ciple or lessen his independence in any degree by accepting the offer. "If I am perfectly free in my political action," said he, "I will accept the appointment; but if my sentiments, or the expression of them, are to be abridged in any way, I would not have it or any other place." Though the appointment would have hastened the realization of his ardent ambition to become a lawyer he stood ready to reject it, if it laid the weight of a straw upon his conscience. Whether the inducement were a petty Assistant County Surveyorship or the Presidency, he was always the same independent, God-fearing man, firm in his faith and therefore resolute to do his duty as God gave him light to see it.

To courage was added a sane tolerance as religious as the tolerance of Gamaliel who put first the will of God in the consideration of all questions. Lincoln's attitude in 1844 in respect to the "Know Nothing" party is noteworthy. He did not believe the political ostracism of foreign-born voters and Roman Catholics was Christian. riot and bloodshed to which it led in several of the larger cities where the "Know Nothing" party was strong seemed un-Christian. When the movement threatened to sweep the country and place the Proscriptionists in power, Lincoln, with his great

The

heart and mighty intellect, sought by judicious means to check the panic among foreign-born citizens. He introduced and supported a resolution in a meeting at Springfield in June of that year, declaring that, "the guarantee of the right of conscience, as found in our Constitution, is most sacred and inviolable, and one that belongs no less to the Catholic than to the Protestant," and that "all attempts to abridge or interfere with these rights, either of Catholics or Protestants, directly or indirectly, have our decided disapprobation and shall have our most effective opposition." This was the beginning of a campaign against intolerance and disorder which he pursued to the end with unabated zeal. Even at the last Cabinet meeting, the very day the bullet took his life away, Lincoln-says Mr. Welles"hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over."

Lincoln lived in all its fulness the Christian faith most of us at best profess.

CHAPTER VIII

LEADINGS OF PROVIDENCE

LINCOLN was far in advance of his day, but he was content to await God's good time-a characteristic attitude of his whole life. This was the measure of his large and growing faith, the secret of his almost limitless patience. Believing that, as the world whirled on its axis and the spheres moved in their appointed orbits, so right would find its proper place in the evolutions in the moral universe. He was, therefore, content to wait, no matter how dark the immediate prospect seemed.

In the Presidential campaign of 1844, in which the gallant, magnetic, and much beloved Henry Clay went down to defeat, Lincoln filled the honourable position of Presidential elector and stumped the state for his party ticket. He was one of Clay's most ardent admirers and read every printed utterance of that brilliant statesman who was moulding, in no small measure, the mental and political type of the Civil War President. Mr. Lincoln, in taking the field for Henry Clay, knew

that the fight was not for that time alone but for all time and that many a battle must be fought before victory would at last be won.

Many of Clay's supporters were deeply depressed by his defeat and believed that, in a sense, the battle was hopelessly lost. Some interpreted his defeat as conclusive evidence that popular government was a failure. They could not understand why such a man as Henry Clay, so eminently fitted to carry on the great work for better government, should have been set aside. Lincoln, too, was keenly disappointed-the more so, perhaps, because Clay was of his own native State. But he did not lose heart. His faith in the ultimate triumph of the right was unmoved in its serenity. He knew, in his soul, that

Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again,
Th' eternal years of God are hers.

Far from abandoning the struggle for the success of his political principles, Lincoln announced himself a candidate for the Congressional nomination in 1846 to succeed Baker who had been elected on the Whig ticket in the year of Clay's defeat. The Democrats placed in nomination the Rev. Peter Cartwright. This was the campaign in which Lincoln was attacked by certain church

influences. Much was made of Lincoln's religious beliefs or disbeliefs; but the effect of this crusade upon the voters of the district in which Lincoln ran, largely made up of church members and attendants, may be judged by the fact that Lincoln was elected by a majority of 1511, a much larger vote than Henry Clay received in the same district two years before. This victory was all the more signal in view of the "Circuit Rider's" church following, his well-known oratorical ability, his personal magnetism and popularity, and his pronounced adherence to the principles of Andrew Jackson, then the dominant politico-religious social power of the commonwealth.

Lincoln's signal triumph over Cartwright was the verdict of the people, who knew Lincoln best, upon the charge that he was lacking in sound religious principles. He had been pitted against a pioneer preacher whose reputation was nationwide a man idealized, if not idolized, by the rank and file of the professed Christians of the day. Evidently, they were capable of recognizing the high character of Lincoln, even if not garbed in the mantle of formal church membership.

Abraham Lincoln's political course was soon to be vindicated by the election of Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate for the Presidency. The