quences of the edict were in the issues of the war there is little need to relate. As an act of astute and nobleminded statesmanship, "war measure" though it was deemed, it achieved its high and memorable purpose, of putting an end to the mighty conflict, restoring peace to the blood-sodden nation, and reëstablishing it in its entire integrity, with undivided authority. The far-seeing device of Lincoln and his administration, with its beneficent results in banning slavery for all time from the country and relieving the oppressed black man from his shackles, was naturally hailed by the plaudits of the world. Careful personally not to go beyond the Constitution in seeking to liberate the slave in whatever State or Territory he was in bondage, Lincoln had heretofore bided his time to put his Emancipation measure in force, which was to end the hitherto "irrepressible conflict" and restore the dissevered Union. But when the fit occasion came, at a favorable turn in the protracted and harrowing conflict, he, "the providential man raised up for his era," obeyed the behests of his own conscience and heart and launched with confident hand and will the tactful yet merciful edict. How potent and instant were its effects, we all know; though we also know how, in certain quarters at the time, it was fought against and discredited, and what wrath was loosed to descend upon the great chieftain's head who was alone responsible for its issuance and promulgation.

This biding his time to abolish slavery has almost inexplicably raised the question whether Lincoln really cared to put an end to the vile traffic, or whether he merely used the Emancipation edict as a war measure tactically directed against the South in rebellion. We need hardly argue the point with those who have raised it, since nothing, we hold, is plainer in the entire history of Lincoln's career than his sympathy for the slave and his abhorrence of an institution that kept him in a hated and cruel bondage. He was not, it is true, a negrophilist;

but nothing, on the other hand, is more self-evident than that he was ever an abolitionist and opposed in his heart of hearts to the giant evil of slavery, which not only shocked his moral sense, but was emphatically alien to his kindly, humane nature. In proof of this, we need but mention his early threat against the institution at the period of his flat-boat trip down the Mississippi, when he saw slaves bought and sold like dumb cattle in the slave marts of New Orleans, or when he witnessed, with strained heart, the poor blacks manacled and cruelly flogged at whipping-posts by their tyrannous masters That threat, that some day " he would hit the institution hard," he long kept in his heart, while he knew that it never could be compromised with, and therefore sought by all means within his power to keep the infamous traffic within bounds and to hinder its extension wherever it was not law. Hardly less indicative of the great Emancipator's early attitude in opposition to the slave traffic is the stand he took in regard to the Dred Scott case, that slavery deprived the black man of the rights and privileges of citizenship, or that memorable assertion. he made in 1858, at the Springfield (Ill.) Convention that nominated Lincoln for the United States Senate, when he told its members, in his appeal for unity, that "the Government of the country cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free," adding that "a house divided. against itself cannot stand." Still more emphatic were his words in 1864, when war was devastating the land, and when all knew that Secession had mainly been brought about by the imperious wish to perpetuate slavery in the South. Lincoln's words then were the once familiar dictum of Abolition orators, that "if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong -a dictum of unmistakable cogency and truth. It took, as we know, a great crisis in the affairs of the nation to get rid of the "hated thing;" but this does not detract from the credit due to Lincoln for abolishing it, and thus striking down, by an

effective and fatal blow, the distinctive barrier, socially and politically, between North and South, and applying a remedy that determined the issues in the great Rebellion conflict. The controversy once rife over this matter is surely to-day in need of no further argument, any more than there is need to argue again the question, also once rife, as to the religious character of the great President and the precise complexion of his religious belief. In regard to the latter, there can, we think, be little room for contention, since though Lincoln was himself chary of giving expression in words to the character and extent of his faith in God, his life, we know, was a highly moral and righteous one, and conspicuously human in its tenderness. Though in his early career he may have been indifferent to religion, his personal and public life was later on marked by a deep sense not only of responsibility to a Higher Power than that of man, but of an abiding trust in a Divine Being, whose will and purposes he sought to obey and give effect to in the administration of his great office. Notable also was his reverent consecration of himself to the service of his fellow-man and to the heavy and exacting calls of the nation. The spirit in which he addressed himself to the accomplishment of the great task he assumed at Washington is manifest in his parting words, at Springfield, Ill., to his fellow citizens, on taking leave of them to engage in the arduous duties of the Presidency. "Friends," he said to them, "one who has never been placed in a like position can little understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me, I must fail; but if the same Omniscient mind and Almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I shall succeed." Here, undoubtedly, we have the true Lincoln, and see the spirit of inner trust and dependence in which he wrought

and achieved his work. With this manifestation of the real man, can we doubt the secret of his meditative moods, amid all his jocularities and racy story-tellings, which endeared him to everyone and brought him into close and kindly touch with his kind?

man.

Curious as well as interesting is it to trace in Lincoln's early years the makings of this extraordinary, self-made Nothing could well be more humble and obscure than the beginnings of his life, in cabin or camp, in the Kentucky scenes of his origin, or in the rough wilderness home in which he was "raised" in Indiana. In the latter State he early lost his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln; though in his shiftless father's second wife, the kindly and sensible Sally Johnston, he was fortunate to find a worthy substitute, to whom Honest Abe was ever greatly attached and of whom he grew to be gratefully and dutifully fond. At his parents' humble home, at Pigeon Creek, Abe spent his youth time, snatching what irregular and limited schooling he could obtain in the neighborhood, while contributing to his growth by an active life in the woods, catching coons and opossums, interspersed by doing chores " at home for his stepmother, or helping his father in cutting the family firewood or in felling timber for rustic cabins for the more well-to-do settler. At this period, Abe, who had meantime grown up a tall, lanky, ill-knit lad, of homely appearance and somewhat rough though kindly manners, was deemed by those who knew him as lazy and disinclined to work, but who delighted to spin yarns with his fellows when he was not lying prone under a shade tree or up in the cabinloft reading, ciphering or scribbling. About this time he began to develop gifts of native oratory, and when opportunity offered would take with avidity to political speech-making, enlivening his stump efforts with witty jokes and amusing stories. His ambition now became earnest to prepare himself for the public arena, and in this creditable purpose he became more assiduous after

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his trading expedition to New Orleans and when his father had immigrated to Illinois, where, however, he soon died. His son, Abraham, now settled near Salem, on the Sagamon river, some twenty miles or so northwest of Springfield. Here the future President became clerk in a store, captain of a militia company, which took part in what is known as the Black Hawk war, and after some brief experience as a surveyor he studied law and associated himself with a Mr. Herndon in a legal partnership, meanwhile acting temporarily as village postmaster and seeking election to the Illinois State Legislature. To the latter, on a second candidature, young Lincoln was successful, and he now began to make a local reputation in politics, the while commending himself to his constituents as a staunch supporter of schemes for internal improvement and development.

In storekeeping, Lincoln hadn't the plodding, steadygoing habits that would enable him to succeed; while as a lawyer, though he was neither widely nor soundly read in jurisprudence, he won for himself a respectable and even an honored position. Moreover, he was too honest to accept fees from suitors whose cases he knew or suspected were not such as should commend them to a man of scrupulous conscience and moral judgment. In the Legislature, while he was loyal to the wants of his own section of the State, and strove to advance its interests, he seems at times to have been too inconsiderate of the State purse when demands were made upon it for railway projects and schemes for împroved river navigation. He was however careful not to lend himself to party jobbery, still less to log-rolling schemes of questionable morality; while he became widely known for his manly, consistent probity and his sensitiveness to matters affecting his personal honor. As a speaker in and out of the Legislature, he interested his audiences by his effective utterances, set forth in plain, terse language, seasoned with humor and at times with a biting wit. His