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grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the mightiest of the mighty men who mastered the mighty days; the lover of his country and of all mankind; the man whose blood was shed for the union of his people and for the freedom of a race— Abraham Lincoln.

LINCOLN AND THE LOST CAUSE

WE

HON. LUKE E. WRIGHT

E are assembled to-day upon the spot where Abraham Lincoln was born, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. When we look about us and behold a great and prosperous State, teeming with population and all the evidences of a highly developed and complex civilization, it requires an effort of the memory to recall how crude and primitive were his surroundings when his eyes first saw the light, and during his boyhood.

He was born of humble parentage, in a rude cabin of logs. His entry into the world was accompanied by no omens, and no seer prognosticated his future fame. Apparently his only heritage was to be a life of ignorance and poverty.

Still, it would be misleading to infer that the future could hold no prize for him. The hardy adventurers who swarmed out from the older States and crossed the Alleghenies were the offshoot of that older stock of English, Scotch, and Irish which had crossed the seas and had founded the first colonies upon American soil. They were a simple, God-fearing people, who lived their lives in field and forest, uncorrupted by wealth, strengthened in body and mind by hardships and dangers endured and overcome, with imaginations quickened by the thought that a continent was theirs.

Whilst there were instances among them of men of gentle birth and comparative fortune, yet all stood upon terms of perfect equality, and opportunity for all was practically the same. Any substantial distinction between the greatest and the humblest man, under such circumstances, could only be one created by individual prowess or worth.

There is perhaps in all the world no fairer land, no territory combining more natural advantages, and none more favorable

to the development of a virile race, than that vast area which gradually falls away from the western side of the Allegheny Mountains.

It is a curious fact that Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born in the same State, that their parents were almost neighbors, and equally curious that in after life, in a great civil war, they should have been leaders on opposite sides. They began under the same environment, and yet how widely separated were they in their subsequent lives and fortunes!

In the Two-Ocean Pass, in the Yellowstone Park, is found a level spot hemmed in by surrounding hills, into which flows a stream which there divides, one part flowing into the Pacific and the other into the Atlantic; and this stream is typical of the careers of the two men. Davis in early manhood found himself living in a community in which slavery was a recognized institution, and himself became a slave-holder, as were his neighbors and friends; whilst Lincoln found himself in a free-soil State, where slavery was regarded as a crime.

From the foundation of the federal government, the right of a State to withdraw from the federal compact was more or less discussed. It is not too much to say that the founders purposely pretermitted any explicit declaration on the subject, and thereafter it was regarded as an open question, as to which intelligent and patriotic men might and did differ. This difference was for many years not sectional, but gradually became so after slavery became distinctly a Southern institution, and the agitation in favor of its limitation or abolition became a burning issue.

Yet it would be unfair to say that there was a complete unanimity of sentiment upon this subject on either side of Mason and Dixon's line. In the border States of the South especially, the majority of the people were opposed to the dogma of secession, as was demonstrated by the overwhelming majority against the Ordinances of Secession submitted to the people in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee a few months before the outbreak of hostilities.

Moreover, in these same border States there was a class

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The Lincoln Log Cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, where Abraham Lincoln Was Born
The Lincoln Farm has been purchased by an Association formed for that purpose, the Cabin restored, and a Memorial
Building erected to contain and preserve it. The corner-stone of the latter was laid by President Roosevelt)

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