- - - CHAPTER XV. - - - - -- The struggle in Kansas.-The South begins the struggle. The North - CHAPTER XVI. - - - Mr. Douglas opposes the Administration. — His course in Congress. - - - - 366 CHAPTER XVII. - Mr. Lincoln writes and delivers a lecture. - The Presidency. - Mr. Lincoln's An invitation to speak in New York. - Choosing a subject.-Arrives in - -- - his speeches. — An amusing encounter with a clerical politician. - - Meeting of the Republican State Convention. - Mr. Lincoln present.-John - - - CHAPTER XIX. - - - Difficulties and peculiarities of Mr. Lincoln's position. —A general review - - - His temperate habits and abstinence from sensual pleasures. His am- - - 421 444 . 466 Departure of the Presidential party from Springfield. — Affecting address by Oath. Mr. Lincoln President of the United States. Mr. Buchanan . 505. ABRAHAM LINCOLN was born on the twelfth day of February, 1809. His father's name was Thomas Lincoln, and his mother's maiden name was Nancy Hanks. At the time of his birth, they are supposed to have been married about three years. Although there appears to have been but little sympathy or affection between Thomas and Abraham Lincoln, they were nevertheless connected by ties and associations which make the previous history of Thomas Lincoln and his family a necessary part of any reasonably full biography of the great man who immortalized the name by wearing it. Thomas Lincoln's ancestors were among the early settlers of Rockingham County in Virginia; but exactly whence they came, or the precise time of their settlement there, it is impossible to tell. They were manifestly of English descent; but whether emigrants directly from England to Virginia, or an offshoot of the historic Lincoln family in Massachusetts, or of the highly-respectable Lincoln family in Pennsylvania, are questions left entirely to conjecture. We have absolutely no evidence by which to determine them. Thomas Lincoln himself stoutly denied that his progenitors were either |