HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT
I SHOULD like to tell you all about one of the greatest and noblest men
who ever lived in our country, and give you his story from the time he
was born until the time he died. But that would be biography, and this
is a book of history. Biography is the story of a man; history is the
story of a nation. So I cannot give you the whole life of Abraham
Lincoln, but only that part of it which has to do with the history of
our country.
Nations, you should know, are divided into monarchies and republics. In
a monarchy the ruler is called a king, or some other name which means
the same thing. And when a king dies his son takes his place as king.
The king may be noble and wise, or he may be base and foolish; he may be
a genius, or he may be an idiot, without any sense at all; he may be
kind and just, or he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he is
king. There may be some good points in letting a man be born king, but
you can see that there are many bad ones. The history of the nations
has often shown this, as you may have seen in what we have said of some
of the English kings who had to do with America.
In a republic the ruler--who is called president instead of king--is not
born to his office, but is chosen by the people; and he cannot rule the
nation all his life, but only for a few years. In that way the best and
wisest man in the nation may be chosen as its ruler. We do not always
get the best man in the United States; but that is the fault of the
people, it is not the fault of the plan. There is one thing sure, we
never get a fool or an idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do.
There are times when we do choose our best and wisest man, and everybody
thinks we did so when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As I have told
you, as soon as he was made President a great war began between the two
halves of our people. It is not so easy to rule in war as in peace, and
I must say that poor Lincoln had a very hard time of it. But he did the
best he could, and people say now that no man in our nation could have
done better. Abraham Lincoln stands next to George Washington among the
great and noble men of America.
There is one more thing it is well to know. It is not only the rich and
proud that we choose to be our Presidents. Many of them have begun life
as poor boys, and none of them began poorer than "honest Abe Lincoln,"
as the people he lived among called him. He well deserved this name, for
he was always good and honest.
No doubt there are many poor boys among my readers, but I do not believe
that any of you are as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as
hard a life. So you see that while a king must have a king or great
noble for father, a President may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any
one of my young readers, if he can bring himself strongly to the notice
of the people, may become President, and I should not wonder at all if
some one among you should do so in future times.
I told you that I would not speak about Abraham Lincoln's early life,
but I see that I shall have to do so. He was born in a mean little
log-cabin in the back woods a hundred years ago, in the year 1809. His
father could not read and did not like to work, and the poor little
fellow had hardly enough to eat.
His mother loved him, but she could do little for him, and she died when
he was only eight years old. Then his father married a second wife. She
was a good woman, and she did all she could for the poor, forlorn little
boy. But it did not look much then as if this ragged and hungry little
chap would become President of the United States.
There was one good thing about little Abe, he had a great love for
books. He went to school only long enough to learn to read and write,
but he borrowed and read all the books he could get. When he found he
could not go to school he studied at home. He had no slate or pencil, so
he studied arithmetic by the light of the kitchen fire, working out the
problems on the back of a wooden fire shovel. When this was full he
would scrape it off smooth and begin again. In this way the boy got to
be the best scholar in all the country around him. How many of you would
have worked as hard as he did to get an education? Yet it was this kind
of work that made him President.
Lincoln knew how to make use of his learning. He was always a good
talker, and he grew to be one of the best public speakers of his times.
He became so well known and so well respected that at length he was sent
to Congress. Lincoln did not believe that slavery was a good thing for
the country, and was sure it was a wrong thing in itself. So he joined
the Republican Party, which had just been formed.
There was another fine speaker in Illinois named Douglas, who had
different ideas about slavery from Lincoln and was a member of the
Democratic Party. Lincoln and Douglas went about Illinois making
speeches to the people, and great crowds came to hear them, for they
were two of the best speakers in the country. Everywhere people were
talking about Lincoln and Douglas and saying what able men they were.
In 1860 came the time when a new President was to be chosen, and out of
all the political leaders of the country these two men from far-west
Illinois were selected--Douglas by those who were in favor of slavery
and Lincoln by those who opposed slavery. When election day came round
and the votes were counted, Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter, was
found to be elected President of the United States.
The people of the South were in a terrible state of mind when they found
that a Republican, a man opposed to slavery, was elected President. They
could not tell what would take place. The Abolitionists who were against
slavery were in power and might pass laws that would rob them of all
their slaves. For years they had been fighting the North in
Congress--fighting by words, I mean. Now they determined to leave the
Union, and to fight with swords and guns if the North would not let them
go in peace. One by one the Southern States passed resolutions to go out
of the Union. And on all sides they collected powder and balls and other
implements of war, for their leaders felt sure they would have to fight.
But Lincoln hoped the states would not quarrel. He begged them not to.
But if they did it was his duty to do what the people had put him there
for. He had been elected President of the United States, and he must do
all he could to keep these states united.
It was on the 4th of March, 1861, that Abraham Lincoln became President.
By the middle of April the North and South were at war. Both sides had
their soldiers in the field and fighting had begun. The South wanted to
take Washington, and the North to keep it, and soon a fierce battle was
fought at a place called Bull Run, a few miles south of Washington.
The Southern States formed a Union of their own, which was called the
Southern Confederacy. They chose Richmond, the capital of Virginia, for
the capital of the Confederacy, and chose Jefferson Davis for their
President. Davis had fought bravely as a soldier at the battle of Buena
Vista, in Mexico. And he had been long in Congress, where he showed
himself an able lawmaker. So the South chose him as their best man for
President.
The war was half over before President Lincoln did anything about
slavery. He was there to save the Union, not to free the slaves. But the
time came when he found that freeing the slaves would help him in saving
the Union. When this time came--it was on the 1st of January, 1863--he
declared that all the slaves should be free. It was a great thing for
this country, for it was clear that there could be no peace while
slavery remained.
But the war went on more fiercely than ever, and it was not until April,
1865, that it came to an end. The South was not able to fight any longer
and had to give up, and the Union was saved. It was saved without
slavery, which was a very good thing for both North and South, as we
have since found out.
But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not live to learn what the country
gained by the war, for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked and
foolish man, who thought he would avenge the South by shooting the
President.
It was a terrible deed. The whole country mourned for its noblest man,
slain in the hour of victory. The South as well as the North suffered by
his death, for he was too just a man to oppress those who had been
beaten in war, and in him all the people, North and South, lost their
best and ablest friend.