by any American statesman, soldier, or citizen from that day to this :) "But more than this, there are many single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, and professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely one from which there could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the Government itself."

What a noble, self-sacrificing army of freemen he describes! The like of it mankind never saw before and will not look upon soon again. Their service and sacrifice were not in vain the Union is stronger, freer and better than ever before because they lived, and the peace, fraternity and harmony, which Lincoln prayed might come, and which he prophesied would come, is happily here. And now that the wounds of the war are healed, may we not, with grateful hearts, resolve, in the words of Lincoln, that we will "care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan."

Lincoln's antecedent life seems to have been one of unconscious preparation for the great responsibilities which were committed to him in 1860. As one of the masses himself, and living with them, sharing their feelings, and sympathizing with their daily trials, their hopes and aspirations, he was better fitted to lead them than any other man of his age. He recognized more clearly than any one else that the plain people he met in his daily life, and knew

so familiarly, were, according to the dictates of justice and our theory of government, its ultimate rulers and the arbiters of its destiny. He knew this not as a theory, but from his own personal experience.

Born in poverty, and surrounded by obstacles on every hand seemingly insurmountable but for the intervening hand of Providence, Lincoln grew every year into greater and grander intellectual power and vigor. His life, until he was twelve years old, was spent either in a "half-faced camp or cabin. Yet amid such surroundings the boy learned to read, write, and cipher, to think, declaim, and speak, in a manner far beyond his years and time. All his days in the school-house "added together would not make a single year." But every day of his life from infancy to manhood was a constant drill in the school of nature and experience. His study of books and newspapers was beyond that of any other person in his town or neighorhood, and perhaps of his county or section. He did not read many books, but he learned more from them than any other reader. It was strength of body as well as of mind that made Lincoln's career possible. Il success only spurred him into making himself more worthy of trust and confidence. Nothing could daunt him. He might have but a single tow-linen shirt, or only one pair of jeans pantaloons, he often did not know where his next dollar was to come from, but he mastered English grammar and composition, arithmetic, geometry, surveying, logic, and the law.

How well he mastered the art of expression, is

shown by the incident of the Yale professor who heard his Cooper Institute speech and called on him at his hotel, to inquire where he had learned his matchless power as a public speaker. The modest country lawyer was in turn surprised to be suspected of possessing unusual talents as an orator, and could only answer that his sole training had been in the school of experience.

Eight years' service in the Illinois Legislature, two years in Congress and nearly thirty years' political campaigning, in the most exciting period of American politics, gave scope for the development of his powers, and that tact, readiness, and self-reliance, which were invaluable to a modest, backward man, such as Lincoln naturally was. Added to these qualities, he had the genius, which communizes, which puts a man on a level, not only with the highest, but with the lowest of his kind. By dint of patient industry, and by using wisely his limited opportunities, he became the most popular orator, the best political manager, and the ablest leader of his party in Illinois.

But the best training he had for the Presidency, after all, was his twenty-three years' arduous experience as a lawyer traveling the circuit of the courts of his district and State. Here he met in forensic contests, and frequently defeated some of the most powerful legal minds of the West. In the higher courts he won still greater distinction in the important cases committed to his charge.

With this preparation, it is not surprising that Lincoln entered upon the Presidency peculiarly well

equipped for its vast responsibilities. His contemporaries, however, did not realize this. The leading statesmen of the country were not prepossessed in his favor. They appear to have had no conception of the remarkable powers latent beneath that uncouth and rugged exterior. It seemed to them strangely out of place that the people should at this, the greatest crisis of their history, entrust the supreme executive power of the Nation to one whom they presumptuously called "this ignorant rail-splitter from the prairies of Illinois." Many predicted failure from the beginning.

Lincoln was essentially a man of peace. He inherited from his Quaker forefathers an intense opposition to war. During his brief service in Congress he found occasion more than once to express it. He opposed the Mexican war from principle, but voted men and supplies after hostilities actually began. In one of his few speeches in the House, he characterized military glory as "that rainbow that rises in showers of blood — that serpent that charms but to destroy." When he became responsible for the welfare of the country, he was none the less earnest for peace. He felt that even in the most righteous cause, war is a fearful thing, and he was actuated by the feeling that it ought not to be begun except as a last resort, and then only after it had been precipitated by the enemies of the country. He said in Philadelphia, on February 22, 1861:

"There is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a

course; and I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is forced upon the Government. The Government will not use force unless force is used against it."

In the selection of his Cabinet, he at once showed his greatness and magnanimity. His principal rivals for the Presidential nomination were invited to seats in his council chamber. No one but a great man, conscious of his own strength, would have done this. It was soon perceived that his greatness was in no sense obscured by the presence of the distinguished men who sat about him. The most gifted statesmen of the country: Seward, Chase, Cameron, Stanton, Blair, Bates, Welles, Fessenden, and Dennison, some of whom had been leaders in the Senate of the United States, composed that historic Cabinet, and the man who had been sneered at as "the rail-splitter " suffered nothing by such association and comparison. He was a leader in fact as well as name.

Magnanimity was one of Lincoln's most striking traits. Patriotism moved him at every step. At the beginning of the war he placed at the head of three most important military departments three of his political opponents Patterson, Butler and McClellan. He did not propose to make it a partisan war. He sought by every means in his power to enlist all who were patriots.

In his message of July 4, 1861, he stated his purpose in these words:

"I desire to preserve the Government that it may be administered for all, as it was administered by the