ments of those historical and turbulent times, gives him superior qualifications to write with deepest sympathy and friendliness. Sympathy rules the world, the world of Letters as well as the world of Life. A friend will show himself friendly. A foe cannot conceal his enmity. Other things being equal the friend is more reliable than the foe, more popular surely. There are a hundred readers of Abbott's "Life of Napoleon" to one who reads the life by Scott. Because of his deep sympathy with all that distinguished the life of Abraham Lincoln the author has here given us a work in the perusal of which one can hear the heart throbs of the writer. Good news can never come too often and this is a book of good news which we will never tire of reading. It tells us what we always believed was true about Lincoln and the proofs are so conclusive that no misleading myths or legends will hereafter be given credence.

I commend to every reader the author's impassionate appeal for the aid of the platform, pulpit and press in repeating the entrancing story of the humble but hallowed home and family from which this great servant and messenger of God came to save the nation and to redeem a race. I have known Doctor Chapman for many years and have ever held him in high esteem. I have rejoiced in his great work on the Pacific Coast and throughout the nation, and have often announced my conviction that of all men I have known he was the best adapted to the work of reform in which he was such an able and successful leader. I rejoice that he has lived to complete the great work on Abraham Lincoln which he has been for so many years engaged in producing. It will undoubtedly prove the crowning work of his remarkable life. He has given abundant evidence of his fitness to write of the important matters with which he is familiar. He has added a valuable contribution to the political history of the nation and I am pleased to present my venerable friend of many years to my many friends of many lands.

J. W. H.

I

FOREWORD

T is indeed a special providence that a unique man like Dr. Ervin Chapman should just at this time of great emer

gency give to the world a work on Abraham Lincoln, in the preparation of which he has been engaged for more than half a century.

Of "Particeps Criminis," "Bob" Burdette said, "Doctor Chapman is the only man who could write this book," and the same is true of the "Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln and War-time Memories." No one but this "Statesman-Preacher," as he is called, could so successfully have supplemented the three thousand Lincoln publications that have appeared, with a work that is unlike all that has been written concerning Abraham Lincoln.

From boyhood Doctor Chapman has been engaged in literary pursuits and his writings have always been distinguished for their fascinating originality. His books entitled, "A Stainless Flag," "The Czolgosz of Trade and Commerce," and "Particeps Criminis," have been widely and eagerly read. At sixteen he was on the lecture platform. At eighteen he was active in the organization of the Republican party and took the stump for Fremont, and at twenty-two he made one hundred speeches for the election of Abraham Lincoln as President. When but a lad he could repeat from memory the greater part of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States. "Jefferson's Letters," the "Madison Papers," "The Federalist," "Benton's Thirty Years' View," and "Democracy in America," were his delight while still in his teens and those works are yet in his possession with his original annotations. I have been thrilled with interest as I have handled those old, well-worn but well-preserved volumes, in the perusal of which

this studious country boy unconsciously prepared for the great work he was destined to accomplish. The knowledge of the fundamental principles of civil government acquired by the study of such great books gave strength and imagination to the fervid eloquence of the "Boy Orator," as he was then called. He was brought into close association with the most distinguished men of the nation, and after the election of Lincoln as President he was called to Washington to fill an important position in the Federal government and to be an active participant in many of the decisive movements of those historic times, some of which were not known to the public and are not until now mentioned in history.

During his connection with the government at Washington, Doctor Chapman began the accumulation of data which has made possible the production of this great work. His claim that during those fifty years nothing of value respecting Lincoln has escaped him seems fully justified by the wealth of information he has here given to the public. Without the extraordinary opportunities and the thorough personal preparation, which began in boyhood and has continued through an extended life, no author could have written a work of such great and permanent value; and from a field less extended or less productive such riches could not have been acquired. Momentous measures and movements have passed like a panorama and men have come and gone as in a moving pageant since Doctor Chapman began his preparation for this work. Not one man is now living who was then prominent in public life. At that time Blaine, Conkling, Grant, and Garfield were just beginning to attract attention. Cleveland, Harrison and McKinley were unknown. John Hay was only a President's private secretary; Roosevelt had seen but seven summers, Taft eight, and Woodrow Wilson was a restless boy of nine years in a Presbyterian manse in Virginia.

And while this procession was passing Doctor Chapman, like a toiling miner, was delving in the rock for the gold that enriches the pages of this historical masterpiece. In this he

has not been hindered but helped by the ceaseless activities that have made his life so full of notable achievements. As a pastor, platform lecturer, participant in great conventions, and valiant leader in reforms, he has always been the champion of those civic and national ideals which he learned from the great books he studied so diligently in early life, and which with such consummate skill he has in this work shown to be the mainspring of the marvelous life of Abraham Lincoln.

He has been a preacher of great earnestness and power, with pronounced evangelistic gifts and inclinations, but he is most distinguished as an authority on the fundamental principles of civil government, and as a wise and successful leader in reform movements. When the Anti-Saloon League was organized in California there was a unanimous and unyielding demand that Doctor Chapman should become the leader of that new and unique movement, and so incomparable were his achievements in that field that no one has ever doubted the wisdom of his selection for that difficult work. It was my good fortune to be one of that great assembly in San Francisco that sent Doctor Chapman out into California as superintendent of the AntiSaloon League. The League was at that time understood to be an experimental movement but Doctor Chapman insisted that while its activities might be in a measure determined by conditions, its ideals must be fixed and immovable, and that the liquor traffic must be regarded and dealt with not as a business but as a crime, and that the League must always oppose the adoption of liquor license and any increase of the liquor license tax. He had learned these fundamentals from Lincoln and he adhered to them as tenaciously as the great Emancipator insisted that all rightful opposition to slavery must be based upon the unalterable proposition that slavery is wrong.

Dr. Howard H. Russell, founder and first superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League, says: "From the day Doctor Chapman began the study of law in 1856 until 1898 when he became superintendent of the California Anti-Saloon League, every day of his life seems to have been spent in a school of discipline,

development and instruction for his state-wide and nation-wide work." And when Doctor Chapman induced the National League to declare that the liquor license tax was "an entrenchment for the liquor traffic and the higher the tax the stronger that entrenchment," Doctor Russell said, "Doctor Chapman has convinced us all. I believe this is one of the most important measures we have thus far undertaken." And when a year later the League was led to declare that the liquor traffic is "not a business but a crime," the national superintendent, Dr. P. A. Baker, said to Doctor Chapman, "You have lifted us a notch higher." Upon that high level Doctor Chapman's "Stainless Flag" address was prepared and delivered throughout the length and breadth of this nation under the auspices of the National League. It was my supreme privilege when a pastor in Brooklyn to hear that epochal address in New York City and subsequently to learn of its great influence in creating and maintaining the conviction now so dominant in the nation that civil government cannot rightfully give legal standing to the traffic in strong drink. That address on "A Stainless Flag" is not outranked in power and eloquence by either Neal Dow or John B. Gough.

As the doctrines of Abraham Lincoln prepared Doctor Chapman for his great influence in temperance reform, so his work in that reform contributed very largely to his preparation for this monumental work on Lincoln. Without the least break or delay he passed from the strenuous struggles of the Anti-Saloon League to the work of classifying and arranging the varied and scholarly material he had accumulated. I was closely associated with him when he turned from all other activities to the happy labor of preparing the manuscript of this work. I observed the enthusiasm with which he retired from the public arena of conflict and sought the quiet seclusion in which he could work without interruption. And I have been thrilled with delight as I have seen this work take definite form and expand into such magnificent and masterful proportions. My hopes were high when I first learned of the plan and scope of the pro