country could not permanently retain the institution of slavery, because he knew that slavery was immoral, and in his mind and heart was the consciousness that no political policy founded on immorality could endure. The Bible was the text book from which he had learned that even an economic policy must be founded upon sound social morality; and the Bible was his ultimate authority, quoted by him over and over again, for the declaration that no policy that comprehended the retention of slavery could be permanent.

Lincoln was firm in the belief that God ordained this Western Republic, founded on the principle of popular government, to be the exemplar of human liberty to endure through the ages. Popular government, therefore, was to him no chimera, no figment of superficial thinkers, no mere sentimental effervescence. Hence Lincoln laid it down as a fundamental and paramount principle that the Union must be preserved at all hazards. To that end he devoted all the powers of his great heart and brain, sustained by the unfaltering faith of his exalted spiritual nature.

How wonderfully Lincoln's thought attuned itself to the Supreme Director of the impending conflict! How unerringly he discerned the Divine purpose, and how accurately he squared his course

with the plans of Providence! The leadership of the prairie statesman, viewed from any angle, scrutinized in the light of history, stands forth a striking illustration of a leadership God-led, even in the smallest details.

CHAPTER XV

AT COOPER INSTITUTE

Ir was on the evening of February 27, 1860, that Abraham Lincoln became beyond all peradventure a personality of national proportions. The fame of his victory two years earlier over Douglas had made Republicans in the East eager to see and hear the man. He had taken such high

moral ground and there maintained himself against all comers, that the new party had a strong conviction that at least his counsel would be useful in making up the party's policy in the campaign of 1860. Of the score or more of eminent Republicans in the East who joined in sending Mr. Lincoln the invitation to speak at Cooper Institute, only two or three knew him at all and even his name was unfamiliar to the audience in general. Few came that evening expecting to hear anything worth while, and not a few were drawn by idle curiosity or rumours of his uncouthness or power to tell fetching stories. The impression that he made that night has fortunately been recorded by men

accustomed to weigh men as well as measures with discriminating accuracy. Major George Haven Putnam says he was but a boy when he first looked on "the gaunt figure of the man who was to become the people's leader" and that he was at once impressed with the outstanding fact that Mr. Lincoln's "contentions were not based upon invective or abuse, but purely on considerations of justice, on that everlasting principle that what is just, and only what is just, represents the largest and the highest interests of the nation as a whole."

The late Mr. Choate awhile before he died pictured Mr. Lincoln's appearance substantially like Major Putnam and other discerning men, who perceived that a new planet had swung into the murky sky of public life, and yet recall his quaintness to an audience made up of the most cultivated men and women in the East. On his long ungainly figure clothes, newly made for the trip, but badly wrinkled on the way, did nothing to relieve the obvious embarrassment of his first moments. "His deep set eyes looked sad and anxious, his countenance in repose gave little evidence"-says Mr. Choate "of that brain power which had raised him from the lowest to the highest station among his countrymen." When the presiding

I

George Haven Putnam, Abraham Lincoln, 47.

officer, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, presented him, the audience was on tiptoe for a story-telling orator. He disappointed them by dealing seriously with the gravest subject then before America. Everybody soon forgot the obtrusive feet, the clumsy hands, the unruly hair no brush could ever tame, even the harsh and high-pitched voice which as soon as he was safely launched into his theme grew natural and pleasing and winning, as his entire presence became as dignified and nobly graceful as St. Gaudens has represented it in his heroic statue in Chicago.

By sheer simplicity and transparent sincerity, with eyes shining and face glowing with interest in his message, Lincoln played at will upon his audience for an hour and a half. By copious historical proofs and masterly logic he stood there, the mighty man he was, shattering with sledgehammer blows the barricades of ignorance, venality, and superstition, demolishing the castles of ancient wrong and misinterpretation of the Constitution; and building on the ruins thereof a new and glorious temple founded on divine truth, and dedicated to a democracy in which

None shall rule but the humble,

And none but toil shall have.