VII.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

It is difficult to see how anyone who believes in God and in His watchful interest in the affairs of nations and individuals, can study the story of Abraham Lincoln and not be impressed with the idea that here was a man divinely appointed and trained for a certain work. In the earlier chapters of this book we have seen how persistently the political power of slavery in the United States asserted itself. Good and patriotic men on both sides of the question had tried to put aside slavery and all that hung on that institution, so that it should no longer appear in public affairs. Again and again they had, as they fondly thought, buried the whole matter so completely out of sight that it never would be heard of again; but, like an uneasy ghost, it continually came stalking in where it was neither expected nor desired. This could not be otherwise, in the very nature of things. Slavery was restless and aggressive. It could not be confined to the States in which it had existed for so many years unquestioned. It was not the fault of the slave-holding States that human bondage was first made lawful within their borders; and now that it was there, it could not be got rid of.

This picture is after a photograph of Lincoln taken in Washington in 1862, and was given to Mr. Brooks by Mrs. Lincoln, with the remark that it was her husband's favorite likeness. When the picture, a miniature, was shown to Lincoln, and Mrs. Lincoln's remark repeated to him, he said, "I don't know that I have any favorite portrait of myself; but I have thought that if I looked like any of the likenesses of me that have been taken, I look most like that one." The picture has never before been engraved.

What was more, slavery must have an outlet. The natural increase of the slaves would soon overstock the home market. There must be some way of disposing of this increasing surplus. Nor was this all. The area of the United States was frequently being added to by the acquisition of new territory in various directions. As these new territories should enter the Union of States, unless some of them came in as slave-holding States, the non-slave-holding States would soon outnumber those in which slavery existed; and slavery needed legislation to enable itself to hold its own where it was already established. This law-making power could not be had if the free States outnumbered the slave States. Calhoun, who looked further ahead than most of the men of his time, saw that unless the newly acquired territory would be evenly divided between the slaveholding and the non-slave-holding States, the cherished institution was doomed. He worried greatly over the disturbance of the equilibrium in the Senate in favor of the non-slave-holding States, giving to these more votes in the Senate than the slave-holding States had. He died before this actually happened, but up to his latest breath he insisted that every time a new State was taken into the Union as a free State, another must be taken in as a slave State.

It was this determination to preserve "the equilibrium," of which Calhoun had so much to say, that forced the question of slavery to the surface every time we acquired territory from which new States were to be carved. As we

were constantly increasing our area in this way, slavery, anxious to secure an outlet and a market for its chattels, and equally determined to keep even the balance of power, if not inclining to its own side, made itself heard in boisterous advocacy of its claims. But the world was all the while growing more and more disposed to regard human bondage as wrong and wicked, and unless something were done to commit the whole Republic of the United States to the perpetuation of slavery as a good thing, the time would soon come when that would not only be impossible, but the bolder sort of anti-slavery men would even venture into an invasion of the right to hold slaves in States in which slavery had existed for many years without serious objection from anybody.

By dint of bullying, and by wheedling some of the Congressmen from the non-slave-holding States into their support, the representatives of the slave-holding States managed to stave off for a while the evil day when their absolute power in national affairs would be broken. Clay helped to postpone that day by compromises that gave him the name of the "Great Pacificator." Benton, a representative from a slave-holding State, failed to see the necessity of providing room for slavery to grow in; or, if he did see it, he did. not care to make that provision. Webster was the awful example of a great genius blinded by a desire to keep friendly relations with a slaveholding interest which his own people at home regarded with aversion. But Calhoun never for

a moment lost sight of the fact that, unless his own people could maintain themselves against the rising tide of anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the insidious growth of free institutions in the newly acquired territories, slavery would have to fight for its own existence or would be obliged to leave the Federal Union, which would bring on another kind of a fight.

Calhoun died while this catastrophe was drawing nigh, and when the forces that made it inevitable were gathering cohesion. But the fight came at last, when the politics of the country showed that the free States were as strong as the slave States: if not a little stronger then, they would be in a clear majority before long.

Now let us look at the character and training of the man who was to be the leader of the nation during that memorable and deadly contest -Abraham Lincoln.

Many biographers lay great stress upon the condition of poverty, even squalor, into which Abraham Lincoln was born, as though that were not common to the whole Western country. It is true that Lincoln's parents were very poor. His father, Thomas Lincoln, had migrated from place to place ever since he had come to man's estate, apparently always seeking for some favored spot where the soil was rich enough to maintain a man with little or no labor. It does not appear that he ever found any such place, but up to the day of his death he was looking for it. When Abraham Lincoln was a boy (he was born in 1809) the depression of trade and