BY WM. H. TAFT, PRESIDENT-ELECT. [William Howard Taft speaking on "Lincoln" October 7, on the Knox College campus, Galesburg, Ill., at the exact spot where Lincoln and Douglas engaged in debate fifty years ago, said:] "Certain it is that we have never had a man in public life whose sense of duty was stronger, whose bearing toward those with whom he came in contact, whether his friends or political opponents, was characterized by a greater sense of fairness than Abraham Lincoln. We have never had a man in public life who took upon himself uncomplainingly the woes of the nation and suffered in his soul from the weight of them as he did. We have never had a man in our history who had such a mixture of far-sightedness, of understanding of the people, of common sense, of high sense of duty, of power of inexorable logic and of confidence in the goodness of God, in working out a righteous result as this great product of the soil of Kentucky and Illinois." BY J. MCCAN DAVIS. Whence Abraham Lincoln was not a deity. It is among the glories of the human race that he was a man. He stands on a pinnacle alone, the greatest man in our history-the most wondrous man of all the ages. The world will forever marvel at his origin and his career. came this wondrous man? Back of Lincoln-generations before he was born-events happened which helped to shape and mold his destiny. No man escapes this inheritance from the past. We can not know what seeds were sown a thousand years ago. We can not see far beyond the log cabin in the wilderness of Kentucky. He came to us with no heritage save the heart and the brain which came from the fathomless deeps of the unknown. He was endowed with that divine gift of imagination which enabled him to behold the future. The emancipation proclamation loomed in his mind when, as an unknown, friendless youth, he stood on the levee in New Orleans and saw a slave auction thirty years before the Civil War. As he sat in the White House he saw beyond battles, beyond the end of the war, beyond the restoration of peace, a reunited countrythe grandest nation on the globe, under a single and triumphant flag, moving down the centuries to its glorious destiny.-From How Abraham Lincoln Became President. BY WM. H. HERNDON, [Law partner of Mr Lincoln] This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our country in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon river friendless, penniless, powerless and alone-begging for work in this city-ragged, struggling for the common necessaries of life. This man, this peculiar man, left us in 1861, the President of the United States, backed by friends and power, by fame, and all human force; and it is well to inquire how. To sum up, let us say, here is a sensitive, diffident, unobtrusive, natural-made gentleman. His mind was strong and deep, sincere and honest, patient and enduring; having no vices, and having only negative defects, with many positive virtues. His is a strong, honest, sagacious, manly, noble life. He stands in the foremost rank of men in all agestheir equal-one of the best types of this Christian civilization-Springfield, 1882. OPINION OF AN EX-SLAVE, FREDERICK DOUGlas. [From an address at the Inauguration of the Freedmen's Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln.] We are here to express our grateful sense of the vast, high, and. preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln. The race to which we belong was not the special object of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow citizens, that you and yours were the object of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children, children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and to perpetuate his memory, to commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts, in the darkest and most perilous hours of the republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, ard defeat than when crowned with victory, honor and glory. Our faith in him was taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. Despite the mist and haze that were about him, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ upon special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of the great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement which, in the nature of things, must go on till slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States. What had Abraham Lincoln to do with us? The answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood. He was a mystery to no man who saw and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant toward those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. The image of the man went out with his words and those who read them knew him. BY HORACE WHITE THE NOTED EDITOR. [Upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Lincoln saw its far-reaching consequences and so aroused was he against it that he came forth from his political retirement to take the great issue before the people. He followed Senator Douglas from place to place in Illinois, answering his arguments in favor of this bill. Horace White, who followed Lincoln through the campaign of 1854 and also through the debates of 1858, reporting the speeches for papers, heard and thus describes the first speech made by Mr. Lincoln on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in reply to Douglas in Springfield, Illinois, October 4, 1854.] I heard the whole of that speech. It was a warmish day in early October, and Mr. Lincoln was in his shirt sleeves when he stepped on the platform. I observed that, although awkward, he was not in the least embarrassed. He began in a slow and hesitating manner, but without any mistakes of language, dates, or facts. It was evident that he had mastered his subject, that he knew what he was going to say, and that he knew he was right. He had a thin, high-pitched falsetto voice of much carrying power, that could be heard a long distance in spite of the bustle and tumult of a crowd. He had the accent and pronunciation peculiar to his native State, Kentucky. Gradually he warmed up with his subject, his angularity disappeared, and he passed into that attitude of unconscious majesty that is so conspicuous in Saint-Gauden's statue at the entrance of Lincoln Park in Chicago. I have often wondered how this artist, who never saw the subject of his work, could have divined his presence and his dignity as a public speaker so perfectly. HIS IMPASSIONED UTTERANCES. Progressing with his theme, his words began to come faster and his face to light up with the rays of genius and his body to move in unison A with his thoughts. His gestures were made with his body and head rather than with his arms. They were the natural expression of the man, and so perfectly adapted to what he was saying that anything dif |