Great Americans of History ABRAHAM LINCOLN A CHARACTER SKETCH BY ROBERT DICKINSON SHEPPARD, DD. ALSO, SUGGESTIONS FROM THE LIFE OF LINCOLN, BY PROF. FRANCIS W. SHEPARDSON, PH. D. of the University of Chicago THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BY PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH, D. C. L. (Oxon). 300442 GREAT AMERICANS OF HISTORY SERIES. THOMAS JEFFERSON, by Edward S. Ellis, A. M., Author of "The People's Standard History of the United States," etc. With Sup. plementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam. Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine, with an Account of the Louisiana Purchase, together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, Chronology and Sayings. JAMES OTIS, by John Clark Ridpath, LL. D., Author of "Ridpath's History of the United States," etc. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine; together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. JOHN HANCOCK, by John R. Musick, Author of "The Columbian Historical Novels," etc. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine; together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. SAMUEL ADAMS, by Samuel Fallows, D. D., LL. D., Ex-Supt. of Public Instruction of Wisconsin; Ex-Pres. Illinois Wesleyan University. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine; together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by Frank Strong. Ph. D.. Lecturer on United States History, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. With Supplemental Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine, etc., and a Character Study by Prof. Charles K. Edmunds, Ph.D.,of Johns Hopkins University; together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. JOHN ADAMS, by Samuel Willard, LL. D., Author of "Synopsis of History," etc. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine; together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. $1.00 per Volume. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, by Edward S. Ellis, A. M., Author of "The People's Standard History of the United States," etc. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine, etc; together with Anecodotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Eugene Parsons, Ph. D., Lecturer on American History, etc. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "SelfCulture" Magazine; with Suggestions by Prof. Henry Wade Rogers, LL. D., of Yale University; together with Anecdotes, Characteristics,and Chronology. JOHN RANDOLPH, by Richard Heath Dabney, M. A., Ph. D., Professor of History, University of Virginia. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self Culture" Magazine; together with Ancedotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. DANIEL WEBSTER, by Elizabeth A. Reed, A. M., L. H. D., Ex-Pres. Illinois Woman's Press Association. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam. Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine; together with Anecdotes. Characteristics, and Chronology. HENRY CLAY, by H. W. Caldwell, A. M., Pa. B., Professor of American History, University of Nebraska. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine; together with Ancedotes. Characteristics, and Chronology. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Robert Dickinson Sheppard, D. D., Professor of American and English History, Northwestern University. With Supplementary Essay by G. Mercer Adam, Late Editor of "Self-Culture" Magazine, etc., also Suggestions from the Life of Lincoln by Prof. Francis W. Shepardson, Ph D., of the University of Chicago. Together with Anecdotes, Characteristics, and Chronology. $12.00 per Set H. G. CAMPBELL PUBLISHING CO., MILWAUKEE, Copyright, 1899, By THE UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION Copyright, 1903, By H. G. CAMPBELL PUBLISHING CO. T is a far cry from a Kentucky cabin to the White IT House at Washington, from the estate of a poor white child in the south to that of Chief Magistrate of the United States of America. Yet it is our task to show how that distance was spanned in the life of Abraham Lincoln, and the story of it should be of the highest interest to every American youth. We are probably not sufficiently removed from the times of Abraham Lincoln to estimate him in his full proportions. The greater part of the literature that has been written concerning him, that is not absolutely ephemeral, has been written for a people who reverenced him, and who would brook no other than a reverent handling of the object of their devotion. Such jealousy, however, was needless, for loving hands have written intelligently and judicially the story of his life, and of the unfolding of his character. They have written with the ardor of personal friendship and almost in the heat of the exciting days when Lincoln stood as their champion and contended for the National Union to which they were devoted. These circumstances are not favorable to the ex 5 position of the real Lincoln. And yet more than most of the great men of history, his individuality was so striking, its outlines were so well defined, that even a poor artist can trace them, and in his maturer years his action was so studied and deliberate as if he were appealing to the solemn verdict of future generations-that it is not easy to go far astray in our judgments concerning him. Take him for all in all, he furnishes us a striking example taken from our own cimes, of a typical American who was born in poverty and reared amid unlikely surroundings and influences, but who made the most of his slender opportunities for intellectual culture, kept himself pure amid much that was degrading, and step by step, attained to nobleness of character, to intellectual strength, to honor and station among those who knew him best and finally, to the highest eminence of position and honor that an American can reach. In his career he epitomizes a half century of the most interesting and critical conditions of our national life. And the progress of events that culminated in the Civil War, its conduct, and the work of reconstruction that followed it, can nowhere be studied as intelligently as in the story of his outlook on the political life of the nation, of his political affiliations, and his active participation in the settlement of the great questions that involved the existence and prosperity of the nation. We shalfturn first to his ancestry and early environ He was born February 12th in the year 1809, in miserable cabin on the farm of Thomas Lincoln, or hor," as he was sometimes called, three miles from Hodgensville in the present county of LaRue in the state of Kentucky. Of his ancestry on the Lincoln side, little is known save that they were among the early settlers of Virginia and were of English descent, and probably were Quakers. The mother of Abraham Lincoln was Nancy Hanks, whose ancestors came from England to Virginia and moved on to Kentucky with the Lincolns, settling near them in Mercer County. It was while learning his trade as a carpenter in the shop of Joseph Hanks, the uncle of Nancy Hanks, that Thomas Lincoln met and courted the mother of the great president. He was of medium stature, standing five feet-ten in his shoes. His complexion was swarthy, his hair dark, his eyes gray, his face full and round, his nose prominent; he was strong and sinewy; he was peace loving but brave enough to fight when occasion demanded, as it often did in those rough days in the border state of Kentucky; he was of roving disposition, a good story teller, and full of anecdote picked up in his wanderings. In politics he was a Jackson Democrat, and in religion "everything by turns and nothing long." A botch carpenter by trade, he soon tired of that and turned farmer, though he did not entirely abandon rough carpentry, and as a farmer he showed his inconstancy by frequent migrations from one location to another. Nancy Hanks is described as a slender, symmetrical, woman of medium height, with dark hair, regular features, and sparkling hazel eyes. Of her it is related, as an unusual circumstance in the illiteracy of the time, that she possessed the rare accomplishments of reading and |