THE WONDERFUL STORY OF LINCOLN
"I see him, as he stands,
With gifts of mercy in his outstretched hands;
A kindly light within his gentle eyes,
Sad as the toil in which his heart grew wise;
His lips half parted with the constant smile
That kindled truth but foiled the deepest guile;
His head bent forward, and his willing ear
Divinely patient right and wrong to hear:
Great in his goodness, humble in his state,
Firm in his purpose, yet not passionate,
He led his people with a tender hand,
And won by love a sway beyond command."
GEORGE H. BOKER.
_Inspiration Series of Patriotic Americans_
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF LINCOLN
AND THE MEANING OF HIS LIFE FOR THE YOUTH AND PATRIOTISM OF
AMERICA
BY C. M. STEVENS
_Author of "The Wonderful Story of Washington"_
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
Copyright, 1917, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS
A Personal Life and Its Interest to Americans.
The Process of Life from Within.
A Life Built as One Would Have the Nation.
II. THE PROBLEM OF A WORTH-WHILE LIFE
The Lincoln Boy of the Kentucky Woods.
Home-Seekers in the Wild West.
A Wonderful Family in the Desolate Wilderness.
Way-Marks of Right Life.
III. THE LINCOLN BOY
How the Lincoln Boy Made the Lincoln Man.
Some Signs Along the Early Way.
Illustrations Showing the Making of a Man.
Lincoln's First Dollar.
The Characteristics of a Superior Mind.
IV. THE WILDERNESS AS THE GARDEN OF POLITICAL LIBERTY
Small Beginnings in Public Esteem.
Tests of Character on the Lawless Frontier.
The Pioneer Missionary of Humanity.
Experiences in the Indian War.
Life-Making Decisions.
V. BUSINESS NOT HARMONIOUS WITH THE STRUGGLE FOR LEARNING
Making a Living and Learning the Meaning of Life.
Out of the Wilderness Paths into the Great Highway.
Lincoln's First Law Case.
The Man Who Could Not Live for Self Alone.
VI. HELPFULNESS AND KINDNESS OF A WORTH-WHILE CHARACTER
The Love of Freedom and Truth.
Wit-Makers and Their Wit.
Turbulent Times and Social Storms.
The Frontier "Fire-Eater."
Honor to Whom Honor Is Due.
VII. SIMPLICITY AND SYMPATHY ESSENTIAL TO GENUINE CHARACTER
Nearing the Heights of a Public Career.
Some Characteristics of Momentous Times.
The Beginnings of Great Tragedy.
The Life Struggle of a Man Translated Into the Life Struggle
of a Nation.
Some Human Interests Making Lighter the Burdens of
the Troubled Way.
VIII. THE MAN AND THE CONFIDENCE OF THE PEOPLE
Typical Incidents From Among Momentous Scenes.
Experiences Demanding Mercy and Not Sacrifice.
Humanity and the Great School of Experience.
Simple Interests That Never Grow Old.
Some Incidents From the Great Years.
IX. FALSEHOOD AIDS NO ONE'S TRUTH
Freedom to Misrepresent Is Not Freedom.
Homely Ways To Express Truth.
X. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY
The Great Tragedy.
The Time When "Those Who Came To Scoff Remained
To Pray."
Some Typical Examples Giving Views of Lincoln's Life.
Remembrance At the End of a Hundred Years.
XI. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
A Masterpiece of Meaning for America.
The Harmonizing Contrast of Men.
The Mission of America.
LINCOLN AND AMERICAN FREEDOM
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS
I. A PERSONAL LIFE AND ITS INTEREST TO AMERICANS
"America First" has probably as many varieties of meaning and use as
"Safety First." It means to every individual very much according to
what feelings it inspires in him of selfishness or patriotism. We are
inspired as we believe, and, to be an American, it is necessary to
appreciate the meaning and mission of America.
American history is composed of the struggle to get clear the meaning
of American liberty. Through many years of distress and sacrifice,
known as the Revolutionary War, the American people freed themselves
from un-American methods and masteries imposed on them from across
the sea. Out of that turmoil of minds came forth one typical leader
and American, George Washington. But we did not yet have clear the
meaning of America, and through yet more years of even worse
suffering, involving the Civil War, we freed ourselves from the
war-making methods and masteries entrenched within our own government.
Out of that political turmoil of minds appeared another American,
Abraham Lincoln, whose life represents supremely the most important
possibilities in the meaning and ideal of America. To know the
mind-making process that developed Washington and Lincoln is to know
not only the meaning but also the mission of America.
Every American child and every newcomer to our shores is in great need
to understand clearly and indisputably their interest in American
freedom, as being human freedom and world freedom, if they are to
realize and fulfill their part as Americans.
The American vision of moral freedom and social righteousness can in
no way be made clearer than in studying the process of development
that individually prepared Washington and Lincoln to be the makers and
preservers of a developing democracy for America and for the American
mind of the world.
Lincoln's early life has interest and meaning only for those who are
seeking to understand the pioneer political principles, fundamental
in character and civilization, out of which could develop a mind and
manhood equipped for the greatest and noblest of human tasks. To take
his "backwoods" experiences and their comparatively uncouth incidents,
as interesting merely because they happened to a man who became
famous, is to miss every inspiration, value and meaning so important
in building his way as man and statesman. To read the early incidents
of Lincoln's life for the isolated interest of their being the queer,
peculiar or pathetic biography of a notable character has little that
is either inspiring or informing to a boy in the light of present
experiences and methods of living. Indeed, many social episodes of
pioneer customs are seemingly so trivial or coarse, in comparison, as
to detract in respect from a boy's ideal of the historical Lincoln.
[Illustration: The Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln--Hodgensville, Ky.]
The pioneer frontier was the social infancy of a new meaning for
civilization. Its lowly needs of humble equality were the first social
interests of Lincoln, and the wonderful story of his life in that
place and time, if told as merely historical happenings, incidentally
noticeable only because they happened to Lincoln, becomes more and
more frivolous and disesteeming in interest to boyhood, and to the
general reader, as current social customs develop away beyond those
times. This is why such strained efforts have been made to give the
incidents of his social infancy a pathetic interest, or some other
sympathetic appeal, where everything was so unromantic, industrious,
simple, enjoyable and faithful to the earth.
Those lowly years were sacred privacy to him. He knew there was
nothing in them for a biographer, and he said so. His experience is
valuable only in showing how it developed a man. True enough, the
biographically uninteresting trivialities of his early years were not
from him but from his environment. This is proven from the fact that
two wider contrasting environments are hardly possible than those of
Washington and Lincoln, and yet out of them came the same model
character and supreme American.
II. THE PROCESS OF LIFE FROM WITHIN
Standard authorities have already fully recorded Lincoln's biography
and its historical environment. There yet remains the far more
difficult, delicate and consequential message from generation to
generation, so much needed in patriotic appreciation, to interpret his
rise from those vanished social origins, in order that there may be a
just valuation of his life by American youth.
The schoolboy learns with little addition to his ideals, or to his
patriotism, or humanity, when he reads of a person, born in what
appears to be the most sordid and pathetic destitution of the wild
West, at last becoming a martyr president. The scenes in the making of
Lincoln's life run by too fast in the reading for the strengthening
life-interest to be received and appreciated. The human process of
Lincoln's youth, with its supreme lesson of patience and labor and
growth, is lost in considering the man solely as a strange figure of
American history. If that life can be separated enough from the
political turmoil so as to be seen and to be given a worthy
interpretation, there is thus a service that may be worth while for
the American youth.
Heroes have been made in many a historical crisis and they represent
some splendid devotion to a single idea of human worth, but Lincoln's
heroism was the far severer test of a hard struggle through many
years. He came near encountering every discouragement and in mastering
every difficulty that may befall any American from the worst to the
best, and from the lowliest to the most responsible position.
The poet has expressed these valuations arising through the frailties
and vicissitudes of his long, tragic struggle in the following lines:
"A blend of mirth and sadness, smiles and tears;
A quaint knight-errant of the pioneers;
A homely hero born of star and sod;
A Peasant Prince; a Masterpiece of God."
Lincoln's life has much more for American youth than the
adventure-story of a backwoods boy of pioneer days on his unknown way
to be a hero of American history. What Lincoln thought he was and what
he made out of his relations with those around him are only incidental
to the inspiring patience with which he kept the faith of high meaning
within him, and the labor with which he strove on until his ideal came
clear as one of the supreme visions of humanity.
Every really ambitious American boy asks himself the question, How did
he do it? The probably correct answer is that he didn't do it. He made
himself the right man and the right people did it.
We do not now hear so much of Lincoln as the "fireplace" student,
because that word no longer carries so pathetic a vision as it did to
the American boy. "Lincoln the railsplitter" has almost disappeared
from the phrases of patriotic eulogy for this great American, because
the task and significance of railsplitting no longer bear the force of
meaning that they did to the boys of Civil-War days. This means that,
if the American boy is to receive any inspiration from the early life
of Lincoln, there must be achieved some new and more significant form
of interpretation from the making of his life and character.
Even the strong description of Edwin Markham becomes more figurative
than concrete in its illustration more poetic than material, when he
says,
"He built the rail-pile as he built the state,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,
The conscience of him testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man."
III. A LIFE BUILT AS ONE WOULD HAVE THE NATION
Lincoln's life may be prized as much in what he did for himself as in
what he did for his country, because in the course of our interest
they mean the same and become the same. He has shown to every American
boy that the right desire, no matter what the circumstances and
conditions, will invariably lead along the right way to the successful
life, because the successful character is a successful career for a
successful humanity. Very clearly one thing is sure, he was
wonderfully successful in finding the right thing to do and in
finding the right way to do it. That is what humanity wants and such a
man is the human ideal. Accordingly, Lincoln's personal moral
development, apart from his historical public career, is an
introductory story inspiring an interest for the patriotic study of
his statesmanship and the fundamental principles of American life.
Any boy or girl can appreciate the events that entered into the making
of Lincoln's mind and character, but only a student of statesmanship
and history can read beyond this and appreciate the almost superhuman
task which Lincoln carried through to the extinction of slavery and
the preservation of the United States of America.
In that view we are not here writing the biography or history of
Lincoln the Statesman, nor of Lincoln the War President, for that work
has already been exhaustively and nobly done, but to give the
inspiring meaning of his experiences from which arose the boy and man
representing above all others the meaning and mission of Americans and
America.