the pilot. The material is in. The opportunity is here for any who can use it. The present biography is not a history of the Civil War. It is not an argument about emancipation or reconstruction. It is solely the personal history of Abraham Lincoln as it appears to one of his countrymen. To that particular reader an anecdote or a picturesque phrase often seems more important than a bill or a message to Congress. He has tried to select those incidents which are doubly true, because they are at once actual and significant, and this truth is as likely to inhere in the amusing as in the solemn. To give credit for the sources of an impression, which is often breathed from the air of daily thought and conversation, is not easy, but a few words are due to the principal books on the subject. Nothing compares in value with Lincoln's own words, and the two volumes of his papers and correspondence are worth all that has been written about him. The official biography by Nicolay and Hay contains much valuable material not to be found elsewhere. Herndon has told the President's early life with refreshing honesty, and with more information than any one else. Lamon has shown vividly the side of Lincoln which naturally came out when he was in the company of his exuberant marshal. Whitney's "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln " is full of good stories of the western bar, and the President's relation to it. Nobody has made the politician's adroitness so real as Colonel McClure. Miss Tarbell has gathered some facts to supplement and correct Herndon and others. Morse's biography, in the American Statesmen Series, is an orderly and serious account of Lincoln's relation to the principal public questions. The other works are legion, but these have seemed, to the present writer, most fertile among the books dealing mainly with Lincoln. It is true, however, that a short impression, incidental to some other object, may be worth a volume. Thus flashes of the greatest value have been given by Emerson, Lowell, Greeley, Grant, Blaine, McClellan, and Sherman. Singularly enough, perhaps, almost nothing of worth has been written about Lincoln in foreign countries. It is probable, also, that in his own country, while flashes have been given by great compatriots, and indispensable records left by other contemporaries, most of the permanent lives, large and small, picturesque and technical, remain to be written. NEW YORK, July, 1899. N. H. NOTE The frontispiece to this volume, which is generally acknowledged to be the best portrait of Lincoln, is reproduced from a negative made at Springfield, Illinois, June, 1860, by Alexander Hesler of Chicago. The negative is now owned by Mr. George B. Ayres of Philadelphia, who has very kindly placed his copyrighted enlargement at the disposal of the publishers. I have also to acknowledge Mr. Charles Eugene Hamlin's courtesy in lending me the original portrait which was presented to Mr. Hannibal Hamlin by Lincoln in 1864. The other portraits, by Hesler and by Brady, are from the collection of Mr. H. W. Fay of De Kalb, Illinois, to whom my thanks are due for the loan. The facsimile of Lincoln's autobiography is taken from the copyrighted reproduction of the original now in the possession of Mrs. Jesse W. Fell, to whose courtesy its appearance in this book is due. The newspaper cut, from the portrait by the late Thomas Hicks, N. A., was kindly lent by the editor of the North American Review. |