       84
+  VIII. Victory                                      100
+    IX. “O Captain! My Captain!”                     110
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PICTURES
+
+
+  “For the first time he saw negroes being
+  scourged”                               _Frontispiece_
+
+  “The bullet passed right through his heart”          6
+
+  “Sometimes he did sums on the wooden shovel”        14
+
+  “His huge arms closed round Armstrong like a
+  vice”                                               24
+
+  “Springing to his feet, he poured out what was in
+  his mind”                                           58
+
+  Lincoln reading Emancipation Proclamation to his
+  Cabinet                                             94
+
+  Lincoln discussing plan of campaign with General
+  Grant                                              104
+
+  “Lincoln visited all the divisions of his army in
+  turns”                                             110
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+BOYHOOD
+
+
+IN this little book I am going to try to tell you something about
+Abraham Lincoln. There is far more to say about him than can be fitted
+into so small a space; and perhaps when you are older you will read
+about him for yourselves, and read his wonderful speeches.
+
+The greatest names in American history are those of George Washington
+and Abraham Lincoln. These two men are great in the true sense of the
+word; they are great because they loved their country, purely and
+passionately, better than themselves, and gave their lives to its
+service. They thought nothing of their own honour and glory: to the
+last they were simple and true. Americans may well be proud of two
+such patriots; and from them every one may be glad to learn what real
+greatness means. Their work has made America what it is.
+
+Less than forty years before Abraham Lincoln was born, America belonged
+to England. In the time of Charles I., numbers of people who loved
+freedom and hated the wrongful government of the king left their
+country and sailed to the New World. Samuel Lincoln was one of these
+men.
+
+For a long time they were few in number. The greatest part of the
+country was unknown forest, inhabited by wild beasts, or vast plains
+which belonged to fierce tribes of Red Indians. Life for the early
+settlers was very hard and rough. They had to cut down trees to build
+their houses, and to kill wild animals to get their food. Nevertheless
+they soon grew to love the country where they lived, where they married
+and brought up their children; and their wild open life made freedom
+more precious to them than anything else. They began to resent the
+action of the English Government, which wanted to tax them to pay for
+wars which were agreed upon in the Parliament in London, where America
+had no voice to speak for her. On July 4, 1776, in the reign of
+George III., the chief citizens met together and declared that America
+was a free united country, with a right to govern itself. The 4th of
+July--“Independence Day”--is the greatest day of all in America.
+
+For seven years there was war. In this war Abraham’s great-grandfather,
+John Lincoln, served as a soldier. The Americans were led by George
+Washington.
+
+England was defeated, and America--the United States of America--was
+a free country. From this time on, America belonged to the Americans.
+But a great many years had to pass before they made of the country the
+America that we know. Now there are towns everywhere: you can get from
+one end to the other of the great country, far bigger than the whole
+of Europe, by trains that travel day and night from north to south and
+east to west. Then there were very few towns, most of them along the
+coast, and no railways. All the west was unknown.
+
+After the war was over, bands of explorers set out to fight the
+Indians and to find new homes for themselves. And Abraham Lincoln’s
+grandfather, after whom he was named, was one of the first of these
+explorers. He sold his little piece of land in Virginia, and tramped
+through the forests till he found a place to build a new home, carrying
+his youngest son Thomas on one shoulder, and with his loaded rifle in
+his other hand ready to shoot any Indian who should attack him. In
+Kentucky some white men had already settled and built a small fort;
+near it Lincoln cut down trees and built a hut for himself and his wife
+and his three sons to live in.
+
+When Abraham was a small boy he used to listen to the stories which his
+father Thomas told of their life there in the constant fear of Indian
+attack. There was one story which Thomas told very often, the story of
+his father’s death.
+
+He was at work cutting down the trees, so as to clear an open space
+near the house which he could plough and then sow with seed.
+
+One morning he set out as usual with his three boys. They were talking
+together as they walked, and none of them saw that behind one of the
+trees an Indian was hiding, his dark skin strangely painted with arrows
+and circles in white and scarlet, and on his head a tuft of black
+feathers standing upright and waving as he moved. In his hand he had a
+gun. As soon as the father had passed, the Indian came out from behind
+the tree, moving without making any sound. He shot at Abraham from
+behind, and the bullet passed right through his heart. The father fell
+down dead before the eyes of his sons. They were terrified. The two
+eldest ran off, one to the house and the other to the fort, to bring
+help. Thomas, the youngest, was only six. He could not run so fast as
+his brothers, and he was too much frightened to try. He stood still
+beside his father’s body, not understanding what had happened. His
+eldest brother, Mordecai, made all speed to the house. As soon as he
+reached it he took down a gun, loaded it, and jumped up to the window
+so that he might shoot at the Indian out of it. As he looked out he saw
+the Indian walk up to the place where the dead body lay, look at it for
+a moment, then pick up little Thomas, put him under his arm, and turn
+to walk away with him. Mordecai felt his heart stand still with fear;
+but he was a brave boy, and his father had taught him how to shoot at
+a long distance. He aimed straight at the white star painted on the
+Indian’s naked chest. There was an awful moment. Then the Indian fell
+back dead upon the ground, dropping the child from his arms. Thomas ran
+to the house as fast as his legs would carry him, screaming with fear,
+for now several other Indians began to appear from the wood. Mordecai
+fired again and again at them from the house; and people came from the
+fort, brought by his brother, and drove the Indians away.
+
+Mordecai, when he grew up, spent his life in waging war upon the
+Indians, killing them wherever he met them. Thomas was neither so
+strong nor so clever as his brother. He became a carpenter, but he
+was never a very good carpenter. He was not very good at anything but
+sitting by the fire telling stories. He did that very well indeed, and
+people generally were fond of him; but he was not a successful person.
+He had none of his son’s wonderful power of work; he always wanted to
+do something else, not the thing before him, and live somewhere else,
+not settle down to work where he was.
+
+[Illustration: The bullet passed right through his heart]
+
+He built himself a log-cabin at Elizabethtown, on the edge of the
+forest, and when he was twenty-eight he got married and took his wife
+to live there.
+
+It is said that all great men have had great mothers. Nancy Hanks had
+much more character than her husband, and her son was much more like
+her. She had a very sweet, unselfish nature, and every one loved her.
+She had had more education than her husband, and could read and write:
+she taught him to sign his name.
+
+After their first child came--a daughter called Sarah--Thomas Lincoln,
+who always thought he could make a fortune somewhere else, moved
+farther west to a place called Nolin’s Creek. The place was not at
+all attractive, but it was cheap. The soil was hard; it was rocky
+and barren, and nothing but weeds seemed to grow in it. Only a very
+energetic man could have made much out of it, and Thomas was not very
+energetic. They were very poor.
+
+It was here, in an uncomfortable log-cabin, that his son Abraham was
+born, on the 12th of February 1809; and here he lived until he was
+seven.
+
+The hut had only one room. It was very roughly built. Stout logs had
+been laid on top of one another, then bound together with twigs, and
+the holes filled up with clay and grass and handfuls of dead leaves.
+There was no ceiling, only the log roof.
+
+The two children climbed up a shaky ladder to a loft in the roof, where
+they slept on a bed of dry leaves, covered with an old deerskin, lying
+close together to keep themselves warm. As they lay there, they could
+count the stars that looked in through the spaces between the logs that
+made the roof. The windows had no glass; the door was only an opening
+over which a deerskin was hung as a curtain. In winter it was terrible.
+The wind blew in, icy cold; there was nothing to keep it out, except
+when sometimes the entrance was blocked up with snow, and no one could
+go out or come in until a pathway had been dug.
+
+In the autumn the house used to be full of dead leaves that whirled
+about in the middle of the floor. The only comfort in the hut was the
+huge fire; it filled up nearly the whole of one side, and in front of
+it was a great bearskin rug. On this the two children spent the days
+in winter, playing together, or leaning against their mother’s knee
+while she told them stories--fairy tales, or true stories about Indians
+and old American history, or parables from the Bible. In the winter you
+could not keep warm anywhere else; and in the autumn there were damp
+fogs that made it unwholesome outside, or heavy rains that came through
+the roof; the only thing to do was to get as near the fire as possible.
+Above it were ranged all the household pots and pans; the meat, a
+haunch of venison, or a couple of rabbits, hung from the roof. Cooking
+was very simple, for there was no choice of food: it consisted of game
+shot in the forest, or fish caught in the streams, roots and berries
+from the wood; bread was made of flour ground from Indian corn, which
+was the only thing that grew in the rough fields. Until he was a grown
+man Abraham had never tasted any other sort of bread.
+
+The life was uncomfortable, often dangerous--for an Indian attack was
+possible at any time--and always the same. No visitors came to see
+the Lincolns; there were few friends for them to go and see, only the
+scattered settlers living in huts like their own.
+
+Abraham very soon learnt to make himself useful. He would cut and bring
+home wood for the fire; help his mother in the house, or his father
+out-of-doors. In summer he spent long hours roaming about the woods. He
+soon learned to use a rifle, for it was not safe to go far unarmed, and
+he became a good shot. He remembered very little about this time when
+he grew older. One day he had been out fishing, and at the end of it
+he caught a single fish. With this he was walking home to supper, when
+he met a soldier. His mother had taught him he must always be good to
+soldiers, who fought for their country, and therefore the little boy
+gave the soldier his fish.
+
+His father always thought that he should be better off somewhere else.
+He heard that across the Ohio River there was rich land which any one
+could have who chose to go and take it: so when Abraham was seven,
+and his sister nine, they moved. The father built a raft, and put his
+family and all the goods he had, after selling his house, on to it, and
+they sailed down the river, getting food on the way by shooting and
+fishing, till they came to a place they liked called Little Pigeon
+Creek. It was simply an opening in the forest.
+
+Here they disembarked, and for a year they lived in a roughly built
+shelter, without a floor or doors or windows, while the father and
+his son built a better cabin, and cut down trees and shrubs to clear
+a place for planting corn. When it was finished, Abraham’s aunt and
+uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, and two cousins, John and Denis Hanks,
+came to live with them. The three boys were great friends, and they
+worked together on the farm until they all grew up.
+
+Abe, as they called him, was a very tall boy for his age: his long legs
+were always in his way, and they seemed to get longer every day. He
+never wore stockings until he was a young man, but moccasins, such as
+the Indians wear--shoes of leather, with a fringe round the top--and
+long deerskin leggings; a deerskin shirt which his mother had made
+him, and a cap which was seldom on his head, it being covered enough
+by his thick black hair. His hair was never tidy; always in his eyes,
+and having to be pushed back. Abe was clever with his axe, and a good
+workman; his mother had taught him to spell, but there was little
+chance of learning in Pigeon’s Creek.
+
+For a year the little family lived there very happily; then a
+mysterious sickness broke out in the place, no one knew why or how to
+cure it. They called it the milk sickness; many people fell ill of it,
+and hardly any one recovered. Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow both died of it in
+the autumn, and a few days afterwards Mrs. Lincoln sickened and died
+too. To her children this was a terrible grief. Abraham, though a boy
+when she died, never forgot his mother: she had taught him his first
+lessons, and from her came that sweetness of nature, that power of
+thinking first of others, that made every one who knew him love him. It
+was at the time of his mother’s death that the sadness which never left
+him came upon him. In later life, people who really knew him said that,
+in spite of his fun and power of making other people laugh, he was the
+saddest man they ever knew.
+
+A dreary winter followed. At the end of it Thomas Lincoln brought home
+a new wife to his little cabin. Sally Bush was a widow, with three
+children; she was a good and kind woman, and Abe really loved her
+and she him. She said afterwards that he had never all his life given
+her a cross word or look, or refused to do anything she asked him;
+that he was the best boy she had ever seen. He was indeed the sunshine
+of the house; but in many ways he was very lonely. He was hungry for
+knowledge, for books and teaching. All the schooling he ever had was
+a month now and then with a travelling teacher who passed through
+Pigeon’s Creek on his way to somewhere else; but none of these teachers
+knew much beyond the three R’s: one who knew Latin was regarded as a
+sort of magician. In all, he had not so much as one year at school,
+taught by five different teachers.
+
+But Abe was not the sort of boy to learn nothing because there was
+nobody to teach him. He had a few books that had been his mother’s,
+and he read them again and again until he knew everything that was in
+them. John Hanks, his cousin, says of him: “When Abe and I returned to
+the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of
+corn-bread, take down a book, sit down, cock his legs as high as his
+head, and read.” The Bible and “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Æsop’s Fables,”
+and “Robinson Crusoe,” these were his books; he knew them by heart.
+In the intervals of work he used to tell them to his companions. He
+thought over every word until he understood it. In this way he learned
+more from a few books than many people do from whole libraries, because
+he learned to think. He questioned everything, and asked himself if he
+thought so too, and why he thought so.
+
+One day he borrowed the life of George Washington from a farmer who
+lived near; as he lay in the loft he read it with eagerness. In the
+middle he was called away to work, and in the meantime the rain came in
+and ruined the book. Abraham went in despair to the farmer and told him
+what had happened. “Never mind,” said the farmer. “You do three days’
+work for me for nothing and you may keep the book; I don’t want it.” To
+his joy he thus became possessed of a new treasure to be studied again
+and again. This book more than any other made him a patriot: he longed
+to get out into the great big world where he could serve his country.
+In the evenings he used to sit silent for hours, thinking. Sometimes he
+did sums of all sorts on the wooden shovel; making figures on it with
+a piece of charcoal. When it was quite full he shaved off the top
+with his knife so as to have a clean slate in the morning.
+
+[Illustration: Sometimes he did sums on the wooden shovel]
+
+All his companions liked Abe and admired him. He worked very hard,
+but farm work did not interest him; he liked dinner and play better;
+and sometimes he used to stop work and climb on to a gate or a
+dead tree-stump, and make absurd speeches or comic sermons to his
+companions, or recite passages from his favourite books.
+
+They thought him a quaint fellow, with some strange ideas. One of these
+strange ideas was his tenderness to animals. He never cared much for
+sport, because it seemed to him cruel. He showed his tenderness to
+animals when quite a small boy. One day he was playing in the woods
+with a boy called John Davis. In their game they ran a hedgehog into a
+crevice between two rocks, and it got caught fast. For two hours they
+tried every sort of plan to get it out, but without any success. They
+were not able to pull it out, and it could not move itself. Abraham
+could not bear to leave the poor thing to die in pain. He ran off to
+the blacksmith’s shop, quite a quarter of a mile away, and borrowed a
+pole with an iron hook fastened to the end; with this they were able
+to set the little animal free. This care for animals was only one sign
+of Abraham’s tenderness of heart. All little children and old people
+trusted him and his word. He was very soon known as “Honest Abe.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE YOUNG BACKWOODSMAN
+
+
+FOR Abraham life was dull and very monotonous: the round of work was
+much the same, summer and winter. He longed to escape from the dull
+work of a farm labourer; to go out and see the world. Until he was
+twenty-one, however, he was bound to serve his father; and his father
+seems to have had no idea that his son was fit for anything better than
+ordinary farm work. Other people nevertheless were struck by Abraham.
+
+Until he was nineteen he had not left home at all; but then one day a
+rich landowner who lived near came to him. He wanted some one to help
+his son to take a raft loaded with different kinds of goods down the
+Ohio River, selling the goods at the different places they passed.
+Abraham had struck this Mr. Gentry as being an honest and capable lad;
+he therefore asked him to undertake the voyage, and Abraham consented
+at once, glad of any chance of seeing something of life outside the
+settlement.
+
+He took charge of the raft and steered it successfully down the river;
+the voyage took them past the great southern sugar plantations, right
+down to New Orleans. They had no adventures of any sort until they had
+almost come to New Orleans.
+
+One night they encamped at Baton Rouge, a place on the bank of the
+river. Here they fastened their raft, and lay down to sleep on it for
+the night, wrapped up in thick blankets. They were both sound asleep.
+Suddenly Abraham started up. He heard the sound of many soft footsteps
+all round him. In the darkness, at first, he could see nothing; then
+he became aware that a band of negroes was attacking the raft, ready
+to steal their goods and to murder them. Abraham’s cry waked up his
+companion, young Allan Gentry, and they threw themselves upon the
+negroes. If Abraham had not been uncommonly strong and active they
+must both have lost their lives, for the negroes far outnumbered
+them. He seized a huge log of wood, which served him as a club, and
+brandished it in his hand. His great height and the unknown weapon
+which he whirled round his head, terrified the negroes. He hit first
+one and then another on the head and threw them overboard, Allan Gentry
+helping. The fight was very fierce for a few moments, and then the
+negroes turned and fled. Abraham and Allan pursued them a long way into
+the darkness, but the thieves did not dare to return, though two men
+could not have held their own for long against such numbers.
+
+The voyage ended successfully, and Abraham returned home for two more
+years. At the end of that time his father again moved. John Hanks had
+gone west to Illinois; he wrote to his uncle, praising the new country,
+and urging him to come there too. Thomas Lincoln was always ready to
+try something new: he sold his farm and his land to a neighbour. All
+the goods of the household were packed in a waggon drawn by oxen; the
+family walked beside it. They tramped for more than a week until they
+came to the new State; the journey was not easy. It was February. The
+forest roads were ankle-deep in mud; the prairie a mere swamp, very
+difficult for walking. They had to cross streams that were swollen into
+rivers by the rains.
+
+At last they arrived. John Hanks had chosen a plantation for them, and
+got logs ready for building the house. Abraham worked very hard, and
+helped his father and John Hanks to make a cabin; then, with his own
+hands, he ploughed fifteen acres of ground. When that was done he cut
+down walnut trees, split them, and built a high and solid fence which
+went right round his father’s property.
+
+Abraham lived in Illinois until he was made President of the United
+States. Once he was addressing a meeting there, years after this, and
+Denis Hanks marched in amid the shouts and applause of the crowd,
+carrying on his shoulder a piece of the railing that Abraham had made
+for his father. It is now in the Museum at Washington, kept as a
+national treasure. How little could Abraham himself or any one who knew
+him at this time, have dreamed that this rail-splitter was to be the
+greatest man in America.
+
+The winter that followed was one of the most severe ever known in
+Illinois; it is always referred to as the winter of deep snow. When
+spring came at last, Abraham said good-bye to his father and mother,
+and went out into the world to make a livelihood for himself. His
+boyish days were over. He was now twenty-one, and very tall and strong
+for his age. More than six feet four inches in height, he seldom met
+a man taller than himself. He is a great exception to the saying that
+all great men have been small--for example, Napoleon, Cæsar, Hannibal,
+Shakespeare. Abraham was very well built; it was not till he stood up
+among other men that you realised that he was head and shoulders taller
+than most of them.
+
+In the ordinary sense of the word, he had had no education. He knew
+no language but his own, and that not very well at this time. When
+asked could he write, he replied, “Well, I guess I could make a few
+rabbit-tracks.” He had taught himself all the arithmetic he knew. But
+he knew two things that are the most important that can be got from any
+training: how to think, and how to work. When he made clear to himself
+what it was right to do, he did it without talking about it, all his
+life.
+
+His experience in taking Mr. Gentry’s cargo down to New Orleans
+induced a merchant called Offutt to offer him another job of the
+same kind. Offutt was an adventurous sort of dealer, who did all
+kinds of business. He wanted some one to help him who had a head on
+his shoulders, and he soon saw that Lincoln had plenty of sense. He
+therefore engaged him, and Lincoln took his cousin, John Hanks, to help
+him. They did not make much money by the voyage, but Lincoln showed
+great skill in managing the raft.
+
+On this trip Lincoln came for the first time really face to face with
+slavery. New Orleans was a great slave market, and they spent some
+time there. For the first time he saw negroes being sold in the open
+streets, chained together in gangs. For the first time, too, he saw
+negroes being beaten; fastened to a block and scourged till the blood
+ran from their backs. Every one took it all as a matter of course, but
+Lincoln was deeply struck. His heart bled. At the time he said nothing,
+but he was silent for a long while afterwards, thinking over what
+he had seen. There and then, as his cousin used to tell afterwards,
+slavery ran its iron into him: to see these men chained was a torment
+to him, and he never forgot it: the picture was printed on his memory
+never to be forgotten, only to be wiped out when there were no more
+slaves in America. He was often in the slave states after this; but
+slavery always seemed to him horrible.
+
+Offutt was quite satisfied with the way in which the young backwoodsman
+had managed the trip. After his return he offered him a post in his
+grocery store at New Salem. He had a kind of half shop, half office,
+with a mill behind it; here he sold everything that any one could want
+to buy--grocery, drapery, stationery, miscellaneous goods of all kinds.
+Lincoln was clerk, superintendent of the mill, and general assistant.
+
+Offutt soon began to admire his assistant immensely. He declared that
+Lincoln was the cleverest fellow he knew--he could read, and talk like
+a book; he was so strong and active that he could beat any one at
+running, jumping, or wrestling. Lincoln did not know any one in New
+Salem, and this “wooling and pulling,” as he called it, of Offutt’s
+annoyed him a good deal; as he knew, it was not at all likely to make
+people like him. The young fellows of the place did not mind his
+supposed cleverness; they knew nothing about that, and cared nothing;
+but they did resent the idea that he was stronger than they were.
+
+At first they did nothing: he looked rather a dangerous person to
+attack, and not at all likely to take things meekly. Offutt’s loud and
+continual praise, however, was more than they could stand. As Lincoln
+was on his way home one evening a group of the strongest fellows in
+New Salem, the “boys of Clary’s Grove,” attacked him. Jock Armstrong,
+the biggest and burliest of them all, challenged him to a “wrastle.”
+Jock was not as tall as Lincoln, but he was much more solidly built,
+with huge shoulders like an ox and immensely strong arms: no one in New
+Salem had ever been able to throw him, and he expected an easy victory
+over this strange clerk.
+
+But Abe was as strong and as skilful as Jock: though he was thin his
+muscles were made of iron; his huge arms closed round the burly fellow
+like a vice. Even when his companions came to the champion’s rescue
+Abe was a match for them. Armstrong was a sportsman and not ashamed
+to take a beating: he admired a man who was able to throw him. After
+this Lincoln had no stauncher friend, and he soon grew to be a person
+of importance in New Salem. His strength and his honesty made him
+respected.
+
+[Illustration: His huge arms closed round Armstrong like a vice]
+
+Of his honesty there are numberless stories. One evening he was making
+up his accounts for the day. While doing so he found that he had
+charged a woman, who had come in in the morning to buy a great number
+of little things, 6-1/4 cents--that is, about 3d.--too much. Until it
+was time to shut up the shop the money seemed to burn in his pocket.
+It was late when the time for locking up came, but he could not wait.
+He started off at once for the woman’s house, though it was several
+miles off, and walked there and back in the darkness to pay her her 3d.
+before he went to bed. He knew he could not sleep until he had done so.
+
+People trusted him: those who were in trouble soon found out how wise
+and gentle he was, and they went to him for advice and help. He had a
+wonderful way of quite forgetting himself, and only thinking of making
+other people happy: generally silent, he could tell stories so that
+every one laughed. But though he enjoyed talking and going to see
+people, he always worked very hard.
+
+And he did not only work in the shop: he was always eager to learn
+more. After the day’s task was done, he would walk miles to get hold of
+some book that he wanted, and read it on the way home. When his cousin,
+a lazy fellow, wrote to ask his advice, he replied: “What is wrong with
+you is your habit of needlessly wasting time: go to work; that is the
+only cure for your difficulty.”
+
+When he came to New Salem he met people who had been well educated, and
+he was at once struck by the difference between their way of speaking
+and his. He resolved to learn to speak correctly. One evening he walked
+to Kirkham and back--it was twelve miles away--and bought a grammar
+there. For the next few weeks he spent all his spare time in studying
+it: he used to sit with his feet on the mantelpiece and work for hours
+without moving. In this way he soon knew all there was to know about
+grammar. When you read his speeches you will find that they are written
+in English as beautiful and simple as that of the Bible, which was the
+book he knew best of all.
+
+He only remained with Offutt for a year. Offutt was too fond of talking
+to make his business a success, and he had to give up the store. It was
+Lincoln’s first attempt at earning his living, and learning a trade did
+not seem very successful. Instead of at once looking for some new work
+of the same sort he enlisted as a soldier. The State of Illinois was
+thrown into a state of wild excitement by an attack made at this time
+by a powerful Indian tribe. Black Hawk crossed the Mississippi at the
+head of an army of red warriors. To drive them back, the Government
+of the country called for volunteers, and Abraham, who was one of the
+first to offer himself, was made a captain. The men entered for three
+months, during which they did a great deal of skirmishing and marching
+about, but took part in no regular battles. At the end of the time
+most of them went back to work. Abraham enlisted again; this time as
+a private in a battalion of scouts. He was not present at any battle,
+but he learnt something of war and a good deal of soldiers; it was hard
+work and not much glory. By the autumn Black Hawk was captured, and the
+war was at an end. Lincoln’s horse had been stolen, and he had to walk
+back to New Salem, a three days’ tramp. His campaigning had not been a
+great success.
+
+When he returned, the elections for members of the Illinois Parliament
+were going on, and he offered himself as a candidate; spending the
+ten days between his return from the war and the time of election in
+making speeches. In New Salem he was popular, but he was not yet well
+known even there; he was young, and had had no experience. He was not
+elected, but he made good friends at the election time, and he began to
+be a capital speaker.
+
+Meetings were not very formal in those days. One day when Lincoln was
+addressing a large hall full of people, in the middle of his speech
+he saw that a ruffian in the crowd was attacking a friend of his;
+they were struggling together, and his friend seemed to be having the
+worst of it. Lincoln jumped down from the platform where he stood, and
+marched to the middle of the room. He picked up the ruffian in his
+mighty arms and threw him some ten feet, so that he fell right outside
+the hall. There he lay, and did not attempt to return. Lincoln came
+back on to the platform and went on with his speech, just as if nothing
+had happened.
+
+After the election he thought of becoming a blacksmith. Instead of
+this, he joined with a man called Berry in buying a store. Berry was
+a stupid and not very honest man. He got into debt; then he took to
+drinking, and soon afterwards died, leaving Lincoln with the business
+ruined and a lot of debts to pay.
+
+After this he did not try storekeeping again: he was made postmaster
+of New Salem. This meant very little work: few people wrote letters
+there: he could carry the whole post in his hat, and he read every
+newspaper that came. He now had plenty of time for reading, and he
+read ceaselessly. Most of all, he read American history. The “Life of
+Washington” had been his earliest treasure; and as a boy he had pored
+over an old copy of the statutes of Indiana. This was, perhaps, the
+beginning of his interest in law. Now he was in a town, though a small
+one, and it was possible to get hold of books. He used to lie on his
+back under a tree, with his feet high up against the trunk, only moving
+so as to keep in the shade, and laying down the book now and then to
+think over what he had read and make sure that he understood it.
+
+He studied surveying in this way for six weeks, and John Calhoun, the
+surveyor of the county, was so much astonished by his knowledge that
+he made him his assistant. His reading in law and history deepened his
+interest in politics: nothing interested him so much. He was resolved
+sooner or later to get into Parliament. One failure could not make him
+despair. There was a great world outside, and the door into Parliament
+was the door into that world. He was resolved to make his way in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SLAVERY
+
+
+IT would be a great mistake to think that Abraham Lincoln won success
+easily.
+
+Looking back over the lives of great men, one is apt to think “How
+fortune helped them;” “What astonishing luck they must have had;” when
+one knows the end, it seems certain from the beginning. But when you
+know more about any one really great man, you are sure to find that he
+has risen only by endless hard work, and by knowing from the beginning
+what he wanted to be and do, and thinking only of that.
+
+Success is never easy, and for Lincoln the path to it was a hard and
+uphill way. You have seen in what difficulties his life began; how he
+taught himself everything he learned, and made for himself every penny
+that he possessed. His first effort to get into Parliament, like his
+first efforts to make a living, seemed a failure. But this did not make
+him despair. Other people had risen, and he was going to rise. He was
+sure of one thing, that there is always plenty of room at the top, and
+he meant to reach the top. There is always a place for a man of strong
+purpose, who is honest, and who can think for himself. If a man really
+wants to serve his country, nothing need prevent him from doing it. And
+Lincoln saw that the first step to serving your country well is to be a
+good workman, a good friend, and a good citizen of your own town.
+
+When the next election came he stood again, and this time he was
+elected; and after his two years of service came to an end, he was
+elected again. For eight years he was a member of the Parliament of his
+own State of Illinois; then, after four years away from politics, he
+was made member of Congress--that is, of the American Parliament, to
+which the States send representatives.
+
+To be in Parliament was to be in touch with the big world; to have a
+share in the settlement of big questions. In the Illinois Parliament,
+Lincoln met a great many clever men; men who rose to important posts
+later. Few of them suspected that this tall, awkward, country-looking
+young lawyer, who did not speak much, but could tell such
+extraordinarily funny stories when he chose, was going to rise to be
+American President, to prove himself greater than any American of their
+time. Most of the members were small lawyers like himself. They were
+sent to Parliament because they were men in whom their fellow-citizens
+had confidence. They were honest men, but few of them had any more
+knowledge of politics than Lincoln himself.
+
+The State of Illinois was very new, and its affairs had not yet become
+complicated. Lincoln soon learnt the ins and outs of parliamentary
+business; and he only found one man who was a better speaker than
+himself. This was a man with whom he was to have a great deal to do all
+his life; a man already well known in politics, and followed by a large
+party.
+
+His name was Stephen Arnold Douglas. He was two years younger than
+Lincoln; like him he had been brought up in the rough surroundings of
+the West, where he had gone as a boy. His father was poor, but he
+was a gentleman. Well educated himself, he had given his son a good
+education of a sort.
+
+When he was twenty-one Douglas became a lawyer. Very soon he became
+the foremost barrister in North Illinois, and soon entered the State
+Parliament. In the year of Lincoln’s election he had been made
+Secretary of State; he was therefore a person of importance. Douglas
+was extremely clever; as a boy he learnt things quickly, and remembered
+them easily, unlike Lincoln, who learnt very slowly; he had a wonderful
+power of speech: he was ready and able to speak on any subject, and,
+even if he really knew very little about it, he always gave people the
+impression that he knew everything. He used to tell people what they
+wanted to hear, whereas Lincoln had a way of speaking the truth whether
+it was pleasant or not.
+
+Douglas was very popular: he understood how to rule men, and he was
+intensely ambitious. Ambition was the strongest feeling in his heart;
+and his ambition was for himself: he dreamed already of being President
+of the United States. He was a short, thickly-built man; but it was the
+smallness of his mind, his selfish aims, that made Lincoln say that
+Douglas was the least man that he had ever met: he seemed to “Honest
+Abe” to care not at all for what he said or did, so long as his own
+success was safe; success was his one object.
+
+It was an ambition very different from Lincoln’s. Indeed, Lincoln was
+unlike any of the members whom he met: his aims were quite different
+from theirs. He looked to a future beyond himself. He did not think of
+his own success. What he wanted to attain by success was the power to
+help his country. Patriotism was his first and strongest feeling, and
+his patriotism was of the truest kind. He did not want to make America
+great because she ruled over a vast extent of territory: such greatness
+did not appeal to him at all. He wanted her to be great in the sense
+that she really lived up to the ideal set before her for ever in the
+Declaration of Independence--the ideal of a union of free men governing
+themselves well.
+
+And Lincoln’s ideals were real to him: in every question he was guided
+by his patriotism. He did not mind saying what he thought, whether
+people liked him for it or not: they must like him for what he was,
+and not for what he said, and unless they loved what was right, their
+liking was not worth having. When, after long thinking, he came to
+see what he thought the truth on any subject, he spoke out so that
+every one who heard must understand: he never said one thing and meant
+another, as Douglas did: he was as honest in his thoughts as in his
+actions.
+
+Now in American politics there was one great question, more important
+than every other, the question of slavery. Cautious politicians, men
+with an eye to their own success, thought that this question had better
+be left alone. Really thoughtful men, men like Lincoln, saw that this
+question could not be left alone for ever. Some day, and the sooner the
+better, it must be settled. Anyhow, it was every honest man’s duty to
+say what he thought. It is difficult now to realise quite what slavery
+meant. Perhaps you have read or heard of a book called “Uncle Tom’s
+Cabin.” It was written about this time by an American lady, who wanted
+to make all Americans see what slavery did mean--how terrible it could
+be.
+
+If you drew a line across America just south of Lincoln’s State of
+Illinois, slavery did not exist in the Northern States; it did exist
+in all the Southern States. Whenever the question was discussed, most
+people from the North thought it rather a bad thing, some thought it a
+very bad thing; people from the South all thought it was a good, or at
+least, a necessary, thing. They all agreed as a rule in thinking that,
+whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, there it was, and there was
+no good discussing it.
+
+The real wrong lay far back in the past. Centuries ago, merchants had
+brought negroes over from Africa, and sold them in America as slaves.
+
+As is always the case, when once the wrong had been brought in,
+when the evil had begun, it was almost impossible to get rid of it
+when people had grown used to it. When people could buy slaves who
+did not cost very much to do work for them, they did not want to do
+it themselves, especially if the work was disagreeable. They began
+to believe that black men were intended by nature to do all the
+disagreeable things. English merchants made great fortunes by bringing
+slaves to America; and the English Government supported them. And when,
+after the war, America was a free country, the Union of States which
+made it so was half composed of States that held slaves. These slaves
+were most valuable property. The men who drew up the Constitution,
+George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton,
+declared in it, “All men are free and equal: all men possess rights,
+which no one can take away from them.” The Northern States gave up
+their slaves, and decided that slavery was illegal: the Southern States
+did not. They refused to join the Union unless they were allowed to
+keep their slaves. Now of course it was absurd to call a country free
+where slavery existed, or to say that all men have rights when millions
+of black men had no rights at all.
+
+To the Southerner a black man was not a man, but a piece of property.
+
+But it would not be quite fair to think that the Northerners who gave
+up slaves had always more lofty ideas than the Southerners. You must
+remember that slaves were much more useful in the South than in the
+North. The climate of the North was cold, and the work not of the sort
+that could be well done by untrained negroes. In the South it was
+so hot that it was difficult for white men to work, and work on the
+plantations needed no special skill.
+
+At the time when the Declaration of Independence was drawn up and
+signed, one thing seemed to every American more important than
+anything else: that the country should be united in one whole. North
+and South must join together; no difference could outweigh a common
+nationality. The Southerners would not join the Union unless they were
+allowed to keep their slaves: therefore the Northerners left slavery in
+the South. They hoped, however, that it would gradually die out; and
+therefore a law was passed which declared that after twenty years no
+more slaves were to be brought from Africa.
+
+When Southerners declared, as they very often did, that slaves were
+very well treated, that they were much happier and more comfortable
+than if they were free, this was true to a certain extent. Those slaves
+who were employed in the houses and gardens of their masters, those who
+were used as servants, were often very well treated. But however well
+they were treated, it is wrong for a man to have other men entirely
+in his power; wrong for him, and wrong for them. And although some
+masters did not abuse their power, some did--and all could, if ever
+they wanted to--without feeling that they were doing anything wrong. A
+white gentleman could beat his black slave to death if he chose; he
+would not be punished any more than if he beat a dog to death, and his
+friends would still think him a gentleman. Moreover, far the greater
+number of the slaves were not used as servants, but used as labourers
+on the cotton plantations. Here they were under the charge of an
+overseer. His one idea was to get as much work out of them as possible.
+They worked all day, and at night were often herded together in any
+sort of shed.
+
+After Eli Whitney, a young American, invented a machine called the
+cotton gin, by using which one negro could pick twenty times as
+much cotton in a day as before, the business of working the cotton
+plantations with slaves made the Southern landowners very rich.
+Slaves were cheap: in a few days they made as much for their masters
+as they cost them, and their masters could make them work as hard
+as they liked. They were quite ignorant: their masters taught them
+nothing; they had no way of escape; they were absolutely at the mercy
+of the overseer with his whip. The masters came to regard these black
+fellow-beings simply as property: not so valuable as a horse, rather
+more useful than a dog; they often forgot that they had any feelings.
+Children were sold away from their parents; a husband was sent to one
+plantation, and his wife to another. They were sometimes beaten for
+the smallest fault. If they tried to escape, bloodhounds were used to
+hunt them down. Dealers led them about in chains, and sold them in the
+public market exactly like animals. People who came from the North
+to the South, as Abraham Lincoln did, on his trip down the Ohio, and
+saw how the slaves were treated, were often shocked; but in the South
+people were used to it.
+
+North of a certain line, slavery did not exist. Slaves used sometimes
+to run away from their masters and escape across this line; but in
+every Northern State there was a law, that escaped slaves had to be
+handed back to their master if he claimed them. The masters used to
+offer a reward to any one who handed back to them the body of their
+slave, alive or dead. This led to all sorts of difficulties, because
+in the Northern States a great many free negroes lived. Very often
+some one who was eager for the reward would capture an innocent free
+negro and hand him over to the master, declaring that he answered to
+the description of the missing slave. The question as to whether he
+was, or not, was decided not in the Northern State where he had been
+captured, but in the Southern State where the master lived, and no
+Southern court could be trusted to decide fairly in a case between a
+white man and a black.
+
+Gradually this injustice roused a small party in the North, which
+openly declared that slavery was an abominable thing, and ought not to
+exist in America. The Abolitionists, as they called themselves, said
+that it was a disgrace to a free country that slavery should exist in
+it; that as long as it did exist, the Declaration of Independence had
+no meaning. Slavery ought to be abolished.
+
+When Abraham Lincoln was about twenty-one, a paper called _The
+Liberator_ began to appear. It was edited by a great man called William
+Lloyd Garrison. Its object was to rouse people to see the evils of
+slavery, and to get it made illegal. The Abolitionists were few in
+number, and very unpopular. They had to suffer for their beliefs in
+the North as well as in the South. The offices where _The Liberator_
+was printed were attacked by mobs of furious people, who burst in
+at the doors, broke every pane of glass in the windows, destroyed
+the printing press, and threw the type into the river. In St. Louis,
+William Lloyd Garrison was dragged round the town with a rope round his
+waist, while crowds of angry people hooted and hissed, spat at him,
+and threw rotten eggs and stones at his head. He only just escaped
+death. Many of his followers were murdered in the open streets. Even
+in Illinois, an innocent preacher, who had sympathised with them, was
+thrown into the river and drowned.
+
+The Southern States were roused to fury. In the North, even sensible
+people who did not like slavery thought it very unwise to say anything
+against it. Slavery was a fact--it was no good to discuss it. Several
+Northern States sent petitions to Parliament, declaring their opinion
+that it was very unwise to discuss Abolition.
+
+In Illinois, this was the view taken by nearly all Lincoln’s friends.
+Lincoln did not agree with them. He thought the Abolitionists very
+often unwise; nothing, he saw, could be more dangerous than to rouse
+the feeling of the South: but nothing could make him seem to approve of
+slavery.
+
+For Lincoln to see that any action was right, and to do it, was the
+same thing. He and one other man, called Stone, sent in a protest to
+the Illinois Parliament; in it they declared that they believed slavery
+to be founded upon injustice and upon bad policy. Lincoln spoke because
+he must. He had seen what slavery meant, and he hated slavery. But he
+saw that the South would not allow slavery to be abolished: if the
+North tried to do it, the country would be divided into two halves.
+He was not ready to face that. His love for his country came before
+everything. Everything must be borne, rather than that it should be
+divided.
+
+The Abolitionists were a small party; and for the next seventeen years,
+the question of slavery was left as it was, as far as Parliament was
+concerned. During these seventeen years, Lincoln was perpetually
+turning it over in his mind; thinking and reading about it, and helping
+other people to think about it too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+LINCOLN THE LAWYER
+
+
+TWO years after Lincoln entered the Illinois Parliament, its meetings,
+which had been held at Vandalia, were transferred to Springfield. In
+Springfield Lincoln lived for the next five-and-twenty years, until
+he left it to go to Washington as President of the United States.
+Springfield was a country town, which thought itself rather important.
+The people paid a good deal of attention to dress; they gave evening
+parties of a quiet sort, where they played cards and talked politics.
+The business of the most prominent persons in the town was law. Almost
+all the members of Parliament were lawyers.
+
+Lincoln found that his surveying did not occupy his time, or bring in
+a very large income; he had studied law-books, and knew very nearly
+as much as most of the young barristers of Springfield. Major Stuart,
+under whom he had served in the war against Black Hawk, took him into
+partnership. The partnership was not very successful. Lincoln was
+rather ignorant, and Stuart was too much occupied with his duties as
+member of Congress--the American Parliament--to teach him much.
+
+After four years Lincoln left Stuart and joined another friend, Judge
+Stephen D. Logan. Logan had made Lincoln’s acquaintance at the time
+of his first unsuccessful candidature for the Illinois Parliament. He
+had then greatly admired the young man’s pluck and good sense, and the
+cheerful way in which he accepted his defeat. Later, he had been struck
+by the sound reasoning of his political speeches. Logan himself was not
+only a first-rate lawyer, he was a man of wide education and culture:
+Abraham learned more than law from him. Even after Lincoln left the
+partnership, and set up an office of his own, the two men remained
+close friends.
+
+Although busy during the winter in Parliament, Lincoln worked very hard
+at his business. He knew that no one can succeed in anything without
+hard work, and he saw that to become a really good lawyer would help
+him in politics, and make him a more useful citizen of the State.
+Moreover, he understood, more clearly than most men have done, that
+every deed in life is connected to every other; no man can escape the
+consequences of what he is and does. Every act and every speech is
+important.
+
+Lincoln was four times elected to the Illinois Parliament--that is,
+he sat in it for eight years. For four years--between 1845-49--he was
+member for Illinois in Congress. In Congress he spoke and voted against
+the war that was being waged against Mexico. The aim of the war was the
+conquest of Texas and California. The South urged this because they
+wanted the number of slave-owning States to be equal to the number of
+free States. They were always afraid that new States would be created
+out of the undeveloped territory in the North-West; and, if this
+were to happen, the slave States would be in a minority in Congress.
+If Texas were added as a slave State, the slave States would have a
+majority of one: there would be fourteen free and fifteen slave States.
+The Northern members, for the most part, did not see the point; they
+did not unite against the Southern demands; and consequently the South
+succeeded. In the war Mexico was defeated, and Texas was added to the
+Union.
+
+At the end of his last year of membership, 1849, Lincoln applied for
+a post in the Government office. Why he did so it is difficult to
+understand, for it would have put an end to his political career, as
+officials may not sit in the House. Fortunately his request was refused.
+
+He returned to his home in Springfield, where he lived in a big, plain
+house, painted a dirty yellow, with a big piece of untidy garden
+behind, and a small field at the side. He had married seven years
+before, and had now three sons. He was devoted to these boys, and used
+to play all sorts of games with them, as they grew bigger.
+
+For the next five years he devoted himself mainly to his work as a
+lawyer. He was now forty years of age. In Springfield and everywhere in
+Illinois he was admired, respected, and loved. But the high opinion of
+other people never made him easily satisfied with himself. To the end
+of his life he never stopped working and learning. He now resolved to
+become a really good lawyer. He knew that in law he could learn the art
+of persuading people, and of expressing clearly what he wanted to say.
+To help in this he took up the study of mathematics with extraordinary
+energy. Examining his own speeches, he seemed to find in them some
+confusion of thought. To make his own ideas clear, and to be sure that
+he expressed them clearly and truly, and never conveyed to others an
+impression that was not true, he bought a text-book of Euclid. The
+first six books of this he learnt by heart. He said “I wanted to know
+what was the meaning of the word ‘demonstrate.’ Euclid taught me what
+demonstration was.”
+
+After a year or two Lincoln was regarded as the equal of any lawyer in
+Springfield. He had one weakness, however. If he did not believe in the
+justice of his case, or if he thought the man for whom he had to speak
+was not quite honest, he did not defend well. His friend Judge Davis
+says, “A wrong cause was poorly defended by him.”
+
+A story is told of a man who came to Lincoln’s office and asked his
+help in getting six hundred dollars from a poor widow. Lincoln listened
+to the man and then said, “Yes, there is no reasonable doubt but I can
+gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighbourhood at loggerheads.
+I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and
+thereby get for you six hundred dollars which rightfully belong, as it
+appears to me, as much to them as it does to you. I advise you to try
+your hand at making six hundred dollars some other way.”
+
+Every one in Springfield valued “Honest Abe’s” opinion. All sorts of
+people brought their troubles to him. His sympathy and his tenderness
+of heart made them trust him. He was one of the people; he never felt
+himself above them. To the end of his life he did not grow proud,
+and he was never ashamed of his early poverty. When he was President
+he told some of his friends of a dream he had had, which might very
+well have been true. He dreamt that at some big public meeting he was
+walking through the hall up to the platform, from which he was going to
+speak. As he passed, a lady sitting at the end of one of the rows of
+seats said to another sitting next her, so loudly that he could hear:
+“Is that Mr. Lincoln? Why, he looks a very common sort of person!” “I
+thought to myself in my dream,” said Lincoln, “that it was true, but
+that God Almighty seemed to prefer common people, for He had made so
+many of them.”
+
+Nothing in Lincoln is more truly great than his power of seeing the
+value of common things and common people. He knew that the things
+which appeal to men as men, which are common to humanity, are the most
+valuable of all. He counted on this when he abolished slavery. Freedom
+is a right common to all men; and there is somewhere in every one an
+instinct which knows that it is wrong to make other people do things
+which are too disagreeable to do yourself.
+
+During these years at Springfield, Abraham read a great deal.
+Shakespeare and Burns were his favourite poets: he knew Shakespeare
+better than any other book except the Bible. He read and thought
+unceasingly about politics, and he talked about them with his friends.
+The history of America he studied until he knew everything there was
+to know. Above all, he thought about slavery. Events were taking place
+which made it plain that the question of slavery could not be left
+where it was. It was no longer possible to act as if the difference
+between North and South did not exist.
+
+As years went on the difference became more and more plain. The North,
+which had been poor and barren, only half cultivated by ignorant and
+uneducated settlers, was growing richer than the prosperous lazy
+South. Workmen came to the North from all parts of the world: poor men
+with good brains and strong arms, ready and able to work intelligently,
+to improve the land, to make wheat grow where stones and bushes had
+been. None of these men went to the South, for there work was done by
+slaves so cheaply that no paid worker had a chance. But the difference
+between the intelligent labour of free men working for themselves, and
+the mechanical labour of slaves working for their masters, soon began
+to tell.
+
+In the North schools sprang up everywhere: the people became better and
+better educated. Men who had grown up in the backwoods, like Abraham
+Lincoln, taught themselves, and rose to be lawyers and statesmen by
+their own efforts; others who had had the chance of being taught, did
+the same. It was possible for any man of brains to rise from the bottom
+to the top. Inventions were made which enabled all kinds of new work to
+be done and new wealth produced. The North was rich in material: richer
+in the men she had to work it, who were helped and encouraged by the
+freedom which threw every career open to real talent.
+
+In the South all power was in the hands of the aristocratic families,
+who had had it always. The work was done by slaves: owners did not
+want to educate their slaves, for then they were afraid that they would
+want their freedom. The coal mines of the South were not discovered;
+they could not have been worked by slaves. The South began to be very
+jealous of the North, and the North began to disapprove of the South.
+More and more people began to see that slavery was wrong: people were
+not yet ready to say that slavery ought to cease to be, but they were
+ready to say that it must not be extended.
+
+At the time of the Mexican war the South had shown that it wanted to
+extend slavery. This frightened the North. In 1850 an agreement was
+made, known as the Missouri Compromise. By this a line (36°30’), called
+Mason and Dixon’s line, was drawn across the map of America. North of
+this line, slavery was never to exist. Speakers on both sides declared
+that the Missouri Compromise was as fixed as the Constitution itself.
+Stephen Arnold Douglas was the loudest in expressing this opinion. “It
+is eternal and fundamental,” he declared.
+
+Douglas was a trader of the great party known as the Democrats. He
+held that the people of every State had a right to decide questions
+affecting that State, and not the Central American Government.
+
+Douglas had one great aim, which was to him far more important than any
+question of political right or wrong: he wanted to be made President.
+To secure this, he saw that he must get the support of the South. To
+win the support of the South, he took a most dangerous and important
+step: one which was the immediate cause of the war which broke out six
+years later. He declared that the people of any state or territory
+could decide whether or not they would have slavery in their State:
+they could establish it or prohibit it.
+
+He went further than this. Two new territories had been organised
+in the north-west--Nebraska and Kansas. They claimed to be admitted
+to the Union as States. Both States were, of course, north of Mason
+and Dixon’s line, and therefore by the Missouri Compromise they must
+be free States. But the South was bent on creating new slave States
+as fast as the North could create free States: they wanted to make
+Kansas a slave State. Stephen Douglas therefore introduced, in 1854,
+the famous Kansas-Nebraska Bill. It declared that Kansas might be
+slave-holding or free, as the people of the territory should decide.
+
+The result of this Bill was for the first time to unite together a
+strong party in the North in opposition to the Democrats, who were
+allied to the South. This new party called itself Republican. Lincoln
+was a spokesman of their views. They declared, firstly, that Congress,
+which is the Parliament representing all the States which together
+formed the Union, has the right to decide whether slavery shall be
+lawful in any particular State or not, and not the people of that
+State alone. Secondly, they declared that, in the case of Kansas,
+Congress had already, four years ago, decided that Kansas could not
+have slavery, because it lay beyond the line, north of which slavery
+could not exist. Resolutions were passed in many of the Northern
+State Parliaments against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. The Parliament of
+Illinois sent one.
+
+Now it was quite clear to keen-sighted politicians that, while Douglas
+and his party pretended that they wanted to give the people of Kansas
+the choice between owning slaves and not doing so, what they really
+wanted was to force Kansas to have slaves. Those who supported the
+Missouri Congress declared that it was illegal to give Kansas the
+choice however she used it.
+
+Events soon proved that Kansas was not to have any choice at all.
+Kansas had few inhabitants; but the opinion of the people of the State
+was against slavery. Next door to Kansas, however, on the east, was the
+slave-holding State of Missouri. From Missouri bands of armed men came
+into Kansas in order to vote for slavery at the election and to prevent
+the real voters from using their votes against it. Free fighting went
+on in the State. An election was held at which armed men kept away
+those who would have voted for freedom, and a pro-slavery man was
+chosen. But few of the people of Kansas had been allowed to vote. The
+free party met at another place afterwards, and a genuine popular vote
+elected an anti-slavery man. Civil war went on in Kansas for two years.
+
+Now the importance of these events is this. Up till now most people in
+the North had believed that slavery ought to be left alone, because
+it would gradually die out. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the Kansas
+election made it perfectly clear that the South was not going to
+let slavery die out; on the contrary, they wanted to spread it to
+strengthen themselves against the North.
+
+Douglas was member for Chicago, in the north of Illinois. He came
+down to Illinois to win the State to his views, and made a series
+of speeches there. This at once called Lincoln to the fore. He saw
+more clearly, perhaps, than any man in America what the Kansas Bill
+meant. It meant that either North and South must separate, as the
+Abolitionists--that is, the party which held that slavery ought to
+cease to be--and some people in the South hoped; or that the North
+would have to force the South to abandon the attempt to spread slavery.
+He made a series of great speeches in Illinois, in which he made it
+quite clear that Douglas and his followers, and the men of the South,
+might say that they wanted to leave States free to have slavery or not
+as they chose, but what they really desired was to force them to have
+slavery whether they chose or not. “This declared indifference, but, as
+I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but
+hate: I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery
+itself ... I say that no man is good enough to govern another man
+without that man’s consent. Slavery is founded upon the selfishness
+of man’s nature; opposition to it, on his love of justice.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DEFEAT OF THE LITTLE GIANT
+
+
+LINCOLN had worked very hard in Illinois. All this year he was making
+speeches; educating the people of the State; helping them to understand
+the big questions before them; making things clear in his own mind by
+putting them into the clear and simple words that would carry their
+importance to the minds of others.
+
+A great meeting was held, summoned by the editors of the newspapers
+that were against the Kansas Bill; they invited prominent men from
+different parts of the country to come and address them.
+
+Lincoln was among those who went, and his speech was by far the most
+important of all that were delivered there. He had not, indeed,
+intended to say anything; but he was roused by the weakness of those
+who did address the meeting. Springing to his feet, he poured out what
+was in his mind, and could not be kept back, in such burning and
+eloquent words that the reporters dropped their pencils and listened
+spellbound. The whole audience was carried away by excitement: it was
+one of the greatest speeches that Lincoln ever made, we are told by
+all who heard it, but there is no record of it. Lincoln himself spoke
+in a transport of enthusiasm: the words came, how he hardly knew; he
+could not afterwards write down what he had said. The reporters were so
+deeply moved that they only took down a sentence here and there. The
+speech was a warning to the growing Republican party: sentences were
+quoted and remembered.
+
+The North was indeed beginning to awaken to the need of uniting against
+slavery; but it took four years before it fully awoke. And as long as
+the North was divided the South was irresistible. When the presidential
+election came, in 1856, the votes of the South carried the day.
+
+[Illustration: Springing to his feet, he poured out what was in his
+mind]
+
+Had a strong man, with definite and wise views, been elected, had
+Lincoln been elected, the war between North and South that came four
+years later might have been prevented. But Lincoln’s fame had not
+yet travelled far beyond Illinois; he was not even nominated. Mr.
+Buchanan, the new President, called himself a Democrat: he believed
+in Douglas’s policy of State rights; but he was a tool in the hands
+of the South. Weak and undecided, his stupid administration made war
+inevitable. He did not satisfy the South; and he showed the North how
+great a danger they were in, so that when the next election came they
+were ready to act.
+
+The Republican party gradually grew strong. More and more Northern
+voters came to see that its policy, no extension of slavery, was the
+only right one. The pro-slavery party in Kansas continued to behave in
+the most violent way; civil war continued.
+
+In Congress, Charles Sumner made a number of eloquent speeches on what
+he called the “crime against Kansas”; and in them he openly attacked
+slavery. One day, as he was sitting in the members’ reading-room, a
+Southern member called Brookes came in. Although there were several
+other people in the room, Brookes fell upon Sumner, and with his
+heavy walking-stick, which was weighted with lead at the end, beat
+him within an inch of his life. For the next four years Sumner was an
+invalid, and unable to take part in politics. This incident caused
+great indignation in the North; their indignation was heightened by the
+attempt to force slavery on Kansas, till it grew in very many cases to
+a real hatred of slavery itself.
+
+But there was still a large party in the North which did not disapprove
+of slavery. This party was led, of course, by Douglas. Douglas had
+been successful up till now, because he represented the ordinary man
+of the North, whose conscience was not yet awake, who did not see that
+slavery, in itself, was wrong. Lincoln had never really succeeded until
+now, because his conscience had always been awake, and the ordinary
+Northerner was not ready to follow him.
+
+The whole question of slavery was brought under discussion in the next
+year--1857--by the famous case of a negro called Dred Scott. Dred
+Scott claimed his freedom before the United States courts, because his
+master, a doctor, had taken him to live in the free State of Illinois.
+The chief-justice--Taney--was an extreme pro-slavery man. He was not
+satisfied with deciding the case against Dred Scott; he went much
+further, and declared that since a negro is property and not a person
+in the legal sense, he could not bring a case before an American
+court. A negro, he declared, has no rights which a white man is bound
+to respect.
+
+The South, of course, was delighted with this verdict. What it meant
+was this. When the Declaration of Independence declared that all men
+are equal, and possess right to life and liberty, what was intended was
+not all men, but all white men, since black men are not legally men.
+And yet free negroes had fought in the War of Independence, and signed
+the Declaration.
+
+To the North such reasoning was hateful. People like Mr. Seward of New
+York began to say, If slavery is part of the Constitution of America,
+there is a law that is higher than the Constitution--the moral law.
+Abraham Lincoln in a noble speech declared: “In some respects the black
+woman is certainly not my equal, but in her natural right to eat the
+bread she earns with her own hands she is my equal, and the equal of
+all others.” The point was, could a negro have rights? The Dred Scott
+decision declared “no,” the South shouted “no.” The Republican party
+said “yes.” In this same year a free election at last took place in
+Kansas; and a huge majority decided that the State should not hold
+slaves.
+
+All these events showed that troublous times were coming.
+
+In the next year a set of speeches was made which showed people how
+things stood. In 1858 Lincoln stood against Douglas as candidate for
+the State of Illinois. Douglas was one of the most famous and popular
+men then living in America. He was far the cleverest man and the best
+speaker of his party; he stood for all those who, though they might not
+want to have slaves themselves, thought that slavery was not wrong;
+that black men were intended by a kind Providence to be useful to white
+men. If any State wanted slaves, let them have them--why not?
+
+As Lincoln said, “Douglas is so put up by nature, that a lash upon his
+back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else’s back does not hurt
+him.”
+
+Those who did not know Lincoln thought it absurd that he, an unknown
+man from the country, should dare to stand against Douglas, the “Little
+Giant.” But Lincoln was not afraid; he did not think of himself; he
+wanted people to hear what he had to say. He arranged with Douglas
+that they should hold a number of meetings together in Illinois. They
+arranged it in this way. At half the meetings Douglas spoke first
+for an hour; then Lincoln replied, speaking for an hour and a half,
+and Douglas answered him in half-an-hour’s speech. At the other half,
+Lincoln began and Douglas followed, Lincoln ending.
+
+You can imagine one of these meetings. A large hall, roughly built for
+the most part, the seats often made of planks laid on top of unhewn
+logs, packed with two or three thousand people, intensely eager to hear
+and learn. Some of them were already followers of Douglas, the most
+popular man in America: all of them had heard of the “Little Giant,”
+the cleverest speaker in the States. Immense cheering as Douglas rose
+to his feet. A small man with a big head: a handsome face with quickly
+moving, keen, dark eyes; faultlessly dressed. A well-bred gentleman,
+secure of himself--a lawyer with all his art at the end of his tongue:
+able to persuade any one that black was white, to wrap up anything
+in so many charming words that only the cleverest could see when one
+statement did not follow from another, when an argument was not a
+proof: quick to see and stab the weak points in any one else. A voice
+rich and mellow, various and well trained, pleased all who heard it.
+
+For an hour he spoke, amid complete silence, only broken by outbursts
+of applause. When he ended, there were deafening cheers--then a pause,
+and “Lincoln,” “Lincoln,” from all parts of the hall.
+
+Lincoln seemed an awkward countryman beside the senator. His tall body
+seemed too big for the platform, and his ill-fitting black clothes
+hung loosely upon it, as if they had been made for some one else. When
+he began to speak his voice was harsh and shrill. His huge hands,
+the hands of a labourer, with the big knuckles and red, ugly wrists,
+got knotted together as if nothing could unfix them. Soon, however,
+he became absorbed in what he was saying; he ceased to be nervous;
+everything seemed to change. As he forgot himself, his body seemed
+to expand and straighten itself, so that every one else looked small
+and mean beside him; his voice became deep and clear, reaching to the
+farthest end of the hall, and his face, that had appeared ugly, was lit
+up with an inner light that made it more than beautiful. The deep grey
+eyes seemed to each man in the hall to be looking at him and piercing
+his soul. The language was so simple that the most ignorant man in the
+hall could follow it and understand. Everything was clear. There was
+no hiding under fine words; nothing was left out, nothing unnecessary
+was said. No one could doubt what Lincoln meant; and he was not going
+to let any one doubt what Douglas meant.
+
+The greatest debate of all was that at the meeting at Freeport. At
+Freeport Lincoln asked Douglas a question, against the advice of all
+his friends. He asked whether, if a State wanted not to have slavery,
+it could so decide? Lincoln knew that if Douglas said “No. A state
+which had slavery must keep it,” the people of Illinois would not vote
+for him, and he would lose this election. If he said “yes” he would be
+elected, and not Lincoln. Lincoln knew this; he knew that if Douglas
+said “yes,” he was safe, and he would say “yes.”
+
+“Where do you come in, then?” his friends asked him. “Why do you ask
+him this? If you do, Douglas is sure to get in. You are ruining your
+own chances.”
+
+“I do not come in anywhere,” said Lincoln; “but that does not matter.
+What does matter is this. If Douglas says ‘yes,’ as he will, he will
+get into the Senate now; but two years after this he will stand for
+election as President. If he says ‘yes’ now, the South will vote
+against him then, and he will not be elected. He must not be elected.
+No one who believes in spreading slavery must be elected. It does not
+matter about me.”
+
+Lincoln was quite right. He saw further than any one else. Douglas said
+“yes,” and he was elected for Illinois. But the Democratic party in
+the South, whose support had made him strong, began to distrust him.
+“Douglas,” said Lincoln, “is followed by a crowd of blind men; I want
+to make some of these blind men see.”
+
+Lincoln was defeated, but he did not think of himself. His speeches
+against Douglas were printed and read all over America. He was invited
+to speak in Ohio; and in the next year, in the beginning of 1860, a
+society in New York asked him to come and give them an address on
+politics.
+
+A huge audience, in which were all the best known and most brilliant
+men of the day, gathered to hear him; an audience very much unlike any
+that he had addressed before. They were all anxious to see what he
+was like--this backwoodsman and farm-labourer, who had met the great
+Stephen Arnold Douglas and proved a match for him in argument; whose
+speeches had been printed to express the views of a whole party.
+
+His appearance was strange and impressive. When he stood up his height
+was astonishing, because his legs were very long, and when sitting he
+did not appear tall. His face, thin and marked by deep lines, was very
+sad. A mass of black hair was pushed back from his high forehead: his
+eyebrows were black too, and stood out in his pale face: his dark-grey
+eyes were set deep in his head. The mouth could smile, but now it was
+stern and sad. The face was unlike other faces: when he spoke it was
+beautiful, for he felt everything he said. Abraham Lincoln was a common
+man: he had had no advantages of birth, of training: he had known
+extreme poverty: for years he had struggled without success in mean and
+small occupations: he had no knowledge but what he had taught himself.
+But no one who heard him speak could think him common.
+
+Speaking now to an audience in which were the cleverest people in New
+York, people who had read everything and seen everything and been
+everywhere, who had had every opportunity that he had not, he impressed
+them as much as he had impressed the people of Illinois. He was one of
+the greatest orators that ever lived. His words went straight to the
+people to whom they were spoken. What he said was as straightforward
+and as certain as a sum in arithmetic, as easy to follow: and behind
+it all you felt that the man believed every word of what he said, and
+spoke because he must. The truth was in him.
+
+Lincoln’s address in New York convinced the Republican party that here
+was the man they wanted.
+
+In 1860 there came the presidential election, always the most important
+event in American politics; this year more important than ever before.
+
+For the last half-century almost the Democratic party had been in
+power. They had been strong because they were united: they united the
+people of the South and those people in the North who thought that it
+was waste of time to discuss slavery, since slavery was part of the
+Constitution. Their policy on slavery had been to leave it alone. As
+long as they did this there was nothing to create another party in
+the North strong enough to oppose them. But when Douglas, in order to
+make his own position strong in the South, made slavery practical
+politics by bringing in a bill to allow Kansas to have slaves; and when
+the judges in the Dred Scott case roused sympathy with the negroes by
+declaring that slaves were not men but property, then the question
+united the divided North into a strong Republican party in which all
+were agreed. There was to be no slavery north of Mason and Dixon’s
+line. The attempt to force slavery on Kansas split the Democratic
+party. One section was led by Douglas, who had gone as far as he could:
+he was not ready to force Kansas to have slaves, if she did not want
+them, because people from Missouri wanted her to have them. He saw
+that to force slavery on the North in this way would mean division
+and war, and therefore he refused to go any further. By this refusal
+Douglas lost his supporters in the South. They joined the section led
+by Jefferson Davis--the Southern candidate for the presidentship.
+
+Jefferson Davis was the true leader of the South. Douglas as well as
+Lincoln had begun life as the child of a poor pioneer: each had risen
+by his own abilities and by constant hard work. Jefferson Davis was a
+true aristocrat. He was the son of rich and educated parents. All his
+life he had been waited on by slaves and surrounded by every comfort.
+While Lincoln was ploughing or hewing wood, while Douglas was working
+hard at the bar, Davis went first to the university at Kentucky and
+then to the military academy at West Point, from which he passed to the
+army. He served as a lieutenant at the time of the Black Hawk war, and
+it is very likely that he came across Lincoln, who was serving as a
+volunteer. After serving seven years in the army he married and settled
+down as a cotton planter in Mississippi. His estates were worked by
+slaves, of course. To him the negro was an animal, quite different from
+the white man, meant by nature to be under him and to serve him. Black
+men, unlike white, did not exist for themselves, with the equal right
+to live possessed by a man, an insect, or a tree, but had been created
+solely to be useful to white men.
+
+No two men could be more unlike than Lincoln and Davis. The groundwork
+of Davis’ nature was an intense pride. A friend described him as “as
+ambitious as Lucifer and as cold as a lizard.” He was cold in manner
+and seldom laughed. Lincoln was entirely humble-minded, full of
+passionate longing to help the weak. To Lincoln what was common was
+therefore precious. Jefferson Davis said the minority, and not the
+majority, ought to rule. And their looks were as unlike as their minds.
+Jefferson Davis, with his beautiful proud face, as cold and as handsome
+as a statue, expressed the utter contempt and scorn of the aristocrat
+for everything and every one beneath him.
+
+When the Democratic party met at Charleston to nominate their candidate
+for the presidentship, they were hopelessly divided. Douglas’s Freeport
+speech had set the South against him. For the last four years there
+had been a growing section which said that, as long as the South was
+fastened to the North, slavery was not safe. Now seven states, led by
+South Carolina, left the Democratic meeting and nominated Davis as
+their candidate.
+
+The Republican party met at Chicago. There was only one man strong,
+reasonable, and sane enough for every section of the party to accept.
+This was Abraham Lincoln. At the time of his nomination, Lincoln was
+playing barnball with his children in the field behind his house. When
+told that he had been chosen, he said, “You must be able to find some
+better man than me.” But he was ready to take up the difficult task.
+He knew that he could serve his country, and he was not afraid. He
+had a clear ideal before him--to preserve America as one united whole.
+He saw that war might come. As he had said, five years before, America
+could not endure for ever half slave and half free--it must be all
+free: and the South would not let slavery go without war.
+
+The election came in November. The result was that Lincoln was elected
+President. For four years the destiny of his country was in his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE NEW PRESIDENT AND SECESSION
+
+
+LINCOLN’S election was a thunderbolt to the South. It meant that the
+great question of slavery would have to be decided one way or another.
+Lincoln was a man who had opinions, and opinions in which he believed,
+for which he would fight; he would not let things drift as Buchanan
+did. Buchanan’s policy would have ended in allowing the South to
+separate itself from the North; the Southern politicians knew this, and
+they wanted Buchanan’s policy carried on, so as to make that separation
+possible.
+
+Few men in the North, although many in the South, understood as
+clearly as Lincoln did the position of affairs. He saw that the time
+had come when active measures must be taken, a strong and decided
+policy maintained, if the Union was to be held together. He was a true
+patriot. He believed in the Union; he thought it a great and glorious
+thing. That North and South should be separated was to him like
+separating husband and wife; their strength and happiness lay in each
+other; they had grown together for eighty-four years; if they parted
+now, each must lose something it could never regain. He loved his
+country. He loved the South as well as the North. He believed that if
+the South tried to separate, the North would be justified, in the true
+interests of the American nation, in compelling her to remain.
+
+The great problem was now, as he saw: Could America hold together as
+one nation, half slave and half free? Could the Union be a real Union
+while there was this deep division, a division which it was now clear
+could not be got rid of, as the Northerners had hoped for so long, by
+the slow passage of time? Time alone would not induce the South to
+give up slavery. Slavery was a barbarous institution, degrading to the
+slaves and to those who owned them; the North could not accept it. If
+North and South were to hold together slavery must go. The great thing
+was to keep North and South united. This and this only was Lincoln’s
+great purpose. He hated slavery, but he would not have compelled
+the South to give up slavery if he had believed that the Union could
+have been maintained without that. North and South must hold together
+whatever it cost; only so could each part of the nation, and the nation
+as a whole, attain the best that was possible for it.
+
+Lincoln’s great difficulty was this. The South saw that the nation
+could not hold together for ever half slave and half free. Two years
+before Lincoln’s election, one of the members for South Carolina had
+written what was afterwards known as the Scarlet Letter. In it he
+declared, “We can make a revolution in the cotton States,” and there
+were many, even at that time, who shared his views. The South saw that,
+if they were to remain united to the North, slavery must go, and they
+were ready to separate from the North in order to keep slavery.
+
+But, while the South understood the position, the North did not. It did
+not understand it fully at the time of Lincoln’s election, or, indeed,
+until the end of the second year of the war. And because they did not
+understand they could not appreciate Lincoln’s policy, or support it
+as they ought to have done. All the time they criticised, blamed, and
+abused him, making his hard task harder.
+
+Not until after his death did all the Northerners see how great and how
+right he had been. Not until his death did Americans realise that had
+it not been for Lincoln the United States might have ceased to be.
+
+Lincoln’s speeches had been plain and outspoken enough; the South was
+terrified by his election. They resolved on separation.
+
+Lincoln, though elected in November 1860, did not actually become
+President until February 1861. During these three months he remained
+in the plain, yellow house at Springfield, his little office crowded
+every day with visitors who came to consult him, to advise him, or
+often merely to shake his hand. “Honest old Abe,” as they called him,
+had a joke or a kindly word for all of them. He was presented with
+many quaint gifts. An old woman came one day, and, after shaking
+hands with Lincoln, produced from under her huge cloak a vast pair of
+knitted stockings for the President to wear in winter. Lincoln thanked
+her graciously and led her out; then returning, he lifted up the
+stockings, and showing the enormous feet, said to his secretary, “The
+old lady seems to have guessed the latitude and longitude about right!”
+
+Lincoln spent the time reading and writing, drawing up memoranda,
+choosing his Cabinet, learning the difficult ins and outs of the new
+work before him. All these months he was thinking hard. His purpose was
+already clear: but the presidentship, always a heavy burden, had never
+been so heavy as it was to be for Lincoln.
+
+Things grew more serious every day. The weakness of Buchanan, who had
+no plan or purpose, allowed the South to do as it chose. The only
+chance of avoiding war lay in firm action now; but it was not in
+Buchanan’s nature to be firm. He had been made President by the votes
+of the South because he was not firm, because he would allow them to do
+as they chose. They dreaded Lincoln because he was firm, and therefore
+acted while there was yet time.
+
+On December 20, 1860, the chief men of South Carolina met together
+and declared the Union to be dissolved. Posters appeared all over the
+State: the South was in a state of feverish excitement. Within the
+month the States of Missouri, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
+and Texas--the chief cotton-growing, slave-owning States--also declared
+themselves to be separated from the Union; and these six States
+joined with South Carolina to form what they called the Southern
+Confederation, independent of the North. They chose for their first
+President Jefferson Davis.
+
+Buchanan did not know what to do. The question was: Has a State any
+right to leave the Union? America, of course, is a Federation: at the
+time of the Declaration of Independence the thirteen States that then
+existed joined themselves together for ever, and created a common
+Federal Government for common purposes, with a President at its head.
+Lincoln would have said one State has no more right to leave the others
+than an English county has to declare that it is a separate kingdom,
+not bound by the common law. Buchanan said “no,” too; but he also said,
+if a State does leave, the Federal Government has no right to force it
+to stay: which meant a standstill. “You ought not to want to go; but if
+you do, we have no right to prevent you.” Buchanan’s one idea, indeed,
+was to let things drift.
+
+There was one great and immediate difficulty. In each of the coast
+States of the Union the Federal Government had armed forts: in South
+Carolina there were two important ones, Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter,
+with a small garrison in each, commanded by Major Anderson. South
+Carolina demanded that the garrisons should be withdrawn. Now to
+withdraw the garrisons and abandon the forts was to admit that South
+Carolina had a right to leave the Union, and to recognise the Southern
+Confederation as independent of the Federal Government. To maintain
+the forts more forces must be sent. Anderson wrote to say that he was
+not strong enough to hold out against an attack. Buchanan did nothing.
+Anderson, believing that an attack was going to be made on Fort
+Moultrie, which he was too weak to defend, removed all his men to Fort
+Sumter. The militia of South Carolina at once occupied Fort Moultrie.
+
+In the second week of the new year, 1861, a Government vessel, the
+_Star of the West_, sailed into the harbour of Charleston to bring
+provisions for Anderson. The _South Carolina_, having attacked the
+_Star of the West_, fired on the United States flag which it carried,
+and drove it out of the harbour. The Confederate Government, led by
+Jefferson Davis, then demanded that Fort Sumter should be given up to
+them. When Anderson refused, it was blockaded by much superior forces,
+and by the 12th of April it was taken by General Beauregard.
+
+Under these circumstances, when war was at hand, when half the nation
+was ready to take up arms against the other half, Lincoln took up
+the burden of office. It was a burden, indeed, which no ordinary man
+could have borne. Buchanan had simply looked on while rebellion was
+preparing itself; for Lincoln was the task of quelling it. But the fact
+of rebellion was not his greatest difficulty. This was the disunion of
+the North. One section--the Abolitionists--rejoiced at the secession of
+the South. “We shall no more be chained to the slave-owners.” Another
+section thought that, if the South wanted to go, why not let them.
+
+There was as yet only a very small section able to agree with Lincoln.
+Lincoln hated slavery but not slave-owners. He loved the South as much
+as the North. It was agony to him to know his country divided against
+itself. Well might he say, in the speech he made on leaving his old
+home at Springfield for ever, “There is a task before me greater than
+that which rested upon Washington.”
+
+It was very natural that men who had not known Lincoln should fear to
+have the fate of their country at so critical a time entrusted to a
+man of so small experience. But any one who knew Lincoln felt absolute
+confidence in him. Years of difficulty and disappointment, of constant
+struggle against every kind of obstacle, had made him what he was:
+clear-eyed to see where the right was; steadfast and unflinching to
+pursue it; tender-hearted and generous to sympathise with all those who
+stumbled on the way.
+
+Few people, indeed, understood him. In the years to come nearly all at
+one time or another abused him and distrusted him, and blamed him when
+things went wrong. For four years he bore the whole burden of a great
+responsibility; patiently and silently he endured disappointment and
+reproach. In the end he could say that if Washington had made America
+one, he had remade it so that it could never again be unmade.
+
+The speech he made when he entered on his duties as President showed
+how little bitterness there was in his heart towards the South. He
+said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
+passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection.
+The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
+patriot grave to every heart and hearthstone all over this broad land,
+will yet swell the chorus of the Union when touched, as surely they
+will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
+
+The attack on Sumter and its fall made war inevitable. Lincoln was no
+Buchanan. War was horrible; civil war--war between men of the same
+country, between friends, often between relations--most horrible of
+all. But he could not, at whatever cost, allow the Union, for which his
+countrymen had fought so heroically eighty-four years ago, which had
+stood so long for such a high ideal of freedom all over the world--he
+could not allow the Union to be destroyed without fighting to preserve
+it. To him the secession of the Southern States meant something as
+unnatural as a separate kingdom in Scotland would be to us, and a
+kingdom based on something which we thought wholly wrong.
+
+“The question is,” he said, “whether in a free Government the minority
+have a right to break it up whenever they choose.” He declared that
+they had no such right. The whole population of the slave-holding
+States was much smaller than that of the free States, and among those
+States, while seven had seceded, eight remained at least nominally in
+the Union; and even in the seceding States themselves, there was a
+party in each that was ready to remain faithful to the Union, and not
+prepared to take up arms against it.
+
+They wanted war: their attack on Fort Sumter was a call to arms. They
+wanted war: they should have it. In the long run the North was bound to
+win: its population was half as great again, and its resources as much
+superior.
+
+Almost the first act of Lincoln’s Government was to call for 75,000
+volunteers.
+
+The attack upon Sumter and Lincoln’s call to arms roused the North
+from its apathy. Excitement grew when the 7th Massachusetts regiment,
+passing through Baltimore on its way to headquarters, was violently
+attacked by the mob: when the Southern army, already in the field,
+captured Harper’s Ferry and seized the Union arsenal at Gosport.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE WAR
+
+
+WAR began in Virginia. West Virginia was free, East Virginia
+slave-holding; the State was the natural meeting-place for the two
+armies. On the 21st July they met at Bull Run: the engagement could
+hardly be called a battle--on neither side was there any order or
+discipline. More than once during the day the Southern army seemed to
+be beaten, but it rallied, and the Federalists, as the Union soldiers
+were called, broke into a disgraceful retreat, which became an awful
+panic. The fugitives poured into Washington, haggard and dust-stained:
+everything seemed lost. Lincoln did not go to bed all night; he paced
+up and down in his room, expecting that the victorious Confederate army
+would march upon Washington, and the war be at an end. It did not come.
+The opportunity was lost. A battle had been gained; that was all.
+
+The moral effect of the battle of Bull Run was very great indeed. The
+South thought the war was over, the North saw that it had only begun.
+
+At first, the Confederates seemed to have great advantages. The army
+was the one profession for a Southern gentleman; nearly all their
+young men were trained at the military academy at West Point, and
+a great many of the officers of the United States army had been
+Southerners. These men now left the Union army and gave their services
+to the Confederates; among them was General Robert Lee, who became
+General-in-Chief of the Confederate army. Lincoln’s difficulties were
+greatly increased by the fact that so many officers and men went over
+to the Confederates. At the beginning, the South had a larger and
+better-trained army in the field; and at first there were plenty of
+volunteers. But after Bull Run, she thought the war was finished; and
+events proved that, in a long war, the North must win by reason of her
+greater staying power.
+
+The South was as enthusiastic as the North, and at the beginning better
+prepared, but not equal in resources of any sort. The South was
+entirely dependent on agriculture; all the necessaries of life came
+from the North and from Europe. Whereas the South had to import all her
+ammunition, the North had powder-magazines of her own, and a people of
+mechanics. And the Confederacy was soon to find that men are useless
+without arms. Great sufferings were endured, wonderful invention and
+patience was shown, on both sides there was great heroism; but in the
+end the resources of the North decided the day.
+
+Lincoln threw all his energy into the task of getting ready an army,
+and in a short time the Northern soldier was as well trained and
+equipped as the Southern.
+
+The battle of Bull Run roused the North: quickened by shame, the people
+were ready to fight to the bitter end. For the next two years, however,
+they were disheartened by continual disaster: army after army was
+destroyed, position after position lost: gloom descended on the nation.
+In the dark times of defeat men turned upon Lincoln and blamed him for
+everything.
+
+His position was difficult indeed. As head of the State, he was also
+commander of the army; but he had to entrust the actual management of
+the campaigns to others. He followed and understood their tactics, but
+was too wise to try to direct their movements. Only occasionally did
+he offer advice--wise advice, which his generals were not always wise
+enough to accept. At first the generals were not men of great ability.
+M’Clellan, the commander, drilled his army in a wonderful way, but
+never used it to any effect. In the Virginian campaign of 1861 and 1862
+he threw away numberless opportunities. His place was taken by Burnside
+at the end of 1862; but not until the rise of Ulysses S. Grant did
+Lincoln discover a really great commander. The generals quarrelled with
+one another, and all were ready to complain of the President. Lincoln’s
+difficulties were increased by the fact that many people, when they
+found that the North was not going to conquer immediately, said that
+the war was a mistake: the South ought to be allowed to go if it wanted
+to. Lincoln did not think it right to let the South go: and because to
+keep it was proving difficult, was never to him a reason for ceasing to
+do what he saw to be right.
+
+The newspapers abused Lincoln because the war, instead of being
+finished in three months, seemed likely to last for years. For long
+his own Cabinet was hardly loyal to him: each member thought he could
+manage affairs better himself. Seward, who was Chief Secretary,
+thought Lincoln stupid, and was anxious to arrange everything; but as
+experience of his chief taught him he became Lincoln’s devoted admirer.
+Chase the Treasurer plotted against him: Stanton the War Secretary
+openly declared that “things would go all right but for the imbecile at
+the head.” Stanton had no sense of humour, and an ungovernable temper.
+He did not understand Lincoln at all for a long time: his jokes puzzled
+and annoyed him, and he used to jump up and down with rage. He did
+not see that to a man of a deeply melancholy nature like Lincoln, a
+dreamer and something of a poet, some outlet, some way of escaping from
+himself, was necessary. Lincoln was marvellously patient with Stanton,
+and won his deep affection. The Cabinet might criticise; but Lincoln’s
+firm will dominated them all. The policy of the Government was the
+President’s policy.
+
+No quality is so hard to appreciate, until it succeeds, as patience;
+and for two years Lincoln was patient, and few understood.
+
+England and France were inclined to recognise the Confederacy. The
+English point of view was not one which reflected any glory on the
+nation. Lord Palmerston said, “We do not like slavery, but we want
+cotton.” And a poem in _Punch_ expressed the general point of view,
+against which only a few Englishmen protested--
+
+  “Though with the North we sympathise,
+    It must not be forgotten
+  That with the South we’ve stronger ties,
+    Which are composed of cotton,
+  Whereof our imports mount unto
+    A sum of many figures;
+  And where would be our calico
+    But for the toil of niggers?”
+
+France agreed with England. Under such circumstances there was a great
+danger that, unless the North proved itself able to cope with the
+Rebellion, England or France might send help to the Confederates. For
+two years the North did not prove this; for two years it seemed, except
+to the very far-seeing, almost certain that the South would win.
+
+The Northern plan of campaign was to attack and close round the
+Confederacy: to do this it was necessary to cross the Potomac river,
+and clear away the Southern armies that blockaded it. The Potomac was
+the centre of operations, while fighting went on constantly in Virginia
+and Missouri. Everything went against the North.
+
+On the 9th of August a desperate encounter took place at Wilson’s
+Creek, at which the Union army lost nearly two thousand men, including
+prisoners, and large supplies of arms and ammunition. In September the
+Confederates won a victory at Lexington, and in October the Federal
+troops were defeated at Ball’s Bluff.
+
+Lincoln’s plan was gradually to shut the South in, driving it behind
+its own boundaries by means of the armies invading from north and
+west, and blockading the ports from the sea. So far the first half
+of the plan was not successful. But the Civil War was won to a very
+large extent by the Northern navy. By blockading the Southern ports
+it prevented the South from getting supplies from Europe; and since
+the South depended for supplies of every sort from abroad, it was in a
+desperate position when cut off from the sea.
+
+More fortunate on sea than on land, Lincoln found in David Farragut
+an admiral almost as great as Nelson. Farragut was a Southerner by
+birth, but he had served for fifty years in the United States navy, and
+refused to desert it now. Patriotism to him meant devotion not to the
+pride but to the best interests of his country, and he thought that
+North and South could only attain their best interests when united.
+In April the Northern army suffered a severe defeat on land at the
+battle of Shiloh--the most disastrous yet experienced; but the news
+was balanced by the tidings of Farragut’s capture of New Orleans. The
+fighting in the harbour was tremendous.
+
+“Don’t flinch from that fire, boys,” cried the admiral; “there is a
+hotter fire for those who don’t do their duty!”
+
+Inspired by his example, his men did not flinch, and the town was
+captured. The North needed all the encouragement such naval victory
+could give it, for things were going very badly. Stonewall Jackson,
+the Southern commander, carried everything before him in Virginia.
+Washington was in danger; there was a panic in the capital. Jackson,
+however, did not want to attack Washington. His plan was to compel
+M’Clellan, who was slowly moving south to attack the Confederate
+capital at Richmond, to turn north again.
+
+There was fighting all through June; Jackson had been joined by Lee,
+the Confederate Commander-in-Chief. On the 1st of July a battle was
+fought at Malvern Hill. Lee and Jackson were defeated. M’Clellan ought
+now to have pushed on to Richmond, the Confederate capital, instead of
+which, with extraordinary stupidity, he continued to retreat.
+
+In August, the second battle of Bull Run resulted in another victory
+for the South. Both sides lost an extraordinary number of men. The
+panic in Washington grew more acute when, early in September, Lee
+prepared to invade Maryland. M’Clellan again delayed when he ought to
+have forced an engagement. The people of Maryland received the Southern
+army very coldly. On the 17th the armies met at Antietam. The battle
+was not really decisive; the losses of the North were as great as those
+of the South; but it put an end to their invasion. Lee recrossed the
+Potomac River to Virginia. M’Clellan again wasted time. He waited six
+weeks before pursuing Lee. In November M’Clellan was at last superseded.
+
+Events had gradually led Lincoln to see the necessity of taking one
+great step--the freeing of the slaves. The question of slavery was at
+the bottom of the war; it was the great division between North and
+South. Two reasons led Lincoln to take this step now. One was that
+he knew the negroes when free would fight, for the most part, for
+the North; and the North needed every help she could find. The other
+was the great difficulty of knowing what to do with the negro slaves
+which fell into the hands of the conquerors of any part of Southern
+territory. On the 22nd of September, very soon after the news of the
+battle of Antietam and Lee’s retreat from Maryland had arrived, Lincoln
+called a meeting of his Cabinet. None of them knew why he had summoned
+them.
+
+They found the President reading Artemus Ward; one story amused him
+so much that he read it aloud. They all laughed a great deal except
+Stanton, who could never see a joke, and did not understand that
+Lincoln must have broken down altogether under the fearful strain
+of all he had to bear, if he had not been able sometimes to forget
+himself. When he had finished reading the story, the President’s face
+grew grave again. He drew from his pocket a large sheet of foolscap,
+covered with his straight, regular writing, and read it to the Cabinet.
+
+It was the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that, after
+January 1st of the coming year, all slaves were to be free; that
+Government would pay some compensation to loyal owners. No one dared
+oppose Lincoln when his mind was made up. His reason for introducing
+Emancipation now was, that he thought it would help the cause of Union,
+and that cause was to him sacred beyond everything. “As long as I am
+President,” he said later, “this war shall be carried on for the sole
+purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this
+rebellion without the use of the Emancipation policy.”
+
+[Illustration: Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his
+Cabinet]
+
+His first object in everything was to hold the American nation together
+as one whole. But, at the same time, he detested slavery as much as
+any man. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” An opportunity
+had now come when to strike a blow at slavery was to assist the Union
+cause. By freeing the blacks, Lincoln provided the North with a new
+resource, at the time when the South had nowhere to turn to for fresh
+resources. By declaring the abolition of slavery an unchangeable part
+of the Union, which the South must accept before peace could be made,
+he won the sympathy of Europe for the North, and prevented it from
+sending help to the South at a time when such help would have changed
+the balance of affairs.
+
+Up till now both England and France had shown themselves ready to
+sympathise with the South. English newspapers abused Lincoln and the
+North in the most violent language. In the English dockyards vessels
+had been built and equipped which were used by the South as privateers
+to do great damage to the Northern navy. One of these was the famous
+_Alabama_. But when the war was a war against slavery, English feeling
+was all on the side of the North.
+
+The United States was made a really free country: slavery, which had
+made such a name a mockery, was wiped off the statute book.
+
+Lincoln showed rare judgment and courage in doing what he did at
+this time. At first a large section in the North was opposed to
+Emancipation, but gradually all united in admiring the wisdom of
+Lincoln’s action. The South knew that if they were conquered slavery
+was gone. And however black things might look, Lincoln and the North
+were not going to give in till they did conquer. They had set their
+teeth; they were going to fight to the bitter end.
+
+M’Clellan had been dismissed, but his successors were not much more
+successful. In December Burnside threw away thousands of lives in an
+attempt to scale Mary’s Heights. Men were shot down in heaps by the
+enemy, and the army fell into a panic; a battle against overwhelming
+odds ended in a complete defeat. Lincoln’s heart bled for the loss of
+so many splendid citizens: there was deep indignation in Washington,
+much of it vented against the President.
+
+The darkest moment of the war came when, in May, the news of the battle
+of Chancellorsville reached the Government. Hooker met Jackson: a long
+and fearfully bloody battle followed. There were dreadful losses on
+both sides: another valuable opportunity of pressing south was lost.
+In the battle “Stonewall” Jackson was killed, shot accidentally by his
+own men; a disastrous loss to the Southern side, though the North was
+defeated.
+
+All hope seemed gone from the North.
+
+Up till now the North had lost more than the South. It had suffered
+most of all from a lack of really able commanders. Now, however,
+Lincoln discovered a really great general in Ulysses S. Grant, and from
+this time on the fortune of the war began to change.
+
+The North was richer: it had more men, money, and resources to draw on;
+in a long struggle the South was bound to be worn out. Grant saw this
+and planned accordingly. Grant had distinguished himself early in the
+war by the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, on the Mississippi,
+in February 1862; in the following April he had driven the Confederates
+back to Corinth after one of the most expensive battles of the war.
+Grant was a man of the most reckless personal courage; as a general
+his great fault was that he exposed his men needlessly. Complaints were
+early made of him to Lincoln; but Lincoln’s wonderful eye discerned a
+great soldier in Grant. “I can’t spare that man; he fights.” Later he
+was told that Grant drank. “Pray tell me what brand of whisky he takes,
+that I may send a barrel to each of my other generals.”
+
+Lincoln and Grant always understood each other. Each was a man of
+intense strength of character, given to doing things rather than
+talking of them. Grant had not Lincoln’s tenderness of heart, or
+the beauty of his pure and generous nature; but he had his power of
+concentrating his whole mind upon the task in hand. He knew Lincoln’s
+secret: “Work, work, is the main thing.”
+
+The battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863, was for the North the darkest
+moment of the war; things were never so dark again. Only Lincoln’s
+supreme faith and courage could have risen from such a series of
+defeats unshaken. The newspapers were full of abuse of the President;
+plots were on foot against him to prevent his re-election when the
+time came. In February he had lost his son Willie after a long and
+painful illness. But he never quailed.
+
+And his patience was at last to be rewarded. After Chancellorsville his
+unflinching belief in the justice of his course, in spite of opposition
+and discontent, was to be rewarded: he was to look, if only for a
+moment, upon an America not only free but united.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+VICTORY
+
+
+AFTER Chancellorsville the South thought that all was won, and a
+movement was set on foot to attack Washington. Lee marched north with
+an army that, though only half fed, was full of enthusiasm, and on
+July 1 took up his position at Gettysburg, where he was faced by the
+Federal army under General Meade. The battle lasted three days, and the
+slaughter was terrific; in spite of the desperate determination of the
+Confederates, the day ended in a victory for the Union.
+
+Lee was driven back, and forced to retreat into Virginia. The invasion
+was at an end. The victory, though brilliant, was not followed up,
+perhaps because of the heavy losses of the Union army; but it was the
+turning-point of the war. Washington was never again in such danger;
+the Confederates had lost the one great opportunity of attack since
+Bull Run.
+
+Deep national thankfulness was felt at this, the first great victory
+for the North. The battlefield was only a few miles from the capital,
+and many of the citizens and the most prominent men of the town
+assembled to perform a service for the dead who had fallen there.
+Lincoln was called upon to speak. He had not prepared anything, but
+the short speech which he gave made a deep impression upon all who
+heard it, and puts into very noble words the thoughts that were always
+present to his mind.
+
+“Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth a new
+nation upon this continent, conceived in liberty and dedicated to
+the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged
+in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
+conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We meet to dedicate a
+portion of it as a final resting-place of those who here gave their
+lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
+that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we
+cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living
+and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power
+to add or detract. The world will take little note, nor long remember,
+what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is
+for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
+that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to
+be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us: that from
+these honoured dead we take increased devotion for the cause for which
+they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly
+resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation
+shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government
+of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from
+the earth.”
+
+In words like these, Lincoln inspired the people of the North to see
+the greatness of the cause for which they were fighting; they were
+fighting for liberty, for a free government of free men, for a United
+America that might be to the world a pattern of such a free government.
+If the South won, if America were a house divided for ever against
+itself, one half would have slavery; if the North won, and America
+were a whole again, slavery was gone; the Declaration of Independence,
+proclaiming the equal rights of all men to life and liberty, would be
+for the first time fully realised.
+
+And encouragement came at last. On the Fourth of July, on Independence
+Day, Grant telegraphed to Lincoln the news of the capture of Vicksburg.
+In the beginning of May Grant had defeated Pemberton, the Confederate
+general, and shut him up in the town with his great army. After an
+unsuccessful assault in the end of May, he sat down patiently before
+the town, prepared to wear out its resistance. After great sufferings,
+the famishing garrison surrendered; Pemberton and 30,000 men, whom the
+South could but ill spare, were prisoners of war. Hundreds of cannon
+and thousands of muskets fell into the victor’s hands. Vicksburg was a
+position of importance, the key to the Mississippi. Lincoln could now
+say, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”
+
+The joy in the North over these two victories was intense. The drooping
+spirits began to rise again; and as things went better, men turned
+with new confidence to the patient man whose courage had never failed
+him. With renewed spirit the North set itself to the great task before
+it.
+
+Lincoln now had men who were able to carry out great designs. By the
+end of 1863 things looked hopeful. The army had a nucleus of veterans
+who had received the best possible training, and a set of generals
+whose positions had been won not by political influence, but by hard
+work. Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan were men of ability, experience, and
+power.
+
+[Illustration: Lincoln discussing the plan of campaign with General
+Grant]
+
+The plan of campaign for 1864, drawn up, under Lincoln’s advice, by
+Grant and Sherman, was masterly; carried out magnificently, it led to
+the complete triumph of the North. It was the complete development of
+Lincoln’s earlier plans. Grant, with the army of the west, was to face
+Lee in Virginia and drive him south; finally, to capture Richmond, the
+Confederate headquarters, and force Lee to yield. Sherman, marching
+south and east, was to carry the war into the heart of the Confederacy;
+to follow General Johnson, push him to the sea, and capture him.
+“We intend,” said Sherman, “to fight Joseph Johnson till he is
+satisfied.” Then Sherman, marching north, was to co-operate with
+Grant by cutting off Lee’s retreat. Meantime Sheridan was to deal with
+General Early in the Shenandoah valley, west and south of Washington.
+
+By May 1864 Grant crossed the Potomac and entered the wild district,
+full of hills and woods and undergrowth, known as the Wilderness, where
+the Union armies had suffered so many defeats. Grant saw that the only
+thing was to wear the Southern army out by hard fighting; and he fought
+hard all summer. He lost some thirty thousand men in the Wilderness.
+His policy was to bear so continuously on the enemy that they, having
+fewer men, and less possibility of recruiting, must be worn out.
+Slowly, with an immense loss of life on both sides, Grant forced Lee
+south.
+
+Sherman meantime was fighting his way to Georgia. His task was as
+difficult as Grant’s. The country was wild, and well adapted for
+concealing the enemy. It was impossible for him to communicate with the
+rest of the army.
+
+After an expedition into Alabama, Sherman started on his “March to the
+Sea.” Johnson disputed every inch of the way. There was incessant
+skirmishing, but Sherman advanced step by step.
+
+While Sherman and Grant were thus slowly wearing down the resistance of
+the enemy, the Unionists were once more encouraged by a brilliant naval
+success. In August Farragut came victorious out of a terrific fight
+in Mobile Bay. Entering the harbour in spite of the line of mines, he
+“plucked victory out of the very jaws of defeat.”
+
+Sherman was now besieging Atlanta, which he captured on September
+1. About the same date Sheridan defeated Early at Winchester in the
+Shenandoah Valley.
+
+These successes decided the presidential election. Lincoln had been
+unanimously nominated as the Republican candidate, “not,” as he said,
+“because they have decided I am the greatest or best man in America,
+but rather they have concluded that it is not wise to swop horses while
+crossing a river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor
+a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swop.”
+Against him the Democratic party, whose main principle was opposition
+to the war, supported ex-General M’Clellan, declaring “the war is
+a failure.” The Democrats found their main supporters among those
+(and they were fairly numerous) who disliked Lincoln’s Emancipation
+proclamation.
+
+Lincoln made no efforts to secure his re-election. He had been before
+the nation as President for four years: his policy was tried, his
+opinions known. Even M’Clellan did not dare to propose to abandon the
+Union. On that point the North was now united, and that being so the
+successes of September made Lincoln’s re-election practically certain.
+Out of 233 electoral votes Lincoln received 212; he had a majority in
+every free State save one. The election was a complete triumph for the
+President.
+
+The noble words of the address which he delivered on taking up his
+duties for a second time mark the spirit in which he celebrated that
+triumph. “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 that may achieve and cherish a just and lasting
+peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
+
+On November 16 Sherman marched on by Atlanta. By December he had
+reached Savannah and began to bombard the city. It surrendered on
+December 21, and Sherman wrote to Lincoln: “I beg to present to you,
+as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.” Leaving Savannah early in
+the New Year, 1865, the army marched, ravaging, through South Carolina.
+Columbia was burned and Charleston captured. By March, Sherman was in
+North Carolina and in communication with Grant. The net was ready to be
+drawn round the Confederate army.
+
+Grant meantime was bearing steadily on. The losses of the Union armies
+were enormous, and made the President’s tender heart bleed. Grant
+began to be hampered by the inferior quality of his troops, and during
+the summer months matters seemed to be going ill with the North. In
+September, however, Sheridan inflicted a series of defeats upon Early
+in the Shenandoah Valley, and on October 18 vanquished him decisively
+at Cedar Creek.
+
+The remaining Confederate army, under Hood, was defeated at Nashville
+in the West, and now Lee’s was the only army in the field. The
+Confederacy was “surrounded by a band of fire.” The sea was in the
+hands of the Union; the Mississippi shut off any help from the coast.
+Sherman had harried Georgia and Carolina, destroying their supplies;
+Sheridan had raided Virginia; Grant was at the gates of Richmond.
+
+Through the whole summer of 1864 and the winter of 1865 Grant besieged
+Richmond. There were indecisive engagements, but the armies did no
+more than “feel” each other. With the spring, however, Grant took the
+offensive again. On March 31 Sheridan gained a brilliant victory at
+Five Forks, and this enabled Grant to break Lee’s lines. On April 3 the
+Stars and Stripes floated over Richmond. On April 9 Lee and his army
+surrendered to Grant at Appomatox.
+
+The war was at an end.
+
+Lincoln had been with Grant’s army during the closing days of March;
+he entered Richmond on April 3. Everywhere the negroes saluted him as
+their liberator, kneeling on the ground before him and clasping his
+knees: “May de Lawd bress and keep you, Massa Presidum Linkum.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+“O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!”
+
+
+NO one had suffered more deeply during the war than the President. His
+purpose never faltered. Even at the moment when success seemed farthest
+distant, his resolve stood firm; cost what it might the Union must be
+preserved. When almost every other man despaired of the Northern cause,
+Lincoln’s invincible faith in the right and justice of their purpose
+sustained his country.
+
+To attain that purpose thousands of lives had to be sacrificed; but the
+purpose was worth the loss of thousands of lives. Yet Lincoln’s heart
+bled for every one of them.
+
+[Illustration: Lincoln visited all the divisions of his army in turn]
+
+All day long he received visits from distracted relations, mothers
+and wives asking him to pardon their sons or husbands in prison
+as deserters or captured from the enemy; asking for tidings of their
+beloved ones at the front. His generals complained that he undermined
+the discipline of the army by pardoning what he called his “leg”
+cases--cases where men had run away before the enemy. “If Almighty God
+gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away
+with him?” said Lincoln.
+
+The story of William Scott is a case which shows the way in which
+Lincoln used to act. William Scott was a young boy from a Northern
+farm, who, after marching for forty-eight hours without sleep, offered
+to stand on guard duty for a sick comrade. Worn out, he fell asleep,
+and was condemned to be shot for being asleep on duty in face of the
+enemy. Lincoln made it his custom to visit all the divisions of his
+army in turns, and, as it happened, two days before the execution he
+was with the division in which Willie Scott was, and heard of the
+case. He went to see the boy, and talked to him about his home and his
+mother. As he was leaving the prison tent he put his hands on the lad’s
+shoulders, and said--
+
+“My boy, you are not going to be shot to-morrow.... I am going to trust
+you and send you back to your regiment. But I have been put to a great
+deal of trouble on your account. I have come here from Washington,
+where I had a great deal to do. Now, what I want to know is, how are
+you going to pay my bill?”
+
+Willie did not know what to say: perhaps he could get his friends to
+help him, he said at last.
+
+“No,” said Lincoln, “friends cannot pay it; only one man in the world
+can pay it, and that is William Scott. If from this day on William
+Scott does his duty, my bill is paid.”
+
+William Scott never forgot these words. Just before his death in one of
+the later battles of the war, he asked his comrades to tell President
+Lincoln that he had never forgotten what he had said.
+
+All the time, people who did not know the President threw on his
+shoulders all the blame for the long continuance of the war. Until
+the last year of the war, the newspapers abused him continually. The
+horrible loss of life in Grant’s last campaign was laid to his charge.
+Only those who came to the President to ask his help in their own
+suffering, understood what his suffering was; he suffered with each of
+them--he suffered with the South as well as the North. After Antietam,
+he had said, “I shall not live to see the end; this war is killing me.”
+The crushing burden he had borne so long and patiently had bent even
+his strong shoulders.
+
+But it had not been borne in vain. The time seemed at last to have come
+when all America would understand how much they owed to the patient
+endurance of the President. And there was work still to be done which
+needed all his wisdom. The South was conquered. It had to be made one
+with the North. The pride of the conquerors had to be curbed, the
+bitterness of the conquered softened.
+
+Lincoln returned from Richmond to Washington, in his heart the profound
+resolve “to bind up the nation’s wounds” as he, and only he, could do
+it.
+
+April 14 was Good Friday, and a day of deep thankfulness in the North.
+In the morning Lincoln held a Cabinet meeting, at which General Grant
+was present. The question of reconstruction, of making one whole
+out of the divided halves, was discussed. Some of the Cabinet were
+anxious to wreak vengeance on the South, to execute the leaders of the
+rebellion. Such was not Lincoln’s view.
+
+“Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments
+if we expect harmony and union.”
+
+His noble patriotism could still say to the South, “We are not enemies,
+but friends.” His life was now even more precious to the South than to
+the North.
+
+After the Cabinet meeting, Lincoln spent some time in talking with his
+son Robert, who had returned from the field with General Grant, under
+whom he had served as a captain. In the afternoon he went for a drive
+with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood was calm and happy: for the first time for
+four years he could look forward peacefully to the future, and to the
+great tasks still before him.
+
+In the evening he went to the theatre with his wife and two young
+friends: the play was “Our American Cousin.” The President was fond of
+the theatre--it was one of his few recreations: his appearance on this
+night was something of a public ceremony; therefore, although he was
+tired when evening came, he went because he knew that many people would
+be disappointed if he did not. The President had a box to the left of
+the stage. Suddenly, about the middle of the last act, a man appeared
+at the back of the box, a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other,
+put the pistol to the President’s head and fired; then wounding Major
+Rathbone, the only other man in the box, with his knife, he vaulted on
+to the stage. As he leapt his spur caught the flag hanging from the
+box and he fell, breaking his leg. Nevertheless he rose instantly, and
+brandishing his knife and crying, “_Sic semper tyrannis!_”--“The South
+is avenged!” fled across the stage and out of sight.
+
+The horrified audience was thunderstruck. The President lay quite
+still: the bullet had passed right through his head. The wound was
+mortal. He was carried to a house across the street, where he lay,
+quite unconscious, till the morning, surrounded by his friends,
+their faces as pale and haggard as his own. About seven, “a look of
+unspeakable peace came upon his worn features.” Stanton, the War
+Secretary, rose from his knees by his side, saying, “Now he belongs to
+the ages.”
+
+There was profound sorrow through the whole of America; sorrow that
+checked all rejoicings over the victory of the North. Thus, indirectly,
+Lincoln’s death helped the reconciliation between North and South,
+though nothing could counterbalance the loss of his wise guidance.
+
+Washington was shrouded in black: even the poorest inhabitants showing
+their sorrow in their dress. The body was taken to Springfield,
+Illinois, to be buried; and all the towns on the way showed their deep
+mourning and respect. Now, and not till now, did Americans begin to
+understand what a man they had lost.
+
+  “He knew to bide his time,
+    And can his fame abide,
+  Still patient in his simple faith sublime
+    Till the wise years decide.
+  Great captains with their guns and drums
+    Disturb our judgment for the hour,
+  But at last silence comes:
+    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.”
+
+So James Russell Lowell wrote of Lincoln when the celebration of
+Independence Day in the year of his death revived the vivid sense of
+loss.
+
+The passage of years have only made clearer how great he was. Perfectly
+simple, perfectly sincere, he thought out for himself an ideal, and
+spent the whole of his life and all his strength in pursuing it.
+
+He loved America, not because it was powerful and strong, but because
+it had been based on a great idea--the idea of liberty: his work for
+America was to realise that idea. He never thought of his own personal
+success: he wanted to be President because he saw a great work to be
+done and believed that he could do it. He never became rich: his own
+tastes remained entirely simple. He was said to have worn the same
+top-hat all his life.
+
+The first thing that struck any one about Lincoln was his extraordinary
+appearance. He always dressed in black, with a big black tie, very
+often untied, or in the wrong place: his clothes looked as if they had
+been made to fit some one else, and had never been new. His feet were
+enormous; so were his hands, covered on state occasions with white kid
+gloves.
+
+In cold weather he used to wear a large grey shawl instead of an
+overcoat. One day, before he was made President, some friends were
+discussing Lincoln and Douglas, and comparing their heights. When
+Lincoln came into the room some one asked him, “How long ought a man’s
+legs to be?”
+
+“Long enough to reach from his body to the ground,” said Lincoln coolly.
+
+Lincoln might look uncouth or even grotesque, but he did not look weak:
+he was the most striking figure wherever he went. No one who saw him
+often, no one who went to him in trouble, or to ask his advice, thought
+long of his appearance. Those who had once felt the sympathy of his
+wonderful, sad eyes, thought of that only. Those who really knew him,
+knew him to be the best man they had ever met.
+
+Lincoln was often profoundly sad, and then suddenly boisterously gay.
+He enjoyed a joke or a funny story immensely: he often used to shock
+thoughtless people by telling some comic story on what they thought
+an unsuitable occasion; but he told it so well that however much they
+might disapprove they were generally forced to laugh.
+
+Always rather a dreamer, he was fond of poetry. He knew long passages
+of Shakespeare by heart, especially Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III.
+The Bible he had known from his childhood; of Burns he was very fond.
+
+Lincoln’s rise to power, as even so short an account as this will
+have shown you, was not due to any extraordinary good fortune or any
+advantages at start. He taught himself all that he knew; he made
+himself what he was.
+
+It was his character more than anything else that made him great. His
+early struggles had taught him that self-reliance which enabled him to
+persevere in a course which he thought right in spite of opposition,
+disloyalty, and abuse; they taught him the toleration which made him
+slow to judge others, generous to praise them, little apt to expect
+them to understand or praise him. He stood alone.
+
+Not till he had gone did his people realise how much he had given
+them; how much they had lost in him. He gave them, indeed, the most
+priceless gift a patriot can give his country--the example of sincere,
+devoted, and unselfish service.
+
+                                THE END
+
+                  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+                          Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
+
+Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph have been moved to
+avoid interrupting the paragraph flow.
+
+On page 65, “yes,” has been changed to ‘yes,’ to conform to standard
+usage.
+
+All other variant spellings, punctuation and hyphenation have been left
+as typeset.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF ABRAHAM
+LINCOLN ***
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+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The story of Abraham Lincoln, by Mary A. Hamilton</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The story of Abraham Lincoln</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>The children&#039;s heroes series</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mary A. Hamilton</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: John Lang</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: S. T. Dadd</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 29, 2022 [eBook #68423]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was created from images of public domain material made available by the University of Toronto Libraries.)</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter adblock">
+<p class="no-indent">THE CHILDREN’S HEROES SERIES</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Edited by John Lang</span></p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="ph2 center no-indent"><span class="smaller">THE STORY OF</span><br />
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 626px;">
+<img src="images/i_map.jpg" width="626" alt="Map of Southern United States" /></div></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="Frontispiece"><img src="images/i_frontispiece.jpg" width="400" alt="For the first time he saw negroes being scourged" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">For the first time he saw negroes being scourged</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<h1><span class="smaller">THE STORY OF</span><br />
+ABRAHAM<br />
+LINCOLN</h1>
+
+<p class="center p4b no-indent">BY MARY A. HAMILTON<br />
+WITH PICTURES BY S. T. DADD</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 180px;">
+<img src="images/i_logo.jpg" width="180" alt="Publishers Logo"  /></div>
+
+<p class="center no-indent p4">LONDON: T. C. &amp; E. C. JACK<br />
+NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON &amp; CO.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent">TO<br />
+MARGOT</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class=" ph2 nobreak">O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">But O heart! heart! heart!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">O the bleeding drops of red,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">Where on the deck my Captain lies,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent14">Fallen cold and dead.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Rise up&mdash;for you the flag is flung&mdash;for you the bugle trills,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths&mdash;for you the shores a-crowding:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">Here Captain! dear father!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">This arm beneath your head!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">It is some dream that on the deck</div>
+    <div class="verse indent14">You’ve fallen cold and dead.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">But I with mournful tread</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">Walk the deck; my Captain lies,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent14">Fallen cold and dead.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right no-indent">&mdash;<i>Walt Whitman.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="nobreak ph2">CONTENTS</p></div>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr><td class="tdc"><small>Chapter</small></td>
+<td>&#160;</td>
+<td class="tdl"><small>Page</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Boyhood</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl">The Young Backwoodsman</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Slavery</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Lincoln the Lawyer</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Defeat of the Little Giant</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">VI.</td>
+<td class="tdl">The New President and Secession</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">VII.</td>
+<td class="tdl">The War</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Victory</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdch">IX.</td>
+<td class="tdl">“O Captain! My Captain!”</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2 nobreak">LIST OF PICTURES</p></div>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" summary="LIST OF PICTURES">
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">“For the first time he saw negroes being<br />
+<span class="hang">scourged”</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#Frontispiece"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">“The bullet passed right through his heart”</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo1">6</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">“Sometimes he did sums on the wooden shovel”</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo2">14</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">“His huge arms closed round Armstrong like a<br />
+<span class="hang">vice”</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo3">24</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">“Springing to his feet, he poured out what was in<br />
+<span class="hang">his mind”</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo4">58</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">Lincoln reading Emancipation Proclamation to his<br />
+<span class="hang">Cabinet</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo5">94</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">Lincoln discussing plan of campaign with General<br />
+<span class="hang">Grant</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo6">104</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tdl">“Lincoln visited all the divisions of his army in<br />
+<span class="hang">turns”</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdbr"><a href="#illo7">110</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<p class="ph1 nobreak">THE STORY OF<br />
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN</p></div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
+<span class="smaller">BOYHOOD</span></h2>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">I</span>n</span> this little book I am going to try to tell
+you something about Abraham Lincoln.
+There is far more to say about him than can
+be fitted into so small a space; and perhaps
+when you are older you will read about
+him for yourselves, and read his wonderful
+speeches.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest names in American history are
+those of George Washington and Abraham
+Lincoln. These two men are great in the
+true sense of the word; they are great because
+they loved their country, purely and
+passionately, better than themselves, and
+gave their lives to its service. They thought
+nothing of their own honour and glory: to
+the last they were simple and true. Americans<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>
+may well be proud of two such patriots;
+and from them every one may be glad to learn
+what real greatness means. Their work has
+made America what it is.</p>
+
+<p>Less than forty years before Abraham
+Lincoln was born, America belonged to England.
+In the time of Charles I., numbers of
+people who loved freedom and hated the
+wrongful government of the king left their
+country and sailed to the New World.
+Samuel Lincoln was one of these men.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time they were few in number.
+The greatest part of the country was unknown
+forest, inhabited by wild beasts, or
+vast plains which belonged to fierce tribes of
+Red Indians. Life for the early settlers was
+very hard and rough. They had to cut down
+trees to build their houses, and to kill wild
+animals to get their food. Nevertheless they
+soon grew to love the country where they
+lived, where they married and brought up
+their children; and their wild open life made
+freedom more precious to them than anything
+else. They began to resent the action
+of the English Government, which wanted to
+tax them to pay for wars which were agreed
+upon in the Parliament in London, where
+America had no voice to speak for her. On
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>July 4, 1776, in the reign of George III., the
+chief citizens met together and declared that
+America was a free united country, with a
+right to govern itself. The 4th of July&mdash;“Independence
+Day”&mdash;is the greatest day of
+all in America.</p>
+
+<p>For seven years there was war. In this
+war Abraham’s great-grandfather, John Lincoln,
+served as a soldier. The Americans
+were led by George Washington.</p>
+
+<p>England was defeated, and America&mdash;the
+United States of America&mdash;was a free
+country. From this time on, America belonged
+to the Americans. But a great many
+years had to pass before they made of the
+country the America that we know. Now
+there are towns everywhere: you can get
+from one end to the other of the great
+country, far bigger than the whole of Europe,
+by trains that travel day and night from
+north to south and east to west. Then
+there were very few towns, most of them
+along the coast, and no railways. All the
+west was unknown.</p>
+
+<p>After the war was over, bands of explorers
+set out to fight the Indians and to find new
+homes for themselves. And Abraham Lincoln’s
+grandfather, after whom he was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>named, was one of the first of these explorers.
+He sold his little piece of land in
+Virginia, and tramped through the forests
+till he found a place to build a new home,
+carrying his youngest son Thomas on one
+shoulder, and with his loaded rifle in his
+other hand ready to shoot any Indian who
+should attack him. In Kentucky some
+white men had already settled and built a
+small fort; near it Lincoln cut down trees
+and built a hut for himself and his wife and
+his three sons to live in.</p>
+
+<p>When Abraham was a small boy he used
+to listen to the stories which his father
+Thomas told of their life there in the constant
+fear of Indian attack. There was one
+story which Thomas told very often, the
+story of his father’s death.</p>
+
+<p>He was at work cutting down the trees,
+so as to clear an open space near the house
+which he could plough and then sow with
+seed.</p>
+
+<p>One morning he set out as usual with his
+three boys. They were talking together as
+they walked, and none of them saw that
+behind one of the trees an Indian was
+hiding, his dark skin strangely painted
+with arrows and circles in white and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>scarlet, and on his head a tuft of black
+feathers standing upright and waving as
+he moved. In his hand he had a gun. As
+soon as the father had passed, the Indian
+came out from behind the tree, moving
+without making any sound. He shot
+at Abraham from behind, and the bullet
+passed right through his heart. The father
+fell down dead before the eyes of his sons.
+They were terrified. The two eldest ran
+off, one to the house and the other to the
+fort, to bring help. Thomas, the youngest,
+was only six. He could not run so fast
+as his brothers, and he was too much
+frightened to try. He stood still beside his
+father’s body, not understanding what had
+happened. His eldest brother, Mordecai,
+made all speed to the house. As soon as
+he reached it he took down a gun, loaded
+it, and jumped up to the window so that
+he might shoot at the Indian out of it. As
+he looked out he saw the Indian walk up to
+the place where the dead body lay, look
+at it for a moment, then pick up little
+Thomas, put him under his arm, and turn
+to walk away with him. Mordecai felt his
+heart stand still with fear; but he was a
+brave boy, and his father had taught him
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>how to shoot at a long distance. He
+aimed straight at the white star painted on
+the Indian’s naked chest. There was an
+awful moment. Then the Indian fell back
+dead upon the ground, dropping the child
+from his arms. Thomas ran to the house
+as fast as his legs would carry him, screaming
+with fear, for now several other Indians
+began to appear from the wood. Mordecai
+fired again and again at them from the
+house; and people came from the fort,
+brought by his brother, and drove the
+Indians away.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">Mordecai, when he grew up, spent his life
+in waging war upon the Indians, killing
+them wherever he met them. Thomas was
+neither so strong nor so clever as his
+brother. He became a carpenter, but he
+was never a very good carpenter. He was
+not very good at anything but sitting by
+the fire telling stories. He did that very
+well indeed, and people generally were
+fond of him; but he was not a successful
+person. He had none of his son’s wonderful
+power of work; he always wanted to
+do something else, not the thing before
+him, and live somewhere else, not settle
+down to work where he was.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo1"><img src="images/i_007.jpg" width="400" alt="The bullet passed right through his heart" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">The bullet passed right through his heart</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">He built himself a log-cabin at Elizabethtown,
+on the edge of the forest, and when
+he was twenty-eight he got married and
+took his wife to live there.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that all great men have had
+great mothers. Nancy Hanks had much
+more character than her husband, and her
+son was much more like her. She had a
+very sweet, unselfish nature, and every one
+loved her. She had had more education than
+her husband, and could read and write: she
+taught him to sign his name.</p>
+
+<p>After their first child came&mdash;a daughter
+called Sarah&mdash;Thomas Lincoln, who always
+thought he could make a fortune somewhere
+else, moved farther west to a place
+called Nolin’s Creek. The place was not
+at all attractive, but it was cheap. The
+soil was hard; it was rocky and barren,
+and nothing but weeds seemed to grow in
+it. Only a very energetic man could have
+made much out of it, and Thomas was not
+very energetic. They were very poor.</p>
+
+<p>It was here, in an uncomfortable log-cabin,
+that his son Abraham was born, on the 12th
+of February 1809; and here he lived until
+he was seven.</p>
+
+<p>The hut had only one room. It was very
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>roughly built. Stout logs had been laid on
+top of one another, then bound together
+with twigs, and the holes filled up with
+clay and grass and handfuls of dead leaves.
+There was no ceiling, only the log roof.</p>
+
+<p>The two children climbed up a shaky ladder
+to a loft in the roof, where they slept on
+a bed of dry leaves, covered with an old deerskin,
+lying close together to keep themselves
+warm. As they lay there, they could count
+the stars that looked in through the spaces
+between the logs that made the roof. The
+windows had no glass; the door was only
+an opening over which a deerskin was hung
+as a curtain. In winter it was terrible. The
+wind blew in, icy cold; there was nothing to
+keep it out, except when sometimes the
+entrance was blocked up with snow, and no
+one could go out or come in until a pathway
+had been dug.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn the house used to be
+full of dead leaves that whirled about in
+the middle of the floor. The only comfort
+in the hut was the huge fire; it filled
+up nearly the whole of one side, and in
+front of it was a great bearskin rug. On
+this the two children spent the days in
+winter, playing together, or leaning against
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>their mother’s knee while she told them
+stories&mdash;fairy tales, or true stories about
+Indians and old American history, or parables
+from the Bible. In the winter you could not
+keep warm anywhere else; and in the
+autumn there were damp fogs that made it
+unwholesome outside, or heavy rains that
+came through the roof; the only thing to
+do was to get as near the fire as possible.
+Above it were ranged all the household pots
+and pans; the meat, a haunch of venison,
+or a couple of rabbits, hung from the roof.
+Cooking was very simple, for there was no
+choice of food: it consisted of game shot in
+the forest, or fish caught in the streams,
+roots and berries from the wood; bread
+was made of flour ground from Indian corn,
+which was the only thing that grew in the
+rough fields. Until he was a grown man
+Abraham had never tasted any other sort
+of bread.</p>
+
+<p>The life was uncomfortable, often dangerous&mdash;for
+an Indian attack was possible at
+any time&mdash;and always the same. No visitors
+came to see the Lincolns; there were few
+friends for them to go and see, only the
+scattered settlers living in huts like their
+own.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+<p>Abraham very soon learnt to make himself
+useful. He would cut and bring
+home wood for the fire; help his mother
+in the house, or his father out-of-doors.
+In summer he spent long hours roaming
+about the woods. He soon learned to
+use a rifle, for it was not safe to go far
+unarmed, and he became a good shot. He
+remembered very little about this time when
+he grew older. One day he had been out
+fishing, and at the end of it he caught a
+single fish. With this he was walking
+home to supper, when he met a soldier.
+His mother had taught him he must always
+be good to soldiers, who fought for their
+country, and therefore the little boy gave
+the soldier his fish.</p>
+
+<p>His father always thought that he should
+be better off somewhere else. He heard that
+across the Ohio River there was rich land
+which any one could have who chose to go
+and take it: so when Abraham was seven,
+and his sister nine, they moved. The father
+built a raft, and put his family and all
+the goods he had, after selling his house, on
+to it, and they sailed down the river, getting
+food on the way by shooting and fishing,
+till they came to a place they liked called
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>Little Pigeon Creek. It was simply an opening
+in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Here they disembarked, and for a year
+they lived in a roughly built shelter, without
+a floor or doors or windows, while the
+father and his son built a better cabin, and
+cut down trees and shrubs to clear a place
+for planting corn. When it was finished,
+Abraham’s aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs.
+Sparrow, and two cousins, John and Denis
+Hanks, came to live with them. The three
+boys were great friends, and they worked
+together on the farm until they all grew
+up.</p>
+
+<p>Abe, as they called him, was a very tall
+boy for his age: his long legs were always
+in his way, and they seemed to get longer
+every day. He never wore stockings until
+he was a young man, but moccasins, such as
+the Indians wear&mdash;shoes of leather, with a
+fringe round the top&mdash;and long deerskin
+leggings; a deerskin shirt which his mother
+had made him, and a cap which was seldom
+on his head, it being covered enough
+by his thick black hair. His hair was never
+tidy; always in his eyes, and having to be
+pushed back. Abe was clever with his axe,
+and a good workman; his mother had taught
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>him to spell, but there was little chance of
+learning in Pigeon’s Creek.</p>
+
+<p>For a year the little family lived there
+very happily; then a mysterious sickness
+broke out in the place, no one knew why
+or how to cure it. They called it the milk
+sickness; many people fell ill of it, and hardly
+any one recovered. Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow
+both died of it in the autumn, and a few
+days afterwards Mrs. Lincoln sickened and
+died too. To her children this was a terrible
+grief. Abraham, though a boy when she
+died, never forgot his mother: she had
+taught him his first lessons, and from her
+came that sweetness of nature, that power
+of thinking first of others, that made every one
+who knew him love him. It was at the
+time of his mother’s death that the sadness
+which never left him came upon him. In
+later life, people who really knew him said
+that, in spite of his fun and power of making
+other people laugh, he was the saddest man
+they ever knew.</p>
+
+<p>A dreary winter followed. At the end of
+it Thomas Lincoln brought home a new
+wife to his little cabin. Sally Bush was
+a widow, with three children; she was a
+good and kind woman, and Abe really loved
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>her and she him. She said afterwards that
+he had never all his life given her a cross
+word or look, or refused to do anything she
+asked him; that he was the best boy she
+had ever seen. He was indeed the sunshine
+of the house; but in many ways he was
+very lonely. He was hungry for knowledge,
+for books and teaching. All the schooling
+he ever had was a month now and then
+with a travelling teacher who passed through
+Pigeon’s Creek on his way to somewhere
+else; but none of these teachers knew much
+beyond the three R’s: one who knew Latin
+was regarded as a sort of magician. In all,
+he had not so much as one year at school,
+taught by five different teachers.</p>
+
+<p>But Abe was not the sort of boy to learn
+nothing because there was nobody to teach
+him. He had a few books that had been
+his mother’s, and he read them again and
+again until he knew everything that was
+in them. John Hanks, his cousin, says of
+him: “When Abe and I returned to the house
+from work, he would go to the cupboard,
+snatch a piece of corn-bread, take down a
+book, sit down, cock his legs as high as his
+head, and read.” The Bible and “Pilgrim’s
+Progress,” “Æsop’s Fables,” and “Robinson
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>Crusoe,” these were his books; he knew
+them by heart. In the intervals of work
+he used to tell them to his companions. He
+thought over every word until he understood
+it. In this way he learned more from a few
+books than many people do from whole
+libraries, because he learned to think. He
+questioned everything, and asked himself if
+he thought so too, and why he thought so.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">One day he borrowed the life of George
+Washington from a farmer who lived near;
+as he lay in the loft he read it with eagerness.
+In the middle he was called away to
+work, and in the meantime the rain came
+in and ruined the book. Abraham went in
+despair to the farmer and told him what
+had happened. “Never mind,” said the
+farmer. “You do three days’ work for me
+for nothing and you may keep the book; I
+don’t want it.” To his joy he thus became
+possessed of a new treasure to be studied
+again and again. This book more than
+any other made him a patriot: he longed
+to get out into the great big world where
+he could serve his country. In the evenings
+he used to sit silent for hours, thinking.
+Sometimes he did sums of all sorts on the
+wooden shovel; making figures on it with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>a piece of charcoal. When it was quite full
+he shaved off the top with his knife so as
+to have a clean slate in the morning.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo2"><img src="images/i_014.jpg" width="400" alt="Sometimes he did sums on the wooden shovel" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">Sometimes he did sums on the wooden shovel</p>
+
+<p class="p2">All his companions liked Abe and admired
+him. He worked very hard, but farm work
+did not interest him; he liked dinner and
+play better; and sometimes he used to stop
+work and climb on to a gate or a dead tree-stump,
+and make absurd speeches or comic
+sermons to his companions, or recite passages
+from his favourite books.</p>
+
+<p>They thought him a quaint fellow, with
+some strange ideas. One of these strange
+ideas was his tenderness to animals. He
+never cared much for sport, because it
+seemed to him cruel. He showed his tenderness
+to animals when quite a small boy.
+One day he was playing in the woods with
+a boy called John Davis. In their game
+they ran a hedgehog into a crevice between
+two rocks, and it got caught fast. For two
+hours they tried every sort of plan to get it
+out, but without any success. They were
+not able to pull it out, and it could not move
+itself. Abraham could not bear to leave the
+poor thing to die in pain. He ran off to
+the blacksmith’s shop, quite a quarter of a
+mile away, and borrowed a pole with an iron
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>hook fastened to the end; with this they
+were able to set the little animal free. This
+care for animals was only one sign of Abraham’s
+tenderness of heart. All little children
+and old people trusted him and his word.
+He was very soon known as “Honest
+Abe.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br />
+<span class="smaller">THE YOUNG BACKWOODSMAN</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">F</span>or</span> Abraham life was dull and very
+monotonous: the round of work was
+much the same, summer and winter. He
+longed to escape from the dull work of a
+farm labourer; to go out and see the world.
+Until he was twenty-one, however, he was
+bound to serve his father; and his father
+seems to have had no idea that his son
+was fit for anything better than ordinary
+farm work. Other people nevertheless were
+struck by Abraham.</p>
+
+<p>Until he was nineteen he had not left
+home at all; but then one day a rich landowner
+who lived near came to him. He
+wanted some one to help his son to take
+a raft loaded with different kinds of goods
+down the Ohio River, selling the goods at
+the different places they passed. Abraham
+had struck this Mr. Gentry as being an
+honest and capable lad; he therefore asked
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>him to undertake the voyage, and Abraham
+consented at once, glad of any chance of seeing
+something of life outside the settlement.</p>
+
+<p>He took charge of the raft and steered
+it successfully down the river; the voyage
+took them past the great southern sugar
+plantations, right down to New Orleans.
+They had no adventures of any sort until
+they had almost come to New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>One night they encamped at Baton Rouge,
+a place on the bank of the river. Here they
+fastened their raft, and lay down to sleep
+on it for the night, wrapped up in thick
+blankets. They were both sound asleep.
+Suddenly Abraham started up. He heard
+the sound of many soft footsteps all round
+him. In the darkness, at first, he could see
+nothing; then he became aware that a band
+of negroes was attacking the raft, ready to
+steal their goods and to murder them.
+Abraham’s cry waked up his companion,
+young Allan Gentry, and they threw themselves
+upon the negroes. If Abraham had
+not been uncommonly strong and active
+they must both have lost their lives, for
+the negroes far outnumbered them. He
+seized a huge log of wood, which served
+him as a club, and brandished it in his
+hand. His great height and the unknown
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>weapon which he whirled round his head,
+terrified the negroes. He hit first one and
+then another on the head and threw them
+overboard, Allan Gentry helping. The fight
+was very fierce for a few moments, and then
+the negroes turned and fled. Abraham and
+Allan pursued them a long way into the
+darkness, but the thieves did not dare to
+return, though two men could not have held
+their own for long against such numbers.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage ended successfully, and Abraham
+returned home for two more years.
+At the end of that time his father again
+moved. John Hanks had gone west to
+Illinois; he wrote to his uncle, praising the
+new country, and urging him to come there
+too. Thomas Lincoln was always ready to
+try something new: he sold his farm and
+his land to a neighbour. All the goods of
+the household were packed in a waggon
+drawn by oxen; the family walked beside
+it. They tramped for more than a week
+until they came to the new State; the journey
+was not easy. It was February. The
+forest roads were ankle-deep in mud; the
+prairie a mere swamp, very difficult for walking.
+They had to cross streams that were
+swollen into rivers by the rains.</p>
+
+<p>At last they arrived. John Hanks had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>chosen a plantation for them, and got logs
+ready for building the house. Abraham
+worked very hard, and helped his father and
+John Hanks to make a cabin; then, with his
+own hands, he ploughed fifteen acres of
+ground. When that was done he cut down
+walnut trees, split them, and built a high
+and solid fence which went right round his
+father’s property.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham lived in Illinois until he was
+made President of the United States. Once
+he was addressing a meeting there, years
+after this, and Denis Hanks marched in
+amid the shouts and applause of the crowd,
+carrying on his shoulder a piece of the railing
+that Abraham had made for his father.
+It is now in the Museum at Washington,
+kept as a national treasure. How little
+could Abraham himself or any one who knew
+him at this time, have dreamed that this
+rail-splitter was to be the greatest man in
+America.</p>
+
+<p>The winter that followed was one of the
+most severe ever known in Illinois; it is
+always referred to as the winter of deep
+snow. When spring came at last, Abraham
+said good-bye to his father and mother, and
+went out into the world to make a livelihood
+for himself. His boyish days were over. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>was now twenty-one, and very tall and
+strong for his age. More than six feet four
+inches in height, he seldom met a man taller
+than himself. He is a great exception to
+the saying that all great men have been
+small&mdash;for example, Napoleon, Cæsar, Hannibal,
+Shakespeare. Abraham was very well
+built; it was not till he stood up among
+other men that you realised that he was head
+and shoulders taller than most of them.</p>
+
+<p>In the ordinary sense of the word, he had
+had no education. He knew no language
+but his own, and that not very well at this
+time. When asked could he write, he replied,
+“Well, I guess I could make a few
+rabbit-tracks.” He had taught himself all
+the arithmetic he knew. But he knew two
+things that are the most important that can
+be got from any training: how to think, and
+how to work. When he made clear to himself
+what it was right to do, he did it without
+talking about it, all his life.</p>
+
+<p>His experience in taking Mr. Gentry’s
+cargo down to New Orleans induced a
+merchant called Offutt to offer him another
+job of the same kind. Offutt was an adventurous
+sort of dealer, who did all kinds of
+business. He wanted some one to help him
+who had a head on his shoulders, and he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>soon saw that Lincoln had plenty of sense.
+He therefore engaged him, and Lincoln took
+his cousin, John Hanks, to help him. They
+did not make much money by the voyage,
+but Lincoln showed great skill in managing
+the raft.</p>
+
+<p>On this trip Lincoln came for the first
+time really face to face with slavery. New
+Orleans was a great slave market, and they
+spent some time there. For the first time
+he saw negroes being sold in the open
+streets, chained together in gangs. For the
+first time, too, he saw negroes being beaten;
+fastened to a block and scourged till the
+blood ran from their backs. Every one
+took it all as a matter of course, but Lincoln
+was deeply struck. His heart bled.
+At the time he said nothing, but he was
+silent for a long while afterwards, thinking
+over what he had seen. There and then,
+as his cousin used to tell afterwards, slavery
+ran its iron into him: to see these men
+chained was a torment to him, and he never
+forgot it: the picture was printed on his
+memory never to be forgotten, only to be
+wiped out when there were no more slaves
+in America. He was often in the slave states
+after this; but slavery always seemed to him
+horrible.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<p>Offutt was quite satisfied with the way
+in which the young backwoodsman had
+managed the trip. After his return he
+offered him a post in his grocery store
+at New Salem. He had a kind of half
+shop, half office, with a mill behind it; here
+he sold everything that any one could want
+to buy&mdash;grocery, drapery, stationery, miscellaneous
+goods of all kinds. Lincoln was
+clerk, superintendent of the mill, and general
+assistant.</p>
+
+<p>Offutt soon began to admire his assistant
+immensely. He declared that Lincoln was
+the cleverest fellow he knew&mdash;he could read,
+and talk like a book; he was so strong
+and active that he could beat any one at
+running, jumping, or wrestling. Lincoln
+did not know any one in New Salem, and
+this “wooling and pulling,” as he called
+it, of Offutt’s annoyed him a good deal; as
+he knew, it was not at all likely to make
+people like him. The young fellows of the
+place did not mind his supposed cleverness;
+they knew nothing about that, and cared
+nothing; but they did resent the idea that
+he was stronger than they were.</p>
+
+<p>At first they did nothing: he looked rather
+a dangerous person to attack, and not at all
+likely to take things meekly. Offutt’s loud
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>and continual praise, however, was more
+than they could stand. As Lincoln was on
+his way home one evening a group of the
+strongest fellows in New Salem, the “boys
+of Clary’s Grove,” attacked him. Jock Armstrong,
+the biggest and burliest of them all,
+challenged him to a “wrastle.” Jock was
+not as tall as Lincoln, but he was much
+more solidly built, with huge shoulders like
+an ox and immensely strong arms: no one
+in New Salem had ever been able to throw
+him, and he expected an easy victory over
+this strange clerk.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">But Abe was as strong and as skilful as
+Jock: though he was thin his muscles were
+made of iron; his huge arms closed round
+the burly fellow like a vice. Even when his
+companions came to the champion’s rescue
+Abe was a match for them. Armstrong was a
+sportsman and not ashamed to take a beating:
+he admired a man who was able to throw
+him. After this Lincoln had no stauncher
+friend, and he soon grew to be a person of
+importance in New Salem. His strength
+and his honesty made him respected.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo3"><img src="images/i_024.jpg" width="400" alt="His huge arms closed round Armstrong like a vice" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">His huge arms closed round Armstrong like a vice</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Of his honesty there are numberless
+stories. One evening he was making up
+his accounts for the day. While doing so
+he found that he had charged a woman, who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>had come in in the morning to buy a great
+number of little things, 6-1/4 cents&mdash;that is,
+about 3d.&mdash;too much. Until it was time to
+shut up the shop the money seemed to burn
+in his pocket. It was late when the time
+for locking up came, but he could not wait.
+He started off at once for the woman’s house,
+though it was several miles off, and walked
+there and back in the darkness to pay her
+her 3d. before he went to bed. He knew
+he could not sleep until he had done so.</p>
+
+<p>People trusted him: those who were in
+trouble soon found out how wise and gentle
+he was, and they went to him for advice and
+help. He had a wonderful way of quite
+forgetting himself, and only thinking of
+making other people happy: generally
+silent, he could tell stories so that every
+one laughed. But though he enjoyed talking
+and going to see people, he always
+worked very hard.</p>
+
+<p>And he did not only work in the shop:
+he was always eager to learn more. After
+the day’s task was done, he would walk
+miles to get hold of some book that he
+wanted, and read it on the way home.
+When his cousin, a lazy fellow, wrote to
+ask his advice, he replied: “What is wrong
+with you is your habit of needlessly wasting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>time: go to work; that is the only cure for
+your difficulty.”</p>
+
+<p>When he came to New Salem he met
+people who had been well educated, and
+he was at once struck by the difference
+between their way of speaking and his.
+He resolved to learn to speak correctly.
+One evening he walked to Kirkham and
+back&mdash;it was twelve miles away&mdash;and
+bought a grammar there. For the next
+few weeks he spent all his spare time in
+studying it: he used to sit with his feet
+on the mantelpiece and work for hours
+without moving. In this way he soon knew
+all there was to know about grammar.
+When you read his speeches you will find
+that they are written in English as beautiful
+and simple as that of the Bible, which
+was the book he knew best of all.</p>
+
+<p>He only remained with Offutt for a year.
+Offutt was too fond of talking to make his
+business a success, and he had to give up
+the store. It was Lincoln’s first attempt
+at earning his living, and learning a trade
+did not seem very successful. Instead of
+at once looking for some new work of the
+same sort he enlisted as a soldier. The
+State of Illinois was thrown into a state of
+wild excitement by an attack made at this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>time by a powerful Indian tribe. Black
+Hawk crossed the Mississippi at the head
+of an army of red warriors. To drive them
+back, the Government of the country called
+for volunteers, and Abraham, who was one
+of the first to offer himself, was made
+a captain. The men entered for three
+months, during which they did a great
+deal of skirmishing and marching about,
+but took part in no regular battles. At the
+end of the time most of them went back to
+work. Abraham enlisted again; this time
+as a private in a battalion of scouts. He
+was not present at any battle, but he learnt
+something of war and a good deal of soldiers;
+it was hard work and not much glory. By
+the autumn Black Hawk was captured,
+and the war was at an end. Lincoln’s horse
+had been stolen, and he had to walk back to
+New Salem, a three days’ tramp. His campaigning
+had not been a great success.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned, the elections for members
+of the Illinois Parliament were going
+on, and he offered himself as a candidate;
+spending the ten days between his return
+from the war and the time of election in
+making speeches. In New Salem he was
+popular, but he was not yet well known
+even there; he was young, and had had no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>experience. He was not elected, but he
+made good friends at the election time, and
+he began to be a capital speaker.</p>
+
+<p>Meetings were not very formal in those
+days. One day when Lincoln was addressing
+a large hall full of people, in the middle of
+his speech he saw that a ruffian in the
+crowd was attacking a friend of his; they
+were struggling together, and his friend
+seemed to be having the worst of it. Lincoln
+jumped down from the platform where he
+stood, and marched to the middle of the
+room. He picked up the ruffian in his
+mighty arms and threw him some ten feet,
+so that he fell right outside the hall. There
+he lay, and did not attempt to return. Lincoln
+came back on to the platform and went on with
+his speech, just as if nothing had happened.</p>
+
+<p>After the election he thought of becoming
+a blacksmith. Instead of this, he joined
+with a man called Berry in buying a store.
+Berry was a stupid and not very honest
+man. He got into debt; then he took to
+drinking, and soon afterwards died, leaving
+Lincoln with the business ruined and a lot
+of debts to pay.</p>
+
+<p>After this he did not try storekeeping
+again: he was made postmaster of New
+Salem. This meant very little work: few
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>people wrote letters there: he could carry
+the whole post in his hat, and he read every
+newspaper that came. He now had plenty
+of time for reading, and he read ceaselessly.
+Most of all, he read American history.
+The “Life of Washington” had been his
+earliest treasure; and as a boy he had pored
+over an old copy of the statutes of Indiana.
+This was, perhaps, the beginning of his
+interest in law. Now he was in a town,
+though a small one, and it was possible to
+get hold of books. He used to lie on his
+back under a tree, with his feet high up
+against the trunk, only moving so as to
+keep in the shade, and laying down the book
+now and then to think over what he had read
+and make sure that he understood it.</p>
+
+<p>He studied surveying in this way for six
+weeks, and John Calhoun, the surveyor of the
+county, was so much astonished by his knowledge
+that he made him his assistant. His
+reading in law and history deepened his interest
+in politics: nothing interested him so
+much. He was resolved sooner or later to
+get into Parliament. One failure could not
+make him despair. There was a great world
+outside, and the door into Parliament was
+the door into that world. He was resolved
+to make his way in.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br />
+<span class="smaller">SLAVERY</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">I</span>t</span> would be a great mistake to think
+that Abraham Lincoln won success
+easily.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back over the lives of great men,
+one is apt to think “How fortune helped
+them;” “What astonishing luck they must
+have had;” when one knows the end, it
+seems certain from the beginning. But
+when you know more about any one really
+great man, you are sure to find that he has
+risen only by endless hard work, and by
+knowing from the beginning what he
+wanted to be and do, and thinking only of
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Success is never easy, and for Lincoln
+the path to it was a hard and uphill way.
+You have seen in what difficulties his life
+began; how he taught himself everything
+he learned, and made for himself every
+penny that he possessed. His first effort to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>get into Parliament, like his first efforts to
+make a living, seemed a failure. But this
+did not make him despair. Other people
+had risen, and he was going to rise. He
+was sure of one thing, that there is always
+plenty of room at the top, and he meant to
+reach the top. There is always a place for
+a man of strong purpose, who is honest, and
+who can think for himself. If a man really
+wants to serve his country, nothing need
+prevent him from doing it. And Lincoln
+saw that the first step to serving your
+country well is to be a good workman, a
+good friend, and a good citizen of your own
+town.</p>
+
+<p>When the next election came he stood
+again, and this time he was elected; and
+after his two years of service came to an
+end, he was elected again. For eight
+years he was a member of the Parliament
+of his own State of Illinois; then, after
+four years away from politics, he was
+made member of Congress&mdash;that is, of the
+American Parliament, to which the States
+send representatives.</p>
+
+<p>To be in Parliament was to be in touch
+with the big world; to have a share in
+the settlement of big questions. In the
+Illinois Parliament, Lincoln met a great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>many clever men; men who rose to important
+posts later. Few of them suspected
+that this tall, awkward, country-looking
+young lawyer, who did not speak
+much, but could tell such extraordinarily
+funny stories when he chose, was going to
+rise to be American President, to prove
+himself greater than any American of their
+time. Most of the members were small
+lawyers like himself. They were sent to
+Parliament because they were men in whom
+their fellow-citizens had confidence. They
+were honest men, but few of them had any
+more knowledge of politics than Lincoln
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The State of Illinois was very new, and
+its affairs had not yet become complicated.
+Lincoln soon learnt the ins and outs of
+parliamentary business; and he only found
+one man who was a better speaker than
+himself. This was a man with whom he
+was to have a great deal to do all his
+life; a man already well known in politics,
+and followed by a large party.</p>
+
+<p>His name was Stephen Arnold Douglas.
+He was two years younger than Lincoln;
+like him he had been brought up in the
+rough surroundings of the West, where he
+had gone as a boy. His father was poor,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>but he was a gentleman. Well educated
+himself, he had given his son a good education
+of a sort.</p>
+
+<p>When he was twenty-one Douglas became
+a lawyer. Very soon he became the
+foremost barrister in North Illinois, and
+soon entered the State Parliament. In
+the year of Lincoln’s election he had been
+made Secretary of State; he was therefore
+a person of importance. Douglas was extremely
+clever; as a boy he learnt things
+quickly, and remembered them easily, unlike
+Lincoln, who learnt very slowly; he had a
+wonderful power of speech: he was ready
+and able to speak on any subject, and,
+even if he really knew very little about it, he
+always gave people the impression that he
+knew everything. He used to tell people
+what they wanted to hear, whereas Lincoln
+had a way of speaking the truth
+whether it was pleasant or not.</p>
+
+<p>Douglas was very popular: he understood
+how to rule men, and he was intensely ambitious.
+Ambition was the strongest feeling in
+his heart; and his ambition was for himself:
+he dreamed already of being President of
+the United States. He was a short, thickly-built
+man; but it was the smallness of his
+mind, his selfish aims, that made Lincoln
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>say that Douglas was the least man that
+he had ever met: he seemed to “Honest
+Abe” to care not at all for what he said
+or did, so long as his own success was
+safe; success was his one object.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ambition very different from
+Lincoln’s. Indeed, Lincoln was unlike any
+of the members whom he met: his aims
+were quite different from theirs. He looked
+to a future beyond himself. He did not
+think of his own success. What he wanted
+to attain by success was the power to help
+his country. Patriotism was his first and
+strongest feeling, and his patriotism was of
+the truest kind. He did not want to make
+America great because she ruled over a vast
+extent of territory: such greatness did not
+appeal to him at all. He wanted her to be
+great in the sense that she really lived up
+to the ideal set before her for ever in the
+Declaration of Independence&mdash;the ideal of a
+union of free men governing themselves well.</p>
+
+<p>And Lincoln’s ideals were real to him: in
+every question he was guided by his patriotism.
+He did not mind saying what he
+thought, whether people liked him for it or
+not: they must like him for what he was,
+and not for what he said, and unless they
+loved what was right, their liking was not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>worth having. When, after long thinking,
+he came to see what he thought the truth
+on any subject, he spoke out so that every
+one who heard must understand: he never
+said one thing and meant another, as
+Douglas did: he was as honest in his
+thoughts as in his actions.</p>
+
+<p>Now in American politics there was one
+great question, more important than every
+other, the question of slavery. Cautious
+politicians, men with an eye to their own
+success, thought that this question had better
+be left alone. Really thoughtful men, men
+like Lincoln, saw that this question could
+not be left alone for ever. Some day, and
+the sooner the better, it must be settled.
+Anyhow, it was every honest man’s duty to
+say what he thought. It is difficult now to
+realise quite what slavery meant. Perhaps
+you have read or heard of a book called
+“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It was written about
+this time by an American lady, who wanted
+to make all Americans see what slavery did
+mean&mdash;how terrible it could be.</p>
+
+<p>If you drew a line across America just
+south of Lincoln’s State of Illinois, slavery
+did not exist in the Northern States; it did
+exist in all the Southern States. Whenever
+the question was discussed, most people from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>the North thought it rather a bad thing,
+some thought it a very bad thing; people
+from the South all thought it was a good, or
+at least, a necessary, thing. They all agreed
+as a rule in thinking that, whether it was a
+good thing or a bad thing, there it was, and
+there was no good discussing it.</p>
+
+<p>The real wrong lay far back in the past.
+Centuries ago, merchants had brought
+negroes over from Africa, and sold them
+in America as slaves.</p>
+
+<p>As is always the case, when once the
+wrong had been brought in, when the evil
+had begun, it was almost impossible to get
+rid of it when people had grown used to it.
+When people could buy slaves who did not
+cost very much to do work for them, they
+did not want to do it themselves, especially
+if the work was disagreeable. They began
+to believe that black men were intended by
+nature to do all the disagreeable things.
+English merchants made great fortunes by
+bringing slaves to America; and the English
+Government supported them. And when,
+after the war, America was a free country,
+the Union of States which made it so was
+half composed of States that held slaves.
+These slaves were most valuable property.
+The men who drew up the Constitution,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
+and Alexander Hamilton, declared in it,
+“All men are free and equal: all men possess
+rights, which no one can take away
+from them.” The Northern States gave up
+their slaves, and decided that slavery was
+illegal: the Southern States did not. They
+refused to join the Union unless they were
+allowed to keep their slaves. Now of course
+it was absurd to call a country free where
+slavery existed, or to say that all men have
+rights when millions of black men had no
+rights at all.</p>
+
+<p>To the Southerner a black man was not
+a man, but a piece of property.</p>
+
+<p>But it would not be quite fair to think
+that the Northerners who gave up slaves
+had always more lofty ideas than the Southerners.
+You must remember that slaves
+were much more useful in the South than
+in the North. The climate of the North
+was cold, and the work not of the sort
+that could be well done by untrained
+negroes. In the South it was so hot that
+it was difficult for white men to work, and
+work on the plantations needed no special
+skill.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when the Declaration of
+Independence was drawn up and signed,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>one thing seemed to every American more
+important than anything else: that the
+country should be united in one whole.
+North and South must join together; no
+difference could outweigh a common nationality.
+The Southerners would not join the
+Union unless they were allowed to keep their
+slaves: therefore the Northerners left slavery
+in the South. They hoped, however, that
+it would gradually die out; and therefore
+a law was passed which declared that after
+twenty years no more slaves were to be
+brought from Africa.</p>
+
+<p>When Southerners declared, as they very
+often did, that slaves were very well treated,
+that they were much happier and more
+comfortable than if they were free, this was
+true to a certain extent. Those slaves who
+were employed in the houses and gardens
+of their masters, those who were used as
+servants, were often very well treated. But
+however well they were treated, it is wrong
+for a man to have other men entirely in his
+power; wrong for him, and wrong for them.
+And although some masters did not abuse
+their power, some did&mdash;and all could, if
+ever they wanted to&mdash;without feeling that
+they were doing anything wrong. A white
+gentleman could beat his black slave to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>death if he chose; he would not be punished
+any more than if he beat a dog to
+death, and his friends would still think him
+a gentleman. Moreover, far the greater
+number of the slaves were not used as
+servants, but used as labourers on the
+cotton plantations. Here they were under
+the charge of an overseer. His one idea
+was to get as much work out of them as
+possible. They worked all day, and at
+night were often herded together in any
+sort of shed.</p>
+
+<p>After Eli Whitney, a young American,
+invented a machine called the cotton gin,
+by using which one negro could pick twenty
+times as much cotton in a day as before,
+the business of working the cotton plantations
+with slaves made the Southern landowners
+very rich. Slaves were cheap: in a
+few days they made as much for their
+masters as they cost them, and their masters
+could make them work as hard as they
+liked. They were quite ignorant: their
+masters taught them nothing; they had no
+way of escape; they were absolutely at the
+mercy of the overseer with his whip. The
+masters came to regard these black fellow-beings
+simply as property: not so valuable
+as a horse, rather more useful than a dog;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>they often forgot that they had any feelings.
+Children were sold away from their parents;
+a husband was sent to one plantation, and
+his wife to another. They were sometimes
+beaten for the smallest fault. If they tried
+to escape, bloodhounds were used to hunt
+them down. Dealers led them about in
+chains, and sold them in the public market
+exactly like animals. People who came
+from the North to the South, as Abraham
+Lincoln did, on his trip down the Ohio,
+and saw how the slaves were treated, were
+often shocked; but in the South people
+were used to it.</p>
+
+<p>North of a certain line, slavery did not
+exist. Slaves used sometimes to run away
+from their masters and escape across this
+line; but in every Northern State there was
+a law, that escaped slaves had to be handed
+back to their master if he claimed them.
+The masters used to offer a reward to any
+one who handed back to them the body of
+their slave, alive or dead. This led to all
+sorts of difficulties, because in the Northern
+States a great many free negroes lived.
+Very often some one who was eager for the
+reward would capture an innocent free negro
+and hand him over to the master, declaring
+that he answered to the description of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>missing slave. The question as to whether
+he was, or not, was decided not in the
+Northern State where he had been captured,
+but in the Southern State where the master
+lived, and no Southern court could be trusted
+to decide fairly in a case between a white
+man and a black.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually this injustice roused a small
+party in the North, which openly declared
+that slavery was an abominable thing, and
+ought not to exist in America. The Abolitionists,
+as they called themselves, said that
+it was a disgrace to a free country that
+slavery should exist in it; that as long as
+it did exist, the Declaration of Independence
+had no meaning. Slavery ought to be
+abolished.</p>
+
+<p>When Abraham Lincoln was about twenty-one,
+a paper called <i>The Liberator</i> began to
+appear. It was edited by a great man
+called William Lloyd Garrison. Its object
+was to rouse people to see the evils of slavery,
+and to get it made illegal. The Abolitionists
+were few in number, and very unpopular.
+They had to suffer for their beliefs in the
+North as well as in the South. The offices
+where <i>The Liberator</i> was printed were
+attacked by mobs of furious people, who
+burst in at the doors, broke every pane of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>glass in the windows, destroyed the printing
+press, and threw the type into the river.
+In St. Louis, William Lloyd Garrison was
+dragged round the town with a rope round
+his waist, while crowds of angry people
+hooted and hissed, spat at him, and threw
+rotten eggs and stones at his head. He only
+just escaped death. Many of his followers
+were murdered in the open streets. Even
+in Illinois, an innocent preacher, who had
+sympathised with them, was thrown into the
+river and drowned.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern States were roused to fury.
+In the North, even sensible people who did
+not like slavery thought it very unwise to
+say anything against it. Slavery was a fact&mdash;it
+was no good to discuss it. Several
+Northern States sent petitions to Parliament,
+declaring their opinion that it was very
+unwise to discuss Abolition.</p>
+
+<p>In Illinois, this was the view taken by
+nearly all Lincoln’s friends. Lincoln did not
+agree with them. He thought the Abolitionists
+very often unwise; nothing, he saw,
+could be more dangerous than to rouse the
+feeling of the South: but nothing could
+make him seem to approve of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>For Lincoln to see that any action was
+right, and to do it, was the same thing. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>and one other man, called Stone, sent in a
+protest to the Illinois Parliament; in it
+they declared that they believed slavery to
+be founded upon injustice and upon bad
+policy. Lincoln spoke because he must.
+He had seen what slavery meant, and he
+hated slavery. But he saw that the South
+would not allow slavery to be abolished: if
+the North tried to do it, the country would
+be divided into two halves. He was not
+ready to face that. His love for his country
+came before everything. Everything must
+be borne, rather than that it should be
+divided.</p>
+
+<p>The Abolitionists were a small party; and
+for the next seventeen years, the question
+of slavery was left as it was, as far as
+Parliament was concerned. During these
+seventeen years, Lincoln was perpetually
+turning it over in his mind; thinking and
+reading about it, and helping other people
+to think about it too.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br />
+<span class="smaller">LINCOLN THE LAWYER</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">T</span>wo</span> years after Lincoln entered the
+Illinois Parliament, its meetings, which
+had been held at Vandalia, were transferred
+to Springfield. In Springfield Lincoln
+lived for the next five-and-twenty
+years, until he left it to go to Washington as
+President of the United States. Springfield
+was a country town, which thought itself
+rather important. The people paid a good
+deal of attention to dress; they gave evening
+parties of a quiet sort, where they
+played cards and talked politics. The business
+of the most prominent persons in the
+town was law. Almost all the members of
+Parliament were lawyers.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln found that his surveying did not
+occupy his time, or bring in a very large
+income; he had studied law-books, and
+knew very nearly as much as most of
+the young barristers of Springfield. Major
+Stuart, under whom he had served in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>war against Black Hawk, took him into
+partnership. The partnership was not very
+successful. Lincoln was rather ignorant,
+and Stuart was too much occupied with
+his duties as member of Congress&mdash;the
+American Parliament&mdash;to teach him much.</p>
+
+<p>After four years Lincoln left Stuart
+and joined another friend, Judge Stephen
+D. Logan. Logan had made Lincoln’s
+acquaintance at the time of his first unsuccessful
+candidature for the Illinois Parliament.
+He had then greatly admired the
+young man’s pluck and good sense, and
+the cheerful way in which he accepted his
+defeat. Later, he had been struck by the
+sound reasoning of his political speeches.
+Logan himself was not only a first-rate
+lawyer, he was a man of wide education
+and culture: Abraham learned more than
+law from him. Even after Lincoln left the
+partnership, and set up an office of his
+own, the two men remained close friends.</p>
+
+<p>Although busy during the winter in Parliament,
+Lincoln worked very hard at his
+business. He knew that no one can succeed
+in anything without hard work, and
+he saw that to become a really good
+lawyer would help him in politics, and
+make him a more useful citizen of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>State. Moreover, he understood, more
+clearly than most men have done, that
+every deed in life is connected to every
+other; no man can escape the consequences
+of what he is and does. Every
+act and every speech is important.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln was four times elected to the
+Illinois Parliament&mdash;that is, he sat in it for
+eight years. For four years&mdash;between
+1845-49&mdash;he was member for Illinois in
+Congress. In Congress he spoke and
+voted against the war that was being
+waged against Mexico. The aim of the
+war was the conquest of Texas and California.
+The South urged this because they
+wanted the number of slave-owning States
+to be equal to the number of free States.
+They were always afraid that new States
+would be created out of the undeveloped
+territory in the North-West; and, if this
+were to happen, the slave States would be
+in a minority in Congress. If Texas were
+added as a slave State, the slave States
+would have a majority of one: there would
+be fourteen free and fifteen slave States.
+The Northern members, for the most part,
+did not see the point; they did not unite
+against the Southern demands; and consequently
+the South succeeded. In the war
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>Mexico was defeated, and Texas was added
+to the Union.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of his last year of membership,
+1849, Lincoln applied for a post in
+the Government office. Why he did so it
+is difficult to understand, for it would have
+put an end to his political career, as
+officials may not sit in the House. Fortunately
+his request was refused.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to his home in Springfield,
+where he lived in a big, plain house, painted
+a dirty yellow, with a big piece of untidy
+garden behind, and a small field at the side.
+He had married seven years before, and had
+now three sons. He was devoted to these
+boys, and used to play all sorts of games
+with them, as they grew bigger.</p>
+
+<p>For the next five years he devoted himself
+mainly to his work as a lawyer. He
+was now forty years of age. In Springfield
+and everywhere in Illinois he was admired,
+respected, and loved. But the high opinion
+of other people never made him easily satisfied
+with himself. To the end of his life he
+never stopped working and learning. He
+now resolved to become a really good lawyer.
+He knew that in law he could learn the art
+of persuading people, and of expressing
+clearly what he wanted to say. To help in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>this he took up the study of mathematics
+with extraordinary energy. Examining his
+own speeches, he seemed to find in them
+some confusion of thought. To make his
+own ideas clear, and to be sure that he expressed
+them clearly and truly, and never
+conveyed to others an impression that was
+not true, he bought a text-book of Euclid.
+The first six books of this he learnt by heart.
+He said “I wanted to know what was the
+meaning of the word ‘demonstrate.’ Euclid
+taught me what demonstration was.”</p>
+
+<p>After a year or two Lincoln was regarded
+as the equal of any lawyer in Springfield.
+He had one weakness, however. If he did
+not believe in the justice of his case, or if he
+thought the man for whom he had to speak
+was not quite honest, he did not defend well.
+His friend Judge Davis says, “A wrong
+cause was poorly defended by him.”</p>
+
+<p>A story is told of a man who came
+to Lincoln’s office and asked his help in
+getting six hundred dollars from a poor
+widow. Lincoln listened to the man and
+then said, “Yes, there is no reasonable doubt
+but I can gain your case for you. I can set
+a whole neighbourhood at loggerheads. I
+can distress a widowed mother and her six
+fatherless children, and thereby get for you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>six hundred dollars which rightfully belong,
+as it appears to me, as much to them as it
+does to you. I advise you to try your hand at
+making six hundred dollars some other way.”</p>
+
+<p>Every one in Springfield valued “Honest
+Abe’s” opinion. All sorts of people brought
+their troubles to him. His sympathy and
+his tenderness of heart made them trust
+him. He was one of the people; he never
+felt himself above them. To the end of his
+life he did not grow proud, and he was
+never ashamed of his early poverty. When
+he was President he told some of his friends
+of a dream he had had, which might very
+well have been true. He dreamt that at
+some big public meeting he was walking
+through the hall up to the platform, from
+which he was going to speak. As he passed,
+a lady sitting at the end of one of the rows
+of seats said to another sitting next her, so
+loudly that he could hear: “Is that Mr.
+Lincoln? Why, he looks a very common
+sort of person!” “I thought to myself in
+my dream,” said Lincoln, “that it was true,
+but that God Almighty seemed to prefer
+common people, for He had made so many
+of them.”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in Lincoln is more truly great
+than his power of seeing the value of common<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+things and common people. He knew
+that the things which appeal to men as
+men, which are common to humanity, are
+the most valuable of all. He counted on
+this when he abolished slavery. Freedom
+is a right common to all men; and there is
+somewhere in every one an instinct which
+knows that it is wrong to make other people
+do things which are too disagreeable to do
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>During these years at Springfield, Abraham
+read a great deal. Shakespeare and Burns
+were his favourite poets: he knew Shakespeare
+better than any other book except
+the Bible. He read and thought unceasingly
+about politics, and he talked about them
+with his friends. The history of America
+he studied until he knew everything there
+was to know. Above all, he thought about
+slavery. Events were taking place which
+made it plain that the question of slavery
+could not be left where it was. It was no
+longer possible to act as if the difference
+between North and South did not exist.</p>
+
+<p>As years went on the difference became
+more and more plain. The North, which
+had been poor and barren, only half cultivated
+by ignorant and uneducated settlers, was
+growing richer than the prosperous lazy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>South. Workmen came to the North
+from all parts of the world: poor men with
+good brains and strong arms, ready and able
+to work intelligently, to improve the land, to
+make wheat grow where stones and bushes
+had been. None of these men went to the
+South, for there work was done by slaves so
+cheaply that no paid worker had a chance.
+But the difference between the intelligent
+labour of free men working for themselves,
+and the mechanical labour of slaves working
+for their masters, soon began to tell.</p>
+
+<p>In the North schools sprang up everywhere:
+the people became better and better
+educated. Men who had grown up in the
+backwoods, like Abraham Lincoln, taught
+themselves, and rose to be lawyers and statesmen
+by their own efforts; others who had
+had the chance of being taught, did the same.
+It was possible for any man of brains to rise
+from the bottom to the top. Inventions were
+made which enabled all kinds of new work
+to be done and new wealth produced. The
+North was rich in material: richer in the
+men she had to work it, who were helped
+and encouraged by the freedom which threw
+every career open to real talent.</p>
+
+<p>In the South all power was in the hands
+of the aristocratic families, who had had it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>always. The work was done by slaves:
+owners did not want to educate their slaves,
+for then they were afraid that they would
+want their freedom. The coal mines of the
+South were not discovered; they could not
+have been worked by slaves. The South
+began to be very jealous of the North, and
+the North began to disapprove of the South.
+More and more people began to see that
+slavery was wrong: people were not yet
+ready to say that slavery ought to cease
+to be, but they were ready to say that it
+must not be extended.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the Mexican war the South
+had shown that it wanted to extend slavery.
+This frightened the North. In 1850 an agreement
+was made, known as the Missouri Compromise.
+By this a line (36°30’), called Mason
+and Dixon’s line, was drawn across the map
+of America. North of this line, slavery was
+never to exist. Speakers on both sides declared
+that the Missouri Compromise was
+as fixed as the Constitution itself. Stephen
+Arnold Douglas was the loudest in expressing
+this opinion. “It is eternal and fundamental,”
+he declared.</p>
+
+<p>Douglas was a trader of the great party
+known as the Democrats. He held that the
+people of every State had a right to decide
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>questions affecting that State, and not the
+Central American Government.</p>
+
+<p>Douglas had one great aim, which was to
+him far more important than any question of
+political right or wrong: he wanted to be made
+President. To secure this, he saw that he
+must get the support of the South. To win
+the support of the South, he took a most dangerous
+and important step: one which was the
+immediate cause of the war which broke out
+six years later. He declared that the people
+of any state or territory could decide whether
+or not they would have slavery in their State:
+they could establish it or prohibit it.</p>
+
+<p>He went further than this. Two new territories
+had been organised in the north-west&mdash;Nebraska
+and Kansas. They claimed to
+be admitted to the Union as States. Both
+States were, of course, north of Mason and
+Dixon’s line, and therefore by the Missouri
+Compromise they must be free States. But
+the South was bent on creating new slave
+States as fast as the North could create free
+States: they wanted to make Kansas a slave
+State. Stephen Douglas therefore introduced,
+in 1854, the famous Kansas-Nebraska
+Bill. It declared that Kansas might be slave-holding
+or free, as the people of the territory
+should decide.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>
+
+<p>The result of this Bill was for the first time
+to unite together a strong party in the North
+in opposition to the Democrats, who were
+allied to the South. This new party called
+itself Republican. Lincoln was a spokesman
+of their views. They declared, firstly,
+that Congress, which is the Parliament
+representing all the States which together
+formed the Union, has the right to decide
+whether slavery shall be lawful in any particular
+State or not, and not the people of
+that State alone. Secondly, they declared
+that, in the case of Kansas, Congress had
+already, four years ago, decided that Kansas
+could not have slavery, because it lay beyond
+the line, north of which slavery could not
+exist. Resolutions were passed in many of
+the Northern State Parliaments against the
+Kansas-Nebraska Bill. The Parliament of
+Illinois sent one.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was quite clear to keen-sighted
+politicians that, while Douglas and his party
+pretended that they wanted to give the
+people of Kansas the choice between owning
+slaves and not doing so, what they
+really wanted was to force Kansas to have
+slaves. Those who supported the Missouri
+Congress declared that it was illegal to give
+Kansas the choice however she used it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p>
+
+<p>Events soon proved that Kansas was not
+to have any choice at all. Kansas had few
+inhabitants; but the opinion of the people
+of the State was against slavery. Next
+door to Kansas, however, on the east, was
+the slave-holding State of Missouri. From
+Missouri bands of armed men came into
+Kansas in order to vote for slavery at the
+election and to prevent the real voters from
+using their votes against it. Free fighting
+went on in the State. An election was held
+at which armed men kept away those who
+would have voted for freedom, and a pro-slavery
+man was chosen. But few of the
+people of Kansas had been allowed to vote.
+The free party met at another place afterwards,
+and a genuine popular vote elected
+an anti-slavery man. Civil war went on in
+Kansas for two years.</p>
+
+<p>Now the importance of these events is
+this. Up till now most people in the North
+had believed that slavery ought to be left
+alone, because it would gradually die out.
+The Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the Kansas
+election made it perfectly clear that the
+South was not going to let slavery die out;
+on the contrary, they wanted to spread it to
+strengthen themselves against the North.</p>
+
+<p>Douglas was member for Chicago, in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>north of Illinois. He came down to Illinois
+to win the State to his views, and made a
+series of speeches there. This at once called
+Lincoln to the fore. He saw more clearly,
+perhaps, than any man in America what the
+Kansas Bill meant. It meant that either
+North and South must separate, as the
+Abolitionists&mdash;that is, the party which held
+that slavery ought to cease to be&mdash;and some
+people in the South hoped; or that the
+North would have to force the South to
+abandon the attempt to spread slavery. He
+made a series of great speeches in Illinois,
+in which he made it quite clear that Douglas
+and his followers, and the men of the South,
+might say that they wanted to leave States
+free to have slavery or not as they chose,
+but what they really desired was to force
+them to have slavery whether they chose or
+not. “This declared indifference, but, as I
+must think, covert real zeal for the spread
+of slavery, I cannot but hate: I hate it because
+of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself ... I
+say that no man is good enough to govern
+another man without that man’s consent.
+Slavery is founded upon the selfishness of
+man’s nature; opposition to it, on his love
+of justice.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br />
+<span class="smaller">DEFEAT OF THE LITTLE GIANT</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">L</span>incoln</span> had worked very hard in Illinois.
+All this year he was making
+speeches; educating the people of the
+State; helping them to understand the big
+questions before them; making things clear
+in his own mind by putting them into the
+clear and simple words that would carry
+their importance to the minds of others.</p>
+
+<p>A great meeting was held, summoned by
+the editors of the newspapers that were
+against the Kansas Bill; they invited prominent
+men from different parts of the
+country to come and address them.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln was among those who went, and
+his speech was by far the most important
+of all that were delivered there. He had
+not, indeed, intended to say anything; but
+he was roused by the weakness of those
+who did address the meeting. Springing
+to his feet, he poured out what was in his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>mind, and could not be kept back, in
+such burning and eloquent words that
+the reporters dropped their pencils and
+listened spellbound. The whole audience
+was carried away by excitement: it was
+one of the greatest speeches that Lincoln
+ever made, we are told by all who heard it,
+but there is no record of it. Lincoln himself
+spoke in a transport of enthusiasm:
+the words came, how he hardly knew; he
+could not afterwards write down what he
+had said. The reporters were so deeply
+moved that they only took down a sentence
+here and there. The speech was a warning
+to the growing Republican party: sentences
+were quoted and remembered.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">The North was indeed beginning to
+awaken to the need of uniting against
+slavery; but it took four years before it
+fully awoke. And as long as the North
+was divided the South was irresistible.
+When the presidential election came, in
+1856, the votes of the South carried the day.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo4"><img src="images/i_058.jpg" width="400" alt="Springing to his feet, he poured out what was in his mind" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">Springing to his feet, he poured out what was in his mind</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Had a strong man, with definite and
+wise views, been elected, had Lincoln been
+elected, the war between North and South
+that came four years later might have been
+prevented. But Lincoln’s fame had not yet
+travelled far beyond Illinois; he was not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>even nominated. Mr. Buchanan, the new
+President, called himself a Democrat: he
+believed in Douglas’s policy of State rights;
+but he was a tool in the hands of the
+South. Weak and undecided, his stupid
+administration made war inevitable. He
+did not satisfy the South; and he showed
+the North how great a danger they were
+in, so that when the next election came
+they were ready to act.</p>
+
+<p>The Republican party gradually grew
+strong. More and more Northern voters
+came to see that its policy, no extension of
+slavery, was the only right one. The pro-slavery
+party in Kansas continued to behave
+in the most violent way; civil war continued.</p>
+
+<p>In Congress, Charles Sumner made a
+number of eloquent speeches on what he
+called the “crime against Kansas”; and
+in them he openly attacked slavery. One
+day, as he was sitting in the members’
+reading-room, a Southern member called
+Brookes came in. Although there were
+several other people in the room, Brookes
+fell upon Sumner, and with his heavy walking-stick,
+which was weighted with lead at
+the end, beat him within an inch of his life.
+For the next four years Sumner was an
+invalid, and unable to take part in politics.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>This incident caused great indignation in
+the North; their indignation was heightened
+by the attempt to force slavery on Kansas,
+till it grew in very many cases to a real
+hatred of slavery itself.</p>
+
+<p>But there was still a large party in the
+North which did not disapprove of slavery.
+This party was led, of course, by Douglas.
+Douglas had been successful up till now,
+because he represented the ordinary man
+of the North, whose conscience was not
+yet awake, who did not see that slavery,
+in itself, was wrong. Lincoln had never
+really succeeded until now, because his conscience
+had always been awake, and the
+ordinary Northerner was not ready to follow
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The whole question of slavery was brought
+under discussion in the next year&mdash;1857&mdash;by
+the famous case of a negro called Dred Scott.
+Dred Scott claimed his freedom before the
+United States courts, because his master, a
+doctor, had taken him to live in the free State
+of Illinois. The chief-justice&mdash;Taney&mdash;was
+an extreme pro-slavery man. He was not
+satisfied with deciding the case against Dred
+Scott; he went much further, and declared
+that since a negro is property and not a
+person in the legal sense, he could not bring
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>a case before an American court. A negro,
+he declared, has no rights which a white
+man is bound to respect.</p>
+
+<p>The South, of course, was delighted with
+this verdict. What it meant was this. When
+the Declaration of Independence declared
+that all men are equal, and possess right to
+life and liberty, what was intended was not
+all men, but all white men, since black men
+are not legally men. And yet free negroes
+had fought in the War of Independence, and
+signed the Declaration.</p>
+
+<p>To the North such reasoning was hateful.
+People like Mr. Seward of New York
+began to say, If slavery is part of the Constitution
+of America, there is a law that is
+higher than the Constitution&mdash;the moral law.
+Abraham Lincoln in a noble speech declared:
+“In some respects the black woman is
+certainly not my equal, but in her natural
+right to eat the bread she earns with her
+own hands she is my equal, and the equal of
+all others.” The point was, could a negro
+have rights? The Dred Scott decision declared
+“no,” the South shouted “no.” The
+Republican party said “yes.” In this same
+year a free election at last took place in
+Kansas; and a huge majority decided that
+the State should not hold slaves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+<p>All these events showed that troublous
+times were coming.</p>
+
+<p>In the next year a set of speeches was
+made which showed people how things stood.
+In 1858 Lincoln stood against Douglas as
+candidate for the State of Illinois. Douglas
+was one of the most famous and popular
+men then living in America. He was far the
+cleverest man and the best speaker of his
+party; he stood for all those who, though
+they might not want to have slaves themselves,
+thought that slavery was not wrong;
+that black men were intended by a kind
+Providence to be useful to white men. If
+any State wanted slaves, let them have them&mdash;why
+not?</p>
+
+<p>As Lincoln said, “Douglas is so put up
+by nature, that a lash upon his back would
+hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else’s
+back does not hurt him.”</p>
+
+<p>Those who did not know Lincoln thought
+it absurd that he, an unknown man from
+the country, should dare to stand against
+Douglas, the “Little Giant.” But Lincoln
+was not afraid; he did not think of himself;
+he wanted people to hear what he had to say.
+He arranged with Douglas that they should
+hold a number of meetings together in Illinois.
+They arranged it in this way. At half the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>meetings Douglas spoke first for an hour;
+then Lincoln replied, speaking for an hour
+and a half, and Douglas answered him in
+half-an-hour’s speech. At the other half,
+Lincoln began and Douglas followed, Lincoln
+ending.</p>
+
+<p>You can imagine one of these meetings.
+A large hall, roughly built for the most part,
+the seats often made of planks laid on top
+of unhewn logs, packed with two or three
+thousand people, intensely eager to hear
+and learn. Some of them were already
+followers of Douglas, the most popular man
+in America: all of them had heard of
+the “Little Giant,” the cleverest speaker in
+the States. Immense cheering as Douglas
+rose to his feet. A small man with a big
+head: a handsome face with quickly moving,
+keen, dark eyes; faultlessly dressed. A well-bred
+gentleman, secure of himself&mdash;a lawyer
+with all his art at the end of his tongue: able
+to persuade any one that black was white,
+to wrap up anything in so many charming
+words that only the cleverest could see when
+one statement did not follow from another,
+when an argument was not a proof: quick
+to see and stab the weak points in any one
+else. A voice rich and mellow, various and
+well trained, pleased all who heard it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+<p>For an hour he spoke, amid complete
+silence, only broken by outbursts of applause.
+When he ended, there were deafening cheers&mdash;then
+a pause, and “Lincoln,” “Lincoln,”
+from all parts of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln seemed an awkward countryman
+beside the senator. His tall body seemed
+too big for the platform, and his ill-fitting
+black clothes hung loosely upon it, as if
+they had been made for some one else.
+When he began to speak his voice was
+harsh and shrill. His huge hands, the
+hands of a labourer, with the big knuckles
+and red, ugly wrists, got knotted together
+as if nothing could unfix them. Soon,
+however, he became absorbed in what he
+was saying; he ceased to be nervous;
+everything seemed to change. As he forgot
+himself, his body seemed to expand
+and straighten itself, so that every one else
+looked small and mean beside him; his
+voice became deep and clear, reaching to the
+farthest end of the hall, and his face, that
+had appeared ugly, was lit up with an
+inner light that made it more than beautiful.
+The deep grey eyes seemed to each
+man in the hall to be looking at him and
+piercing his soul. The language was so
+simple that the most ignorant man in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>hall could follow it and understand. Everything
+was clear. There was no hiding under
+fine words; nothing was left out, nothing
+unnecessary was said. No one could doubt
+what Lincoln meant; and he was not going
+to let any one doubt what Douglas meant.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest debate of all was that at
+the meeting at Freeport. At Freeport
+Lincoln asked Douglas a question, against
+the advice of all his friends. He asked
+whether, if a State wanted not to have
+slavery, it could so decide? Lincoln knew
+that if Douglas said “No. A state which
+had slavery must keep it,” the people of
+Illinois would not vote for him, and he
+would lose this election. If he said “yes”
+he would be elected, and not Lincoln.
+Lincoln knew this; he knew that if Douglas
+said “yes,” he was safe, and he would say
+“yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where do you come in, then?” his friends
+asked him. “Why do you ask him this?
+If you do, Douglas is sure to get in. You
+are ruining your own chances.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not come in anywhere,” said Lincoln;
+“but that does not matter. What
+does matter is this. If Douglas says
+‘yes,’ as he will, he will get into the
+Senate now; but two years after this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>he will stand for election as President.
+If he says ‘yes’ now, the South will vote
+against him then, and he will not be
+elected. He must not be elected. No one
+who believes in spreading slavery must be
+elected. It does not matter about me.”</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln was quite right. He saw further
+than any one else. Douglas said “yes,” and
+he was elected for Illinois. But the Democratic
+party in the South, whose support
+had made him strong, began to
+distrust him. “Douglas,” said Lincoln, “is
+followed by a crowd of blind men; I want to
+make some of these blind men see.”</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln was defeated, but he did not
+think of himself. His speeches against
+Douglas were printed and read all over
+America. He was invited to speak in Ohio;
+and in the next year, in the beginning of
+1860, a society in New York asked him to
+come and give them an address on politics.</p>
+
+<p>A huge audience, in which were all the
+best known and most brilliant men of the
+day, gathered to hear him; an audience
+very much unlike any that he had addressed
+before. They were all anxious to see what
+he was like&mdash;this backwoodsman and farm-labourer,
+who had met the great Stephen
+Arnold Douglas and proved a match for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>him in argument; whose speeches had been
+printed to express the views of a whole party.</p>
+
+<p>His appearance was strange and impressive.
+When he stood up his height was
+astonishing, because his legs were very
+long, and when sitting he did not appear
+tall. His face, thin and marked by deep
+lines, was very sad. A mass of black hair
+was pushed back from his high forehead:
+his eyebrows were black too, and stood out
+in his pale face: his dark-grey eyes were
+set deep in his head. The mouth could
+smile, but now it was stern and sad. The
+face was unlike other faces: when he spoke
+it was beautiful, for he felt everything he
+said. Abraham Lincoln was a common man:
+he had had no advantages of birth, of training:
+he had known extreme poverty: for
+years he had struggled without success in
+mean and small occupations: he had no
+knowledge but what he had taught himself.
+But no one who heard him speak could think
+him common.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking now to an audience in which
+were the cleverest people in New York,
+people who had read everything and seen
+everything and been everywhere, who had
+had every opportunity that he had not, he
+impressed them as much as he had impressed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+the people of Illinois. He was one
+of the greatest orators that ever lived. His
+words went straight to the people to whom
+they were spoken. What he said was as
+straightforward and as certain as a sum in
+arithmetic, as easy to follow: and behind
+it all you felt that the man believed every
+word of what he said, and spoke because
+he must. The truth was in him.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln’s address in New York convinced
+the Republican party that here was the man
+they wanted.</p>
+
+<p>In 1860 there came the presidential election,
+always the most important event in
+American politics; this year more important
+than ever before.</p>
+
+<p>For the last half-century almost the
+Democratic party had been in power. They
+had been strong because they were united:
+they united the people of the South and
+those people in the North who thought
+that it was waste of time to discuss slavery,
+since slavery was part of the Constitution.
+Their policy on slavery had been to leave
+it alone. As long as they did this there
+was nothing to create another party in the
+North strong enough to oppose them. But
+when Douglas, in order to make his own
+position strong in the South, made slavery
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>practical politics by bringing in a bill to allow
+Kansas to have slaves; and when the judges
+in the Dred Scott case roused sympathy with
+the negroes by declaring that slaves were
+not men but property, then the question
+united the divided North into a strong
+Republican party in which all were agreed.
+There was to be no slavery north of Mason
+and Dixon’s line. The attempt to force
+slavery on Kansas split the Democratic
+party. One section was led by Douglas,
+who had gone as far as he could: he was
+not ready to force Kansas to have slaves, if
+she did not want them, because people from
+Missouri wanted her to have them. He saw
+that to force slavery on the North in this
+way would mean division and war, and therefore
+he refused to go any further. By this
+refusal Douglas lost his supporters in the
+South. They joined the section led by Jefferson
+Davis&mdash;the Southern candidate for the
+presidentship.</p>
+
+<p>Jefferson Davis was the true leader of the
+South. Douglas as well as Lincoln had
+begun life as the child of a poor pioneer:
+each had risen by his own abilities and by
+constant hard work. Jefferson Davis was
+a true aristocrat. He was the son of rich
+and educated parents. All his life he had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>been waited on by slaves and surrounded by
+every comfort. While Lincoln was ploughing
+or hewing wood, while Douglas was
+working hard at the bar, Davis went first
+to the university at Kentucky and then to
+the military academy at West Point, from
+which he passed to the army. He served as
+a lieutenant at the time of the Black Hawk
+war, and it is very likely that he came across
+Lincoln, who was serving as a volunteer.
+After serving seven years in the army he
+married and settled down as a cotton planter
+in Mississippi. His estates were worked by
+slaves, of course. To him the negro was an
+animal, quite different from the white man,
+meant by nature to be under him and to
+serve him. Black men, unlike white, did
+not exist for themselves, with the equal
+right to live possessed by a man, an insect,
+or a tree, but had been created solely
+to be useful to white men.</p>
+
+<p>No two men could be more unlike than
+Lincoln and Davis. The groundwork of
+Davis’ nature was an intense pride. A friend
+described him as “as ambitious as Lucifer
+and as cold as a lizard.” He was cold in
+manner and seldom laughed. Lincoln was
+entirely humble-minded, full of passionate
+longing to help the weak. To Lincoln
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>what was common was therefore precious.
+Jefferson Davis said the minority, and not
+the majority, ought to rule. And their looks
+were as unlike as their minds. Jefferson
+Davis, with his beautiful proud face, as cold
+and as handsome as a statue, expressed the
+utter contempt and scorn of the aristocrat
+for everything and every one beneath him.</p>
+
+<p>When the Democratic party met at Charleston
+to nominate their candidate for the
+presidentship, they were hopelessly divided.
+Douglas’s Freeport speech had set the South
+against him. For the last four years there
+had been a growing section which said that,
+as long as the South was fastened to the
+North, slavery was not safe. Now seven
+states, led by South Carolina, left the
+Democratic meeting and nominated Davis
+as their candidate.</p>
+
+<p>The Republican party met at Chicago.
+There was only one man strong, reasonable,
+and sane enough for every section of the
+party to accept. This was Abraham Lincoln.
+At the time of his nomination, Lincoln was
+playing barnball with his children in the
+field behind his house. When told that he
+had been chosen, he said, “You must be
+able to find some better man than me.” But
+he was ready to take up the difficult task.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>He knew that he could serve his country,
+and he was not afraid. He had a clear ideal
+before him&mdash;to preserve America as one
+united whole. He saw that war might come.
+As he had said, five years before, America
+could not endure for ever half slave and
+half free&mdash;it must be all free: and the
+South would not let slavery go without war.</p>
+
+<p>The election came in November. The
+result was that Lincoln was elected President.
+For four years the destiny of his
+country was in his hands.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br />
+<span class="smaller">THE NEW PRESIDENT AND SECESSION</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">L</span>incoln’s</span> election was a thunderbolt
+to the South. It meant that the great
+question of slavery would have to be decided
+one way or another. Lincoln was a man
+who had opinions, and opinions in which
+he believed, for which he would fight; he
+would not let things drift as Buchanan did.
+Buchanan’s policy would have ended in
+allowing the South to separate itself from
+the North; the Southern politicians knew
+this, and they wanted Buchanan’s policy
+carried on, so as to make that separation
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>Few men in the North, although many in
+the South, understood as clearly as Lincoln
+did the position of affairs. He saw that
+the time had come when active measures
+must be taken, a strong and decided
+policy maintained, if the Union was to be
+held together. He was a true patriot.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>He believed in the Union; he thought it
+a great and glorious thing. That North
+and South should be separated was to him
+like separating husband and wife; their
+strength and happiness lay in each other;
+they had grown together for eighty-four
+years; if they parted now, each must lose
+something it could never regain. He loved
+his country. He loved the South as well as
+the North. He believed that if the South
+tried to separate, the North would be
+justified, in the true interests of the American
+nation, in compelling her to remain.</p>
+
+<p>The great problem was now, as he saw:
+Could America hold together as one nation,
+half slave and half free? Could the Union
+be a real Union while there was this deep
+division, a division which it was now clear
+could not be got rid of, as the Northerners
+had hoped for so long, by the slow passage
+of time? Time alone would not induce the
+South to give up slavery. Slavery was a
+barbarous institution, degrading to the
+slaves and to those who owned them;
+the North could not accept it. If North
+and South were to hold together slavery
+must go. The great thing was to keep
+North and South united. This and this
+only was Lincoln’s great purpose. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>hated slavery, but he would not have compelled
+the South to give up slavery if he
+had believed that the Union could have
+been maintained without that. North and
+South must hold together whatever it cost;
+only so could each part of the nation, and
+the nation as a whole, attain the best that
+was possible for it.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln’s great difficulty was this. The
+South saw that the nation could not hold
+together for ever half slave and half free.
+Two years before Lincoln’s election, one
+of the members for South Carolina had
+written what was afterwards known as the
+Scarlet Letter. In it he declared, “We
+can make a revolution in the cotton States,”
+and there were many, even at that time,
+who shared his views. The South saw
+that, if they were to remain united to the
+North, slavery must go, and they were
+ready to separate from the North in order
+to keep slavery.</p>
+
+<p>But, while the South understood the position,
+the North did not. It did not understand
+it fully at the time of Lincoln’s election,
+or, indeed, until the end of the second
+year of the war. And because they did
+not understand they could not appreciate
+Lincoln’s policy, or support it as they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>ought to have done. All the time they
+criticised, blamed, and abused him, making
+his hard task harder.</p>
+
+<p>Not until after his death did all the
+Northerners see how great and how right
+he had been. Not until his death did
+Americans realise that had it not been for
+Lincoln the United States might have
+ceased to be.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln’s speeches had been plain and outspoken
+enough; the South was terrified
+by his election. They resolved on separation.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln, though elected in November 1860,
+did not actually become President until
+February 1861. During these three months
+he remained in the plain, yellow house at
+Springfield, his little office crowded every
+day with visitors who came to consult him,
+to advise him, or often merely to shake his
+hand. “Honest old Abe,” as they called
+him, had a joke or a kindly word for all of
+them. He was presented with many quaint
+gifts. An old woman came one day, and,
+after shaking hands with Lincoln, produced
+from under her huge cloak a vast pair of
+knitted stockings for the President to wear
+in winter. Lincoln thanked her graciously
+and led her out; then returning, he lifted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>up the stockings, and showing the enormous
+feet, said to his secretary, “The old
+lady seems to have guessed the latitude and
+longitude about right!”</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln spent the time reading and writing,
+drawing up memoranda, choosing his
+Cabinet, learning the difficult ins and outs
+of the new work before him. All these
+months he was thinking hard. His purpose
+was already clear: but the presidentship,
+always a heavy burden, had never been so
+heavy as it was to be for Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>Things grew more serious every day.
+The weakness of Buchanan, who had no
+plan or purpose, allowed the South to do
+as it chose. The only chance of avoiding
+war lay in firm action now; but it was not
+in Buchanan’s nature to be firm. He had
+been made President by the votes of the
+South because he was not firm, because he
+would allow them to do as they chose.
+They dreaded Lincoln because he was firm,
+and therefore acted while there was yet
+time.</p>
+
+<p>On December 20, 1860, the chief men of
+South Carolina met together and declared
+the Union to be dissolved. Posters appeared
+all over the State: the South was in a state
+of feverish excitement. Within the month
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>the States of Missouri, Alabama, Florida,
+Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas&mdash;the chief
+cotton-growing, slave-owning States&mdash;also
+declared themselves to be separated from
+the Union; and these six States joined
+with South Carolina to form what they
+called the Southern Confederation, independent
+of the North. They chose for
+their first President Jefferson Davis.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan did not know what to do. The
+question was: Has a State any right to
+leave the Union? America, of course, is
+a Federation: at the time of the Declaration
+of Independence the thirteen States
+that then existed joined themselves together
+for ever, and created a common Federal
+Government for common purposes, with a
+President at its head. Lincoln would have
+said one State has no more right to leave
+the others than an English county has to
+declare that it is a separate kingdom, not
+bound by the common law. Buchanan said
+“no,” too; but he also said, if a State does
+leave, the Federal Government has no right
+to force it to stay: which meant a standstill.
+“You ought not to want to go; but
+if you do, we have no right to prevent
+you.” Buchanan’s one idea, indeed, was
+to let things drift.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was one great and immediate difficulty.
+In each of the coast States of the
+Union the Federal Government had armed
+forts: in South Carolina there were two
+important ones, Fort Moultrie and Fort
+Sumter, with a small garrison in each,
+commanded by Major Anderson. South
+Carolina demanded that the garrisons
+should be withdrawn. Now to withdraw
+the garrisons and abandon the forts was to
+admit that South Carolina had a right to
+leave the Union, and to recognise the
+Southern Confederation as independent of
+the Federal Government. To maintain the
+forts more forces must be sent. Anderson
+wrote to say that he was not strong enough
+to hold out against an attack. Buchanan
+did nothing. Anderson, believing that an
+attack was going to be made on Fort
+Moultrie, which he was too weak to defend,
+removed all his men to Fort Sumter.
+The militia of South Carolina at once
+occupied Fort Moultrie.</p>
+
+<p>In the second week of the new year, 1861,
+a Government vessel, the <i>Star of the West</i>,
+sailed into the harbour of Charleston to bring
+provisions for Anderson. The <i>South Carolina</i>,
+having attacked the <i>Star of the West</i>, fired
+on the United States flag which it carried,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>and drove it out of the harbour. The Confederate
+Government, led by Jefferson Davis,
+then demanded that Fort Sumter should be
+given up to them. When Anderson refused,
+it was blockaded by much superior forces,
+and by the 12th of April it was taken by
+General Beauregard.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances, when war was
+at hand, when half the nation was ready to
+take up arms against the other half, Lincoln
+took up the burden of office. It was a
+burden, indeed, which no ordinary man could
+have borne. Buchanan had simply looked
+on while rebellion was preparing itself; for
+Lincoln was the task of quelling it. But the
+fact of rebellion was not his greatest difficulty.
+This was the disunion of the North.
+One section&mdash;the Abolitionists&mdash;rejoiced at
+the secession of the South. “We shall no
+more be chained to the slave-owners.”
+Another section thought that, if the South
+wanted to go, why not let them.</p>
+
+<p>There was as yet only a very small section
+able to agree with Lincoln. Lincoln hated
+slavery but not slave-owners. He loved the
+South as much as the North. It was agony
+to him to know his country divided against
+itself. Well might he say, in the speech he
+made on leaving his old home at Springfield
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>for ever, “There is a task before me greater
+than that which rested upon Washington.”</p>
+
+<p>It was very natural that men who had
+not known Lincoln should fear to have the
+fate of their country at so critical a time
+entrusted to a man of so small experience.
+But any one who knew Lincoln felt absolute
+confidence in him. Years of difficulty
+and disappointment, of constant struggle
+against every kind of obstacle, had made
+him what he was: clear-eyed to see where
+the right was; steadfast and unflinching to
+pursue it; tender-hearted and generous to
+sympathise with all those who stumbled on
+the way.</p>
+
+<p>Few people, indeed, understood him. In
+the years to come nearly all at one time or
+another abused him and distrusted him, and
+blamed him when things went wrong. For
+four years he bore the whole burden of a
+great responsibility; patiently and silently
+he endured disappointment and reproach.
+In the end he could say that if Washington
+had made America one, he had remade it so
+that it could never again be unmade.</p>
+
+<p>The speech he made when he entered on
+his duties as President showed how little
+bitterness there was in his heart towards
+the South. He said, “We are not enemies,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>but friends. We must not be enemies.
+Though passion may have strained, it must
+not break, our bonds of affection. The
+mystic chords of memory, stretching from
+every battlefield and patriot grave to every
+heart and hearthstone all over this broad
+land, will yet swell the chorus of the
+Union when touched, as surely they will
+be, by the better angels of our nature.”</p>
+
+<p>The attack on Sumter and its fall made
+war inevitable. Lincoln was no Buchanan.
+War was horrible; civil war&mdash;war between
+men of the same country, between friends,
+often between relations&mdash;most horrible of
+all. But he could not, at whatever cost,
+allow the Union, for which his countrymen
+had fought so heroically eighty-four years
+ago, which had stood so long for such a
+high ideal of freedom all over the world&mdash;he
+could not allow the Union to be destroyed
+without fighting to preserve it. To him the
+secession of the Southern States meant
+something as unnatural as a separate kingdom
+in Scotland would be to us, and a
+kingdom based on something which we
+thought wholly wrong.</p>
+
+<p>“The question is,” he said, “whether in a
+free Government the minority have a right
+to break it up whenever they choose.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>He declared that they had no such right.
+The whole population of the slave-holding
+States was much smaller than that of
+the free States, and among those States,
+while seven had seceded, eight remained at
+least nominally in the Union; and even in
+the seceding States themselves, there was a
+party in each that was ready to remain
+faithful to the Union, and not prepared to
+take up arms against it.</p>
+
+<p>They wanted war: their attack on Fort
+Sumter was a call to arms. They wanted
+war: they should have it. In the long run
+the North was bound to win: its population
+was half as great again, and its resources as
+much superior.</p>
+
+<p>Almost the first act of Lincoln’s Government
+was to call for 75,000 volunteers.</p>
+
+<p>The attack upon Sumter and Lincoln’s
+call to arms roused the North from its
+apathy. Excitement grew when the 7th
+Massachusetts regiment, passing through
+Baltimore on its way to headquarters, was
+violently attacked by the mob: when the
+Southern army, already in the field, captured
+Harper’s Ferry and seized the Union arsenal
+at Gosport.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br />
+<span class="smaller">THE WAR</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">W</span>ar</span> began in Virginia. West Virginia
+was free, East Virginia slave-holding;
+the State was the natural meeting-place for
+the two armies. On the 21st July they met
+at Bull Run: the engagement could hardly
+be called a battle&mdash;on neither side was there
+any order or discipline. More than once
+during the day the Southern army seemed to
+be beaten, but it rallied, and the Federalists,
+as the Union soldiers were called, broke into
+a disgraceful retreat, which became an awful
+panic. The fugitives poured into Washington,
+haggard and dust-stained: everything
+seemed lost. Lincoln did not go to bed all
+night; he paced up and down in his room,
+expecting that the victorious Confederate
+army would march upon Washington, and
+the war be at an end. It did not come.
+The opportunity was lost. A battle had
+been gained; that was all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p>
+
+<p>The moral effect of the battle of Bull Run
+was very great indeed. The South thought
+the war was over, the North saw that it
+had only begun.</p>
+
+<p>At first, the Confederates seemed to have
+great advantages. The army was the one
+profession for a Southern gentleman; nearly
+all their young men were trained at the
+military academy at West Point, and a great
+many of the officers of the United States
+army had been Southerners. These men
+now left the Union army and gave their
+services to the Confederates; among them
+was General Robert Lee, who became
+General-in-Chief of the Confederate army.
+Lincoln’s difficulties were greatly increased
+by the fact that so many officers and men
+went over to the Confederates. At the
+beginning, the South had a larger and better-trained
+army in the field; and at first there
+were plenty of volunteers. But after Bull
+Run, she thought the war was finished; and
+events proved that, in a long war, the North
+must win by reason of her greater staying
+power.</p>
+
+<p>The South was as enthusiastic as the
+North, and at the beginning better prepared,
+but not equal in resources of any
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>sort. The South was entirely dependent on
+agriculture; all the necessaries of life came
+from the North and from Europe. Whereas
+the South had to import all her ammunition,
+the North had powder-magazines of her own,
+and a people of mechanics. And the Confederacy
+was soon to find that men are useless
+without arms. Great sufferings were endured,
+wonderful invention and patience was
+shown, on both sides there was great heroism;
+but in the end the resources of the North
+decided the day.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln threw all his energy into the task
+of getting ready an army, and in a short
+time the Northern soldier was as well
+trained and equipped as the Southern.</p>
+
+<p>The battle of Bull Run roused the North:
+quickened by shame, the people were ready
+to fight to the bitter end. For the next two
+years, however, they were disheartened by
+continual disaster: army after army was
+destroyed, position after position lost: gloom
+descended on the nation. In the dark times
+of defeat men turned upon Lincoln and
+blamed him for everything.</p>
+
+<p>His position was difficult indeed. As head
+of the State, he was also commander of the
+army; but he had to entrust the actual management<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>
+of the campaigns to others. He
+followed and understood their tactics, but
+was too wise to try to direct their movements.
+Only occasionally did he offer advice&mdash;wise
+advice, which his generals were not
+always wise enough to accept. At first the
+generals were not men of great ability.
+M’Clellan, the commander, drilled his army
+in a wonderful way, but never used it to any
+effect. In the Virginian campaign of 1861
+and 1862 he threw away numberless opportunities.
+His place was taken by Burnside
+at the end of 1862; but not until the rise
+of Ulysses S. Grant did Lincoln discover
+a really great commander. The generals
+quarrelled with one another, and all were
+ready to complain of the President. Lincoln’s
+difficulties were increased by the fact that
+many people, when they found that the North
+was not going to conquer immediately, said
+that the war was a mistake: the South
+ought to be allowed to go if it wanted to.
+Lincoln did not think it right to let the South
+go: and because to keep it was proving
+difficult, was never to him a reason for ceasing
+to do what he saw to be right.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers abused Lincoln because
+the war, instead of being finished in three
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>months, seemed likely to last for years. For
+long his own Cabinet was hardly loyal to
+him: each member thought he could manage
+affairs better himself. Seward, who was
+Chief Secretary, thought Lincoln stupid, and
+was anxious to arrange everything; but as
+experience of his chief taught him he became
+Lincoln’s devoted admirer. Chase the
+Treasurer plotted against him: Stanton the
+War Secretary openly declared that “things
+would go all right but for the imbecile at the
+head.” Stanton had no sense of humour, and
+an ungovernable temper. He did not understand
+Lincoln at all for a long time: his
+jokes puzzled and annoyed him, and he used
+to jump up and down with rage. He did
+not see that to a man of a deeply melancholy
+nature like Lincoln, a dreamer and
+something of a poet, some outlet, some
+way of escaping from himself, was necessary.
+Lincoln was marvellously patient with
+Stanton, and won his deep affection. The
+Cabinet might criticise; but Lincoln’s firm
+will dominated them all. The policy of the
+Government was the President’s policy.</p>
+
+<p>No quality is so hard to appreciate, until
+it succeeds, as patience; and for two years
+Lincoln was patient, and few understood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>
+
+<p>England and France were inclined to recognise
+the Confederacy. The English point
+of view was not one which reflected any glory
+on the nation. Lord Palmerston said, “We
+do not like slavery, but we want cotton.”
+And a poem in <i>Punch</i> expressed the general
+point of view, against which only a few
+Englishmen protested&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Though with the North we sympathise,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">It must not be forgotten</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">That with the South we’ve stronger ties,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Which are composed of cotton,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Whereof our imports mount unto</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">A sum of many figures;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And where would be our calico</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">But for the toil of niggers?”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>France agreed with England. Under such
+circumstances there was a great danger
+that, unless the North proved itself able to
+cope with the Rebellion, England or France
+might send help to the Confederates. For
+two years the North did not prove this;
+for two years it seemed, except to the
+very far-seeing, almost certain that the
+South would win.</p>
+
+<p>The Northern plan of campaign was to
+attack and close round the Confederacy:
+to do this it was necessary to cross the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>Potomac river, and clear away the Southern
+armies that blockaded it. The Potomac
+was the centre of operations, while fighting
+went on constantly in Virginia and
+Missouri. Everything went against the
+North.</p>
+
+<p>On the 9th of August a desperate encounter
+took place at Wilson’s Creek, at
+which the Union army lost nearly two
+thousand men, including prisoners, and
+large supplies of arms and ammunition.
+In September the Confederates won a victory
+at Lexington, and in October the
+Federal troops were defeated at Ball’s
+Bluff.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln’s plan was gradually to shut
+the South in, driving it behind its own
+boundaries by means of the armies invading
+from north and west, and blockading
+the ports from the sea. So far the first
+half of the plan was not successful. But
+the Civil War was won to a very large extent
+by the Northern navy. By blockading
+the Southern ports it prevented the South
+from getting supplies from Europe; and
+since the South depended for supplies of
+every sort from abroad, it was in a desperate
+position when cut off from the sea.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span></p>
+
+<p>More fortunate on sea than on land,
+Lincoln found in David Farragut an admiral
+almost as great as Nelson. Farragut
+was a Southerner by birth, but he had served
+for fifty years in the United States navy,
+and refused to desert it now. Patriotism
+to him meant devotion not to the pride but
+to the best interests of his country, and he
+thought that North and South could only
+attain their best interests when united. In
+April the Northern army suffered a severe
+defeat on land at the battle of Shiloh&mdash;the
+most disastrous yet experienced; but
+the news was balanced by the tidings of
+Farragut’s capture of New Orleans. The
+fighting in the harbour was tremendous.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t flinch from that fire, boys,” cried
+the admiral; “there is a hotter fire for
+those who don’t do their duty!”</p>
+
+<p>Inspired by his example, his men did not
+flinch, and the town was captured. The
+North needed all the encouragement such
+naval victory could give it, for things were
+going very badly. Stonewall Jackson, the
+Southern commander, carried everything
+before him in Virginia. Washington was
+in danger; there was a panic in the capital.
+Jackson, however, did not want to attack
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>Washington. His plan was to compel
+M’Clellan, who was slowly moving south
+to attack the Confederate capital at Richmond,
+to turn north again.</p>
+
+<p>There was fighting all through June;
+Jackson had been joined by Lee, the
+Confederate Commander-in-Chief. On the
+1st of July a battle was fought at Malvern
+Hill. Lee and Jackson were defeated.
+M’Clellan ought now to have pushed on
+to Richmond, the Confederate capital, instead
+of which, with extraordinary stupidity,
+he continued to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>In August, the second battle of Bull Run
+resulted in another victory for the South.
+Both sides lost an extraordinary number
+of men. The panic in Washington grew
+more acute when, early in September, Lee
+prepared to invade Maryland. M’Clellan
+again delayed when he ought to have
+forced an engagement. The people of
+Maryland received the Southern army very
+coldly. On the 17th the armies met at
+Antietam. The battle was not really decisive;
+the losses of the North were as
+great as those of the South; but it put
+an end to their invasion. Lee recrossed
+the Potomac River to Virginia. M’Clellan
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>again wasted time. He waited six weeks
+before pursuing Lee. In November M’Clellan
+was at last superseded.</p>
+
+<p>Events had gradually led Lincoln to see
+the necessity of taking one great step&mdash;the
+freeing of the slaves. The question
+of slavery was at the bottom of the war;
+it was the great division between North
+and South. Two reasons led Lincoln to
+take this step now. One was that he
+knew the negroes when free would fight,
+for the most part, for the North; and the
+North needed every help she could find.
+The other was the great difficulty of knowing
+what to do with the negro slaves
+which fell into the hands of the conquerors
+of any part of Southern territory. On the
+22nd of September, very soon after the
+news of the battle of Antietam and Lee’s
+retreat from Maryland had arrived, Lincoln
+called a meeting of his Cabinet. None
+of them knew why he had summoned
+them.</p>
+
+<p>They found the President reading Artemus
+Ward; one story amused him so
+much that he read it aloud. They all
+laughed a great deal except Stanton, who
+could never see a joke, and did not understand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
+that Lincoln must have broken down
+altogether under the fearful strain of all he
+had to bear, if he had not been able sometimes
+to forget himself. When he had
+finished reading the story, the President’s
+face grew grave again. He drew from his
+pocket a large sheet of foolscap, covered
+with his straight, regular writing, and
+read it to the Cabinet.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">It was the Emancipation Proclamation,
+which declared that, after January 1st of
+the coming year, all slaves were to be
+free; that Government would pay some
+compensation to loyal owners. No one
+dared oppose Lincoln when his mind was
+made up. His reason for introducing
+Emancipation now was, that he thought
+it would help the cause of Union, and
+that cause was to him sacred beyond
+everything. “As long as I am President,”
+he said later, “this war shall be
+carried on for the sole purpose of restoring
+the Union. But no human power
+can subdue this rebellion without the use
+of the Emancipation policy.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo5"><img src="images/i_094.jpg" width="400" alt="Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet</p>
+
+<p class="p2">His first object in everything was to
+hold the American nation together as one
+whole. But, at the same time, he detested<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+slavery as much as any man. “If
+slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”
+An opportunity had now come when to
+strike a blow at slavery was to assist
+the Union cause. By freeing the blacks,
+Lincoln provided the North with a new
+resource, at the time when the South had
+nowhere to turn to for fresh resources. By
+declaring the abolition of slavery an unchangeable
+part of the Union, which the
+South must accept before peace could be
+made, he won the sympathy of Europe
+for the North, and prevented it from sending
+help to the South at a time when
+such help would have changed the balance
+of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Up till now both England and France
+had shown themselves ready to sympathise
+with the South. English newspapers abused
+Lincoln and the North in the most violent
+language. In the English dockyards vessels
+had been built and equipped which were
+used by the South as privateers to do great
+damage to the Northern navy. One of
+these was the famous <i>Alabama</i>. But when
+the war was a war against slavery, English
+feeling was all on the side of the North.</p>
+
+<p>The United States was made a really free
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>country: slavery, which had made such a
+name a mockery, was wiped off the statute
+book.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln showed rare judgment and
+courage in doing what he did at this time.
+At first a large section in the North was
+opposed to Emancipation, but gradually all
+united in admiring the wisdom of Lincoln’s
+action. The South knew that if they were
+conquered slavery was gone. And however
+black things might look, Lincoln and
+the North were not going to give in till
+they did conquer. They had set their teeth;
+they were going to fight to the bitter end.</p>
+
+<p>M’Clellan had been dismissed, but his
+successors were not much more successful.
+In December Burnside threw away
+thousands of lives in an attempt to scale
+Mary’s Heights. Men were shot down in
+heaps by the enemy, and the army fell into
+a panic; a battle against overwhelming
+odds ended in a complete defeat. Lincoln’s
+heart bled for the loss of so many splendid
+citizens: there was deep indignation in
+Washington, much of it vented against the
+President.</p>
+
+<p>The darkest moment of the war came
+when, in May, the news of the battle of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>Chancellorsville reached the Government.
+Hooker met Jackson: a long and fearfully
+bloody battle followed. There were dreadful
+losses on both sides: another valuable opportunity
+of pressing south was lost. In the
+battle “Stonewall” Jackson was killed, shot
+accidentally by his own men; a disastrous
+loss to the Southern side, though the North
+was defeated.</p>
+
+<p>All hope seemed gone from the North.</p>
+
+<p>Up till now the North had lost more than
+the South. It had suffered most of all from
+a lack of really able commanders. Now,
+however, Lincoln discovered a really great
+general in Ulysses S. Grant, and from this
+time on the fortune of the war began to
+change.</p>
+
+<p>The North was richer: it had more men,
+money, and resources to draw on; in a long
+struggle the South was bound to be worn
+out. Grant saw this and planned accordingly.
+Grant had distinguished himself
+early in the war by the capture of Fort
+Henry and Fort Donelson, on the Mississippi,
+in February 1862; in the following April he
+had driven the Confederates back to Corinth
+after one of the most expensive battles of
+the war. Grant was a man of the most
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>reckless personal courage; as a general
+his great fault was that he exposed his
+men needlessly. Complaints were early
+made of him to Lincoln; but Lincoln’s
+wonderful eye discerned a great soldier in
+Grant. “I can’t spare that man; he fights.”
+Later he was told that Grant drank. “Pray
+tell me what brand of whisky he takes,
+that I may send a barrel to each of my
+other generals.”</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln and Grant always understood
+each other. Each was a man of intense
+strength of character, given to doing things
+rather than talking of them. Grant had
+not Lincoln’s tenderness of heart, or the
+beauty of his pure and generous nature;
+but he had his power of concentrating his
+whole mind upon the task in hand. He
+knew Lincoln’s secret: “Work, work, is
+the main thing.”</p>
+
+<p>The battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863,
+was for the North the darkest moment of
+the war; things were never so dark again.
+Only Lincoln’s supreme faith and courage
+could have risen from such a series of
+defeats unshaken. The newspapers were
+full of abuse of the President; plots were
+on foot against him to prevent his re-election<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>
+when the time came. In February
+he had lost his son Willie after a long and
+painful illness. But he never quailed.</p>
+
+<p>And his patience was at last to be rewarded.
+After Chancellorsville his unflinching
+belief in the justice of his course, in
+spite of opposition and discontent, was to
+be rewarded: he was to look, if only for
+a moment, upon an America not only free
+but united.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<span class="smaller">VICTORY</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">A</span>fter</span> Chancellorsville the South thought
+that all was won, and a movement was
+set on foot to attack Washington. Lee
+marched north with an army that, though
+only half fed, was full of enthusiasm, and on
+July 1 took up his position at Gettysburg,
+where he was faced by the Federal army
+under General Meade. The battle lasted
+three days, and the slaughter was terrific;
+in spite of the desperate determination of
+the Confederates, the day ended in a victory
+for the Union.</p>
+
+<p>Lee was driven back, and forced to retreat
+into Virginia. The invasion was at an
+end. The victory, though brilliant, was not
+followed up, perhaps because of the heavy
+losses of the Union army; but it was the
+turning-point of the war. Washington was
+never again in such danger; the Confederates<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
+had lost the one great opportunity
+of attack since Bull Run.</p>
+
+<p>Deep national thankfulness was felt at this,
+the first great victory for the North. The
+battlefield was only a few miles from the
+capital, and many of the citizens and the
+most prominent men of the town assembled
+to perform a service for the dead who had
+fallen there. Lincoln was called upon to
+speak. He had not prepared anything, but
+the short speech which he gave made a
+deep impression upon all who heard it, and
+puts into very noble words the thoughts
+that were always present to his mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Fourscore and seven years ago, our
+fathers brought forth a new nation upon
+this continent, conceived in liberty and dedicated
+to the proposition that all men are
+created equal. Now we are engaged in a
+great civil war, testing whether that nation,
+or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
+can long endure. We meet to dedicate a
+portion of it as a final resting-place of those
+who here gave their lives that the 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.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>The brave men, living and dead, who
+struggled here, have consecrated it far above
+our power to add or detract. The world will
+take little note, nor long remember, what we
+say here, but it can never forget what they
+did here. It is for us, the living, rather to
+be dedicated here to the unfinished work that
+they have thus far so nobly carried on. It
+is rather for us to be dedicated here to the
+great task remaining before us: that from
+these honoured dead we take increased devotion
+for the cause for which they here gave
+the last full measure of devotion; that we
+here highly resolve that these dead shall
+not have died in vain; that this nation shall,
+under God, have a new birth of freedom, and
+that the government of the people, by the
+people, and for the people, shall not perish
+from the earth.”</p>
+
+<p>In words like these, Lincoln inspired the
+people of the North to see the greatness of
+the cause for which they were fighting; they
+were fighting for liberty, for a free government
+of free men, for a United America that
+might be to the world a pattern of such a
+free government. If the South won, if America
+were a house divided for ever against
+itself, one half would have slavery; if
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>the North won, and America were a
+whole again, slavery was gone; the Declaration
+of Independence, proclaiming the
+equal rights of all men to life and liberty,
+would be for the first time fully realised.</p>
+
+<p>And encouragement came at last. On
+the Fourth of July, on Independence Day,
+Grant telegraphed to Lincoln the news
+of the capture of Vicksburg. In the
+beginning of May Grant had defeated
+Pemberton, the Confederate general, and
+shut him up in the town with his great
+army. After an unsuccessful assault in
+the end of May, he sat down patiently
+before the town, prepared to wear out
+its resistance. After great sufferings, the
+famishing garrison surrendered; Pemberton
+and 30,000 men, whom the South
+could but ill spare, were prisoners of war.
+Hundreds of cannon and thousands of
+muskets fell into the victor’s hands. Vicksburg
+was a position of importance, the key
+to the Mississippi. Lincoln could now say,
+“The Father of Waters again goes unvexed
+to the sea.”</p>
+
+<p>The joy in the North over these two
+victories was intense. The drooping spirits
+began to rise again; and as things went
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>better, men turned with new confidence to
+the patient man whose courage had never
+failed him. With renewed spirit the North
+set itself to the great task before it.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">Lincoln now had men who were able to
+carry out great designs. By the end of
+1863 things looked hopeful. The army had
+a nucleus of veterans who had received the
+best possible training, and a set of generals
+whose positions had been won not
+by political influence, but by hard work.
+Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan were men of
+ability, experience, and power.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo6"><img src="images/i_104.jpg" width="400" alt="Lincoln discussing the plan of campaign with General Grant" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">Lincoln discussing the plan of campaign with General Grant</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The plan of campaign for 1864, drawn
+up, under Lincoln’s advice, by Grant and
+Sherman, was masterly; carried out magnificently,
+it led to the complete triumph of the
+North. It was the complete development
+of Lincoln’s earlier plans. Grant, with the
+army of the west, was to face Lee in
+Virginia and drive him south; finally,
+to capture Richmond, the Confederate headquarters,
+and force Lee to yield. Sherman,
+marching south and east, was to carry the
+war into the heart of the Confederacy; to
+follow General Johnson, push him to the
+sea, and capture him. “We intend,” said
+Sherman, “to fight Joseph Johnson till he is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>satisfied.” Then Sherman, marching north,
+was to co-operate with Grant by cutting off
+Lee’s retreat. Meantime Sheridan was to
+deal with General Early in the Shenandoah
+valley, west and south of Washington.</p>
+
+<p>By May 1864 Grant crossed the Potomac
+and entered the wild district, full of hills
+and woods and undergrowth, known as the
+Wilderness, where the Union armies had
+suffered so many defeats. Grant saw that
+the only thing was to wear the Southern
+army out by hard fighting; and he fought
+hard all summer. He lost some thirty thousand
+men in the Wilderness. His policy
+was to bear so continuously on the enemy
+that they, having fewer men, and less possibility
+of recruiting, must be worn out.
+Slowly, with an immense loss of life on
+both sides, Grant forced Lee south.</p>
+
+<p>Sherman meantime was fighting his way
+to Georgia. His task was as difficult as
+Grant’s. The country was wild, and well
+adapted for concealing the enemy. It was
+impossible for him to communicate with the
+rest of the army.</p>
+
+<p>After an expedition into Alabama, Sherman
+started on his “March to the Sea.”
+Johnson disputed every inch of the way.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>There was incessant skirmishing, but Sherman
+advanced step by step.</p>
+
+<p>While Sherman and Grant were thus
+slowly wearing down the resistance of the
+enemy, the Unionists were once more encouraged
+by a brilliant naval success. In
+August Farragut came victorious out of a
+terrific fight in Mobile Bay. Entering the
+harbour in spite of the line of mines, he
+“plucked victory out of the very jaws of
+defeat.”</p>
+
+<p>Sherman was now besieging Atlanta, which
+he captured on September 1. About the
+same date Sheridan defeated Early at Winchester
+in the Shenandoah Valley.</p>
+
+<p>These successes decided the presidential
+election. Lincoln had been unanimously
+nominated as the Republican candidate,
+“not,” as he said, “because they have decided
+I am the greatest or best man in
+America, but rather they have concluded
+that it is not wise to swop horses while
+crossing a river, and have further concluded
+that I am not so poor a horse that they
+might not make a botch of it in trying to
+swop.” Against him the Democratic party,
+whose main principle was opposition to the
+war, supported ex-General M’Clellan, declaring<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+“the war is a failure.” The Democrats
+found their main supporters among
+those (and they were fairly numerous) who
+disliked Lincoln’s Emancipation proclamation.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln made no efforts to secure his re-election.
+He had been before the nation as
+President for four years: his policy was
+tried, his opinions known. Even M’Clellan
+did not dare to propose to abandon the
+Union. On that point the North was now
+united, and that being so the successes of
+September made Lincoln’s re-election practically
+certain. Out of 233 electoral votes
+Lincoln received 212; he had a majority in
+every free State save one. The election was
+a complete triumph for the President.</p>
+
+<p>The noble words of the address which
+he delivered on taking up his duties for
+a second time mark the spirit in which
+he celebrated that triumph. “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&mdash;to do all that may achieve
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>and cherish a just and lasting peace among
+ourselves and with all nations.”</p>
+
+<p>On November 16 Sherman marched on by
+Atlanta. By December he had reached
+Savannah and began to bombard the city.
+It surrendered on December 21, and Sherman
+wrote to Lincoln: “I beg to present to
+you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.”
+Leaving Savannah early in the
+New Year, 1865, the army marched, ravaging,
+through South Carolina. Columbia was
+burned and Charleston captured. By March,
+Sherman was in North Carolina and in
+communication with Grant. The net was
+ready to be drawn round the Confederate
+army.</p>
+
+<p>Grant meantime was bearing steadily on.
+The losses of the Union armies were enormous,
+and made the President’s tender
+heart bleed. Grant began to be hampered
+by the inferior quality of his troops, and
+during the summer months matters seemed
+to be going ill with the North. In September,
+however, Sheridan inflicted a series
+of defeats upon Early in the Shenandoah
+Valley, and on October 18 vanquished him
+decisively at Cedar Creek.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining Confederate army, under
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>Hood, was defeated at Nashville in the
+West, and now Lee’s was the only army in
+the field. The Confederacy was “surrounded
+by a band of fire.” The sea was in the hands
+of the Union; the Mississippi shut off any
+help from the coast. Sherman had harried
+Georgia and Carolina, destroying their supplies;
+Sheridan had raided Virginia; Grant
+was at the gates of Richmond.</p>
+
+<p>Through the whole summer of 1864 and
+the winter of 1865 Grant besieged Richmond.
+There were indecisive engagements, but the
+armies did no more than “feel” each other.
+With the spring, however, Grant took the
+offensive again. On March 31 Sheridan
+gained a brilliant victory at Five Forks,
+and this enabled Grant to break Lee’s lines.
+On April 3 the Stars and Stripes floated
+over Richmond. On April 9 Lee and his
+army surrendered to Grant at Appomatox.</p>
+
+<p>The war was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln had been with Grant’s army during
+the closing days of March; he entered
+Richmond on April 3. Everywhere the
+negroes saluted him as their liberator, kneeling
+on the ground before him and clasping
+his knees: “May de Lawd bress and keep
+you, Massa Presidum Linkum.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX<br />
+<span class="smaller">“O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!”</span></h2></div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">N</span>o</span> one had suffered more deeply during
+the war than the President. His purpose
+never faltered. Even at the moment
+when success seemed farthest distant, his
+resolve stood firm; cost what it might the
+Union must be preserved. When almost
+every other man despaired of the Northern
+cause, Lincoln’s invincible faith in the right
+and justice of their purpose sustained his
+country.</p>
+
+<p class="p15b">To attain that purpose thousands of lives
+had to be sacrificed; but the purpose
+was worth the loss of thousands of lives.
+Yet Lincoln’s heart bled for every one of
+them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a id="illo7"><img src="images/i_110.jpg" width="400" alt="Lincoln visited all the divisions of his army in turn" /></a></div>
+
+<p class="caption no-indent">Lincoln visited all the divisions of his army in turn</p>
+
+<p class="p2">All day long he received visits from
+distracted relations, mothers and wives
+asking him to pardon their sons or husbands<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>
+in prison as deserters or captured
+from the enemy; asking for tidings of
+their beloved ones at the front. His
+generals complained that he undermined
+the discipline of the army by pardoning
+what he called his “leg” cases&mdash;cases where
+men had run away before the enemy. “If
+Almighty God gives a man a cowardly
+pair of legs, how can he help their running
+away with him?” said Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>The story of William Scott is a case which
+shows the way in which Lincoln used to
+act. William Scott was a young boy from
+a Northern farm, who, after marching for
+forty-eight hours without sleep, offered to
+stand on guard duty for a sick comrade.
+Worn out, he fell asleep, and was condemned
+to be shot for being asleep on
+duty in face of the enemy. Lincoln made
+it his custom to visit all the divisions of
+his army in turns, and, as it happened,
+two days before the execution he was
+with the division in which Willie Scott was,
+and heard of the case. He went to see
+the boy, and talked to him about his home
+and his mother. As he was leaving the
+prison tent he put his hands on the lad’s
+shoulders, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>
+
+<p>“My boy, you are not going to be shot
+to-morrow.... I am going to trust you
+and send you back to your regiment.
+But I have been put to a great deal
+of trouble on your account. I have come
+here from Washington, where I had a
+great deal to do. Now, what I want to
+know is, how are you going to pay my
+bill?”</p>
+
+<p>Willie did not know what to say: perhaps
+he could get his friends to help him, he said
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Lincoln, “friends cannot pay
+it; only one man in the world can pay it,
+and that is William Scott. If from this
+day on William Scott does his duty, my
+bill is paid.”</p>
+
+<p>William Scott never forgot these words.
+Just before his death in one of the later
+battles of the war, he asked his comrades
+to tell President Lincoln that he had never
+forgotten what he had said.</p>
+
+<p>All the time, people who did not know the
+President threw on his shoulders all the
+blame for the long continuance of the war.
+Until the last year of the war, the newspapers
+abused him continually. The horrible loss
+of life in Grant’s last campaign was laid to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>his charge. Only those who came to the
+President to ask his help in their own suffering,
+understood what his suffering was; he
+suffered with each of them&mdash;he suffered with
+the South as well as the North. After
+Antietam, he had said, “I shall not live
+to see the end; this war is killing me.”
+The crushing burden he had borne so long
+and patiently had bent even his strong
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>But it had not been borne in vain. The
+time seemed at last to have come when all
+America would understand how much they
+owed to the patient endurance of the President.
+And there was work still to be done
+which needed all his wisdom. The South
+was conquered. It had to be made one with
+the North. The pride of the conquerors had
+to be curbed, the bitterness of the conquered
+softened.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln returned from Richmond to Washington,
+in his heart the profound resolve “to
+bind up the nation’s wounds” as he, and only
+he, could do it.</p>
+
+<p>April 14 was Good Friday, and a day of
+deep thankfulness in the North. In the
+morning Lincoln held a Cabinet meeting, at
+which General Grant was present. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>question of reconstruction, of making one
+whole out of the divided halves, was discussed.
+Some of the Cabinet were anxious
+to wreak vengeance on the South, to
+execute the leaders of the rebellion. Such
+was not Lincoln’s view.</p>
+
+<p>“Enough lives have been sacrificed. We
+must extinguish our resentments if we
+expect harmony and union.”</p>
+
+<p>His noble patriotism could still say to the
+South, “We are not enemies, but friends.”
+His life was now even more precious to the
+South than to the North.</p>
+
+<p>After the Cabinet meeting, Lincoln spent
+some time in talking with his son Robert,
+who had returned from the field with General
+Grant, under whom he had served as a
+captain. In the afternoon he went for a
+drive with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood was
+calm and happy: for the first time for four
+years he could look forward peacefully to
+the future, and to the great tasks still before
+him.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening he went to the theatre with
+his wife and two young friends: the play
+was “Our American Cousin.” The President
+was fond of the theatre&mdash;it was one of his few
+recreations: his appearance on this night
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>was something of a public ceremony; therefore,
+although he was tired when evening
+came, he went because he knew that many
+people would be disappointed if he did not.
+The President had a box to the left of the
+stage. Suddenly, about the middle of the
+last act, a man appeared at the back of the
+box, a knife in one hand and a pistol in the
+other, put the pistol to the President’s head
+and fired; then wounding Major Rathbone,
+the only other man in the box, with his
+knife, he vaulted on to the stage. As he
+leapt his spur caught the flag hanging from
+the box and he fell, breaking his leg. Nevertheless
+he rose instantly, and brandishing
+his knife and crying, “<i>Sic semper tyrannis!</i>”&mdash;“The
+South is avenged!” fled across the
+stage and out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>The horrified audience was thunderstruck.
+The President lay quite still: the bullet had
+passed right through his head. The wound
+was mortal. He was carried to a house
+across the street, where he lay, quite unconscious,
+till the morning, surrounded by his
+friends, their faces as pale and haggard as
+his own. About seven, “a look of unspeakable
+peace came upon his worn features.”
+Stanton, the War Secretary, rose from his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>knees by his side, saying, “Now he belongs
+to the ages.”</p>
+
+<p>There was profound sorrow through the
+whole of America; sorrow that checked all
+rejoicings over the victory of the North.
+Thus, indirectly, Lincoln’s death helped the
+reconciliation between North and South,
+though nothing could counterbalance the
+loss of his wise guidance.</p>
+
+<p>Washington was shrouded in black: even
+the poorest inhabitants showing their sorrow
+in their dress. The body was taken to
+Springfield, Illinois, to be buried; and all
+the towns on the way showed their deep
+mourning and respect. Now, and not till
+now, did Americans begin to understand
+what a man they had lost.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“He knew to bide his time,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">And can his fame abide,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Still patient in his simple faith sublime</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Till the wise years decide.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Great captains with their guns and drums</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Disturb our judgment for the hour,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But at last silence comes:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Our children shall behold his fame,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The kindly, earnest, brave, far-seeing man,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">New birth of our new soil, the first American.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p>
+<p>So James Russell Lowell wrote of Lincoln
+when the celebration of Independence Day in
+the year of his death revived the vivid sense
+of loss.</p>
+
+<p>The passage of years have only made
+clearer how great he was. Perfectly simple,
+perfectly sincere, he thought out for himself
+an ideal, and spent the whole of his life and
+all his strength in pursuing it.</p>
+
+<p>He loved America, not because it was
+powerful and strong, but because it had
+been based on a great idea&mdash;the idea of
+liberty: his work for America was to
+realise that idea. He never thought of
+his own personal success: he wanted to
+be President because he saw a great
+work to be done and believed that he
+could do it. He never became rich: his
+own tastes remained entirely simple. He
+was said to have worn the same top-hat
+all his life.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that struck any one about
+Lincoln was his extraordinary appearance.
+He always dressed in black, with a big black
+tie, very often untied, or in the wrong place:
+his clothes looked as if they had been made
+to fit some one else, and had never been
+new. His feet were enormous; so were his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>hands, covered on state occasions with white
+kid gloves.</p>
+
+<p>In cold weather he used to wear a large
+grey shawl instead of an overcoat. One
+day, before he was made President, some
+friends were discussing Lincoln and Douglas,
+and comparing their heights. When Lincoln
+came into the room some one asked
+him, “How long ought a man’s legs to
+be?”</p>
+
+<p>“Long enough to reach from his body
+to the ground,” said Lincoln coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln might look uncouth or even grotesque,
+but he did not look weak: he
+was the most striking figure wherever
+he went. No one who saw him often, no
+one who went to him in trouble, or to
+ask his advice, thought long of his appearance.
+Those who had once felt the
+sympathy of his wonderful, sad eyes, thought
+of that only. Those who really knew him,
+knew him to be the best man they had
+ever met.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln was often profoundly sad, and
+then suddenly boisterously gay. He enjoyed
+a joke or a funny story immensely:
+he often used to shock thoughtless people
+by telling some comic story on what they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>thought an unsuitable occasion; but he
+told it so well that however much they
+might disapprove they were generally forced
+to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Always rather a dreamer, he was fond of
+poetry. He knew long passages of Shakespeare
+by heart, especially Hamlet, Macbeth,
+and Richard III. The Bible he had known
+from his childhood; of Burns he was very
+fond.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln’s rise to power, as even so short
+an account as this will have shown you, was
+not due to any extraordinary good fortune
+or any advantages at start. He taught himself
+all that he knew; he made himself
+what he was.</p>
+
+<p>It was his character more than anything
+else that made him great. His
+early struggles had taught him that self-reliance
+which enabled him to persevere
+in a course which he thought right in
+spite of opposition, disloyalty, and abuse;
+they taught him the toleration which
+made him slow to judge others, generous
+to praise them, little apt to expect them
+to understand or praise him. He stood
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>Not till he had gone did his people realise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>how much he had given them; how much
+they had lost in him. He gave them, indeed,
+the most priceless gift a patriot can give his
+country&mdash;the example of sincere, devoted,
+and unselfish service.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Co.</span><br />
+Edinburgh &amp; London<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="transnote"><div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2 nobreak"><span class="smcap">Transcriber’s Notes:</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent">Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph have been
+moved to avoid interrupting the paragraph flow.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">On page 65, “yes,” has been changed to ‘yes,’ to conform to standard
+usage.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">All other variant spellings, punctuation and hyphenation have
+been left as typeset.</p></div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ***</div>
+<div style='text-align:left'>
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-21 18:15:44 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-21 18:15:44 -0800
commit	8545a00cfcf3256162d4db0f72f0e05cfcb5b768 (patch)
tree	47cf6d470b70d8d497337c36f60ef9c67d16a27a