(1809-1865)
[Footnote 13: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: A house. [TN]]
Born in obscurity and poverty, with health and a good disposition as a
heritage from nature, and with Christian parents as teachers and guides,
Abraham Lincoln--sixteenth president of the United States--entered upon
life's journey through toil and vicissitude to fame and immortality.
Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of the president, was born in Union, Pa.,
and in 1759 removed with his parents to a point near Harrisonburg, Va.
John Hanks and Squire Boone, father of Daniel Boone, were neighbors of
the Lincolns at Union; the former took up his residence at Harrisonburg,
Va., and Squire Boone removed to Holman's Ford, on the Yadkin River, in
North Carolina. When he was twenty-one years old, Abraham Lincoln went
to North Carolina to visit his old neighbors, the Boones, and while
there met and married Mary Shipley. He built a log cabin on the banks of
the Yadkin and lived there several years. Here it was that Thomas
Lincoln, father of the president, was born. Shortly after his birth his
parents, in 1778, removed to Kentucky and settled near Elizabethtown, in
Hardin County. In 1784, when Thomas was but six years old, his father
was killed by the Indians. There were no schools in that neighborhood,
and Thomas Lincoln grew to manhood without receiving an education.
Joseph Hanks, son of John Hanks, removed to Kentucky about the time that
Abraham Lincoln moved there from North Carolina. His daughter, Nancy
Hanks, who was born and educated in Virginia, grew up a playmate of
Thomas Lincoln, and in 1806 became his wife. Thomas Lincoln selected a
farm near Hodgensville, now the county seat of Larue County, Ky., built
a log cabin containing but one room, in which, on February 12, 1809,
Abraham Lincoln, the future president, was born. A poor farmer, with no
education and no capital other than his labor, Thomas Lincoln found
little to encourage his stay in Kentucky. The institution of slavery,
which lived on the toil of the black man, threw a dark shadow across the
path of the "poor white" who could claim no title to property in human
flesh and sinew, and in 1817 he removed from Kentucky to Spencer County,
Ind., and settled in the forest at Pigeon Creek, near the town of
Gentryville. On October 5, 1818, Mrs. Lincoln died and was laid to rest
at the foot of a tree on the farm which her husband had hewed out of the
forest with his axe.
Eighteen months after the death of his wife, Mr. Lincoln married Mrs.
Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow who had been a neighbor of his in
Kentucky. To his stepmother Abraham became very much attached, and he
always entertained the greatest respect and affection for her. His
education was very simple, his school days few, and his books fewer
still. Before leaving Kentucky he learned to read while listening to his
mother as she gave lessons to his father. In 1814, a Catholic priest,
Zachariah Riney, who travelled through the country, opened a school in
an untenanted cabin at Hodgensville, and for a few weeks gave
instructions to the youth of the neighborhood. Abraham attended this
school during its brief existence. In 1822 Azel Dorsey was employed as
teacher at Pigeon Creek, Ind., and during his short stay Abraham Lincoln
was his most attentive pupil. Two years after, Abraham went to school
for several months, and in 1824 his school days came to an end. His time
at school did not exceed twelve months altogether. In the meantime he
had read Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
AEsop's "Fables," The Bible, and Weems's "Life of Washington." In 1824
his father, in need of his assistance as a bread-winner, began to
instruct him in the carpenter trade. In 1825 he was employed at $6 a
month to manage a ferry across the Ohio River at Gentry's Landing, near
the mouth of Anderson Creek. His wages were paid to his father. The
first money he earned for himself came in the shape of two half-dollars
paid to him by two gentlemen whose trunks he transferred from the shore
to a passing steamer. In 1828 Mr. Gentry engaged him to go to New
Orleans on a flat-boat with a load of produce. In 1830 John Hanks, who
had removed from Kentucky to Illinois, wrote to Thomas Lincoln, urging
him to move to that State. Acting on the advice, Mr. Lincoln removed to
Illinois and settled at a point some ten miles west of Decatur. Abraham
Lincoln drove the ox team which hauled the household effects of the
family, and wearing a coon-skin cap, jean jacket, and a pair of buckskin
trousers, he entered the State poor, friendless, and unknown. Thirty
years later he left Illinois the foremost man in the nation, and known
to all the world. He assisted his father in clearing fifteen acres of
land, and split the rails with which to build the fence. Although of
age, he had no money, and having but a scant supply of clothing, made a
bargain with Nancy Miller to make him a pair of trousers. For each yard
of cloth required he split four hundred fence-rails, and as he was over
six feet in height it took fourteen hundred rails to pay for his
trousers. On April 19, 1831, he went to New Orleans with a flat-boat
load of pigs, corn, pork, and beef; the pigs refusing to walk, Lincoln
carried them aboard in his arms. John Hanks and Lincoln's half-brother,
John Johnston, accompanied him on the trip. While in New Orleans he
first saw men and women sold as slaves, and as every instinct of his
nature revolted at the spectacle, he said to John Hanks: "If ever I get
a chance to hit that institution, I'll hit it hard." Returning from New
Orleans, he went to New Salem to clerk in the store of Denton Offut.
While waiting for a shipment of goods he acted as clerk on a local
election board, and thus filled his first political position. During his
stay in New Salem he was frequently called on to exercise his great
strength in quelling disturbances, and inspired the turbulent element of
the place with a wholesome respect for his powers of muscular
persuasion. He was not quarrelsome, never engaged in contention, but
never hesitated to take his own part or that of another who might need a
helping hand. He subscribed for the Louisville _Journal_, and generously
read its contents aloud to those who gathered in the store. During the
Black Hawk war he enlisted as private in a company which was raised in
the neighborhood, and was at once elected captain. In a short time the
company was mustered out, and he re-enlisted in an "Independent Spy
Battalion" which continued in service until the end of the war. On
returning to New Salem he announced himself an independent candidate for
the Legislature, and at a meeting held during the canvass made his first
political speech in these words: "Fellow-citizens: I presume you know
who I am; I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many
friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics can be
briefly stated. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a
high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political
principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the
same."
In the winter of 1832 he became a partner of a man named Berry, in the
purchase and management of a store. They had no money, but gave their
notes. Berry became dissipated, lost interest in the business, and the
firm failed. In 1833 President Jackson appointed Lincoln postmaster of
New Salem; he remained postmaster until 1836. While holding the office
Lincoln voluntarily established the "free delivery" system in New Salem
by carrying the letters around in his hat. He began the study of law,
and was soon after appointed deputy surveyor. The note he gave on going
into partnership with Berry had been sold to a man who wanted his money,
and in the fall of 1834 the sheriff levied on and sold his instruments
to satisfy the debt. In that year he was elected to the Legislature, and
borrowed the money with which to purchase a suit of clothes to go to the
State capital at Vandalia. He was re-elected to the Legislature in 1836,
and during the canvass declared his principles as follows:
"I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in
bearing its burdens; consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, _by no means excluding
females_."
A few years later, when questioned concerning that utterance, he said:
"All questions of social and moral reform find lodgement first with
enlightened souls, who stamp them with their approval. In God's own time
they will be organized into law, and thus woven into the fabric of our
institutions."
[Illustration: A. Lincoln.]
In 1836 he met Stephen A. Douglas for the first time, at the State
capital. In 1837 he was admitted to the bar, in 1838 re-elected to the
Legislature, and again in 1840. The capital had been removed from
Vandalia to Springfield, and in partnership with John T. Stuart he began
the practice of law in that city in 1839. On November 4, 1842, he was
married to Mary Todd, daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd. In the
presidential campaigns of 1840 and 1844 he canvassed the State as a
presidential elector on the whig ticket; and in both campaigns was
pitted, in joint debate, against Stephen A. Douglas. In 1846 he was
elected to the thirtieth Congress, and was the only whig representative
in that body from Illinois. On January 12, 1848, he made his first
speech in Congress, on a resolution which he offered calling on the
president to provide a statement relating to the war with Mexico. On
January 16, 1849, he introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia and to compensate the owners of the liberated
slaves. He declined a re-election to Congress, and in 1849 was an
unsuccessful candidate for United States senator. In 1850 he refused to
accept the appointment as Governor of Oregon, tendered him by President
Fillmore. For a few years he gave no attention to political matters, but
the introduction in Congress of the bill to admit Nebraska and Kansas to
the Union, and the agitation for the repeal of the "Missouri
Compromise," aroused his interest, and in a short time he became the
leader of a new party in the State. All who opposed the repeal of that
compromise, of whatever party, were known as "Anti-Nebraska" in the
beginning, but gradually they began to call themselves "Republicans,"
and as such they carried most of the "Free State" elections of 1854.
Senator Douglas, in defending his course on the "Nebraska Bill," made
speeches through Illinois. On October 1, 1854, Lincoln, in reply to one
of these speeches, in speaking of slavery said:
"I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just
influence in the world; it enables the enemies of free institutions to
taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our
sincerity; is at war with the vital principles of civic liberty;
contrary to the Declaration of Independence; and maintains that there is
no right principle of action but self-interest.... No man is good enough
to govern another man without the other's consent.... I object to the
Nebraska Bill because it assumes there can be moral right in the
enslaving of one man by another."
He was a candidate for United States Senator in 1855, but his withdrawal
from the contest gave the election to Mr. Trumbull. In 1856 he received
one hundred and ten votes for vice-president at the first Republican
national contention, and canvassed the State as one of the presidential
electors. During this canvass he said:
"Sometimes when I am speaking I feel that the time is soon coming when
the sun shall shine and the rain fall on no man who shall go forth to
unrequited toil.... How it will come about, when it will come, I cannot
tell; but that time will surely come."
The Supreme Court of the United States, on March 6, 1857, committed
itself to the perpetuation of slavery in the "Dred Scott" decision, and
that act, together with the question of admitting Kansas to the Union as
a slave or free State, furnished the argument for the legislative
campaign of 1858, in which Lincoln was a candidate for United States
senator against Stephen A. Douglas. In his speech accepting the
nomination he, in referring to the agitation for the abolition of
slavery, said:
"In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached
and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe
this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do
not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to
fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided."
On May 16, 1860, the second Republican national convention met in
Chicago, and on the third ballot nominated Lincoln for the presidency
over William H. Seward, who was at that time the idol of the radical
element of the party. Not many who listened to the clergyman who
delivered the prayer at the opening of the convention, gave serious
thought to these prophetic words as they fell from his lips:
"We entreat Thee that at some future, but no distant, day the evil which
now invests the body politic shall not only have been arrested in its
progress, but wholly eradicated from the system."
The Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas; the slave-holding,
Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckenridge, and a Constitutional
Union party nominated John Bell. The Electoral College gave Lincoln 180
votes, Breckenridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas 12. In his inaugural
address Lincoln said:
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have
no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
Although his inaugural breathed peace and conciliation in every line, it
had no effect on the hot-headed advocates of secession. The war began
with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and ended with
his death. On April 15th, he issued his first call for troops, and
during his administration the total number called for was 2,759,049.
With the exception of Russia, the foreign powers exhibited evidences of
hostility to the Union, and when urged to retaliation Lincoln said: "One
war at a time, if you please, gentlemen." On May 20, 1862, he signed the
Homestead Law, a boon of inestimable value to settlers on land. On
January 1, 1863, he issued the "Emancipation Proclamation" which stamped
the seal of eternal truth on the Declaration of Independence. On
November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, he, in
concluding a speech which should be committed to memory by every citizen
of the nation, said:
"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us.... That we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have
died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the
people shall not perish from the earth."
On June 8, 1864, he was renominated by the Republican national
convention, General McClellan was nominated by the Democrats, and at the
election Lincoln received 212 of the 233 electoral votes cast. In
concluding his inaugural address, March 4, 1865, he said:
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His
aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to
ask God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other
men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.... Fondly do
we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so, still, it must be said, that the judgments of
the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward none,
with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see
the right, let us 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 orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
On the evening of April 14, 1865, while seated in a box at Ford's
Theatre, witnessing the play, "Our American Cousin," he was shot by an
actor, J. Wilkes Booth, and at twenty-two minutes past seven on the
morning of the 15th his life ended. His body was embalmed and taken, in
funeral procession, from Washington through Baltimore, Harrisburg,
Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago to
Springfield, and was buried on May 4th at Oak Ridge Cemetery. On October
15, 1874, his remains were taken up and placed in a tomb beneath a
magnificent and elegantly designed monument consisting of a statue of
the martyred president and an obelisk of imposing appearance.
No pen can do justice to the character of Lincoln, for the world will
never know of the trials, embarrassments, and misgivings which beset him
from his infancy in the backwoods to his tomb in Springfield. During his
administration he never knew a moment free from anxiety. Each day he
faced a new problem, and finding no precedent to guide him in its
solution, he acted in accordance with his own good common sense, and
proved equal to every emergency. Frequently misunderstood by the nation
and her foremost men, he removed all doubts by the touch of the
statesman when the time was ripe. To fully estimate the statesman we
must know the man, and as years go by the full nobility of his private
character will be disclosed to the world in all its simple grandeur. His
was "a spirit of the greatest size and divinest metal" which no
temptation could allure from the course of right. His administration was
the most trying that could fall to the lot of man, no other furnished so
many opportunities to amass wealth through speculation and intrigue, but
greed and avarice were strangers to his nature, and no stain rests upon
his memory. He was slow to arrive at conclusions, but when deliberation
gave birth to conviction he unfalteringly strove for the right. His
education was practical, not theoretical, and was acquired in the school
of nature and among men rather than among books. The basis of his life
was earnestness. No rhetorical display marked his speech, but his
oratory fastened the attention, appealed to reason and carried
conviction to the hearts of his listeners. He valued public opinion, for
he said:
"With public sentiment nothing can fail; without public sentiment
nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment goes
deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions."
He opposed the extension of slavery rather than its abolition; but as he
divined the real sentiments of its advocates he realized that enduring
peace would not bless the nation while the institution lived, a menace
to free labor and industrial prosperity. He professed no religion, for
his great heart throbbed in sympathy with all humanity, and he would not
be separated from even the humblest among men by the artificial barriers
of creed. He believed in the gospel of liberty and would guarantee it to
all men through constitutional enactment. When he became president he
found slavery intrenched behind the bulwarks of constitutional law and
judicial decision; he found a united South, resolute in her
determination to perpetuate slavery in the nation; a vacillating North,
divided in its sentiment on the great question of property in man. He
found the nation in the throes of civil war, and died in the triumphal
hour of his country's deliverance, with the sceptre of slavery
shattered, her fetters broken and in rust, and her power crumbled to
ashes.
Public criticism never annoyed him, and he was not averse to taking
counsel from the poorest among men. It was love of country, not selfish
ambition, which turned his attention to public life, and toward the end
of his administration he was rewarded by public confidence and a respect
for his honesty and singleness of aim toward the good of the nation. He
had a great relish for story-telling and used his fund of anecdote to
good advantage in illustrating points in conversation.
His administration stands the guide-post of the centuries, set by the
Eternal as the dividing line between the serfdom of the past and the
freedom of the future. His monument stands the altar of a nation's fame,
and his name will live to guide the world to enfranchisement.
[Signature of the author.]