IV.

LINCOLN.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN was born February 12, 1809, in what was then Hardin, now Larue, County, Kentucky, on Nolen Creek. His earliest ancestor who can be determined, moved from Berks County, Pa., to Rockingham County, Virginia, in 1750. Thirty years afterward, Abraham Lincoln, the President's grandfather, moved to Floyd's Creek, in Bullitt County, Ky., where he was killed by an Indian. His widow soon removed to Washington County. Her son Thomas married, in 1806, Nancy Hanks, a Virginian, and the couple moved to Hardin County, where Abraham was born. The boy was born to poverty and hard work. In 1816 he obtained a very little schooling, but it quickly ended, for the next year his father removed to Spencer County, Indiana, an unsettled region, where he built a log cabin. When Abraham was ten years of age his mother died. Although all his school-days together barely amounted to six months' time, still he worked at his studies until he could not only read, but could write letters, which made him quite a sage, and often a scribe (but never a Pharisee), among his neighbors. At nineteen, young Lincoln, with a companion, took a flatboat-load of produce to New Orleans and sold it. During the down trip the two navigators beat off seven negroes who attacked them with the design of capturing boat and cargo. In 1830 his father moved

again, to Macon County; next year the young man made a second flatboat voyage to New Orleans, managing so well that the owner who sent him employed him as clerk and manager of a flour-mill. In 1832 young Lincoln enlisted as a volunteer in the Black Hawk war, and was chosen captain of his company, serving faithfully, though he saw no actual fighting. Just after the war he made his first entry into politics, by runing for the State Legislature, as a Clay man in opposition to Jackson, and was beaten (the only time) in a contest before the people. In his own precinct, however, he received 277 votes, out of the 284 cast. He now opened a store, and got the postmastership of the village, but had to sell out; then tried surveying, but became embarrassed again in 1837, and his instruments were sold by the sheriff in execution. He had always spent what time he could in reading and study; and he now gave up the idea of business, and went to reading law, with a view to a legal and political career. Beginning in 1834, he was elected to the State Legis lature for four successive two-year terms, during which he gained considerable reputation as a speaker and a sensible man of business. In 1836 he was admitted to the bar, and in 1837 he settled in Springfield. At the end of his fourth legislative term, in 1842, he declined a re-nomination, in order to bring up his law studies; and in the same year he married Mary Todd, daughter of Hon. Robert G. Todd, of Lexington, Ky. In 1844 he stumped Illinois and part of Indiana, for Henry Clay, and in 1846 he was elected to Congress—the only Whig from Illinois-and by the startling majority of 1,511, where Henry Clay had only had 914 votes.

While in Congress, with constitutional discrimination about principles, he voted for all supplies needed to carry on the Mexican war, but always refused to vote that the war had been justly begun. He was a delegate to the convention which nominated Gen. Taylor, in 1848, and labored hard in canvassing for him. During this congressional term, Mr. Lincoln had frequently occasion to vote on questions involving slavery, and always voted for freedom. In January, 1849, he moved a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but it was too soon for public opinion, and the bill failed. The Wilmot Proviso was often before the House, in consequence of efforts to apply it to recently acquired territory, and as Mr. Lincoln afterward said, he voted for it, "in one way or another, about forty times."

At the end of this session, in March, 1849, Mr. Lincoln declined a re-nomination; and was during the year beaten as Whig candidate for United States Senator from Illinois. He now passed a number of years at home, practicing his profession, and enjoying an increasing reputation as a lawyer and politician. During this time he invented his "camels," or machine for carrying a ship over bars or obstructions, of which a model is to be seen at the Patent Office in Washington. This consisted of a couple of large cases that could be inflated somewhat after the fashion of a bellows. These were to be sunk empty, secured under the vessel, and then filled with air, so as to lift the ship. The Nebraska Bill was passed May 22, 1854, and in the following autumn the Illinois Legislature was to choose a United States Senator in place of Gen. Shields,

who had voted with Douglas for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It was important that Judge Douglas' own State should indorse his course, and he went himself into this canvass. So did Mr. Lincoln on the other part, and with the better fortune. He met Douglas in public debate, and it was generally conceded on both sides that he decidedly gained the advantage of him, powerful debater as he was. The result of the canvass was accordingly the election of an anti-Nebraska legislature, and the choice of that able man and unswerving friend of freedom, Hon. Lyman Trumbull, for United States Senator. Mr. Trumbull had been a Democrat; and Mr. Lincoln having been a Whig, the friends of the latter were disposed to contest this choice, and to insist that Mr. Lincoln should be Senator. But with self-denying wisdom, he used his own personal influence to carry the votes of his friends to Mr. Trumbull, and thus secured his election.

Mr. Lincoln's reputation was becoming national at the time of the Fremont and Buchanan campaign, and he had 110 votes for the nomination as Vice-President with Fremont, standing next to Mr. Dayton, who was the nominee.

By this time Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas were the recognized leaders, in Illinois, on the two sides of the great political controversy of the day. As Mr. Raymond says, in his "Life of Lincoln," "Whenever Mr. Douglas made a speech, the people instinctively anticipated a reply from Mr. Lincoln." In June, 1857, Mr. Douglas made, at Springfield, that speech which publicly committed him to the support of the Lecompton Constitution and of the Dred Scott decision. Mr. Lincoln,

two weeks afterward, replied in a speech at the same place, and these speeches were a sort of preface to the famous series of Lincoln-Douglas debates the next year, which firmly established Mr. Lincoln's reputation as a wise and just politician, and as a powerful speaker and skillful and ready debater. The two combatants were in that year candidates for the United States senatorship, to be determined by the Legislature then to be chosen. On one hand, Mr. Douglas' fortunes were staked on the election, because if his own State would not continue him in the Senate, he would evidently not be available on his intended further road as a Presidential candidate. And on the other hand, the Republicans of Illinois felt it supremely important to register the powerful voice of their great State in favor of freedom, and against the oppressive measures forced on the citizens of Kansas. Each of the candidates had already pretty well defined his position, as they had spoken thrice each in June and July of that year (1858); when, on July 24, Mr. Lincoln challenged Mr. Douglas to meet him in a series of public debates during the pending campaign. Mr. Douglas, after a correspondence which indicates some reluctance to venture on the contest, offered a programme of seven debates, in four of which he was to have the opening and closing turns, Mr. Lincoln to have them only in the other three. But Mr. Lincoln, confident in his own plain, keen, and weighty reasoning, and straightforward, clear, common sense, and in the overwhelming justice and rightfulness of his cause, readily accepted the proposition, and the meetings were held.

The seven places of meeting were in as many differ