LINCOLN

Washington stands to the Revolution and Lincoln stands as the hero of the mightier struggle by which our Union was saved. He was born in 1809, ten years after Washington, his work done, had been laid to rest at Mount Vernon. No ever came from beginnings which seemed to promise so little. Lincoln's family, for than one generation, had been sinking, instead of rising, in the social scale. His father was One of those men who were found on the frontier in the early days of the western movement, always changing from one place to another, and dropping a little lower at each remove.

the establishment of the government, so

great

more

man

Abraham Lincoln

was born into a family who were not only poor, but shiftless, and his early days were days of ignorance, and poverty, and hard work. Out of such inauspicious surroundings, he slowly and painfully lifted himself. He gave himself an education, he took part in an Indian war, he worked

in the

fields, he kept a country store, he studied, and, at last, he became a lawyer he entered into the rough politics of the settled State. He grew to be a leader and went to the legislature. Th

county,

was very rough, the struggle was very har very bitter, but the movement was always up

on e

but

his

last

At last he was elected to Congress, and s
term in Washington as a Whig with cr
without distinction. Then he went back
law and his politics in Illinois. He had
made his position. All that was now need
an opportunity, and that came to him in t
anti-slavery struggle.

was grea

t

Lincoln ing

train

and

as

but he

ery, the

in

was not an early Abolitionist. H had been that of a regular party man a member of a great political organization, was a lover of freedom and justice. Slavits essence, was hateful to him, and when between slavery and freedom was

conflict

fairly joined, his path was clear before him. He

took

up

the anti-slavery cause in his own State,

and made himself its champion against Douglas,

the great stumped

for the

leader of the Northern Democrats. He Illinois in opposition to Douglas, as a Senate, debating the question country in every part of the beaten at the election, but, by brilliancy of his speeches, his own

candidate divided which State.

the

He

Power

the

was

and

battle within Constitutional lines, concentrating his reputation was made. Fighting the anti-slavery whole force against the single point of the exten

sion of slavery

clear that a new leader had arisen in the cause of

to the Territories, he had made it

freedom.

the East, and soon after his great debate he delivered a speech in New York which attracted

From Illinois his reputation spread to

wide attention.

of 1856, his name was one of those proposed for

At the Republican convention

vice-president.

When 1860 came, he was a candidate for the on the national ticket. The leading was William H. Seward, of New York,

first place candidate the most conspicuous man of the country on the

str

were

Republican side, but the convention, after a sharp uggle, selected Lincoln, and then the great potical battle came at the polls. The Republicans victorious, and, as soon as the result of the voting was known, the South set to work to disIn February Lincoln made his solve the Union. way to Washington, at the end coming secretly from Harrisburg to escape a threatened attempt at assassination, and on March 4, 1861 assumed the presidency.

ever

No public man, no great popular leader, faced a more terrible situation. The Union was breaking, the Southern States were seceding, treason was rampant in Washington, and the Govern

ment was bankrupt. Lincoln was a man of great capacity voted to the cause of anti-slavery an tenance of the Union. But what h to deal with the awful conditions by surrounded, no one knew. To follow the four years of civil war which e course, impossible here. Suffice it to greater, no more difficult, task has ever by any man in modern times, and n met a fierce trial and conflict more suc

Lincoln put to the front the quest Union, and let the question of slavery first, into the background. He used ev tion to hold the border States by modera ures, and, in this way, prevented the rebellion. For this moderation, the ant extremists in the North assailed him, but shows more his far-sighted wisdom and s of purpose than his action at this time. at the beginning of his administrat policy held the border States, and united the peo the North in defense of the Union.

As the war went on, he went on, too. never faltered in his feelings about slavery. knew, better than any one, that the successful the Union by the slave power me solution of destruction of an empire, but the

not only the forces

tory of the